I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. This Bill has been introduced principally to give effect to the amendment in Section 19, which raises the insurable limit to £400 in respect of non-manual workers. Deputies are aware that manual workers are insurable, no matter what their remuneration may be. When the National Health Insurance Act was first brought in, in 1911, the limit was £160. It was increased to £250 in 1920 and has remained at that figure. Owing to the increase in wages, particularly during the last few months, a number of people who were hitherto insurable have passed beyond the insurable level and I think the opinion was expressed by practically all Parties in the Dáil that we should raise that limit from £250 to some higher figure. We have inserted this figure of £400 as a reasonable figure, being somewhat related to the £250 when you take into account the increase in wages over the last few years. I might mention here that where a person passes over the insurable limit for national health insurance, the same applies to widows and orphans and that may be even a more serious question than the question of national health insurance. If this amendment is accepted it will apply to widows and orphans as well as to national health insurance.
It is true, of course, that these people could continue their insurance on a voluntary basis but very few do that, for one reason or another. They do not seem to think of it in time and when they do think of it the amount of arrears to be paid up is a deterrent and they are not inclined to go on. That is Section 19.
When bringing in the Bill I thought it well to take advantage of the occasion to re-enact the provisions of Emergency Powers Order No. 381, which was passed last June, and that is dealt with in Part II of the Bill. First of all, Section 3 deals with the question of people who continued to contribute even though they were not insurable because they had passed over the limit for insurance. Section 3 legalises their payments when they were made in good faith and really continues their cases as live cases when they come back into insurance again now with the raising of the limit. Section 4 deals with the free period of insurance which up to this was 12 months but which is now raised to 18 months. That is necessary because, in the interests of economy, the National Health Insurance Society issued cards recently for 12 months instead of six months and, in order to give a period over the 12 months for these cards to be returned, the insurance society would need a free period of 18 months instead of 12 months. It will, of course, be all to the benefit of the insured person also.
The remaining three sections in that part are dealing with the Army, in particular, soldiers who enlisted for the period of the emergency. There was no such period of enlistment contemplated in the Act of 1926 in dealing with members of the Army and these sections are necessary to clear up certain points that were in doubt.
Part III of the Bill deals with the members of the Military Forces International Arrangements Insurance Fund which was brought into being in 1923 and was established for ex-members of the British Army. At that time the insurance societies, a number of which existed, were not inclined to take on some ex-members of the British Army because they were not very good risks. A special scheme was prepared for taking these people on and that scheme has continued up to the present. It is proposed now to do away with the scheme because it is uneconomic to work a separate scheme by the Department for the sake of a few thousand members. The whole thing is being transferred to the insurance society. No member of the fund will lose in any way by reason of this merger. There are a number of clauses there but they have the effect only of transferring these people over and giving them the same rights they had in the fund. There is also a provision with regard to keeping certain accounts, so that if some of these people go back again to Great Britain it will be possible to send the history of the case, as they will be eligible for insurance on the other side.
Part IV deals with persons who are in receipt of pensions from the British Government in respect of disablement arising out of the recent war. There are two clauses there, one which deals with men who have got a pension who are members of the forces, and the other, which deals with men or women who have got a pension who are not members of the forces. In the case of members of the forces, where they got a full pension for 100 per cent. disability, they do not get sickness allowance here. Where they got what was not a full pension, in fact, less than the national health insurance would amount to here, they would get the sickness allowance on this side. In the case of civilians who got compensation for injury, coming back here from Great Britain, they would be treated exactly as persons who had been compensated under the Workmen's Compensation Act, that is, that if the allowance was less than the allowance given for health insurance on this side, they would get the difference between what they were in receipt of and what would be now 22/6 a week.