By Aoife Kearns and MaryAnn Vaughan
A group of former Debenhams workers took to the picket line in Waterford a whole 365 days after they were told by the store they were being made redundant.
They say they've had little to no communication from the store's liquidators, KPMG, in the last year.
The issues arose because the terms of their original redundancy agreement weren't fulfilled.
Speaking outside the City Square store today, shop steward Michelle Galvin, says they are still considering an offer the government made:
"Where we're at at this moment is that €3 million fund is still there on the fund that the government offered, and we're exploring that.
"Each store is going to meet up with Solas, store by store, and we're just probing and looking into that at the moment to see how it can benefit us. Then we'll make a decision after that."
Darren Malone worked in the Waterford store for 13 years and says the last 12 months have been particularly tough:
"It's been worse. It's been so, so bad. And the government has shockingly let us down. It's kind of pointless to talk about that at this stage.
"I've learned to manage my money. You'd be terrified to spend a cent because you're wondering, you know, what's going to happen and how long this is going to last.
"There was a joke made at the start of all this, 'we'll see each other in a year', and we're actually here. We didn't realise it was going to happen."
Darren says that as well as being financially tough, it's been difficult mentally:
"More than anything it's kind of affected - which I didn't realise - my mental health.
"I would never have thought that I would have got depressed or anything... I got massively depressed over it.
"... I hope Waterford sees and Ireland, you know, look at this now and learn from it. Learn that businesses, no matter who they are, will try and walk away if they can get away with it."
Michelle Galvin explained that the protest is about standing up for their rights:
"It has been very hard. We're all unemployed, we have no jobs to go back to.
"We all have to start moving in different directions. You know, some of us are older and that's hard because you don't know what direction to go in.
"But we've formed a great little team here and I believe in standing up for your rights.
"That's what we did and I'm proud of that."
Listen back to Damien Tiernan and Aoife Kearns look back at the year that was for Waterford's Debenham's workers here:
https://www.spreaker.com/user/wlrfm/deb-final-package-one-year-on
And you can listen back to today's full Déise Today Show here:
https://www.spreaker.com/user/wlrfm/deise-today-friday-9th-april-part-1
https://www.spreaker.com/user/wlrfm/deise-today-friday-9th-april-part-1
