I wrote down the words when the Deputy was speaking and, if he looks up the report of his own speech, he will find that he used them. Let us get this thing in perspective and realise that there is a problem to be dealt with, that there is widespread destitution, that things are not as rosy as Deputy Kelly would have us believe. To come to the terms of the motion proper, it expresses the view that the present rotational scheme of employment should be replaced by a scheme under which men would get six days' work each week while employed and that they should be paid the local rate. What we are doing under the present scheme is offering employment to people for three, four or five days per week not so much because we are concerned with the unemployed or the standard of living which they will get from part-time work of that kind but to cut down expenditure on unemployment assistance. Men working on these rotational schemes are getting little more than they would get under the Unemployment Assistance Act if they did not work. I am not making a case that men should be allowed to draw benefit in preference to earning money by work. I would prefer to see them work and every decent, honest man would prefer to work at a decent rate of wages to putting up with the degrading conditions attached to unemployment assistance, with the inquisitions held by the courts of referees, with the long distances to be travelled and the irksome conditions which have to be complied with in order to obtain the miserable pittance which they obtain in the form of unemployment assistance.
It is true that a fairly substantial number of people get employment on these relief schemes, but we know perfectly well, and every Deputy who represents a rural area knows particularly well, that these relief schemes are being used to force men to accept employment under almost any conditions; and that is being done in order to deprive them of unemployment assistance benefit if they refuse to accept that work.
Men are being compelled to walk long distances to and from their employment—three, four, five and six miles there and back—in all kinds of weather, and the threat is held over them that, if they do not take work under these conditions, they need not sign at the labour exchange for further unemployment assistance benefit. Many of them are being compelled to take work with which they are not familiar and which they never followed as a normal occupation. Now, what do they get, even when they are employed on these schemes? The Parliamentary Secretary said that it varied from 4/6 to 11/4 per day but, of course, the wage of 11/4 per day was the wage paid to a tradesman who was engaged on a relief scheme. He would be a tradesman and he would have to be paid his trade union rate of wages because there would be no work done if he were not paid the trade union rate. The ordinary worker in the country, however, the ordinary worker who is 12 miles from Dublin, is being paid at present 4/6 per day for three or four days' work in a week.
Now, let us be generous and say that such a man will manage to get four days' work in a week. If so, his total wage is 18/- per week, and out of that 18/- he has got to pay 1/6 per week insurance—1/5 is probably the exact figure—so that, after four days' work —and that is a generous computation of the amount of work he can get—he goes home, and for that week he can get no unemployment assistance, no home assistance, and has got to exist on 16/6 after four days' work that week. That is the high standard of living that we are told is being provided for unemployed people in the country—16/6 of a net weekly wage to enable a man to maintain himself, his wife, and any number of children, for an entire week. He is expected to maintain himself and his family on that miserable pittance, and to do that to-day, in face of the present high cost of living, is a feat of economic gymnastics that not even regularly employed men could hope to perform, used as they are to having to balance their budgets on very slender incomes.
We are told by the Parliamentary Secretary that these relief schemes— these hunger schemes, because that is what they are more than relief schemes —are so attractive that agricultural workers leave their ordinary employment to work on them. Deputy Corish has pointed out, in correction of a statement made by Deputy Kelly, that it is quite impossible for an agricultural worker to leave his employment to take work on a rotational scheme because, before he can get work on such a scheme, he must be listed as unemployed at the labour exchange and must be in receipt of the higher amounts of unemployment assistance benefit. If there are people registered at the exchange, who have 10/-, 12/-, 13/- or 14/- per week in unemployment assistance benefit, while he has only 9/- per week, he has no chance of getting on one of these schemes so long as these other people are there and are capable of staffing the job. Accordingly, it is sheer nonsense to suggest that an agricultural worker can leave his employment and work on such a scheme since, not being registered at the exchange, he can never be placed on a relief scheme, and even if he does leave his employment as an agricultural worker he is disqualified from obtaining unemployment assistance benefit for a period of three months, if he ever has to seek such benefit.
Another iniquitous aspect of this whole rotational scheme is the fact that, if there is a good piece of work to be done, constituting, let us say, six days' work in the week, it is being divided between two men, one doing three days' work and the other doing three days' work. A normal six days' work is covered by one national health insurance stamp and one unemployment insurance stamp, but the rotational scheme has the effect that, for the six days' work under such scheme, you have got to put on four stamps, one man putting on two stamps and the other man putting on two stamps. Normally, these six days ought to be covered by two stamps for an entire week, and the fact that these unemployed people are being used as a source of tax by compelling them to put additional unemployment insurance stamps and national health insurance stamps is being used, in another sense, as an argument that employment conditions are good. When there is talk about unemployment, we are told to look at the number of stamps sold and the number of books exchanged. Is it any wonder that that should be so when so many thousands of people are being compelled to stamp their cards with four stamps where, normally, two stamps are sufficient in ordinary employment to cover six days' work?
The only justification—if one could call it a justification—for a continuance of these relief schemes is the fact that there is such a wide stratum of poverty in the country; such a large number of unemployed people that the weapon of economic necessity is being used for the purpose of forcing them into accepting employment on these notorious rotational schemes. If they do not take that employment, there is no unemployment assistance benefit for them at the labour exchange and no home assistance for them either. After reading the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary on this subject, it looks to me as if the Government has made up its mind that the only thing it can do in respect of the provision of employment is to offer the unemployed workers three or four days' work at rates of wages which are a disgrace to any Government and which do not provide anything more than a pauperised standard of existence. We have come down now, from the balmy days when the emigrants were to have been recalled, when the famous plan was going to put every unemployed man into work and the Government was going to cure unemployment, to a condition of affairs where men can get only three or four days' work in the week at a wage ranging from 12/- to 16/6 a week. That is the sum total of it. These rotational schemes have been marked by wretchedly low wages, bad conditions of work, and irregular part-time employment, and it is quite clear that a resort to schemes of this kind indicates the complete bankruptcy of the Government in the matter of providing employment at reasonable rates of wages for the unemployed. Instead of having a plan, we now see that there is no plan. Instead of offering to give work, we now see that there is no work and that the only things offered to the unemployed are miserable rates of wages on these relief schemes, part-time employment, and the use of the weapon of hunger to compel them to accept these degrading conditions.
This motion asks that the present rotational schemes be abolished, that workers on such schemes should get not less than six days' work at a time, so that they could get a full week's work in any particular week, and that they should be paid the wage appropriate to that of county council workers. In other words, if they are engaged on carrying out these schemes, they ought to get a full week's work and the full rate of pay, and not be compelled to accept the rotational scheme of employment for three or four days at rates of wages that are even less than those paid to county council workmen, and, heaven knows, in some cases that is an intolerably low rate of wages at the present time. We, therefore, ask the House to support this motion, and to say to the Government that, having had experience of the rotational schemes, we are not satisfied to continue schemes of that kind which are pauperising tens of thousands of decent, honest, unemployed people; that the Government should introduce new schemes whereby a full week's work will be provided for all the unemployed, and that they should get decent rates of wages while so employed under those relief schemes.
