Two officials of my Department travelled to Castlecomer to meet union officials, worker' representatives and Mr. Martin Carroll, county councillor, at the Comerama factory on 23 June 2003. The manager of the company attended as an observer for a short while. The union officials and the workers' representatives made the case that the workers who had already been made redundant up to January 2003 before the new enhanced rates came into force in May 2003 should be retrospectively paid these enhanced rates. However, these workers were paid about 3.2 times the then statutory rate by the company on a voluntary basis. The company had also applied for and been paid by my Department its entitlement to a 60% rebate from the social insurance fund, SIF.
The legal advice to my Department when issues such as this were considered during the drafting stage of the Bill to give statutory effect to the new enhanced rates was that retrospective effect could not be given as to do so would be placing a legal onus on employers retrospectively which the Oireachtas is not allowed to do in these circumstances. Unfortunately for the workers concerned, my Department is precluded from paying the enhanced rates of redundancy with retrospective effect. The case was also made on behalf of these workers that if it was not legally possible to meet their claim for payment of the enhanced rates, the Government should consider introducing a scheme to enable them to be paid the enhanced rates from the SIF as a special case. I have also considered this proposal and I believe it would be impractical. It would mean making a special case for the workers concerned on the basis that they had missed out by being made redundant quite a while before the new enhanced rates were passed into law. Many thousands of other workers are in a similar position and could also make a case for special treatment.
