I do not think the matter I have referred to would require legislation. The Minister dealt with the question of the EEC in his statement. I want to conclude the comments I was making on the last occasion. From the point of view of administration we must put the entire expenditure on social welfare — the figure is £154 million this year and it will be £175 million next year — into an administrative structure which will be known as the "Social Budget". That will be entirely in accord with the recommendations of the EEC Commission. The Commission, at the request of the Council of Ministers, adopted as one of its priorities the creation of a European social welfare and social security structure. Germany, France and the Netherlands are Community countries which have social budgets and other countries in the Community are considering the adoption of the concept of social budgets for the administration of their social welfare and social security system. I suggest there is need here for a complete recasting of Government budgetary strategy in the field of social services. This can be done by adopting the Community practice of social budgets and I would strongly urge the implementation of the recommendation in the report on the development of the social situation in the Community in 1971. At pages 189 and 190 the recommendation is very clearly set out.
In my experience the Fianna Fáil Party is the most sluggish, lethargic and — I have to use the word — incompetent political party with regard to this point of restructuring of expenditure. I have no great admiration for Fianna Fáil literature but I did find lately the 1969 clár of the 39th Ard-Fheis and the social welfare section of that clár contained a specific recommendation tabled by no fewer than nine different Fianna Fáil Cumainn. The resolution was adopted and then ignored. The resolution said there was urgent need to bring our social welfare structure into line with modern European standards and asked for a progress report. This resolution was proposed by the Father Augustine Cumann of Cork city and it was endorsed by some ten or 12 other cumainn. The resolution was accepted but nothing has ever been done about it. We should have had a report setting out our approach to social welfare and social security within the EEC. We shall become members next January.
There is a responsibility on the Government to ensure that we fully avail of the resources of the European Social Fund. This morning the unemployment statistics were published and recently we had the statistics relating to redundancy. While I do not think these are cause for any great alarm they highlight the distance this country will have to travel towards full employment. There is need to avail of every possible facility offered by the European Social Fund. I have not noticed any urgency on the part of the Government in this regard. The full utilisation of the nation's resources depends to a considerable extent on the enterprise and initiative of our Government. Half of the resources allocated to the European Social Fund will be available for the part-financing of schemes proposed by member Governments and projects proposed to deal with unemployment resulting from Common Market policies will have to meet with the ready co-operation of member Governments.
We must face up to the implication of availing of the finances of the Social Fund. The Government should give a very high priority to the formulation of schemes to deal with deep-seated, structural unemployment problems. The Minister has a joint responsibility for Labour and Social Welfare and he has, therefore, a major responsibility in this field. Many of the policies in relation to the European Social Fund are not as yet fully formulated. It will not be a simple matter in years ahead for the Irish Government periodically to look for a few "bob" from the European Social Fund. Projects and schemes of training and retraining will have to be devised and we will then have to look for the finance to ensure that the schemes we put forward to the Commission are fully backed.
I was struck by the Taoiseach's contribution on regional policy at the recent meeting of heads of State. It was widely criticised by responsible members of the Oireachtas. Senator Mary Robinson was very critical of the Taoiseach's nebulous and vague contribution. The correspondent to the Cork Examiner was provoked into describing it as a timid contribution. If we have a similar approach on the part of Ministers, particularly the Minister for Social Welfare, I am afraid the benefits available from the European Social Fund will be minimal. That will certainly be the case if Ireland's voice in Brussels is one of the weakest. I have that fear. It is a legitimate fear and one which we must express here in public.
I want to deal with the question of the EEC and our relations with other European countries, particularly Northern Ireland and Great Britain. There should be a special examination undertaken by the Department with a view to extending the various reciprocal insurance agreements with member states of the EEC. At present, to the best of my knowledge, the only reciprocal arrangements we have are those with Great Britain, Northern Ireland the Isle of Man. These generally cover insurance eligibility and insurance benefit, but now is the opportunity to extend, particularly with some of the more progressive European countries, our reciprocal arrangements. We should not just hope that in the year 1980 when the EEC brings in some particular insurance regulation or directive we would then fall in line.
I want to refer briefly to Northern Ireland. The Minister had several questions down to him in relation to our social welfare system and its relationship with that of Northern Ireland. I would strongly urge that the Department of Social Welfare should undertake a great deal more public comparative study of the cost of bringing the social services in the Republic into line with those of Northern Ireland. I am aware that within the Department of Social Welfare a good deal of work has been done. Many projections have been undertaken, but it is disgraceful that the Minister has refused to make this information public. I think he has just sat on it out of sheer embarrassment, and as a result Members of this House are obliged to talk in very broad estimates of the cost of bringing our benefits in line with those of Northern Ireland. Figures varying from £100 million to £150 million and £250 million have been mentioned. The truth does lie within these global figures, and, therefore, if we are serious about national unity the Government should commission, I would suggest, the Economic and Social Research Institue to undertake these comparative expenditure studies in regard to health, education, social security, housing, community welfare services, in both areas. All the Fianna Fáil Deputies I meet shy away like frightened horses from any discussion in depth on this topic.
The Minister for Health, Deputy Childrens, has been much more forthcoming in this connection. On 2nd November, 1971, in Dáil Éireann, he admitted that if eligibility for all the services here were extended to the entire population the additional expenditure of public funds would probably be of the order of £30 million. In response to a question last week the Minister for Health reiterated that figure. Ever since November, 1971, in Dáil Éireann, the Minister for Social Welfare has been extremely coy. On that occasion he said that about £51 million additional expenditure would be required to bring our social welfare services up to the level of those in the North. On that occasion his estimate of £51 million was very strongly challenged by Deputy Garret FitzGerald, myself and other Deputies. We suggested, at column 674 of the Dáil Official Report of 2nd November, 1971, that the figure of £50 million was an extremely conservative one and that £80 to £100 million was nearer the mark. In the analysis in the appendix to the recent publication by Deputy Garret FitzGerald Towards a New Ireland he arrives at a fair minimum conclusion, which I strongly support, that the expenditure on levelling up would be in the region of £150 million. We should have some confirmation of that from the Minister for Social Welfare, and I would ask him to be more explicit on that area in his reply to the debate.
In order to illustrate the gap which exists in the social welfare services North and South I wish to quote some statistics. In Northern Ireland a man with a wife and two children with earnings of £24 a week would get unemployment and sickness benefit amounting to £19.20 a week, that is, a flat rate benefit of £14.20 for himself, his wife and two children and a supplementary earnings-related benefit of £5. With earnings of £24 he would have a total social security payment of £19.20. In the Republic the same man with a wife and two children would get £11.65. Any working person in the North who may be clamouring for national unity would want very seriously to ponder that wide gap.
In regard to children's allowances, in the Republic a family with three children gets 98p per week, and in Northern Ireland the same family gets £1.90 — twice as much in Northern Ireland. In the Republic a family with five children gets £2.2; in Northern Ireland, £3.90. These are the hard facts that people have to bear in mind.
I gave the example last week of the young man I met in Long Kesh who is now living in the Republic. He certainly got a shock when he realised the difference in that area. We have a long way to go before we appreciate the magnitude of the task before us. To take one area of cost, I should like to bring to the attention of the House the fact that the Minister for Social Welfare has admitted that the annual cost of increasing children's allowances in the Republic to the rates currently being held in Northern Ireland would be £15.2 million extra. That is a pretty startling figure. In that regard we must certainly question very seriously the Taoiseach's assertion that there would not be any serious problem in the alignment of the Republic's social services with those of Northern Ireland. It is not just a problem; it is a massive problem, if we ever attempt to face it.
In particular, I draw the attention of the House to and question the extent to which the Estimate for the Department and the whole Government approach get to grips with the problem of poverty in our community, the extent to which the expenditure of £154 million contributes to the elimination of poverty here. Many of the Members of the House may not have been born very far from very low levels of income. That is a fact of Irish life but there is an appalling complacency in Dáil Éireann in regard to appreciating and understanding what constitutes poverty today. The House has fallen into the classical political trap of saying: "Next year we shall give another 50p to the old age pensioners. We will"— as I believe the Government will next April —"abolish the means test in relation to widows' pensions and do other little bits and pieces here and there and as a result, poverty will be abolished." This approach certainly does not "get to grips" with the real areas of poverty. Simply handing out another 50p a week does not resolve the problem of the rural, aged poor. Many social welfare recipients live in isolation in rural areas in very small holdings and frequently in great poverty despite contributions from the State.
We politicians owe a debt of gratitude to and should at least thank the Council for Social Welfare of the Catholic Bishops who in November, 1970, brought together in Kilkenny a widely representative group to discuss the evils of poverty. It is ironical that the bringing together of national experts in this field was undertaken by the council of one of the churches and that not one political party in the history of the State ever held such a conference. That is an indictment of our society. It happened only because of the pioneering work and outspoken views of such social pioneers as Dr. Birch, Bishop of Ossory and founder of Kilkenny Social Services Council. The headline he has set for politicians should stimulate us to get to grips as politicians with the question of poverty.
Another major work in this field was that done by Patrick Lyons, lecturer in Economics at Trinity College, who outlined at length the areas of poverty in our community and areas of wealth distribution. In the past fortnight there was the publication by the Economic and Social Research Institute of the report of their conference on poverty and the work done by Dr. Brendan Walsh. These have thrown up a great deal of information in regard to poverty in this country and it is high time that the politicians sat down in Dáil Éireann and asked themselves: How do we abolish the situation in which tonight two out of every ten of our population — men, women and children — are living well below the minimum subsistence standard? This is the purpose of politics, the very reason for the existence of this House — to try not just to alleviate the most obvious forms of poverty but to remove and abolish in society by whatever means are open to us real and measurable poverty.
The kind of social welfare charity we have here and the reliance on private charity and on a few shillings being given each year in the annual Budget does not by any stretch of imagination get to grips with the problem. The past 15 years are an indictment of Fíanna Fáil in that regard. We can examine exactly what the Government have done in that period. They were returned to office in 1957 following an economic crisis and since then all we have seen are what one might describe as incidental structural improvements of the existing system.
The Fianna Fáil Government brought in an old age contributory pension in 1961. So what? We had a social insurance system which was no great shakes. An old age contributory pension in 1961 was long overdue. Occupational injuries insurance was brought in by the Government in 1967. Free television licences were hind, at a time when almost every enlightened European country had already introduced such a scheme on a State basis and it was no longer the private preserve of the insurance companies.
The Government with a great deal of hoo-ha introduced the subsidy for electricity for pensioners in 1967. Free travel for pensioners was provided in 1967. Free television licenses were provided for pensioners in 1968. These budgetary concessions did not prove costly to the Exchequer because there was no fundamental reform involved in them. The deserted wife's allowance was introduced in 1970. This again was an elementary normal development of social welfare in a civilised country. By no stretch of the imagination could it be regarded as a major innovation. There were the increases for the old age care allowances in 1970. Roughly speaking, these were the improvements that were introduced. They were not very great. They may have been good enough to win a couple of by-elections but certainly it cannot be suggested that the Fianna Fáil Party have raised the basic levels of social welfare. They have simply kept them in line with increases in the cost of living on a rough and ready basis.
I do not think it is fully appreciated by the electorate or, in particular, by politicians that a person who retires at the age of 65 on a State retirement pension, who has no other occupation or pension available to him gets £1.48 per day for himself and his wife. That represents a personal rate of 89p per day. For a Member of this Dáil who would have a few drinks on an evening before he would go home, 89p or £1.48 would not go very far. How many people spend £1.48 on an evening's entertainment?
In the constituency that I represent there are many old age pensioners who have full insurance for contributory pensions, who live on a subsistence level, in what could be described as poverty. They get 89p per day, or £6.20 per week. For a husband, wife and a dependant the rate is £1.48 per day. I do not feel any great pride as an Irishman when I meet such constituents. I certainly feel very little pride as a politician when I meet them. Take the case of a widow with three young children who has an income as from 1st October of this year of £10.10 per week, a daily rate of £1.44. How many Members of this House could feed, clothe, house and educate three children and maintain himself on £1.44 per day?
These are the harsh realities of Irish society in the year 1972. It is all very well for someone to shrug his shoulders and to say that in 1967 the inter-Party Government gave them half a dollar, or whatever it was. That type of justification means nothing to the unfortunate widow and her three children living in 1972 on £1.44 per day, representing a contributory pension on the basis of her husband's insurance record, a factor which is sometimes forgotten.
If the outline of the daily rates which I have given does not stir the conscience of our community, I shall be very reluctant to call it a Christian community. This year we are spending £54 million. There is a basic priority which this House must recognise. A far greater proportion of the national resources must be allocated to social security. Social welfare must not be on a quasi-charity basis.
There is one important statistic which is an indictment of Irish politicians and Irish society. Many Members of the House do not welcome statistics. They are difficult to record, assimilate and report. In the 1960s there was very considerable economic growth and the standard of living improved very considerably. The people may take justifiable pride in that fact. Things are somewhat more difficult in the early 1970s but I am quite convinced that we can overcome our difficulties, particularly if there is a change of Government. In the 1960s, the opportunity presented itself to devote a higher percentage of national expenditure to social welfare but, in fact, the reverse happened. On 26th October I asked the Minister for Social Welfare to state the expenditure on social security and welfare as a percentage of the total expenditure by authorities both central and local. The Minister gave two statistics: in 1963-64 the figure was 17.67 per cent; in 1971-72 the provisional figure is 17.36 per cent. In other words, there has been a slight decline in the percentage.
There has been no change in the past ten years in the proportion of expenditure spent on social security. In 1962-63, the figure was 17.05 per cent; in 1963-64, 17.67 per cent; 1964-65, 17.89 — an increase; in 1965-66, 16.51 — a decrease. In 1966-67, after the general election the figure went up to 17.66. In 1967-68 it went down again, to 16.89; in 1968-69 it was 16.32, in 1969-70, 16.81, in 1970-71, 17.33 and in 1971-72 it was 17.36. There has been no change of any consequence whatever in the Irish Republic in the past ten years and I think that alone is an indictment of the allocation of national resources for social security. This illustrates for me the public hypocrisy of a political party who state that they have every intention of realigning completely the system of social security in a more equitable and egalitarian manner.
I hark back, and legitimately hark back, to say that we need a new approach in this country, the approach which came about in 1940, for example. Whatever political views may be held in this House about the contribution of the late William Norton, it was he who caught expenditure on social security and its administration in this country in 1949, by the scruff of the neck, shook it and produced a White Paper on social security. In 1952 major proposals were made and implemented by the Fianna Fáil Government in the Social Welfare Act of that year, but since 1949 we have never had a Government White Paper on social security. We have had nothing. We have had changes and minor innovations here and there, with incidental benefits and so-called concessions introduced here and there, but really there has been nothing of a widespread insurance nature undertaken in the community since 1949-52. When we look back on Irish social welfare, the only people to whom I can allocate credit is William Norton, in terms of his real contribution, and Dr. Duignan, Bishop of Clonfert, for his tremendous contribution in the war period around 1944 when he proposed a comprehensive national social security system. We have, therefore, to ask the Government to consider major changes in the social insurance system.
I do not think that it is good enough simply to extend social insurance to all wage and salary earners in the State, much as I would wish to see it extended. I do not want to impinge on an area requiring legislation but I strongly suggest to the Government that it is high time they devised a comprehensive national social security system which would take into account the interests of all wage and salary earners and also the very large numbers of self-employed persons in the State, as well as the farming community. Until such time as the whole of the working population are brought into comprehensive national social security, I do not see our system being worthy of approval by any of the political parties.
I make that strong recommendation to the Government and point out that there is at the moment in the State what one might call the middle income poverty trap, the poverty trap of the family who are over the £1,600 limit and who have not got the full benefits of social welfare because they are outside the insurability limit and are, therefore, very frequently caught in a trap in terms of health services and the social insurances services of the State. There are many thousands of such white collar and industrial workers, blue collar workers, in the State who are caught up in that middle income trap of a lack of full coverage. Therefore, in respect of social security, I put forward three basic demands: the level of cash benefits must be substantially increased, the basic levels I have referred to; secondly, the system must be a comprehensive national system; and thirdly, contributions and benefits must be wage-related right up the line and self-employed persons and farmers brought within the context of compulsory social insurance in this State. This will require a complete restructuring of our social security system and I do not think the provisions in the proposed new legislation, the 1972 Bill — I do not intend to refer at any length to this — go far enough or are broad enough. They bring in far fewer people than we would wish. We need a universal system rather than a general system which is very limited in scope.
I want to raise, in relation to the Minister's Department, the matter of a question I put down and which I intend to repeat. It was on 26th October that I asked the Minister for the total number of wage and salary earners in the income ranges between £1,600 and £2,000, between £2,000 and £2,500, between £2,500 and £3,000 and over £3,000. I must confess that I was rather surprised to get back from the Minister by way of written answer on 26 October, to Question 468, a reply which said that the compilation and supply of statistics of this nature is not the function of his Department. The Minister has on occasion waxed eloquent about the number of extra people who will be covered by an extension of the social insurance limit. When it was brought up from £1,200 to £1,600, the Minister had no difficulty whatever in indicating the number of people in these income categories who were covered by way of extended social insurance and my simple reply to the Minister is that this answer is not good enough. The information is available in the Department and if it is not, it is the function of the Department to obtain the information and to supply Deputies with it. I intend to repeat that question with a view to obtaining the information from the Minister.
Regarding the organisation of the Department, I want to repeat a recommendation I made in public recently in a draft policy document. On that occasion I suggested that the Department of Social Welfare and the Department of Health should be amalgamated and that we should have a new Department. I am not quite certain what we would call it, whether it would be the Department of Social Services or the Department of Social Development, as it might well be called in years ahead. I see a great logic in the amalgamation of those two Departments. They are inextricably bound up in terms of social policy. It is essential that they should be amalgamated with responsibility for the co-ordination of our social services.
The excuse of the Fianna Fáil Party that there is now some experimentation and restructuring and re-organisation going on in the Department of Health is a very lame one for not going ahead with the rationalisation of the functions of the two Departments. It would be wise to do it also because I see the Department of Labour growing up as a major Department. As we enter the EEC the Department of Labour will assume major new responsibilities in respect of the social fund and training and re-training in that area of the social fund. It will have major responsibility in representing this country in the industrial and social policies affecting workers in the EEC.
When we think of worker participation in the EEC, which will come in time, and when we think of the growth of the social legislation affecting industrial relations, it is very unwise to continue to have the Department of Labour and the Department of Social Welfare the exclusive responsibility of one Government Minister. I strongly urge that we should have a separate Minister for Labour. That is a legitimate claim on our part. Therefore, we should amalgamate the two Departments I mentioned and reorganise them as a single Government Department, as was recommended in the Report of the Public Services Organisation Review Group.
The Government do not seem to have taken into account the recommendations of August, 1969, by the Devlin review group. They recommended that comprehensive care, involving medical and social welfare effort, was now the accepted basis for most modern health and welfare activity. The Devlin review group saw a logic in the two Departments coming together. They pointed out that planning for health and welfare services was directly inter-related and directly dependent on the same kind of social skills, the same kind of social administrators, and the same kind of general budgetary expenditure. Therefore, they recommended that the two Departments should come together.
I would be very interested to hear whether the Minister accepts the need for a rationalisation of the two Departments. I do not think there would be any insurmountable administrative problems, although in both the Department of Health and the Department of Social Welfare it might well be that some of the more cherished empires would have to fall. In the nature of things, if a recommendation is worthy of implementation, it should be implemented without further ado.
I would also recommend that there should be set up within this House a joint all-party committee of the Dáil and Seanad on social affairs. I should like to make the point, as a newly elected spokesman for the Labour Party, that it is quite impossible for a spokesman on social welfare to speak for several hours and deal effectively, and in a comprehensive manner, and in any reasonable depth, with the whole range of expenditure on social welfare totalling £154 million in a single contribution once a year, and then sit down and hope that the Department and the Government and the House will take note of his recommendations.
It is a typical piece of feudal parliamentary democracy that this should be the way in which our legislators should run their affairs. It is entirely logical that if the Social Welfare Bill arising out of the budget each year, and the Social Welfare Estimate presented annually to the House, and the various other legislative matters which arise inevitably during the year, are to be discussed in any reasonable depth, such a committee should be set up. Any recommendations made to the professional staffs of the Department of Social Welfare could be made at the committee and discussed. It is entirely proper that an Oireachtas committee on social welfare should be established.
How does a politician on the Opposition benches open up any kind of contact with the professional staffs of the Department? Public servants do not exist simply to service the political party in power. They are responsible to the State. They are responsible to the Oireachtas and responsible to the nation as a whole. It would be a very healthy development in democratic discussions if Deputies had an opportunity to sit down on an Oireachtas committee on social affairs and discuss with the professional staffs of the Department of Social Welfare and the Department of Health the various implications of the legislative matters coming before the House.
This House is creaking to a standstill as we approach the EEC. In 1973-75 we will be faced with the prospect of hundreds of regulations, hundreds of directives and massive volumes of reports being presented to the House for public discussion and public review. We will be involved in the ramifications of the European Social Fund. Employers and workers will participate in the EEC economic and social committee. Members of this House will discuss social security in the European Parliament. Therefore, it is imperative, if we are entering into this kind of national and international dialogue in relation to our social affairs, that the crude, inefficient and ineffective parliamentary structure which we have in this Dáil should be transformed into some sane sensible structure in which it would be open to the politicians to play a more constructive role.
I make that recommendation to the House fully confident that the Fianna Fáil Party will pay not the slightest attention to it, because the Fianna Fáil Party have a contempt for what happens in this House. Their only concern is with ministerial prerogative, with dishing out favours to individuals and, above all, with power. They are not concerned with a vibrant, dynamic democracy which would enable all public representatives to air fully their views and their attitudes in a more open, almost non-party, manner.
With regard to pensions, the numbers of workers retiring annually are increasing. There are some workers who retire earlier than 65. Unless we get to grips with the current level of pensions, both social insurance and occupational, we will find ourselves with a new stratum of poverty-stricken people between the ages of 60 and 70. The prospects of obtaining suitable alternative employment from 60 onwards are very remote indeed. As well as normal retirement there is also the problem of redundancy.
The implementation of a national comprehensive pension scheme related to income is a matter of grave urgency. Workers and employers alike would contribute to such a scheme. There is grave need for such a scheme. There are many CIE pensioners living on appallingly low incomes, many of them as low as £1.50 per week. They have given a lifetime of service to our national transport system and this is their reward for that service. There are workers who, after 30 or 40 years' service, find themselves compelled to exist on £2, £3 or £4 a week. This will be supplemented by their social insurance but, even so, it gives them a bare subsistence level. We should follow the example of Britain and Northern Ireland and introduce a graduated pension scheme. Such a scheme would give a worker retiring at 65 between his occupational pension scheme and his State pension scheme two-thirds of his earnings. That should not be an insurmountable objective.
This is something which should be done expeditiously because of the growing numbers retiring and because of the growing appreciation of the vital importance of being covered effectively. I can give a personal example. I am not covered by any pension scheme. I was in two different pension schemes in two different trade union organisations. When I transferred from the first I was given £100 refund of pension contributions. When I left the second on becoming a Member of the Dáil I was given a refund of a couple of hundred pounds. Now, at 37 years of age, having started my working life at 20, I find myself not covered for any pension whatsoever. It is in this kind of situation that one becomes firmly convinced that this kind of thing should not happen.
The Minister and the Government will have to get to grips with the major deficiencies that exist. The levels of pensions, particularly in the case of manual workers, so-called, are abnormally low. Added to that is the fact that many workers lose pension entitlement on redundancy. If a firm folds up, pensions also fold up. Workers who change their jobs lose their pension entitlements. Pressure should be brought to bear on those who administer occupational pension schemes to ensure that this disability is substantially mitigated. Every worker has a right to build up pension rights and, as he changes from one job to another, those rights should go with him. Social insurance rights pass from job to job and surely pension rights should also pass thereby enabling those in private occupational pension schemes to accumulate their rights.
The Government have an obligation to produce a White Paper on this matter because it is becoming a matter of grave concern not only to the trade union movement but to the workers themselves. Again, women are treated as second class citizens where pensions are concerned; they may have to pay the same flat rate contribution but they will get lower benefits when they retire. There is the golden handshake for the director, the silver handshake for the senior executives and the copper minimum payment to the wage earner. The Minister should take a sharp look at occupational pension schemes and he should introduce a comprehensive national scheme designed to bring about major improvements.
Such occupational pension schemes should, if possible, also provide for benefits to devolve on dependants. Many of these benefits die with the holder thereof. We should ensure that on the death of an employee the support of his dependants should not be left to either the State contributions or to private charities and that dependants should have a right to a pension which would give them a decent living. The classic example of that is the CIE pension scheme, and the Department of Social Welfare should examine that.
I wish to refer to certain aspects of child care for which the Department of Social Welfare is responsible. We find ourselves making the public plea that the Minister should bring his influence to bear on the Government to ensure that national child care services are placed under the auspices of a single Government Department. I would have no great objection if a Parliamentary Secretary were given responsibility for this. It is ironic that a Parliamentary Secretary were can be given responsibility for school transport services or can be given responsibility for the Office of Public Works but cannot be given responsibility for national child care services.
At the moment there are 3,500 children maintained by health boards in approved children's homes and residential schools. These children have relationship with the Department in the context of Social Welfare entitlements. The co-ordination of the functions of the Department of Health, of Education, of Justice and of Social Welfare is urgently needed in this area. The fact that no single Government Department seems to have responsibility in this area has caused confusion, mismanagement and a waste of resources. Therefore, I would ask the Minister to give serious consideration to this recommendation for reform.
The negative attitude of the Minister and his Department in respect of the children's allowances scheme is still a matter of public concern. I cannot understand why a claim for children's allowances may be submitted only by the father of a family. The classic answer of the Minister is that it is not a major issue. It is a question of social entitlement and of social rights, and it is manifestly unfair and unjust that the mother of a family is, by implication, precluded from applying for children's allowances. It requires the most careful examination of the Department and the most profuse returning of forms to the claimants before the Department is prepared to sanction a claim submitted by the mother of children. The father of the family is regarded as the head of the household and only he may apply for children's allowances. As recently as the 26th October the Minister, in reply to a question, said he was not prepared to consider the amendment of this regulation. There have been several recommendations to the Minister to examine the whole question of application forms for children's allowances.
Recently I had the case of an unmarried mother who applied for children's allowances and, even though I sent in a covering letter to the Department stating that this was an application by an unmarried mother, in thick red pencil back came the form saying it must be signed by the head of the household. Eventually the Department was prepared to accept her father as head of the household. She was the mother of the child. This reveals a lack of sensitivity, of which I rarely accuse the Department. I think it gets a great deal of abuse which it does not deserve. However, there is need for change in the certification of application forms.
I would ask the Department to have a full-scale review of the whole question of family allowances. I do not think it is enough just to say that if we want the level of Northern Ireland family allowances it will cost us an extra £50 million a year. The stage has been reached when it should examine the real effectiveness and the benefit to society of the present system of family allowances in the Republic. I know this is a thorny political problem. At the moment there are roughly 60,000 families with five children or more who get family allowances. To what extent are the allowances which are given to those five-child families of immeasurably greater benefit than the money which is allocated to the 92,000 one-child families? There are 67,000 families with three children. Have we examined the relative levels of income tax paid by them and the value of the benefit given to them by way of family allowances? Have we examined the relative importance of this very substantial allocation of public funds? Have we examined the fact that to some wealthy families children's allowances are merely bingo money? How do we apply the principle of selectivity to the allocation of family allowances? Have we examined, for example, in the Department the "claw-back" principle of giving family allowances and taking them back from wealthier families by means of income tax? These are areas of social policy on which, with all due respect to the House, we do not find information publicly and readily available for discussion or serious political debate. Family allowances are supposed to be under examination by the Minister for Finance for the past three or four years but nothing has really been done yet in this area.
The Minister should bring in, as a matter of urgency, his reforms in respect of home assistance. I hope these reforms will be very extensive in scope. It is now universally accepted that our current home assistance system is a national scandal. The 31,000 people receiving home assistance would probably be first to agree with that description. When I read the public-spirited and well-documented case put forward by the association of home assistance officers, the various documents and recommendations they produce, I see the system indicted in a big way. One need only read the paper presented by Mr. Dick Doyle, superintendent assistance officer in Waterford, which he read at the Kilkenny conference. That paper showed that the home assistance system is utterly inadequate to deal with areas of poverty in our community.
The effect of home assistance on poverty is marginal. Many Deputies know families in their own constituencies who are receiving home assistance and quite frequently one can say the odds are that the next generation of the same families will also be in receipt of home assistance. The extent to which the system has any real effect in relieving poverty is very much open to question. There is a veil of bad administration over the home assistance system. I do not mean bad in the context of staff; they are obliged to administer the system. Home assistance officers are generally untrained and have not much training in social work. The criteria, the regulations and guidelines under which they operate are so much open to subjective assessment that one often wonders how they manage to administer the system. The system we have should certainly be reformed. I should like to see a system of minimum family income benefits of a comprehensive nature replacing it and, before the Minister introduces his reforms, I should like some consultative discussions between Deputies and the Department. I see nothing wrong with the Minister bringing together Deputies from various political parties and saying: "These are the changes I am thinking about. Have you any suggestions about a system of supplementary benefits which would improve the overall situation?"
I do not propose to speak on the role of social workers apart from welcoming the establishment of the association catering for social workers. I trust the Department will co-operate fully with this association because as a unified body for the past 12 months I think that association deserves full public recognition; I have no doubt it will make a major contribution to the reform and extension of our social services.
I welcome the setting-up of that body just as I welcome the establishment by the Department of Health of the National Social Services Council. I baulk at trying to interpret the reaction of the Department of Social Welfare to this council. One is aware that the Minister for Health is likely to go off at half-cock in a half-dozen different directions simultaneously and to discover the implications of what he has done two years later. He does magnificent work in many respects in his Department but there is need for the Department of Social Welfare to be kept fully informed as to what the Minister for Health is doing particularly in the social services field. At present we are liable to develop into a sort of hallowe'en party where crackers will be going off all over the place with social services councils, community welfare councils, social workers employed by this body and by that body and a whole range of duplicated social community services with very little co-ordination. There is a real danger of this developing with the Department of Health making their contribution, the various regional health boards doing their bit and then the Department of Social Welfare capping the lot. There is need for much greater co-ordination of these services and I should like the Department of Social Welfare, in conjunction with the Department of Health, to set up community welfare centres throughout the country. I have advocated in the newspapers and in the House the setting-up of citizens' advice bureaux and I do not propose to delay the House unduly on this matter.
I conclude with a number of pleas in regard to individual groupings under our social welfare system. I plead particularly for an urgent revision of the disgraceful anomaly under our social welfare system whereby the Department virtually refuse to recognise the right to social welfare entitlement of deserted wives divorced in Britain by husbands domiciled there. A similar scandalous situation arises in regard to widows' pensions where divorced husbands have died and wives divorced in England apply for widows' pensions here and are refused on the grounds that they were not married before applying for the benefit.
The Minister has said that the Department's legal adviser has advised that such applications, where the deserted wife is involved in divorce proceedings, should be rejected. The Minister is trying to have it both ways. He has said:
To qualify for a deserted wife's allowance a woman must naturally be a wife and arising out of a decision in the case of women who have been divorced in England the deciding officer took into account legal advice to the effect that under our law the divorce in England of a person domiciled in England is effective to dissolve the marriage and the dissolution is recognised as being effective in this country.
One must draw public attention to the fact that a dissolution by divorce of a marriage in England is recognised in the Republic of Ireland in respect of social welfare entitlement and that this is the legal advice given by the Attorney General and by the legal adviser to the Department of Social Welfare. I want to state baldly that the State recognises divorce in England when it suits administrative and statutory convenience. This is a very paradoxical situation. The Taoiseach has said publicly and privately within his own party that one could never have a referendum in Ireland on divorce because it would be defeated. The other political parties, ironically, have come to the same conclusion — we all know what I am talking about — in relation to constitutional referenda.
The State, the Government and the Minister for Social Welfare recognise divorce in relation to social welfare entitlement. I shall give the example of a constituent of mine who is affected by this rather perverse interpretation of the law. This constituent of mine has four children. Her husband went to Britain, in effect deserting her. He divorced her. He died in Britain. The woman applied to the Department of Social Welfare quite recently for a widow's pension. A reply which I got from the Department on 25th September, 1972, is as follows:
I am directed by the Minister for Social Welfare to refer to your letter of——
the date is irrelevant
——concerning the case of——
I do not propose to name the person
——and to inform you that a claim for a widow's pension has been received from her. In order for Mrs. X to qualify for a pension it will be necessary for her to establish that she is a widow. In deciding this question in regard to women who have been divorced in England the deciding officer takes into account legal advice to the effect that under our law the divorce in England of a person domiciled in England is effective to dissolve the marriage and the dissolution is effective in this country.
Enquiries are proceeding in regard to the divorce in this case and if the result of these enquiries confirms the position as set out in your letter, the claim, on the advice quoted above, will be rejected. The grounds of the rejection will be that Mrs. X will have failed to establish that she is a widow.
I sympathise with the staff of the Department of Social Welfare. I do not hold them responsible for this. Their job is to administer the statutes in accordance with the legal advice given but I do seriously suggest to the Minister that the reply which he gave to me last week, that she can go away and apply for home assistance, is not fair and just in the context of 1972 and of our society, which professes serious concern for the Christian family. Where the breadwinner has gone to England and divorced his wife, she should not be penalised.
There seems to be an impression abroad that all members of the Garda Síochána are covered by social welfare insurance. This is very far from being the case. The Garda Síochána have been excluded from Social Welfare Acts since the inception of the force and that position obtained until 2nd October, 1972, when those members of the force whose income is under £1,600 were included as compulsorily insured persons. I want to draw particular attention to the fact that the Conroy Commission recommended, in paragraph 1108 (b) that steps should be taken to ensure that a member of the Garda Síochána might become insurable under and share in the benefits of the Social Welfare Acts and the Health Acts. Since 2nd October about 1,000 members of the total of 7,229 gardaí have been brought under the Social Welfare Acts. The proportion of members covered will decrease as Garda pay increases. I do not think the spirit of the Conroy Commission recommendation has been implemented by the Government, notwithstanding the great brouhaha that went on in regard to the recent Social Welfare Act, when the guards got a pat on the back and were told that they were great fellows and that they were being brought under compulsory social insurance. Of course, members of the force are contributing just as other insured workers are. Gardaí were deprived by law of the right to stamp a card at a time when their salaries would otherwise have entitled them to be compulsorily insured. Recommendations have been made, in particular, by the representative body for inspectors, station sergeants and sergeants. The Minister should re-examine the matter.
The Minister for Social Welfare should consider the question of having contributions deemed to have been paid in respect of the employment of each member of the Garda Síochána in respect of each week immediately prior to 2nd October, 1972, up to a maximum of 156 weeks. This would mean that the three-eighths of pay paid by each member for the past 156 weeks prior to 2nd October would be accepted as a contribution to social welfare. If necessary, the Department of Justice should credit the Department of Social Welfare with the amounts paid. On that basis the members of the force would be in a position to become voluntary contributors, if they so wish. They would, of course, have coverage under the Health Acts. This is a recommendation which I would urge the Minister to consider because it is not enough to say to the members of the Garda Síochána: "You are being brought in under social insurance". They should be brought in on fair and equitable terms.
The only other grouping I want particularly to refer to are the blind. The Department should undertake a very special review of the social welfare provisions for blind persons. There are many serious problems facing blind persons which are ignored in our society and in terms of the provision of employment for blind persons, the provision of tax-free and special disability allowances for blind persons and additional home help for blind persons, our State has been very miserly, rather mean, and rather sparse in its contribution. The recent report of the National League for the Blind of Ireland highlighted the failure of our community to make reasonable and fair provision for the social rights of blind persons in our community.
In regard to the cost of all I have been talking about, I made the suggestion earlier that as a community we have to devote an increasing proportion of our national resources towards social welfare. Where do we get these resources from? One should bring to the attention of the House the kind of money which is now knocking around the State, as one might say, and I will make one or two comments in this regard. Income tax has grown from £52 million in 1965-66 to £148 million in the current year, a phenomenal growth in money which is being contributed by wage and salary earners into the Exchequer, and yet there has been no great relative increase in expenditure in the Department over the years. Revenue from PAYE has rocketed from £21 million to £87 million in the current year—here again wage and salary earners are making massive contributions to State revenue. Surtax has doubled, from £2.6 million to £4.3 million. Value-added tax revenue will be growing very considerably. There is a buoyancy of revenue in the straightforward areas of taxation. The amount we still spend on drink is 10 per cent of all personal expenditure so that there seems to be a fairly substantial buoyancy of revenue in the area of drink consumption. I suggest that it would be possible to have a capital gains tax brought in. In the past year on the Dublin Stock Exchange, £200 million were made in capital gains. There is an area where, if you want to look for money for social welfare, the money is available. I would also bring to the attention of the Minister that very slight increases in the insurance stamp bring in very substantial amounts of money. I have not got the exact figure before me but the Minister will agree that roughly speaking one penny on the insurance stamp from an insured worker brings in £300,000, one penny from an employer bringing in about a similar sum.
We in the Labour Party are under no illusions whatever about the cost of the reforms we are talking about. The cost will be very substantial and this community, if it is really serious about getting to grips with the raising up massively of the levels of social welfare benefit, will have to make up its mind that it is going to pay for it. Those who are going to pay for it are ourselves and the rest of the community through the working population of the State. If any significant progress is to be made towards achieving the changes I have outlined it will require very substantial monetary contributions from the land speculators, from the tax and bonus share speculators — who made fortunes in the past two or three years and who, because of their contributions to Fianna Fáil, are allowed to go scot-free because they are valuable at election time— from employers, and probably more from employers than workers because we have to get away from the idea of identical contributions from employers and workers. On the Continent now, employers are paying vastly more and in Britain employers are increasingly paying more than workers and wage and salary earners such as myself will have to pay more related to our earnings. It is quite unfair that I should pay £1 a week as a voluntary contributor as I do to social insurance on a salary of £2,500 while the unfortunate worker with a wife and five children who is earning £24 a week has to pay £1 also. It is quite unjust.
