Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I am sorry. On the redundancy debt, I heard that slightly peculiar RTE report. We took over the redundancy debt from the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation because, although I do not want to continuously harp back to the awful events in 2008 and afterwards, there was a considerable backlog.

The Deputy may have known people - I certainly did - who had worked in construction and whose construction employer went bust. In some cases, they all but disappeared and there was a waiting period of significant duration. I personally dealt with cases in which the waiting period was up to two years and this Government inherited a large number of such cases. The Deputy may criticise me for this but as Minister, I decided to focus on those who were waiting on their redundancy payments in what I found to be an inheritance from the previous Government. It was because the crash was so huge and rapid and because the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment frankly was not geared up to deal with the kind of demands that emerged. The then Government decided - in my view wisely - to try to transfer the administration of the scheme to the Department of Social Protection. I prioritised paying those who were due redundancy payments or insolvency payments or both. Second, the Department's staff worked flat out and created a new information technology platform. The Deputy will remember the prolonged dispute concerning the sit-in at Vita Cortex. Once an agreement had been reached there and the employers had put in the appropriate redundancy payments and applications, the Department was able to pay the people involved who were in benefit within a very short time. That was when the new computer system went live and the Department has concentrated on getting the system up to date.

In addition, as one of the savings it undertook, the Department reduced the actual refunds that were paid over a period of time. It was in respect of refunds that the arrears arose in past times and the saving to the State in this regard was €117.5 million. This is what I found a bit odd about the RTE report, as actually there has been a significant saving in this area, as well as a huge improvement of the service. For instance, if a redundancy is announced anywhere in the country nowadays - happily they are less frequent - social welfare staff will go into that place of employment, set up an office and get the details of the staff. There have been small problems with British-based companies because the British redundancy rules and social welfare system are different from ours and sometimes, where the receivership is being handled from the United Kingdom, there may be a slight communications pause. I remember that in the case of a number of those computer shops which also went bang during the recession, there again were long delays for some of the workers involved. However, the system at present is working very well.

In respect of debts, one should remember the Department has taken over a lot of this from the former Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and it does not write off debts unless that is strictly in line with Comptroller and Auditor General requirements. The Department pursues employers and members will recall the legislation was changed recently to enable the Department to pursue debt, in that where the employer subsequently recovers and is collecting some other Government support, the Department can deduct any outstanding debt. The Department has made great progress in the recovery of outstanding debts over the past few years from individuals and other sources. Over the period since the legislation was changed, I believe the debt recovery amount is running close to €300 million in respect of overpayments, frauds and so on. As I stated, I found the RTE report to be a bit unusual.