It is an indication to the Minister in charge of the Bill that this particular section will be opposed. I think it is proper that it should be opposed and that is why I put it down. In fact, I want to oppose this section very strongly. I think it a very serious matter and one which must give rise to a considerable amount of alarm as to what exactly is going to happen if it is passed. I gather that there are really three Acts dealing with pharmaceutical chemists, druggists and the people covered by this Bill. The original Act was the Act of 1791 which was passed by the old Irish Parliament, then the Act of 1875, which is the principal Act, and the amending Act of 1890. Under the Act of 1890, there was a provision, very clearly set out in the Statute Book, that a person who had completed a period of four years' apprenticeship, satisfied the examiners by passing an examination, made an application to the register for enrolment, paid a fee of two guineas and made certain statutory declarations, would be entitled to be registered, and that the council could not refuse to register him. I think that was a very important protection for the student. I am referring to Section 8 of the 1890 Act. Under Section 10 of the same Act, so long as he completed his apprenticeship, applied for registration and passed an examination, he was registered, and the society could not prevent him being registered. What was done in the Bill under discussion at present? Sections 8 and 10 were abolished and nothing was put in their place.
My concern for this started when I heard Deputy Brady saying the other evening here that the council intended to alter the provision whereby, after spending four years' apprenticeship and passing an examination, a person would be a qualified chemist. Deputy Brady said that the council are to introduce a new provision whereby a person has to give three years' apprenticeship and then to spend one year in some type of school or college where he would have to study, hear lectures and note them down. During that period, no provision is made by anybody for his maintenance.
I look at it from the point of view of the student from a rural area who wants to serve his apprenticeship to become qualified and who is faced, or his parents are faced, with the additional expenditure, or they may be. If we take out these two sections and deprive the students of their rights, I do not see what is to prevent the council saying that he will have to do two years or maybe three or four years in a school. I would like to hear the Minister saying what protection there is under the law as it stands if we eliminate these two sections which give such important rights to those apprentices.
I can understand the council deciding to make some change, but if they made the change then I think they should have written that change into the Act so that each and every one of us would know where we stood. We would know what we were inserting for the important provisions that we were taking out. For these reasons, which I am putting in very brief form at the moment, I oppose very strenuously the removal of those two very important sections of the Act of 1890.
