Ken O'Flynn (Cork North-Central, Independent Ireland Party)
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181. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he will outline the number of taxpayers who received redundancy payments in each of the past five years and the average payment amount. [54671/25]

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The Redundancy Payments Act 1967, as amended, provides that all eligible employees are entitled to a statutory payment on being made redundant. The statutory redundancy payment is 2 weeks' pay for every year of service plus 1 additional week's pay. This payment is capped at €600 per week. By law, it is the employer's responsibility to pay statutory redundancy.

My officials have done some work with the Central Statistics Office to estimate the total number of redundancies across the workforce. However, it is not possible to provide the data sought by the Deputy based on current employer reporting requirements.

However, I can provide information on payments made under the Redundancy Payments Scheme.

The Redundancy Payments Scheme pays statutory redundancy payment to an employee where their employer cannot pay due to financial difficulties, insolvency or refuses to pay. This represents only a proportion of overall redundancy payments. Payments under the Scheme are made from the Social Insurance Fund. Once a payment has been made under the Redundancy Payments Scheme, a debt is raised and the Department of Social Protection will seek to recover this debt from the employer. Repayments can be made by the employer by a lump sum payment or by regular instalments.

Once a payment has been made under the Redundancy Payments Scheme, a debt is raised and the Department of Social Protection will seek to recover this debt from the employer. Repayments can be made by the employer by a lump sum payment or by regular instalments.

The Department of Social Protection, which administers the Redundancy Payments Scheme on my behalf, informs me of the below statistics which I hope will be of some benefit to the Deputy: