Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 19 May 2010
75 Deputy Tom Hayes asked the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation when redundancy payment will be awarded in respect of a person (details supplied) in County Tipperary; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20891/10]
Amharc ar fhreagraMy Department administers the Social Insurance Fund (SIF) in relation to redundancy matters on behalf of the Department of Social and Family Affairs. There are two types of payment made from the SIF — rebates to those employers who have paid statutory redundancy to eligible employees, and statutory lump sums to employees whose employers are insolvent and/or in receivership/liquidation. I can confirm that my Department received a redundancy lump sum claim from the employee concerned on 27 January, 2010.
In this instance, the employee took a case directly to the Employment Appeals Tribunal and was successful in obtaining a determination to redundancy entitlement and, on this basis, has now applied to my Department for payment of that entitlement. The Department must discharge its obligation to protect, to the greatest possible extent, payments made from the Social Insurance Fund (SIF) and minimise the impact on that Fund. In this regard, and to give the employer an opportunity to meet his obligation to make the redundancy payments to the employees as required in the first instance, my Department wrote to the employer in end-April 2010 requesting payment of the redundancy entitlements. The letter outlines that if the employer is not in a position to pay the redundancy entitlements, documentary evidence of this (as outlined) should be submitted as well as acknowledgement of the debt owing to the SIF. At the time of writing to the employer, my Department wrote also to the employees affected requesting completion of a form verifying that payment of redundancy entitlements has not been made by the employer following the EAT determination.
My Department will review and follow up on this case after a reasonable period of time of 3 to 4 weeks has elapsed following the issue of the letters to the employer and the employees with a view to securing payment of the redundancy entitlements for the employees at the earliest possible date.
I should point out that the impact on business of the severe economic circumstances currently pertaining has resulted in an unprecedented increase in the level of Redundancy Payment claims lodged with my Department. This has impacted significantly on the capacity to maintain the customer service targets that previously obtained. The scale of the challenge on the Redundancy side is evident from the statistics that show incoming redundancy claims in 2009 amounted to 77,001 which represents a threefold increase over the level of claims lodged in 2007 and earlier years. In 2007, claims received were of the order of 25,000.
Efforts continue to be made by my Department to deliver more acceptable turnaround processing times for Redundancy payments given the difficulties that this gives rise to for both individual employees and the business community. Measures already taken in the Department in 2009 to alleviate the pressures on the Payments area include: almost doubling the number of staff through reassignment to a current level of 52 full time equivalents; prioritisation of the Department's overtime budget towards staff in the both Section to tackle the backlog outside normal hours; establishment of a special call handling facility in NERA to deal with the huge volume of telephone calls from people and businesses concerned about their payments; better quality information relating to current processing times on the Department's website; engagement with the Revenue Commissioners to facilitate the offset of redundancy rebate payments by employers against outstanding tax liabilities which those employers owe to the Revenue Commissioners.
The backlog and waiting times remain at unacceptable levels. However, improvements are evident. I should point out that my Department has, in 2009, processed 50,664 claims, up 70% on 2008. During the period 1 January 2010 to 30 April, 2010, 23,593 claims were received and 27,592 were processed. In the year to date, inroads have been made on the backlog of claims on hand, which reduced from 41,168 at the end of January to 36,333 at the end of April 2010.
