I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. The purpose of the Bill is to improve the position of persons who come within the scope of the Unemployment Assistance Act, 1933, in certain respects. Provision is made in Sections 5, 6 and 7 to establish machinery which enables applicants who are dissatisfied with the valuation of their means by the Unemployment Assistance Officers to have their appeals considered and determined expeditiously. Section 3 seeks to provide that two periods of unemployment of not less than six days each separated by an interval of not more than six weeks shall be treated as a continuous period of unemployment.
Sections 9 and 10 are designed to enable unemployed persons entitled both to unemployment benefit under the Insurance Act and to unemployment assistance under the Unemployment Assistance Act, to choose which of these benefits they will claim. Section 4 is designed to secure the inclusion as dependents of their parents of invalid sons and daughters over 18 years of age. Section 8 seeks to ensure that in the event of any new area becoming an urban area, the recipients of unemployment assistance who reside therein will continue to receive assistance at the higher rate appropriate to the area. Section 11 is designed to secure the distribution of the unemployment assistance more equally between applicants according to their circumstances. Certain other minor provisions are made whereby persons who obtain unemployment assistance by the deliberate making of false and misleading statements or concealing facts, will not be permitted to retain such assistance; there is also provision whereby public assistance authorities can, in certain circumstances, recover excess relief paid by them.
Taking these matters in the order in which I mentioned them, I wish further to state as regards the expeditions determination of appeals that some 35,000 persons who were dissatisfied with the decisions given in their cases have appealed to the Unemployment Appeals Committee, which is the Tribunal set up under the Act for deciding finally questions of that kind. For the most part those applicants were dissatisfied with the valuation of their means. By exercising their direct right of appeal to the Unemployment Appeals Committee they produced a volume of appeals so great that the Committee could not consider and determinne them in any reasonable time. As the Dáil was informed temporary arrangements were made whereby the cases of these applicants are being re-examined by the unemployment assistance officers, and wherever possible, revised to the advantage of the applicants.
It is necessary to establish permanent machinery by which the appeals can be considered and determined without delay. The tribunals for determining these appeals must be capable of expansion in proportion to the volume of the appeals. Applicants who are dissatisfied with the unemployment assistance officers' decision have at present, as I stated, a statutory right of appeal to the Unemployment Appeals Committee. It is proposed in the Bill to retain to applicants this statutory right of appeal but to make the appeal lie to an appeals officer rather than direct to the Unemployment Appeals Committee. The appeals officers will be highly specialised officers, and the number to be appointed will be determined by the number of appeals to be dealt with. The necessary number of officers to enable these appeals to be disposed of expeditiously will be appointed. The appeals officer may decide the appeal himself or refer it to the Unemployment Appeals Committee for decision. If he decides it himself he may give permission to the applicant to bring his case by a further appeal to the Appeals Committee. But without such permission the appeals officer's decision will be final.
The rights of the applicants are, therefore, preserved. The appeals can be determined by a system sufficiently elastic to expand or contract according to the volume of appeals. But the Unemployment Appeals Committee will govern the decision of the appeals officers. The decisions to be given by the appeals officers who will be appointed under the Bill will be ruled by the decisions given by the Unemployment Appeals Committee or by any future decision which may be given by that body.
With regard to the changes proposed to be effected by Section 3 the position under the Act at present is that an applicant for unemployment assistance must prove a fresh waiting week, during which no unemployment assistance is payable, on every occasion upon which he obtains more than two days' work. That rule has operated so as to deter applicants who are in a position to obtain short periods of employment from taking such employment. It is proposed to alter the rule so that it will be possible for recipients of unemployment assistance to take employment lasting as long as six weeks without suffering loss of unemployment assistance for any days other than the days upon which they have actually been working, provided they have been unemployed in the weeks immediately preceding and immediately following the period of employment. This alteration will make the position under the Unemployment Assistance Act similar to the position under the Unemployment Insurance Acts and will remove any deterrent from taking short periods of employment which the existing rule may cause. The change supplements and does not substitute the existing rule for shorter periods.
With regard to the changes proposed under Sections 9 and 10, the position under the existing Act is that an applicant for unemployment assistance, who obtains some credit in the Unemployment Fund by the payment of contributions in respect of employment in an insured occupation, is forced to exhaust his right to unemployment insurance benefit before he can have recourse to unemployment assistance. In actual practice it has been found that this rule causes hardship to applicants in that before unemployment assistance can be paid it has first to be established that the applicant is not entitled to unemployment benefit, and delays often result from the application of the necessary tests. It is proposed to alter this and to leave the applicant free to claim either unemployment assistance or unemployment insurance benefit as he chooses, provided only that he shall not receive both at the same time— that is both in respect of the same day. It is anticipated that this new provision will eliminate a rather fruit ful source of complaints by applicants for unemployment assistance. They will now have a free choice to claim either unemployment benefit or unemployment assistance. In addition, these sections effect another change which has been urged from various quarters. Applicants will be able-while actually in receipt of unemploy ment benefit, to prove their waiting week for the purpose of unemploy ment assistance, so that there will be no gap between the expiry of unemployment benefit and the beginning of unemployment assistance.
Section 4, which deals with the definition of "dependents for the purposes of the Act, effects three changes. In the first place, there are drafting changes effected, because at present there is a certain lack of uniformity in the terms used in the definition of "dependents" and it is proposed to make the terms uniform; and in addition to secure that invalid children over 18 may be regarded as dependents of their parents who wholly or mainly support them. That provision was omitted from the Principal Act through inadvertence. The existing definition of "dependent wife" requires only that she be living with her husband and not working, otherwise than at her usual household duties, regularly for wages or other remuneration. It is proposed to restrict this definition so as to ensure that where a wife is engaged in an occupation ordinarily carried on for profit or has an income sufficient for her own support she shall not be regarded as dependent on her husband.
The change effected under Section 8 is designed to deal with the situation that would arise in the event of the extension of the boundary of a county borough or urban area so as to include areas hitherto outside the boundary and provides that recipients of unemployment assistance in such added areas would be entitled to continue to draw unemployment assistance at the higher rates which would then become applicable. Under the present law if the boundary of a county borough were extended, a recipient of unemployment assistance in the added area would be left without that assistance, and a similar position would arise if, as a result of a future census, the population of an urban district was shown to have increased so as to exceed 7,000. The Bill provides that recipients of unemployment assistance will continue to receive that assistance and that the rates will be increased to the rates appropriate to the alteration in the status of the area in which they reside.
Section 11 is one designed to secure the distribution of the funds available for the payment of unemployment assistance in a more equitable manner between applicants according to their circumstances. A person entitled to unemployment assistance receives the rate laid down in the Schedule to the Act subject to a reduction of 1/- per week for each shilling or part of a shilling by which the value of his means exceeds 2/- per week. One result of this arrangement is that an applicant who has means to the value of 2/- per week obtains the full scheduled rate of unemployment assistance in addition to his means. This results in an inequality, inasmuch as a person with means amounting to 2/- per week is to this extent better provided for than the person who has no means at all. It is difficult to justify this inequality and it is proposed to minimise it. Recipients of unemployment assistance are able-bodied persons capable of work who normally support themselves by their labour. Unemployment assistance comes to their aid during interludes of involuntary unemployment, and if a man continued during such involuntary unemployment to have means amounting to 2/- per week it is reasonable that he should not receive the same amount of unemployment assistance as a similarly employed man who has no means at all.
There are other general provisions which perhaps can be more suitably discussed in the Committee Stage, but reference can be made to them here. The first of these is dealt with in Section 16. When a doubt arises as to whether an applicant for unemployment assistance fulfils the statutory conditions, some weeks must elapse before the question is finally determined, and during this period the public assistance authority may have provided the applicant with relief on the basis that he would not receive unemployment assistance. If, as a result of an appeal to the Court of Referees, or in some cases to the Umpire, the final determination is in the applicant's favour, arrears of unemployment assistance are paid from the date of his claim. These arrears would be additional to the relief provided by the public assistance authority pending the determination of the application for unemployment assistance, and provision is made in the Bill to enable the public assistance authority to avoid this duplication by recovering from the arrears of unemployment assistance the amount of home assistance paid in excess of what would have been paid had the applicant been actually receiving unemployment assistance for the time his application was under consideration.
With reference to Section 13, it is not clear at present that there is power to recover unemployment assistance paid to an applicant by reason of his false or misleading representations or by conceaiment of material facts. The position is clarified by this Bill which ensures that an applicant who has obtained employment assistance, in such circumstances will not be permitted to retain it. With regard to Section 12, applicants who are not capable of work, who are not available for work or who are not genuinely seeking suitable employment, may at present insist on renewing their applications every day and thus require several decisions though their condition may remain unaltered and though they are not in a position to submit any new facts. To enable an unemployment assistance officer to refuse to determine such ineffective renewals of applications, provision is made whereby within a limit of six weeks he may refuse to determine them.
There are some other amendments which experience of the operation of the Act have indicated to be necessary. These are all minor matters, involving such things as the definition of a day, the abolition of any prescribed form of appeal, and the payments of unemployment assistance, due to a deceased or insane person, to their representatives without formally proving a will or taking out letters of administration. I think I have dealt with all the main provisions of the Bill. This is an amending Bill designed to deal with the different parts of the principal Act, and consequently it is a type of Bill that lends itself more to Committee Stage discussion than to a Second Reading debate. If there are any matters concerning which the members of the Dáil desire to have further information at this Stage, I shall endeavour to pro vide it for them.