MANY IRISH COMPANIES have laid off their staff before Christmas, bringing forward redundancies planned for 2012 – in order to exploit better government subsidies for redundancy pay, it has been claimed.

Retail Excellence Ireland says companies which may have been considering letting staff go next year, as the harsh economic climate continues, have brought forward their plans and laid many staff off – because they will only be able to recoup a small fraction of their redundancy costs from the government next year.

This amount previously stood at 60 per cent – but is to be reduced to 15 per cent under the measures announced in the Budget earlier this month.

As a result, REI chief executive David Fitzgerald says, companies under financial pressure – and who may have been considering some redundancies in early 2012 – have simply decided to lay the staff off now, while they can still recoup 60 per cent of the price of letting them go.

He was speaking as REI unveiled statistics which showed that like-for-like retail sales in December 2011 were slightly higher on the same month in 2010 – the first time in 46 months that sales had grown.

The increase was modest, however, with sales up by only 0.68 per cent – and with December 2010′s sales having been particularly badly hit by two rounds of heavy snow.

REI’s research indicated that many shoppers seemed to be postponing their “fashion and big ticket shopping trips” until the winter sales began.

Pre-Christmas boost for retailers, with 1.6pc surge in November

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