You might just as well have a parish council. It would be much better than a rural council. Or we might have councils for every townland in the country. It is merely a question of where we ought to draw the line. At the present time, to give an instance of how confused local administration is, let us take this:—The rain water which flows in the channel along the street is supposed to be looked after by the employees of the county council. The sewerage there in that same street is supposed to be looked after by the employees of the rural council. It is time we were done with such anomalies. A great of argument has been directed against the abolition of rural councils because there is nobody to take their place. Under this Bill power is given to appoint committees. These can be appointed by the county council, and it is hoped and expected that these committees will legislate for areas of a much more suitable kind than the present extraordinary areas known as rural districts. It is expected that these committees will develop parish units like small towns and places in which the people have some interest and in that way local pride and local ambition and local idealism will have an opportunity of developing. Nobody has ever heard of such a thing as a hurling club or a football club or a pipers' band, or a political club belonging to a rural district council for the simple reason that there is no local sentiment attached to it. It is hoped that under this Bill little groups will gather together and will be bound together by a natural local sentiment.
Now, Deputy O'Connell referred to the medical inspection of school children and I told him that under the Act of 1919 we have power to insist upon such inspection of schools; but the difficulty is that we have no machinery to put such legislation into operation. If we were to do so it would mean appointing this medical inspector of schools at a very high salary, whereas under the present Bill we hope that the county medical inspector will be able to discharge this duty, or see that it is discharged, along with a great many other duties. If this Bill cannot go through, and if we cannot get the county medical officer of health appointed, it will mean that this provision will have to go through anyway, and it will mean that later on there will be a great duplication of duty and there will be a pensioning of officers who should never have been appointed.
With regard to the county medical officer of health, Deputy Sir James Craig was rather dubious as to whether we could get the right type of person for the position. This is really the pivotal position of the Bill; the whole administration of the county will devolve on his shoulders. He will have to be a thoroughly capable officer, and for that reason we are going to insist on the highest qualifications that we can get. He will have to have a diploma of public health, together with the customary degrees for a person holding that position, and in addition to that I intend to endeavour in every possible way to see he is a man of very large experience in matters relating to public health.
Deputy Johnson rather upset me in his first onslaught on the Bill. It turned out to be a grand offensive against centralisation, but as he argued, there was a difference. As long as he was dealing with theory, he confined himself to the attack on centralisation. When he came down to practical common sense, I find that he was prepared to go even further than I was able to go myself. The principal point on which Deputy Johnson was in favour of centralisation was with regard to roads, and I think that his opinion was held unanimously by every Deputy, irrespective of party. My position is exactly on a par with theirs. I am altogether in favour of the centralisation of the administration of trunk or main roads, but I would like to impress on Deputies that that is not going to mean any saving.
Several Deputies have advocated the centralisation of the administration of trunk roads on the ground that they believe it will be much less expensive than the present system. On the Continent, for strategic and other reasons, they have maintained roads on a national basis for a considerable time and they find it much more costly. I have no doubt if we started immediately in Ireland on the national system of maintaining roads we would find it very expensive. You would find that to have our staff working along the trunk roads with a centralised administration in Dublin, would mean very heavy expense in the provision of steam rollers and machinery for crushing stones, while perhaps within fifty or a hundred yards away, on one of the roads feeding the trunk road there may be plant and machinery of the same kind at work. For the present it is much better to allow the staff in the various counties to do the work on the main roads as well as on the roads of secondary importance.
The one point that Deputies seem to have missed in the section dealing with roads is that I have taken the power to determine what roads shall be main roads. That is a big step towards the nationalisation of those roads. Heretofore, as some Deputy has suggested, it was quite a common thing to have a splendid road running through two or three counties and then in another county it would cease to become a main road and would be classified as a byroad. That entailed great hardship on travellers and it ruined the road work that had been done in the other counties. There are at least two counties in Ireland which have no main or trunk roads. The Bill gets over that difficulty and prepares the way for nationalisation, if it is found workable.
The main objection to nationalising the roads is because of the financial difficulties. It would mean very considerable expense setting up a central authority, securing a staff for the roads, and duplicating machinery all over the country. We would have to start off with a very large fund. Deputy Egan has referred to the different kinds of roads, and it seems to be generally agreed in the Dáil that the water-bound macadam road is obsolete, at least for heavy traffic. I agree. I had the experience of travelling some thousands of miles in the United States on concrete roads, and I certainly found them excellent. I have discussed the proposition with several engineers here, and they say that the roads would stand the heat and frost in America very well, but they would not stand the moisture of Ireland. I am not certain of that, but it is something that can be investigated. We will require a high standard of road in Ireland, just as they do in other countries.
I would like to point out to those Deputies who stress the fact that the charge for trunk roads should be met from a central fund, that this year we have advanced a large sum for the maintenance of trunk roads, and I believe that every year we will find ourselves in a position to make grants of a similar kind. As the roads get better we have every reason to expect that the numbers of motors will increase. That will mean an increase in the amount of the road fund, which is the national fund for the upkeep of roads. As the roads get better our income will get larger, and there will be less necessity for heavy expenditure. I think the provisions in the Bill in that respect set us on the right road.
With regard to the increase in the number of county council members, except where there are one or two rural district councils there will be no increase in the membership of the county councils, and any increase that will occur will be necessary owing to the fact that boards of health and other committees will have to be set up which will consist of the same personnel as the county councils.
The abolition of the rural councils will not, I believe, add very greatly to the duties that will have to be performed by the county council itself. The main duties of the county council under this Bill will be in connection with roads and with finance. Public health duties will be carried out by the county board of health. There are a great many duties, or so-called duties, at present carried out by rural councils which are quite unnecessary. As to the talk of parish pumps, mending broken glass in labourers' cottages, and all that, under a properly regulated system all these matters should be very carefully handled by officials without having local bodies wasting their time in discussing them.
Deputy Johnson made great play with a circular sent out from my Department giving very specific instructions to officials down the country. Those instructions were sent out on the request of these officials themselves. When you send out instructions it is necessary to make them particular and specific. The reason they were issued was that these officials were complaining that they were continually wrangling amongst themselves about their duties and unless we laid down hard and fast rules it would be impossible to get those duties performed at all— one would say it was the other's job, and so on. Deputy Johnson referred to many matters in connection with the Poor Law. This Bill does not attempt to deal with the Poor Law at all. It was considered to be a different problem, and that we had no statistics or anything on which to base a decision at present. Later one we hope to introduce a Bill that will deal with this very important question. The Deputy also mentioned the question of National Insurance. The Minister for Finance has announced his intention of appointing a committee to enquire into National Health Insurance generally and until this problem is examined it would be most unwise to make any changes.
With regard to this question of the Commission, many Deputies have complained about the way they are being treated in having this Bill flung at them and then, when we were half way through, having the suggestion made that the question of local administration should be left to a Commission. I want to disabuse the minds of Deputies of the idea that this Bill was hastily drafted or thrown at them without getting the fullest consideration. We have been dealing with this Bill, thinking over it and doing everything we can to improve it for a considerable time. Some of the provisions of it have been on the tapis for the last 12 months—I might say before I became Minister at all. So far as my department could get helpful information from outside, everything has been done to make this Bill as perfect as possible. When I introduced this Bill I intended to see it get a second reading. When I was introducing it I threw out the suggestion that I expected that we would get considerable help in its passage through the Dáil, because, as the President remarked, the Bill is largely founded on the opinion of experts and we had not got the opinion of many people who are in touch with local conditions— at least I believe that Deputies who represent those people here in the Dáil, particularly those who are members of local councils, will be able to give us a point of view which we had not to the same extent in drafting the Bill. It is on those lines I expect that we shall be able to amend this Bill considerably in committee. The question of the Commission originally arose in connection with the Greater Dublin scheme. Several people who are particularly interested in the city of Dublin, and who realised that it is a problem per se, came to me and to the President and asked us to leave that question altogether outside the Bill, as it was a problem that could be better dealt with by itself. I agreed to give the fullest consideration to that suggestion.
Several other important problems have to be considered, and I am anxious to have these dealt with by a Commission or some such body. Consideration of the relations between agriculture and local government is very important and does not brook delay. The question of asylums will have to receive very careful consideration, as well as a scheme of State medical service. It is necessary that a Commission should be set up to deal with various problems of that kind. With regard to the main provisions of the Bill, we have very carefully drafted them, and with the view of seeing, if they were accepted, that it would be quite easy to attach to them measures dealing with poor law or agriculture, without hampering them in any way. The Bill is a kind of necessary skeleton, set up before we can make any further additions to or reforms of the local government code. Some of these measures are extremely urgent. The setting up of county medical officers is most important, and I would be very sorry to see that delayed longer than is necessary. At the present time we have practically no such things as health services functioning in this country. The inspection of schools, care of mothers, welfare of the blind and other things are being neglected. Every day we delay, people are probably dying in this country owing to the absence of proper sanitary conditions, who might be saved if the Bill was passed. Hundreds of children are growing up in the country weaklings, mentally and physically, who might be healthy and strong under proper supervision. For these reasons this part of the Bill is most important.
I might say the same with regard to the part of the Bill that deals with roads. The Bill is a step towards nationalisation, as big as we can take owing to our present financial position. Every month, or every year, that we delay centralising road maintenance in the county councils means that thousands of pounds are being expended unnecessarily on roads, without getting proper value for the money. For that reason I am very anxious to get this Bill through as soon as possible. I realise that such an important Bill could not be put through the Dáil and Seanad this session, and I am not pressing it. In the Committee Stage I hope Deputies will be able to do full justice to the Bill. The holding up of the Bill, that I now find is necessary, until after the recess, will necessitate postponing the elections, at all events for the rural district councils, and it will be necessary for me to bring in a Bill to that effect later on. I am not sure but that it may necessitate the holding up of the elections for county councils, but, if possible, I will try to avoid that. As I say, committees will be set up to deal with the other vital problems of local government, so that I believe Deputies should be thoroughly well able to deal with the matters that I have opened for discussion in the Bill.