Employers will pay for sick leave, vows Burton

PROPOSALS to make employers pay the first weeks of an employee’s sick leave have only been abandoned for this year but will be introduced before long.

Social Protection Minister Joan Burton said Ireland was different from other European countries in placing the sick pay burden entirely on the state, which spends €900 million a year on short-term illness benefit.

She said she wanted employers to take responsibility for the first two to six weeks of sick pay.