I have stated here that this motion is unnecessary. It calls upon the Government to increase the rates of benefit provided under the Unemployment Assistance Act in consequence of an increase in the cost of living. Let us get the facts. Deputies in the Labour Party do not like facts but my job is to give them. We base our policy upon facts. The Unemployment Assistance Act was introduced in 1934. May I remind the House that it was introduced by this Government, that, before 1934, there was no such thing as unemployment assistance in this country?
Up to that time if a person became unemployed and exhausted his right to insurance benefit, there was no provision for him at all. In fact, up to a certain time, even the home assistance authority could not give him help if he was an able-bodied man. That is a matter of only a few years ago. This development of our social services, which began with the advent of Fianna Fáil to office, has already worked substantial changes in the social life of this country. Deputies are inclined to forget that. Of course, they naturally do not want to credit Fianna Fáil with anything. But it is our job to see that the full facts are put, including those things which are creditable to ourselves.
This Act was introduced in 1934, which was the first time in this country that unemployment assistance was made available on a nation-wide basis. It is true we had to lay down certain rules and tests in order to determine those who were to receive the benefit. You cannot have, in relation to a nation-wide scheme of this kind, a judicial examination of the circumstances of each individual. It is necessary to lay down certain broad rules and to say: "Those who qualify under these rules get the benefit and those who fail to qualify are out." We did endeavour to get the element of individual judgment introduced by bringing into operation the system of courts of referees, and any person who is refused unemployment assistance by the unemployment assistance officer has the right to go before the court of referees, a local court, consisting of a chairman appointed by the Government, a person chosen from a panel nominated by local employers and a person chosen from a panel nominated by the local trade unions.
That tribunal examines his case and decides whether, having regard to all the facts, he is or is not under the law entitled to unemployment assistance. Most people who are refused unemployment assistance exercise that right of appeal, and a very large number of them have their unemployment assistance restored to them as a result of decisions in their favour by the local court of referees.
The Act of 1934 established that new service and provided for the first time a statutory right to assistance in a large number of households where previously there had been real need of it. The scales of benefit which were laid down in the Act were not represented as adequate to maintain a man and his family in the same circumstances as he would have been able to maintain himself if he had succeeded in getting employment. The unemployment assistance provided was not intended to be a substitute for wages. It was intended, as I have said, to be assistance from the communal resources to the individual family during the period of the unemployment of the breadwinner. We did not think that we were providing means to enable individuals to maintain themselves and their families over long periods of unemployment. The total amount which could be provided for that service was determined and voted, and, within the limits of that amount, we endeavoured to do the best possible, having regard to the relative claims of various individuals.
The rates of assistance which were provided in the 1934 Act were increased by an Act passed in 1938, shortly before the outbreak of the war. They were increased, except in the case of single men without dependents, by 15 per cent. in urban areas and 10 per cent. in rural areas. In August, 1941, the continuity rule was amended in favour of the unemployment assistance applicant. I do not wish to go now into a technical explanation of what that meant, but it did involve a concession of importance in the circumstances then existing— circumstances in which a number of people were becoming not unemployed but under-employed, through the growing scarcity of materials and fuels and the inability of their employers to give them a full week's work in every week. It did involve increased expenditure on the service.
In September, 1941, the food voucher scheme was introduced. That food voucher scheme was an attempt to do what this motion contemplates, that is, to devise a method by which the value of the assistance which the unemployed person received would very with changes in the prices of the most essential foodstuffs. By giving him a right to a stated quantity of bread, butter and milk, irrespective of the prevailing prices of these commodities, we did in fact ensure that the value of the assistance he was receiving would continue to increase as the price of these commodities increased. In September, 1942, the amount of food provided on food vouchers was increased again. In that month, there was an increase in the fixed price of bread. To offset that increase, the amount of bread provided on food vouchers was raised by 50 per cent. and the effect was to do much more than to offset for the persons receiving food vouchers the effect of the increase in the price of bread.
In November, 1942, the weekly rates of unemployment assistance payable to persons with dependents outside the incorporated towns, that is, in the smaller towns and rural areas in which the food voucher scheme had not applied, were increased. In fact the rates payable in respect of dependents of unemployed persons in those areas were increased in that month by 150 per cent. There has been an increase in the cost of living, an increase which, taking one date with another, could perhaps be expressed as Deputy Davin expressed it, in terms of 58 per cent. One could take different dates or yearly averages and get a lower percentage, but I am not going to quarrel with Deputy Davin's 58 per cent. He said, of course, that the real increase in the cost of living was higher than the cost-of-living index revealed. The reverse is the case, and I am going to demonstrate that that is so.
The cost of living index is not really what its name implies—an index of changes in the cost of living. It is an index of changes in the prices of certain fixed quantities of a limited number of foodstuffs. In the year 1922, an investigation was carried out into the quantity of foodstuffs and other necessary materials which would be purchased by what was then described as a well-off artisan's family. These quantities of foodstuffs at the prices then prevailing, weighted in accordance with their relative importance in the average household dietary, determined what was the basis of the cost of living index figure for that year. As the prices of the quantities of foodstuffs taken into account in the calculation varied, the cost of living index figure was varied, and we are still working on that basis and still publishing a cost of living index figure which assumes that the average household is getting a cwt. of coal per week, two and seven-eighths ounces of tea per week, so many lbs. of bacon and so many lbs. of butter per week, and which takes no account of the fact that a number of the foodstuffs in the schedule are not available, that others are severely rationed, and that people could not in fact buy the quantities of foodstuffs which are the basis of the calculation.
That alteration of the circumstances has in fact upset almost entirely the validity of that index. If we were to attempt to prepare another index now, to decide a figure which would represent the actual increase in the expenditure of a typical family, on the expenditure of which the figure is based, even making allowances for the fact that if they cannot get coal, they have to buy turf, and if they cannot get enough butter, they have to buy jam, and if they cannot get enough tea, they have to buy cocoa, coffee and substitute materials, it would reveal a change substantially less than 58 per cent. The basic items have shown no change at all. There has in fact been no change recorded in rents which absorb a high percentage of the average workingman's income. The percentage increases in the main items are, of course, much less than the all-over average.
Deputy Davin spoke about the cost of rabbits having increased by 350 per cent. That is quite likely. The Government has been trying to encourage an increase in the price of rabbits in order to get people to trap them. A very large number of these unemployment assistance recipients throughout the country are not as unemployed as they would like to appear. They are busily engaged in trapping rabbits and making a good thing out of it.
The more rabbits they trap the better we like it, because rabbits are a pest. They do infinite harm to the harvest each year; they destroy possibly £1,000,000 worth of foodstuffs. If we could wipe them all out, no matter what price we had to pay for rabbits retail, it would be a great national benefit. But, although there has been an increase of 350 per cent. in the price of rabbits, Deputies or the public must not assume what Deputy Davin wants them to assume, that that represents a typical increase in the price of foodstuffs.
Take the price of bread. Bread has gone up from 1/- per 4 lb. loaf to 1/1 since the outbreak of the war. It was not until last year that the price of bread was increased. In fact it might not have been increased at all but for the agitation carried on in the previous year by certain agitators throughout the country who were urging farmers to demand more and more for their wheat. In the previous year the farmers got a substantial increase in the price of wheat, an increase which was not reflected in the price of bread by reason of the Government subsidy. The fact that the Government concealed the effect of raising the price of wheat led people to urge that the price of wheat should be increased still further.
It was because it was necessary in the public interest that the public should understand what the rising cost of primary commodities was likely to involve in retail prices in the shops that it was decided to allow an increase of 8½ per cent. in the price of bread. There is far more bread than rabbits eaten in the average household. While 8½ per cent. is no more typical of the average increase than the 350 per cent. mentioned by Deputy Davin, it is a far more important factor to the average unemployed worker that bread has only increased by 8½ per cent. than that rabbits have increased by 350 per cent.
It may be that our pre-war standards of unemployment assistance benefit were not as high as we would have liked them to be, but, in so far as they were reasonable in the pre-war period, they are still reasonable. If there has been a 58 per cent. increase in the cost of living, the fact is that the average family in Dublin, or in any of the towns where the food voucher scheme is in operation, which is depending upon unemployment assistance, has received increased unemployment assistance to a higher percentage than the increase in the cost of living.
Take a man with a wife and five children. Deputy Byrne mentioned cases of larger families and, to an extent, it is true to say that the percentage increase in the amount of unemployment assistance rose in relation to the size of the family. I am taking a family consisting of a man, with a wife and five children. At the present price of foods made available under the food voucher scheme, the increase in the unemployment assistance given such a family since the beginning of the war is 61 per cent. in Dublin. In Drogheda and Dundalk it is 85 per cent. It goes up by various percentages. In Balbriggan it is 100 per cent. The highest I have on my list is Ardee with 108 per cent. The reason why the percentage is higher in Balbriggan and Ardee than in Dublin is apparently because the rise in the cost of the commodities provided under the food voucher scheme has been greater in these towns than it has been in Dublin. But there is the fact that if 58 per cent. represents the increase in the cost of living—and I suggest that, having regard to the basis upon which the cost of living index is compiled, the actual increase in the expenditure of the average family is not so great as that—then we have increased the unemployment assistance available to the average unemployed family by more than 58 per cent.
In the case of the rural areas it was not practicable to provide increased unemployment assistance by means of the food voucher scheme. The food voucher scheme could only operate effectively in comparatively large centres of population where there is a number of retail shops readily available. There is no point in giving a food voucher to an unemployed man in a rural area entitling him to milk, butter and bread, unless he has immediately available to him a retail establishment where that voucher can be translated into supplies of the foods mentioned on it. For that reason we dealt with the problem in the rural areas by an increase in the cash benefits allowed in respect of dependents. We increased these cash benefits by 150 per cent. That does not mean, of course, that the total amount of unemployment assistance going into the average household was increased by 150 per cent., but it does mean that all over the rural areas an increase in unemployment assistance corresponding to the increase we had given in urban areas was effected by the Government Order of November last.
Let us take that typical family I mentioned—a man with a wife and five dependent children. At the present time such a man, assuming he has no means and is entitled to the maximum rate of unemployment assistance, in the County Boroughs of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Dun Laoghaire, receives £1 16s. 6d. per week in unemployment assistance. If his family is larger than the maximum provided for under the Unemployment Assistance Acts, or if there are special circumstances in his case which make greater assistance necessary, then the amount provided under the Unemployment Assistance Acts can be supplemented, and is frequently supplemented, by the home assistance authorities. In the county boroughs that typical family I mentioned receives £1 16s. 6d. In other urban areas, that is, towns which are not county boroughs but have populations exceeding 7,000, the amount provided is £1 11s. In other incorporated towns under 7,000 population the amount is £1 7s. 6d. In the rural areas and in unincorporated towns it is 23/-.
I think that, having regard to the total resources of this State, the fact that we are passing through a period of particular difficulty, that our national income is declining, that our total industrial activity is being seriously curtailed by a dearth of supply of materials and fuels, with the tremendous increase in expenditure necessary upon emergency and defence services, in making this provision for persons who are temporarily unemployed we are not doing badly. It is only eight years ago since the Government introduced a novelty in the legislation of this country by enacting a minimum wage for agricultural workers. Never previously in the whole history of this country had there been any attempt to prescribe a minimum wage for agricultural workers.