Hundreds of thousands of workers could lose out on redundancy payments if their employment is terminated because time spent claiming the Pandemic Unemployment Payment will not count when calculating entitlements.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has urged the Government to reform employment law so that the period spent on the PUP will count towards redundancy payments.
It says that without reform, some employees could lose out on up to a year of redundancy pay having been laid off due to the pandemic through no fault of their own.
At present over 480,000 people are claiming the Pandemic Payment - which means that while they have been temporarily laid off, there still remains the prospect of a return to work when the pandemic ends.