I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. Deputies will no doubt recall that in his Budget Statement on 14th April last, the Minister for Finance announced increases in the rates of non-contributory old age and blind pensions, widows' pensions and unemployment assistance. This Bill is designed to give legislative effect to these increases and also to bring about some further extensions and improvements of both the Social Insurance and the Social Assistance schemes.
I shall deal first with the Budget increases in Social Assistance, which it is intended will come into effect on 1st August next, and with the consequential extensions in the Social Assistance scheme.
The increase proposed in the rates of non-contributory old age and blind pensions is 2/6 a week, which will bring the new rates of these pensions to 37/6d, 32/6d, 27/6d, 22/6d, 17/6d, 12/6d, and 7/6d, according to the means of the pensioner as set out in the table in section 2.
The increase proposed in rates of unemployment assistance, which is dealt with in section 3, is also 2/6 a week, but this applies to both the personal rate of assistance and to the allowance payable in respect of an adult dependant. Thus the maximum rate of unemployment assistance for a married man with a dependent wife will be increased from 47/6d a week to 52/6d a week in an urban area, and from 39/6d a week to 44/6d a week in a rural area. The increase in the maximum rates of unemployment assistance automatically increases the means limit for assistance purposes and will thus bring within the scope of the scheme persons who at present fail to qualify for assistance because their means are slightly in excess of the limit.
As regards widows' non-contributory pensions the increase proposed is again 2/6d a week for the widow herself. As a result, the rates of pension for a widow with no dependent children would range from 36/- a week at the maximum by steps of 5/- down to 11/- a week according to the means of the widow. A widow whose means were just outside the limit for 11/-pension would, however, get no pension even though the margin by which her means exceeded the limit might be considerably less than 11/- a week. To obviate this and to follow the line adopted in previous years when a similar situation obtained in relation to either old age pensions or widows' non-contributory pensions, it has been decided to extend the scale of means and rates of widows' non-contributory pensions this year, so as to add a new rate of pension of 6/- at the minimum. This new rate is included in the table in section 4. The introduction of this new rate will also save some widows whose means increase from losing more by way of pension than their increase of means. For instance, a widow with two children whose means go up from £3 10s. a week to £3 15s. a week will not lose her 11/- pension altogether but will have it reduced to 6/- instead.
As I have already mentioned, this Bill, in addition to providing for the Budget increases, includes provisions for further improvements and extensions of the social welfare schemes which it has been found desirable and possible to make this year. The first of these represents a completely new development in this country in relation to old age pensions, both contributory and non-contributory, in that it will enable allowances to be paid as part of pension for qualified children. These proposals are dealt with in sections 5, 8, 9 and 10. I have felt for some time and, no doubt, all Deputies will agree with me, that it is anomalous that a person approaching the age of 70 could be in receipt of disability benefit or unemployment benefit, which included an allowance for children, but that immediately on reaching that age and becoming entitled only to an old age contributory pension, no allowance could be paid in respect of the children apart, of course, from any children's allowances under the general children's allowances scheme.
A similar anomaly arises in the case of persons in receipt of unemployment assistance or widow's non-contributory pension who qualify for non-contributory old age pension at the age of 70. To remove these anomalies, the Bill proposes to provide for the payment of allowances to old age (contributory) pensioners for qualified children at the same rates as are paid in respect of persons in receipt of disability benefit, unemployment benefit or widow's (contributory) pension, that is, 13/- for each of the first two qualified children and 8/- for each additional qualified child, and for the payment in respect of qualified children of non-contributory old age pensioners of allowances at the same rate as those which are paid with widow's (non-contributory) pension and unemployment assistance, i.e. 10/-for each of the first two qualified children and 5/- for each additional qualified child.
In addition to extending the scale of means and rates of pension on the non-contributory side section 5 will enable £39 to be disregarded in assessing means for pension purposes in respect of each qualified child. The following example will illustrate the effects of this concession. A pensioner with a wife and two young children, could, if he had no other assessable means, earn up to £3 10s a week and still receive the maximum pension payable in his case, £2 17s. 6d. a week as against £1 a week at present. If his earnings did not exceed £9 a week, he could still receive a pension of the minimum rate of 7s. 6d. a week. It is estimated that these proposals will cost some £73,000 in a full year on the contributory old age pension side, while on the non-contributory side it is estimated that the cost will be some £158,000 in a full year. Children's allowances under the general scheme will, of course, already be in payment in respect of the children involved, and the same qualification conditions will obtain in respect of the allowances granted as part of pension as obtain for the general children's allowances scheme and as obtain in respect of children under the other forms of social welfare benefits.
These are, briefly, that the child is under the age of 16 years, is ordinarily resident in the State and is not detained in a reformatory or industrial school. For a pensioner to be entitled to the proposed allowance in respect of a qualified child, the child must, of course, be normally resident with him or her and questions as to the normal residence of the child will be decided under the rules already made in relation to the general children's allowances scheme. Deputies will observe that provision is made in sections 5 and 8 for the making of an order bringing these allowances into force. For administrative reasons it would not be possible to bring them into payment concurrently with the Budget increases, but it is anticipated that my Department would be in a position to commence payment at the beginning of November next.
This Bill provides for two amendments of the social insurance scheme. The first of these relates to the insurability of pensionable teachers in the training colleges for national teachers. These teachers are at present compulsorily insurable for all benefits under the Social Insurance scheme and pay contributions at the full rate where their remuneration is within the insurability limit. Their position is, however, in reality no different from that of pensionable teachers in national secondary or vocational schools or domestic science training colleges for whom contributions at reduced rates, which reckon only for widows' and orphans' pensions purposes, are payable. Section 6 of the Bill, therefore, makes provision to enable the Minister to make regulations treating these teachers for insurance purposes in exactly the same way as pensionable national, secondary and vocational teachers and teachers in domestic science training colleges.
The other amendment in relation to the social insurance scheme refers to the amount which may be paid by way of treatment benefit in any financial year and is dealt with in section 7. At the present there is an overriding limit of half a million pounds on the amount which may be paid each year in treatment benefits. Treatment benefit is now limited to dental benefit, optical benefit and medical and surgical appliances benefit, the appliances in question being, contact lenses and hearing aids. These services are, in fact, provided under the Social Welfare Acts as a temporary measure pending the full implementation of the Health Act, and the amount which may be paid is agreed between the Minister for Finance and myself each year subject to the overriding limit. Expenditure on treatment benefit is increasing and it is feared that unless the overriding limit is removed the scheme might have to be terminated or suspended during the course of a financial year for lack of money. Section 7 proposes, therefore, to remove the overriding limit and leave the amount to be spent in any year to be agreed upon between the Minister for Finance and myself, the amount involved being, of course, approved by the Dáil as part of the year's estimates.
I now come to two sections aimed at effecting improvements in the unemployment assistance scheme. The first of these, dealt with in section 11, is intended to remove a cause of grievance arising from the existing provisions regarding the operative date of revised decisions or decisions on appeals concerning qualification certificates under the Unemployment Assistance Acts. Its general effect will be to enable persons applying for unemployment assistance to be paid retrospectively or to be paid at a higher rate retrospectively where favourable decisions revising earlier decisions have been given. This will ensure that the time taken to deal with cases and to follow unavoidable administrative procedures will not detrimentally affect the amount payable to the applicant where his application or appeal is successful. The amendment will also help to clarify the law in so far as it relates to overpayments of unemployment assistance arising in the converse situation where a revised decision results in a reduction of the unemployment assistance payable, and there has been fraudulent concealment of means. It is estimated that the annual cost of this improvement will be about £5,000.
The second of these improvements, dealt with in section 12, is intended to give some relief to the persons who are employed seasonally as fishermen either working on their own account or on a share basis. This matter has been the subject of a great deal of representations over the years. Earnings from employment under a contract of service are not regarded as means for the purpose of unemployment assistance. A fisherman working on his own account or on a share basis is not normally employed under a contract of service and, accordingly, any income which he derives from his fishing is treated as means. He may thus be unable to obtain a qualification certificate without which he cannot get unemployment assistance, or his means may be assessed on such a level as to reduce the rate of unemployment assistance payable to him. It has been represented to me repeatedly that this bears unfairly on these seasonal fishermen. The provisions of the section are designed to allow a proportion, up to an overriding limit of £80 a year, of the income derived from seasonal fishing to be disregarded in assessing a person's means for unemployment assistance purposes and this would have the effect of considerably reducing the impact of such earnings on title to unemployment assistance.
And finally on the Social Assistance side, in section 13, I come to an improvement which I have had in mind for some time. This relates to the minimum age limits for widow's non-contributory pension. Up to two years ago a widow could not qualify for a non-contributory pension if she was less than 48 years of age unless she had a qualified child or children. If a widow with a qualified child or children had not attained the age of 48 years within six months after her last or only qualified child ceased to be qualified, she lost her pension.
Deputies will recall that in the Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1962, the minimum age in the latter type of case was reduced to 40. Since then I had the matter further examined and I feel that both of these minimum age limits can operate rather harshly. The only real argument for them is that a widow without children should be in a position to provide for herself by working. If she can so provide and in fact does so, the means test would ensure that her pension is terminated or reduced appropriately in accordance with her means. Circumstances can arise, however, to prevent such a widow from working, for example, incapacity for work, lack of suitable employment locally, domestic circumstances, which the minimum age limit cannot allow for.
Section 13, therefore, proposes to remove the minimum age limits completely, thus leaving the question of title to a widow's non-contributory pension to be determined on the basis of the widow's need as measured by the means test and not on a minimum age limit fixed somewhat arbitrarily, which does not permit account to be taken of the widow's capacity for work or her financial or domestic circumstances. The cost of this concession is estimated to be of the order of £27,000 a year. The maximum age limit for receipt of a widow's non-contributory pension will remain at 70, at which age the question of title to an old age pension, either non-contributory or contributory, arises.
To conclude it might be helpful to Deputies if I were to summarise the cost to the Exchequer of the various proposals which I have outlined above. On the Social Assistance side, the total costs are estimated to amount to £1,290,000 in a full year. All of this expenditure will fall on the Exchequer. The annual cost of the proposal for payment of allowances in respect of children of old age (contributory) pensioners which will for the present all fall on the Exchequer, is estimated at £73,000. The overall cost to the Exchequer will, therefore, be £1,363,000 in a full year.
I have much pleasure in recommending this measure to Dáil Éireann as a further step in the evolution of social welfare schemes which will meet the needs of our people and I would ask for expeditious and favourable consideration of it.