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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 6 Mar 1930

Vol. 33 No. 11

Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Allocation of Salaries of Co. M.O.'s.

asked the Minister for Local Government and Public Health whether his attention has been drawn to the question of the allocation of the salaries of the county medical officers of health under the tuberculosis and school medical services schemes in County Wicklow; whether these schemes were not adopted by the Wicklow Board of Health and Wicklow County Council on the basis of a draft scheme submitted by his representative; whether this draft did not provide for salaries, ranking for recoupment purposes, of £500 and £200 per annum for the respective positions; and whether his Department has not since intimated that after 1st February, 1931, the allocation for recoupment purposes must be at the rate of £300 and £150 per annum, respectively, involving a loss to the rates of County Wicklow of £125 a year, as compared with the arrangement made on the adoption of the scheme; and whether the Minister will take steps to have such adjustments made as would carry out the agreement upon which the scheme was based, and so prevent this substantial annual loss to the county rates.

The Wicklow County Council are under a statutory obligation to appoint and pay the salary of a whole-time county medical officer of health. To afford financial relief to local funds, it has been the practice to permit the county medical officer of health to combine the functions of tuberculosis officer and/or school medical officer, with a view to recoupment in respect of a proportion of his aggregate remuneration. In the case of County Wicklow, where tuberculosis arrangements had not heretofore been administered on comprehensive lines, it was suggested in the preliminary negotiations that such proportion might be fixed at £700 for the first year, when it was contemplated that the county medical officer of health would be mainly occupied in organising and initiating the new grant-aided services. Recoupment from State grants will be allowed to the Wicklow Board of Health on this basis for the initial year of administration, but subsequently will be reduced to the lower proportions which obtain in other counties. There would be no justification for extending to County Wicklow a continuance of preferential treatment.

Is the Minister aware that representations were made by his Department and that the County Council and Board of Health agreed to the scheme, and, if there is an honourable agreement reached on both sides, why not continue that agreement?

There cannot have been any understanding that the special arrangements made for the first year would continue. The Deputy will understand that because of the fact that the tuberculosis scheme was not working in a comprehensive way in the medical service, that the greater proportion of the county medical officer of health's time will have to be given to that. The State aided the service in the first year, and, perhaps, when we come to consider the position later on, in the second year also, but when the situation gets normal and the work is normal the assessment of the amount of the county medical officer of health's time that will be spent on this State aided service cannot be regarded as different in Wicklow from any other county in the Saorstát.

Is it not the policy of the Minister's Department to transfer everything on to the local authorities and therefore save the central fund?

With all respect, it is. Have you not ordered that the cost of all those people entitled to domiciliary treatment, which should be paid out of insurance funds, be put on to the rates? Did not that order go out last week?

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