This Social Welfare Bill, 1949, is a relatively simple Bill and one will not find any great difficulty in following its general structure. In order to facilitate Deputies and Senators in examining the financial provisions of the Bill, a special memorandum on the subject was issued to them and I hope that the receipt of that memorandum has enabled Senators to become familiar with its financial provisions.
The main object of the Bill, quite frankly, is to clear the ground for the implementation of the wider scheme of social security which the Government intends to introduce. When the Department of Social Welfare was created early in 1947, it was then intended that that Department would deal with all the various social services, that they would be merged into one common whole and integrated in such a manner as to enable them to be administered by one Department. At that time, in fact, all the various social services were administered by different Departments and those services were all brought under the head of the Department of Social Welfare. One service, however, still remained outside the ambit of a Government Department; that was the service relating to national health insurance. That service, as the Seanad will know, was administered by the National Health Insurance Society. If one is to give consideration to the question of planning and implementing a comprehensive social security scheme it is obviously necessary that the position of national health insurance in relation to that scheme should be considered and a mere perfunctory examination of the situation will convince Senators at once that it is desirable that that scheme should be brought within the ambit of the Department of Social Welfare so that it can form part of the foundation on which it is hoped to rear a still larger and a still wider structure. It is, therefore, felt to be necessary that the National Health Insurance Society should be integrated in the Department of Social Welfare and that that integration should take place in advance of the introduction of the wider scheme of social security, so that when the Department is planning for the implementation of the main scheme it will have within its ambit the National Health Insurance Society and be able to give cognisance to the existence of that society as a branch of the Department's activities.
In other words, before any comprehensive scheme can be introduced and implemented by the Department, it is vitally necessary that the National Health Insurance Society should be part and parcel of that wider comprehensive scheme and that it should be part of the organisation on which that wider scheme will be built. This Bill, therefore, recognising that fact, proposes to take into the Department of Social Welfare the existing national health insurance service so that an efficient machine can be built up for the purpose of implementing the wider social security scheme. That efficient scheme can only be built up if at the outset we integrate that vital part of the scheme, the National Health Insurance Society, in the Department of Social Welfare and plan on the basis that in future it is to remain a part of the Department of Social Welfare. That represents in the main the objective of the Bill as far as the National Health Insurance Society is concerned. We can come to the question of the staff later.
Part II of the Bill provides that the existing position of the Exchequer in relation to national health insurance will be maintained until the new scheme comes into operation. In other words, there will be no alteration in the basis on which the State gives subventions to the National Health Insurance Society for benefits and administration and, as far as there is provision for payment by the society to the State, that position will likewise be maintained. The position by which the State pays to the society or the society repays to the State will be stabilised under the Bill until such time as the comprehensive scheme is introduced when, of course, the whole matter will come up for further review.
In Part II of the Bill, provision is made for the dissolution of the National Health Insurance Society and the transfer of its functions to the Department. Not only will the functions of the society be transferred, but the liabilities of the society will be transferred in addition. The Bill provides that not only will the society be dissolved and transferred but that the staff of the society will likewise be transferred except in two or three instances where we feel that a case for transfer, as such, is not established.
At present the staff of the Society amounts to about 600 people. These are composed of officers who are the secretary and treasurer, the clerical and administrative staff and outside these groups there are agents and other staffs. You may take it that approximately half the staff of 600 represents indoor, clerical or administrative staff and that the other half represents full time or part time agents largely part time agents in field work.
This Bill proposes to take over the entire staff of the National Health Insurance Society. Those who are pensionable officers in the society will be taken over on a tenure in no way unfavourable as compared with their existing tenure. They will suffer no reduction in salary on transfer, and, where they are pensionable, the pension scheme to which they will be assimilated in the Civil Service will be a better pension scheme than they enjoy to-day. So as far as the remainder of the staff is concerned, these part-time agents and other staffs, they will be taken over on their present tenure with not less wages or salary, and, in so far as it is possible, will be assimilated to their appropriate Civil Service grades. I may mention here that, in the case of the clerical and administrative staff taken over, that is, the entire staff, they will be assimilated to the appropriate Civil Service grade. Where you have, for example, in the society a person employed on clerical work on a salary scale which compares approximately with the scale of a writing assistant, the assimilation will be to the writing assistant grade; where a person is paid on a salary scale comparable in general with the scale of clerical officers, the assimilation will be to the clerical officer grade; and where you have persons employed by the society on scales which compare with easily ascertainable scales in the appropriate Civil Service grades, the assimilation will be to the grade in the Civil Service which is the nearest appropriate grade. So far as the staff of the society are concerned, they have these assurances: (1) that the entire staff, with the couple of exceptions I have mentioned, will be taken over; (2) those who are pensionable officers will have not a worse but a better pension scheme; (3) there will be no reduction in the wages or salaries of the staff taken over; and (4) they will, as the House will probably agree, have a better tenure by reason of the fact that they are employed by a central State authority rather than by a National Health Insurance Society liable, as it is, to undergo changes in its structure from time to time.
Another aspect of the Bill, and one with which the House will probably be concerned, is the provision in Section 21 which enables portion of the funds of the society to be invested in the purchase of equipment and premises for use by the Department, and for use especially in advance of the comprehensive scheme. It is proposed under the Bill to enable—in fact, it might be argued that to some extent the power resides there at the moment — the accumulated or portion of the accumulated invested funds of the society to be utilised for the purpose of purchasing suitable central premises which will house the staff of the Department. That purchase will be made by means of liquidating investments at present held by the society, or held by the Minister for Social Welfare or the Minister for Finance on behalf of the society, and in the Bill provision is made that, so far as the State is concerned, it will repay to the funds of the society for the use of the members of the society a sum of money not less than the sum of money which these investments yielded.
In other words, if money is utilised for the purchase of central premises for the use of the Department, that money will come from accumulated funds, probably from funds now invested in British securities, and, while the funds so liquidated for investment in the central premises will not, on such investment, secure dividends from the sources from which these dividends were previously receivable, there is nevertheless in the Bill a provision whereby the State will pay to the benefit of the fund a sum of money not less than what these investments previously yielded. That ensures that there will be no loss whatever to the funds of the society by reason of this investment procedure contemplated in the Bill. In fact, to some extent, it might be said that the funds of the society will gain as a result of the proposed purchase of central premises which are likely to appreciate in value and, in addition, the State will be responsible for maintaining the buildings purchased from these invested moneys.
At present, as any Senator who has close contact with the Department is aware, the activities of the Department are spread over a variety of offices in different parts of the city. If you want to inquire about an old age pension matter, you have to go to Lord Edward Street; if you want to inquire about a widows' and orphans' pension claim, you have to go to D'Olier Street; if you want to inquire about a children's allowances claim, you have to go to Earlsfort Terrace; if you want to inquire about a national health insurance claim, you have to go either to Upper O'Connell Street or the Custom House; and if you want to inquire about unemployment assistance or unemployment insurance matters, you may have to go to any one of three or four buildings in the city.
With the purchase and equipment of a central headquarters for the Department in Dublin, it will be possible for the Department to shed practically all these offices which are now occupied and thus make them available for use by other Government Departments where accommodation is inadequate, or the mere fact of shedding these buildings now occupied by branches of the Department may arrest the trend which has been so noticeable for many years past of acquisition of private buildings by Government Departments for the housing of staff for which no Government buildings or Government accommodation proper is available. This scheme, whereby a central headquarters will be purchased for the accommodation of the staff, should make other accommodation available for the relief of governmental congestion from the administrative point of view or should enable private dwelling-houses, now necessarily used for governmental purposes, to be handed back. So far as the Department is concerned, the intention frankly is to purchase the Store Street premises. It is hoped that that building will be able to accommodate approximately 900 to 1,000 members of the staff of the Department.
If we can succeed in accommodating that number, the other buildings I have mentioned will be available for other use. Lest any Senator might think that it is possible to accommodate the staff in the Store Street building and leave sufficient space available so that the bottom portion can be let as a bus terminus, let me say at the outset that the closest possible examination by our own higher staff and by competent architects and consultants has convinced us that there is no hope whatever to be found in any wishful thinking along those lines. It will take the entire building to accommodate the staff of the Department of Social Welfare if in fact all the staff can be accommodated within the building.
One thing is certain — there will be no surplus space available there. We will be lucky if we can manage to accommodate the entire staff within the building. There will be no spare space, and anybody who imagines that he has an easy remedy for making the building the headquarters of a public Department and a bus depot at the same time will find that that is not physically possible on the accommodation that is available there and the number of members of the staff who have to be fitted into the building. Negotiations are at present proceeding with Córas Iompair Éireann with a view to the acquisition of the building. It is intended that when the building is acquired it will be completed and adapted so far as is necessary to the requirements of this Department. We feel that no insuperable difficulty will present itself in carrying out the necessary adaptations to make the entire building suitable for the use of the Department. These are the main provisions of the Bill.
The remainder of the Bill deals with a number of technical matters relating in the main to the transfer of funds, property and liabilities of the society and for the discontinuance of certain provisions originally rendered necessary by earlier English Acts, no longer necessary once the National Health Insurance Society is integrated in the Department of Social Welfare.
A number of the sections deal with such problems as one might call the cutting out of the dead and unwanted timber consequent on the transfer. The rest of the Bill contains machinery provisions which may lend themselves to more intimate examination on the Committee Stage, though I should be happy on this stage to endeavour to elucidate any point in the Bill on which Senators feel clarification is necessary. We might get a better discussion on the detailed provisions, however, on the Committee Stage.
I commend the Bill to the House as a Bill absolutely essential to clear the ground for the preparation, introduction and ultimate implementation of the comprehensive social security scheme. I feel that the integration of the society in the Department is necessary and my predecessor, Deputy Dr. Ryan, when discussing the same problem on the Estimates for my Department in the Dáil last year, acknowledged that he himself, having examined the problem from the same standpoint, had likewise come to the conclusion that the integration of the society into the Department was desirable in advance of the introduction of the comprehensive scheme. He, like myself, realised that, having absorbed the society into the Department, one could then think of our social services as a comprehensive whole and plan in the knowledge that national health insurance was a problem which had to be dealt with by the Department in the future and not by an outside society.
I recommend the Bill to the House as something which is necessary preparatory work for the main social security scheme, as something which is indispensable to the efficient and smooth working and administration of the comprehensive scheme which will come in due course.