One feels that if we all followed the example of the Good Samaritan such exercises as Social Welfare Acts might not be necessary. But I am afraid that will not happen in our time or for a long time after. I should like to join with the Parliamentary Secretary and the other Deputies in paying a tribute to the staff of the Department because they get through so much work and documentation with so few mistakes. From time to time I see some of those mistakes, and I cannot understand how they are so few. One must pay a tribute to the staff when one realises the amount of papers which pass through the Department, that practically all books and forms have to be changed from one year to another, and on this occasion changed for a second time, and the colossal amount of work demanding attention to detail.
I should like to refer to unemployment assistance or, as it is known, the dole, in view of the fact that there was some controversy about this recently. It is my opinion that but for unemployment assistance the population in the west would be fewer than it is. This subsidy to the small farmers has helped keep them over the years. It has been criticised from time to time and one must agree with some of this criticism. It is unfortunate that it was labelled "unemployment assistance". It is now being realised that it could have been given another name. It could be labelled a subsidy to tide the small farmers over the period until they become big farmers. It is true to say that every small farmer who hopes to continue to make his living on the land has a big farmer inside him trying to get out. He is always looking for extra land and hopes that some day he will get enough to take him out of the category of the small farmer so he can call himself a big farmer. For this reason much of the talk heard and the emotion spent on the small farmer is misplaced. I am sure it is not the intention of any Deputy to perpetuate the small farmer, particularly the man living on the small income. It is alleged that he is getting money for doing nothing. This aspect was considered in the past and the system of estimating means was changed so that it became more compatible with the productive capacity of the man who hoped to draw social welfare assistance. This was a move in the right direction.
On the other hand, let us consider the amount of money this State pays to big farmers—dairy farmers and beef producers. The Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, and now the EEC fund, pay a great deal of money to keep those people on their land and provide a living for them. These people have sufficient land and resources to provide an adequate living for themselves and their families without having recourse to the finances of the State. Of course they are giving extra production to the State and this is of economic benefit. But this is where I criticise unemployment assistance. It has not been tied up in such a way that it could be used to increase the productive capacity of the people to whom it is payable. As I mentioned, an effort was made in this direction in the past but it probably was not carried far enough.
There are people who because of illness or age have not the capacity to produce off the land they own. The number of people drawing unemployment assistance should be examined and the people given unemployment or sickness benefit. As has been mentioned in this House several times, this is not a new idea. But the Department of Social Welfare did not get around to it, perhaps because the amount of work involved and the system there at the moment is acceptable enough.
The Parliamentary Secretary mentioned criticism of the present increases in social welfare. It was also alleged that some people are getting more on social welfare than they would earn. This is probably a fault in the system, but it appears to arise as a result of the pay-related system. In view of the fact that this will continue for 12 months only even if the unfortunate man gets more than he earns he will need it when his pay-related benefit runs out. Therefore, I do not think we can complain too much about that.
It is also alleged that many people drawing unemployment benefit are working or are able to work. This brings up the question of the definition of "ability to work". We can all see the exaggerated case of the man with one arm who, if he gets suitable employment, can earn an acceptable rate. On the other hand a man who appears to be in good health may be drawing unemployment benefit and be unable to work.
A man has a right to employment. It is well to put on record that a former Minister for Industry and Commerce years ago made the statement that there was no obligation on a Government to provide work for anybody. Fianna Fáil did away with this fable when they came to power. As I said, a man is entitled to work but is he also entitled to work for which he has been trained and at which he may have spent 25 years or more; or must he be still labelled as employable even though he has to pursue a totally different type of work? Cognisance is taken of this in the present thinking by virtue of retraining, but there is not retraining for everybody in this class. It could be argued that a man is not alone entitled to work but is entitled to work for which he has been trained. This is a certain justification for him to draw unemployment benefit, even though there may be other work available for which he was not trained or which is not congenial to him. I have no doubt some people hold a completely different view on this.
The problem of disability benefit, which involves the element of sickness, also arises. In spite of all the criticism, I would say that the abuses constitute about 1 per cent or 2 per cent. In my experience most men work if they are able and in my area I know of men who are working who should not be working. There are quite a few who would be on disability benefit but the difference between the amount of benefit and the wage they can earn gives them a drive to work even though they are in indifferent health. Naturally, as the years go by the work is not as congenial to them as it might be.
Doctors depend on the word of the people they treat. A patient may complain of pain but it must be realised that pain is a very subjective thing. One might compare the stoicism of a woman in labour with the anguish of a professional footballer on the field. Here there is an amazing contrast between the two cases; both are expressing in their own way what they think of pain and how acceptable or unacceptable it is to them. There are situations where people can work for one, two or three hours and then they must take a rest but this may not be possible when they are in employment. For instance, many workers have to keep working steadily if they are working on conveyor-type work and it would not be possible for them to interrupt their work at regular intervals.
This is an aspect that the Department of Social Welfare must consider. From time to time I have thought that a local committee which would supervise administration at local level might be of some help to the Department. On the other hand, I gathered from the remarks of the Parliamentary Secretary a few days ago that he was not 100 per cent confident of the ability of old age pension committees to make such decisions. This was suggested in the past through the Irish Medical Association but I do not know if it was considered by the Minister at that time. It was suggested that in each area there would be a social committee who would have the obligation of deciding to a large extent regarding a person's eligibility for an old age pension, a medical card, deciding whether they were able to work and various other factors. Probably it would take a lot to change the system now. The fact that local organisations were abolished, possibly because they were not doing their work, and that managers were appointed might well indicate that at that time we were not mature enough. It is another matter whether we have got more mature in the meantime. If we are ever to have decentralisation, passing responsibility back to the community, I would suggest that thought to the Parliamentary Secretary and his advisers.
In his introductory statement the Parliamentary Secretary referred several times to poverty. I do not know if he really made an effort to define poverty although he made a few attempts. The more one thinks about it the more difficult it is to define what it means. Off-hand, I would define poverty as a people's inability to make use of resources, or people who have little or no resources at all. In my younger days there was a large amount of poverty in that people did not have many resources. They had small pieces of land but they appeared to live as well as their neighbours, which seemed to be the definition suggested in the Parliamentary Secretary's statement. People were able to produce crops, milk, eggs and potatoes and they kept going. Apart from fairly rare cases, there did not seem to be actual want.
When I look around me and see people I would label as impoverished, often they have resources but they do not seem able to make the proper use of them. When one goes into a house and sees a television set while other things are neglected, one wonders what definition to put on that. One could go into a house at lunch time and see a large plate of expensive biscuits for five or six children while at the same time those children are not getting the foods they really need. This is probably poverty so far as the children are concerned and it is due to a failure by the parents to make proper use of their resources.
There is also the case of the businessman who will go into debt to make more money and very many people are living on borrowed money who show no evidence of poverty. This is an absolute contradiction of what we were told when we were young, that a person who was 6p short at the end of the week was impoverished. It is a very difficult problem to define.
The Parliamentary Secretary summarised this matter when he quoted Professor Donnison—he said it was a matter of education. If the people I am thinking of had been taught house economics and how to make better use of money when they were in primary or post-primary school many of the situations I have described could have been avoided. I must admit that there are not that many but they do exist. There are very few cases of poverty that exist just because the resources are not available to people from the State. They may not have as much as their neighbours, they may not be able to keep up with the Joneses even though the latter may not be very affluent, but at least they are not hungry. In the last few years there have been very few hungry people.
There is the other situation of the man who is ill-cared for, who has a badly kept house, who is obviously anaemic and yet who has a bank account. It reminds me of the story of a man who sold two cattle for £95 at a fair and who owed a certain amount of money to a shopkeeper. The latter had a great welcome for him when he came into the shop under the impression that he would pay his bill. He congratulated him on the price he got for the cattle but the farmer told him he came into the shop to borrow £5 as he would like to put an even £100 into his bank account. That was the farmer's attitude to life and looking after his money.
The question of social welfare brings up the question of socialism. There are people who are doctrinaire in this matter. Listening to them one would get the impression that unless the sick and the unemployed get financial benefits from a system based purely on a socialist philosophy, they are not getting their rights. This is going too far. I sometimes wonder whether the £1 I subscribe to the St. Vincent de Paul Society is as acceptable to those who benefit from it as is the £1 I pay in income tax. There are those who might say that it is not and that organisations such as the society I have mentioned should be abolished, with the State assuming responsibility for the whole area of providing for the needs of people. However, the more we experience the work of the State and the difficulties involved for the State in these areas, the more we realise the need for those local organisations.
This State is doing very well. Successive Governments have endeavoured to increase social welfare benefits as much as possible. I am old enough to remember a time when the distribution of wealth by way of social welfare payments was not acceptable. Recipients of social welfare in the thirties were sneered at by their neighbours. I am glad that we have long got away from that sort of thinking and that there is now the acceptance of the responsibility of the State in this area and not only of the State but of the citizen to some extent, although the income tax payer may not always appreciate this when he gets his annual assessment.
The Parliamentary Secretary has told us that he intends making some provision for the self-employed, particularly in respect of pensions. This is a very desirable move. There are many self-employed persons who are making their contribution to the economy but who never seem to be able to take advantage of any benefit from it except when they are unfortunate enough to become ill, in which circumstances they would probably benefit on the medical side. Also, if they are ill enough to qualify, there is the disabled persons allowance, though there may be a case for increasing these benefits because they are not up to the level of other social welfare payments.
Having regard to the circumstances in which we live and to our country's productivity and also in view of the fact that the Ministers of Agriculture are meeting in an effort to solve the problem of excess production in the Community, is it not time for the Department to consider the extension of social welfare to take the form of aids other than money? This has been done in the past. I refer to the introduction of the free beef scheme. This was another scheme that was sneered at and one which left its mark on some of our people. The result of this attitude was that those most in need did not apply for participation in the scheme. At the time of the US crisis I remember reading that an outstanding economist suggested that the superfluous amount of beef available in that country should be distributed free to those could not afford to buy it. The EEC have used a similar scheme recently to dispose of a butter "mountain". I do not know whether they have used it to dispose of a beef surplus but the idea is one that we could adopt.
I was an advocate of our joining the EEC. My support for membership stemmed mainly from my memories of farmers coming to our shop when I was young and bemoaning the fact that they had not been able to sell their cattle and, consequently, would have no income for some time. I was led by economists to believe that if we joined the EEC there would be no problem for our beef producers because there was a deficit of this product within the Community. Unfortunately, these economists have been proved wrong and we have been encountering many difficulties. The suggestion that Community farmers should produce at a price acceptable to them is wrong. The only way to deal with a surplus is to increase demand and this is where the consumers come into the picture. If products are sold at a price that is acceptable there is much more likelihood of there being a demand for them. The Department of Social Welfare could contribute their share by way of the provision of vouchers to the needy. This is something that could be taken up by all the social welfare ministeries within the Community. This would benefit the farmers in the first place and, secondly, those in receipt of such concessions.
There are many other remarks I should like to make but since they have been made by other speakers I would not consider it appropriate to take up the time of the House by repeating them. The Parliamentary Secretary has reminded us that for the first time somebody in his position has come to the House for a second time in the same year offering increased social welfare benefits. If such increases are necessary it is good that they are being granted, but it is my hope that the economic conditions of the country will improve to such an extent that never again will it be necessary for anybody to seek increases twice in the one year. In saying that I am not laying the blame on anyone.
