The principle of the Bill is to reduce the rates of contribution from what they are at present to the rates set out in the First Schedule while keeping the benefits as they are. The rates of contribution are going to be lowered to the point denoted in the First Schedule. This is made possible by the fact that while the Unemployment Insurance Fund can hardly be described as being actually clear of debt at present, the contribution income exceeds the amount that is paid out from it yearly by a sum of £360,000. There will be a debt on the Fund as from 1st January next of about £300,000, and we propose, in order to give the benefit of this to industry immediately, that we should, to a certain extent, fund that debt of £300,000 and pay it off in a period of from seven to nine years. In the meantime we can give this reduction, which amounts to about 3d. per week in the case of the employer and 3d. in the case of the employee. Of course, it is not so right down along the line, because there are different contributions for men, women and children. In this way, as between the employee and the employer, there is a saving in contributions to the Fund of about a quarter of a million per year, and the saving to the State is between £46,000 and £60,000 per annum by reason of this.
Private Business. - Unemployment Insurance Bill, 1930—Second Stage.
I suppose it might be taken generally that the unemployed, or the employed people at least, should be thankful for this Bill. As a matter of fact, it constitutes a grave act of injustice in the case of every unemployed man who has been paying unemployment contributions for the past few years. Some years ago the unemployment benefits were drastically worsened in the Saorstát. The Minister insisted upon putting unemployment insurance on what he termed a real insurance basis—a sound, actuarial basis. In other words, no benefit was to be paid out except what was actually subscribed for by the employers, the employed, and the State. He went a little bit too far; he put it on too good an insurance basis, with the result that the unemployed have been paying far more than they have been getting. The Fund was in debt to the State to the extent of about one and a quarter million pounds, and that is now being paid off at the rate of £360,000 per annum, with the result that in a few years there would be a substantial surplus, after making all allowance for the payment of benefits. The Minister has decided, therefore, that, instead of improving the benefits at the present rate of contribution, he will leave the benefits as they are, inadequate though they may be, and reduce the contributions.
Anybody who knows anything about the subject knows that the unemployment insurance benefits here are far and away less favourable than they are either across the Border or in Great Britain, and the manner in which the regulations governing the payment of unemployment insurance contributions are administered results in the present position, that even if the total of those on the unemployment registers—a total which is not at all representative of the number of people unemployed—in or about one-half only are in receipt of unemployment benefit. That is because of the shortening of the period during which they are entitled to benefit. A man gets only a day's benefit for every stamp. A stamp, of course, is put on each week, so that if he is three months employed and is then thrown out of work he is only entitled to two weeks' benefit. On the other hand, if he is eight or ten years in employment, and he has been contributing to the Unemployment Insurance Fund during all that period, and he is then thrown out of work, the most he can get in any one year is 26 weeks' benefit.
We are living in very abnormal times and a man, when he gets out of employment now, may be not only months but years unemployed. But no matter what amount he has contributed, or how many years he has been contributing, he cannot get more than 26 weeks' benefit. Then there is a waiting period of six days before he can get any benefit. I think the Minister said in the other House that that waiting period was originally based upon the practice of the trade unions in paying benefit to their own members. I am not sure that that is absolutely correct, but if it is, it was based on a very ancient practice — a practice that obtained when the position in regard to industry was normal and when long periods of unemployment were almost unheard of. No union that I am aware of has practised that for a good many years now. They realise that they are dealing with an abnormal period and that special methods have to be resorted to.
The Minister says that we should base our unemployment legislation on a normal basis. I suggest that he cannot very well do that in an abnormal period spread over a big num ber of years; in effect, an abnormal period that, in a sense, has become the normal condition of affairs, especially when the present contributions allow of better benefits. Surely it was not the proper way to go about it, to reduce the subscriptions and leave the benefits as they are. The Minister contends that they are trying to meet abnormal unemployment in another way: that a sum of £300,000 has been voted for relief works with a view to mitigating the hardships of the unemployed. It is possible that many men who would otherwise be entitled to unemployment benefit, and who have paid for it, will have to go on to that relief work and take work that would otherwise be available for other men who very badly want it. The benefits that the unemployed have been subscribing to for a number of years past, and that are now beginning to accumulate in the form of a surplus, are being confiscated from them—absolutely confiscated—because they are getting no credit for the time that is past and the accumulations that are accruing, and the employer who is now contributing, and the man who is employed now, are getting the benefit of these people's extra contributions in the past.
I suggest that not only is that an injustice to those who have been subscribing, but that it is also a very unstatesmanlike and short-sighted way of dealing with one of the most vital problems of the day. The relief of 3d. per week to the employed man, to the man now in industry, is absolutely negligible, and the relief to the employers, except they have a very large number of workers, will also be negligible. I have not heard of any employers who have asked for any reduction. If they have done it they have done it in quite a silent way, and the Minister cannot certainly state that there has been any demand for it, while there has been a demand for better employment conditions here.
There is another aspect of this, and that is the fact that if it were possible to raise the unemployment benefit to the same level as that obtaining across the border, that would take away from the Northern Minister for Labour one of the excuses and indeed the principal excuse which he advanced against the establishment of a reciprocal arrangement between the two States. I do not agree that was a sound reason, but he contends it is, and at least our own Minister will be able to take it from him and make him face up to the position created. At the present moment employees who go from the Free State and work in Northern Ireland, though they may have paid contributions for months and years, if they are then thrown out of work and come home are not entitled to any benefit. If they work in the Free State and live in Northern Ireland and come home they get no benefits although they have been subscribing all the time. Men who go to Great Britain and work there, when they are in semi-permanent employment for years and then find themselves thrown out of work and come home, get no return whatever for their money. The principal excuse advanced—and I certainly term it an excuse—is that our rates of benefit are so low as compared with those obtaining across the border and in Great Britain, that the Minister cannot see his way in either case to establish a reciprocal arrangement. That excuse could be taken away, and taken away at least for some time without any expenditure to the State, by merely continuing the present arrangement. I think it is a great pity that the Minister did not see his way to deal with the position in that way, seeing that we were in the happy position of being able not only to pay for the benefits that were being got but would in a few years have accumulated a substantial reserve which would meet the requirements of the situation. For that reason I shall vote against the Bill. I think it is unnecessary and uncalled for, and it certainly is not the right way to deal with the position with regard to unemployment.
I would suggest to the House there are other people involved in this matter than the employed. The Senator says the employed have no reason to be thankful for this measure. But I suggest that the country as a whole has very good reason. This is the fructification of a policy of placing insurance upon a sound basis and of avoiding the demoralising abuse of insurance such as we have seen in other countries, and especially in a country where the rates are higher than they are here. The Senator, I think, in this matter speaks with a certain degree of class consciousness, and I suppose he would say I do, too. I do not deny it. I think we are both partisans, and if we are honest I think we will admit it, that there is a very large element of partisanship in politics, and why suggest any illusion?
The Senator talks as if there were only one class of contributor to this Fund, and that the employee. He surely knows, although it may not be convenient to state it, that the employers and the State also contribute, and that this is not either a class or a personal matter. It is insurance; it is a collective matter; and the employers and the State are also entitled to recognition for the contributions they have paid in the past. I suggest that this Bill does give proper and adequate recognition to all classes. There is a very large element of psychology in these matters. The more these benefits are given, the more they are wanted; and the easier they are to get, the more they are exploited. I congratulate the Government upon the very firm stand they have taken in this matter. I think the House will generally be conscious that the example of the Government in this matter is one that many other countries envy very much.
In considering this Bill we ought to take some notice of the history of this matter. Because of the fact that the Insurance Fund has now become profit-making, if I might say so, the Government propose that the contributions of the employers and the employed should be reduced. For years the Fund was in a state of what the Minister describes as bankruptcy. Why was the Fund in a state of bankruptcy? Was it because it was insolvent, or because the scheme was insolvent? Or was it because very abnormal circumstances made it insolvent?
The scheme as originally proposed was quite solvent. But after the events of 1918 hundreds and thousands of people were loaded on to this particular fund who never had any right to be on it, and it was because of this fact that the Unemployment Insurance Fund became insolvent, with the result that in this country the employed people who contributed to the Unemployment Fund were deprived of the benefits that people in other countries, where this Act was first introduced, were able to secure. The difference between the benefits paid across the water and in Northern Ireland and what is paid in this country is astounding. It shows that the working-class people in this country, because of certain events, and the change over that followed, were put in a great deal worse position than they would have been if the change had not taken place. Now, when we have got over this difficulty and wiped out this great deficit, not because of the insolvency of the scheme, but because of the loading on to the Fund of people who never contributed to the Fund and never should have been on the Fund——
Quite right, and the Senator's colleague wants to put them back again.
Certainly not. The Minister might wait until I had made my case.
I said the Senator's colleague wants to put them back.
The Minister admits that the Fund became insolvent because people came on to the Fund who were never entitled to be upon it. For that reason I say that people who paid insurance contributions were deprived of the benefit that they should have received in time. Our objection to this Bill is that the Fund is now solvent, and has been made solvent at the expense of the employed contributors, and if Senator Sir John Keane wishes, the employers also; still I have yet to learn that whatever the employers contributed came out of their private pockets. It was the industry that paid for it, not the employers.
They are part of the industry.
It was out of the industry it came, not out of the private pockets of the employers. The result now at any rate is that this Fund has become solvent, and I do not want to load anybody on to it that is not entitled to receive benefits on it. But I want to give a decent extension of benefits to those who contributed and who are entitled to them. The benefits paid are roughly one day's benefit for every stamp contributed, with 26 weeks' benefit if you have sufficient stamps, in one year. It does not matter if you had been paying contributions for ten years if you become unemployed you only get 26 weeks' benefit in one year, and I say that these benefits ought to be extended for a further period. The people who usually get unemployment benefit at the present time are not the type of persons that go into unemployment for the sake of being unemployed.
We know that a number of men became redundant in the railway service, and that although some of them thought they were entitled to pensions they found afterwards that they would not get them. Some of these people had stamps to their credit for ten years, and after six months' benefit they found that they had no hope of further employment and were cut off. In that case the benefit should be extended. Benefits all round should be extended, and as this scheme is solvent something better should be done than merely reducing the rate of contribution. That is not the way to solve the unemployment problem or to save industry.
Senator Sir John Keane talked about partisanship and said that Senator O'Farrell was class-conscious. Senator Sir John Keane admitted that he was class-conscious, and that there was always partisanship in politics. In dealing with this great question of unemployment there are other considerations than political considerations to be looked into. There is the human consideration, the starving man or woman, and there is no partisanship in giving a loaf of bread to that class. Surely such people are entitled to some consideration instead of having a Bill such as this introduced for the purpose of taking a small percentage off the contribution. I think the Minister should have followed the lead given across the water and give decent benefits to the insured persons, instead of making decent people paupers. That is the object we have in view, and for that reason we are opposed to the reductions in contributions. I go further and say that a large number of workers who are in permanent employment and paying to the unemployment insurance scheme have no objection to continue paying, if it means that those who have been less fortunate will get the benefit.
There has been talk about this scheme being based on a scheme that was formerly provided by the trades unions. Before ever an Unemployment Insurance Act was dreamt of by the State, the trades unions, out of their own funds, provided for their unemployed members. The State was never asked for any contributions. There is no doubt that if a man gives up to 30 years' service in an industry, that industry is entitled to contribute towards his upkeep when he is unemployed. Otherwise you are going to make a machine or an animal out of him. If a man gives a number of years' service to an industry, that industry owes him something, and is morally bound to contribute towards his support when he is unemployed. These are the reasons why we are opposed to this Bill and why we ask the House to vote against it.
I am in the unhappy position of having to look for information in respect to this Bill. As far as I can recollect the Unemployment Insurance Fund became insolvent by reason of the fact that uncovenanted benefits were granted for a period of two or three years, so much so, that uncovenanted benefit was regarded by labour people as something that the Insurance Fund should have given under ordinary circumstances. I am only asking for information. I am not opposed to having a fund for the benefit of a man who is idle. I want to get the facts. When I heard Senators on the Labour Benches say that the Fund is not giving as much as it was originally intended should be given, I wondered if that was a fact.
It is quite wrong.
That is the point. I want to get the facts. I daresay that when that Fund was started certain regulations were laid down in regard to what would be paid out in case of unemployment. It has been stated here that the unemployed persons have not got what they should have got. I would like to have that matter cleared up. It was pointed out that if a person had stamps to his credit for ten years that he could only get benefit for 156 days of the particular year. If he contributes stamps for ten years he will have paid, in actual cash, £20 and he gets in benefit in one year £20; or 156 half crowns. He gets that continuously for ten years perhaps, until his stamps are expired. Therefore I think he is doing very well.
If he worked 40 years and paid in all the time how much would he get? This is not insurance.
The Fund is not in existence for 40 years. I want to point out that the Fund is giving what it engaged to give.
There is more than 9d. a week going in.
For the last ten years 9d. per week has been paid by the contributor. That amounts to £2 a year and if the insured person gets 26 weeks' benefit I think he is doing well. I am not saying that he should not get more, but I say that the case made by Labour Senators is not the exact case that the Seanad ought to vote on. It should be inquired into. I am not in favour of uncovenanted benefit, and I am not in favour of as much money being paid out here as is paid in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I know cases in Great Britain where the insured people get more from the Fund than they would if they were working. From personal inquiry I know that is the case.
I want to refer to another aspect of the matter that was raised by Senator Connolly. He stated the other day that the agricultural labourers are not insured, and he regretted that fact. The agricultural labourers are not insured, and rightly so. The way to help unemployment amongst agricultural labourers is to extend the principle of giving them houses and plots.
And in the meantime what are they going to do?
Cottages have been built throughout the country, some of them with four rooms, to which is attached an acre of land, and they are let at a rent of 1s. 2d. per week. Cottages are of more benefit to the labourers than anything the Insurance Fund would ever provide for them.
That is a contribution to the employer.
It is not. If the labourer who is idle had a plot of land he can get more out of it than if he was paying into an Insurance Fund. That is the right way to deal with unemployment amongst the agricultural labourer and that scheme should be extended if he is to be helped. Of course we know that there have been abuses in connection with the tenancy of these cottages, but an agricultural labourer who has a cottage of four rooms and a plot of land in North County Dublin can get much greater benefit from that bit of land than he would ever receive from an Unemployment Insurance Fund into which he had paid 9d. a week.
I am opposed to this reduction in contributions for various reasons. One of these reasons is that a very important section of the community—the agricultural labourers— are not provided for. There is no provision by which these men can be kept fit for employment during extended periods of unemployment such as they have suffered during the past few years. Senator Wilson says that he is opposed to extending unemployment benefit to the agricultural worker. He gives us very glowing accounts of the amount of wealth a cottage-holder is able to get out of an English acre of a garden. That was a very different account from the story we heard this day week of the destitution and hardship which people with 60, 80, or 100 acres were suffering.
On a point of explanation, the benefit derived by an agricultural labourer in respect of the house alone exceeds £20 a year.
I thought it was the garden to which the Senator referred.
The house plus the garden.
The Senator even suggested that the garden should be extended. Was not that the Senator's suggestion?
Yes.
The distance which you can extend a labourer's garden is very limited, particularly in the Co. Dublin, to which Senator Wilson referred. When we have claimed portions of land for landless men, it has always been put up to us that a holding of less than twenty acres is not economic, and we are told that the greatest trouble the Land Commission have had throughout the Free State has been the elimination of holdings of three, four, and five acres. Here we have Senator Wilson suggesting the extension of the labourer's plot to two three acres, so as to convert the labourer into a sort of mongrel—a man who will be neither a farmer nor an agricultural labourer.
Cathaoirleach
This is outside the scope of the Bill.
I think I am quite entitled to refer to any remarks made by Senator Wilson.
I want to contradict a statement made by the Senator. I never made the statement which he suggests I made.
Cathaoirleach
The Senator introduced a great deal of matter that was extraneous to the Bill.
I think he suggested that the way to deal with the agricultural labourers was to extend their plots.
Cathaoirleach
The Bill does not provide for that and I ask the Senator not to refer to it.
I am trying to make a case for the agricultural labourer.
Cathaoirleach
The Senator must make a case within the scope of this Bill.
I suggest to the Minister that the surplus money which has been paid in by the contributors to the Fund for the past few years, which has practically suceeeded in wiping out the big deficit that existed eight or nine years ago should not be utilised in this way. Instead, I suggest that this Bill should be extended so as to embrace the agricultural workers—a class which, I submit, is the most important in the community. We hear every day that the principal industry of this country is agriculture. If there be any section of the community which deserves well of the people as a whole, it is the agricultural workers, because they are producing the wealth which is keeping running all the cities and towns and which is maintaining the professions, the politicians, the Government, and all the rest. I think that that is undisputed. I suggest that instead of frittering away this surplus in giving relief of a penny or twopence a week to the worker and another couple of pence to the employer, and reducing the contribution of the State by £50,000, the proper and sensible thing to do is to extend to agricultural workers the benefits enjoyed by every other working section of the community.
We on these benches are in the happy position, listening to this debate, that we are not partisans. We listened to the speeches from the Labour benches, and we listened to speeches from other Senators, and I am glad to say that the Labour men have it.
They always have.
We consider that the arguments put forward from the Labour benches have not been refuted from any quarter of this House and are not capable of refutation. Here is the position: this fund was established on a conservative basis. Each year it was making a profit of £300,000. Whose money was that? It was the money of the working people.
Why?
Because the benefits ought to have been so framed that there would have been no nest egg laid up at the end of each year. After 1920, this annual profit of £300,000 was made. How has that been applied? It has been applied towards paying off the deficit on the British fund, which, I submit, the workers of this State were, in justice, under no obligation to pay. Next, it was applied in paying off the deficit of the fund in the Saorstát. If I am wrong, the Minister will correct me.
Give us the proportion.
From 1920 to 1922 benefits were undoubtedly paid to persons who were not under covenant to receive them. As Senator Wilson said, uncovenanted benefits were paid during those two years. In 1923, uncovenanted benefit was stopped, and we came back to the very conservative working of this scheme, whereby £300,000 a year which ought to have gone to the workers was kept from them. What happened then? In 1925, there was a proviso issued—I am surprised that Senators on the Labour benches who spoke so ably on this Bill did not note it—by which an insured person must have twelve stamps affixed after going out of benefit before benefit can be renewed. If I am wrong in that, the Minister can correct me. That was a further limitation introduced in 1925. Justice can be done, without any reduction of or increase in contributions, by giving benefit to the insured person before he has twelve stamps on the book. Justice could also be done by repealing this regulation—that employees who draw twenty-six weeks' benefit in one year cease to be in benefit irrespective of the number of stamps they had to their credit prior to unemployment. A workman might have been paying since the scheme first came into operation—he might have been in constant employment all the time—and he might have to his credit £30 worth of stamps, the men in employment with him having, perhaps, to their credit thousands of pounds worth of stamps, and yet if he is out of employment for twenty-six weeks, he can get no more benefit. I think that is wrong. There are a few other matters which require attention. In the first place, we ought to have a full register of the unemployed. We ought also to be in a position to know in any one week, or on the first of any month, how many persons had applied for employment, say, in the City of Dublin and how many were refused or were unable to get employment.
This is a matter which I do not wish to put forward in any controversial spirit. I am not class conscious as between employer and employee. I would say this for Senator Sir John Keane, although he himself phrases it in a way which is, perhaps, rather uncomplimentary and unjust to himself, I do not believe that he is class-conscious, because from my observation of him during the last two or three years I believe that he is a man with an essentially honest mind, and no man with an essentially honest mind who goes into this question can fail to see the strength of the arguments put forward from the Labour benches to-day. I differ fundamentally from Senator Sir John Keane when he says that the present position of affairs is the fruition of a sound policy. What is the sound policy? A policy which keeps from the workmen £300,000 a year. I would differ very respectfully from Senator Sir John Keane in regard to that. I submit that, in so far as it is a fruition of anything, it is the fruition of an unsound policy, a policy which deprives working men of the full benefits to which they are entitled. Therefore, having listened to this debate, we are going to support Labour, if the matter goes to a division, for the reasons which they themselves have urged.
The speech of the last Senator reminds me of the last time I was in New York. There was a chariot, as they call it, coming down Broadway with a large number of drums and a flourish of trumpets. I went over to see what was happening and I found that it was a parade of the American Non-Partisan Association. I do not think that there is any need to be non-partisan in an issue of this kind because, to my mind, the issue is extremely simple so far as this Bill is concerned. We are not dealing with the question as to whether agricultural labourers should be under this or some similiar scheme. We are not dealing with the question as to whether this scheme is the best. We have an insurance scheme to which there are three contributors and, as a result of the financial policy pursued it is in a strong position. There are two courses open which would benefit the contributors. One course is to reduce the contributions and the other is to increase the benefits for the future. At the same time, there is room for a perfectly honest difference of opinion as to which is the wiser course and all other matters are extraneous. I am of opinion that, having regard to the condition of the country—and I believe that Labour Senators know about it—having regard to the wishes of a considerable number of the contributors, a reduction of rates will be more welcome than an increase of benefits to the persons concerned. I may be wrong, but that is the issue which we have to decide and not extraneous issues which have been raised.
The whole idea of the character of insurance seems to be missed. What about the thousands of people who are never unemployed and who never receive benefits? It is surely by counting on their getting no benefit that those who are unemployed can get benefits. It is the idea of insurance to balance one set of probabilities against another. Instead of complaining about the surplus being a nest egg which has not been distributed it ought to be considered as proof of the success of the scheme. It should not be suggested that men should be put out of employment in order to benefit by this £300,000 surplus. The other side of the matter is that if, after ten years' work an insured person is to accept ten years' unemployment, or to be insured for ten years' so that he need not work, it does not require much foresight to see that it will be possible that no one will work for more than ten or fifteen years if he has a short expectation of life. We would then get to the position which prevails in England where there is only a difference of a shilling between working and not working but a mighty difference as regards demoralisation. I do not mind Senator Comyn's complaints about the nest egg being sent to England, because his emphasis is nearly always much stronger than his points. If there were not to be any surplus the fund would be unworkable because it would be bankrupt. Men cannot be deliberately disemployed in order to prevent a surplus arising. That is the position. As long as we keep our attention on the character of insurance which is to do an injustice, so to speak, to those who do not claim unemployment benefit for the portion or remnant of those who do, we must see that there are always people who will stay in employment and who are apparently in the position of being treated unjustly. That is the reductio ad absurdum at which you can arrive in considering the character of insurance. The proposition is to enable some people who are getting too much value to be unemployed for ten or fifteen years or more as they choose.
I think that Senator Douglas went to the crux of this discussion when he said that the question arose as to whether the surplus is to be distributed by a reduction of premiums or by an increase of benefits. He said that there was a reasonable ground for difference of opinion on that issue. I think it is quite correct to say so. Senator Sir John Keane, perhaps, gave the key which ought to decide the lines which the Seanad should take. He explained that on this matter, consciously or unconsciously, class interests seemed to affect the decision of the disputants, the controversialists, the partisans. It would seem to me that the class interest of the employers would decide that there should be a reduction in the contributions, because it serves the class interests of the employer, whether as employer or as income tax payer. On the other hand, you have over 250,000 people employed for wages in insurable occupations who, so far as they have been able to give expression to any views on this question, would prefer to have improved benefits rather than reduced contributions. If class interests are going to determine one's views on this matter, we will have to decide whether it is better to keep in good moral and physical condition those who are out of work to a greater degree than at present, or to save threepence a week per man employed for the employers. I do not know whether the Minister is pleased at the connection of the two sentences in Senator Sir John Keane's speech, namely, that class interests undoubtedly would affect his view, and the views of those who think with him, and his commendation of the Government for introducing the Bill. There is probably a clear connection between the two ideas expressed by Senator Sir John Keane, but I really think that there is something fundamental at stake in this matter. It is not enough to speak about the insurance fund as an insurance fund, but even though we were doing so, I think that the general tendency amongst insurance companies, if one is going to speak on purely business lines, is to distribute their surplus by improved benefits and not by a reduction of premiums.
On that account alone I think the conclusion would follow that benefits ought to be improved and increased rather than that contributions should be reduced. But really we come to an issue as to whether Senators would desire to keep an unemployed man in benefit for a longer period, or improve the benefits by one means or another out of the fund that is collected, or whether unemployed persons should go more quickly or more easily on home help, because that is what happens. If you have an unemployed person receiving unemployment benefit for a few weeks or months and that then he is cut off, much more rapidly will that person go on home help. If you are satisfied with the payment of five or ten shillings per week out of home help rather than to keep a man's moral state in a fairly good condition by a payment out of the insurance fund, you will vote for this Bill. If you prefer to keep in a good, healthy mind and stamina the unemployed man, to keep him fit for work when work comes, you will rather favour the extension of benefits than the reduction of contributions. I think it will be agreed by any person of experience, whether on the employer's side or the workman's side of business, that the longer a man is unemployed without unemployment benefit, the less he is fit to take work on when work is offered and the less chance there is, therefore, of his getting work.
I take this stand: that we have a national community which is or should be an enlarged family, that we have a responsibility to maintain in some degree of health and condition the workman who is thrown out of work through no fault of his own. We talk of maladministration. We talk of malingering and fraud on the funds. Those things will occur undoubtedly as they occur in fire insurance, let us say. They are remedial by administration. You may strengthen your Acts if you like, but the amount of malingering is very small indeed, much smaller proportionately here than in Great Britain and very small indeed in proportion to the amount of benefit that is being paid and the amount of good that is being done. If we have any national responsibility for unemployment we have got somehow to keep the unemployed man in condition. Are you going to do it by home help or are you going to extend your system of insurance? I prefer to extend the system of insurance much wider than it is. Keep on insurance by all means if you can, but why reduce benefits when you have a surplus out of the present insurance fund? If one wants to relieve local rates and if no other appeal will touch the heart of the farmers and the men from the country, that surely ought to. Keep them off local rates for a longer time by extending unemployment benefit and use this surplus to increase the period of benefit during which unemployed men are unable to get work or, to put it another way, during which employers are unable to find or to provide work for the men who are waiting to do work for them. This is a question of industry, and while of course at first hand, it is true that the contribution that the employer pays is placed on to the cost of the article which he sells——
That he cannot sell, very often.
True, very often that he cannot sell, but is it better that he should pay rates for poor law assistance? Is it better that he should pay increased charges to charitable funds? Somebody has to maintain the unemployed men. How are they to be maintained? Should they be maintained in something like a fair condition or are they gradually to be driven down until they become unemployable? I contend and the House should contend that the proper method is to increase benefits rather than to reduce them. Sir John Keane interjects and says that the employer sometimes cannot sell an article, the cost of which is added to by threepence per week per man. Well that is a factor no doubt. The employer who employs say 100 men is out of pocket £65 per year by the payment of threepence per week or he will be in pocket by that amount if this Bill is passed. I cannot conceive of an employer of 100 men being in the position that the £65 a year is going to make a difference between his ability and inability to sell the article which he produces. All the advantages are in maintaining and extending unemployment insurance so that the man who is unemployed for a period, a continuing period as it often is, shall be kept in as good a condition as he possibly can be so that he will be fit to do the work when it comes.
The Minister has argued that the scheme should be sound actuarially. Of course it is an answer to a good many criticisms that have been made heretofore, when one realises that for some years something like £30,000 to £60,000 per year prior to 1927-28 had been paid in interest on advances from the Central Fund, so that this Unemployment Insurance Fund has been paying interest on any money advanced to it out of the Central Fund. It is said that this scheme was adopted to deal with normal unemployment and that our problem to-day is one of abnormality. I say if we had any scheme put forward which was going to deal with the abnormally unemployed persons one might consider the Bill with a different view, but we have no such scheme. There is a sum of £300,000 talked of for relief work. The greater part of that is to be used for the relief of agriculture. At the present time you have any number, I do not know the exact number, between 20,000 to 50,000 persons who are unemployed and who are not getting any benefits from unemployment insurance.
What is to become of them? If you had some scheme on hands for dealing with that number which is supposed to be abnormal then you might talk about reducing the contributions. But I say that we ought to wait until the schemes that are supposed to be in embryo are brought into actual effect before we reduce the contribution, and that this sum of £300,000 that is at present being paid into the fund and is not required by the present scheme, ought to be held until amended benefits are introduced. I hope the House will not agree to the Second Reading of this Bill, and that that refusal so to agree will be an indication to the Minister that we desire that he should bring forward proposals for improved benefits in respect to unemployment insurance.
I should like to ask the Minister whether it would be possible to make some arrangements to continue benefits for a longer period than 26 weeks for those who have been paying insurance for several years without drawing anything from, the Unemployment Insurance Fund. It does seem hard that a man should be in continuous employment for a very long period, paying to the Fund, and still getting no more benefit than a person, say, who has been paying for only one year.
Senator Wilson asked me certain questions, and as the answers to his questions go right to the root of certain objections that were made by Labour Senators, I propose to deal with his points first. The Senator asked was it correct to say that the benefits received by unemployed people under the unemployment insurance scheme had been worsened. Senator O'Farrell not merely asked that same question but answered it affirmatively. It is not a fact; the reverse is the fact. The rates of benefit have not been worsened, but in so far as rates have been changed they have gone up since the establishment of the Fund.
The value of money changed in the meantime.
And the increase was made corresponding to the so-called reduction in the value of money. When the scheme was started the maximum benefit paid in a week was 7/-.
What was the position when the Free State came into being?
I am speaking of the money paid, not of the persons. I am not dealing with the classes of persons who enjoy benefits, but with the moneys paid. It is quite inaccurate to say that the rates of benefit have been worsened except to this extent, that we are not giving doles in this country. For one bad winter we did extend the benefit, particularly because it coincided with the sending back to civilian life of a very big number of men who had been in the National Army. It was to meet a temporary difficulty. There was one other slight extension. To that extent, it could be said that we have given worse conditions than in the North of Ireland and Great Britain. We are not giving the dole, and we do not intend to. Senator Farren, I think, objected to the number of unemployed people who never paid into the fund, but who had received benefit. The manner of payment, Senator Farren said, was worse than in Northern Ireland or Great Britain; that is not so. If I am wrong I can be faced with the figures on the next day, and told there are the benefits paid, not the amount of benefits paid a year, because that is a multiplication of rates by numbers. Leaving numbers out of it, I am standing entirely on the total. As a matter of fact, in certain respects we pay more, and in other respects we pay a little less. On the whole, the conditions are a little bit better for the man who gets benefit in the Free State than the man in Great Britain or Northern Ireland; that is the man who has contributed to the Unemployment Insurance Fund.
The man with a wife and children?
There is a difference as regards the dependents' allowance. We make our maximum period 18 years. The British made theirs 21 years.
Is the maximum the same?
No, it is not. On the whole, the situation has not been worsened by us. It has been worsened inasmuch as we will not pay it to certain people because we have an insurance scheme, which the British have not. We are going to stick to the insurance scheme. People who complain of that have their remedy. Similarly with regard to the point urged here as to hardships, although this was not on the ground of differentiation between our code and the British code, the waiting period and the maximum number of weeks over which payment was made when the British system was an insurance scheme was exactly the same. Under their system of extended benefit of course a week's payment is gone. The waiting period, as I said in the Dáil, was founded upon the practice of the trade unions at the time when the insurance code was first introduced. It was then the general practice of trade unions that they did not pay to people to whom they were to make payment until after the expiration of six days. The trade union principle at the back of that was that if a man was only going to be out of employment for six days he ought to have some means of tiding himself over that temporary difficulty. They would not regard it as a case in which payment should be made unless there were six continuous days without benefit. The 26 weeks' payment is a fundamental of the scheme, if it is going to be an insurance scheme at all. Any change in that would mean definitely that the whole scheme of contribution would have to be revised, and if people were allowed to break in on that principle it would not be only a matter of refraining from giving this £300,000, but of piling on a considerable amount more by way of contribution to the Fund, so that it would be particularly undesirable.
As regards the case raised by Sir Edward Bigger of people who have been paying for years without drawing benefit, I have less sympathy for them than those who have been drawing benefit. They are the good lives on whom this scheme is founded. They have been kept in continuous employment and one has to lean in these cases rather against the good lives.
That is not an insurance basis at all.
It is a definite insurance principle that you do weigh the good lives as against the bad lives. Senator O'Farrell used the word "confiscation" with regard to this money and Senator Comyn, of course, fell into the trap immediately. Senator Comyn talked of £300,000 which we are keeping from the working men. Whose £300,000 is it? I asked him to say that in the course of his speech but he neglected to answer me. The £300,000 is the accumulation of the payments made by the employer, the employee and the State over a period of years. Take it for a certain year that £300,000 is the surplus. That is a surplus arising out of overpayment by the employer, the employee and the State. We think the best way to distribute that is to give it back to these three. We do not distribute it proportionately. The employers as a class get between them £125,000, the employees as a class get between them £125,000. The State is getting the benefit of about £62,000. We consider that that is the proper way to hand back the money that has been accumulated by reason of over-payment. It is quite right to say that we are not handing it back to the people who have paid it. Here again we are leaning against the good lives. We lean against the employers of the old time. It is impossible to go back over a ten or twelve years' period and to hand employers back their proportionate shares. If we are defrauding any employee we are defrauding the man who has been paying in for years and who has drawn nothing or next to nothing. We are not defrauding the man who has taken out the amount he put in, plus the State contribution and the employer's contribution. The word "confiscation" can certainly not be applied to what is happening here.
I have heard a good deal of demand for the reduction of the burden of unemployment insurance on employers. I have heard it applied not particularly to this as much as to their burden generally, and this is a very definite burden. I know that employers and workers have expressed themselves as being very glad to get this remission of 3d. per week.
Where did you hear that statement?
I have had it expressed to me.
It certainly never came from any organisations.
Naturally not. In any organisation the more vocal element would be the people whom I call the bad lives for insurance purposes. They would naturally not like to see the Fund depleted. I have been asked on very inadequate grounds to raise it to the same level as in Northern Ireland and take away one of the objections raised when I tried to make a reciprocal scheme with Northern Ireland. Senator Farren was sufficiently frank about the matter to say he did not believe in the claim made by the Northern Minister. Nobody, I think, who heard that claim would believe that it was the reason for the objection raised. I certainly am not going to do what I consider to be an unsound thing in order to take away one complaint from the Northern Ireland Minister when he has about eight reasons for refusing to do what we requested him to do. Anyway, that problem of the migratory labourer is a thing that we are striving to get settled. If it means that some extra payment has to be dispensed, we are not going to default if we can get a settlement that we think to be an equitable one. Senator Farren fell into the mistake of talking about railway men with ten years' stamps to their credit. I would like to see that unique person, a railway man with ten years' stamps to his credit. If there is one to be found in the grades that accepted—I do not mean the shop men —he certainly has a claim for a refund.
He was referring to the shop men.
The shop people are not deprived of unemployment insurance when out of work. I am not going to deal with the agricultural labourer. That matter is irrelevant to this issue. If Senator O'Duffy wants to test that. let it be tested by way of resolution. I will listen to what the agricultural men have to say with regard to the payments of premiums in order to have a scheme for the agricultural labourer.
Senator O'Duffy also spoke of this as if we were distributing moneys we have on hand. I would like people to realise the exact situation. The debt at one time amounted to between £1,250,000 and £1,400,000. That is being paid off year by year. At the moment we are at least £400,000 in debt. At the beginning of the year we expect to have the debt reduced to a £300,000 figure. As Senator Johnson has said, the interest on that has been met during the period the debt was running. We intend to meet the interest over the period it will still continue to run. We believe in giving this fillip to industry at this time and in postponing payment of the debt for a period of from seven to nine years. That will depend, of course, on the number of contributions that come in. We will still be meeting the debt. The debt will be paid off and the interest will be paid at the same time. If we do not pass this Bill by the 1st January there will be £60,000 in hand, and we think it is better to do it in this way when there is a definite indication of an upward trend in business. We prefer to do everything at this point to give whatever fillip there may be in this instead of hanging on to the contributions and merely paying off the debt for next year.
Senator Comyn said he thought we should have a full register of the unemployed. I have spoken on this matter of the register of the unemployed before, and I do not want to go into it in detail. The sooner, I think, the situation is understood by Senators the better. I would like to find out what better system there is than the present one. If a man is out of work and if he wants to go on the register of the unemployed all he requires to do to get on the register is to get a sheet of paper and something with which to write. He writes his name and address and he posts it on to our offices without even putting a stamp on it. If the pressure of unemployment does not make a man do that then I do not consider that the weight of unemployment on him is sufficient to make us consider him. What other system is there except a house to house search. If a house to house search is embarked on what are the administrative costs of such a scheme going to be?
Offer them work and you will find out the number.
I am glad to have got that remark. I have stated this over and over again and the better it is known the more accurate my figure will be. In the past five years 16,000 vacancies per annum were filled through the medium of unemployment exchanges. If a man sees that he has at any rate a chance to secure one of the 16,000 vacancies filled through the unemployment exchanges and does not take the trouble to get a sheet of paper, write his name and address on it and post it without expense to himself, I do not think we can take any account of that man. The pressure of unemployment cannot be so severe on him. Let some other system be thought out, if this is not the proper system to keep the register.
Senator Johnson talked about the difference between home help and unemployment insurance benefit. I have often heard from Senator Johnson that the unemployment insurance benefit as paid is just barely sufficient to keep a man at a sort of starvation point. Apparently there is a big psychological difference between depending on unemployment insurance and on home help. In the one case you consider yourself a beggar and a pauper, kept on charity, while in the other, even with extended benefit, a man is merely kept in a sound condition. I fail to see the difference.
If the Minister knew anything about the way home help is distributed be would know the difference.
I can hardly imagine anything worse being said about the way home help is distributed than what has been said about unemployment insurance—the paltry benefits a man will get for himself and his dependents. In answer to the arguments advanced that there has been no demand from the employers for this reduction, I must say that I have heard very little demand for increased benefits. I have heard a great deal of demand that the benefits at present given should be to a greater number of people, and that in opposition to that there should be 30/- or 22/- a week instead of 15/-. We are not going to have extended benefits. It may be a wrong point of view, but we prefer to say that industry should be made to support the people who are normally in industry when unhappily they go out of industry. Anything beyond that is not a matter for the industrialists, but for the taxpayers generally, by means of relief works and schemes of that sort started from time to time. We prefer to have the industrial group meeting the expenses of the people in industry who go out of employment over a particular period.
Might we ask the Minister to deal with the point we all made, that he would extend benefit to the extent that the surplus accumulated would enable it to be expended? We are not talking about the dole, but of the extent to which the Fund, under present contributions, would be able to give better benefit.
Senator O'Farrell has gone away from his own position. The implication of his contrasts was that he wanted an extension for a larger number of people than those who are getting it here, as compared with Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
If the Minister concedes the principle we can go into the details later.
I have been asked about the 26 weeks' maximum. My answer is that when the Unemployment Insurance scheme was founded as an insurance matter the attitude taken up was—I may not be so clear on this as on the matter of the waiting week, but I think the trade unions were in agreement on this point—that there must be some maximum as to the period within a year during which persons unemployed would be entitled to draw benefit in order to give them an incentive to go back to work. If there were no such maximum, and people were entitled to benefit for 52 weeks in the year it meant that they would treat unemployment insurance as a kind of savings bank. This is not a fund to which people pay in money and then draw it out. The people who receive benefit are not the only people who contribute. There are other people paying into this fund. The State pays and the employer pays. The fund is based on an actuarial basis, and there has to be an incentive that a man should get back to work. There is the maximum of 26 weeks, but one generally finds that that maximum is taken in periods of two or three weeks here and there, and that it has the effect of putting people back to work.
What about the proviso with regard to the twelve stamps?
The whole principle of the scheme is that men in insurable occupations can draw up to the value of their stamps for a period of 26 weeks with the over-riding condition that if a person goes out of insurance he has, so to speak, to serve again some term in industry before he becomes eligible for insurance benefit. The whole scheme was very carefully worked out. At the time that it was worked out it was stated that the contribution income was more or lesson a conjectural basis, but we had it definitely stated that if it proved to be more than sufficient in the sense of bringing in a greater amount in income than the amount paid in benefits in the year there was then going to be a reduction. That was stated at the beginning, and it was on that basis that the people went into it. With regard to increasing benefits, this is somewhat in the nature of a contract. It may be said it was not freely entered into, and that if employees as a class had the handling of it it would have been built up differently. It was put before them on a particular basis and they accepted it. The original basis was a certain contribution. The maximum benefit payable was 7/- a week with, at that time, no dependents' allowance. In the late days of the war it was raised to 12/- and now, as far as we are concerned, it comes to 15/-, with dependents' allowances introduced.
At first it only applied to those industries such as ship-building and the building trades, in which, as we know, there is in and out employment—many breaks in employment.
That was the foundation of it at the start, to deal with intermittent employment, and the basis of the scheme was not to provide for people mainly out of work, but for people who over a yearly period have spent more than 50 per cent. of their time in employment. Now there is an attempt to extend it and to make it a charity. If industry is to be asked to pay it should be asked to pay only for those who are ordinarily occupied in industry. It is now being put to me to extend the benefit, to pay more. Why should I pay more? If we were clear of debt there would be £300,000 collected in the year. The State gets less remission under this Bill than either of the other two parties. Why should we say to people who are unfortunate enough to go out of work that we are going to raise it from 15/- to £1, and in exceptional cases to 25/-? We should not say that we are going to give to the good life, as well as to the bad life, this amount per annum. I think the Bill is on a most equitable basis, and merely to defeat this Bill will not secure the other thing.
The Minister made a statement with regard to 16,000 positions filled in the year by the Labour Exchanges, and he asked why people did not take the trouble to register. Arising out of that, I want to ask him a question. Suppose, for instance, an application comes into the Labour Exchange for twelve bricklayers, and that there are twelve bricklayers signing and receiving benefit and twelve whose benefit is exhausted, which group would be sent to fill the job?
I would require notice of that question.
There the Minister will find the reason why the unemployed man whose benefit is exhausted will not go to the trouble to sign every day at the Labour Exchange.
I did not mean that 16,000 people are put into employment, but that 16,000 notified vacancies are filled through the medium of the Exchanges.
It is the merest trifle.
Taking it at its worst, there is still sufficient incentive for a man to get a sheet of paper and a pencil at possibly no cost to himself and put his name down at the Exchange.
So long as only people in receipt of unemployment insurance will be sent to a job when vacancies occur, then it is only waste of time for people whose benefit is exhausted to be signing up.
I do not think that is so, but I can deal with that point on the Committee Stage.
Tá
- John Bagwell.
- William Barrington.
- Sir Edward Bellingham.
- Sir Edward Coey Bigger.
- Miss Kathleen Browne.
- James G. Douglas.
- Dr. O. St. J. Gogarty.
- The Earl of Granard.
- Sir John Purser Griffith.
- Henry S. Guinness.
- Major-General Sir William Hickie.
- Sir John Keane.
- Cornelius Kennedy.
- Patrick W. Kenney.
- Thomas Linehan.
- R. A. Butler.
- Mrs. Costello.
- John C. Counihan.
- The Countess of Desart.
- James Dillon.
- The McGillycuddy of the Reeks.
- James MacKean.
- Joseph O'Connor.
- M. F. O'Hanlon.
- James J. Parkinson.
- Siobhán Bean an Phaoraigh.
- Michael Staines.
- Thomas Toal.
- Richard Wilson.
Níl
- Caitlín Bean Uí Chléirigh.
- Michael Comyn, K.C.
- William Cummins.
- Michael Duffy.
- Thomas Farren.
- Thomas Foran.
- Thomas Johnson.
- Seán E. MacEllin.
- Colonel Moore.
- John T. O'Farrell.
- Séumas Robinson.
With regard to amendments, what is the latest time for receiving them?
Cathaoirleach
Those handed in tonight will be in time.