asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he will state in what way he proposes to provide for workers at Castlecomer and Wolfhill coal mines, who must leave their employment under medical orders as a result of industrial disease and how their families are to be provided for in cases where workers have to cease work at an early age on health grounds.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Industrial Disease—Provision for Workers.
As the law relating to workmen's compensation stands, workmen who contract certain diseases in the process of mining are entitled to compensation. These diseases include all industrial diseases affecting miners for which, up to the present, it has been found practicable to make provision in the workmen's compensation code of this country. The question of making provision in that code for cases of the respiratory industrial diseases which affect miners and others and which are known by the general term pneumoconiosis, is under active consideration in my Department. My information is that the occurrence of pneumoconiosis is very rare in this country. If the Deputy has any such case in mind I would appreciate it if he would give me particulars.
Any worker who ceases work because of illness other than industrial disease provided for in the Workmen's Compensation Acts is free to claim sickness or disablement benefit under the National Health Insurance Acts.
Is the Minister aware that there was a case recently in Cork where a lime-kiln worker suffering from that disease was unable to get compensation because it was not scheduled as an industrial disease?
If the Deputy will examine the provisions of the Workmen's Compensation Act he will see that, while certain industrial diseases are covered by the Act and prescribed as industrial diseases, there are other diseases which are not prescribed and which can only be covered if a special scheme is brought into operation. He will perceive also on examination of the Act that there is a special method of financing any such scheme brought into operation. The circumstances of this country, with our limited output of coal and limited number of coalmine employers, make it, I fear, impracticable to bring into operation any such scheme. I think we may have to deal with the matter in an entirely different way because the Act is constructed on a basis which, apparently, does not suit a country with the limited coal-mining possibilities which we have.
The worker I have in mind is a lime-kiln worker.