I only want to point out that the figures which I am quoting are the total unemployment figures, which include unemployment insurance claimants and ordinary uninsured claimants and any change in social welfare legislation does not affect the total. It may affect the number of persons who are insured claimants as against uninsured claimants, but it does not affect the gross total, so that the Parliamentary Secretary must have been mistaken in the reasons which he gave in his reply.
The position in Dublin is extremely serious at the moment. I have had an opportunity of actually seeing the queues outside the three unemployment exchanges in the City of Dublin and I have received a great many complaints as to conditions in these exchanges and they are appalling. People are kept waiting for four or five hours, the women being very often badly clad while the men's clothes are certainly not fit for this weather. A great many claimants are elderly women who are unemployed and I think it is ridiculous for the Parliamentary Secretary to suggest that they canwalk four or five times a week from Ballyfermot to and from Werburgh Street which is the employment exchange at which they have to sign on.
The Parliamentary Secretary should re-examine this question in a non-Party sense. I said that I did not propose to widen the scope of the debate by going into the causes of the steep increase in unemployment. I merely make an appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary to take measures which will alleviate the lot of the 87,000 people who are unemployed at the moment. I have not got the full total of unemployed in Dublin, but it is very substantial and represents a large percentage of the total. The accommodation in the three exchanges is entirely inadequate.
The Parliamentary Secretary has overlooked the fact that the City of Dublin has grown and expanded at a tremendous rate in recent years and that most of the wage earners in Dublin have moved from the centre of the city to outlying districts forming a ring around the city. Surely it is not too much to ask that some effort should be made to provide employment exchanges in these new areas some of which are many miles away from the present exchanges. The situation has been rendered even more acute by reason of the increase in bus fares in Dublin which has placed an additional burden on the claimants amounting to over 1/- a week in many cases.
Again I want to appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary to approach this question not as a member of the Fianna Fáil Party but to approach it as the responsible Parliamentary Secretary who is faced with a crisis in this respect. The St. Vincent de Paul Conference, who are doing tremendous work to try to alleviate the sufferings of these people, have considered the problem on a number of occasions recently and have made some suggestions as to how it could be dealt with. One of them is that transport should be made available through C.I.E. for unemployed claimants so that on presentation of their cards issued at the labour exchange they would be able to get free transport between certainhours. I do not think this would cause any particular burden on C.I.E. because the hours could be so regulated as to allow workers to avail of the non-peak period on those particular lines when the buses are very often empty or half empty. There is no reason why the claimants should not be able to travel at times when the traffic is very light. They need not travel at the ordinary business hours, so that it would not involve any additional expenditure on the part of C.I.E. and would do a tremendous amount to relieve the situation.
We all hope that the present unemployment crisis will not continue for long. I am not asking the Parliamentary Secretary to make any admission that it is likely to continue although I am afraid there are certain things which indicate that it will. Even on the Parliamentary Secretary's own assumption it will certainly continue for the next few months and that is the worst period of the year for these people. I would urge the Parliamentary Secretary to consider taking some steps of that nature. I have dealt with the problem so far as it affects Dublin South-West — Crumlin, Kimmage, Terenure, Drimnagh Ballyfermot, and so on, but it applies to the whole working-class area that is around the City of Dublin and it applies to Cabra and every other district in the city from where the bulk of the unemployed have come.
Conditions have changed considerably in the city and it does seem fantastic if you examine the areas of the city to find that the labour exchanges are situated miles away from the working-class areas of the city. I do not think that the cost of providing additional exchanges in these areas would be very much. We all hope that there will be no necessity for labour exchanges but unfortunately we have to deal with the situation as it is. I can see one difficulty in dealing with the situation immediately. It will probably take some time to acquire premises to provide suitable employment exchanges, but in the meanwhile I would urge the Parliamentary Secretary to adopt the suggestion made by the St. Vincent de Paul Conference that some arrangement should be cometo with C.I.E. whereby unemployed men and women could, during certain hours when the traffic is light, obtain free transport to and from the labour exchanges. I do not think it is an unreasonable request. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to approach this problem in an atmosphere of reason and to consider the situation objectively.
Another problem which arises is that at present the actual staffs and facilities in the employment exchanges are inadequate to meet the upsurge that is taking place in the course of the last few months. I do not think the staffs or the buildings were ever intended to cope with this upsurge. These are the highest unemployment figures we have had in ten years and these premises need to be increased in size and additional staffs employed to deal with the work and to ensure that claimants are not kept waiting, very often in queues, outside in the cold. Possibly if the Parliamentary Secretary has time he might go to some of these employment exchanges and examine the position for himself. If he did that he would realise very quickly that something had to be done, and done urgently. If he could also make contact with some of the unemployed persons in Cabra, Ballyfermot and Crumlin and hear their views on their difficulty of reaching the employment exchange he would also appreciate the urgency of doing something. If he cared to walk, for instance, from the far end of West Cabra or from the far end of Ballyfermot to the Werburgh Street exchange, he would realise that it is not a thing he would ask any unemployed man or woman to do. Many of the unemployed are elderly women who are badly handicapped; having regard to the increases in bus fares, the possibility of taking buses is completely removed.
I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will receive this motion objectively and will try to deal with the position and not merely deny that the problem exists and do nothing about it. He can do something about it by providing buses. That can be done by arrangement with C.I.E. at a negligible costif the buses are used at periods when traffic is light in the city.