Employers who are out of work and who have had to lay off staff, have no recourse to any social welfare benefit and are not included in the Live Register figures, according to Mayo Fine Gael TD John O’Mahony.
Deputy O’Mahony said there were hundreds, possibly thousands, of employers throughout Ireland who are now unemployed but their status is not reflected in any set of statistics released by the Department of Social Welfare.
“I’m specifically referring to employers who are now unemployed. In most cases these people employed in the region of two or three staff but they have had to lay them off. There appears to be a real anomaly here because the employees who have been laid off have access to schemes such as Job Seekers Benefit but their employers, who are now also out of work, don’t have access to any social welfare scheme. Neither are they included on the Live Register figures, which is alarming as it would paint an even more drastic picture of the situation that currently exists,” he said.
Dep O’Mahony said the unemployed employers had told him that the advice they were given was to either liquidate or go bankrupt. “They don’t want to do that as the cost of them starting up again when the economy picks up would far exceed what they would get if they sold their assets. It’s a situation that Minister Hanafin needs to look at closely and we can’t have a situation where thousands of people throughout the country are deprived of access to benefits at a time when they most need it. After all, those people have families to take care off and they deserve to be looked after,” he said.
