This is a long series of amendments. I attempted, not necessarily successfully, to bring the principle involved right through the Bill. The amendments are designed to introduce the principle of wage relationship of which I spoke on the Second Stage when I gave reasons in favour of maintaining this principle which exists in present legislation but which has become atrophied because the maximum compensation payable has been £4 10s. 0d—so low that no adult worker has had a wage of such a low level that this has taken effect. All wages have been above the limit in respect of which the £4 10s. 0d compensation is effective.
As I have said, this principle is in the existing legislation and has ceased to operate only because of the neglect of the Government in the past ten years to make any upward change in compensation during a period in which wages and industrial earnings generally have almost doubled. The principle is there and it is one which we should maintain because it is quite evidently and obviously undesirable that a man who is insured and loses his employment should during any period have his income cut back to a small fraction of its original level and that no attempt should be made to give him compensation at some decent proportion of his earnings.
We can understand the desire to bring into the existing code the principle of dependency allowances. This seems to me to be reasonable. It is a start and it is a complicated matter. However, there is no reason whatever for not combining with the introduction of these dependency allowances the principle of wage relationship. I see no reason why the position of workers over any period should be allowed to deteriorate. The maximum benefit now is £4 10s. 0d. That figure, if it were to be brought upward in proportion to the change in industrial earnings since 1956, would need to be almost doubled. The Minister proposes to provide for a single man maximum injury benefit of £5 15s. 0d a week. I realise the Bill contains other provisions in relation to permanent incapacity and there are other provisions, many of them desirable, which we welcome and which should have been introduced long ago. I am concerned now with one particular point which the Minister has evaded so far in the examples he has given of ways in which this Bill improves the present system. Undoubtedly, in respect of individuals the benefits under this Bill are better than the recommendation of the Majority Report in regard to certain individuals. However, we must look at both sides of the case, particularly in relation to injury benefits where the most a single workman can get is £5 15s. 0d per week regardless of his earnings.
That figure represents an increase compared with what the workman now gets. However, it represents only an increase of £1 5s. 0d or barely 25 per cent in a period in which earnings have risen by almost 100 per cent. I do not think this is defensible. I agree that the introduction of dependency allowances is a good thing but I am not 100 per cent satisfied with the method or the detail. However, the Minister has made an honest effort to ensure the protection particularly of families who may be adversely affected by injury to the breadwinner, but the introduction of that principle is no reason for dropping the wage-relationship element in existing legislation. The Minister has endeavoured to excuse his abolition of this desirable principle, running completely contrary to the practice of almost all countries in the world in this respect, on grounds which, to say the least, are inadequate. During the Second Stage, at volume 61, column 335 of the Official Report, he is reported as saying that the wage relationship is desirable. He went on to say that it is not by any means impossible to have it but that there is a certain amount of difficulty attached to it. Then he goes back to the same old refrain: "I should prefer to consider this in the context of the whole of our social welfare code rather than in one isolated instance."
Anybody reading that would think somebody was proposing to introduce a new principle of wage relationship into the social welfare code, whereas the Minister in this Bill is proposing to abolish the wage relationship system in relation to something which is not now part of the code, only because workmen's compensation must be made to fit into the existing social welfare code, no matter who gets hurt, just because a doctrinaire principle must be maintained at all costs. He goes on to say:
... I do not preclude the possibility of wage relation being introduced some future time when it appears to be feasible, working with the amount of money which I decided it would be reasonable to ask the economy to provide...
These references to difficulty and lack of feasibility are unconvincing. I think I have shown, by these amendments, that this change away from wage relationship is not a necessary element in this Bill. There are no insuperable difficulties in maintaining the principle of wage relationship and although it has taken about ten different amendments to maintain this principle in the Bill and although it is quite possible I may have overlooked something or that some of the amendments could be imperfectly drafted— I admit that—I think by introducing these amendments I have shown that this principle can be maintained if the Minister is prepared to consider it.
The Minister, in all he said on this subject in reply to the Second Stage, emphasised all the time that his Bill was much better than what the Majority Report recommended, and that the Majority Report recommendations were in all kinds of ways inadequate. Anybody listening to the debate would have thought, from what he said, that he was giving more all across the board and that the Majority Report recommendations involved very much less. He kept on referring to the £7 a week, which was the maximum proposed by the Majority Report when they considered the matter in 1960 and which they incorporated in their report in 1962. As a member of that Commission I was most conscious of the fact that even since the matter was considered several years had passed. I was also conscious of the fact that with any inflation in the economy —and wages are rising with or without inflation—£7 a week was something which could become very quickly out of date. It was for that reason that in the Addendum I wrote to the Majority Report I specifically mentioned this matter and made my acceptance of this £7 a week conditional on its being—I quote my exact words here:
... regularly modified subsequently in the light of wage changes in the years after 1960 (when this figure was decided upon by the Commission)...
Those are the words I used because I was conscious of the fact that the Commission's report, as it stood, was one which related to a point in time. The Commission's report did not advert to the need to keep the scheme up to date. I was very much afraid that the Government might just simply accept the £7 a week and leave it for another ten years, like the £4 10s.— repeating the Government's performance in respect of the £4 10s. limit. I think I was right in my apprehensions and in specifying that the acceptance of the £7 a week could be favoured only on the basis of its being modified subsequently in the light of increases in wages thereafter —not in the cost of living and not even wages from 1962 onwards, but I specifically said in the light of increases in wages from 1960 onwards.
The Minister, in his reply to the Second Reading, kept on trying to pin me down on this saying that I recommended a maximum of £7 a week. I pointed out repeatedly, at the risk of being ruled out of order for interrupting, that I recommended this on the basis of the year 1960 and its being kept up to date thereafter. Between the year 1960 and the present time, wages in industry have risen by 57½ per cent. Consequently the implementation of my recommendation in the report would involve now a maximum payment of £11 0s. 6d. per week. I shall omit the sixpence hereafter and say £11 a week; that is in respect of legislation being introduced at this point of time. The Minister, in suggesting that I was in favour, at this point of time, or that I visualised myself in 1962 as being in favour of £7 a week, was being, as he knew, less than honest because I had specifically covered this point. The application of the principle which I had inserted in that Addendum would involve now a figure of £11 a week.
I am prepared to accept that the Minister's scheme, which is different in character because of the introduction of the dependency allowances, is better in some respects. He has pointed out that, in extreme cases, an injured man could get £15 or £17 a week in certain circumstances. In that respect this scheme is certainly better but the great bulk of the cases are not cases that require constant attention—of, say, a man with seven children who is permanently incapacitated. In fact, I would be interested to know if there is any such case at the moment anywhere which has this peculiar combination of features which the Minister had to think up in order to arrive at that conclusion. The vast majority of people are simply people getting injury benefit for a certain period. In the minority of cases there is a greater permanent incapacity, which may or may not require constant attention and who may or may not have one or two children, or however many it may be. We are legislating here for all possible cases but that the Minister should confine himself to certain extreme cases is not to treat the House seriously.
The single man getting injury benefit —and injury benefit is what is paid to most people, because most people are not permanently incapacitated — the single man in that position, and in this country unfortunately there are a lot of single men, gets £5 15s. 0d. under the Minister's scheme as against £11 if the recommendation I made in the Majority Report were implemented. This is on the assumption, of course, that the man is earning a high wage. Naturally enough, if a man is earning only £10 a week, the recommendation I made would not give him anything like that. I am talking here of the higher paid, skilled workers. At present wage levels, the semi-skilled workers would earn something like £14 10s. 0d. a week and the skilled worker around £19. The Minister is going to cut those people back to £5 15s. 0d. a week. Under what I propose they would be cut back to £11 per week—twice that figure. The Minister had what I can only call the nerve to throw in my face the ILO recommendation that the compensation should be two-thirds of the wages, when he is providing a sum which might, in many cases, not be one-third, never mind two-thirds. If the Minister were implementing the ILO Convention he would have my full backing and that of this side of the House but what he is proposing is something far below any ILO recommendation in this respect. He is proposing £5 15s. 0d. injury benefit for a single man. I have done a calculation in respect of the skilled worker and how many children he would have to have to get the Minister's benefit. My arithmetical calculation tells me the poor man would have to have 7 children before he would get £11 a week out of the Minister—what the skilled worker on £18 10s. 0d. or £19 a week would get under the proposal in the Majority Report is modified by the Addendum I put on to it in the Commission.
I do not think we can justify, by any standards, cutting back a skilled worker from £19 a week to £5 15s. 0d., which is what the Minister proposes. I do not think we can justify this by talking about other benefits in the Bill. There are other excellent things in the Bill, I admit, but there is no good in having good features in the Bill, such as constant attendance allowances, if at the same time you move backwards from the position you are in at the moment where, until the Government allowed the whole position to lapse, there was a wage relationship principle involving a certain percentage of wages very much higher than what the Minister now proposes for a case like this.
There is a very powerful case in favour of these amendments and nothing the Minister has said has convinced me that this case is not a good one. I should like to ask the Minister, when he replies to the amendment, if he has any difficulty in accepting it and, as far as I can make out from the Second Reading speech the reason he is likely to have difficulty in accepting it is because of the cost involved, I should like the Minister to tell us what that cost would be.
The amendments I have put down are designed specifically to implement the recommendation in my addendum. I have chosen the figure of £18 10s. because that is the figure which, if the 60 per cent principle that was referred to in the Majority Report were applied, would give £11 per week at maximum, which is what the effect of the recommendation would be at this time. That is the basis of the amendments.
In his reply on Second Reading the Minister suggested that the various proposals in the Majority Report, and in what I proposed, would offer such poor benefits that they would not be worth considering. If that is the case they cannot cost much. If, in fact, the cost is so high that the Minister cannot pay it, at least it is clear that the Minister by failing to accept the recommendation of the Majority Report, as modified by the addendum, is cutting back substantially on the benefits which were proposed. The Minister cannot have it both ways. Either what is proposed in the report and in the addendum is something which does or does not cost very much, and if it does not, as the Minister has accepted that it is desirable, and as the difficulties of implementation have been largely overcome in the series of amendments drafted, the Minister should forthwith accept the fact that these amendments are desirable, and accept them.
The principle of wage relationship is accepted widely everywhere else in the world. The Minister told us on Second Reading that he would like to introduce it but that the cost would be far too great. In that case the Minister might have the grace to withdraw his remarks about the inadequacy of what was recommended by the Majority Report and in the addendum. The Minister by refusing to accept this recommendation is depriving the workers of substantial benefits. If it does not cost very much the Minister, having accepted that these amendments are desirable—and the amendments having been drafted to get over the difficulties—should accept them. He must face that dilemma.
I do not think the Minister can get away on Committee Stage with what he tried to get away with on Second Reading—a series of statements about the enormous benefits given in obscure and unlikely cases, ignoring the fact that the great bulk of people on injury benefit are now earning a typical wage of £14 10s. a week and in the case of skilled workers £19 a week. For these people, unless they happen to have very large families, the Minister's proposals are designed to have the effect of reducing them to a very low standard of living if the breadwinner is injured, something which, throughout the world, countries have tried to avoid and something which we in our legislation have always tried to avoid. We have failed to avoid it only because the Minister and the Government allowed this legislation to lapse and refused to modify the £4 10s. limit on the totally spurious grounds that they had to await the report of the Commission. There was no reason whatsoever for not adjusting the £4 10s. limit in line with wages pending the report of the Commission.
I do not understand why that was not done. Normally speaking, any Government are anxious to maintain the level of social welfare benefits in line with wages, and let it be said that this Government have at least minimally done that throughout their period of office. In the Budget of 1965 they did a bit more because they had to face certain pressures in the general election before the Budget. Before those pressures the Government, with a certain lack of imagination, at least kept benefits moving upwards with wages.
I do not understand on what grounds the Government should have allowed the workmen's compensation benefits to stand still for ten years. That is completely contrary to normal Government policy and their excuses were totally spurious. One almost wonders in retrospect whether this was all part of an idea to eliminate wage relationship probably by letting it fall into disuse by failing to modify the £4 10s. limit. Then the Minister could tell us: "There is no such principle in operation now." He would not tell us that that was because of Government neglect.
I do not understand on what grounds the Minister purports to abolish this principle which has existed for so long in our legislation and which is universally in operation elsewhere. In his two readings of the Report the Minister must surely have come to the table on page 304 in which there are two long columns of the countries in which benefits for non-fatal injuries in workmen's compensation are related to wages. He must also have seen the shorter column in which benefits are related to wages, with additional allowances for dependants, a desirable feature which the Minister has introduced into this Bill showing that the combination of the two principles together is quite feasible, as I have shown in the amendments.
The countries which have this desirable combination include Australia, Austria, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Spain and some American states. Most of the other countries simply have wage relationship without dependency allowances. That is the normal practice but these countries and a couple of others have wage relationship with allowances for dependants. What the Minister's attention became riveted upon was the list of countries in which there is flat rate payment related to need, without any regard to wages. When he saw that was a feature in Great Britain and Northern Ireland he could not look any further afield. Those two countries are listed separately for some obscure reason. The fact that those two countries are listed with four States of the United States and with Iceland, may have reinforced his resolution, but it is pretty evident that in this, as in so many other fields, the Minister is not prepared to look further afield than Britain and Northern Ireland and that his highest ambition—if his ambition is even as high as that—is to keep in line with the most backward countries in the world in the field of social welfare. These countries are regarded as behind the rest of the world in the field of social welfare, except for the health services.
That the Minister should be so determined on this is to me quite inexplicable. The amendments I have put down would modify the benefits payable, and the system would be easily workable by the civil servants concerned. I do not see that it would give rise to serious difficulties, or why it could not be operated. It seems to be the one fundamental reason for failing to introduce wage relationship that it is not done in Britain and Northern Ireland. That is conclusive for the Minister. I am mystified by this. It is very puzzling indeed that a Government in Ireland should consider what is done in Britain and Northern Ireland the be-all and the end-all in any sphere of life. That is the attitude of mind which bedevils a great deal of our legislation, which very often is copied word for word from British legislation. We had that recently in the case of the Merchant Shipping Bill. There is not much point in our setting up our own system for dealing with Bills if the Government just point to what someone else has done and simply implement it in a convenient and automatic way.
It would be silly of us to do for ourselves everything that they are doing, but when we are in an area of social or economic legislation where the requirements of this country are clearly different from those of Britain and Northern Ireland, or where it is known to everybody that Britain and Northern Ireland are defective in their legislation and behind other countries, that any Government here should be unprepared to look further afield and consider that the only thing that requires to be done is to bring it into line with Britain and Northern Ireland —this is inexplicable to me. I do not see how a Minister of an Irish Government can justify this attitude, and it seems to me that the Minister's Party have moved a long way from certain principles they held here 30 years ago when this is their idea of legislation. That they should do this at a time when they are telling everybody that we are moving closer to Europe and they are seeking to bring legislation into line with Europe and abolish the differences, when even Britain is moving away from the flat rate system, shows an extreme lack of imagination or interest in this subject or a lack of social conscience. That it should be suggested that a skilled worker injured in his job should have his standard of living cut by over two-thirds to not more than a quarter of his ordinary level to bring us into line with Britain when it is open to us to maintain the wage relationship principle is something which the Minister has failed so far to justify.
I do not think I need say any more about it. I think the case is fully made. The amendments are there, and the Minister, if he is prepared to accept them, will have the backing of this side of the House in justifying the additional expenditure involved. Possibly it might have been better if the Minister had in the first instance worked out a proper scheme of wage relation benefits and flat rate benefits which would have added up to something similar to what is involved in this. It might have been better in not introducing a sudden increase in the burden on the economy, but I do not think that the extra cost involved in adding this wage relation benefit to the flat rate scheme is going to break this country or break the employers. It is certainly going to be an additional burden, and there will be some groans, but it is not going to have a fundamental effect. We must wait to hear what the Minister tells us about the cost of this proposal. I hope that he will not tell us that his Department is incapable of calculating the cost or that we could not have a scheme because the Department could not work out what it cost, but that is unlikely. He can tell us what it will cost and whether he thinks that it can be afforded or not. If he thinks it can be afforded, as I think, even if it goes beyond what is proposed hitherto, he will have the support of Fine Gael and, I am sure, of the Labour Party in justifying this additional burden on employers on the grounds of social justice.
I do not think he need fear that he will be attacked on any platform for making such a change. He will have the support of all if he does so. Now he has been shown how this can be done by the introduction of these amendments I hope that he will agree to accept this principle which is so universally adopted throughout the world, has been in operation so long, is so important to social justice and can be so easily maintained, and which we in this legislative assembly seek in accordance with the public interest.
