I feel sure that all Senators will welcome this Bill which provides for the introduction of a new scheme of supplementary welfare allowances to replace the existing outmoded and generally unsatisfactory home assistance scheme. The new scheme will be administered by the regional health boards under the general direction of the Minister for Social Welfare.
Senators will have received with the Bill an explanatory memorandum which has, I hope, assisted them in their consideration of these quite complex proposals.
This Bill provides for the removal from our Social Welfare legislation of the last vestiges of the harsh and unfeeling Poor Law, contained in the Public Assistance Act of 1939 which for all practical purposes is being repealed. This is a very important step forward in the development of the social services in this country and it is a step that is long overdue.
The attitude towards those unfortunate enough to be deprived or poor which was embodied in the Poor Law was both censorious and patronising. In the debate in this House on the Second Stage of the Public Assistance Bill, 1939, one Senator referred to that piece of legislation as being "full of delicate charity" and as showing respect for the poor in Irish society. No one today, looking at the practical results of that Bill over the years, could regard that view with anything but amazement. Attitudes have changed, for which we must be thankful, and legislation must also be changed to ensure that the rights and dignity of citizens are positively protected and promoted.
In introducing this measure I am very conscious of the lessons of history which indicate, in the words of one recent commentator, that "since other attempts to bury the Poor Law, in Ireland and in Britain, have shown the truly remarkable ability of the Poor Law to survive death sentences, a really radical reform will be necessary" I believe that the measure provided for in this Bill is indeed a radical and workable reform of the home assistance scheme and that it will bring much aid and support to many people who are deprived economically and socially.
While saying this I recognise fully that the long-term solution to the problems which give rise to the need for a home assistance or supplementary welfare allowances scheme lie in very basic structural changes which will require significant advances across a broad front. Provision in the field of social welfare is of importance in so far as it can alleviate the effects of poverty and inequality but the ultimate elimination of poverty will demand concerted efforts in all areas of economic, social and political policy. Equally, I accept the need for careful review and assessment of the progress of the new scheme which will be introduced under the terms of the Bill. Every effort must be made to ensure that it will contribute in a positive manner to the strengthening of our social welfare services.
It is essential within any social security system to have such a relatively flexible support service which will enable assistance to be given, quickly and as of right, to those in urgent need or who cannot be helped under other income maintenance services. Such a service should be also available to help those whose needs cannot be fully met under other State schemes or who find themselves confronted with an emergency situation.
The new supplementary welfare allowances scheme will provide this support service within the national system of income maintenance services. It will become an effective and integral part of the overall national social welfare services and, unlike the present home assistance scheme, will not be seen as an unconnected poor relation of that service.
The new scheme will, however, retain and develop the local, community-based element of home assistance, which is its most important potential strength. The problems of those seeking assistance under the new scheme will, in most cases, call for more than a mere cash response. Social services, social work support and a genuine community care are also needed to help recipients to cope with the situations in which they find themselves and where necessary to reintegrate themselves with dignity in our society.
This Bill is a further step in the direction of the Government's declared goal of establishing a comprehensive system of social security catering for the needs of all citizens. Its effect will be to provide assistance, as of right, to a further substantial number of persons and families and to bring us nearer to the desired end of providing adequate maintenance coverage for all.
Home assistance had its origins in the Poor Relief (Ireland) Act, 1847, and was the only statutory form of assistance, other than institutional assistance, provided for persons in need until the beginning of this century. Since then the establishment and development down the years of various State-sponsored social insurance and assistance services has greatly decreased the need for the present home assistance service, as established under the Public Assistance Act, 1939. This fact is reflected in the steady fall in the numbers of recipients, including dependants. From a weekly average of some 75,000 30 years ago the numbers have dropped to less than 30,000 at present.
The nature of the service has also changed radically in that the majority of recipients nowadays are persons who receive assistance to supplement a payment under some other social welfare service or while awaiting payments under such schemes. As a result of this trend home assistance in terms of expenditure is now a relatively small service, the cost in the last full year, 1973-74, being approximately £2 million as against expenditure on the State social insurance and assistance schemes in 1975 of the order of £370 million.
The home assistance service, which is financed from the rates, is administered by 31 public assistance authorities, or by health boards acting on their behalf, subject to the general direction and control of the Minister for Social Welfare.
As Senators are aware, under the existing scheme a person is eligible for home assistance if he is unable by his own industry or other lawful means to provide the necessaries of life for himself or his dependants. All applications are dealt with by the local assistance authority which may decide, at its absolute discretion and without right of appeal, whether a person is eligible and what assistance should be given.
Criticism of the home assistance service has been a feature of social and political comment for many years. Surveys of the service have shown that because of major defects in its structure it operates in an arbitrary and far from satisfactory manner. There are major inequalities in regard to standards of eligibility and in regard to the amount of assistance given as between one authority and another. In some cases these inequalities exist even within the same authority in regard to the treatment of basic needs. Again, in the matter of supplementation there are wide differences in the treatment of similar cases.
These inequalities and the scope for local variation and even for arbitrary exclusion stem from the wide differences in the financial circumstances of the various local authorities involved, as well as from the fact that the existing law does not define with any precision the circumstances in which assistance may be paid or the amount of assistance to be provided. It can scarcely be denied that the resultant discretionary allowances granted in such an arbitrary way, without any right of appeal or review, have all the unpleasant flavour of the Poor Law.
Indeed one recent social survey among poor people showed quite clearly that more than a quarter of the persons who were actually receiving home assistance at the time of interview did not admit this fact to the interviewers and the author of the survey was forced to the conclusion that this was due to a basic feeling of shame associated with the receipt of assistance under the service. If it can be said of any social service that it is compromising of the self-esteem of citizens of our country, then surely the time for reform is more than ripe.
Whatever may be the technical or theoretical criticisms of the existing home assistance service, I am satisfied that by far the most important reason for reform is the stigma which is associated with home assistance. Improvements such as those proposed in this Bill cannot change attitudes, but they can help to remove the most obvious causes of those attitudes and to bring to an end the social cleavage between home assistance recipients and the rest of the community which appears to be an inevitable result of the present system.
The Public Assistance Act, 1939, the present law in the matter, includes provisions deriving from the Poor Law which are unacceptable in a modern welfare system. I refer to provisions such as that which makes it an offence, punishable by imprisonment, for a person in receipt of assistance to refuse or neglect to perform a task of work which he is required by the Act to perform. Such provisions have not been operative for many years but their very existence in current legislation in this day and age highlight the need for radical reform.
The inherent defects of the home assistance scheme in its present form have inevitably led at times to criticism of the officers who had the task of implementing it over the years. I do not accept that such criticism is valid and I wish to place on record my appreciation of the work which home assistance officers are doing and have done throughout the country in seeking to operate an outdated and thoroughly defective scheme with humanity and with concern. I trust that the proposals contained in this Bill will provide a more suitable framework for the efforts of these officers in the future.
I now turn to the detailed provisions of the Bill. In general the aim of this Bill is to provide for the foundation of a social assistance service which will enable pressing need to be met in a flexible and speedy manner while at the same time guaranteeing to all persons who have to resort to the service a standard basic income as of right in place of the arbitrary and variable payments they may receive at present. These basic payments will, of course, be subject to a standard means test.
While uniform basic rates must be a fundamental feature of the new service, the diversity of recipients and the wide variety of the circumstances which cause them to seek assistance require that there must also be a considerable element of flexibility in the service to enable the wide variety of personnel problems and needs to be adequately catered for. This means that provision must be included to permit the basic rates of allowance, or indeed the payments under the various State income maintenance services, to be supplemented so that particular, special or urgent needs of individual claimants may be met.
Another necessary feature of the new service is that it must be capable of being co-ordinated on a family oriented basis with a comprehensive range of non-monetary social work services, the overall objective of which will be to break the cycle of poverty in which some families find themselves trapped.
A most important feature of the new supplementary welfare allowances scheme is that its administration through the health boards, which will apply national standards and national guidelines, will eliminate the territorial inequalities of the existing system in relation to the standards of eligibility and payment and will enable the new scheme to be operated within the framework of the community care services of these boards.
The Bill provides that every person in the State whose means are insufficient to meet his needs and those of his dependants will be entitled to supplementary welfare allowance. This allowance will be provided as of right instead of on a purely discretionary basis under the present Poor Law based scheme.
As I have already said, the demand on the home assistance service has declined over the years because of the introduction of social insurance and assistance schemes which gave statutory rights to benefit to specified categories of persons. The provision of assistance as of right for persons in need who happen to be excluded from such other income maintenance schemes is a feature of corresponding residual benefit services in other countries with highly developed systems and is long overdue in this country.
Since the new scheme will provide that an allowance will be payable as of right instead of at discretion, it is only reasonable to ensure that none but cases of genuine need are covered. Accordingly, students receiving full-time education, who as individuals could be regarded as having no means but who are in fact normally maintained by their parents, will be excluded from eligibility. Persons in full-time work and persons directly involved in trade disputes will also be excluded.
I would like to make it clear, however, that these exclusions are not absolute. In the first place a person in any of the excluded categories may receive an allowance in case of urgent need. Again, even where urgent need does not exist, a person receiving full-time education could in exceptional circumstances be paid an allowance, an example being a student who is head of a household. Similarly a person who has been receiving an allowance while out of work may, under regulations to be made by the Minister, have his allowance continued for a short period after he starts work to help him in the transitional period.
The exclusion of persons directly involved in trade disputes is on the same basis as that applying in relation to the unemployment benefit and assistance schemes, except that under the new supplementary welfare allowances scheme it will be possible to allow payments in respect of dependants to be made during a trade dispute.
While under the relevant legislation the administration of the home assistance scheme is a function of the public assistance authorities, that is, the corporations of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford and 27 County Councils including North and South Tipperary, these authorities have, with the exception of ten county councils, transferred their functions in that respect to the health boards under powers given by the Health Act, 1970.
Subject to the general direction and control of the Minister for Social Welfare the supplementary welfare allowances scheme will be administered by the health boards, and claims for the new allowance will be determined by the chief executive officer or other officers of each board acting on his behalf.
Under regulations to be made by the Minister for Social Welfare a health board may determine that a person shall not be entitled to the new allowance unless he is registered for employment. However, there will be a general exemption from this rule in respect of persons incapable of work, persons over pensionable age, women with dependent children and other classes of persons in whose circumstances the imposition of the condition of seeking employment would be inappropriate.
Persons who make application for supplementary welfare allowance may also be required to make application for any statutory or other benefits or assistance to which they may be entitled.
Apart from the grant of home assistance being at the discretion of the public assistance authority, an objectionable feature of the scheme, which is linked closely to the antiquated tradition of poor relief, the fact that there is no provision for appeals against decisions of the authorities in relation to applications for assistance is another notably repugnant feature of the present system. I have already pointed out that under the provisions of the Bill persons in need will be entitled as of right to allowances under the new scheme. There will also be provision for appeals and the person who is dissatisfied with the determination by an officer of the health board of his claim for supplementary welfare allowance will be able to appeal against such determination to a person appointed by the Minister for Social Welfare.
The basic supplementary welfare allowance payable to a person without means will be the same as the maximum rate of unemployment assistance payable in rural areas. Thus a person without means and without dependants will receive £7.75 a week while a person with an adult dependant will receive £13.50 a week. Increases for dependent children will be payable at the same rates as those which are paid to recipients of unemployment assistance.
A family consisting of a man, his wife and two children will, therefore, receive £18.50 a week. If there are four children the total weekly payment will be £22.30. A single person with four dependent children could receive £16.70 a week. In the case of persons who have some means those basic rates will be reduced by the amount of such weekly means.
These proposed rates compare very favourably with the present national average of payments made by way of home assistance. In a survey made last year it was ascertained that the average payment to a person receiving home assistance, otherwise than as an addition to other statutory benefit or assistance, was £4.91 to a person without dependants, or £9.11 in the case of a recipient with dependants.
The Bill provides also for supplementation where the basic weekly rates of the new allowance or the weekly rates of other statutory social insurance and assistance payments are insufficient to meet individual special needs. Such special needs could, for example, arise in relation to rent payments, to heating or diet requirements, or in the case of persons living alone or having no income other than an allowance over a prolonged period.
Although the amount of the supplements will have to be determined by the health boards by reference to the particular circumstances of individual claimants it is desirable that where practicable the provision of supplements should be standarised for all health board areas. The Bill therefore includes a provision which will enable the Minister, with the sanction of the Minister for Finance, to specify by regulations the circumstances which will give rise to supplements and the amount to be paid in the case of particular classes of claimants. These regulations may also provide for the granting of supplements in the form of assistance in kind.
Standard uniform rules for the assessment of means will be introduced under the new supplementary welfare allowances scheme, representing a further big improvement on the present position. In general, these rules will be on the same lines as those used in the assessment of the means of an applicant for unemployment assistance. It may, however, become necessary in the light of experience of the new scheme to vary these rules if they are not sufficiently flexible or are otherwise inadequate to meet all the particular circumstances which may arise. Provision is accordingly included in the Bill to enable the means rules to be varied by regulations made by the Minister for Social Welfare with the sanction of the Minister for Finance.
So far I have been speaking about supplementary welfare allowances in the form of normal weekly payments, and I would like now to mention briefly the provisions made in the Bill for other forms of allowance. In the first case, where a health board considers that the needs of a person can best be met in such a way, an allowance in kind may be granted instead of the whole or part of a cash payment.
Again, where a health board deems fit, a single payment may be made to meet an exceptional need arising on a single occasion as opposed to continuing special expenses which would be met by an increase in the weekly payment.
The Bill provides that each spouse will be required to support the other and either will be liable to maintain his or her children under the age of 16, without prejudice to other obligations imposed by law or otherwise. These provisions are broadly similar to those of the Public Assistance Act, 1939, but the further provisions of that Act, which stipulate that every legitimate person is liable to maintain his father and mother and every illegitimate person his mother, are being repealed. The proposals in this Bill limit the liability to maintain to the immediate family unit, which is a considerable liberalisation of the wider and outmoded concept of liability under the Public Assistance Act, 1939.
It follows from the maintenance provision that I have just mentioned that where a person receives a supplementary welfare allowance, every person who is liable to maintain that person should be liable to contribute according to his means and ability to do so to the allowance granted. The Bill, accordingly, empowers the health board to apply, where necessary, to a District Court for recovery of sums paid by way of allowances from the persons liable to maintain who are in a position to pay, or make some contribution towards, the cost of the allowances paid. The Court will fix the amount of the contribution to be made in such cases by the relative who is liable.
At present public assistance authorities are responsible for the burial of persons who die leaving insufficient resources to provide for their burial, or whose relatives, if any, are unable to meet the cost. There is provision in the Bill to enable health boards to make arrangements for burials in such circumstances and to empower them to obtain repayment of expenses incurred, where appropriate, from the estate of the deceased person or from any person who is liable to maintain the deceased person.
I come now to the financing of the new scheme.
At present, public assistance authorities are required to meet the full cost of home assistance expenditure from the rates. I have already pointed out that one of the reasons for the absence of uniformity in the treatment of recipients of home assistance throughout the country is the fact that poor counties just cannot afford the same level of assistance as is provided in some of the wealthier counties. If each local authority had to bear the full costs of the new service in its area, with its higher and standardised rates of payment, there would be a very substantial increase in the local rates in the poor counties where home assistance standards of payments are generally lowest.
Having given the matter very careful consideration, the Government came to the conclusion that it would not be unreasonable to require local authorities to bear the cost which they are now required to meet for home assistance, together with a share of the additional cost of the supplementary welfare allowance scheme.
Accordingly, under the proposals of this Bill each local authority's contribution to the total amount to be paid by all authorities will be determined by reference to what it is now spending on home assistance, so that the poor areas will not have to contribute a higher proportion of the total cost than they are doing at present.
Briefly, the new financing arrangements are that expenditure under the new scheme will be met partly by payments to the health boards from the local authorities, which are at present public assistance authorities, and partly by grants from the Exchequer.
Each local authority, which is at present a public assistance authority, will pay to the health board in whose area it is situated a sum equivalent to its expenditure on home assistance in the year 1975 in respect of each full year of the operation of the new scheme. In addition, 40 per cent of the amount by which the total expenditure of all health boards on the supplementary welfare allowance scheme in the year in question exceeds the total expenditure by all public assistance authorities on home assistance in 1975 will be borne by the local authorities concerned, and each individual authority will pay to the appropriate health board a share of that 40 per cent. The allocation between the authorities of the 40 per cent of the excess cost will be determined by the proportions in which total expenditure by all public assistance authorities or health boards on home assistance in 1975 was shared between them.
For example, if expenditure by a public assistance authority on home assistance in 1975 is one-twentieth of the total expenditure by all public assistance authorities in that year, then that particular public assistance authority will be required to pay one-twentieth of 40 per cent, which is equivalent to 2 per cent of the excess cost in question. Expenditure by health boards on supplementary welfare allowances over and above that covered by receipts from the local authorities, i.e. 60 per cent of the excess cost will be met by grants from the Exchequer.
If the new scheme comes into operation other than at the beginning of a year, the arrangements I have outlined will apply on a pro-rata basis in respect of whatever part of the year is involved.
Local authorities which are at present public assistance authorities will have also to pay the administration costs of the new scheme. The local authority in each health board area will share the administration costs in similar manner to that in which local authorities share their contributions to the health boards under the Health Act, 1970.
The cost of the home assistance scheme in 1973-74, the last complete financial year for which figures are available, was, as I said earlier, about £2 million. However, adequate statistical and other information necessary for an accurate estimate of the cost of the radically different scheme with which it is proposed to replace it is not available. It is difficult to guage with any degree of accuracy the effects of the replacement of a purely discretionary service at local level, by a service providing standard payments as of right to be applied uniformly on a nationwide basis.
On the basis of the available information, however, it is estimated that the overall yearly cost of the proposals in this Bill, excluding the costs of administration, will be of the order of £4.5 million.
Taking the cost of home assistance in 1975 to be £2 million, the additional cost of the new scheme would therefore be about £2.5 million. On the cost sharing basis which I have described, the local authorities would be required to bear 40 per cent of the excess cost, that is, 40 per cent of about £2.5 million which is £1 million, leaving about £1.5 million to be met by the Exchequer.
I have mentioned earlier that a number of public assistance authorities had already transferred their functions in regard to the home assistance scheme to health boards under powers contained in the Health Act, 1970. In doing so they also transferred the staffs concerned with the administration of the scheme. When the supplementary welfare allowances scheme comes into operation, the respective staffs of the remaining authorities will likewise be transferred. I wish to make it quite clear that the employment and superannuation rights of such staff will be safeguarded under the provisions of the Bill.
Likewise, all property of public assistance authorities used solely or mainly in connection with the discharge of their functions under the Public Assistance Act, 1939, will become the property of health boards.
Under the terms of this Bill, the Public Assistance Act, 1939 will be repealed, with the exception of two sections which are still required in connection with the administration of the health services.
Transitional provisions in the Bill will enable references in existing statutes, orders, or regulations to matters affected by its proposals to be adapted or modified as may be necessary consequent on the replacement of the home assistance scheme by the new supplementary welfare allowances scheme.
There are also transitional provisions to protect the interests of persons claiming or receiving home assistance at the transition stage. Moreover, in line with similar provisions in social welfare legislation in the past, the Bill also includes a provision enabing the Minister for Social Welfare to take appropriate action by order, within a period of one year from the date of commencement of the new scheme, to remove any unforeseen and otherwise insuperable difficulty which may be encountered when bringing the scheme into operation. Any such order must, of course, be laid before each House of the Oireachtas and may be annulled by resolution of either House within 21 sitting days.
The remaining proposals in the Bill provide for the making of regulations for the purposes of the supplementary welfare allowances scheme and for the bringing of the Act into operation by order.
I believe that the new supplementary welfare allowances scheme, which is provided for under the terms of this Bill, can become an effective and necessary part of the overall social welfare service and that it can remove from that service some, at least, of the stigma attaching to schemes of the Poor Law type. I am sure that all those who will have the task of implementing the new scheme are determined to make it effective and fully sensitive to the needs and dignity of every claimant and recipient.
Yet, in the long run, the success or failure of social welfare provisions in terms of human dignity and of the full integration of all citizens into the community will depend on our attitudes as individuals and members of society. Recent research into the attitudes of the general public to social assistance services and their clients has indicated the continued existence of prejudices which can only hinder the evolution of adequate services and, more important still, of policies leading to long-term solutions. I refer to such attitudes as the making of distinctions between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" and the determination to exercise social control over assistance recipients in what is seen to be their own best interests.
There are still many in our society who see poverty as the result of personal failure rather than as the outcome of deep faults in our social and economic structure. The existence of scientific evidence of the continuance of such attitudes points to the urgency of work designed to bring home to all the real facts about deprivation, its causes and its answer.
I believe that such concepts as the distinction between the "deserving and the undeserving" will cease to be meaningful once the elimination of poverty itself can be accepted as a goal of national policy. Allowing for all the harsh facts of economics in these days such a goal is not alone desirable, it is realisable if we truly wish it. It is not realisable if we continue to believe that some people should be poor and that some should not. Or to put it another way, we must be able to face up to the fact that, if the poor are poor because of the way in which the system works and not because they have faults as people then the non-poor are comfortable for the same reasons and not because of their special personal merits. It is an uncomfortable but necessary thought.
I hope that the reform initiated by this Bill will have a positive effect upon the attitudes of the public at large and that it will assist the overall thrust of policy in the fight against poverty. All effective policy change in the social area is dependent upon widespread public awareness and understanding. These are the only real bases for acceptance of the costs of good social services and for sustained community involvement in them.
Without support and involvement on a very considerable scale even the most radical policies and programmes cannot get to grips with the deep problems experienced by very many individuals and families throughout the country. This is especially the case in respect of the proposed new scheme of supplementary welfare allowances which are designed specifically to deal with the problems of perhaps the most deprived groups in our national community.
It is my belief that the measures proposed in this Bill can achieve two aims. They aim to do away with what has been aptly described as the pauperisation, the indignity and the inadequacy of the Poor Law. They aim also to introduce a new service upon which we can build a programme capable of bringing effective help to many in real need. These are aims which are totally consistent with the progressive development of our social services.
I commend the Bill to Seanad Éireann for its speedy and favourable consideration.
