Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Senator for raising the issue. Officials from my Department and the Departments of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources and Health and Children recently met a delegation from the National Coalminers Group to hear their concerns at first hand.

The Senator will be aware that the primary role of my Department with regard to the range of issues raised by the National Coalminers Group relates to the provisions of the occupational injuries scheme and specifically to the disablement pension payable under the scheme. The occupational injuries scheme is a compensation payment for loss of faculty arising from or in the course of insurable employment. The legislation governing the occupational injuries scheme provides entitlement to benefit for persons suffering from certain prescribed diseases which are listed in the legislation and where a person has contracted that disease in the course of his or her employment.

Employment under a contract of service as a miner is insurable for occupational injuries benefit under the Social Welfare Acts. Miners who are unable to work due to an accident arising from their employment may be entitled to occupational injury benefit for the first 26 weeks of their claim. If their incapacity extends beyond that period, they may received illness benefit or invalidity pension, subject to meeting the qualifying conditions for these payments.

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 that they contracted at work. Medical assessments are undertaken in all such cases to determine the degree of disablement, which is calculated by comparison of the state of the health of the applicant with a person of the same age and gender. Miners who contracted the prescribed disease pneumoconiosis, also known as black lung disease, are entitled to disablement benefit.

The issue raised by the Senator has been the subject of several parliamentary inquiries from a number of Deputies and Senators and was discussed at some length at a meeting in February 2010 of the Joint Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. In the course of that meeting and again at the recent meeting held with the National Coalminers Group it was argued that the list of prescribed diseases under the occupational injuries scheme should be extended, and reference was made in particular to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, also known as COPD.

My Department has considered whether COPD should be added to the list of prescribed diseases but has been advised that it is a common clinical condition and one of the leading causes of death, after heart disease, cancer and stroke. It is not a condition that is specifically linked with 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. My Department has been advised that no European Union member state other than the United Kingdom includes COPD in their schemes equivalent to the occupational injuries benefit scheme.

The position in the United Kingdom is that its equivalent of our occupational injuries benefit may be paid to coalminers who have worked underground for at least 20 years and who are diagnosed as having definite pneumoconiosis with considerable lung function loss. The effect of prescribing COPD, or chronic bronchitis and emphysema, otherwise known as CBE, was not to confer entitlement to people who did not already qualify for the United Kingdom equivalent of occupational injuries benefit but, rather, to enable a higher rate of payment to be made to some pneumoconiosis sufferers in certain circumstances.

In this country the position is that where miners develop pneumoconiosis as a result of their occupation, occupational injuries benefit is awarded. Persons claiming it 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 will establish the extent of lung malfunction, irrespective of the specific medical condition giving rise to that malfunction. 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 occupational injuries benefit.

I am acutely conscious of and sympathetic to the difficulties faced by the former miners. I am actively exploring whether there is any leeway within the confines of the occupational injuries scheme to provide some further income supports to the miners affected by ill-health as a consequence of their working conditions in privately owned mining operations.