The Department of Social Protection will deal "promptly" with redundancy payments for former HMV staff, Minister Leo Varadkar has promised.
Staff at four HMV stores that closed in Dublin and Limerick this year say they were told by the company they would receive redundancy payments but the company has now entered liquidation.
In a statement, Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar said employees who lose their jobs because of company liquidation are entitled to "statutory redundancy payments and to wage related payments due at the time of the liquidation."
Fianna Fáil Jobs Spokesperson Niall Collins said the party will be looking at the relevant legislation, and proposing amendments, to see if this type of situation can be avoided in the future.
"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.
"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."
"It's just not on for a company to leave their former, loyal staff high and dry like this," he added.
