Deputy Corish says that he hopes the local authorities will not filch the 2/6d. They certainly cannot filch this 2/6d. because it has been filched already. It was filched in anticipation the day they put 7d. on the lb. of butter, £1 on the bag of flour and 4d. on the 21b. loaf. That operation saved the treasury £9,000,000 and a great deal of the burden fell on the old age pensioners of this country. They got 1/6d. to compensate them for it. Everybody else in the community got 10/- a week but the old age pensioners got 1/6d. and the small farmers got nothing and now the old age pensioners are to get a further 2/6d. which I do not think is very exciting in the case of old people who have lived substantially on bread, butter and tea and who have now got to pay more for all.
I want now, for it is relevant to the Second Stage of this Bill, to return in somewhat greater detail to a question that I asked the Parliamentary Secretary when he was concluding the debate on his Estimate. This Bill is primarily designed to make adequate provision for old age pensioners. I want to draw the attention of the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary to the fact that it has been publicly stated in Dublin by somebody who professed to be in a position to know that the hospitals of the City are filled with old people who are in fact suffering from malnutrition as a result of their inability to purchase the minimum necessary diet from the resources available to them. I confess that that statement rather shocked me and it occurred to me to ask the question which I did put to the Parliamentary Secretary largely for the purpose of directing public attention to the facts.
As I understand the position, if there is an old person living alone with no family assistance to fall back upon, if he or she has nothing but the old age pension, the local authority has a statutory duty to provide home assistance sufficient to bring that pension up to a level which will enable him or her to live in frugal comfort. If that is not so, I put it to Deputies that we should not sleep abed of night in peace. It would be a shocking thing in a society such as ours, where apparently everybody has a motorcar, that there should be old, destitute people living in our midst hungry because they have not the wherewithal to buy the minimum necessary food and I do not believe there are Deputies on any side of this House who would desire that situation to continue.
I remember pressing the view on a previous occasion that if I were Minister for Social Services I could not rest easy if I did not know the reason for any family in this City being destitute. I do not believe that there is room in our society for a hungry person, hungry through no fault of his or her own. I do not think it is enough to say that, if people are hungry, they ought to forage about until they find the food necessary to assuage their hunger.
When one is dealing with old people, many of whom are perhaps a little mentally afficted or bewildered by the adversity which has come upon them, I think it would be the desire of all of us to go a step further than merely saying that, if they avail of the services that are there, their difficulty can be overcome. I think we would all want to feel that we brought these services effectively within their reach. I do not know how one can do that if one has not got some machinery to find out the answer to why an individual, or a family, in a two-pair back in a street like Dominick Street, is destitute while an individual, or a family, in apparently identical circumstances in a similar two-pair back in another street may be poor but is certainly neither destitute nor hungry.
I certainly cannot rest easy if it be true that there is a constant stream of old people into the hospitals of this city who are brought there as a result of malnutrition arising from destitution. There is no use making high-falutin speeches deploring that such things should be, if one is not prepared to offer some practical suggestion for meeting the problem. I want to suggest now that either through the agency of voluntary bodies, such as the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Legion of Mary, the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers' Society, or, if needs be, through the agency of the Civil Service itself, some system of almoners should be established, so that, if somebody comes to me and says: "I declare that in such-and-such a street in Dublin there are families and old age pensioners destitute, and it is a great scandal", I may be in a position to say: "Now, listen. It is no use standing in the street flapping and saying it is a great scandal and something ought to be done. There is an almoner into whose district that street falls and, if this deplorable state of affairs is a fact, write in to the Department of Social Welfare, or to whatever is the appropriate authority—possibly the Department of Health—and state your problem; they will hand your allegation to the almoner in charge of that district and he will go and visit."
It may be true that there are families here in our midst who, through the ill-health of the parents, because of feeblemindedness or through some other unanticipated complication, are enduring destitution. If that is so, the machinery of the social services will be brought to bear upon their problem and we shall resolve it in that way, and they will not be left in destitution simply because they are not able to fend for themselves.
I remember one time going to the length of persuading the then Minister for Social Welfare to meet a deputation from the Legion of Mary. We would concoct a scheme for a pilot scheme to be instituted in respect of one street, and all we would ask the Department of Social Welfare to do was to provide one room, preferably in the area to be serviced, and a member of the Legion of Mary would undertake the duty of almoner in that area. Then, if I had any problem, if it was reported to me or came to my knowledge that there was a family or an old age pensioner destitute in any room or cottage in that street, I could refer it to the Department of Health, who would refer it to the almoner, who would investigate the case promptly for the purpose of finding out what should be done.
I should like to believe that our social services, costing up to £20,000,000 per annum now, are of a character sufficient to guarantee that destitution will not be suffered to continue in our society. I do not think anybody on any side of this House would calmly accept the proposition that our financial resources are not sufficient to protect our people from destitution. We have all about us the evidence of a prosperous society. I put it to the Minister: can anything be done in the cities? I do not think anything is necessary in rural Ireland. The problem is very much more manageable in rural Ireland. If there are old people or destitute families, neighbours have much more access to them; they know their circumstances and can help them in a way that may not be practicable in urban conditions. Can we take a few areas in Dublin—areas like Meath Street, Marlborough Street —I think Dominick Street is largely pulled down now so the problem is not there any longer—and possibly some of the new housing estates, like Crumlin or West Cabra, and experimentally introduce an almoner into each of these areas, so that, if allegations of this kind are made in future, they can be checked upon promptly?
It is true that cases of destitution do exist. I have had no recent experience in St. Vincent de Paul work in the city of Dublin. I have lived now for a long time in rural Ireland. Some years ago, when I was younger, I was a member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society and I remember that one would find cases in tenement rooms where destitution was very largely due to some familial difficulty, such as simplemindedness on the part of the breadwinner, an incapacity on his part to keep a job, or sometimes some delicacy in a mother which made her, through no real fault of her own, a bad provider. Sometimes you found that there was insobriety which absorbed the family income to the great detriment of the children.
I remember one case I found in which there was real destitution in face of industry and diligence of an admirable kind. She was a widow-woman. Her house was spotless. She was, one might almost say, literally living on the smell of an oil rag. In those days, social services were not as good as they are now and it was very difficult to meet the problem there, though the St. Vincent de Paul Society did their part. But what struck me then was the immense difference that a capacity to meet adversity could make in the circumstances of the family afflicted. And that goes for a family just as it does for the individual old age pensioner.
Where that incapacity to meet adversity results in destitution, then we ought as a society have a duty to come to the aid of those afflicted. If they are not able to help themselves, there should be some sympathetic person who would go to them and say: "Look; your circumstances are such that you ought to sit down now and we will prepare an application to the home assistance officer, or invoke the assistance of the Department of Health or the Department of Social Welfare, and, between all the various resources at our disposal, we shall be able to build up an economic structure for you which will at least ensure that you will not go hungry or cold and that you will have a decent room to live in."
It may be that the suggestion I am making of a district almoner is not the best suggestion. I am simply putting it forward so as not to be in the ridiculous position of saying that something will have to be done, without making any proposal as to what might be done. It might be that my plan would work if given a chance. There may be some other plans which are better, but unless somebody else has a better plan, may I put it to the Minister that this is a problem we ought to face, and that we ought to be able to say with perfectly clear consciences to anyone who professes to know that there is a steady stream of old people into the city hospitals as a result of malnutrition consequent on destitution: "That is not so, or if it is so, it is because social services are not being properly availed of. That constitutes the real problem. We will provide the machinery which will ensure that that failure to avail of social services will not continue any longer."
