Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

Waiting days have been a feature of the illness benefit and jobseeker's payment schemes since their inception and are a feature of similar social security schemes in many countries. The application of a three-day waiting period avoids the disproportionately high administrative costs involved in processing large numbers of claims of short duration. The waiting day rule is not applied in every case. Where a person is subject to intermittent spells of interruption of employment, it would clearly be unreasonable to impose the three-day waiting rule for each benefit claim.

In the case of illness and jobseeker's benefits spells of interruption of employment are aggregated in order that the waiting period is confined to the first three days of the aggregate period subject to the rules of linking. These rules provide that any two periods of unemployment not separated by more than 26 weeks are treated as one claim and payment may be made from the first day of the latter claim. The linking period for jobseeker's allowance is 52 weeks instead of 26. Linking rules apply in a variety of ways across schemes, for example, where a person claims illness benefit immediately following an unemployment benefit claim. A person who has no other income is not left without support during waiting days; he or she may claim supplementary welfare allowance in respect of the days in question.

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