Vol. 138 No. 5
I move:—
That provision shall be made by statute for the making by the Minister for Health of regulations relating to filling material for bedding, cushions, articles of upholstery, toys or similar articles and providing for the imposition of certain charges.
What is the motion?
No. 4 on the Order Paper.
What is it?
"That provision shall be made by statute for the making by the Minister for Health of regulations relating to filling material for bedding, cushions, articles of upholstery, toys or similar articles and providing for the imposition of certain charges."
It has not been moved.
It has been moved by the Minister.
Perhaps the Minister will state what it is about.
I do not know why the Resolution is divided into four parts. Evidently there is some technical reason for it.
This type of Resolution does not appear very often on the Order Paper.
It is rather in the nature of a Resolution imposing a tax.
I am raising the point that this type of Resolution, either in whole or in part, does not appear on the Order Paper very often.I have no doubt that it has some purpose, but we should be told what the purpose of the Resolution is and why it is required. We have been told nothing like that.
The Resolution is moved in order to enable us to issue licences to certain people in business.
The proceedings of the House must have some coherence and meaning. The motion now moved is: "That provision shall be made by statute for the making by the Minister for Health of regulations relating to filling material for bedding, cushions, articles of upholstery, toys or similar articles and providing for the imposition of certain charges." I have not the faintest notion of what all that is about.
It is in the White Paper which has been circulated.
I would suggest that if you went round the House and asked Deputies generally what the meaning of the proposal is, not a single one of them—and I do not exclude the Minister from my catalogue—would know what it meant. All we are asking the Minister is to get up and read his brief. We will understand the brief as well as he understands it, and, when we know what it is about, it will probably prove to be an uncontentious matter.
There was a White Paper circulated which contained an explanation of all these things.
The White Paper has gone a long way from it by this time.
It was circulated in the last session.
Is that a circular letter the Minister has again?
Perhaps I could give a little information about it. Section 53 of the Bill provides for the control of the cleanliness of filling materials used in bedding. Under sub-section (2), paragraph (i) the regulations under the section can provide for the impositionof charges in respect of the grant, retention or renewal of licences or registrations. The amount of any charges under this provision will be specified in the regulations, but no proposals as to their amounts have been formulated, but it appears that, for some technical reason, it is necessary to have this separate Financial Resolution for the purpose.
What is the technical reason?
I do not know.
I have a little better understanding now. It seems that what we are now being asked to do at this late hour and in this rather quick way——
There is no quickness about it.
——is to give the Minister power to make regulations, which will have the authority of law, to give or withhold licences to any particular person or persons, to fix any particular fee for the licence which the Minister desires to fix and to set down for applicants for licences any conditions which the Minister may by Order or regulation make. It seems from the limited information we have at our disposal that this is an Order which is going to affect a very big industry in this country, because there are a great number of people engaged and employed in the manufacturing and assembling of some of the commodities covered by this Resolution. What the House is being asked is to give the Minister authority to make regulations enabling him to give whatever number of licences he may desire to give to whom he may desire to give them and at whatever fee may be fixed by him. I think the House is entitled to a little more information about it. I see that Deputy Briscoe is anxious to give us all that information and I will give way to him.
I have a distinct recollection of reading a White Paper on this matter and it is quite simple to me. Under the Health Bill, it is proposed to protect people in relationto the use of materials in mattress-making which have been gathered from all directions, second hand materials, which would be a danger to health if there was not some control over the fumigation or even the use of this class of material, and, for the purpose of preventing the spread of contagious diseases through the use of second hand materials, that persons engaged in this business will have to submit to control and operate under licence in order that the health side of it will be properly preserved and protected.
There is no doubt that Deputy Briscoe has a much quicker intelligence than I have and it is quite clear that the Deputy has taken a much greater interest in this matter than I have. Apparently he has had information that was not available to any member of the House.
In the White Paper.
I have the White Paper here and it does not give all the details.
On a point of explanation, Sir, Deputy Morrissey has said that I had information which was not made available to any other Deputy. That is untrue.
I did not say any such thing. What I said was that the Deputy had made it appear that he had information about this matter that other people had not got.
Your colleague beside you has it.
If Deputy Briscoe would let me continue, we might get somewhere. He has given us his interpretation of this motion——
Get the White Paper and read it.
If what he says is correct, may I ask why if it is to preserve public health, to see that objectionable matter is not put into mattresses or other bedding, that is not provided for in the ordinary way in a section in the Bill? Why have we to bring in this rather extraordinarysort of Resolution to do it? I think I would be correct in saying that provision has been made in other Bills to meet the point Deputy Briscoe has made, but perhaps there is even more in it than we have heard.
The regulations will be made under the Bill in any case, but, as there is a charge being imposed in the regulations, this Financial Resolution is necessary.
It is in the Health Bill.
I still do not understand why there is a charge.
In respect of the licence.
Deputy Briscoe has purported to explain this motion, about which the Minister seems to be rather doubtful. I take it the position is that this motion was introduced for the purpose of giving the Minister power to intervene in the event of bedding or anything that may be filled with feathers or other material being injurious to health.
That is in the section, not in the motion.
It is not.
It is quite obvious that the Minister cannot personally attend to it. Is it that the health authority, and, by the health authority, I mean the county manager, is empowered under this to enter any house he likes, seize any article of furniture or bedding——
No financial motion would be necessary for that.
Would the Deputy mind allowing me to continue? Is the county manager empowered to enter any house, seize any mattress and ask that it be destroyed? Is that what we are asked to vote for?
Not at all.
I now want to make a further suggestion as to what the purpose of a Financial Resolution is. IfI understand the procedure, the purpose of a Financial Resolution is to enable the Minister to collect into the Exchequer the proceeds of a tax or fee levied and it is apparently the intention to defray the cost of carrying out this inspection of the quality of filling material by the imposition of a licence fee which is hereafter to be determined. This Financial Resolution gives the Minister authority to draw those moneys into the Exchequer and to use them for the general purposes of the Exchequer. That can or cannot be a proviso which has inherent dangers. It can be used very easily, if the licence fee is fixed sufficiently high, to prevent new entrants to the trade, and to create monopolistic practices. I am not so sure that that is not the purpose of this Financial Resolution. There are a couple of old hakes floating around in this business in this country at the present time. They are well established. They have had protection for a long time. It would pay them well to persuade the responsible Minister to fix a fee of 100 guineas for a licence to enter into this trade.
If such a fee were fixed farewell then to competition evermore. I am not so sure that that is not the purpose of this Financial Resolution. I would like the Minister for Health to guarantee that in regard to licences to be issued in connection with the relevant section of the Act and the Financial Resolution we are now considering he would undertake now to make two provisos. The first is that the fee should be a nominal fee or certainly a fee which would not exceed a certain figure leaving himself a discretion within that limit. The second proviso is that the conditions for securing a licence would be uniform for everybody and that once those conditions were laid down anybody conforming to them would have a right to demand a licence as of right.
Every rag dealer is entitled to a licence if he fumigates his stuff.
That is what I want to be sure of. I have seen several cases before where humble people earningtheir livelihood legitimately were told that there was no need for apprehension. Licensing provisions were introduced and they discovered that thereafter their livelihood depended not on their own industry but on the nod of the licensee. There were only very few people entitled to get a licence. I remember a proviso of this nature under another Bill which may be familiar to some Fianna Fáil Deputies. There used to be a time here when any man wanting to deal in sheepskins could do so and make a living. Then a Fellmongers Bill and a Financial Resolution were introduced which provided that the fee collected in respect of licences issued to fellmongers would go to the Treasury. I have no doubt that Deputy Briscoe made comforting noises and said that there were a lot of people selling sheepskins in the country.
I said that?
I said I have no doubt that the Deputy might very well have made comforting noises. His Government was responsible for that Bill. What happened when that Bill had been in operation for a very few years? There were three or four people in Ireland entitled to deal in sheepskins and they were not little people. They were very big people, and nobody now can get a licence, and the people who deal in sheepskins in this country rejoice in the title of fellmongers.
The Minister for Health would not be responsible for that.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce runs that little racket.
You continued to run it for three years while the Coalition Government was in office.
I will move you out in God's good time. What I am determined to ensure now is that the Minister for Health is not preparing to run a rag-pickers' racket.
The Deputy is always talking about rackets.
The name of the FiannaFáil Party evokes the thought of rackets. They have grown fat on them. Let us give the racketeers credit for one thing.
I am giving it to you.
They have never been deficient in loyalty. I would like an assurance that this Financial Resolution is not designed, in the eloquent words of Deputy Briscoe, to establish in this country a rag-pickers' racket on which the Fianna Fáil Party may hope to batten in its declining days.
I am not trying to establish anything.
I know what this Resolution is for. It is for collecting the fees from the rag-pickers' racket.
It is to protect the people against infectious diseases.
I am not so sure of that.
Do not be educating him. He raves away like that on every occasion of a new moon.
I would like to know, for instance, whether cotton wool will be covered by this.
Put it in your ears.
We will need it if we have to listen to this much longer.
A Deputy said I was being personal. I am not being personal. Why does he say I am personal? Is not cotton wool one of the things the Minister has in mind?
To fill mattresses?
Perhaps I am wrong, but does the Minister for Health envisage that cotton wool will be one of the articles covered by this proviso?
If it is filthy, yes, of course.
If it is cotton wool?
Anything.
Deputy Cowan is now discovering that it will be covered.
Anything that is dangerous to health must be covered.
The great danger is that a great many things may be covered that we do not envisage now. Thereafter, the right to deal in these things will be subject to licence and anyone who wants to deal in them will have to pay the licence fee. Do Deputies think it is unreasonable in these circumstances that the Minister at this stage should be asked to say to the House: "I give two guarantees. The fee will be nominal so that it will be within the reach of any man's purse; conditions of a uniform character will be laid down and it shall be open to anybody complying with those conditions to demand a licence as of right?"
I suggest that these are matters about which it is unnecessary to get cross. Common sense and prudence should suggest the desirability of getting the Minister to acknowledge thatprinciple now. If it is not acknowledged now it will never again be in the power of this House to establish that.
Is this the lifebuoy after the shipwreck of the last four days?
I do not know what Deputy Briscoe is talking about. I am talking about furniture and other articles mentioned in this Resolution.
All the trades requested it.
I quite agree. The trade demands it.
