December 2 1924
The Minister of Labour, Mr JM Andrews, DL, MP, accompanied by the Parliamentary Secretary, Mr JF Gordon, MP, yesterday received a deputation from the Belfast Board of Guardians consisting of Messrs Robert Andrews, JP (chairman); Thomas Gibb (vice-chairman), John Wilson, Wm J McMullen, RC Lyttle, John Beattie, and RH Wilson (clerk to the Union).
The deputation discussed with the minister the new conditions for extended benefits laid down by recent legislation both in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. They urged that in the present abnormal state of unemployment the ministry should exercise its power to waive certain of these conditions to the fullest possible extent. A few applications had been received by the Guardians from persons to whom benefit was no longer payable under the revised statutory conditions.
In answer to a question, Mr Andrews stated that the number of persons affected by the new conditions in Belfast was in the neighbourhood of 1,400, and in the rest of Northern Ireland almost 300, and that the figure was not many thousands, as appeared to have been the impression.
Mr Andrews then said that it was the policy of the Government of Northern Ireland to administer the Unemployment Insurance Scheme on parallel lines with Great Britain. It was very difficult for the Government to carry out this policy considering the size of the problem, which involved a charge on the Unemployment Fund of £40,000 per week, and it was really not practicable to do more. He had no doubt that the new conditions were being sympathetically and leniently administered in Northern Ireland, always having regard to the interests of the contributors to the fund. Shortly, they laid down that unemployment benefit should not be paid to persons who had contributed little or nothing to the fund in recent years, or to persons belonging to industries where opportunities for employment had increased who have not done some work in each of six weeks during the last two years.
It was inevitable, unfortunately, that any regulation which could be devised, however lenient, might involve certain cases of hardship.
It was agreed that while the Ministry would deal sympathetically with borderline cases the Guardians, in their turn, would, so far as their powers allowed, act in a similar way.
While John M Andrews, the Minister of Labour, insisted the new unemployment benefit restrictions introduced by the Northern government would have minimal consequences, others claims the new rules would drive some families into starvation.
