The Bill gives us an opportunity to discuss the social welfare system as it is. Among the things that have come out of it is that the Minister has expressed her concern for people on social welfare benefits. Everybody in this House would agree with her sentiments on that. Her remarks about the poverty programme and about poverty in our society disturbed me a little in the sense that it seems there is an emphasis being placed on the transfer from the family to the State of the job of caring for people in need.
I agree that the State has a major part to play in the helping of the under-privileged in our society whether they are under-privileged because of mental handicap, physical handicap or social handicap. I do not think that we should get too far away from the extended family situation where in the past the young people looked after the elderly and the elderly looked to the young people as a resource for the future. I do not think that we should become totally State-oriented in the social welfare system. We must look at society and at people within society and not look to the State and ask it to look after people. I sincerely hope — and I am glad my parents are still alive — that I would be capable of trying to help my parents when they might get into trouble. At present there is too much emphasis on transfer from the family-oriented society to a State-oriented society, and that worries me.
I am sure the Minister has seen the newspaper in which it is stated that there was a poverty conference in Kilkenny, my home city, and a certain lady passed by and when she saw all the Mercedes and the Volvos and BMWs parked outside the conference hall she said: "I wonder what would be here if it was a celibacy conference".
