There are one or two points in connection with this Bill which I think the Minister might explain a little further. It proposes to transfer certain properties to the Hospitals Commission. The Board of Superintendence has been, of course, a permanent body since its establishment. I do not know that anybody is contemplating the Hospitals Commission as a permanent body. Certainly, there is nothing in the statute upon which it rests which suggests that it would be a permanent body. All its statutory functions are concerned with the distribution of funds coming from what is, presumably, a temporary expedient, the Hospitals Sweepstakes. I think it is generally assumed that once the Hospitals Sweepstakes cease to be held, the Hospitals Commission will cease to function. The Hospitals Sweepstakes were instituted for the purpose of helping voluntary hospitals. The scope of their work has, of course, been extended, but it has been calculated by those in charge of the sweepstakes that the primary purpose of their establishment, the equipment and endowment of the voluntary hospitals, will be achieved through the sweepstakes, if their income is to continue at anything like the present rate, in another two or three years. In that case, one would expect that the functions of the Hospitals Commission would then cease.
It may be that the Minister has decided to keep the Hospitals Commission in being for other purposes. I am not questioning the propriety of such a step in certain circumstances, but I do suggest that if the Hospitals Commission is to be kept on as a permanent body, this House ought to have an opportunity of discussing its scope and its functions. On its establishment the Hospitals Commission, it was understood, would undertake the same duties, but on a wider scope, as had previously been fulfilled by the Committee of Reference in regard to sweepstakes, that is to say, that they should investigate the question of the allocation of funds—certainly on a wider scope than their predecessors— that they should make recommendations to the Minister and that the Minister, if satisfied, should act on their recommendations. What has actually happened in practice is something quite different. The recommendations of the Committee of Reference were acted upon almost automatically by the Minister. The recommendations of the Hospitals Commission, a much stronger body, which has given a much wider and a much deeper study to the question than its predecessors, are subjected to the scrutiny of the Minister's own Department, with the result that there has been a degree of delay in carrying on the work of the Hospitals Commission. I suggest that the members of the Hospitals Commission are far more competent to advise the Minister on this matter than the officials of his Department. They have given particular study to this question. However inexperienced the members of the commission may have been when they were appointed some years ago, they have now gained a very wide experience. They are in a position to exercise a very sound judgment and to take very long views as well as very wide views. They are thoroughly expert on the whole question of the hospital system of the country. Yet their recommendations are submitted to the judgment of a body of permanent officials who, whatever their qualifications for dealing with the ordinary routine work of their offices, have no expert qualifications for dealing with voluntary hospitals.
Up to the present the voluntary hospitals have been entirely out of their purview. They have had no opportunity of studying the principle of the voluntary hospital system, but apparently they are to sit in judgment over a body which has become expert in this matter in the last few years, a body to which everybody concerned with the hospitals feels extremely grateful. That has resulted in considerable delays, delays due to the fact that the recommendations of a body of authority have to be revised by a body of lesser authority, because they happen to be the Minister's permanent officials. I am not criticising the competence of the Minister's officials to deal with the ordinary duties of the Department, but I do suggest that they cannot be as expert on questions affecting hospital management as the Hospitals Commission, which was specially created to deal with this matter. If the Hospitals Commission is to receive a permanent standing, as seems to be implied by this Bill, I think the House should have an opportunity of considering what its functions will be in future and whether effect will be given to its recommendations.
The other point to which I wish to call attention has reference to Section 6 of the Bill in which it is provided that, in the event of an application being made to the Minister by the person, who is the holder of the office of secretary to the Board of Superintendence, for compensation in respect of the abolition of his office,
"the Minister may direct the Hospitals Commission to pay to such person such sum, not exceeding £150 as the Minister in his absolute discretion shall think proper."
When the Minister introduced this Bill last week, he was asked by the Leader of the Opposition what would be the position of the secretary of the board, and the Minister replied that his position would be safeguarded. That seems to me to have been a very optimistic statement, certainly over-optimistic from the point of view of the secretary. The secretary receives a salary of £150 a year. His appointment has, in fact, been a permanent appointment. It has always been held for life up to the present. That is to say, the secretary on appointment held office until he chose to resign or until he died. Men who were older than the present secretary on appointment have held the office up to extreme old age. It is proposed that the present holder of the office is to be retired and that he will simply receive one year's salary as compensation. I do not know whether the Minister has come to any arrangement with this gentleman or not. It is possible he has, and that the fact that the retiring official has accepted one year's salary instead of a permanent pension represents a degree of self-sacrifice on his part. The compensation awarded in this case is in curious contrast to that given to a certain other retiring official recently who did not hold a permanent office and who was due to retire in another year and a half. It seems to me that, unless this official has consented to this arrangement, the House should demand that something more than a paltry year's salary should be awarded to an official on the compulsory abolition of what is in effect a permanent appointment. It seems unfortunate that this Bill which opens up one very important general question, namely, the position of the Hospitals Commission, and which also deals with the question of importance for the official concerned, should be brought forward in the expiring hours of this Dáil.
