Mick Clifford: Protect those in precarious employment

Former workers on picket line duty outside the Debenhams Store on Patrick Street, Cork. Picture: Dan Linehan

Early on in the documentary 406 days, there is footage of a deserted Henry Street in Dublin during the pandemic lockdown. Nothing moved. There was no life, no marching of feet, no rubbernecking shop windows, all activity suspended as the country hid in fear of a raging virus. Retrospective comment today appears to be divided on whether the lockdown was necessary, but one way or the other the vistas of deserted streets evoked images of the end of the world as we knew it.

Of course, it wasn’t. Lives were lost, and others suffered long-term effects, but, with the help of science, we have learned to live with the virus. For one group of people, however, it was the end of the world as they knew it. The 1,000, nearly exclusively women, who worked in eleven Debenhams stores around the state found themselves dealing with the closure of the business that had been their lives.