Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005

• Permanent Page URL

Insurance against prescribed diseases and injuries not caused by accident.

[1993 s66(1)]

87.—(1) Subject to this section, a person who is insured under this Part against personal injury caused by accident arising out of and in the course of his or her 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 1 May 1967.

(2) A disease or injury shall be prescribed for the purposes of this section in relation to any insured persons, where 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 1 May 1967, shall be treated for the purposes of this section, subject to any prescribed modifications, as if the regulations had been in force when the person developed the disease or injury.

(4) Provision may be made by regulations for determining—

(a) the time at which a person is to be treated for the purposes of this Part as having developed any disease or injury prescribed for the purposes of this section, and

(b) the circumstances in which any such disease or injury is, where the person in question has previously suffered from that disease or injury, to be treated as having recrudesced or as having been contracted or received afresh.

(5) The benefit payable under this section in respect of a prescribed disease or injury, and the conditions for the receipt of that 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 in relation to any matter which is to be prescribed and to subsections (6) to (8).

(6) Regulations may provide, in relation to prescribed diseases and injuries—

(a) for modifying the provisions of this Chapter relating to injury benefit and disablement benefit and for adapting references in this Chapter to accidents, and

(b) for modifying the provisions of this Part in their application in relation to claims for benefit and in relation to questions arising in connection with those claims or with an award of benefit on any such claim.

(7) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (6), regulations under that subsection 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 or she 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, the person developed the disease or injury,

(ii) not to be due to the nature of a person's employment unless he or she 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, the person developed the disease or injury,

and

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

(8) Nothing in this section affects the right of any person to benefit in respect of a disease which is a personal injury by accident within the meaning of this Chapter 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 where at the time of the accident the disease is in relation to the person a prescribed disease by virtue of the occupation in which he or she is engaged in that employment.