Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Senator for raising this issue and will respond to it on behalf of the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Brennan. The social welfare code already provides for payments to former mine workers who suffered a loss of faculty arising from their employment as miners. Disablement benefit, payable under the occupational injuries benefit, OIB, scheme, is a compensation payment for loss of faculty arising out of or in the course of insurable employment. The legislation governing the scheme provides entitlement to benefit for persons suffering from certain prescribed diseases listed in the legislation and where persons have contracted such diseases in the course of their employment.

Miners may be entitled to disablement benefit if they suffer a loss of physical or mental faculty as a result of an accident at work or a disease prescribed in legislation they contracted at work. Medical assessments are undertaken in all such cases to determine the degree of disablement, which is calculated by comparing the state of health of the applicant with that of a person of the same age and gender.

Miners who contracted the prescribed disease pneumoconiosis are entitled to disablement benefit. There are currently 19 miners in receipt of disablement benefit in respect of pneumoconiosis, seven of whom were former Ballingarry miners. These miners and their representatives have also sought to have other conditions, specifically chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, included as a recognised disease for the purpose of the OIB scheme.

The question of whether COPD should be added to the list of prescribed diseases was considered in the Department in 2003 and it was advised that COPD is a common clinical condition that accounts for 10% of total medical admissions to Beaumont Hospital in Dublin. COPD is not a condition that is specifically linked to a particular occupation and it is not possible to establish a causal link between coal mining, or any other occupation, and the experience of COPD. Smoking is by far the most common cause of COPD.

The Department was also advised that no EU state, other than the United Kingdom, includes COPD in a scheme equivalent to our OIB scheme. The position in the United Kingdom is that its equivalent of our OIB may be paid to coal miners who have worked underground for at least 20 years and who are diagnosed as having pneumoconiosis with considerable lung function loss. The effect of prescribing COPD or chronic bronchitis and emphysema was not to confer entitlement to people who did not already qualify for the UK equivalent of OIB but rather to enable a higher rate of payment to be made to some pneumoconiosis sufferers in certain circumstances.

In this country, OIB may be awarded where miners develop pneumoconiosis as a result of their occupation. Persons claiming OIB in cases of pneumoconiosis are referred to a consultant respiratory physician in the first instance for an examination and report. This examination consists of a clinical assessment and pulmonary function testing. The latter is a standardised test that establishes the extent of lung malfunction irrespective of the specific medical condition giving rise thereto. Disablement benefit is awarded on the basis of the consultant's objective report, including the pulmonary function test results. If COPD is present in some of these cases, the disablement award will reflect this. Given this background, it was concluded that it would not be appropriate to specify COPD for the purposes of the OIB scheme.