It is an issue about which the Leader is enthusiastic. I am pleased to see that Fine Gael is not engaging expensive media monitoring firms because when I appeared on "The Pat Kenny Show" this morning, the Leader engaged by tweeting a very welcome comment. I acknowledge his role in making Ireland a more equal society. I congratulate him and hope we will have Government support for the legislation when it is introduced and debated in January.

On more mundane matters, last Friday morning staff at the SuperValu store in Drogheda showed up for work as normal, but they were locked out of the premises and the doors were closed for good.

Out of the blue, the company which ran this particular store for more than 20 years ceased trading. Almost 30 staff, some of whom had worked there for almost 20 years, were left without work this side of Christmas.

We know that businesses fail every day. We all feel a sense of sorrow when businesses do fail and people are let go. Nobody puts more work into a business than the business owners. However, this is a tragedy for everyone involved. When a firm is careering towards insolvency, is in difficult trading circumstances and ends up being liquidated, everyone will agree that there are better ways to treat staff than to merely shut the door in their faces and leave them depending on statutory redundancy at the expense of the taxpayer. In a normal collective redundancy scenario where a business fails, there is a requirement on the employer to engage in a 30-day consultation process with employees to discuss enhanced redundancy packages and so on. No such requirement falls on a business owner where his or her business ceases trading and goes into liquidation. When the Drogheda SuperValus of this world decide they are going to close their doors, it is the State which is on the hook for the payments.

There is a solution to this problem. After the Clerys scandal, I worked closely to engage with experts to understand how the law could be changed to better protect workers in such insolvency scenarios. The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation has an expert report, the Duffy-Cahill review. It was initiated by me and developed by Mr. Kevin Duffy, former chairman of the Labour Court, and an expert company lawyer, Ms Nessa Cahill, to identify ways in which workers could be better protected in scenarios such as this. The Minister has, however, been sitting on the report. The public consultation on the report has concluded, yet we see staff in SuperValu in Drogheda and Pumpkin Patch in the Blanchardstown and Liffey Valley shopping centres experience the loss of their jobs last Friday as the doors of their companies were closed in their faces. There is a better and fairer way of doing this. It is high time the Minister introduced legislation to give effect to the proposals made in the Duffy-Cahill report to better protect workers in insolvency scenarios.