Seanad debates

Tuesday, 8 March 2022

Redundancy Payments (Amendment) Bill 2022: Second Stage

 

2:30 pm

Photo of Annie HoeyAnnie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

First, I must offer my apologies. As it is International Women's Day, I am scooting from one Zoom event to another today. It is a big day for us gals. I thank the Minister of State for coming into the House. The Labour Party of course supports this Bill. It will bring peace of mind to many workers who were laid off during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. During the past two years, our society made many large changes for the greater good of public health. The Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (Covid-19) Act 2020 gave legislative effect to many of these changes. This groundbreaking emergency legislation was rightly introduced at great speed and it is perhaps to be expected that such a wide-ranging and fast-moving Act was not going to be perfect. Indeed, issues around the Act's medium and long-term effect on workers' access to fair redundancy were raised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and by the Labour Party at the time. My colleague, Senator Ó Donnghaile has referenced other parties and Members of both Houses who raised concerns with this. My colleague, Deputy Nash, in particular was highly vocal about the real risk to workers in the manner in which the section 12A of the Redundancy Payments Act was suspended. While the State's plan for emergency support payments required the suspension of normal redundancy rules in order to prevent widespread job losses during lockdown, the Act left many workers badly exposed against the risk of future redundancy. Without the measures in this Bill, workers made redundant from 2024 onwards would find themselves unable to count any time they spent on the pandemic unemployment payment towards a fair calculation of their redundancy entitlement. In other words, workers who were temporarily laid off during the pandemic and who later unfortunately are made redundant, will find that some or all of their time employed during 2020 and 2021 will not count towards their redundancy claim. The financial cost to these workers would have been significant. Workers who did the right thing in taking the pandemic unemployment payment, doing their part to keep their employers and our economy afloat would have found themselves out of pocket at the worst possible time. Obviously it is extremely welcome that this problem is now being corrected and that workers seeking to access their redundancy rights will now be able to get a fair accounting of their employment during the pandemic.

By passing this short Bill we are restoring vital supports for workers who, it is to be hoped, will never need to access them. I repeat that this is welcome but I also repeat that this problem we are now correcting was identified by the Labour Party, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and others at the time it was being created. An amendment was tabled by Deputy Nash which would have corrected this issue before it even began. That amendment was ultimately withdrawn in the interests of speedy passage of the emergency legislation, with reassurances from the Government that this issue would be fixed in time. Time has passed, it is now being fixed but perhaps we could reflect on the fact that had the Labour amendment been accepted back in 2020, we could have had really strong emergency legislation without the need for this corrective measure two years later. Ultimately I do not believe there was any need to leave workers who had been laid off during the pandemic with uncertainty hanging over their heads. There was very much uncertainty outside of this uncertainty hanging over workers' heads. Of course it is good to see this uncertainty removed and we will be supporting this Bill.

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