asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he will give details of the discussions he has had with employers and trade unions' representatives regarding the transfer of responsibility to employers of short term sickness payments; if he will outline the mechanism for the payments by employers; for claiming by the employees, for rebating to employers; for the prevention of abuse by either employee or employer and of possible collusion between both; if short term sickness payments to be paid by employers will be subject to taxation, in view of the fact that similar payments paid directly by the Exchequer will not; if he will issue within the next few weeks a White Paper listing all the issues of significance which arise so as to enable Members of the House and the social partners to make proposals for the satisfactory execution of the scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Short Term Sickness Payments.
The transfer to employers of responsibility for payments to employees for the first 13 weeks of illness will be a major development in the social welfare system. It will end the unnecessary duplication between the disability benefit scheme and occupational sick pay scheme and enable employers to have greater control over the factors underlying absenteeism. It will also enable sickness benefit payments to be made subject to taxation.
An inter-departmental committee are considering all aspects of this question at the moment. Discussions have taken place with employer and trade union organisations to consider their views and concerns. The committee's report will be submitted to the Government shortly. It will be necessary at that stage for the Government to decide on the details of the scheme in order that the new arrangement can be brought into operation without unnecessary delay.
A proposal to transfer responsibility for short term sickness payments to employers was also put forward by the previous Government and was discussed at that time by the interests concerned, both in the framework of NESC and otherwise. I do not consider that the issue of a White Paper at this stage to raise all of these issues again would be either necessary or desirable.
In principle the move is desirable but will the Minister not accept that enormous problems will arise if all the people concerned do not know the full details of how the scheme will be implemented? Will the Minister accept that if this change is implemented in a haphazard and ill-considered way there is a real danger of abuse not only by employees or employers but by collusion between both parties? Is the Minister aware of the experience in other countries in this respect? Will the Minister outline to the House the steps he proposes to take to ensure that all facts are known by interested parties and to prevent the abuses which might arise?
Those matters are among the many items being considered before we finalise the details of the scheme. Obviously, the question of collusion between employers and employees is important and I will be bringing a separate Bill before the House shortly to deal with that matter. I accept what the Deputy has said about the difficulties involved in this undertaking but nevertheless if we do not bite the bullet sometime we will never get the work done.
I welcome that.
What we are doing means that we will have to face a lot of administrative difficulties, as the Deputy pointed out, but they are being tackled. I must add that there is a broad measure of consensus and support.