A "loophole in the law" that has left staff and former workers at the popular Paris Bakery in Dublin without wages owed to them needs to be addressed, local TD and Minister for Trade Joe Costello said.
The bakery ceased trading last week more than a month ahead of its planned closure due to the non-renewal of the lease at the Moore Street premises.
Mr Costello and Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton yesterday visited the workers, many of them immigrants, who are engaged in a sit-in protest at the Moore Street premises. Bakery owner Yannick Forel has told The Irish Times he estimates about €130,000 is owed to the staff and former staff. He and the other director of the company, Ruth Savill, have said they cannot afford to pay the wages outstanding.
Mr Costello told The Irish Times that the company had simply ceased trading rather than going into receivership.
“So in those circumstances, it is much more difficult for the workers to get their entitlements.”
Mr Costello said today the situation needed to be looked at “very carefully, to see if we are getting the full story”.
Mr Costello said he had never seen such a situation arise in his own constituency before. Ms Burton had told the bakery workers yesterday she would arrange for her officials to meet them to discuss how any entitlements might be progressed, he said.
Noting that most of the workers were not Irish nationals, he said many of them were in “dire need” as they had not been paid for “several months”.
"There's a loophole there that needs to be plugged and that would be a matter for Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton, " he said.
“They (the bakery) had a very popular operation there,” Mr Costello said.
But he added that companies promising jobs which then disappeared was “not the kind of model of recovery we want to be encouraging”.
About 40 people, including workers, former workers and trade unionists, planned to travel to the home of Ms Savill in Wicklow again today to protest outside her house.
The bakery is based at numbers 18-19 Moore Street, in a 2.7 hectare block that has been earmarked for re-development by developer Joe O’Reilly’s Chartered Land group.
It was granted planning permission in 2010 for the development on a site stretching from the former Carlton cinema on O’Connell Street to Moore Street.
No construction started, however, and the lands now form part of Nama’s portfolio of loans.
Ms Savill told The Irish Times last week she had had no involvement with the business for the past six months. She and Mr Forel are listed as directors with the Companies Registration Office.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) made a submission to the Government in 2012 outlining a remedy for this legal loophole.
Ictu general secretary David Begg said at the weekend the issue needed to be dealt with with urgency.
“We’ve been here before and will be again unless this legal loophole is closed and employers are obliged to honour their commitments and pay employees what they are due.”
Similar issues had been seen with Vita Cortex, La Senza, HMV, Game, Thomas Cook and Connolly Shoes over the last number of years.