Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Question 222: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills when redundancy payment will issue in respect of a person (details supplied) in Dublin 17; if his attention has been drawn to the fact that despite his reply to Parliamentary Question No. 222 of 1 May 2012 this person was informed by his Department by telephone on 30 May that they were still processing applications from September 2011; if he will take steps to expedite the processing of applications, taking into consideration the hardship the delay is causing for people; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29171/12]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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A redundancy application in respect of the person referred to by the Deputy was received by my Department on 9th November 2011. The application will be reached for processing within the next fortnight. The person will then be advised of the position regarding the redundancy payment by an official of my Department. When a redundancy application is being processed the applicant's payroll file is also checked. This is to verify that the person did not have any underpayment or overpayment of salary during the course of their service as an SNA.

To comply with audit requirements all payments must be verified by a second official before issue. The Department's payrolls, due to their size, close for processing ten days in advance of the date of issue of the payment. Accordingly, there is a time lag between the initial processing of the application and the date the person receives the payment.Every effort is being made, within the resources available, to ensure that Special Needs Assistants that have been made redundant have their claims processed as quickly as possible. Extra resources are assigned to the Redundancy Unit as and when they are available. The Deputy will appreciate that, in the context of the employment control framework, it is only possible to reassign limited additional staffing resources from within the existing staff cohort of the Department to deal with redundancy payments whilst at the same time ensuring that other priority functions such as the payment of salaries to teachers and Special Needs Assistants on a fortnightly basis are performed.