Vol. 498 No. 3
142 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs if his attention has been drawn to the fact a person who works 20 hours per week in two days can continue to claim partial unemployment benefit whereas a person working the same number of hours spread over five days will be completely disallowed from benefit; and if he will make changes to introduce equitable treatment in these situations. [27126/98]
Current legislation provides for the payment of unemployment benefit in respect of days of unemployment subject to satisfying the statutory contribution conditions and other conditions requiring the claimant to be available for, capable of and genuinely seeking work. Consequently, unemployment benefit is not payable for days in respect of which an employee receives wages irrespective of the amount of the wages or the number of hours worked.
An exception to this situation arises where a person, had, in addition to his/her normal occupation, part-time employment outside normal working hours, prior to claiming unemployment benefit. If the full-time employment was lost, the part-time employment may in certain circumstances be treated as subsidiary employment and exempted for the purposes of qualifying for unemployment benefit. I should also mention that part-time and casual workers may, subject to certain conditions, qualify for means tested unemployment assistance and have a proportion of part-time earnings disregarded in determining their entitlement.
Entitlement to unemployment payments has always been based on the number of days of unemployment and any change in that regard would have fundamental consequences for the schemes. Changes have been made in recent years to facilitate people in taking up part-time employment and there are no plans at present for any further changes in this legislation governing the schemes.
143 Mr. B. Smith asked the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs if the Christmas bonus will be paid to recipients of disability benefit long-term payment; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27170/98]
My Department's Estimates for 1998 included an amount of £40 million to provide for payment of a Christmas bonus to the 715,000 recipients of long-term social welfare payments.
The long-term schemes comprise disablement pension, death benefit by way of pension, old age contributory and non-contributory pension, retirement pension, invalidity pension, widow's and widower's non-contributory pension, orphan's contributory and non-contributory pension, pre-retirement allowance, blind pension, carer's allowance, one parent family payment, unemployment assistance at the long-term rate, disability allowance, payments to people formerly in receipt of deserted wife's benefit and allowance and prisoner's wife's allowance.
The bonus payment amounts to 70 per cent of the person's normal weekly payment subject to a minimum of £20. It is payable to recipients of long-term social welfare payments and is therefore paid to those who are sick or disabled and in receipt of invalidity pension or disability allowance.
People in receipt of short-term payments such as disability benefit, unemployment benefit and unemployment assistance at the short-term rate are not eligible. The cost of paying the bonus to the 24,000 people in receipt of disability benefit for more than 12 months would be £1.5 million. I have no plans at the present time to enable recipients of short-term schemes to qualify.
