asked the Minister for Labour (i) if he will extract from the 5,000 most recent RP2 forms submitted to him the total reckonable service of each redundant employee and classify it into the following categories: (i) one year service and two years service, up as far as 40 years service; (ii) if he will give the names of the employers who made those 5,000 employees redundant and give the total reckonable service of the employees by category as above; and (iii) if he will give from the list of 5,000 forms the breakdown of employers by number of redundancies made and give the total reckonable service of employees under the categories mentioned.
Written Answers . - Redundancy Statistics .
561.
: Certain statistics of notified redundancies are prepared by my Department and published in the Economic Series issued monthly by the Central Statistics Office, the Irish Statistical Bulletin issued quarterly by the same office and the Manpower Information Quarterly issued by my Department.
In view of pressure on my Department's staff arising from the increasing numbers of redundancies to be dealt with under the redundancy payments scheme, I am not prepared to divert staff to compilation of the very detailed statistics requested by the Deputy. A very rough estimate of the amount of staff time involved in compiling the information is something of the order of 60-70 working days. The diversion of staff to compile the information would add significantly to the time taken for processing payment of claims for redundancy lump sums and rebates. It would also be contrary to practice to name individual employers and to give detailed particulars of redundancies notified by named employers.