Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

The considerable increase in the number of redundancy payment claims lodged with the redundancy payments section of my Department in the latter part of 2008, and to date in 2009, is unprecedented and is giving rise to delays in the processing of redundancy payments for individuals and companies within acceptable timeframes. The scale of the challenge is evident from the statistics for the first half of 2009, which indicate that the number of new claims lodged with my Department stands at 42,724, an increase of 160% over the equivalent period last year. Moreover, claims lodged at this half-year point now exceed the total number of claims received for the full year 2008, which, of itself, was an exceptional year by comparison with earlier years when claims received were of the order of 25,000 or less.

I am acutely aware of the difficulties the inability to deliver an acceptable turnaround of redundancy rebate payments is giving rise to for both individual employees and the business community. Together, we have taken and continue to take all possible steps to address the issues. Measures already taken include the reassignment of 19.7 additional staff, full-time equivalents, from other areas of the Department to the redundancy payments area since early 2009 with ongoing review of trends and demands; the prioritisation of the Department's overtime budget towards staff in redundancy payments section to tackle the backlog outside normal hours; the establishment of a special call handling facility to deal with the huge volume of telephone calls from people and businesses who are naturally concerned about their payments, using the facilities and cooperation of the National Employment Rights Authority, NERA; and the provision of better quality information on current processing times on the Department's website. This enables the staff in the redundancy payments area to concentrate on and prioritise the processing of redundancy payment claims.

The average time it takes to process rebate applications from employers filed on-line is six months while claims submitted by post take seven months. In respect of lump sum payments paid directly to employees in instances where the employers are unable to pay the statutory redundancy entitlements, the current processing time, assuming all of the necessary supporting documentation is filed, is between six and eight weeks.

I agree with the Deputy that this is totally unacceptable and that is why I have streamlined a transfer of my human resources, and, to the disgruntlement of every member of my staff all of my overtime budget, to deal with this inordinate difficulty. I appreciate that it is not good enough and we will do all that we can to correct this as quickly as possible.

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