The Minister for Social Affairs, Mr Ahern, has been asked to guarantee that workers laid off because of foot-and-mouth receive dole payments. A spot check of 14 social welfare officers by the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed found that only half were automatically providing unemployment benefit entitlements to workers laid off.
The organisation's general secretary, Mr Tony Monks, called on Mr Ahern "to make a statement in the Dail that all those temporarily laid off will not be forced to meet the `genuinely seeking work' criteria at their local exchange before receiving a dole payment". According to a spokeswoman for the Department, a circular was issued on March 12th to deciding officers asking them to take account of the particular circumstances of the workers. Each application would be passed to a deciding officer and decided on its merits. The Department had no reports of dissatisfaction with how the system was working.
But Mr Monks said this was not enough. "Local social welfare exchanges have discretion over whether to enforce the genuinely-seeking-work criteria," he said. "Two offices said that these workers would need proof of applying for advertised work."