Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Independent)
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To ask the Minister for Finance in relation to staff in the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, if he will honour the existing 2011 agreement on the strategic plan approved by him in respect of redundancy terms in the wind down of the bank; if he will confirm that these payments have already been budgeted for by the IBRC and if he will use the powers available to him under the IBRC Act 2013 to make these payments and ensure that undertakings given to staff in 2011 are honoured. [11827/13]

Patrick Nulty (Dublin West, Labour)
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To ask the Minister for Finance if he will instruct the liquidator of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation to pay the full redundancy entitlements to IBRC staff. [11831/13]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 72 and 76 together.

As the Deputy is aware, the legislation surrounding liquidation ranks employees as preferential creditors in respect of certain amounts owing to them on a winding up, including accrued wages and salaries, holiday pay, sick pay, statutory redundancy, pensions contributions and claims for damages arising from accidents. Any claims, over and above that described above, will rank as an unsecured claim in the liquidation process.

There are standard rules which apply to the distribution of the assets of companies in liquidation and it would not be appropriate for me to interfere with these rules. However the State does intervene to ensure that statutory redundancy is available through the Social Insurance Fund and that arrears of pay, sick pay, holiday pay or pay in lieu of statutory notice (limited to EUR600 per week up to a maximum of eight weeks) are payable from the Insolvency Payments Scheme. The Minister for Social Protection will rank as a preferential creditor of IBRC in respect of any payments made to employees of IBRC from the Social Insurance Fund or the Insolvency Payments Scheme. Any action taken by the Minister which might divert the assets from IBRC creditors to employees could be challenged in the Courts. I have been advised by the special liquidators that that any voluntary severance scheme, that was in place prior to liquidation, is no longer operational.

The special liquidators have said that it is their key priority that all employees are fully kept up to date on all developments during the course of the special liquidation. They have indicated that their approach will be to talk with employees directly either in small groups or on a one to one basis and they also plan to communicate by email general updates to employees during the course of the special liquidation.