To my mind there is a good deal wrong with the measure that the Minister is introducing, a good deal that might be plain to the Minister himself and to anyone who has had any experience of insurance administration in this country. First of all, I want to say that the method the Minister has adopted of dealing with this Bill in Committee is not a desirable one. National Health Insurance is a purely technical matter, very technical to a good many Deputies who might, in ordinary circumstances, be sitting in this Chamber. It is a very technical matter to most of them, and I think that a special committee of the Dáil would be the proper way to have dealt with this Bill. I thought that probably the Minister might have adopted that line and taken the Bill before a special committee. What I take particular exception to is the method by which it is proposed to recoup the medical certification fund—that is to say, the method by which the Minister proposes to take moneys away from the subscribed funds of members of societies in order to recoup medical insurance certification. I want Deputies to realise that no attempt whatever is made in the Bill to give anything for medical certification. The only pill that the Minister administers in this medical provision is the pill of taking money from the sick people and from the societies.
The history of medical certification is, in itself, somewhat interesting. When the British Government of happy or unhappy memory was responsible for the administration of National Health Insurance in this country they gave £60,000 towards medical certification, and the first act of a free people in this country was to drop a grant such as that of £60,000 or something like it. Now we find that the £45,000 that it is probably proposed to put up for medical certification alone is not to be got from the approved societies in the fashion that it was got before, that is, from the fund made up of unclaimed stamps, but rather that it is to be got by taking it away from the money set aside for sanatorium treatment. The Minister is Minister for Local Government and Public Health. I dare say that one of the functions of the Minister is to read a good many reports such, for instance, as the minutes of board of health meetings and documents of that kind. I want to say without any disparagement of the Minister— I hope he will accept it in the spirit in which I say it—that he has not had much experience of the actual operations of board of health meetings. He does not know the hundred and one difficulties that they come up against or the multifarious duties that they have to carry out, beyond probably a theoretical knowledge of it. He has no practical experience of it.
I put it to the Minister that the giving to these people of a grant of £27,000 odd is not the proper way to administer sanatorium treatment. I also put it to the Minister that when members of the board of health have disposed of the work that comes before them, work relating to cottages, sanitation, hospitals, the appointment of doctors and nurses, matters relating to water supplies and other things, that they will not be able to give to the proper administration of sanatorium treatment the attention it requires. If we are going to recoup the administration funds of certain societies by 5d. per head, and if it is necessary to do that, then I think it should be done in some other fashion besides taking it from the money that has been set aside for sanatorium treatment. I suppose we will have another opportunity of dealing with this matter when the sections come up for consideration. For that reason I do not want to delay very much further on the matter, except to register my definite opinion that the Minister, from two angles, is, in my judgment, dealing in a very injudicious fashion with this question of National Health Insurance. He has put before the House a measure that, for the average Deputy, is highly technical. I submit that he should take it before a special committee and have it dealt with fully and adequately before that committee. In the second place, not alone has the Minister and his colleagues in office dropped the £60,000 that was given by the British Government for medical certification in this country, but he is imposing upon insured persons, by taking away from them what they were getting for sanatorium treatment, a burden that it is not fair to put upon them.