The first item on the agenda is the election of a chairman. I will now accept nominations for chairman which should be seconded. I should point out that voting and candidacy for chairman of the committee is confined to actual Members of the committee, as nominated by the Committee of Selection.
Page 3
Election of Chairman.
Clerk
I propose Senator Roche as chairman.
I second that proposal.
Senator Roche then took the Chair.
Chairman
I want to thank Senator Cashin and Deputy Ryan for proposing and seconding me.
Procedure Generally.
Chairman
The second matter on the agenda is to decide whether we should deal with some matters in private session, that is, to consider the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Bill, 1993 informally with the Minister. But before doing so I think we have to cover some points relating to procedure generally. I am advised that we have to decide the general position about public and private sessions. The formal election of chairman is always done in public session. The balance of our work could be done in private session. Then we could revert to a formal public session for consideration of the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Bill, 1993 section by section. That is the way it was done on a previous occasion. I take it that is agreed.
We also have to examine the issue of verbatim official reporting. Any portion of the work of the Committee in public session will have to be the subject of verbatim reporting. That is a matter for decision by the Committee. Clearly, we cannot have a public session with the press reporting without having an Official Report.
I take it that is agreed by the Committee. Agreed. The Committee also has to decide whether the press and/or visitors should be allowed to be present. The general practice has been to have as many sessions as possible of these committees open to the public and to the press. The general practice has been to exclude the press and visitors during private sessions. I do not anticipate that we will have too many private sessions. I take it that it is agreed that the press and/or visitors will be permitted to attend. Is that agreed? Agreed.
With regard to Standing Orders, there are a number of differences between the Standing Orders of the Seanad and the Dáil. In many ways, the Standing Orders governing committee work in the Dáil are more precise than those governing Seanad work. As regards the taking of divisions in Select Committees, differences exist between Standing Orders in the Dáil and those in the Seanad. Seanad Standing Orders require the locking of the doors and the taking of the division forthwith, by the Clerk calling the name of Members, whereas the Dáil Standing Orders require that, when eight minutes have elapsed, or as soon as all Members are present, whichever is the sooner, the doors should be locked and a division taken by the Clerk calling out the names of the Members. It is a matter for the Committee to decide on which procedure to adapt. It strikes me that the Dáil procedures fulfil all of the requirements of the Seanad procedures and are more precise. Therefore I suggest that we adopt the Dáil procedures in the event of our having a vote. Is that agreed? Agreed.
With regard to a quorum, Dáil Standing Orders provide that if, on the report of a division it becomes obvious that a quorum is not present and if, after not less than a further eight minutes have elapsed a quorum is still not present, the Chairman shall suspend the meeting to a later hour or to a subsequent day named by him or her and no decision shall be considered to be arrived at by the division. The relevant Seanad Standing Order makes no such provision. Therefore, again I would suggest that we adopt Dáil procedure regarding a quorum. Is that agreed? Agreed.
Social Welfare (Consolidation) Bill, 1993: Committee Stage.
I propose that we go on to the formal consideration of the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Bill, 1993.
Chairman
I take it that will be in public which means official reporting will continue. The only observation I would make is that we are short in terms of Members present, which may cause difficulties later if we go too far without one of the major parties in the Dáil or Seanad being represented. I think we should commence formally. Everybody has had notice, and the Minister can explain the various sections of the Bill. Perhaps the Minister would now like to make his introductory comments.
I will make these comments in an attempt to be helpful. It is a formidable Bill in size alone. This Social Welfare (Consolidation) Bill, 1993 is an important, almost unique Bill, since there have been three such major Consolidation Bills since the foundation of the State. One of those was the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act, 1981.
The purpose of a consolidation Bill is to consolidate all the existing statute law on a particular subject matter. The only permissible amendments are those designed to remove ambiguities, replacing modern for archaic language, achieving uniformity of expression. A consolidation Bill may not make any substantive amendments to the law. It must also be certified by the Attorney General as a consolidating measure. This Bill has been certified as such. I would like to assure Members of the committee that this Bill makes no substantive change in the law and is certified as such. Some people may wonder why we have undertaken such an onerous task if the Bill does not make any changes in the law. I might point out that some 800,000 people, with 700,000 dependants, receive social welfare payments each week and the legal provisions designed to benefit such a large proportion of the population shoud be accessible and easily understood. The Social Welfare (Consolidation) Bill, 1981 collated the provisions of over 70 years of social welfare law. Since 1981, 19 Social Welfare Acts with over 500 sections, have been enacted. These amending Acts provide for major developments in the social welfare code. These include the extension of social insurance to the self-employed and part-time workers; 160,000 additional workers now have cover for PRSI pensions on retirement; the introduction of the lone parent and the carers' allowances with approximately 39,000 people, with almost 60,000 dependants, benefit from these schemes; the establishment of the independent social welfare appeals office and a wide variety of measures designated to streamline the system for beneficiaries and prevent fraud and abuse. All these developments — introduced over the years, principally by me, as Minister for Social Welfare — have significantly altered the provisions of the 1981 Act.
I plan to publish a layman's guide to this Social Welfare (Consolidation) Bill, 1993 as soon as it is enacted. This guide will describe all the provisions in a simple, straightforward way. The consolidation of 20 Social Welfare Acts and the new layman's guide will ensure that the legal provisions of such great importance are readily accessible, not confined merely to those with the time and expertise to trawl through 13 years of legislation. The different provisions and the language used have been simplified and brought up to date. The Bill restructures the entire provisions governing the code.
The insurability provisions relating to almost 1.4 million employees, self-employed workers and voluntary contributors to the PRSI Fund are contained in separate Chapters of the Bill. The essential core of the code — provision for income maintenance schemes which cover pensions for elderly and retired people, families who are unemployed or out of work through illness or invalidity, family income support for widows and lone parents and child support — are all set out separately in different Chapters. A major simplification has been undertaken in the structure of all other provisions of the code. Provisions such as those relating to the making of claims and payments, formerly scattered throughout the Acts and in regulations have all been standardised. A common set of administrative and other provisions now applies to all social insurance and assistance schemes.
There are separate Chapters in the Bill containing standardised provisions governing how claimants' claims and payments are made; the appointment, duties and powers of deciding officers who have the responsibility of determining people's entitlements under the Acts and the authority of Social Welfare inspectors; offences and legal proceedings under the code and all matters relating to the social welfare appeals office, including procedures for appeals and the duties and responsibilities of the chief appeals officers.
The planned approach we have taken in drafting this Bill ensures that the provisions relating to any specific area of the code can be easily found in this legislation. By standardising the provisions applying to the various schemes we have removed many of the complexities in the code which obtained previously.
To assist Members in their work, I should say that the Bill is prefixed by a memorandum, as required by Standing Orders, which shows the enactments proposed to be repealed and the sections of the Bill in which these enactments are reproduced. This is a very important Consolidation Bill. It makes the law more accessible, easier to understand, will be of great benefit to Members of the Oireachtas and to all others involved in whatever way in the area of social welfare.
I might refer briefly to the memorandum prefixing the Bill which, in itself, could cause some difficulty in interpretation. This is not the usual type of explanatory memorandum to a Bill with which Members are familiar, but all these annotations and remarks can be seen on page III. To explain this in simple terms, the first column contains every provision of the earlier Act. The earlier Act refers to the one on top of that page, which is the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act, 1981. Down along the side, in the first column, there appears every single provision of the 1981 Act. The next column headed — Provision of Bill — shows where that appears in this Bill. For instance, section 1 is not provided for in this Bill because it was just a short Title in the original Act. This Bill has its own Title so that is not necessary. That is why there is a blank in the middle column and a note included in the remarks column. Then Members will find that section 2 (1) of the earlier Act is contained in section 2 (1), (2) and (3) of this Bill. Therefore, one can trace every section of every previous Act in this Bill. That is what this memorandum does. There are no comments in the remarks column after those entries because they are straightforward. But when one comes down to section 5 (1) in the first column there is a blank in the second column. The reason for this is that it was carried forward through section 40 of the Social Welfare Act, 1991. In other words, it is superseded by that Act, which is then brought forward in this Bill.
Could the Minister explain section 7 in the column headed "Provision of Earlier Act"?
Section 7 is a different kind of remark. It is carried into section 11 but section 7 (2) is dropped because it is obsolete and unnecessary. Section 7 (3) is repealed by section 23 of the subsequent Act of 1985. In other words, the Act of 1985 is carried forward but sections of previous consolidated legislation is not carried forward because it is already carried into the 1985 Act. Deputies and Senators will note that everything is systematically carried forward unless it is superseded by one of the subsequent Acts mentioned and in that case the subsequent Act is carried forward. It is carried forward in so far as the subsequent Act supersedes it.
Chairman
Let us take the example of section 5 (1). There is no specific provision in this Bill as it was substituted by section 40 of the Social Welfare Act, 1991. Is section 40 of the Social Welfare Act, 1991, therefore, in section 5 of this Bill, or will a further note show us where it is?
No. Further on we will see what has happened to the 1991 Act.
Chairman
Yes, I follow. It is included with the subsequent Acts, of course.
From page iii onwards we list everything that happened to the 1981 Act. We then go on to the bottom of page viii, which deals with the Social Welfare (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1981, which is the first subsequent Act to the basic Consolidation Act.
Chairman
At the bottom of Page viii we have the Social Welfare (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1981. The Social Welfare Act, 1982, is across from that on Page ix. From Page iii we are dealing with the provisions of the 1981 Consolidation Act and all the subsequent Acts are dealt with subsequently.
The chairman asked about section 40 of the 1991 Act. If we go to the 1991 Act on page xx, we will find what happened to section 40. Section 40 (1) (a) is carried into section 9 (1) of this Consolidation Bill, 1993.
Chairman
And section 40 (1) (b) is carried into section 21 (2) and so on.
I realise that it looks complicated, but it is a total reference to everything that has happened. It is total cross-index. Members will see the volume of work involved. Every single subsection in the original Acts is accounted for. Let us take another example. The last Act, the Social Welfare Act, 1993 is on page xxiii. Let us go down through the columns. In the first column you will see that section 1 was unnecessary because it was a short title. In other words there is a new title to the Act and the title changes.
Section 2 was unnecessary definitions. There are various reasons that they are "unnecessary". For instance, if in the original Act it stated: "This Act is to commence on 1 April, 1993" then it is unnecessary to repeat it because it is already in force. That is not carried forward because it only causes complications, therefore, the commencement date is dropped as unnecessary. Similarly with the operative dates — the dates from which particular things operate. With regard to provisions that were repealed at some stage, it is unnecessary to carry those forward, so they would be deemed unnecessary also. The same applies to provisions that were substituted by a later provision which rendered them obsolete and then there is deletion, where some words were deleted earlier. Again, it is a totally consistent way of nothing everything that has happened.
If we go to page XXIV we will see at the top that section 28 (6) is unnecessary because it was repealed already and has been deleted. It is not carried forward because the measure was repealed.
Does that apply to section 39 (3)?
It is interesting that the Deputy raises that. That subsection is not carried forward. Essentially it results from an industrial relations situation, that the word "inspector" has taken over from "social welfare officers" and "social welfare inspectors". They are all inspectors now. This came from combining the old corps of social welfare investigating officers with the different grades, and those offices can now compete across the general service grades. It really came from an industrial relations situation. All social welfare officers now are called inspectors.
They are now social welfare inspectors.
That is right. It really resulted from the industrial relations changes that took place. The Deputy has put his finger on an unusual one in that sense. The rest of the sections are dealt with in the way we have talked about.
The memorandum is there for reference if anyone wants to check where anything is in the future. If anyone wants to check where any particular section or sections went to or what happened to them, all the cross reference for that is there. It has been certified by the Attorney General's Office that everything has been carried forward and that there is nothing missing in that respect.
Before we go too deeply into it I would like to mention in case we forget afterwards, the enormous amount of work involved in this. That is why we do not have many Government Departments doing this kind of task, because it takes painstaking work to put everything together for legislators and others and it takes an enormous amount of time. I would like to place on the record my appreciation of the work done by the parliamentary draftsmen, Mr. Jack Hazlett, for giving drafting assistance, advice and ensuring speedy processing; Mr. Vincent Grogan for very valuable advice in the whole area; and members of our own social welfare team, because it was a team effort on their part headed by Eoin Ó Broin, who was very ably assisted at different stages by a number of civil servants who prefer to remain anonymous. Their names are Ms Mary McGarry, Ms Joan Gordon and Mr. Enda Flynn, who is now my Private Secretary. They put an awful lot of work into this and, as you can see, different members of that team did different parts of the work, which all had to be certified subsequently.
In relation to the format of the Bill, Part I covers definitions and interpretation. Part II deals with social insurance — the Social Insurance Fund. Part III deals with the assistance schemes. It is now very simple. The 1981 Act was very good consolidating legislation when it was done in 1981. We now have an even much better Consolidation Act because it has been simplified a lot more, apart from taking in everything that has happened since that time. The two basic areas are insurance and assistance; and everything relating to insurance is in Part II and Part III covers everything relating to assistance. Parts IV and V relates to child benefit and family income supplement schemes. Part VI covers provisions which are common to both social insurance and social assistance and are dealt with separately. This would include things like the social welfare inspectors and offences which would be common to both. Part VII deals with decisions of deciding officers and appeals officers and other provisions relating to decisions and appeals officers in the case of the supplementary welfare allowance scheme and also the Social Welfare Tribunal.
Part VIII deals with overpayments and repayments. Part IX deals with the liable relative clauses. Part X contains the necessary continuity provisions from the consolidation of the legislation and provides for the repeal of enactments which are reproduced in the Bill. The First Schedule deals with insured employment and self employment excepted from social insurance. The Second and Fourth Schedules deal with the rates of social insurance and social assistance payments. The Third Schedule has the rules governing the assessment of means. The Fifth Schedule sets out the enactments repealed by the Bill and the Sixth Schedule contains amendments to the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act, 1981, which has not yet been brought into force. The source references which we mentioned at the beginning, the columns and memorandum, are listed after the Schedules. There are also a few technical amendments which we will come to in due course. In one case in the drafting and printing of this Bill the second half of a bracket was left out and it is not permissible to put in the second half of the bracket without it coming through the committee. That applies to amendment No. 6, which we will come to later.
Is the Minister saying that the deletion of one half of the bracket might deprive somebody?
I do not see how it could. In case it might we will put it back in. That indicates just how thoroughly the Bills Office, the Department and draftsman went through this Bill. That concludes my introduction to the Bill. The remainder of the Bill deals with the sections which have been consolidated.
Chairman
That concludes the Minister's introductory remarks. Do Members wish to make any other introductory remarks?
I am amazed at the amount of work that has been done to bring this Bill before us this afternoon. I have no doubt it will simplify matters not only for politicians but for officials and perhaps the general public. I compliment the personnel who have drawn up this Bill. How much time went into it?
In the past few months, a great deal of time; and before that a lot of preparatory work. It has been constant work for a number of people in the past few months. It is interesting that in the Department we have a person who drafts Bills for us — every Department does not have that facility — and that person is Eoin Ó Broin. If you were waiting for the parliamentary draftsmans' office to do that, you would have to wait a long time. Eoin Ó Broin and his staff drafted the Bill, the draftsman's office went through it and then a very senior drafts-person went over it. The backbreaking work was done by the staff in the Department. It is the only way you could get that kind of work done. It is tedious work.
I compliment the Minister on this. I read through the Committee Stage brief last evening and felt it would make pleasant reading through the recess.
Chairman
It is fascinating to look at. Having spent some time in the Civil Service I know a little about the black art of parliamentary draftsmanship. It is a compliment to the Department. This the second Consolidation Bill in just over a decade. As the Minister said, consolidating legislation is needed in a great many Departments but this has not been done and the law remains a jungle. The Minister and his officials have put a huge amount of time into making more accessible what is extremely complex legislation. I know it is the Minister's personal objective that there should be a layman's guide to the entirety of the service, with full references to the law. That is an absolutely excellent innovation. Some years before I entered politics I worked with the OECD and we looked at guides to public services. I was much taken at that time by guides produced to French services, which are based on the Napoleonic code. The codes of law are very complex and they had to go through a similar process before they got layman's guides which were readable. It is interesting that when the guides were actually put on sale they subsequently became the number one bestseller. Perhaps the Minister and his Department would consider that.
I will note that.
Chairman
As Senator Cashin and Deputy Ryan have said, it is clear that a huge amount of effort has been put into this. It makes the law accessible and the law should be accessible in a democracy. The Minister and his officials are to be complimented. That ends the introductory remarks. As there is no proposal for a private session, we can now proceed to consider the Bill in its separate elements.
Sections 1 to 3, inclusive, agreed to.