Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 7 July 2020
151. Deputy Eoin Ó Broin asked the Minister for Finance the way in which the temporary wage subsidy scheme evaluates average pay for furlough if unpaid sick leave was taken in December 2019 and January 2020 which has subsequently impacted negatively on an employee’s average furlough pay. [13812/20]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) is provided for in section 28 of the recently enacted Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (Covid-19) Act 2020. The Deputy will be aware that the TWSS is an emergency measure to deal with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy. Of necessity, the underlying legislation and the scheme itself were developed rapidly, having regard to the Government objective of providing financial assistance to employers and employees, where businesses have been seriously affected by the pandemic and the necessary restrictions that were introduced as a result.
In the context of the need for immediate implementation of the TWSS, the scheme necessarily had to build on data returned to Revenue through its real-time PAYE system. The key conditions of the scheme, as prescribed in the underlying law, are that:
- the business is suffering significant negative economic impact due to the pandemic,
- the employees were on the payroll at 29 February 2020, and
- the employer had fulfilled its PAYE reporting obligations for February 2020 before, in general, 15 March 2020, but extended recently to before 1 April 2020.
For the purposes of the operation of the TWSS, the Average Revenue Net Weekly Pay is the employee’s average net weekly pay for January and February 2020 based on the payroll submissions made by the employer concerned to Revenue.
I have been advised by Revenue that if no payroll is on record for an employee in January due to unpaid sick leave, then Revenue will use the February payroll submissions for the calculation of the Average Revenue Net Weekly Pay and divide that by the number of insurable weeks reported in that period. Thus, an employee would not be negatively impacted if he or she only had payroll submissions covering four weeks during the January and February period as the calculation is proportionate to the number of insurable weeks reported.
