Private Deputies' Business. - Measures for Social Security—Motion. – Dáil Éireann (12th Dáil) – Wednesday, 14 Nov 1945

Private Deputies' Business. - Measures for Social Security—Motion.

Mr. Everett

I move:

Being of opinion that measures for social security for our citizens constitute the first and most urgent consideration in our post-war planning, Dáil Éireann requests the Government to introduce proposals for the establishment of a scheme of social security, in which all the existing social services shall be unified and co-ordinated under a Ministry of Social Services, and all persons in gainful employment brought under the provisions of a comprehensive scheme of social insurance.

This is a double-barrelled motion. First of all, it requests the Government to initiate and establish a social service scheme for our citizens. The second part of the motion is cutting across Government policy and it asks the Government to change a system that has been in existence for the past 22 or 23 years, and establish a Ministry of Social Service. There is this reason for that suggestion. At the present time we have social services divided between two Departments. The Department of Industry and Commerce looks after workmen's compensation, family allowances, unemployment insurance and unemployment assistance. Then we have the Minister for Local Government, who is responsible for widows' and orphans' pensions, old age pensions, national health, the dispensary system, hospitals and public bodies throughout the State.

We will try to convince the Government that, in the interests of all concerned in this State, it is desirable to have a separate Department for social services and allow the Minister for Local Government to devote his time to purely local government work. We recognise that in this post-war period public bodies have considerable responsibility in relation to house building, sewerage and water schemes, and we feel that the Minister should be more in touch with those local bodies in order to give them advice and assistance wherever they may be needed.

If you view the position to-day you will observe the unnecessary duplication of Ministries. You will see that you have one set of citizens in receipt of unemployment insurance, through the Department of Industry and Commerce, and you have others in receipt of widows' and orphans' pensions, controlled by the Department of Local Government. We recognise that since Dr. Ward was appointed as Parliamentary Secretary some progress has been made in regard to sanitation and public health. We believe that greater responsibility should be placed on a particular Minister. The citizens will then realise that there is one person solely responsible for looking after services from which they may be deriving benefit.

I should like to quote the case of a workman—I am familiar with a couple of such cases—who meets with an injury in the course of his employment. That aspect is controlled by Industry and Commerce. We find that after his accident the workman has to submit each week a certificate of his inability to work. After 13 or 14 weeks the insurance society will write to a local doctor. To my own knowledge they send five guineas for a report on the injured man. The doctors in some areas find that the man is capable of light work, but his previous employer refuses to give him any light work.

What is the position of a poor individual of that type? He may be brought before the local courts and his benefit is stopped. His solicitors are unable to bring a case into court for another three months. That man has nothing to exist on unless he gets home assistance. During a period of two or three months his mind is tortured, apart altogether from the illness following his accident, as to how he will provide for his family. He may receive 10/- or 15/- a week by way of home assistance pending a settlement by the insurance society. Very often we find that before the sitting of the court the man will be prepared to take a small amount by way of compensation sooner than go into court.

That finishes him. There is no one to look after him, no one who will try to cure him or give him hospital treatment. We say that such a case should be the responsibility of a Minister for social services. He should be in a position to see that a workman who is injured while in employment will receive fair compensation, and should be adequately protected by a scheme of national insurance. Not alone should he receive compensation, but he should be given proper hospital treatment.

What position do we find in the country? We have a dispensary system which is, in our opinion, out of date. The dispensary doctors are not adequately paid. In some cases they have to look after populations of 5,000 and upwards and they have to travel long distances in remote portions of the country. In some areas the dispensary doctor has a maximum salary of £300.

The doctor has to depend on red tickets. We have one section of the community receiving red tickets, but there is another section, including small farmers, small tradesmen or shopkeepers in rural areas and others with limited means, and they do not receive adequate medical attention. Very often the man with a small income is unable to pay for adequate medical attention and the result is that his disease develops. It is only when he is in the last stages that he is brought to a Dublin hospital and the first question asked about him is: "What means has he? Has he £40 for an operation, or £30?"

The result is that his whole life-savings are gone and his case is so far advanced that the operation fails to cure him. If we had a Minister for Social Services, medical aid would be available for all sections—the small farmer, the agricultural worker and the business man in the rural area. These sections of the community would take advantage of the medical services available, and, if these services had been available in the cases I have mentioned, many of these men would be alive to-day.

With regard to old age pensioners, the majority of workers are receiving a cost-of-living bonus which now amounts to 15/- a week, but the poor old age pensioner in the rural area is expected to live on a maximum sum, which he receives only if he gets nothing from a relative, of 10/- per week. We are told that there is an extra half-crown available, but in my county only one out of five receives that extra half-crown. The public body does not provide anything additional to pay that extra half-crown to old people in the area, and we expect these old people to exist on this miserable pittance, although it costs the State four times as much to maintain a criminal. On that basis, we hold that some improvement in social services is necessary.

We come then to the widows of non-insured persons who are expected to exist on the 5/- a week because their husbands, by reason of illness or otherwise, were unable to become insured. The amount which these people receive has to be supplemented by the rates and a deduction is made in respect of every shilling earned by a daughter or son who goes to work. In other words, if the son or daughter goes out to work for 5/- or 6/- a week—and I have known cases of it—they forfeit the 5/- a week widow's pension. Directors of factories and large employers of workers are all anxious to put social services into operation. We see large insurance companies taking advantage of the position and guaranteeing pensions, sickness benefit and so on at a certain age, and the greater the delay by the State in putting such social services into operation, the more we will get into the position in which there will be only the casual or the unemployed worker to insure, because employers of labour are, as I say, insuring their workers for pensions and other social services at present.

The Minister for Finance said here some time ago that the scheme we proposed would cost a very considerable sum of money. We recognise that, but I am sure the Government realises that any money would be well spent if it resulted in an improvement in the position of the people and in giving them some security. Take the case of blind persons of whom we have a large number at present. The State grants a small allowance, but again fails to provide a trade for the blind boy or girl. I admit that, in the case of deaf and dumb people, there is a school where a trade is provided, but, in the case of the person afflicted with blindness, there are no such facilities. In County Wicklow, a blind person over 15 and under 30 years of age receives 12/- a week. A married man under 30 years of age receives 15/- a week and a married man over 30 years receives 2/6 per week additional for each child, but no arrangements are made to fit the children to earn their own livelihood.

With regard to national health insurance, a man receives 26 weeks full benefit, and, after 26 weeks, gets 7/6 a week until he reaches the age of 70, and again no provision is made for the treatment of illness. He is allowed to linger on until his national health insurance benefits cease and he gets the old age pension. There is no provision whatever for curative treatment, except in relation to the treatment of tuberculosis in its early stages which is now being made. Hospital treatment will be given only on a temporary basis. Small farmers and others are not availing of the red ticket system and they have not got the money to bring in a private doctor. The doctor is not brought in until the patient is in the last stages, when, perhaps, it is too late to do anything for him. It all arises from the fear of the exorbitant fees charged by professional men in Dublin, even before an operation.

The Minister for Finance said the scheme would cost over £26,000,000. I do not deny that we have made progress and that certain benefits have been given. I do not deny that we have schemes of widows' and orphans' pensions and family allowances, and I do not propose to contrast what other countries are doing. What may suit an industrial country may not suit an agricultural country like ours, and we can evolve our own scheme which will give security from want to our people. The Minister said that we were advocating something like the Beveridge Plan and that it could cost £39,000,000. We never advocated the Beveridge Plan.

At the time the Minister made his statement, 14th November, 1945, about the Beveridge plan, it was not proposed to put all of it into operation at the one time but rather by stages. We are submitting that all classes, civil servants and others, should contribute to this fund for social services as well as every person engaged in employment. We say it is the duty of the Government to provide the people with gainful employment instead of unemployment assistance as at the present time.

The Minister, of course, pointed out the cost of the present schemes. We are not wedded to the Beveridge scheme or to that outlined by Dr. Dignan. We do not care what you call the scheme so long as a scheme of social security is put into operation. We approve of the abolition of the dispensary system. According to returns published by the Government, we find that public assistance and poor law expenditure are costing £2,540,312 a year; unemployment insurance, £1,361,488; national health insurance, £914,672; widows' pensions, £809,451; old age pensions, £3,815,000; children's allowances, £1,548,000; unemployment and emergency schemes, £1,250,000; free milk and school meals over £1,000,000, making a total of about £13,234,000. Dr. Dignan, in his scheme, estimated that we are spending each year over £4,000,000 on health services; £11,000,000 on social insurance and £3,000,000 on social services, making a total of £19,500,000. The citizens, by their State contributions paid directly or indirectly in taxation, provide every penny of that sum. You have these relief schemes detached from one another and you have duplication of staffs. You have inspectors for widows and orphans, and more inspectors for family allowances. The means test is applied by these inspectors in the case of poor persons, of old age pensioners, and the non-insured contributor looking for a widow's pension. There is no means test in the case of family allowances. Seeing that all other nations are trying to better the position of their citizens, and seeing what the present schemes are costing, we think that all these services should be put under one Department so that better results would be obtained. With contributions from all in gainful employment it would be possible to provide a service which would remove the stigma of charity from individuals looking for home assistance. The fears of people in times of sickness and unemployment would be removed if given the grants that they are entitled to expect from the State.

People talk about giving something for nothing. We are not suggesting that. At the present time over £19,000,000 are being paid, directly or indirectly, by the people through taxation or out of the rates for the services they are getting. We believe in Dr. Dignan's plan that a sum of something like £20,000,000 would give the people security, assuming that all hands were engaged in employment. I ask the House to consider the present position of the small man with a horse and cart working on the roads or of the small farmer or agricultural labourer. They have been praised for their work for the country in the last six years. What return have we given them for that? The sections I have mentioned are the worst treated in the community at the present time. In the rural areas widows and orphans are treated differently from widows and orphans in the towns, while the old-age pensioners do not get the same benefits as those in the urban areas. There is always the excuse that it costs more to live in a town than in a rural area. I ask Deputies to picture the plight of an old man in a cottage in the country trying to exist on 10/- a week, with the extra half-crown allowed in some counties. The small working farmer has not the money to call in a doctor when he gets sick. Therefore, he is neglected. He does not get medical aid as a rule until it is too late or until his condition has become known to the clergy or other people in his area. When I asked a hard-working farmer in a hospital why he did not get the doctor earlier his reply was that he had not the money. He said he was afraid that he would be sent to a Dublin hospital and that he had not the money to pay for an operation. A lot of these men will not look for medical aid on a red ticket. In most cases it is too late when their poverty becomes known to the local board. A number of valuable lives are lost owing to the fact that those people did not get necessary medical attention.

While recognising what the Government has done during the last five or six years we are appealing to them to scrap the present dispensary system. We recognise the improvements that have been carried out in the last six years. We think there should be a scheme to give medical treatment to all sections of the community engaged in employment.

Abolish home assistance, and provide that the public bodies contribute their share to supplement the sums granted to sick people and persons unemployed. We are not advocating a scheme that would apply in the case of a big industrial country. We do say that we can afford a scheme of social services, and that we can give a lead to other countries at a cost that will be only a few million pounds more than what we are paying to-day for the half-social social services that we are giving.

The Government may say that we are proposing to cut across their policy by advocating the setting-up of a separate Ministry. We believe that is necessary. We believe that if the real feelings of the representatives of the country were tested it would be found that the people would support a scheme to abolish the dispensary system and would approve of the setting up of a special Ministry to be solely responsible for the administration of these social services. Each Department at present has enough work to do and should devote its whole time to it. Members of the House who have experience on public boards are aware that the Department of Local Government and Public Health is divided into different sections. I believe the Minister for Local Government should be more in touch himself with the feelings of the representatives on public boards. All Parties will have to cooperate in a big post-war housing scheme and sewerage scheme. We expect immediate attention from the Minister, who has experts to advise him, and we expect him to assist the public boards. At the present time responsibility is delegated to a Parliamentary Secretary, but the Minister is responsible and he is regarded by the public boards as being solely responsible. In respect of amenities such as pasteurisation, dispensary, and other social services, it is our opinion that it is better to have one Minister solely responsible and to have another Minister for Local Government to look after and to assist public bodies in the work that they have to do.

The question has been raised by all Parties in the House, and public bodies have sent resolutions in regard to the matter, of initiating some social security scheme in this country. This is the place in which to ventilate our grievances. I am not doing it for any purpose other than that I believe it is necessary to suggest these schemes to the Government with a view to bringing to their notice the effects of the legislation they pass and the expectations of the people in regard to it. I hope that it will be possible to keep the debate on this motion along the lines that we desire it to take, and that no advantage will be taken of it of a political kind. We are not particularly concerned as to who will bring in the scheme provided it is brought in. We will be satisfied if the scheme meets with our approval and if there is an effort made to implement it.

We regret certain statements that were made here and elsewhere that we have less benefits in this country than other people enjoy. Great Britain is preparing a much more ambitious scheme than any scheme which I think could be initiated here. However, we here are free to evolve our own plans in accordance with what we believe are the wishes of the people, in accordance with the dictates of the people.

I am glad that the Government have taken the matter seriously, and I hope that as a result of suggestions made on this motion, a comprehensive scheme will be devised which will be productive of the benefits we all desire. I think every member of the House desires to see a scheme initiated which will remove the fear of want from the majority of our people.

The big industrialists at the present time have made arrangements in this regard, and surely the State, with the responsibilities they have to the community, should see to it that a scheme is brought in which will benefit all sections of the community. We hope it will not be assumed by the Government that we are asking for something for nothing. We suggest that all persons in gainful employment should contribute. I am sure that no person in gainful employment would object to paying an increased contribution if he knew that in return for that contribution he would derive greater benefits, that his friends would derive greater benefits. I am sure the working farmers would not object to paying their share if they knew that in return they would be guaranteed hospital treatment and other benefits that the ordinary worker in industry receives at the present time. We are all in favour of the scheme. Most Reverend Dr. Dignan brought out a scheme and estimated the cost at over £20,000,000. At present we are paying over £19,000,000 for services which we admit are necessary but which we suggest will have to be improved for all sections of the community.

I hope contributions will be made to the debate which will give the Government some idea as to the nature of such a scheme. All sections are in favour of some such scheme being put into operation. That being so, I am sure the Government will have the active co-operation of all sections of the House. If we do nothing else but bring to the Government's attention the serious plight of the people that I have referred to, the motion will have done some good. We have introduced the motion, not for any ulterior motive or for any propagandist purpose, but because we recognise the position. The people must be content, and to make them content it will be necessary to give them the services we suggest. I appeal especially to the Taoiseach to remember that, in addition to the social services that we have mentioned, such as increasing the amount of national health benefits and workmen's compensation, other services are required. We should not rest there. That is why we suggest separate Ministers. We will first have to try to get every fit person to work. Then we must deal with prevention of disease. In that connection, also, we will want a separate Minister. If we are to have the healthy nation we all desire, we should have some Minister whose duty it will be to consider the question of increased sickness benefits and to prepare some scheme of prevention of the many diseases which unfortunately occur at the present time.

We recognise the duty of the Government. We recognise their difficulties, but we can get over those difficulties now. Millions of pounds were voted for the Army. That was necessary expenditure, and there was no question about it. Now our people require a guarantee for the future; our old people require greater assistance. We will no longer have that expenditure on the Army, and therefore we can initiate a scheme without increasing taxation, to give these people the security they desire. We will not give them the excuse that is being given at the present time about our neglect of our people.

We say that this is an opportune time for dealing with this matter. We have young men coming out of the Army and, when they are idle after coming out, they will not be contented with the allowance granted to them. There is also the danger of men coming across from another country and bringing certain ideas with them, forgetting that this is an agricultural country. They may try to expound their views. Then a large number may be demobilised from the Army with no prospect of employment. We say that it is a matter for the Government to provide gainful employment for these people and, under the insurance scheme, give them benefits that we desire for our people. I hope the contributions by speakers to this debate will show that all sections in the House, even Fianna Fáil Deputies, are desirous of having a scheme of social security for our citizens.

This motion has been on the Order Paper for a long time. Since it was put down I know that a committee has been inquiring into the position. I do not know whether that committee has reported or what it has reported. But that committee may receive some suggestions as a result of this debate which will enable the Government to introduce a scheme which will be not alone just, but will be a credit to the nation and to the Parliament to which we are all so proud to belong.

Mr. Pattison

I formally second the motion and reserve the right to intervene later in the debate if necessary.

Mr. McGilligan

I cannot compliment Deputy Everett, who has spoken of his optimism, when he asserts that he feels that the Government will make favourable response to this motion, even although, as he correctly adds, it has been on the Order Paper for quite a while. When the Deputy put down this motion we were still in what can be called the war period. We are now in the post-war period. The earlier terms of this motion speak of the first and most urgent consideration in our post-war planning. What sign has any Deputy got in this House that there is any such thing going on as post-war planning? All that I am aware of is that the material which might enable Deputies and the public to form some line about plans for the future has been so far withheld from them.

In the last Budget speech to which we listened we were promised certain financial information, information upon such things as the inflation which had taken place, notwithstanding the standstill Order which was supposed to prevent that. We also got certain indications as to how far the national income had advanced, and we were told, so far as it had advanced at all, that it was a purely monetary phenomenon. We were given some indication of the increase of prices in this country by the mere statement that wholesale prices had advanced between 1938 and May this year, the date when the Minister spoke, by 98.1 per cent. Further information was promised to us and it is understood this information reached the hands of the Government, but apparently it was so unsatisfactory to them that it has not been published yet, but has been sent back, I understand, for reconsideration.

A committee on agriculture was set up during the war. They produced one or two provisional or temporary reports. The main report, it is understood, is in the hands of the Government for a long time, but the country has not heard of it yet. We were given some indication of a scheme with regard to drainage. When we were discussing the Money Resolution then, we found that, while it was to cost something like £6,000,000, we were hurriedly assured that this would be spent at the rate of £250,000 each year, so that we have to wait 24 years before whatever is projected—and we do not know what that is—in connection with drainage is completed.

One commission which was set up pre-war, or in the early stages of the war, reported a couple of years ago in connection with housing, but did no more than state the problem. They indicated the difficulties that there were in the solution of the problem. Since the date of the report, no Minister has told us what the Government's proposals are in connection with housing.

I think the only thing that can be called a scheme with regard to the post-war situation in this country that we have seen is in regard to rural electrification. It is notable that that did not proceed from a Government Department. What they did with regard to the scheme was to hide it from the public for the best part of a year and a half and then to delay for at least a further half year before they brought in certain enabling legislation. So far as anybody is aware, nothing has been done to any great extent towards fulfilling even any single one of the plans that were regarded as essential if we are to have rural electrification in the post-war period or any time remotely connected with the post-war period.

Deputy Everett asks that we should still consider as a part of our post-war planning something in connection with social security. So far as the motion speaks of unifying and co-ordinating existing social services, the case has already been made for that. Everybody who has any contact with the public realises that, while there are a lot of things called social services and plenty of money being spent upon them, these are under the control of all sorts of different people. Deputy Everett referred to the number of inspectors and the number of people who have to traverse this country piling up administrative expenses in order to see that the same person will get whatever is due to him from a large number of these things that are called social services. I think a mere recital of what these social services are, a description of the Ministers under whom they are, and a look at the Estimates to see the number of administrative officers and inspectors associated with them make immediately a case for unification and co-ordination. Without a doubt, not merely could there be any amount of money saved by cutting out all the over-lapping and the waste and the extra expense of having a vast number of people travelling around the country examining the same person or the same person's family from different aspects, but any amount of irritation could be saved to the people who are supposed to get these benefits. In the end, I think it would be found that under a co-ordinated scheme what money has been provided and has to be paid by the taxpayer in some form or another would eventually reach in a more liberal way the beneficiaries under these schemes than it does at the moment. It is always the trouble that, when you seek to interpose in something that is moving—and in so far as this deals with human activities we have always to regard it as not static but alive and moving—and when you try to interfere with all the arrangements there are at the moment, you have to make a short-term plan as well as think out something entirely different for the future.

Deputy Everett will get everybody's agreement that the existing social services should be unified and co-ordinated. It is when I come to the end of his motion that I begin to wonder what he means, and until I get his meaning I do not know if I can support him. He speaks of introducing a Ministry of social services, as if we had not enough Ministers and Ministries, and as if the addition of some individual person would make for simplicity instead of making for more complexity and confusion. Then he tails off by saying that:

"... all persons in gainful employment should be brought under the provisions of a comprehensive scheme of social insurance."

Now, I believe that all social insurance should be removed as far as is humanly possible from a Government Department. I wonder if people realise what happens under some of those benefits we have at the moment under ministerial control. I have standing out before my mind one case in which I was engaged on the legal side. An unfortunate man who paid for years into the National Health Insurance Society became completely broken down in health and applied for a contribution. It was refused on the ground that he was fit for work. He took a preliminary appeal and went before some arbitrator who sat in the City of Cork. That person found he was completely and entirely disabled. The report was sent back to the Department of Local Government and Public Health, which immediately countered by demanding an appeal on their side. The appeal taken by them was heard before one of their own officials, who proceeded to hear what was called an arbitration, in the City of Cork. He summoned the applicant before him and heard his story. Incidentally, I should state that his opening remark, as stated in affidavit in Cork, was that "he was not going to be troubled by the laws of evidence in this inquiry"— and he showed what he meant by that pretty soon. In any event, he heard the applicant, and then he asked the applicant's doctors to come and state the case for him. The first doctor thereupon made a submission to the court, which he did by writing, that the man should be removed from the room, because he (the doctor) had not yet told the man how bad he was and feared the result on the person's health if he were to speak of it publicly.

The patient was removed and the two doctors then disclosed a deplorable condition arising from the state of the man's heart. They gave their evidence and waited to be cross-examined, but no cross-examination came. Those who were attending on the man waited to hear some contrary evidence produced, which they could then tackle by way of question and answer, but no one was introduced. The inspector went off home with the evidence he had heard—and the only evidence given was that of the applicant and two supporting doctors. The next thing that came from Dublin was a statement that the man was completely well and entirely fit for his work.

I know, of course, that the courts upset that on the first hearing, but the State went to the point, when proceedings were taken against them, of entering a defence against the proceedings and carrying them over the Christmas holiday. It was only when the New Year dawned that they decided to throw in their hand and give this man benefit. I know that that is a very extraordinary case, but I know also that there are cases which deserve an application to the court quite as well as that did and which, possibly, would succeed if they were brought; but the situation we have with the National Health Insurance Society and its system is such that very rarely can one get one of these outrageous cases brought before the courts to get the mind of an independent court working upon it.

I wonder if Deputy Everett realises where he is going when he speaks of having this Ministry of social services. It is quite clear that, in any discussion about social security, the name of His Lordship the Bishop of Clonfert must be at least present in people's minds, if it is not brought into the discussion. One knows that, for merely suggesting a scheme, he has been put out of administrative life, as far as the Government can achieve that, though as far as we know his suggestions have not yet received the consideration which a great bulk of the people believe they should have received. Would Deputy Everett like to have all the social services grouped together and put under the Minister who decided that, because the Bishop of Clonfert addressed a general meeting of the National Health Insurance Society, he should be treated in the way he was treated? Would Deputy Everett like that Minister to be in charge of social security and have all the social services grouped under that Minister? I think I have only to ask the question, at least in these parts of the House, to know what the answer would be.

Leaving out of consideration the way in which a Minister will treat the scheme, where are the people looking for any social security to get their safeguards? Deputy Everett has talked of the Beveridge scheme. There was a Beveridge scheme, drawn up by a person of that name. After a lot of debate, that was transferred into what was called a British Government White Paper on Unemployment and Social Security—and there is a vast difference between the two. The Beveridge scheme was built upon the recognition of the responsibility of parents for families and was an attempt to put those individuals into a position in which they could carry out and fulfil their responsibilities to their families. A White Paper with regard to social security is an attempt to pull everything in under the control of Government Departments and gives none of the safeguards that one gets, for instance, with regard to workmen's compensation, in having an independent tribunal, safeguards with regard to health, individual doctors to whom one can resort and all the varieties of safeguards there are under the free working of insurance schemes as opposed to the narrow, cloistered sort of control there is bound to be if a Government Department is in charge.

Then I ask myself further how far this idea of social security is going to go. I know that the length it has gone in England, even though there is only a scheme so far, is disturbing many people who believe they have the proper conception of life, even though they have not a formal Constitution of the pious type we have. In a debate recently in the English House of Commons a member of that House who was a doctor referred to the decline in the marriage rate in England. She referred to the refusal of women to produce the most valuable commodity in the world, the embryo worker, and the comment was that, apparently, in England the law assumes that the normal rate of wages paid is insufficient to enable parents to maintain children, to provide against ill-health and give them their education. The comment occurs in a criticism I have read of the schemes they have over there, "that social idealists apparently nourish the hope that John Smith's child will become in truth John Bull's child, a cherished part of the country's capital".

Long ago there was a war fought in America. It was, in part, fought against the slave system. After that war had been fought, after many years had passed, there was found a certain number of workers in America who regretted what they called the disappearance of the security of the plantation, because they found, when they looked back on the old plantations, that even if people were what they called slaves and could be sold out of serfdom into another serfdom, they were really well treated as long as they remained in a plantation, and their wives and children were provided for. It was even known that there was something in the nature of widows and orphans being looked after. Of course, the person who regarded the widow as the possible producer of further embryo workers sought to achieve that end by methods that were not entirely desirable. But the position was that the people were content with the plantation conditions. They could get certain security. Is that what we are aiming at in all this drive for social security? A book recently issued in England on the necessity for rebuilding family life in the post-war period has this note:—

"The State has nowadays assumed many of the former responsibilities of parents, protecting, feeding and educating the young leaving to parents only those that relate to conception and pregnancy."

Is that the road that Deputy Everett and those who talk about putting social security under a Ministry want to travel? Is not there another conception, a conception that men ought to be allowed to work in the area in which they are born and that, by their physical exertions, they ought to be enabled to earn sufficient to provide for themselves and for whatever family they choose to rear? I want to bring the Bishop of Clonfert into this picture from that angle. He has published his scheme in the form of a pamphlet and in a foreword to it on the first page he says:

"Christianity does not demand that people who could and would provide for themselves should be left destitute to give the rich opportunity for being charitable. On the contrary, it lays down that every man should get the opportunities to provide for himself and that, if he is denied them—if he cannot get work, for instance, at a wage that will enable him to live and pay social security contributions—he has a grievance, a grievance that charity cannot altogether remove, for, in the words of Pius XI: `Charity cannot take the place of justice'."

In his preliminary remarks on the original scheme for social security, in the third paragraph, he says this:

"In a Christian State, a family wage is the solution of the social problems of the worker. This means a wage sufficient at least to meet all the essential needs of the home— house, clothes, food, education, etc.”

Lower down he says we are in a society in which the employers are not paying a family wage. He does admit that possibly some of them could not afford, even if they were willing, to pay a family wage, and he continues:

"This may explain the trend of the State to-day to relieve parents of their responsibilities and of the very disturbing factor we find in Ireland of so many people relying on the State for almost all things."

He goes on:

"I suppose the State must step in and assist but the less it interferes with the rights of the family the better, and it must always be understood its help is only supplementary and subsidiary. It cannot be too strongly urged that for a livelihood men are to depend on their own initiative and exertions and not on the State.”

How far are we approaching that, or how rapidly are we getting away from it?

I have often referred to the astounding paragraph that is in the Housing Report, where the 36,000 families that I have often spoken of were brought under observation. A statistical sample of that was taken, covering one-third of them. It is stated by the authors of that report that it was sufficiently big to enable the conclusions to be regarded as well-founded and, examining the sample which they say can be related to the whole 36,000 families, they found that 45 per cent. of those particular people had a family wage in 1938 of £2 a week and under, and that £2 is related to, as that report pointed out, the purchasing power of £2 in 1938. If we take the 98 per cent. increase in wholesale prices, referred to by the Minister for Finance in his last Budget speech, it means that £2 has a buying power nowadays of £1 and, therefore, 45 per cent of 36,000 families in the City of Dublin have a family wage at present representing a purchasing power of £1 a week. The Government policy is to carry that on.

I was amusing myself, when Deputy Everett was speaking, thinking that supposing we did get a Minister for social services and he was taking the view that really what you wanted was to give people an opportunity to provide these things for themselves, would he not before long develop into a Minister who would oppose the standstill Order? Would not the main policy he would have to promote inside the Government be the raising of the standstill Order? How it is expected people are to provide for the health and the education of their children and for invalidity and old age, everything that is spoken of as social security, with the wage policy the Government has pursued is something that no member of the Government has yet attempted to explain.

Of course, we have the signs that are obvious under our eyes to indicate what is happening. Without any apparent shame, the Taoiseach was in a position to confess to Deputy Norton within the past fortnight that the number of work permits given to people to fly from this country since the war started was something in the neighbourhood of 191,000. These 191,000 people found it was not possible to live here. I want that figure related to another figure. We are a 3,000,000 community. We have a lot of aged people. We have not the usual proportion of young people under 16 in that community. If one goes to the 1936 Census Report and takes up the division of our people according to occupation, one finds the whole group of people gainfully employed is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1,125,000. Of that 1,125,000, about 250,000 are employers and another 250,000 are people working on their own account. It is not likely that many employers left this country in the past four years and, although it is possible some of the people working on their own account left, I think it is certain that the vast majority of the 191,000 who got work permits came from the people who were neither employers nor people working on their own account and they were a tot of something in the neighbourhood of 650,000. That meant that two out of every six workers left this country in the last four years. Why? Because not merely had they been enabled to keep themselves on the other side, but they could save enough to send over here, to those who, by the standstill Order, were deprived of getting that money by their own efforts here the wherewithal to buy what they required.

There is no sign, as far as I can see, of the Government relaxing its standstill policy at all. A lift of three shillings or four shillings is given here or there—generally when there is something of political importance about— but, so far as we can understand from the speeches of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, he has the view that those who are gainfully occupied, so far as they are workers who get wages and so far as they are middle-class people who live on salaries, are going to be kept as nearly as possible to the 1939 wage, notwithstanding that the same Minister recognises that post-war costs will be far beyond those which impacted on these people in the pre-war period.

The same Minister came in here with his arrangements about rural electrification. He told us that the Electricity Supply Board had, as it must, built its scheme upon the prices ruling before the war, and he gaily announced to us that, of course, it was inconceivable that these prices would ever again occur, and, when making his Estimates in the Dáil, he took the report based upon 1939 prices and multiplied by two. He thought that was a fair way of projecting himself into the future when considering the possible expenditure upon electrification in this country.

But when it comes to the people who, as I would ask, are going to be allowed to provide themselves, by some scheme of social insurance, with all the benefits which people ought to have in the modern life, the Minister thinks they can be scaled down to the 1939 position, and then, presumably, be asked to fend for themselves. It should be said in honesty that that is not Government policy. The Government policy is not to let people pay for themselves so far as these social benefits are concerned. The Government policy recognises that if you have a man screwed down to a 1939 wage, he cannot fend for himself in a variety of ways, and hence we have a system of this, that and the other dole, such as unemployment assistance, and, even more recently, the family allowances.

Remember the cynicism with which family allowances were brought into this House. Any time they were ever spoken of by those who were in favour of these payments before the scheme was made effective here, they were spoken of in terms of raising the birthrate or inducing people to marry at an earlier age. In any event, they were designed to ease the life of the married couple. The Minister cynically told us he did not believe the bringing in of the Vote for family allowances would increase the number of marriages by one. He did not think it was going to help towards the beginning of greater families, of more numerous families; but there it was, and, of course, it was quite clear that it was the Minister's way of making up for some of the devastation he himself had caused. That apparently is the policy: keep wages down, and then add on a little benefit here and a little benefit there and then set up an administrative scheme which will take from the beneficiaries, or the supposed beneficiaries, of these family allowances and other matters, a machine which will run so harshly that you will in the end save a considerable amount of what the public were told the scheme was going to cost.

I suppose nothing has been so completely canvassed in the country in years past as this matter of the means test, which is applied even in respect of such little additions to some of the benefits the State gives people as they have secured by their own efforts. By sacrificing something in their lives, people have been enabled to make little savings, but when it comes to giving any of these benefits the fact that the person was a good worker, an industrious person, a thrifty person, goes against him. If there were a scheme of social insurance, that means test would not be there. If there were a scheme of social insurance, with the independent safeguards I have spoken of, with the scheme as far removed as can be from Government Departments and Government inspectors, the more likely it would be that people would enjoy the full flow of the benefits which we are told from time to time they are getting.

I can see no chance of the State, as at present being worked, giving the type of social security I should like to see people having. I can see the State possibly, as a subterfuge, adopting something like what Deputy Everett puts up, and saying: "We will guarantee all these things, and add something here and there, and then we will take it back from the people, because we shall have our ruthless type of administration. We shall scrape, pare and be niggardly, and we shall save what we can on these people, relying on the fact that they are up against a Government Department and none of them can get out into the clear and get the full benefit guaranteed to them by some independent tribunal, some independent actuary, somebody who is apart from Government Buildings."

One last point with regard to the Beveridge scheme. The Beveridge scheme, was a scheme for social security. It provided not merely that there should not be more than a certain percentage of unemployment in England but something more—that there would be a great increase in the national wealth in England. Sir William Beveridge was quite definitely of the opinion, and expressed himself to that effect over and over again, that unless a very full-blooded expansion policy was operated in England, people would not be in a position to fend for themselves in the way of social security against the various giants he spoke of. They have at least a liberal view about expansion and wages in England. They have it equally in America. What they have and their liberality in that matter should be contrasted with what we have here.

President Truman recently addressed manufacturers in America. He told them that, now that workers were coming off the heavy wage payments which they used to get through overtime rates and through working extremely long hours, he was afraid of the repercussion throughout the whole State of America of the reduced purchasing power. Unless, he said, the worker had as much to take home as he had before, there was going to be a very serious repercussion right through the whole economic fabric of America and he gave his orders that wages should be increased immediately and automatically. So long as wages had not advanced equally with the cost of living, he said that, wages should be increased thereafter and he would not allow any increased prices by the manufacturers who had to pay these increased wages, unless they could prove to him that there was a necessity to get increased prices even if they were asked to pay lower wages. But, on the lower level, if there was any trade or occupation in respect of which the wage rate, although it might have advanced, was found not to have advanced to the full point of the increase in the cost of living figure, it must be raised to that point.

The President, in trying to get that view of his over to the public, used these significant words. He said "I am asking that wages should be increased. I am not thinking only of employees who want to get these increases". If they are reduced in their wages, remember, he said, that the grocer at the corner, the person who sells provisions, the small man everywhere, the small huckster shop, will feel the effect, and you will have, equally with a reduction in the worker's rate of pay, a reduction in the amount of money that is going into these shops with a corresponding reduction in the amount of money that goes to the employees in the shops. For the purpose of keeping the whole American economy geared to a high point he insisted on these increases. That is expansionism. I do not think that even President Truman would say it was expansion at all. He would say that was keeping things on the level. Expansion is something beyond that. There was the change over from war to ordinary industry, and he was trying to get the wheels of industry geared as quickly as possible. In any statements from British or American politicians, statesmen and economists, you will find running through them this one thing: that if you do not keep a high level of purchasing power out through your workers, then you are going to lead to the old bad times of slumps, and that the slump will be immediately on them.

What is our policy as opposed to all that? To keep the worker geared down; not to let him have as much in his pay packet as will equate the increase in his cost of living; put him, as we have put him, on half wages. Under that sort of system you are going to get something new in the way of an expansion policy in this country. You cannot run social security on grinding down wages and throwing out little doles here and benefits there. The only Christian way in which this thing can be done is by putting the individual who is able and willing to work in the position that, through his efforts, he can get enough to provide himself with social insurance. I have all the while remarked that, when we are interposing into the middle of a moving situation, we must make allowances for those already badly placed, and should move out towards the other situation. We should put people in the position in which they can fend for themselves.

I have seen quoted over and over again the phrase of Lenin that the person who controls the ration books of the population controls their votes. That is a matter that disturbs most people who are looking on the trend of events here to-day. If people were put in the position where, in their various occupations, they could get enough wages to provide themselves with social benefits then they are free men, able to exercise the rights of a democratic system in a free way without any coercion being brought on them or even persuasion from the fact that a lot of their pay comes from Government Departments, and that possibly even a lot of the niggling inspections that are done by officials may be eased if only they can get the ear of a Government Deputy. The tendency is there, the tendency to keep the people on a low level, and then provide them with benefits from the Government as if it were the Government were paying them out of their own pockets. Then when an election comes, they are told: "Oh, if you change individuals, these little benefits may disappear at the same time." That is the Irish equivalent of controlling the ration books of the population so as to control their votes.

Dr. Dignan got a certain amount of publicity for his plans. He never yet got proper publicity for his idea that it was an insurance scheme that he was at and not a Government scheme. He wanted the whole thing put into the hands of some body that seemed to be independent, although he found to his cost that he was not as independent as he had expected. Action is taken against him. Still the idea was there, that the thing should be worked through an independent insurance body, and that everything the people required in this way should be built up out of their wages and out of contributions from their wages. He went on to say, as Sir William Beveridge has said, that, unless there was more employment and a higher standard of living, and that depends on a higher standard of pay, the scheme that he put forward as a suggestion could not even be considered. Like Sir William Beveridge, he had an idea. He, in fact, put that idea far more prominently than did Sir William Beveridge that this was an individual matter. He built himself around the family, and the member or the members of the family who were the main individuals in regard to that family. His idea was that it was through giving them better benefits in the way of wages that they would be able to accumulate for their children, for their own old age, and for periods of sickness through an insurance scheme, the things that he thought they required in the present framework of what he called ordered Christian society. Deputy Everett must know that as far as the Government are concerned, they have put Dr. Dignan into the outer darkness, yet, with a happy optimism, he proposes to the House that the Government will make some response to accept this resolution of his. I think he will find that he will be fobbed off with the usual promise, that he will be told that there is post-war planning, although no details will be given. He will be told, in the words of the old proverb, that if you live long enough you will get grass, or something as sustaining as that. But if he hopes that he is going to get any sign of repentance on the Government's part in regard to a low wage policy, I believe that he is living in a time of completely unfounded optimism.

Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 14 Nov 1945