The Government have recently published the Redundancy Payments (Amendment) Bill 2022, which gives employees who have lost out on reckonable service while they were on lay-off due to COVID-19 restrictions, and have subsequently been made redundant, a special payment of up to a maximum payment of €1,860 tax-free to bridge the gap in their redundancy entitlements.
A worker does not have to have been in receipt of any form of State payment, such as the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) or jobseekers, during the lay-off period, although they could have been. The criteria are simply that the person qualifies for redundancy in the usual way and was laid off because of Covid restrictions during the emergency period.
