How the Myth of Dole Abuse Clouds the Misery of Unemployment

There would seem to be an obvious line of political descent from a speech by Charlie Haughey at the last Fianna Fail Ard Fheis through paragraph 7.16 of the Green Paper Develop- t ment for Full Employment to the reo ~ cently increased restrictions on dole~ claimants. But the appearances are de·~ ceptive: the Minister for Social Wellfare and his department officials cateegorically deny that they have issued any directive to labour exchanges requiring them to have the unemployed sign on more regularly or show more tangible evidence of their efforts to get work. The regulations for labour exchanges specifically require claimants Jiving within two miles of an exchange to sign on daily. By Brian Trench
Due to the increased pressure on the exchanges from record levels of unemployment the rules had been relaxed and that was on the basis of a department instruction. However, with the dip in unemployment earlier this year, exchange managers arranged for a return to earlier methods. Ironically, these were just taking wider effect and coming to public notice as unemployment rose again in two leaps of over 1,000 a week. If closer scrutiny of claimants' eligibility removes some people from the Live Register of unemployed, they will be knocked down, as they leave the exchanges, by the new people coming in.

Still, there is constant pressure on the Minister and the Department of Social Welfare to cut out alleged abuses of the dole. The most common of these is supposed to be "doing the double", that is, holding down a job and colleccting unemployment benefit. Complaints about this practice are made frequently to the Minister, though they are usually non-specific. The conviction that the practice is widespread extends into the Fianna Fail parliamentary party and limits the Minister's ability to persuade them that Social Welfare needs more funds. Civil servants in that department come in for flak from their colleagues in other departments because they are alleegedly lax in controlling the hand-outs.

Both the present Minister and his officials believe that dole abuses are a very minor problem, however. Defining the work of this department, Charlie

Haughey starts by saying that it is their I purpose to let people know what beneefits they are entitled to receive and to pay them those benefits. Yet, with his ear fairly firmly attached to the ground, he told last February's FF Ard Fheis of his concern a bout abuses of the social welfare system. And the same concern was expressed in terms of a possible cost-cutting exercise in the Green Paper:

"Steps must be taken to prevent abuses of the system .... the effect of fraudulent claims is that less is available to help those who are genuinely in need ... such abuse of the system affects the C0111m unity's willingness to provide the necessary finances ... "

And then: "the government are re- i viewing the existing measures to combat " fraudulent claims and have at present under consideration a number of meaasures to control abuse of the system and thereby reduce the heavy cost of finanncing the services."

There is no evidence at all of any. such measures having been introd uced. The Department does not even have an approximate figure for the value of benefits which have been paid to ineligible claimants. But officials acknowledge that if such a figure could be prooduced it would certainly come to less than the £500,000 which the Departtment had to retrieve last year through civil bills issued against employers who did not buy social insurance stamps with the money deducted from wages for that purpose.

Last year, about 100 successful proosecutions were brought against employyers for failure to pass on contributions. Although there are over ten times as many insured workers as there are emmployers liable to pay insruance, the number of successful prosecutions against social welfare claimants was 87. That figure represented a substantial inncrease over the previous year due to the prosecutions of 30 people in a single case. In the first ten months of 1978, there have been 47 successful prosecuutions. These figures include both dole abusers and the more easily apprehendded defrauders of sickness benefit.

As Parliamentary Secretary, Frank Cluskey tried to turn the tables on those who alleged there were wideespread abuses of the dole (usually reeferring to urban workers rather than to recipients of the politely named "smalllholders' assistance"). 'He launched a campaign against defaulting employers in the wake of the Creation Group collapse which had revealed that tens of thousands of pounds worth of deducctions for a pension fund, for P AYE, and for social insurance, had been retained by the company. The Social Welfare Act, 1976, increased the penalties for such offences, but only a small proporrtion of the cases where social welfare officers discover a discrepancy go as far as prosecution and conviction, By their own efforts the Department recovered over £4 million last year from employyers who had not stamped cards up to date. Even that sizeable sum represents a tiny percentage of the total of £230 million collected each' year from emmployees' contributions.

Not too surprisingly, the Green Paper does not mention this form of social welfare abuse. However, in a letter sent last month to Michael Bell, National Group Secretary in the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, the Minister's private secretary stated that Haughey was conscioLis of the problems caused by employers who do not "comply with their obligations to stamp the insurance cards of their employees". "You may rest assured," he wrote, "that all practical steps will be taken to ensure that no employee suffers loss because an employer fails to comply with the law."

Bell, whose group within the union includes workers in the much troubled textiles and footwear sectors, had stated that non-stamping of social welfare cards had "assumed grave proportions, particularly in the low-paid areas of employment, and indeed in industries where we have 'been faced with shortttime working, lay-offs and redundanccies." Bell claims that in every factory closure which he has to deal with cards were not stamped up to date; the perriods for which stamps were missing ranged fromsix months to two years. In some instances, companies have tried to extend their life by not stamping cards, even resorting to blackmail' by claiming that they would have to close a factory if they did stamp the cards up to date. In other instances, it has been found that companies were lodging the deducctions in the bank, either trading with the cash or accumulating interest, and then buying the stamps in one block at the end of six months or a year.

Workers have the right to inspect their cards once a month, but few do it. They may not want to risk precipitating a crisis in a shaky company if they innsist on their right and evidently they feel other inhibitions about doing it, too. When five uninhibited part-time teachers at Dun Laoghaire School of Art occupied the premises of the Vocaational Education Committee for a day and a half during October in order to see their cards they had their worst suspicions confirmed: the cards had not been fully stamped for three years.

However, workers from whom deeductions have been made and who cannnot, therefore, be blamed for the disscrepancy, are protected if they are made redundant. Once the Department is satisfied that they have made their conntribution unemployment benefit can be paid. But the investigation may take several weeks and during that time the unemployed person receives only the means-tested unemployment assistance whose maximum rate is much lower than unemployment benefit. The State, too, is partly protected against employyers' failure to buy the stamps; in the event of a liquidation, the Department of Social Welfare comes high up the list of secured creditors. However, it may take months or years for the liquidator to make the payment and, even then, it is likely to be less than the full amount.

It seems no amount of evidence of . employers' abuse of the dole is going to shift the well-rooted belief that claimants are systematically fiddling the system. As Jim Murray, Director of the National Social Service Council, has pointed out, this kind of belief - or "myth", as he calls it - has a dangerous effect: it helps keep payments for the unemployed lower than they should be and it inhibits action to eliminate unnemployment. And there, too, is a reason for Ministers to gently encourage what they know to be a wild exaggeration. It can feed the notion that many of the unemployed lead the life of Reilly and that there are not really as many genuinnely unemployed as the Live Register statistics show. However, Murray's analysis of the unemployed has demonnstrated that an increasing proportion are being reduced to the rock-bottom assisstance payments. And it is generally accepted by economists and statisticians - notably Brendan Walsh, of ESRI - that the Live Register gives an underate, possibly by as much as 30,000 or 40,000 of the unemployed.

In a paper prepared last January, Jim Murray demonstrated that while the overall level of unemployment was fallling, the numbers of 'unemployed who have been out of work for six months or more, and who have, therefore, lost or are about to lose entitlement to redunndancy payor pay-related benefit, are rising steadily. Murray showed that the numbers on the Live Register who receive no form of benefit at all have been increasing, and the proportion of those relying on unemployment assistance alone is also on the up. In October 1977, these two categories took in over half the officially unemployed. Their maximum income if they had an adult dependant and six child dependants comes to £38.60 - less than half the average male industrial earnings.

The average income of the unemmployed represents a declining proportion of the earnings of those at work and their average period out of work is inncreasing. Figures from the Central Statiistics Office show that the trend contttinued into this year. In 1976, 50 per cent of the males on the Live Register were unemployed for more than six months. In August 1977, that figure had gone up to 52.7 per cent. It dipped slightly in November 1977 - to 51.4 per cent, but in May of this year it had risen to 54.8 per cent. In the six months from last November to last May the number of men unemployed for more than a year rose from 28,236 to 29,505 during a period when the total numbers, excluding those on farmholders assisttance, fell from 84,524 to 81,591. Now that unemployment is again rising steaddily towards the 100,000 threshold which Jack Lynch last January hung around his neck as the acceptable reason for supporting, or rejecting, a government, it can only be assumed that the trend is being accentuated. Launching their Interim Report last month, the chairrwoman of the Combat Poverty Commmittee, Sister Stanislaus, made a general reference to the growing number of unnemployed caught within the poverty trap. Unfortunately, none of the projects which the Poverty Committee is carrying out will demonstrate with the necessary force just how wide of the mark the common middle-class perceptions of the unemployed are.

A recently published survey of a Dublin working class estate ÀEdenmore, in Raheny - showed in annother way how global and average figures for unemployment disguise the grim reality of unemployment as so many experience it. The survey, carried out by the local branch of the Socialist Labour Party, recorded a level of unemployment twice the national average. For those between 16 and 19, however, the figure was 29 per cent. Youths do not become eligible for unemployment benefit until they are 18. Those who have never worked and are living at home may be assessed for unemployment assistance. While not preparing a formal report on this aspect of unemployment at Edennmore, SLP researchers found that some did not bother to collect the assistance they had been awarded because the bus fares to the labour exchange made it worthless. By doing this, they also forrfeited other non-cash benefits.

An even larger category of unemmployed who do not appear on the Live Register and who receive neither benefit nor assistance are married women. Many professional and voluntary workers assisting the unemployed insist that the apparently systematic refusal of Departtment officials to recognise married women as being available for work and, therefore, eligible for unemployment benefits, is one of the very real abuses. Deciding Officers rule them out on the grounds that they cannot be available for work when they are looking after their children and Appeals Officers have tended overwhelmingly to uphold their findings. (This is in contrast to the 40 per cent of cases where the appellant is successful in having the original decision reversed, or modified.)

An unsuccessful claimant took a High Court action against the Department last April. But Justice Tom Finlay ruled that the onus of proof was on the claimmant to show that the Appeals Officer had acted unreasonably and to support her own case for unemployment benefit. The Coolock Community Law Centre, which was involved with that case, reeports that Appeals Officers seem to be influenced in their finding by whether the claimant is represented by a third party or not. . They also say that claimmants may be humiliated with questions like "Who will cook your husband's tea?" or led into agreeing that they are available for part-time work, from which the A.O. concludes that they are not available for full-time work, and therefore not eligible for benefit.

It cannot be denied that some claimmants do make fraudulent claims and their numbers are considerably under-stated in the figures for prosecutions. Generally, the problem is handled under the regulations for the exchanges rather than going to court. However, for purrposes of the appeal which almost invarriably follows a decision to suspend a claimant from unemployment benefit, or remove them from the register altogether, the Department is obliged to observe the strictest standards of evidence and the l8 social welfare officers throughout the state who specialise in matters of dole fraud may face insuperable problems in proving a suspected abuse. On the other hand, the knowledge that they are being investiigated often persuades a claimant to report that they are working again Hpossibly several months after this has happened. It is notable, too, that in 30 of last year's convictions against claimman ts for unemployment benefit or assistance, the Probation Act was applied, the court evidently holding that there was real hardship. The Department did not retrieve the funds they had handed out. But nobody was making themselves rich on dole money.

Set against the misery of unemployyment for so many thousands, the increassing length of time spent out of work, and the mounting evidence that the Fianna Fail government's programme cannot make a substantial dent in the unemployment figures, dole abuse is an insignificant phenomenon. Thousands of women and youth are excluded from any form of benefit. Others are awarded so little and have so far to travel to a labour exchange that it is not worth collecting. The proportion of those who are included in the statistices for unemmployment but who receive no social welfare payments or minimal meansstested assistance is increasing. Employers are defrauding the Department of Social Welfare of thousands of pounds at a time. And the 26 Counties still maintains it's bottom-of-the-league position in the EEC for per capita spending on social services and for the proportion of national income spent on social benefits.

The continuing chorus about doleefiddling deflects attention from all of these things. But it could be stopped if the Minister for Social Welfare was willing to make an emphatic and detailed statement on the information which his Department has on supposed abuses!