Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Perhaps I need to give a bit more thought to this but the advice I have been given is the unfair dismissals legislation provides that any social welfare payments which the employee may have received after the date of dismissal are not taken into account in calculating the financial loss. If we were to change this, presumably the person would have to get a lower award from the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, and we would have to go after the employer for the difference. We would then probably be challenged. Employers would certainly challenge this and they would state the person may well have been unfairly dismissed but this is not to state the person could not have taken up other employment. I accept it makes it more difficult to take up other employment if someone is unfairly dismissed, but it is certainly not an impossibility. If challenged, how would we prove the person could not get another job because he or she had been unfairly dismissed and not because of another reason?