Legal experts are welcoming a new report calling for reform in our employment laws.
The report was commissioned by then Junior Minister Ged Nash last year in the wake of the sudden closure of Clerys department store in Dublin.
Clerys was bought by Natrium and the company was liquidated in June 2015. Some 130 staff and 300 concession workers were let go without notice.
The report found that while the closure was lawful “it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it would be preferable if it were not”.
The study is recommending that we increase redundancy pay and put tougher penalties in place for firms that do not consult their staff for 30 days, before any collective redundancies.
Professor of Law at NUI Maynooth, Dr Micheal Doherty, spoke to Newstalk Breakfast about the report.
He explained that employment and company law are "two distinct spheres of law, but they do overlap at certain points - and it can be hard, in fairness to legislators, to plug gaps when you have that overlap".
Dr Doherty says that the State and the taxpayer will remain liable in the case of a genuine insolvency.
"Unfortunately this is an example of a very timely report on reforming of the law into the future, but for those individual workers... they didn't get everything that they would normally":
