Who is responsible for ‘redundancy payments’ in a situation whereby an agency has a candidate placed with a client for 2+ years continuously and the individual is paid by the agency and bills the client for the associated costs?

When an agency worker’s assignment with a client ends for whatever reason, the obligation rests with the employment agency to redeploy the agency worker to another assignment, unless otherwise agreed with the client. If the employment agency cannot redeploy the agency worker, then the agency worker may be made redundant. Where the employment agency pays the agency worker, it shall generally be considered to be the employer of the agency worker.

Under the Redundancy Payments Acts 1967 – 2014, the employer bears the cost of making the redundancy payments to its employees, and therefore, in this case, the agency shall be responsible for making the payment. Under the Protection of Employees