Vol. 544 No. 3
136 Mr. Rabbitte asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the number of redundancies or job losses notified to her Department in 2000 and to date in 2001; the number of anticipated job losses reported to her Department to date in 2001; the procedures which are in place within her Department for an early warning system to identify jobs at risk; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [28632/01]
A total of 13,316 redundancies were notified to my Department in 2000. In the first ten months of 2001, a total of 15,764 redundancies were notified. These relate to employees who have actually been notified individually by their employer that they will be made redundant on a certain date.
As regards anticipated job losses, one indicator of this is the number of collective redundancies notified to my Department under the Protection of Employment Act, 1977. These are the numbers of employees that companies have indicated that they propose to make redundant. It should be borne in mind that there is considerable overlap between the figures for collective redundancies and notified redundancies, and a company may not proceed with all collective redundancies notified. A total of approximately 5,200 collective redundancies were notified under the 1977 Act in September and October 2001, including a number of major cases.
