With regard to unemployment insurance, the total sum paid into the unemployment fund was approximately £950,000, two-thirds of which, £633,332, was contributed by employers and workers. The benefits paid to the workers amounted to about £650,000, and the appropriation for administration was three-twentieths of the fund's income. There is a statutory obligation on workers and employers to contribute to the fund, but there are peculiar regulations with regard to the payment of benefits. In order to illustrate my point I may mention the case of a young man from a country district who intended to make clerical work his career. He was working for a period in the City of Cork in a clerical capacity in connection with the building trade. Early this year, when work got slack, he was knocked off, and instead of remaining in the city he went home and applied for benefit from the fund to which his employer and himself had been paying. The case came before the court of referees, which held that he was entitled to benefit, but on appeal by the insurance officer the umpire disallowed the claim on the ground, I understand, that he was not exactly available for work, or because his people lived on a farm, notwithstanding the fact that if work was available he would again take up clerical work in the city.
From that example I think the regulations are rigidly enforced. When a worker and an employer contribute to an insurance fund, provision is supposed to be made by the State when unemployment occurs, and there should be a statutory obligation to pay benefit to the worker. From what happened in that case it seems to me that the regulations seem to be against the worker when unemployed. The example I have given is, I am sure, typical of many of that kind that could be cited, because people coming to the cities may take up clerical work there, and if unemployed naturally they return home to await further employment. However, the fact of going home, I take it, debars them from benefit. If the man I am referring to had remained in the city, and had tried to eke out an existence on the miserable amount he would get he would be entitled to benefit from the Unemployment Insurance Fund, but because he went home he is deprived of benefit. The amount to the credit of the fund is small, but the whole of the overdraft is repaid. There cannot be any fund built up so long as the Government transfer £300,000 to finance the Unemployment Assistance Fund. In cases like the one I mentioned, workers who should be by statute entitled to benefit from the fund are deprived of it.
There are very big anomalies also in connection with the Unemployment Assistance Fund. I have stressed in this House on several occasions the position of a number of workers in an area of the City of Cork, who, because of slum clearance schemes, and the building of new houses by the Corporation, have been transferred immediately outside the city boundary. Because no cognisance was taken of the fact that they are city workers, they come under the unemployment period order. When replying to the Vote for the Department of Industry and Commerce the Minister stated that it was necessary to deal with slackers. We all agree with that statement.
I am in the fortunate position that I have very rarely come up against people who are slackers. I find that men I come in contact with are anxious to work, even at very small wages. That is clearly exemplified when any job where workers are required starts. Members of the corporation and of the county council are then besieged by people looking for employment.
People who have been transferred to houses outside the boundary of the City of Cork, because of the necessity of housing them properly, and getting them away from the slums, come under this unemployment period order, but by no stretch of the imagination could they be regarded as being in the category of agricultural or rural workers. They have been brought up and have worked all their lives in the city, but because the corporation could not house them within the confines of the borough, and had to go outside the city boundary to build houses, these people come under the unemployment period order.
I speak of the single men and men without dependents. No work is available for them in that district. I pointed out to the previous Minister the hardship which these men have to undergo. In effect, they are told by the Employment Order to fend for themselves. If work were available in the rural districts, one might say there was some justification for enforcing this Employment Order in respect of such men but no work is available for them. Even if agricultural work were available, these men are not suited to it, because they have been city workers all their lives. The board of assistance have to provide help for these men to compensate for the amount of unemployment assistance of which they are deprived. I ask the Minister to consider their case. The difficulty is that because they happen to be resident outside the city they are regarded as rural workers. The Minister has given them a concession, showing that his Department and his predecessor regarded these men as city workers; they are allowed to be registered for work in the city. That means that they have to take their places in a queue and their chance, as single men, of getting work, particularly corporation work, is very small.
I was told on a previous occasion when I spoke of this matter, that the cure was to extend the borough boundary. There are serious obstacles to the doing of that. The Corporation of Cork has considered the problem of extending the boundary, but I am afraid that it will be extremely difficult to get over the obstacles in the way of doing that. In the meantime, these men are deprived of any assistance by the Employment Order, and they cannot get work. The number is pretty large because there is a corporation housing scheme of long standing on the western side of the city, and the men living in that locality come under this Employment Order. The position of the men who live in the suburbs of Cork must be a peculiar one because, in the thickly populated area of Cork of which I speak—the western and northern suburbs—the city boundary is very circumscribed. Unemployment assistance cannot be given under the regulations, and these men have to fall back on home assistance and on grants by charitable organisations. I do not know if this position obtains in any other part of the country, but it obtains very definitely around the City of Cork, owing to the fact that the corporation had to place their housing schemes outside the boundary.
In some cases the unemployment assistance regulations are harshly enforced. These cases include some which are referred to the court of referees for investigation. I was present at the hearing of many of these cases, and when investigated they were found to be genuine claims for unemployment assistance. There was, however, a protracted interval from the time proceedings were commenced until unemployment assistance was renewed. That created a great hardship on the people concerned. In many cases they were obliged to have recourse to the home assistance officer. I have recently come across cases in a town in my constituency—Passage West—where a number of people were knocked off the unemployment assistance list. Nearly a month elapsed before the cases came for hearing to the court of referees. They were heard on this day fortnight, and confirmation of the decision of the report of the court of referees has not yet come from the head office. The Minister, or his Department, should go carefully into the machinery for dealing with those claims and try to minimise, if not entirely abolish, the hardship imposed on the people concerned. I think I can speak for every member of my Party when I say that we do not stand for the slacker or the shirker, but you have thousands who are genuinely unemployed. You may have cases in rural parts of the West or the North where unemployed people are not entirely destitute, but large numbers in my constituency—especially in some of the towns—are genuinely unemployed and completely destitute. If obstacles are to be allowed to impede these people in getting relief for their distress and poverty, the position will be serious for the country generally. It is bad enough to be unemployed and to be genuinely seeking employment, but it is worse to find obstacles in one's way when one seeks to obtain unemployment assistance, having failed to secure employment.
There are long delays, too, in issuing qualification certificates. I have known of cases where the people had to wait for a month. The blame is put on the investigation officer, and then on other officials. But the qualification certificate does not arrive. These are matters that require to be tightened up. It is bad enough to have to endure the horrors of unemployment. I do not want to exaggerate, but every member of the House is aware of these horrors—but the unemployed should not, in addition, be deprived of the solace which is given them by whatever little sustenance— I do not call it maintenance—is allowed them. That should be readily obtainable, especially when those concerned are, as those I speak of are, neither slackers nor shirkers.
I move to report progress.
