Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 1 Jun 1967

Vol. 228 No. 15

Redundancy Payments Bill, 1967: Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time".

Mr. Larkin

When speaking before Question Time, I was referring to delays in relation to the making of regulations and administration. I expressed the view that, in these circumstances, the Government should have regard to the position of workers who may be declared redundant between now and the time the Bill comes into operation. The House will recollect that when the heavy fall occurred in cattle prices, a special headage grant was made available by the Government. The House will also be aware that from time to time, special assistance has been rendered to sections of industry. Forms of assistance in other cases exist to encourage industry by way of grants, income tax concessions, and so on. However, fellow-citizens, workers in concerns, may, between now and the time the Bill comes into operation and through no fault of their own, be thrown on the labour market. Surely it is possible for the Government to make special temporary assistance available to them by introducing a special grant for workers whom redundancy would normally bring within the scope of the Bill when it comes into operation? There is no doubt that the Government have the power to do so, if they have the will. I do not think it is impossible to do this or unreasonable to ask the Minister to do it.

I said earlier that we cannot entirely throw all the sins of the Fianna Fáil Government upon the shoulders of the Minister for Labour but he must accept a share of them. He must accept his share of the sins of dilatoriness in attacking the manpower problem and the problem of providing employment which has been with us for a long time and which was certainly with us before the Minister became Minister for Labour.

I cannot understand why the worker who is declared redundant must wait four weeks before he may draw benefit. Is this some hidden economic lever which will be applied to force the worker to accept unsuitable work or work that would not provide him with a reasonable income or work which would not in any circumstances be suitable to his family or domestic needs? The section provides for payment of 50 per cent of normal earnings up to a maximum, including social welfare payments, of 90 per cent but I think few cases will occur where, with the addition of social welfare payments, the total income will come to within 90 per cent of the worker's earnings except in the case of a very low-paid worker.

I do not know why, for the purpose of this Bill, overtime earnings are excluded from the calculation of weekly compensation. I am aware of arguments in relation to other matters but not in relation to this Bill. The Minister is well aware that a considerable number of firms operate on the basis of regular overtime. They work overtime regularly and this is not done at the request of the workers. The worker does not go along and say that he is working a 42½ hour, or 45 hour, week and that he will work an extra five hours this week, or an extra five hours every week for the next three or four months. He does overtime because he is required to do it. In many cases where overtime work is the pattern, the worker who is not prepared to do his share of overtime discovers either that his job disappears or that the attractive jobs in the industry are not open to him because he is treated as an individual who is not very co-operative. The problem here is that these people who regularly do overtime because of the exigencies of their employment will, if they are declared to be redundant, get redundancy compensation based only on what would be the normal week's wages, exclusive of overtime.

The Minister should look at this again. The Bill, which has taken account of bonuses, is either related to earnings or it is not. As far as the Minister for Finance is concerned, overtime earnings are rated as income and if workers go to the Labour Court to argue their case in regard to wages and conditions, very frequently the employers will make the case that their earnings are to be taken as including overtime. I think it is correct to say that in the statistics supplied by the Department of Commerce and so on, where they deal with wage rates, the earnings refer to total earnings of males and females.

I cannot understand either why the Minister says that a worker must have four years with an employer in order to be compensated. I do not know where this particular magical figure of four years comes from. Why did the Minister not make it three years, or two years? The Minister might look again at that particular qualification. That qualification is important in regard to adult workers but a more important point is one to which I have already referred, that is, that a person has to wait for four weeks after being declared redundant before getting compensation. Surely one of the purposes of redundancy compensation is to maintain the worker and his family and to ensure that the dislocation shall be as little as possible, pending the worker's re-absorption, it is hoped, into industry.

It appears to be completely illogical to provide that a worker who qualifies as being redundant may have to receive the ordinary social welfare payments for four weeks. Is it hoped that in this way the fund will be saved that expense, or is it hoped that by having a worker go within the scope of receiving the ordinary social welfare payments for four weeks, it will attune his mind and that as a consequence he will be more amenable to accepting work that otherwise he would not accept?

I was somewhat surprised by one of the arguments in the Minister's statement. If it were accepted, the Minister, the Government and this House would have little hope of ever seeing the country developed. It is implied in the statement that if the compensation payments were too high, workers would not accept work. I should like to express the most emphatic resentment against that implication, that a worker who through no fault of his own is signing on at the unemployment exchange does so because he does not want to work. This is the suggestion that is clear in the Minister's statement when he says that the benefits must be sufficient to enable redundant workers to maintain standards relatively close to their pre-redundancy level while they are placed in, on retrained for alternative employment. Of course, this does not apply to the first four weeks. If they go on social welfare for the first four weeks, they will not be meeting what the Minister says is an objective.

The Minister also says that the benefits should be substantial enough to effect the necessary change of attitudes towards redundancy, and must not be so high as to add significantly to production costs or act as a disincentive to the seeking or accepting of alternative employment. This last point is of particular significance in regard to the weekly payments. This is the part of the Minister's statement which is being given effect to in the Bill and which I think should rightly be challenged in this House.

There is little use in members of the Government telling industrialists who might be interested in establishing industries here that we have available manpower, because, to our shame to some extent, we have had manpower available for years when most European countries were short of manpower. It is little use to say that the workers here are intelligent, capable and adaptable and ready trained to take jobs in industry and at the same time, say in this Bill what in fact is said by the Minister, that the level of compensation payments must be kept a bit lower than it might otherwise be because workers might not be encouraged to accept employment.

Dr. Hillery

If the Deputy got more for not working than for working, what would he do himself?

Mr. Larkin

I was waiting for the Minister to ask that. The Irish people generally, like most other people, are happier when they are working.

Dr. Hillery

I do not contest that but it would be a disincentive.

Mr. Larkin

This is proved by the fact that so many of them are prepared to do voluntary work. Also there are people at present who, because of various industrial schemes and arrangements with the employers, if they were out of work for a period through sickness, might actually draw a little more than if they were at work and yet that does not worsen the sickness situation. I take it from the Minister's remarks that his suggestion underlies this Bill—I am surprised at him; I do not know if he is serious: I hope he is not. He seems to think a considerable section of the Irish people do not want to work. I do not accept that or agree with it when we know that we have people leaving their homeland and their families and everything else and taking all the risks entailed in emigration to secure employment. Yet it is said that if this compensation were a little higher, people would not accept employment.

I know that whatever the level is, there will be people who will not accept employment because the employment offered will not be suitable. This is one of the problems: we are dealing with the situation in reverse. We are not dealing with questions of manpower and placement and treating workers as human beings. It is not just a question of work but of work in areas where workers can give of their best and get satisfaction from their work. We are inclined to think nowadays that workers are purely cyphers. I trust the Minister will have another look at that section but I am doubtful of this, having regard to his remarks.

I do not understand why, as I said earlier, it seems that every member of the Government would like to be camped in some part of Europe engaged in discussions aimed at getting this country into the European Economic Community if they do not start thinking in terms of trying to provide social benefits. The workers in that Community get not less than 80 per cent of their normal earnings when not employed. In our situation they get 50 per cent, plus social welfare benefits. At least the Bill is finally before the House. No doubt there will be a number of amendments on Committee Stage.

I am surprised that the Minister was not a little more generous in regard to redundancy payments especially in relation to certain employees for whom I was negotiating for many weary weeks. The farthest they got at that time, regarding lump sum compensation was a half week's pay for each year's service and a full week's pay for those over 50. I should say we had 50 years of age while the Minister has 41. Again, why the maximum of 16 years? This is one of the aspects of redundancy compensation that to my mind has been completely overlooked in the Bill.

The Minister will be aware that there is a number of fairly large-scale undertakings in the country, not very many, that in recent years have been faced with some of the problems to which the Minister refers in his introductory remarks. Some of these are firms—I shall not use names as I do not think the place is appropriate but I can give the Minister a list of them, if required—that are financially fairly sound and employ workers at reasonable rates of wages and provide pensions and sick pay schemes and so on. Faced with the problems of new methods and techniques, equipment and machinery, it meant in their circumstances a run-down in the manpower employed. Their attitude was— and I think the same approach was made in CIE at one stage—to encourage workers who are coming near the pension age to retire somewhat earlier and as part of the encouragement, it was agreed that they should pay the workers the full pension at an earlier stage than they would normally qualify for it and, in addition, give them lump sum compensation.

In this case we have a situation in which the benefits of the Bill do not apply to anyone over 65 years of age. Possibly the Minister does not know that there are people in various industries today over 65 years of age who are still working. If in the industries concerned they are faced with the problem of increased mechanisation and new techniques and they feel that the solution to their problem would be to encourage older people to retire earlier, as far as this Bill is concerned there is no assistance whatsoever for these people. Naturally, people of 65 years of age or over will try to maintain a position in which they have a week's wages coming in. They will be supported in this by their fellow workers.

Suppose the Minister looked at this from this point of view. I am sure the Minister can get a list fairly quickly from his Department of the older people who are working if he does not know immediately the number of such people who are working. In some industries there are workers of 63, 64 and 65 years of age who are still capable of fairly good work. They may not be able to work quite as fast as previously but they certainly can do a good day's work. There are some firms which, in order to increase their competitive position may find it necessary to instal new machinery and new equipment so that they may sell large quantities of goods but there may be an actual reduction in the manpower involved. Everyone who has considered the matter reasonably and rationally thinks that in such a situation one thing which should be encouraged is that the more senior people, if they were so desirous, would voluntarily retire but there is no provision in this Bill which would enable them to do so.

Some of those industries have no specific statutory pension scheme so those older people will continue working. They hope to continue until they can draw the somewhat inadequate old age pension. Surely when dealing with redundancy compensation the special position of those people should be taken into account. If the Minister contends, as he does, that there are circumstances wherein there would be some run down in labour which would inevitably be justified, it would be rational and reasonable to provide where such run down is permitted that the older people would retire with redundancy compensation, weekly payments at least on the lines in the Bill rather than let the people with 4, 5, 6 and 10 years' service who are readily capable of being retained in the changes in industry go. People with three and a half years' service would get nothing and in respect of people with four, five, six or ten years' service there is a most inadequate lump sum compensation and there is the added problem, if they are married, of having to wait for four weeks.

I would ask the Minister to look at the four weeks period. It strikes me as something like the waiting period for social welfare benefits. It should not be in any redundancy payments which have any real objective. Secondly, I would ask the Minister to consider this half week for every years' service. This means that somebody of 40 years who may have worked for 20 years would get ten weeks as a lump sum. There is no golden handshake or no silver handshake there. We agree that the weekly compensation payment and the lump sum is better than purely a lump sum payment. Nevertheless, we think that the amount set out in the Bill is certainly inadequate. It falls short of what has already been negotiated by trade unions and employers.

I would again press the Minister to look at this question of the maximum and take into account overtime because in certain industries overtime is part of the very structure. In an industry such as the papermaking industry, where there was a dispute for nine weeks last year, overtime is the structure of that industry. If there is redundancy in that industry it means that the workers declared redundant will get a much smaller weekly redundancy compensation than workers whose average earnings were about the same but who are working in an industry in which overtime is not so heavy and incentive schemes applied without the question of fairly continuous overtime.

I would make a special plea to the Minister to have a look at the other point I raised, that is the question of elderly workers. None of us wants to see workers of 63, 64 or 65 years of age out of employment but there are circumstances in which they would be prepared voluntarily to give up employment. That has been the experience in most cases. It has been the experience not alone in the case of manual workers but in the case of clerical workers and administrative workers. This would at least get over the problem of a run-down in employment in an industry in which they have to re-equip. The effects of this would be less heavily felt by the workers concerned if the older workers could voluntarily retire and were given some adequate compensation.

While certain criticism has been made, we are at least relieved to see that at last the Redundancy Payments Bill is before the House and we are given an opportunity of not only discussing it but having it passed through the House.

Finally, might I, again, ask the Minister to look at the position of the workers who may be redundant—we must accept what the Minister says with regard to the difficulty he has with the administrative machinery, the drafting of regulations et cetera—before this Bill comes into force and at least not treat them in any less humane way than the farmers were treated when the price of cattle fell or in the case of industries who sought special grants and special assistance at various times. The probability is that between now and the date on which this Bill is in force, there may well be a large number of workers becoming redundant. Once this Bill is before us, I think the Minister will have no difficulty, in so far as this House is concerned, in getting support for the introduction of some ex gratia payments until such time as the Bill will have the force of law.

Minister for Labour (Dr. Hillery)

As I said when introducing the Bill, I thought, because of the many imponderables in the preparation of such a scheme, that the sensible course was to introduce the scheme as quickly as possible. As quickly as possible has turned out in the event to be quite a slow procedure because of the complexity of the legislation: the difficulty in getting the drafting done and the attempt to have a wide measure of agreement between the two sides of industry. However, I thought we should do everything in our power to introduce the scheme as quickly as possible and to learn whatever lessons we have to learn from the actual operation of this scheme.

I am quite willing to make whatever modifications or improvements that appear to be necessary in this scheme, in so far as I am responsible for it. Whether we should try to make these improvements in anticipation of the working of the scheme is a matter of opinion. As somebody remarked, this will largely be a Committee Stage Bill and it may be that we can make some alterations at the Committee Stage.

My work up to now has been to try to anticipate developments, drawing on the experience of other countries and on our own knowledge of industry and the labour force here, and to come as near as possible to a scheme that will work within the manpower policy of the Government and one that will most effectively meet the needs of that manpower policy.

The discussion on Second Stage gave me the impression generally that most Deputies accepted the need for the Bill. Even if some felt it was overdue, the understanding of all the implications in the preparation of the scheme is possibly limited to those who in their work, or in their special interests in Parliament, deal with this work. The general run of people do not find it easy to comprehend the complexities of a redundancy scheme. The contributions made and the changes in detail to be asked for at Committee Stage seem to loom largest in the minds of speakers.

I think it would be worth while between now and Committee Stage for everybody interested to try to appreciate the principles on which this Bill is based. It would be worth my while to restate the main principles which were in my mind in promoting the preparation of the Bill. I would stress again that in a dynamic and changing economy, a certain amount of redundancy is inevitable.

Mr. Corish

What about our economy?

Dr. Hillery

Even in countries which have full employment——

Mr. Larkin

Deputy Corish is asking about our economy.

Dr. Hillery

——economic and technological changes take place and give rise to redundancies. We can take it that if we are to have a developing and dynamic economy, we will have redundancies. I do not anticipate large-scale redundancies. Even though the overall incidence of redundancy may be small, the workers likely to be affected, whatever their number, will have to be protected. This Bill is obviously primarily social in its purpose. It provides for financial assistance to redundant workers in the difficult period between the loss of one job and the securing of another. The Bill has the secondary object of reducing resistance to change, and resistance to change could retard economic progress and the creation of new jobs and a higher standard of living.

The Bill recognises the principle that over the years a worker builds up certain rights in his job, and if he is deprived of these rights by circumstances outside his own control, he should be compensated.

Mr. Corish

Hear, hear.

Dr. Hillery

These rights which a worker has in his job arise out of his employment, and recognise that over the years the worker has contributed by his labour to the well-being of his employer's business. In doing that, he has created for himself a right in that business and it is up to that business to compensate him for loss of job. I have taken the line that a minimum of four years should elapse with the same employer before a worker can be said to have established a right in that job with that employer. There have been arguments that four years is too long. Deputy Larkin has just spoken about that. If we stick to the principle that here we are compensating for rights established in a job, I think four years is about right.

Mr. Larkin

The rights are not past; there are also future rights.

Dr. Hillery

A man has, over four years, contributed so much that he has the right of which I have spoken.

Mr. Larkin

Rights as we see them are past and future rights.

Dr. Hillery

I am dealing with the period required before a man has contributed so much in a job that he could be said to have acquired rights. I think four years is sufficient but we can debate this again on Committee Stage. This is the figure I have taken and I feel it is reasonable.

Mr. Larkin

Eeny, meeny miney, mo.

Dr. Hillery

We could have said "Mo" and made it six years or ten years but four years seems right to me.

Mr. Corish

It is eeny, meeny, miney, and no mo.

Dr. Hillery

If it were more, you would object to it; the period would be too long. This scheme will provide, broadly, that the worker will be entitled to a week's pay for each year. Depending on service and age, many workers would get more than that. This period compares quite favourably with redundancy provisions in Britain and Northern Ireland. There is deliberate stress on weekly payments rather than on large lump sum payments. The restriction on the amount of the lump sum payment is such that the worker could by having these weekly payments — by receiving the money in weekly payments—maintain as near as possible his pre-redundancy standards of income and standards of living. This should be so while the worker is being trained or retrained for suitable alternative employment.

Mr. Larkin

From the moment he becomes redundant?

Dr. Hillery

We should try to keep up the standard of his income while the other services of training, retraining and replacement are being availed of. I should also like to hear more argument about this four-weeks period on Committee Stage.

There is certain thinking behind the various parts of the Bill. It is developed from what we would think would be the behaviour of employer and employee in certain circumstances. It might be that some of our deliberations on Committee Stage will change the thinking on some of these things. I am quite open on this. Certainly if our experience of the actual working of the scheme suggests that we should change, I think we should be willing to make any change necessary.

This Bill deals with redundancies which will arise in the future; you cannot deal with redundancies which happened in the past.

Mr. Coughlan

Or which are happening now.

Dr. Hillery

Any legislation which deals with benefits for sections of the community will bring up this question.

Mr. Coughlan

But is the Minister not aware that people are taking advantage of this forthcoming Bill to create redundancies; has he not experience of it in his own county with SRS, and in Limerick with the bacon factories?

Dr. Hillery

The Deputy is inaccurate if he attributes that to impending legislation. But I should say at this stage that if I get evidence of employers putting people out of employment because of this Bill being in the offing and wanting to escape it, I can easily put a section into the Bill at a later stage to deal with the situation.

Mr. Corish

How will the Minister get that sort of evidence?

Mr. Coughlan

SRS is typical.

Dr. Hillery

I went into that case very thoroughly and if the Deputy thinks that there is the evidence there, he is absolutely wrong.

Mr. Coughlan

Why did the Minister demand that it be taken over by Aer Lingus?

Dr. Hillery

Aer Lingus took over a long time ago.

Mr. Coughlan

On the Minister's direction.

Dr. Hillery

Any legislation which gives benefits to sections of the community will raise this question of whether those in the past should benefit. All the important social legislation since the State was founded was introduced by this Government. Therefor, we have experience of schemes being brought in and, whenever legislation was brought into operation, there were cases of people who would have benefited had the scheme been brought in earlier. It will happen in this legislation also.

Mr. Coughlan

All the more reason why it should be retrospective.

Dr. Hillery

This would be the case, had we introduced this Bill say, two or five years ago. There would be people, seven, eight and nine years back who would have missed the benefit.

Mr. Corish

But the point here is why not provide for payment of redundancy benefit from the passing of the Bill through this House or the Seanad? As it is, what will hold up payment to these people is the fact that, as the Minister said, it is impossible to frame regulations and orders before 1st January. This would not be retrospection.

Dr. Hillery

Yes, but what about the people who are redundant before the enactment? What about people who were redundant last January or February?

Mr. Corish

We are concerned about them as well. We want that from 1st January but the Minister is resisting it.

Dr. Hillery

What about people redundant last November?

Mr. Corish

Or in 1922.

Mr. Coughlan

You made provision for that redundancy. Particularly in CIE, when they were declared redundant, you made provision for them. We only want to be fair to those people, which this Bill does not do.

Dr. Hillery

This Bill is to create a redundancy scheme for the future. Now, how far do you go? Even if this Bill had been introduced five years ago, there would still have been people who were redundant two, three or four years before, and there would have been somebody in this House who would look for retrospection.

Mr. Larkin

The point has been made strongly that it is not retrospection from the time this House passes it. Surely it is reasonable to say that from that date a special arrangement be made in respect of anyone becoming redundant, pending the regulations, the orders et cetera?

Dr. Hillery

This might appear to the Deputy as a way of limiting the number of people who would press for payment but it is pure chance that a man who would be redundant from the beginning of the Bill would be covered and a man who became redundant a week before that would not be covered. Therefore, those who became redundant in January are covered and those before that are not. There will always be somebody who will be unjustly treated if you bring in retrospection. I think we can argue that again.

Mr. Corish

What Deputy Larkin is speaking about is the difference between retrospection from the making of the final orders and regulations and retrospection from the passage of the Bill, into Act form by the two Houses of the Oireachtas. I do not know whether the Minister gets that point.

Dr. Hillery

I get the point, but my answer to that is that this is a definition of a period before the coming into operation of the Act, and there will be people who will be excluded from that period by a day, a week or a month, who will feel unjustly treated because they were pre whatever date it may be.

Mr. Larkin

Many people felt unjustly treated because there was not a Redundancy Bill.

Dr. Hillery

The commencement date will exclude people.

Mr. Larkin

The Minister will want to stress that point.

Dr. Hillery

We can argue that on the next Stage.

Mr. Larkin

Will the Minister think about it between now and the next Stage?

Mr. Coughlan

Favourably?

Dr. Hillery

If the Deputy is going to say that, I need not think about it at all.

Mr. Coughlan

But the Minister sees what happened in Limerick where a bacon factory——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

These are all Committee points, and Deputies will have every opportunity of discussing them.

Dr. Hillery

The Limerick people would not be covered by the suggestion from the Labour Party now; Deputy Coughlan's people would be excluded.

Mr. Corish

We are looking for it from 1st January.

Dr. Hillery

From 1st January this year?

Mr. Corish

On 1st January, 1967, as against the Minister's 1st January, 1968.

Mr. Coughlan

Now we are landed; we are on the West Clare line.

Dr. Hillery

There has been criticism of the fact that the State is not contributing towards the cost of this redundancy scheme. This is based, I think, on a misunderstanding of the type of scheme involved in redundancy legislation. If this were a piece of social welfare legislation, the criticism would be valid but it is not. It deals with the rights which a worker acquires in his job through service with an employer. It deals with the compensation that should be paid to that worker when the rights which he has established are terminated through circumstances outside his own control.

Mr. Jones

If I do not say anything at this stage, the Minister will understand that I shall have something to say on Committee Stage.

Dr. Hillery

What I have been trying to do, and it is very difficult, is to establish—I do not mean to be offensive—what a redundancy scheme is because no matter what type of scheme is brought in there will be all sorts of hard cases and extraneous things brought in and what I am trying to do is to show clearly the principles which were in my mind when this Bill was being formulated. Then I think we can argue better on the Committee State about deviations from the principles.

Mr. Jones

If the Minister would not mind at that stage having a look at sections 55 (ii) and (iii) also.

Dr. Hillery

I shall. To get back to the principle that a man has established rights in his job by working for an employer. If his rights are terminated and it is outside his control he is entitled to compensation and if by his work through the years he has contributed, and he must have, to the welfare of that business, then his rights should be compensated for by the employer and not by the taxpayer generally.

Mr. Corish

By the employer alone?

Dr. Hillery

The contribution by the workers is pretty small—two boxes of matches a week.

Mr. Corish

That is a contribution towards the compensation which the Minister says the worker has acquired. I am sorry; we are interrupting the Minister too often.

Dr. Hillery

If the Deputy promises to read my speech afterwards, I do not mind the interruptions.

Mr. Coughlan

I am afraid we will have to read it.

Dr. Hillery

I do not think that is fair.

The primary purpose of the Bill is social, to minimise hardship but payments will also be made to people where no hardship arises, payments for rights lost, rights already established in a job. It is appropriate that the cost should, therefore, be borne by industry and that the taxpayer should not be asked to contribute. Deputies should ask themselves whether industry and the people in it are better off or worse off than the ordinary run of taxpayers and whether the ordinary run of taxpayers should contribute more to industry than they are doing already.

In opening this debate, I said that apart from any contribution which the taxpayer is making to industry the main manpower services will already be a charge on the taxpayer. For example, take the training and retraining schemes. The Budget this year already allocated £250,000 for training to the new body set up under the legislation which passed through this House. The resettlement allowance scheme which is in this Bill will be a further charge on the Exchequer, on the taxpayer, and the extended employment service and the improved placement service will also cost the taxpayer money. These are contributions by the ordinary taxpayer to industry. If Deputies think it out, they might agree that the person in industry, whether an employer or a lucky employee in continuous employment, should not expect more contributions from the general run of taxpayers. If Deputies think it out, they will agree with me that the Exchequer should not be asked to contribute to this redundancy scheme.

The White Paper on Manpower Policy made it clear that the concern of the Government for redundant workers would not end with this scheme. When this Bill becomes an Act and the scheme is in operation, it will enable the worker to maintain as near as possible the standard of living which he has been used to in his employed days, while the employment service is attempting to place him in alternative work or while he is being retrained under the scheme provided as a result of the Industrial Training Act which the House passed this year or while he is being helped financially, again by the Exchequer, under a resettlement allowance scheme to take up employment in a new area where employment is available. The House ought to be reminded of the total manpower policy when considering the details of discussion on Committee Stage and the amendments which Deputies have adumbrated in their speeches here.

I have a couple of times recently in speeches outside the House asked managements and people who make big decisions in firms in industry and commerce to help to minimise the problem of redundancy by implementing progressive personnel policies. Any firm properly equipped with people trained to do so should be able to plan its manpower requirements so that it can have early retirement schemes and so that it can retrain and upgrade skills of workers and prepare them for new jobs in the undertaking which will be available if their own particular jobs become obsolete. The trouble is that Irish management have neglected personnel problems.

Mr. Coughlan

Hear, hear.

Dr. Hillery

They have neglected very greatly this aspect of management. We cannot expect to escape the ill-effects of such neglect, and I do not think we have escaped the ill-effects of the neglect of personnel management. Many of the problems, I believe, of redundancy facing workers and management today would be well on the way to solution if managements had appointed personnel officers and developed proper personnel policies.

Mr. Coughlan

Hear, hear.

Dr. Hillery

I do not know how we can bring this about. There has been a really serious neglect by management of personnel policy. Neither individual firms nor this country can get away with that any more.

Deputy Jones spent a fair amount of time on the question of separate appeals machinery for the purpose of the scheme. We must recognise the fact that there is in existence already the appeals machinery of the Department of Social Welfare, which would I think be adequate for the purposes of this Bill.

There is another practical problem which might require experience of operation to tell us what we should do. It is the emphasis in this Bill, as distinct from the British Bill on weekly payments. There is a link between the weekly payment which a redundant worker would get and his normal benefits from social welfare insurance

Mr. Jones

Does that relate to the 90 per cent?

Dr. Hillery

Yes; when a man is on redundancy payment of, say, 50 per cent, he will still draw his full employment benefit. To prevent a man getting more than he got when he was at work, I have a limit of 90 per cent. The point I am making is that in the event of a man drawing from two sources, redundancy payments and unemployment benefit weekly payments, there could arise the example of a person being dismissed and both payments being in question. If I had separate appeals machinery as advocated by Deputy Jones, he could appeal on the basis of his redundancy weekly payments, and he could appeal to the social welfare machinery for unemployment benefit, and it is possible that there could be two different decisions. That is a possibility. There could be conflicting decisions on the same case. I am not that much afraid it would happen in practice, and I am quite willing to scheme.

consider the proposals made by Deputy Jones, between now and Committee Stage.

Mr. Jones

If the Minister has a limited amount of 50 per cent so far as redundancy payments are concerned, and the social welfare benefits are on the means test, does the Minister feel that the redundancy appeals would be small?

Dr. Hillery

The example I gave would arise only in a case where a person unreasonably refused to accept alternative employment.

Mr. Larkin

What does "unreasonable" mean?

Dr. Hillery

I hope it would be interpreted in favour of the worker, that he would not be expected to take up employment at a grossly reduced income or for which he was not trained or suitable. I have not attempted to spell it out but I would hope it would be interpreted in favour of the worker.

Mr. Larkin

Many hopes are expressed here that are not realised.

Dr. Hillery

I will look at it between now and Committee Stage. As I said before, any improvement that can be made in the scheme should be made. If we find that our decisions on Committee Stage do not in practice bear out what we envisaged, we should be prepared to change the scheme after experience of its operation. Of its nature, it is an experimental scheme, and we will have to learn by experience. All Parties are agreed that we have certain objectives and that we should try to prepare a scheme that will achieve those objectives. Any scheme we produce therefore will have to be kept under constant review, and we will have to agree to make any modifications or improvements which prove necessary.

I will try to get this scheme into operation before 1st January. My advice is based on the amount of work that has to be done in bringing this into operation. Regulations have to be drafted. I am told that about 20 forms will have to be produced and printed. Advice and directions will have to be drafted and printed in leaflet form. There is a good deal of work to be done. The stamp by which the fund will be financed is not produced by my Department, and the advice I have from the people who will do it is that it will take quite a considerable time to produce it. While I will do my best to have the scheme in operation before 1st January, the best estimate I can make from the different people involved is that it will be 1st January before we have the scheme.

Deputy Corish was anxious to know if it will be a later date because of the desire the Chair has expressed to the Whips, for the House to be free at the end of June. I have asked the people concerned in my Department and other people to start preparing as if we had the legislation, so that if we do not get all Stages this month, the preparation can proceed so that there will be no postponement of the operative date which I have in mind. Our deliberations in this House should not affect the operative date and any changes that we can envisage occuring in the Bill as a result of Committee Stage work we can provide for in our preparations in the Department, so that if we get only Second Reading through, it will not delay the implementation of the scheme.

Mr. Larkin

Will the Minister look at the suggestion about the possibility of having it in operation before 1st January?

Dr. Hillery

I was not referring to administrative difficulties.

Mr. Larkin

Will the Minister have a look at it?

Dr. Hillery

I will be prepared to argue it on Committee Stage. I would not like to raise hopes. When I said in answer to a Parliamentary Question by Deputy Coughlan that it would not be retrospective, people got the impression that it would. We have to be very careful about the hopes and expectations we raise.

Mr. Dillon

Can the Minister say at this stage what the price of the stamp will be?

Dr. Hillery

Eightpence for a man from the employer and 4d from the employee, and 6d and 3d for a woman. That is based on the best calculation we could make, but we may have to change it.

Question put and agreed to.

Committee Stage ordered for Tuesday, 20th June, 1967.