Social Welfare (Occupational Injuries) Act, 1966

Insurance against prescribed diseases and injuries not caused by accident.

23.—(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, a person who is insured under the Acts against personal injury caused by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment shall be insured also against any prescribed disease and against any prescribed personal injury not so caused, being a disease or injury due to the nature of that employment and developed on or after the appointed day.

(2) A disease or injury shall be prescribed for the purposes of this section in relation to any insured persons, if the Minister is satisfied that—

(a) it ought to be treated, having regard to its causes and any other relevant considerations, as a risk of their occupations and not as a risk common to all persons, and

(b) it is such that, in the absence of special circumstances, the attribution of particular cases to the nature of the employment can be established or presumed with reasonable certainty.

(3) Regulations prescribing any disease or injury for the purposes of this section may provide that a person who developed the disease or injury on or at any time after a date specified in the regulations, being a date before the regulations came into force but not before the appointed day, shall be treated for the purposes of this section, subject to any prescribed modifications, as if the regulations had been in force when he developed the disease or injury.

(4) Provision may be made by regulations for determining the time at which a person is to be treated for the purposes of the Acts, as having developed any disease or injury prescribed for the purposes of this section, and the circumstances in which any such disease or injury is, where the person in question has previously suffered therefrom, to be treated as having recrudesced or as having been contracted or received afresh.

(5) The benefit payable pursuant to this section in respect of a prescribed disease or injury, and the conditions for the receipt of such benefit, shall be the same as in the case of personal injury by accident arising out of and in the course of a person's employment, subject, however, to the power to make different provision by regulations as respects any matter which is to be prescribed and to the following provisions of this section.

(6) Regulations may provide, in relation to prescribed diseases and injuries, for modifying the provisions of this Act relating to injury benefit and disablement benefit and for adapting references in this Act to accidents, and for modifying the provisions of the Acts in their application in relation to claims for benefit and in relation to questions arising in connection therewith or with an award of benefit on any such claim.

(7) Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing subsection, the said regulations may in particular include provision—

(a) for presuming any prescribed disease or injury—

(i) to be due, unless the contrary is proved, to the nature of a person's employment where he was employed in any prescribed occupation at the time when, or within a prescribed period or for a prescribed length of time (whether continuous or not) before, he developed the disease or injury,

(ii) not to be due to the nature of a person's employment unless he was employed in some prescribed employment at the time when, or within a prescribed period or for a prescribed length of time (whether continuous or not) before, he developed the disease or injury;

(b) for such matters as appear to the Minister to be incidental to or consequential on provisions included in the regulations by virtue of the foregoing provisions of this section.

(8) Nothing in this section shall affect the right of any person to benefit in respect of a disease which is a personal injury by accident within the meaning of this Act, except that a person shall not be entitled to benefit in respect of a disease as being an injury by accident arising out of and in the course of any employment if at the time of the accident the disease is in relation to him a prescribed disease by virtue of the occupation in which he is engaged in that employment.