In considering the picture presented by the Minister for Social Welfare, many important considerations must spring to the minds of Deputies. I believe that we are now coming to the end of an era in the social development of our country. In so far as I represent the young men and women of to-day, and as an Independent Deputy, I feel it would be churlish were I to dismiss as unimportant and inconsiderable the achievements of the generations that have gone before us. We will merit the right to criticise and possibly to denigrate their achievements, or their lack of achievement, when we ourselves have a little more to show for our own ability, understanding, integrity and honesty of purpose in the years that lie ahead.
When speaking on this measure, Deputy General Mulcahy quoted at some length from the democratic programme laid before the First Dáil in 1919. I think the programme has inherent in it an intensity of feeling in relation to the requirements and needs of a truly democratic people. The sentiments contained in that programme and heir method of expression have never been betterd, in my view, in any similar Assembly in any other country.
"We declare, in the words of the Irish Republican Proclamation, the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be indefeasible, and, in the language of our first President, Pádraig Mac Phiarais, we declare that the nation's sovereignty extends not only to all men and women of the nation, but to all its material possession, the nation's soil and all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the nation, and with him we reaffirm that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare."
He then goes on to read:—
"In return for willing service, we, in the name of the Republic, declare the right of every citizen to an adequate share of the produce of the nation's labour."
I wonder if those who had the privilege of being present when that proclamation was read are completely satisfied that they have discharged, to their own satisfaction, the undertakings and the guarantees given by those young men at that time, among whom they themselves were numbered.
I share the view with both Deputy Norton and Deputy Larkin that this Bill is in principle no different from the Bill introduced by the inter-Party Government with Deputy Norton as Minister for Social Welfare. Deputy Larkin at column 823 of the Official Report of 27th March said:—
"So far as the two Bills are concerned it is quite a legitimate criticism to say that the present Bill is substantially the same, almost word for word, but in a truncated form, as the one we discussed in this House 12 months ago."
It has the same advantages and the same objections, together with certain other disadvantages to which Deputy Larkin referred in a very fair-minded, level-headed, objective and extremely competent manner. It would appear, therefore, that this Bill has additional defects as compared with that introduced by Deputy Norton but, despite that, it does, I think, represent the fruition of the achievements which these men on both sides of the House set before themselves 25 and 30 years ago in order to achieve equality of opportunity for all the children of our nation. I do not know if they are completely satisfied. Perhaps they are: perhaps they are not. As an Independent Deputy I accept that decision of the House but as an individual starting out, as I hope I am, to work towards what I consider to be the fuller achievement of that democratic programme I believe that it fails in many respects to achieve all that is required.
The Social Welfare Bill, as introduced by the present Minister, has, for him, a number of untypical disadvantages. I always like to associate the Minister and Fianna Fáil with probably the finest piece of social legislation ever introduced in this House. Incidentally-looking back, as I think most of us look back from time to time —all social legislation, from what I can gather, started in 1933—a significant date. However, I like to associate the Minister with the fundamental principles of the 1947 Health Act—particularly in respect of a scheme which I attempted to implement in relation to a mother and child health service. The full credit for the underlying principle there, for which I claim no credit— although I should very much like to claim full eredit for such an idea—rests with the Minister and with the Party which supports the Minister. That principle was that a very necessary health service should be freely, readily, and without a means test, at the disposal of all mothers equally. No insurance principle was involved at all.
There is no doubt that it is impossible to improve on that as a basic principle for social welfare schemes generally. Here in Ireland, in particular, it is a terribly important consideration whether these schemes are made available as a right of citizenship or as a result of insurance contributions. The reason why I rejected insurance—and I think why the Minister accepts its defects—is that quite a considerable proportion of our population do not receive a regular weekly wage from their work on the land. There is also the administrative difficulty of collecting insurance contributions from the small farming community generally. The fact is that the very people you want to help most are people who are not improvident, as some short-sighted people accuse them, but who are simply so badly paid that they cannot afford to put by the money for insurance schemes and possible and inevitable contingencies. Academic moralists who criticise schemes such as these in the comfort of their ivory towers condemn these people for not ensuring, in this modern community, that they can provide for these possible and inevitable contingencies. These people cannot put by the money for insurance schemes or possible contingencies or even inevitable contingencies such as old age, death, maternity, and so forth. These are the people whom most of us here, I think, are more anxious to help than any others.
It is in consequence of that point, among others, that an insurance scheme has many defects in our largely rural community. On one occasion when I was arguing the case for our special interest as a Christian people in that particular section of the community, the very, very poor, I was asked by a distinguished prelate why I should concern myself or bother the country with the expense of this small percentage who might have been subjected to a means test—"Why not let them have it?" and so forth.
I do not think that as a Christian people—I am sorry to have to reiterate the word "Christian": it has become very common in use and sometimes one wonders what it stands for—we can afford, as I felt at that time, to leave aside that section of our community, to humiliate them or allow them to be humiliated in any way simply because they do not fit into some nice well tied-up administrative category. They are our responsibility —we here in the Oireachtas—and we cannot, because it is difficult to categorise them, dismiss them as an insuperable difficulty. This Bill, as Deputy Norton's Bill, has, to a certain extent, neglected to take up the challenge of the problem of the very poor and the underprivileged and of those who, more than anyone else, require our help.
When examining that Bill and the Health Bill I wondered to what extent, if any, the Minister or the Government felt tied by that—I must still admit to me—rather confusing entity known as Catholic social teaching on matters of progressive or social legislation of any kind. It is confusing and I believe that if we are to make progress with any degree of safety we must have clarification of the extent to which we are bound by the conflicting decisions on the various matters raised from time to time. I am a confirmed believer in what has been described as the Welfare State. I believe in the Welfare State—and this is important and relevant on this debate—because, by it, I understand that the State accepts responsibility. Should I not requote the democratic programme of the First Dáil:—
"We declare that the nation's sovereignty extends not only to all men and women of the nation, but to all its material possessions, the nation's soil and all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the nation, and we reaffirm that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare... In return for willing service, we, in the name of the Republic, declare the right of every citizen to an adequate share of the produce of the nation's labour."
Pádraig Mac Phiarais, President of the Republic, Deputy Mulcahy and many other Deputies in this House subscribed to that declaration—in my view a declaration of my conception of the Welfare State—that the State will take on responsibility for the protection of the aged, and the effect of accidents inseparable from loss of wages, old age, ill-health, unemployment and sickness and all the other disabilities inseparable from our lives in a modern community, that in giving access to these benefits provided by the community out of the community purse, the dominating motive shall be that the community provide these services in health and social welfare as one section of the community providing them for another section who will require them rather than as one class of the community providing them for another.
As I have said I believe fervently in the Welfare State. I intend to pursue ruthlessly and relentlessly, as long as I am in public life to the extent that I can do so, the achievment for our people of that equality in the treatment of these accidents and of the inevitable developments amongst the old and the weak. As I say, I wondered when I read the Bill to what extent Deputy Dr. Ryan, the Minister, felt that he could not pursue, as far as he might have wished, the achievement of a truly equitable and just social security in regard to these matters but his statement to me, as a politician, requiring guidance if you wish, is confusing. We were told recently in a Lenten Pastoral—I quote from the Irish Times of February 25th—that “the Welfare State, being in large measure the offspring of Socialism, insists that all should be on the same footing, and receive equal treatment”. Then in a report of a lecture in the Irish Independent of 31st March we are told that “the Welfare State is a concept of Government more correctly termed ‘paternalistic’. It was impossible not to recognise the generous impulses that were often behind it. In so far as it represented a revulsion of feeling from the horrors of laissezfaire, or in so far as it promoted social justice, the Church would welcome it.”
May I say, in passing, that Monsignor Ryan, who delivered that lecture, congratulated the present Taoiseach on the Constitution under which the perfectly constitutional 1947 Health Act was made law by this Oireachtas? Nobody questioned the constitutionality of that Health Act—I do not intend to deal with it in extenso but it is relevant to the question of social teaching—nobody questioned the Health Act in relation to the fundamental principle of service being made available from the community purse to those who require it under the health provisions of the mother and child scheme. I am well aware that in discussing these matters at all I am travelling along very thorny paths but I think if we are to achieve as Catholics—as most of us are—true equity in a Christian community, we must do it, knowing clearly the path which it is permitted for us to travel. I do not know if the Minister was concerned on that score. If he was, all I can do is to point to his achievement under the 1947 Health Act, which is still there on the Statute Book. There is no question as to its constitutionality or of its being repugnant to the Constitution. In the examination of our way of life and the social conditions under which we live, as far as I can see, our attitude appears to be to penalise the child of the improvident father or of the careless parents. In looking through the whole gamut of our way of life, surely it is true to say that, of necessity, starting with infanthood, childhood and boyhood and going the whole way, the chances of a poor child losing his life are higher than those of the child of wealthy parents.
The figures are there for anybody to see. In our educational services, the dice is loaded against the child with ability but without wealth. The universities and the professional schools all open to the self-same key-the money you have in your pocket and what you can pay. It is true that a good education brings a man a good distance along the road towards providing for his family and achieving for himself the social security which you deny to the poor. In old age—I referred to this before—you can buy security from our workhouses. Some thousands of old people, men and women, in them are scattered throughout every county in Ireland. I wonder how many Deputies have any intimate knowledge of the conditions under which they are living before passing from this world? To my knowledge, there is no more materialist people, by clear provable example, than we are demonstrably living at present. Every single aspect of our life—access to every way for improving and for achieving comfort and security—is open to the man who is wealthy. I think that is a fair incontrovertible statement.
From time to time, we, politicians, receive strictures for our interference with other aspects of the life of the country. But, as politicians, we have no alternative but to deal with realities. We must deal with unemployment, emigration, bad health services, old people in county homes, neglect, orphan children, widows and so on, and the way in which we can deal with these problems is not simply by talking about them or by mouthing pleasant, comfortable platitudes. We must in this House legislate for the deficiencies and the defects of our society. The fact that those defects, provable, demonstrable defects, exist, in spite of the fact that these platitudes are being mouthed year after year with little real effect on the way of life of our people, leaves us, as politicians, with no alternative but to provide what admittedly is our make-shift answer to the needs of modern society. We must step in where there is need.
We have the example of politicians of other nations who have succeeded in achieving a large measure of social justice by means of legislation. I mention, particularly, New Zealand and Sweden. I believe that, short of their defence programme on which they have entered, Great Britain in a short time would also have achieved, under a Labour Government, a real measure of true social justice for all its people. We must, as politicians, bear in mind that, being a newsboy at a street corner in mid-winter or an emigrant hawking your bag up the gangway, or being unemployed with a family—not starving it is quite true but not having what you would like to give them—or being a child with ability and denied the right to develop that ability for lack of wealth or money, or being a widow separated from your children by a court of law through no fault of the judge's but just your fault because you have not money, or being an old person incarcerated in these cold and cheerless dungeons which we call our county homes: that all these are hard realities not only for the politicians but for the widows and the orphans. I do not wish to make this into an appeal, but these are painful realities which are there and which must be dealt with.
A truism, too often repeated, becomes a platitude, and that is one of the reasons why I have always preferred to be more a man of action than one of mere words. It is imperative that those who continue to impose these strictures, lectures and limitations on us politicians in our attempt to discharge our duties, as we consider best, must understand that it is not sufficient comfort for those people I speak of to know that they are in orphanages, in destitution or in want and need in such circumstances under the aegis of a truly Christian community.
I believe it is very difficult for the Minister to bring in a proper and comprehensive Social Welfare Bill with no ceiling, no means test and, preferably, no contributions unless you have full employment in the country. I believe that this Bill is a true measure of the poverty of the State 30 years after the declaration of the democratic programme. At the same time, it is what probably the country can afford. It is a shameful thing that it is only what the country can afford. It does not matter whether the number was 70,000 or 50,000 when we were there—I am not criticising any Government; one is as bad as the other—but that there are 50,000, 60,000 or 70,000 unemployed men, capable of making a productive contribution to the wealth of the nation, walking around the streets, standing at street corners, drawing the dole or unemployment benefit of some kind, is a shameful reflection on the state of the country 30 years after that brave, courageous and magnificent declaration of a democratic programme.
The continuation of emigration creates the same problem for the Government of the time, the loss of men capable of adding to the wealth of the community, that wealth which would make it easy to give proper social services to the community. It is just like the private individual in a material society like ours where, if you have money, you can have everything. The Government say: "We have not got the money because over the years we have not been efficiently or competently ruled." However, as I say, I prefer not to criticise the past. We can do better in the time that lies ahead of us.
With the emigrants and the unemployed I also class as unemployed, in effect, so far as the productive wealth of the country is concerned, the true wealth of the country, the road workers. I am well aware that that again is another political subject. I consider these men, occupied, as they are, digging holes in the ground and filling them up again as being occupied on little better than relief work and I think that is unworthy of our State. It is more appropriate to the famine days than to modern society. You can and you should find for these men well-paid productive work, adding again, as I have said, to the collective wealth of the community and the collective prosperity of our people. These are the major failures of our successive Governments. That all these men, able-bodied, intelligent, educated men, should be on road work is a serious indictment of our Governments.
As to Deputy Norton's amendments, I completely agree with them and I consider that they would improve the Bill. I consider the £600 ceiling, the absence of provision for domestic workers and the absence of a death benefit are disadvantages in the Bill. But Deputy Norton cannot bluntly get away with what is a palpable political trick. He is surely the last Deputy who should have tabled these amendments. He had the power, the authority and the money to do all these things over a period of three and a half years. He may think that he can confuse his constituents occasionally at public meetings, but most of the people are fairly hard-headed. They are not unduly moved by the political wailings which we hear from Deputies. His concern for a means test is what you might call his magnum opus—the man who could campaign at the election and develop that delightful Ramsay MacDonaldish explanation of why we should have a means test in the mother and child scheme: why should the fur-coated ladies in Fitzwilliam Square get paid for by somebody in Connemara? Deputy Norton and the majority of the members of the Labour Party, I am afraid, have abdicated any right they may have thought they had to speak on behalf of the working people, the ordinary people of this country. The Labour party have made declarations of very high-sounding and fine-sounding principles which we now know are nothing more than windy, flatulent platitudes.
