Backlog of redundancy claims to be processed

ALMOST 42,000 redundancy claims are waiting to be processed, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has said.

The figure includes lump sum claims made by individuals after being made redundant by their employer and claims for rebates of redundancy payments made by employers.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment administers the Social Insurance Fund in relation to redundancies on behalf of the Department of Social and Family Affairs.

There are two types of payment made from the fund; rebates to employers who have paid statutory redundancy to eligible employees, and statutory lump sums to employees whose employers are insolvent or in receivership or liquidation.

An employer who makes the statutory payment is entitled to claim a 60 per cent rebate from the fund.

When a company goes into liquidation or becomes insolvent, the liquidator applies to the fund for payment to be made directly to the employees.

When an employer claims inability to pay, the onus is on the employer to provide proof so that the employee can be directly paid.

In response to parliamentary questions, Minister of State at the department Dara Calleary said due to the unprecedented increase in the volume of claims on hand, those received in January are currently receiving priority attention.

“Claims completed manually, submitted by post and received in January and claims submitted online received in February are currently being processed,” he said.

He told Sinn Féin Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, that 41,854 claims were outstanding, including those which were incomplete.

A notice on the department’s website also said lump sum claims are given priority over rebate claims and the department aims to process lump sum claims within six weeks.

A spokeswoman for the department said the bulk of the redundancy claims on hand were from employers seeking rebate.

“Efforts have and continue to be made by the Tánaiste to deliver acceptable turnaround processing times for redundancy payments, given the difficulties that this gives rise to for both individual employees and the business community,” she said.

More than 19 staff had been reassigned to deal with the claims since early 2009 and the department had prioritised its overtime budget to tackle the backlog.

They had established a call handling facility to deal with the “huge volume of telephone calls from people and businesses who are naturally concerned about their payments”.

They were also engaging with the Revenue Commissioners, the spokeswoman said, to facilitate the offset of redundancy rebate payments by employers against outstanding tax liabilities with the Revenue Commissioners.

“The Tánaiste is arranging for the urgent reallocation within the department of further additional resources to the area, as well as the possibility of securing additional resources from other Government departments,” she said.