Vol. 544 No. 3
249 Mr. Bradford asked the Minister for Finance if he will make the necessary arrangements to ensure that those staff members of the Houses of the Oireachtas who work overtime in the pre-Christmas period will be paid for this overtime before Christmas. [29155/01]
274 Mrs. Owen asked the Minister for Finance the reason staff of Members of the Oireachtas will not receive their overtime payments from 20 November 2001 until January 2002; if he will make arrangements to ensure that all payments to staff are fully up to date by 21 December 2001; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28902/01]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 249 and 274 together.
Every year there is a delay in paying overtime at this time because payroll processing has to be anticipated to allow for the Christmas and new year holidays. This year there are two additional factors that require bringing forward the payroll processing to earlier than heretofore. Firstly, the end of the tax year is impacting at this point for the first time this year. This has a major effect on the scheduling because of the additional processing required. Second, many Departments, including the Department of Finance, have recently changed their payroll software in preparation for the euro changeover and so are operating end-of-year routines for the first time with new systems. Consequently, caution has to be exercised in the scheduling of the process to reduce the risk to the payment of the payrolls due in the early days of the new year.
This compression of the processing necessarily requires the postponement until January of the overtime payments that would, in the normal course, have been paid in December. In compensation, weekly paid staff will be paid their basic salary in advance – the payment due on 21 December will be paid on 14 December and that due on 28 December will be advanced nine days to 19 December. By 21 December, basic pay will be in advance of normal, although overtime will be necessarily delayed.
