I do not suggest that the Taoiseach directly approved of the pamphlet written by the clergyman in question. What I do say is the view he expressed that social services could be regarded in the nature of medicines coincided to a considerable degree with the general view expressed by the clergyman. I did not say he gave it his specific blessing.
I now have the actual quotation and maybe it is just as well to read it to the House to indicate how far prominent Ministers of Fine Gael are prepared to sacrifice their own point of view in order to maintain a Government in office. Speaking on 13th May, 1947, at column 73 of the Official Debates, the Taoiseach said:
"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. ... 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 bottle showing disease in the household."
That is not the point of view of Fianna Fáil. We have never had any objection to the idea that if associations of men and women of the various professions are unwilling to collect amongst themselves the amount required to provide for the expenses and difficulties of life, the State can come in, and, by way of contributions from workers, by way of State taxation and contributions from employers, redistribute a portion of the national income and, in fact, effect compulsory saving. That is what this Bill does and what Deputy Ryan's proposals do. They both compel people to save for themselves against disaster and against the difficult circumstances of life. It is a compulsory saving Bill and it is just as well that we stopped a lot of the claptrap being talked about it, as though the money were coming from nowhere, as though the people were not paying for it. Like all other measures of social security, it is compulsory saving and nothing else, and people are being made to save in spite of themselves by this Bill. The rich pay a little more than the poor in the way of saving, but the vast majority of the people will be paying for the vast proportion of the cost of these services.
Deputy Cowan suggested that the Fianna Fáil Party, because of its attitude towards the Bill was showing signs of defeat. I am quite agreeable to accept his challenge. I would not mind if we went to the country and had a general election, and even if we went so far as to say that we will postpone the Social Security Bill for one year until we can see if we can find enough money to put this country into a state of preparedness in view of the present emergency. If we put that to the people of the country, I am absolutely certain that we would gain an over-all majority and I would not be in the least afraid of accepting the challenge on that basis. That is my answer to Deputy Cowan when he suggests that we are a Party in defeat.
So far as the details of the Bill are concerned, I want to refer in particular to the absence of any improvement in the children's allowances and to the fact that they are included in the scheme put forward by Deputy Ryan. I am becoming a little ashamed of the degree to which we exploit the old people of this country in order to get votes. I am tired of all the talk that is carried on with a view to attracting the votes of 158,000 old age pensioners and I believe that the vast majority of these old age pensioners are not going to accept any bribe offered to them. I am tired of hearing so much talk about the old age pensioners, who represent 5.26 per cent. of the whole population, or one in 20, and so little talk about the children of the country who have no votes and about whom one cannot arouse the same popular political clamour.
I might add that when Deputy Cowan suggests that the 1944 election was fought on the subject of children's allowances, he was talking the most arrant nonsense. Everyone who remembers the 1944 election knows that it was fought on a number of general issues and that children's allowances were scarcely mentioned in it. On very few occasions did Fianna Fáil specifically offer a particular social service on the eve of an election. Most of the great social services we instituted were either scarcely mentioned in our election programme or instituted during the period in between elections as was the case with widows' and orphans' pensions.
I think it is time we talked a little more about children in this country. We hear a great deal of talk throughout the country about old age pensioners and about the great increase being offered by this Government, but we hear no reference to the fact that the previous Government twice increased old age pensions and we hear still less reference to a far more important subject, the whole question of the support to be given to people with large families. We hear everywhere about old age pensioners getting a half-crown more a week, but we hear very little about the dull and nonpolitical national nutritional survey prepared by a group of experts and presented by the present Government and with absolutely no contentious or adverse criticism by the present Minister for Health, the implication being that there is nothing wrong in the reports, nothing which need be criticised and that the information in them is correct. This kind of stuff is dull and does not draw votes, but in it lies a clue to the solution of a great deal of the problem of poverty in this country.
Every one of these five reports shows that if there is any real grinding poverty left in this community, if there are any adverse circumstances affecting people's lives which require attention, it is in the case of families of four, five and more children. These five reports are full of dull statistics but these statistics are fundamental. They may be dull but they deal with the amount and kind of food eaten by people of various grades of society, of every grade of society, according to the size of the family. They show beyond all doubt that there is too little spent on food in numerous families among the working people; they show beyond all doubt that there are far too many bread-and-spread meals amongst workers' families, small farmers' families, congested district farmers' families and agricultural workers' families, where there are four and more children. They show also that in many large families there is a great and serious deficiency of certain kinds of vitamins and foods. They show that workers who have large families provide a monotonous and deadly diet for their children, try as they will to produce the best they can for them.
Every one of these reports shows that No. 1 upon the programme of the Minister for Social Welfare should have been an increase in children's allowances. There is not the faintest evidence that there is the same condition of poverty or strain of existence in workers' families where there are only one, two or three children. They have their difficulties. The cost of living is very high, but the real core of the problem is among the persons with large families. I want to give it as my private point of view that again I think it is a great pity we were not an independent nation a long time ago, because in relation to a country like ours, where families are large and marriages are late, if ever there was a case for all trade union wages being based on the size of the family, it exists in this country.
I know perfectly well that it would be asking an enormous amount of both employers and trade unions to reorganise the wage structure of the country so that people would be paid, as they are in certain continental countries, on the basis of the number of persons in their family and their marital state. I know well it would be extremely difficult to work out the whole problem of ensuring that there would be no discrimination against married workers and workers with large families by employers. I am not asking trade unionists to do it, because I realise it is an almost insuperable problem; but the only alternative to it is a gift by the people with no family and with small families and by the unmarried people to the people with large families. There is no other solution of the problem of the poverty of the worker with a large family, and my criticism of this Bill to-night is that it does not provide sufficiently or, in fact, in any way, for an increased scale of children's allowances. I am not ashamed and not in the least afraid to say, putting it this way, that I do not want particularly to see £1,000,000 spent on increased old age pensions unless, before that happens, a certain amount of money is spent on increased children's allowances, and if it is decided that we can afford increased children's allowances, I am prepared to agree that, with the present cost of living and under present circumstances, it is a good thing to increase old age pensions by another 2/6 per week but, as I have said, to my mind, the whole question of children's allowances should be considered.
To my mind also there is very great need for an extension of child welfare in the City of Dublin. There is very great need for an extension of child welfare of every kind by contributions to voluntary societies and, if necessary, to societies to some degree stimulated by the State for looking after the children of large families in Dublin. A great deal of the poverty and a great deal of the mortality of which Dr. Browne, the Minister for Health, has spoken exists because of the difficulties of mothers in looking after large families, particularly when the family is increasing or about to increase in numbers, and the Minister for Health's scheme, which forms the subject for another discussion, does nothing to deal with that social difficulty. It is dealt with partly by charitable societies and by the conventual orders. It is not dealt with sufficiently. It still exists, and it all adds to my argument that the children in large families deserve the first consideration of the Government, before anyone else.
I do not know whether it is necessary for me to quote from this report. Not half enough about it has been spoken in the country in general. I do not know whether it is necessary for me to read the figures, in order that they should be recorded in the House, in connection with the differences in expenditure by people with large families and by people with small families. Some of the information is very interesting and it seems to me that it should receive far more study from members of the House. For example, I take the dietary survey of the farm workers' families and I deal with table 4 (b)—the average expenditure per diet head weekly on food in 177 farm workers' families, classified according to the number of persons in the family—and I find that the total amount spent on food per diet head in the case of a family without children, per week, is 19/6; the total amount spent per head in a family of eight, nine, ten or eleven persons is 10/1, which is just about 50 per cent. less. If anybody tells me that there is not need for readjustment of the children's allowances, in face of that simple statement that in farm workers' families where there is a large number of children there is spent about onehalf of that which is spent by a man and his wife without children, I should like to hear the criticisms of the suggestion that more should be done.
In the summary of the Report on the National Nutrition Survey, the following paragraph occurs—No. 2, on page 11:—
"The consumption of meat, milk, eggs, vegetables and fruit increased consistently as income increased, and decreased with almost equal consistency as the number of persons in the family increased....
Milk consumption at 5.1 pints per head per week was low for a rural survey; the figure in Dublin City was 4.8 pints and in farming families was 9.2 pints."
In other words, agricultural workers with large families were drinking half the milk of the farmers living around them and were drinking very little more milk than persons living in Dublin City.
I do not want to take the time of the House by repeating the main conclusions of these reports but they go to indicate what I said before that children's allowances deserve the first consideration of the Minister.
I would like to ask the Minister, in connection with this Bill, what he thinks will be the social effect of the provision in the Bill whereby a farm of under £30 valuation can be assigned without any conditions being attached thereto. I should like to ask him whether he thinks it will encourage the settlement of the farm on younger people or whether he thinks it will have any adverse effect. I should like to hear what views he has to express in regard to that matter.
I am very disappointed that, when the Minister decided to introduce an increase in the non-contributory old age pension of 2/6 a week, he did not reconsider the whole question of the character of the means test. As I understand it, three-quarters of the persons of age over 70 in this country are now receiving an old age pension of some kind or another. They amount to just over 5 per cent. of the entire population. One in every 20 people you meet is getting an old age pension of one kind or another. It is a very large number of people. It seems to me there are two simple courses that should be adopted, either one of which might get over the difficulty of the means test which involves an examination of savings, an examination of the income attached to small plots in the case of cottage dwellers, an examination of all the elements of thrift in the life of an applicant for an old age pension. The first is, to give everybody in the community an old age pension automatically, which would cost a considerable amount of money, which does not on the whole seem fair to me; the second would be a simple valuation limit, such as has been proposed in Deputy Dr. Ryan's alternative proposals. If three-quarters of the people over 70 years of age are entitled to draw an old age pension, is there anything socially unfair in simplifying the means test, particularly in rural districts, in making the means test depend on valuation and having, in addition to that, the question of the maximum amount of cash that can be held? Would not it save a great deal of administrative expense and would not it save, as I have said, the continuous examination of a man's thrift in life? Would it create any abuses? Can the Minister for Social Welfare say in what percentage of cases there might be a very unfair refusal of an old age pension to a person because he happened to be above or below the line? It seems to me this suggestion is well worth considering before the Bill reaches its final stages, because such a huge proportion of the older people do finally get a pension and they amount to such a large proportion of the community.
Deputy Cowan and Deputy Cogan, in speaking on this Bill, discussed the question of unemployment. I cannot understand Deputy Cogan's point of view that the Government must guarantee work and cannot and should not guarantee maintenance in lieu of work. The problem that affects this country is that which affects most countries, the fact that labour is not mobile to a considerable degree. The people will not leave their homes in many cases. Another section of the people in the community like to leave their homes or have to leave them under compulsion. There is a great deal of winter unemployment, while in summer in many areas it is difficult to find workers. Workers have neither the desire nor have they the training, in many cases, to move from one occupation to another. It struck me as extraordinarily old-fashioned of Deputy Cogan to suggest that the Government has only a right to guarantee work and should not guarantee maintenance in lieu of work, because the Government that could provide work for the people of this country to the degree of 100 per cent. all the year round, in winter and summer, in rural and urban districts, if there was a profound depression in England and if there was absolutely no employment for workers who have been leaving this country for many years—in very large numbers under the present Government, I might add—would be a miraculous Government under the circumstances. There must always be some insurance provision, some assistance provision, for those who are unable to find work either temporarily or for considerable periods. In fact, a great deal of what Deputy Cogan said struck me as being extraordinarily old-fashioned, something like what one would hear coming from the British Conservative Party about the year 1910. He seemed to refuse to accept the general principle of a social security plan under which the Government would undertake to provide necessities for persons unable to provide for themselves. In conclusion, I should like once more to ask the Minister to consider the alternative measures put forward by Deputy Dr. Ryan, particularly because of the fact that under these measures provision is made for increased children's allowances where families are large.