Why not assume, unless we hear from them to the contrary, that they have no objection to having them in Irish? That means that those who want Irish must ask for it. The others will undoubtedly be in the majority and, if it is to be decided as a majority question, there is no doubt what the result will be. I thought that the fact that there is a section in the unemployment assistance branch which is dealing with the Gaeltacht and is trying to do its work through Irish was an indication that the Tánaiste would go on the line of extending the policy of Gaelicisation in the Department as far as possible. As the Department deals with the ordinary people of the country to a greater extent, perhaps, than any other Department, if the officers are in favour of Irish and display an anxiety to use Irish and to extend the use of Irish, the language will benefit accordingly. On the other hand, if the feeling is that the Government decision and the Government policy is in the other direction and that no special attention need be given to Irish, not only will Irish suffer in the areas where it still is spoken but throughout the country. Young people coming on the register and coming into the schemes, who, in the majority if cases, have sufficient knowledge of Irish to enable them to fill these forms and to transact their business in the national language, will feel that there is a certain bias against it. In this matter, Departments ought not to take a neutral attitude. They ought to show that they are definitely on the side of the language, unless there are very strong reasons for not doing so.
I notice that the Vote contains a sub-head for health embarkation allowances. Does that mean, may I ask the Tánaiste, that it is in connection with medical examination of persons leaving the country to take up employment elsewhere? It is an indication that the precautions and measures which had to be taken in the past and about which one heard so much propaganda and misrepresentation have still to be carried on; that a large number of people have still to leave this country to find employment, and that the State has to participate in certain schemes guaranteeing that they will be physically and medically satisfactory on taking up such employment.
This Department must be entrusted with the question of juvenile advisory committees which used to function. I am afraid they have not been very active. In connection with unemployment insurance, there is a difficult period between the time that the young person leaves school and the time he or she comes into unemployment insurance. It had been the practice to have advisory committees representing the Department, business men and the trade unions. Very valuable advice and assistance could be given to the young people seeking employment.
There is a certain grain of truth in the mass of matter which we heard from Deputy Cowan, that is, that if we are to have social services, it is obviously better that they should be administered by sympathetic personnel who would try to deal with the problems that present themselves as human problems affecting the lives of young people, for example, rather than that they should be dealt with, as is generally charged against State schemes, in a cold, impersonal way without regard or, perhaps, without sufficient regard to the individual feelings or the individual case, simply dealt with as a reference number.
We had a scheme of youth training under the supervision of the Army, called the Construction Corps. When I see the controversy that is being raised by the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Industry and Commerce with regard to unemployment assistance and the drawing of unemployment assistance by single men, I want to say that it is a well-known fact, as Deputy Cowan has said, that there are people who are unemployable. I do not agree with him that there may be thousands of such cases but there are a certain number who are unemployable. Because of their physical condition, they would be quite incapable of doing ordinary constructional work and anything in the way of navvying would be entirely beyond them and it is very doubtful if they would give a reasonable economic return even in much lighter forms of employment. The advantage of the Construction Corps was that these young men were given training under Army supervision. It is perhaps the case that the scheme was lacking in one respect. If it had been completely in charge of persons acquainted with industrial conditions and who were themselves expert in training people for industrial occupations and who were selected solely from that point of view, it would have been more successful but it had the advantage that these young people were properly fed and properly looked after and after about a month or so there was tremendous improvement in their condition. It is a pity that we have not a scheme of that kind. The juvenile advisory committees are too limited. There is too much of the Civil Service characteristic about them but they might, perhaps, be extended so that centres could be set up, if that were considered advisable.
I am not holding myself out as an expert in this matter. But I say that there is a tremendous loss to the country if we have young people leaving school at an early age and if there is no organisation to take charge of them, to advise them, in the first place, with regard to the vocations they should follow; and, secondly, to try to prepare them physically by physical training, and so on, and industrially by giving them some technical education. In the case of young men of about 18 years of age, some of the religious orders in Dublin, who have accomplished national work, found that it was rather beyond their resources and beyond what they felt they were able to achieve to take them on, but it should be possible to devise a system something like Comhairle le Leas Oige. We approached the problem there through the youth clubs, but from the trade union side it ought to be possible and I am sure trade union leaders would take a particular interest in that stratum who are not being looked after and who are not being helped along, in the way that we would all desire, to become good citizens and good workers, able to take their part in the national economy.
When Deputy Cowan asks us to give our opinion in advance about this White Paper, he is putting us rather in the position of the scaltáin who, as is well known, has his eyes closed and his mouth open and is prepared to swallow anything that may be put into it. I think we are entitled to wait until we see what the White Paper gives us before us come to conclusions as to its merits, as to its suitability to our circumstances and as to whether it is going to be worth the cost. Undoubtedly, whatever the proposals may be when they come to be considered by the Government, it is the amount of the bill in the last analysis that the taxpayers will have to pay that is going to decide very largely, I suppose, the Government's own decision, and also the general feeling of the public.
I think that I might remind Deputy Cowan that Fianna Fáil has nothing whatever to be ashamed of in its record as regards social services. The Deputy is not an old member of the House. He is, perhaps, as old as I am, but he is not as long a member of the House. He has forgotten that for many years Fianna Fáil were taunted with being profligate in the expenditure of money—that squandermania was one of our chief characteristics. Two years ago the present Taoiseach stated—the reference is column 73 of the Dáil Debates, 13th May, 1947—
"...money is wanted for social services. That is the justification for all the extravagances that have been perpetrated and inflicted upon this country by Government profligacy in the last six or seven years. Spending on social services is the excuse for everything. The existence of social services is an indication of ill-health in the body politic. In any case, as has been said, they are nothing more than a row of medicine bottles showing disease in the household. The sounder your economic fabric is, the less need there is for social services."
I think that, when Deputy Cowan anticipates general agreement from all sides of the House for these proposals, the nature of which we know nothing about so far—we know very little indeed because the Tánaiste has not given us very much of an indication of what he has in his mind—he is assuming a great deal when he thinks that the Tánaiste, in addition to all the other work he has to perform, has been able to bring about such a wonderful change in affairs as that he can convert the Taoiseach, who spoke in the terms I have quoted, to his own particular point of view. But, of course, it is not only the Taoiseach but the Minister for Finance he has to convert. He, presumably, has a say in the determination of what amount of money the national Exchequer, and through it, the taxpayer, should be asked to share or not share—the burden that he ought to be asked to carry on foot of social services.
At column 537 of the Dáil Debates on the 28th March, 1947, the present Minister for Finance informed the House that:—
"We should not pretend that any great measure of social services is any credit to this community. The greater the necessity for social services the greater the condemnation of the economic system under which we live."
That is not an isolated statement by the Minister for Finance. He reminded us that he had been preaching this doctrine for years. At a later stage he told us that "he saw in the development of the social services nothing but progress towards the servile State". "The situation," he said, "which the then Government would like to see develop more and more would simply mean that the stimulus to work would be withdrawn." More stimulus, in fact, instead of less, according to the Minister, should be applied to people to get more effort out of them. "The more a man does in the way of greater effort the greater the return he gets." In fact, he ended his remarks on that occasion by reminding the then Minister that there was no reason for this Department of Social Welfare and that the Minister.
"should contemplate with equanimity the disappearance of his own Department and look forward to the time when it will be wiped out from the Estimates and all these subventions will disappear... Depending on the State means that people are depending on the efforts of their neighbours."
"No healthy community," he said later on, "can be reared on charity. The boosting of social services means a marked degradation of the whole countryside. It diminishes real wages. Control the family allowances and old age pension money and what you will give by way of an increase, control employment insurance and unemployment assistance, control all these subventions and you control the votes that we are instituting in this country—what was called in the old days institutions of slavery. You must recreate the institution of slavery. We do it with what we call social services—what are called our social services or what I call grants-in-aid to the annuitants of a servile State."
Now, the Minister has changed his attitude and the Tánaiste has been able to persuade him that he was entirely wrong in these sentiments. If his accession to the important post of Minister has brought about a conversion to the principles which Deputy Cowan tells us all members of this House, except apparently Deputy de Valera, hold, then we might not wonder, but we have some recent instances of utterances somewhat of the same character. May I remind Deputy Cowan, and those who would like to know what the attitude of the Opposition is on the question of the extension of social services, that we first want to know what the attitude of the Government is? In his Budget speech last year the Minister for Finance said:—
"The substantial wage and salary increases already secured by all classes of workers, with such further advantages as shorter hours, paid holidays, children's allowances, and other increases in social services, have gone as far as is possible, in present circumstances, to meet the claims of social justice, and I would make a most earnest appeal to all employees not to seek further increases in monetary remuneration or improvements in working conditions, unless warranted by exceptional circumstances. Recent experience confirms that the benefit of an increase in money incomes is rapidly swallowed up by rising prices."
Speaking recently at a meeting of the Dublin Branch of the Institute of Cost and Work Accountants, I think on the 18th March, the Minister for Finance said, according to the Irish Press report, that—
"he wished that we got the opinion expressed at meetings where social services were claimed to be something good that they were not anything of the sort. Social services were necessary for those who had been unable in early life to save for their upkeep later, but for the bulk of the community they were not anything to be clamoured for."
According to the Irish Times report of the 19th March he pointed to a danger in the social services:—
"There was a danger in the development of social services that the people would lose their sense of independence."
The Minister stated that:—
"social services were not something to be proud of; they should be used like medicine, kept in a locker until they were required to treat disease or illness."
It looks very much as if the same brief was in evidence in the statement of the Minister for Finance on that occasion and of the Taoiseach when he spoke two years ago. As regards those bottles, in one place we are told they are a sign of disease in the body politic, but in the other case there is a slight amendment—they should be used only in case of necessity. One is tempted to wonder whether it might not be possible to get these genii and increase social services and bring about the comprehensive social security to which the Coalition Government solemnly pledged itself upon taking office; one wonders whether these two Ministers are not trying to get these genii into the bottle and to keep them here, as happened in the well-known story.
I do not know how we can reconcile these statements, that the extension of social services is symptomatic of disease, beggary and even serfdom, when we have not such conditions in other countries, which are prosperous. Apparently, the Minister for Finance has a very poor opinion of the system of social security that operates in Great Britain and of the efforts of the Labour Government there. He has quite a different opinion, apparently, from the Tánaiste, who told us that his intention was to try to bring forward a comprehensive scheme comparable to the British. More recently he announced that the object of the social security scheme which the Government has under consideration will be to improve and expand existing services on a scale which will keep Ireland abreast of enlightened social legislation throughout the world. The toiling masses, in the rousing words of the Tánaiste, must be provided with full security against all the hazards of life.
It would be accusing the Tánaiste of gross hypocrisy and an entire lack of responsibility if we were to suggest that he has in any way departed from the principles he so frequently laid before us when he was Leader of the Labour Opposition in the Dáil. I think his general attitude might be fairly expressed when he explained before he took office, when he was seeking the suffrages of the Irish people, that to himself and his colleagues social security implied freedom from want, and he went on to say that our resources were quite sufficient to render this possible. In fact, like Deputy Cowan, he had a financial specific which would get over this difficulty which always arises when comprehensive schemes have to be put into operation—that is, where the money is to be found. According to the Tánaiste, that would have been quite a simple matter as he then saw the position, because by an orientation of credit and the monetary system of the State we would be able to solve all these financial problems without, presumably, imposing burdens upon anybody.
I have not heard whether that particular kind of solution is being tried out in connection with the new White Paper, or whether the Tánaiste has succeeded in converting the Taoiseach and Minister for Finance to his point of view, that social services are vital for the maintenance of the standard of life in this country, and particularly necessary where the standards of remuneration are inadequate. That is from Volume 112, columns 1835 and 1836. How can that be reconciled with the feeling of the Minister for Finance so often expressed here, that social security simply means absolute, subservience to the State and a return to plantation conditions, as they were known in the Southern American States, or in some similar place? Now the Tánaiste tells us we are to keep abreast of enlightened social legislation and produce a comprehensive scheme comparable to the British.
There is a certain discrepancy between the statements of the Tánaiste and the statements of his colleagues. What the country would like to know is in which—the Taoiseach or the Minister for Finance on the one hand, or the Tánaiste on the other— is the doctrine of collective responsibility being personified, and which of them, at the time he is speaking, is giving voice to the opinions of the inter-Party or Coalition Government with regard to this comprehensive policy of social security.
At any rate, we have reached the stage when the question has to be considered of financing the scheme. I do not think we have heard anything about it, and we may assume it is being put aside, but, as is the case in most of these schemes, it is either the State or the local authority, either the taxes or the rates or, in the case of social insurance, there is the question of the contributors. When national health insurance first made its appearance in Great Britain, the slogan was 9d. for 4d. The people were to get 9d. worth of benefit for 4d. worth of contribution. I think it has worked out rather the other way round and, for a contribution of 9d., it has been more likely the case that the benefit represents only 4d.
Recently, in the scheme which was introduced into Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the contributions have gone up enormously. I think they are at least 7/- in some cases and if we are to believe the statements we hear from the North of Ireland, based on the experience of small employers and farmers who employ a few men, the amount of the additional contribution is enormous having regard to their way of living, the amount of their output and their circumstances as employers. Of course, the Tánaiste recently transferred almost £1,000,000 to the contributors by increasing the stamps that he had to pay when he claimed that in abolishing the cash settlement and putting the benefits on a statutory basis he was really conferring an advantage on the contributors.
I hope the contributors saw that point of view, but I think they must have realised that, from the point of view of £ s. d., they were getting nothing whatever by way of additional return simultaneous with having to pay additional contributions up to as high as 50 per cent., contributions which had previously been borne by the taxpayer. The Minister told us, of course, that the benefits under State schemes were really only fit for paupers. Because they were so inadequate he could only describe them as pauperised rates. The fact is that in this country we have about half our population, the rural population, living on the land. A large number of these are self-employed. It is recognised in the case of agricultural labourers that because of the conditions in the particular industry they cannot be brought within the scope of certain forms of social insurance policy, though they may be brought in under others. Generally speaking, it has to be admitted that the benefits, like the rates of contribution, are as a rule based upon a flat rate all through. No exceptions are made for the special circumstances of the individual. Very often no special allowance is made for dependents or to meet family circumstances. In order to bring about such variations as would make rates of benefit more equitable the administrative machine would have to become much more costly. I do not know whether the Minister is prepared to give us any information on these matters. When the time comes I think, we ought to be told what the costs of administration will be in respect of the different services for which he is at present responsible. As far as I remember, it was computed some years ago that the cost of administering children's allowances was about 4 per cent. National health insurance was very much higher. I think it was in the neighbourhood of 18 or 20 per cent. I believe unemployment assistance was higher still.
If we are to come to conclusions as to the merits of the scheme when it is eventually put before us it will be necessary for us to know what the administrative costs are in detail, and whether, with further centralisation of the services, it can be argued from past experience that they are likely to result in such a reduction as would mean automatically increased benefits and increased moneys in the national pool of that particular service. I notice that in the City of Dublin the city council has been occupying itself with drawing up a scheme of differential rents. It is apparently recognised that some people have good employment and can afford to pay more substantial rents than they are paying at the present time. Others are not in the happy position and, presumably, reductions will be made in their case. I must confess that I do not know whether the problem is being tackled on the basis of taking the present rents as a minimum and adding on to these where the income of the tenant shows that that can be done or whether, as is more likely, there will be variations both upwards and downwards. It is quite evident, as experience has shown in all countries wherever investigations have been made into social insurance generally, that the poorer the occupation the lower the wages and, very often, the larger the families. Recently a nutrition survey was carried out in the City of Dublin. Although the nutrient intake reached the standard of nutrition internationally accepted, broadly speaking, even in the case of the poorest families from the slums, it was agreed that the larger the family, both in the slum and artisan classes, the higher the expenditure upon food where the family did not exceed two in the slum classes and five in the artisan class. After that point it was agreed that the amount expended on the individual members of the family in relation to food decreased.
