asked the Minister for Finance whether, having regard to the considerably increased cost of living and the inadequacy of the wages paid to persons employed on rotational schemes, he will authorise the local authorities to employ workers on such schemes for the period of a full week.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Rotational Schemes.
Provision is made for unemployment and distress by a total sum made up by the Unemployment Assistance and Employment Scheme Votes. The change suggested would have the effect of reducing the number of unemployed workers who at present benefit by employment schemes; would increase the disparity of treatment between those employed and the less fortunate unemployed persons who remain on the unemployment register; and would concentrate in the hands of a more limited number the benefits of the wages paid on the schemes.
Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware of the fact that under these rotational unemployment schemes men are given employment for three or four days per week at a wage as low, in many cases, as 4/- and 4/6 per day, that the total income which they receive from that fragmentary kind of employment is inadequate to sustain them for a week and would he agree, if local authorities are prepared to offer employment to these workers for six days per week, to permit them to do so?
The suggested change would not help them in any way.
The effect of the change surely would be that a man would get a much higher wage than he is at present getting under the rotational employment scheme.
No; it would not benefit him in any way because there is a total fund which is represented by those two funds and if a man obtains unemployment assistance on the alternate weeks then he is taking it out of the other pocket of that fund. The method which is at present adopted has been calculated to give the greatest benefit out of the existing sum of money to the largest number of people and if any scheme can be found which will do that better I will be very glad to consider it, but this suggestion would not.
Surely the Parliamentary Secretary will admit that the device of employing men for three or four days per week operates to deprive them of unemployment assistance benefit and thus save that sum of money to the State? These men are only receiving, therefore, the inadequate income which they get from three or four days' work per week and they are, losing the other benefit which would be available to them during the weeks they were continuously unemployed.