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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 26 Feb 1953

Vol. 136 No. 12

Committee on Finance. - Vote 67 — Health.

I move:—

That a supplementary sum not exceeding £10 be granted to defraythe Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1953, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Health, and certain Services administered by that Office, including Grants to Local Authorities, Miscellaneous Grants and a Grant-in-Aid.

Before you put the vote, may I ask what is it for?

It has been explained fully.

You are nearly inside the gate so you should keep quiet.

I am quite happy.

I am sure you are. I want to know what is it for.

To give the House an opportunity of speaking on health. It was put down last July.

I am glad the Minister explained that, because there are at least five Deputies who have prepared speeches which they did not get an opportunity of delivering on the Second Reading. May I suggest to the five Deputies, starting with Deputy Cowan, that this is an excellent opportunity for them to deliver the five carefully prepared written speeches?

Was it only five?

They can deliver them on this.

(Interruptions.)

Can you not conduct your own class behind you?

I am afraid the choir is out of tune.

I am only trying to help the Deputies who are disappointed this evening.

On a point of order. Surely it is not in order to discuss legislation on an Estimate on which only administration can be discussed?

We can deal only with the administration of the Department on this Estimate.

I have not said a word about legislation. What I am saying is that the few green members of the House who are anxious to speak on health matters can do so on this Estimate.

Does that include Deputy MacBride?

It does not include the Minister for Finance because no matter how wide the Estimate would be the Minister for Finance could not be kept within its bounds.

You were too green a while ago to stand up.

I am only trying to be helpful.

We are all in a good spirit this evening.

I know that. Apparently the Deputy must have been told that he is on the right road.

He is being kept quiet to-night.

That is more than can be said for you.

You cannot be kept quiet one day and speak your mind the next.

If I cannot induce the Deputy to speak I will not try to provoke him.

I want to speak on the Health Bill. We are not going to have very much good health, either in the House or outside it, if the discussion on health matters, whether in regard to the existing health services or those proposed, is to be conducted either inside or outside the House in the spirit in which it has been conducted for the last ten years.

You were in very good frame of mind a couple of minutes ago.

I am trying to put the Deputy in a frame of mind that is other than good.

Is this a second speech? I thought the Deputy sat down, having concluded his speech.

Unfortunately, apparently the Minister's bad example is beginning to have some influence on his Party. He has no longer a monopoly of bad manners in Fianna Fáil. He had that for a long time but his monopoly is in danger. When Deputies on the opposite side are feeling in such very good form may I remind them that I have a fairly long memory, like many people in this House, and I remember a good many discussions on health matters and a good many divisions on health matters. I remember in 1945 when there were only eight, of whom I was one, to go into the Lobby against a particular Bill.

They say that memory is the only friend that grief can call its own.

There will be one member of this House who, as soon as we get the opportunity, will be a victim of memory. The memory of the people in North-East Dublin of the Deputy's promises and performances will be vivid enough, I am sorry to say.

Deputy Morrissey is getting away from the Supplementary Estimate.

I am a very simple man and I really am in need of some protection.

The Chair will afford the Deputy every protection.

I am quite sure of that. I would ask the Chair to keep Deputy Cowan within bounds because I find it difficult, strange as it may appear, to continue if I am interrupted. I am not anxious to make a speech myself.

A Deputy

That is quite obvious.

My efforts here to-night are made on behalf of certain members of the House who are, apparently, dumbstricken. I have got on myfeet to try to keep the door open, to give them an opportunity to deliver the speeches that they were one time so anxious to deliver, but they were so busy jockeying for position that the guillotine came down before they realised it.

There are still three stages and the Money Resolution.

Mr. O'Higgins

I am very glad to have an opportunity to enable the Minister for Finance to hear, if possible, on this Estimate, some of the views that he heard so confidentially from his running companion in the townships constituency in the last election. It is extraordinary that these gentlemen, who were so vociferous outside this House tilting at windmills, had not a word to say when the Health Bill was being discussed some ten or 15 minutes ago. I know that it is not proper and it would not be in order for them now to give their views, precious as they may appear to the Minister for Finance, on this Estimate.

On a point of order, are we discussing the administration of the Department of Health or what happened in the House 15 minutes ago? The Deputy proposes to discuss what happened in the House 15 minutes ago but the Estimate as put down is a token Estimate to enable the administration of the Department of Health to be discussed. I submit that the Deputy should be kept to that.

The Deputy has been speaking for about a minute and a half and it was very difficult in that time to ascertain what he proposed to deal with.

Mr. O'Higgins

I sincerely hope that Deputy Cowan did not laugh because if he laughed I would prophesy that the laugh will disappear from his face before I sit down.

On a point of order, is it in order for a Deputy to threaten another Deputy inside the precincts of the House? That is a serious threat, to take the laugh off my face.

He is only anticipating what your constituents will do.

Mr. O'Higgins

I know Deputy Cowan always gets uncomfortable if anyone makes prophecies as to his future.

The Deputy should address himself to the Supplementary Estimate before the House.

Mr. O'Higgins

May I point out that I have been speaking only for a minute and a half and during that period two absurd points of order have been raised, one by the Minister for Finance and the other by Deputy Cowan? As I was saying, despite the opportunity now being given to certain Deputies in this House, it will not be possible for these Deputies who support the Government to express their views on the Health Bill.

We are not discussing the Health Bill.

Mr. O'Higgins

I am pointing that out.

The Deputy has already done that.

Mr. O'Higgins

It would not be in order for these Deputies to give their views on the Health Bill on this Estimate.

On a point of order, is it not right and within your knowledge that Deputy O'Higgins and his Party were flattened to-night by Deputy Larkin's speech and that Deputy MacBride ran out of the House as a result of Deputy Larkin's speech?

Mr. O'Higgins

I do ask for some protection from the Chair. That is the second time we have had this type of farcical points of order.

Is there anybody called Dr. Browne in this House?

Mr. O'Higgins

While it is not possible and it would not be in order to discuss the proposal for legislationdealt with by the House some minutes ago, it will be possible to discuss the peregrinations of the Minister for Health in the last 12 or 18 months. He took up office in 1951, flying a kite for Deputy Dr. Browne and he has been flying that kite from Cork to Donegal, from North to South, and from East to West, for the last 18 months. What a kite it has been! The hand that held the kite was the hand of the Minister for Health but the cord was weighed down and tied around Deputy Cowan and Deputy Dr. Browne. This kite was supposed to be a wonderful new health scheme and I think it is proper that, in reviewing the administration of the Minister for the last 18 months, we should discuss the vast amount of tilting that has gone on at multifarious windmills since he resumed office. We were first told when the present Minister found himself restored to office that we were shortly going to have a mother and child health scheme which would be free for all. That was assured to the people of the country by those who put the present Minister in power. It was assured to them by Deputy Cowan, by Deputy Dr. Browne, by Deputy Dr. ffrench-O'Carroll and by every one of the multi-coloured Deputies who support the present Minister.

We heard a lot about it from Fine Gael.

Mr. O'Higgins

We heard nothing about it from Deputy Dr. ffrench-O'Carroll. I hope we will hear something now. The Deputy's performances in this House since he got in have been most insignificant. He has sat for a long time when he was expected to walk and he was silent when he was expected to talk.

He was a very important man on the morning of the day the Government was changed.

Mr. O'Higgins

The Deputy has ceased to be important long ago.

Deputy Cowan said he was the most important person.

Mr. O'Higgins

As I was reminding the House — Deputy Cowan has been anxious for the House to forget — assuranceswere held out that we would have, as a result of the proper administration of the present Government, and with the help of Deputies Browne, Cowan and the rest, a free-for-all mother and child scheme introduced by the Minister. I want to know where is it?

Ask Labour.

Mr. O'Higgins

Where has it gone? What happened to the carrot that was held out to the donkeys? If they swallowed it, they are suffering from indigestion now.

The Deputy should not refer to Deputies as donkeys.

Mr. O'Higgins

I am very sorry, Sir. I think it would be in order to refer to them as political donkeys. The fact is that, despite all the talk, all the window-dressing, all the flag-waving and this spurious appeal to sentiment in the last 12 or 18 months, the mountain has been in labour and brought forth a mouse.

Mr. O'Higgins

It was a mouse that so frightened Deputies Browne and Cowan 15 minutes ago that they had not a word in their mouths.

We enjoyed the Deputy's discomfiture.

Mr. O'Higgins

I would like to know what the people of this country think of the administration of this Department in the last 18 months. Was the Minister paid his salary to create false hopes in the breasts of Deputies Cowan and Browne? Was he paid his salary to bedevil relations between the State and the medical profession? Was he paid his salary to turn the members of every county council in the country against a health scheme? Was it for that purpose that he was put there as Minister for Health? I do not know at the end of the story. The Minister would like to see this the end of the story but he will find that it is only the start of the story itself. Despite all the play-acting and antics that heand his Government have indulged in during the last 12 months, sooner or later the people will realise that this important matter of health is not the plaything or the particular monopoly of any particular Party or Deputy in this House.

Deputies have been elected and sent into this House because they have tried to arrogate to themselves the sole right to speak on health matters.

The Bill was passed practically unanimously a few minutes ago.

Mr. O'Higgins

When the Bill was being discussed here——

The Bill was accepted by the House almost unanimously. It was not discussed.

Mr. O'Higgins

While one can justifiably express hard words with regard to certain Deputies, particularly Deputies Browne and ffrench-O'Carroll, words fail when you consider Deputy Cowan who failed to speak a few minutes ago. What does Deputy Cowan stand for now? From a political view-point his front is the same as his rear. He does not know where he is going.

On a point of order. Is the House not discussing the Health Bill and not Deputy Cowan?

It is not discussing the Health Bill.

I seem to be more important than the Deputies would suggest.

The Health Bill is before the House.

It is not.

Mr. O'Higgins

It is a bit hard, when discussing this important Estimate, to find a Government back-bencher blowing in without any idea as to what is going on.

It is still more strange to find the son of a Deputy of this House contradicting his own father on the provisions of this Bill.

Mr. O'Higgins

I would like to inform Deputy Moran that, due to the vocal paralysis of Deputies Browne and Cowan, we are now on the Health Estimate. In discussing the Health Estimate, as I am endeavouring to do despite attacks from right and left——

Why did you do this, Deputy Morrissey?

Mr. O'Higgins

——it is important to keep in mind what I have termed the peregrinations of the present Minister for Health. I would like to know from the Minister why, if he were bona fideand sincere in his assurances, that he would introduce a new health scheme containing free-for-all provisions and all the rest, did he call into his offices in the Custom House and in Leinster House the representatives of each and every county council to tell them, as he told them: “Look, I am going to bring in this scheme. I have no idea how much it is going to cost but the cost is going to fall on your rates, and the cost on the rates will be something around 2/- or 3/-.” Why did the Minister do that unless he intended the scheme he was going to introduce to be killed and be still-born?

There is nothing in this Estimate about the Health Bill. We are discussing the Estimate.

Mr. O'Higgins

I hope the Chair will bear with me. I am talking about the action of the Minister for Health in summoning to a meeting in the last 12 months representatives of the different local authorities, and that, Sir, is administration. I would like to know why the Minister did that if he did not intend to prevent this health scheme he said he was going to introduce from having any possibility of success? He deliberately stirred up in country areas a vast amount of opposition to any legislative proposals dealing with health.

He stirred it up?

Mr. O'Higgins

The Minister himself stirred it up and nobody else, and the strongest men against it were theFianna Fáil county councillors. In every single constituency and county in this country Fianna Fáil county councillors were organising to prevent the proposed health scheme ever assuming legislative form. They even got Deputy Cogan to reform his ratepayers' association to prevent it coming into operation.

Are we discussing the Health Bill or the Estimate?

The House is discussing the Estimate.

We are now listening to the speech that Deputy O'Higgins forgot to make a while ago.

The Deputy had no speech prepared.

Mr. O'Higgins

I am glad Deputy McGrath intervened because he is the type of Deputy who, when he gets back to the South, would dearly love to make the speech he would have liked to have made 15 minutes ago.

I would make my speech and would not tell lies. I would tell the House about the voluntary hospitals.

Mr. O'Higgins

I think Deputy McGrath strayed beyond the limits of this House by using the word "lies."

The Deputy did not attribute lies to any particular Deputy.

Mr. O'Higgins

I think there has been something sinister going on in the administration of this Department during the past 12 months. There has been something extremely sinister in the manner in which the Deputy in charge of this Department faced up to his responsibility.

Could the Minister say if this requires psychopathic treatment?

If that is applied, the Government will lose its majority very quickly.

Deputy Cowan will be the first.

Mr. O'Higgins

The members of each local authority were deliberately disturbed in their minds by the Minister, who tried to convey to them an unfounded, ill-informed idea of the cost of this scheme. He said "two or three shillings" to the representatives of Laois and Offaly County Councils. I do not know what he said to Deputy Cowan.

Would a good scheme not be worth 2/- or 3/-?

Mr. O'Higgins

A good Deputy is worth an entire House. The Minister says to-day it will cost around 1/6.

One shilling and sixpence on the local authority and 1/6 on the central Government.

Mr. O'Higgins

I am glad Deputy Cowan has been reminded that he missed what has been going on. Why was there that statement by the Minister only three or four months ago?

Why did you not vote against it?

Mr. O'Higgins

I count to ten. Why has there been that extraordinary inconsistency between what the Minister told local authorities and what he now tells us? It is because he never intended, and does not now intend, to see in operation any health scheme good, bad or indifferent.

It is on the long finger already.

Mr. O'Higgins

This talk is merely intended to continue the dangling of the carrot before the political donkeys. It is intended merely for parliamentary purposes, to keep the miserable support that maintains the present Government in office.

Twenty-one to 60 was not miserable.

Mr. O'Higgins

Did Deputy McGrath ever hear of North-West Dublin? The Minister said the responsibility for carrying this health scheme out would not be his but that of the local authorities — the people whose opposition he had alreadyensured. That may appear strange to an innocent Deputy like Deputy Cowan.

The Deputy is proceeding to discuss the provisions of the Bill.

Mr. O'Higgins

I am proceeding to discuss the statement of the Minister for Health.

There is no motion to refer this Estimate back.

That does not matter.

Mr. O'Higgins

The scheme has gone a little bit off. The Minister never intended to see in operation the health scheme he and his back benchers and fellow-travellers talked about — otherwise, would he have gone to infinite pains to ensure, before he introduced it, that he had banked up opposition from every local authority?

On a point of order, is the Deputy entitled, on a motion such as this, to endeavour to repair the shocking rift that occurred in the inter-Party lute this evening?

Surely the only thing the Deputy cannot do is advocate new legislation on an Estimate? That is a recognised question of order.

He is trying to build a new dyke.

So long as he does not put the Deputy in it, it is all right.

Mr. O'Higgins

It does appear to the ordinary Deputies and to people outside that the Minister was never serious about a health scheme. That may be understandable. In the kind of coalition composed of the flotsam and jetsam of Irish politics, such a Minister could not be serious, as he would have to pacify and placate so many elements. Look at what he had to placate—Deputy Cowan, Deputy ffrench-O'Carroll, Deputy Browne. Deputy ffrench-O'Carroll and Deputy Browne said they wanted a free-for-all scheme.

Deputy MacBridecould not make up his mind whether he should be on your side or on Deputy Larkin's side.

He was locked out.

Mr. O'Higgins

I was trying to explain the political difficulty that faced the Minister. He had a majority, conceived in sin, perhaps, of four or five, composed of Deputies Browne, ffrench-O'Carroll, Cowan and Cogan.

Would the Deputy say what this has to do with the Estimate?

Mr. O'Higgins

The charge I am making, regarding the administration of this Department in the last 12 months, is that the Minister indulged in so much play-acting.

This contribution was conceived in sin, if I may say so.

Mr. O'Higgins

I can wait for as long as necessary, to ensure a proper receptive demeanour on the faces of the Minister and others. I want to make this charge in all seriousness. The Minister for Health wanted to placate certain Deputies, Deputies Browne and ffrench-O'Carroll. At the same time, he did not want to cut athwart the low rate campaign being indulged in by Deputy Cogan.

Surely that is not relevant.

Mr. O'Higgins

It is for that reason that the Minister finds himself doing the things I now refer to and for that reason he talked about a free-for-all health scheme. For that reason, he ensured that every local authority in the country would be against it and for that reason he stated to-day that the scheme he was introducing would not be his responsibility but the responsibility of the county councils. He then had achieved a wonderful political miracle. He had got Deputy Browne, Deputy Cowan, Deputy Cogan and Deputy ffrench-O'Carroll to dance the same step like the Royalettes. That is the political miracle the Minister thinks he has achieved.

We can afford to laugh and enjoy ourselves.

Mr. O'Higgins

Unfortunately, more grave issues are involved because the country finds now, at the end of 18 months of administration by this Minister——

The Government were to be beaten on the Health Bill? Did you know that?

Mr. O'Higgins

——that all the great promises made 18 months ago are so many broken words. Everything that was so important when the last election was being fought, when the Government was in the meltingpot, is forgotten, and the Minister has brought in to-day a proposal which recognises existing services and saddles those who thought they were to get a free-for-all health scheme with five different kinds of means tests.

Surely the Bill is not under discussion?

The Deputy is discussing the provisions of the Health Bill.

And if he discusses the Bill, Deputy MacBride might run away again.

Mr. O'Higgins

For these reasons I hold that the record of the Minister, for whom personally we all have a high regard, is amongst the worst ministerial records the House has ever had to investigate. I regret to say of any Minister that he has done nothing, but I am afraid it is true to say it of the present Minister. During the past 18 months people have been sick and have been dying just as they were in June, 1951, and there are still only the same number of maternity beds and the same hospital facilities.

What does that prove? It proves that more maternity beds are needed.

Mr. O'Higgins

There are the same appalling dispensary conditions——

That is not true.

Mr. O'Higgins

I should like to know from the Minister why, instead of all the talk and all the nonsense he has indulged in in the past 12 months, he did not devote his time and the time of his Department to devising some practical solution of the health problems of the country——

You must be asleep.

Mr. O'Higgins

——by pressing on with the hospitalisation drive, by giving better dispensary conditions in rural Ireland and by providing some of the machinery under which the health scheme can operate? Why did he not devote attention to that? If he had done so or had even done something, he would have achieved a very important advance in the past 12 months. In that connection, he can report nothing, and it is astonishing that, in introducing the Estimate, he was so ashamed of his own lack of progress in these months that he had not a single word to say as to why this money should be voted by Dáil Eireann.

Give me five minutes now and I will tell you.

Mr. O'Higgins

I will give you nothing.

He will tell the whole story. You are afraid to hear it now.

Mr. O'Higgins

If the Minister wishes to conclude now, I will give way to him.

The Deputy accuses me of not being serious about this Health Bill. I am serious. I brought it to Second Reading and the reason I got it to Second Reading is that my colleagues are also serious about it. Every colleague in the Government is serious about this Bill and that is why it has reached the Second Stage. My predecessor was serious about his Health Bill, but his colleagues were not, and he never got so far. That is the difference between the two.

There is a big difference between the two Bills also.

It is said that I tried to hold Deputy Cowan and DeputyBrowne — naturally I am delighted to hold them, if I can — because I adopted Deputy Browne's scheme. I said here in introducing my Bill that I was taking exactly the White Paper issued by me in 1947 and following it exactly, having made some changes after meeting the county councils and so on. Deputy O'Higgins has the art of not sticking to the truth. I never said 2/- or 3/- on the local authorities — I said 2/-. The Deputy is able to build up a case by saying 2/- or 3/- when it should be 2/- or 1/6. I said to the local authorities that my estimate was 2/-, but they asked me, every single one of them, to reconsider the matter from the point of view of whether a charge could not be made for hospital attendances.

I agreed because I am a good democrat and Deputy O'Higgins finds fault with me because I agreed. He says I got them to object purposely so that I could do so. I did not, but I listened to them and agreed, and because there is now a reduced sum in relation to central and local authority funds, I say that my estimate is 1/6 in the £ instead of 2/-. That is how that arises.

With regard to the Estimate, it was put down last July. The Dáil adjourned for the Summer Recess without considering the Estimates for certain Departments and mine was one of them. The Dáil very kindly gave us the money to carry on, provided we introduced a £10 token Estimate to give the Dáil an opportunity of discussing the Health Department, and that is what we are discussing to-night. I wonder what Deputies think of the performance by members on the benches opposite. The expenditure of the Department of Health is somewhere about £5,000,000. It has a lot of activities, and the House has heard what Fine Gael had to say about it. Is it not a nice example for anybody coming in to listen to this deliberative Assembly discussing these matters and to hear what the Fine Gael Party, the Opposition in this country, have to say about the Health Department in respect of a full 12 months? Any outsider who came in here and listened to the discussion would go away with a very pooropinion of this Dáil, but I suppose we have to put up with the material we have. We cannot get any better on that side.

We will soon have a better Opposition over here.

Supplementary Estimate agreed to.

Supplementary Estimate reported and agreed to.

The Dáil adjourned at 11.30 p.m., until 10.30 a.m., on Friday, 27th February, 1953.

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