Vol. 404 No. 1
129 Mr. Morley asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he will consider repealing Statutory Instruments No. 7 of 1953, as amended, and No. 52 of 1965, in view of the discriminatory effect they have on many rural recipients of unemployment benefit.
It is a basic condition for the receipt of unemployment benefit that the claimant must be unemployed. Regulations under section 29 (5) of the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act, 1981, allow a claimant, who is engaged in a subsidiary occupation, to be treated as unemployed provided he has at least 78 reckonable employment contributions paid in the three years preceding the date of a claim or that the profit from his occupation does not exceed £4 per day. The purpose of the special condition is to ensure that the claimant can be regarded as genuinely unemployed. The majority of unemloyment benefit claims involving claimants who follow a subsidiary occupation are from landholders.
In the circumstances for which they were intended the regulations are considered to be reasonable. However, consideration will be given to reviewing the regulations with a view to increasing the figure for daily profit from the occupation.
An increase in the daily limit for qualification for unemployment benefit would have cost implications and would have to be considered in a budgetary context.
