The Government has announced that the suspension of sections of the Redundancy Payments Act 1967 will be lifted at the end of this month. It will also introduce a new special redundancy payment for those impacted.
The Government has confirmed that Section 12A of the Redundancy Payments Act 1967, which suspended certain sections of the Act, will not be extended beyond 30 September 2021. The provision was introduced as an emergency measure in March 2020 to effectively suspend an employee's right to seek redundancy if they had been laid off or put on short-time work due to the measures required to limit the spread of COVID-19 for the duration of the emergency period. It has been extended six times.
In addition, the Government has announced that it will make a special payment of up to a maximum of €1,860, to workers who have lost out on reckonable service while temporarily laid off over the course of the pandemic and who are made redundant. To support employers, where they are unable to pay statutory redundancy to their employees, the State will fund these payments from the Social Insurance Fund on their behalf. The Government states that a flexible and discretionary approach will be taken in relation to the recovery of these payments and in many cases the debt can be repaid over a number of years.
A link to the Government's press release is available here.
This article contains a general summary of developments and is not a complete or definitive statement of the law. Specific legal advice should be obtained where appropriate.