I move.
"That Dáil Éireann, noting the out of court settlement by the Department of Social Welfare of a case taken by FLAC on behalf of 1,800 married women claiming arrears of social welfare payments as required under EU equality directives,
—calls on the Government to make full payment to all other married women who were similarly discriminated against.
—deplores the refusal of the Department of Social Welfare to inform women of their rights, thus forcing many to take legal action, and
—calls on the Minister to make a full disclosure on all such cases settled and claims pending."
This motion is about justice in matters of social welfare. It is also about the right of women to equal treatment in all areas of life, the failure of this country to live up to its obligations as a member of the European Union, the right of Members of the Oireachtas to information, the expenditure of public money and openness and accountability in Government.
The matter before the Dáil has its origins in the botched implementation by successive Irish Governments of various European directives which required that men and women should receive equal treatment in regard to social welfare payments. The key decisions were, in many regards, those taken by the Coalition Government in the mid-1980s and the then Minister for Social Welfare, Mr. Barry Desmond, must share a great deal of the blame for the problems which followed and which we continue to encounter today.
The original European directive was adopted in 1978 and gave member states six years to phase out sex discrimination in their social welfare systems. Any Government faced with the problem of implementing a directive requiring equal treatment had two options, given that men in general received preferential treatment under the social welfare code as it then operated — the Government could achieve equality by bringing women up to the level of rates paid to men or reduce men to the level of rates payable to women. Barry Desmond and his colleagues opted for an approach which, while benefiting many women, also involved substantially reducing the incomes of many families. In other words, he decided to equalise downwards rather than upwards.
Although the directive was to be implemented by the end of 1984 the Government failed to meet the deadline. The Social Welfare (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, 1984 was published nine days before the deadline but was not passed into law until July of the following year. That Act gave the Minister for Social Welfare power to bring in, by order, the various sections of the original Bill. Some of them were brought in during May 1986 but others which involved, in some cases, losses to families of between £20 and £40 per week came into operation in November 1986.
When thousands of families realised their incomes were to be substantially cut there was a public outcry. The Dublin Council of Trade Unions organised a public demonstration. Local meetings were held in many parts of Dublin and Members were lobbied on the issue. Such was public anger that a number of backbenchers in the then coalition Government threatened to vote against the Government on the issue.
As a result of that pressure the Government introduced a series of what were called transitional payments to cushion families to some degree from the losses they faced. These were paid to men only. Originally they were worth £20 per week. Over the years they were reduced to £10 per week and ended altogether as part of the McCreevy dirty dozen cuts in 1992.
The Minister of State at the Department of Social Welfare, who is not present but who has built up a considerable political record as being concerned about the rights of women, told her party conference two months after taking office that the McCreevy cuts were gone for a burton. This is one cut, like many of the remaining dirty dozen, that did not go and the Minister of State, Deputy Burton, has been untypically silent on this issue. This clearly discriminatory decision to breach the directive by making transitional payments to men only continues to anger women and they continue to seek justice.
I accept that the area of social welfare equalisation is enormously complicated and has been the subject of several legal cases both in the Irish and European courts. Given the complexity of the issue, it is not surprising that it has received relatively little media attention and only a handful of Deputies pursued the matter in the Dáil after it was initiated by Deputy De Rossa. The Minister and Minister of State have used the complexity of the issue to befuddle and confuse the public and the House and deny women arrears of the transitional payments to which they were clearly entitled under EU rules.
The common thread running through the reaction of successive Ministers to social welfare equalisation has been a determination to duck, weave, obfuscate and do everything possible to avoid living up to the spirit of the directive and, where this was not possible, to delay meeting obligations for as long as possible. Time after time women were forced to go to the courts or threaten legal action to get their entitlements. The Coalition failed to meet the deadline for implementation of the directive on equalisation and this was the subject of litigation in the Irish and European courts. The Government resisted this case all the way but eventually the European Court ruled that the women were entitled to arrears and certain benefits for the period December 1984 to November 1986. The Department made the payments due to the women concerned and made reasonable efforts to identify women who qualify for these benefits. That is not at issue although the Department is using the payments, as is evidenced by the amendment, to convince the public that all the requirements in respect of equalisation are being met. This is clearly not the case.
A separate case was taken on behalf of two Irish women, Ann Cotter and Nora McDermott, claiming they were also entitled to the transitional payments which operated between 1986 and 1992 but which were paid to men only. The matter was referred to the European Court which, in a judgment given on 13 March 1991, found in favour of the women. It referred the matter to the Irish Supreme Court but the Government settled the case on June 6 that year before the court could consider it and paid the women in question. It clearly follows that if Ann Cotter and Nora McDermott had a valid case then thousands of women in similar circumstances were also entitled to these payments. However, unlike the case involving the arrears between 1984 and 1986 where the Government paid all qualifying women, in this instance the Government refused to make payments to other women in similar circumstances and made no effort, contrary to what the Minister suggests in the amendment, to notify those who might qualify.
By settling out of court before the Supreme Court could give its judgment the Government was clearly hoping to avoid a legally binding precedent and thus keep the lid on the whole affair. This has been the pattern with all subsequent cases taken. The Government resisted the claims, warned they would fight them through the courts but settled before they came to a hearing.
The Government's attempt to draw a veil of silence gradually broke down. By word of mouth, women began to learn they were entitled to substantial arrears. Organisations such as FLAC and the lobby group Married Women for Equality, initiated in Cork, took up the issue. My party raised the matter and made an issue of it in the House but still the Department resisted the claims and only conceded where legal action was threatened. They denied information about settlements made to the Dáil and the public. We still do not know the full extent of the payments made by the Department.
I understand that prior to the recent FLAC case 2,000 people in Dublin and 800 in Cork received arrears in cases where solicitors intervened on their behalf. In some cases, the payments are reported to have been £13,000. However, information is hard to come by as a condition of payment is that women will not disclose the amount received.
What Deputy De Rossa described last year as a virtual mini-industry for the legal profession grew up around these claims. Solicitors in Dublin, Cork and Limerick advertised in the newspapers and offered to take cases on behalf of women who may be eligible. One such advertisement, carried regularly in the Evening Herald last summer was headed “Equality Payments” and stated “married women in receipt of social welfare benefits between 1984 and 1992 should seek advice on their entitlements”. It gave a free telephone number and invited people to contact them. I saw a letter which a woman who responded to such an advertisement received. She was asked to sign an authorisation form allowing the firm to act on her behalf and was then told:
In the event of our being successful we will be looking for fees based on the amount we collect. If we collect £2,000 we will be looking for £200 plus VAT at 21 per cent. (It is a bit like the chimney's precedent.) If it is £400 we will be looking for twice that. In the unlikely event that we are not successful we will not look for any fees.
The system operates on a no win-no fee basis. Clearly women were being forced to go to the courts to secure justice, and a number of solicitors recognised that there were substantial sums to be made in fees from these cases.
The biggest single case was initiated by FLAC, the free legal aid centres, on behalf of 1,800 women. FLAC is a voluntary organisation which does not charge fees. It also played a key role in earlier cases taken and its record in this area is an outstanding tribute to the commitment of its young members to the principles of justice and equality. Although Minister Woods repeatedly told the Dáil that the Department would fight all these cases in the courts, the Department settled the FLAC case out of court on 12 April before it came to a hearing. I should like the Minister to explain how this can be reconciled with his earlier statements. By settling out of court the Department clearly hoped to avoid a judgment which would be legally binding. By settling the case, the Government has acknowledged its validity, and justice demands that all other married women who were similarly discriminated against should now be paid.
Having said before that it would contest all cases through the courts, the Department changed its position following the settlement of the FLAC case. The Minister now says that the Department will settle only those cases initiated prior to the introduction of the European Communities Social Welfare Regulations in June 1992 and that cases taken after that date will be contested all the way. That policy will give rise to all sorts of anomalies.
Take an imaginary case of two married women living in the same estate in any area of Dublin. Mrs. A who lives in No. 50 was discriminated against because she was denied the transitional payments paid to men in similar circumstances between 1986 and 1992. She was lucky; she heard about the issue from a friend in Cork, went to a solicitor who initiated action prior to June 1992 and she recently received her entitlement of approximately £6,000. Mrs. B who lives up the road in the same estate, in No. 108, was also discriminated against because she was denied the transitional payments paid to men in similar circumstances between 1986 and 1992. However, she only heard about the matter in late 1992. She has now initiated proceedings despite the fact that the Department has told her solicitor that the case will be fully resisted in the courts. These two women suffered the same degree of discrimination, yet one will receive £6,000 in compensation while the other will get nothing if the Department gets its way. This is justice and fair play courtesy of Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party.
The Minister for Social Welfare has once again made a bad calculation. I do not believe the European Courts will accept this further discrimination, this division of women into two categories — those who initiated claims prior to June 1992 and those who initiated claims after that date. It will probably take another case in the European Courts to establish that the Government is once again likely to bring embarrassment and humiliation on this country by being found to be in breach of EU directives on social welfare equalisation.
The Government likes to pat itself on the back, to say how positive it is about Europe and to boast about what good Europeans we are. The Government is happy to go looking for money from Europe, but it has been totally reluctant to live up to the obligations of membership of EU when it comes to fully implementing directives or judgments of the European Court which would benefit those on low incomes. One can imagine how different the story would be if the tens of thousands of women involved in this case happened to be tens of thousands of farmers. The front page article in today's Irish Independent tells about the £138 million paid to farmers in compensation for a price increase which never took place. That supposed increase plus the 10 per cent devaluation which was added, gave farmers a £138 million bonanza to which they were not entitled. One can only imagine what Minister Woods and his strident Minister of State, Deputy Burton, would do in this case if these women, the vast majority of whom, if not all, are on low incomes, had the IFA lobby behind them.
The Department's record in this area has been appalling. Successive Ministers have made us the skinflints and begrudgers of Europe. Whenever Government has had the choice of ending inequality by making some people better off or cutting the living standards of those already in need it has chosen the latter, the easier option. It did this when equalisation measures were first implemented in the mid-1980s and again in 1989 when the Supreme Court found in the Hyland case that the State was discriminating because non-married couples were receiving more in unemployment assistance than were married couples. Rather than increasing the levels of payments to married couples to bring them up to the level of payments to non-married couples, the then Government cut the incomes of unmarried people, thus plunging people in need even further into poverty.
This entire affair raises another issue of fundamental importance, that is the accountability of the Government, the Executive, to this House. The manner in which Minister Woods and his Minister of State, Deputy Joan Burton, have engaged in what amounts to a virtual conspiracy of silence on this issue makes a mockery of the commitments in the Programme for a Partnership Government about "encouraging greater openness and improving public accountability, transparency and trust".
It is not just the married women concerned who have been denied information about their entitlements. Members of this House have also been refused details on the number of claims settled and the amounts paid, information to which we should be entitled — it is public money. I have a file of questions tabled by Deputy De Rossa and some others of my colleagues going back over a number of years which have drawn a virtual blank in terms of extracting information. On some occasions the Minister has simply ignored the questions and replied to matters he was not asked about, a favourite gambit of his. At other times he claimed he could not comment as matters were before the court. Extraordinarily, on one occasion he claimed that his Department did not maintain statistics on the number of solicitors' letters received claiming payment of arrears of transitional payments. On other occasions he refused to give information about settlements, claiming that they were subject to "conditions of confidentiality", conditions which his Department had insisted on setting. This is a shameful episode in the history of Irish public administration and it is especially regrettable that the victims should be women, and predominantly women on low incomes.
So determined was Minister Woods and his new adjutant, Minister of State Burton, to deny information to Members of the Dáil that officials of the Department, presumably acting on the instructions of their political masters, refused last October to attend the meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Women's Rights to discuss this matter.
As Members of this House we have a fundamental right to the information we have been seeking. How many women have applied for and how many have received the transitional payments due to them? What was the average payment made in these cases? How many claims are outstanding? How many women would have been entitled to transitional payments between the years 1986 and 1992 had they been paid to women on the same basis as to men? What legal expenses has the Department incurred in preparing to defend court cases which never went to hearing? Various estimates have been made of the numbers of women who might qualify for the transitional payments, varying from 40,000 to 75,000. We do not know how many women have received settlements but it is likely to be considerably fewer than 5,000, leaving a substantial number of married women still being discriminated against. The treatment of these women and the attempts to keep them in the dark are an outrage.
This is the first Government to have included among its members a Minister with specific responsibility for equality. What is the value in having a Minister for Equality when he is prepared to turn the blind eye to women being treated as second-class citizens? I share a constituency with the same Minister for Equality. I can assure the House that the lustre that surrounded him when he was so indignant in Opposition is fast disappearing in the minds of women in Dublin South-West, in Tallaght, Clondalkin and Walkinstown who are involved in this very issue and have been denied their entitlements.
Is this the best the Labour Party can do, especially when they have a Minister of State at the responsible Department who would claim to be particularly committed to the rights of women? I am reluctant to comment further on the political performance of the Minister of State, Deputy Joan Burton, in this area because, almost alone of the 30 Ministers in the House, she seems to take any criticism of her lamentable political performance as some kind of personal comment, gives interviews and writes letters to the papers complaining about members of the Opposition doing their job in exposing this kind of injustice. She takes it as an attack on women, an attack on her; she has not yet learned the adversarial system that obtains in this House. Since I am a considerable admirer of the woman as a woman, I regret that I cannot deal with her as firmly as I would like. It is a lamentable record that, as a Labour Minister in Government, with this particular brief, and professing a commitment to equality for women, she has sat beside the Minister for Social Welfare, Dr. Woods, since she came into office, yet nothing, but nothing has happened on this issue. We still encounter the same obstacles to basic information to which we are entitled and the women affected are still being obliged to resort to legal action to prosecute their case.
It is necessary to inquire why there is such a deafening silence from the Labour backbenches on this issue. Various Labour backbenchers with whom I have had the privilege of appearing in radio broadcasts or whatever tell their constituents and the country at large about the new committee system we have in the Dáil, about how hard they work at it, but always they have been in scant evidence at any of the committees on which I have served. On an issue like this that affects women in their constituencies one would expect them to be in the House, to offer tacit support if they feel they cannot stand up and say that they are defending these women. Yet what we get is deafening silence, no sign of the Labour Party at all in the House this evening on an issue that affects tens of thousands of women. Is it just that they do not care, or are they embarrassed by the role of their colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Joan Burton, in failing to make any attempt to resolve this saga which continues for perhaps up to 75,000 women?
Even at this late stage the Government should do the decent thing. No more women should be forced to resort to the courts to secure justice. The Government should do what it should have done after the judgment of the European Court in March 1991. It should take steps to notify all those married women — I presume that the Department has already identified those eligible — and inform them of their entitlements and set about the phased payment of the moneys due to them.
If it is acceptable to the House, I should like to share my time with Deputy De Rossa.
