Deputy Hickey, in proposing this motion, and Deputy Davin, in supporting it, drew the attention of the House to the fact that it was put down in April of 1938 in circumstances very different from to-day, and put down even then, I think, under a misapprehension as to what the real position in regard to the Employment Fund was. It is not, perhaps, without some relevancy to this motion, and without some significance in connection with the circumstances under which it was put down, to refer to the fact that, so far as the Minister for Industry and Commerce was concerned, its appearance upon the Order Paper was preceded by a communication from the Irish Trade Union Congress, dated 28th March, 1938, in the course of which it was said:—
"My national executive understand funds have now accumulated to an extent sufficiently adequate to consider an improvement in benefits under the Act without any additional cost to the worker. I am, therefore, to invite the Minister to say if it is his intention to introduce legislation increasing the unemployment insurance benefits."
As I have said, that communication was dated 28th March, 1938, and we have this motion put down in April of that year, and put down, I think, under the misapprehension that because from time to time there was a balance to the credit of the fund after the experience of certain years, the fund would go on with an accumulating surplus, and that surplus could be used, as has been suggested in this letter, for the purpose of granting additional benefits without any increased cost to the worker.
The position in relation to the fund in fact was not at all as bright as the optimistic writers of this letter thought it to be. The excess of receipts over payments of the fund during a number of years from 1933 to 1939-40 showed in fact very large variations. In 1933-34 the excess was £7,797; in 1934-35, it was £22,665; in 1935-36, it was £130,032; in 1936-37, it was £242,136, which was, I may say, a peak over this cycle of years; in 1937-38 the excess of receipts over expenditure fell to £163,927; in 1938-39, it had fallen to £83,044 for that year; in 1939-40 it had fallen to £48,764 and the position now is that in fact the expenditure exceeds the income of the fund and that we have had to realise some of the securities of the fund for the purpose of meeting the claims upon it.
This is an insurance scheme. It is designed to meet good years and bad years and it is hoped that the surpluses which have accumulated in the good years will be there to meet and provide for the deficits which undoubtedly accrue in the bad years. In my view it would be quite improvident and, of course, wholly inconsistent with the principle of insurance to utilise the surplus which has been accumulated in preceding years, not in order to meet the legitimate demands upon the fund, but in order to provide benefits which were never covenanted and which were not paid for. I should have thought that those who have spoken in favour of this motion would have addressed themselves to the very important principles with which we are here concerned. Notwithstanding the speech of Deputy Hickey, who seemed to be running in and out as between unemployment insurance and unemployment assistance, this is not a scheme which is based purely upon general humanitarian principles. It is an insurance scheme.
It is a scheme whereby people pay contributions in return for which they are entitled as of right to certain benefits. If, by reason of other circumstances, the benefits appear to them to be insufficient, they are not entitled as of right to get increased benefits. They may get them as an act of grace. They may get them because social exigencies would dictate that those benefits should be given. But when you come to consider this question of social exigencies, then you have to balance the needs not merely of those who happen to be in receipt of unemployment benefit but of those who are not even so well circumstanced, and you must ask yourself whether you are going to increase the contributions from those who are contributors to the fund or whether you are going to tax the general body of the people in order to provide the enhanced benefits which are demanded. That, I think, is the issue to which those who have spoken in favour of this motion ought to have addressed themselves, and which, I am sorry to say, they ignored.
Let me get back again to the fundamental principles in this matter, and emphasise the fact that we are dealing not with a scheme like the unemployment assistance scheme, under which we try to assist people who are in the utmost need, but with an insurance scheme, and the contributors to this scheme, which is on a statutory basis, consist of the employees, the employers, and the general taxpayers, as represented by the State. The benefit which this scheme can afford to those who are the beneficiaries of it, that is to say to those who happen to be unemployed and who have been paying the employee's contribution, depends on the relation which the amount contributed by those three elements, the employee, the employer and the general taxpayer, bears to the demands which are made upon the fund. From what I have said in regard to the state of the fund itself, where we have had dwindling surpluses over a number of years, and where during six or nine months of this year at any rate according to the last figures which are at my disposal we actually have had quite a considerable excess of expenditure over income, something to the tune perhaps of £70,000, it is quite clear that if we are going to accede to the terms of this motion, if we are going to increase the payments from the fund or to relax the conditions under which those benefits can be obtained, someone must pay. We cannot do it for nothing, unless we are going completely to bankrupt the fund, and of course if those who are contributors to the fund permit the fund to be bankrupt then they will lose all their rights as insured persons in relation to the fund. Accordingly, if we do not wish to do that, and if we wish to have increased benefits, then someone must pay.
