Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and other members for facilitating this Bill. We are in a position to move it through Committee Stage today, all going well. I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss the Redundancy Payments (Amendment) Bill. The Bill provides for a payment from the State which will ensure that workers being made redundant will receive the same statutory redundancy payment as if they had not been laid off due to Covid-19 restrictions. Under existing redundancy provisions, a period of lay-off within the final three years of service before a worker is made redundant is not allowable as reckonable service. Therefore, the lay-off period is not counted towards a worker’s statutory redundancy payment.

Due to the necessary Government decisions to close and restrict certain sectors of our economy, some workers lost the opportunity to accrue reckonable service. This Bill will provide for a Covid-19-related lay-off payment from the State which, in the event of the worker’s redundancy, will cover lay-off periods due to Covid-19 restrictions. Payments will be made from the Social Insurance Fund. A worker does not have to have been in receipt of any form of State payment during the lay-off period. The criteria are simply that the person qualifies for redundancy in the usual way and was laid off because of Covid-19 restrictions.

The amount eligible workers will receive will depend on the length of time they were placed on lay-off due to Covid-19 before the date they were made redundant. The Bill does not change the fact that employers are obliged to pay statutory redundancy, which excludes lay-off periods in the final three years of employment, to eligible workers. However, employers will not be liable for this additional payment. The Covid restrictions which caused lay-off situations were completely outside the employers’ and employees' control. Imposing this cost on employers would be unfair. It would also conflict with wider Government policy, which, since the start of the pandemic, has been to minimise financial hardship on businesses and workers during the most challenging of times in order to protect those jobs.

This Bill provides the best outcome for both employers and workers. It will provide the legislative basis for the Department of Social Protection to process applications and make this payment to workers as soon as possible. It will be an employer-led online application process in the first instance. This is the most efficient approach from a customer service perspective. However, in the event an employer fails to make an application, I assure the committee that manual applications from workers will be accepted and they will not lose out.

Intensive work is ongoing on the development of the necessary systems, which was raised on Second Stage. I confirm that officials in the Department of Social Protection expect to open the application process during quarter 2 of this year. It will be in a position to do that in the next couple of weeks. I thank the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and her officials for their important work on this. I thank Deputies for their contributions on the Bill on the previous stage. I look forward to today's discussion. One of the major changes that people asked is in amendment No. 4, which extends the timeline. I am conscious that Members raised that. There was unanimous support for this change. I hope, if the committee accepts the amendment, that it will deal with the issue.