I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
The purpose of this Bill is to replace the home assistance service, provided under the terms of the Public Assistance Act of 1939, by a new scheme of supplementary welfare allowances to be operated under the general direction of the Minister for Social Welfare and administered by the regional health boards.
This is a somewhat technical Bill, of 29 sections, and I hope that the explanatory memorandum which was circulated with the Bill has been of assistance to Deputies in their consideration of the detailed proposals.
The Bill proposes the repeal, for all practical purposes, of the Public Assistance Act, 1939 and thus the removal from our social welfare legislation of the remaining vestiges of the poor law. I regard this as an important step forward in the development of the social services and one that is long overdue.
The poor law was the legal embodiment of the attitudes of the last century, harsh and unfeeling attitudes which should have no place in the society of today.
As Séamus Ó Cinnéide wrote in his study, A Law for the Poor, which is the standard work on the history of home assistance:
under the Poor Law the assistance given was minimal, people were discouraged in every way from seeking assistance and the assistance was given in a miserly way. Practice may have varied over time and from place to place but the philosophy of the Poor Law was repressive and inhumane. We must have a new philosophy now.
I see this Bill as a realistic attempt at a radical overhaul of the home assistance service which I proposed as a major aim of my Department, when introducing the 1974 Estimate in this House. The supplementary welfare allowances scheme is designed to fulfill a necessary residual and support role within the overall and income maintenance structure. It is essential within any national system of social welfare to have a support service of last resort which can enable immediate and relatively flexible assistance to be provided for those in need who do not qualify for payments under other State schemes. Such a service should also help those whose needs are inadequately met under the major schemes and those confronted with emergency situations.
Thus, the supplementary welfare allowances scheme will become an effective part of the overall national social welfare service and will no longer be seen as an unconnected, poor relation of that service. It will, however, retain and develop its local, community-based element which is a most important potential strength. The problems of those who will need to avail of these allowances will, in most cases, be of a nature calling for more than a mere cash response. Social services, social work support and genuine community care are also needed which can help the recipients to cope with the situations in which they find themselves and to find a place of dignity and full integration in our society.
This Bill is a further step forward in the planned realisation of the Government's objective of creating a genuinely comprehensive social security system catering for the needs of all citizens. Its effect will be to provide assistance, as of right, to a further substantial number of persons and families and to bring us nearer to the desired aim of giving income maintenance coverage to all. It is another positive element in the Government's policy of alleviating and eliminating poverty and ending social injustice. This policy is being implemented progressively and systematically.
The proposals contained in this Bill should be put in their proper perspective. While very considerable progress has been made in the development of the social welfare system by substantial improvements and extensions, designed to meet immediate and obvious social needs, it cannot be denied that the existing home assistance scheme has fulfilled, and continues to fulfill, a vitally important support role in areas where poverty is encountered in its most acute form.
Home assistance, which is now provided under the Public Assistance Act, 1939, had its origins in the Poor Relief (Ireland) Act, 1847, and was the only statutory form of assistance, other than institutional assistance, provided for persons in need until the beginning of this century. Since then the overall need for the service has been eroded as State social insurance and assistance services, catering in different ways for loss of income arising from specific contingencies such as old age, sickness, unemployment, widowhood, were gradually introduced and expanded. This is reflected in the numbers of beneficiaries, including dependants, which have fallen from 75,000, 30 years ago to around 30,000 at present. The nature of the service has also changed in that the majority of recipients nowadays are persons who receive assistance to supplement payments under some other service or while awaiting other payments. As a result of this evolution home assistance is financially a relatively small service, the cost in the last full year—1973-74—being approximately £2 million, as against expenditure on the State benefit and assistance schemes in 1975 of the order of £350 million. The home assistance service which is financed from the rates is administered—as Deputies are aware—by 31 public assistance authorities, or by health boards acting on their behalf, subject to the general direction and control of the Minister for Social Welfare.
A person is eligible for home assistance if he is unable, by his own industry or other lawful means, to provide the necessities of life for himself or his dependants.
Applications for assistance are made to the local assistance officer who implements the service in an assistance district of convenient size within each administrative area. In urgent cases, and pending decision by the appropriate authority, the assistance officer can grant to eligible applicants assistance in food, fuel and other necessaries. All applications are dealt with by the appropriate authority which decides whether a person is eligible and what assistance should be given.
Generally grants of home assistance are not made for more than one month at a time but in cases of permanent infirmity they may be renewed every three months. The home assistance service, as at present operated, has been the subject of widespread criticism for years. My own views on the service have been expressed quite unequivocally in this House.
Surveys of the service have shown that, because of major defects in its structure, it operates in an arbitrary and far from satisfactory manner. Major inequalities exist as regards the standards of eligibility and levels of payments as between one authority and another and even within the same authority in the treatment of basic needs. Similarly, in the manner of supplementation, wide differences in the treatment of similar cases are evident. This scope for local variation and for arbitrary exclusion stems from the wide differences in the financial circumstances of the various local authorities involved, as well as from the fact that the existing law does not, with any precision, define the circumstances in which assistance may be paid or the amount of assistance to be provided.
Perhaps the most serious criticism of home assistance has been that its operation has always been discretionary, with no right to assistance existing for the applicant. Arguing for the extension of social assistance to cover all social contingencies and needs, Professor Kaim-Caudle—in his important survey of social policy in the Irish Republic—has made the point that discretionary allowances, without any right of appeal or review, have all the unpleasant flavour of the poor law.
Criticism of the home assistance service has been a feature of social and political comment for many years. Indeed, the debate in this House on the Public Assistance Bill, 1939, contained some striking contributions which reflected the existence even then of much disquiet about various features of the scheme. Speaking on the Second Stage of the Bill—on 6th June, 1939, at columns 537 and 538 of the Official Report— the then Leader of the Labour Party, the late Deputy William Norton, said that:
Here in this country, both in our approach to the workhouse system and to the manner in which we distribute relief, as well as in the low scale of relief which we provide, we proceed to assume, I am afraid, in our approach to that problem, that poverty is something on which you are entitled to upbraid a person... there is very little real effort made to raise either the conception of life or the conditions of life of those who are unfortunately compelled to resort to it for sustenance.
That criticism was made 36 years ago in the course of a Dáil debate on a measure which was designed to do more than codify and co-ordinate the poor law code. These words very clearly summed up the underlying philosophy of the poor law and its defects.
Perhaps the most striking criticism of the service is that contained in Séamus Ó Cinnéide's study, A Law for the poor, published in 1970. In this he stated that:
It may be argued that home assistance is very different from the outdoor relief given under the Poor Law from 1847 but the facts contradict this. Now, as then, persons in need have no right to assistance; they are dependent on the goodwill of the authority which gives assistance and cannot have recourse to any appeals machinery, including the courts. Now, as then, no great effort is made to seek those in need and the public image of the service is forbidding. Now, as then, the emphasis is on saving the ratepayer's money. Now, as then, the method by which assistance is given is inconvenient and compromising of the self-esteem of those who must avail themselves of it.
If it can be said of any social service that it is compromising of the self-esteem of citizens of our country, then surely the time for reform cannot be further delayed.
One recent social survey among poor people showed quite clearly that more than a quarter of persons who were actually receiving home assistance at the time of interview did not admit this fact to the interviewers and the author of the survey was forced to the conclusion that this was due to a basic feeling of shame associated with the service.
Another survey has underlined this most serious issue of the stigma attaching to a poor law type of service. A pensioner was quoted as saying: "I wouldn't go within a mile of the home assistance—it has the brand of poverty on it", and a young mother was quoted as describing her feelings: "People make you feel like an outcast when you are on assistance —you would think it was out of their own pockets the money was coming."
Whatever may be the technical or theoretical criticisms of the existing home assistance service, I believe that this element of stigma is by far the most important reason for reform. Improvements such as those proposed in the Bill cannot change attitudes but they can contribute to removing the most obvious causes of those attitudes and to ending the social division between home assistance recipients and the members of the community which appears to be an inevitable result of the present system. The present law, therefore, includes provisions deriving from the poor law which are unacceptable in a modern welfare system. I can refer here to provisions such as that which makes it an offence, punishable by imprisonment, for a person in receipt of assistance to refuse or neglect to perform a task of work which he is required by the Act to perform. Such provisions, which go back to the poor law, have been inoperative for many years but their existence demonstrates the need for radical reform.
In proposing this reform, I want to state again that a scheme such as home assistance has always been necessary and that it has been an essential service for many people. Its inherent defects have, however, rendered the service to a large degree ineffective in human and community terms.
The general criticism of home assistance to which I have referred has, at times, involved criticism of the officers who have had the task of implementing it over the years. I cannot go along with such criticism and I wish, at this stage, to place on record my appreciation of the work of the home assistance officers throughout the country who have sought to apply the terms of an outdated and thoroughly defective scheme with humanity and with concern to relieve the deep-seated problems of many individuals and families in distress. I hope that the new proposals contained in the Bill will provide all who will work to implement them with a more suitable framework for their efforts in the future.
I turn now to the detailed provisions of the Bill which will introduce the new system of supplementary welfare allowances. The reforms envisaged by this Bill are designed to meet pressing need in a flexible and speedy manner while at the same time guaranteeing to all persons who have to depend on the service a standard basic minimum income as of right in place of the arbitrary and variable payments they may receive at present. These basic payments would be subject to a standard means test.
While uniform basic rates must be a fundamental feature of the new service, the diversity of recipients and the variety of the circumstances which cause them to seek assistance require that there must also be a considerable element of flexibility in the service to meet particular needs. The service must, therefore, include provision to permit the basic rates of allowance, or, indeed, the payments under the various State income maintenance services, to be supplemented so that the special needs of individual claimants may be met. Similarly, there must be flexible provision for special aid in emergencies.
Another objective of the new service is that it must be capable of being co-ordinated on a family-oriented basis with a comprehensive range of non-monetary social work services, the overall objective of which will be to break the cycle of poverty in which some families find themselves. There must also, of course, be the maximum possible co-ordination between the service and the social insurance and assistance income maintenance services administered by my Department.
It would not be possible to achieve the broad uniformity of approach required in dealing with these matters if they were left to a number of independent administrative authorities to work out for themselves. Administration of the new supplementary welfare allowances scheme through the health boards, which will apply national standards and national guidelines, will eliminate the territorial inequalities of the existing system in relation to standards of eligibility and payments, and will enable the service to be operated within the framework of the community care services of these boards.
The Bill provides that every person in the State whose means are insufficient to meet his needs and those of his dependants will be entitled to supplementary welfare allowances. Providing allowances as of right will remove one of the main poor law connotations of the Public Assistance Act, 1959, under which assistance is provided purely on a discretionary basis.
As I have stated earlier, the home assistance service has over the years been replaced in very large measure by special schemes which give rights to benefit to specified categories of persons in need. The provisions of benefit as of right for persons in need who happen to be excluded from such special schemes is a feature of corresponding residual benefit services in other countries with highly developed systems and is long overdue in this country.
The new arrangements whereby an allowance is available as of right, instead of at discreation, means that specific exceptions must be made to ensure that only cases of genuine need are covered. An exception is, therefore, made in the case of students receiving full-time education who as individuals could be regarded as having no means but who are, in fact, normally the responsibility of their parents. Provision is also made to exclude persons in full-time work and persons directly involved in trade disputes.
I should like to make it clear, however, that these exclusions are not absolute. In the first place, a person in any of the categories excluded may receive an allowance where there is urgent need. Also, even where urgent need does not exist, a person receiving full-time education could in exceptional circumstances be paid an allowances, an example being a student who is the head of a household. Similarly, although persons in full-time employment will normally be excluded, a person who has been receiving an allowance while out of work may, under regulations to be made by the Minister, have his allowance continued for a short period after he starts work to help him in the transitional period. The provisions for exclusion of persons directly involved in trade disputes are similar to those applying in relation to unemployment benefit and assistance, except that power is included to allow payments in respect of dependants to be made during a trade dispute.
While the administration of the home assistance schemes is, under the Public Assistance Act, 1939, a function of the public assistance authorities, that is, the corporations of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford and 27 county councils including North and South Tipperary, these authorities have, except, in the case of ten county councils, transferred their functions in that respect to the health boards under powers given by the Health Act, 1970.
The new supplementary welfare allowances will be administered by the health boards subject to the general direction and control of the Minister for Social Welfare. Claims for the new allowance will be determined by the chief executive officer or other officers of each board acting on his behalf.
Subjects to regulations to be made by the Minister, a health board may determine that a person shall not be entitled to the new allowance unless he is registered for employment. It is intended that provision will be made in regulations for general exemptions from this rule in the case of persons incapable of work, persons over pensionable age, women with dependent children and other classes of persons where the condition of seeking employment would be inappropriate. Persons who make application for the supplementary welfare allowance may also be required to make application for any statutory or other benefits or assistance to which they may be entitled.
I have already referred to the fact that home assistance is given at the discretion of the public assistance authority, an approach which follows closely the antiquated tradition of poor relief. Another notably repugnant feature of the Public Assistance Act, 1939, is that there is no provision for appeals by persons against the decisions of the authorities in relation to their applications for assistance. As I have already explained, the Bill provides that persons in need will be entitled as of right to allowances under the new scheme. The corollory to this proposal is that there should be provision for appeals. I am glad, therefore, to include in the Bill a proposal that where a person is dissatisfied with the determination by an officer of a health board of his claim for supplementary welfare allowance, an appeal shall lie against such determination to a person appointed by the Minister for Social Welfare.
The basic standard amount of supplementary welfare allowance which will be payable to a person without means will be equivalent to the maximum rate of unemployment assistance applicable in rural areas. Thus a person who has no means and no dependants will be paid £7.35 a week and a person with an adult dependent will receive £12.80 a week. Increases for dependent children will be payable at the same rates as those which apply under the unemployment assistance code.
A man, wife and two children shall, therefore, receive £17.50 or, if there are four children, £21.10. A single person with four children could receive £15.80. In the case of persons who have some means those basic rates will be reduced by the amount of such weekly means.
These proposed rates compare very favourably with the national average of payments made by way of home assistance. In a survey made some months ago it was ascertained that the average payment to a person receiving home assistance, otherwise than as an addition to other statutory benefit or assistance, was £4.91 to a person without dependents, or £9.11 in the case of a recipient with dependants.
Whilst uniform basic rates of allowance will constitute an essential feature of the new service, there must, as I have already mentioned, also be an element of flexibility in the new scheme to enable it to meet a wide variety of individual needs and circumstances and to enable appropriate additional payments to be made over and above the basic weekly rates of allowances. The Bill includes provision for supplementation where the basic weekly rates of the new allowance or the weekly rates of other statutory social insurance or assistance payments are insufficient to meet individual needs. Such special needs could, for example, arise in relation to rent payments, heating or diet requirements, or in the case of persons living alone or dependent on an allowance over a prolonged period.
While the amounts of supplements will fall to be determined by the health boards having regards to the particular circumstances of individual claimants, it is desirable that the provision of supplements should, where practicable, be standardised for all health board areas. The Bill, therefore, enables the Minister, with the sanction of the Minister for Finance, to specify by regulations circumstances which will give rise to supplements and the amounts to be paid in relation to particular classes of claimants. These regulations may provide for additional help in the form of assistance in kind.
Another essential requirement of the new scheme is that there should be standard uniform rules for the assessment of means, and the Bill includes provision for these. The rules for calculating means will, in general be on the same lines as those used to calculate means for entitlement to unemployment assistance, but it may be found necessary, in the light of experience of the new scheme, to vary the rules if these are inadequate to deal with particular circumstances which may arise. Provision is, accordingly, included in the Bill to enable the means rules to be varied by regulations with the sanction of the Minister for Finance.
I have been speaking thus far about supplementary welfare allowances in the category of normal weekly payments and I would like to refer briefly now to provisions in the Bill for other forms of payment of the allowance. First, allowances in kind may be granted in lieu of case where a health board considers that the needs of a person can best be met in that way. Secondly, a single payment may, where a health board sees fit, be made to meet an exceptional need arising on a single occasion as opposed to continuing special expenses which would be met by an increase in the weekly payment.
I should like now to say a few words on the question of liability to maintain dependants. The Bill provides that, without prejudice to other obligations imposed by law or otherwise, each spouse will be required to support the other and either will be liable to maintain his or her children under the age of 16. these provisions are broadly similar to those in the existing legislation but the further provisions of the 1939 Act which stipulate that every legitimate person is liable to maintain his father and mother and every illegitimate person his mother are being dropped. The proposals in the Bill restrict the liability to maintain to the immediate family unit and this represents a departure, for the purposes of the new scheme, from the extended and outmoded concept of liability under the Public Assistance Act, 1939.
In this regard, I might mention that the liability of a child to support his parents for the purpose of entitlement to disabled person's (maintenance) allowance under the Health Acts was eliminated in the revised provision made in the Health Act, 1970.
It follows from the provisions regarding liability to maintain dependants that, where a person receives supplementary welfare allowance, every person who is liable to maintain that person should be liable to contribute according to his ability to the allowance granted. The Bill includes provision accordingly and empowers a health board to apply, where necessary, to a district court for recovery of allowances from the persons liable to maintain who are in a position to pay, or make some contribution towards, the cost of the allowance paid. The court would, in such case, fix the amount of the contribution to be made by the relative who is liable.
At present public assistance authorities are responsible for the burial of deceased persons who died leaving insufficient resources to provide for their burial, or whose relatives, if any, are unable to meet the cost. The Bill includes provisions to enable health boards to make arrangements for burials in such circumstances and empowers them to obtain repayment of expenses incurred where appropriate from the estate of the deceased person or from any person who was liable to maintain the deceased person.
I turn now to the question of the financing of the new scheme. At present public assistance authorities meet the full cost of home assistance expenditure from the rates. I have already mentioned that one of the reasons for the lack of uniformity in the treatment of applications for assistance in the different public assistance districts is the fact that poorer countries cannot afford the same level of assistance as is provided elsewhere. If, following the present system of financing, each local authority had to bear the full cost of the new service in their area there would be a very substantial increase in the local rates in the poorer counties where home assistance standards of payments are generally lowest and, consequently, where the cost of bringing the levels of payment up to the national standards envisaged for supplementary welfare allowance would weigh most heavily on ratepayers.
The Government have examined very carefully the question of the financing of the new scheme and consider that it is not unreasonable to require local authorities to bear the cost which they are now required to meet for home assistance, together with a share of the additional cost of supplementary welfare allowance. Under the proposals in this Bill each local authority's contribution to the total amount to be paid by all authorities will be determined by reference to what they are now spending on home assistance so that the poorer areas will not have to contribute a higher proportion of the total cost than they are doing at present.
The new financing proposals are briefly that expenditure under the new scheme will be met partly by payments to the health boards from the local authorities which are at present public assistance authorities and partly by grants from the Exchequer. I will explain now in greater detail how these proposals will operate.
Local authorities who are at present public assistance authorities will in respect of each full year of the operation of the new scheme pay to the health board in whose area they are situated a sum equivalent to their expenditure on home assistance in the year 1975. In addition, 40 per cent of the amount by which the total expenditure of all health boards on supplementary welfare allowances in the year in question exceeds the total expenditure by all public assistance authorities on home assistance in 1975 will be borne by the local authorities concerned. Each such authority will pay to the appropriate health board a share of that 40 per cent. The allocation between the authorities of the 40 per cent of the excess cost will be determined by the proportions in which total expenditure by all public assistance authorities on home assistance in 1975 was shared between them.
Broadly speaking, therefore, if the expenditure of a public assistance authority on home assistance in 1975 is one-twentieth of the total expenditure by all public assistance authorities in that year, the local authority concerned will be required to pay one-twentieth of 40 per cent of the excess cost in question. Expenditure by health boards on supplementary welfare allowances over and above that covered by receipts from the local authorities, that is, 60 per cent of the excess cost will be met by grants from the Exchequer.
If the new scheme commences other than at the beginning of a year the arrangements I have outlined will apply on a pro rata basis in respect of whatever part of a year is involved.
The administration costs of the new scheme will also be paid by the local authorities who at present are public assistance authorities. Local authorities in each health board area will share the administration costs in similar manner to that in which local authorities share their contributions to the health boards under the Health Act, 1970.
I want, in this connection, to stress again the importance which must be attached to the local involvement in the working of this new scheme. If the grave social problems which lead to eligibility for supplementary welfare allowances are to be solved and if the persons concerned are to be supported and helped to achieve their rightful place in the community, then there must be a genuine connection between the income maintenance service and personal social services. It is generally accepted that effective personal services should have a sound community basis which can be ensured by the work of the community care sections of the health boards.
I come now to the question of the cost of the new scheme. The cost of home assistance in 1973-74, the last complete financial year for which figures are available, was, as I have said earlier, about £2 million. The proposals which I have outlined envisage the termination of the home assistance scheme and the substitution for it of a new service, and the statistical and other information necessary for an accurate estimate of cost is not available.
It is difficult to gauge with any degree of accuracy the effects of the replacement of a purely discretionary service at local level, by a service providing standard payments as of right to be applied uniformly on a nation-wide basis. On the basis of the available information, however, it is estimated that the overall yearly cost of the Bill proposals, excluding the cost of administration, will be of the order of £4.5 million.
Taking the estimated cost of home assistance in 1975 to be £2 million, the additional cost of the new scheme will, therefore, be about £2.5 million. On the cost-sharing basis which I have described, the local authorities will be required to bear 40 per cent of the excess cost, that is, 40 per cent of about £2.5 million which is £1 million. Thus the cost to the Exchequer in a full year will be approximately £1.5 million.
On the commencement of the new scheme, the staff of public assistance authorities who have been engaged on the administration of home assistance will be transferred to the health boards. The Bill includes provision to safeguard the employment and superannuation rights of the staff so transferred. I might mention in this regard that some public assistance authorities who have transferred their home assistance functions to health boards have also transferred their staff, so that the transfer of staff to be affected as a result of this Bill will apply only to the remaining authorities.
I have already referred to the work of the home assistance officers in the operation of the existing scheme. If the proposed new service is to achieve its objectives it will depend to a considerable extent on the day-to-day efforts of the staffs engaged in its implementation. I look forward to the preparatory work which will be needed in coming months prior to the introduction of the new scheme—work which will call for close collaboration between the staffs of involved, the community care staffs of the health boards, the appropriate unions and representative organisations and the officials of my Department.
All property of public assistance authorities which was used solely or mainly in pursuance of their functions under the Public Assistance Act, 1939, will on the commencement become the property of health boards and with the exception of two sections which are still required in connection with the administration of the health services the Act itself will be repealed.
To meet any difficulties which may arise in bringing the new service into operation, the Bill includes a provision empowering the Minister to take appropriate action by order to remove any such difficulty. This power will continue for one year from the commencement of the new scheme. Similar provision was included in other social welfare legislation introducing new services, for example, the Social Welfare Act, 1952, the Social Welfare (Occupational Injuries) Act, 1966 and the Social Welfare (Pay-Related Benefit) Act, 1973. Any order made under this provision must be laid before each House of the Oireachtas and could be annulled by resolution of either House within 21 sitting days.
The Bill includes transitional provisions which will enable reference in other statutes, orders or regulations to matters affected by this Bill to be modified where necessary, as a result of the replacement of home assistance by supplementary welfare allowances. These provisions also include measures designed to protect the interests of persons claiming or receiving home assisttance at the transition stage.
Other proposals in the Bill deal with the Minister's power to make regulations for the purposes of the new scheme. Provision is also included for bringing the Act into operation by order. I am anxious that the new scheme should be brought into operation as soon as possible. However, before doing so it will be necessary to complete the organisational arrangements and to make the regulations which, as shown in the explanatory memorandum, will cover a wide variety of matters.
I want to refer now to an important, and relevant, element in the work programme of the National Committee on Pilot Schemes to Combat Poverty. The Committee have decided to undertake a project designed to assess the effectiveness of the reformed scheme proposed in this Bill and to indicate ways in which further and improved services could be brought about for the groups and individuals concerned. The project will seek, also, to ascertain through experimentation the best methods of providing for the total needs of recipients of the new allowances with a view to ending the cycle of poverty experienced by such persons.
This scheme has been submitted by the committee to the Commission in Brussels for inclusion in the programme of pilot schemes and studies to combat poverty which was approved by the Social Affairs Council in Luxembourg last week.
I regard this project of actionresearch as having a most important role in relation to the development of our policy in this area of hard-core poverty and deprivation. There will be a "before-and-after" survey of recipients which will enable the research workers of the committee to evaluate the practical changes brought about by the implementation of the changes provided for by the Bill and to assess their effectiveness. There will also be a survey aimed at categorising problems, identifying proximate causes and seeking appropriate services to deal with them. The whole project will be carried out in close collaboration with appropriate specialist personnel, such as public health nurses, psychiatrists, health board staffs, officials of national manpower services, and so on.
It is envisaged that the project areas will consist of one urban, or largely urban, and one rural assistance officer functional area in each of two counties. The counties chosen for the project will be probably characterised by high and low levels of payments under the existing home assistance scheme. Planning and preparatory work in connection with this project is proceeding and the field work will commence in the autumn period. I see this project as a most imaginative contribution to our policy-making and review procedures.
In the overall planning of the social welfare system, it is my concern to see developed a single assistance scheme, envisaged and operated in such a way as to be an adequate complement to the comprehensive scheme of social insurance which is being created. This assistance scheme would provide supplementary income maintenance to any person in genuine need.
Supplementary support should, of course, be available as a social right and should be backed up with a proper set of personal and community social services geared to the long-term solution of social problems. It would eventually encompass the existing assistance payments service and would have responsibility for the various ancillary services such as the provision of free transport, free electricity, and so on. The criteria would be simplified, as far as possible, to become equated to need.
I believe that it should be the task of social assistance to enable the recipient to lead a life in keeping with his dignity. Social assistance must, therefore, enable the recipient as far as possible to live independently of it and should be an aid to self-help. In all cases, aid under such a scheme should be concerned not only with specific payments and actions designed to meet material and care needs, but also with the prevention of isolation and with including the individual as far as possible in the full life of the community.
I can say, at this stage, that the National Committee on Pilot Schemes to Combat Poverty are planning to undertake research into the adequacy of certain social welfare payments as part of their welfare rights project. This study will be carried out in the context of a programme of practical intervention aimed at ensuring that all existing social rights are obtained by those who are eligible. I hope that this project will contribute to our understanding of the way in which our social welfare system works and of the degree to which it meets its stated objectives. The work of the national committee will, in this way, be directed in all its aspects to provision of useful information for policy makers at local and national levels, and, indeed, at Community level.
I have on other occasions, described the home assistance service as a disaster, thus echoing the opinions of many informed critics over the years, and the reform of this outdated scheme has been a priority in my approach to the development of a comprehensive social welfare system. In the context of the Government's programme to combat poverty, this Bill is one of major importance in that it proposes to eliminate from our social legislation the last vestiges of the Victorian poor law.
The Bill breaks new ground and provides for a number of important reforms to which I have already referred. While these improvements will free beneficiaries from the stigma of the poor law tradition, I am conscious that the Bill is not an end but a beginning. It is only reasonable to expect that operational experience of the new scheme will indicate areas in which improvements are necessary and the provisions will, therefore, be subject to constant review towards that end.
In conclusion, I hope that the reform initiated by this Bill will have a positive effect upon public attitudes and, thus, in helping the overall thrust of policy in the fight against poverty. It cannot be said often enough that policy changes in the social area depend upon widespread public awareness and understanding which can lead both to acceptance of the cost of social services and to real involvement in them. Without this support and involvement the most radical policies and programmes will not get to grips with the human problems experienced by individuals, families and groups in our cities and towns and throughout the country. This is particularly true in respect of the proposed new scheme of supplementary welfare allowances which are intended to deal with the problems of perhaps the most deprived groups in our national community.
It gives me great pleasure to recommend this Bill to Dáil Éireann for speedy and favourable consideration.
