We use Google Analytics to see which pages are read and how the site is used, so we know what to improve. This only runs if you accept. See our privacy notice for details.

Dáil
‹ An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

Iceland workers' dispute

Summary

Deputy Bríd Smith raises the plight of Iceland workers facing store closures and lack of consultation. Minister Coveney says he will look at the case and follow it up through the industrial relations machinery.

I welcome the workers from Iceland here today. They are up in the Gallery. I hope everyone welcomes them. They have been busy campaigning, unionising and some of them occupying their stores where they are losing their jobs. We have just learned that five more stores have pulled down the shutters today without any consultation with workers. The issue of the Iceland workers has been raised several times by us and others on the floor of the House. The frequent answer which the Taoiseach gives me is that they have to wait to engage with the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, to get justice, but, in this case, justice delayed is certainly justice denied.

Molly Prendergast, who is sitting in the Gallery, is owed a staggering €1,700 in wages. She is one of 40 complainants who have gone to the WRC. She and her mother are both waiting for wages owed to them since the spring. They worked in the Northside Shopping Centre. Workers like Molly, and indeed like Donna and her colleagues, who are occupying the Talbot Street store - they should not have to sit in a store all day and sleep there all night to demand justice - are being left behind by the Government. Will the Taoiseach please encourage the Government or ensure it uses its influence, as it did with Tara Mines last weekend, to expedite talks in the WRC to get a resolution for these workers?

Comment on this
Simon Coveney Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Fine Gael

I will look at that case if it is helpful. We obviously want to use the industrial relations machinery of the State to good effect. Many Iceland workers find themselves in a very uncertain position and I can understand their frustration and anger as result of that. An examinership process is under way by court order. I have to be careful with respect to any political intervention here but the WRC is there for a reason and I will follow up on the issue after the Deputy has raised it here again with me.

Comment on this