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

I will certainly talk to the Secretary General at the Department about that and see if it can be done. One might say that what is happening in the economy is a bit peculiar. We are facing a pandemic, yet in the face of that pandemic the economy is growing very rapidly. There are 2.4 million people at work. We think that next year there will be more people at work in Ireland than ever before. Most sectors are doing extremely well, but there are some sectors that have been hit really hard. We have always had two economies in Ireland, but we really have two economies now, because there are the affected sectors and the unaffected sectors. Interestingly, statistically, 5,452 potential collective redundancies were notified in 2019. That rose to 12,514 last year. There have only been 7,500 such notifications to date this year. Nobody can say for sure what will happen next year. However, it is of note that the number of collective redundancies notified this year is half of what it was last year.

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