I understand that we are to take a decision on this matter to-night.
Private Deputies' Business. - Unemployment Assistance (Second Employment Period) Order, 1936—Motion for Annulment.
Debate resumed on the following motion:—
That the Unemployment Assistance (Second Employment Period) Order, 1936, presented to Dáil Eireann, pursuant to Section 7 (3) of the Unemployment Assistance Act, 1933, on the 26th day of May, 1936, be and is hereby annulled. —(Deputy Norton.)
There is an understanding that Deputy Morrissey is to get a quarter of an hour and Deputy Norton 20 minutes in which to conclude. A decision is to be taken to-night.
I suppose we ought to be grateful to the Government for giving us time, even the very little time we are given, to reply to the speech the Minister made.
The Deputy has to be grateful to the Government for more than that.
We are very grateful for even the smallest mercies from the present Government. Even if I had the time, I would not attempt the task of correcting all the inaccuracies and misstatements of the Minister in this matter. I have got tired of trying to correct his misstatements in this House, particularly with regard to unemployment and unemployment assistance. The Minister did make a speech and it was the type of speech we expected to get from him—a series of sweeping statements.
"There are more people employed in this country than ever before, and there are fewer people unemployed than ever before."
He was satisfied that of the people laid off last year, 41,000 got employment. When he was challenged for the evidence, the evidence, he told us, was the fact that they did not continue to register, and because there were only 4,000 odd of the people laid off under the Period Order, who received home assistance.
Not even that. I said that the number of persons receiving home assistance as able-bodied persons was less after the Order was brought into operation than before.
And the Minister concluded from that that it was because they were employed.
I concluded that they did not get home assistance.
The Minister was talking without any knowledge of the matter at all, as usual. He did not give us any indication of the numbers that applied for home assistance. Is the Minister aware that there are boards of health in this country that have definitely decided they will not give home asistance to able-bodied unemployed? The Minister's plea is that he is going to shift the burden from the State to the local authority— the Government that boasts that they have taken responsibility for maintaining the unemployed. The Minister said:
"We know from direct evidence that these people were either employed on the farms on which they live, or got employment during that period."
The Minister did not produce the direct evidence and he told us nothing about it. The Minister's statement of the position was this:
"The difficulty in rural areas is this: that during periods of the year there is considerable difficulty in determining whether a particular individual can be regarded as employed or not."
Therefore, the Minister's way of solving that difficulty is to regard the whole lot of them as being employed.
No.
Of course, it is.
Only a very small proportion of workers in rural areas.
Are employed?
Are affected by the Order.
41,000 last year, and, at least, 41,000 this year for double the period. The Minister gave us as one of the direct pieces of evidence that they were employed the fact that they did not register for employment. He said that there were certain benefits to be got from registration. They got priority on certain works, and there were certain public works available, he said. Does the Minister not know quite well that the class of people affected by this Order have not got first claim upon public works in the country? Does the Minister not know —if he does not, he ought to—that relief works in rural areas during the summer months are very few, and that whatever relief works are carried out are mainly confined to towns and cities, and that, in the rural areas, they are carried out mainly during the autumn, winter and early part of spring?
Let us remember that this Order is an Order that affects every single unemployed man without dependents, and every widower without dependents, in a rural area. It is interesting to note how a rural area is defined under the Order to show the stupid way in which this Order is applied. A rural area for the purpose of this Order is defined as an area which has not either an urban council or town commissioners. We have this position as a result. Let me take my own county as an example of how the workers are affected by this Order. The town of Fethard, with a population of 1,180, has town commissioners. This Order does not apply to it. The town of Cahir has 1,709 of a population, nearly 600 more than Fethard, but because they have not town commissioners or an urban council, the unemployed in that particular town are to be deprived of their unemployment assistance. The town of Templemore has an urban council, and a population of 2,233, but Roscrea, with a population of 2,772, has no urban council or no town commissioners, and therefore the man in the town of Templemore receives his unemployment assistance while the man in Rosrea is deprived of it. The same thing applies in other counties. In the county represented by the mover of this motion—County Kildare—Newbridge, with a population of 2,249, has an urban council, while Kildare, with a population of 2,316, has neither an urban council nor town commissioners. This Order applies in Kildare, but not in Newbridge.
Can anybody conceive of anything more stupid or more sweeping than that? If there were nothing but that alone in connection with this Order, I say that it is a complete and absolute condemnation of the Order. Does the Minister want to tell the members of this House that all the single unemployed men in the town of Kildare will get employment and are guaranteed it until the 27th October, and that the unemployed men in Newbridge will not get employment; that every man in Roscrea will be employed, and that the men in Templemore will be unemployed? The Minister has not produced one bit of evidence. He is simply trying to balance the Budget for the Minister for Finance, and trying to do it at the expense of the poorest section of the people in this country. It is a going back on the principle which the Minister and the Government said they accepted, of providing either work or maintenance for these people. The Minister simply issues an Order which deems these people to be at work. He says that there is plenty of work available in rural areas, and we are told by other members of the Minister's Party that the work is there, but that the people are too lazy to do it in rural areas. We are accustomed to hearing from the Minister statements without any foundation. Recently, in a debate on unemployment assistance in this House, I mentioned that one of the principal sources of employment in rural areas, outside agricultural work, was employment on roads, and I stated that unfortunately the employment on roads had been considerably reduced. What did the Minister say in reply? He said: "Not at all; the Deputy is wrong as usual; there are more men employed on roads than ever before." That is what the Minister said, but in any event I was right, and the Minister was wrong. However, in order to satisfy him on the matter, I put down a question to the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, and asked for a return setting out the numbers of men employed on relief work on roads for the years ending December, 1931, to December, 1935.
On relief work?
Yes, relief work on roads. Is the Minister going to quibble on that point? I was informed by the Department that they were unable to give me the figures for the year ending December, 1931. I do not know why, and I think it was rather unfortunate that I was not able to get them.
There was probably no employment for them.
They were unemployed.
If the Minister makes that point, I shall make this point: that there were at least three times the number engaged on relief works in 1931 than in 1935. In any case, however, we got this return: that in November, 1932, the total number engaged on relief work on roads was 15,363. In December, 1933, it had dropped from 15,000 to 4,139. In December, 1934, the number was 5,990, and in December, 1935, it was 4,032. Yet I was told by the Minister that I was wrong, as usual, when I told him of the drop in the figures, and the Minister said that there were more men employed on the roads now than ever before. That is the type of statement we get from the man who is charged with the responsibility of dealing with unemployment and unemployment assistance in this country. That is the sense of irresponsibility shown over and over again by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I want to put this to the Minister: if there were only 4,032 men in the whole of the Free State engaged on relief works on roads at December when, usually, the maximum number engaged on roads is put on, will he tell us how many are going to be absorbed on road work this year?
As I say, the Minister's statement is absolutely irresponsible. He spoke about the £2,500,000. I asked him when it would be spent and he told us that it is being spent at the moment. He did not tell us where, or by whom the money was being provided, or for what schemes. It would be interesting to know that, but we got this from the Minister, and, mind you, this statement is not from an ordinary member of a back bench in the House but from a responsible Minister:
"There is this sum of £2,500,000. All these people know"
—he was referring to the unemployed—
"that every penny of that money is to be spent upon wages. Every penny of it is going to some person who is registered at the unemployment exchanges."
The Minister told us that every penny of that money is being spent on wages. Can he tell us how much of the £2,500,000 is being absorbed on materials? He says that every penny is going on wages. It just shows the absolutely irresponsible way in which the Minister gets up here to deal with matters affecting the unemployment situation in this country. I do not know whether there is really any use in putting facts before the Minister; whether there is really any use in trying to bring home to him a sense of his responsibility in regard to those people; or whether there is any use in telling him that, to say the least of it, it is unfair on his part to treat this problem as if it did not exist. He knows that the problem exists. He must know that it does exist and that he is not going to provide employment simply by making an Order to the effect that, as between such and such dates, people are going to be in employment.
The Government boast, and have boasted inside this House and outside this House up and down the country, that they have accepted the responsibility of providing either work or maintenance for the unemployed in this country. Either they have or they have not. The Minister also told us that we were rather overlooking the point that the Act had not been suspended altogether: that it was only for certain classes. He cannot have it both ways, and he cannot get out of his promise to provide either work or maintenance for the unemployed and at the same time suspend people, whether in work or not, from the benefits of unemployment assistance, whether they are in work for three or six months in the year. We want the Minister to treat this problem seriously and to adopt a different approach to the treatment of the problem than he has been adopting. We want to see that the Minister carries out the Government's promise to provide either work or maintenance and to see that, if employment cannot be provided, these people shall not be deprived of unemployment assistance.
The Minister availed of the discussion on this Order to display a form of optimism which, I think, exceeded any similar displays of optimism we have had from the Minister for Industry and Commerce, though one would wish that the occasion for the optimism was less tragic than that provided by the sufferings of the people we are going to deprive of unemployment assistance benefit as the result of the Minister's Order. He told us that 41,000 persons were affected by the Employment Period Order of last year and that 24,000 of these were farmers' sons. Presumably the other 17,000 were not farmers' sons. The Minister seemed to find some curious satisfaction in cutting off farmers' sons from unemployment assistance benefit. Under the first Employment Period Order small farmers with valuations over £4 lost unemployment assistance benefit, and now, not content with depriving the fathers, who are small farmers, of unemployment assistance benefit, the Minister proposes in the rural areas to cut their sons off benefit also. The fathers went under the first Employment Period Order, and now the sons are deprived of unemployment assistance benefit because they are single and because, according to the Minister, they should be working on their father's land, even though the small patch of land is utterly unable to sustain a family during the period of unemployment. The Minister made the case that persons who were cut off unemployment assistance benefit in fact immediately proceeded to get work. We have the extraordinary position apparently, that the State recognises that there is no work for single men without dependents on June 2nd, but suddenly, like rain or manna, from June 3rd until October 27th, work is there in such abundance as to make it possible to deny unemployment assistance benefit to single persons or to widowers without dependents. The work is not there on June 2nd, but on June 3rd it is there in abundance, and then disappears on October 3rd. That is what the Minister asks us to believe in the attempt to justify this Order. The Minister wonders why persons do not register at the employment exchange when cut off unemployment assistance benefit. He has not told us what real benefits are attached to continued registration at the employment exchanges by those who have been denied unemployment assistance benefit.
Work.
The Minister has work on the brain.
That is the only place it is.
We will discuss that later. What advantage is there for people continuing to register at the exchanges when they are denied unemployment assistance benefit? There are married men registering at the employment exchanges, after the single men have been cut off, and there are also single men with dependents registering to see if any work financed wholly or partly out of public funds is available. Preference is given to married men with dependents, and then to single men with dependents, and it is only when these catagories are exhausted that single men without dependents have any chance of getting work. The Minister knows that and should realise that there is no advantage for these people continuing to register at the employment exchanges for work when they know that there are two other unexhausted catagories there already, and that people in these catagories will get preference.
21,000 got work during the last employment period. They got spells of work—not necessarily during the whole period.
They did not get it for 21 weeks.
They might get a few days' work.
Even a day's work. Is that a reason why they should cease registering?
The Minister wonders why these people do not seek home assistance. There he is speaking with the city mind. If he had any appreciation of what is happening in rural areas, or if he went around the rural areas, or sent his inspectors there to inquire about the home assistance position, everybody knows, including Deputies on the Government Benches, that it is almost impossible for able-bodied single men to get home assistance from boards of health under existing circumstances. I wish the Minister would ask some members of his own Party about the difficulty that single able-bodied men have in getting home assistance. I venture to say that the Minister will find that Deputies on the benches behind him will be able to assure him that it is almost impossible for these persons to get home assistance. It is hard enough for married men who are destitute to get home assistance much less single men. The Minister says that there is work in the rural areas, and I suppose 21,000 are going to get it there this year. That seems to be the Minister's contention, because with delightful urbanity he is proceeding to cut single persons off unemployment assistance in rural areas, believing, or pretending to believe, that work is available there.
Why do they not maintain registration?
Is that a justification for leaving them hungry for 21 weeks?
It is proof that they are not. It is proof that there is work.
Is that why they are to be punished?
It is sheer nonsense to say that if a man is struck off unemployment assistance he is rendered destitute when he will not register at the exchanges for work seeing that 21,000 got work last year.
Nonsense.
That is part of the foolish optimism of the Minister. We can get evidence to show how groundless the Minister's statement is. He says that work is available in rural areas but as Deputy Morrissey pointed out, rural areas have a wide definition in regard to unemployment. Towns with substantial populations in the circumstances of this country come within the category of rural areas. Substantial towns are affected by this Order, places like Kildare, Tullow, and Monasterevan. Town workers in these places come within the category of rural workers for the purpose of this Employment Period Order.
And there is no difficulty in maintaining registration.
I would like the Minister to send his inspectors to these areas and to tell the workers where they are to get work from June 3rd to October 27th. Until such time as the Minister or Deputies on the benches behind him tell these people where they are to get work for 21 weeks we ought to have no more talk about work. If it was decided to send some of the Deputies in the Minister's Party to these places, to tell the unemployed where work could be got, I venture to say that very few of them would have the hardihood to go to towns with populations of 2,000 or over that are affected by the Order. Since the optimistic speech of the Minister on the last occasion that this motion was discussed I received a letter from a person who resides in Donegal. The contents are an interesting sidelight on the Minister's statement. The writer says:
"In order that you will understand the position of the working classes in the Gaeltacht area, I have only to point to the fact that there are hundreds leaving here every week for Scotland and England. I am a strong supporter of the Government and was for a great many years a county councillor, and so cannot regard the spectacle of witnessing such a panorama of exiled industry with indifference. But, as a matter of fact, the whole aspect of things as regard the labouring class here is a disgrace for any native Government, and the alleged remark of the Cosgrave Minister, that it was not part of the duty of the Government to provide for the unemployed, is partly borne out as being once more the policy when we observe the callous criticism of the Employment Period Order by the Minister a few days ago in the Dáil. Therefore, if unemployment allowance is to be discontinued during the summer period it is important that the Government provide a scheme of relief work. It is only right as the Pope said in his famous Encyclical that the State should concern itself with the workman and that necessary work should be provided. I trust you will bear in mind that there are no relief works or any industries here to give young people employment."
Where is that from?
I will let the Deputy see the letter afterwards. There is testimony from a strong supporter of the present Government that there are hundreds of people leaving Donegal every week for Scotland and England, that there is no employment there for people affected by the Employment Period Order and that in that area the problem of destitution, already bad, is going to be inserted. One would think from what the Minister says about employment in rural areas that to live in a rural area is like living in an El Dorado. I have a document here which is described as a wages receipt of the Turf Development Board, Limited, which shows that a person in a rural area after doing nearly three days work, in Offaly, for the Turf Development Board, gets the munificent sum of 10/5 less a deduction of 1/5 for health insurance and unemployment insurance contributions —9/- for three days.
Nearly three days.
That works out at 5½d. an hour.
The rate is not fixed per hour. The rate is fixed by the amount of work he did.
He had a 48-hour week.
He is paid so much per foot cut.
This will probably gladden the heart of the Minister for Finance because in his Budget statement he referred to people who did not want work. This man lives 13 miles from the place where he is employed. He has to cycle 13 miles to work and 13 miles back in the evening. He told me that he leaves his own house at a quarter past six in the morning and gets to the bog about a quarter to eight. He gets 5½d. an hour for working under these circumstances.
He is paid by piece-rate.
He is paid 5½d. per hour, and on that he is expected to keep a wife and children. His net wages for the three days amount to 9/-, and to earn that he has to cycle 13 miles to work and 13 miles home in the evening. If he did not do that, and lost the employment, he would not get unemployment insurance benefit. This goes to show conclusively that there is not that abundance of employment in the rural areas which the Minister for Industry and Commerce suggests. If there was that abundance of work in rural areas you would not get a man to cycle 13 miles to work and 13 miles home in the evening for 5½d. an hour.
If there was not abundance of employment in that area, people living so far away would not have a chance of getting work.
Will Deputy Donnelly go down that area and tell the people there that the conditions are ideal? The Minister knows there was a strike there over the wages paid and that the local Fianna Fáil Cumann took the view that the strike was justified in the circumstances owing to the rate of wages paid.
The Deputy knows that there is no fixed rate of wages, that the work is paid for by piece-rates.
Here is a man working for nearly three days who gets a net sum of 9/-, and he has to cycle 26 miles every day in order to earn that money. In any case, look at the Donegal instance, hundreds leaving every week for England and Scotland, a fact which induces this strong supporter of the Government to express his horror at "this panorama of exiled industry." He is an intelligent supporter of the Government.
Why did he not write to a Government Deputy then?
I do not know. The Government Deputy can have the letter if he wishes.
He has probably been writing to a Government Deputy for the last four years.
If the Minister wants evidence as to the employment available in rural areas, he has it in this document from Offaly, which shows that a man was obliged to cycle 13 miles every morning and evening to get work at 5½d. per honr. All that proves conclusively that there is not that abundance of employment in rural areas about which the Minister for Industry and Commerce so enthusiastically talks. If there is abundance of employment in rural areas, how is it that employment is available only for single men without dependents?
It is because we hold the contrary view that we have confined the Order to single men.
Take any exchange covering a rural area. On the 2nd June last there were a number of single and married men registered as unemployed in that exchange, and receiving unemployment assistance. On the 3rd June, the Minister says that the phenomenon occurs that there is an abundance of employment for single men, and that they can get plenty of work from the 3rd June to 27th October——
I said nothing of the kind.
——but that in respect to married men or single men with dependents, there is no work for them. I suggest that if there is no work for married men and single men with dependents, and if, because of that, unemployment assistance should be continued for married men and single men with dependents, neither is there any work for single men without dependents. The whole purpose of this Employment Order is to save money for the Exchequer. It is an economy Order, not an Employment Period Order. This Order is made and the period of it extended to enable the Minister for Finance to get money to balance his Budget. That is the whole purpose of the Order, and the country should be told that. The Minister should not pretend that there is an abundance of work in the rural areas when, in fact, it is not there. I ask the House to annul the Order.
Question—"That the Unemployment Assistance (Second Employment Period) Order, 1936, be and is hereby annulled"—put.
The Dáil divided— Tá, 38; Níl, 51.
Tá
- Broderick, William Joseph.
- Burke, James Michael.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Coburn, James.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John Aloysius.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Davin, William.
- Davitt, Robert Emmet.
- Desmond, William.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Henry Morgan.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Everett, James.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
- Keating, John.
- Lavery, Cecil.
- Lynch, Finian.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGuire, James Ivan
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Morrisroe, James.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
- Nally, Martin.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
- O'Higgins, Thomas Francis
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget Mary
- Rice, Vincent.
- Rogers, Patrick James.
Níl
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Carty, Frank.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
- Crowley, Timothy.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Doherty, Hugh.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Geoghegan, James.
- Gibbons, Seán.
- Goulding, John.
- Hales, Thomas.
- Hayes, Seán.
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Keely, Séamus P.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamonn.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Maguire, Conor Alexander.
- Moane, Edward.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Moylan, Seán.
- O'Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Pearse, Margaret Mary.
- Rice, Edward.
- Ryan, James.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Ward, Francis C.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Corish and T. M urphy; Níl, Deputies Little and Smith.
Question declared lost.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.40 p.m. until Tuesday, 16th June, at 3 p.m.