EMPLOYMENT: The Employment Appeals Tribunal is considering making all its determination notices available on the web in a new e-Government initiative. The move comes amid a huge upsurge in the number of cases being referred to the tribunal over the past 18 months as more people lose their jobs due to the current economic downturn.

New figures obtained from the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment show the overall number of cases referred to the tribunal increased to 5,257 in 2001, up from 3,377 during 2000.

These figures include 612 claims under the Redundancy Payments Act, up from 300 in 2000.

Anecdotal evidence suggests more people are taking cases against high-tech firms under the Redundancy Payments Acts or the Unfair Dismissals Acts.

People familiar with the tribunal believe this is probably due to an increase in the number of redundancies over the past year.

The tribunal has ruled on several high-profile cases recently against technology firms such as Servecast, NEC and Lucent.

The tribunal, which is overseen by the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, has informed members of the public on its mailing list of the proposal to make its decisions available on the internet, and has asked interested parties to make observations. However, it is understood that even if the proposal is agreed, it is likely to take a long time to implement a technology solution.

To protect the privacy of individuals, under the tribunal's proposal the names of individual claimants and respondent firms would be removed before a determination was put on the Web.

However, it is believed a written register available at the offices of the tribunal would retain the identities of parties concerned.

Opposite are descriptions of two recent cases involving technology firms. They were taken from the tribunal's determination notices.