I should like to start by welcoming this Bill which has come before the Seanad at last. The statutory establishment of a National Social Service Board, or National Social Service Council as it was before, is something that many of us who were involved in it have been frustrated about for at least ten years. I am very pleased that at last it has come to fruition.
I should probably start by doing what is normally called declaring an interest. From about 1973 until the establishment of the Community Development Agency in 1982 I was chairman of the National Social Service Council and then the National Social Service Board. What I say can be taken as being perhaps enlightened, perhaps prejudiced by the fact that I held that position and that I knew what was going on in the background all the time.
First of all, the Minister has a great deal in his speech — and some other Senator referred to it — about the need to combat poverty and to set up a separate institution to deal with the poverty problem. I would quite agree this is very necessary, but it is not what I propose to deal with in my contribution. When that agency is set up I will no doubt have something to say about it. Today I particularly want to deal with this Bill and the history and the prospects of the National Social Service Board.
The Minister said at the beginning of his speech that the National Social Service Council were set up in 1971 and re-constituted into the board in 1981. What this leaves out of account is the fact that from at least 1977 onwards various Governments had been playing around with the idea of re-constituting the National Social Service Council possibly as a statutory body and possibly not as a statutory body. Members of the National Social Service Council spent a period of some four years in total uncertainty as to what was to happen to the council. I think it is fair to say they were very poorly treated by successive Governments in that they were the kind of people Senator Fallon was talking about, people who knew about this problem on the ground, people who worked very hard, people like the president of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, people who were involved in social service councils on the ground, people who had a great deal to do, and had a great deal more to do than to sit around waiting for Government decisions that never seemed to come.
I am sure Senator Fallon meant very well in saying that he did not want any more reports, or surveys, or whatever, but I really must point out that was not the kind of thing the National Social Service Council or board did on the whole. There was a certain amount of preparation of documents incidental to their work. But basically their work was practical work. Their work was on the ground. Their work was setting up a whole network of community information centres throughout the country to which people could go and find out their entitlements under all sorts of headings, bringing consumer information into these centres as well as social welfare information, and so on.
Their work was in the setting up, establishment and organisation of social service councils throughout the country and the development of these social service councils in so far as they were allowed to do so. Their work was in giving information to people all over the country about their various entitlements. They regularly published a document called "Entitlements of the Elderly" and, just as regularly as it was published, it joined the top ten selling publications in this country, because so many people felt the need of it and so many people wanted it and bought it, or were given it free if they had not got the money to buy it.
Regularly over the years they produced Relate magazine which dealt with all sorts of matters that came under the heading of social and personal services. The January issue, for instance, dealt with medical cards for young people, the enterprise allowance scheme, medical card income guidelines, discrimination in social welfare, road accident injuries and health services, this Bill and changes in hospital charges. It was a publication which gave information to social workers throughout the country, to people involved in social service councils, people involved in community information centres and so on. I would very much resent any suggestion that this body made reports and surveys and did nothing about them. In addition to this, very many courses of training for voluntary workers were organised by the National Social Service Council through their development section. Many voluntary bodies have benefited greatly from these training courses.
This is, perhaps, why, through the years, I have felt such very considerable resentment that people, both the staff carrying out this work faithfully and the members of the council and later the board who gave their time voluntarily to try to run this enterprise, were never told what was being done about their reorganisation, were never sure whether the organisation was going to continue from year to year. At one stage I recall that it got to the stage where the council was not reappointed, fell into abeyance, nobody was able to sign a cheque for money to be paid out to staff or anybody else. I recall the then president of the St. Vincent de Paul Society sending a telex to the then Minister for Health complaining bitterly about what had happened. When a person of that stature reaches that point of frustration and rage, something very bad is going on.
Obviously I am not blaming the present Minister for this because he was not in office at the time, but I hope that this Bill will mark an end to this kind of thing and once the board is fully established under the Act that people will be allowed to get on with the work they are doing, that the staff will have security of tenure, security of pension, will know where they stand and not be reduced to going on one-day strikes to try to find out what their position is.
I will deal later with matters relating to the functions of the board. Here again there have been a number of problems. The Minister referred to the matter of the security of the staff. They have had tremendous problems relating to private pension schemes, inability to receive death benefits and many other difficulties have arisen. The board was finally, after four years of negotiation, reconstituted in June 1981 and appeared to be working perfectly until suddenly, in April 1982, it was announced it was to be disbanded and that the community development organisation was to be brought in. There was only one meeting of the board between the announcement and the bringing in of the Act which created the community development association. There was absolutely no discussion with the then board as to what were the merits of setting up the community development association or what its functions were. That board was set up. Immediately, in the aftermath of the election in December 1982, the Government announced that they intended to repeal the Community Development Agency Act and bring in the present Bill. This has been awaited from that time. The staff and the people dealing with the National Social Service Council have been in what O'Casey described as a state of "chassis" since 1977. It is unfair to either a devoted staff or to people who were giving of their time to try to deal with the social services area. I hope sincerely this will mark the end of such occurrences and that from now on the National Social Service Board will be able to go from strength to strength in a statutory and established way and that there will be no more necessity to reconstitute the whole thing, throw it back into the melting pot again.
I would like to make one or two comments on the functions of the new board, as set out in section 4 of the Bill. As far as the first one is concerned, advising the Minister and keeping him informed of developments in social services generally, I hope very much this will be interpreted as a fairly free remit to advise the Minister even where they think the Minister is wrong; to be allowed criticise the Minister, be free to say things about Government policy on health and social services that may not be altogether pleasing to the Government.
While in the past the council and the board have had these functions of advising the Minister from time to time, one had the feeling that advising the Minister was fine as long as one agreed with what the Minister thought; but if one advised the Minister and did not agree with what he thought it was rather a dangerous function. At times we got into terrible trouble because we actually advised the Minister that we thought he was wrong. I hope in the future a Minister will be able to accept that advice may sometimes be very good, telling him that he is taking the wrong course rather than saying "Yes, yes Minister, of course you are taking the right course". If the board cannot be critical of Government policy, then it may as well not have such a function because there is no point in just having a flattery shop.
It is also true that this type of advice can take the form of submissions in advance of the budget and so on. To be fair, it must be said that on numerous occasions in the past when submissions were made in advance of the budget various Governments involved have made changes and done things that were advised. That was a very useful situation. Perhaps the statutory setting up of the board will make this easier. But it is a difficult situation where a group of people are being paid by the Government to advise the Government: if they break into criticism of the Government it is all too easy to say: "Why are you biting the hand that feeds you? You are being paid by us; how dare you criticise us?" I hope that will not be the attitude in the future.
Another point which is important in relation to the functions of the board is contained in section 4 (1) (e), in which it refers to promoting, developing, encouraging and assisting co-operation between statutory and voluntary organisations. This had been a function of the National Social Service Board since they were set up. It is a particularly important function in this economic climate because with the various cut-backs in statutory health services and difficulties in finding money to provide new statutory services, it is extremely important that voluntary services should be treated not just as a kind of offshoot or a sidekick or a cheap way of providing services that we cannot pay professionals to provide, but as an equal partner in the co-operation between the statutory and voluntary bodies.
I would draw attention to the fact that in the Programme for Government produced by the previous Fine Gael-Labour Government in 1981, what was known colloquially as the "Gaiety Theatre Document", there was a specific reference to this in which it was stated:
The Parties in Government acknowledge the enormous contribution of voluntary, community-based organisations to tackling social problems and meeting local needs. The examples of Social Service Councils, specialist bodies and non-governmental organisations dealing with a wide range of current issues are well known. We will ensure that this role is given proper recognition. A Charter for Voluntary Services will be introduced which will provide a framework for the relations between the statutory and voluntary agencies.
When I saw that in the Programme for Government I was extremely pleased. I thought it was a very worthy aim to produce this charter because very often voluntary organisations find it difficult to know where they are in relation to the different health boards, particularly as relationships tend to vary from health board to health board.
At the time that this was proposed the Government wished to have submissions about it and the National Social Service Board, as it then was, went to a great deal of trouble to produce the discussion document on the development of voluntary social services in Ireland. It was published by the National Social Service Board and presented to the Government. It dealt with a great many of the very difficult questions that arise in the relationship between statutory social services and voluntary social services. I do not recall any reference to this proposed charter in the programme of the present Government but I hope it is not an idea that has been flung out. We need more than just the National Social Service Board; we need the kind of context in which the whole relationship of voluntary and statutory bodies can be seen.
One has to remember that the money expended on personal social services of the type covered by the National Social Service Board is a very small proportion of what is spent by the health boards, community welfare programmes and so on. If it difficult to find out exactly what the level of spending on personal social services is. In 1980 the total non-capital expenditure on health services was £701 million. Of that, the community welfare sub-programme was only £46.84 million, which is quite a small amount of it. Of that £46.84 million some £32.19 million went on income maintenance schemes so that in point of fact only about £14½ million, about 2 per cent of the total health spending, may have been spent on personal social services. It may also have been spent on other things. When we talk about what we spend through statutory funds on personal social services of the type dealt with by the National Social Service Board, it is a very small proportion of total health board spending of which, as we know, the vast majority goes on hospital services and so on. We very badly need the co-operation of the local social service councils and the other voluntary bodies in dealing with this area of voluntary social services.
Unfortunately, one of the things which have bedevilled this situation is that in the early seventies when the social service council was first set up there was great encouragement and movement towards social service councils in every area and they were encouraged to employ social workers, to employ professional personnel and on many occasions were given grants to do so by the health boards. About the mid-seventies the health boards came to the conclusion that they were going to provide these community welfare services and that they were no longer going to grant-aid voluntary organisations to employ social workers or only to do so in a very limited way. All social workers basically would be employed by the health boards under their senior social workers. This sounds a very fine idea but in effect I do not know that it has worked so very successfully. I hope that, when this Bill is enacted, another look will be taken at this matter and that more encouragement will be given to granting voluntary bodies, who have shown themselves capable, help to allow them to use professional social workers as well so that they will be more equal partners with the statutory services. Indeed, some of the community development social workers who have been employed by the health boards found themselves faced with an uncomfortable dichotomy between what their bosses wanted and what they felt the community wanted. It is not a complete solution to everything to say that the health boards will employ community workers and that will look after the whole thing.
One other item in regard to the functions of the National Social Service Board is referred to in the Minister's speech. He states that it also became responsible for servicing the National Council for the Aged which was also established in 1981. Certainly, it became responsible for servicing it but if it did, it became responsible for servicing it without one single extra person of staff, without any other resources than it already had and the end result was that, in particular, the director of the National Social Service Board and a couple of other members of the staff were run into the ground trying to service the National Council for the Aged as well as all the other work that they were already supposed to do. I understand that there is now a certain amount of extra personnel being provided, in particular because the present director is being seconded to the Commission on Social Welfare, but I still feel that if we are going to take the National Council for the Aged seriously—its publications and work to date would certainly suggest that it should be taken seriously—then we must be prepared also to staff it seriously and not expect the people in the National Council Service Board who are dealing with information, training and so on to just fit it into their free time, of which there is none. I would appeal to the Minister to ensure that the National Council for the Aged is properly staffed if it is to be effective.
There are two other things which I would like to say. One is a small matter which might also be raised on Committee Stage. This may sound as though it is a personal plea but I can assure you, a Leas-Chathaoirligh, that it is not meant to be. It is something that has been raised in this House in particular with great vehemence by Senator Mark Killilea on a previous occasion while discussing the Posts and Telegraphs Boards. It is that membership of the Houses of the Oireachtas, or even being a candidate for election to the Houses of the Oireachtas, means that a person is statute-barred from being a member of this board. This, as I understand it, is now being included in all these Bills as a matter of form. I have a feeling that people are not thinking about it. Obviously, if these are paid functions, if a salary is going to go with them, there may well be an extremely good argument that Members of the Oireachtas should not be members of the board. But where, as in this case, it is something that is free, a service given to the community, it seems to me somewhat harsh to decide that Members of the Oireachtas who have a particular knowledge of the area are just automatically barred. I do not see why this should be so. I say this particularly as, to my knowledge, the National Economic and Social Council, another voluntary body which advises the Government on economic and social matters, has not got this barring of Members of the Oireachtas. There are Members of the Oireachtas who are also members of it and I cannot see what the difference in principle is. I would suggest that the Minister look at this again. He should not just accept, because the Department of Finance or whoever organises these things says that this is an automatic section in all these Bills, that it should be so. He should look again and say, "Why should it be so?" Are we just accepting it automatically?
My last point is something which was also mentioned by other Members, that is with regard to the finances of the board. The Minister in his speech referred to the fact that the board in the past had neither the status nor the financial resources to act vigorously and to the fullest extent of its potential. That is a true statement and I agree with the Minister. It had not the status, partly because it was not statutory and partly because there were all the difficulties that I referred to at the beginning of my speech with regard to its establishment or non-establishment. But it never had anything more than peanuts as far as financial resources were concerned in comparison with, say, the Combat Poverty Committee. It had very little money. At the time of the setting up of the Community Development Agency it was suggested that some £2 million would be allocated to this area but between one difficulty and another and one election and another, the £2 million never materialised. I would again suggest to the Minister that of course the board cannot carry out its functions successfully if it has not got the financial resources. Financial resources means financial resources to staff it properly and to promote its various activities and publications. This Bill will set up, we hope, the status by making it a statutory body and by making it permanent. We must expect and hope that in the very near future it will also have the financial resources necessary.
