Before I call on Senator Ryan I want to extend a very warm welcome to the Minister for Social Welfare on his first visit as Minister to the Seanad. I congratulate him on his appointment and wish him every good luck.
Adjournment Matter. - Eligibility for Social Welfare Payments.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
May I join with you and add, as one Kildare man to another, that I compliment this Kildare man on his promotion and wish him well. However, I hope to make life as troublesome and difficult as possible for him on certain issues. He deserves his promotion; he got it the hard way, no doubt the long and painful way. I wish him well. I wish him success and hope the imagination he has shown so often will be applied to the issues with which he now has to deal.
There are certain things in life that are done so often they become almost a ritual and they are always justified by simply saying that is the way it was always done. We have set phrases, procedures and policies. This House is riddled with them and legislation is full of such phrases. As one who has had an interest in legislation throughout my ten or 11 years in this House, I know the Minister will say the advice we got is that that is the way this legislation is written.
This afternoon we are dealing with a classic example of this. I want to raise with the Minister his Department's interpretation of the words that recipients of unemployment assistance or benefit be genuinely seeking work. I would like the Minister to discuss this issue seriously and not to read to us what he said in the Dáil because I am going to read it into the record to pre-empt that approach. I know he did not say anything about "the good life", that was a gloss enterprising people in the media put on it. There is no good life on the dole. Nobody can live "the good life" on what we pay people on the dole. This is an opportunity to address certain fundamental questions, and I will come back to that.
The facts are that the law says that to qualify for unemployment assistance or unemployment benefit people must be genuinely seeking work and available for work. In the specific case that generated a bit of controversy known as the west Cork happies controversy the Minister replied to Deputy Connaughton in the Dáil on 19 February 1992 and reiterated what we all know to be the legal position. He specifically said, and I quote from column 2494 of the Official Report:
...claimants are required to make reasonable efforts to make themselves available for and seek work for which they are qualified by reference to their skills, education and previous work experience.
I know from a succession of encounters with a variety of Ministers for Social Welfare that that is the position.
Let me specifically refer to the controversy about people living in remote locations. It is stated at column 2494 of 19 February 1992 that:
...certain claimants with considerable levels of education and work experience are opting to transfer residence often from urban to remote rural areas, where the opportunities for them to obtain employment for which they are best qualified are very poor.
Moving from a more likely area to a less likely area of employment, having regard to the individual's background, has always been one of the considerations in relation to the question of a person's availability for work.
That is the Minister's position and I confirm that there is no reference to "the good life" in it. That is about the only positive thing one could say about this. This is not just this Minister's position, and I do not have a particular row with this Minister, but I have a row with the way his Department work. Certain practices have developed and, in the next couple of weeks I will be publishing a 40 page report on the views from the centres for the unemployed around the country on what the Department are doing to unemployed people.
My experience is that the Department of Social Welfare pick on people week after week. They look for meaningless ways to make life difficult for them. They demand, as the Minister said, that people prove they are genuinely seeking work, but they also demand proof of idleness so that people are available for work. You cannot be other than idle without formal approval from the Department of Social Welfare. You cannot get involved in education, voluntary work or anything else without their permission. You have to prove two things, here there is a slight contradiction, as people who are unemployed will tell you. On the one hand, you have to prove you are genuinely seeking work and on the other you have to prove that you are available for work by being idle. I know people who have run into this catch 22 because when the inspector came to see if they were living where they claimed he asked: why are you at home? Why are you not out looking for work? If they are out, they are told they are not entitled to unemployment assistance because they were not at home when the inspector called and he does not know if the claim is legitimate. That is a classic catch 22. It is not a universal practice; there are a series of sub-practices.
The story from all around the country is that this is used as a method of harassment. There is a cyclical pattern and I have evidence from all around the country to that effect. People usually sign on, answer questions, go through a process and then, to their own astonishment, they are disqualified. I had a letter from a man who had worked for 37 years and was told after three months on the dole that he was disqualified as he was not doing enough to look for work. He got back the dole on appeal, but there was nothing on his record to suggest that he was not keen to work. He had worked for 37 years — from 15 to 52 years of age.
People are usually told they are "not doing enough", but "enough" is never defined. For instance, you cannot write letters to box numbers. The Department of Social Welfare say that does not prove you are looking for work. You can possible extract letters from increasingly reluctant employers to say Mr. or Mrs. X applied for a job but they have no work for them. Mr. or Mrs. X must prove they went an acceptable distance looking for work. There is many of these tricks used by the Department: not travelling distances may be a problem; looking for too limited a range of options may be a problem etc. I know of people who worked in a specific area who were disqualified because they kept looking for work in an area related to that they had worked in.
What we need from this Department, once and for all, is a rational basis for the requirement of "availability for work and genuinely seeking work". The problem is that in a country where work is the scarcest commodity of all, there is no rational basis for this requirement. This is where the Minister's reply in the Dáil becomes, to say the least, somewhat meaningless because he talks about a more likely area of work. The truth is that the rate of unemployment does not vary very much around the country and therefore there are no likely areas of employment. Therefore, it is meaningless to tell people they are more likely to get a job in one area than another. In this benighted society, there are surplus skills in every area for which jobs are available.
The whole problem is that this concept is meaningless. I have a very simple way of testing whether people are available for and genuinely seeking work. It is very simple and I will talk about it later. What I would like to ask the Minister is why it is that whenever a little group put their head above the surface his Department target them? There was a big hassle about travellers abusing the dole. Suddenly they were targeted for 11.30 a.m. on Thursday which was as good as a white star on their shoulder, to brand them around the country as travellers. Now it is the hippies in west Cork, people's social disapproval is generated and the Department of Social Welfare move in and pick on them. The tragedy is that it will happen to one group after another. The unfortunate people in UMP some of whom have worked for 20, 30 or 40 years were suddenly told yesterday they no longer had a job. I can guarantee to this House that inside three months some of those people in some of those places will have somebody in the Department of Social Welfare telling them they are disqualified from benefit because they are not doing enough to look for work. When they ask what they should do, they will simply be told they are not doing enough and when they appeal they will simply be told they are still not doing enough. Enough will not be defined, enough will not be written down. The Minister will say, as his predecessor said, that Department officials have guidelines to make sure they treat people properly but he will, presumably as his predecessor did, refuse to publish the guidelines, they were confidential documents. Those at the receiving end of that will not know the guidelines under which they are being judged. It is so extraordinarily cruel and unfair. If these regulations applied in our society 25 years ago when something close to full employment existed, one could understand what they meant. People who did not work then could be pressured. In case the Minister has forgotten, we have almost 300,000 unemployed in this country. One in five of the workforce is out of work. All the pressure, all the schemes, all the arm twisting, all the intimidation of the Department of Social Welfare and of the Department of Labour have failed to deter people from signing on. That is because there is no work available. There are so many contradictions. The Department of Labour says schemes are not compulsory while the Department of Social Welfare say if you refuse the scheme your dole payments will be discontinued but none of that has dented the numbers because there is no work available. Is it not time that the reality was addressed? There is no work available and to send people on a meaningless Kafkaésque pursuit of a commodity that does not exist is nothing more than institutionalised cruelty. It is not the fault of this Minister but rather of the system. The Minister as I have often said before, has the capacity to think independently and to act independently, qualities he has always shown. For the employed, instead of being perceived as their persecutor, he could become liberator. I am talking about the liberation of 300,000 people from a system which is cruel, degrading and soul destroying.
In conclusion, I would like to tell the Minister the simple way to determine whether people are available for and genuinely seeking work. All you have to do is offer them a job and then you will know whether they are available for and genuinely seeking work. You say "here is a job paying a reasonable wage, relevant to your skills, and if you do not take it you are obviously neither available for nor seeking work." If that cannot be done let us not pursue any longer this meaningless ritual of systematic humiliation of the largest minority in our society.
I thank you, a Leas-Chathaoirligh and Brendan Ryan for your good wishes. Though Senator Ryan portrays himself as a Cork man he is a lily white, born and bred. In fact if I may say politically he is bred in the purple or bred black tie in Kildare terms. Such people usually come back to where they started from.
There is no sign of that yet.
I am interested in what Senator Ryan and I will try to deal later with some of the issues he raised. He raised many interesting points regarding the whole system of signing on. I hope in my time in the Department of Social Welfare to be able to announce initiatives in that regard. It is bad enough and degrading enough not to have a job and to be depending on State benefits without it being made any more difficult.
I want to clarify some matters in relation to the question raised by Senator Ryan. As I have already stated publicly there is no change in the way my Department's officials determine the requirement that a person be available for and be genuinely seeking work as a condition for continued receipt of their unemployment payments.
Entitlement to unemployment payments has always been linked to participation in the labour market and the various statutory conditions outlined in the legislation have been inserted with this in mind.
The conditions of entitlement are that an applicant must be capable of work, be available for work and be genuinely seeking work. These conditions must be satisfied by all claimants for unemployment payments irrespective of where they reside. The ongoing entitlement of claimants is also reviewed to determine whether they continue to satisfy these conditions.
Entitlement to social welfare including unemployment payments is determined by deciding and appeals officers appointed by me as Minister under the authority of the Social Welfare Acts. The legislation also provides that these officers are completely independent in the discharge of their duties and are not subject to ministerial direction in relation to any type or category of claimant.
In regard to the criteria of availability and genuinely seeking work these are broadly: the extent to which a claimant has made efforts to obtain employment since becoming unemployed; the type of work the claimant is seeking and the reasons for any restrictions the claimant may be placing on the kind, place and hours of work sought. In this context a change of residence would be evaluated to assess whether it resulted in a restriction on the type of work available to the person, having regard to their level of education and work experience. This evaluation also takes account of domestic or other commitments or circumstances which might have influenced the change of residence.
Proof of compliance with the statutory conditions must be presented to a deciding officer. Whether a person fulfills these statutory criteria is obviously something that can only be determined by reference to each individual case.
Moving from a more likely to a less likely area of employment has always been a relevant criterion for consideration in relation to the availability and genuinely seeking work conditions. It is not new.
Recent comment in the media and by public representatives has focused on two particular groups, persons, some from abroad, who have moved into areas of west Cork and other western seaboard locations, many of whom in the view of local residents and public representatives are not seriously seeking employment in keeping with their skills and previous work experience and, secondly, residents of disadvantaged city areas in Dublin and Cork, many of whom were unemployed, who have moved to villages in rural areas, again, principally in the west, in search of a better family environment and possible enhanced job opportunities.
In the case of the first group most attention has focused on reviews in one specific area in west Cork where some 236 people were interviewed within the last nine months as part of the ongoing review of entitlements conducted by my Department. The majority interviewed were not local residents of the area nor were they what might be regarded as settled people who moved to the area to work. Instead many had moved into the area to live what might be termed an alternative life style, indeed many were of no fixed abode.
The result of these reviews was that the majority continued to receive their payments without interruption having satisfied the statutory conditions. It is vital that this fact be not overlooked as it is clear evidence of how the system works. Eighteen of those investigated signed off immediately and another 59 were disallowed on the grounds of failure to satisfy the statutory conditions. Twen-ty-one of those disallowed appealed the disallowances and were granted oral hearings. Seven were successful in their appeal. Fourteen lost their appeal, including five who did not attend their appeal hearing.
Following the publicity given to these cases, particular concern and raised regarding the position of those who wish to move from disadvantaged urban areas to rural locations. These people are moving residence for very positive reasons and I do not have any fears that their entitlement to social welfare will be prejudiced by their desires to better themselves or to contribute to the renewal of rural life.
I am sure that Senator Ryan and others will agree that it is unacceptable that those who seek to avoid participation in the labour market should be supported by the State. If they wish to opt out of the normal lifestyle, that is their right but to be paid unemployment assistance they must fulfil the same requirements as everybody else. Likewise, I am sure that this House will join with me in welcoming the initiative of those who seek to resettle some of our rural communities who have been revaged by emigration. What they are doing is for the good of all, both urban and rural dwellers. I look forward to seeing the report that Senator Ryan is compiling on unemployment centres. I am sure he will send me a copy.
Autographed.
I should say also that for the past year the Department have been outlining the reasons persons have been struck off. Therefore, even though the guidelines were not published in the past, the practice now is that in cases where it has been determined that a person is not available for work, to give the reasons the deciding officer came to that decision. As I said earlier, I hope to be in a position in the coming months, if I am still in the Department of Social Welfare, to announce some initiatives to make the system less degrading for the unemployed, and to ensure they will not have to go through this rigmarole, and thus creating a better, more streamlined and more humane system.
The Seanad adjourned at 4.35 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 25 March 1992.