I welcome the opportunity to raise this matter in the Seanad and am glad that the Minister is able to be present to reply. I do not approach this in any contentious way and am not going to raise the temperature, but I want the House to be aware that this section—section 17 of the 1975 Act —appears to be a dead letter and yet it is a section which was inserted into that Act to fulfil a very important purpose.
I propose to begin by reading the relevant part of section 17. It refers to the possibility of the health boards recovering supplementary welfare allowances from the person who is in a position to provide maintenance. In the normal case, this would be that, where a deserted wife was getting a supplementary welfare allowance, the health board could bring proceedings in the District Court against the husband, if he was in a position to maintain the wife and children. Section 17 (1) states:
Where a health board grants supplementary welfare allowance to any person (in this section referred to as "the beneficiary"), every person who is liable to maintain the beneficiary shall be liable to contribute to the health board according to his ability to any allowance so granted.
Subsection (2) provides:
Whenever a person who is liable to contribute to supplementary welfare allowance granted to the beneficiary fails or neglects to make such contribution, the health board concerned may apply to the District Court for an order directing the person liable to contribute to make such contribution to the allowance so granted.
Then there are further subsections dealing with the procedure before the District Court and providing that the person liable for maintenance would not have to pay more than the amount of the supplementary welfare allowance.
So far as I have been able to ascertain, from my own personal experience of deserted wives with particular problems—and I will identify these problems—and in conversation with social workers and from inquiries that I have made to Women's Aid, who process more than 20 applications for supplementary welfare allowance every week, there has not been evidence of any attempt or willingness by the health boards to invoke section 17 of the 1975 Act. The information appears to be that this section is somehow under consideration, or it may even be that the health boards are not themselves sure of the jurisdiction. It is extremely important that we clarify precisely what is meant in section 17 and that it be given a very positive and meaningful interpretation by the health boards; it is a very vital extra hand, or additional support, to deserted wives in particular circumstances.
I would preface what I am going to say by referring to the problem of deserted wives generally. It is too broad a subject for the adjournment but it is clear that a deserted wife, left with children, has very difficult choices to make. Indeed, a report brought out by the Coolock Law Centre on deserted/separated wives' maintenance and social welfare, which was released on 14 November last, identified five basic choices for a deserted wife and six combination choices, making 11 choices in all, as to what she would do in seeking support.
We must realise that the deserted wife is, initially, in a very difficult position. She must choose whether to apply for maintenance from her husband; whether to apply if eligible, for the deserted wives benefit; whether she can apply for the deserted wives allowance with all the attending conditions; whether to opt for split payments; or whether to fall back on supplementary welfare allowance. Depending on her difficult choice in this very harrowing time for her, she will get differing amounts of money and even differing conditions relating to relief on rent and other assistance. She is in a very difficult position.
I turn to a particular problem where section 17 would be a necessary help and support, in certain circumstances. I refer to the situation where a woman has taken out a maintenance order and her husband defaults in paying—either he goes on sick pay, or as very often happens in these circumstances, he becomes unemployed, perhaps for a short time, perhaps for a longer time. The net result to the unfortunate deserted wife with the children is that she gets half the amount of the maintenance order, or perhaps nothing at all or occasional payments. We all know cases of that. Everybody doing advisory work in a clinic in a constituency—in Dublin particularly and around the country—knows of defaults in payments and of the evasion of responsibility in these matters.
I would mention a recent typical case which I encountered in the Rathmines area. It is a case of a deserted wife who has three young children under the age of ten. She has three other children but those three are being maintained by her as young, dependent children. She took out a maintenance order against her husband and the District Court awarded her £30 maintenance. Her husband was not paying, so she got an attachment order; in other words she has tried through the courts under the Family Law legislation to go as far as she can. The husband has now gone on sick pay for an indefinite time. So, instead of getting £30 a week—which is not a great deal of money to try to feed and clothe and house three young children and herself—she gets £12.25p. She gets that £12.25p by taking a bus from the heart of Crumlin down to the family law office in Ormond House where she collects her £12.25. She then has to take another bus to her employers' place and get a letter from them saying that £12.25p is all she gets under the attachment of earnings. She then takes another bus right back to the heart of Crumlin again, to the community welfare officer on the Old County Road, produces this letter and gets, not usually cash—by then it is late on Friday afternoon and the community welfare officer has no money left, as happens so often on Friday in these offices—but a food voucher. That unfortunate woman traipses around the city every week and seems to have no way of improving her situation.
If section 17 were given meaning, how would it help that particular woman and any other woman with a maintenance order, where there is default by the husband? If the default continues over a number of weeks and places a woman in this kind of hardship and difficulty—a difficulty that can be totally compounded if there was something like a bus strike—what does a woman like that do? She has to get somebody to look after her children while she traipses around the city from office to office. If section 17 was being used and had the meaning that it is clearly intended to have in the wording of the Act, then, after the establishment of a default of this sort, in getting maintenance a deserted wife in those circumstances should be able to waive any maintenance, if she is getting partial maintenance, or show that she is getting no maintenance at all, or that it is so irregular that it is not a genuine maintenance but only an occasional payment which is something placing her in total financial insecurity. If she establishes that, then, from that moment, the health board should pay her the full supplementary welfare allowance—the minimum that the State believes that somebody can live on. It is the absolute rockbottom minimum. She would get her £22 odd a week to look after herself and her three children. She would get the security of a cash sum every week and no pressure.
There is a lot of pressure exercised by the community welfare officers on women trying to receive the supplementary welfare allowance, week by week. They are asked why do they not go after the husband; why do they not take out another court order; why do they not look for an attachment of earnings. It is totally unfair and cruel to require the deserted wife, in those instances, to try to get further legal redress against the husband. She has exhausted her remedies and should be able to rely on the security of supply of the supplementary welfare allowance. The health board should go against the husband; they should proceed in the District Court to get the balance or the equivalent of the amount in supplementary allowance on the grounds that the husband has a duty to maintain, should have been maintaining and is in a position to maintain his wife and children. If the health board ascertains that the husband is not in a position, has no means, is genuinely unemployed and cannot afford maintenance, then after a period of a secure flow of money at the minimum level of the supplementary welfare allowance, a woman, in those circumstances, should be allowed to transfer over to the deserted wives' allowance or, if she qualifies, to the deserted wives' benefit.
I think the Minister will accept that this is one of the major problems in this whole area, the lack of any possibility of transferring, the lack of any link between what happens under the supplementary welfare allowance and the other allowances, such as the deserted wives' allowance. That is going a little bit outside the terms of this matter on the adjournment.
There are a number of other examples, apart from the example I gave, of cases where section 17 could be an invaluable extra support to a deserted wife who encounters obstacles in trying to get maintenance.
One of the reasons for the particular problem is the lack of definition of what is meant by a deserted wife under the Social Welfare Act 1970; under section 22 of that Act, there is no definition of a deserted wife. There is a provision that a woman cannot qualify for the allowance unless she has been deserted by her husband. The criterion appears to be not desertion but disappearance; it does not include constructive desertion or does not include desertion where the woman knows the whereabouts of her husband but cannot, for very understandable reasons, proceed against him.
A woman may very well know where her husband is but be advised, or know herself, that she should not make any approach to her husband because of a history of violence to her or to the children. There you have a woman whose husband may, in fact, be in a position to maintain her but who is not in a position to take out any maintenance against him because of the physical risk to her health and that of her children, and who should not have further contact with him. That is an example where the health board should move in and should, first of all, give her the supplementary allowance; pursue the husband for his contribution and, if he is not in a position to maintain her, transfer her quickly and directly to the deserted wives' allowance. Another example would be a woman who is too ill, suffering from a nervous or physical illness, and who cannot bring an action for maintenance in the courts but can ascertain her husband's whereabouts. She comes up against this terrible problem that she must take out proceedings against her husband or she will not qualify for the deserted wives' allowance. She then goes along to seek the supplementary welfare allowance but there is always the implication that she should be doing more to chase up her husband, that she cannot be coming back every week to obtain supplementary welfare allowance. That is, undoubtedly, the attitude in a number of the offices. If a woman is coming back, week by week, to the community welfare office, she does not get a welcome. She is told she should be trying to take out a maintenance order against her husband, or applying for the deserted wives' allowance. She applies for the deserted wives' allowance, knows the whereabouts of her husband and has not taken out maintenance against him, so her chances of getting the deserted wives' allowance may be very slim. It is a catch 22 position.
A terrible problem which Women's Aid may encounter again and again is of a woman who may have taken out a maintenance order but has to leave her area and come to Dublin because of the violence encountered in her home. These are the really sad cases. Again and again, it is the unfortunate, deserted wife with young children who has to cope with the inadequacy of the system. In these circumstances, section 17 has particular importance and is, in a sense, an innovation; this does not apply in the Social Welfare Act 1970 and, unfortunately, it does not apply right across the board in relation to deserted wives' allowances and deserted wives' benefit.
The section is of importance here because, in all these cases, the woman needs the security of a supply of money; security of supply is very often more important than the exact amount. Regular receipt of even the minimum amount of the £22-odd is better than the occasional £30 and nothing the following week. Nobody can try to feed, clothe and bring up children on that basis of harrowing uncertainty. Any woman in those circumstances should be able immediately to invoke the assistance of the health board, who should pay her the supplementary allowance and tell her that she can come back each week and get the full allowance in cash and that they will proceed in the District Court against the husband to enforce a maintenance order, or to get as much in maintenance as possible, or take out maintenance in the first place against him, whatever the case may be. If the health board has the view that the husband is genuinely unable to maintain the woman, she should be transferred to the deserted wives' allowance and continue to have, at a slightly higher level, her security of flow of money.
If this section were to be given active implementation by the health board, if they understood what I believe is a legislative intent, then it would be the first step in the right direction towards the kind of approach we should have to deserted wives or, indeed, to deserted spouses; sometimes it is the husband who is deserted and left with the children.
What we need is a guaranteed income to the deserted wife and children stright away; no three months' waiting period. If there is to be a follow-up in looking for maintenance from the husband who is in a position to maintain, and legally obliged to maintain, that should be done by the welfare authority. That is the procedure in other jurisdictions, and is the only procedure which will remove from the deserted wife the burden, the often unacceptable position, of trying to sue her husband through the courts. The constant racket that goes on when a deserted wife gets a maintenance order is that the husband goes unemployed, or goes sick, or disappears for a while, and terrible hardship is caused by this. It is a major area of real hardship. It would be a major improvement to a number of deserted wives just to have the security of a cash flow of about £22 a week. We should all think deeply about that, about how one can try to manage, in this day and age, on that kind of income. Yet, this is by no means an unusual position of a deserted wife in these circumstances. Very often, she will not get much more than that, anyway, in a maintenance order against her husband in the District Court and will have no secure guarantee that he will pay it. Even if she takes out an attachment order, he can avoid it by going unemployed, or on sick pay, or simply disappearing.
The problem is a very real and a very acute one. The way to resolve it is to give section 17 full and meaningful implementation and to continue this approach by amending the Social Welfare Act 1970.
