It seems to me that the case for this Bill has not at all been made out. Those responsible for it have rested their case entirely upon an appeal ad misericordiam. We have heard about the zeal and devotion of the nurses. Nobody questions it and nobody dare question it. Any of us who are familiar with the work they have done is isolated and out of the way places can have nothing but admiration for them. We have been told about the need for nurses. Any of us who know the Gaeltacht and the poorer, areas in the country are not going to dispute the need for them, but if the nurses are zealous and dutiful, and if there is a crying need for their services, what is the logical consequence of the whole of that argument?—that there is an unquestionable need for a State nursing service and a State nursing organisation.
Deputy Sir James Craig told us that in his opinion, in many cases, the nurse is even more important than the doctor. If the State feels it incumbent upon it to provide medical services for the poor, and if we have a distinguished member of the medical profession getting up in the Dáil and telling us that as a result of his experience he is convinced that in many cases they nurse is even more important than the doctor, surely if the State provides the doctor it ought also to provide the nurse. The conclusion which emerges from the debate upon this Bill is that the need for a proper nursing service for the Irish poor is so great, that it should be made the responsibility and duty of the Government, and that only the Government can fulfil that responsibility and meet that need. If there is anything at all in the case the President made in favour of the Bill, and which the Minister for Local Government and Public Health has made, it is this, that every time the Government fails in its duty and shirks its obligations to the Irish poor it should bring in a Bill to extend the basis, of the Sweepstakes and to create more vested interests in the continuance of that undertaking, let us, they say, bring in a Bill that will so compromise the position that if ever at any time another Government might feel that if public lotteries are going to be run at all, they should be run by public servants more directly responsible to the people than those engaged on the present undertaking are, it will be virtually impossible to bring about any change no matter how desirable experience may prove it to be.
The Minister ostensibly is going to support this Bill upon the plea that there will be no greater danger to society than that people in responsible positions should say that the medical. services and the nursing services should be provided, by the State and that there should be nothing left to charity. What is the purport of this Bill? It is to provide monies for certain, nursing organisations, but, those monies are not being provided out of charity. They are provided as the result of a mere sordid gamble upon the part of millions of people, not a single one of whom at the present, moment when he buys a sweep ticket is animated by any motive of charity whatsoever. There is no charity, and there is no charitable element in the manner in which these monies are collected.
In that, connection I would like to safeguard myself and, say this that there are a number of eminent people engaged in the administration of the sweepstakes in honorary positions who are doing what they conceive to be a public duty and who are animated by the highest motives. But for every single ticket sold in connection with that sweepstake, for every service rendered in connection with it, there is payment out of the proceeds of the sweepstakes. With the exception possibly of the people I have mentioned there is not a single individual engaged in the sale of tickets or in the promotion of the sweepstake who is animated by charitable motives. These monies do not come from charity. It is purely a business matter and the monies secured are the products of a monopoly which have been conferred upon certain individuals in the State. The Minister deliberately attempts to deceive the people when he says that those who are opposing the extension of the sweepstake, as, this Bill is designed to extend its operations, are opposing it because they believe that there can be no place in Irish social life for the virtue of charity.
I do not think that any of us would for a moment accept the position into which the Minister has tried to put us. Charity, it has often been said, is a cloak for a multitude of sins. It should not be made a cover. for Governmental inactivity and neglect. Private charity is intended to deal with the accidental and abnormal cases which are created by the vicissitudes of our social organisation and our social system. Where the need is wide-spread and general, where it cannot be adequately dealt with by private effort, it becomes the duty, of the State to deal with the situation.
Formerly education in this country was carried on by purely voluntary effort. When the need for education became so widespread that it was impossible for voluntary effort to provide it, the State was compelled to step in, to accept it as a responsibility and to discharge it as a duty. In the same way in connection with certain, hospitals provided for the very poorest of our people, the same principle holds. The same is true of the public health services, the dispensary services. The same is true of child welfare centres. For every one of these services, when private effort was no longer able to meet the need, the State had to accept responsibility, and everything that we had been told in this debate about the necessity for these nurses and about the good work which they do in every part of the country, is only an argument for the establishment, as I have already said, of some form of State nursing organisation. The Minister in that connection said that if such a service were to be established its efficiency would be impaired by the atmosphere of cold officialdom with which his Department would undoubtedly surround it.
The Minister has knowledge himself of services in which the State provides the funds and in which the administration is largely guided by and directed by organisations and, associations of charitably disposed people. He has told us to-day of his experiment in Cork. I would refer the Minister to the child welfare centres here in Dublin. The public authorities provides the funds and the funds are largely under the control and administration of private bodies. The fact that these child welfare centres are doing such good work shows at any rate, even though the funds have been provided from public services, that the fact has not been sufficient to congeal their efforts in this cold official atmosphere of which the Minister spoke.
What has been done by the child welfare associations could be done in exactly the same way, on the basis of having the money provided out of the public funds, if only the Minister and the Executive Council of which he is a member, would face up to their responsibilities in regard to the Irish people, and discharge them. If they did we would have a much more effective service that way because at any rate it would be based upon certitude. As it is at present, these nursing organisations, even though they are going to get a large grant from the sweepstake fund, are, nevertheless, going to live from hand to mouth. Because they do not know what their income will be from year to year. When the last Sweepstake Bill was before the Dáil, we were told I think by Deputy Shaw, who is one of those who would finance every service of the State by, a public, gamble and who would have the Executive Council manned by public gamblers—
