Ba mhaith liom dá dtiocfadh liom, an méid atá a dhéanamh ag an Aire a mholadh, ach faraor ní mar sin atá an cás. Is léir nach dtuigeann an tAire féin chomh dona agus atá cúrsaí sa tír agus nach dtuigeann sé na fadhbanna atá ag daoine i láthair na huaire. Tá sé soiléir chomh maith nach dtuigeann an tAire fiú amháin an chaoi a n-oibríonn an Roinn atá faoin a chúram féin agus is bocht an rud é go gcaithfidh mise teacht isteach anseo agus na rudaí seo a rá.
In the introduction of this Bill and in the glowing terms in which the Minister presented it to the House, and referring to the work of the Department, it is quite clear that he is entirely removed from reality. The Minister does not seem to understand the hardships endured by people in benefit and he does not understand the working of his Department. Surely the Minister cannot congratulate himself about the fact that he is giving an annual increase of 3 per cent to social welfare recipients when we consider the increases that have come about as a result of the removal of food subsidies, the increases in the cost of electricity, gas and fuel charges and when one considers the introduction of VAT on clothing and footwear and on household goods generally. Surely the Minister cannot be serious when he says that the increases are sufficient to meet the needs of poor people.
The method of assessment for unemployment assistance and for pensions has changed drastically since this Minister took office and it is obvious that the officials who do this job are under tremendous pressure from the Department to try to cut everything to the bone. People tell me about the severe questioning, the harassment and the personal details sought by social welfare officers and this indicates that the pressure is on to try to save every penny. Other Deputies can confirm that people are sometimes terrified at the prospect of a call from the social welfare officer. Old people particularly have come to me inquiring about pensions and the possibility of an increase, but at the end of the day when told that it would be necessary for the same official to call to re-investigate their case they invariably opted to leave it alone and to accept what they were getting rather than put up with the harassment and questioning. These officials are tied to a role in which they have to carry out these investigations in this manner and it is unfortunate that the Department are subjecting their officers to this kind of thing.
The Minister referred to efficiency in his Department. I cannot agree with him. The experience we as public representatives have with the Department has been verified by a Government Deputy. We have to wait a long time before even getting an acknowledgment to a query. The people who apply for unemployment assistance and benefits often have to wait long periods for payment. In the case of sick benefit payments, that situation is the worst of all. I receive representations almost every week in relation to these matters. Certificates seem to get lost in the Department and the only one who suffers at the end of the day is the unfortunate applicant, who must seek credit from the local grocer while waiting for payment.
What is the position in relation to appeals on behalf of people who applied for unemployment assistance? My experience is that there does not seem to be any result. People make their appeals or they go through public representatives and we never seem to get a reply from the Department as to the outcome of the appeal. The House, and perhaps the Minister, will be amazed to hear that a person came to me in October 1983 in relation to a cut in his unemployment assistance and yesterday morning I received the final notice from the Department as to the outcome of the investigation. That is a deplorable situation. I am not sure if the person involved received notification of the position. This sort of thing treats the House and the Members of the Oireachtas with contempt.
In relation to sick benefit, when a person has been deemed no longer eligible by the Department they are left waiting for a long time for any decision and in the interim they do not know what to do. If they apply for supplementary welfare from the health board they cannot get payment until a final decision comes from the Department of Social Welfare. The supplementary welfare allowance is not back dated so in many instances they must wait several weeks for a decision and lose out in the meantime. Recently, I have noticed that people on long term benefit such as invalidity benefit who were declared by the Department to be eligible for long term invalidity payments are now being called before medical referees. This has been unheard of in the Department up to now. It proves the point that the Government are scouring the bottom of the pot to save money. It is both callous and cruel to demand that persons already in receipt of invalidity benefit and who were declared eligible for it by the Department now have to go before a medical referee. It is terrible that this situation should occur under a so-called Labour Minister for Social Welfare.
In the assessment of young single people living with parents it is past time when the regulation governing their assessment should be changed. The amount paid to a single person who applies for unemployment assistance in those circumstances depends on the income of his parents. This is most unfair. There may be a young 19 year old student who finds himself without a job. He has no hope but to apply for unemployment assistance or to emigrate. The amount he will get is determined by the parents' income. He has already been a burden on the parents and it is an embarrassment to find that he will become a further burden on them.
I know the case of a young fellow who worked in a factory. His father is a teacher. The factory closed down and the young man did not have a sufficient number of contributions to qualify for unemployment benefit. The assessor decided that he would be entitled to 35p per week. In this day and age that kind of thing is intolerable. The regulation governing it, which has been there for a long time, must be changed so that young people who apply for unemployment assistance will at least be left with a certain degree of pride. It is bad enough for them to have to go to the dole office but it is intolerable to be told that they will get only a few pounds a week.
There seems to be a set figure of £5 or £7.50 per week for young farmers living at home with their parents. I do not think we can go on in this way and tolerate this. It is rendered worse because no explanation is given about how the assessement was arrived at. A round figure is assessed for board and lodgings but the person concerned is not given an explanation of how the figure was arrived at.
In relation to the small farmers' dole, as it is commonly called, the Government have achieved their ambition and have taken £5 million or £6 million out of the pockets of those farmers. The Government's approach shows scant regard for social justice. Up to 1966 many of those smallholders did not enjoy any security and had to go to England or Scotland to do seasonal work. When the notional system of assessment was introduced they were assessed on the land value and they could produce on their smallholdings without interference from the social welfare officers. It was most encouraging to see people who heretofore had to emigrate staying on in their holdings with their families. However, with the abolition of the notional system they are back where they were in the fifties and the ugly term emigration has begun to raise its head again because people are going off day by day, having been left without any income by the social welfare people. Parents of such families nowadays have to prepare for secondary education and many of the children have to pay bus fares and buy textbooks. Then we had the reduction in the food subsidies and VAT was imposed on footwear and clothing. Other difficulties were imposed by the Government, making things impossible for those people. I do not think there is any other group in our society who would accept that on one day their entire income from social welfare had been taken away, in some cases £40 or £50 a week. They cannot do without it. They are forced to keep their children from school.
Many such smallholders tried to do something to improve their farms and availed of the various schemes, like the AI, the lime subsidy and the farm improvement scheme. They are the people who have been got at by the social welfare people. The fellow who sits down or sleeps all day and who will not do anything on his holding will get full benefits while the person who tried to do something over the years is regarded as a fool by his neighbour. That does not help honest persons to have hope for the future.
I know people who wanted to get into milk and who got nine or ten cows. The social welfare people cut them off benefit and all such people could do was to sell off their cows. If was an evil stroke to cut off the notional assessment system because it made small farmers productive and it gave their owners a pride in themselves. It reminds me of Father McDyer, with whom I was on a deputation before I entered politics. It is too depressing to recall what has happened since the notional method of assessment was abolished.
The two farming organisations, the IFA and the ICMSA, made representations to the Minister and the Government on this issue and two promises were made. One was that a farmer could list items of expenditure and they would be considered in calculating assessment for entitlement to unemployment assistance and, two, a detailed account as to how the assessment had been arrived at would be given to the applicants by the Department. I am not aware of any constituent of mine having been accommodated in this way by the Department.
The Minister mentioned the work of the voluntary organisations and help being made available to them. These organisations are doing a tremendous job and they deserve as much help as possible from the Department and the State. I do not think that the State could afford to carry out the various jobs they are doing and it would be impossible to provide the services they are giving but for the fact that these services are given voluntarily. Here I compliment the social workers and those involved with the health boards on the wonderful job they are doing in this respect. If one were to draw a parallel with the officials from the Department of Social Welfare and the people working for the health boards one would find a vast difference. The officials and the social workers from the health boards are received with open arms everywhere and regarded as guiding lights in the community where they are always prepared to listen and to help, and they show genuine concern for the poor people in our society.
I understand that in the budget a certain figure was made available to meet the needs of the voluntary organisations employed in the social services. I would like to mention a project in my constituency. An amount in the region of £73,000 has been decided upon by the Westport Social Service Council to provide facilities for the old, the poor and the disabled in Westport. Already they have spent £23,796 on a building. Phase 2 will cost £24,000, and furnishings and other overheads including the provision of a car park will amount to about £22,000. While local contributions will be sought, the fact that new schools are being built in the area — and all due credit to the Government for providing these schools — means that the drain on the resources of the people there is heavy and they have been in contact with the Minister regarding the possibility of getting a substantial grant. I do not know what criteria the Minister has for providing these grants, but we hope that this effort will be rewarded and that a substantial grant will be forthcoming for the project I have mentioned.
When it is fully operational, meals on wheels, a laundry service for aged and disabled people, an information and advice centre, counselling rooms, dining facilities for the aged, meeting rooms for voluntary and caring organisations affiliated to the Westport Social Service Centre, a kitchen and other facilities will be provided. In this International Youth Year it is proposed to include a large multi-purpose room in the new building which will provide facilities for youth and also as a public meeting room. That kind of work deserves the full support of the Department and I hope that, when the Minister decides on his priorities this will rate highly on the list.
We must do something soon about the self-employed. They have absolutely no protection. I am sure that many people here know of instances of small builders and other people who now find themselves going to the wall and are no longer able to continue with work they have been doing. These people never bothered to go to the labour exchange to look for unemployment assistance and now they find themselves with no option but to do so in order to support their families. Here again the long standing policy seems to be that a person must give an account of his earnings for the previous year.
A person who earned £X in 1984 is supposed to live on that for almost the rest of his life when it comes to the method of assessment for unemployment assistance. Such people have no protection, no way of getting assistance except by getting unemployment assistance, and very often their application for that is turned down. They are forced to emigrate, and these are really fine, great people who were making an honest effort to do something worth while. Generally speaking, in my experience they are treated very badly when it comes to applying for unemployment assistance. Very often what is worse is the delay they experience before they get the decision. They must wait several months before they are told of the final outcome of the investigations. This is most unfair. I do not know exactly how the problem can be tackled, but some arrangement should be made for perhaps some kind of interim payment to people of this kind, or some allowance that would help to tide them over a difficult period when they are genuinely in need of help and make their application for unemployment assistance. A more flexible approach should be adopted. I ask the Minister to examine this with a view to doing something positive in that direction.
The first part of the Minister's speech deals with the increases I have mentioned. After that, referring to the social welfare code, he said: "I now turn to the second main element of this Bill." We all accept that there is a need and we owe it to the taxpayer to try to ensure that there is no question of fraud or that people will not get away with making any declaration to enable themselves to benefit unfairly from social welfare payments. Nevertheless, listening to the media last night one would get the impression that everybody looking for social welfare was some kind of rogue or trickster. We accept that there are irregularities but it is most unfair to people to give that impression. Even the figures that the Minister gave when he referred to the extent of fraud — unemployment benefit, disability benefit and pay-related benefit, 4,300; unemployment assistance, 1,000; old age non-contributory pension, 270, and social assistance allowance for unmarried mothers, 500 — are all round figures, but I question them. If there are irregularities surely the Minister must have the exact figure. Why does he not give the exact figure rather than the round figure?
The Minister said that in the case of old age pensioners many of the abuses were discovered after the pensioner died. He said that the bulk of the sums which were overpaid were due to the non-disclosure of means which came to light generally on the death of the pensioner. There is an underlying tone in his speech which verifies what I said earlier that the Department and the Minister have just one objective in mind, knock, knock. This is the case in relation to old age pensioners at present. In the past when farmers handed over their holding to a member of their family they had no problem in drawing the old age pension. That is not true any more. Now they do not automatically qualify for the old age pension. It is annoying for old people to be subjected to the degree of harassment they have to face in relation to their application for their rights. The old age pension is something they look forward to.
I do not agree with the Minister's assessment of the improved efficiency of his Department. On today's Order Paper there are 37 questions to the Minister and yesterday there were 76 questions. That is ample proof of what Deputies have to put up with from the Department and of the way the Department does its work.
The way the family income supplement scheme has been implemented is a joke. The Department do not want anyone to know anything about it. We were told that applications would be in the region of 35,000 but we know that the figure is much lower than that. People are entitled to be informed about how the scheme operates. This information should be made available to them at their place of employment so that they can gain from the benefit which many of them would like to have at this time with prices rising as they are.
There are many other points I could make in relation to the Bill but I have already taken up too much of the time of the House. We will be opposing the Bill vigorously.