Minister should ‘pick up phone’ to Dealz owners as time runs out to save jobs

The Minister for Enterprise has been urged to “pick up the phone” to the owners of Dealz while there are “10 days for a potential rescue plan” for its 70 shops in Ireland, which employ 3,500.

Concern is growing for the future of the discount shops after parent company Poundland went into administration in the UK last month. It is understood a notice to appoint administrators included the Irish Dealz shops.

Labour finance spokesman Ged Nash described the owners – Gordon Brothers investment group – as the “worst kind of asset strippers imaginable”, reminding the Dáil on Thursday that their actions in 2015 “saw almost 500 staff of Clerys dumped on to O’Connell Street with nothing but the dole”.

“In the dead of night they liquidated the company that ran the iconic department store while simultaneously flipping the finest building on our national main street to a company called Natrium”. Natrium subsequently told the workers they were not their employer.

Gordon Brothers “have form” and “they’re back in the news again”, he said.

He said they got a 10-day extension in the high court in London on Thursday morning “to seek protection from creditors”.

That is “10 days for a potential rescue plan, and the implications of that will have implications for 3,500 Dealz workers in Louth, in Limerick, in Wexford, in Cork, in Fingal, all across this country”.

Nash who was a minister of State at the time of the department store sale said he introduced a so-called Clerys law “to ensure that workers who were caught up in insolvencies would have a right to be heard and to be consulted on redundancies”.

He told Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke that his “first job is to work to ensure that the company has a future here, and that the 3,500 jobs are protected”.

“You have an obligation to pick up the phone and discuss with Gordon Brothers what their plans are for Dealz, those jobs, those 70 stores in this country.”

Burke said he could “absolutely assure you that I will discharge my duty” on the issue. He reiterated that “we have not received a collective redundancy notification from Poundland or Dealz at this particular juncture”.

“I have to be careful in terms of the statutory process”, particularly as there had been no formal redundancy notification.

The Minister said he appreciated the uncertainty for workers “given that this situation is currently evolving”.

But he stressed that “employers must comply with a number of legal obligations during the collective redundancy process” and “particularly in relation to the 30-day information consultation process with employees’ representatives”.

He told Nash: “I do hear, you know, a lot of rumours about different entities from time to time that never come to pass”. But, he said, the Dealz situation was “very concerning because we see the process that has commenced from the perspective of the UK”.

He said he was putting the Workplace Relations Commission on notice for protections dealing with any consultation period “to ensure that employees’ rights are protected”.

He said in 2024, they published an updated handbook for employees to be aware of their rights.

“And I can absolutely assure you that all the supports of our State agencies will be made available if any event should happen. And I can absolutely assure you, my department is very much engaged in this regard as well.”