Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Usually when amendments or comments on legislation come from the Opposition benches, we are looking for the Government to spend more money. This is a rather unusual situation in which there should be a net gain to the Government. There is a genuine issue here. I realise that the Employment Appeals Tribunal could take up to five years to make a determination, which is appalling. I can see that if one was to force the employer to pay all the social welfare between the date of the dismissal and the settlement five years later, it could have an effect on smaller employers, but that is not a major issue and it is one that could be dealt with in another way. In terms of what an unfair dismissal can cost the State, Deputy Smith referred to social welfare payments up to the time of the determination that the employee was unfairly dismissed. As a matter of fact, it could be worse. I have come across cases where people who rightly took cases to the EAT and won were subsequently regarded as troublemakers which stood against them in seeking employment thereafter. One or two people I know have been condemned to a lifetime of social welfare because they had the temerity to challenge a dismissal. Employers regarded them in that way because of it.

The Minister's main objection on Committee Stage, if I heard him correctly, was that this amendment could, in some way, interfere with the ultimate compensation awarded to the employee. He undertook to see if that was case. It does not obviously affect the level of compensation to the employee as I read it but the Minister may have discovered something different. I would like to hear his observations on that.

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