I will start my brief contribution on Second Stage by stating that I am aware that there would be no Member of this House who would not be fully behind any Bill or indeed any move to deal with this terrible problem of poverty. This Bill is largely an extension of one introduced by my party and therefore I have no hesitation in welcoming the Bill. To deal with the problem of poverty and to get maximum benefit from any Bill it is necessary to ask very many questions and to find proper answers to them. There are some questions that it is absolutely imperative and essential to ask and to answer before a satisfactory Bill can be implemented.
First of all, we have to ask ourselves what is poverty? What is the extent of poverty? What causes poverty and what steps can be taken to solve the problem? Qualified experts are necessary to help us in this area. On the last occasion in this House some Members felt it might be inappropriate and wrong to spend too much finance in this area and that the finance should go directly to solving the problem. We must have the help of sociologists and social scientists. This is an important piece of social engineering and for that reason everybody would agree that it is most important to have the services of social engineers. They will isolate the problem and suggest what can and should be done. Then the solution will be a political one to be implemented by the politicians and by the Government.
Some well-intentioned and sympathetic people say that we know all about poverty, we know who is poor and we know what should be done. In a general sense this may be true but to get maximum benefit from the Bill and from any legislative move we should have the services of those experts. I am aware that much research has been done by private individuals, by groups and by experts in this field. I would like to pay tribute to them and to their hard work. In the implementation of any policy the results of their research and their work will be used.
Social surveys and research can be carried out in various ways. One of these is participant observation in which the person carrying out the survey will become involved with those among whom the survey is carried out. Interviews may be carried out in two ways, structured or unstructured. The structured interviews would set certain questions and the unstructured ones would give more scope. They would set questions but perhaps lead people into expressing views of their own on those issues or on related issues. There is also the system of questionnaires which is the cheapest and the most straightforward. People are given specific questions and they give their answers and then on the basis of those answers the survey is completed. We have some considerable information already available from Government reports and other sources and these will be taken in to account as well.
I believe the success of the survey depends on the quality and validity of the data collected. The surveys will measure rather than explain the problem. Methodology is very important. There are those who believe that social science is not what might be termed an exact science. There are some sociologists who feel that logic methods and procedures of natural sciences are applicable to the study of mankind. This I believe is regarded as positivism. On the other hand, there is the other side to it, phenomenology, which feels it is not an exact science, that man does not respond to situations and to effects in the same way as inanimate things and so this would have to be taken into consideration.
When we get down to examining poverty itself it can be expressed in three ways — in absolute terms, in relative terms and in subjective poverty terms. In absolute poverty, from the 19th century, when serious studies of poverty began, researchers have tried to establish a fixed datum line against which to measure poverty. Below that line, poverty would begin and above it it would end. This involves judgment of basic human needs, resources for health and physical efficiency. This is also know as subsistence poverty. It involves pricing basic necessities such as food, clothing and shelter. Some concepts would include basic cultural needs which, to some extent, would reflect the value of the researcher. They would also include education, leisure, recreation and finally security in old age.
In this country we had a tradition where people provided for security in old age by having very large families. There are many problems with this method of determining poverty. For example, as regards food, how do we know the exact amount of food that is required by any particular individual? Do we make allowances, for example, for situations where a person would buy a parcel of potatoes and maybe half of them would be unusable? Do we take for granted that people are good cooks, that there is no wastage? There are many other issues to be taken into consideration as well as shelter. On a different level, is colour television essential? Is radio essential?
Then we have relative poverty. Because of the difficulty, many researchers do not employ the absolute poverty concept but they work to standards related to the particular time and place and this is known as relative poverty. It is measured in terms of what is considered an acceptable reasonable standard in the community and so will vary with time and is constantly changing. There are problems in this regard as well because there is a difficulty in deciding on proper standards of norm for large numbers, ethnic groups, different classes, different age groups, religion etc.
Would it be regarded as necessary in this respect that people should have access to those standards? Would that be regarded in relative terms? As far as I am concerned, I think so. The concept of relative poverty makes it difficult to compare the past with the present and to compare different areas, for example, the Third World. To overcome this there are two standards suggested: the national relational, which is relative poverty and world relational, which is absolute. Finally, we come to subjective poverty where individuals and groups may feel they are poor. Some individuals may feel they are poor while other might not necessarily think so. This is important in one sense because people generally behave in response to the conditions in which they find themselves. My own definition of poverty is resources which would not enable a person to develop to full potential throughout life and so he or she would be inhibited in this sense and for this reason would be a second-class citizen.
When we come to examine the extent of poverty it very much depends on the concept of poverty that is adopted. I have no doubt that the surveys which have been carried out — in particular that carried out by Sister Stanislaus which refers to over one million poor people — are correct. I believe that there is no reason to question them. Then we come to the causes of poverty. Some people refer to the vicious circle. They say that poverty breeds poverty from one generation to another and that people are trapped in this situation. They feel there is no escape from it. There are people who have not got sufficient food and are therefore unable to work or to study properly. They are unable to get out of this situation.
There is also the culture of poverty. Poverty has common characteristics, similar problems and similar responses in different societies. These develop into a sort of culture. Culture is regarded as the learned, shared and socially transmitted behaviour of a social group. The result of this is marginality as has already been stated in this debate, helplessness, dependence, inferiority, resignation, tatalism and living for the present, or present-time orientation. It is stated that culture has a life of its own and that if the circumstances were to disappear the culture of poverty could continue. The culture theory sees the poor as different from the remainder of society with a distinctive sub-culture. It sees this sub-culture as maintaining the poor in unchanging circumstances.
The situation in America in the sixties, when war was declared on poverty, has already been mentioned in this debate. The welfare state in the United Kingdom has been referred to. Poverty has persisted and grown in both those places. I believe this is because in the USA there was no shift of wealth, which is necessary in order to solve the problem of poverty. I believe that social engineers and those engaged in this area must erect canals and viaducts out of this morass and not be simply creating a labyrinthine series of ways within it. In the UK, the benefits were not sufficient and so the poor generally remained poor.
I have said before in this House that poverty is not simply an individual condition. It is a social problem; a class phenomenon of the working class. A massive redistribution of resources away from the wealthier classes is needed in order to solve the problem. What is needed is something of the situation created by the "Wild Colonial Boy" mentality, without the gun to rob the rich and serve the poor. Perhaps not in that sense, but a redistribution is needed, away from the wealthy classes to the poor if the situation is to be solved. In reading through books on sociology it is interesting to see the references to all the different classes, the upper class, the middle class, the working class, the lower class and the down-and-outs. In one sense this does not appear to be correct. Nevertheless, I accept that we must have some divisions of this kind. We have the shame of poverty where people feel they are responsible for their positions. This is not true. I would like to know if inequality can be abolished. I am sure there will be difficulty in this regard. Is poverty endemic? We have the new poor being created. Like sand in a sealed vessel a certain number will go to the bottom no matter what is done. I feel that poverty undermines society.
In this Bill, section 9 is most important. It deals with finances. It will be necessary to measure the results of this legislation periodically. It should be an integral part of social policy and social engineering to do away with the dole concept in this country. People do not want to get something for nothing. They are prepared to work; they want to work; they want productive employment. I have made the plea on many occasions in this House and elsewhere that we should strive to arrive at a situation where work of a productive nature — in housing, roads and many different areas including the provision of fuel — could be undertaken. People should have job satisfaction. The position has been described in this House on many occasions of people queuing for the dole in the rain. When they get this dole it is a mere pittance. I do not think that progress can be made in this situation until we have abolished that and arrived at a situation where we have full employment. I think it is possible to arrive at a situation where we have full employment.
I am well aware that what I have to say on this subject in this House has no great significance. We all feel when we get into public life that we can do something at local authority level or at Seanad level. The reality then is rather disappointing when we are in a situation where very little can be done.
My own experience of poverty may not be appropriate but nevertheless I would draw on it in some sense in this situation. Patrick Kavanagh has said that poverty is largely in the mind and I believe that is true to a large extent. Looking back on it at my stage in life, I look back at youth — torn clothes going to school and to Mass, wearing mother's clothes at secondary school; no fuel, no light; hiding on the rent collector when he called, sick and delirium after sickness; no food. I remember a few months old baby sister dying simply and solely because of poverty: nursed in a suitcase; no heat in the house. The memory is still with me of a little baby snuggling to get some warmth where there was none; waked on a table with a little candle, the coffin a cigarette box hammered together, unpainted, carried through fields of fat cattle; a small group digging a small grave and comback with a spade, passing by windows where they pulled back the curtains to peep out unable to come out and then a broken-hearted mother crying.
Those memories never leave anybody who experienced these realities. I remember my father at the beginning of the last World War, a farm labourer working at 13 shillings per week. He had to walk seven or eight miles to work and the same home. For that he had breakfast, dinner and tea and a big issue was made of the breakfast for a family of six.
We were brought up to accept poverty in our environment and our religion, without question. If I were starting life all over again and know what I know now, it would be different. We had that concept of "the poor you have always with you". There is no poverty now like there was then. I honestly feel that. That is not to say that we do not have poverty: we have poverty on a massive scale.
Looking back on it, there is no shame or pride in the way I was brought up. Many others were brought up in similar circumstances and, I believe, worse but on looking back it was the concept of the drowning rat: charity kept its head from sinking when it might have been more charitable to push it down under the water because the effects of poverty are irreversible. When that happens to some people they try to make sure that it will not happen to their children if humanly possible and for that reason among others, I hope that this Bill will be successful. I feel that education should be provided not simply with a view to helping the poor to analyse their problem and lift themselves, as somebody has said, by their own shoe strings — not for that reason but eduction should be provided to get them through life and to lead full lives and to get employment for them.
Perhaps in some cases poverty has been caused by a lack of commonsense or gumption, or savvy, whatever it may be called. I do not think that this is simply confined to the poor; I have found a lack of commonsense in well-educated people and brilliant people. I think that commonsense is something that, as a nation, we do not have in large quantities. The poor, of course, have muscle. Poverty in religion may be all right. Some people have a romantic notion of poverty. They look on it as frugality or discipline of some kind. It is nothing of the sort: it is really a case of pushing people to be second or third or fourth-class citizens. In my time that was acceptable. I do not think it is acceptable now. It is only right that it should not be acceptable now. That is probably the result of educating people. As some Members have said here before it may be partly the result of being educated also by the media, by television for example, by seeing the way other people live, the opulence and the fullness that they have. Why should a certain section of the population be denied some kind of reasonable income? They see this on television.
It is not simply a transfer of resources that is needed. People should be taught responsibility at school. If money is got too easily it is not appreciated. We need to be educated and to become mature. I see this in the situation at discos where I feel that the young people have a wrong sense of values. We have too much drink and we have too much money spent on drink. In schools much can be done, and much can be done by example from people who have resources and who are in a position to give a lead. In my young days to go for "home help" was a last resort. Many people would die in shame before they would do it. Now we have a situation where people have almost to become professional beggars in some instances to get what they deserve and what they are entitled to. That is wrong and something should be done about that.
In dealing with poverty I think that women's role has been a very difficult one, far more difficult than that of men. In a situation like this it is appropriate that we should think of the travelling people and the position they are in. Not enough is being done when you have young children, babies, brought up under a canvas tent in winter time. It certainly does not fit in with the concept of a Christian country, what our behaviour should be and our consideration and care of people in those circumstances. We should also pay tribute to so many different bodies and groups like the Samaritans, the St. Vincent de Paul Society and all those who have helped out in that area.
I will conclude by once again stating that I fully support any Bill or any move that will do anything to help in the area of poverty. We will be able to deal more fully with the Bill when it comes to Committee Stage and we shall have some amendments at that stage.
