Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Redundancy Payments Act 1967, as amended, requires employers to make a minimum level of payment to employees in the event of a redundancy. It is the employer’s responsibility to pay redundancy payments to all eligible employees at this minimum rate as provided for under the Act. Policy responsibility for the schemes transferred to the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment on 14th October 2020. While employers are required to notify the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment of the potential for collective redundancies, employers are not required to submit a notification of actual redundancies that have occurred. As a consequence, there is no central record of redundancies each year and consequently no potential to identify levels of PRSI paid by these employers into the Social Insurance Fund (SIF).

Under the Redundancy Payment Scheme, it is only where an employer is unable to pay statutory redundancy due to financial difficulties that an application may be submitted to the Department of Social Protection for the payment of statutory redundancy entitlements from the SIF. Details of the number of applications received since 2010 and the associated costs under the Redundancy Payments Scheme is shown below.

When a redundancy payment is made from the SIF, the employer is notified of the amount owed and a debt is recorded for recovery from the employer as provided for under Sections 32 and 43 of the Redundancy Payments Act. A recovery plan takes into account the current financial situation of the employer and their capacity to repay the outstanding debt with each case dealt with on its own merits. This includes agreeing arrangements whereby the debt can be recovered by way of instalments over a period of time. The Department of Social Protection has not commenced any enforcement action, nor attempted to take possession of any family home as part of in order to recover outstanding debts to the Social Insurance Fund as a result of payments made under the Redundancy Payments Scheme.

Note: Applications received from 2010-2013 include applications under the rebate scheme which was discontinued in 2013. The expenditure shown above excludes costs associated with those rebates.