Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 29 September 2020
65. Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú asked the Minister for Finance the number of persons in County Louth aged between 18 to 21, 22 to 25, 25 to 30, 30 to 35 and 35 to 40 years of age respectively, in receipt of the employment wage subsidy scheme in tabular form. [26519/20]
View answerThe Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS), which was provided for in section 28 of the Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (COVID-19) Act 2020, expired on 31 August 2020. It was replaced by the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) from September 1 2020, which was legislated for under the Financial Provisions (Covid-19) (No. 2) Act 2020. The specific nature and terms of the EWSS are separate and distinct from the TWSS.
It is important to emphasise that the EWSS is a subsidy to the employer, unlike the TWSS which was an income support to the employee paid via the employer. The EWSS is an economy-wide scheme that focuses primarily on business eligibility, delivering a per-head subsidy on a flat rate basis. A subsidy of either €151.50 or €203 may be claimed by the employer retrospectively for every worker who is paid between €151.50 and €1,462 per week.
EWSS registered employers must file payslips with Revenue for claims in respect of relevant pay periods. Until these processes are completed it is not possible to know the number of employees (nor their characteristics or locations) that will be supported under the scheme. For example, the payslip information for EWSS recipient employers for September will be available in mid-October and Revenue has confirmed that it will publish employee level information as soon as is practicable after that date.
The Deputy may be interested to note that Revenue has already begun to publish weekly statistics updates on the EWSS as employers continue to complete the registration process. These statistics are available on www.revenue.ie. By 25 September 2020, some 36,746 employers had registered for EWSS. The statistics show the breakdown of the registered employers by size, sector and county.
