asked the Minister for Social Welfare if, with a view to the amelioration of hardships in the case of recipients of unemployment assistance in rural areas, he will introduce regulations to make it necessary for all such recipients to attend at signing centres and/or employment offices on only one day per week for the verification of evidence of unemployment for each week of unemployment.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Attendance at Unemployment Assistance Signing Centres.
19.
Under existing arrangements, the general position is that only persons who reside within two miles of their local office are required to attend there daily to prove their unemployment. Persons residing over two but not over four miles from the local office have to attend there on alternate days. Persons residing over four miles from their local office are required to attend once a week only, either at the local office itself or at an appointed Garda station or signing centre, as appropriate. Bearing in mind that unemployed persons must be capable of work to be eligible for unemployment assistance, I do not consider that these arrangements are unreasonable or that they inflict hardship. Furthermore, they constitute the minimum safeguard necessary for the prevention of abuses. In the circumstances, I am not satisfied that the arrangements need to be altered.
May I ask the Minister if he cannot place as much trust in the people living within two miles of the signing centre as he can in people living over six miles away from it? Is he not aware that he is causing considerable hardship to small farmers by making it necessary for them to come into town six times a week, while others need not come in at all?
It is not a question of trust; it is a special arrangement for those who live more than two miles away. This special arrangement is made for those people so that they need not come in every day. The fact that they are available for work means that they are underemployed on their own holdings and so coming in to prove their unemployment in the local office cannot interfere with their working on their own holdings.
Would the Minister not agree that there can be very little difference between people who live two miles from the signing centre and people who live six miles away? By his activities, he is causing them to waste time and he is reducing national production, as far as agriculture is concerned. Would he reconsider this matter and stop treating the people of the rural areas in the same way as he treats the people of Dublin city?
A person drawing unemployment assistance is not fully employed on his own holding. If he lives within two miles of the local office, it could not interfere with the working of his holding to come in once a day to sign.
And go home drunk.
He is probably speaking from experience.