Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 18 Mar 1970

Vol. 245 No. 4

Committee on Finance. - Vote 47: Social Welfare.

Minister for Social Welfare (Mr. Boland)

I move:—

That a supplementary sum not exceeding £7,542,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1970, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Social Welfare, for certain services administered by that Office, for payments to the Social Insurance Fund, and for sundry grants.

Mar is eol do Theachtaí, glacadh gan díospóireacht le meastachán mo Roinne-se i mí na Samhna seo caite. Tugadh isteach meastachán foirlíontach de £10 chun caoi a thabhairt do Theachtaí cursaí leasa shóisialaigh a phlé. In a theannta san, tá meastachán foirlíontach eile ós ár gcómhair chun íoc as na feabhsanna ins na scéimeanna éagsúla leasa shóisialaigh a fógraíodh i gCáinfhaisnéis 1969.

Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,

Mr. Boland

'Sé méid glan an bunmheastacháin don bhliain 1969-70 ná £51,880,000. Nuair a chuirimíd na meastacháin foirlíontacha leis sin beidh an caiteachas iomlán i ngar do £59½ milliún, 'sé sin méadú de bhreis is £10 milliún i gcomparáid leis an bhliain 1968-69.

Níl an tsuim sin de £59½ milliún atá luaite agam ach an méid a chaitheann an Státchiste ar na seirbhísí leasa shóisialaigh. Tá caiteachas breise as an gCiste Árachais Shóisialaigh, agus nuair a chuirtear é sin san áireamh mar aon le costaisí riaracháin, 'sé méid iomlán an mheastacháin in aghaidh na bliana seo ná tuairim is £92¼ milliún.

Pinsin neamhrannaíocacha seanaoise an seirbhís is mó costais. Meastar go gcosnóidh na pinsin seo beagnach £18 milliún i mbliana. Cosnóidh pinsin rannaíocacha seanaoise breis agus £11 milliún, agus mar sin caithfear breis agus £29 milliún san iomlán ar phinsin seanaoise.

'Siad seo leanas na seirbhísí eile is tábhachtaí ó thaobh caiteachais; sochar míchumais breis agus £14 milliún, pinsin de bhaintrí £12½ milliún, liúntais leanaí breis agus £14 milliún, sochar dífhostaíochta £8 milliún agus cúnamh dífhostaíochta £6¾ milliún.

As Deputies are aware, the current year's Estimate for my Department was adopted without debate in November last. A token Supplementary Estimate for £10 was then introduced to enable a discussion on social welfare matters to take place. There is now a further Supplementary Estimate for £7,542,000 before the House to provide for the extra expenditure arising from the improvements announced in the 1969 Budget Statement and enacted by the Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1969. I think it would be appropriate to deal with the full requirement for the year in the one discussion.

The original Estimate for social welfare for the year 1969-70 was £51,880,000. This represented an increase of £2,572,000 on the total provision, including a Supplementary Estimate of £3,907,000, for the year 1968-69. When we include the additional amount now being sought, total expenditure comes to almost £59½ million, and the increase over last year's figure amounts to more than £10 million.

The figure of £59½ million which I have mentioned represents only the amount which the Exchequer must contribute towards the cost of the social welfare services. When the estimated expenditure from the social insurance fund is taken into account, together with certain costs borne by other Departments in connection with the administration of our services, the total expenditure for the year is expected to be approximately £92¼ million. In addition about £1 million will be spent on benefits under the occupational injuries scheme and about £165,000 on "wet-time" payments. No State grant is payable to the occupational injuries or the "wet-time" funds, and accordingly provision for these services does not require to be made under the Vote for social welfare.

The increased rates of payment announced in last year's budget became effective as from the beginning of August, 1969, in the case of the assistance services and from the beginning of January, 1970, in the case of the insurance services. On the basis of these rates, total expenditure on the social welfare services is now running at an annual rate of almost £102 million.

The increase in expenditure for the current year as compared with 1968-69 is attributable to three factors; first, the additional cost for a full year of the 1968 budget increases which operated only for portion of the year 1968-69: second, the cost in the current year of the 1969 budget increases and third, a continuing upward trend in the number of beneficiaries.

Subhead H—Children's Allowances —shows an increase of over £3½ million, due almost entirely to the increased rates now payable. Under subhead G—Non-Contributory Old Age Pensions—there is an increase of over £2¼ million. Deputies will observe that at £17,920,000 this is the largest item of expenditure among the social welfare services. If we add the cost of contributory old age pensions, which is now estimated at £11,434,000, the total cost of all old age pensions in the current year is seen to be over £29 million. There are about 112,000 non-contributory and 45,000 contributory old age pensioners.

Disability benefit is expected to cost over £14¼ million this year. Apart from the increased rates of payment, there is a continuing upward trend in claims, and this has been aggravated this year by the influenza epidemic.

In the case of widows' and orphans' pensions the cost of the contributory scheme is estimated at approximately £9½ million, and the non-contributory scheme at over £3 million, a total of £12½ million. There are altogether about 68,000 widows in receipt of pensions and the number is increasing year by year.

There is an increase of £542,000 under subhead K — Miscellaneous Grants. This subhead provides for grants to local authorities in respect of school meals, cheap fuel and footwear, for grants to institutions providing services for the blind, and for the cost of free travel, free electricity and free radio and television licences for pensioners. The increase as compared with last year is mainly attributable to an upward revision in the rates of payment to the concerns providing free travel facilities, increased cost of the free electricity scheme and the extension of the period of operation of the cheap fuel scheme. There are also small increases in the provisions for school meals and welfare of the blind.

The provision made under this subhead for welfare of the blind constitutes, in the main, capitation grants paid by my Department to approved institutions for the blind towards the education, maintenance and employment of blind persons in these institutions. One such institution is the Board for the Employment of the Blind, which was set up in 1957 by a former Minister for Social Welfare when the Richmond Institution became unable to continue to operate on behalf of blind workers. Under existing arrangements the board is financed by way of capitation grants from the Department and local authorities together with special contributions paid by local authorities towards the annual working losses of the board. Despite these subventions the board's financial position has given and continues to give increasing cause for anxiety. When this project was initiated it was visualised that subsidies at the original level would not be required indefinitely, but instead they have had to be progressively increased. The matter is one which must give rise to considerable concern in the future unless there is a radical change for the better in the financial results of the board's operations. In this connection Deputies may be interested to know that the number of blind persons employed in the workshops is about 60, or only about two per cent of the blind adults in the State. These 60 or so workers are, in effect, being subsidised to the extent of £42,000 per annum or about £700 per blind worker, in order to keep them in employment. By any standard this must be regarded as comparatively generous treatment of the small section, employed in the workshops, of the total blind population. The members of the board are dedicated men and are deserving of the utmost praise for the time and energy they give, without remunerative reward, to their arduous and sometimes thankless task.

When one realises that in many outside positions blind persons can hold their own in competition with ordinary members of the public without any subsidy, it is somewhat difficult to understand why better results cannot be achieved in these workshops. I would, therefore, appeal to every person connected with the undertaking, no matter in what capacity, to make a special effort to make the board's operations more successful.

The only other significant change in the Estimate for 1969-70 as compared with the previous year is an expected increase of over £5? million in income from employment contributions. This increase is a result of the revision of contribution rates in January, 1969, and again in January, 1970.

I do not think there are any other items calling for comment, but I will, of course, give Deputies any further information they may require.

Mr. Ryan

The principal criticism which we would make of the Estimate is that it is far too small. There is more wealth available in our community for the relief of the under-privileged than is being tapped by the State at present. There is also a readiness on the part of many people in the community to accept a larger burden of the cost of maintaining people of limited means in a decent standard of living. It must therefore fall as well-deserved criticism on the shoulders of the Government that they have not availed of the anxiety which is prevalent in our community to assist the underprivileged to the extent that people are ready to give.

The Government have not yet gathered into the purses of the State for redistribution a great deal of the unnecessary expenditure on high living which is becoming a growing feature in our society. This is because the Government have the view that improvement in social welfare is dependent on economic growth and on an increased national product every year. If this is not forthcoming the social welfare beneficiaries have to wait. If such money is forthcoming it must be siphoned off for less necessary expenditure because there is still the feeling abroad in Government circles that the relief of destitution is something which must only be done when absolutely and demonstrably necessary. There is still too little preparedness on the part of the Minister for Social Welfare to examine in depth the problems of hundreds of thousands of our people who are unable to provide themselves and their families with the standards that are available even to the members of the community who are living on mere pittances and earning much less than the national average wage.

It did not require the report which was published this week in relation to unemployment assistance to demonstrate that the rate of unemployment assistance was only one-third of what the average wage-earner is now getting, but it is a very useful report in that it helps to underline what we in Fine Gael have been saying for so long and it brings into one easily-understood book a great number of the facts which should be affecting the mind and the planning of the Minister.

The Supplementary Estimate of £7.5 million is comparable only to the increase in the cost of living. In fact I suspect the figure is even less than the cost of living but the latest figures are not yet available. That this should be so is an indication that, in fact, rather than improving the standard of social welfare we are at best maintaining it and I suggest we are making it a great deal worse because total State expenditure on social welfare in relation to all State expenditure is falling rather than increasing. I can anticipate the Minister's reply to the debate. He will point out monetary, nominal increases in the levels of benefits, pensions and payments compared with ten years ago.

Fortunately, our society has moved on over that decade. To whom the credit goes is a matter of indifference but what does matter is that our people now have higher standards than those to which our parents were born. It is no answer to be perpetually relating present scales to what applied ten, 20 or 30 years ago, if at the same time you do not point out what is common knowledge: that the standards of living of practically all sections of the community have improved immensely over the same period, and that things once regarded as luxuries and available only to the wealthy are now regarded as necessities of life. Poverty and wealth are related; you cannot deal with either of them in isolation. You cannot determine that a person is wealthy or poor according to statistics produced to ascertain cost of living indices or matters of that kind. These things are relative and must be considered against the background of the society in which people live and not against the impersonal and sometimes inhuman means test.

In his opening statement the Minister made some remarks concerning the Board for the Employment of the Blind. Many people will share with the Minister his regret that the board is not more successful financially. It is important to recite here the readiness, I trust, of all parties not to judge the success or otherwise of the employment of the blind by the financial examination which might be appropriate in other cases. It is true that blind, handicapped people can be as efficient in many activities as, or more efficient than, people who do not have the handicap of blindness. The Minister and others who are concerned with making the board more successful than it has been must look with a critical eye on the appalling relations which exist between the board and the employees.

To say that is not to castigate either one side or the other but, while from time to time we have criticised the Administration and private industry for poor industrial relations, my own experience has been that even the worst industrial relations in State or private concerns are very much better than the relations which exist in that board. In such a situation it is unlikely that any group of employees, whether handicapped or not, will give of their best. I venture to suggest to the Minister that, while I do not doubt that he appropriately praises members of the board for their good intentions, he should most critically examine whether their good intentions have produced the results which he says himself he would like the board to achieve. It is quite clear that the reverse is the position and, that being so, I think the Minister should now seriously consider restructuring the whole administration in that institution in Rathmines. If it is not done soon we may find ourselves in the situation of having to listen to a proposal that the board should close down. That would be a really terrible disaster for the employees of the board and their families.

I know a large number of the workers in Rathmines and I am greatly impressed by their zeal, dedication and anxiety to overcome their handicap, by their readiness to prove that blind people can be as good as, or better than, people who are not blind and I am certainly at a loss to understand why it is this zeal, dedication and application, which blind people have far more than non-handicapped people, do not produce better results. And when they do not produce results I think any reasonable person would look to the management. It seems the management are not above criticism and therefore the Minister must take what, perhaps, for him is a difficult step and decide to reconstruct the board and have new personnel on it including, I would hope, people who are themselves handicapped by blindness and have a real understanding of the problems of the blind.

I have no wish to go into some of the industrial disputes that have taken place but were the Members of the House to be aware of them I think they would be appalled to think that any concern, public or private, could have acted in the Victorian way in which that board have treated their staff within the last couple of years, particularly around Christmas time.

I should like to urge on the Minister that the promotion of the sale of turf or the maintenance of the turf industry is not a function which should be carried out by the Department of Social Welfare. It is desirable, where particular industries are maintained because of their national benefit or because of their social benefit in the area in which they operate, that they should be identified as such.

I think it is wrong that the money of the Department of Social Welfare should be expended in purchasing, for distribution in urban areas, fuel which is extremely costly to handle in the way in which it is handled and which means that a considerable amount of the money used in relation to the scheme does not go to the benefit of the people who need the money most. It is clear, on the figures of the costings of the cheap fuel scheme, that, if the State were to give a fuel voucher to poor people to buy fuel of their own choice or requirement, the beneficiaries would be able to purchase almost twice the amount of fuel for the present cost of the administration of the scheme.

At present, turf is brought to various depots in Dublin and other urban areas, oftentimes in inaccesible places, sometimes in places of ill repute. The result is that a growing number of elderly and poor and invalided people are disinclined to go to these depots. Because the number of people available for the distribution of this fuel is falling, those still remaining in the activity of distributing the fuel from the depot to the pensioners' houses are now charging what sometimes are quite exorbitant rates. This is common practice. We know, I suppose, that the demand for services is great. If the number of people available to perform it are few, then it is understandable that those rendering the service will charge the maximum they can get. Many old age pensioners cannot afford the 2/-, 3/- and 4/- they are sometimes asked to pay for the delivery of the so-called free or cheap fuel.

One also meets the problem, where people move to new housing estates outside the old urban boundaries, that the cheap fuel scheme does not apply. That position arose in Ballymun. The State makes no contribution to the cost of providing heating for old age pensioners because it is provided through central heating. If the cost is borne by anybody other than the pensioners, it falls entirely on the rates. If the scheme is to continue at all, it should be modernised and brought into keeping with the needs of the people. It began as a war-time emergency scheme when it was extremely difficult to get fuel of any kind in urban areas and when it was necessary to ensure at least a minimum of fuel for poorer people. That day has gone. There is little justification for maintaining the system of distribution with all its hardships and all its indignities. I would urge on the Minister to take a radical look at the cheap fuel scheme and to replace it with one in accordance with the modern needs of our people.

The Estimate for the Department of Social Welfare is, I suppose, always a difficult one to criticise. One generally finds that the money sought is all required and that the money is well spent. One fortunate development in recent times has been the readiness of the State to provide services from some of the money expended rather than providing mere monetary payments. This is a very necessary development but one which the Department of Social Welfare is not properly attuned to give. Most of the administrators in social Welfare in this country might just as easily have been administering the affairs of the Land Registry or of the Land Commission or of the Office of Public Works or of a multitude of other State activities. Most of them are in the Department of Social Welfare simply by chance, through the lottery which takes place on entry to the Civil Service which determines in what particular field one is to spend one's life thereafter. This, of course, does not mean that they do not, over the years, acquire skills and experience. They do, of course, acquire skills and experience which they then bring to bear on the problems, as they see them from inside the Department of Social Welfare.

The Department of Social Welfare have all too few operators in the field. They have not got on their staff qualified sociologists. I would not classify these in the same manner as the Minister classified those concerned with the preservation of the amenities of our civilisation as people whose views and theories had little relevance to the requirements of our community. People who study social problems and who work in the field of social and public service deserve to get more attention from the State than they have been getting from the Minister's Department. It is essential, if the Department of Social Welfare is to conduct the kind of improvement in our social services which our times require, that they would have people in the Department who are qualified to carry out the necessary research.

It is very interesting to note that practically all research work in social science and in social services in Ireland in recent times has been done by bodies other than by State bodies. It has been done by people outside the public service. It ought to trouble the Minister's conscience that this is so. It is time the Department of Social Welfare got away from accepting their passive role in the distribution of monetary benefits. It is time the Minister for Social Welfare refused to accept that the various pension schemes and benefit schemes we now have are acceptable because they are a growth of schemes introduced ten, 20 or 50 years ago. They need to be studied in depth. If they are studied in depth I believe that in many cases they will be found wanting. It is quite possible that, if the necessary studies are carried out and new methods tried, there could be a considerable saving to the State, a saving which we would be anxious to see used for the purpose of giving greater benefit to those in real need. If the Minister would give us an assurance that he would be prepared to recruit qualified sociologists and carry out this necessary research, I believe the country would applaud him and would look forward with some confidence to some real improvement in the social needs of our people.

At the present time, we merely guess at the needs of our people. Politicians and civil servants are not necessarily the people who are always right when they guess the needs of the under-privileged in our community. We need to get closer to the people to understand their problems and real difficulties and then to tailor our social welfare services to their known present-day requirements and not to requirements which were valid, urgent and compelling 50 years ago and which have little relevance to the anxieties and requirements of the present day.

Dr. Browne

Twenty years ago, when I was in charge of the Department of Health, one of the things I did was to go around the county homes of the country to look at the conditions under which people lived in them. I confess to having been so shocked by the appalling conditions in the majority of those places I visited that eventually I persuaded the then Government to set up an inter-Departmental committee which made recommendations in 1950-51 in regard to some of those county homes. I think the repercussions have been that limited improvements have been made in some of them as a result of those recommendations. Conditions in some of them were quite indescribable. I will not bother the House with it now because it is not my particular concern tonight.

I am concerned still about the way we discharge our responsibilities to the old people in our society, the way we fail to discharge our responsibilities to the aged poor. It is probably the most shocking of all the many failures to which we must confess, taking the whole spectrum of our society, taking the whole ambit of our activities since the State was founded 50 years ago. I have no doubt the Minister will tell me, as he did when making his apologia for our failure to provide housing for our people when he was replying to the Estimate for the Department of Local Government, that the money is not there, that other countries are wealthier.

If the Minister were seriously concerned by the magnitude of our failure he would begin to examine seriously the reasons why a society such as ours finds it cannot feed its hungry aged poor. I have said before, and the Minister can contradict me when I say it again, that I believe the old person living on the non-contributory old age pension if he does not die of hunger in Ireland certainly he dies hungry. That is a scandalous admission, and I do not care whether it is one old person, 100 or 1,000. I ask the Minister could he himself or would he expect anybody belonging to him to live on the old age pension which he now pays to old people, with living costs at the level they are at.

He knows quite well. In his closing speech on the Local Government Estimate he jeered at the socialist Government in Britain as he called it, and their housing record in London. There is a conservative council in London, but I will let that pass. The point is that the socialist Government there provide for old people in a way which we have grossly failed to do here, and the socialist Government in England are one of the most backward of the socialist Governments in Europe and the British social services are among the most backward in the whole of western Europe. Yet our social services are worse than the British and a shame to what purports to be a Christian community.

I have often referred to the decline in the concern which the Fianna Fáil Party had, in the loyalty they had to the underprivileged in the 1930s, when I believe—I have said it many times— they were easily the highest and the best in the country. That is my case: they are less and less concerned for the provision of better health, better education, better housing, better care for the aged. That is particularly well borne out by the fact that in 1959-60 Government expenditure on social welfare was nearly 20 per cent, but in 1969-70 the provisional figure is 14.3 per cent. The Government, the Fianna Fáil Party, have deserted this sector of the community. In here at periodic intervals they have increased a pittance by a pittance but at all times leaving the aged poor underprivileged, undercared for, a very uneasy, neglected sector of our society. Nobody could live, nobody could survive on the £3 or £4 a week given to old people.

I think the Minister must understand that what has to be provided for the old people is not simply the old age pension thrown at them once a week to keep them quiet. He must realise that he must reorganise his whole conception of his responsibility, of our responsibility, to the old people. It is not simply a matter of throwing them a pittance pension and expecting them to get by on it with the so-called free fuel scheme. There is a whole range of services needed.

As Deputy Ryan pointed out, there are services which are provided now in most advanced European societies for the care of the aged, particularly in the socialist Scandinavian countries —socialist in their own way—who are far ahead of the British and, of course, of us. I am sure the Minister has read frequently the reports of the heads of psychiatric hospitals who point out that one of their problems, their biggest problems, is that old people are certified as being insane in order to get them somewhere, in order to get them into psychiatric hospitals when, in fact, the problem is one of two things—there is not proper home accommodation for old people available in the community, there is not enough of it, or, alternatively, no serious attempt is made by the Departments of Social Welfare and Health to provide services in the home which would help the old person to remain in the home and so get by on this miserable pension.

Some people take the view that the younger generation are not prepared to care for their old people. Generally speaking, I think that is not true. One of the repercussions of the economic failure of successive Governments in the last half century has been the continuous emigration of middle-aged people leaving us a grossly distorted society in which there are the very young and then a very high proportion, related to the wage-earners, of old people who have to be carried by a relatively small number of taxpayers, ratepayers and so on.

This, again, is one of the consequences of the failure of the social and economic policies of the Government. It is not an act of God as the Government and the Minister know. There is no good in the Minister saying that he would like to double the old age pension but that it would cost so much to do so. When there is failure, because of economic policies, to provide for these old people it must be then accepted that there must be a change. The demonstrable truth of the failures I have cited is a drop in Government expenditure on social welfare funds of nearly 5 per cent during the last ten years.

Young people would be prepared to take care of their aged parents if they could manage to do so but we all know that too many of our families, working-class families and white collar workers also, are living in overcrowded conditions. Many of them are living in flats in which up to now there was no provision for keeping old people in that community.

An Ceann Comhairle

That question does not arise on this Estimate.

Dr. Browne

If such provisions had been made it would be possible for children to care for their aged parents with the help of services to be provided by the Minister. I should like to ask the Minister what he proposes to do about bringing the necessary services into being within the community as rapidly as possible.

Looking at the matter even from the mercenary point of view, it costs the Department from £12 to £14 per week to keep an old person in an institution whether it be an institution directly intended for the geriatric type patient or the old person misplaced in a psychiatric hospital. From the humane and economic point of view it would make sense for the Minister to establish services at such a level as is found in other advanced European societies.

I should be glad if the Minister would consider the provision of these services. It is quite obvious that there is a need for a national council for the aged, some sort of a co-ordinated organisation whose function it would be to try to find out as much as possible about the extent of the neglect of the aged in our community both in the cities and in rural Ireland. The function of such an organisation should be to establish the various services now accepted as common form in most European countries, to provide specially designed accommodation in all local authority type house planning systems, the provision of wardens for the supervision of the known aged people in those housing areas, the provision of services for these old people of which the obvious ones are medical care and nursing care so that they would not have to travel to dispensaries where they have to wait in the cold. Such an organisation could also provide for special laundry services. They could also provide emergency funds as well as providing domestic help so that these people would be catered for as they become more and more decrepit or immobilised by progressive old age. Provision could also be made by such an organisation for visiting the old and ensuring that they do not feel completely neglected and forgotten in our society. Of course, the provision of hot meals on wheels is another obvious need in our community.

The Minister should also consider the establishment of day centres where an old person, instead of sitting alone, can spend some time during the day, where he will be provided with a hot meal and where he is helped to pass the time by various forms of diversionary activities in the company of other old people. There should be proper assessment units where medical doctors could decide on the need of each individual over the age of 65.

An Ceann Comhairle

That would be a matter for another Minister. It would arise under the Estimate for the Department of Health.

Dr. Browne

I accept the Chair's ruling. One of our difficulties is that there is an overlapping of functions as between the Minister for Health and the Minister for Social Welfare. Indeed, it is very difficult to know on which Estimate to speak about this particular subject. I understand an attempt is to be made to co-ordinate the services of the three Departments —Local Government, Health and Social Welfare—but nobody seems to know yet which Minister will be answerable for the different services that will be made available. There is a need for much research into this whole problem of the aged. It is particularly badly needed in our society because it is a disproportionately large problem here by virtue of the fact that so many of our young people must get out of the country.

One of the best services—it is the type of service which I have in mind —is that provided in the north of England, in Nottingham, by Dr. Mac-Millan. It is based on the old wartime warden system whereby an old person in need of help signifies this by putting a disc in the window and thereafter anything up to 25 different facilities, amenities or services can be put at his disposal. The systems are not uniformly good in Britain but that, as far as I can gather, is one of the best. It probably would repay the Minister well, if he is sufficiently interested in it, to see how this problem is dealt with in other countries.

One of the repercussions of easy access to the chronic hospital, the long-stay hospital, whether it is a psychiatric or a general hospital, is chronic invalidism and earlier death than is necessary. This chronic invalidism results in a long-term demand on the funds of the Minister's Department. If the Minister could establish proper assessment units in different forms of rehabilitation care units it is possible to reduce the degree of chronic invalidism arising in this type of case and it is possible to send anything up to 50 per cent at times of these people back into society again. I think it is generally true to say that once an old person goes into one of our hospitals or homes he tends to stay there.

There is little or no serious public opinion on this whole problem. It would be the function of a national council for the aged, if the Minister chooses to establish one, to try to create a public interest by the establishment of local councils for the aged which would look after this. There is only one that I am aware of—the Kilkenny scheme by Bishop Birch— which seems to me to be a kind of prototype of a scheme which might, with adaptation, be applied in Dublin. On the whole in Dublin we have failed to deal with this problem in the way in which it should be dealt with.

It should be possible for the social services in St. Kevin's and various geriatric centres which treat old people to work through boarding-out schemes where an old person could be boarded out in a private home with, say, a widow with a spare bedroom or two, anything rather than sending them to hospital because of the rapid deterioration which takes place I am afraid in the majority of our institutions. Once an old person goes in he tends to deteriorate and die rapidly, certainly deteriorate into a chronic invalid.

I wish the Minister would try to understand that coming in here and going to elections proclaiming from time to time that we will increase the old age pension by 5/-, 7/6d or 10/-is not answering the needs of the old people in our community. He is fooling himself completely if he thinks that by providing £3 or £4 a week in a society such as ours with the cost of living at such a high level, he is discharging our responsibility—it is not his alone— as a Christian community to the old people in our society. It has become a very much more complex problem now. It is not 5/-, 7/6d or 10/- that matters. It is various services which are needed by old people, to be provided for them in the home through the interaction of various voluntary organisations, some of which work under great difficulty and do good work, and the local authority— medical, nursing and geriatric services of one kind or another.

The Minister should be given credit for the fact that in his other capacity as Minister for Local Government he created an interest in the problem of the itinerants and, more than that, he mobilised public support among local authorities and voluntary organisations for the itinerants and some attempt is being made to deal with them. This is a very much greater problem and a very much more costly one but if he would show anything like the same energy and interest in it I am certain he would find the same concern, interest and, above all, compassion for these unfortunate people who are, unlike the unemployed who can emigrate, prisoners of our society. They are past emigrating. They are past running away, as do our unfortunate unemployed, to the British welfare society to be fed and clothed, cared for and housed in sickness and old age in Britain. These old people simply cannot get away from the cruel indifference to their plight of the society which we have created here in the past 50 years.

The question of widows' and orphans' pensions is one which we have dealt with in a very mean and niggardly way. It must be clear to everybody that it is bad enough to lose one's husband without having to find that one is then expected to try to provide a level of services after his death and that the only way open is by going to work, if one knows of any skilled work, or the other appalling choice of putting children into an institution.

Again, we have this extraordinary attitude towards institutions. We are prepared to pay £5, £10, £15, or whatever it may be for an old person in a home and we are prepared to pay a somewhat lower sum to keep a child in an institution but we are not prepared to pay a widow enough money to keep her family together and to remain in the home herself. I have very strong views on this need for the mother in the home. The family which loses the father, the breadwinner, suffer gravely, not only materially in the obvious way of lowered income and lowered standard of living, but also suffer emotionally because the loss of one parent in any family is a very serious emotional and traumatic experience. In those circumstances it is imperative that the remaining parent, the mother, should not be forced to go out to work. She should be helped to retain the vestige of the family unit on which our Constitution is based.

We do not, I believe, by the niggardly and mean pension we pay to widows and their orphans make it possible for them to remain at home and to try and provide the vestige of a family life for their families. If the widow is to try to maintain nutritional levels for her children as well as clothing, educational and medical needs of one kind or another, or drugs of one kind or another, she is almost invariably forced to go out to work, if she can get it. The widow's pension should be one which makes it possible for her above all to keep the family together. Widows are a special responsibility of any community and I do not think we discharge this responsibility in the way I consider we should do so.

I can never understand why we find it so easy to pay for the child going to an institution; this may be a considerable sum if there are three or four children going to different institutions, the boys going to one and the girls to another. From the emotional point of view this is very destructive and very damaging to those children and above all to the mother. In fact, we pay for the breaking up of the family, we facilitate that, but we will not provide money at a level which would make it possible for the mother to keep her children in the home. Widows' pensions are grossly inadequate and should be on a very much more generous level. I hope the Minister will not give me the reply that we are a poor country. That is not true. We are a relatively wealthy country. It is simply a fact that the wealth is maldistributed. It is simply a fact that the three basic needs for the creation of wealth, land, labour and capital, are not used to the optimum in order to create the necessary wealth to provide for those people, whether it is the old age pensioner, the services I have mentioned or the widow and her children.

It is no good the Minister shedding crocodile tears about what he would like to do. There are plenty of agricultural based communities like our own, such as the Scandinavian countries, New Zealand, and various other countries which have solved this problem of providing for the dependent classes in their societies. It is true most of them use socialist methods in order to achieve this objective but the Minister has to decide between which is the greater scandal, an organisation or a society organised on social lines or hungry old people, hungry widows and their orphan children. Which is the greater scandal? Which is the greater crime? Which is the greater sin?

I support Deputy Ryan's criticism of the blind workshop. There appear to be very bad relationship between the management and the employees. I know the institution. The extraordinary thing about it is the work is very beautiful. It is basket work mostly but furniture of different kinds is also produced in this factory. I cannot for the life of me see why it appears to be run at the loss at which the Minister says it is being run. Surely this is a problem which should be looked into by efficiency experts in his Department in order to find out if it is a fact that they are producing something nobody wants. The work is beautiful but if nobody wants it then why do they go on providing it? What is the reason that this business is being run at such a loss?

I would like to ask the Minister in relation to the provision of free electricity if he would be less demanding in the conditions under which this scheme is made available to old people. I know of sons and daughters who care for their aged parents and as far as I can gather under this scheme the income of those wage-earners will be taken into consideration in assessing eligibility. They should be helped to keep the old people in society. It is difficult for parents with five or six children living in a two- or three-roomed flat to accommodate elderly people in such overcrowded conditions. Every possible facility should be given to a daughter or son who attempts to keep an old person at home in order to help in this humane and fundamentally Christian act. They should be given free electricity, free fuel and help with the rent. The old people should also be taken to day centres and returned home in the evening. There are various ways of reducing the burden which old parents can be on an already over-burdened working class family. If the Minister were to provide these services, in addition to whatever pension he wants to give them, he would find that our geriatric hospitals, no matter how big they are, would not be filled as soon as they are opened.

I realise these suggestions are not a modern way or a revolutionary way of dealing with the problem because, in fact, they are already practised in many other countries, but if the Minister adopted these suggestions there would be less need for him to provide these very costly institutions, some of which have been adapted from old county homes and others from TB institutions, and it would also save him the considerable cost of capitation payments which he has to make to local authorities in order to keep these people in the institutions. Above all, I would ask the Minister, in the name of common humanity, to look into the problem of the aged in the city of Dublin. This problem has been wantonly and shamefully neglected by successive Governments since the formation of the State and it is about time the Minister did something to remedy the situation.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): I do not propose to take up the time of the House for very long on this Estimate but I do regard this as a very important Estimate which should not be allowed to pass without appropriate comment. The first thing that strikes me is that the gap between the income of what one might describe as the social welfare classes and the better off classes is rapidly widening instead of narrowing. The object of any Government, with an appropriate social conscience, should be to improve the lot of the people who cannot look after themselves, or cannot help themselves until they are brought into line with people who are employed or are in receipt of incomes from other sources. This, I think, we are failing to do. We are failing very badly to discharge our obligations to the aged, the sick, the infirm and the people who, for one reason or another, are in no position to look after themselves. The more affluent our society becomes the further these classes are allowed to lag behind. Whether the economy justifies an affluent society or not is another question but there is no doubt that there are many people in this country at present living in a state of considerable affluence. One has only to see how money is spent on luxuries of one kind or another in order to realise that the people who are able to fend for themselves are getting on all right whereas the social welfare classes and State pensioners—I know State pensioners do not come within this Estimate—fall behind.

The tendency in the schemes for free fuel, free radio and free electric light—worthy schemes as they are— seems to be to encourage old people to live alone. Perhaps I would be more correct in saying they discourage young people from looking after their aged relatives. A person over 70 years of age only qualifies for a free radio or television licence if he lives alone or in the company of another old person. Likewise, a person only qualifies for a free supply of electric light if he lives alone. I appreciate that if the scheme were extended to cover old people living with their relatives it might be abused but I do not think it is beyond the capacity of the Minister or his advisers to devise a scheme under which the abuses would be negligible. Concessions should be given for the allocation of free radio and television licences, free electric light and free travel for old people living with immediate relatives. It is very desirable that young people be encouraged to look after and provide for their elderly relatives yet it appears that every scheme introduced by the Minister's Department is going in the opposite direction. At present when a young person relieves the State of the burden of looking after an elderly relative he is not given recognition for doing so and he is not given any grant or help in providing for them. If we extended these schemes we would be doing two things. We would be encouraging the retention of family units and relieving the State of the cost of providing for these people, as Deputy Dr. Browne has said, in homes for the elderly.

It is appropriate at this time to repeat a plea I made last year or the year before in respect of non-contributory old age pensioners who wish to go to reside with sons and daughters across the sea. As the regulations are operated at the moment a non-contributory old age pensioner who goes to reside with a son or daughter in England or America must do so as a pauper; the non-contributory old age pension ceases. That is wrong. As there are reciprocal arrangements between Great Britain and this country and between other countries and this country the old age pension should be continued if the pensioner is living with a son or daughter abroad. An old age pensioner may have reared a family and may be left alone here because for one reason or another the family has been forced to emigrate. In such cases, the pensioner who goes to live with a member of the family abroad should continue to receive the non-contributory old age pension.

This is a problem which I imagine the Parliamentary Secretary must meet quite frequently because there is considerable emigration from his constituency, as there is from many constituencies. Particularly in the case of Great Britain it should be quite easy to check for the purpose of confirming that the pensioner has not won the sweep or the pools, because that is the only source of income they would be likely to have. They must be over 70 years of age to qualify for the pension and it is unlikely that they would be engaged in gainful employment.

Such a scheme as I have recommended would not cost the State anything. In quite a few cases it might relieve the State of the burden of maintaining these people in homes for the elderly, county homes or public institutions of one sort or another. It is a source of anxiety to old persons not to be able to make some contribution towards their maintenance when they go to reside with their kith and kin abroad.

I would appeal to the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary to review the regulations and to ensure that they are operated in such a way that elderly persons can qualify for non-contributory pension while resident abroad. At present there are reciprocal arrangements with regard to unemployment payments and sickness benefit. Why not extend them to the non-contributory old age pension even if it would be one way traffic?

It should be a simple matter to make an arrangement whereby the British Ministry of Pensions would check the position of the pensioners. Even if that were not possible, if the Minister's conscience compelled him to do so, there would be no objection to the appointment of, say, two roving inspectors who would visit the elderly persons and check that they had not won the sweep or the pools.

I should like to deal now with the question of deserted wives. I realise that if I were to advocate an amendment of the law to provide pensions for deserted wives I would, quite properly, be ruled out of order by you. Therefore, I do not propose to do that. I do say, however, that under existing law the Minister has ample power, if he wishes to do so, to relax somewhat the regulations governing the payment of the widow's pension. Most Deputies have come across cases where a woman has not seen or heard of her husband for 20, 25 or 30 years, where her efforts through the Garda Síochána or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children have failed to trace him. In these cases the Minister is quite entitled under existing regulations to regard the husband as dead and to regard the woman as entitled to the widow's pension.

Under Acts governing the issue of grant of probate and such things it is a comparatively simple matter to get an order from the court presuming death. I do not know whether or not it is still the law but it used to be the case that if a man had not been seen or heard of for seven years, his death could be presumed. Some of the husbands that I am speaking about have not been heard of since the last war. Their wives have had to bring up their children in their absence. These women should qualify for the widow's pension. At the moment, practically speaking, nothing short of a death certificate will satisfy the Minister for Social Welfare in this type of case. I have a case where a man who, if he were alive, would be about 80 years of age, would not be regarded as dead for the purpose of the non-contributory widow's pension by the Minister for Social Welfare unless a death certificate was produced. Eventually a death certificate of a person of the same name was produced and the Minister accepted it.

The Minister should exercise the discretion which I think he has under existing law to presume death where a man has not been heard of by his wife and where the efforts of the Garda Síochána or other police forces or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children have failed to locate him. His death should be presumed and his wife should be entitled to the widow's pension. There are cases of very severe hardship, of women being forced to work when they are not fit to do so or existing on home assistance from local health authorities. That is not good enough. All Deputies know about this problem. The Department of Social Welfare can be relied upon to see that abuses will not take place and there are the Garda Síochána and other bodies to assist in investigation.

Another matter that is causing some trouble at the moment is the question of Garda widows who are in receipt of the non-contributory widow's pension. The fact that they are in receipt of a non-contributory widow's pension or a non-contributory old age pension is not any creditable reflection on the amount of the Garda widows' pension they receive. Nevertheless, when the Garda widow's pension is increased by some paltry amount the non-contributory widow's or old age pension is reduced. Very often it is reduced retrospectively and the Garda widow is blamed, if you do not mind, or faulted in some way, because she did not draw the attention of the Department of Social Welfare to the fact that her Garda widow's pension had been increased. She is then called upon to pay the amount she is alleged to have been receiving for, perhaps, 20 or 30 weeks in excess of the proper amount.

Those paltry increases should be ignored. If a woman is entitled to a Garda pension and a non-contributory widow's or old age pension, and if the Department insist on reducing the social welfare pension immediately the other pension is increased, it should not be beyond the capacity of the Department to have some special mark on her file which would immediately identify her as a Garda widow. If they insist on this miserable practice, which I do not think they should, the non-contributory pension should be automatically reduced so that they would not be saying after six months to this unfortunate woman: "You received £20 or £26 more than you should have and we are now going to recover it from you and not only reduce your pension to what you should have been getting but also reduce it still further to recoup ourselves for the amount you have been receiving in excess of the amount you were entitled to."

When a person in receipt of a non-contributory pension, whether it is an old age pension or a widow's pension, lets land practically the very last penny she receives in rent from that land is regarded as net income and her means are assessed accordingly. Sufficient allowance is not made for the maintenance of the land, for attention to the land, or for management of the land. Apparently the Department consider that you can drain and drag the last penny out of the land by way of rent and put nothing back into it and that is that. That is wrong. A more generous allowance should be made to these people who let land.

I approve of the recent amended scheme under which allowance is made to an old age pensioner in respect of a female relative who is looking after him or her. That is a good scheme. From what I have seen so far it is being operated in a reasonable manner. Of course, until it was amended recently by the abolition of the employment provision and the insurance contribution provision in the former scheme it was absolutely useless. It was non-existent. It was there on paper only. As the Minister disclosed in answer to Parliamentary questions, the number of people who reaped any benefit from it was negligible.

Since the scheme was extended to include female relatives who never worked or who were never in insurable employment, it has become worth while. To give credit where credit is due, it has been operated in a reasonable way and let us hope it will continue to be so operated because that is the type of encouragement which should be given to relatives to look after old people, their parents and others. If that example were followed in other schemes we would have a happier elderly community. We would have elderly people looked after by their own and there would be a considerable saving to the State.

I agree with the Minister that it is unfortunate that his Estimate is dealt with piecemeal over the year. Apparently the principal Estimate was adopted on 1st November last without a debate. A token Estimate for £10 was taken later on and now we are dealing with a Supplementary Estimate which is expected to be passed within a matter of hours on the eve of the Easter recess. The business of this House should be so arranged that it would not be necessary for the Estimate for the Department of Social Welfare to be passed without any debate as was done in the case of the main Estimate this year. We are now dealing with this very substantial Supplementary Estimate and we are expected to deal with it in a matter of hours. lumped in with a number of other Estimates.

Indeed, it is no wonder that the newspapers feel obliged from time to time to criticise this House for being engaged in what might appear to be the valueless exercise of discussing expenditure after the money has been spent. This cannot go on indefinitely. We must try to devise some ways and means of dealing with these Estimates and having a proper discussion on the activities of the Departments at least once in the year, at a time when the current year's problems, expenditure and requirements are fresh in everyone's mind.

Dr. O'Connell

I do not intend to delay the House unnecessarily on this Supplementary Estimate. Like Deputy Fitzpatrick, I feel it is a futile exercise to discuss money which has already been spent. It seems as if we are just a debating society. However, there are some points I should like to raise in relation to our social welfare services which I maintain are the lowest in Europe. There was a reference last week, by the Economic and Research Institute I think, to the effect that our social welfare allowances are very low and far below what is desirable for our infirm and sick. This is evidence that there is something radically wrong with our social welfare system.

When a person becomes ill it is important that he should have an adequate allowance to provide for him during those trying times when there are increasing demands on his meagre resources. We should not expect a person who becomes ill through no fault of his own to try to subsist on such a small social welfare allowance. I should like to bring to the Minister's attention the problems of these people who become ill. These are the ordinary working people who have no money whatsoever. Their wages are barely sufficient. They become ill and for the first three days they get nothing, while there are demands for medicines, doctor's fees and extra nourishment perhaps. When the certificates are submitted they are lost; no one knows where they are. These are not isolated instances. It is a frequent occurrence with the Department of Social Welfare that certificates are lost. The person has no redress; he must wait for weeks and must provide for himself while he is ill. The Parliamentary Secretary will agree that there is need for streamlining this Department which is perhaps one of the worst Departments of all. There is an inadequate telephone service in the Department. It is forever engaged and when people try to phone up about their certificates they can never get an answer. It is a constant problem. I find it a most frustrating job to phone up on behalf of poor people who have received no cheques.

Mr. Geoghegan

A question was tabled in the Dáil only last week and replied to in connection with that. A new switchboard has been ordered and it will take about six weeks more to get it. Nothing can be done about it at the moment.

Dr. O'Connell

I appreciate what the Parliamentary Secretary has done and is trying to do in the face of tremendous difficulties. I have discussed this with him before and he is to be congratulated on the efforts he is making. However, I cannot but condemn what has been happening in relation to the Department of Social Welfare. People who are ill or infirm, who are dependent on this meagre allowance, have tremendous difficulty in this regard, and I must bring their problems to the attention of the House and put them on the record.

I am annoyed and irritated by the fact that when the Minister was asked if he would try to make calculations as to what it would cost to bring our social welfare benefits into line with our neighbouring countries, he said it could not be done. If we are seriously considering entering the Common Market this must be done; we must find out what it will cost this country to provide social welfare services on a par with the services in those countries. I hope the Government will pay attention to the recommendations made last week by the Economic Research Institute. I should very much like to know what they intend to do about those recommendations, if they will accept them or in what way will they improve our social welfare services? I presume—I do not know— the Parliamentary Secretary has control over this Department. Certainly to have the one Minister dealing with social welfare and also with our very acute housing problem is too much for one man. I should like to see a Minister for this Department alone. This is one Department that needs a separate Minister.

I wish to draw the attention of the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary to the question of the non-contributory old age pensioner who often finds that, when one member of the family gets an increase in salary, thus bringing about an improvement in the household circumstances, his pension is reduced. It is also common that where an increase is provided for an old age pensioner the rent of his council house goes up. The same Minister who provided an increase gives orders, as Minister for Local Government, that there shall be an increase in the rent.

In this so-called age of affluence our old age pensioners are the greatest victims. The biggest problem with them is depression and despondency, so many of them with no will to live. They are trying to survive on meagre resources. I was wondering if the Minister would, as a little exercise, try to find out how a pensioner can manage to subsist, to provide the necessary food for himself, the high protein diet which is essential for an old age pensioner, on the small allowance. Many of them who are on their own are suffering from malnutrition. If a study was made into this problem it would be found that malnutrition among these people is immense. It might be found that James Plunkett's book Strumpet City would have relevance today among old age pensioners, when he portrayed the man looking for food in the bins. Is the Minister aware that it can happen today and is happening, that some of these old people are literally starving? I think I mentioned before the poor person who at intervals of ten or 12 weeks went into hospital for blood transfusions and to be built up because she and her daughter were living on a total of £3 15s and were starving. We have seen some cases over the winter of people having died. A study of how a person lives on the present-day pension would be a revelation.

I wish to refer to the problem of the stamping of employees' cards. After years working with a firm employees suddenly discover their cards are not stamped. I have had so many cases in the last two years that I am wondering if some system could be devised whereby an employee would know at six-monthly intervals that his cards had been stamped. If his cards are unstamped he must take action himself against the employer. The Department will take action only when he has failed in his attempts. This is a serious problem and we must find some way of preventing this injustice to employees. I should like to see some system devised to protect employees, to give them this assurance about their holiday money, benefits and also redundancy payments. This is very important and I know that the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary are sympathetic in regard to this matter.

I am not advocating changing the Social Welfare Act but I must highlight the problem of widows in receipt of pensions who, because of circumstances outside their control, are compelled to work. Very often when those widows fall ill they only receive half benefit, which is most unjust. Their husband's stamps provide the widow's pension and the widow's stamps provide for social welfare benefit; I cannot understand why these people should be victimised due to the fact that they have a pension from their husband's contributions. If a married woman works, and her husband also works, and if she falls ill she receives full benefit but this does not apply in the case of widows who very often have to maintain their children.

I should like to refer to the problem of deserted wives because I have come across cases both here and in England where the husbands are drawing social welfare benefits on their behalf. I would urge on the Minister to consult with his colleagues in the British Ministry to see what can be done in cases where husbands are collecting social welfare and national health benefits in respect of their wives but who are keeping the allowances for themselves. Of course, it would be better if we ourselves could provide for these people. It is degrading and humiliating for the deserted wives to have to depend on home assistance, where it is discontinued after four weeks, and they then find themselves completely destitute. Renewed applications for home assistance have to be made and these people exist on the charity of their relatives and friends. This is an increasing problem and it demands urgent attention.

I am told that many people do not get their full social welfare benefit, or even lose it entirely, because their certificates are not properly dated. It may be due to errors on the part of the doctors but if people are deprived of benefit because of erroneous dating of certificates the matter should be brought to the attention of the doctors and the people themselves. I am reliably informed that a considerable amount of money is lost in this way by recipients of social welfare benefit and, if this is the case, we should give full publicity to this fact and let them know that they are losing the benefits.

I often hear the cry that we cannot improve our social welfare services, that it is not possible to do so. However, we must do something about it particularly in regard to the infirm and aged and those who cannot cope with the ever-soaring costs of foodstuffs. By some other form of taxation, by exploiting our natural resources to a greater extent, we must provide more social welfare services for our people so that we can be proud to say that at least we treat the aged and infirm well in this country.

Mr. Bruton

It is rather unfortunate that a debate on social welfare, which is a matter of great importance, is likely to go through this House in such a summary fashion. It is possible that the debate will be concluded tonight, which I consider regrettable, and not in line with the relative importance of social welfare in our national economy. I should like to echo the remarks of Deputy O'Connell when he said that we should have a separate Minister for Social Welfare. The very fact that one man, however able, is holding down two important Ministries—of which Social Welfare is one—is a reflection of the priority the Government give to this matter. There is a very clear case for a separate Minister for Social Welfare to ensure that, not alone will he merely maintain existing schemes and make occasional improvements in response to pressures, but that he will be in a position to undertake an overall review of our entire system and, if necessary, to have a total overhaul to bring this country into line with European standards. When a Minister is holding down two jobs he is not in a position to do this fundamental thinking.

In approaching the whole concept of social welfare we must not see it purely from the point of view of alleviating hardship. While this is its primary purpose, it has a secondary role which is to bring about greater equality in our community. If we see it merely from the point of view of dealing with instances of hardship as they arise, we have not a complete view of the functions of social welfare. It must be seen as a continuous process towards making this country a more just place in which to live. We must see it not only from the point of view of improving physical conditions for our people but the services must be administered in such a way as to restore to deprived people moral wellbeing and dignity. I have no fixed or definite idea as to how our social welfare system could be improved in this respect but I hope this matter will get the thought and consideration of the Government.

A point which has been repeatedly made is the need for a unified system of social welfare. Formerly we have tended to respond to immediate pressing needs, to introduce a scheme for this or that, but the whole system is very much of a patchwork nature. All the various social welfare provisions, including home assistance which is at present administered by the health authorities, should be brought under one umbrella so that all the contesting claims of various groups for welfare services can be assessed in competition with one another and not administered by different authorities with differing sets of priorities. Only by having such a unified scheme can we ensure that nobody is excluded. In the course of my contribution I shall indicate some people who are being blatantly excluded at the present time and who, if there was a unified system and a consequent reassessment of all needs of the community, might find themselves included in the scheme.

The main difficulty in this patchwork approach to social welfare is the question of home assistance which is administered by a different authority on a discretionary basis rather than on a basis of right. It is more or less filling in where our centrally administered system does not fill the bill. This is a haphazard approach to social welfare. I should like to quote now from a review by Mr. Anthony Coughlan in a recent edition of Administration on “Law for the Poor”, published by the IPA. He says:

It is difficult to see how the anomalies and injustices of home assistance can be got rid of unless it is integrated with the national assistance of the Department of Social Welfare.

I take it he knows what he is talking about; he certainly knows more about the matter than I do. I understand that 62 per cent of those at present receiving home assistance receive such assistance as a supplement to cover the inadequacy of existing centrally administered schemes.

There is another group omitted from the scheme—deserted wives and the mothers of illegitimate children. For these there is no social welfare. All they can receive is home assistance. Now such assistance is not paid as of right; it is discretionary. These women—deserted wives and the mothers of illegitimate children— should receive assistance as of right.

Again, there are the permanently disabled. Those who become disabled in insurable employment receive benefit as of right. The only benefit available to those born disabled is home assistance and again it is discretionary. One of the big difficulties here is the fact that there are differing standards of payment from county to county. That is wrong. Those suffering genuine hardship should receive payment as of right, under a centrally administered scheme.

One of the major criticisms of our insurance scheme is the fact that payments are on a flat rate. This is fundamentally unjust because those who earn little pay just as much as those who earn considerably more. We should move towards a wage related graduated scheme similar to that which obtains in most European countries. It would be more humane to relate the payments to what people earn while at work. Their living standards are set during the period in which they are gainfully employed and the objective should be to enable them to maintain that same standard of living. At the moment people who are earning and who suddenly find themselves on social insurance payments suffer a severe drop in their standard of living. The amount should be related to earnings. There should be no flat rate. That would be a more humane scheme. It would, indeed, be more in line with what obtains in Europe. There is the advantage, too, in such a scheme that it is protected against inflation. If wage rates rise payment under the graduated scheme rises automatically. Under the present system, with its flat rate, there are serious disadvantages. If the political pressure is not on the Government to increase the rates of payments the rates are allowed to lag seriously behind. If there is political pressure, if there is an election coming, the rates of benefit are raised in order to help the Government over some political hurdle.

Increases in social welfare should be related to the cost-of-living index and not to the political needs of the Government. It must be firmly established, and accepted, as a principle that social welfare payments must be related to the cost of living. The way in which to do this could be by a graduated scheme similar to that on the Continent.

One of the remarkable features of the recent report on the care of the aged is the fact that it echoes many of the proposals put forward by Fine Gael quite some few years back. There is endorsement of the need for a proper domiciliary welfare service. That is now recognised in the report. It was, of course, recognised by Fine Gael in 1965 in their policy for a just society. There is need for more welfare officers with specific responsibility for looking after the aged. I trust the Minister will implement these recommendations as soon as possible.

There are one or two other points I should like to mention. One is the question of the three waiting days. Those who become unemployed, for whatever reason, do not receive any payment for the first three days. The reason for this is to prevent malingering or to prevent people having a half-a-week's holiday. I can see the justification for not giving anything in respect of three isolated days. I can understand that approach. There is a need for some scheme under which a person who is out of work for more than 12 days would be paid not only in respect of the last nine of those days but also in respect of the first three days as well. If a person stays out for 12 days he has a genuine reason for doing so. He should be paid for all the days he is out of work and not just for the last nine of those 12 days. I understand such a scheme is in operation in respect of occupational injuries. Why can it not be extended to disability benefit and to unemployment benefit?

It has come to my notice that people have been laid off work as a result of the cement strike. They are laid off through no fault of their own. They are not involved directly in the trade dispute. These people are experiencing great delays in obtaining unemployment benefit. I do not know why this is. There may be some justifiable reason for it. Some people who have been out of work for five or six weeks have not received unemployment benefit. I have not made a complete investigation into this matter yet. The fact that so many of these people have come to me because they have not got unemployment benefit indicates that something has gone wrong in the Department. There may have been a big influx of claims in the first week of this strike. I understand that people might not be paid immediately. There might be a delay of one or two weeks as a result of the heavy pressure on the staff in the Department of Social Welfare. The coincidence of so many of these people coming to me would indicate that there is something fundamentally wrong with the payment of unemployment benefit.

Family allowances, including remissions on income tax, maternity grants and children's allowances, are basically regressive because people who are prosperous on balance receive almost as much in family allowances as people who are not prosperous. This is certainly the case in respect of children's allowances. To a substantial degree this also applies to income tax allowances which are given in relation to the number of children in a family. The more tax one pays the more rebate one can get off in respect of children——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is aware that this would need legislation. The Deputy is critical of legislation at this stage.

Mr. Bruton

I have been informed that of all these family allowances only one-third go to what are classed as the lower-income group while the remaining two-thirds go to people in the middle- and upper-income groups. This is regrettable.

Mr. P. Barry

The Department of Social Welfare is responsible for the standard of living of those members of our society who are dependent on those of us who work. We must see that the way they live is as satisfying to them as we would wish it to be. This Department caters for those who are in some way deprived—widows of their husbands, children of their parents, and the old people of the health and strength to provide for themselves. We should have regard for all these people. Our regard should be shown by the Government in appointing a Minister to take complete control of the pensions and of the schemes which now come under a Minister acting in a dual capacity as Minister for Local Government and Minister for Social Welfare.

Deputy Dr. O'Connell was critical of the Department of Social Welfare. I was glad to hear the Parliamentary Secretary say that the telephone communications with this Department have now been attended to. My experience of the Department has been that the staff there are courteous, efficient and helpful. At local level, and in Dublin, I have found the staff considerate and conscious of the hardships on pensioners who do not receive their cheques in time. The system breaks down occasionally. I hope the Minister or the Parliamentary Secretary will underline to the staff the seriousness to an old age pensioner of not having a cheque for a week or a fortnight. Such people must go to the shops and look for credit to tide them over. They are in an embarrassing position if the cheque fails to arrive for a second week. They must give an explanation which is often not fully believed. When the cheques arrive such people are half ashamed to go and pay their bills. I hope the Minister will see whether this position can be remedied so that old age pensioners are not put in the position of not receiving their payments and having to go to the shop to get credit to bridge the gap between the time the cheques are due and their actual date of arrival.

The pensions which we give old people are deplorably low. Nobody on any side of the House can fool himself that the pension is adequate recompense for a person who has reached 70 years of age. Deputy Dr. Browne outlined all the various services which can be provided, not as charity but as a right, when someone has reached 70 years. These old people have contributed all their lives to this country and have contributed to the pensions of previous old age pensioners. When they reach 70 years of age they are entitled to a pension and to the company and comfort of those of their own age. They should have centres in which restrooms would be available for their use. In some parts of the country community centres are providing meeting-places for pensioners.

I sometimes feel that old people grow in on themselves and become disinclined to mix with others unless they are forced to do so. I would like to see restrooms available so that old people could go to them. There should be no appearance of charity attached to anything we do for the old. The people who are now drawing old age pensions would have been about 20 years of age at the time of the foundation of this State. They would have given their full working lives for the country. We should be very conscious of the debt we owe them and we should see that their old age is as comfortable as we would wish our own to be. I think it is true that many of them die, if not of hunger, hungry, but many more die of loneliness. It is very sad to see old people living on tea and bread and butter only in a cold, bleak room having a fire for only three or four nights a week since they cannot afford a fire any oftener. Even though the free fuel scheme is there, under some local authorities the old people must pay a charge for delivery or else collect the fuel themselves. I asked the Minister about this before and I think he replied that there was some provision in the scheme that the fuel supplied must be hand-won, not machine-won turf or coal. The least we could do would be to give these people machine turf rather than hand-won turf. Even to give them coal might not stretch the country's Budget too far.

This scheme runs from 1st November to the end of March but for old people the months of October and April can seem equally cold and I ask the Minister to extend the free fuel scheme to include these months and make it seven rather than five months as I think it is at the moment. There is an aura of charity about much of what we do for the old age pensioners. Many voluntary bodies do extremely good work such as Meals on Wheels, St. Vincent de Paul, the Legion of Mary and many others. I should like to see a situation in which there was no necessity for these bodies. I hate to see them calling on anybody; old age pensioners should have sufficient money to enable them to live a normal life or their children should look after them. It is frequently a matter of complaint that there is some reluctance on the part of children to care for aged parents. I think the problem is exaggerated. I believe it is not widespread but in many cases parents are put into what are not geriatric units but into mental institutions in some places. This is not always done because children do not want to care for their parents but they cannot afford the physical room in the house nor could they keep that old age pensioner for a week on the old age pension that the old person gets. The State should devise a system whereby when an old age pensioner goes to live with the children such children would be given an adequate allowance. This would save the cost of the institution and the conscience of the children would not be disturbed and the old people would live much longer.

I understand statistics suggest that if you live to be 65 life expectancy afterwards is almost 14 years. That means the State would be responsible for them for nine further years. If as Deputy Dr. Browne suggested it will cost from £11 to £13 per week to keep them in an institution—I believe it would be nearer £18 a week—this would be a good investment for the State, considering the matter on the lowest level and on another level, the human level, it would be a tremendous comfort to the old people and it would give a sense of security to the children in that they would feel that when their time came they would get the same treatment. It is true that as we treat our parents so we shall be treated by our children. By providing an allowance in such cases the State would make a saving which would probably far outweigh the expenditure involved.

The same situation seems to apply in the case of widows in that none of us realises the position in which they find themselves. We seem to suffer a mental block and cannot agree among ourselves. On this side we cannot induce the Minister to bring in legislation to improve the position. I do not know what the reason is. It is a very sad thing to see a family broken up and the children separated from the mother and put into an institution. I have seen it happen frequently. It must be realised that there is a tremendous strain on a woman who has led a sheltered life and then loses her husband. The wages die with him and she is left, perhaps, with the widows' and orphans' pension and nothing else.

Apart from the loss of her husband the strain of taking responsibility for running a house, which in so many cases is carried by the husband, is very great. This frequently makes the widow incapable of making correct decisions for as long as two years afterwards and so the house is not run as he would have done it or as she would do it later on. I have seen cases like this where the widow goes into debt and seems to find things impossible. Nobody talks to her or helps her. Then the children are taken from her and put into an institution and again there is enormous expense for the State. If she had some knowledge of the financial position before her husband died whatever other worries or responsibilities she had she would not have the worry of assuming financial responsibilty to the same extent. The children are deprived of a father and then of the mother and the home and in many cases live their lives in an institution until they go out to work. I have spoken to social workers about this problem. Even the worst home is better than an institution and I think nuns and brothers who run the institutions would be the first to agree with that, except in very extreme circumstances.

I hope there will be some rethinking in the Department on this matter and that some method will be devised whereby a widow will get something approaching what her husband had before he died so as to allow her to rear her family as he would wish. From pure mercenary reasons it would represent a saving to the State because the cost of keeping children in institutions must be about £10 per week, certainly £8. If the widow had this she would be saved great worry and would be able to rear her children in an atmosphere which would give them a better chance in life. Children coming out of such institutions are conscious of the lack they have suffered during the years they have been in the institution. They are unable to face up to life; their mother has become merely a visitor and they look for the guidance they should get from their parents from people who, however well-meaning, are strangers to them.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.

Votes 37, 7, 10, 11, 15, 16, and 51 reported and agreed to.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 19th March, 1970.