Deputy Alan Dukes has given me notice of his intention to raise the matter of the remuneration of part-time local authority fire officers and their entitlement to unemployment assistance.
Adjournment Debate. - Remuneration of Part-Time Fire Officers.
Thank you, Sir. With your permission I propose to share my time with my colleague, Deputy Yates.
I am sure that is satisfactory and agreed.
Thank you, Sir. Briefly, the situation is the following: the majority of fire officers employed by local authorities in this country are part-time; they are not full-time employees. Some are on call 52 weeks a year, while others are on call 26 weeks a year. There is a wide variety of situations. Many are people who are otherwise unemployed. For those who are employed otherwise there is a difficulty for employers in that the employee is liable to be called out without notice — that is in the nature of the emergency service they provide. That kind of situation creates a difficulty for those who are unemployed and who are seeking work, because very few employers — and it is understandable — will voluntarily take on a potential employee who may have to drop tools at short notice and leave. For those who are otherwise unemployed there is a great difficulty in finding permanent employment. The people in question need to be contactable and they need to be mobile. When an emergency arises they have to be contacted quickly and they have to be able to get to their fire station quickly. For the majority of them that means they must have a telephone and a car. A great many people who are unemployed do not have those things but these people have to provide those facilities.
Up to recently those who were unemployed received the appropriate level of unemployment assistance and, in addition, were paid on a fee per call-out basis by the fire service. That income was not taken into account when deciding their eligibility for unemployment assistance. That situation has changed as that income will now be fully taken into account.
These part-time firemen now face the prospect of losing a certain payment in terms of unemployment assistance in return for maintaining their access to an unpredictable level of payment as firemen, because it depends totally on how long they are on call and how many calls they get. That, Sir, will probably induce a great number of those people to leave the fire service. The experience they have will be lost to the fire service, and the public service provided by them will deteriorate. That is not good enough. We need a better solution than this simple straightforward axing job to deal with that problem.
I thank Deputy Dukes for sharing his time with me and I thank you, Sir, for allowing this matter, about which I wrote to you last week, to be debated. Everything Deputy Dukes has said is correct. In County Wexford 60 per cent — six out of ten — of firemen are in this situation. They are on unemployment assistance and they are on call. The amount they are paid for being on call is 6p per hour — prisoners are paid more for work they do in prisons. If they are called out to a chimney fire under these regulations they will receive £13.68 but they will lose a day's dole. That is the rule. A married man with three children could lose £25 per day. These people risk life and limb in the interests of the community. As the local authority cannot afford to pay them on a permanent basis there is no full-time service. They are only needed on a part-time basis, especially in smaller villages, such as Bunclody in my constituency. These people are paid quarterly. It could happen, therefore, that for some weeks they would have no money to meet their mortgage repayments and family commitments.
The social welfare system has, in effect, subsidised local fire authorities who have not paid the full cost of having people available on a 24-hour, seven day a week basis. I believe that is good value for money in the totality of things. We do not want any industrial relations difficulties, and local authorities cannot afford to pay more. Some small modification is required. This wholesale butchering of their unemployment payment assistance is unfair and will cause havoc. The State has invested a lot of money in training these people but many of them will throw in their job because it does not pay them. It is nonsensical. I ask the Minister to take heed of what Deputy Dukes and I have said and defer the implementation of this measure. He should reconsider it fully and sit down with SIPTU and other representatives and thrash out a fairer system.
I should like to apologise for the inability of the Minister for Social Welfare to be present. I will try to explain the position in relation to this matter.
The unemployment assistance scheme was designed for and continues to provide support for those workers who are either not entitled to or have claimed their full entitlement to unemployment benefit. It is totally State-funded out of taxpayers' moneys. The central basis of the scheme is that applicants have to be unemployed, actively seeking work and, pertinent in the context of this motion, unable to support themselves from their own resources.
The inclusion in the 1992 Social Welfare Act of a provision allowing the assessment of insurable income was undertaken to ensure that the above principles were upheld. The provision is not aimed specifically at firemen but will affect a wide variety of persons who are working on a part-time or casual basis and claiming assistance for the days they are unemployed.
There are perhaps two specific reasons why a change in legislation was necessary; first, to ensure equity of treatment as between employees and self-employed persons claiming unemployment assistance who have always had their earnings assessed as means and, second, in recognition of the extension of insurance cover to all employees earnings over £25 per week with resulting wider entitlement to unemployment benefit.
Self-employed persons claiming unemployment assistance have always been assessed with all of their self-employed earnings. This contrasted sharply with persons working in insurable employment who heretofore were not assessed with any means from part-time or casual employment. They could work for a few days in a week and qualify for unemployment assistance for the remaining days, regardless of their earnings for the days worked. Accordingly, an unjustifiable inequity has developed vis-à-vis self-employed claimants.
I should like to inform Deputies of the level of earnings received by part-time firemen as much is being made of the hardship that the new measure will cause. Evidence available indicates that in the 1990-91 tax year part-time firemen received on average, earnings of almost £90 per week without any reduction in their entitlement to assistance. Indeed, many cases greatly exceeded this average. The firemen attached to one particular station had earnings of over £300 per week, on average, in addition to their assistance payments of £100 per week. Self-employed persons with the above level of earnings would have no entitlement whatsoever to assistance. Clearly the continuance of this situation is indefensible.
Reference has been made on many occasions by Deputies of all parties to the disparity I have just outlined. The purpose of the change from July is to ensure that we have a consistent approach in this matter.
The preferential treatment previously accorded the claimants with income from insurable employment has its origins in the establishment of the unemployment assistance scheme. The legislation establishing that scheme provided that persons could have their means assessed while still employed so as to avoid any delay in authorising claims when they suffered a loss of work. By excluding income from current employment, the assessment reflected the situation that would exist when they became unemployed. At the time, that was a very necessary provision in circumstances where entitlement to unemployment benefit was very restrictive.
However, this is no longer the case. The scope of unemployment benefit has been greatly expanded since the assistance scheme was introduced in 1933, most recently with the extension of insurance cover to those earning over £25 per week and who will become entitled to the various benefits from the beginning of next year.
The commitment shown by part-time firemen in providing a local fire fighting service is well known. The Minister yesterday acknowledged the special circumstances in which they operate and he has indicated that he is willing to review the current assessment procedure in a sympathetic manner while having regard to the necessity to ensure equity vis-á-vis other persons affected by this measure.