The legal right of employees to demand redundancy after a certain period of lay-off has been suspended for a fifth time until 31 March 2021, following a Cabinet decision today.
The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment said the extended suspension would help to avoid further permanent job losses at a time when 350,000 people are receiving the Pandemic Unemployment Payment, and 41,200 employers have registered for the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme. "The Government agreed an extension of the end-date was required as crystalising a large number of redundancy claims now could cause hundreds of businesses to fail thus causing even more jobs to be lost.