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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 24 Mar 1943

Vol. 89 No. 11

Private Deputies' Business. - Family Allowances—Motion.

I desire to state, before Private Deputies' Business is entered on, that, owing to transport difficulties, the question on the adjournment will be taken at 9 o'clock.

I move the resolution standing in the names of Deputy Alfred Byrne and myself:—

That Dáil Eireann is of opinion that a scheme of family allowances on a national scale should be instituted forthwith.

When Deputy Alfred Byrne and I first mooted the question of family allowances in this House, about three years ago, we encountered an atmosphere on all sides of the House which suggested that our proposal was not one to be taken seriously——

Not all sides.

——and that it was probably made for some ulterior motive. However, in the three years that have elapsed since then a great metamorphosis has taken place. Deputy Alfred Byrne and I find ourselves in the odd position of being hustled by the principal Parties in the State and of finding ourselves confronted with a clamour that it was not we who made this proposal at all, that it had been made by the Labour Party and the Fianna Fáil Party and a variety of other influential bodies long before we had ever adumbrated it. Deputy Alfred Byrne and I are accustomed to directing the attention of this Legislature to necessary reform and discovering, after the passage of time, that our colleagues come round to our point of view. We are quite happy to witness that recurring event in connection with family allowances. I venture to prophesy that, after we have completed our task to-night, we will turn our minds to other reforms which require attention and help to lead Oireachtas Eireann on to their completion.

I would like to direct the attention of Dáil Eireann to an article that was written in last Sunday's Independent under the name of P.S. O'Hegarty. There was a terrible lot of sense in that article.

Tell us some of it.

I want to. There was a terrible lot of sense in that article because the theme of the article was this: "Be careful lest in inviting the State to lift all the burdens of responsibility off the shoulders of the individual citizen you will not create a situation in which the State will undertake that task but will add a condition that, in consideration of removing these burdens from the individual citizen's shoulders, they demand of the individual citizen certain concessions of liberty in return which might be entirely inconsistent with the views of a Christian democrat." That article went so far as to say: "If you expect to be born at the expense of the State, to be fed at the expense of the State, to be educated at the expense of the State, to be cured of your sickness at the expense of the State and ultimately to be buried by the State, these are demands analogous to those made by a dog upon its master, and the State, in granting these demands, may turn some day and require of the citizen to whom it grants them, duty and subservience analogous to that shown by a dog to his master."

I sympathise with that view in so far as it is interpreted to mean that the growth of the power of bureaucracy is inconsistent with individual liberty and the dignity of the human soul. But the views expressed in that article, I think, must be tempered by a reasonable appreciation of what are the hazards that individual citizens may justly be invited to face, and what are the hazards that any Christian community will combine to protect its members from.

I remember once driving in a motor car—I think it was from Castlebar to Balla—and discussing generally with a very shrewd man the rival philosophies of complete individual liberty without social services of any kind and the Rooseveltian approach to life, to be found in the social philosophy. At the time we were talking the struggle between Mr. Willkie and Roosevelt was proceeding in the United States, and I remember saying that I thought the attitude of Mr. Willkie was very understandable when he said that open competition and leaving every free citizen open to the blast of events as they might transpire produced the best results and the strongest type of citizen and the most virile nation.

I remember my companion on that occasion saying that that was all very well, but that there were limits to the hazards to which people ought to be exposed and that nobody, in the last analysis, would be prepared to maintain that you should never extend a helping hand to anybody, to let the devil take the hindmost and the strongest survive, and that, therefore, when you come to consider this question it became largely a matter of degree rather than principle: you had to do your best to prevent your fellow-members in the community in which you live from suffering the full blast of adversity and misfortune and, at the same time, abstain from an undue intrusion on their individual liberty and dignity by bureaucratic interference. I think he was right. I think it is a matter of degree. I do not think you can lay down any fundamental principles about it except to say that a man, an individual citizen, has an existence independent of the State, that he has rights superior to any of the rights of the State and, secondly, to say that the obligations of charity are just as strong as the obligations of justice, and that in determining the attitude of society to its members the obligations of both charity and justice must be borne in mind.

I am very strongly apprehensive of increasing bureaucratic control over the lives of our people, and it is really in order to safeguard the family unit against such interference and control that I am strongly in favour of instituting a system of family allowances. In the absence of any such system, the very poor for the protection of their children must go to the relieving officer, to the public health authority or to the various public schemes that are operating for the relief of indigence and destitution. Every time they approach one of these public services for the purposes of securing the benefits provided, they find themselves confronted with a questionnaire, possibly they have an investigating officer, or a relieving officer habitually calling to their homes. They discover that into their kitchens and their daily lives there intrudes an outside authority that was never there before. That outside influence and interference are brought in by the very fact of the poverty of those citizens. I want to avoid that. I want to ensure, so far as we can, that in this society to which we belong, the family unit will be sacrosanct from outside interference, that inside the home the father and mother will be the ultimate authority and that the less the State intrudes the better.

Believing that a system of family allowance is desirable for that reason, I turn my mind to a comparison of the position of the person who enjoys a good income with the position of a person who has a relatively small income. I then discover that the person who has £500 a year, and say a family of six children, is at present receiving in this State a very substantial family allowance, whereas the agricultural labourer, who is receiving 36/- a week, less than £100 a year, and has six children, gets no family allowance at all. The fact is that if a man in this State has £500 a year, the income-tax law requires him to pay a certain proportion of that income in income-tax, but there is a provision in the income-tax code that if you get married you are entitled to have a certain part of your income free from income-tax in respect of your wife. For every child born into the house, a further moiety of the income is relieved from income-tax. You can chop logic as long as you like as to whether it is a family allowance or whether it is not. You can argue that inasmuch as the State never takes the money from the taxpayer, it must not be regarded as a gift from the State to the taxpayer but the net result is that the man with £500 a year would be paying over to the Government perhaps £120 income-tax at the present time—I am talking in round figures—but when he marries, immediately his income-tax is reduced by about £26 a year. Five children are born into his house and he has to pay no income-tax at all.

I suggest to the House that that man is receiving in respect of his wife and family a family allowance of approximately £120 a year, or over £2 a week, whereas the agricultural labourer who gets 36/- a week when he gets married still gets 36/- a week. His first child is born and he still gets 36/- a week. His fifth child is born and he is still getting 36/- a week. The man with £500 a year, before he got married, had a net income of £380, but when his fifth child is born his income increases from £380 to £500. The man, on the other hand, with 36/- a week before he got married is still in receipt of 36/- a week after he has married and even after his fifth child has been born. Is there any equity in that? I do not think there is. I think on this ground you can justify a system of family allowances, but I do not seek to justify it on any grounds of jealousy or comparison.

I seek to justify this proposal on justice and social expediency. I do not believe that any citizen of this State desires to know of the existence of men who are working hard week in week out, who exercise their divinely granted right to marry and bring children into the world, and who find themselves in the position that when their first child is born it is an occasion of rejoicing, and when their second child is born, they are still in a position to welcome it but for whom, when the third child is born, their standard of living is definitely reduced. It means for those parents that some of the comforts they had been able to provide for the first few children must now be done without because the cost of maintaining their family makes the continuance of these comforts impossible.

The fourth child coming into that family is received with consternation because it means that that married couple, who set out on their married lives in reasonable comfort, are now definitely poor people, battling with adversity, not knowing from hour to hour or from day to day, what untoward event may throw them into utter ruin and misery and make them suppliants of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the relieving officer or forced to resort to the pawn office. The fifth child is looked upon as a disaster. The fifth child means hunger, want and misery and is, in fact, a warning that there must be no more children born to that home. I do not believe that the citizens of this State want that to continue. I do not believe any citizen to whom these facts are brought home, would not be prepared to say: "Whatever the financial sacrifices are, we are prepared to meet them in order to ensure that that state of affairs will not continue."

We all agree with what is said at meetings of Muintir na Tíre and other admirable bodies of that character when people deplore that young persons do not marry in the country, that there are no marriages and that young people are leaving the land. In the name of commonsense, what young person of 22 years or 23 years would get married in rural Ireland at present on a wage of 36/- a week in the knowledge that, when he had six or seven children, he would still have 36/- a week? Would any Deputy here contemplate the maintenance of nine persons on 36/- a week? Would any Deputy contemplate the maintenance of one person at present on 36/- a week? I know people with five children in the house who are living on 36/- a week. We must, of course, bear in mind that they live in a subsidised house, for which they are paying a rent of only 3/- a week. But I honestly believe that some of these children are fated to grow up cripples, in one sense or another, because they are not getting the food necessary to maintain their bodies in perfect health. I do not refer to a man who is on outdoor relief or out of a job. This man is working 54 hours in the week—and working hard. People may ask why is he not paid more. For the excellent reason that the work on which he is engaged could not bear the payment of more. The only result of making the enterprise pay a higher wage would be to close it down completely. And the enterprise in question is farming.

Does that apply also to turf production?

I could not tell you. I am talking about family allowances and not about turf. The longer we live in this country, the more it will be brought home to us that what I have said applies to a great many enterprises. They can afford to pay a wage adequate for a single man but, when it comes to providing a wage adequate for a man with a large family, they cannot afford it. That is one of the reasons why I am about to advocate the payment of family allowances by the State. It might be argued that each industry ought to pool its resources and provide family allowances for its employees, as is being done in France and Belgium.

I do not believe that that is practicable here. Inasmuch as it is not practicable, I do not think that any considerable body of citizens want to go on enjoying reasonably adequate incomes in the knowledge that their next door neighbours have been forced to regard children as a curse rather than as a blessing. That is a literal fact, and it is a shocking thing to have to say in a Catholic country. I honestly believe that there are many small homes in which the fifth, sixth and seventh child is looked upon as an utter disaster, its arrival being greeted with nothing but consternation and dismay. I do not think that anybody faced with the dilemma of stretching a static wage, sufficient, perhaps, for the maintenance of a man and his wife at the barest level of subsistence, over an increasing number of children could react in any other way. One of the objections to the paying of family allowances is of the type that P.S. O'Hegarty had in mind when he wrote his article in the Sunday Independent—that it might be that the State would have a right to go in and inspect the family. You will hear well-intentioned bureaucrats say——

Who is P.S. O'Hegarty?

The Deputy knows, and I know, but, officially, neither of us knows. His name appears on this article contributed to a Sunday paper.

He has only £1,200 a year.

That does not arise.

Plus bonus.

There is a great deal of force in the apprehension that a system of family allowances might bring into every family an inspector to inquire how the allowance was being spent, or whether it was being spent to the best advantage. You will hear well-intentioned bureaucrats ask: "What causes you to believe that the parents will not spend the family allowance on horse racing or cigarettes?" or "How are you to be satisfied that the allowance will be spent on the children?" Many of them will go on to say that, if you have a scheme of this kind, you ought to give the allowance to the parents in the form of food, or something of that kind.

I want to reject that line of argument completely, because it comes from a benevolent belief in the bureaucrat's mind that he knows God's business much better than God knows it Himself. He does not care to say openly that he really thinks that God Almighty "slipped up" when he instituted the family, that He should have consulted a competent civil servant before He proceeded to set up the family, which civil servant would prescribe that some angelic individual should go in every now and then and see that the parents were doing what the Almighty intended them to do. I, being a simple creature, believe that God knew what He was about when He instituted the family. I believe that He knew what He was about when He ordained that the father and mother should be charged with the responsibility of looking after their children. I do not believe that any rational Oireachtas will seek to amend that arrangement. Therefore, I say that our duty is not to go in and improve on God's handiwork but to provide the parents with the means whereby to discharge their divinely-appointed mission of bringing up their children properly within the family circle. I want to provide that without the interference of the bureaucrats, however well-intentioned they may be.

That brings me to one very controversial element in the proposal I have to make. I regard any scheme which involves the application of a means test as abnoxious. The moment you have a means test, you have inquisition, inquiry and discouragement of any kind of help from friends or neighbours or relatives, because any little help a friend or neighbour may give is treated as means and the allowance proportionately reduced. You have this horrible business of the most intimate details of family life being inquired into and the parents being cross-heckled and harried so as to get information. You have resentment because of the apparent inequalities that result from the treatment of one case as compared with another.

If you are not to have a means test, the family allowance must be payable to every citizen of the State, from the millionaire to the crossing-sweeper. I think it should be so paid. I would abolish the income-tax allowance in respect of children and I would grant to every citizen of the State an equal family allowance in respect of his children, leaving it to the parents in each family, by their respective exertions and ability, to earn a larger income for the upbringing of their children if they are able to do so. I would put the subsistence allowance for all children on the same basis and I would entitle every parent-citizen of the State to draw it without question, without investigation and without any stigma of charity or pauperism attaching to its receipt.

All plans of this character are attractive at their first glance, until you begin to consider what they are going to cost and how they are going to be financed. That is not quite an easy question but, in approaching it, we ought to bear in mind that a system of family allowances will abolish a great deal of public expenditure at present undertaken on behalf of the children of poor people. For instance, one of the things it will take care of is the children's allowance in unemployment pay, and I do not want to depart from that without a word. It often strikes me that one of the most poignant and grievous qualities of unemployment is the experience a married man has who entered into the responsibilities of matrimony with a full realisation of their magnitude, when he had a good job and could see his way to look after a family, when, through no fault of his own, he loses his job and slowly spends his savings in keeping the family together, until ultimately he reaches the day when he is dependent exclusively on his unemployment insurance or unemployment assistance, and, after his long day's search for work, comes home to find himself confronted, not with consolation or relief from the ardours of his day but with the spectacle of children, whom he was responsible for bringing into the world, and a dependent wife suffering not only the spiritual and psychological discomforts of the unemployed man's home, but the physical misery of hunger because he has not the wherewithal to buy them food.

That, I believe, is a quality of the suffering of unemployment so horrifying that no conscious Christian community could endure its continuance very long, and I am suggesting to the House that if we had a system of family allowances operating, that additional burden of misery of the unemployed man would at least be relieved, and however he fared, he would know that, provided he left to his wife and children the allowance provided for them, though they might have no luxuries, they would at least never know the spectre of starvation and that whatever came, it would be there for them.

Suffering of that character is very difficult to bear, if one has to bear it alone. The misery of unemployment, the frustration of being unable to get a job, is a very great burden, even when one can carry it all oneself, but when, nolens volens, it extends itself to other and weaker shoulders, then it becomes almost unendurable. One of the great merits of the proposal which Deputy Byrne and I put before the House now is that the unemployed man, faced with adversity, will at least have preserved his ability to bear his burden alone and not call on his wife and children to take their part in carrying it.

What is it going to cost? I am not in a position to put accurate figures before the House. I have not got them, and, so far as I know, official figures have never been worked out in relation to this problem. I understand that the Government has an inter-departmental committee operating, but they have reached no official conclusions. They very kindly communicated to me, at the request of the Minister for Finance, such information as was at their disposal, but it was at that stage—this was some time ago—of a purely tentative character. I could not attempt to quote that information and I do not want anybody to imagine that the figures I am submitting are figures over which any Government committee or Department stands. They are as near as I can go from my inadequate statistical inquiry.

I reckon that there are approximately 855,320 dependent children in the country—that was the position when the last census was taken—and if we were to provide a family allowance for every dependent child, whether the millionaire's child or the child of the crossing sweeper, it would cost £11,119,160 per annum, at 5/- per week. If we fixed the rate of annual contribution at 3/- in respect of each child, the figures would be approximately £6,671,000. In New Zealand and, I think, in Australia, although I am not so sure, the family allowance is not payable in respect of the first child. It is payable only in respect of each child after the first, and, if we were to adopt that plan, of paying the allowance not to all the children but to all the children after the first child, we should have to deal with 575,000 children, and the annual cost at 5/- per week would be about £7,500,000, and, at 3/- per week, about £4,500,000.

Those are substantial sums. If we provide family allowances for every child, the savings to the Exchequer in respect of existing allowances, such as unemployment insurance allowances, unemployment assistance allowances, income-tax allowances, free food distribution, outdoor assistance, and widows' and orphans' pensions, would amount to about £2,000,000 per year, so that while the gross cost of giving it to every child would be £11,000,000, the net cost would be about £9,000,000 per annum.

If you gave it to every child at 3/- a week, the cost would be £6,671,000, approximately, and the net cost would be in the order of £4,671,000. I would give it to everyone, and I believe that if we had to raise, annually, a revenue of £10,000,000 for this purpose, the benefits that would accrue from it would be an ample compensation for that expenditure. For instance, the great bulk of this money would be spent on the purchase of food—extra food that these families have to forego at present because they have not the money with which to buy it. Of the food that would be thus purchased, a very large proportion would be produced in this country. An immense additional market would be provided for butter, milk, eggs and meat—all commodities a sufficiency of which is not at present included in the dietary of our people.

I believe that at the present moment there are hundreds of thousands of children—well, I should like to correct that, and say tens of thousands of children—in this country who are not getting enough milk to ensure their health. I believe that there are thousands of expectant mothers in this country who are subsisting on a diet which is deficient in milk or in calcium intake and that, as a result, their children are bound to grow up in permanent ill-health, or crippled in one way or another. I believe that that would be remedied by making it possible, through the provision of family allowances, for these mothers to buy milk, which they cannot afford to buy now. I believe that the investment of this annual sum would result, in addition to the saving of the £2,000,000 which I have mentioned—because it would result in a far higher standard of health throughout the whole community in the course of ten or 15 years' time—in a consequent reduction in the charges for public health services that are necessary now as a result of the real destitution that obtains in the country, and I believe that, ultimately, we would reach a stage in which the vast system of subsidised housing, which at present exists, would become no longer necessary. I believe that if we make, through family allowances, an adequate provision for every man, so as to enable him to provide for his children, the necessity of subsidising the building of houses out of taxation would disappear, because everybody, then, would be able to pay an economic rent. For instance, you could have houses designed for various types of families, such as married couples without children, or married couples with one child, or with two or three children, and you could have varying rents fixed according to the accommodation required. I think that such a scheme of family allowances would be sufficient to enable an individual to pay whatever the cost of building might be, and I think you are bound to fix the family allowance at a level which would enable that to be done. Unless you do that, there is something manifestly inequitable.

There is no reason why a man in this country who works, let us say, 48 hours a week, should not be able to obtain from the community a share of the national income to enable him to feed, clothe and house his family. And if he does secure such a share in the national income, then the necessity for subsidising housing and various other forms of relief would disappear, and economies could be effected in other relief services that now exist. Now, I do not want to advance this as of fundamental importance in considering this matter, but I think it is worth while bearing in mind that one of the things that was discovered during the last great inflation, and the subsequent slump, by competent economic observers, was that the slump was not precipitated by any sudden disappearance of wealth. What happened was that income began to dry up in a vast number of small homes, and the moment that began, they stopped spending. That wave of caution spread from the small homes to the middle classes, and from the middle classes to the rich owners of property until, eventually, the spending capacity of the people collapsed. That was the appalling slump which devastated the United States of America and Great Britain, and which, I must say, to the credit of precautions taken by Deputy Cosgrave, wrought such little havoc in this country, because, as a result of his efforts, our people managed to escape most of the terrible consequences of that slump. In view of that, I say that the maintenance of a stable purchasing power all over the masses of the people of this country is an economic asset that is worth bearing in mind when one is considering the merits of such a proposal as I am now putting forward.

Now, this resolution in Deputy Byrne's name and mine, calls for the immediate introduction of a scheme of this kind. Of course, this is a time in which public expenditure has reached great heights, as a result of the war situation which surrounds us, and, naturally, people will be reluctant to contemplate launching into a scheme which will involve an expenditure of £10,000,000 a year, or at least £8,000,000 a year, in addition to the present Budget charge. I would not dream of suggesting to Oireachtas Eireann that in normal times, when currencies were stabilised and one was constrained to take a long-term view, we should embark upon an enterprise of this kind on borrowed money, but these are not normal times. We are living in times when the value of money, in two or three or five years from to-day, is very doubtful. It is very hard to forecast what will happen, or what currency will be worth in the post-war world. The result, in the post-war world, may be a re-valuation of money on a basis that it is now very hard to forecast. Certain it is, however, that with Great Britain spending £5,000,000,000 a year and with America spending £8,000,000,000 a year, the pound and the dollar are not going to have, post-war, the value that they had pre-war, so far as the purchasing of commodities is concerned. Some re-valuation will have to be undertaken, and, in that period of re-valuation, the man who has converted his currency into fixed assets can contemplate the future with equanimity, because, whatever may happen to the currency, his assets will still remain.

In connection with a recent Vote, I was advocating the spending of money on the improvement of land and providing amenities for the urban population. I now want to suggest to Oireachtas Eireann that one of the most precious assets we can purchase at any time is a healthy nation. If a necromancer were to appear before us and were to say to us: "Your next generation will be made up of healthy men and women, or I can make them all cripples, or half of them cripples and half of them healthy, but I warn you that if I so arrange that the next generation will be all crippled with disease, in the wake of that decision there will come want and destitution, consequent upon thousands of persons being unable to provide for themselves, and there will ensue on that want and destitution vice, squalor and crime; but if, on the other hand, I ordain that your next generation should be a generation of healthy men and women, with consequent progress for your nation and the advantages, material and spiritual, that must result from such a development, what price is this House prepared to pay for that?" Will we simply say: "No, we will take a middle course, and have half cripples and half sound men and women, because it would cost too much to have 100 per cent. healthy men and women"? Is there any Deputy here who would argue that we should buy a generation of cripples, or that prudence should deter us from the extravagance of purchasing a generation of healthy men and women—that we should take a middle course and, by paying a moderate sum, bring into the world a generation composed of half cripples and half healthy persons?

There is no necromancer here; there is no one to put this issue with that certainty before us; but there is that choice before us as certain as we are in this Chamber. We are the necromancers in this situation; we have to discharge our duty and determine the risks that may be required in order to save those who must be cripples if they have not enough whereon to live now. Prudent economists may determine that it is better to let these children die. I do not want to set against that any appeal to sentiment; I do not want to allege, against a person who makes that proposition, that he is heartless or indifferent. But, on his own ground, I want to meet him and to tell him that economically he is a fool. He is in exactly the same position as the wretched miser who starves himself to death in order to stuff his bed-tick with bank notes.

In normal times, without the excessive defence burdens which are at present imposed upon us by the circumstances in which we find ourselves, I would advocate the raising by taxation of whatever revenue would be necessary to finance this plan. In the situation in which we do find ourselves I advocate the borrowing of money now wherewith to purchase a healthy generation in the years to come. I advocate the launching of this plan now, the purchase with borrowed money of the certainty that no child born into this community is going to be reared to perish, or to linger on, a cripple because there is no money with which to buy food. There is nobody in this House who is not aware that there are thousands so circumstanced at the present time; there is nobody here who is not aware that there are thousands of children who are going to die, or who can only survive as cripples, for want of food.

And have died.

It is not what has happened as what is going to happen that matters so much. Every man makes mistakes. What matters is whether men learn by their mistakes or go on making the same mistakes. There is no use dwelling on the fact that many have died. This is not the only community in which persons have died through that cause. The fundamental point is, was it wise and good to let them die? I think this community has awakened to the fact that it is neither good nor wise so to let them die. Let us give effect to that discovery. Can it be done now? I say it can. Should it be done now? I say it must, and I would like to see it done, not as a feature in the programme of any political Party, but rather as the unanimous resolve of this House, coming from no Party, but coming rather as the joint responsibility of all of us.

I think it is right to say there is not any Party in this House which would reject this plan on the ground that it was not good value to purchase children's lives for money. There may be men here, and there may be women, who believe that the scheme adumbrated by Deputy Byrne and myself will not work. If there are, I should like to hear them, because I want a chance at the conclusion of this debate of answering them. If the Government accept this motion, there will be no need to divide the House; but if they do not accept it, then Deputy Byrne and myself will divide the House on it, and I ask every Deputy who, in that event, will walk into the "No" Lobby, to say, before he goes in, why he is going in, because I know that we have an answer to whatever argument could conceivably induce him to go into that Lobby. I suggest that it will be ignorance that will bring him into the wrong Lobby.

Deputy Byrne and I are anxious to hear any objections to the proposals we are making. We have the answers if only Deputies will ask us for them and the Deputy who walks into the wrong Lobby because he is too lazy to ask the answers is truly deserving of public opprobrium. We want to hear the arguments against this plan, if there are any, and I submit we are in a position to answer all those arguments. We are prepared to give every Deputy an opportunity of demonstrating before the country what he thinks of the merits of our arguments, and then the people of the country will have an opportunity of demonstrating what they think of the merits of Deputies who decide against the proposal.

Mr. Byrne

I rise to second the motion and to remind the House that we are merely asking the Government to introduce a long-overdue act of Christian social justice. I move the adjournment of the debate.

Debate adjourned.
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