I am sorry that I cannot echo the optimistic hopes which have been put into the Minister's mouth. I am aware that in this country there is steadily developing a bureaucratic machine which has become obsessed with the idea that it can not only operate the Civil Service but can run everybody's business better than the people themselves. I notice particularly that the Department for which the Minister for Industry and Commerce is responsible is peculiarly ready to undertake the task of supplanting men who have devoted their lives to the development and management of highly technical businesses, to take over these businesses as Departments of State, and to say quite blandly to the community that they are quite satisfied that under this new dispensation they will be very much better run than they were heretofore.
The Minister says he expects this Bill will result in there emerging one efficient unit for the handling of all the industrial insurance of this country, and that he is convinced that such a unit is the most desirable method of dealing with industrial insurance in Saorstát Eireann. That is a sound socialist view. The socialist always holds that if you can centralise everything in the hands of the Government, consolidate everything, eliminate private enterprise and regiment everybody everything will be best in the best of all possible worlds; but the socialist is wrong and I view with great alarm the increasing tendency of the present Government to drift from one socialist experience into another. We alternate in the most extraordinary way between State capitalism and State socialism. I think these insurance proposals are strongly flavoured with State socialism, and I believe the ultimate intention of the Government, having forced all the industrial insurance of the country into the hands of one unit, is to nationalise that unit and to make an attempt to equate industrial insurance with national health insurance and to operate it as a semi-Government Department. In my opinion, if they do, they will kill industrial insurance in this country. I am convinced that the elimination of competition in the industrial insurance field is going to react unfavourably on the policy-holders.
We have made it quite clear on every stage of this Bill that we were anxious, and are now anxious, to cooperate with the Government in removing from industrial insurance practice here any and all abuses that have manifested themselves during the last 50 or 60 years since industrial insurance first came to be known here. Probably one of the best reforms included in this Bill, a reform which deals with the pseudo-transfers from one company to another, has been inserted at the instance of Deputies on this side of the House, but we are equally clear that the socialisation of industrial insurance, or of anything else in this country, is not a good thing and ought never to have been undertaken. The Minister says that this Bill will aid our own native companies to attain greater strength. That is true in so far as it refers to insolvent Irish companies. They are going to be picked up and fortified with State money, set upon their feet and forced into amalgamation. That is the plan. They can be forced into amalgamation by the threat of winding-up unless they submit to the terms suggested by the Minister's Department. When they have been amalgamated into a block, supported by Government money, they will undoubtedly be able to carry on and they will carry on as a semi-Government Department. The British companies will be able to carry on because they have accumulated great reserves over a long period of unregulated operations in Great Britain, which will enable them to meet the requirements imposed on them by the terms of this Bill, but the solvent Irish companies will be destroyed by this Bill, and this House should realise what it is doing in that regard.
They are going to be left to compete, on the one hand, with a Government company composed of the insolvent Irish companies which the Minister will have taken over, and, on the other hand, with the great British companies offering better terms which the British companies are in a position to finance from their accumulated funds. The reward of men who have deprived themselves of the profit they might have taken out of these insurance concerns which they themselves built up, who preferred to put them back into the business in order that the policy-holders of their company would be doubly secure, is going to be destruction, and I say that in so far as that is true a very cruel injustice is being done by this House to a body of men who never asked anything from this State but the right to carry on legitimate business in a legitimate way. Out of that dilemma there is no escape for this House, except by amending legislation which would provide equitable terms of amalgamation for the shareholders in these companies. Unless that course is adopted, this House should open its eyes to the fact that it will, in effect, confiscate the property of honest men who have built up honest business, and who had no reason to apprehend penal legislation of any kind being directed against them in this State.
The Minister says he hopes the Irish companies will accept the new conditions. Most of the persons concerned with industry in Ireland have shown themselves on more than one occasion to be good citizens, and they will accept the law for what it is, but to hope they will be able to make a success of the new conditions he is creating for them is to hope for the impossible. They cannot do that, and I believe that the Minister's advisers know that. Many Deputies will ask themselves how can such a situation have developed and the answer is perfectly simple. The Government rushed into this business without fully understanding the problem with which they have to deal. They had a kind of idea that there was some kind of analogy between national health insurance and insurance of that character and industrial insurance. There is, in fact, none. They became obsessed with the policy-holder's view, and, while it was right and proper that the policy-holder's claims upon these companies should be given the fullest weight and amplest consideration, it was also right and just that the interests of the shareholders and proprietors of solvent companies, who were quite prepared to carry on and quite prepared to submit their companies to whatever examination or regulation the Government thought expedient, should have been considered. Their interests have not been considered. Their property is going to be destroyed, and I say that is a very grave injustice, and a situation which the Government has made no genuine attempt to meet. The Minister referred in passing to the view his Department would take of the amalgamation scheme which I outlined on the Report Stage. He said that if he approached the Irish companies with a scheme of that character he felt sure it would be favourably and carefully considered. The obstacles in the way of carrying through an amalgamation scheme within the terms of this Bill are insuperable. It cannot be done. The only efficient way to effect amalgamation is to do it by ad hoc legislation, which will cut the Gordian knot presented by the impact of existing companies on the problem with which we have to deal here. The Minister said that his policy is to end up by having one unit of industrial assurance. If that is his policy it is a bad policy, and he has to prevail upon this House to adopt it. All I say is, if that is his policy, then let us make no shilly shally about seeking a realisation of the policy he has in mind and which this House has accepted. Not one Deputy in the Fianna Fáil Party knows one section of this Bill from the other, but, good or ill, they have voted for it, and as it has been accepted by the Oireachtas, then let amending legislation be introduced at the earliest possible moment to incorporate a scheme of amalgamation which will most effectively carry out the Minister's opinion. If he wants to do that the first preliminary is to invite the constituent companies to the proposed amalgamation to meet him and to present an agreed scheme. If they will not produce an agreed scheme he could inform them that it is his intention to draft one, which will do the best equity he can devise, in the absence of the co-operation of the companies to be amalgamated, and that he will ask Dáil
Eireann to pass the Bill, because he has been unable to get from the constituent companies an agreed scheme which he could incorporate in a Bill and submit to the House with the consent of the companies.
Let me make myself clear upon that. I should like first if the Minister could get the five companies to agree to a scheme that he could incorporate in a Bill to be brought in and carried through this House, so as to override any difficulties which might arise under the existing law. If he cannot get agreement amongst the five companies, after consultation with the companies individually, he should devise what, in his opinion, is the most equitable one that could be hammered out, or the best of the schemes laid before him by the constituent companies, and he should then draft a scheme of his own devising and bring it before the House and force it on the companies. Otherwise the only people who will suffer will be the solvent companies. All the others can afford to sit back and let events take their course, without having any apprehension whatever of what the ultimate consequences may be. I think the Minister should say now, before the Final Stage is passed, whether he is prepared to provide the legislative machinery which will be necessary to carry amalgamation effectively into force, and if he is prepared to introduce an amending Bill for the purpose of facilitating the realisation of what he has declared to be his ultimate aim and policy in regard to this business.
