Without any hesitation I withdraw any suggestion in regard to Deputy Brady that he literally got away with murder. Nothing is farther from my mind, and I am sure Deputy Brady knows that. Deputy Brady is a good pupil of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Department of Local Government and Public Health, and he aspires to be even better. I am grateful to the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for directing my attention to the possibility of the misinterpretation of that figure of speech. I meant it purely and solely as a figure of speech and in no other way.
Having departed from the somewhat unsavoury topic of the Parliamentary Secretary's activities in County Monaghan, I want to come now to other matters relating to the Department for which the Minister is responsible. I should be glad to hear from him when he expects some form of agreement to be arrived at with the doctors' organisation which will enable local authorities to get on with diphtheria immunisation schemes. At present we seem to be held up in that respect. We are told that the doctors cannot arrive at any agreement with the Department on some matter relating to fees. The facts are that if you can get children immunised from diphtheria they will not die from diphtheria. Children are dying from diphtheria and that is because the Department cannot arrive at some agreement with the doctors in regard to fees. That seems to me to be a very deplorable state of affairs, and I would be glad to know when we may expect that obstruction to be removed so that we may get on with the job.
Dietetics is a matter which should come within the scope of the Minister's Department. At present, so far as I am aware, there is no division of the Minister's Department primarily devoted to the matter of dietetics. I would suggest to the Minister that he ought to establish a division in his Department concerned with dietetics where experts would be available. If he did, local institutions and public bodies could seek the assistance of that division with a view to bringing the diets provided for the inmates of public institutions and prisons and other places of that kind into line with modern dietetical knowledge. Furthermore, the accumulated knowledge of that Department might be made available in technical schools and generally disseminated, even on the lines of the Department's leaflet.
I have often felt that a good deal of poverty in this country, and indeed all over the world, is due to the lack of knowledge women have of the best way to get the most value for the money they lay out. I believe that thousands of children in this country are hungry because their parents do not give them the necessary food and, oddly enough, I do not think that that type of hunger is confined to the children of the poor. I think many a child of well-off parents is starved because its mother does not know what food to give it. She has no knowledge of dietetics, no knowledge of the kind of food which is best for the child and, with the best will in the world, she gives the child what she thinks is luxurious food but, in fact, it does not provide the child with the essentials for proper nutrition. Then, at the other end of the scale, you have the poor person who is trying to make both ends meet and, instead of buying cheap, good food, with the best will in the world she starves herself to buy some expensive thing for the children when, in fact, if she gave them a cheaper but more nutritious thing, she would be able to have some money to buy food for herself and at the same time she would be feeding her children much better than by buying the dear thing that she actually does buy for them.
I will give you a case in point. A woman goes out with a couple of shillings and she passes the herring basket and buys margarine to spread on the children's bread. As a matter of fact, when she passes herrings she passes one of the most valuable foods that she could possibly give her children. If the situation is one in which every penny counts, it is of immense importance that she should get the maximum value for every penny she lays out. The next thing is the poor woman in the country. She may have a few gallons of milk, and instead of feeding that milk to her children, she permits her husband to bring the milk to the creamery. It is sold there for 4d. a gallon and she then comes up to the shop and spends the creamery cheque on tea, margarine and jam. There is more nourishment in the quart of milk which she sold for one penny than in any of the tea, margarine and jam upon which she spend the whole cheque. If we could bring home to the poor of the country, and the poor of the cities, that milk, green vegetables, eggs, bacon, cabbage, oatmeal and brown bread constitute between them an adequate diet and that, after you have provided that basic diet, you can add frills and furbelows, if you can afford them, you go a long way towards removing a good deal of poverty which at present obtains.
For instance, another matter about which ignorance of dietetics embarrasses people is the use of the humble potato. It has become quite fashionable in modern days to decry the nutritional value of the potato, but it now emerges from the most modern research into dietetics that the potato is one of the most nutritious things people could eat, so that this interesting fact emerges—and it is a dietetic division of the Minister's Department which should emphasise it—that one of the safest guides to dietetics is to look at the established customs of the country people. Until you have positive evidence condemning the established customs of the country people, you should be extremely reluctant to depart from them. Our people ate potatoes, cabbage, bacon, milk, eggs and, where they had a patch of wheat, wholemeal bread. They worked that out by their own experience, and, oddly enough, over the last 60 years, that diet has been largely abandoned in the country. Now we find Sir John Orr, and the greatest dietetists in the world, approaching the question from the purely scientific angle and coming back to virtually exactly the same diet that our grandfathers worked out by generations of experience. I think I am correct in saying that if you took the diet of the average person in this country in the year 1846 and submitted it to Sir John Orr to-day, he would say: "That is the ideal diet for a person who is living on the border of starvation. He is getting the maximum nourishment that it is possible for a person living on the border of starvation to get." The difference is that under the rotten system that obtained in Ireland 70 years ago our people were condemned to live on the border of starvation. By their own ingenuity they worked out the best possible diet they could get in those circumstances. They are no longer required to live on the border of starvation, but it would be a sad commentary on the attempt to raise the standard of living of our people if, as we raise it, they depart from sound dietetic practice and use their additional prosperity to poison the generations rising at present. Let us by all means enjoy luxuries, but, with our luxuries, let us all see that the rising generation get the necessary basic diet to enable them to grow into strong men and women.
Before I part from that question of diet, let me throw out a suggestion. I do not suggest that what I am going to mention now can be done overnight or to-morrow morning. I do not assert that it can be done at all, but I think it ought to be considered. The value of milk as a food is incomparable. At the present time the disposal of the milk supplies of this country constitutes a perennial problem which involves the community in considerable expense. Nobody seems willing to pay us an economic price for butter manufactured out of milk, and, in the present circumstances of our agriculture, milk is really a by-product of our live-stock industry. I place special emphasis on the words "in the present circumstances of our agriculture." Suppose, instead of going around hat in hand to the foreigner and begging him to take the butter manufactured out of that milk from us at an economic price, we brought all that milk into centres of consumption here, pasteurised it, and distributed it free to the people, would the cost of such a proposal be prohibitive, or of a kind sufficient to make such a scheme wholly impossible? I doubt it. You would get immense value for the milk and you would confer an immense benefit on everybody. I think the legitimate interests of the present milk distributors would have to be considered and, of course, at first, you would have people, if milk were distributed free, bringing home gallons of milk which they did not want in the hope of selling it again at a profit and then finding that it was not saleable. I think, however, that these initial difficulties would be got over.
I remember that George Bernard Shaw once wrote an article advocating the free distribution of bread. He said that if such a scheme were put into operation, for the first week, you would find the whole Liffey choked with bread, because everybody would be carrying home bread for nothing in the hope of selling it subsequently, and when they went to sell it, finding that everybody else had bread, and the only thing to do was to bring it to the Liffey and throw it in, and immense quantities of bread would be wasted, until everybody came to realise that bread was as cheap as water. Then that difficulty would settle itself. If the day ever dawns when milk could be made as freely available as water, people would realise that there would be no more use in trying to carry home undue quantities of milk than there would be in trying to carry home undue quantities of Vartry water.
Many people will say that this is pure moonshine and rainbow-chasing, but I should like them to think of it. I am convinced, and I think Deputy Tom Kelly will confirm me in this, that there are hundreds of children in this city at present who are literally hungry for want of milk. I am perfectly convinced that if these children were hungry for want of solid food and could make their hunger known to their neighbours, their neighbours would advocate the feeding of the children and the counting of the cost afterwards; but, because children do not happen to cry or manifest hunger by the ordinary signs, when they are, so to speak, physiologically hungry, when they are deprived of adequate nutrition, the bulk of the population simply do not notice the fact that they are hungry and, not noticing it, do not get excited about it. If, however, a child is starved of the essential elements of its diet during its childhood, it grows up eventually a delicate man or woman, or a cripple in some particular.
The evidence of starvation during childhood is manifested in the infirmities of adult life when it is too late to do anything. A trained observer can see in the face of a child who is not getting quite sufficient nutrition the evidence of past starvation. The ordinary citizen cannot see that. I say that if that inadequate nutrition is a fact, if that hunger is a fact, we should concern ourselves to end it. We should make the ideal at which we aim the provision of the minimum nourishment essential for every man, woman and child in the country. The most effective method of providing the children with the necessary nutrition is milk. On the other side, we are confronted with a perennial surplus of milk which we find it hard to dispose of. Will it be possible by any ingenuity to build a bridge between the children of the people who need milk and the people who have the milk to dispose of? That is a matter deserving of consideration and investigation by the Minister. I do not attempt to be dogmatic on the economics of that proposition. But I venture to say that it is worthy of the consideration of the Minister and that it should be examined by him and by his Department in collaboration with the Ministers for Agriculture and Finance.
The next question I want to put to the Minister is in this connection—as a member of a local body I occasionally see the extremely distressing circumstance of a poor woman whose husband, a labouring man, has died and she is left with four or five young children. She now gets a pension of course and some allowance for the children, but even so there is a feeling and it is frequently true, that she is not able to keep the children and they have to go into an institution. They have to be sent to an industrial school or to be boarded out. In the case of such persons what objection could there be on the part of the board of health to board out the children with the mother? I can see, at once, that the experienced member of the local body will say "if you did that you would have every orphan child in the country sent to the county home in order to get them sent back again to be boarded out with the parent." I do not think that is true, but, even if it were it would be possible to restrict the class of persons to whom the child could be boarded out. I have no doubt that a child boarded out with its own parents is much better looked after than it would be in any other home. If you are to board out the child at all is it not better to do so in a home that will keep a Christian family together rather than break up the family or distribute the children to an industrial school? I think that is a matter worthy of consideration and investigation. I have already mentioned it on two occasions on the debate on this Vote and I do not propose to go further into it now but to ask for the Minister's consideration of the matter and to ask him if possible to do something on these lines.
There is an archaic regulation requiring dispensary doctors to live in their own dispensary districts. That regulation has been archaic since the advent of the telephone and the motor car. It is much more convenient now to have a doctor living in an adjacent town where the telephone is available and where a motor car is available. The telephone is now to be found in practically every Gárda station. If the doctor is living near the telephone in an adjacent town he can be rung up from the Gárda station in an emergency and a message can be sent to the doctor's house. The doctor can get to the house of the sick person in his motor car in far less time now than it used take in the old days, when the relative of the sick person had to drive into the doctor's house and the doctor had to drive back again in a horse and car.
The existence of this regulation, however, is used for the purpose of persecuting the dispensary practitioner. The doctor is living a quarter of a mile outside his dispensary area in a considerable town. Somebody gets a grudge against him and gets in touch with the Minister and asks "why is the doctor not living in the dispensary district?" The Minister replies that the doctor should live in his dispensary district. And soon he is asked why should he not live in the centre of the district. Then we have the position that a man who has lived all his life in a town or city is asked to take up his residence in a village consisting of one public house, a sweet shop and a Gárda station. The doctor may reply that there is no accommodation there for him. Then there is an agitation at once to build a doctor's residence. That agitation is supported by the feeling in the district that if a doctor's residence is built there would be employment given in the area, that a contract will be let for the building of the house and that there will be all sorts of pickings. Then the unfortunate doctor is planted out in a wilderness for no purpose and to the ultimate inconvenience of the great majority of persons living in that dispensary area. I therefore suggest that that regulation should now be waived; and that the doctors should now be required to live in a place which in the opinion of the local body will enable them properly and conveniently to attend to the persons placed in their charge.
The next matter to which I will refer briefly is the administration of the mental hospitals. Very few people take any interest whatever in the mentally sick. I do not want to be cynical but I think that that is possibly due to the fact that the vast majority of them have not got votes. I do not say none of them have votes. I have known patients in a mental hospital to be brought out by enthusiastic members of the Fianna Fáil Party, polled to a man and marched back again to the mental home. On one occasion one of these patients escaped after he had polled his vote. It cost the local authority a large sum of money to get that patient back again after his vote had been polled. It would, I am sure, astonish Deputies of this House to realise that in some mental hospitals the ward used for the reception of new patients is the ward used for violent patients. Many of the new patients would not in the ordinary way require to remain for very long in the mental hospital at all. After a short examination and some careful treatment they are found to be suffering from a nervous breakdown and these people are sent home again. But when these people are brought to the mental home they are brought into the reception ward which also serves for the violent patients.
In these surroundings just imagine the feelings of the unfortunate creature who is merely suffering from a nervous collapse of such a character that his removal to a mental hospital is deemed prudent for the time being. When that patient enters the hospital he is placed in the same ward with the violent patients, adjacent perhaps to a parricide. I know that that is due to a lack of accommodation, and steps are being taken to remedy it in certain institutions. I would like to say that where that state of affairs exists vigorous measures should be taken to provide accommodation for the incoming patients who require to be left under observation for some time before they can be put into their own category of "permanent" patients. The administration of our mental hospitals on the whole is probably good. I do not want to suggest to the House that there is any horrible scandal existing in them. I think the difficulty to which I have referred arises from lack of accommodation, and these difficulties are mitigated as far as it is possible to do so by the consideration and zeal of the staff. Nevertheless it is the duty of the Minister to see that these institutions are properly equipped, more particularly because so few people naturally interest themselves in the treatment of the mentally sick. Of course the mentally sick are unable to speak for themselves. That is, therefore, a matter that should engage the Minister's attention and the Minister's vigilance.
I would like to hear from the Minister what facilities are provided for the treatment of the mentally sick and what steps are being taken in that matter. I suspect that in a very large number of our mental hospitals all that happens to patients sent there is that they are simply washed, kept clean, got to bed at night and got up in the morning. That is all that can happen where you have an immense number of people in an institution and no adequate medical staff to attend to them. The best they can do is to keep them clean, fed and clothed. We should be doing more than that. We should be trying to cure them, and I would suggest to the Minister that if at this stage he is not prepared to arrange for vigorous measures for the cure of the patients in all our mental hospitals, he ought to inquire into the desirability of establishing a certain number of hospitals primarily designed for therapeutic work in connection with mental sickness. Then, from our larger county institutions, selected patients could be sent to these therapeutic hospitals, where they would be given intensive treatment deliberately with the object of curing their mental sickness. So far as I am aware, nothing is being done along these lines at present and that greatly reflects upon us. I attach principal importance to the matter I referred to in regard to dietetics. I would ask the Minister to make special reference to that in his reply and to let us know to-day whether in his judgement it will be possible to establish a division of his Department primarily concerned with that matter.