Vol. 64 No. 10
I move:
That the Social Welfare (Insurance Inclusions and Exclusions) Regulations, 1968, proposed to be made by the Minister for Social Welfare and laid in draft, sanctioned by the Minister for Finance, before Seanad Éireann on the 31st day of January, 1968, under sub-section (6) of Section 4 of the Social Welfare Act, 1952, be approved.
The purpose of these regulations is to bring the employment of managers of employment offices within the scope of the social insurance scheme. Hitherto the employment was not insurable under the Social Welfare Acts not being under a contract of service. Neither was it regarded as employment in the Civil Service which in itself would have made it insurable whether under a contract of service or not. The method being adopted to secure this position is to include the employment among those specified as insurable in Part I of the First Schedule to the Social Welfare Act, 1952.
The question of the insurability of the employment of managers was raised by their Association at a conciliation council comprising representatives of the Association and representatives of the Department of Labour. The agreed recommendation of that council is that the employment be brought within the scope of the social insurance scheme. Since managers are not pensionable and have no sick pay privileges, I consider that they should be fully insurable under the Acts.
Article 3 of the regulations would make all employment as manager insurable. Where, however, the employment is of a subsidiary nature or the manager is not mainly dependent on the remuneration for his livelihood it is proposed to exclude it from the effect of Article 3. This is being achieved by Article 4 of the draft regulations which adds this type of employment to the list of employments specified in Part II of the First Schedule to the Act as being excepted from insurance.
I recommend the resolution for the approval of Seanad Éireann.
I think there will be general agreement with this proposal and it is not a matter which necessitates lengthy debate in the House. There seems to be agreement among all those concerned that they be included within the scheme and, accordingly, the Minister and the House will facilitate them.
The only point that arises with regard to inclusions and exclusions of this type is that this development in our social welfare regulations and schemes with the inclusion of people such as the managers of employment offices and the like seems to indicate more and more the necessity that our whole social welfare system should be revised in such a way that both contributions and benefits should be wage-related.
Much of the difficulty of whether to include or exclude certain persons is increased by flat-rate contributions and flat-rate benefits. I merely make this comment in passing on this particular minor change because I think it highlights the more fundamental change desirable in our social welfare legislation.
I welcome this change. I should like the Minister in his reply to tell us approximately the number involved in this and give a general idea as to the salary and rates paid. I presume these people would not be affected by the £1,200 which operates to the exclusion of people from the full social welfare benefits. I do not know whether it would be fair in such a matter as this to ask the Minister if he has made any progress in his examination of the social welfare arrangements, if that is the proper expression, in this country. I think they are being widened progressively.
For many years now the introduction of widows' and orphans' benefits, occupational injuries and this sort of thing, the increase in contributions and the increase in benefits, would make it appear to be necessary to take a fresh look at our situation here. The thinking originally was that these were very minimum benefits provided only for the lower-paid. I should like to see a situation included whereby benefits and contributions would be wage related and as well that we would take another look at the exclusion of such a large section of our contributors from the obligation contributions and the cover which is necessary.
I think the situation is that we largely inherited the arrangements from Britain — the employment benefit and certainly the national health. These have been merged in the years into social welfare generally. In principle, we ought to take a look at whether large sectors are excluded from social welfare and I think it would be desirable that we took a fresh look at the situation here.
There are many anomalies in the present situation. This is probably not the time to go into detail on those but perhaps the Minister might give an indication in his reply whether any progress has been made in looking at that and in taking a fresh look at the whole situation and bringing the general arrangements in regard to social welfare more up-to-date.
There are two points that occur to me on this particular motion. The first is that when one receives this kind of document— in fact, one does not get it, it is laid in draft on the table — it is very difficult for ordinary Senators like myself who do not possess a detailed knowledge of the Statutory Rules and Orders under the Social Welfare Acts to understand what all this is about. It would be a good practice on the part of the Minister for Social Welfare and every other Minister in cases of this kind to give some idea in advance as to what the position is.
The second point arises out of Statutory Instruments of this kind and, indeed, in relation to a good deal of legislation. I would invite the House to have a look at this mumbo-jumbo produced as a piece of legislation by the Minister's Department. I object, and I continue to object, to wording of this kind:
These Regulations may be cited as the Social Welfare (Insurance Inclusions and Exclusions) Regulations, 1968.
I do not see any reason why we cannot, particularly with our Social Welfare Regulations, begin at the beginning and call them 1, 2, 3, 4, and refer to them in that way saying "this is under Regulation 57" instead of stating "(Inclusions and Exclusions) Regulations, 1968".
In modern times, when we are concerned with streamlining things, this is an extraordinary piece of draftsmanship. We have in sub-paragraph (2):
The Social Welfare (Insurance Inclusions and Exclusions) Regulations, 1952 (S.I. No. 373 of 1952) and these Regulations shall be construed as one and may be cited together as the Social Welfare (Insurance Inclusions and Exclusions) Regulations, 1952 and 1968.
That to my mind is cod and there is no other name you can put on it on an Ash Wednesday or on any other day of the year.
Put ashes on it.
Ash Wednesday might well be a day on which the Government ought to repent, especially considering what is going on in the other House.
There is another matter to which I should like to call the attention of the Minister. If we are going to use English we ought to use it properly. I am sorry to say that the Minister, for whom we all have a genuine admiration, is being dropped by the Government and employed as the manager of an employment exchange. It says: "Employment by the Minister for Labour as manager of an employment exchange." I would have thought that if one were drafting it properly one would have said "Employment as manager of an employment exchange by the Minister for Labour" or "under contract with the Minister for Labour". The present regulations seem to suggest that it is the Minister for Labour who is being employed as manager of an employment office.
I am sure that these observations will carry very little weight with the Minister, because we have been making observations of this kind for quite some time in this House and they have been regarded as the observations of persons who are cranky and difficult. Might I say that this is like the Social Welfare (Occupational Injuries) Act, 1967. Everybody refers to it now simply as the Occupational Injuries Act, 1967. We ought to drop that kind of thing. The Department of Industry and Commerce have been giving a very good example in this respect, and we have had the Transport Act, 1958, the Transport Act, 1963, and the Transport Act, 1965, which are all amendments of the parent Transport Act of 1950. I do not see any reason why we should not follow that example, though even that Department have given us this evening a Bill called the Industrial Grants (Amendment) Bill, 1967, when they could well have left it the Industrial Grants Bill. I hope that the Minister might have a word with those concerned and try to bring some kind of order into these regulations so that people can call them by their appropriate names.
I just want to raise a few questions. I wonder, if these regulations are adopted, will we have a situation where the social welfare stamps are automatically stamped by the Minister for Social Welfare on behalf of the people who come within these regulations or will they themselves be required to make a contribution towards the cost of the social welfare stamp. I know that this will refer to persons who are working more than 18 hours per contribution week at these exchange offices. Any of us who are familiar with these offices can realise that these exchange managers, especially in the smaller towns, would not be getting anything like £1,200 a year. Indeed, they would be getting a lot less. I think that the Minister might indicate for the benefit of the Seanad what the salary scale is in relation to these managers whom we are discussing now. I think that it is true to say that in many cases the managers concerned also provide the premises in which they work, and they are paid, of course, for the service they give as manager of the local exchange. This proposal now will bring a good deal of benefits to the managers concerned. They will be able to qualify for a number of the social welfare schemes which the holding of a social welfare stamp will provide for them. I assume, for instance, that they might possibly benefit under the Redundancy Act from this proposed regulation.
That is rather likely. We will, of course, always have unemployment with the present Government at any rate.
There has been some annoyance caused by arrangements made relating to the issue of payments to old age pensioners and others where local exchanges close down and they have to deal directly with the Department. In many cases those people have been left to starve down in their villages because the Department does not understand the circumstances in which they are living, and because those persons do not complete the form properly or promptly there is a delay in the issue of payments to them.
I have old age pensioners in mind where there was a closing down of services in various localities. I assume it is possible, too, that under the modern system of automation there may be employment exchanges closed down and the services will be given through the post office or just by correspondence with the Department of Social Welfare. Generally speaking, it would be helpful if the Minister could give us even briefly the skeleton of the set-up so far as the majority of the exchanges are concerned.
I know that we are not discussing the big city exchanges here or in Cork, Galway or Limerick, where we realise the kind of situation that exists. But there are scores of employment exchanges all over the country and it would be fair at this stage to ask the Minister to give us a picture of the situation in those areas and the average earnings of the managers. I assume that the salaries or earnings of those people are related somehow to the population of the area which the particular exchange serves. It would be useful to know at this stage what allowance is made to the employment exchange managers in those smaller areas so that we would have some idea of the real value of the benefits which it is proposed to give by these new regulations.
I did not anticipate that the prescribed form of this motion would end up with a discussion of the whole administration of the social welfare code, but I will endeavour to cover some of the points mentioned. This motion merely deals with one specific point, and that is the extension of the scheme of social insurance to one category who heretofore did not benefit, namely, the managers of employment exchanges. It has already been agreed with their own association and the consultative council that it should be done. It is open to any category of persons to apply if at any time they think they have a claim and it will be considered in the same way. As regards the remuneration of these people it varies from one to another. They come under not my Department but the Department of Labour and there may be cases where they would be over the remuneration limit and not covered for that reason, but most of them would qualify.
There is also the case of those who look upon being managers of exchanges as merely a sideline and who have other work which would be regarded as their main source of livelihood and they might not be insurable, as I have stated at the outset. Those of them who are insurable will be qualified for all the benefits persons ordinarily insurable would be entitled to, including occupational injuries and redundancy.
The question raised of pay-related benefits is something I have been examining in recent times in relation to what it might be possible to do here and what is being done in other countries, particularly in the six EEC countries. One finds from the start that there is a tremendous variety of ways of meeting this in various places and it is done in different ways. In Britain as we know they have overcome this problem by having supplementary benefits — just a basic rate and then supplementary benefits in which people can participate in relation to the amount by which their remuneration exceeds the basic figure. Senator O'Quigley said the legal change is something all laymen will agree with.
He is not a layman.
The legal profession were never too anxious to have this jargon changed. I always felt they derived their livelihood from trying to sort out all brackets and the difficult terms for the layman who pays to have it done for him. I am all in favour of simplifying the legal jargon. For us, the legal adviser in the Department compiles the draft and he ensures that it is watertight so that it will not be misinterpreted. That applies to all legislation as we know it. I cannot see anything wrong with having an explanatory leaflet circulated with the more complicated motions or Bills but not with a motion of this kind. I do not think it is necessary because, first of all, it has been dealt with in the Dáil and, secondly, it is very easy to ascertain what it is all about — it applies to a simple matter.
I was asked whether I had made any progress with the examination in depth of the social welfare code. I have but I am reluctant to publish anything in the form of a White Paper which would first of all give the impression that we were immediately about to adopt a comprehensive scheme and put it into effect at a particular time. I rather prefer to have a blueprint and, as time goes on, to implement it as necessary and in an order of priority. It is not correct to say that there are a great many anomalies in the code. There are a few. It is true that the system has grown up but by comparison with any other country we have reasonably good cover. The cover extends very well. The rates may be criticised in relation to other countries but in the context of our national income or our gross national product, whichever you prefer, we are paying a big amount in social welfare and in social assistance — more than £65 million in the current year.
One of the things people do not always seem to appreciate when making comparisons with highly industrialised countries is that 43 per cent of our payments are on the social assistance side, entirely a charge on the Exchequer. The remaining 57 per cent is on the social insurance side, paid to those who contribute to the various schemes, with the Exchequer paying approximately one-third. With a very high percentage of our payments on the social assistance side, it is not always easy to have comprehensive schemes on the social insurance side that would take in all the sections we should like to take in. We might examine how far it may be possible to extend the social insurance schemes from the point of view of which other sections we might seek to contribute.
These are matters in which we have made a good deal of progress. Many of them have been examined already, some of them in relation to the drafting or revision of legislation, and I am endeavouring to compile an examination of them in a broader and more comprehensive manner but not for the purpose merely of issuing a White Paper to be adopted as a comprehensive social welfare policy or scheme but to set out the priorities in relation to any extensions or improvements in the schemes. We are always concerned, as time goes on, with the problem of increasing rates under existing schemes.
I do not think there is anything else I am called on to reply to. I think I have referred to most of the points which were raised by Senators, relevantly or irrelevantly. Of course, on an occasion such as this I am not prepared to cover the entire field of social welfare. Another opportunity will arise for that.
