I move:
That the Unemployment Assistance (Employment Periods) Order, 1936, laid on the Table of the Seanad on the 4th March, 1936, pursuant to Section 7 (3) of the Unemployment Assistance Act, 1933, shall be and is hereby annulled.
This is an Order which fixes a period in accordance with that section of the Unemployment Assistance Act, and the effect of which is to rule out from the operations of the Act all those persons who occupy land of £4 valuation over. It will be remembered that in the Unemployment Assistance Act of 1933, it was explained by the Minister that the principle of the Act was that all able-bodied persons who are involuntarily unemployed, and who have either no means at all or insufficient means to maintain themselves and their dependants, should be given a statutory right to assistance. It was explained by the Minister that a certain number of people in the country were partially employed for wages who had pieces of land of their own, and consequently it was deemed that those people who had these holdings employed themselves on these holdings for certain periods of the year, and provisions were inserted in the Act, the effect of which is that the Minister may by regulations prescribe, either generally or in respect of any particular class or classes of persons, or any particular district or districts, any period to be an employment period; and, accordingly no person of such class, or resident in such district, shall, during such employment period, be regarded as unemployed within the meaning of the Act. It will be remembered that any person whose means were deemed to be £39 a year or over would be entirely disqualified from the operations of the Act, but persons within that category—that is to say, who had means of less than £39 a year — would, according to a scale, be entitled, if otherwise eligible, to assistance under the provisions of this Act.
Now, last year, the Minister made two Employment Period Orders. The first affected persons who held land, that is, occupiers of land, whose rateable value exceeded £4. The second Order included such persons and also other persons who were agricultural labourers, to speak shortly; and in the second Period Order both occupiers of land and agricultural labourers would be deemed to be employed during the period of the Order. Now the first Order—that is the Order which was applicable to occupiers of land whose rateable value exceeds £4—was identical in its terms with the Order that has now been issued and that we are discussing, but there was this difference: that last year the Order operated from the 17th day of April to the 21st day of May, a period of five weeks. There was then a gap of eight weeks, and the second Order operated from the 17th July to the 1st October, a period of 11 weeks. The class of persons, however, who are affected by the present Order— that is occupiers of land—were disqualified last year from any assistance under the Act for a total period of 16 weeks: but the present Order, as affecting occupiers of land, disqualifies all such persons for a period from the 4th March to the end of October— a period of 34 weeks. It is difficult for me, at any rate, to understand what has happened between 1935 and 1936 to add so much to the value of these holdings as to more than double their value as employment-giving and consequently money-earning property. It will be for the Minister to justify the extension from 16 weeks to 34 weeks in a period of 12 months.
In the course of his statements, in explaining the section in question, when the Act of 1933 was going through this House, the Minister stated the effect that he anticipated the provision would have. He pointed out, for instance, that, at certain times of the year, these small landholders must be regarded as being employed on their own land and, therefore, not unemployed and available for work if offered. I can quite see the case that was made, and I think it is justifiable that a man who has a few acres of land but is probably employed for wages will, at certain periods of the year, employ himself on that land and that, therefore, for the purposes of these insurance and assistance Acts, he should be deemed to be employed in the operations that that land requires. That is what was explained by the Minister when he said that, at certain times of the year, these small landholders could be regarded as being employed on their own land. Again he said that it was not always easy to determine when a person who holds land of a small acreage, and who supplements his earnings by earnings from road work, or some other class of work, is employed on the land or not. In order to get over that difficulty, he said, it was proposed to take power to make Orders providing that for certain periods of the year people of that class, or of other similar classes, would be regarded as being employed on their own holdings or on whatever holdings in which they might be engaged, and would not be entitled to unemployment assistance while these periods existed. That is merely another way of saying the same thing. Then, again, by way of supplementing that view of the intention of this section, the Minister said that the intention of this, in regard to small farmers who would ordinarily be occupied on spring or harvesting work, was that, during these periods, they would not be entitled to receive unemployment assistance.
Now, it was in pursuance of those assurances given to this House that the Orders were made last year as applying to spring and harvesting work, that is to say the period from April to May—five weeks—and from July to October, as covering spring and harvest. Now, however, without any explanation, we have this class of person disqualified from receiving unemployment assistance for eight months of the year. I think that that is not a fulfilment of the assurances given to this House when the Minister spoke of certain periods of the year— spring or harvest—and it seems to me to be a stretching of the Minister's authority and that it contravenes the general intention of himself at the time of the passing of the Act and the intention of the Oireachtas in accepting his propositions in regard to this provision. It remains to be asked: who does this affect—how many people does it affect? We read in yesterday's paper that, since the operation of this Order, from the beginning of March to the last report—a period of three weeks—there has been a fall of about 10,000 in the number of persons in receipt of unemployment assistance. That may or may not be attributable to the operation of this Order, but we have more positive evidence of the effect of last year's Order in the spring period. It was an Order that affected 6,613 persons; that is to say, the number of persons who were disallowed unemployment assistance owing to the operation of the first Employment Period Order totalled 6,613. Of course, the effect of this Order varies in its incidence according to the character of the country. In a county like Donegal, the exchanges in that county accounted for 547 persons who were disallowed unemployment assistance by virtue of the operations of this Order last year. In the Mayo area—Ballina Exchange and branch offices—11,086 persons were affected last year. Then you come down to areas like Dublin, Carlow, and so on, and you have about 70, 80 or 100 affected.
The complaint that I make in regard to this Order is, first, that it covers a longer period without discrimination; second, that it makes no discrimination in respect of the size or quality of the holding or the amount of employment that might reasonably be deemed to be required to be given on that holding. We have a range of valuations. Let us take the valuation in the area of Meath—that is to say, the small holdings in the County Meath of valuations of from £4 to £7. One might say then that a person in the County Meath with a holding of from £4 to £5 would be for a large part of his time occupied for wages outside his own holding, but that for part of the time he would be employed on his own holding. That would be the kind of person who would be occupying six or seven acres. I am not going to pose as an authority on this, but I would be very much surprised to learn that in connection with the kind of farming that has operated generally—leaving out intensive culture—it is fair to deem a man with six or seven acres as being occupied for eight months in the year on that holding. We go to the poor lands of the West and we take County Mayo, where the average valuation of that kind of landholder would be about 4/7 per acre. We might assume that the holdings that would be affected by the operation of this Order would be in the nature of 20 acres to 25 acres— poor land, in the main. Is there eight months' work on that kind of holding? Is there eight months' work for this small-holder, partially a farmer, partially a wage-earner—a half proletarian, as the Russians say—is there work for that man and his family in that period of the year? The Minister may not be aware, but a week or two ago we had discussions here on a matter dealing with education and the Minister for Education explained how important it was that the children of these small-holders would be employed during the spring and autumn on their fathers' holdings. It is necessary, therefore, to take into account the employment-giving capacity of these holdings, not merely for the man himself, but for his family. I think it will hardly be contended that there is eight months' work on this type of holding, irrespective of the part of the country or the quality of the land, and if it is not the case that such a holding would give eight months' work, the Minister has no justification for the deprivation of assistance for eight months, except from the point of view, which he made on the Second Reading of the Bill, of easy administration and financial saving.
I am not going to stress the suggestion, though I think it is not an unfair inference, that one of the factors that have affected the judgment of the Minister in making this 34-weeks' Period Order is the likelihood that considerable numbers of the people concerned may, if they wish, find employment in England. I wonder whether it is part of the contention that it is hoped and expected that the migrants from the West will continue to go in large numbers to England and therefore, during that period of employment across the water as they would not be unemployed they would not be eligible for assistance. I hope the Minister will disavow any such suggestion but, if that is disavowed, can he suggest that there is additional employment as compared with last year in this country, for this type of semi-farmer semi-labourer? I think there is no evidence whatever to warrant any such suggestion.
One effect of the operation of this Order is that during that middle period after the spring work is finished and before the harvest work has begun, the man continues to be disemployed but he is ineligible for employment at wage-earning occupations on public works. The effect of the Minister's policy in regard to employment on public works is that only those people who are on the register who are most eligible and most needy because they are longest on the register and with large families, are taken on public works. Many of these 6,000 or 7,000 men have large families and are greatly in need, but no matter how they need public work they would not be able to obtain it because of the Minister's ruling in respect of public works.
It is important to draw attention to the fact that from the time when the spring period begins at the 4th March until the end of October, let us say, the man in question has to find a living somehow. He has been intermittently employed during the winter, and when not employed was able to obtain a few shillings a week unemployment assistance. I might say that the average saving in respect of each of those disqualified last year was about 7/3 per week, per man. During the periods of employment and intermittent employment they would not be able to save very much, yet they are expected to live for a period of eight months out of what they are going to get from the work on the land in the intervening period. That is to say, by some means or other they have to find food and fuel, and they have to get shopkeepers to give them credit to enable them to live while the spring work is coming to fruition and a time when it can be turned into cash.
I think that, in view of the intentions of the Act and of the assurances that were given by the Minister as to the effect of this Employment Period Order, the intention of the Act and of the Minister at that time is being destroyed and made invalid by the Order that has been laid on the Table. The effect of the passing of this motion would, of course, mean that the Order would no longer operate. It would mean that the Minister would have to introduce a new Order, an Order which I think would be necessary, but which would not cover a period longer than that for which it operated last year, or he would have to select his areas instead of making a single Order, without discrimination, that would cover the highly-rated Counties of Dublin and Meath and the lowly-rated Counties of Kerry, Donegal, Mayo, etc. It seems to me that there has been no proper discrimination, discrimination which was quite necessary before making such an Order, and the Seanad ought to exercise its authority and power to annual this Order so as to oblige the Minister to make a new Order with more discrimination and more thought behind it, and which could be justified from the point of view of the employment-giving capacity of these small holdings of £4, £5 and £6 valuation.
I am pretty sure that if the Minister had told this House in explaining the effect of Section 7, sub-section (3) of the Act of 1933, that the intention was to disqualify from unemployment assistance every holder of land of £4 valuation for a period of eight months the year, the House would not have agreed to it and I think, therefore, the House ought now to say that that was never the intention of the Oireachtas, certainly never the intention of this House, and the Minister must conform to what were the intentions of the House and the assurances which he gave when the Act was being passed in 1933. I beg to move the motion.
