The Deputy who has just sat down thinks the Bill is capable of amendment. I do not know whether that is intended to be an expression of opinion that the Bill ought to be given a Second Reading or not. It is capable of amendment, no doubt, but whether, in its present form, it will be worth the trouble of amending is a question I am not able to gather has been answered by Deputy McGoldrick. He said there had been some statement made by Sir Henry Robinson to the effect that local government in Ireland had been a constant tussle between the central authority and the local authority in Ireland.
I believe that we have to make up our minds before going very far with this Bill as to what the desire of the Dáil is in respect to that question. Is it desirable that Local Government should be conducted from Merrion Street, and that local responsibility for local affairs should be obliterated, or is it desirable to encourage local authorities to develop that sense of local responsibility, and gradually to minimise the extent of centralised supervision? It seems to me that we have got to make up our answer to that question before we go far with this Bill, because the Bill in every section of it is a movement towards greater centralisation and the deprivation, in the case of local authorities, of responsibility for the administration of their areas. Of course, it is distinctly in accord with the policy of the department as at present conducted. The Ministry of Local Government is quite clearly bent upon centralising administration and on depriving local authorities of the powers which they have hitherto held, and on reversing the principle that has so often been expressed from the Government side of the House that the people have no right to do wrong.
The Minister in this Bill is bringing into concrete legislation the idea that a local authority, the people in a district, have no right to do wrong, while nationally the Government are professing to be fighting against that conception. In actual practice, in administration and in this legislation, they are endeavouring to strengthen the hold of bureaucracy in governing every part of the country from a central government and relieving the local people of their responsibility for local administration; in a general way, reversing the process that government has been following and which I think is desirable that it should continue to follow, that is to say, to devolve upon local authorities the control and the power and the responsibility for the administration of their areas. I say that we have to make up our minds whether we want a centralised administration, or whether we are to encourage local authorities to bear responsibility and take an interest in the good government of their own neighbourhood. If you are satisfied that greater centralisation, continuously increased centralisation, should be abolished, then support this Bill, but if you are against that policy, if you think that there should be a steady increase in local responsibility for local administration, then I say that this Bill ought not to be passed in its present form, and that the discussion of it should be deferred, and the whole question should be reconsidered in the light of devolution rather than of centralisation.
Deputy Sir James Craig has congratulated the Minister upon the sections of the Bill dealing with the public health services. Well I think, his congratulations were cheaply bought. Some of the things in the Bill, of course, are tending towards improvement and to the embodiment in legislation of the recommendations of the public health council, but most of the recommendations of any value are omitted and are not embodied in the Bill, but are carefully left aside. The report of that public health council amongest other things, recommended the unification of local administration, of medical treatment of insured persons and of those unable to pay, and the medical inspection and treatment of school children. The Bill does not carry out those recommendations. There is no linking up of the dispensary medical system with the Health Insurance system. That was recommended, but it is not embodied in the Bill. As Deputy Sir James Craig said, the Bill does not establish a State medical service which was also recommended in this report. Neither does it embody the recommendation regarding the subvention by the State of half the cost of the medical service, and it does not set up a health council. This consultative body by no means fulfills or supplants the recommendation to have a public health council. That public health council was to be entrusted with the general direction of policy in regard to the administration of health services, and of medical services subject, of course, to the Minister. But this proposal of a consultative council to be called in ad hoc to prescribe for any special questions that might be under consideration, does not by any means meet the requirements of this report. I say that the Bill fails to do most of the things of value that were recommended by that report.
The Minister dealt with the Bill first, in regard to its treatment of road administration, and secondly, regarding health. I think there is much to be said in favour of the Minister's view regarding the change in the responsibility for road administration, road care and government. This Bill, does not alter the responsibility for what might be called national roads, which are obviously, in view of the modern developments of locomotion which the Minister spoke of, not a county responsibility but a national responsibility, and if the Minister's contention as a justification for the change suggested in the Bill is true it calls for much more radical treatment than the Bill proposes. All that the Bill proposes to do is to transfer responsibility for roads within a county from the rural district council to the county council. How, I ask, is that going to meet the requirements that the Minister himself says the new methods of locomotion have brought into view? Trunk roads are not local. They are obviously matters that should be administered and cared for under a national authority, and though you may devolve upon the county surveyor certain duties in regard to these trunk roads the change that is required is to set up a national road authority and not to do what the Bill proposes, namely, to change the responsibility for the local roads from the district council to the county council.
There is the extraordinary position of certain main roads running across one corner of a county, leaving part of another county high and dry, for which there is no responsibility and nobody cares, such as in a certain corner of Offaly, running into Westmeath. I am wrong in saying there is no responsibility. There is responsibility, but inasmuch as another county gets the benefit, or loses the advantage of a certain road, the county in whose area this main road lies will take no responsibility for it because they do not benefit. It is the other county that it affects. That is just a little illustration of the necessity for national responsibility for roads in view of the development of locomotion which the Minister himself has put forward as a justification for the changes in this Bill. But the proposition that the rural district councils should be abolished because it is proposed to transfer responsibility for local roads to the county councils is to me a great surprise. One would imagine that the rural district councils have not any other responsibility than that of the maintenance of roads. Let us assume that it is satisfactory to transfer the responsibility for the maintenance of the local roads to the county councils. Are you going to leave anyone in the locality responsible for matters of sanitation, or for public libraries, or for any other of the many local matters that there should be a local authority responsible for? You are not proposing in this Bill to set up any new authority to be responsible for local matters. I say that is a blot which will be very damaging to the idea of local government.
You are going to try to centralise in the county councils all responsibility for all local matters. You are not going to do that effectively. It is not going to be the efficient administration that is suggested by Deputy McGoldrick. The county council is not going to change except by the addition of two or three people. Is it contended, after all that we have heard from the Minister, and all that has happened in the office of the Minister, that the county councils are perfectly satisfactory in administration? He will not claim it, because he has all too often said the other thing; but then the county councils, about which so many complaints have been made, are going to be responsible now for every local matter and for all the smaller matters of primary importance to people in the localities. If there had been in this Bill a proposal to set up councils to cover the smaller areas, or the parish areas, if you like, I could then understand the principle of why the Minister wants to make changes, but he is proposing first to abolish the smaller local councils and to transfer their authority to the county councils, and then to require that everything done by the county councils shall be subject to his veto and to his approval even more than it has been in the past. I say that is retrogressive. It is a movement towards centralisation and, shall I say, if it were to be justified at all it could only be justified if you were sure of having a central administration which was generally sympathetic, generally liberal in its views, and generally willing to meet local needs and local demands. But, unfortunately, recent experience has shown that you cannot rely upon that kind of centralised administration. Unfortunately, we have proved that it is possible to have in national government an administration which is harder, more rigid and more difficult to deal with than any centralised administration that the country has hitherto had experience of.
Now as to the Health Council, or the Health Board, that is spoken of. What is to be its position? It is to be set up by the county councils. It is to be composed of members of the county council, not necessarily representatives of any districts. Districts may or may not be represented on the Health Board, but once it is set up it is a separate statutory body not responsible to the county council. The local officer of Health is not appointed by the county council. The local Health body will put in its claim to the county council for money, but the county council has no further control over its proceedings. Even regulations as to procedure are to be prescribed by the Minister, not by the county council. The Board of Health may appoint committees, but it does not impose upon the committees that they shall appoint members of the county council who are not already on the Board of Health.
It may include outsiders who are not members of the Board. The effect of this is to create a new local public health authority practically independent of the county council, the county council in reality acting as an Electoral College and finding the money Again, we have to decide in which direction we are moving. Do we intend to maintain the position, that the electorate will elect by direct election these administrative bodies, or is it intended that we should move in the other direction and that there should be elected bodies, who will then appoint other bodies to do the work at second hand, supervised finally, cabined and confined by orders from the Minister? I say that it is desirable that we should know where we are going and have a clear view. This, I suggest, is another illustration of the departure—the rather important departure—from the tendency of imposing upon the citizens direct responsibility for the administration and government of their areas. Bear in mind this Bill is intended to deal with normal periods. It is not an emergency Bill. We are presumed to be getting back to "normalcy," as President Harding would have said. If we are to get back to that stage, when people will realise responsibility, I say that we ought rather to increase that responsibility and make it more direct—if possibly personal—and the more direct the better. But we are going away from that. We are saying: "Remove responsibility. Let it be indirect. Let it be through the county council, which may be far away. They will only come before you once in three years and they may do what they like in the meantime subject only to the pressure or the veto of the Minister." There is to be no veto by the citizens. There is to be no responsibility except at the end of three years. There is not even the necessity for public meeting or publication of the proceedings under the Bill. In every respect the tendency is to move away from local responsibility towards centralised government.
There is not in the Bill any mandatory provision which requires a county council, for instance, to set up any other committee except this board of health. There is no necessity under the Bill to set up a local roads committee, responsible for the maintenance of roads for which the county council is to be held responsible. There is no general scheme in the Bill providing that the county council shall do its work through Committees made responsible for administrative work. One very serious defect, which I mentioned a moment ago, is that the Bill does not provide that every locality shall be represented even upon the Board of Health. This County Board of Health is to take over the functions of the old Guardians under both the Poor Law and the Medical Charities Act. It deals with the treatment of the sick and preventive medicine generally, as stated by Deputy Sir James Craig. But it is not confined to that. It is responsible for the education of children, inmates of workhouses, but it has no contact with any of the other education committees. It is to deal with the education of pauper children, but it does not touch, and has no responsibility for, technical instruction committees or school attendance committees. It is responsible for the relief of the able-bodies poor, but it has no connection with any relief works that might have to be set up at some time. It has charge of the aged poor, but it is not in direct touch with any of the pensions committees under the Old Age Pensions Act. It is not designed to co-ordinate those functions, and there it fails to do work which a new Local Government Bill might have been expected to deal with.
I have said that the tendency of the Ministry is to interfere unduly with administrative work, to centralise administration to the very minutest detail. It is to issue regulations respecting this, that, and the other thing. Everything is to be done subject to the Minister, subject to his veto, and, in most respects, subject to his sanction. To give an illustration of the state of mind of the Ministry regarding the class of centralisation that they think is necessary, there was recently issued to the Board of Health a General Regulations Order. It is dated the 4th March of this year. Rules and regulations have been issued under the old regime somewhat similar, at least, dealing with the same matter, but apparently the new Department, like the old, still thinks that a medical officer or a nurse, or a workhouse master or matron is incapable of initiating any ideas at all, or carrying out work as responsible persons. For instance, the Order details such things as these:—
Duties of the Clerk to the Guardians; duties of the Secretary of the Board of Health. No. 3, to peruse and conduct the correspondence of the Board of Guardians or Board of Health according to their directions, to preserve the same and all orders of the Minister; letters received, together with copies of all letters sent by direction of the Guardians.
The old Order of the British Local Government regarding matrons read as follows:—
"To visit all the wards of the females and children every night before 9 o'clock; to ascertain that all the paupers in such wards are in bed, and all the fires and lights therein extinguished."
That is fairly general. The new Ministry says:—
"To visit the sleeping wards of the inmates at 11 o'clock in the forenoon,
not five minutes before eleven or five minutes after eleven, but precisely at eleven
every day and see that such wards have been all duly cleansed and properly ventilated. To visit all the sleeping wards every night at or before nine o'clock, and to see that all the inmates are in bed and that all fires and lights are extinguished; to pay particular attention to the moral conduct and orderly behaviour of the females and children and to see that they are clean and decent in their dress and persons.
This to the matron of the hospital, as though a matron of an hospital would be appointed——
