I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
The purpose of the Bill, as Deputies will be aware, is to provide for equality of treatment for men and women in the social welfare code. This is required in accordance with the terms of an EC directive adopted by the Council of Ministers in 1978.
The main area of discrimination in the social welfare code concerns the entitlements of married women. The Bill is a reforming measure which will remove fundamental inequalities in the code affecting married women even though I am bringing it forward a little later than the directive provides or than I would wish. These changes will have a major impact both on the thrust of the social welfare code and on the operations of my Department on which they will place substantial new demands.
So that our debate may be complete and that Deputies will have a full picture I should like initially to outline in detail the background to the Bill. EC Directive 79/7/EEC on equal treatment was adopted by the Council of Ministers on 19 December 1978. The directive applies to statutory schemes providing protection against sickness, invalidity, old age, unemployment and accidents at work and occupational diseases. It does not apply to survivors benefits nor to family benefits and, naturally, the implementation of equal treatment does not preclude provisions relating to the protection of women on grounds of maternity.
Social assistance, in so far as it is intended to supplement or replace similar social insurance schemes, is also embraced by the directive. In accordance with the directive all sexual discrimination in such schemes whether direct, or indirect by reference to marital or family status, must be removed and the Bill now before the House provides accordingly.
There are four distinct areas of such discrimination all of which have been part of the social welfare code for some considerable time now. Firstly, certain married women receive lower rates of benefit than men and other women in the schemes of disability benefit, unemployment benefit, invalidity pension and occupational injuries benefits. The married women so affected are those deemed by the social welfare system to be dependants of their husbands which, in effect, is any married women living with her husband. Her personal entitlement to flat rate disability or unemployment benefit is £32.75 whereas the standard rate for most other beneficiaries is £37.25 per week. Secondly the maximum duration of entitlement of a married woman to unemployment benefit is 312 days which is 52 weeks of benefit. For most other categories it is 390 days, a difference of 13 weeks.
In relation to unemployment assistance, married women are effectively debarred under existing legislation from applying for assistance. In order for a married woman to qualify, either her husband must be dependent on her— and under existing legislation this means that he must be wholly or mainly maintained by her and incapable of self support by reason of mental or physical infirmity— or she must not be a dependant of his. In this regard the present definition of dependency provides that all married women are dependent on their husbands as long as they are living with them. In practice, therefore, the vast majority of married women cannot apply for unemployment assistance.
The final and most complex element of discrimination relates to the payment of increases in respect of adult dependants. Differences exist in the conditions under which increases are paid to men and women in respect of adult and child dependants and these differences are heavily biased in favour of men. As I mentioned above, a married woman is almost always regarded as her husband's dependant and accordingly he qualifies for an increase of benefit in respect of her regardless of her employment status. A married woman on the other hand can only qualify for an increase for her husband if he is invalided. Neither of these definitions reflects dependency in a way which conforms to present day realities and they must be revised. I will, however, return to this later in my speech. At this stage I am mainly concerned to outline for Deputies the extent of the discrimination.
The other aspect of dependency concerns the payment of increases for dependent children. Married women can only rarely qualify for these as the children are deemed by the legislation to be normally resident with the father. The expression "normally resident", which Deputies will see in the Bill and elsewhere in social welfare legislation, is a mechanism to determine who should receive increases in respect of dependent children. Where children are living with both parents the existing legislation deems them to be "normally resident" with the father rather than the mother. To comply with the requirements of the directive this situation must be changed.
These four areas describe the scope of the problem which must be tackled and the Bill now before the House does this in, I submit, a balanced and equitable manner. I will deal with the provisions of the Bill and the manner in which equality is to be implemented later. Before that however I would like the House to consider in a general way what exactly is meant by this concept of equality which we are attempting to introduce into the social welfare code. This is necessary I feel because of the confused thinking which was evident, for example, in the contribution of the Members on the other side when a motion on equal treatment was debated by the House before Christmas.
Firstly, let me remind Deputies that the present directive is the third in a series of measures concerned with equal treatment for men and women in the social affairs area. The first of these, in 1975, was concerned with the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work for men and women. The next, in 1976, dealt with matters relating to access to employment, vocational training and promotion, and working conditions. These two directives in essence dealt with inequalities existing between the sexes in the labour force. Finally, we are only concerned, in this third directive, with matters relating to social security schemes provided by the State. Deputies may feel that women are still not treated equally in the labour market notably, though not exclusively, as regards levels of pay. Such discriminations inevitably spill over into other areas. Whilst such matters are a cause of concern to everyone and should be rectified we cannot address or redress all these inequities in a social welfare Bill.
We are obliged by the directive to provide equality of treatment in matters of social security. As I stated during the debate on the Opposition motion before Christmas, the principle of equality in the directive could be described as a neutral concept. It must be applied unconditionally to all. We cannot apply it on a selective basis seeking to have equality here and there but not in schemes or parts of schemes where it does not suit us. We must remove the fundamental inequalities which exist against married women and give them the same entitlements as others. However, we cannot go to the other extreme and implement equality by applying to them out-dated rules and definitions which are now inconsistent with the changed role of women in society. The implementation of equal treatment provides us with the opportunity, not to say obligation, to review and, where necessary, replace some concepts and rules which we have maintained in the social welfare system through the years though the social situation they were intended to reflect has changed so radically.
We are faced with a number of serious discriminatory factors in our system which we must eliminate. But let me say here that the fact that person A is entitled to a benefit—of any sort—to which person B is not, does not necessarily imply discrimination against B. Even where it does, it does not follow that the only or the best way to remove the discrimination is that B should automatically receive the same entitlements as A has got up to now. A's entitlement may in fact be legally well founded but totally unjustified in the light of current facts and another solution may be called for. The resolution of inequalities can therefore be approached in a number of ways. For example where the discrimination relates to differences in the rates of payments, equal treatment could be affected by bringing all payments up to the highest level. An alternative would be to equalise entitlements at the lowest level. There are any number of possibilities in between. The main point is that in implementing an equal treatment principle, the main aim must be a balanced overall result which reflects today's social and economic relationships and does not perpetuate those of another era.
The discriminations we are faced with in the social welfare code, which are clearly contrary to the EC directive, do not lend themselves to a simple, straightforward application on a universal basis to both sexes of the rules or conditions now applied to one sex only. While the elements of the discrimination in the code as it stands can be individually distinguished, they are all related back to the principle, which is embedded deeply in the code, that in principle married women are financially dependent on their spouses.
The underlying concept in the code always has been that the husband was the breadwinner and head of the household and the person to whom the full benefits of the social security system should be available. Consequently, the husband was also deemed by social welfare legislation to be the person to whom increases in respect of dependants should be paid. Any married woman living with her husband was regarded as his dependant and any children were also regarded as his dependants. Only where the husband was incapable of self-support through mental or physical infirmity could the wife claim him as her dependant. As a consequence, the husband almost always qualified for increases in respect of his wife and children, even where the wife was in employment or receiving benefit in her own right. In such circumstances the needs of a married woman were not seen as being the same as those of a married man, leading to the inferior personal entitlements such as lower personal rates of benefit which I have just described.
This approach was undoubtedly relevant at a time when it was most exceptional for a married woman to take up employment outside the home, but this, as we are all too well aware, is no longer the case. In present circumstances it results in many thousands of married men being paid adult dependant allowances in respect of wives even when the wives are either in employment or receiving a social welfare payment in their own right on the basis of an insurance record built up when in employment. If equal treatment were applied simply by giving married women exactly the same rights as married men now have, it would lead to ludicrous results. For example, in the case of a married couple where both are absent from work due to illness, each would be given a separate entitlement to disability benefit with increases for each other and for any child dependants. Even more ludicrously, it would enable a wife claiming disability benefit, for instance, to get an adult dependant increase in respect of her husband—and child dependant increases to boot—even though he was in employment earning a substantial salary sufficient to support the whole family in comfort on his own.
Simply to extend to women the present conditions which men enjoy would mean that a wasteful and inequitable payment of adult and child dependant increases, even in respect of spouses at work in well-paid employment, which occurs at present, would be expanded enormously and would indeed reach gigantic proportions. For example, it would mean that family A, where both husband and wife had been at work but now had separate entitlement to social insurance benefits, would receive twice as much in weekly payments as family B, where only the husband had a recent employment record. Equal treatment on those lines would cost about £100 million to implement. But cost aside, no Minister for Social Welfare could justify the allocation of very scarce resources to such an inherently biased and inequitable approach. I am grateful that the review of the dependency concept which has taken place in the context of implementing the EC directive has highlighted the need to redefine dependency in economic terms rather than basing it on sex or marital status. That is precisely what one of the key sections of the Bill, section 3, sets out to do. This is a major step forward in the area of real equality but it has tended to be overshadowed by the agruments about the ins and outs of the new economic definition of dependency.
The new economic conditions of dependency, which will apply uniformly to men and women, are based on the principle that one spouse will be regarded as dependent on the other spouse only if he or she is being wholly or mainly maintained by that spouse. Under the provisions of the Bill, the existing presumption that any married women living with her husband is automatically a dependant will disappear and any person, male or female, who is in employment or in receipt of a social welfare benefit in his or her own right will, in general, not be deemed their spouse's dependants for the purposes of qualifying for increases of benefit.
There are necessary exceptions to this general principle in certain cases which I will return to later. A great deal of ill-informed comment was made about this proposal when it was first announced and, in outlining for Deputies the effects of the Bill, I will show just how wide of the mark this reaction was. For the moment, however, I would like to complete the outline of the Bill's provisions. The effect of this revision of the dependency conditions will be that there will be no a priori presumption about either married women's or married men's dependency on their spouses. All married persons, qua married persons, will have the same status within the social welfare code. Several changes in entitlement follow from this.
Section 2 of the Bill, with the Second Schedule, provides that married women will have the same personal rates of disability benefit, unemployment benefit and invalidity pension as other persons, while section 7 provides for the payment of the corresponding higher rates of occupational injuries benefits. In this case equality is being applied by a levelling up process, because it can be so done without creating any new forms of discrimination.
Secondly, the discrimination in the matter of the duration of the payment of unemployment benefit is being removed under the provisions of section 6. For the same reasons as in section 2, a levelling up approach is also being adopted here. This section also contains the usual transitional measure in such cases where the period of the payment of a benefit is being extended. It provides that anyone whose benefit expired before the section comes into effect, and who would still have been entitled to benefit if the provision had always existed, shall be so entitled to the end of the now extended period.
Thirdly, married women will be entitled to apply for unemployment assistance. The condition debarring them at present is contained in section 136 (3) (d) of the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act, 1981 and reference 4 in the First Schedule to the Bill provides for the abolition of this provision. After the passage of the Bill, therefore, married women who are unemployed, available for and genuinely seeking employment will be eligible to apply for unemployment assistance on the same basis as other unemployed persons in similar circumstances. Unemployment assistance is a means-tested scheme and, in common with the other assistance schemes, in assessing means the income of the spouse is taken into account. There would be no reason to depart from this principle in the case of the extension of the scheme to married women and the means test will continue to apply. Section 13, to which I will be proposing amendments of a technical nature, contains the necessary changes to enable the existing test to be applied in the context of the new situation where either spouse will be entitled to apply. Where both spouses have entitlement, the means will be aggregated and split between them and section 12 (2) contains the necessary provisions in this regard.
Section 12 also provides a mechanism to ensure that the unemployment assistance scheme is not used as a means of topping up family income. Because the personal rate of assistance is higher than the adult dependant's increase paid with this benefit an incentive could exist for non-working partners to apply for assistance in their own right when their spouses are on benefit. They would thus be seeking to exploit the social welfare system to secure for themselves a higher total entitlement than the social welfare system intends for a family in their particular circumstances. Subsections (1) and (4) of section 12 provide the necessary safeguards against this.
The other change of significance in the Bill concerns the proposed new arrangements for dealing with increases in respect of child dependants.
The removal of the automatic presumption of dependency and the treatment of married women in the labour market as in principle financially independent in exactly the same way as married men means that their role in contributing to the support of their children must be recognised. At present only the husband can, in general, qualify for child dependant increases. In future where one spouse only is in the labour force, be it husband or wife, that person, when claiming a social welfare payment, will qualify for the full increases in respect of children. Where both spouses are in the labour force clearly the full increases could not be paid to either spouse when claiming benefit. To do so would be to ignore the contribution which the other spouse makes to maintaining the household. The Bill provides that in such circumstances each spouse will have an entitlement to 50 per cent of the appropriate increases when claiming benefit. The relevant sections of the Bill in this regard are section 4 in relation to benefits generally, section 11 in relation to unemployment assistance and section 14 in relation to old age pensions.
I am also providing in section 5 for the payment of increases for children and maternity allowance. This is not required by the terms of the directive. I am making this additional provision because prior to receiving maternity allowance a woman may have been in receipt of disability benefit and entitled to increases in respect of her children. On becoming entitled to maternity allowance, therefore, it is appropriate that the level of her entitlements should remain the same and the new arrangement provided for in section 5 will achieve this. Where the husband is in employment or in receipt of benefit, the payment of the child dependant increases with maternity benefit will be at half the standard rate in line with the principle I described earlier. The inclusion of this extra provision demonstrates, I think, that my primary concern in implementing the directive is to achieve a balanced overall package which ensures that equality is achieved in a real and coherent way rather than in a piecemeal sense.
These then are the main provisions to provide for equality of treatment. The Bill contains a number of other changes but these are of a technical nature to permit the implementation of equality on the basis outlined. I should now like to discuss the effects which these equality measures will have. I should, however, mention at this stage that the Bill was circulated last December and the Schedule to it contains the current rates of benefits. For ease of reference, therefore, I am using examples based on the existing rates of benefits. These are, however, due to be increased from early next month in accordance with the provision of the Social Welfare Act, 1985 passed earlier this year. We will, therefore, on Committee Stage need to amend the rates in the Schedule to this Bill.
Over 46,000 married women on social welfare will benefit from the provisions of the Bill. For a start they will be entitled to higher rates of benefit. The vast majority would be on disability or unemployment benefit. They will, quite apart from the effect of the other proposals entitling them to increases for dependants, each receive an increase of £4.50 per week at current rates of benefit. Married women on unemployment benefit will have the duration of their benefit entitlement extended by 13 weeks.
Furthermore, all married women will be eligible to apply for unemployment assistance subject to their being capable of, available for and genuinely seeking employment in the same way as other applicants and to their satisfying the means test.
The most complex area in regard to equality of treatment is that relating to increases in respect of dependants and much of the debate on the equality of treatment proposals—and as I said earlier most of it ill-informed—has been concerned with the proposed new dependency conditions. Demands have been made that all benefits must be levelled upwards and that no one should suffer a reduction in entitlements. I have explained why the present conditions which apply to men cannot automatically be applied to women. To do so would imply that in order to achieve equality all married men should automatically be regarded as dependants of their wives claiming benefit, irrespective of employment or economic status. Equal treatment on these lines could not be defended and would require a massive injection of financial resources. Equal treatment must, therefore, involve a revision of the present dependency conditions. What the Bill does is not alone to define dependency in a non-discriminatory way but in a way which also reflects the concept in a realistic and genuine manner. Only spouses who are wholly or mainly maintained by their partners will be deemed to be dependants and this will be deemed not to be the position where a spouse is employed, self-employed or entitled to benefit in his or her own right. However, where the employment is part-time work of an insignificant nature or of inconsiderable extent — and this is defined under existing regulations — the spouse will continue to be regarded as a dependant and the full dependant increases will be payable.
Married women will benefit substantially from this change. In the case where only the wife works and her husband is a dependant — in a reversal of the traditional roles — she will now be entitled to the full adult and child dependant increases as long as her husband is not on benefit. At present she can only qualify if her husband is an invalid. This would give married women with three children in such circumstances a gain of £51.10 a week compared with the present provisions, in addition to the higher personal rates to which she would now be entitled.
In families where both spouses are economically active there will be offsetting gains and reductions. A married woman with three children, for example, whose husband is employed or on benefit would, when on benefit, gain about £13.50 per week in addition to the increase of £4.50 in her personal rate of benefit.
Reductions in the entitlements of husbands will occur but such reductions are inevitable because the present adult dependency arrangement is not defensible. As I stated earlier, it gives a husband an increase for his wife not alone where she is in employment but even where she is entitled to benefit in her own right. In effect, the social welfare system is at present paying on the double for the same person. This must stop in the context of equality of treatment. There is no objective reason why such families should receive more from the social welfare system than families in which only one spouse is claiming benefit and the other spouse is not economically active.
There are at present over 170,000 payments being made per week by way of increases of benefit in respect of adult dependants. Almost all of these would be payable to married men in respect of their wives. In the vast majority of these cases, however, that is where only the husband works, there will be no change whatsoever in his entitlements and he will continue to be entitled to full increases in respect of his dependants.
The information at the disposal of my Department indicates that only in about 20,000 cases, out of 170,000, of married men in receipt of benefit with wives in employment or also on benefit would entitlements have been affected and I propose to take steps to alleviate the effects of the revision in many of these cases.
Of this figure of 20,000, in about 12,000 cases the wife is in employment. I would accept that in a small proportion of these cases the earnings of the wife would be very low and the reduction in the benefit entitlement of the husband would represent a substantial loss of income to the household. I have indicated from the beginning that these cases were a cause of particular concern to me and when the Bill was being drafted I ensured that it contained the necessary power to enable me to provide alleviation in such cases. The new definition of adult dependant in section 3 enables the Minister for Social Welfare, by regulation, to specify other persons to be adult dependants. I propose to use this provision to ensure that where the earnings of a spouse are below a specified figure she — or he for it will be applied equally to both sexes — will continue to be a dependant and full increases for dependants will be payable. This will be a permanent feature of the new dependency arrangements.
The introduction of an earnings floor has operational consequences in that it would further complicate the payments delivery system. Its effect on the overall level of service which the Department can give to the public is, therefore, a crucial issue at a time when staffing restrictions and a massive increase in the claims load are already combining to put the system under enormous pressure. For this reason the rule must be simple and straightforward so that it will be easy for claimants to understand and will not increase significantly the amount of time needed to process applications and make payments which would disimprove the service to social welfare clients.
Ideally an earnings rule might be graduated so that benefit is reduced as earnings increase. This will simply not be possible and accordingly I have already proposed that the earnings rule should consist of a single cut-off point of about £50. The possibility of introducing some element of graduation at a later date will be kept under review in the light of staffing and other constraints. The introduction of this rule will mean that in about 3,000 of the 12,000 cases where the wife of a beneficiary is in employment no reduction in benefit entitlement will occur. Of the remaining 9,000 cases, the wife will have earnings in excess of £100 per week in over half of these.
I also expressed concern about the situation where both spouses are separately in receipt of social welfare payments. About 8,000 such cases are affected by the new provisions. After equal treatment each spouse will have the full personal rate of benefit and between them they will have the full increases for children. It must be accepted that the social welfare system is providing fully for the family within the system and the level of benefits provided. However, the net reduction of about £20 in household income compared with their present entitlement could represent a substantial loss and I propose to phase in equal treatment in these cases by an arrangement which will repay some part of the loss. Section 20 contains a general power enabling temporary and transitional arrangements to be made on a limited basis and I will be using this to make a special payment of £10 in these cases for one year or for the duration of the claim, whichever is the shortest. No permanent arrangements could be considered under this heading as any steps that are taken are themselves in conflict with the principle of equal treatment. All 8,000 cases will benefit from this arrangement.
To summarise, of the total number of 20,000 married men with wives in employment or on benefit who otherwise would have been affected by the revision of the dependency conditions, I will be taking steps to fully or partially alleviate the adverse effects of the revision in over half of them.
Debate on the alleviating measures should not obscure the main purpose of the Bill which is the removal of fundamental inequalities in the present system. The Bill in its entirely is a positive response to the provision of equal rights in the social welfare code for married women who pay the same social insurance contributions as other employees. They will, by virtue of the provisions of this Bill, now have the same benefit entitlements.
I am satisfied that in this measure we are providing for equality of treatment in an equitable and practical way. Some 46,000 married women will gain substantially. Of the 170,000 married men in the system 150,000 are not affected at all and only about 20,000 would have stood to lose to the extent I have mentioned at this stage. I am providing alleviating measures in about 11,000 of these cases which will wholly or partly eliminate such losses. That is a reasonable balance.
Some people may seek to get highly selective mileage out of this. In this regard, for instance, I was disappointed to see that two of our more prominent trade unions have issued leaflets furnishing "information"— and this very deliberately I put in quotation marks — on the equal treatment debate. Unfortunately the information is unbalanced in some respects and I regret that the leaflets may only serve to create unwarranted concern in the minds of people who will not be affected in any way by the equal treatment provisions. In both cases the leaflets speak of the loss of the adult dependant allowance with little or no qualification as to the circumstances under which this will happen.
As I explained above, this loss will occur in only a small number of cases and it will occur, unavoidably, because any revision of the concept of dependency which has existed in our code made necessary by equal treatment must result in some reduction in entitlements. Those who would seek otherwise should at least make some attempt to define the concept of dependency they wish to substitute for what the Government propose and say clearly what would be its financial and other implications.
In the case of the leaflet issued by the Federated Workers Union of Ireland reference is made to the "halving of children's allowance". It is unfortunate that greater care was not taken with the phraseology of the leaflet. Presumably what the authors have in mind are the increases of benefits paid in respect of dependent children which will be reduced for some, and only some, beneficiaries. The leaflet, however, refers quite specifically to children's allowances which in most people's minds are the monthly allowances paid in respect of children to all mothers regardless of their or their husbands' employment or economic status. These allowances are totally unaffected by equal treatment and the leaflet will, therefore, only cause needless concern to many people.
The leaflet from the Irish Transport and General Workers Union suggests that it would have been much better totally to reform the social welfare system. This, however, they see as their long term view and in the short term they say that their ideal would be for the introduction of equalisation in a way that causes least hardship to families on social welfare.
As to the long term, one of my first actions on assuming the position of Minister for Social Welfare was to establish a Commission on Social Welfare to review and report on the social welfare system having regard to the needs of modern Irish society. I recognised from an early stage that a fundamental reappraisal of the whole social welfare code was required and I took the steps to see that it happened. The commission are now well advanced in their work and I expect to have from them within a year a blueprint for the development of the social welfare services in the years ahead.
As to the short term, it is evident from the proposals I have outlined that every effort is being made to introduce equalisation in a way that minimises hardship. Before leaving this question let me assure Deputies and others that my Department will be extensively advertising the changes resulting from equal treatment when the legislation has been enacted so that the public will know clearly their rights under the new provisions.
To those who would see political advantage for themselves in the equal treatment debate I would say that I regret the reduction in entitlements which will occur in a small number of cases but it is an inevitable consequence of making married women and married men equal before the social welfare code. As I told the House during the motion on equal treatment before Christmas, previous Ministers for Social Welfare were faced with the same problem and came to the same conclusion. When the equal treatment directive was adopted by the Council of Ministers in 1978 the then Minister for Social Welfare, Deputy Haughey, who is now the Leader of the Opposition, had a statement inserted in the Council minutes to the effect that the Irish delegation in accepting the adopting of the directive considered that nothing in the directive prevented arrangements being made to control dependency payments so as to avoid paying increases of benefit in respect of a spouse when that spouse is already receiving benefit or is in employment, or to control payments of increases for children.
Quite clearly the then Minister envisaged that a revision of the concept of dependency involving controls on the payment of increases for a spouse in employment or on benefit in his/her own right would be required. His policy in regard to equal treatment was exactly in line with the proposals I have now outlined. This is the only realistic approach to implementing equal treatment and now that Deputies have had an opportunity of reflecting on the issues involved, I feel that they must conclude likewise.
Before ending I should like to mention two further matters. The first is very much related to the fundamentals of the equal treatment debate. It has been raised by many commentators though it is not a matter which needs to be provided for in this Bill. This concerns the application by my Department of the statutory condition requiring applicants for unemployment benefit and assistance to show that they are available for work. In the legislation this condition is phrased in a non discriminatory fashion and does not need to be amended in the Bill before the House.
The purpose of the unemployment payment schemes is to provide income maintenance for persons who are involuntarily unemployed and who are available for and genuinely seeking employment. In determing availability for work it is necessary to establish whether persons claiming payments genuinely wish to and are seeking to obtain work, whether commitments of a domestic or other nature exist which might limit the person's freedom to accept, or might prevent acceptance of, full-time employment which would normally be suitable, and whether restrictions are being imposed by the person on the kind, place or hours of employment acceptable, any of which would unreasonably diminish the prospects of obtaining work. The determination of availability is made by deciding officers and appeals officers, in the exercise of their statutory functions, through the interpretation and application of any or all of these broad criteria in relation to the facts and evidence available in each case.
In determining claims to unemployment benefit or assistance, deciding officers must satisfy themselves, in the light of those broad criteria, that the claimant concerned is available for work. To so satisfy themselves they must try to ascertain all of the facts of the case. If there is any element of doubt in the matter, the deciding officers are obliged to query the position by asking the claimant any question which they consider may be relevant to the case. Information may, therefore, be sought about what efforts the claimant has made to obtain employment since becoming unemployed, whether he or she has registered for work with the National Manpower Service, what type of work the claimant is seeking, whether there are any factors which would prevent the claimant from taking up work if it were offered and so on.
I am satisfied that the controls that are now in place are not excessive and that by and large they are fairly applied. In view of the concern which exists regarding the application of these measures, however, particularly that they are exercised in a manner discriminating against married women, I will be taking the necessary steps to ensure that in the future all conditions relating to entitlement to unemployment benefit, and all inquiries made in connection with these conditions, are applied impartially as to sex. New guidelines will be prepared bringing to the attention of deciding officers and other staff the requirements of the EC directive that no discrimination either in laws or administrative provisions is permissible and that in applying availability for work criteria there must be no discrimination on the basis of sex, directly or by reference to marital status, in questions asked or conclusions drawn.
Finally I should like to deal with the operative date of the provisions. The deadline contained in the directive for implementation of its terms was, as Deputies are aware, 22 December 1984. High Court actions have been initiated by two married women, and plenary summons issued on behalf of more than 10 others, seeking to have the provisions of the directive deemed directly applicable and equal treatment in accordance with its provisions implemented from 22 December last. The President of the High Court has submitted a reference to the European Court in Luxembourg for a preliminary decision and we must await the outcome of this case before we know where we stand in the matter. In passing I might add that arising from the provisions of the directive a case is already before the European Court concerning the implementation of the directive in the Netherlands. Clearly therefore we are not alone in the difficulties we face in introducing the concept of equality of treatment into our social security system.
For the information of Deputies I should mention that while a directive is binding on a member state as to the results to be achieved it leaves open to national authorities the choice of form and methods to be adopted. Deputies will realise from the outline I have presented that in implementing equal treatment in the Irish social welfare code we are dealing with a complex issue which could not be proceeded with until the national Parliament had discussed the issues involved and passed the necessary amending legislation.
In this regard also the suggestion has been made in some quarters that some parts of the proposals involving the increased rates of benefit should be made retrospective to December last. I do not think, however, that we should or could look at any parts of the equal treatment proposals in isolation. The package is, as a whole, a balanced and equitable approach to providing equal treatment, involving the removal of the automatic presumption of dependency of married women and conferring on them in consequence full entitlement to social welfare rights. As retrospection obviously cannot arise in the case of the elements of the package which involve reduced entitlements I see no case in principle for providing for it on the other elements.
I hope from the information I have given that Deputies will now have a clearer understanding of the many complex issues involved in applying the principle of equal treatment in our social welfare system. I am happy to bring forward this reforming measure and I strongly recommend the Bill to the House.
Because of having agreed several months ago to attend a conference on network for the disabled between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. this evening, I regret that I shall not be able to remain in the House to hear Deputy McCarthy's contribution but I shall be back about 6 p.m. During my absence the Minister of State at my Department will be present. I look forward to hearing the views of the Opposition on the Bill.
The directive in question was adopted by the Council of Ministers in December 1978. It had been around from 1976. What is involved is a very complex piece of legislation and I have been involved in that respect in the past couple of years. The explanation to the people as to what is involved is even more complex. At times I have experienced great difficulty in explaining in any precise detail. I hope my elaboration here today will be of some benefit. I can assure Deputies that it is not my fault that there has been a delay of two years. I have endeavoured to move as expeditiously as I could in that regard. Although the directive was adopted in 1978 successive Governments decided to put off the evil day. I decided that we should apply it as a matter of urgency and have the Bill drafted, which has taken considerable time.
In replying I hope I will have an opportunity to elaborate on any issues raised by Deputies in relation to the Bill itself which I trust will have a speedy passage through the House and, therefore, enactment.
