At the present moment I am not concerned with future benefits, but I am concerned with the benefits which the people are entitled to and are not receiving. There is no question but that, throughout the country, we have complaints in regard to undue delay in dealing with the claims of the poor people. We have claims awaiting six or seven weeks, and, in the meantime, those people have to receive home assistance. We find the most frivolous excuses from Dublin, such as a wrong number being sent up by an agent, instead of the officials dealing with the proper cases that arise.
I have three cases in mind. One is the case of a man who had been in receipt of disablement benefit for two years. The superintendent under the unification scheme was the superintendent under the original insurance scheme. The moment it came under the Local Government Department, the same superintendent reported that this man's illness was a result of an accident. This man himself proved by medical evidence, by the evidence of surgeons in Dublin, that his illness was in no way the result of an accident. The Department was not concerned. They cut off the man's benefit and left him at the mercy of the local home assistance people. That poor man had no money to fight his case. If the insurance people had any doubt that it was the result of an accident, their proper procedure would have been to continue the payment of the benefit and take proceedings in the court against the man's employers. Instead of that they left the poor man in bed for two years without giving him any assistance.
There was another case where the Unified Society held that the poor man was 70 years of age. Evidence was submitted to them that he was not 70 years. They refused to accept that evidence. After the lapse of four or five weeks that evidence was supplemented by his birth certificate, which proved that the man was right. But, up to Christmas I found that the man had not received his benefit and was still on home help. We got word that there was some mistake, not in any certificate that had been issued, but we got proof that the certificate had been sent to the local agent 20 miles out of his area. That had been sent from the Health Office in Dublin; it went to the wrong agent. Then, in that case, a second certificate had to be procured. We have other cases where on the most frivolous pretexts men were turned down and placed as a burden on home help and on the local authorities.
Then again, we have in this society full-time agents who are paid the miserable wage of 30/- to 40/- a week. I ask the Minister to contrast the payments to these poor agents who have to travel long distances around the country with the treatment that is given to a member of the Committee of Management who only attends once a week. There is no question in that case of cutting down the remuneration. You have blue lights, green lights and red lights in the office. I want the Minister to see that there will not be so much of this red-tape in future, and that it will not be a question of red light, green light or blue light, but that the man will get benefit when he has presented a proper claim. I have submitted several cases where men have been entitled to benefit, but have not got it.
I can well understand there being some excuse in the case of a small society. We understood that once the business was centralised in Dublin that particular care was to be taken that the people in the rural areas would be attended to. Instead of that, these people have been made wait, and where they do receive benefit sometimes they do not get it for a month. I have definite information that one man who had been in receipt of benefit of 7/6 a week since the Unified Society was set up, has been cut down now to 1/6. The sooner the Committee of Management is changed the better. It should not be a case of one man going down once a week, and for that one day's attendance he gets better pay and better treatment than the poor agent who has to go through rain and storm around the country collecting money.
If the thing is to be made a success there must be a satisfied staff. A man cannot take a real interest in his work when he is only getting £2 a week, while he sees thousands spent in Dublin in connection with the management. We were assured that there were to be increased benefits once the Unified Society was set up and that there were to be no further complaints from the insured people. I can only say that in my ten or 12 years' experience on public boards I never heard so many complaints as we have at present about the delays in the payment of benefit. I am not blaming the agents. They send their reports here to Dublin, but there does not seem to be any co-ordination in the system. With the number of red lights and green lights they have one would imagine that it was into an Indian prince's chambers one was going, rather than into an insurance office. Instead of spending money on tomfoolery the money should be spent in giving benefit to the people.
