Vol. 310 No. 7
I move:
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £10,000,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31 day of December, 1978, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Social Welfare, for certain services administered by that Office, for payments to the Social Insurance Fund, and for sundry grants.
We could discuss the three Supplementary Estimates together.
There are a few points I would like to make on Vote No. 50. They relate primarily to the savings which have taken place. Deputies will note there have been savings under subheads A.2, B.2, F, H and K. Under subhead K there has been a saving of £479,000 on free electricity allowances. The money provided for this has not been spent. I presume that that arises from a shortfall in the anticipated number of applicants for free electricity but it indicates that there is money to spare to improve the provisions of the free electricity scheme. As the Minister is no doubt aware, there are a number of people who should qualify but are not qualifying because they are not deemed to be living entirely alone. Those people may have some person staying with them for a few hours in the evening or at night but there is nobody there for most of the day. Those people do not qualify because they are not entirely alone. In view of the fact that the Minister has saved almost £500,000 on the money provided for free electricity this year it looks as if he has some room to extend the category of people who may qualify for free electricity.
The same may be said in regard to the television licences. The provision for aid for television licences was underspent to the extent of £335,000. The same restrictive criteria apply in respect of this. There is a saving in regard to television rental of £125,000. I realise that any change in the regulations is a budgetary matter but in view of the fact that there has been savings in the amounts it was anticipated would have to be spent in 1978 there is room for doing something about extending the category of qualification for the free electricity and TV licences in the forthcoming budget.
I wish to turn to a more serious matter, namely, the saving of £280,000 in respect of social welfare allowances. Members of this House are aware that this allowance represents the income of the poorest of the poor. They are the people who have the least resources and the least ability to fend for themselves. They are not able to get employment or disability benefit because they have not stamps or for some other reason. They have to rely on the lowest income of anyone in the State.
The fact that almost 10 per cent of the money which is represented by this sum of £280,000 remains unspent is an indictment of everyone concerned with the Department of Social Welfare and the health boards from the Minister down. It should be the priority of the Minister to make sure if he gets money for social welfare allowances for helping very poor people that every penny is spent to alleviate the hardship of such people. The fact that he has come to this House with a saving of £280,000 on an item such as this is a very serious matter to which the Minister should give attention.
I am not saying that the responsibility is entirely that of the Minister. Possibly there are many people involved in various agencies in the public service and in the health boards who must make decisions in relation to allocating money. However, in the coming year the Minister should make sure that any money he gets for supplementary welfare allowances is spent and that he does nor come back to this House with a saving in this area.
I note also that there is a saving of £40,000 in relation to school meals. All of us know that these school meals are not meals at all. Really it only involves a glass of milk and an apple. This is what most of the children in the urban areas who qualify for school meals actually receive. The fact that the provision for school meals is so meagre surely indicates that the Minister should not come to this House with a saving of £40,000. He should have used the money to improve the quality of the meals being provided for children in the urban areas where the scheme operates. As I illustrated on a previous occasion, there are hard statistics to indicate that many children go to school who have no nourishment whatever during the early part of the day. Many of them do not have a breakfast and the first nourishment of any kind that they will get will be in the form of the school meal if it is operating in their school. The Minister should not skimp, as apparently he has done, and achieve a saving of £40,000 in this area. He should have made sure that the money was spent. He should also make sure that any extra money he may get is used and that we make use of the aid available from the EEC for the provision of milk. They are prepared to provide £ for £ for any money we spend on the provision of milk in schools. The Minister should ensure that he provides money to match the EEC funds and that a milk scheme is extended to all schools.
The Minister has succeeded in saving £500,000 in children's allowances—
He will have a saving of £8 million next year.
I presume we will be told that the estimate of the numbers applying was not correct. We may be told the Minister did not know how many children there were in the country when making the original provision in 1978, that he found out there were fewer children than he thought and that, consequently, he did not have to spend this £500,000. Given the demographic information available, that explanation would surprise me somewhat but perhaps the Minister has a better one. In any event he has saved £500,000 in children's allowances and he should make sure there will be a generous increase in these allowances in 1979. This is particularly important in view of the fact that in the 1978 Budget there was no increase in the tax allowances for children although there were increases for married couples without children. It is ironic that the Minister has been able to save £500,000 as well as the saving made by the Minister for Finance by not increasing the allowances for children under the tax code.
We welcome the fact that there is an increase under other heads amounting to a total of £10 million. Many people think that during the years the Department of Social Welfare have been getting more than their share, that money has been spent on social welfare in excess of that spent in other areas. I should like to tell the House that is not the case. The provision for social welfare from 1971 to the present—and a number of Governments have been responsible for this—has no more than kept pace with the amount spent by other Departments. On average the amount is about the same and, therefore, there is no question of money being spent lavishly on social welfare in the past ten years. There have been increases in the provision for the Department of Health. In fact, the increased provision for that Department has been almost twice as great during the past decade as the provision for social welfare. I question if that is the right priority, given that male life expectancy is falling at the moment. It seems unusual that we should be increasing very considerably our provision for health.
I am afraid that in the time at my disposal I shall not have time to deal with the points raised by Deputy Bruton. Of course, most of the savings to which he has referred are quite imaginary. They are not the result of any economising on our part; it is that for one technical reason or another the amounts estimated were not needed subsequently. I shall give the House an example, namely, the supplementary welfare allowances. There was no question here of any attempt by the Department to cut back on the amount provided. This was an entirely new scheme. The amount provided in 1978 was based on estimates submitted by the health boards as to what might be required. That is all we could go on. Having no experience of the administration of the scheme, we asked the health boards for their estimate of what would be required and our Estimate was framed on that basis. It was very much a de novo Estimate. As it transpired during the year, the level of payment was less than what was estimated by the health boards——
The Minister could have increased the rate of supplementary welfare allowances.
As the Deputy knows, rates are fixed annually by statute.
The Minister could have changed them.
We could not change them during the year. Even yet we do not know what will be the outcome. All we can do is to give authority to welfare officers throughout the community to administer the scheme in accordance with the guidelines and leave it to them. I do not think the saving is a real saving. It was because we were inexperienced with regard to working the scheme and the Estimate we provided was in excess of what was required.
It is now 6.30 p.m. and in accordance with the resolution of the Dáil earlier today, I am forthwith putting successively the questions necessary to bring the proceedings on the remaining Estimates to a conclusion.
