Last night I was drawing attention to the remarkable phenomenon that Deputy O'Leary would appear to have become the spiritual guide and director of the Government.
Private Deputies' Business. - National Free Milk Scheme Grant— Motion (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:—
That the Dáil is of opinion that, owing to the increase in the price of milk, the national free milk scheme grant of £90,000 to local authorities is inadequate to meet the demands of the various voluntary committees carrying out the distribution of the milk, and that an increase in this grant should be made to cover present demands.
—(Deputies Byrne and Cogan.)
They would be worse than they are then.
Deputy O'Leary has also the honour and privilege of having had his ideas accepted by the Minister for Defence last week. Last night the Parliamentary Secretary accepted his view that the burden of financing the distribution of free milk should be thrown entirely upon the local authorities. I entirely disagree with Deputy O'Leary and with the Parliamentary Secretary.
How would the Deputy do it?
I hold that the cost of services such as this, which are of public benefit, should be equitably distributed over the community. To secure equitable distribution, every citizen who has a substantial income should pay a proportion thereof to provide this social service. That is done through income-tax.
The person who has sufficient income to indulge in luxuries should also make a contribution towards the relief of needy children. These fortunate people who can derive a certain amount of happiness through the neck of a bottle of beer or whiskey will be happier still if they find that every time they lift their elbow in a publichouse they are lifting a glass of milk to the lips of some needy infant. Therefore, I think that the method of financing this scheme at present in force is the proper one. The only complaint we can make at present is that, in view of the difficult and distressing times through which we are passing, it is wrong that the volume of relief provided should be reduced, as it is certainly reduced at present.
The Parliamentary Secretary drew attention to other reliefs which are given in various ways, such as assistance in the purchase of fuel, food, and other things during the emergency. I agree that certain provisions are made in that direction; but we must remember that these provisions are solely due to the emergency and the high cost of fuel. Even with the allowance made to assist in the purchase of fuel and other necessaries, we know that the conditions of the poorer classes of our people are worse than they were before the emergency. Therefore, it is nothing to boast of that the State has made increased provision in that direction.
I thoroughly agree that the real solution to the problem is to provide full employment at reasonable wages. That is the only real permanent solution. The sooner we can get away from the necessity of providing various forms of charity to an ever increasing section of our people the better. There are too many people absolutely dependent now on charity from the State. We ought to end that state of affairs and, pending a really business like approach to this problem through the provision of employment for our entire population, I think that this motion should be accepted.
As the House is aware, this motion declares that, because of the increase in the price of milk, the national free milk grant of £90,000 to local authorities is inadequate to meet the demands of the various voluntary committees and others carrying out this work. I will be brief for this reason. I had some statistics and other data, but I was considerably influenced in refraining from mentioning some of these figures because of a statement attributed to, and I believe correctly attributed to, the Parliamentary Secretary when speaking last night. He stated, inter alia, that if the grant of £90,000 was not adequate, it seemed to him that the local authority had not only a right but a duty to supplement it.
That is correct.
That saves the Parliamentary Secretary and the House a lot of time, because I was going to direct most of what I had to say to that very aspect of the position in relation to the national scheme of free milk. We in Cork have done our bit in regard to the distribution of free milk. We have also in operation under the Child Welfare League, of which I was an executive member for many years and still am, although I cannot afford time to attend their meetings, a scheme which has proved very successful. In addition to the free milk grant, the Child Welfare League distributed last year 3,947 gallons of milk to children and necessitous mothers. That milk was not given free, but was given at a quarter of the cost, so that it might be said that approximately three-quarters of the milk was distributed free.
According to the Press this morning, the Parliamentary Secretary also stated that there was no such thing as starvation in this country. If there is not actual starvation, there certainly have been many cases of deaths attributed by a coroner's inquiry to starvation or semi-starvation. It must be the experience of Deputies, as it is my experience in Cork City, that from day-to-day many worn and hungry-looking men and women knock at the doors of Deputies, aldermen, councillors, and other members of public bodies. These people are, undoubtedly, hungry. They have all the appearance of people who are half-starved. That cannot be gainsaid. Deputy Furlong will bear me out in that. I am speaking from my own personal experience, and what must be his personal experience also. Many of them are unfit for any kind of labour involving even the smallest degree of exertion or continued effort of any kind. That is brought about by various causes. As Deputy Cogan said a moment ago, the principal cause is unemployment and all that flows from it. I know, of course, that the cases I have mentioned cannot come under the head of starvation. But these people can be classed anyhow as being only partly fed and in most cases, where they are partly fed, they are improperly fed as well, because they have not the facilities for cooking. They have not the coal or the turf or the coke, or even the wood in many cases, to cook meals and have them served as they should be served, in a manner in which they could digest them. That is the experience of most people who have anything to do with the social side of our city life.
There are other cases in which the milk supply has been cut off from tuberculous patients and others. The Parliamentary Secretary is a medical man and I feel he must give his imprimatur to most of the literature that is being sent out by way of propaganda against the inroads of tuberculosis in this country. It is true, indeed, that milk is the foundation of most of the treatment these unfortunate patients have to undergo. But what occurs? Many people blame the administrators of the poor law system. Frequently, they blame the home assistance officers, but those officers are only carrying out their duties, and they are cribbed, cabined and confined in doing so by the figure laid down by the Government for the purposes of the free milk scheme. That scheme is restricted by the amount of money made available for that purpose. Anything I have to say now is not a condemnation of the poor law officers, but simply an attempt to get the Parliamentary Secretary to agree to increase the grant from the £90,000 to a sum more adequate to the needs of the people whom it was intended to serve.
Why does not the local authority supplement it?
I am going to answer that. I could go on for a full hour, but the Parliamentary Secretary's own query now has helped me very considerably along the lines I wanted to pursue, so I will not detain him or the House by going into the matter at length. Now, the Corporation of Cork receives an allocation from the Department of between £4,000 and £5,000. For the year 1945, the grant amounted to £4,755 17s. 7d. It is considered an order that this money be expended completely on milk supplies. The amount of milk given must be kept within the grant, as the corporation can be charged with any excess expenditure. I would like to hear the Parliamentary Secretary about that. He has half assured me, from the way he put his query a moment ago, that the Government will not turn a deaf ear to the request I am making in this motion that the grant be increased.
There is no doubt on that question at all.
No doubt?
No doubt, whatever.
Let me give this version of it: is it true to say that if we, the Cork Corporation, exceed the amount of £4,755 17s. 7d., we will not be surcharged?
It is true to say that any local authority can give to the necessitous poor as much milk as it is necessary to give, and pay for it out of their own resources.
Oh, that is quite a different thing.
Where else would it come from, if the £90,000 is exhausted?
If the grant of £90,000 is not adequate, it is only right and proper that provision be made.
Yes, out of their own resources.
That is a different story.
The Parliamentary Secretary knows as well as I do that the resources of these municipal bodies are not inexhaustive. They do their best, but they cannot meet all this expense.
I thought the Deputy said it was right and proper to do it.
It is right and proper, I admit.
Then why does the Deputy say they cannot do it?
It is right to do it, but if they have not the funds?
They can get them.
If you want to make hare soup, first catch your hare.
You have the hare in Cork, anyway.
We have, and we will keep him on the run, too. Now we know where we are and we know what the big headings in the papers to-day mean. The people down the country say: "What a bountiful and beneficent Government we have, when that glorious Parliamentary Secretary says that, if the grant of £90,000 is not adequate, the local authority has not only the right but the duty to see that sufficient is provided". I can answer that and say that the national exchequer has the right and the duty to supplement that £90,000.
Does the Deputy disagree with the statement? Is it not correct?
I do not disagree at all. It is couched in that most ambiguous way so peculiar and so common to Ministers, so that it can read either way.
It can read only one way.
I am going to pin the Parliamentary Secretary down to the King's common or garden English. Will the Parliamentary Secretary say to me that, if we exceed the £4,755 17s. 7d., we shall not be surcharged?
Go ahead—I have made it as clear as I could make it to a Cork Deputy.
You must give us a straight "yes" or "no".
I have given a straight "yes".
The debate had better proceed by way of ordinary speech. Let the Deputy make his own speech.
I will give the Parliamentary Secretary plenty of time to answer.
I answered yesterday and the Deputy was not here.
I was unavoidably absent, trying to stop some of your game-boys in Cork from doing a wrong, but failed. Some of your boys did it, but we had a drunken man to contend with.
I am glad we have not got one now.
Please keep your temper. If you had six months' hitting with the gloves in a boxing-ring, it would do you all the good in the world and you would have a better temper. Now, in the six months ended 31st March, 1945, 43,544 gallons of milk were supplied to an average daily number of 2,259 persons. This supply had to be stopped on the 18th March, in order to keep the expenditure within the grant.
Then your local authority can continue it, and pay for it.
Within the grants. This benevolent and beneficent Government I mentioned a moment ago did not come along and say: "Your rates are inordinately high, being 25/6 in the £, and we feel the Cork citizens are bearing the burden very well and it is time we, this benevolent Government, came to their rescue and gave them another couple of thousand pounds to carry on until the 31st March."
Does the Deputy know that Cork is getting £22,500 under the food voucher scheme, for milk alone?
This has only to do with milk.
This is milk—£22,500 for Cork city, under the voucher scheme.
But we are asking more for Cork City, as the grant of £90,000 is not adequate. We are dealing with the Cork milk scheme.
But this is for milk.
I know—but it does not come out of the £90,000.
So it does not count at all if it is not in the £90,000?
I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will itemise these things, so that we will have them in a proper way for our constituents.
They are itemised. The Deputy will find them itemised in the report.
In a certain way. We know how these figures are manoeuvred. I am sorry I got you so ruffled.
Would the Deputy address the Chair?
I am sorry. He was disorderly and I had to do something. The following are the regulations: the recipient must be a child under five years—or under 15 years with a medical certificate—the parents must be in receipt of unemployment assistance, unemployment insurance benefit, national health insurance, widow's and orphan's pension, any other State benefit or be in receipt of a low income. Soldiers' children automatically are entitled to the grant.
Is "low income" defined?
You know what that means. Every member of this House who has experience in an urban or rural area must know that what I have stated is 100 per cent. true. We have a state of semi-starvation in this country. There is no doubt on that point. That cannot be questioned. Any person who is in public life and who has to meet those people will tell you that. When you see the gaunt and haggard faces of those persons who come to your door asking for food you inquire as to the cause and they will tell you that they are getting so much milk and so much of this, that and the other, but, having paid the rent, there was little left for anything else, the father was unemployed, not having worked possibly for two or three years, and because of various things like that the members of the family were ill-nourished, so ill-nourished that they are a ready prey to tuberculosis or any kind of disease.
What we ask you in this motion to do is to increase this grant, the national free milk scheme grant, of £90,000 and give a sum adequate to meet existing needs. As the Parliamentary Secretary must realise, this milk goes to the poorest of the poor— with very few exceptions to the most deserving poor. If the Parliamentary Secretary will come with me I will show him the poor creatures waiting for that milk either at the centre where the scheme is administered under the Cork Child Welfare League, at one of the poor law institutions, or elsewhere. He will see for himself that they really are the necessitous poor. When he balances their incomes with the high prices of everything, he will find that the poor to-day are worse off than they were 20 years ago. There was never so much real poverty in this country as there is to-day.
Let us consider the high cost of commodities and we will realise that the amount given by way of assistance is quite inadequate to enable people to purchase essentials. We all know that the Government has not an inexhaustible pool on which it can draw, any more than any other Government has an inexhaustible pool. But we are not looking for extraordinary things; we are not looking for pensions of £3 or £4 a week. I am dealing with mundane things, the ordinary things of everyday life. These are the problems that men are up against in various parts of the country. When he takes those facts into consideration—and they are stark naked facts relating to the City of Cork—surely the Parliamentary Secretary will not tell me that the Government cannot do any more in this connection.
A statement appeared in the daily papers to-day, in the Cork morning paper and the three Dublin papers, to the effect that if this grant was not adequate the local authority had not only a right but a duty to supplement it. That statement was made yesterday by the Parliamentary Secretary. He knows full well that the demands made on the local authorities are becoming a very big burden and the breaking point will soon be reached. We ask that this grant be increased so as to enable us to meet the very grave situation that exists among the very poor, not alone in the rural but in the urban areas of this country.
I am surprised that Deputy Anthony has such an extraordinary ignorance of local affairs. He has made certain statements here to-night but I cannot say that I have ever met anything to correspond with his description of things.
I have seen thousands of these cases.
Unlike Deputy Anthony, I have spent a number of years on the local board of assistance. If Deputy Anthony is so much interested in the poor why has he not become a member of a local authority interested in the welfare of the poor? Under the present regulations the poor are the responsibility of the local authorities. Anybody not eligible to register at the labour exchange becomes a charge on the local rates. If Deputy Anthony is so interested in the poor, it is his duty to become a member of such a local authority.
Would you vote for me?
I certainly would if I thought you would turn round and influence those members of your Party who are members of it to make a demand on our local authority sufficient to provide the necessary funds to give these people increased benefits.
That is a reversal of the Fianna Fáil policy.
I did not interrupt any Deputy. I am a novice at making speeches here, and I feel I should not be interrupted. Under the existing regulations, any poor person who is not eligible to register at the local labour exchange becomes a charge on the local rates. They are the responsibility of the local authority. The board of assistance can formulate their demands and pass an estimate, and the local authority must strike a rate to meet that demand. Deputy Anthony never accepted that responsibility. It is very unpleasant work, and it takes up a lot of a man's time.
Deputy Anthony talks about people calling on him, but he never has had to get out of his bed to write a ticket for a poor man. The Cork Borough Council, in preparing the current year's estimate, did make provision for £3,000 to supplement the Government grant for the free milk scheme, and yet Deputy Anthony denies the right of or the obligation on the local authority to do so. The Minister has stated that we are quite free to do it. We got that information already. In Cork City we made provision for £3,000 to supplement the amount already voted, so that most of Deputy Anthony's complaints to-night are utterly unworthy.
Did it not stop in March, 1945—is it not stopped?
It is not. The finances for the coming year have been arranged for. I say that if Deputy Anthony and other Deputies will only interest themselves sufficiently in the matter they will realise what is being done under the present system. That is what the Parliamentary Secretary has been pointing out to the Deputy, but evidently the Deputy has not sufficient intelligence to understand it. He thinks he is a very superior person. There are certain local people responsible and it is up to Deputy Anthony to get members of his Party on that board to agree to an increased demand and then strike a rate for an increase in home assistance. That is all I have to say.
The Deputy is a member of the board and why did he not do it?
When are we likely to have the Report of the Milk Tribunal?
I could not say, Deputy. There was a great deal of evidence taken. It may take a long time.
I am rather surprised to hear Deputy Furlong taking the line he has taken in the course of his speech. It is a complete reversal of Fianna Fáil policy and certainly not in keeping with certain Articles of the Constitution with which, I am sure, the Deputy is fully acquainted. We have been told repeatedly here, and it is written into the Constitution, that it is the duty and responsibility of the Government of the day to provide work for all its able-bodied citizens and maintenance at a decent standard for all unable to work, and it is because I believe sufficient money is not being provided up to the present for those very deserving services that I am supporting this motion.
I have only a limited knowledge of the administration of this scheme, but I learned for the first time to-night that the deficit in the amount of money required for this essential national service, particularly in urban areas and boroughs, is to be provided by the local ratepayer, and not the taxpayer, who, under the Fianna Fáil policy, is supposed to be the person to provide the money for this service. If all the obligations supposed to be undertaken by the Government for the maintenance of the poor and the provision of a decent standard of life for those unable to work, such as children, old age pensioners and so on, are to be passed back to the local ratepayer, we are going to have a very funny state of affairs.
I worked for close on 40 years on the quays of Dublin, and if Deputy Furlong has any spare time I suggest that he should take a run around the streets of this city, and particularly the north side, around the North Wall and the poorer parts, and look at the hungry faces of the children there, some of whom should be going to school but who apparently do not go there. If he does not believe from what he sees in those countenances, let him go to some of the active workers in the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and he will learn what the situation is. I do not know anything about the City of Cork, but having worked for a good part of my life around the North Wall, I can say that the children are not getting the nourishment they should get.
Deputy Furlong would be as anxious as anybody to see that the children are properly fed and clothed and to place that responsibility on the proper shoulders. If we are to provide free milk for all those badly in need of it in the boroughs and urban areas, and if that obligation, or even 50 per cent. of the financial responsibility, is to be placed on the shoulders of the ratepayers, the amount would have to be increased considerably and would certainly be beyond the capacity of the ordinary ratepayer. I plead with the Parliamentary Secretary, who, I am certain, has more up-to-date knowledge of conditions in the country than I have, to increase this grant rather than to place responsibility for any shortage of funds in this connection upon the ratepayers.
Local authorities' estimates are made up only once a year and the sums set aside for the various services are estimated to be sufficient for normal conditions. Something may happen in a particular urban area or borough which may add to the unemployed list, which may add to the number of people in a poverty-stricken state, and the money to cope with that situation cannot be provided by the local authority without fear of surcharge. Deputy Anthony put a most pertinent question to the Parliamentary Secretary when he asked whether, if the amount estimated for this service fell short of the needs of a local community and if the local authority spent a sum in excess of the estimate sanctioned by the Minister, the local authority would be surcharged. I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to answer that pertinent question.
That is rubbish. If a local authority underestimates, it has to make up the deficiency in the following year.
I understand that a local authority cannot exceed the amounts in the various subheads without the sanction of the Minister.
A local authority can make up a deficiency in the following year.
The case made by Deputy Furlong is that any extra expenditure urgently required for a service of this kind must be borne by the local ratepayers rather than by the general body of taxpayers, and that is my reason for supporting this motion.
When this motion was moved last night, we were speaking about the grant of milk under a scheme known as the National Free Milk Scheme. It is not a local authority's free milk scheme. I drew attention to the fact that, since the motion was put down, there had been two increases in the price of milk, and that the local authority's share of the grant of £90,000 fell far short of the number of bottles of milk required for delicate children in this city, as recommended and reported on by 400 voluntary lady inspectors attached to the Infant Aid Society. The increase in the price of milk was met, so far as the local authority was concerned, or so far as those administering the scheme for the local authority and the Government were concerned, by reducing by many thousands of pints per week the amount of milk available for necessitous children who were certified by the doctors as being delicate children requiring special milk. The Corporation of Dublin have many contracts in this connection and the milk given under this scheme was not ordinary milk, but tuberculin-tested milk from special herds for the nourishment of children suffering from the many forms of children's ailments.
The Parliamentary Secretary's reply last night took the form of setting out what the Government were doing in the matter of social services. He spoke of all the things which were necessary not alone for children but for adults, and he glossed over the demand for an increase in this grant by speaking of the many great things the Government were doing, and added that if any further moneys were wanted for this purpose, the local ratepayer should carry the burden. I am rather amazed by the support which the Parliamentary Secretary has got from Fianna Fáil Deputies for his argument that the local ratepayer should accept responsibility for moneys which should be spent through national taxation on a national free milk scheme. The Parliamentary Secretary merely unloads his and the Government's responsibility on to the local ratepayer and says it is either that, or go without. That is the attitude he has taken up.
When telling the House what the Government were doing and when reading out the many millions they have spent in order to keep the unemployed from suffering hardships, he did not tell the House that, out of the 20/11 rate in Dublin, 16/7 goes on social services, over which the local authority has no control. Yet he wants to add to that burden. In the matter of public health, for instance—and the Parliamentary Secretary, I understand, is Minister for Public Health— the Dublin Corporation, out of that rate of 20/11 spends 7/2. A further 2/- is for housing; and 2/- represents the demand of the Grangegorman Mental Hospital, 3/7½ the demand of the Dublin Board of Assistance, and then there is a demand of 1/8 under the Unemployment Assistance Act. So that to provide all these national services Dublin has to contribute 16/- in the £ out of its total rate of 20/11. The Dublin ratepayers do not know that they are accepting this responsibility from the Government. The Government want to unload further responsibilities on to the local ratepayer to meet the cost of hospital treatment. We had a pistol put at our heads to-day in the Corporation when we were told that we must pay £2 12s. 6d. for every person getting hospital treatment.
Why not?
That will mean that the Dublin ratepayers will have to provide a sum of £180,000 a year. That is the position while the money in the Hospitals fund is earning interest and lying idle. The Dublin ratepayers will, as I have said, shortly have to accept responsibility for providing this sum of £180,000 for hospital treatment. I want to know where is it going to end? The national revenue is raised by all forms of taxation, a good deal of it on luxuries, a good deal of it on amusement and a good deal in the way of excess profits. The Government are rolling in handsome sums of money from these luxuries. We are merely asking them to spend money on this milk scheme and on any other scheme that is necessary to nourish children whose parents are not able to provide proper nourishment for them. We say that is the Government's duty and we are asking them to assist us.
I agree with the Parliamentary Secretary when he says that money spent by anybody on the health of children is a good investment. I agree that it is a very good investment. I suggest to him that if he increases this grant for the type of children who are being deprived of getting this milk it will enable them to grow up good healthy citizens and will save the cost of hospital treatment for them later. It will save some of them seeking beds that are not in our sanatoria. We are told that in five years' time there may be a sufficient number of beds for the tuberculous patients looking for them. I cannot see any new beds being provided within a period of four or five years, so that there is no hope for those who are suffering from tuberculosis, whether they are children or grown-up people. This is an attempt to provide nourishment for the children. We are asking the Government to do this. If the children are reared up in good health now there will be no need in the near future for them to seek beds in our sanatoria. Give them the exceptionally good milk that is necessary for them, the tuberculin-tested milk. That is the suggestion in the national milk scheme. There is no use in talking about the voucher milk. I am not talking about that. The voucher milk is for necessitous people whose children may be in reasonably good health. This is a special scheme that I am speaking of, and has nothing to do with the voucher relief given by the Dublin Board of Assistance to parents who are on poor law relief and who are denied the right to work.
The Parliamentary Secretary admitted last night that this scheme I speak of was doing great work, and that any money spent on the provision of milk was a good investment. We had hoped that he would say: "Yes, we appreciate what is being done by the local authority and we will increase the grant so that it will be possible to purchase the same quantity of milk that it purchased five years ago." The position is that the grant we are getting now purchases much less milk than when the Government and the corporation started this scheme.
I ask members of local authorities who are members of the Dáil to say that this is a national burden which should be borne by the Government, and that it is unfair to expect the local rates to pay for these social services. The Government have already unloaded portion of their A.R.P. responsibilities on to the local authorities. In Dublin it was on a 50-50 basis, I think. The Government made the Dublin ratepayers pay a huge sum to meet the cost of the erection of air-raid shelters. I say that cost should have been borne in full out of national funds. These are payments which, I think, the Government should consider when we are dealing with emergency costs. The price of foodstuffs to-day has gone beyond the purchasing capacity of the working classes if they are to provide themselves with the full necessaries of life. I do hope that the Government will do something in this matter of unloading their responsibilities on to the local ratepayers. That is a thing that should not be accepted by this House. Only to-day I was informed that the national health hospital benefits for people ceased on the 1st October. The position, therefore, will be that between the 1st October and the 31st December no moneys can be paid out in respect of people getting sick. Optical benefits are also to cease between the same period because the Minister's Department did not make an adequate estimate of the cost. While that is so the Government expects local authorities to be able to estimate to the very penny the actual sum required for milk and other social services. All these things are worthy of the Parliamentary Secretary's attention, and I hope that he will give way.
Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 29; Níl, 44.
Tá
- Anthony, Richard.
- Beirne, John.
- Blowick, Joseph.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Coogan, Eamonn.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Davin, William.
- Donnellan, Michael.
- Finucane, Patrick.
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Halliden, Patrick J.
- Hughes, James.
- McAuliffe, Patrick.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- Mongan, Joseph W.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, Timothy J.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donnell, William F.
- O'Driscoll, Patrick F.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Leary, John.
- O'Sullivan, Martin.
- Pattison, James P.
- Reynolds, Mary.
- Rogers, Patrick J.
Níl
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Dan.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Brennan, Thomas.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Burke, Patrick (Co. Dublin).
- Butler, Bernard.
- Colbert, Michael.
- Colley, Harry.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Fogarty, Patrick J.
- Ryan, Mary B.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Furlong, Walter.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Healy, John B.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Humphreys, Francis.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Kilroy, James.
- Kissane, Eamon.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Loughman, Frank.
- Lydon, Michael F.
- McCann, John.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- Movlan, Seán.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Rice, Bridget M.
- Ua Donnchadha, Dómhnall.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Conn.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Byrne and Anthony; Níl: Deputies Kissane and Kennedy.
Motion declared lost.