Vol. 209 No. 2
asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he is aware that, in the case of many recipients of unemployment assistance who are landholders, expansion of the productive capacity of their holdings is seriously affected by the fact that they have to attend at signing centres six times per week while their neighbours may have to attend only once weekly; and if he will take steps to remedy this inequity.
25.
asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he will state the reason, if any, other than the existence of a regulation, why recipients of unemployment assistance in rural areas who reside within a certain distance of a signing centre must sign there daily, while those similarly situated but further from the signing centres are not, and rightly so, required to sign daily.
With your permission, a Cheann Comhairle, I propose to take Questions Nos. 24 and 25 together. As the Deputy is aware, under the arrangements for the proving of unemployment by recipients of unemployment assistance in rural areas, only those unemployed persons who reside within two miles of a local office of my Department are required to attend there daily to sign the unemployed register. In the case of unemployed persons residing over two miles from a local office, less frequent attendance at the local office or other signing centre is required, but this is a concession designed to take account of the longer journeys which are involved for the persons concerned. To qualify for unemployment assistance landholders must be available for employment off their holdings and, accordingly, it is not understood how daily attendance at a local office not above two miles from their homes could seriously affect the working of the holdings. The present signing arrangements are not onerous and they constitute the minimum safeguard necessary for preventing abuse of the unemployment assistance scheme.
