asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce whether he contemplates any modification of the existing regulations in connection with claims for unemployment insurance benefit that preclude insured contributors holding or living with other members of their family on small patches of land from receiving benefit or obtaining a refund of their contributions.
CEISTEANNA—QUESTIONS. ORAL ANSWERS. - UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE BENEFITS.
It is an entire mistake to suppose that any such regulations exist or ever did exist. A person living on a small holding of land does not have to satisfy any different conditions whatever than any other person. Every claim from every kind of insured contributor is considered on its own facts. Each claimant must, under the Acts, prove that he is not following an occupation from which he derives any remuneration or profit. He must also prove that he is available for work, that is to say not otherwise engaged, and finally that he is unable to obtain suitable employment. It will be realised that claimants living or working on the land at the time they claim benefit may be unable to satisfy one or more of these conditions. But in evidence of the fact that as a class such claimants are not precluded from obtaining benefit I will quote the figures for the year ending 1st July, 1927. Two thousand five hundred and ninety-five landholders or persons living with landholders claimed benefit; 1,968 such claims were allowed, 627 disallowed. In other words 75 per cent. of claimants in the class, erroneously assumed in the question to be precluded from benefit, in fact received it. I hope this statement will serve finally to correct the mistaken impression that any special conditions are applied to landholders. That impression arises from the fact that it is only cases of disallowance which are reported to Deputies, who consequently do not realise that there are three cases of allowance for every one of disallowance. As to a refund of contributions I have no power to refund, nor is there any case for refunding contributions which a worker pays while in insurable employment, simply because at some particular——
Mr. MURPHY
Is the Minister aware that numerous complaints have been addressed to his Department from several Deputies, including myself, dealing with the cases of people who never worked on the land but who live with people on a small piece of land, and that invariably cases of that kind are turned down?
I am quite aware many complaints have been made. I am prepared to accept from the Deputy that all the cases he has sent in have been turned down.
Mr. MURPHY
Every single one of them.
I accept that. I have asked Deputies to put down for discussion on some evening a motion giving me particulars of cases about which they complain, so that we may have definitely brought to light actual cases of hardship where the value of the holding and the industrial history of the applicants are brought into consideration. I have not been able to get Deputies to do that.
Mr. MURPHY
I hope to be able to oblige the Minister shortly.