Minister Calleary welcomes the achievements of the National Employment Rights Authority in 2009

The Minister for Labour Affairs, Mr. Dara Calleary has welcomed the preliminary report of the National Employment Rights Authority for 2009 on their activities. Noting the equal emphasis given by NERA to awareness raising and inspection in order to achieve greater compliance, the Minister said: "Nera's activities help not only individual workers to obtain their entitlements but also ensures that employers operate on a level playing pitch whereby no competitive advantage can be gained by undercutting workers legal entitlements in the area of pay and conditions".

Information Services

During 2009, NERA continued its commitment to assisting employers to meet their obligations under employment law, through a proactive education and awareness programme supported by focused inspection activity. These activities also assisted thousands of employees to get their statutory minimum entitlements.

All statistics are year-to-date comparisons (to 18 December 2009):

During the year NERA Information Services dealt with

• over 149,000 calls in the period to 18 December 2009, an increase of 38% over the corresponding period in 2008, up from 108,000 calls.
• Over 40% of these calls were from employers and/or their representatives
• all telephone enquiries relating to redundancy issues to allow staff of Redundancy Payments section to prioritise the processing of redundancy claims.
• introduction of a 24-hour comprehensive recorded information service on a range of employment rights- related topics. Over 18% of those who contacted NERA’s Information Services accessed this recorded information service since its introduction.
• participation in 36 national and local conferences, exhibitions and seminars in conjunction with both employer and employee representative bodies.

NERA worked closely with a number of employer representative bodies during 2009 in order to encourage compliance, including:

• participation in a series of one day Employment Law Programmes organised by the Small Firms Association for their members in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick.
• participation in an 8-week roadshow with the Restaurants Association of Ireland (RAI) which reached hundreds of employers in the catering sector and Gave NERA an opportunity to brief in the sector on the revised Catering Orders introduced in June 2009.

Inspection Services:

All statistics are year-to-date comparisons (to 17 December 2009):

Up to 18th December 2009, NERA inspectors

• carried out a total of 22,065 inspections. This is similar to the number of inspections carried out for the same period last year (22,062).
• ensured that over €2.3m in unpaid wages was paid by employers to their employees on foot of NERA inspection activity during 2009.
• undertook Employment Permit Compliance checks. A total of 1,062 checks have been undertaken to date. Compliance with employment permits legislation is another important element in ensuring fair competition among employers.
• identified an overall breach rate at 19% which remains similar to last year’s, although there are substantial variations in the breach rate depending on the sectors involved.

NERA continued to work very closely with Revenue and Social and Family Affairs this year both in exchange of information and in undertaking joint inspection activity. A total of 38 joint inspections were undertaken to date in 2009 compared to 12 joint inspections in 2008. The ability to undertake such activity - both information exchange and joint inspection - enhances the operations of the three bodies and ensures better value for money for the taxpayer.

31^st December 2009