I move—
"That the Dáil is of opinion that the Government should introduce without delay proposals for legislation to amend the Unemployment Insurance Acts so as to extend the period over which unemployment insurance benefit may be paid to men and women who are willing to work but unable to find work."
Deputies who have had an apprenticeship in the Dáil will be familiar with the discussions which have taken place on this question of unemployment itself and the need for amending the Unemployment Insurance Acts. But we have a new House now and I am sure that some of the Deputies, at least, are not as familiar with the problem, and the proposals regarding the treatment of the problem, as those who have had experience here before. Many may not be familiar with the attitude of the various parties in the last Dáil upon this question. We consider it very necessary that the question should be dealt with at the very earliest stage in the history of the new Dáil. So far as the Labour Party were concerned during the election campaign all stress was laid upon this problem of unemployment, and poverty arising out of unemployment, and how the problem should be dealt with. Insistence at every point in our campaign was laid upon this: that it was a big problem; that it meant enormous waste and loss of wealth to the community, and that it should be dealt with seriously in an organised. systematic manner.
The claim, in the motion, is that the Government should introduce proposals for legislation dealing with the extension of the unemployment benefit. When this matter was discussed, not on the last occasion, but in November of last year, we were challenged by the Minister to bring forward figures, statistics and estimates of costs and so on. We did not do that; we are not going to do it to-day, that is to say we are not going to bring forward statistics of the number of people unemployed for the very simple reason that such figures are not known. There was in the early part of the year a Census of Production taken and one of the answers to questions was to be in relation to the number of people in the household who were at that date unemployed. It was found impossible, or at least impractical, to take out from the returns the number of persons who again into an insurable occupation, to obtain extended unemployment benefit. position to-day than we were in 1926 or 1925 or 1924, to state what the number of unemployed persons is. What is perhaps even more unfortunate is this: we are not in a position to say how many persons in the country who are normally wage earners are, in fact. earning wages, and that at least is of equal moment with the question of how many persons there are unemployed.
Though we have not statistics, there is no Deputy in the House who has been in touch with his constituents in various towns throughout the Saorstát but knows that there are numerous cases of persons who are unemployed and are not in receipt of unemployment benefit. Now that is a very simple statement, and I do not think any Deputy in the House who has any knowledge of the condition of things, knowing all the towns in his constituency, but will bear out that statement. I go further and say that there are numerous persons from amongst the class of insurable persons who are in that same position, who have not any more benefit to draw from the Unemployment Insurance Fund. Many of those persons and their families are in dire need, and we are faced with the question whether it is better that these people should remain in need, whether they should be driven to apply for home help, or whether they should be able to keep their self-respect and have some provision made for them by way of insurance out of the Unemployment Insurance Fund.
I would direct special attention to the difference, so far as it may affect, shall I say, the ratepayer as distinguished from the tax-payer. Home help is not repayable. Advances from the Unemployment Insurance Fund are repayable. I am asking that provision should be made to make the unemployment insurance scheme applicable over an extended period to enable people, who have exhausted their benefits and who have some prospects of coming back again into an insurable occupation to have extended unemployment benefit. The question has been faced several times in the history of the Dáil, and in 1924 there were two Acts passed, both of which were directed towards doing something of what I desire to be done now, that is to say, to revive the credits of the insured person, to revive the value of the stamps, so that insured persons may come again into benefit after their normal benefit is exhausted.
I am sorry the Minister for Agriculture is not present or the Minister for Justice, but those Ministers made reference during the election campaign to the position of unemployment, and the Minister for Agriculture made reference to the position of Northern Ireland, not in relation to unemployment, but in respect to the desire that he felt, and which he presumed the community generally felt, that there should be some attempt towards re-union at some appropriate time. He said, by way of illustration, that if we could find a way of making income-tax only 2s. in the £ in the Saorstát it would help to bring the Northern Ireland people into unity with the Saorstát more than any other act he could imagine. There are, perhaps, 20,000 income-tax payers as a maximum in Northern Ireland and 266,000 persons in Northern Ireland are insured under the Unemployment Insurance Acts. I suggest to the Minister and to any other Deputy who thinks as he thinks that though you may reduce your income-tax to nil in the Free State, if you maintain the difference between the Unemployment Insurance and other social insurances that exist to-day as between Northern Ireland and the Free State, you are going to repel with very much more emphasis a ten times larger population than you will entice by reduction of income-tax. To give you an example—a workman in Northern Ireland at present pays 7d. per week by way of unemployment insurance and receives 18s., plus 5s. on account of his wife, plus 2s. for each child. A workman in the Free State at present pays 9d. He receives 15s., plus 5s. on account of his wife, plus 1s. for each child. A man with a wife and three children in Northern Ireland who is unemployed, therefore, receives 31s., and his colleague perhaps working in the same trade or industry in the Free State will receive 23s. In the Northern Ireland scheme there is, in fact, a system of extended benefits, so that when the actual standard benefit is exhausted there comes to him under certain conditions continued assistance by way of extended benefits on the same scale as the standard benefit.
I mention that to show that there is more than the simple fact, which is the more important fact, that a man ought to be allowed to live and not to die. There is possibly a very important political consequence arising from this inadequate scheme of unemployment insurance which we have in the Free State.
I said a few minutes ago that when we were discussing this question in November the Minister for Industry and Commerce demanded from us figures, estimates of the cost, the numbers that would be likely to come upon the fund and the effect upon the fund. He asked in short that we should do without his resources what he was unable to do with these resources. We were told during the election campaign and told last week by the President of the position of the Free State in respect to reduction in unemployment since 1925. We were informed that by reference to statistics compiled by the International Labour Office it appeared that the Free State was one of six States in the world in which unemployment had declined. Now in any figures I am going to quote I am going to take the official figures and I am going to assume that these official figures are approximately correct. I am not going to put forward any case made on the basis of my own figures. I am going to quote only official figures and records and I am going to assume those figures are an actual presentation of the position.
The Minister has told us again to-day, as he told us in November, that there is, in fact, no unemployment outside the registered number, the number on the live register. In November he told us that "there is very little unemployment which is not notified in the ordinary register—very little unemployment indeed." In reply to Deputy Byrne to-day he told us very much the same thing. We will accept that. I ask him, and I ask the House, to believe this: that within that number of 18,000 odd persons who are on the live register, there is a number of persons—I do not mind whether you take it as a large or small number— who are in need, owing to the fact, that their benefits under the unemployment insurance scheme have become exhausted. It might be well to remind Deputies who are not familiar with this question that the Unemployment Insurance Fund is built up out of contributions on the part of the employers, on the part of the employees, and on the part of the State. The fund grew in credit during the war, and a year or two after the war, but then it rapidly went into debt and had to borrow from, what is to us, the Central Fund, and has remained in debt ever since.
There was taken over a certain share of the deficit from the British administration, and there has been a steady borrowing from the Central Fund by the Unemployment Insurance Fund for the purpose of meeting claims since 1922. It is, perhaps, well to remind Deputies that the State grant, which consists, I think, of somewhere about one-third of the total, is recouped in respect of the cost of administration by about half the amount of the grant. I mention that to show that the figures in the Estimates are not quite reliable as an index of the cost to the taxes of this Unemployment Insurance Fund. I also want to remind Deputies that the borrowings from the Central Fund are repayable with interest.
We have had statements made by the Minister for Finance each year when introducing his Budget as to the position of the Unemployment Insurance Fund. On the last occasion, in April this year, he told us that there was a deficit due to the Central Fund from the Unemployment Insurance Fund of £1,284,000. That might be compared with the figure at the end of March, 1924, when the sum due to the Central Fund was £877,000, showing an increase in three years of £407,000. I estimate that about £150,000 of that deficit is represented by interest on the borrowings, and I do not think it includes—I am not sure of this—the Saorstát share of the United Kingdom deficit, part of which was taken over as from the 1st April, 1922. We are in the unfortunate position of not having any statistics published in respect of this fund. We do not know actually what the state of the fund is, except in so far as we are able to extract it from replies given at different times by Ministers, whether the Minister for Finance or the Minister for Industry and Commerce.
I hope that the position in respect of the Unemployment Insurance Fund will be circulated at an early date, showing the position of that fund from year to year since we took it over. We have also learned from official sources that there is what might be called a standard or normal rate of unemployment. It is assumed that the normal rate of unemployment is 7 per cent. The total number of persons insurable under unemployment insurance schemes is about 250,000—men and women, boys and girls of insurable age in the Free State—and 7 per cent. of that would be 17,500. Thus, with the figure we have to-day from the Minister, namely, 18,151 registered unemployed, some of whom, he said, have since obtained employment, we may take it that we are now down to normal, and that we are working on the normal state of unemployment. That is an important consideration in respect to the finances of this Unemployment Insurance Fund.
The fund was in debt on the 1st April this year to the extent of £1,284,000. In March, 1924, the debt was £877,000, and at that time, and for some considerable time before that, the estimate was round about 50,000 persons unemployed. The register showed on February 23rd, 1925, that there were 53,308 unemployed. A little earlier it was something over 45,000 or 46,000. We may take it that round about the beginning of 1925 the figure was 50,000 unemployed. Consequently we may assume on the Minister's argument that the remainder of the persons who were insurable were, in fact, employed, and were paying contributions, helping to build up the Unemployment Insurance Fund. Therefore, it may be assumed on the Minister's own figures that there are to-day 32,000 more persons employed and paying into the Unemployment Insurance Fund than there were in 1925.
That figure will fairly well fit in with the claims of the President and the Minister for Justice a few days ago respecting the number of persons for whom employment had been found by way of tariffs, trade loan facilities, drainage, the Shannon scheme, and so on. We have arrived at a figure which shows that there are 32,000 more people paying into the Unemployment Insurance Fund to-day than there were in 1925. Consequently that fund is growing in strength, is saving, and we have to answer the question:—"How long will it take for this deficit in the Unemployment Insurance Fund to be cleared off, assuming no further decrease in the number of employed, as a consequence of Ministerial schemes and revival of trade, and assuming we maintain merely the normal rate of 7 per cent.?"
When the figure was £877,000, and 30,000 people less paying unemployment insurance, and the comparable number drawing from the Unemployment Insurance Fund, we were told it would take four to five years at the then condition of affairs to pay off the deficit. There is now, roughly, one and a quarter millions due to the Central Fund and the calculation I can make from the figures presented by the Minister is that this deficit— assuming, no further decrease in the number of unemployed—can be repaid in about six or seven years. That, I think, is the outside limit, and will include the amount of the deficit taken over from the British administration. If that is the position, and I am dealing with it in this fashion because of the Minister's challenge on the last occasion when the question was raised, I say, that we can well afford to extend the benefit, to pay unemployment insurance to persons who are now unemployed because they are unable to find employment, at a rate considerably extended as compared with the present period, and that it will be a right, a proper, a just and a humane thing to do. The Minister has agreed with us, and we have agreed with him, that the provision of an unemployment insurance fund is a good and a valuable provision. We would like to see it extended. Some of us are fairly strong on the desirability of extending it even to occupations not at present covered. We say that where people have entered upon insurance, and where their benefits have been exhausted, some provision should be made for the smaller number, who are just as needy, as was made in 1924 when the number was greater, and consequently the cost to the fund was greater than it would be to-day.
The Government has told us many times, and quite rightly, that it is their policy to assist and encourage private employers to extend their economic activities in such a way as to absorb the growing number of unemployed, and generally to extend the area of employment throughout the country, and they have promoted schemes of various kinds with a view to that end, and in fulfilment of that desire. But that has been proceeding for, let us say, four years. The present position I think it will be admitted, is in fact admitted by the statements of Ministers themselves, is that the greater proportion of persons who are at present employed on Government schemes are employed on schemes that are not the result of activity towards promoting new industries, but are rather schemes which are beneficial but temporary in their effect as regards employment. That is to say, while being beneficial they are not immediately and directly productive. Work on roads, houses and reconstruction in Dublin and so on is not directly productive. That will come to an end without showing any growth in the productive powers of the nation. The numbers absorbed in employment by way of the tariff industries through the Trade Loans (Guarantee) Act, the beet sugar and the Shannon scheme are comparatively small in consideration of the need. Unfortunately we have to face the fact that there will, and must be, an interregnum between the initiation of the schemes, valuable as they may be, and their fruition, and I make the claim that in that period it is just as necessary that men should be fed, clothed and housed as in the period they are working. After all, men can only live by what they eat. and can only be warm by what fuel they can consume. It is necessary to keep men alive if the nation is to continue in being.
We are face to face with the question—how is this to be achieved when men's resources have become exhausted? There is provision by the Poor Law, but are you inviting these men to apply for home assistance? Is it the desire of the Dáil that these men should be forced to apply for home relief, or is it the desire that they should seek the charity of their friends? In commercial circles the practice of making bank advances, overdrafts and so on is very common. This proposal is in the nature of an advance against future earnings, an advance against future work, an overdraft for the individual insured person, for the individual recipient of benefit with the security of the whole number of insured persons at his back. I do not want to let it be thought, when I am laying stress on the necessity of providing extended benefits under the unemployment insurance scheme, that I am putting that forward as being more desirable than the provision of employment. Some foolish, and perhaps spiteful, critics, when this matter was being dealt with on a previous occasion, pretended to believe, and tried to teach the public, that we, on these benches, were more concerned with unemployment insurance benefits than we were with the provision of employment. I need hardly say that is an utterly false statement of our attitude on this matter.
I want to see every possible effort made to promote new industries, and I will give all my help to the Government, or any other party in the House, who will bring forward proposals to encourage the development of new industries, of new industrial activities of any kind, to assist in building up the wealth of this State, the wealth of the people. I believe that can be done more satisfactorily than has been attempted or even promised. If there were more energy and consideration given to the problem from the point of view of the people's needs as distinct from the point of view of commercial operations one might be tempted to go into questions of how this might be done, but I will content myself with saying that there is an obvious need for action, for action on the initiative of the Government, perhaps under control of the Government, towards the organisation of all the agents capable of being employed on new productive processes. I think probably the Minister will agree with me that on the employers' side there is a great lack of organisation, and as a consequence a lack of initiative, a lack of risk-taking, a lack of enterprise and a wastefulness in productive methods.
We repeat here what we have argued before the country, that perhaps supplementary to, if not supplanting, the Tariff Commission, there might well be set up a special, separate department to assist the Government by the way of a Development Commission, giving that Commission power to initiate new works of a useful, productive kind, and to direct research and experiment. The President in the course of his speech last Thursday was inclined, I think, to twit the Labour Party for, as he thought, not having made any special point during the election campaign regarding the necessity for using Irish produced articles. I want to re-assure him on that. There were hundreds of thousands of election addresses circulated, all of which contained a paragraph which dealt with the necessity for not only organising the home demand for Irish produce, developing Irish production, but also the spending of high wages in the purchase of Irish-produced articles. That was insisted upon as a primary consideration of our economic policy, that those who receive good wages should be required to spend their earnings as far as reasonably practicable in the products of Irish farms, factories, and workshops.
I come back to the point I made at the beginning, that in this discussion have dealt with the figures provide by the Minister for Industry and Com merce, or the Minister for Finance at different times, and I think I have shown that on those figures it is not an extravagant proposition to do in 1927 for a number of persons who have exhausted benefits what was done in 1924 when the prospects were worse than they are now, and for a much larger number of persons than we are now thinking of. I was able to obtain certain details which supplement the figures given by the Minister in reply to Deputy A. Byrne to-day. Deputies who are familiar with the conditions in their districts may take note of some of these details, bearing in mind the Minister's assurance that the number of unemployed is fairly represented by the figures given in the numbers on the live register.
For instance, if there is any Deputy from Louth here he can answer whether 29 is the number of unemployed in Ardee. Does 84 represent the number of unemployed in Balbriggan, or 63 in Edenderry? If there is any Deputy from Cavan he will know whether there are more than 28 persons unemployed in Cavan. Are there only 23 unemployed in Clones? These figures include men, women, boys and girls. Are there only 44 unemployed in Monaghan? If there is any Deputy here from East Cork perhaps he could confirm the statement that there are 42 unemployed in Midleton, or could any Deputy from West Cork confirm the statement that there are only 20 unemployed in Dunmanway? The number given for Kinsale is 11, and 46 for Mallow. If Deputy Hennessy were here, perhaps he would say whether there are more than 54 unemployed in Passage West. We are told there are 19 unemployed in Dingle, 78 in Clonmel, and in Mullingar 49. If ex-Deputy Lyons were here, he would be able to say something about that, and perhaps Deputy Broderick would be able to confirm the figure. Are there more than 6 unemployed in the town of Roscommon; in Donegal town 3; in Dungloe 9, and in Dunfanaghy 7? These are some of the figures which go to make up the total number on the live register of 18,000, which is the figure the Minister assures us does in fact represent the number of unemployed in the various towns and cities of the country.
I say I am accepting those figures, because apart from general knowledge, apart from personal facts I have no statistics. Therefore, I prefer to accept the Minister's statistics in making this case. I am asking the House to agree that on the facts as they know them and the figures as given, it is a desirable thing that there should be new legislation to amend the Unemployment Insurance Acts so as to extend the period for which unemployment insurance benefit may be paid.