We have information from Revenue in relation to the operation of the Wage Subsidy Scheme form the 4th May onwards. One of the key differences between the temporary and operational phases is that on the 4th of May Revenue are going to provide each employer with a list of employees (by means of a CSV file) who are eligible to receive a subsidy payment. This list is going to be generated by Revenue over the weekend and will be based on the employments that are registered with each employer on the evening of Friday 1st May.

If an employee is not on that list then the employer will not receive any subsidy payments for that employee from the 4th May. This could be significant if a business plans to reopen in May or Jun and available of this scheme.

At the end of March, some employers closed their business and temporarily laid off their employees. At that time, it appeared that employees had to be ceased on their payroll in order to be eligible to receive the COVID-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP). However, since them Revenue have advised that this is not necessary and that as long as no salary/wage is put through for them, then they will continue to receive the PUP. Therefore, I would urge anyone who runs their own payroll, to rehire all their staff members on their payroll software by close of play tomorrow to ensure that they are on the list that Revenue will generate over the weekend. That way, if the business does reopen in May or Jun, then the employer could receive a subsidy payment for that employee.

Point to Note:

There is one area that could cause potential problems where the employee has multiple employments. In these cases Revenue will apportion the subsidy across the multiple employments and the employee will only receive a reduced subsidy in each employment. If you rehire an employee now and don’t subsequently operate the subsidy scheme for them then they will not receive their full subsidy entitlement in the other employments. Therefore this is a difficult decision for you to have to make. Revenue have said that they will only be generating this list once (this weekend) and that they will not be updating this on a regular basis. One of the payroll providers, Collsoft, have advised Revenue that this will not work well in practice. Revenue may reconsider their position on this in due course.