Vol. 407 No. 5
4 Mr. Gilmore asked the Minister for Labour the total number of redundancies reported to his Department for the first quarter of this year; the way this compares with the same period last year; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
43 Mr. T. O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Labour the total number of redundancies notified to his Department in each of the months of January, February and March of this year; and the corresponding number of redundancies notified for the same period in each year since 1985.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 4 and 43 together.
The information sought by the Deputies is set out in a tabular statement which I propose to circulate in the Official Report.
The total number of redundancies notified to my Department in the first quarter of 1991 was 4,343 compared with 3,503 for the corresponding period in 1990. This increase may be explained by the notification by a number of firms of significant redundancies in the early part of this year. In general terms, these redundancies could be said to be attributable to factors such as the global recession, rationalisation, loss of markets and the temporary dislocation of business due to the Gulf crisis. It will be noted, however, that the average figure for notified redundancies in the first quarter of the years 1989-91 — 3,947 — represents a drop of more than a third on the average figure for the corresponding periods in the years 1985-88-6,208.
Tabular Statement
The total numbers of redundancies notified to the Department of Labour for the first three months of each year since 1985 were:
|
Year |
January |
February |
March |
Total |
|
1985 |
2,386 |
1,710 |
1,916 |
6,012 |
|
1986 |
1,909 |
1,971 |
1,918 |
5,798 |
|
1987 |
1,839 |
1,842 |
1,890 |
5,571 |
|
1988 |
2,491 |
2,634 |
2,327 |
7,452 |
|
1989 |
1,388 |
1,375 |
1,232 |
3,995 |
|
1990 |
1,307 |
1,253 |
943 |
3,503 |
|
1991 |
1,169 |
1,459 |
1,715 |
4,343 |
The above figures relate to notifications of proposed redundancies under the Redundancy Payments Acts and not to actual redundancies. They do not, therefore, include certain categories of employees which do not come within the scope of the Redundancy Payments Acts; employees with less than two years' eligible service with an employer, employees who are under 16 years of age or who have reached the qualifying age of old age pension, or employees who work less than 18 hours per week.
Does the Minister agree that these figures are positively alarming in the context of the very moderate proposals the Government agreed so recently in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress? Does he agree that attempts by the Government to explain it in terms of returned emigrants are somewhat feeble especially since the Taoiseach quite recently confirmed in the House that there is no statistical mechanism available to measure the reality of returning emigrants to whatever extent it might be a reality?
The question of analysing returned emigrants in the live register is another matter. The figures are an increase on last year. I have the list of companies. In the first part of the year, particularly the first six weeks and even more particularly in the two or three weeks after the commencement of the Gulf crisis, a number of firms notified the Department of redundancies. The figures are always notified as redundancies but for the purposes of comparison I take it that they were subsequently made redundant because that is the only fair comparison one can make. A high number of those jobs were in the computer area. They would include the workers in Digital and Packard. There was a high number of those in the first six weeks. I would be hopeful that that trend will not continue. Last year we had the lowest number of redundancies since 1969 or 1970, just over 13,000. It would be hard to equal that again, but I do not see any massive increase in the figures for industries for the months of March or April.
(Limerick East): Could the Minister say if there is any particular trend apart from the computer industry, or are there redundancies right across the sectors? Second, is there any estimate of non-notifiable redundancies? Third, would the Minister have any estimate of the number of people who, though they are not made redundant, have been put on three day weeks, part-time work?
There is a social welfare figure for those on three day weeks. The redundancies occurred very much in the computer area. I suppose there were reasons for that. Digital, Packard and Wang were the big companies. The computer industry, both in the last quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year has shown a high fall out. It did not go across the board. There is no estimate of unnotified redundancies.
