I move:—
"That the Children Bill, 1928, be read a second time."
Happily this Bill requires very few words from me, I hope, to recommend it to the adoption of the House. An Act of Parliament that is well known to you, sir, is the Children Act, 1908 There was an amending Act of 1910 but the Bill before the House is not concerned with that.
The Act of 1908 specifies a number of classes of those who may be sent to industrial schools. It is not necessary to enumerate or to dwell on these classes. But there is one clause dealt with in the Act of 1908, the provisions of which do not cover the case of a child whose parents are honestly unable to support it. In such a case as that the child can only be committed to an industrial school if he is found begging on the streets, and the sole and only object of the Bill of which I am asking the Seanad to pass the Second Reading to-day is to remove that degrading provision, which makes a criminal of the child before he is sent to the industrial school. Of course, I need hardly remind the House that the very fact that the child is begging is in itself a criminal offence, and I submit that possibly the child could be convicted according to law for it, but Mr. Cussen, the experienced Senior District Justice, recently stated in a case of this kind that he was not going to discuss whether or not the act of inducing a child to solicit alms with the object of having it sent to an industrial school is in itself an offence against the law. But he went on to say —and really this is what inspired me to introduce the Bill—"It would be a red-letter day for the poor, destitute, hungry children of our city and country if our legislators could be induced to pass a short Act allowing a Justice, in his discretion, to send a destitute child not an orphan to an industrial school without any formal charge being brought against the poor little urchin." This Bill, a one-clause Bill, does nothing more than remove that degrading provision of compelling a child to ask alms.
I was so sanguine as to the ease with which it could be passed into law that I could not foresee any objection to it at all, but as the House will remember, Senator Mrs. Wyse Power, on the occasion when I got leave to introduce the Bill, raised the point that it was piecemeal legislation, and that it would be much better to proceed to deal with the Poor Law Commission's Report as a whole, of which Commission she and Senator Sir John Keane were distinguished and very helpful members, rather than to deal with it in this piecemeal fashion. I agree. But I daresay Senators have seen this Report, if they have not read it in its entirety. It is a very voluminous document, and it makes a large number of recommendations. Of course, I am not in the confidence of the Government as to its intentions regarding the Report, but I think he would be a very sanguine man indeed who looked forward to the embodiment in legislation of all the recommendations in this Report in the near future. I say that as this degrading provision in the case of these poor children has existed for so many years the sooner it is removed the better, and that it should be removed now rather than to wait until all the legislation suggested in this Report is passed.
Another objection urged against the Bill, I understand, is that possibly it will involve additional expenditure of public money. I do not think that is so. The industrial schools are certified, and they cannot admit into their institutions any greater number than the Government certifies for. Accordingly, even if this Bill becomes law, the Government will still have all these powers preserved regarding certificates, and possibly this Bill would not mean that the admissions would be increased by a single case to any of the industrial schools. I do not think there is any more to be said in support of the Second Reading of the Bill.