asked the Minister for Finance if, in relation to State employees suffering from malignant disease, he will by regulation or otherwise provide that payment of their salaries will be made on the same terms as in the case of State employees suffering from tuberculosis.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - State Employees Suffering from Malignant Disease.
6.
The enhanced sick leave concessions allowable to civil servants who contract tuberculosis were introduced in 1945 in the context of an intensive national campaign for the eradication of the disease. The primary consideration in granting the concessions, which are allowed at the expense of the general taxpayer, was to protect the community at large from the infectious character of pulmonary tuberculosis by inducing those suffering from it to seek medical advice quickly and to undergo the usually lengthy treatment involved. As this consideration does not apply in the case of the diseases which the Deputy has in mind, I am not prepared to agree to an extension of the concessions on the lines he proposes.
Would the Minister examine the position? I am sure he knows the disease I have in mind. I know of a case in recent months of a person who was dying from the disease and who received notice that his salary was cut from £14 a week to £7. This was at the height of his illness and he died a few months afterwards. When the position was examined in years gone by in regard to tuberculosis, the disease I have in mind, cancer, was not so rampant or so recognised.
Cancer would have to be treated in the same manner as any other disease. There is a particular case for tuberculosis or any other infectious disease because it is important to induce people suffering from such infectious disease to go for treatment as quickly as possible because they are a danger to other people.
Surely the Minister will agree that it must be a hardship on the patient and his family that the patient, having been ill for six months, should receive notice that his salary has been cut in half?
Surely this is a statement?