I move amendment No. 23 :—
To insert at the end of the section the following new sub-section :—
(3) Where an order is made under this section prohibiting the employment in licensed premises of a person suffering from disease, the Minister shall at the same time make a further order specifying that all persons whose employment is prohibited under this section shall be paid by the Bacon Marketing Board during the period of the currency of the first-mentioned order a weekly sum equivalent to the wages and other emoluments such person would be entitled to receive if no such order were in force.
Sub-section (1) reads—
The Minister may, after consultation with the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, by order make regulations prohibiting the employment in licensed premises of persons suffering from diseases specified in such regulations and contact cases and known carriers of diseases specified in such regulations until such persons, contact cases and known carriers have been certified by a duly qualified medical practitioner as free from such diseases.
Take the case of a man employed on licensed premises where the production of food for human consumption is being carried out. He happens to contract eczema or some disease of that kind and there is a certificate to that effect from the medical officer of health. The man loses his employment, but no provision is made to pay him his wages during his period of enforced idleness. I fear that he would not be entitled to get National Health Insurance benefit because he is not physically ill in the ordinarily accepted sense of the word. The man is fit to work, but owing to the nature of the disease he is suffering from he cannot be employed on licensed premises where the production of food for human consumption is being carried on. Neither would he be entitled, I think, to unemployment assistance. I am suggesting in this amendment that provision should be made to pay him his wages during the period of his enforced suspension.