Amendments Nos. 1 to 6 overlap and are largely interdependent.
In Committee on Finance. - Local Services (Temporary Economies) (No. 2) Bill, 1933—Committee.
Section 1 agreed to.
SECTION 2.
(1) For the purposes of this Act each of the following bodies and persons shall be a local authority, that is to say:—
(a) the council of a county, county borough, borough, or urban district, a board of guardians, the commissioners of a town, and a port sanitary authority, and
(b) a person appointed by or under a statute to perform the functions or any of the functions of any such council, board, or commissioners, and
(c) a committee or joint committee or a board or joint board (whether incorporated or not incorporated) of or appointed by any one or more of such councils, boards, commissioners, authorities, or persons, and
(d) a school attendance committee, a vocational education committee, and a committee of agriculture.
(2) In this Act the expression "the Minister"—
(a) in relation to a committee of agriculture means the Minister for Agriculture, and
(b) in relation to a school attend e committee or a vocational education committee means the Minister for Education, and
(c) in relation to any other local authority means the Minister for Local Government and Public Health,
(3) In this Act—
the word "officer" means any person in the employment of a local authority;
the word "employment" shall be construed as including engagement and retainer;
the word "rate" includes percentage.
The following amendments were on the Order Paper:—
(1) In sub-section (1) to delete paragraph (d).—(Patrick McGilligan.)
(2) In sub-section (1) (d), lines 32 and 33, to delete the words "a vocational education committee". —(William Norton.)
(3) In sub-section (2) to delete paragraph (a).—(Patrick McGilligan.)
(4) In sub-section (2) to delete paragraph (b).—(Patrick McGilligan.)
(5) In sub-section (2) (b), lines 37-38 to delete the words "or a vocational education committee". — (William Norton.)
May we discuss the part of the section to which there is no amendment first? I ask this merely as a matter of procedure.
I propose to put two questions to decide the issues raised in these amendments: First that the words "a school attendance committee" and a "committee of agriculture," lines 32 and 33 stand, secondly that the words "vocational education committee," in the same lines stand. There will thus be two divisions if two divisions are claimed. Amendments 1 to 6 inclusive.
That includes 1 to 6, but amendment 6 not merely deals with the teacher employed by the vocational education committee but, also, an officer employed by that committee. I would like some distinction. There might be some administrative officer in connection with this type of work who operates under the vocational education committee, who is not employed in teaching. I have joined them together I admit.
It might be possible to deal with that particular type of differentiation on Report.
Possibly it could be considered on Report.
The only thing is, whether, if this is dealt with now by division, we would be precluded from raising the question of differentiation between an officer and a teacher on Report.
What does the Deputy suggest? I propose to put two questions on amendments Nos. 1 to 6.
I would prefer not to move amendments No. 6 at this stage.
Very well. Nos. 1 to 5.
I shall withdraw amendment No. 6 for the time being.
The Deputy might for purposes of discussion move amendment No. 1.
What about sub-section (1), paragraph (a), to which there is no amendment? Can we not discuss that now?
The point might be raised on the section. No amendment has been offered to that portion of the section.
No. There is no amendment, but it is to delete paragraph (a), I move to wipe out all three. Deputy Norton has a restricting amendment.
The three issues may be debated together and decided by two questions.
Might I suggest that we should have the debate in two sections? First we could debate the question of cutting out all reference to educational committees, and secondly, to cutting out all reference to the school attendance committees, but not to debate them both together as there are two questions to be put.
Why not debate the two together and have separate divisions if the Committee desires? They are closely allied matters.
I will move my amendment in its restricted application to the vocational committee, but that is the same practically as Deputy Norton's amendment. I am proposing to move that portion of my amendment that deals only with the vocational committee. Deputy Norton's amendment is restricted to that point.
Is the Deputy moving that, because his original amendment is different?
I propose amendment No. 1. The sub-section says "a school attendance committee, a vocational education committee, and a committee of agriculture." The effect of bringing in these three bodies here is, that in a later section of the Bill those employed or operating under the auspices of these three committees, whatever their emoluments or commission, everything they get is subject to a certain cut. I want to exempt those employed by the vocational education committee. We have been told by the Minister that the whole Bill is going to effect a saving of £35,000. We know, as we read through the Bill, that that money is not going to accrue either to the taxpayer or the ratepayer in any single respect. Whatever is saved will scrupulously fall back into the fund out of which it was previously paid. There is going to be no saving so far as the taxpayer is concerned. It seems to be an absurd thing, in order to allow a very small sum of money to fall back into a fund raised by local authorities, to upset a committee such as the vocational education committee and to disturb those employed under it. I want to segregate this service particularly because it is the only service the inauguration of which was attended with a considerable amount of debate. There was what amounted to agreement, that the emoluments of the people coming into these services in this way were small. It was indeed expressed as an excuse, for the point at which they are fixed, that they were more or less experimental, and even with that excuse it was admitted that the experiment was on the low side.
The Minister for Education who was speaking at the time did give a promise that mandatory salaries would be prescribed for the vocational education officers. He took power to prescribe salaries. In other words, it was apprehended that the salaries likely to be fixed would not be sufficient or adequate to the work to be performed, and with the consent of the House it was then proposed, and accepted, to give powers to the Minister afterwards to establish salaries which could not be interfered with. Since then these mandatory salaries have not been established. So far from being established, and so far from the power given by the House being exercised, for that particular purpose, it is now proposed to take away something of what was since given. Let us get a balance on all this. This is not going to save the taxpayers at all. There is no chance of saving the taxpayers or the ratepayers anything at all measurable. Take out all that is to be saved under the whole Bill and it has no force in relation either to the moneys that can be saved or the work that is being disturbed. On the other hand, face up to these facts that we are dealing with people who have only recently been in the position I have described, and, add the further fact, that we are dealing with these in a group that got a promise of an upper grade. There is now a tendency downwards and you are certain to have an amount of discontent sown amongst those people. It is going to spread naturally from those people. The Vocational Education Act was supposed to be the beginning of a new system and the people who were to be appointed under it and who were to operate under it were supposed to be the inaugurators of a new scheme of things under the auspices of those vocational education committees in association with local authorities. Instead of being allowed to do their work even under the restricted circumstances held out to them, they are going to be further restricted. No real excuse has been given for it. Again I urge, as I did previously when the main Economies Bill, which has been a fiasco as far as saving is concerned, was introduced, that it is a grossly immoral thing to pick out people to have their salaries cut against whom the allegation cannot be made that they are overpaid either in relation to the experience or talents they have or to the work they do and to hack at their salaries simply because they are people in the second remove from the Government. What makes them open to attack is not anything inherent either in the work they do or the importance of the posts they occupy, but simply that they are near the Government, and that is the sole reason for this choice.
There has never been an argument put forward in the House with regard to these people or the other people in the public service whose salaries were cut that they were not doing the work for which they were paid; that the work was not of the importance which entitled them to the old-time sum, or that the work had become lessened in any degree. None of these arguments was made. It is simply that these people are near the Government when they are striking out blindly. These were the first people on whom their fists lighted because they were in close proximity. They have now moved down another step from the people immediately under the State to the people under the local authorities. There is no pretence made that there is economy in this. The only excuse made is that they are determined to spread the hardship all round; that they have come in here and done a certain amount of injury to the country and everybody must share in it. That is not an argument that should weigh with regard to people in a service inaugurated under the circumstances I have explained. I am going to press definitely to a conclusion the amendment that vocational education committees should be excepted from this.
I want to support the proposal to delete the officers of vocational education committees from the scope of the Bill. There are many unwarranted things done under the Bill, but there seems to be the least possible excuse for bringing within the scope of the Bill the employees of vocational education committees. As Deputy McGilligan pointed out, the imposition of a cut on the salaries of these officers will yield no revenue to the State. It will yield no easement to the burden of taxation of the local ratepayer. It seems to me that the proposal to include such officers is based either on a complete misconception of what is involved or merely a desire to impose a cut for the sake of imposing a cut. The rating authority for the vocational education committee is the county council. Even if this Bill is passed, and assuming that these cuts are imposed, the rating authority would still continue to levy a fixed rate for vocational education purposes and to that extent the local ratepayer gets no relief. Assuming the vocational education committee cuts the salaries of its employees, then, under Section 20 of the Bill, the Minister will deduct no grant from any local education authority which complies with the terms of the Act. So that you have got the position that when the local authority cuts the salaries of its employees the State saves nothing, because it continues the old grant, and the local ratepayer gets no relief because there is a statutory obligation to levy a fixed rate for the purpose of vocational education. There is no saving whatever to the local ratepayer. There is no saving to the central State funds. What merely happens is that the local authority has still the old sum available for vocational education purposes but is definitely prohibited by the Minister from continuing to pay the old salaries even though the local vocational education committee felt it was bound to pay the old salaries as a matter of equity between themselves and the employees.
As Deputy McGilligan said, vocational education is relatively a new service here. It ought to start under the happiest possible auspices and under the most congenial possible circumstances. It seems to me hardly likely that a Bill of this kind is going to promote that efficiency and contentment which are so necessary at the outset of a move of this kind in our national life. Vocational education officers, as most people know, are notoriously underpaid. The overwhelming majority of those officers are paid salaries which nobody could possibly justify either in relation to the work they perform or to their human or civic responsibilities. When the Vocational Education Act of 1930 was passing through the House they were promised that something would be done in the way of prescribing for local vocational education committees a mandatory scale of salaries which it was then felt would have to be forced on the local vocational education committees in order to get them to recognise the responsible work which the officers of the committees were performing. That was in 1930. In the intervening four years nothing has been done to implement the promises then made or to take advantage of that particular section of the 1930 Act to endeavour to create a national scale of salaries for people employed by such local authorities. Instead of the State facing up to its responsibility under the Act and realising it ought to pay reasonable salaries to those employees, instead of some effort being made to put the remuneration on some kind of reasonable basis, it is now proposed to brush aside all that was said and implied when the Act was passing through the House, and instead of presenting them with a decent scale of salaries to present them with cuts which will only aggravate instead of improving their position.
Under the Vocational Education Act of 1930 certain employees of the old technical instruction committees were taken over by the new committees and a special section in that Act—I think Section 99—provided that those who were so transferred should hold their office on the same terms and conditions as formerly. That seemed to be an implied promise by the State that there would be no reduction whatever in the remuneration of the officers transferred from one committee to an entirely new committee, functioning in a different way. Now apparently under this Bill that particular section of the 1930 Act is to be torn up and cuts imposed, as I contend, in flagrant defiance of the definite guarantee given to them under Section 99 of the 1930 Act. There is no case for including those officers. I think all sections of the House, including the Minister's own Party, would very much prefer that he came to the House prescribing a reasonable rate of salaries for vocational education officers instead of asking them to cut salaries which are disgracefully low at present, and which I say are not calculated to make officers of vocational education committees either attentive to work or efficient in its performance.
It is worth noting the different type of speech that has been made in the House here, such as the one which has been made by Deputy McGilligan on this question of salary cuts for teachers employed under vocational education bodies, and the type of speech that his colleagues in the Party have been making during the last few months all over the country. There we are told that the country is fast being driven into bankruptcy, that the farmers are in a state bordering on destitution, that there is no money for anything in the country. That is the type of speech to which we have been listening for a long time, and I have no doubt we will hear it again from many of the Deputy's colleagues, and may be from the Deputy himself when he is in other places. I am sure Deputy Keating, when he is speaking on behalf of the farmers, will be shedding tears —I will not say crocodile tears——
There is every chance that the Minister will be shedding tears, too.
——in County Wexford next week when he is addressing his constituents there.
So far as the Minister is concerned, the farmers are prosperous, but he will hear a different tale when he goes amongst them.
He knows nothing about the condition of the farmers.
Deputy Keating's friend, who is sitting beside him, will be doing the same thing, shedding tears in County Cork, as he has been doing for many weeks. Other Deputies on the Party opposite, for their own good political reasons, will be making the country appear in the very last stages of destitution, and particularly the farming community. Now, when a proposal is made to effect more economies, Deputy McGilligan, one of the leaders of the Party opposite, makes a howl about the teachers, the poor salaried classes.
Many members of your own Party agree with us.
I am sure there are many colleagues of Deputy McGilligan who will feel they are being placed in an awkward position. They will have to go around the country and try to explain away Deputy McGilligan's speech. Many of the Deputies opposite have told us time and again that there are not enough economies. All over the country they have been howling for economies and for the reduction of salaries.
I never heard that before.
I had not the pleasure of hearing any of them; possibly I had not the time.
I am aware that they were howling for the return of their markets, which is quite a different thing.
They have been howling for economies, reductions in salaries. I have files here, newspaper cuttings.
Let us have them.
I have here newspaper cuttings showing that various local authorities, of which Deputies opposite are members, have been howling out for cuts, and not alone that, but they have actually adopted cuts not of 5 per cent., 10 per cent., or 15 per cent., but of 20 per cent. and 25 per cent. in relation to the salaries of local officers. Deputies over there know that is quite true, and are aware that they have done that in all parts of the country, north, south, cast and west. Deputy McGilligan's colleagues have been cutting salaries to the extent of 25 per cent. in some cases. There are some here who will say that a cut of 5 per cent. is not enough. I know that the colleagues of the Deputy, if they were free to speak, would rather have a cut of 10 per cent. or 20 per cent.
I was never a cutter of wages or salaries, and I could never approve of a Party that has thrown away the staple industry of the people.
Colleagues of the Deputy all over the country have advocated huge cuts. They have demanded cuts in the salaries of civil servants and public officials of all kinds. I do not think any member of the Party can deny that. I do not think that the opposition of Deputy McGilligan and his Party—I presume he speaks for the Party—to this proposed cut, is serious. In the case of officers of vocational education committees, if the proposed cut were eliminated it would place them in a position that I do not think, as public servants, they are entitled to be placed in, particularly when it is proposed to cut the salaries of all other servants of public authorities.
Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Norton reminded us that these officers were paid on a lower scale some years ago and that when the Act of 1930 was being put through the House certain promises were made to those officers of improved salaries. While the Minister has not availed of the authority to prescribe salaries, he has used his influence with the local authorities to have the salaries of these people raised to what he believed was a proper amount. The suggestions made by him to these local authorities dealing with vocational education, to put the salaries of their officials on a basis that he considered reasonable, have been adopted by authorities all over the country, with three exceptions. There are three local authorities that have refused, so far, to raise the salaries to the rate that the Minister considered would be commensurate with the duties performed by the officials. In all other cases the salaries have been raised in accordance with the promise given by the then Minister in this House. I think that disposes of the arguments of Deputy Norton and Deputy McGilligan.
Can the Minister give us a general picture of what the existing salaries are?
I am told that the salaries of these vocational education officers have been raised in accordance with what the Minister believed should be their salaries.
You must have heard that in Glasgow.
What are the annual increments?
I am aware that the salaries were raised by all the local authorities, with three exceptions.
Can you give us a general picture of the existing scales and indicate what are the annual increments that are being provided?
Under a circular dated in April of last year the scales would appear to be:— Men, £130, rising by annual increments of £10 to £200; women, £120, rising by annual increments of £10 to £170, together with such cost of living bonus on the Civil Service scale in each case as may be approved from time to time by the Minister for Finance. The circular points out that manual instructors will not be eligible for increments on the scale beyond £150 unless they have obtained a manual instructor's certificate. That, in general, shows an increase, in some cases a fairly considerable increase, on what were the salaries paid before this cirucular was issued to and adopted by the local authorities. The improved scales have been adopted by 38 committees and there were three exceptions, namely, Kilkenny, Monaghan and Leitrim. That, I think, disposes very largely, if not altogether, of the case made as to the poor salary that was paid to these teachers previous to 1930. It is true that the Minister has not prescribed but he has written to and circularised all these bodies and he has induced them to raise, and to raise in some cases very considerably, the salaries paid these officials to the level that he thought was within the capacity of the committees to pay and up to the standard of the work that they were doing for the public.
It is not true to say that none of this money saved by this Bill will be saved to the local authorities. The money will be credited to them. The saving made will be credited to the next year's estimates and that money will be available for their work in the future. There will be a certain saving, a saving which some people may say is not sufficient. But this is the minimum scale and there will certainly be recoupment to the State, not of a very large amount but nevertheless there is economy and there is a saving, a saving both to the ratepayers and to the taxpayers. While, as Deputy Norton says, the committees will have to raise the amount specified for education in the coming year, nevertheless this money saved in this way will be saved to them and it will be at their disposal for next year's work.
The Minister has mentioned certain salaries for teachers under the vocational education committees. These salaries are below the scale with which this Bill deals. I do not think there is any bigger blot on our whole system of building up the country than the scale of salaries paid to technical instructors and technical instructresses. A number of affairs operated to make that so, but the fact that it is so, with all that comes later on from it, explains why our technical education is in the backward position in which it is. The salaries that are dealt with in this Bill are the salaries paid to people who have the higher responsibilities under these local bodies, but they do bear a relation in the smallness of their size to the more disgraceful salaries that exist lower down.
The Minister is, no doubt, sensitive with regard to the position in which the farmers find themselves. We find a report in this morning's Press that for the payment of an outstanding sum of £25 in rates, a woman in South Tipperary had her 11 in-calf cows seized by the sheriff. We can understand how sensitive the Minister is with regard to the position of the farmers. But the condition of affairs which brings about a situation that makes the Minister sensitive with regard to that, also brings about a situation for him and the Executive Council in which they are asking for a complete revolution in our farming methods and a complete revolution in the work to be done by the instructors and instructresses under the agricultural committees.
The instructors have a very big function to perform in the sphere of education. The students leaving the secondary schools, who are going to carry on the farming industry, have very important functions. Unless the machinery has been functioning, and unless those who are to direct the machinery for giving instruction in agricultural work under our agricultural committees have enthusiasm, the results that the Minister hopes for, and the results that we hope for, generally, for better agricultural education in the country are not going to be reached. On the purely agricultural side alone, an effort is being made to increase our agricultural output and to increase the efficiency and the adaptability of our people. But when they have gained their education, fitting them for engaging in industry, this is a step that will not lead to increased enthusiasm.
We look to the teachers under the vocational education committees to supply not only instruction, but to be prepared to work to influence the minds of our growing people for engaging in industry. We look to them also for enthusiasm, and if we do not get that enthusiasm we are not going to get the results that are necessary in our vocational education. Anyone who has had experience, say, of technical schools in the City of Dublin, whether in Kevin Street or Bolton Street, and who has seen the pupils coming from ordinary schools to take up work there under the type of teachers which Dublin has been able to provide, realises what the new outlook on secondary education is and what the students are going to get from being brought into touch with the type of teacher that exists in the City of Dublin.
The Vocational Education Act, passed some years ago, was intended to take some of the anaemia out of the educational system in the country. I do not know that it has achieved much in making our technical education schemes bear more on industry than they did in the past, but, nevertheless, since that Act was passed, a number of young teachers have been drafted into the scheme. A number of executive officers have been brought in. A new ideal has been set before them and new hopes have been built that not alone will they get assistance to carry on their work, but that they will have an opportunity of serving the State in preparing boys and girls leaving schools for a more suitable and more effective entry into the technical life of the country than did the technical schools in the past. Here, again, the enthusiasm and efficiency of the particular scheme that is dealing with technical education is going to be impaired.
The Minister for Education wanted certain clauses referred to himself to secure that adequate salaries would be paid to the teachers working under these bodies. The other day, in Kilkenny, he declared that it was the duty of the State to provide provision so that young men with patriotic fervour and patriotic aspirations would have an opportunity of working for these things. And within the last week we passed a Vote here which, even for the few remaining months of this financial year, is double the amount of the saving that would be made under this Bill. I submit, when you take into consideration the statements made on behalf of the Executive Council with regard to the new hope, the new activity and the new developments that they say are taking place, and that they hope will take place more and more widespread throughout the country in both industry and agriculture, one cannot understand this Bill. When we hear that they are to have an enthused machinery that must be utilised to bring about these things, and when we compare what they are doing on a more futile and destructive side, we have a measure not alone of their competence but of their wisdom. I am of opinion that the proposals in the measure, as far as vocational committees and committees of agriculture are concerned, are going to undermine the enthusiasm and efficiency of a body of men and women throughout the country whose services and whose enthusiasm are so urgently needed at the present time.
The Minister for Local Government and Public Health commented upon the speeches that were made through the country, pointing out that the country is in decay and despair, and he opines that it will be very hard to reconcile the speeches made here to-night with those phrases. People who really believe that this country is in decay, and have grounds for that belief, will not take much solace from £35,000 being saved on this measure, when they think of the extra expense that has been brought on the State, say, in the last week, by the present Minister. If the Minister wishes to create any confusion or embarrassment about speeches in this House and speeches outside it, will he let us know how he will feel when he next addresses the people and tells them that everything is rosy? That was his phrase—everything is rosy. I wonder if he has ever read Dickens, and found the Marchioness asking the person who used that phrase to pass the rosy. He ought to pass the rosy prospects on to other people. How are the people being benefited by £37,000 being saved through cuts this week, and maybe a quarter of a million pounds paid out next week? Go and tell them that £1,000 is going to be saved on the cutting of the vocational education officers' and teachers' salaries this week, and that to-morrow we will establish a new publicity department for the Government at the cost of a couple of thousand pounds.
Think of the speeches that will be made. Everything is perfect in the country according to the Minister. Never was such an effort made to get the country saved. The battle has been won according to the three times statement of the Minister. What he says three times is presumably true. The country is being saved. We are well out of the old decay. There are the 300 factories, which have not yet been discovered, the vast number of people who are crowding into employment, the money that must be in circulation through the country by reason of the vast increase in the industrial development of the country. How does all that square with this attack on the salaries of people who are not expressed in this House as being overpaid? What about the other economies that were promised without touching anybody's salary? Has the Minister forgotten the advertisements—the million pounds that were to be saved, the close calculation that had been made upon the examination of the current estimates of about three years ago? The Minister was one of the people who was satisfied that a saving of £1,000,000 could be achieved without cutting salaries. Does he remember the old speech I have often referred to which Deputy Cooney made—appropriately, as I always said—at Grangegorman, where he talked about the administrative programme including a saving of £2,000,000 on the Army? Deputy Cooney must have been temporarily located there in the last fortnight, when he allowed, not a saving of £2,000,000, but an increase of a quarter of a million pounds. He must have known that his Minister was coming in with an attempt to cut the salaries of local authorities and save this miserable £35,000. Deputy Cooney, in that same speech, promised a saving of half a million pounds on the Civic Guards, instead of which we have got the Broy Harriers. Those are some of the things which the Minister might reconcile when next, if at all, he attempts to address the people of the country.
This measure effects no economy. It is a miserable attempt at economy. It does not show that there is any seriousness in the talk of economy. It is not based upon any principle. It does not proceed upon the grounds that the people attacked here are being overpaid, that their work is unnecessary, or that the services they render to the country do not, or would not ordinarily, warrant their getting the moneys that are being paid to them. None of those arguments on the merits is put up. The Minister simply comes in here and says "I happen to have a body of people under my thumb, the civil servants. I am going to take something off their salaries; when I have finished with those I am coming to the second group." His best argument here to-night was that it would be an impossible position to leave those people uncut when everybody else in the local services is going to be cut. He has not yet said why those people are going to be cut—just that they are; just because of the Minister's inefficiency, just because the Minister and his Government blundered into an economic war. It has been declared here recently and shown conclusively that we are actually having more extracted from us in taxes on our produce than what we have withheld. Because more money is being paid to the British through the economic war the local authority services have got to be cut! Who is held out for cutting under this particular amendment? First of all, those people—let me repeat—were promised that their salaries would be fixed on a particular scale and that that scale would be made mandatory on the local authority by act of the Minister for Education, or of the Minister for Finance. That has not be done. That promise has not been carried out. The Minister tells us to-day that some time recently the Minister for Education wrote to the vocational education committees and used some influence to get certain things done. When was that letter written?
In April.
In April last. Speaking in this House in regard to the whole measure in June of last year the Minister did not say he wrote that letter then. Imagine the views that the vocational education committees must have taken of the Minister who came to them and said: "Put up the salaries or give some boost to the salaries of those people," when they knew that he had previously put in a "Cuts" Bill, and only went to the local authorities because he was afraid to face the Division Lobby on it. The salaries have not been raised. They certainly have not been raised in fulfilment of the promise as to mandatory salaries that was given. That is the first thing. We have said there is no saving to the taxpayer. That has not been argued. There is not a shilling of saving to the taxpayer. I have argued, and still contend, that there is no saving to the ratepayer. The Minister says there is—that next year they will be eased in their Budget. How is that? I had understood that the rate that had to be levied for vocational education was fixed—that it was compulsory. What is the saving, therefore? They are going to save money, and in these times when money is required to be spread over the people of the community for their spending, what is going to happen is that the same compulsory rate will be levied, but instead of being paid out as previously to those people in salaries it is going to be saved. We said this was no saving to the ratepayer. That is correct. Again, taking the position as I have described it, that this mandatory arrangement was not made, what is the situation with regard to those vocational teachers at the moment? They claim—the claim may be somewhat exaggerated but it is very close to the truth—that they are so lowly paid that 90 per cent. will be below the scale at which the cuts begin. I do not think it is so high, but certainly there will not be very many of them. In the main, as a body, they are below the attacked scales, so it is only a certain percentage of them that is going to be attacked. There is another thing which particularises those people from anybody else. First of all, they did not get their salaries raised as they were promised; they are generally on a low scale; because of the fall arising from the cut in the bonus they have lost in the last number of years, and, unlike other people, they have no ordinary increments to set off against that.
They have now.
They have not had.
They have now.
They may have as from a particular period. At any rate, there is the position: these people have for some time past been suffering as the bonus fell, and up to recently had no incremental scale; they are at a point where only a small number emerge above the accepted point—they have not got the salaries that were promised to them; there is going to be no saving to the taxpayer, and I yet can see no saving to the ratepayer; yet those people are being held up here for a certain amount of cutting. I do not bring out any weakness in my own argument when I say that this cut, if it is operated at all, will hit only a small percentage of the vocational education teachers. I think it is necessary to stress that point because it shows just how little the saving will be, anyway, even though it is only money saved to lie by idly. There is nothing saved, but the loss on the individual, and particularly the individual who has to work on a very low salary and, possibly, has made commitments in respect of it, is going to be pretty severe. Again, I stress that no reason has been given for it. There is not one of these individuals can sit back and think, after the arguments here to-night, that a good case was made for his cut. "It was proved that I was getting too much; it was proved that my salary was incommensurate in comparison with the work I do; it was proved that the work I do is not required in the present circumstances of the country"—not one of them can say that that was argued here. All he can say is: "For some reason unknown to me and for some reason which the Minister may know but was not fit to speak of, my salary has been cut." The saving, as I say, if there be a saving at all, in the sense of money idly put by, is going to be very small indeed, while the loss to the individual will be very big.
We are told that we have a great industrial revival on, and certainly, at the beginning, it was intended that those who got any sort of instruction through the medium of these vocational education teachers were to have their minds directed towards industry and to have whatever talents they had in their heads and in their fingers directed towards industrial production. We are in a great industrial movement. Sometimes we are told we are, but, at any rate, it is the argument, it is the pretence, that we are, and anything that is done concretely shows that the Ministry do not believe one bit in all they so often say about industrial revival. These are the people on whom it was expected we would lean for the better provisioning of the future workers of the country in industrial matters—and they are being cut now. It is a good recommendation as to the sincerity of the Ministry's promises in regard to education and in regard to industry.
There is one last matter. Some day we will get a proper equation of the moneys that were, in fact, saved on the first cuts Bill and the moneys the State lost on the first cuts Bill through the people who went into retirement because of the material change made in their conditions, and some day we will get added to that, on the debit side, not merely the moneys the State has lost through having to pay earlier what might have to be paid—moneys to people who have gone into retirement —but some calculation as to the loss the State has suffered by reason of good men leaving the service earlier than they might have been made to leave. I doubt if anybody, even accounting the moneys alone, could say that last year there was any saving to the State, mean and mangy as the saving might be. There were transferred officers with rights. There was an attempt made, when the measure was going through the House, to get these rights taken away from the people who had them, and that was beaten. There was an attempt then made by administrative action to prevent these officers from getting their rights, and they had to go to the courts for their rights, but they did get them. There are transferred officers here, too, and it will not take many people to assert the rights which they have as transferred officers to wipe out the odd thousand that will be saved by this absurdity, and the Ministry will have again exposed themselves to the very natural comment that they tried to do an illegal thing as well as an inequitable thing in trying to get cuts forced through without any excuse on the merits being given in the House. I think it is well that we have segregated the vocational education teachers and officers because it shows up, as under a magnifying glass, the meanness and the futility of all this nonsense. I should like to bring the Minister back to what he started with—if he thinks that this will appear before the public either as a proper answer in the way of economy to those who believe that the country requires economy or that it can be argued as a just thing before those who hold that the country is prosperous, he is making a mistake in both cases, but it is good to have him say what he did say.
I am opposed to these cuts. I am opposed to them as I am against the policy of the Government. The Minister sneers at farmers. He sneered at the position of the farmers. He can well afford to sneer when he and his wife draw £2,000 from this State, and draw it free of income tax. That is the type of politician we have in this country at the present time who sneers at unfortunate people who are on the verge of bankruptcy. I have before me here the case of an unfortunate man who sent 12 turkeys and 34 geese to London at Christmas. They realised a sum of £20 Is., from which £1 10s. 10d. was deducted for expenses and £9 15s. 9d. for tax. There is another constituent of mine who, last October, sent 24 cattle from Kanturk. They realised £400 10s., from which was deducted a sum of £144, together with £56 17s. 9d. expenses, with the result that he received £199 12s. 3d., and the Minister is going to compensate him by giving him 1d. in every £100.
The Minister, in the course of an attempt to justify this cut, referred to speeches made throughout the country by the Party opposite indicating the position of the farmer, and while that may have suited the Minister's particular line of argument, the real position is that it is very doubtful if he could produce for this House a single request from a vocational education committee to be permitted to cut the wages or salaries of its employees. If there is a single case of that kind from a local vocational education committee, I should be glad to hear it and to know the local authority concerned and to be able to examine the mentality of those who comprise it, but I venture to say that the Minister has had no demand whatever from vocational education committees to be permitted to cut the salaries paid to their employees. That is the real test—that these vocational education committees, responsible to local public opinion, are not in favour of cutting the remuneration of their employees. I think it has been proved perfectly clearly that there is no saving to the Central Fund; there is no saving to the rating authority, and there is no saving to the local vocational education committee by cutting the salaries of the employees of these committees.
The Minister has said that if the money for one year proves more than is necessary there will be a certain credit next year. I should like the Minister to tell the House in what way that credit is going to be brought to account and in what way it is going to save the local taxpayer in the subsequent year, because, presumably, the same levy will continue and, if the Bill should be continued, will yield an accumulating surplus. The local vocational education committee, presumably, will not need, if the salaries of its employees are cut, all it formerly needed, and, as Deputy McGilligan pointed out, it will then be put in the privileged position of saving money but saving it at the expense of the underpaid employees of the committee. I think the Minister when he indicated that the Department informed the vocational education committees that they were willing to sanction a certain scale of salaries might have been a little more generous in the scale of salaries prescribed. Many of the chief executive officers of these committees are men of high educational qualifications. Many of them have legal qualifications, many have engineering qualifications; and to prescribe a basic scale of salary of £140, rising by annual increments of £10 to £200, to people who possess the educational qualifications that many of these people have is not placing any premium whatever on intelligence or ability or adaptability.
The scale of salaries set out in the Minister's circular is one which is in no way over-generous. In my opinion it still perpetuates the gross underpayment from which this section of the community suffers. If the Minister thought that a fair scale of salaries in April of last year I cannot for the life of me see what has happened since to justify him in cutting it in February of this year. Nothing has happened in the meantime to justify the cut. It is a very poor argument for the Minister to say: "It is because these officers are in the group and I cannot conveniently segregate them, I must impose a reduction on them." That is a very poor line of defence for the Minister to take in his attempt to justify these cuts. I suggest to the Minister that this Bill could well be withdrawn. It is really a jest to say that this country urgently needs the £35,000 which it is estimated will be saved under the Bill. That sum means absolutely nothing to the country. If our problems are to be measured economically, financially or industrially, by a saving in one year of £35,000, then we have no problem of any kind to face up to, and I suggest this Bill ought to be withdrawn. If the Minister persists in going ahead with it, then I think the employees of the vocational education committees ought to be excluded. Their inclusion cannot possibly be justified simply because there is alleged to be a clamour in the country for cutting down the salaries of the employees of local authorities.
I can tell the Minister that you have a dangerous kind of democracy in this country if it is the kind of democracy that takes the form of advocating the slashing of wages as a means of getting rid of all our problems. It is very unstable and sandy and, in my opinion, ought not to be pandered to. Rather our endeavour should be to build up a decent standard of life for our people. We ought to say in connection with these employees of vocational education committees: It is not that we are too poor to be able to pay a decent rate of wages, but that we are too poor in the matter of vocational education to dream of cutting their salaries because inevitably the effect of such cuts will mean for them a lessening of enthusiasm and the benefits of that enthusiasm in the case of those who are pupils of vocational education committees.
I do not think there is anything more that I can say in connection with this amendment. I still maintain that there will be a saving to the ratepayer and to the taxpayer. In the majority of cases all over the country the minimum rate fixed for vocational education committees is exceeded so that the saving effected will enable counties, in some cases, perhaps, to approximate nearer to the minimum rate fixed. At any rate, there is not much point in Deputy Norton's case. The Deputy talks of cutting small salaries. No salary below a maximum of £300 will be cut. Therefore, the people with small salaries that he talked about will not be cut. The point he made about cutting what he called the miserable salaries of these teachers, therefore, falls to the ground. The same remark applies to the point made by Deputy McGilligan. The Deputy may have been exaggerating, but I think he took the figure of 90 per cent. and said that number of teachers would come under the authority of the vocational education committees. I do not know what the exact figure is, but I should say that the vast bulk of these teachers will not be cut because their salaries do not come up to the figure of £300.
Or £210.
I do not know about £210. £300 is the figure that is being fixed, and so far as I know the majority of these teachers will not come near that. I did not sneer at the farmers. I believe that the farmers in many parts of the country are having a hard time. I did not sneer at the Deputy or at anybody in this House. I simply reminded the Deputy and the House of a certain type of speech that is being made, one that he must have read in the newspapers as well as I did, about the condition of the farming community. I did not say whether it was correct or not. I did say that Farmer-Deputies sitting in all parts of the House have made speeches here demanding and clamouring for economies. They have made in this House that particular type of speech to which I have referred; clamouring that those high salaries, as they called them, should be cut down. When they spoke of high salaries I do not know what figure they had in mind, whether it was £300, £400 or £500, but their demand has been that these salaries should be cut when the farmer's price for his produce has fallen so considerably. That demand has been made insistently from all sides of the House.
Can the Minister quote me as saying that?
I cannot, but I take it for granted the Deputy will not deny it if he did say it.
That is a good shot in the dark.
I am sure the Deputy said it. It was said on all sides of the House: that these high salaries, as they were called, must be cut. Deputies have said that and I am sure they will not deny it. Now they are getting an opportunity of cutting them, and we will see where they will go when the Division is taken.
I deny that I ever made any such statement, and I ask the Minister to withdraw it.
The statement is no reflection on the Deputy's character.
Only on the character of the man who said it.
If Deputy O'Leary thinks that anything I said was any reflection on his character then I certainly withdraw it.
Would the Minister tell us whether, in dealing with the officials of vocational education committees, we are not dealing with a class that is going to be hit twice? Under Section 11 of the Public Services (Temporary Economies) Act, 1933, provision is made by which the Minister can withdraw portion of the grants payable to certain local bodies, having regard to deductions from salaries made under Part II of the Act and the other circumstances of the case, the deductions being from salaries earned during the current financial year.
On 31st January, this year, I asked the Minister for Finance whether any deductions had been made from any grant under Section 11 of the Public Services (Temporary Economies) Act from any local authority or from any committee or other body, the members of which are appointed wholly or partially by a local authority. The Minister in his reply said: "It is not proposed to make a deduction from any such grant. Section 11 of the Public Services (Temporary Economies) Act will be applied only to the grants payable to vocational education committees and to county committees of agriculture. No deduction has yet been made under Section 11 from any grant payable to a vocational education committee or a county committee of agriculture. It is intended, however, to make a deduction from the grant payable to each such committee in the current financial year." I then asked the Minister whether "reductions will be made in the amount of salaries paid to the employees or some of the employees of these bodies in respect of the current financial year," and the Minister, in reply, said that he was not in a position to say that. In view of the fact that the Act of 1933, giving the Minister power to withdraw certain grants from these committees, contained a provision to the effect that the amount so withdrawn would bear some relation to the deduction made in the salaries of some of the officers of these committees, earned and payable during the financial year, 1933. I would like the Minister to tell us whether, in fact, the employees or any employee of vocational education committees are going to have deductions made in their salaries under the 1933 Act and also under this Act for the year 1934. If that is so will he say what is the reason for it? If it is not so, why does the Minister for Finance propose to withhold from some of those committees grants normally payable to them, and withhold them under Section 11? I submit he is not entitled to withhold them.
I am in favour of this amendment. As a member of a vocational education committee for a number of years, I am perfectly satisfied—I can speak, of course, only for urban vocational committees, because my experience is limited to those—that in a great many cases these men are not sufficiently paid for the work they do. I should like to hear from the Minister how it is proposed that a saving will be effected on behalf of the local authorities. The Minister is, I am sure, aware that under the recently passed Vocational Education Act the minimum rate for an urban area, like the town of Wexford, is 3d. in the £. That increases by ½d. in the £ each year until it reaches the maximum of 6d. in the £. That is settled by statute. I wonder how any relief will be given to the ratepayers if that provision of the statute is insisted upon. I cannot see how the ratepayers are going to benefit if this provision is insisted upon.
I am surprised at some of the statements made here to-night. I do not consider that any official with £300 a year is badly off. I understand that this Bill does not apply to officials receiving less than £300 a year. If Deputy O'Leary considers that it is a reflection on his character to say that he was in favour of cuts in wages or salaries, I wonder where Deputy MacDermot, Deputy Dillon and Deputy Curran come in, as they voted for the Second Reading of a similar Bill. Do they change their policy as they change their seats? Some of these Deputies were annoyed with me because I did not move for a harsher cut than was proposed previously. I am sure that Deputy MacDermot will remember that. He was very much annoyed because I did not move an amendment which I had down, which proposed to impose a harsher cut than was proposed in the Bill. Since he changed his seat he is, I suppose, prepared to vote against these cuts. Instead of Deputy MacDermot and his Party swallowing the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, I think that the Cumann na nGaedheal Party have swallowed them. The proof will be the way in which they vote on this proposal.
For the past seven or eight years there has been a demand in the country for a cut in salaries—a far larger cut than is proposed in this Bill. Local bodies, which are more in touch with people in the country than the Dáil, are crying out for cuts in salaries. I realise that the farmers' representatives on local bodies are far more inclined to cut the wages of a labourer than the salary of an official because, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the official is some relative of their own. At the same time I should like to hear Deputy MacDermot justify his change of front within a few short months. If he is going to vote for this amendment, I should like to hear his reasons for the change. There has been a change of front or, as my friend here suggests, a change of shirt, on this question. I should like to hear from Deputy MacDermot, Deputy Dillon and Deputy Curran some reason for their change of front, or shirt.
With all that Deputy Corry knows about the country and the anxiety there to get after salaries, I presume that the local elections will no longer be postponed. The Deputy will then be able to get in the people who will engage in this cutting of salaries to his heart's content. Perhaps he would ask his Minister why he postponed the local elections if he could get in men of the calibre that Deputy Corry wants.
I promise you that we will meet you at an election any day.
The trouble was that there was an election pending and you postponed it. Why?
We cannot be having elections once a week to please you.
Why was it postponed?
You had one election last year and you got enough.
Why was the local election postponed?
We might rather have one to throw you out of this.
That may be, but it will not be you who will do it.
I might miss one of my friends.
I should not.
I should like to know from the Minister in what way local authorities will benefit by the reduction of salaries.
The Deputy was not here when that question was being debated earlier.
I was here, and I have not found out yet.
I heard Deputy Corry ask a similar question—whether there was to be any form of bribe to local authorities to reduce salaries by giving them an extra grant, or some allowance. I am only supporting him.
It is the labourers' wages they want cut.
The Minister says that he has explained this matter and that Deputy Minch was not here. I was not here either, and I ask the Minister to be a little more detailed in his explanation. What number of county councils will benefit by the reduction, and to what extent will they benefit? The Minister should not content himself merely with a statement that in certain cases the rate struck is higher than the compulsory rate. He should tell the House in how many cases that is so. Is it the general rule that a higher rate than the compulsory rate is struck? What will the saving be in those cases? In the case of those county councils and local bodies that do not strike a higher rate than the compulsory rate, perhaps the Minister will attempt to answer Deputy Minch's question. Where there is a higher rate struck than the compulsory rate the benefit of the saving must, I presume, remain with the vocational education committee. That being so, why is the money not to be spent in the way in which it ought to be spent—in securing that there will be proper teaching? Does the Minister think that it will conduce to proper teaching to cut salaries merely for the sake of cutting? It is quite obvious that a cut is now being made not on account of the money that will be saved, but because, having damaged certain portions of the community, you are determined to damage others. If there is not a higher rate levied than the compulsory rate, there will not be a saving to the local authorities. Am I correct in that? The Minister does not answer, but I think I am correct. Where there are savings why cannot they go to the committee to be utilised in the best way—in securing that teachers are satisfied and that they are properly paid? Now, this is a branch of the teaching profession in regard to which, I think, the whole House recognised, when the Technical Instruction Bill or the Vocational Education Bill was going through this House, that even if teachers as a whole are not well paid here, this branch was not even so well paid. Not merely was that recognised, but again and again the case was put forward—and I must say that I was sympathetic towards it—that it would be a good thing for education if this particular type of education was held in higher esteem in this country than it is. I suggest that the Minister is doing no good to the county councils, to the ratepayers, or to anybody, merely by sticking to the mere mathematical logic to which his Party or the Government seem to be so wedded.
Deputy Corry refers to the fact that there have been demands for this for a number of years. There have also been demands for a number of other things for a number of years, demands to which the Party opposite and the Government are particularly deaf. There have been demands for a reduction in taxation, and I suggest that they have been much stronger and much more insistent demands than in this particular case. There have been demands for a market. There have been demands for all these things, and yet to these things the Party opposite and the Government shut their ears; but they are quite satisfied if they can inflict this damage on a certain number of teachers. There is and has been a great deal of talk from the Government side about about our new industries, and complaints have been made that the proper personnel are not there; and, as their little contribution to doing that, the Government cuts the salaries of precisely those technical teachers who might be able, if they got some assistance and encouragement, at least, to prepare the proper personnel of these new industries. In reality, the Ministry do not really believe in those new industries. Probably they do not believe that, by cutting in this way the salaries of the technical teachers, they are doing any damage to these industries in which they do not believe and which are mere moonshine so far as the majority are concerned. I trust that the Minister will give us more information than he has given, and will not ask the House to be satisfied with the mere statement that there are cases in which a higher rate is struck than the compulsory rate, and that he will indicate the number of such cases and to what extent that happens to be so.
I do not want to appear discourteous by not replying to the challenge of Deputy Corry and, therefore, I rise, for a few moments, to do so. I think, however, that Deputy Corry is showing considerable audacity in accusing anybody else of inconsistency in connection with this particular matter. I am sorry that I have not got before me the reports of the speeches he made in connection with the Public Services (Temporary Economies) Bill, but I do remember that he was extremely eloquent on the subject of the burdens that were pressing on the farmers of this country, and upon the necessity for lightening those burdens. I cannot help asking myself the question how a zealot for economy like Deputy Corry, and a man who is as anxious as he is to lighten the burden on the farmers, can be supporting the Government policy of spending an entirely unnecessary quarter of a million a year on a new Defence Force. In my opinion, the recent acts of the Government, in regard to the Defence Force for instance, and also through expenditure on creating a new Special Civic Guard force—
What has that got to do with the Bill?
It concerns the Bill as it has to do with money.
As I was saying, these actions make it quite impossible for anyone, who is keen about economy, to think that this Government, in general, deserve support, and make it quite reasonable for anybody, in indignation at their hypocrisy, to stop supporting them, and even to oppose them on a Bill such as this. Deputy Corry assumed that I was going to vote in favour of the various amendments to this Bill. He was rather rash in that assumption. As a matter of fact, I am not; but if I or any of the members of the former Centre Party chose to do so I think we have sufficient justification so far as the Government are able to furnish such justification.
It seems to me that the allegation that the new industries claimed by the Government are largely moonshine is, in itself, ample justification for the Bill. The same Deputies who allege that the new industries are moonshine allege that farming is in a bad state. If farming is in a bad state, and if the country has only a few paltry industries, surely the justification for a Bill to promote economy is fully proved.
Fully!
How are the salaries to be paid at all if these two sources of wealth are in that decrepit state? Surely it would be more consistent for the Opposition to claim that the Minister is not going far enough in his demands for economy? How can the Party opposite make these allegations about the state of industry and agriculture—particularly about the state of agriculture—and at the same time claim that a man earning over £300 a year in a provincial town cannot afford a reduction in his salary? Of course, I do not believe that the point now being emphasised—that it does not mean any saving to the ratepayer—is sincere. I do not think there is a county council in Ireland that is not contributing, for instance, to the erection of new buildings for vocational education, and surely the saving that will be effected through this Bill will help, to some extent, to relieve the ratepayers with regard to the contributions to which they have committed themselves in respect of new buildings.
How?
Anyhow, I think there is something very unreal indeed about the arguments that have been put forward in the last five minutes. The talk about new industries is so shallow that even the Minister knows it to be moonshine. It is also alleged from the other side that agriculture is absolutely bankrupt and, at the same time, they say that there is no need whatever for a Bill to promote economy and that it is unjust to ask public servants, who are paid over £300 a year and who live in provincial towns, to bear even a small sacrifice in the present situation. It is too unreal to occupy time.
Arising out of another Bill that was before the House to-day, dealing with the giving of plots to the unemployed in Bray and Arklow, the Deputy opposed a suggestion from these benches that the county instructor in agriculture should superintend any work required in connection with these plots. Will the Deputy explain why he supported the Minister in insisting on the necessity of appointing a special instructor to supervise such work while he now insists, under this Bill, that it is necessary to cut the salary of the county instructor in agriculture in County Wicklow?
I wonder if Deputy Mulcahy believes that to be a correct statement. I did nothing of the kind.
I am asking for an explanation from the Deputy. This Bill proposes to cut the salaries of the county instructors in agriculture. The previous Bill, on which the Deputy spoke, deliberately proposed to appoint a special instructor, and as far as County Wicklow is concerned he will simply have to see what is being done on any plots that the urban councils in Arklow or Bray may provide for the unemployed.
To show the dishonesty of that remark I gave as a reason for supporting the Minister that there might be occasions where inspectors who might not normally be civil servants might be temporarily employed for a purpose by the Government. I gave that as a reason for resisting the proposal, yet Deputy Mulcahy says I was supporting the Minister in a desire to appoint a special official.
That was what the Minister said on the other Bill.
The Minister rather suggested that on this side of the House there was a general demand for the cutting of salaries. I have no doubt that there was such an expression of views in various parts of the country, mainly confined to the supporters of Fianna Fáil, for the cutting of salaries. I have never been an exponent of that type of economy. This Bill clears the air as far as the measure of saving that will result by any attempt to cut even fairly average salaries. The ordinary person, I dare say, believes that the cutting of official salaries should amount to a very large sum. I have no doubt that the Minister very carefully considered the Bill and brought every class that he could under its provisions, but, lo and behold, the saving for the nation is mentioned as £35,000. As Deputy Mulcahy pointed out, coincident with this Bill the Minister has brought in other Bills which will place ten times that amount of expense on the community. I am sorry Deputy Moore has left the House, because I wanted to refer to something he said. A great deal has been said about vocational education and other committees, but I should like to say a few words about the committees of agriculture.
On a point of order, I think it was understood that there would be two separate divisions, one dealing with vocational education committees and one with agricultural committees.
I understood that there would be two divisions but that the debates would go together.
There was no agreement that there would be two divisions immediately on the conclusion of this debate. If so, I am going to speak three or four times on this amendment.
I am not going to hamper the Deputy. I under stood that there would be two divisions and that the debates would go on together.
As a matter of fact, they have not gone on in that way. Until the Deputy introduced the agricultural committees the debate has proceeded entirely on vocational education committees.
It is true that the debate has continued on the vocational education committees, but the declaration of the Ceann Comhairle was that it should be on the whole ambit of the amendment.
So it will be eventually. We can clearly divide them as we please.
I understood that there would be two divisions and that the debate would range over the two amendments.
That was the arrangement.
If that was the arrangement the Chair realises that it will lead to a loss of time. Trying to carry on two debates generally leads to a great deal of repetition. If that was the arrangement it will lead to a loss of time.
Deputy Moore suggested, in regard to another proposed appointment, that possibly some of the agricultural instructors in the employment of the State could be used for the work that was referred to, instead of having to appoint new men. I suggest that if there is one class of officials whose salaries should not be cut it is the agricultural instructors and men in kindred occupations, because, as far as we know the policy of this Government, it is not going to relieve these officials but rather tends to increase their duties. If all the experiments and new legislation that this Government is putting into operation continue I can see the time coming when the services of agricultural instructors will not be available, because they will be engaged teaching people how to grow beet, how to convert calves into cash, how to get rid of surplus dairy cows, and how to make wheat millable. Deputy Moore spoke about "moonshine." The instructors might have to have an investigation into the making of "moonshine" out of some barley.
Or of industrial alcohol out of "moonshine."
I predict that there is more likelihood of that, because certain people have been endeavouring to manufacture "moonshine" for many years. Agricultural instructors, as a class, are not very well paid. As their duties will now be greatly increased, this is not a time to include them under the provisions of this Bill. I will not argue on behalf of the vocational education officials. I agree with what has been said on their behalf by previous speakers, but I am not as well acquainted with their duties. I appeal to have men engaged in agricultural instruction excluded from this Bill, because it is almost certain that their work will be increased fivefold by the legislation of this Government.
It is an interesting confession to have it on this Bill that we have to pull up in our expenditure, notwithstanding all the signs of prosperity that we heard of. It is interesting also to learn that the instructors under the committees of agriculture could not be used for other jobs. Speaking with nine years' experience, and as a chairman of a committee of agriculture, I know that in the last year we failed, even in County Dublin, to get people to take up premiums for bulls, boars, etc., to meet the requirements of the county because the game does not pay. I do not share the views of the last Deputy, who spoke about utilising the officials of these committees. The Minister should have looked at the matter squarely and shut down the committees of agriculture. He would then have effected a real saving, because when agriculture is dead—as far as being profitable—I do not see much use in paying salaries to instructors in agriculture.
I do not see what use there is in carrying out the various experiments which the committees have been carrying out when, whether they are successful or not, they will not pay. The Minister thinks that by taking a bit off salaries it will effect economy. If there is one thing that the Minister and his colleagues have preached for the last two years it is the policy of self-sufficiency, whatever that means. Does he not realise that a policy of self-sufficiency means to be self-contained?
Enough for everybody.
Finding, in his attempt at self-containment, that he cannot afford it, he proposes to take a slice off these salaries. The carrot that is held up before the country people is: "The farmer is in the trenches, therefore the other fellow must get into the trenches." But they have not the courage to put him in step with the farmer who has lost his entire income. Why, if you are going to put all in step, do you not face the thing boldly and make a reduction commensurate with the reduction that the agricultural community have had to suffer in their incomes, as a result of your insane policy? I do not say that I would even vote for a proposal of that kind but it would have this merit—it would be honest. This thing is not honest. I am sorry that our two-gun friend, the Minister for Finance, is not here. I wanted to tell him that the policy which I have always preached and that the farmer should be strongest in favour of, is high wages and if the export market is gone from the farmer and we thank God it has gone from him, according to the new economy opposite, well then if ever there was a need for high wages and salaries in this country, it is now. Otherwise you are going to cut the bottom out of the farmer's market. To take off a small percentage from people with over £300 a year is an insult to the intelligence of people who have had 75 per cent. taken from them.
We had Deputy Moore getting up and talking about the unreality of this debate. Nothing could be more unreal than that a Deputy representing Wicklow should preface his remarks by these words "If agriculture is in an impoverished condition." It shows how much Deputy Moore knows about the agricultural constituency he represents. "If agriculture is in an impoverished condition!" Let him go down to the sheep farmers of Wicklow whom he has fooled for the last seven years—and unfortunately I helped him to fool them when I asked them to vote for him—let him go down and ask them——
A Deputy
That is a nasty confession.
It is, nastier even than any that is revealed by this Bill.
It is a terrible confession. You will never get absolution for it.
I am afraid I will not. It is one of the most deadly sins I have ever committed. This Bill is pure eye-wash. It is pure eye-wash to say that if you take a small percentage reduction off the salaries of the secretary of a county committee of agriculture you are going to help anybody. There are some secretaries and instructors of committees of agriculture who are getting £500 or £600 a year. I take it it was considered that they were worth that. I see a Deputy opposite taking a note of that figure. I suppose he is going to use that and ask me to name the farmer who has that income. I know that no farmer in Ireland has that or even half of it, thanks to the Government over there, but are we going to put the farmer right by putting other people wrong? There is one way out but you will not adopt that course. Let it be clearly understood that we are not opposed to real economy but you are never going to economise by lowering the standard of living. You are never going to help the market by taking money out of that market and if the agricultural economy practised by the Government in power for the last two years is going to be the national economy of the future, then the purchasing power for agricultural produce in this country will depend upon the standard of wages and the standard of salaries here. That should be quite plain even though there are only a few representatives of the Government opposite and even though most of them appear not to have had enough sleep last night.
It is hard to keep awake listening to you, you know.
The Deputy is taking a great interest in agriculture, and he should show some interest in the few remarks I am making considering that he kept the House spell-bound for an hour and a half here one night speaking to a motion on agriculture. He prefaced his remarks by saying that he knew nothing about it, and he reminded us when he was finishing that he knew nothing about it. We knew only too well that he knew nothing about it long before he had finished.
No one went to sleep though.
There is another side to this, that we should not reduce the salaries of those engaged in technical teaching. Agricultural teaching is technical teaching, for not only do the instructors conduct experiments in agriculture round the country, but they hold agricultural classes as well throughout the winter months. Even though we could do without them for the present, we shall not always be under the present regime, and it would be false economy to impair their efficiency even though there is no outlet for agricultural produce just now. It would also be only proper to honour the contract that was made with the instructors and to retain them at the salaries which the county committees contracted to give them. They were told that the emoluments of their office would not be interfered with except for reasons of inefficiency. That is going to be done now under this section of the Bill. As far as I am concerned, I am going to oppose it for two reasons. Firstly, I am against cutting salaries or wages. Secondly, the proposal is dishonest, because if we all had our minds made up that every citizen in the country should bear an equal share in this fight, then a proposal should be put before the House, and it should be proved mathematically that that proposal was going to impose an equal burden on all. I would be glad to hear anybody from the Government Benches proving that a little slice from a £300 or £400 a year salary is commensurate with what has been taken off agriculture through the Government policy in this country. There is no comparison between the proposed cut and the cuts imposed upon the agricultural community. Will they go down to the labourers in the towns and tell them what they are doing? Deputy Kelly's friends, employees of the Dublin Corporation, are getting £2 19/- a week. That is not too much. I would resent a cut in the wages of the Corporation workers. Do Deputies opposite want to reduce these men's wages to the level of the farm labourers —15/- a week? If there is to be equal burden, let it be an equal burden, but this proposal does not suggest an equal burden. This proposed cutting of salaries is merely eye-wash. It proposes to enable certain people to go to the cross-roads and say, "We propose cutting the big salaries in Dublin." But, again, I ask, will they propose a cut commensurate with the cut the agricultural community has suffered? If they did that it would put a different complexion on the matter. But they will not do that because their proposal is dishonest and will not stand examination.
I agree absolutely with Deputy Moore that there is something very unreal about this debate. I go further and say there is something farcical about the whole debate when one considers the times we are living in. We are living in circumstances when the bottom has fallen out of the greatest market the country has ever had, and when the roofs are being blown up over the heads of the people in the country. This Parliament has nothing better to do in such circumstances than to discuss for three hours how best to victimise 50 or 60 little individuals in the country in order, mar eadh, to assist the agricultural interest in the country and to assist the finances of the county councils and the local boards. Is there any genuine necessity for these proposals? As far as I can learn, the average amount of money to be saved by these victimisations is a matter of £37 per county. Everyone knows that £37 per county matters as little to the finances of the country as would an extra tear to the Atlantic Ocean. The only result of this proposal is that no potential results will accrue to the finances of any county council. If this proposal is passed, 50 or 60 individuals will have to economise in their modest homes, and the people behind them as usual —the housewife or the children—will suffer drastically with no benefit to the community as a whole. The thing is nothing more or less than a bit of political humbug. I re-echo what Deputy Belton has said, that this Bill is introduced in order to put a phrase into the mouth of the cross-road politician and enable him to say "We have cut the big salaries in Dublin; we stand for the little man." These men, no doubt, are little men. They may be small, but they are not half as small as the sponsors of this Bill.
It is rather amusing to hear the statements that we have had to-day from the other side of the House. I am prepared to admit that the cut is not quarter heavy enough. I admit that straight off the reel. But the arguments we have heard put up against the cuts are rather amusing. We heard Deputy Belton declaring that the agricultural instructors have not got half enough. He said that he knows some of them who have only £500 or £600 a year. In my county their salaries are round about £400 or £500 a year. If the condition of agriculture were as good as it was in 1917 to 1919, and prices as high as they were then, I would still be in favour of a cut in salaries. We could not, at any time, afford these salaries. When this State was set up here apparently there were so many people pitchforked into jobs that it was not a question so much of position as of salary. We had O.C.s of the coal scuttle getting £600 a year. I wonder if Deputy Belton, at any time, ever saw farm labourers' wages compare with the wages of the town workers.
Why not?
Did the Deputy ever see it at any time?
It is time it came right now anyway.
The matter is entirely different. If Deputy Belton thinks it strange that Deputy Moore should be representing Wicklow, I think it is more strange that an agricultural Deputy, like Deputy Belton, should be representing Dublin.
It is more strange to see you representing a division in County Cork.
Deputy Finlay is not long in the House, and I shall be here to see him out of it again.
I doubt it very much.
That is the position. I am sorry I could not get a straight answer from Deputy MacDermot when I put a question to him. I would like to know the reason why Deputy Finlay and Deputy Curran, who were in favour of cuts in salaries last year, and fought for them, are now going to fight against cuts in salaries. I would like to have heard some reason for the same Deputies making such a change in so short a time.
The three of you should be together.
The proposed cuts are all eyewash. As we have been told, they will amount to about £37 in each county.
Wait until Deputy O'Higgins counts up the cuts in his salary, and see how much comes off. I do not think he will call that eye-wash. I would like to hear something more definite from Deputy MacDermot. He was very anxious last year that I should press an amendment demanding four times a heavier cut. I am surprised at the change that has taken place, and I see no excuse for it. It would take more eyewash than has been supplied to convince the people as to the reason for this change on the part of Deputy MacDermot and his friends. The real position is that at no time since this State was set up could we afford the salaries paid in the country. Neither now nor ten years ago could we afford those salaries. The proposed cuts do not go one-fourth as far as I would go, and I make no bones about that. If Deputy Belton thinks an agricultural instructor with £400 a year, with bonus and travelling expenses on top of it, could not afford a nine or ten per cent. cut in his salary without his woman and children having to suffer, I wonder has he thought what kind of eyewash that is.
Will the Deputy say how many agricultural instructors associated with local committees have between £400 and £500 salary with a bonus top of it?
I have not the list by me.
You should know what you are talking about.
I do very well. I have not the list by me at present, but I have examined the list from the committee of agriculture and I know what I am talking about.
Give us the number, then.
I could not at the moment, but I shall furnish them to you.
The Deputy is talking about something he knows nothing about.
If Deputies who are so anxious to interrupt will be good enough to study some of those figures for themselves they might be able to contribute something intelligent to the debate instead of interrupting.
When a Deputy speaks he should know what he is talking about anyway.
If the Deputies know how to read—which I doubt—and if they will go down to the Library for half an hour and study these figures, they can come up here then and be able to talk on the matter.
And get the same benefit you got from the reading.
You got the benefit of the doubt when you found yourself over here. I am afraid you will not get the benefit of the doubt the next time— you will be missing. I shall be sorry. I miss ex-Deputy Gorey, and I would not like to miss you for another while, as I would not have any fun then. Deputies are complaining about the poverty of the country and of the people and the inability of the people to pay. We saw their move after the last general election. They had no scruple then in cutting the wages of the agricultural labourers by 50 per cent., or their supporters had not anyway.
Could we afford to pay them?
Your supporters had no scruple in doing that. During the seven years I have been associated with local authorities I have seen your supporters coming in year after year with proposals, not to cut the salary of the man with £400 a year and travelling expenses, but to cut the wages of the men on the roads who had no relations on the council. As a matter of fact, I have to go down to Cork to-morrow morning to stop a cut of that description. Supporters of the Deputies who are shouting to-night against the cut in the salary of the man with £300 and £400 and upwards and who are evidently acting on instructions are to propose at the Cork County Council to-morrow a cut in the wages of the labourers who have 35/- a week. The man with £300 a year is not to have his salary cut because his long-tailed family stretches into the benches opposite.
Deputy Corry talked about salaries, and said he would like to see officials with one-quarter of the salary they now have. How can he reconcile that with the recent appointment made by his Government of a man from County Tipperary who is getting £1,500 a year as a land commissioner? How can he talk about slashing salaries when his Government gave £1,500 a year to a land commissioner who was only able to earn £300, £400, or £500 in the past? These are statements which he probably does not like to hear. I am as much for economy as anybody in this House or outside. I know the relief that this Bill is going to give to ratepayers. The Minister has justified this Bill by pointing to the relief it will bring to the ratepayers. It will not mean one penny in the £ in my constituency.
You do not pay rates down there.
Do we not?
There is another consignment of cattle in Prussia Street now.
On a £50 valuation this Bill will only mean the price of four packets of cigarettes in the year. That is the economy that Deputies stand for while they appoint an official at £1,500 a year and are creating a new Defence Force and a new Gárda Síochána.
That is a low remark of yours.
I know what relief this is going to give to local ratepayers— no relief. You docked the agricultural grant last year by 1/8 in the £ and justify yourself by a supposed relief of ½d. in the £. Let us be honest about it. There are men whose salaries will probably be cut under this Bill, whose salaries I shall never stand for cutting even at the risk of a mandamus because I know what they have done. I know that a good official is entitled to be paid and we have some good officials. I am not acquainted with the highly-salaried officials that Deputy Corry talks about. I do not know of them. I should like to see economies in my county if it is possible to make them, but you will not do it by the fraction of a penny relief which will be given by this Bill. I ask Deputy Corry or anybody else to deny that that is the kind of economy which will be brought about under this Bill. It is not worth talking about. It is only eyewash to talk about economy under this Bill.
Cut the labourers' wages.
We have not done that either.
Envy has often been said to be the besetting sin of this country. It is mainly expressed in the hatred displayed amongst certain low, mean-minded people in the country towards the successful neighbour's child. Deputy Corry's envy of anything educative is something that is really that type of local distaste of a decent neighbour's child. Deputy Corry hates anybody who is educated. Anybody who looks to get a reward for the education or talent or experience that he may have gets Deputy Corry seeing red—a peculiar type of red that wants to slash. Deputy Corry is very much in the position of the times when the surgeon used to have a barber's pole as a sign outside his door. He bled everybody. Bleeding was the great method of cure for everything. Let blood run even for the sake of seeing blood run. That is the mentality of mind that is afflicting some portion of this country and it is not to be denied that Deputy Corry, if there was a corporation of that sort of rather mean-minded people, would be a proper representative of them. I do not know what Deputy Breathnach said, but, if he is backing Deputy Corry, all I can say is that he did not do it before his own association.
The Deputy would not bleed much.
Possibly not, but they might be able to bleed a lot of nonsense out of Deputy Cooney. There was quite a lot of nonsense in his Grangegorman speech. If Deputy Corry wants to get anything definite done in the country, let him turn round to Deputy Cooney and, hateful and all as education and talent are to him, he can sleep easily beside Deputy Cooney. Let him ask Deputy Cooney about this wonderful Grangegorman speech. "Our administrative programme includes a saving of £2,000,000 on the army." Of course, it did not matter much to Deputy Cooney, but the fact of the matter is that at that particular time the army was not costing £2,000,000.
Was that speech made at Grangegorman or in it?
Was the Deputy listening in?
The newspapers considered it part of their duty to report such irresponsible trash.
What paper reported it?
The Independent. But that was not the height or the depth of the Deputy's folly. He went on to say that they could make a saving of £500,000 in the Civic Guards. That was a good whack at them. The Broy Harriers were not thought of at time. It is just as well to remember that Deputy Corry did not say very much about them when they were appointed. The money paid to them was and is badly wanted for other purposes, but Deputy Corry was very silent about all that. Deputy Cooney at Grangegorman told us that there could be a saving of £500,000 on the Civic Guards and other savings could be made which could be put into productive industry. Then there was this sapience at Grangegorman: “We have come to the conclusion that we can solve the unemployment problem in 12 months.” He has got his 12 months and what has been done?
How did we get it?
By promising to solve the problem of unemployment. Did you solve it? You got into power by promising to solve the problem of unemployment.
And you made every effort to spike us.
Did we stop you making the saving of £2,000,000 on the Army or the saving of half a million on the Civic Guards?
That was the Grangegorman correspondent of the Independent.
Or may be the Deputy was fed for the purpose on that occasion. Anyway, that is what you said.
That is what I am represented as having said.
The Deputy never denied it before, although I quoted the speech several times in this House. Of course, that sort of trash was talked by everybody. I am not chancing much when I say that Deputy Corry was guilty of anything that Deputy Cooney was capable of saying. Anyway, the Deputy said that and much worse. If there was a man with a salary that indicated that he had some education, some experience and some little talent that entitled him to stand out from his fellows, he immediately became a marked man by Deputy Corry.
I can appreciate talent, but I do not appreciate fellows pitchforked into jobs when they had no talent. That was the game you played.
That is the answer, then. We have many thousands of civil servants, and Deputy Corry hates them all just because they were pitchforked into positions. Will the Deputy tell me how many civil servants were removed since his Party came into office and how many new men have been put in? We had a reference here to-night to one. Will the Deputy tell me how many posts of over £500 a year have been created since his Party came into power? How many more are going to be created, because I am sure we have not seen the end of it? What is the Deputy's attitude at Party meetings?
Perhaps it is merely replacing duds by talent.
There is implied in that a very big "perhaps." Let us compare some of the people removed with those who have been put in to replace them. Let us remember, also, that there are some people in who are doing good service, service so good that they can scarcely be removed.
Perhaps the Deputy will keep to the subject-matter under discussion.
If other Deputies raise points, surely I am entitled to reply.
There have been a good many interruptions, and at this stage Deputies cannot be allowed to compare the relative merits of people occupying various positions.
A general statement was made to the effect that people earning £600 should have their salaries cut. The Deputy talked a lot about savings, and he told us that they were going to put in better people to do better work at lower salaries. In due course we will see what the lower salaries will be. As Deputy O'Higgins pointed out, the Deputy wants to cut the salaries of 70 or 80 people throughout the country, and 90 per cent. of them are already below the accepted limit. If one man happens to have his head over others in the matter of talent and experience it means something, and that extra talent and experience gets Deputy Corry's goat.
There are two other people featured in this amendment. We have, for instance, school attendance officers. I remember that it was held here as a very big progressive step when they brought in a Bill which increased the age at which children were to be kept at school. It means extra work on the school attendance officers. The school attendance officer, the man who, possibly, kept Deputy Corry at school, when he did not want to be there, is to have his salary cut. The officers connected with committees of agriculture are also to have their salaries cut. And all this at a time when we are inaugurating a great change. A new system is coming into being. The old system certainly has been wrecked. We are having a great change. We are going to begin on the marvellous extension of agriculture that was promised. There is never a time when the Minister for Agriculture visits the country that he does not talk about the great work that is being done. The officers serving under the committees of agriculture are going to have whatever little salaries they possess lopped, because Deputy Corry dislikes education and Deputy Cooney cannot get what he promised for the Grangegorman people.
There has not been one argument used by anybody, if we except the blind hatred of Deputy Corry, to show that these people are getting more than they should get. Nobody has had the temerity to deal with the work that those people do or to say that for that work too much is being paid, too much by so much. Nobody has had the temerity to say that these people are doing work for which the country cannot pay at the moment. No one has attempted to make a case on the merits. The Minister merely says: "These people are next to my hand and I am going to hit at them. It is untenable that they should have such high salaries when everybody else has to suffer." Deputy Corry says that everyone with a salary over a certain amount must necessarily have it cut. That is pure hatred of advance. It is the idea of keeping everybody at a level, possibly putting them below Deputy Corry's level. If you take the case of the vocational education people, the salaries they are at, the promise made to them, the fact that they have no bonus or that the bonus has been cut, that up to recently they have had no incremental additions, the fact that the saving in their case will be very little, no matter to whom it accrues, and the other fact that there is admittedly no saving in this matter to the taxpayer—and, I hold, none to the ratepayer either— you will realise how absurd is the whole proposal. Despite all that, the point of view of Deputy Corry is going to go. These people are going to be cut just because they have reached something a little bit higher than Deputy Corry himself.
I would like to bring Deputy Corry down to something definite. He said that those officials at any time had too much. Is his the case then that in normal times their salaries were too high? Or is his case that in these abnormal times their salaries are too high? He must not have read the title of the Bill. The title of the Bill is Local Services (Temporary Economies) (No. 2) Bill, 1933. If these officials in normal times had too high a salary, why is this called a Temporary Economies Bill? Why is it not called a Permanent Economies Bill? I would like to bring the Deputy or any member of his Party down to a definite point. He charges us with going down to the country and saying that agriculture, for instance, is in an impoverished condition. Surely he will not deny that. Would he take that portion of the Bill which applies peculiarly to the officials we are discussing under this amendment, people earning between £300 and £400 a year with a cut of 2 per cent. The cut in such cases would vary from £6 to £8. Will not the farmer lose that much or thereabouts on one bullock because of the import duties put on by England? Is that equitable?
If all are going to get into step, why should not all go into step? Any man who could be described as a farmer would have to sell yearly ten bullocks or their equivalent. Even that would be a small farmer. Now in this era of new economy, starting off with tillage, we are going to reduce the salaries of agricultural instructors. Deputy Corry will admit this, despite the strictures of Deputy McGilligan, that to make tillage pay we must have the best of seeds as well as the best of fertilisers. The Deputy knows that these itinerant instructors are carrying out experiments, and that they have been for years carrying out experiments in barley, beet, potatoes, fruit, cattle, sheep, pigs, ducks, turkeys, geese and hens. He knows these experiments have been carried out. He knows that various types or strains are a success in some parts of the country and that these are not a success in other parts of the country. The instructor is experimenting in order to find out the strain or breed that is most suitable for each county. The Deputy knows how much success has attended those experiments and he knows how absolutely essential for the future of tillage it is that there should be a full trial of these experiments in the country. Yet he proposes to cut the salaries of those who are carrying them out.
We are wasting hours discussing this, but the Government Party would not allow the tillage position itself to be discussed. We are running this whole machine of the organisation to find out what is best to help tillage, but we have 58 per cent. of the tillage products at the present time on our hands and we cannot get a bob for them. There is no market for them and the Government Party would not give time for a discussion on this question. But it gives time for the piffle contained in this Bill. You have 12,000 to 15,000 fat cattle on the hands of feeders at present. These cattle were fed by the produce of tillage and there is no market for them. Perhaps it is by a process of inversion that they arrive at the Temporary Economies Bill and that they have come to the conclusion that there is not much need for those agricultural instructors. If they go along that line and say "abolish them" we might not agree but it would be the logical course. The time of the House has been wasted in putting up arguments for a "cut" that is not a commensurate "cut" at all if we were to admit the principle even of "cuts." There is no use here in giving us a foretaste of what is to be given by the Party opposite off the platforms in the country—that they tried to economise but that the Opposition opposed them. They did not try honest economy.
I am sure Deputy Corry's colleague in the back bench, Deputy Breathnach, would find himself in Queer Street with his association if honest economy all round were attempted. If you want to get in step why not get the teachers in step and take 50 per cent. off their salaries? I would not support cutting 50 per cent. off the teachers' salaries, but if we are to keep in step each section of the community should bear an equitable share of the burden of the economic war. The farmers do not want to get any peculiar relief, but is it not time that the men in the front line trenches were relieved of bearing the almost entire burden? Let us see how many teachers will volunteer to step into the front line trenches and sacrifice the whole or half of their salaries for a year and a half. If you were to propose it you would find that none of them would come in here and vote for the continuance of the economic war.
Question.
The Deputy did not vote for the reduction in the teachers' salaries. He smiled down on us from the distinguished strangers gallery. But in the very next breath he came in and voted for a cut in the civil servants' salaries.
Is it not time that the Deputy should come to the Bill?
I hope the Deputy will not vote for a cut in the salaries of the agricultural instructors.
Deputy Belton is a very innocent man.
I hope the Deputy will not vote for a cut in the salaries paid to the employees of the county committees of agriculture, because after all these are useful, and are doing very useful work, even though at the moment the outlet for the sale of agricultural produce may be stopped; but a change will come some time, because the country cannot be always in the neighbourhood of Grangegorman. I would like Deputy Corry to come down to brass tacks and to answer these two questions. He said that these officials always had too high a salary. He nods assent. Then, if that is so, why vote for a temporary Bill Evidently the Minister does not think that the salaries are too high in normal times, and under normal conditions.
If this is a Bill to put all on a level during the economic war, I put it to Deputy Corry or any Deputy on the opposite benches, to show that this schedule of cuts in the Bill bears any relation whatever to the loss sustained by the agricultural community.
How do you prove that?
How do I prove what?
That assertion.
I should like to know the farmer who has £300 a year and only raises one bullock or his equivalent in the year. I suppose the Deputy is aware that a British tariff on a two-year-old bullock and upwards is £6. Here is a cut of £6 proposed in a salary of £300 a year. What sort of a farmer produces in the year only one bullock or his equivalent?
Go on.
No answer?
Go on.
No answer. That is a proof that this proposal is not going to put professions or other jobs in step with the agricultural community. I hope that they will not be reduced to the level which the agricultural community are reduced to to-day. Of course we would be in the vicious circle if it were started, and if the position is that the British market is gone, and gone for ever, thank God, you will be coming back here with temporary reductions in a few months' time, and they will become greater, until the salaries will vanish altogether. I do not think there will then be so many of the professional men seeking to get iron crosses or Victoria crosses.
I regret occupying the time of the House so long, but Deputy Belton was anxious for an answer to some questions. Yes, I believe—and I stated that already—that salaries in this country are too high and have been too high for the past ten years, over since this State came into being. They have been too high all the time from the start.
I do not agree with that.
Yes, this is a temporary measure certainly, and I can say this much anyway, that the Minister for Local Government and I agree better than Deputy Belton and Deputy Hogan agree on the wheat policy.
We will take wheat when wheat is up.
When we compare notes on this matter we see what happens. We heard the statements that were made here from these benches when Deputy McGilligan was over here. They do not want any cut on any official salary. I gave the reason a while ago. A man may die of starvation in this country, but it is not the duty of the Government to provide employment for him. A man may die of starvation, but the official salaries should remain at £600 to £1,500 a year. If that is the kind of education Deputy McGilligan learned in his University, I am not at all sorry to have escaped from it. When Deputy McGilligan finds the foundations taken from his case he always resorts to a particular kind of filthy abuse. I remember here some time ago I found one kind of employment for the Deputy, which suited him perfectly, namely, that he should go down to Nenagh and lend a hand in killing the musk rats; that is the only job that would suit him.
If the Deputy would steer clear of personalities and deal with the amendment before the House it would facilitate the debate.
I regret that the Ceann Comhairle was not in to hear the previous statements. If he had been, he would understand the analogy. Deputy Belton says that the agricultural instructors are busy on experiments. They are, but does Deputy Belton say they are not paid well enough, or does Deputy Belton say that they will feel so severely this cut of 2 per cent. on from £200 to £400 a year salary?
Is that commensurate with the farmers' loss?
Does he think that hurts them? Deputy Belton has stated here to-night that if there was a larger proportion brought in he would not support it either. Deputy Belton apparently cannot get away from the time when he was a civil servant, but those are the facts.
I should be better off as a civil servant now than as a farmer.
You left the Civil Service and you went farming.
I had no alternative.
And you knew so much about your job that you did not know when we put a tariff on rhubarb for you. The position is that the salaries in any country must be commensurate with the capacity of the people to pay those salaries, and I hold that at no time since this State was established could this country afford the salaries that were paid. If those people can get more elsewhere let them go elsewhere. When Deputy Curran speaks here of the appointment of Mr. Mansfield to a position, and of Mr. Mansfield's salary, I would remind him that Mr. Mansfield's predecessor had a far higher salary, and the farmers of the Free State paid £66,000 a year for it in increased rents. If we have Mr. Mansfield there at that salary to see that the unfortunate tenants of this State get a fair crack of the whip, it is about time they got it. There is a big difference between Mr. Mansfield, friend of the tenants——
The question does not arise. The activities of the Land Commission are not under discussion.
Unfortunately it was already alluded to.
The Chair is not concerned with what was alluded to. Reference to Land Commission judges and officials is not in order.
I will leave it at that. All I have to say is that I have given Deputy Belton his answer in this, and if Deputy Belton had any bit of honesty about him he would walk into the Lobby and support it. I take very little notice of the gentlemen—they are missing now — who came in here last year and voted for cuts, and who were anxious to increase the cuts last year, but who now, because they have changed the colour of their shirts, are apparently going to vote against the cuts—just because they have changed the colour of their shirts. I have very little opinion of them.
Before the Deputy sits down would he mind answering this: is the cut proposed in any of those classes commensurate with the cut a farmer in the same class has had to put up with for the last two years? Is it 1 per cent. of the cut the farmer has had to put up with?
I will answer the Deputy in that. I am not going to say the farmers are well off. I am not going to say even that they are capable of paying their way. I am not going to say one or the other, but I will say this much: I gave figures in this House on three occasions during the last 12 months proving that the ordinary farmer with 40 acres of land was at least £40 better off under our Government than he was under Cumann na nGaedheal. I did not yet hear the figures contradicted in this House, and I am waiting to hear one farmer contradict them.
I do, for one.
Get them and read them, and then get up and contradict them. I have not heard them contradicted yet.
Would you mind answering? Are those proposed cuts in any way commensurate with the cuts which the farmers in the same class have suffered? Is the proposed cut in any way commensurate with the losses the farmers have sustained in the last two years?
Is it your complaint that they do not go far enough?
It is your pretence that it is to put the rest of the community in step with the farmers, and I want to pull the mask off your face. They are not commensurate. You will not answer the question, but that calls the bluff.
One would think in listening to this debate this evening, that this was the first country in the world to introduce a Cuts Bill and one would think in listening to the speeches from gentlemen on the opposite side that they felt that cuts were coming in their own direction and I hope that they are coming before very long. We are sneered at if we stand up to speak as farmers. We are sneered at by Deputy McGilligan who says that we have not the intelligence to do it but I say that we have intelligence enough to know that there is depression in this country as well as in other countries. I will go further and say that the farmers are in the first line of trenches. I do say that.
Are you taking them out with this Bill?
One would also think that we controlled markets outside this country. If they do think so, I would ask them if there was a depression in 1931 when Deputy Cosgrave went over to England and asked for time to pay a quarter of a million pounds and did not get it? Was there depression then? One would think that we ruled the English market but we had Deputy MacDermot reported last week as saying in this city:
"Great Britain had made a change in her own agricultural policy. She was now committed to a policy of protecting her farmers against foreign competition and even against Dominion competition."
What are we doing to-day? Are we not protecting the farmers, in so far as it is humanly possible, in the home market? We cannot control the outside market and the sooner the Opposition realise that the better. We are starting off to guarantee, so far as we can, the price of bacon, of butter, of wheat and of oats. We heard oat flour and black bread being sneered at last week. It comes very ill from professional gentlemen and particularly doctors and Free State Army pensioners, to sneer at farmers talking in this House. If they do stand up to criticise the Government, let them put up their own scheme but let them not tell us that we control the English market while they tell a different story outside.
Is the Minister not going to reply at all?
What is he going to reply to?
I asked a question——
The Minister replied before the Deputy came into the House.
Did he reply to the definite question I put—in the case of how many committees of agriculture was the compulsory minimum rate exceeded? I understand the Minister to say that he gave that information before I came into the House. He shakes his head. Will he give it now?
I am not aware that there is any special rate for committees of agriculture.
For vocational committees? The Minister, I think, as an excuse for this Bill, has stated that there were instances in which the minimum rate was exceeded. I asked him, and I ask him now, whether, before I came into the House—I was hoping he would reply or say something—he did give the information as to how many of these vocational education committees had exceeded the compulsory minimum rate? Did the Minister give that information?
No.
Will he give it now?
No.
Right. We take it for granted then that he has no case, and he knows he has no case. I think it proves quite conclusively that, in this case, as in the case of the Bill last year, the aim is not economy and the aim is not to come to the assistance of local bodies, but merely to cut for the sake of cutting. The aim is to inflict damage on certain classes of the community because they have already inflicted damage on other classes of the community. I should say that that is quite apparent from the Minister's failure to answer the various criticisms put up. I should like, however, to welcome Deputy Corry back—I am sorry he has gone—to his position of taking charge of these Bills once again. There was a time when I feared that we would be without his valuable assistance, because, as I have remarked on more than one occasion, Deputy Corry generally acts as Parliamentary Secretary to whatever type of Bill is under discussion, and he tells us much more clearly than the Ministers do what is really at the back of the mind of the Government. I take it for granted that Deputy Corry, in speaking, was really representing the mind of his Party, and that, in reality, the Government's wish would be not for a temporary Bill but for a permanent one, and that, practically speaking, on its merits, this Bill is altogether independent of any passing depression there may be. That was the line taken up by, as I say, the most vocal of the Minister's own supporters, the man who, again and again in this House, has blurted out the Government's intentions much more clearly than the Ministers have.
We have often heard that it was the intention of the head of the Government to level. It is quite true that his followers would like to say that he wanted a levelling up as well as a levelling down but in the two years during which he has been in office, all the evidence we have seen has shown that the tendency is mainly in the direction of levelling down. He has pulled down so far as the farmers are concerned and so far as the wealth of this country is concerned and now by this legislation and by the legislation of last year, he is determined to pull down. It is all a case of pulling down and as we can see from the speech of the best supporter that the Minister has got— he himself has contributed nothing to this particular discussion, in the last two hours, at least—that pulling down is the general policy, a returning to the simpler life as the Government and the head of the Government have always proclaimed to be their policy. We are told that even if prices continued as high as they were in 1917 and 1918, we would have these cuts. Not a single case has been put forward by the Minister, however, to argue on the merits of these bodies, no suggestion that value is not given for the money. I suggest that not merely is value given in the case of the particular officers we are discussing, but, seeing that this is a comparatively new service, seeing that for a number of years it was treated more or less as a kind of step child, so far as the country was concerned and not properly looked after, when there is an opportunity of raising this service—I am speaking particularly of vocational education committees and their officers and teachers—to the level to which it ought to be raised, not merely is there no attempt to raise it-although in other directions where the return may be expected to be much less remunerative, the Government is squandering not merely tens of thousands of pounds but hundreds of thousands of pounds—to its proper level in the sphere of education—and everybody acknowledges that it is for the good of the country that it should be improved—but this Bill is brought forward and this clause inserted merely for the sake of cutting and merely to prove that these people are to suffer as well as anybody else.
The Minister refuses to give an answer to the question as to the number of cases of vocational officers in which the money would go back to the ratepayer. He says there are some cases, but he does not indicate in respect of how many committees that will happen. He refuses to give the information, and he refuses to make the case. We are justified, therefore, in assuming that the spirit behind the Bill is the spirit revealed by Deputy Corry—pull down. It does not matter whether the services are good or not-pull down. As I say, I congratulate the Deputy on taking up again his position as unofficial Parliamentary Secretary to this and similar Bills. If an attempt were made to justify it, I could understand it, but there is no attempt. Perhaps the Minister does not believe in the Bill. I wonder does he? I gather from his attitude, and from the spirited defence which he has put up in favour of the clauses of this Bill, that he must not be a whole hearted supporter, at all events, and that he realises in his calmer moments that this is a bad Bill, and a thoroughly bad Bill, but the spirit of Deputy Corry and others is a bit too strong, and they have gained the day. Still, I have just a little too much belief in the fundamental good sense and also the fundamental uprightness of character of the people of this country to believe that they will not be deceived by a Bill whose only purpose is to hurt, not really to help. The only appeal it can make to people is that it hurts others. If Deputy Corry and others think it is good politics to play to that particular feeling, abroad in some circles, I have sufficient fáith in the goodness of our fellow-countrymen to believe that such an appeal will fail.
You are playing politics.
No, I am not.
You are.
We will know what the Deputy is playing when we see him vote.
You are playing politics. That is well-known.
The decision on amendment No. 1 will cover amendments Nos. 1 to 5 inclusive.
Question put: "That the words proposed to be deleted stand."
The Committee divided: Tá, 69; Níl, 51.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neal.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, William Frazer.
- Carty, Frank.
- Cleary, Mícheál.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
- Crowley, Timothy.
- Daly, Denis.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Doherty, Hugh.
- Donnelly, Eamon.
- Flinn, Hugo V.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Geoghegan, James.
- Gibbons, Seán.
- Goulding, John.
- Hales, Thomas.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hayes, Seán.
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Keely, Séamus P.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, James Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamonn.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- Lynch, James B.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Maguire, Conor Alexander.
- Moane, Edward.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Moylan, Seán.
- O'Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Dowd, Patrick.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Kelly, Seán Thomas.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Pearse, Margaret Mary.
- Rice, Edward.
- Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C. (Dr.).
Níl
- Alton, Ernest Henry.
- Beckett, James Walter.
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Burke, James Michael.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Coburn, James.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John Aloysius.
- Curran, Richard.
- Davin, William.
- Davis, Michael.
- Davitt, Robert Emmet.
- Desmond, William.
- Dockrell, Henry Morgan.
- Dolan, James Nicholas.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
- Everett, James.
- Finlay, John.
- Fitzgerald, Desmond.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
- Keating, John.
- Lynch, Finian.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGuire, James Ivan.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Minch, Sydney B.
- Morrisroe, James.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
- Nally, Martin.
- Norton, William.
- O'Connor, Batt.
- O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
- O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Mahony, The.
- O'Reilly, John Joseph.
- O'Sullivan, Gearoid.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget Mary.
- Roddy, Martin.
- Rowlette, Robert J.
- Thrift, William Edward.
- Wall, Nicholas.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Little and Traynor; Níl: Deputies P. S. Doyle and Bennett.
Question declared carried.
Words ordered to stand part of the Bill.
As regards amendment No. 6, I should not like to leave Deputy McGilligan under a misapprehension. It seems to me that amendment No. 6 is the same in essence as amendment No. 2. Therefore to move amendment No. 6 on Report Stage would be to attempt to negative a decision arrived at by the Committee, which is not permissible. If the Deputy desires to have a division now on amendment No. 6, without further discussion, he may challenge a division.
It is not the division so much as the discussion that I wanted. I had refrained from discussing the particular people concerned— the officers employed by the vocational education committees—on the understanding that I should be allowed to discuss them on Report Stage, as was stated. However, it does not matter whether or not I am allowed to move the amendment.
Does the Deputy desire to discuss the question of the officers concerned?
I should have discussed them on the other amendments if I thought that this amendment was not to be debated as a separate item. I understood that it was to be debated as a separate item on Report Stage. However, there is not much in it.
Amendment No. 6 not moved.
I move amendment No. 7:—
In sub-section (3), line 44, after the word "authority" to add the words "but shall not include any medical officer in the employment of such local authority."
The sub-section, if amended, would read "the word officer means any person in the employment of a local authority but shall not include any medical officer in the employment of such local authority." I am aiming, again, at getting those who are in the medical profession and who are under the authority and control of a local authority exempted from this measure. These professional people, on the medical side, were included in the main "cuts" Bill of last year. For some reason unknown, it was decided to remove those under the control of the local authority from the scope of that measure and the "cut" was not, I hope, imposed upon them. Now, an attempt is being made, for the second time, to cut their salaries. When previously speaking on this matter, I divided those people into the various classes set out in a memorandum they had furnished at the time which was prepared by the Irish Medical Committee. Some of these are possibly not covered now by the Bill, but there will be included whole-time medical officers attached to local authorities, county hospital surgeons and county medical officers. We have attached to and paid by the local authorities certain professional medical men. On them depends, to a great extent, the health of the community. On them depends entirely the health of the community in so far as that is adverted to by the State operating through the local authorities. An attempt had been made in this country since the Treaty was signed to get these professional men put into something approaching a suitable category with something in the way of reasonable salaries attached to their posts. It was pointed out with regard to some of them that right at the beginning they had rather to be forced on the local authorities. The local authorities did not welcome the idea of receiving these men and making the payments, small as these payments were, associated with the posts. For that reason it was argued here, and I think commonly agreed, that the medical officers had been put in on a very small scale of salary indeed, with the hope that the local authorities eventually would see the good they did in the community and would realise that they were well worth not merely what was paid to them in the beginning but some increase.
In various classes these professional men met in their professional associations and put up reasonable claims from time to time as to the emoluments they were getting. They pointed out the nature of their duties, the experience they had got to have before they achieved these posts, and the standard of education associated with them. They made a good case, even in the higher ranks, even in what would be regarded by some people as the extravagantly paid classes, with regard to their emoluments—not merely for the retention of what they were getting but for additions in their emoluments. The case they make generally runs this way: that you have got to take into consideration, when thinking of the salaries to be paid to them, the fact that there is a long and costly professional course to be studied, and, when that course is finished and a good professional qualification achieved, that, in the main, in connection with the public appointments of recent years, there had to be added to their studies and their qualifications a considerable amount of experience. That experience, in the main, was gained outside this country. That also, in the main, meant that men who started in practice found it was incumbent on them to get a secondary degree, which entailed their breaking away from their practice and resuming their academic studies once more for periods of anything from six months to a year. So that, on the whole, having done one course over a number of years and paying heavily for it, men had to enter into a practice and work at it for some years in order to have saved enough either to appoint a locum or to enable them to leave the practice and devote themselves again to study. Even then there were few plums to be got. There were a great many applicants for these very small appointments.
Those people are well qualified. They have studied hard and have shown talents and capacity and, in addition, they have had to acquire a certain amount of experience outside this country. One of the results of that experience is that these men go into these posts at a later stage in life than those entering the Civil Service and, even if they had the same pension rights and other rights as in the Civil Service, they have not the same chances as in the Civil Service. They have not the same emoluments or the same chances of additional emoluments, and they have nothing like the same chance of achieving a pension at the same rate. As to the work they did, there might have been some question as to that eight or nine years ago when some of these appointments were new, but there has been no authority of the local type found recently to say that the men occupying these posts were unequal to the work they had to do. No authority dealing with the health of the people has been found to say that the work is not there to be done and is not being done magnificently, or that the salaries paid are more than what the duties warrant. It is in these circumstances that it is now proposed to make a cut in the salaries of these men.
I want to hear again in this debate if anybody has the temerity to say, with regard to any of these people, that they are not of the standard required or that the work is not there to be done and that it is not valuable, national work that has got to be done. I want to hear if anybody has the temerity to say, with regard to any of these people or to any group of them, that the moneys paid are outside what this country, even in its present deplorable circumstances, can afford to pay. That is the broad principle upon which I open this matter. There is quite an amount of detail into which I can go, such as the details of the salaries of any of these groups—the county hospital surgeons or the medical officers attached to the local authorities—and there is a tremendous case to be made for the ordinary poor law medical officers. These, as a group, have probably more distressful conditions than any of their professional brethren. They have been living in hopes of increases in their emoluments. These increases have been promised to them from time to time, and they find now that not merely are they going to be cut in the salaries attached to the duties they are bound to perform, but that, in the case of the part-time men, any private practice they have has ceased to be remunerative. I said, when speaking on a previous occasion, that it was even then recognised that the doctor's bill was one of the last things to be paid, and as the months have gone on since last June that has become more apparent still. Men practising in the countryside find themselves in the position that they have got to keep up the habit of attending private patients, not because of any great return financially from that, but because they know that there are people who are ill and requiring their attention and they go to them, but the way the part-time work used to be added to by private practice has disappeared for many months past.
You have these people with high qualifications, who have run the gauntlet of a series of examinations, who have succeeded against the claims of many other applicants in being passed by the Appointments Commission, entering the service at a low rate of pay because they knew that some of the services were new and they had to ingratiate themselves with the local authority, or else because men, in their anxiety to secure posts in their own country, accepted in this country much lower salaries than they could have got abroad. Having arrived here, under these conditions, they find now, not on any arguments founded on their merits as to whether they are qualified or as to how they perform their duties or what their work is, but simply because they are near the blundering fists of the Minister, that their salaries, low as they are at present, are going to be cut. If there is a case to be made for this it certainly was not made last July when this was debated. If there is a case to be made, it is about time that it should be made, or that an attempt should be made in this House to have it presented. Up to date, those who want these cuts have been silent as to their merits. The Minister said, with regard to another class of people, that it would be an unreasonable thing to leave these men with the salaries they have at present as long as other men's salaries are to be cut, and I am sure we will hear the same argument now. Again, I say that we should have some indication, as regards these men of the medical type, of what is going to be saved, and we will then know in what degree or to what extent a real attempt is being made, even in this fatuous way, to meet an ugly situation. There is a bad situation, but it is not one to be met in this way. There is a bad situation that can be eased by people giving up the habit of thinking always politically, and not minding anything that happens nationally, economically or financially. It is unfair that these people, whose merits are so great, should be picked out, because a blunder has been committed, and just because an amount of money has to be saved, big or small. There should be some attempt now, at the conclusion of the debate, to acquaint these men with the merits of the sacrifice proposed to be imposed upon them.
I should like to support very strongly the appeal that Deputy McGilligan has made on behalf of the medical fraternity, and particularly on behalf of dispensary doctors. Everyone knows that if there is one way to bring down a profession and to degrade the individual, it is to bring those who belong to it down to the bare marrow of being able to live as gentlemen, in the position they occupy, leaving aside the big expense they had to incur in securing a medical qualification and a university degree. In view of the disappearance of their private practice, dispensary doctors in our towns and villages are put to the pin of their collars to make ends meet. These men have to live up to a certain status. They are the first to be asked to subscribe to local appeals, because they have to give a lead, as it were, to ordinary citizens. Yet, when private practice has practically ceased, their position is to be further degraded. As a result, the next thing we may expect is to have medical officers wearing mufflers around their necks instead of their customary attire. There is very little in towns or villages for the uplifting of our people, but if we find those who occupy a certain social scale unable to keep it up, it will have a repercussion in another way. Can these men be expected to give the same service, or to keep themselves up to date if their condition is worsened? It is quite obvious that that cannot go on, and that a general demoralisation will take place in the profession. They cannot take the same interest in the upkeep of their dispensaries or in their patients because this may be only the beginning of a further reduction in their status. In the interests of the medical profession, in the interests of poor patients, and in the interests of the whole system, I hold that nothing will undermine local administration more than cutting the emoluments of dispensary doctors.
I cannot remember an old Dutch phrase which represents the varying opinions held about a doctor who attends a patient. When the patient was sick the doctor was represented as a god; when the patient was convalescent the doctor was represented as an angel; when the patient was well the doctor became an ordinary human being, but, when he presented his bill he becomes a demon incarnate. There is a feeling growing up in the medical profession, not only in Ireland, but in America and in other countries, that the time has come when they no longer want to be looked upon as ministering angels, or, as Deputy Minch mentioned, as country gentlemen going round and giving their services to people who, very often, are not as poor as they represent themselves to be, and getting nothing in return. Nobody will deny that there has been for a long time an agitation for the improvement of their position on behalf of medical doctors, and especially poor law dispensary doctors. Few will deny the fact that they are under-paid. The doctors have been agitating for better payment for their services. As Deputy McGilligan stated, these services are of extreme importance to the individual and to the State. While it has been shown that the emoluments which accrue to the doctors are insufficient, the Government now brings in a measure to cut their salaries further. Possibly it has not occurred to the Minister what effect the cutting of the salaries of doctors may have upon the future of the medical profession. There have been complaints about the numbers of doctors we export. There is a certain amount of justice in that complaint, but if medical students going through their course, either in the university or in the College of Surgeons, notice that the prospects of a medical profession in Ireland are not showing any signs of betterment, but signs of worsening, that must act as an incentive to them to seek a livelihood abroad where their services will be better appreciated from the point of view of financial remuneration. Action such as the Minister intends to take is bound to have repercussions, and from that point of view alone it is a regrettable one.
As Deputy Minch mentioned, the fact is that dispensary doctors are at present in an exceedingly needy position, and in many cases, are barely able to make ends meet. Do not let us forget that although this is a poor country, apparently, yet a doctor's overhead expenses in Ireland are greater than those of his colleagues in England. Few will deny that a motor-car is absolutely essential for a doctor in the country. What does he have to pay here for that essential equipment? In the first place, he has to pay far more than his colleagues in England. In the second place, he has to pay a bigger tax on petrol, and in the third place, he will have to pay a larger premium on his insurance policy—with the prospect of a 25 per cent. increase —since insurance was made compulsory here. In that way doctors here to start off are handicapped compared with the position of their colleagues in England, who may, on the average, earn six times as much money. Is that fair? Is it fair that an essential accoutrement of doctors should be so much more expensive here than across the Channel? I am not now advocating that doctors should get motor-cars cheaper than anyone else, although I have strong views on the point. It is important to bear these things in mind when considering the position of dispensary doctors and other doctors paid by local bodies. There is undoubtedly a falling off in the private practice of doctors. When you consider the position of doctors existing apparently on salaries paid by local bodies, and partly on whatever private practice has been built up, then we have the situation that when private practice is rapidly falling off, and in some districts is practically non-existent, there is to be a further reduction. I admit that some doctors make a good living, but remember the amount of money spent on their education, and in preparing themselves for their profession, and while they are giving their services to the people, they see those who were students with them going straight into the money market and making money. At a time when private practice is falling away, and when expenses are increasing, the Minister brings in a Bill to cut the salaries paid to doctors by local bodies.
On the face of it, it seems to me that, whatever be the claims of other people who are hit by the Bill, certainly the doctors—full-time medical officers of health, county hospital surgeons and poor law dispensary medical officers— have a very genuine case for exemption from this Bill. I suppose we shall hear some of the spokesmen from the opposite benches on that point. I dare say Deputy Corry will get up and say that the doctor who is supposed to have £300, is an eyesore to him, but I think that even Deputy Corry will admit that possibly the medical men he knows are finding it very difficult to make both ends meet, and that medical men all over Ireland are really sick and tired of hearing "thanks be to God" as the only reward for their services. It has come to that now, that the average fees book of a dispensary medical officer has more "thanks be to God" cases than actual L.s.d. cases. At the same time one cannot expect doctors to refuse to do their work. The nature of their work is such that they simply cannot refuse to act when called upon. They would be regarded as inhuman if they refused to attend a case of sickness even when they know very often that they are not going to get any fee for it. They make it a habit to go out in any case. I would ask the Minister to accept the amendment. I fully believe that some members of his own Party are in favour of it. I believe that if there were a free vote of the House, this amendment would be carried. I believe that many of those on the opposite benches would be behind the amendment if a free vote were permitted.
I should like to add a word to the appeal made on behalf of the dispensary doctor. I was for a number of years a member of the Cork Board of Assistance and I have a fairly good experience of the work which fell to dispensary doctors during that time. I can say that the life of a dispensary doctor is one long drudgery. He is at the beck and call of the public day and night. Even the fees doctors once got from the farmers are no longer forthcoming. They get more promises now than money. I really do not know how some of them bring up their families on the small salaries they get at present. I think it is a very grave mistake to enforce a reduction of their salaries.
I want to support the plea which has been made for the exclusion of the medical officer in the employment of a local authority from the scope of this Bill. I cannot imagine that a Bill which purports to single out the dispensary medical officer for a special cut has been balanced by any regard or any kind of thought for the position of the medical officer in the community. If the position were that the State, as a whole, thought that medical officers were overpaid, then one could understand an effort being made to impose a general levy, or a poll tax on all medical officers in the community, but here we find a particular class, the worst paid class of the whole lot, the dispensary medical officer, singled out for a special type of cut while his colleagues in the medical profession outside who may be earning ten times his income at present, are permitted to go free. I am not advocating a cut on any particular class of person; I do not think that cuts in salaries are a remedy, but I cannot understand the viewpoint of a Minister who says that the gentleman with £5,000 a year outside is to be free from any cuts while the dispensary medical officer whose total income is four or five hundred pounds is to be subjected to a special cut. I cannot understand the mentality behind that at all and I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government and the Minister for Agriculture to tell us from their own personal experience whether dispensary medical officers are people who can afford the cuts that will be imposed on them under this Bill.
As has been already stated, a large amount of the time of the dispensary medical officer is given free. Probably the poor, especially in rural areas, have no greater friend than the dispensary medical officer. He is available at all times to attend to their needs. When the poor are ill, they are the first whom the dispensary medical officer attends and they are the last people from whom the dispensary medical officer expects any fee or reward. As a matter of fact, the giving of medical treatment is not like selling potatoes or cabbage. In buying potatoes or cabbage one is forced to have cash. You must pay for these commodities or do without them. Medical treatment, not being a commodity, is not sold for cash in the same way as commodities are sold, with the result that medical officers generally, particularly dispensary medical officers, render much service to the community for which, in the great majority of cases, they receive no remuneration whatever.
Deputy Davitt has mentioned the expense to which the medical officer is subjected in the course of his duties. He has referred to the fact that the-medical officer must, of necessity, in existing circumstances, have a car. A car, one might say, is a tool of the dispensary medical officer's occupation. It is almost impossible to think of a dispensary medical officer without a car. In any case, it is a most undesirable thing if he is without a car, because obviously rapid transport will often mean the life or death of his patient. A motor-car to the medical officer is a tool of his occupation. It is a necessity for him. In rural areas especially that car is used continuously in the interests of the poor patients whom the medical officer attends as part of his official duty. The cost of purchasing the car and of its upkeep is a large item in the domestic budget for every dispensary medical officer. When one considers his present low rate of salary, one shudders to think how the ordinary dispensary medical officer can manage to keep his head above water and keep free from debt having regard to his outgoings on the one hand and his meagre income on the other.
It has been mentioned and, of course, everybody knows it from experience, that the last person one thinks of paying is the medical officer. Everybody goes to him, but, as Deputy Davitt says, he is regarded as a demon incarnate when he presents his bill, the result being that in the majority of cases which they attend medical officers receive no payment whatever. Indeed dispensary medical officers, because they are associated with the scheme of free medical attention, are frequently assumed to be impertinent if they attempt to demand fees from people who are often well able to pay fees. I think it is rather unfortunate and grossly unfair that dispensary medical officers, who are very much underpaid, should be singled out for a special cut as distinct from other medical officers and other persons in the medical profession. There is no case for singling out dispensary medical officers. Nobody has shown, and I am sure nobody can show, that the dispensary medical officer is in any way overpaid. Nobody can show that his duties are not burdensome. Nobody can show that he is in any way excessively remunerated for the multifarious duties which he performs. If the Ministry cannot see its way to exempt medical officers completely from the scope of the Bill I would suggest that some substantial allowance, much more than the £50 mentioned in the Bill, should be made. Dispensary medical officers have to maintain motor-cars for their duties, and it is impossible for them to meet the expenses incurred in the discharge of their duties on the scale of salaries provided at present, and it will be further impossible under this Bill.
I rise to support the amendment before the House, which is almost identical with an amendment of which I have given notice. I appeal to Deputies on both sides of the House, and I appeal to the Minister in charge of the Bill, to receive this amendment in a sympathetic spirit. It is said by several Deputies that medical officers of every class are not overpaid. I think that opinion will be shared by the Minister. I am sure he will make no claim that there is extravagance, or lack of economy shown in the salaries of medical officers who are likely to be affected by this Bill. In asking for special consideration for medical officers I am not wishing to make any unfair discrimination against other officers affected by the Bill. But medical officers stand in a special position as compared with the great bulk of other officers. They constitute the largest class of professional men in the employment of local authorities and these professional officers of the local authorities should receive special consideration. They do not enter upon the public service until they have spent five or six years, at considerable cost to their parents, in educating themselves for the profession and in study which alone will make them eligible candidates for such appointments. Again, and this applies particularly in recent years, since the status of medical officers throughout the country has been raised by the Government methods of appointment, the competition has been very keen.
It is not sufficient now to look for appointment in any branch of the public medical service simply with medical qualifications. The candidate must possess experience. He must possess experience at starting which will increase his usefulness to the community. Then, in addition, a candidate seeking employment should possess some higher qualifications than formerly. Any medical body in the last seven or eight years knows that a very large number of men have to spend a certain number of years in the practice given to their work and whatever employment they are going in for, in order to fit themselves to receive appointments in the public service, which looks for extra experience as a qualification. The result is that the country can congratulate itself that its public medical service is much more efficient to-day than it was ten years ago.
What has been the great attraction to these men to seek appointment in the public service? It is certainly not the wealth they expect to acquire from it. They know, perfectly well, they could not attain wealth by employment in the public service. What they look to are salaries increasing by a fixed scale as promised, but above all, they look to security in their contract, and the right to pension when their working days are over. This Bill interferes with that security and the candidates for public services in the future will know that the contract of their appointment, although protected by the terms of the Bill, may be altered at any time by the legislature. That security is no longer one of the assets in employment for the public service, and that is what service under the local authorities promises in the future.
Again, much of what I say in regard to doctors in the public service applies equally to engineers and others, as well as to the medical profession. From these men considerable experience is required before they can get their appointments. Doctors enter the public service later in life than clerks who enter a county council office and, consequently, their years of tenure of office are shorter for securing pensions than those who enter the public service five or ten years earlier.
I would like to draw attention to some of the different classes of medical officers in the public service. One may take first what is the most important branch of the medical service in the country and that which is most hopeful for the country, that is the service of the county medical officer of health. Up to ten years ago we had no county medical officer of health in this country. We neglected that all through our history. We were half a century behind other civilised countries. It is to the credit of this State that that condition of things was taken in hand and, that, a couple of years ago, a public medical service was founded, and is now in practice, which is proving a benefit and a credit to the country. When it was necessary to start this work, to initiate it, and to put into operation a scheme to which the country was unaccustomed, we had to get men from other countries, where this scheme was developed. We had no demand for candidates in the Irish Free State for the position of medical officers of health. The great majority of the men we got received their training in Great Britain, and many of them were enjoying salaries higher than they actually accepted on their return to their own country. Men with salaries of £1,200 a year accepted salaries of £800 in order to help in doing useful work for their native country. They were assured, and persuaded, and they believed that, though beginning at a small salary, as the value of their work was more appreciated salaries would be increased in proportion to the importance of the work done. They have been here only a few years. None of them held these positions some five or six years ago, yet now their salaries are to be cut by a substantial figure — £50 in the case of salaries of £800 a year. Then again these men had much better prospects in the country from which they came. Not only had they larger salaries, but they had better prospects. They came here at salaries on a scale between £800 and £1,000 rather than remain in Great Britain with better salaries and emoluments. They made sacrifices to come here upon an understanding that they believed was an honourable understanding, but which this Bill now claims the right to tear up.
It is not as if these salaries had been fixed at a time when salaries and prices were high. They were fixed in recent years. There is little if any alteration in the cost of living since these salaries were fixed. With these men I may class the assistant medical officers of health, mostly engaged in such important work as the prevention of tuberculosis and the care of school children — the most important services that this country could undertake. If we are to attract the proper class of candidates to these public services we must make these services secure and we must make the salary attractive, but above all we must give security, which is threatened by this Bill. Again, I think officers engaged in the mental hospitals service deserve special consideration. In these cases the assistant medical officer is usually a whole-time officer with £300 a year and accommodation. Some of the tradesmen working in the mental hospitals are more highly paid — I do not grudge it to them — I am sure they earn what they get. Is that a salary which will attract medical officers of the class that one would like to be in charge of the most unfortunate class of the community? Are we likely to attract medical officers who will do credit to the service, who will make improvements in that service, which so far has lagged behind in the general advance of medical services? These men have little prospect. The number of senior posts which they may attain is very small. A young man going in at 25 or 30 years of age at £300 a year may look to advancement as assistant medical officer, perhaps, to £500, but once he attains the age of 40 or 45 he is very unlikely to get any further. He is unlikely to be chosen for one of the senior appointments. As is quite natural, the Appointments Commission selects the younger men. It is an unattractive service. Is it the wish of the Government to make it more unattractive? Does it not occur to them that it may increase the melancholy conditions prevalent in the mental hospitals if they depress the salaries of the unfortunate medical officers?
The county hospital surgeons stand in much the same position as the county medical officers of health. Most of them are recent appointments. I think there is no office in the country, medical or otherwise, which demands more varied accomplishments than that of county surgeon. He has to be a skilled surgeon, a skilled physician, a skilled gynaecologist, a skilled laryngologist, an x-rayist, and a pathologist, and all these things at the same time. He must be a man of very great capacity, a very versatile professional man, and he must have the confidence of the public. If the people of the country are to be properly treated in the county hospitals, and I know the Minister is anxious that the county hospitals should be thoroughly efficient, it is essential that men of the highest professional capacity should be attracted to those offices, and that if they cannot expect wealth in these offices they can, at any rate, expect the security which they believe they got when they accepted the office.
Several Deputies have already spoken of the poor law medical officers. I make no appeal to the House for charity for these men, but I do appeal to the House for justice for them, and I do appeal to the House still more to maintain the efficiency of the dispensary medical service through the country. It is on the dispensary doctor, the general practitioner, not on the county hospital surgeon or the county medical officer of health that the health and happiness of the great bulk of the people depend. It is on his efficiency and devotion to duty. No one who is a member of the profession could fail to listen with pleasure to the words that came from several lay Deputies this evening in recognition of the work performed by dispensary medical officers. It has been said that this cut will hit them specially hard. I agree. Much has been said in the earlier part of the debate to-day, and much has appeared in the papers in very serious pronouncements within the last few days about the farmers being in the trenches. They are in the trenches, but the doctors are with them. Whatever touches the prosperity of the farmer touches immediately the livelihood of the doctor. The work of the doctors through the country in the last year or two has been transferred from their private practice to their poor law practice. I do not say that their former private patients are getting red tickets, but they are getting free attendance. I have been told — and I believe it — by dispensary medical officers in many parts of the country that their poor law practice — that is the practice actually done on red tickets and black tickets — has increased 50 per cent. in the last 12 months. I have been told by them personally — and I have been in touch with them in most parts of the country — that in the last 12 months their private practice has almost vanished. They are doing the work, but they are not being paid; they have no expectation of being paid and no possibility of enforcing payment. They are reduced to living on their poor law salaries, while at the same time they have to keep up the expense of doing an extensive private practice— extensive as far as area goes. The minimum poor law salary of a dispensary doctor is £175 per year. He is immune from the cut. The maximum is £350 a year, together with some small stipend — a contemptuous stipend — as assistant medical officer of health. On that sum of money he is expected to suffer a reduction. He has been attempting to live, and has been living with difficulty, on that sum of money, plus his private practice. It is impossible for him to alter his means of living — the education of his family, the manner in which he runs his house — if he is reduced to his dispensary salary minus the minimum cutscale, or perhaps a larger scale if he does not happen to be popular with the local authority. His dispensary salary in many cases will do little more than pay his travelling expenses through his district even for his poor law patients, without, as happens now, his having to pay the expenses of his private practice as well, for which he gets little or no remuneration. That applies to dispensary doctors generally throughout the country.
I should like to say something about the position of the dispensary doctors in Dublin. In Dublin the scale is relatively good. The scale of salary runs from £250 to £350, with £25 as medical officer of health. That with private practice might seem to offer a good livelihood but where is the possibility of the private practice? A dispensary doctor practising in Dublin gave me those figures to-day as to his dispensary work in the year 1933. He attended a total of 10,185 patients throughout the year, and his colleague in the same dispensary attended a total of 12,193 for a salary of about £300 a year. If one of those gentlemen was looking for a position as a panel doctor in England he would be only allowed to undertake the liability of attending 1,500 persons, not patients. In Dublin he attends 10,000 or 12,000 patients, representing possibly a population which is liable to attain to twice that amount. Where could such a man get an opportunity for private practice? He is depending absolutely on his dispensary salary for his livelihood. Moreover, if he had time for private practice, in many parts of Dublin the private practice has now moved out to the suburbs while he is perhaps in a tenement district where he has to live if he is to keep in touch with his poorer patients. I think everyone in the House—most of the Deputies know the conditions in which the medical officers of the country work — will agree that none of them is overpaid.
The word "economy" has been greatly used to-day and in recent days. I ask Deputies to consider what economy is. Economy is not the mere saving of money: it is getting full work well done. There is no such thing as economy without efficiency. In so far as this Bill is concerned with the cutting down of salaries by amounts which will inflict suffering on some thousands of persons through the country, it will merely effect a contemptible amount of saving of money for the country as a whole — £35,000 is the amount quoted by the Minister. In so far as economy is concerned, the mere saving of that sum of money, if it diminishes the efficiency of the officers of local authorities throughout the country, will mean that there will be no economy whatever. I believe, and I think I have given the House reason to believe, that the efficiency of future medical services will be gravely interfered with by the passing of this Bill in its present form. It will mean that a less suitable class of candidate will be seeking to enter the public service in the future. It is not the medical profession that will suffer; it is the whole country that will suffer through a lack of efficiency and through a worsening of conditions in relation to the general health of the people. I appeal to the Minister to give sympathetic consideration to this case, to consider medical officers as a class by themselves with certain claims which other classes cannot completely show. I appeal to him to take the same attitude towards them as he took last year on a similar Bill in regard to the Civic Guards by not inflicting a cut in their salaries. I trust that he will consent to accept the amendment which has been moved.
So many Deputies have spoken in favour of the amendment that I feel rather nervous about speaking at all. I would like to join with other Deputies in paying a tribute to dispensary doctors.
Why try to decrease their salaries so?
I am in close association with them on public boards, and I must say they are good men and they do their work well, the greater proportion of them. However, there is an odd black sheep in every flock, and we cannot help that. Despite all that, I cannot see why doctors should be exempted from the cut. This cut will not inflict the enormous hardship on them which has been mentioned so eloquently from the benches opposite. A cut of £10 or £15 a year off their salaries is not too much, and it will not inflict on them the hardship we have had so much noise about.
The last Deputy told us about the sacrifices made by doctors who came back from other lands to take up jobs here at £800 a year. If they were in better positions elsewhere I can assure every Deputy here they would not come back. Anyway, there were enough doctors here to fill all the jobs without bringing any fellows back from other countries. Unfortunately, the medical profession in this country has been overdone.
The Deputy seems to object to medical officers being brought back from other countries, and he says there are plenty of doctors here to do the work. Might I point out that when the medical officers of health were established we were establishing absolutely new positions and we were building up a new health service in the country? Might I also point out that there were no men in the country sufficiently qualified to fill those positions and that is why men with experience gained elsewhere were brought over here?
We had at least 15 doctors here for every position.
We had not. The Deputy does not know anything about it.
We do not know anything at all unless we go through the peculiar form of training that gives us the mentality Deputy McGilligan has, a mentality that leaves him here like a weasel. The dispensary doctors have not the same amount of work to do as they used to have. All over the country we have cottage hospitals set up where special doctors are put. At present if an ordinary dispensary patient gets ill and the doctor has to pay that patient a second visit, he is shifted off to the cottage hospital.
That is a damn lie.
Deputy Minch says you are a damned liar.
That is what I would expect from Deputy Minch. I suppose he is suffering from the peculiar education Deputy McGilligan talks of — the advantages of it. We have had a new service set up, the county medical officer of health. Honestly speaking, from the specimens I have seen going around, they do not appear to be overworked; whether they are overpaid or not is another question. The County Medical Officer of Health in Cork has three assistants, and five or six lady assistants tacked on also. I think it was a case of making posts for the doctors. The ordinary dispensary doctor starts off with £250 or £300 a year. In addition to that, he has his private practice. I admit there are a few honourable exceptions, but I would like to see the doctor who is prepared to come in and say: "God bless you; I will not charge you at all," when he goes round to the ordinary farmer. I have heard no case showing why the dispensary doctor or the medical officer of health should not have his salary reduced, just the same as everyone else.
The Government have spoken!
I have never listened to Deputy Corry making a contribution to the proceedings here without wondering whether the people of Cork, who sent him here, really appreciate the awful hardship which they have inflicted upon the House. So far as these two amendments are concerned, I have no very special contribution to make to the debate; but the arguments which apply to these amendments, and to the section of the Bill which these amendments seek to alter, seem to me to be similar to those which apply to every other section of the Bill. There seems to be a certain amount of temerity, or rather diffidence and shyness, in suggesting to the Government what the proper remedy is for their shortage of money. There are other ways, besides raiding the salaries of medical officers, of finding money for this hard-up State. I am going to say, without any diffidence and without any shyness, that the proper way to find money, if you want to find it, is to settle this dispute which is going on with England, this rotten dispute which is proving every day it goes on the imcompetence and stupidity of the Government which is ruling the destinies of the country. That Government——
The Deputy should remember that this is the Committee Stage of the Bill and that a Second Reading speech is not permissible.
I am putting forward an argument to show why this money should not be taken from the pockets of dispensary doctors. My suggestion is that instead of taking it from the pockets of the dispensary doctors the money could be got in another feasible way. That, sir, is my submission to you as to the relevance of my remarks. To proceed with my argument, the point which I would like to stress is this — that as long as this present Government is led by an arch-fanatic there is very little chance of having any settlement with England.
The question of an economic settlement with Great Britain is not relevant.
There are two amendmends down on the amendment sheet. These two amendments propose that the Bill, in so far as it proposes to make cuts on the salaries of dispensary doctors, should be amended. My suggestion goes to show this — that there are other ways of finding the money which is being taken out of the pockets of the doctors. Surely I am entitled to say that instead of taking the money out of the pockets of the doctors, the money could be got in another feasible way, a way which is open to any commonsense Government, and that way as I have already indicated is, undoubtedly, by entering into negotiations with England——
The Deputy has been twice informed that the method of terminating the economic war is not in order. If he cannot get away from that point he must conclude his speech.
Very well, if it is not in order to indicate in what way the money can be got other than as proposed in the Bill I do not propose to carry my remarks further.
Before discussing the particular amendment I wish to say that I am rather glad to notice that the Minister has returned to the House, because I want to take the very earliest opportunity of refuting the slander which was uttered by Deputy Corry on the dispensary doctors of this country. I think that Deputies of all parties, irrespective of political affiliations, and the Minister for Local Government and Public Health in particular, will agree that it is unfair to charge dispensary doctors generally with packing off to hospital every dispensary case that requires as much as a second visit. One outstanding feature of this debate was that even those who found themselves in the unfortunate position of having to advocate a reduction in the already slender income of dispensary doctors, as well as those who were opposed to that action, have one and all, with the exception of one Deputy, proclaimed with a loud voice their tribute to the dispensary doctors of Ireland. I hope when the Minister's attention is called to what was uttered from behind his seat that he will see that that is contradicted on the part of the Government and by the man best fitted to contradict it, namely, the Minister to whom all these doctors are responsible.
In good and in bad times, in good and in bad weather, the dispensary doctors of Ireland have always rendered heroic services to the people of Ireland, particularly to the poor. Any suggestion that they have attempted to side-step their responsibilities, or that in a spirit of utter selfishness, to save themselves a visit to a sick house, they would pack the patient to hospital, is a suggestion that should not be tolerated in this Assembly. I can only echo the tribute which has been paid to this long-suffering body of men, whether that tribute has been paid from the benches opposite or from my own. I would ask the Minister in particular to hearken to those tributes and thus to realise what this amendment means; that it is merely an appeal to him to listen to those tributes from all sides and to exempt that particular class from the axe that is in operation at the moment.
So far as I can see, the argument advanced for this particular type of economy is that we are all going through it, that we all have to go through it together, that the sacrifices must be equal and that all must bear their share. Whether I agree with the cause or the policy that brought about that particular set of circumstances, I agree with the demand that if sacrifices have got to be made then that all should make these sacrifices, that all should make sacrifices according to their capacity or capability. I hold that the dispensary medical officers or the part-time medical officers have made a greater contribution and a bigger sacrifice in this economic war than any other class in the community, not excepting even the farmers.
I argued before on the Second Reading of the Bill that the larger part of the income of the dispensary medical officer was made up of private practice, and that private practice in rural areas had disappeared entirely. That may be an exaggeration. Their private practice may have disappeared or their income from the private practice may have disappeared only by 50, 60 or 70 per cent. But it has disappeared to a very great extent. I would ask the members of all Parties to realise this, that the dispensary doctor, the poor law medical officer, is the one man whose work costs him money out of pocket. Every case means out-of-pocket expenditure. Every wave of illness in his district means more and more out-of-pocket expenditure. With the income from his private practice disappearing the car has still to be run, the tax on that car has to be paid, and that tax is more than the doctor can often bear.
Within the last five days I spoke to a doctor, who certainly is not and never was a supporter of the Party to which I belong. He is a man who minds his business and works hard, and he told me that he is still driving his car with last year's licence. The reason is that he cannot get the cash to pay for the new licence. The one defence he has if he is up in court, is that he has not got the money. Now he is the last man in the world who, I would suggest, is not minding his job. But the cash is not in his parish. He has a bigger practice than ever, but he is not getting the money. He has reached the point now where private practice is a loss to him. All he gets out of it is the wear and tear of his car and the cost of petrol, with no remuneration for his services. I would like to tell the House that that is not an exceptional case.
I have a shrewd suspicion that dispensary doctors were included in this particular Bill because of the argument that if you are going to have such a Bill at all, it should apply to all, and that if you open the door to exempt any class, you will never be able to close that door — that there will be such a demand for exemptions that your Bill will not be worth while. Even though the argument may be in any direction, if the balance of equity and justice is in the other direction, then equity and justice should be our guide rather than cold logic and argument. There is no doubt about it. It has been said there are exceptions: that there are some doctors still earning a considerable amount by practice, and they can afford a cut. They are already taxed by reason of increased income tax, by reason of increased car tax, by reason of compulsory insurance, by reason of the 25 per cent. increase in insurance. The man who of necessity has to utilise a motor-car for his work is taxed top, bottom and middle, without any further cut. Remember you can, through your economy Bill, force this dispensary medical officer to become economically minded. You can force him to begin to watch petrol consumption. You can force him, by stress of lack of money, to do what Deputy Corry accuses him of doing — to visit a case only once, and if it is going to be a tedious one to get it packed off to the nearest hospital. I wonder how that would suit the poor. He would be within his rights in doing it. He would also be within his rights, on visiting a case and seeing that it was not a terribly serious one, in saying: "I will be around this way again in four or five days time."
You can force him to economise. You can force him to economise to such a point that he will visit a case once in six days, where he is visiting it now five times in six days. Who is the loser and who is the gainer? The State gains £3 or £4 a year; the county gains £3 or £4 a year. Every sick poor person in the district loses the careful attention and the visit of that doctor daily or every second day. Even though he does not do anything in particular each time he visits the house, the people — particularly the poor — like to have a doctor calling when somebody is sick, even if it is only to say "Good-day, Mary," and a kind word, and "You are doing well." That feeling of welcome for the doctor, and the reassurance that he is coming again to-morrow, is more important than medicine in bringing that person back to a state of health. Mind you, I am not talking now in any Party line. I say that either commonsense or fair play or equity or the capacity of the individual to bear the cut should prompt the Minister and his colleagues to exempt that particular class. A case has been made for others. I am only concerned with the part-time poor law medical officer, the man who was heretofore dependent on practice, the man who is forced down to the very lowest stiver now, the man who is unselfishly and heroically going his many miles per week now as he did in easy days, in days of luxury when money was plentiful and petrol no consideration. There has been no decrease in the vigilance and consideration extended by these men to their patients. We should appreciate that. We should appreciate that rather than victimise them still further.
Deputy Corry says that it is a matter of £10 or £15 a year. It may be a matter of only £10 or £15 a year, but it is a matter of the last ten or 15 straws, and it will have the effect of forcing them to economy, or, on the other hand, turning them into a hard, commercially-minded class. That has never been associated with a dispensary doctor. He has gone on a ticket; he has attended as many people free as he has on tickets. He has gone to people who could not very well produce a ticket, but who could not very well produce a fee, and he has never pressed for that fee. In law he would be entitled to it. You can make him a hard, commercial machine. Self-defence, the prevention of bankruptcy, the desire or the necessity to keep a car on the road, can turn him into that hard, commercial machine, where he has got to ring the last bob out of anybody capable of paying, where he has got to make the poor dread the day when illness will come to their house where he has got to make them fear the visit of a doctor rather than welcome it, got to make them, right through their illness, worry with the thought "How are we going to pay this man at the end?"
Where will all that lead to in this country? It will lead back to a state of affairs that is happily past in Ireland. It will lead back to a state of affairs where many illnesses go undetected, untreated and undiagnosed; where you have the spread of diseases through those hidden or undiagnosed cases. In the long run, there, again, who is going to suffer? The county; the public of the county; and we are supposed to be compensating for all that by victimising the greatest hero in every parish, by turning into a hard machine the one outstanding human factor in every parish. As a compensation for that the parish will receive half of a £10 note per annum. That forces me back to where I began, that the only justification for the inclusion of these poor law medical officers in a Bill such as this is the inadvisability of making any exceptions lest you might have to except all. That, instead of being an argument for the inclusion of the dispensary medical officer, is an argument for the withdrawal of the Bill. If your case is so weak against all that the exception of any class would force the exemption of all, then there are rather groggy legs under the whole Bill.
I do not want to get back into anything but the particular amendment we are dealing with, but remember that dispensary doctors in every board of health area are of all ages. There are some young men, some middle-aged men, and some older men. With their practice gone, and the threat of a cut in salary, undoubtedly you will have one, two or three resignations in every board of health area. You will have one, two or three new appointments. You will have one, two or three new pensions. Where is the economy? Where does the £10 or £15 a year come in? Does not anyone who knows the facts and knows and appreciates the circumstances realise this, that this Bill may stand for anything but it does not stand for economy? This Bill, in its application to that class, will mean more expenditure in every board of health area. It will mean more expenditure if it has the natural effect of doing what Deputy Corry has prompted; if it has that result it will mean more expenditure, transport to and from hospital, maintenance of the cases in hospital, etc. If it leads to even one resignation in the whole county it will not result in economy. It will result in more expenditure than there is at the present moment.
Then there is another thing which I left last; there is the value of a contract; the value of security and the value to the individual of a feeling of stability. Those mean more than money. Those mean more than money to the individual. They mean more than money to those dependent on the individual. All those things are blasted by this Bill. What security is there for any servant of this State after a sequence of this class of Bill? What value will they place on the contract made between the individual and the State? What security can any man, irrespective of what his salary or wages are, feel after this particular precedent is established? Mind you, a rate of x number of pounds a year is purely an arbitrary figure but utilise that for the moment. Those who fix the rate at x pounds this year can make it half x pounds next year, once you drive the thin end of the wedge in. The spearhead is there and the shaft will follow easily and once the salaried classes are attacked in this Bill, the wage classes will be attacked in the next and we will reach a point, if we give approval to this Bill, at which we shall have established in this country that the only officials, the only officers or the only servants of the State who can feel their position secure or their incomes anyway stable are those who were specially protected by the British Government at the time of the Treaty. I move to report progress.
Progress reported; committee to sit again to-morrow.