I am not satisfied with the Minister's statement on this question of the obligation to register. He stated that the obligation was on the parent and if the parent was negligent the onus was on the doctor or anyone present. In the case of a parent neglecting to register, the doctor or the nurse might not be aware that the birth was not registered. They would not know that it had not been done and they would feel they had no responsibility. Many people, through negligence or want of knowledge, fail to register births. I have known cases where people have not been registered at all and did not discover it until they reached manhood or girlhood when they came to look for a certificate; the parents had forgotten to do it or did not know they were obliged to have it done. As I say, what is everybody's business is nobody's business. I feel some tightening-up of the position ought to be made.
Vital Statistics and Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Bill, 1952—Committee and Final Stages.
The only improvement I can suggest is that there is power for late registration which was not there before. As the law stood, if the thing was not done within 12 months, a person could not be registered, but now a person can be registered at any time.
The Senator might look at Section 5.
Is there any reason why it could not be provided that, except where the long certificate is asked for, the registrar would always send the short one? There will be a certain muddle-up in regard to price, etc., and if persons call they can be asked which they want. It will be some time before people will know about it and it seems to me if it were possible to make an administrative direction that when in doubt the short certificate would be sent, it would go a long way towards bringing it into common use.
That will be part of the regulation, that if a birth certificate is asked for the short certificate will be sent.
If they ask for the short certificate?
If they ask for a birth certificate they will get the short one.
Thank you. That will be very satisfactory.
I would like some information on this section. Evidently it is meant to apply where a vacancy is created by a death or some other event where you have an officer in a temporary capacity collecting these statistics. The section says:—
"The public assistance authority under the Public Assistance Act, 1939 (No. 27 of 1939), within whose functional area the district is situate shall thereafter be the superintendent registrar for the district."
I would like some further information or explanation on that from the Minister. What does that mean? Does it mean that in the public assistance offices some member of the staff there is to be given this responsible work of the collection and compiling of these vital statistics?
It seems to me that when you specify where this information is to be collected and sorted out it ought to be under the authority of the county medical officer of health. From my own experience the county medical officer of health is the one individual under the local authority who has really very much to do with what we know as vital statistics. From the reports which they work out it is obvious that they are the people who are concerned and who can interpret correctly. I do not know, in the set-up under any local authority, how these functions are going to be properly and intelligently administered, unless it is I do not understand the purpose at all. I know that, at present, the superintending officer, who is the superintendent registrar, as we call him, is collecting certain information, but I take it there is going to be a considerable extension of the work of tabulating and interpreting these statistics.
I have a feeling, and it has been suggested to me, that the one responsible person under any local authority who is competent and who is vitally interested in studying these statistics, the whole problem of diseases and all that kind of thing, is the county medical officer of health. These are matters which can only be properly understood by and are of interest to your county M.O.H. Somehow or other I have the feeling that this work of registering and understanding these statistics ought to be related to his responsibility. I may not be very clear about the exact method of carrying out these functions in future, but I would like to know whether the county medical officers are to partake in the collection and interpretation of statistics. If they are, it would be better that the work should be done directly by them than that it should be passed to them at second hand.
The work of the superintendent registrar is clerical work. What happens, as I am sure the Senator is aware, is that the doctor registers births and deaths. He does not register marriages. The information comes to the superintendent registrar for the district — the old poor law union. He tabulates them and sends them to the Registrar-General, keeping a copy himself. Therefore the doctor has a copy and the superintendent has a copy for the district, while a full account is also sent to the Registrar-General, who has these details for the whole country. The medical officer of health can inspect those returns at the end of the quarter and get the information he needs. No doubt a good medical officer of health will look in every quarter to see how things are going in his area. He will look at the number of births. There is a new provision regarding still births and he would be very interested to see if there had been any and to find out the cause. He would inspect the register of deaths to see whether the movement was upwards or downwards and to find out what the various causes of death were.
I agree with the Minister. I have had some experience of the registering of deaths, births and marriages. It is mostly clerical work and from my experience the last person in the world on whom to place clerical work is the medical officer. The procedure is exactly as outlined by the Minister. Births and deaths are first registered by the local medical officer and are passed on to the superintendent-registrar who transmits them to the Registrar-General. I would never place any clerical work in the hands of a dispensary doctor.
I am still not quite satisfied in spite of what Senator McCrea says. The county medical officer of health has the responsibility of interpreting the statistics — I am thinking of deaths and their many causes. I understand that this whole effort of ours is to enable us to get our statistics in such a form as to give a clear picture of life in the country. We pass on the responsibility, I take it, to our medical people who will interpret conditions of health and so on. If these statistics are being collected under a local authority the work should not be done by an official in an office separated from that of the medical officer who is responsible. We get an annual report from our medical officers regarding conditions of health and we can see the labour and toil which someone must undertake in order to give us a reasonably clear picture of what is taking place.
I do not suggest that the medical officer of health should do simple clerical operations which any writing assistant is competent to do, but the work should be closely related to his work. Our local authorities' organisations are growing at such a pace and have so many departments that some are in one building and some in others, so I think that this work should be done in the same building as that of the medical officer and under his supervision, because he, in the last analysis, has the responsiblity of telling us the value of these statistics, what they mean and what we should do to change them in a certain direction. That is an aspect of the problem which is worth considering. I may not have impressed the Minister. There are medical people in the House who would have experience of this. Definitely, I do not suggest that the medical officer of health should sit down to write a detailed story on every record, but, as he is the person who must deal with the information, the work should be done under his supervision, so that, when the statistics are to be interpreted, he will have them in such a clear form as to make the work more simple.
My view, either as Minister for Agriculture or as Minister for Health, is that technical men should be allowed to do work of a technical nature and we should take clerical work away from them as far as we can — they have to do it sometimes — because a clerical job should be done by a clerical worker, whether a high officer or low. The medical officer of health can get all the information he wants by looking over the statistics.
Níl ach ceist agamsa. Níl i gceist ag an mBille ach an teastas a gheobhfar amach ó oifig an chláraitheora ag daoine atá ag lorg a leithéid. Do réir mar tuigtear dúinn níl athrú ar bith le déanamh ar an leabhar cláruithe; an t-eolas a bhí le dul sa leabhar sin cheana tá sé le dul ann fós agus an t-eolas a bhí ag teastáil cheana ó oifigí i dtaobh breithe, báis nó pósta is tuigthe go mbeidh an t-eolas sin ar fad le soláthar agus le chur ar aghaidh go dtí an cláraitheoir ginearálta. Níl aon tuiscint le baint as an mBille go mbeidh aon athrú, laghdú ná easnamh ar an eolas sin maidir leis an leabhar cláruithe in Oifig an Ard-Chláraitheóra anseo i mBaile Atha Cliath nó, is dócha, sna hoifigí ins na contaethe. Sin é an rud atá ann, go mbéidir go bhfuil baol ann go bhféadfaí i ndiaidh a chéile teacht ar an dtuiscint nach gá iomlán eolais a chur síos faoi, obair, beireatais agus a leithéidí sin.
There will not be any change in the general register. The general register will remain the same, but only an extract will be given from the general register in future. When the short certificate is given, the full information will not be given.
Ní bheidh aon tuiscint le baint as an mBille seo ag aon chláraitheoir logánta go bhféadfaidh sé níos lú eolais a chur síos mar gheall ar aon duine óg a thagann ar an saol?