Dail Report: The Tánaiste has vehemently rejected Labour Party claims that she had promised to make new redundancy payments legislation retrospective.
As she announced that the Dáil would sit next Friday to debate the new Bill to increase the level of redundancy payments, Ms Harney insisted she had said the legislation would be made retrospective if it was possible, but it was not.
She also warned that "vested interests have to be taken on in areas where we do not have adequate competition and where consumers are paying more than they should for products and services".
Welcoming last month's drop in inflation, she said: "I am delighted to acknowledge that inflation is on a downward turn but we must do much better, as 4.3 per cent is still far too high," she said during Enterprise, Trade and Employment Question Time.
But as she noted Ireland's drop in ranking on international economic competitiveness scales, Fine Gael's enterprise spokesman Mr Phil Hogan accused the Government of putting €35 a week in indirect tax increases on every job in the State since the last election and 800 jobs a week were being lost, many of them because of those indirect taxes.
During sharp exchanges over the legislation to increase redundancy payments, Labour leader Mr Pat Rabbitte accused Ms Harney of telling workers facing unemployment in Co Kilkenny that she would make the legislation retrospective.
Current redundancy legislation allows a half week's pay per year of service for employees under 41 and one week's pay for those over that age. The new legislation removes the age distinction and will set payments at two weeks' pay per year of service with a €500 a week ceiling.
When she published the legislation earlier this week, Ms Harney announced that it could not be made retrospective because employers' obligations could not be made retrospective.
When Mr Rabbitte asked "why did the Tánaiste go around the country promising to make the Bill retrospective", Ms Harney retorted that "as usual Deputy Rabbitte is wrong". When the Labour TD said he was not wrong about this, that she had told workers in Castlecomer it would be backdated, Ms Harney said that during the recent pay agreement talks, the unions "were in no doubt that it could not be made retrospective legally".
He said "the Tánaiste would know it was important if she was being made redundant", to which Ms Harney replied that he was "playing politics with vulnerable people" who were losing their jobs.
Later under renewed Opposition pressure during Question Time later in the day, Ms Harney said her officials had minutes of her meeting with the Castlecomer workers.
This proved she had said that that "if I could I would" make the legislation retrospective. "I can't do it," she said, insisting that "I know the commitments I make and I stand over them".
In a swipe at the Labour Party, she said they had been in Government for a few years and "didn't do much about redundancy" payments.
