It is obvious that the thinking of the Government and of the Minister for Labour as far as disabled persons are concerned is, like the clocks in this House, out of joint. Last week, about the time that I was talking on this matter there was a sightless person proceeding down Dawson Street with a friend. When he knew that he was outside the Mansion House he heard a commotion and asked his friend: "What is all that noise about?" His friend replied: "It is the gathering of the clans. You must have heard about it on the radio. It is the Fianna Fáil Árd-Fheis.""Have they the place decorated?" asked the blind man. "They have," said his friend. "There is a big scroll over the entrance to the conference hall.""And what does it say?" asked the blind man. It says: "To cherish all the children of the nation equally.""What do you feel about that?" asked the friend of the blind man. "I feel," said he, "that I could do no better than repeat what Adlai Stevenson said on a famous occasion, ‘too old to cry and too hurt to laugh'". "To cherish all the children of the nation equally."
Private Members' Business. - Disabled Persons (Employment) Bill, 1967—Second Stage (Resumed).
That is what Taca is doing.
In that legend, hanging there, was writ all the accumulated cynicism which is now represented by the Fianna Fáil Party—the emptiness of promises and the foolishness of people who believe in the meretricious nonsense that pours forth in an unceasing river from this organisation which has had control of this country for so long.
I think that any Government must stand to be judged, and must accept judgment, on the basis of an examination of how it treats the least advantageously-placed of the citizens of the country it governs. By this yardstick, the present Administration must surely, before any tribunal of public opinion, offer no plea to the charge of neglect other than "guilty". Last week, we had the Minister for Labour dilating at some length upon his concern for the disabled and, before him, we had, I think, Deputy Moore. Many months ago, in the spring of the year, when I first introduced this Bill. we had a procession, a somewhat small procession I will admit. one might almost call it a picket, of Fianna Fáil Deputies contributing to the debate and displaying an attitude of mind on this question of the treatment of the disabled which can be summarised only as patronising. The word "charity" was bandied around amongst them. If there is one thing which emerges from life's experience it is this: always distrust a man who talks about charity because the charitable man does not talk about it. But we had that word and we had a lot of explanations on behalf of the disabled as to why they would prefer—this was the proposition —that there should not be any State regulation in matters concerning their employment.
The word "pride" was used. It was reiterated that disabled people are proud people. It was a misuse of English but one knows that what was intended was that they are a dignified people, as every human being is—and they no more, nor would they claim to be, than any other. They have a natural desire to be regarded as what they are, human beings. They have a natural desire for what is mentioned in that document which is framed a few yards down from us in the hall wherein is proclaimed the right of people to equal rights and equal opportunities.
It often strikes me, and I am sure it strikes many others, that these phrases have been reduced to mockery and have been employed simply for the purpose of maintenance in power of privilege and selfishness. This thought is driven home every day in the mind of every person who thinks of the way the disabled people of Ireland are being and have been treated by this Government. I was going to use the cliché of “successive governments” but any governments which have been in existence here since 1932 have been of a very short-lived and temporary nature. We have had almost continuous autocratic single-Party rule since 1932. It may be argued that that has been by consent of the people. It has, of course, been by consent of people misled, persuaded, cajoled, bribed, intimidated and generally led astray by one means or another.
I have glanced through the expensively-produced document which I hold here in my hand and on which the members of the Government Party will have cast an eye during the past week —the clár of the Fianna Fáil Árd-Fheis. I have sought in the clár through every sentence, every clause and every phrase to discover some mention of concern for the disabled of our country. I failed to find, in this glossy, Madison Avenue production, anything to that effect.
Some delegate raised it.
I believe he was expelled from the hall for being disorderly.
It was raised all right. I shall reserve my statement for Dáil Éireann.
You dealt with diplomatic relations with Russia and with failure to make returns to headquarters of national collections.
We are travelling far from the provisions of the Disabled Persons (Employment) Bill, 1967, which is now before the House.
If you have Árd-Fheiseanna, you have these things.
Is that your attitude to the vox populi, to the voice of the people, to brush aside——
Do you have any Árd-Fheiseanna?
We abide by the decisions of our annual Conferences.
I am judging you by the "Late Late Show".
The Minister makes it clear that this is something to keep the boys quiet, that it is merely a masquerade so that they can have a good look and go home and say they were talking to Paddy or to Charlie or to this fellow or that fellow.
They were lucky they were not talking to you.
A good many were talking to me and that is where I got this clár.
And they put Colley on the tree top.
As the Ceann Comhairle so rightly says, we are dealing here with the serious matter of disabled persons and, indeed, with the Bill which I have been trying to persuade the House to accept, to improve their conditions. I merely mention the complete absence of any reference to these the most distressed of our people from the list of matters discussed at what I suppose might be called the "father organisation" of our Government. It might be called that but, of course, it is not. However, we will describe it as such. I notice, too that there was a reference to creating a Fianna Fáil youth organisation, which must have sent shudders down the backs of a few members of the Cabinet. Nothing at all in that and nothing in the Minister's speech last week to give any hope to these people that they could look forward to a better life.
While I criticise what the Fianna Fáil speakers said on the matter, I do thank them individually for contributing to the debate. I thank each and every one of the handful of people who found the time to say a few words about this important question of the treatment of the disabled. Whether they accept my ideas or not is irrelevant in this connection. They showed some concern and in some cases where perhaps they made use of the debate to boast a little bit about their own activities that was forgivable and at least they took the trouble to come in. Of the 140 Members of this House it is a pretty poor reflection of the concern of the Dáil as a whole that only 15 had anything to say. This, too, reflects a general malaise throughout the whole of society and it is not peculiar to Ireland so far as my reading can discover. It is common to Europe that Parliaments or Governments do not seem to want even to talk very much about disabled people or their problems or about plans about how their difficulties can be met. In a way it is a kind of evidence of the growing selfishness which seems to be a concomitant of affluence or the approach of affluence, a disregard for the conditions of other people.
This debate may be summed up as a discussion on the conflict between the principle of organised State regulation of employment to ensure that disabled people will get a living in their own land, in other words, socialism, or the welfare State, between that idea and that of the flagday mentality. I know that every effort will be made to depict me as somebody attacking the voluntary organisations. I want to say that I have no such intention. I know a bit about the voluntary organisations. I have seen some of the work some of them do and I certainly feel a personal debt to such people for the difficulties they face and the courage and tremendous humanity they bring to the job. I am not attacking the voluntary organisations in any shape or form nor will I accept that impeachment from any source, although I know those who are ill-intentioned will try to make this point in their attack on the Bill. In fact, the Minister by inference almost suggested that; he talked about compulsion as against voluntary effort. I am concerned with a principle here, the principle of whether or not society is going to accept its obligation to do what should be done for the most necessitous section of the community or whether we are going to leave that to chance, to goodwill, to use the Minister's word. Goodwill is all right, a wonderful thing, but much more beneficial legislation has been brought into existence by public indignation than by goodwill. One would wish it could be otherwise but the history of every country proves the contrary. It is only when people become incensed at injustice and laws are brought in to prevent that injustice, that some approximation of equity is achieved.
I am not claiming for this Bill that it is going to answer all the problems of disabled people nor do I say that it is within the competence of the human mind to produce laws which will solve every human predicament, nor will it ever be. If such a state of affairs were achievable life would have no meaning whatsoever. We will always be faced with challenges even if we do, eventually, not perhaps in our time, but in times to come, even out all the various economic problems that bedevil our society, we will still have vast and troublesome problems to be solved, problems relating to health, mental illness and the various ills of that nature which will constitute a challenge to be met.
Here we have an immediate problem, a relatively simple one, that of asking whether we should go on with the old haphazard method of letting the night fall, as it were, upon the disabled any way it likes and mouthing platitudes about our concern for them, leaving it to a few well-intentioned people to face what are, in fact, insurmountable odds by establishing homes and workshops and so on and by gathering money by any means which come into their heads and whether we should do so as a conscious act by using the tools of social organisations at hand so readily for us.
Deputy Clinton, in a brief intervention at the start of our discussion, said:
There is not much charity in industry and commerce today, either here or elsewhere, because industry has to compete and it can only compete without raising prices if it gets the same output from the disabled person and gets that output at the same price as from the ordinary fit employee.
Unwittingly or not, Deputy Clinton in that sentence summed up and "kernelised", as it were, the difference of approach which distinguishes those of us here from the rest of Dáil Éireann. We do not consider it is good enough to say that an employer's social responsibility ends with securing an answer to the question: Will this man make money for me or not? That is the bald, naked and cruel stand taken by the apologists for the status quo, for having things as they are; by the “gradualists”, such as the Minister, who say: “Take it easy and voluntary effort will solve everything in the sweet bye and bye”; for those who say: “It is not fair to an employer that he should be compelled by law to take into his employment a person who manifestly will not be able to make as much money for him as an ablebodied man.” This is a man-made concept which has no basis in justice. It is a selfish attitude and absolves completely the individual who has the fortune, and it is largely fortune, to be in the position of having a lot of other human beings working for him. It may be argued, and I have heard it argued on television, where we hear practically every darn thing argued nowadays——
I am sorry I was not here when the Deputy was making his earlier remarks.
I know the Deputy is very assiduous and attentive to his duties and cannot be everywhere at the same time. However, it may very well be he will have the opportunity of hearing me rephrase it at a later stage, if not tonight perhaps later. You have very successfully put me off a fruitful train of thought. I feel very deeply about this superficial notion which has no basis in common humanity. I do not appeal any higher than that. Unlike others, I am not going to quote from Papal Encyclicals, nor am I even going to quote from that dull old ham, Charlie Marx, who is beating all others as a bill-topper in the Montrose Follies.
Does anybody like them at all?
Bedad it appears to me he has friends in the most influential quarters.
The poor Montrose boys.
Not necessarily the Montrose boys, but the guests who appear there.
Could we have an occasional reference to the Bill?
I do not want to be put in the position of castigating any free expression of opinion at Montrose. It is only right that there should be. I am not going to lean on those arguments for what I have to say here. I am basing it upon consideration of pure and simple humanity, which is what I find most abundant around this city. There should be a little thought given by the Minister and others, including possibly Deputy Clinton. However, Deputy Clinton's contribution was not long enough to make it clear how he stands on this proposition I have been attempting to adumbrate: that the sole test of an employer's position or worthiness should not be his ability to employ people out of whom he can make money. To put it another way, if a man or woman is fortunate enough to have a number of other human beings working for him or her—I emphasise "fortunate" because there is a great deal of luck in this game—if such a person has achieved the position of being an employer by his or her own efforts, in the society in which we live it simply means they have been cleverer than other people perhaps. If they are cleverer than other people, it is not of their own creation. They were born that way. It comes to them from countless generations. There is luck in that.
More of them make money simply by speculation, which does not require a great deal of grey matter but invariably requires, it seems, an unlimited supply of ruthlessness and disregard for others. More of them are born with not only silver but golden mink-covered spoons in their mouths—a very unpleasant experience, I am sure, for any infant but nonetheless they seem to get over it. Many of them have accents which clearly betray that that was their origin. However, they come to be in the position of being employers; I am not making any criticism of the fact that they find themselves in that situation. No matter what sort of society we have, we will have the managerial class anyway. It will always be with us. I do not hold with the notion that all they have to do is be what is known as good business men. I have often seen the term "good business man" used to describe somebody who is just slicker than somebody else. This is the stage at which the Government must make their presence felt by saying to employers as a body: "Perhaps conditions have so formed you that you see it as your sole duty and responsibility only to employ people so that they will make money for you, and that you have no other responsibility in life but that." The Government, no matter what Government and no matter in what country, surely should in such circumstances act as the social conscience of the nation and say: "There is more to life than this. The people who are born disabled are entitled to live the same as people who have the good luck to be born with all their faculties. It is not just because we cannot make money out of them that they are to be denied a job." What the Government are saying is: "Let us see if we can persuade those by voluntary effort to take up the tremendous amount of slack that there is in this country in regard to the numbers of disabled people who have no work and who face utter despair." We have all known moments of depression in life: that is human nature. I am sure the Minister for Labour will tell us it is a necessary part of the human make-up that we should. We cannot be high all the time, though judging by the activities of some members of the Government, one would think that not everybody is persuaded of that, but the sensible people believe it.
Let us think of what must face the average person who is disabled, who has no prospect of a job, who is compelled to wear his disablement like a badge, if it is obvious. Every time he goes out, he is seen and known. If he goes looking for a job and there are others offering, it is a sure thing that he will not get it. As for the person whose disability is not apparent, his case may be even worse, because few will have sympathy with him, whether it is a physical disability or a mental one. In fact, it was the common comment of employers until the advent of the great trade union movement that such people were malingerers, until "Jim" came here and taught them the difference.
Look at the despair disabled people face and visualise their reaction when the Government say: "We are going to encourage voluntary effort to get you placed in jobs, but we are not going to take any steps to compel anybody to make vacancies available for you." The Government must be aware that in the Civil Service there are countless jobs of a clerical, semi-clerical or manual nature, which could be filled by people who are, on the face of it, disabled. Surely the Minister could have met me at least half way by saying: "All right; we shall make this progressive step at least." Members of his own Party speaking in the House recommended it to him. I think Deputy de Valera gave favourable mention to the idea of making employment at certain levels in the Civil Service available to a percentage of disabled people. However, the Minister did not say that. What he did say in the course of his intervention last week was that he had set up a committee of a number of prominent people—very worthy people they are, may I say, because I happen to have the fortune to know one or two of them, experts in their field—to investigate this thing. This thing does not need investigation. What investigation is necessary? He set up the committee in May and we are now coming up to Christmas. What revolution would it cause in the Irish Civil Service if you were to give three or five per cent of certain types of jobs to disabled people who would qualify for them? Does this need a committee? For so young a man as the Minister to apply such a brake to a simple idea like this betokens ill for this country. The Minister did not make that offer.
At the moment disabled people get 47/6d a week, after a means test, and that applies to all classes of disabled people, impossible for me to enumerate. The Minister, as a medical man, would be far better able to instance the various forms of disablement than I would. However, looking at a list one gets the impression that the kinds of ailments that can cripple people and make them fall into the category of being disabled are countless. Not the least worrying or troublesome to any social worker would be that of the mentally handicapped, which is a subject the fringe of which we have only touched so far, but happily we seem to be making some progress now in that matter, because we have an excellent man in Dublin in the person of Dr. Ivor Browne; and let me say also in this field we have working a man with a very keen social conscience, of which we in this House have reason to be aware, in Dr. Noel Browne, as well as, of course, Dr. Moore of St. Patrick's, who has a wealth of experience behind him and who is well known as an expert in this field. There is some hope that we are beginning to examine this problem, because no matter what we try to do in our time in the provision of the first essentials, the tools for the job, namely, the provision of proper buildings for the mentally ill, the solution of that appalling social problem is something which, while we would hope to see it, we shall not see in our time. However, with the advance of knowledge and enlightenment, please God, we shall move towards it.
As regards the number of people in this country who are getting 47/6d per week and living on it, it was said in reply to a Dáil Question early this year that there were 18,699 disabled people, and of those, only 161 undergoing rehabilitation. One of the difficulties which those of us who are on health authorities come up against is that we find that deductions are made from this miserable allowance—it cannot be described in any other terms and this is a devalued 47/6d now—when such people are confined to hospital. To my mind that is cheese-paring of a most unworthy kind. However, that is a matter for Social Welfare. We were told that the price of coal has gone up. It has yet to be seen whether this is justified. I want to take every step open to me to get the Minister for Industry and Commerce to go into the matter of whether it is justified.
It has nothing to do with this Bill.
I know that. Please allow me to develop——
The Deputy is developing overmuch I feel. The Chair has been very lenient.
I try to keep within the rules of order. However, let us take this amount of 47/6d paid to the disabled. How do they manage on it? It defies examination. I will say no more than that.
After Deputy Clinton had concluded his kindly contribution we had Deputy Wyse of Cork who said in his first sentence that he agreed with the principle of my proposal and then proceeded to attack the proposal with all the weapons at his command. One of the troubles about politicians, and especially less experienced politicians, is that they have the illusion that they can ride two horses successfully. Unless you are an accomplished circus hand such a feat is impossible, as they will find in time. You cannot be for the principle of a Bill, and be against it at the same time. I notice how skilful they were in the course of the contributions which were made by those members of the Government Party who found themselves in the dilemma that their hearts were, as they say, in the right place, and were persuaded that it was only right and proper that this should be done, and managed by a process of inverted reasoning to twist the whole idea of the Bill into something which was at no time intended.
At column 249, volume 227 of the Official Report of 8th March Deputy Wyse said:
It is like going to a physically handicapped person, who is a very proud person, and saying to him: "Look, it is hopeless; we cannot find employment for you; we will just have to compel an employer to employ you."
I do not know if they order things that way in Cork. We do it with more grace in the capital city. Anyone who would entertain that attitude of mind, let alone use those words to a handicapped person, is not fit to talk to such people. You see how the intention can be twisted just the same, or an effort can be made to twist the intention of the Bill.
Deputy Dr. Gibbons made a very good contribution to the discussion and being a medical man he would have an insight into the problem. At column 258 of the same volume he said:
I indicated my interest in this problem last year when I spoke on the Estimate for the Department of Health. I mentioned that I thought the Government should make a start on employing disabled people and I suggested some of those people should be taken into the Civil Service. I then thought, and I still think, that there are many people rejected for various jobs in the Civil Service because of health conditions, particularly heart and chest conditions, which would not prevent them from working efficiently there.
That is a very useful contribution to the discussion. Was it taken up by the Minister? Again, it was brushed aside. I wonder why does the Minister adopt this attitude? Is it that he has fallen a victim to the dread disease which was so obvious in all his predecessors of thinking that nothing good may appear to come out of Dáil Éireann unless it bears the imprimatur of the Fianna Fáil Party?
I have no predecessor.
The way the Minister is going he will have no successor either. In order to put it on the record that someone was doing roughly the same thing as the Minister is allegedly doing, the Minister for Industry and Commerce could be described as the Minister's predecessor. Is that his attitude, because it seems to be? Over the weekend he even sought to interfere with the rights of trade unions to take steps to ensure that their interests are looked after in Dáil Éireann.
All I said was that I do not question the right of the trade unions.
The Minister went a lot further than that. He threatened all sorts of things concerning Government boards and so on. All he wants is "yes" men. In any event, will the Minister say to me now that he will do this simple thing, I wonder? It is simply a question of making available for disabled people a percentage of employment in suitable jobs in the Civil Service.
As I told the Deputy, the report of that committee is being examined at the moment, but they did not go for a fixed percentage. Certainly the attitude would be to have more employment of disabled persons.
But if you do not go for a fixed percentage the idea would be that you could take on one disabled person and the job would be all right and no more about it.
That is not their attitude.
I know it would not be the attitude of this committee. What I am worried about is the Minister's attitude and the attitude of his more immediate advisers.
The Deputy would be wrong to take that view.
Perhaps I would be wrong in that. I hope I would. I am talking about the Minister's immediate advisers.
I do not think the Deputy need worry about the attitude of any advisers.
I said last week that as far as I knew there were very few blind switchboard operators in the employment of the State. I thought there were half a dozen but I have discovered there are 14 or 16.
I promised to get this information for the Deputy. There are 16 in the Government service and 14 in local authorities. There are 13 in commercial employment and two trained and awaiting placement.
Sixteen in the Government service. Would they be in Dublin?
I have not got that information. Most of them would be.
It is not an important point. There are 16 out of 7,000 blind people. I am not saying all of those 7,000 are trained.
There are only two trained and awaiting placement.
What does that mean?
It means available for employment.
Does the Minister mean that if he had three or four jobs there would not be blind people available to take them up?
That is the information I got.
The Minister is misinformed. That is completely in conflict with what I am told by an authoritative organisation. If you say trained and awaiting a job, of course, the numbers may deliberately be kept down by not training people.
Those are telephonists.
This is ridiculous. If it needs training and it does need a certain amount of training these people are peculiarly adaptable to this kind of work, as the Minister knows, and they make a great success of it. I understand that the total number of blind people is 7,000 and out of that we employ 16 in the Government service as telephonists. It is not good enough. I think we should make a better effort. I am not suggesting there is anything like 7,000 capable of the work but certainly a much better effort than that is called for.
We had some discussion last week on the National Council for the Blind. My information is that those are well-disposed people and some of them, in fact, employ handicapped people themselves which is all to the good and a very excellent thing. I would not want to take anything from it or from anyone entitled to any credit. However, the National Council for the Blind is in a somewhat different position to a trade union for the blind. It is largely composed of people who are in a position to employ others and there is a slight trace of paternalism about their activities. Many people say there is nothing wrong with that but that would not be my view. I mean it is not sufficient just to leave it at that. I am not saying that the National Council for the Blind should be abolished, but it is not sufficient that the whole thing should be left at that stage, a sort of laissez faire attitude, leave it to those people and they will do the job. As time goes on things will improve. As time goes on they will not, they will disimprove.
I want to bring something to the Minister's notice. Up to, I think, four years ago in Britain the placement of blind people in this kind of employment was looked after by a royal society whose functions roughly coincided with those of the National Council for the Blind of Ireland. In over 20 years they placed in employment 2,000 blind people—not a bad effort for a voluntary organisation, quite laudable. However, in the four years since this function of placing blind people in this kind of employment was taken over by the State in Britain, 5,000 people have been placed. That is more than twice the number. Therefore, the argument about the effectiveness of voluntary as against what the Minister chooses to describe as compulsory activity is loaded in favour of the State taking the initiative.
There is an awful lot of codology talked about compulsion. One of the most popular public house discussions is that you cannot compel Irishmen to do what they do not want to do. I think this is a myth. I am not arguing that there should be compulsion, but this idea of compulsion being particularly distasteful to Irish people is not true. Irish people find it just as distasteful as the people of any other country, no more and no less. Compulsion is a dirty word. It is associated with making people do things they do not want to do. As I mentioned previously, if one took out of the whole corpus of law any mention of sanctions how many people would obey the law? How many do so voluntarily? Is there not some form of penalty inherent in every law that is passed—that if it is not observed then the person who does not observe it will, in some way, have his liberty curtailed or suffer financially or otherwise? Is this to be described as compulsion? I do not think that is the proper term to apply to it at all.
In any event, laws which are made are made to meet the wishes of the majority of the people and the majority will, very often, has to be imposed by using means which are loosely described as compulsion, very often unpleasant means. You may find the minority in violent opposition to the will of the majority as has been known in our history. Those who are compelled to obey the law describe the law as compulsion and describe it in derogatory terms. Those who have to implement the law on behalf of the majority of the people invariably describe it as taking the necessary steps to make the law effective. Playing around with this emotional word "compulsion" is really dodging the issue. If there is all that goodwill the Minister was talking about amongst employers, so far as the treatment of the disabled is concerned, it would never be necessary to invoke the law against it, because the number of people, the number of employers who would be affected, in the first instance, by the Bill, would be limited and the number of disabled workers that such employers would be required by law to take on could surely be absorbed by the goodwill, of which the Minister claims there is a wealth floating about so that talking of compulsion versus the moryah of free society which is a laugh, is really very irrelevant and simply shows to me at any rate that the Minister was hard put to get an argument against this Bill of mine.
State interference, of course, is another phrase which was used by Deputy Barrett. You do not hear of private interference. If it is done by private employers, that is initiative or enterprise. All those terms are, as I say, used purely towards an end, the end being to, I do not say consciously, do harm to disabled people. It does in the kind of society in which we live, where some people do extraordinarily well and others do extraordinarily badly. The resistance towards any change in such a society is the provocation for those remarks by people who talk of State interference and such like.
Deputy de Valera in one of his customary long and laboured contributions spoke very much as a lawyer with considerable knowledge of court actions as they related, although he did not mention it, it was obvious to anybody who knows the Deputy, to disabled people. His speech is a very good example of why lawyers as a class should be kept as far away as possible from the areas in which the law is made because they are liable to complicate it and confuse issues because of the very nature of their calling and because of the particular thought they bring to the consideration of any simple question. He said at column 555, volume 227, of the Official Report for 14th March:
This is the great difficulty of the socialistic approach—it hurts so many individuals although it does so much for the community at large.
That to me is one of the best arguments that ever was made in favour of a Bill of this kind or of socialism. Surely the Dáil must be concerned with the community at large. If we are not going to make laws, if we are going to refuse to make laws, because the privileged position of some individuals will be impaired, we have not any right to call ourselves a Parliament and we certainly have not got a right to say that we represent the people of this country.
I know there has not been a great deal of publicity about this Bill nor has there been a great deal of interest shown in it in the House but the basic thing is that if one could consult—I am convinced of this—the ordinary people of Ireland on the merits of this Bill they would be overwhelmingly in favour of it. It is being held up because it is an assault on the citizens' privilege, because it is initially asking, demanding, making it imperative on a privileged group to sacrifice some of their accumulated status and wealth in society for the benefit of the less fortunate.
The Dáil should legislate for the community at large. It is impossible for it to legislate for everybody or to pass legislation which will be acceptable to everybody. No human institution ever succeeded in doing that and despite the efforts of certain noted Members of this House, not even individual TDs have succeeded in doing so, although some of them, God knows, have made fairly valorous attempts at being all things to all men.
Deputy de Valera went on so much that he took up nearly the whole of Private Members' time, which he was entitled to, of course. That is the great beauty of a private Bill. One can talk on it for hours or days or even months. A further interesting remark by Deputy de Valera at column 838, of Wednesday, 15th March, volume 227, of the Official Report was:
If we are going to arrange statutorily that people in a certain category are to get a certain type of employment, percentage-wise or otherwise, this seems to me to be taking the first step towards the regimentation of all labour in industry.
That is one of the strangest arguments I have heard in this discussion against this Bill. Anybody who could possibly think that the employment of a minimum number of disabled people in industry is a first step towards regimentation of workers portrays a most extraordinary mind. At column 840 he says the same thing:
The difficulty is that the acceptance of a proposal of this nature is bound to upset the balance.
We want to upset the balance. Deputy de Valera does not and the Minister does not. We find that the balance is all wrong. The balance is all in favour of the privileged and all against the helpless. He goes on to say:
Compulsorily installing certain people in privileged employment would deprive an industry of the elasticity which is so essential.
The elasticity seems to be interpreted in this context, I have no doubt, as meaning that there should always be a queue outside the gate, as God knows there used to be, or outside every job which the Lord and Master created, specially for the purpose of exploiting other people and giving a right of entitlement, in his own mind, by reason of his birth as a superior being to come out and make his selection. "The elasticity which is so essential"—this elasticity is just a cover word for unemployment and we, of course, have had unemployment as part of our social set-up, part of our economic set-up, since this State was founded.
We never achieved full employment. Even when highly monopolistic capitalists had full employment in time of war, we were not able to achieve it. We were not able to achieve it during the last war. It defeated our economic genius apparently to find employment for our people. That was the war we kept out of, and we sent over half a million people to England, to Coventry, London, and so on, to be bombed to bits to keep John Bull and the factories going.
That was the war we were kept out of: it is a good job we were not in one. Full employment has never yet been achieved, except in those booklets which pour out from the Government presses, green-covered, of course. Naturally they must be covered in green. We get a supply of those. I have said in another place at another time that I wondered how many people read and studied these booklets. How many people read that on full employment? I think the people generally are disenchanted with this long-term, large-scale confidence trick which has been proceeding on the matter of full employment. Full employment has defeated the nimble brains of the Fianna Fáil hierarchy. It will always do so because there is no other organised society in which full employment can be had than a socialist society.
When Deputy de Valera was putting the view that if employers were compelled to take on even a fractional percentage—and that is all I was looking for and am looking for, a fractional percentage of the labour force of those employing 20 people; one-in-twenty should, if suitable, be a person suffering from a disability—he said, amongst other things, that it would be the first step towards the regimentation of all labour. It would upset the balance. The balance of course would be upset as they would rock the boat. The boat is all right for those who are sitting up on the bridge sending the orders down a pipe. It is not so happy for those down in the bowels of the ship who when anything goes wrong with the boat never get out with their lives. They are the first to go to the bottom.
He also went on to say that this modest proposal of mine would deprive an industry of the elasticity which he said is so essential. Most of the contributions, it must be said, if not helpful to my case, were well-intentioned for various reasons; that is, most of the contributions on the Government side. Of course, we had to await the arrival of Deputy Michael Carty complete with cap and bells to reduce this very serious matter to something approaching a joke. Among other things, he accused me of all sorts of Machiavellianism in this matter and claimed inevitably that anything good that ever came to this country came from the perfervid brains of the Fianna Fáil leadership and also insinuated that this proposal of mine was initiated in a far eastern country without identifying geographically its location.
A time there was when that kind of manoeuvring paid electoral dividends in this country but that duty was executed by a master of the technique, to wit, Deputy MacEntee who was well-known as a researcher into the past of the most obscure people. He was able to establish connection and modifications which were truly appalling, but he did it with a certain grace. One can say about him now that at least he was literate.
Literate.
Yes, l-i-t-e-r-a-t-e, and at times admirably so. He had a happy choice of phrase even when he was assassinating your character. I got the idea that he was talking with his tongue in his cheek, but Deputy Carty does not bring this finesse to the exercise. I am sorry he is not here. I wish somebody would send for him.
He has your book no doubt.
If he knew I was beaming on to him he would be down. He is probably not around at all. He knew nothing whatsoever about the Bill. He came charging in here like a bulleen in a china shop and proceeded to talk the greatest ráiméis and triviality for one purpose, to tear the Bill apart. That was last March. It was evident that the Government did not want to be embarrassed at that stage by having to decide whether or not they would vote on the Bill. It was subsequent to the adjournment in March that the Minister set up that committee upon which he now lies so heavily in regard to the employment of disabled civil servants. It was a result, I claim, of the pressure of this Bill that that was done. There have been other instances of similar activities of the Government but I shall not go into them now. Perhaps I shall do so later, when a suitable opportunity offers. I wish to deal with Deputy Carty and I want to resume tomorrow evening on Deputy Carty, and I hope, Sir, he gave you notice of my intention.
Would the Deputy like to have him here?
I am very anxious he should be. I should not like to say behind his back the things which are in my mind now, except that all of the time-wasting performances we have witnessed in this House—and God knows I have suffered in silence here for many years listening to the repetition of boring platitudes and banalities that would bring one almost to tears—Deputy Carty's has ranked very highly in that classification. They say that down in the West of Ireland the people are very charitable, as my Fianna Fáil colleague from County Dublin is wont to remark. They must be, if the kind of thrash Deputy Carty poured out in relation to this Bill is the sort of stuff he trots out to them in his after-Mass talks when he reports on his stewardship in his constituency. If that is the stuff they have to listen to, the people of the west must have a forbearance that passeth all understanding.
I am certain that if the constituents of Deputy Carty knew his real sentiments and had the opportunity of reading them as I have had—as they were reported verbatim in the Official Report—on the matter of the employment of the disabled, they would have things to say to him he might not like to hear. One of his remarks concerning the Labour Party, one of his allegations—and this is the level at which he approached the whole discussion was as follows, reported at column 857 of the Official Report for 15th March, 1967:
They——
meaning the Labour Party——
have no use for the members of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Legion of Mary and the other organisations who have done so much for our people and are doing so much for them—these high-principled men and women who give their time and money to those who are worse off than themselves.
That is the outpouring of the hymn-singing confraternity man.
A hymn-singing hypocrite. It reminds me of the salvationist who came to the little village of Kilmacow, as my old granduncle told me, 80 years ago.
The Deputy is very well preserved.
The salvationist came 80 years ago. He addressed the local people and said: "Everyone has a soul to save, even a wild Irishman." Deputy Carty would seem to be an intellectual brother of that gentleman. He has corralled all of those excellent organisations together and suggested that we as a group, the Labour Party, are opposed to the great work they are doing. I need not say that time and the voters will give him his answer. That sort of stuff might be all right in the west—certain parts of it, because they cannot all be so backward there—but it does not make any impression here. However, he was only killing time.
That is a national past-time.
How could anyone do that?
At the same column, Deputy Carty is reported thus:
We have always, to the best of our ability, endeavoured to help that kind of person.
"That kind of person" being the disabled, Deputy Carty being of the superior element of society who refers to "that kind of person". The disabled person is not regarded by Deputy Carty as his brother in misfortune because, of course, Deputy Carty is not in misfortune. Any effort to help "that kind of person" is like throwing coppers to somebody who is begging. Later, Deputy Carty said:
The employer sees they have certain skills and aptitudes. As far as the employer is concerned, such persons are a better buy.
That is the mentality behind Deputy Carty's offering here.