This Bill contains one or two measures that I think might be dropped without any disadvantage to anybody, but as they seem more or less innocuous measures it is hardly necessary to draw special attention to them. It does, however, omit to carry forward one Act of some consequence to quite a considerable number of people, and the reasons given by the Minister in the other House for dropping that Act are not convincing, to me, at all events. I refer to the National Health Insurance (Prolongation of Insurance) Act, 1921. When unemployment became a very serious consideration in 1921 a Bill was introduced in the British Parliament, eventually becoming operative in Ireland also, by means of which a person out of employment could have his membership of an approved society under the National Health Insurance Act extended under certain conditions, and by the payment of 7/- in any one year during which he was not working, be entitled to benefit under the Act. At present a person who has one week's work in the year and who gets one stamp put on his card retains his membership of an approved society for the ensuing year. But if he is more than a year out of employment—and there are, unfortunately, thousands of men who are more than a year out of employment—he thereby ceases to be an insured person, and when eventually he does get work he has to start all over again.
Before a person can get the benefit of this special Act he had to have at least eighty stamps on his insurance card, which meant that he was insured for quite a considerable time prior to that. The great benefit of this Act was that a person out of employment was not subjected to added suffering by having no provision whatever to deal with sickness. The society of which he was a member credited him with twenty-six stamps, although he might not have paid them at all, and if, within the statutory period he himself paid 7/- he could be kept in benefit, his wife would be entitled to maternity benefit, and if he fell ill himself he would be entitled to receive benefit. If this Act is not carried forward it will mean that after the 31st December there will be no such provision, and thousands of men who are unemployed for more than a year, will, in addition to being unemployed, have no provision at all for illness. It will mean also that when they do get work they will have to start from the beginning, although they may have been paying contributions ever since 1912. They lose all the benefit of that completely; it is all cancelled, although they may never have drawn a penny benefit, and they must start anew. There must be twenty-six weeks' contributions paid before they would be entitled to benefit; they must be two years insured before they can get full benefit, and they must be five years insured before they can get what is known as added benefit from the approved societies. The House will see, therefore, the very serious consideration that this involves for thousands of people who, in the present period of depression, have been out of employment for a long time through no fault of their own, and who, if this Act is omitted from the Bill before the House, will have their sufferings considerably added to, both now and for some years to come.
The Minister stated that the present course was being taken on the recommendation of the approved societies. That is true so far as a number of societies are concerned. There are what is known as commercial approved societies, like the National Foresters, the A.O.H., and little diocesan societies. These are really commercial undertakings, in the management and control of which the members have practically no voice at all. They have no branches, and when a meeting is summoned it would mean that an aggregate of 50,000 or 60,000 members might attend, although the meetings are generally held in an office. Obviously it is not intended that they should turn up, because they would have to pay their own expenses, and if they did turn up in large numbers there would be no accommodation for them, so that they do not meet at all. Consequently, these societies, on which the Minister is relying, do not speak for the people who are insured and whose views ought to be taken into consideration, for whom the Act was first brought into operation. The trade union approved societies, which have branches all over the country, and which call delegate meetings, oppose this proposal. They express the views of the insured people, and I think their views ought to have some effect, but the Minister seems to have overlooked their protests altogether. He said that at the present time there are 90,000 people on the books of the approved societies who should not really be on them; in other words, that there are 90,000 people who must be over twelve consecutive months out of employment, that many of these have died or have gone abroad, and his remedy is to wipe out the Act altogether. There is no compulsion whatever on the societies to have persons on their books who have died or gone away. That is negligence on their part. There is no obligation whatever to have these people on their books. It does seem rather inconsistent when the Dáil has been spending five full days discussing the question of unemployment, when a special committee is set up to devise schemes by which immediate relief can be given, that the Government should come along with a measure which, at one stroke, inflicts additional serious hardship on unemployed persons during illness, and deprives them of little matters like maternity benefit, which are very big matters to poor people, on account of the technical plea that it involves hardship to the approved societies because they have some persons irregularly on the books. The position of unemployment is as bad here as in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and as far as I am informed, the Act is being continued in those places.
I suggest that the Minister should seriously reconsider the attitude he took up in the Dáil and have this Act carried forward for at least another year. Legislation will be introduced on the strength of the findings of the Insurance Commission that was set up some time ago, and I understand that next week the Advisory Committee, set up by the Insurance Commissioners, are meeting, and they, it seems for the first time, are considering this question. So that the Minister is actually moving ahead of those who should be his official advisers. He seeks to eliminate but not to remedy an Act which was passed to meet the conditions which now actually prevail, which are far more serious now than they were in 1921. It is a lamentable state of affairs to find the Minister dropping this Act now, because even if, in a year's time, many of these people are fortunate enough to get work, they will then have to start anew as insured persons and be subject to all the disadvantages I have mentioned, and it will take five years for them to get back to the position they would be in with regard to benefit if this Act was not dropped.
