The Parliamentary Secretary says that the machinery of the child welfare system will be used in so far as possible. First of all, in regard to the necessity that arises for the provision of milk to young children, I submit we have got no information at all to show that there is any special emergency in that particular line. When we turn, then, to the provision of milk for children in relation to the general question of the application of local funds to outdoor relief, we find that outside the City of Dublin—that is, for the whole of the Twenty-six Counties except that part of County Dublin which is in Dublin City—the total amount of money spent for the last three years annually on home assistance was, for 1929, £360,000 odd; for 1930, £370,000 odd, and for 1931, £380,000 odd. That is an increase of about £10,000 each year in the money raised from local rates by the county councils and expended under the supervision of the boards of health. There has been practically no increase, and there are five or six counties in which it will be found that the total amount of money paid out in an average week for December, 1931, was less than paid out in December, 1930, or December, 1929.
In so far as we can judge of the existence of an emergency from the actions of public authorities that are dealing with the question of outdoor relief, there has been nothing to show, as late as the last month in 1931 or in the expenditure of their money in that year or in previous years, that there is anything like a definite increase in the expenditure on home assistance although local bodies have a regular scheme of giving assistance directly in the case of children. When we come to the work that is done definitely in respect of children through local bodies, with State assistance, we find that under the maternity and child welfare schemes between, say, the year 1925 and the last year for which we have the actual expenditure, 1930-31, the State expenditure, which is 30 per cent of the total moneys spent by the local authorities or by the voluntary bodies, rose from £13,201 to £22,364. The estimated expenditure for this year, 1932-33, is £25,500.
There is a system in the country whereby large numbers of local bodies and voluntary bodies deal with schemes of maternity and child welfare. The local authorities, perhaps in many cases, as they did in the City of Dublin, provide milk for children under five years where the circumstances, in the opinion of the nurses dealing with the scheme and the voluntary bodies who supervise it, seem to warrant it. I would like to know if there have been any representations from the bodies dealing with these schemes that an emergency had arisen in that particular direction. When we come to the question of school meals, where children attending schools are getting milk through the machinery of the local authority, we find that the State grant in respect of school meals has risen from £5,500 actual expenditure in the year 1924-25 to £8,253 in the year 1930-31. The estimated expenditure this year is £8,500, the State grant being half the cost of the scheme. I am excluding from these figures the new proposal in respect of the Gaeltacht areas where a separate and increasing expenditure is being provided.
On the other figures relating to the country as a whole, I submit that there is something more behind this proposal than merely to deal with what the Parliamentary Secretary calls special destitution. We have fairly responsible bodies throughout the country. We have the boards of health closely in touch with the actual position in each county, with the relieving officers and the superintendent home assistance officers, and nothing in the nature of an emergency either in the matter of home assistance or in the matter of providing nourishment for children has, I submit, arisen. As a general proposition, if there was this necessity, I submit that it should be left to the local authorities to deal with it. Very considerable grants in relief of rates have been given to local authorities.
Last year there was an addition of £750,000, bringing the total given in relief of rates on agricultural land up to something like £1,900,000. An addition of £250,000 in relief of rates is being provided this year. It would have been better, I submit, even to give the local authorities the additional £100,000 in relief of rates generally than to step into a responsibility which has been completely that of the local bodies up to the present—a responsibility which, if it is taken off the shoulders of the local body, is going to lead to enormously increased expenditure.
The President, in some of his recent speeches, has been suggesting that what he wants is to give more authority to local bodies. The actual operation of the policy as far as I can see, seems to be to give more authority and less responsibility. If we relieve local authorities of the expenditure of which it is proposed to relieve them now—I suggested before that the State was going to relieve local rates something to the tune of over £4,000,000, and the local authorities themselves were going to provide through rates a sum less by £4,000,000—and if the State, after that general relief of rates, is going to step in in a matter directly concerned with home assistance. I submit it is completely undermining the responsibility of the local authorities in respect of the particular matter in which it is most necessary that it should shoulder that responsibility. Deputies on the opposite side have often said that their policy was an anti-centralisation policy, but action such as this, centralising responsibility, is going to undermine the responsibility of local authorities on the one hand, and, on the other, is throwing on the central authority a responsibility without authority. It will simply undermine authority in a most vulnerable way.