Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar has promised that his department will deal "promptly" with redundancy and insolvency applications from the former employees of HMV.

Four HMV stores were shut earlier this year and the company reportedly going into liquidation on Saturday before the payment of redundancy.

Employees who lose their jobs because of the liquidation of their company are entitled to statutory redundancy payments and to wage-related payments due at the time of the liquidation.

Minister Varadkar has said that eligible staff would be entitled to payments from the State under the Redundancy and Insolvency Payments schemes.

Fianna Fáil Jobs Spokesperson, Niall Collins argued on Saturday that former staff of the music store had been left high and dry as it entered liquidation.

He said:

“The closure of the four stores, three in Dublin and one in Limerick, is a terrible blow for the workers, and their families."

“The least the staff could expect was that the company would pay them their redundancy payments. They received written correspondence from the management to say that this would happen.”

“However, the decision to enter into liquidation today has ended any hope of the former workers getting redundancy payments from the company.”

“The State will now have to step in and provide basic statutory redundancy which, in some cases, may be considerable less than what they would have received if the company had paid them their redundancy.

“What happened today is nothing short of scandalous. The company made a commitment to their former staff, and simply decided to renege on it."

Collins continued that it set a bad precedent and that his party would be looking at the relevant legislation and proposing amendments to avoid this type of situation in the future.