My personal experience is that an increasing number of people are having their pensions cut. I heard from people who had their pensions cut that they had them restored in part. The figure is not even £250,000 but it is big enough to justify mention in the Minister's address. I am not sure whether that £250,000 is included in or excluded from the Minister's figure for last year or for this year. It ought to have been isolated for special redistribution to the sections of the community who are in most need of increased benefits.
I should like to draw attention to a problem which mercifully does not frequently occur but it is one which, I think, ought to receive the Minister's sympathy and attention. It is one which can be remedied in the regulations. At present, the mother of an illegitimate child is unable to get benefit for that child if she loses her employment, and if she is living with a relative and, in particular, if the relative with whom she is living is a person who is himself in receipt of social welfare benefit. I have in mind the mother of an illegitimate child who, through no fault of hers, became unemployed. She was living with her father and because he was the head of the household the mother of this child was unable to get benefit. Her father was an extremely difficult person to deal with. Like many old people he resented the presence of the child, not because of the status of the child but because old people generally are unable to endure the crying and wailing and domestic upset of children. He was not contributing anything towards the child's food or clothing bills and this mother was in dire distress because of the fact that she had not sufficient means herself, through her own unemployment benefit, adequately to maintain herself and her child. I think it should be possible to look at this on the merits and, where circumstances appear to justify it, payment of unemployment benefit in relation to such a child should be made by the State.
There is another problem of administration which I think ought to be remedied. I refer to the frequency of delays in the payment of weekly disability benefit, particularly where the disabled person, the person who is ill, is required to make weekly certificates available. I am sure that a number of Members of this House have had complaints about these. Our invariable experience is that when you convey these complaints to the Department, you receive from the Department an apologia which asserts that your complainant is wrong, that the Department are right and they have issued payment on specific days and within the time that it should have been issued. One is not always in a position to contradict the Department but I have seen cases where the Department asserted that they posted payments on particular days and where the postmarks on the envelopes containing the benefits were, in fact, one or two days subsequent to the dates on which the Department believed that they had posted the letters. It may be that the Department handed them over to the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and that a delay then occurred and that the Department of Posts and Telegraphs did not frank the letters on the day on which they received them, but if this is so or whatever the reason, I should like to see a substantial improvement in the payment of these benefits.
We come now to a matter which I think needs remedial action. In a substantial number of cases where people are in receipt of such benefit it is apparent that they will be disabled and that they will be unable to follow their employment for a considerable time. I feel that in such cases, rather than awaiting a specific application by the beneficiary or on behalf of the beneficiary, the Department should waive the requirement of weekly certificates and allow the certificates to be furnished monthly. It is extraordinary that where the Department is prepared to accept certificates at monthly, or longer intervals, the weekly payments appear to be made regularly and without any delays on the part of the Department or the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. These delays occur, apparently, with most frequency, where there is a requirement to furnish a weekly certificate. It appears that a certain section of the Minister's Department awaits the furnishing of these certificates and then on getting them, approval is given for the making of payment but in the processing of the certificate, the approval and the issuing of the money and the delivery of the money, varying degrees of delay frequently occur. I feel that the burden of work in the Department would be greatly reduced if they accepted certificates at longer intervals than a week. The Minister should endeavour to reduce the requirement of weekly certificates.
Having said all that, we fully appreciate the reason for weekly certificates. It is to ensure that nobody receives payment for a longer period than he or she requires it but I believe that in the long run the State would lose little even if the odd person were to get benefit for a week longer than was necessary. The reduction in manpower in the Department and the reduction in overhead costs would be substantial if certificates were, in many cases, accepted at longer intervals than a week.
From the humanitarian point of view I feel it is an undue hardship to impose upon people who are disabled and who are probably in domestic difficulties to require them to attend a doctor week in week out to furnish these certificates. This in itself imposes undue hardship on people who are themselves disabled and, in this city, many people so anxiously require payment of benefit that they endeavour to expedite it by personally delivering their certificates at the Department of Social Welfare. For many people this requires an expenditure of a couple of shillings or more in bus fares and a number of hours which they can ill afford to be absent from their homes. Notwithstanding the fact that they are unable to follow their occupation they would probably be better off in their homes resting and recuperating than enduring the hardships of public transport or the absence of it in this city.
This brings me to a matter which I have raised on numerous occasions. I make no apology for again bringing it before the Dáil. It is the obligation which we unnecessarily impose upon recipients of old age pensions, contributory and non-contributory, children's allowances, widows' and orphans' pensions and other social welfare payments to attend in person at a post office for payment of their pittances. As I have pointed out before and as I emphasise again, there is no justification for requiring personal attendance of people at post offices in large urban areas. The justification, if such it could be called, for the requirement that people attend personally is to reduce the possibility of fraud, to reduce the possibility of people representing themselves as being the beneficiaries. Personal attendance might be of value if the person actually making the cash payment were in a position to identify the recipient but it is ridiculous to suggest that in urban areas, where as many as 1,000 to 3,000 people per post office are in receipt of benefit, personal attendance is required for identification purposes. The postmistress, sub-postmistress or any assistant in the post office could not possibly know the identity of the vast majority of people personally attending at such post offices. In any event, if a person wants to avoid personal identity in Dublin or in any other urban area all he needs to do is nominate a post office outside his own particular parish and the Department will allow the payment to be made there. It is beyond all reason, in my opinion, to continue this requirement which imposes a colossal burden on the recipients themselves and which takes no account of the domestic difficulties which such personal attendance requires and which imposes on the post office authorities a burden which is unnecessary, inconvenient and costly.
The Minister is familiar with Ballyfermot. In Ballyfermot, between the two post offices there, on one day of each month almost 5,000 families are entitled to get payment of children's allowances. It can be argued that there is no obligation on the recipient of a child's allowance to attend on the first day of entitlement to obtain payment. That is perfectly true but as far as I can gather actual experience is that something between 75 per cent and 85 per cent of the people who are entitled to such allowances seek payment on the first or second day of entitlement simply because their incomes or wages are not sufficient to give them enough to pay for clothing or to pay the rent.
It is common knowledge that Dublin Corporation's rent fund is maintained to a substantial extent up to date by referring children's allowances towards the rent arrears. If children's allowances were to be abolished tomorrow, even if all salaries were increased by a weekly sum equivalent to the children's allowances there are many house-holders in this city and elsewhere in the country who would not be able to manage their rent affairs because they would not have that expected monthly income coming in. Anyway, there is a problem that we have thousands of people in urban areas where they are no more than bearers of an impersonal cheque book requiring them to attend, because we believe that in some way or another this will stop fraud. It might stop it in a small village where the postmistress knows everybody but it certainly will not stop it in any of the large urban areas. I would once again beseech the Minister — who, I think, is not unsympathetic — to take the plunge and do away with this rule in so far as the urban areas are concerned. Mind you, if it is unnecessary in the urban areas, I do not see how the rural areas should have to endure it either in the future. After all, all that is required is to allow people to cash their allowances in places other than the local post office. If they could cash them in other than the local post office, the possibility of fraud would probably be less because the local shopkeeper or butcher — although these people do not frequent the butcher's except at Christmas because they cannot afford the price of meat — would probably know more about them, their appearance and their family circumstances than many a postmistress. I venture to suggest that, in the areas where there is the greatest demand for social welfare payments, you also have the least amount of letter writing and letter posting.
It is now over a year since we increased the ceiling of remuneration for insurance. We increased it from £800 to £1,200 on 6th September, 1965. I know an effort has been made to peg incomes over the past year but, of course, it has not succeeded. Many people who, a year ago, were within the insurance limit have now — perhaps fortunately for them — gone beyond it. Of course, it is possible for them to maintain voluntary insurance, but, human nature being what it is, some of them will not do so or they may be pressed, due to other financial commitments, and may feel disinclined to do so because of financial embarrassment. It is desirable that this rate should change more frequently than we have permitted it to change in the past.
Speaking now from recollection, I think there was a lapse of something like eight or ten years from the time the £800 limit was fixed to the time it was fixed at £1,200, and the result was that a substantial number of people — something in the region of 10,000 — in the intervening period, went outside the insurable limit. This is undesirable; it certainly creates difficulties and leads to a sense of grievance, when people who have contributed for several years, and then when they fail to contribute because of a change in their salary structure, fall into difficult times, find that, notwithstanding the fact they contributed large amounts over the years, they are disqualified.
The way to remedy this is to have a more frequent change but perhaps I should not dwell too long on this because I think it does require legislation at present to change this limit. I am not certain whether, in the last piece of legislation, we allowed this to be changed by Ministerial order, but, whatever way it can be done, it ought to be done with more frequency. If wage levels change, as they do tend to change, yearly or thereabouts, then this limit ought to be increased by the average amount by which income levels have altered in the intervening period.
There are many other aspects of social welfare we would like to discuss but perhaps we can do that at another time, as the Minister has promised us a Supplementary Estimate in the course of the year. One thing can be said in favour of Supplementary Estimates, that is, they allow one to talk about the matter more frequently, but that is all that can be said for them. We think it desirable that we have a keen social conscience in this country and perhaps the more people in public life preach about the necessity for improving our social services, the more will people be prepared to accept that it means a sacrifice for some people, because their incomes will be redistributed but it is a worthwhile aim if we can improve the overall standards of our people.
Deputy James Tully and I were recently privileged to be in a country where there is no social service or code such as we understand it here, and it is only on seeing at first hand the appalling absence of a social conscience that one realises how vitally necessary it is to have a socially just society. We have in this country, I think, fallen into the ditch of indifference. We have assumed that all will be well as long as we add just that little amount of money one year after another to match increases in the cost of living, as long as we add that little amount to existing social welfare payments. That is certainly not enough. As I said earlier, we can provide a more socially just society in many ways other than by increasing the monetary allowances paid.
This is something to which the Department of Social Welfare ought to direct its attention. It has a worthwhile role and it ought to endeavour to be something other than an accounting agency for the Department of Finance. It ought to endeavour to see in what ways the standards of our people can be improved, to see in what way the colossal differences which now exist between the various strata of our society can be abolished or can be narrowed to some extent. This is a worthwhile aim and I should like to see the Department doing more in that regard.
We are fortunate in recent times in having inaugurated, in our universities and colleges, courses of social studies. Some of these faculties have produced some very worthwhile studies in recent times. The research work being carried on is, I believe, of the greatest value and is deserving of support. I feel the State is not helping these studies as much as it ought to; in fact, I do not think it is helping them at all in so far as the Department of Social Welware is concerned. These people, who are skilled in these researches, are ready, willing, able and anxious to have an exploration in depth of our social requirements and I should like to see the Department of Social Welfare playing a positive part in encouraging these people to carry out this work. If we had more of that kind of research work, we might be able to build a more inspired social code than the one upon which we are relying at the present time.
I would, therefore, like to see substantial grants being paid by the Department to these faculties to have the necessary research carried out. I do not think the Department officials themselves are in a position to do it; all they can do is as much, perhaps, as public representatives can do, that is, to list, to refer and to try to make decisions within the existing code upon individual cases presented to them from time to time. But the kind of new work necessary, the kind of new society we should be building, will not adequately be planned unless we carry out widespread research at home, outside the ambit of the official code, official requirements and statutory requirements we have at the present time. Other countries have done this with great success and that is why they have, in many cases, different types of social services from what we have here.
Unless we do this and do it quickly, we will be in serious difficulty in years to come on two fronts: our own people will not be adequately provided for and we may not be able to match the requirements of countries which, for economic, financial and political reasons, we may desire to be associated with — not that I am to be taken as advocating some of the alliances which some people speak of at the present time, but if they are coming and if the people desire to have them we must be prepared, or else the effect on our people, socially and economically, will be disastrous.
