With your permission, a Cheann Comhairle, I propose to take Questions Nos. 36, 37 and 38 together.
I am not aware that any employees who were out of work by reason of recent trade disputes and who were entitled under the law to unemployment benefit have, in fact, been denied or deprived of benefit. The question of whether any person is unemployed within the meaning of the relevant Acts and regulations and entitled to unemployment benefit, in a trade dispute situation or otherwise, is a matter for decision by statutory deciding officers, subject to a right of appeal to statutory appeals officers whose decisions are final.
Under an amendment made in 1967 of the trade dispute provisions of the Social Welfare Act, 1952, unemployment benefit can be paid to an employee who is not himself participating in or financing or directly interested in a dispute and who does not belong to a grade or class of workers at his place of employment any member of which is so involved. While a number of claims to benefit arising out of the present trade dispute situation have been disallowed by the statutory officers on the ground that these statutory provisions were not fulfilled, many other claims, which would otherwise have been disallowed, have, in fact, been allowed as a result of the 1967 amendment. The purpose of the modification of the law was to identify employees who could be said to be sufficiently free from involvement in a trade dispute at their place of employment as to justify paying them unemployment benefit and the amended law has had effect accordingly.
Section 19 of the Public Assistance Act, 1939, provides that it shall be the duty of public assistance authorities to give to every person in their areas who is in need such public assistance as shall appear to them to be necessary or proper in each particular case. The fact that a person lost his employment because of a strike does not of itself constitute grounds for refusing an application for assistance.