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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 4 Dec 1935

Vol. 59 No. 12

Insurance Bill, 1935—Second Stage (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following amendment:—
To delete all words after the word "That" and substitute the words "the Dáil declines to give a Second Reading to the Insurance Bill, 1935, until a Select Committee with power to send for persons, papers, and records be appointed to inquire into the whole question of insurance and to report what changes, if any, in the law are necessary and desirable."—(Patrick McGilligan.)

Looking at the Insurance Bill there are some items in it which I should like the Minister to give us some explanation of. First of all, the word "assurance" in this Bill seems to be used in rather a peculiar sense. I looked up the word "assurance" in a dictionary in the library and I see it is a variant of insurance only—life insurance. Now the word "assurance" seems to be used in this Bill as applying to these various classes of business and I do not know if the Minister could avoid using the word in the extraordinary sense it is used in the Bill, a sense in which it is rather difficult for the ordinary person to understand.

Coming down to the classes of business which are covered by this Bill, I think the Minister is quite right in leaving out marine insurance. It would have introduced extraordinary difficulties and put people doing business in this country under a very grave handicap. The Minister mentioned that certain classes of insurance business were exempted from the provisions of this Bill. But I notice that "third party" appears to be half in and half out of the Bill. At the bottom of page 6 we see "the expression `mechanically-propelled vehicle insurance business' means the business of effecting contracts of insurance against loss of or damage to or arising out of or in connection with the use of mechanically-propelled vehicles, including third party risks." Apparently under that, third party risk in connection with mechanically-propelled vehicles is brought in under this Bill, but the other bases of the third party risks are not included. I think that is rather peculiar, and I would ask the Minister to look into it. Friendly societies or trades unions are exempted from the provisions of this Bill. Is there anything to prevent friendly societies or trade unions extending the scope of their insurance business at present? Lest some of the Labour Party might think I was unduly hard on trade unions, there are trade unions of employers.

Another matter to which I would like to draw the attention of the Minister is Part II, Section 9:—

It shall not be lawful for any person to effect or to endeavour to effect any contract of assurance with an assurance company or any other person which or who is not the holder of an assurance licence entitling such person or company to effect contracts of assurance of the kind so effected or endeavoured to be effected by such person.

How is a person to know with whom they are dealing? Is the Minister, for instance, going to say that in future on the windows of a life insurance company there will be displayed a notice: "licensed by the Minister to transact life and industrial insurance, burglary, plate glass insurance, riot and civil commotion"? Will that species of notice have to be displayed in future, or, if not, how is a person to know whether he is dealing with a licensed insurance company or not? The next question that crops up is the word "person." There is no definition of what "person" is in this Bill. For instance, is it unlawful for a person who is resident in this country and has property in England to go over and effect an insurance policy on property in England?

There is a further matter to which I would like to draw the Minister's attention. It could happen that a tourist who is in this country from, say, Scotland, might inadvertently display an insurance policy. Would it be possible for that person to be arrested and confined until he would have paid up the £50 fine? Passing on to Section 10 (2), it sets out there:—

A foreign company which issues a policy, bond, certificate, or other instrument of insurance to a person ordinarily resident in Saorstát Eireann, or issues to any person a policy, bond, certificate, or other instrument of insurance in respect of a liability, loss, or damage which will arise (if at all) in Saorstát Eireann. ...

Apparently, that is forbidden. Suppose a tourist arrives, say, from Scotland and puts up at a leading hotel and that hotel is burned during the night. Suppose his luggage is covered under a policy of insurance, wherever it might be, what would be the position in the Saorstát? On last Friday I referred to the danger of amalgamating an insurance company which would be insolvent with a solvent company and dividing the capital. I see that in cases such as that the Minister is not empowered to acquire more than £500,000 of shares in nominal value. I am afraid he must contemplate a good deal of amalgamations.

I will now pass on to Part VI, which deals with the Re-Insurance Company of Ireland, Limited. In his opening statement, the Minister, if I understood him aright, referred to the amount of risks that were covered in this country as being in the neighbourhood of £400,000,000, and the premiums on those risks at somewhere around £1,000,000 per annum. Taking the Minister's figures as correct, and assuming that this reinsurance company is going to get to work; taking a rough-and-ready estimate of an insurance company holding, say, 50 per cent. of any risks and ceding 50 per cent. of the risks, that would involve, presumably, the company in covering risks amounting to £200,000,000 and getting an income of £500,000 a year. Has the Minister considered what the capital of the company ought to be if it would be carrying £200,000,000 of risks? I would suggest a couple of million pounds as the capital of that company and, considering the risks involved, I think it would be on the small side.

Another matter of importance comes under Section 82, which sets out:—

Whenever any assurance company effects any assurance business in Saorstát Eireann (including the renewal of any such business, the original contract for which was entered into before the commencement of this Part of this Act), such company shall not reinsure the whole or any part of such business with any person until either such company has entered into an agreement with the company to cede to it such portion as the company may agree to accept of the reinsurance of such business, or the company has refused to accept the reinsurance or any portion of the reinsurance of such business.

I would like to suggest that that section is unworkable under the ordinary procedure of insurance business. Very large risks are covered in a few moments and the procedure of most companies is to have a reinsurance treaty with some other company or companies. The reinsurance companies have to take what is offered to them. How can the Minister envisage bargaining going on with a reinsurance company, possibly over the telephone, something along these lines: "Well, now, we have had enough of that risk; we are not going to take that on. You had better hold the rest of it yourself." I do not see how the Minister thinks that a reinsurance company could enter into a treaty with the local companies here and pick and choose the business. It would be feasible at the outset for that company to say: "We will not take certain classes of risks," and claim they ought to be exempt from the provisions of this Bill. Another possible position would be: "Well, we are starting with £200,000,000 possible reinsurance and we will take 10 per cent. of the risks and leave it to the Minister afterwards to increase that percentage." That would be possible, but I do not see how any reinsurance treaty could be worked with a company where there would be protracted negotiations as to whether they would take or reject the business. Another matter that I would like to get an assurance on from the Minister is: Is the reinsurance company going to farm out its risks again; because even so, I would like to put before the Minister, that the companies who reinsure here, and have buildings and are paying staff, ought to get a share of that business on a percentage basis of 50/50. What does the Minister envisage will be the result upon local insurance companies of removing from them £200,000,000 of business, and an income of £500,000 a year? Surely, that must have a very considerable effect upon the employment of staffs, and the buildings they occupy! I would like the Minister to look into that very carefully.

The next section that calls for comment is Section 83, where the contract of reinsurance of assurance business is only to last for ten years. Ten years is not such a very long time, and some people would like to know where they are going to stand at the expiration of ten years. Because, after all, it is not fair for the Government to chase certain people out of doing a certain line of business, and then leave the people to be covered in the position of not knowing where they are. I ask the Minister why ten years is inserted there. Does he consider that after ten years the company will be in such a strong position that they will be able to face risks and meet all the claims that come along? The Minister has mentioned a question, which I do not want to labour very much; but there is a possibility, even in a country such as this, of a disaster occurring that would entail a very heavy strain on insurance companies carrying on their business here. I would like the Minister, when replying, to deal, as fully as he can, with these matters in regard to company risks.

I would like to say a few words upon this Bill from a purely man-in-the-street, amateurish point of view. The reasoned amendment to the Second Reading, put down by the Opposition, seems to me to be in principle rather objectionable, because it amounts to inviting the House to set up a select committee to do work that the Government ought to have done. It invites us, in fact, to do work that other people are being paid to do. The objects of the Bill, as set forth by the Minister, probably commend themselves to all parts of the House as praiseworthy; but what we need to know before deciding whether or not to vote for the Second Reading, is whether the scheme of the Bill is sound; whether a workable scheme has been thought out for carrying into effect the objects we all want to see achieved. I think the Minister might have said somewhat more than he did say to satisfy us of that.

I notice on reading the proceedings of the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis—and, on the whole, I do not know any reading I could recommend as more wholesome fun than the proceedings of a Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis—the Minister was at pains to insist—if he was correctly reported—that he had not consulted a single expert on insurance until he had his Bill already drafted.

The other Bill he meant.

What other Bill?

The Bill he had first drafted.

I understood, from the speech he made on the Second Reading of the Bill, that he wished us to believe that this Bill was drafted as a result of long and patient investigation, and I am at a loss to imagine how that investigation can have been carried on unless he did consult people best qualified to advise him, not after the Bill was drafted, but before it began to be drafted at all. I hope when the Minister concludes this debate, he will say more to convince us that the Government have really gone into this question thoroughly, and have not merely been scraping the surface, and that they have taken the best advice available. As Deputy Dillon said, we are not insurance experts in this House, and we cannot be expected to go into all the considerations that arise out of this Bill with the mastery of insurance experts. But we do deserve to be assured that the Government have done their duty and that they have availed themselves of the best possible advice.

There are two or three things in the Bill that strike an ordinary, uninformed person like myself as extremely peculiar. One is that for certain extensive classes of insurance the Minister is given power to prescribe the rates of premium if he so desires. I should like to know why he thinks it necessary to take that power, and whether he does not think that that power may prove to be a great embarrassment to him. When he decided to take that power I wonder whether he had in mind the situation that arises out of the fact that insurance companies are divided into tariff companies and non-tariff companies, and that those companies which are tariff companies have really no choice as to the rates they shall fix as they are prescribed by agreement with other companies. I hope the Minister will enlighten us as to what he had in mind when he put in that provision.

Another point that strikes one as objectionable is that referred to the other day by Deputy Dillon and that is the power given to the Minister to decide disputes between policy-holders and insurance companies in reference to cases of industrial insurance. I have no objection to his taking that power when there is a joint application to him by the insurance company and the insured person for a decision, provided always that he does not think the effect of that will be to overwhelm his Department with work. If he thinks that he can cope with it I see no objection in principle to such matters being left to him for decision by consent of both parties, but it does seem to me objectionable that such matters should be referred to him for decision when only one of the two parties involved wishes this to be done. He has not as yet made any case for taking such matters away from the law courts of the land, and he has provided in this Bill for summary procedure when such cases do go before the law courts which will have the effect of reducing the legal expenses below what they would have been but for that provision. I would, therefore, suggest to him that he should modify that section of the Bill to the extent of not interfering in the settlement of such disputes except where both parties wish him to do so.

As regards reinsurance, I gather that, so far as there is any protection for Irish companies in this Bill, it lies in the powers given to the Minister in connection with reinsurance, and so it is very important that the whole of that part of the Bill should be conceived on a sound basis. The Minister has probably discovered what I imagine he would have been very slow to admit before he came into office, and that is that insurance business is essentially international. It is one of those unfortunate phenomena which have a knack of cutting across the cherished isolationist ideas of the Party opposite, ideas that are gradually fading as the years go by, now that they are in office. It is quite certain that if the reinsurance part of this Bill is to be a success it must be possible for the Irish Reinsurance Company to pass on a very large percentage of the risks they undertake to foreign companies. The whole strength of insurance depends upon its being international. We have seen an example of that in such an incident as occurred the other day when an Italian ship was burned outside the port of Alexandria, and one read in the newspapers that 80 per cent. of that loss was sustained by British Underwriters. If any country ought to be able to have a completely protectionist and isolationist policy with regard to insurance it should be the United States of America, and yet anyone who has lived and done business in the United States of America knows that a considerable proportion of American risks are passed on to British companies. It is, therefore, the beginning of wisdom with regard to insurance to realise that it must be on an international basis; that rates could not be as low as they are, and that the security of the policy-holders could not be anything like as great as it is were it not for the fact that the insurance business is on an international basis.

On the whole I feel that the general scheme of the Bill is more satisfactory than might have been apprehended from Fianna Fáil propaganda before they came into office. The days have apparently passed when it was the opinion of the Party opposite that the foe and the stranger were being allowed to batten upon the Irish people in this matter of insurance, and that it was a sign of the subjection of the leaders of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party to British Imperialism that British insurance companies were allowed to operate in this country at all. The Minister has not gone so far perhaps as to recognise that it would be permanently to our advantage to have foreign companies available to Irish insurees, but at any rate he admits that for the time being it is, and that is something. The President of the Executive Council, speaking at the Ard-Fheis yesterday, said that where there had been changes in the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party during the past three years it had been due to the fact that since they came into office more information had been absorbed by them. Well, that may be true, but it was not that the information was not available to them before they came into office; it just was more profitable, for Party purposes, to turn a blind eye to certain unpalatable facts which they now are in the position of having to preach to their own followers at the Ard-Fheis.

My instinct is to support the Second Reading of this Bill, but I hope that the Minister will make it possible for unprejudiced persons to do so by convincing us, when he is replying, that the Government have really investigated the matter thoroughly with the aid of the best advice available, and that they have not kept out the hated experts until the eleventh hour. I hope that the Minister will also satisfy us that the provisions of the Bill which I have mentioned, giving him power to settle disputes about industrial assurance on the desire of one party only, and giving him power to fix rates of premiums in a number of classes of insurance, are either justifiable or will be dropped. I think the House will agree with me that in principle the interference of the Government to the extent of settling the price at which insurance companies may sell their insurance is something that requires a very great deal of justification. It is a degree of interference with private business that ought not to be allowed to go unchallenged and unexplained.

It is obvious that an Insurance Bill had to be introduced, and that it is, in fact, long overdue. The big question of industrial insurance has been crying for attention for a very long time, and the big fact which the Minister mentioned — that the premium income of Irish companies is now nearing the sum of £600,000 a year—inevitably meant that the State would have to take action to see that the money subscribed to insurance companies would be so invested and taken care of that those who paid their money to these companies in good faith would get the return to which they were entitled. It seems to me, therefore, that this Bill was an urgent necessity. The question for the House, I think, is whether it fulfils the objects it was intended to fulfil—first of all, to protect policy-holders and next to ensure that Irish companies are sound, reputable companies in a position to get business in competition with any outside company; and thirdly, to secure that the moneys that are subscribed to insurance companies are, from the national point of view, invested to the best advantage. While I could not attempt to give a very positive opinion on this matter, my own reaction is that the Bill fulfils these conditions and is likely to be of enormous benefit to Irish insurers as well as a great encouragement to those who are engaged in Irish assurance and insurance business.

What I am rather surprised at is that a comparatively minor point like the Minister's proposal to settle a difference between policy-holders who have industrial insurance policies and the company with which they are insured without litigation through the courts should figure so prominently in the speeches of Deputies Dillon and MacDermot, while a very much bigger principle involved in the Bill should apparently have escaped their attention. It is particularly surprising to see Deputy MacDermot devoting time to speaking patronisingly of the development of Fianna Fáil, of the gradual education of Fianna Fáil, expressing his satisfaction with what he considers the gradual disillusionment of Fianna Fáil; and yet apparently forgetting that there is in this Bill a very big principle that has never been heard of in our insurance life before. I refer to the principle that the State is practically taking over responsibility for at least a considerable share of the insurance business of the country. It seems to me inevitable that if the State is going to insist on the liquidation of certain companies, or if it is able to secure the amalgamation of companies, the result of that effort will be that only one or two Irish companies will remain in life business, and that the State having done that, having taken power to invest moneys so as to secure the amalgamated company and make it thoroughly solvent, having taken power to appoint directors, the new insurance company must certainly become a body somewhat like the Electricity Supply Board, the Agricultural Credit Corporation, or other of these semi-State companies.

What then will be the position with regard to insurance? Will the State have to guarantee the same results, or as good results, to policy-holders in such a company as in the competing foreign companies? I think that question can hardly be answered at the moment, but it obviously arises. If the State not only insists upon the separation of life business from other business but further insists that either a company is amalgamated with another company or gets out of business, if it further takes power to invest capital, to appoint the majority of the shareholders and the managing director of the company, then that company obviously becomes a Government insurance company. I think that will create new problems. It is a thing I suppose that many people would welcome because there seems to be a great belief that the State does that kind of business better than a private, uncontrolled company would do it. But it looks to me to create certain problems—the problem whether the Government will have to be in active competition with insurance companies that are not Government-controlled and the problem that a State insurance company will be handicapped to the extent that it can only invest its money in certain gilt-edged, probably trustee, securities, whereas the companies that are competing with it can afford to take risks, if uncontrolled, can afford to gamble to some extent and perhaps be successful in their gambles. The latter might then be in a position to pay bonuses and perhaps to give better returns for the money invested than the State-controlled native company. I think that that as I say will create a new problem—whether Irish investors will be content still for patriotic reasons with a return that will come from the Irish companies when the English company may possibly be in a position to give them a better return for their money. It is only when the Bill is in operation that one can see what the developments will be and how that competition will work.

There is a point in connection with the proposal to compel Irish insurance companies to separate life business from general business. The Minister says it is being done to ensure that those who invest their money in life business will get a better return for it, and to ensure that the life moneys will not be devoted to meeting demands arising from other lines of business. Has the contrary not also to be considered—that you can have profits made from a fire business or from any general business devoted to some extent, at all events, to giving bonuses or to securing the rewards of a life policy? I should like to hear the Minister say why it is that this side must be kept out of consideration, why we are making a very big change, a rather unpopular change, because of the possibility that life moneys might be used for general purposes. I do not know enough about the subject to say with confidence that one would be as likely as the other but I think it is due to us that the Minister should tell the House why it should not be possible for a composite business to be run and a general inspection kept of the position, and why, if there were not profits on the life business, they should not on any account be provided for from the moneys accruing on fire and general business. I should like to hear him expand the point that there is danger in such a position to those who have life insurance policies. It is, to me, at all events, not obvious why the danger should be greater than the possibility of greater security.

Is not the explanation of that the fact that all the Irish companies doing business that included life insurance have done badly?

I have not heard of any Irish companies failing to meet maturing policies. I do not think it is correct. I think most of the Irish companies have always met their policies as they matured.

I have not suggested that they have not met the policies, but I suggest that there is pretty good grounds for considering that that mixture of life insurance with other insurances has worked badly in Ireland. Whether it has worked badly elsewhere I doubt.

That is what I would like to know. I think the Irish companies would deny that it has worked badly; probably they would hold that it has worked well. There is obviously a big saving in administrative expenses, and there is this also, that there is room for greater competition. If you allow two types of businesses to be done by the one company, you can have more units than you will have if you insist that life business must be done by a separate company, because, with such a small population as we have, there would hardly be room for more than one or two life companies. So that, in fact, you may before long have only one company and that State controlled. That is the reform I see in the Bill. The Bill inevitably leads to that position, that you will have merely one Irish company doing life business in this country and, possibly, only two or three doing general business. I have no objection to that coming about, but I think the Minister should give us his views as to whether he agrees that that is likely to be the position. I should like also if he would tell what he considers the responsibilities of the State would be if the machinery that is embodied in the Bill for this is put into effect; if the Government invests money in one or two Irish insurance companies and takes power to appoint the directors. It has already got the power to see that the funds are separate for life purposes. There is now power being taken to see that the assets are kept separate. Will that necessitate that the Government will control the investment of the moneys? If so, that company becomes even more a State company. I should like to know if it also means that the existing assets of an Irish company will now have to be divided up. You may have the position that one of the Irish companies has considerable investments in ground rents. They belong to the company as a whole. Will the Minister now insist that these investments will have to be realised, so that part of them may be credited to the life side of the business, and part of them credited to the general side? How is the division to be made?

There are many other points that will have to be elucidated; the Bill, indeed, is very much a committee Bill. I am glad it has been introduced. So far as I can see, it creates a framework that will be extremely useful, and it should be very welcome to policy-holders in this country. It should also be welcome to Irish insurance companies, because it will secure them from any charge of not being in a healthy financial position. They will, at all events, have the Government hall-mark to that effect, and, generally, I think its effect should be altogether good.

The motion before the House in Deputy McGilligan's name is that a select committee should be set up, with power to send for persons, papers and records, to inquire into the whole question of insurance and to report on what changes, if any, in the law are necessary or desirable. That motion should commend itself to the House even more strongly now that the Minister has spoken than before the Minister made his speech. This House is asked to make up its mind upon a matter of very considerable importance, because insurance nowadays is a matter of very high importance, a matter of national importance. The solvency and soundness of the general insurance system of this country is a thing that goes right down and has its roots deeply fixed in our national life. This Bill comes before the House and it does not seem to be unreasonable that the House should have full information; that the House should know fully and completely the nature of the problem it has got to solve, as well as the solution which the Minister puts before it.

I cannot agree with the view put forward that this work of getting facts should be done by people who are paid to get facts; and when people who are paid to get facts have got them and given them to the Minister, the Minister should bring in a Bill and this House should tamely accept the provisions of that Bill. In my judgment that is bureaucracy run mad. I think the House should have the entire facts before it and should have the problem that it has to face clearly put before it. Of course, this House could make up its mind and is perfectly competent and capable of making up its mind as to what is the nature of the disease and what is the proper remedy to be applied.

It is all the more necessary that the House should have this information, which can be got only by a committee such as is suggested in this resolution, owing to the very disquieting nature of the speech which the Minister made when introducing the Bill. I have seldom heard or read a more disquieting speech. All through the speech there was running the innuendo that this country is full of insolvent insurance societies and that we must do something to remedy that position. It is very much worse than if it were coming by direct statement. It is coming by innuendo. All through the Minister's speech there seems to be an undertone that this position is very bad; so bad that I do not want to tell you every single thing about it.

Personally I do not profess to know in what position the companies operating as insurance companies in this country are at the present moment. I do not believe, and it would take a great deal to convince me, that these native companies are in the position which anybody reading the Minister's speech would conclude them to be. The Minister emphasises the terrible danger of people losing their policies, the innuendo being that there are people at the present moment who are in grave danger of losing their policies because they are insured with companies that are doubtful. And the Minister is worse than that because he goes on to give us certain reasons why Irish companies are not at the present moment in a very sound condition. The reasons he gives are so very strange that they would induce the ordinary person to conclude when the Minister has put forward reasons such as these, that the position must be a desperate one. The Minister says that they are very recently formed and that because they have been very recently formed they are encountering difficulties and dangers which a company which had been formed for some time would not be faced with. But surely it is the other way about. Surely when an insurance company starts life insurance and has been ten or 15 years at work, that insurance company ought to be in far and away a sounder and more solvent position than the position it would be in after 35 or 40 years at work. For the first ten, 15 or 20 years it is nearly all taking in money. The premiums are being paid and the number of lives that will drop out will be comparatively small in the earlier period. For that reason the company has a better chance of building up reserves then than it will have for a very long time to come. On the other hand, when the company has been for a considerable time in operation the paying out begins on a large and substantial scale. The company would not be able to put to reserve the same amount that it would put during the earlier years. So far as I am concerned I cannot follow the Minister's argument at all. I do think that when the Minister is driven to an argument of that nature he is certainly insinuating that there must be a very dangerous future for persons who have insured with Irish companies. If it is so the Minister ought to give the House the facts and to let us know what the position is. He ought not to proceed by innuendo which will shake the confidence of people who are insured with these companies. The Minister's remedy for this state of things is the amalgamation of the various companies. Then these companies are to receive a certain amount of capital from the State. The State is to have a certain amount of control. If it is 50 per cent. of the shares then it would be practically complete control. If you take two companies that are in an unsound financial position— and that seems to be the basis upon which the Minister is building—or if you take two or three or four companies which are in an unsound financial position, by amalgamating them you do not make them sound. You rather increase their unsoundness. If you take a great number of drapers who are all in debt and you amalgamate their businesses you do not wipe out their debts. You accumulate all their debts. If a company could not carry on, you will not help that company by merely lending money at interest-bearing shares. Even if they are not interest-bearing shares you will not help an insolvent company at all by lending money to it. That is perfectly obvious. You may postpone for a short time—and keep on postponing —the crash. But the mere lending of money will not put insolvent companies on a sound financial basis.

Will you not reduce the overhead charges?

I am just going to deal with that point. That is the next matter with which I was going to deal because the Minister told us there was to be a reduction in staff. If Deputy Davin will turn to column 1721, volume 59, No. 5, of the Official Report for the 29th of November last he will find what the Minister for Industry and Commerce said:—

"I do not think that the provisions of this Bill will result in any number of persons losing employment."

Where is the cutting down of expenses to come in? For the life of me I do not see it. I can quite understand that if there were two companies sending out their canvassers and if after amalgamation one does the work of the two, you would make a saving in the salaries of one. I can understand in the office where the clerks are not fully worked that you may cut down the number of clerks; or in looking over the higher paid side of experts engaged in insurance investments it may be that one expert would be able to invest a very much larger sum. You may make some ordinary improvements of that nature, but the Minister does not seem to realise that, because his view seems to be that there is to be no appreciable cutting down of the staff. I do not see how there is to be any appreciable cutting down in the administrative costs. If Deputy Davin, when he comes to address the House, will explain how that is to happen or if the Minister himself will enlighten us on that matter I will be considerably obliged. I am assuming that Deputy Davin is going to address the House.

Could not the redundant staff be absorbed by the new reinsurance company of Ireland?

There are certain things which I will deal with on another stage. They are more in the nature of detail than the general principle of the Bill. I think I have said sufficient on what appears to me to be practically a self-evident proposition and that is that the entire insurance position of this country should be in the possession of members of this House before we are asked to deal with the problem and offer a solution of it on details that have not been put before us. According as I read the Minister's statement his solution does not appear to be in any way a sound or satisfactory one.

Now, when I turn to consider the details of this scheme, there are certain things in it of which I approve and certain things of which I do not approve. Those which I approve of do not go at all as far as I would like to see them go. The first question I would like to put to the Minister is this, is it legal now or, after the Bill becomes law, will it be legal in this State to insure live stock or insure against burglary? The Minister made it clear that this Bill would not deal with live stock or burglary or marine insurance or certain other types of insurance; but as I read the Bill, there is nothing in it which shows it shall not apply to this class of insurance. Yet, we are told that this class of insurance will be, after the passing of the Bill, entirely illegal. I desire to draw the Minister's special attention to Section 9 (1):—

It shall not be lawful for any person to effect or to endeavour to effect any contract of assurance——

There is no definition of contract of assurance, so that therefore a contract of assurance could include, let me say, live stock,

... with an assurance company or any other person which or who is not the holder of an assurance licence entitling such company or person to effect contracts of assurance of the kind so effected or endeavoured to be effected by such person.

But the Minister can only give licences for assurance of a certain kind, such as is set out in the definition section. I am certainly satisfied that it is an oversight on the Minister's part.

Assurance business is defined in the definition section—the expression "assurance business" is clearly defined there.

But where is contract of assurance defined? A contract of assurance undefined takes in live stock. I am merely drawing the Minister's attention to the matter, because I believe it is an oversight. I know it is not the Minister's intention, and that is why I am drawing his attention to it. It is certainly highly arguable that a policy of insurance of live stock could not legally be effected at all, because no company can get a licence to effect that class of business. At any rate, I have drawn the Minister's attention to the matter, and I have no doubt he will consider it.

There is a good deal in Section 54, which deals with contents of proposals for industrial assurance policies, and there is also a good deal in Section 57 —admission of age of life assured— with which I agree. But I would like to know why are these provisions confined to industrial policies? Why should they not apply to every policy of life assurance? I think both sections are very good, but I want the Minister to make this point very much stronger. I would like him to make the provisions of Section 54 applicable to every policy of life assurance. It is very easy to say that persons who take out industrial policies are the persons who must be protected, and the persons who do not take out industrial policies are not in such need of protection. In my judgment they are in just as much need of protection. It is not merely in the case of industrial policies, but in other policies, that insurance companies get the better of the insured by the terms of their policies. I think the Minister should seriously consider whether the provisions of those two sections should not be spread to every policy of life assurance.

Possibly the most famous insurance case on record is that in which Lord St. Leonard said that the man filling up a policy of insurance ought always to have an attorney at his elbow. As a matter of fact, people filling up proposals for insurance do not always have attorneys at their elbows and, therefore, a great number of persons are very unjustly treated when the time comes to have payment made to them on their policies. As regards Section 57, I am strongly of the opinion that the provisions there should appear in every policy, and I would suggest that to the Minister as a matter worthy of very serious consideration. It is suggested that a policy shall not be void because it is not mentioned that the person is insured with another company. I am in favour of that, and I think it should be in every policy. If a person fails to mention a previous illness, the company have two years in which to question it. Again, that provision should be in every policy.

Where a policy is filled in wholly or partly by the agent, again that is dealt with, but it is not adequately dealt with in my opinion. I suggest to the Minister that that should be so amended that whenever a policy is filled in wholly or partly by the agent, or in the presence of the agent, that provision should apply, and for all purposes the agent of an insurance company should be the agent of the company and should always be deemed to be the agent of the company. At the present moment the law is that when an insurance agent fills up a policy, he is the agent, not for the company, but for the person who is taking out the policy of insurance. I suggest that the law should be that he should be the agent of the company whenever he is filling up a policy, and every single thing he knows, whether that knowledge came to him as such agent or not, or in the same type of transaction or not—every single bit of knowledge the agent has got should be deemed to be the knowledge of the company.

One of the principal cases we had in this country was the case of Taylor against the Yorkshire Insurance Company. Possibly Deputies from Westmeath are a little familiar with it. There was a very famous stallion standing in Westmeath called General Simons. His front legs from the time of birth were deformed. His owner insured him with the Yorkshire Insurance Company. The agent knew perfectly the condition of the horse's legs and knew also there had been questions about insuring him before. The horse died, and it was held that the agent who filled up the policy and who left a blank in it was agent for Mr. Taylor, the owner of the horse, and not for the insurance company, and in consequence Mr. Taylor lost his case. That seemed to me to be very unfair. It seems to me when an insurance agent asks a person to take out a policy and fills it up, it is his duty to inform his company about every single thing he knows, and the company ought to be taken to have all the knowledge which the agent has got. If the agent does not give them that knowledge, it is the company's own fault. The company ought to appoint agents they can trust and who will tell them. I would press the Minister to enlarge his expectations to that extent.

There is also another matter where the insurance laws press very hardly against the insured. I shall just mention to the Minister possibly the most famous of all insurance cases in that direction. It was a case of Anderson v. Fitzgerald, and it was very interesting. It was tried here in Ireland, and, being a matter that was new to the Irish courts, all the judges were invited to give their opinions. They all gave their opinions in favour of the insured person. The matter was appealed to the House of Lords, and all the English judges were asked to give their opinions on the case. Their opinions were diametrically opposed to the opinions of the Irish judges and went in favour of the insurance company. The House of Lords acted upon the advice of the English judges and reversed that of the Irish courts. That is the case where a man took out a policy, and, in reply to a query whether any relatives of his had died of consumption or other pulmonary disease, he gave the answer "No." As a matter of fact, two sisters died as old women of pulmonary diseases. The judges in Ireland held that that was immaterial. The English judges held that that voided the policy. The House of Lords, therefore, set aside the decision of the Irish judges, and that decision is now the authority for the proposition that the truth of the answer made in the proposal for a policy, and not the materiality of the answer, is what counts. I suggest that that is extremely unfair to an insured person, and that if an untrue statement appears in the proposal for insurance, and if it is not material, the policy should not be voided for that reason.

There is another example of that in another case which was decided in the House of Lords not long ago. It was a Scottish case of Dawson v. Bond. There the person had a motor-car insured. In answer to the question of the company's agent, "Where do you keep your car?" the proposer gave the answer: "We keep it in our ordinary place of business." It turned out that they did not keep it in their ordinary place of business, but kept it on a farm a short distance away. It was not that it had any bearing on the question of the premium; it was that a wrong answer had been given. The car was burned and the insurance company replied to the claim saying: "There is a statement in your proposal which is untrue." It was quite immaterial, but the House of Lords decided that it was a statement of fact and was untrue. The late Lord Haldane, in giving judgment in that case, said that although the result was technical and harsh, still the fact remained and he had to give a technical and harsh decision. I suggest to the Minister, when he is dealing with insurance law, that no policy should be voided on a statement actually made, though untrue, unless that statement is a material statement.

There is another very curious matter in this Bill to which Deputy Dillon also drew attention, and that is in regard to Section 65. Section 65 brings an entirely new principle into operation, and a thoroughly unsatisfactory principle. I do not think that the Minister can, in any way, defend that provision in that section. The object is to add more and more to the powers of bureaucracy, to oust courts and make civil servants do the business of judges. That is a very unsatisfactory thing and should not be done. The Minister says it would save expense. It will not save expense. Even as the matter stands it must add to expense. Sub-section (1) of Section 65 is thoroughly sound, where the Circuit Court must deal with any disputes that arise. That is perfectly sound, but when it goes on to provide that instead of the Circuit Court in certain cases an official of the Department may decide, it is thoroughly unsound. In some cases it requires the consent of both parties, and in others only one, to oust the court and to have the Department's official brought in. What is to be the advantage? We are told the advantage will be in connection with costs; yet when we go further down the section we find that when a case is to be heard by an official there is to be full provision for costs, and we find, eventually, that these costs are to be taxed upon the High Court scale. There being no power to make a rule under this section, they are to be taxed by a High Court taxing master, and they can be recovered by a court action. Here you have provided for a hearing, not before a judge, but before an untrained civil servant, with greater costs of appearing by solicitor or counsel than you would have in the Circuit Court, because you would have probably a much longer hearing and higher expense. You can have your costs taxed, and if they are not paid you can go back to the Circuit Court or court of origin and issue a civil bill. There is no sense in that at all, and it will work out very unfairly. The insurance companies send around their agents when there is a dispute. The individual wants to go to a court and have the matter determined by a trained lawyer, a Circuit Court judge. The insurance company does not like that, and they think they would have a much better chance if they go before a civil servant. He is a man they are continually meeting, and he knows them. He may act entirely fairly, according to his lights, but he is not a trained lawyer. The civil servant will sit there; the insurance expert will come in and tell him all about it. He will not be in the same position to judge questions of law like a judge will be, and there is greater likelihood that he will follow the views put forward by the insurance company. Of course, the insurance company—not all insurance companies—will try to get out of it for as small an amount as they can. Certainly it is not for the benefit of the insured persons that the various other sub-sections of Section 65 are put in. If they are for the benefit of anybody they are for the benefit of the insurance companies. The dice is already sufficiently loaded against the insured persons. The insurance companies draw up policies and the insured person is not consulted as to what is in them.

There is another thing I would like to see stopped. The insured person, under an industrial policy, is entitled to be paid, and there should be provision that the money must be sent to him at once. It is very unfair to have an agent coming around—I have known instances of it—and asking a person whether he would not take shares in the company instead of cash. The insured person wants his cash and should be paid it promptly. In those respects I would press upon the Minister to enlarge the protection clauses for insured persons in this Bill. They are not strong enough at the present moment. They ought to be strengthened in the interests of insured persons, and in the interests of justice and fair play. They can be very much strengthened as compared with the position in which they now are. Taking the Bill as a whole, I think that before we vote on it we ought certainly to have the full facts of the insurance situation before us. I suggest to the House that they should insist upon that by passing Deputy McGilligan's amendment. If the House will not accept Deputy McGilligan's amendment then I suggest to the House that this Bill does not seem to meet at all adequately the situation which the Minister has hinted at in his opening statement, and it ought not to be accepted.

I am supporting this Bill, but it is a rather comprehensive measure and it is very hard to get through it all. I have certain doubts with reference to Irish insurance companies. I approach this Bill from the point of view of the Irish insurance companies and their workers and shareholders. The Minister is looking after the policy holders very well. The Bill, as far as I could read it, has seen after their interests very well. In his speech on the Second Reading of the Bill on the last occasion the Minister made one statement of which I am very glad, because it will do away with a lot of misapprehension. It is reported in column 1720 of the Official Debates of November 29th:—

"If there are now, or should at any time exist, insolvent Irish life assurance companies, the situation which they create must be dealt with, and it seems to me that there are only three practicable alternative courses: (1) to wind them up, distributing the available assets proportionately amongst their creditors; (2) to introduce a special measure compulsorily to write down their liabilities on their policies in accordance with their assets; and (3) the course adopted in the Bill. Of these alternative courses, that adopted by the Government is far preferable to any of the others."

There should be emphasis on that statement to-day when there is a certain amount of propaganda being carried on here by the agents of British offices, who are going around canvassing and saying: "This Bill means the termination of such-and-such a company, and we"—naming their own company—"are going to absorb them under this new Bill in a very short time."

There was an interchange between Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney and Deputy Davin about overhead expenses. I contend that if the income which the English offices have here were diverted to the Irish offices, the overhead expenses would be halved. It is because the total income from industrial and life assurance received by the Irish offices is so small that the overhead expenses are so high. If the Bill would divert the income to the Irish offices, then it would be doing a great deal of good. I am anxious to know whether the terms of the Bill give protection to Irish offices as against foreign offices. The Minister has paid a tribute to the work of the pioneers of Irish assurance. He could not pay them sufficient tribute. I happened to work for Irish companies, and am associated with one at present. I know the uphill struggle which they had when they had no protection, and when there was no native Government here, and I think the utmost sympathy should be given to their work by the whole House. When we talk about their solvency, we should contrast their position with that of the big millionaire companies in England when they were twenty years in existence, and ask ourselves whether they were as sound then as the Irish companies are to-day. They had ninety years in which to establish their present position, without let or hindrance, and I believe that, if legislation diverts the industrial and life assurance income to Irish offices, in a far less time they will be in a comparatively better position than the English offices are at present.

I should like to draw the attention of the House to certain figures. In the case of one particular company, the facts about which are known to me, the ratio of expenses in 1932 was 45.6 per cent.; in 1933, 42.8 per cent., with an increased premium of £3,000; in 1934 the figure was 41 per cent., with an increased premium of £10,000; in 1935 its estimated expenses are 39.8 per cent., with an increased premium of £10,000. I contend that if what is recommended in the Cohen Report to the British Government on industrial assurance in 1931, namely, a five-years period in which to put their house in order, is given to the Irish offices, they will be in a perfectly solvent position. That contention is borne out by the figures which I have quoted. When we talk about the ratio of expenses we should bear in mind that we are an agricultural country; that our population is much smaller per square mile than it is in England; that fewer of our people are engaged in industrial pursuits, and no matter what the Irish companies do the ratio of expenses will continue to be higher here. When the big industrial companies who have offices here gave their ratio of expenses they included their expenses in Great Britain, in Scotland and here. That is not a fair comparison.

Section 12 (c) of the Bill says: "The majority of the directors (other than a managing director giving the whole of his time to his duties as such director) of such company are citizens of Saorstát Eireann." I do not see why the managing director should be excluded from that provision; I think he also should be a citizen of the Saorstát. Section 18 (c) says that when "such licensee has failed to pay, within one month after a claim on an insurance policy with such licensee is admitted, decided, or adjudged to be due, the amount of such claim to the person entitled thereto, the Minister may ... consider the suspension or revocation of such licence." I think that is a bit drastic, and that the period should be two or three months at least. I contend that Section 53 is an impossible section. It deals with general meetings of industrial assurance companies and if I read this aright it would be an impossible provision to carry out. It says:—

Every industrial assurance company shall hold at least one general meeting every year.

(2) Notice of every general meeting of an industrial assurance company shall, unless the day, hour and place thereof is fixed by the articles of association of such company, be given by such company in either of the following ways, that is to say, either by advertisement to be published at least twice in at least two newspapers in general circulation in every county in which such company carries on industrial assurance business or by being served upon each member of such company.

(3) Every such notice shall be last published or served (as the case may be) at least 14 days before the day appointed for the general meeting to which such notice relates and a copy of such notice printed in legible characters shall be kept affixed by such company in some conspicuous place where it may easily be read in or on the outside of every office of such company at which such industrial assurance business is carried on.

(4) Every such notice shall specify the day, hour and place and the objects of the meeting to which it relates ...

I contend that is an impossible clause to carry into practical effect and that the effect of it will be to impose unnecessary expense on the companies. I contend that the clause should be omitted altogether.

Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney dealt with Section 54. He dealt with it I think in reference to a person taking out insurance policies with another company, without reference to the fact that he had held a policy previously. If I read the section aright, sub-section (4) deals with the one company. Sub-section (4) states:—

Whenever a proposal for an industrial assurance policy contains a statement, which is not true in fact, that the person in respect of whose life such proposal has been made is not at the time of making such proposal a person on whose life any other policy has been issued by the industrial insurance company to which such proposal is made, and a policy of assurance on the life of such person is issued by such company in pursuance of such proposal, such company shall, notwithstanding that such statement is not true and that the truth of such statement is made a condition of such policy, be liable on foot of such policy.

That deals with two policies, as far as I can read it, with the one company and it is not fair to an Irish company, or to any other company. In the Industrial Insurance Act of Northern Ireland, 1924, Section 5 deals with that matter. It says:—

"Any collecting society or industrial assurance company which issues policies of industrial assurance which are illegal or are not within the legal powers of the society or company shall be held to have made default in complying with the provisions of this Act and where any such policy has been issued, the society or company shall, without prejudice to any other penalty, be liable to pay to the owner of the policy a sum equal to the surrender value of the policy (to be ascertained in manner hereinafter provided), or, if the policy was issued after the commencement of this Act, a sum equal to the amount of the premiums paid, unless it is proved that owing to any false representation on the part of the proposer, the society or company did not know that the policy was illegal or beyond their legal powers."

I contend that that section in the Northern Act is much fairer to the companies and, in common justice, that the insurer under sub-section (4) of Section 54 gets away with too much under this Bill.

Sub-section (2) of Section 57 states:—

Whenever an industrial assurance company receives a proposal for a policy of industrial insurance and such proposal contains an incorrect statement of the age of the person whose life is thereby proposed to be assured, such company may, within one month after the date on which it receives such proposal, so adjust the terms of the policy issued, or about to be issued, in pursuance of such proposal as to make such terms conform to the terms applicable to the true age of such person.

I contend that the period of one month given there is altogether too short. In the Act I have quoted, two years are given to the companies on any ordinary business transaction to rectify the falsification of age. One month is much too short and it is not fair to any insurance company.

Then Section 59 (2) says:—

Where a policy of industrial assurance has become forfeited by reason of the non-payment of a premium payable in respect thereof and it is shown that the collector or other person having the duty of collecting the premiums payable in respect of such policy was negligent or failed to exercise due diligence in the collection of such premiums during the period between the last payment of any such premium and the forfeiture of such policy and within two years after such forfeiture all unpaid premiums in respect of such policy (including premiums which would have become payable if such policy had not been forfeited) are paid to the industrial assurance company by which such policy was issued, the said forfeiture shall be cancelled and the rights under such policy of the person who effected the policy shall become and be revived.

That simply means that if a person with a lapsed policy feels that a claim is about to become due he can go into the office, pay up the arrears and revive the claim. That is hardly fair to the company.

In Section 80 (2) (b) it is provided:—

A demand for inspection shall be deemed to have been duly made by an officer of the Minister if such demand is made verbally at an office of the company to any book-keeper or other member of the clerical staff of the company at such office.

I should like to take that along with Section 88 which says:—

Where a foreign company carries on in Saorstát Eireann any class of assurance business the Minister may, if he so thinks fit, accept (in lieu of the abstracts and statements which such company is required by the Act of 1909 or this Act to make or deposit) copies of the abstracts and statements which such company is, by the law of the country in which such company is incorporated, require to make or deposit with the Government or a Department or officer of the Government of such country.

I contend that there is an unfair treatment of Irish companies there. They are subject to the most minute scrutiny. An officer of the Department can go in to their office and demand to see books. He can go across the counter and examine these books in detail, while in the case of the English company the abstract of their accounts from their London office will be accepted by the Department of Industry and Commerce.

I think that Section 38 is altogether too drastic a section. It would seem to indicate a determination to wind up certain companies. I am very much afraid that if the Irish offices are reduced to two, a life office and a composite office, the millionaire companies here in ten years' time will whack them and absorb them. That is my honest opinion. These companies can be fed with funds from the other side and they can absorb the redundant workers of the Irish offices and go out with these redundant workers, who are well trained and who will have a certain amount of sympathy on their side, and fight the two or three Irish offices and eventually wipe them out.

I think the principle of forced amalgamation is running through this section:—

A company shall be deemed to be or to have been insolvent for the purposes of this Part of this Act on any particular date, present or past, if the circumstances of such company on that particular date are or were such that if proceedings for the winding-up of such company were or had been taken on the said date, the court could, under Sections 129 and 130 of the Act of 1908, hold or have held such company to be, on the said date, unable to pay its debts.

I think that part of it dealing with present and past should be struck out. That is a suggestion, of course, for the Committee Stage; but the examination of companies under the 1908 Act should be only applicable from the passing of this Bill. If the Minister had power to go back in connection with any Irish companies to the time when they started, I do not say he will, but he could find reason for winding-up every Irish insurance company. I seriously suggest that there should be no reference to the past there.

Does not the next section deal with that?

The next section reads:—

The Minister may present a petition for the winding-up of an assurance company on the ground that such company is unable to pay its debts....

"Is unable."

That does not prevent the operation of the previous section.

Surely the only petition that can be presented is that the company "is unable to pay its debts"?

I do not see the necessity then for the insertion of the previous section.

What about the quinquennial valuation?

That does not come in here.

I should like to know the Minister's intentions about that, like yourself.

Section 52 reads:—

Notwithstanding anything contained in Section 5 of the Act of 1909, the first industrial assurance valuation of an industrial assurance company shall be made within two years after the commencement of this Part of this Act or within such longer period after such commencement as the Minister shall in any particular case appoint."

I think that should be five years. These are the main points which strike me in regard to this Bill. I think there should be a provision also that the funds of the foreign offices licensed here should be invested in this country for the benefit of the country. As I said in the beginning, I believe that if means are found under this Bill of diverting the total income or nearly the total income from industrial and life assurance into the Irish offices, in a very short time they will be in an impregnable position. I do not believe in forced amalgamation. I believe that the Minister should be careful in licensing any further life and industrial companies, no matter what their funds are. There are sufficient to carry on the business that is here. If they get a chance under this Bill, which I am sure they will, they will get on their feet in a very short period.

Adequate provisions are being made for the safeguarding of the policy-holders. In that matter of course there is a contract between two parties. People very often talk about rogues and robbers and all that kind of thing, as they do about people in business. There is also the aspect that the insurance companies have to meet their liabilities and make provision for their policy-holders. I hope that that will be borne in mind when the Bill is going through the House. Then there is the question of the men, some of whom have spent 20 and 21 years of their lives as employees of insurance companies. The shareholders also deserve credit for putting money in Irish insurance. Due consideration to their claims should be given when the Bill is going through the House.

With all due respect to those who have spoken on the amendment from this side of the House, I think the best case I have heard for the amendment has been made by Deputies Moore and Kennedy. Anyone who listened to the speech just delivered by Deputy Kennedy would immediately agree that there is a necessity for a further and expert inquiry into this matter. So far as I am personally concerned, I am satisfied that there was an urgent necessity for legislation to deal with the question of assurance in this country, particularly industrial assurance. In so far as the Bill goes to meet some of the evils which obtain and have obtained in this country, I welcome it. My main objection to it is, however, that it does not go to the root of the trouble. For the moment, I am speaking mainly of industrial assurance. It seems to me that the evils inherent in the system of procuring industrial assurance, not only in this country but in Great Britain, have not been touched by this Bill, except to a very limited extent in Section 57. It seems to me that until such time as the Minister will get to the bedrock of the matter, and by that I mean until he gets down to the system which obtains in this country, as also in Great Britain, of recruiting insurance agents and the basis upon which they are remunerated for the work, he is not going to get after the evils inherent in the system.

I want to make it clear that these things are not peculiar to this country, that they happen also, perhaps to as great an extent, in Great Britain. In order to prove that point, I should like to give one or two quotations from the Report of the Cohen Committee, referred to by Deputy Kennedy. The Committee report that "of the 10,000,000 new policies issued in 1929 no fewer than 6,000,000 of them lapsed through the inability of the policy-holders to continue to pay their premiums. In 5,000,000 of these nothing was repayable to the policy-holders." It says that 6,000,000 out of a total of 10,000,000 policies issued lapsed through the inability of the policy-holders to continue to pay the premiums. From my experience and knowledge of the way in which industrial business is procured in this country, I should like to differ from the conclusion arrived at by that Committee, and I say that with great respect to these experts.

It seems inconceivable to me that out of 10,000,000 policies issued, 6,000,000 would lapse through the inability of the persons who in the first instance took out the policies, to continue paying on them. What is largely responsible for a very big number of lapsed policies is because of the way in which that business was procured. A similar state of affairs exists in this country. That brings me back to the system by which agents are recruited. The policy of companies in this country —Irish as well as English—in the matter of industrial business—and I want to emphasise that I am now dealing with industrial insurance—is to get as many agents in a district as they possibly can. If a company has already got ten agents in one parish, they would be only too glad to take on another. They pay them on commission. That method is based on the reason that every agent has a circle of friends and relatives. These friends and relatives will take out small policies of 3d. per week, 6d. per week or 1/- a week, not because they want to insure but to help on their friend who has got a job in the insurance company. As soon as that particular agent has exhausted his friends and relatives in the district, he is of no further use to the company, and he is disposed of. What happens then is that the friends and relatives who took out the policy, mainly because they wanted to do a good turn to the man who was appointed, lost further interest in it and did not continue to pay the premiums. It may be said that such a thing would not pay the insurance companies very well. We must always keep at the back of our minds the number of policies lapsed.

I do not suggest that this applies to all companies, but it applies to a certain number who remunerate their agents in such a fashion that they safeguard themselves against any loss, whether the policy remains in force for a short or a long period. I, myself, know small companies which pay procuration fees to the agent. The agent gets some person to insure his father or mother. What is called 20 times the amount of the premium is paid for procuring that policy, but if that policy lapses in one year or five years the agent has to cover that particular lapsed policy. In other words, he has to make good to the company the pounds originally paid in procuration fees, notwithstanding the fact that the company had been getting the premiums for five years.

There is a worse feature than that, and it applies to companies which boast of their high standing in the insurance world. When a policy lapses after the procuration fees have been paid, the agent is to make good that, even though the fees have not been paid to him, but to his predecessor. I want to suggest to the Minister and to the House that so far as industrial insurance business is concerned, you are not going to give to the policy holders the protection they require until you get that system of recruitment altered. You are not going to stop the indecent methods that have been and still are in existence in this country in procuring industrial business. Remember that this Bill is required mainly for the protection of industrial insurance policy-holders. I would venture to say that those members of the House who, for their sins, have any knowledge of the business, will agree with me that in 90 per cent. of the cases industrial business is given to the agent without having any regard whatever to the company, whether it is English or Irish, or whether it is in a good or a bad condition. If that is not true in 90 per cent. of the cases, it is at all events very largely true.

What happens generally is that the person who effects an industrial insurance policy never fills up the proposal form at all. It is filled up for him, sometimes by the agent in his presence, and sometimes it is partly filled up in his presence when certain answers to questions which the agent cannot answer himself have to be inserted. I venture to suggest that in a considerable number of these cases the people taking out the policies are quite ignorant of their rights in the matter, and I suggest that that ignorance has been played upon by the companies, both Irish and English, in this country.

The person who is taking out a life policy, generally speaking, has sufficient interest and he is sufficiently intelligent to look after his own interests in the matter. The premium he has to pay is sufficiently high to force him to make inquiries about the particular company in which he wishes to insure. He will make inquiries amongst other companies to see whether he is getting the best value. Now that class of inquiry does not obtain so far as industrial assurance goes.

Deputy Kennedy talks about the ratio of administration expenses. Of course that is very important. If it is to be fully discussed here in this House it should be discussed in the light of this fact after having due regard to the rights of the company, particularly Irish companies and those employed by those companies. Our chief and primary duty is to safeguard the rights of the policy holders. My own experience convinces me that insurance companies are usually very well able to look after themselves. Again, to show that the very high percentage of expenses in the running of certain of these companies is not confined to this country, let me quote from the same report of the Inter-Departmental Committee in Great Britain:—

"In some cases as much as 73 per cent. of the income was devoted to expenses with no provision for improved benefits to the policy holders."

The Committee reported that in one case they examined the emoluments of the directors for 1929 totalled 8 per cent. of the premium income for the year. Remember that happened in Great Britain in 1929, and it happened under an insurance code that was very much superior to anything that obtained in this country. I suggest that it is likely to happen or that the evil will be continued here, only to a very smaller extent, if the Bill before us is allowed to go through in its present form.

There has been a good deal of talk here about the Minister's action in divorcing fire and accident from industrial and life. The Minister has been criticised very strongly in that connection. I am satisfied that the Minister would not take that particular action unless he thought it was absolutely necessary, just as I am also satisfied that the Minister would not introduce this Bill in its present form unless he considered it absolutely necessary. Anybody who has any little knowledge of insurance work will recognise that there is a danger of companies being tempted to recoup one fund from another as a temporary expedient in the hope that things will balance themselves later on. I want to say, with regard to Irish insurance companies, that these companies were started here at a certain period, and I must give the fullest possible credit to the men who started those companies and who worked them. Those men are entitled to the fullest possible credit. But we have to have regard also to the fact that many of those people, the majority of them who took out policies in the Irish companies at the beginning, and, what is much more important, who were induced to transfer from other companies, to throw up their existing policies with British and other companies, are entitled to the fullest possible protection. I could quote, if I so desired, many cases of that sort. I think that the Irish companies were foolish ever to set out on that line of inducing people to transfer, to throw up existing policies with British companies, and guarantee them full benefit. I have my doubts if it ever paid them. There are cases I could quote, if necessary, that are not at all creditable.

I want to make quite clear what is the great evil and the great stumbling block—the indecent scramble for business, the policy of get business, get it fairly if you can, but get it any way. That is the policy of many insurance companies, I do not say all of them. When you have eight, 12 or 20 insurance agents for different companies in a small town, very often what could hardly be classified as a town—a village—each trying to get an existence out of the business, those agents will naturally go to any extremes in order to get business.

The Minister, I am glad to say, is trying to meet the situation with regard to the question of age. Certain companies have made a practice of accepting the statement, when the policy is being taken out, of the person effecting the insurance. If a man says his father or mother is 51 years of age, the agent puts down 51 years, although the person might be 70. The policy is then issued on that basis. Those policies are usually issued up to a certain age without medical examination. There is usually a limit so far as age is concerned, and a limit so far as the amount of the policy is concerned, without a medical examination. It may be to the advantage of the insurance agent to make the person out younger. Very often it is the custom to make the person out younger than he or she really is, so as to enable the agent to insure that particular person for the maximum amount, having regard to the maximum age fixed, without medical examination. The higher he can put the weekly premium the more he has to get by way of commission. Naturally he will try so far as he can to swell his weekly remuneration.

There are a great many other points, but they are more for the Committee Stage and I do not propose to go into them now. Has the Minister considered the question of agents? If he cannot bring something into this Bill to deal with their position, will he say if he proposes to introduce another Bill at a later stage, and whether he is going to take any steps to regulate the number of agents that can be appointed throughout the country?

The Minister has taken a fairly effective step in this Bill to see that we are not going to have new companies added to what I consider too large a number of companies. It is just as necessary also to see that the existing companies are not free to parcel out whatever insurance business may be available in a district, which would really be only sufficient to give a decent livelihood to three or four men, amongst 10 or 15 persons. It is my firm belief that, with all the good intentions behind the Bill, until such time as the Minister takes steps to meet the points I have put forward, I do not think it will be effective.

The Minister ought to make a more definite statement regarding the provision to be made for redundant agents who will lose their employment when this Bill becomes law. He made a rather vague statement in his opening speech, and he should now make the position a little more clear. There will be very definite hardship on those men, many of whom have given perhaps the greater part of their lives to this work. They are very well trained, and they are entitled to consideration. We should have a clearer statement from the Minister on that point.

In a Second Reading debate like this I think we should try to keep to the big considerations that induced the Minister to put this measure before the Government and eventually before the House. I think everybody admits there is a need at all times for some sort of regulation and control of insurance business. We know that it is a very intricate business, and policy holders, especially industrial policy holders, are entitled to a certain amount of protection. When buying a policy of insurance a person is not buying in the same sense as he would be buying goods in the shop. If a person enters a shop he has a reasonable idea whether he is getting good value or not. Those who have money to put into a bank are often people who know a thing or two. They know something about a bank before they put money into it. Even if they are people who do not know a lot, they are not running the same risk with a bank as with an insurance company. At least they can go back to the bank and take out the money, but they cannot go to the insurance company until the term of years is up. In that way it is much more necessary to have regulations with regard to insurance business than with regard to any other line of business where people are trying to get value for their money.

Even when we see the balance sheet of an insurance company we are not altogether sure that the company is all right. The company may show assets to the extent of £50,000, but still it may not be properly solvent in the actuarial sense. Ordinary people may be misled when they see that an insurance company has assets to the extent of £50,000,000. They say to themselves, "That insurance company must be right"; but it may not necessarily be right. After all it is only the actuary, not the auditor, who can find out whether an insurance company is solvent or not. So we must have control of some kind. I think that cannot be denied. Nobody has said that we must not have control. Therefore we get to the point of what is the type of control we ought to have in regard to insurance. I think the Minister must have the power to examine the affairs of the insurance companies. If he finds a company is not solvent he must necessarily have the power to take action. What holds good under this Bill is the same as that which holds good in every other country. If they find, from examination by actuaries and experts, that an insurance company is insolvent, or is going to be insolvent, and will not be able to meet its liabilities, not in the next year or two, but in the next ten years, then the Minister must have power to say I shall wind up this company and put things right. That is the power the Minister is taking. He is taking power to wind up not to amalgamate Irish companies as has been stated here. He is taking power so as to be able to order a company to close down if it has gone insolvent, and not to deceive intending policy holders by collecting money from them which that company would not be in a position to pay upon policies after 15 or 20 years.

There can be no objection to the power to wind up a company if the company becomes insolvent. But, as there has been an amount of consideration shown by everybody for policy holders in Irish companies, that, also, is shown by the Minister. These policy holders are entitled to some protection other than policy holders would get in the ordinary way. People have insured in Irish companies to some extent, at all events, from patriotic motives. Deputy Morrissey pointed out that people who had insurance policies running in foreign companies left these policies aside, and changed over to Irish companies for patriotic reasons in many cases. Some special consideration is, therefore, due to those policy holders with Irish companies that have become insolvent. I was not here when the Minister made his speech in moving the Second Reading of this Bill, but I read it since in the Official Report, and I cannot agree that the Minister, by innuendo, or in any other way, inferred that Irish companies were going to fail in the future or at any other time. Every country has from time to time brought in legislation dealing with insurance. That does not say that the companies are going to fail. But it is provided for in this Bill that, in order to save policy holders, the Minister can approve a scheme of amalgamation if put before him by a company which is solvent with another company that is insolvent. He cannot force that amalgamation or compel the companies to amalgamate. If it comes to an extreme case all he can do is to say that the company must be wound up because it is insolvent, and, then, things will go on as they would have gone on if this Bill never was brought in. That provision of amalgamation at any rate, I believe, only applies to Irish companies that may become insolvent. It does not apply to foreign companies that become insolvent, although there again, it is quite open to another foreign company to take over a company that becomes insolvent, and they can in fact amalgamate although it is not provided for in this particular way.

Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, in speaking here to-day, made a statement which shows that he does not fully understand the finance of insurance companies. He said that the Minister pointed out in his opening statement that Irish companies had to go through a very difficult time in their early stages, because they had higher overhead charges, and so on. The Deputy pointed out that surely a young company ought to be more solvent than a company of 25 or 30 years of age, because after 25 or 30 years they would have to pay out, while they do not pay in the first five or seven years. That shows an entire lack of understanding of the whole position. As I have stated, the balance sheet in the first eight or nine years, when the company is collecting more than it has paid out, and therefore has money in reserve actually, may show that the liabilities incurred by that company are more than it can meet when the time comes to meet those liabilities. So evidently this question of insolvency is not understood by the Deputy, and that may be some argument for the amendment moved by Deputy McGilligan. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney said that amalgamation of insolvent companies was to make them solvent and that you do not do it by lending money. It is not proposed here to lend money; it is proposed to put in additional capital. And, therefore, again, although the balance sheet may show liability for capital on one side and assets on the other, the net result may show that there is no addition by putting in capital, yet there is a very big change, because it shows that the policy holders are protected, even though the shareholders have very little to get in the way of winding up the company.

I know certain people have said, perhaps not in this House, but outside it, that if this is a case where the Government are going to put State moneys into this company, the State as a shareholder will have very little to show or to get at least in the earlier stages. Why therefore should the State not make a grant? I think the answer to that is that if the State is going to put money into one of the amalgamated companies surely the State is entitled to the fruits of any appreciation of the investment and is as much entitled to that as the original shareholders at present owning the company. It has been asked, also, why the money should not be put in in the form of debentures rather than in the form of shares. There, again, I say if the State is going to put money into an amalgamated company of that kind where it might hold that the management is not as good as it might be, surely the State is entitled to take some control of the management when it is putting in money by way of investment of shares. I do not want to say any more about this amalgamation scheme, except that in my opinion the Minister, who is bound to give full consideration to the interests of policy holders in framing a Bill like this, could not have done better, keeping the interests of the policy holders in mind, to help those people who have given so much of their time, their enthusiasm and so on, in building up Irish insurance business in this country, than he has done under this proposed amalgamation scheme.

With regard to fire and general insurance, I know it is claimed by some that all this business should go to Irish companies; and perhaps that could be done. I do not know whether it could be done or not, but I do know that at least there is an argument that there are certain risks—fire risks, for instance—which could not be carried by all the Irish companies combined, and it is inevitable that at least a part of these risks would have to be sent outside of this country for reinsurance. So that, whatever way this question of fire and accident and general insurance might be dealt with, I think that nobody would hold that it could all be retained amongst existing Irish companies. Accordingly, we must look at it from the point of view that at least part of it will have to go outside the country, in order that it may be covered by reinsurance or otherwise, so that our risks may be fully covered as they have been in the past. The scheme which is provided in this Bill, I believe, gives the advantage to the Irish companies of getting a bit of practically every risk, because most fire risks, of course, have some reinsurance and a good many accident risks have reinsurance. There are some accident risks, perhaps, that are carried by the company which takes them on without any reinsurance, but a good deal of the fire and accident and general insurance finds its way into the reinsurance market. Now, under the scheme set out in this Bill it can be arranged that a good deal of this business, that now goes for reinsurance, will go back again and be distributed amongst the Irish companies. I think that is a very good arrangement because it gives a large amount of business to the Irish companies without upsetting present arrangements to any great extent. It is an experiment that can be carried out without any disturbance in either the insurance or the reinsurance market. This scheme also has the advantage of leaving the way open for some other method of dealing with the matter if the scheme is found, on trial, not to be a success; and if it is found, on trial, to be a success, it also leaves the way open to give more and more insurance business to the Irish companies until eventually they can be asked to carry all the fire and accident insurance that is available in the country.

As I have said, I think that at this particular stage of the Bill we need only deal with it in a very general way. There will be other stages of the Bill in which we can deal with the details. I wanted to say, however, that the Minister, besides having the problem before him of protecting the policy holders in the insurance companies here in the same way as they are protected in every other country also had the additional problem here of having young Irish insurance companies to be looked after. I believe, honestly, as one who has been associated with an Irish insurance company for many years, that the Minister could not have produced a better scheme for the protection of Irish companies while keeping in mind all the time his first duty, which is to protect the policy holders, whatever companies they may go to. The only other question that was asked here—at least the only question that I heard here to-day—was: Why was the Bill introduced now? Well, I think the answer to that is, because it was not introduced sooner.

What about another answer that could be given to it?

Dr. Ryan

What other answer?

There is another answer—that it might be better if it were introduced later.

Dr. Ryan

Oh, well, I do not know about that.

Is not that the pivotal point?

Dr. Ryan

If it is the point, nobody made it.

Is not the point always to be made by the person who introduces the proposal? Why should there not be a question as to why it should be introduced now?

Dr. Ryan

There was a Commission set up in 1924, I think.

Well, it reported in 1923.

Dr. Ryan

Very well, 1923. That Commission had to do with industrial insurance and it reported—I was interested in its report at the time— in favour of many necessary reforms. It pointed out very many of the reforms, such as Deputy Morrissey has been speaking about to-day, to which the policy holders were entitled, and other reforms also; but nobody has asked the question why were not these reforms put into operation by legislation in 1924 or 1925, or in any year since the year 1923. It had to be done some time, and Mr. Lemass, when he took over the Department of Industry and Commerce, naturally took up this question, the same as he took up every other question that had been put aside, and he started to prepare legislation in connection with insurances. In his thorough way, however, he said: Why deal with industrial insurance alone? Why not deal with the whole problem? As a result of his examination of this problem and as a result of his taking up those matters, such as insurance, that were put aside before he came into office, he has produced this scheme which, in my opinion, is the most complete, the most thorough, and the most perfect scheme that could be introduced at the present time to deal with insurance.

That is certainly a very sound reason!

I have read this Bill with very considerable interest and I think that, on the whole, it is a Bill to be welcomed, although I should not like to give it the certificate of perfection which the Minister for Agriculture has just seen fit to confer upon it. Nevertheless, however, the Bill does introduce many necessary and far-reaching reforms, and I am glad that steps are being taken to provide the policy holders with security, stability and guarantees, which they have not had so far in respect of insurance legislation in this country. This Bill represents the first effort of this new State to legislate on the subject of insurance after a revolution and, I think, as the Minister for Agriculture has said, that the necessity for the introduction of this legislation has been apparent for very many years. The need for its introduction is explained by the enormous growth in the insurance and assurance business. Its introduction has been rendered still more necessary by the peculiar growth of Irish insurance companies in this country and by the extent of the external domination of insurance by outside insurance companies in a small country such as this.

Insurance, from very small beginnings, has now developed into an enormous industry, an industry with which is bound up the future wellbeing, the security and the stability of many, many people amongst the community, and the State can no longer allow legislation in respect of insurance to take the simple line of asking no questions and of holding the ring, even if it ever performed that function effectively, between the policy holder on the one hand and the powerful insurance combine on the other hand. I think that there is an obvious responsibility on the State to exercise the utmost possible vigilance on behalf of policy holders. While very rapid strides are made in this Bill to safe-guard the interests of policy holders, I think that other provisions might usefully be made in order to ensure that the policy holders are protected, as far as the Legislature can protect them, against the many risks and, still more, abuses to which they have been subjected in the past because of the absence of any State provision against risks or abuses of that particular kind.

When we consider the position of the policy holder in relation to assurance and in relation to this Bill, we find, in the main, a simple citizen of moderate means, with heavy domestic responsibilities, anxious to make provision for the rainy day, anxious to provide some safeguard in times of misfortune, anxious to make some provision for the day when, perhaps, death may claim the breadwinner of the family: anxious to make provision for those kinds of risks which are now underwritten by assurance and insurance companies. That simple, modest individual in the community is, surely, entitled to have his interests protected by legislation in every possible way when the Legislature can do it. At all events, I think most people, other than those who are speaking from the briefs supplied by insurance companies, will take the view that the policy holder ought to be protected against sharp practice, that the policy holder ought to be protected against many of the mean and disreputable devices which have been practised on him in the past in order to deprive him of the provision which he has endeavoured to make against misfortune or old age by way of assurance.

Anybody who has had any experience of the assurance industry, and particularly experience of it in this country, knows perfectly well that many mean practices were resorted to against policy holders. The main consideration with many companies, both Irish and British, was to get as much new business as possible and to lapse as many old policies as possible. The unfortunate policy holder, the man of slender resources with no great power or influence in the community, when faced with economic need, perhaps unemployment, was expected to stand up against a systematic policy of that kind which was practised by many large companies, and even by many small companies, too. One has had experience from time to time of policy holders taking out a policy of insurance to provide for, perhaps, the education of a child at the age of 14 or 15 years, perhaps to make provision for the burial expenses of a father or mother when death claimed either, or, perhaps, to make some provision for helpless children if anything happened to the breadwinner, and, by a set of economic circumstances and resort to sharp practice on the part of companies, these unfortunate policy holders were compelled to allow their policies to lapse. They have been assisted artificially by an insurance company to do that, not being able to recover a single farthing of all the money they had paid in premiums to the company over perhaps a long period of years.

As a matter of fact, under the legislation that exists, or because of the absence of effective legislation, in respect to insurance in this country, the companies which have operated here have been allowed, all too frequently and all too promiscuously, to indulge in what I can only describe as the feast of lapses. Anybody who has any experience in this country, particularly in the rural areas and, more particularly, in the poorer quarters of our towns and cities, knows the long tales that can be told by policy holders of having taken out policies and of being compelled, either by economic necessity and in many cases by sharp practices, to lapse the policies with resultant substantial benefits to the company which issued the policies.

It is not an unknown dodge in the insurance world for policies to be allowed to lapse by means of a scheme of the non-collection of premiums, and in those cases where the premiums were not collected, and poor working-class families did not take special steps on their own to have the premiums paid, these policies were allowed to lapse. Because of the fact that their economic circumstances did not enable them to make regular provision for the payment of contributions on their policies without the aid of a weekly collector, they were compelled to sacrifice their entire interest in the policy. There are some insurance companies that could tell this House a good deal in respect of the manner in which a policy of that kind can be practised with considerable success. There was the other problem for the policy holder, and the other dodge for some companies, of allowing persons to take out policies at fictitious ages: to accept a premium from a policy holder in that category, and then, when a person died and a claim was made upon the company, or when a substantial number of premiums had been paid on the policy, to dispute the age and to invalidate the policy. In our own courts there has been told many a tale of policy holders having had premiums accepted from them, and of the age, accepted by the company in the first instance when issuing the policy, being disputed when a claim happened to be made on the company.

I am glad that the Minister has taken steps, through the medium of this Bill, to remove these wicked and widespread abuses so far as the policy holders are concerned. I am glad that, in future, the policy holder is going to have the backing of the State against the abuses which threatened him in the past, and against some of the sharp practices which reflect no credit at all upon the commercial integrity of those who resorted to them with such apparent ease when dealing with the unfortunate working-class people, or people who were not in a position to invoke the assistance of the courts even if it was possible, in the absence of legislation, to get effective protection from the courts in a matter of that kind.

Now, under this Bill, a person who has paid a premium and is unable to continue to keep the policy in existence will be entitled to a surrender value in respect of the premium paid, or to a free policy in respect of the premiums paid, or will be entitled, if he can show that the policy has been lapsed because of negligence on the part of the collector, to revive the policy within a period of two years by paying the arrears due. These provisions in the Bill are satisfactory to policy holders. In my opinion the passage into law of a Bill of this kind, providing that kind of security for policy holders, ought not to be delayed for any length. If it is necessary to have an inquiry into the actuarial position of insurance companies inside and outside this country, which operate here, at all events let us have the legislation as soon as possible. We can have the inquiry afterwards and, if necessary, amending legislation, or any further legislation of a comprehensive character which may be found necessary as a result of an inquiry of the kind suggested.

Deputy Morrissey referred to the position of agents of existing companies and societies. I want to deal with that question. In this Bill we are giving extern companies a pretty well consolidated position. There might be very sound reasons, having regard to the position of our Irish companies, why it would be undesirable in existing circumstances, and having regard to the interest of Irish policy holders, to take steps which might not react to the benefit either of the country or of Irish policy holders. But, we ought to recognise definitely that we are placing these companies in a fairly privileged position in respect to their activities, and if we are doing that, we ought to extract from the companies something in the way of definitely satisfactory conditions for those who are employed by them. That brings me to the position of agents who were in the employment of some of the extern companies, and agents who are in the employment of companies both extern and intern. The Minister may be aware, and if he is not, the information can easily be obtained both in this country and from the report of the Cohen Committee in Great Britain, of the practice resorted to by many extern and intern companies of employing local agents. The main consideration of the bulk of the insurance companies has been a passionate drive for more business. The agents are employed to get business in every possible field, and in every possible way. I do not say that they are encouraged to get that business by resorting to any definite dishonesty, but I say this: that it is often got in a way that is not wholly honest. That insane drive for new business in any case has led to many illegalities, and many irregularities in the past, and has produced a system of speeding up on the part of insurance agents which has made the insurance industry one in which the workers are exploited in a most unscrupulous manner. The whole policy of the bulk of the companies has been to incite their employees to get business, and to get that business at any cost. A most unfair and unscrupulous kind of competition, leading to economic exploitation, is resorted to by many companies in order to take business from other companies. It is often taken on terms which obviously have no actuarial foundation.

The Minister must be aware—if he is not, he can easily ascertain the information—that there is operating in this country one large British insurance company whose reputation in the matter of the employment provided for the staff is the most unenviable in the insurance industry. Young men from 20 to 27 years of age are employed and, as it were, are put on a treadmill, looking for new business. Dare they relax their efforts to secure new business? Dare they offer any kind of valid explanation that it is not possible to get new business? The one overruling passion with that particular society is to get new business at any cost. Unless the agents are prepared to keep step on that kind of automatic treadmill, then their service with that company turns out to be an extremely short one. I invite the Minister to ask companies operating here to give him a list of their employees and particulars of their service. I ask the Minister to ascertain the number of those who left after a short period of service. I also ask the Minister to ascertain the number of companies which resort systematically to a policy of taking on staffs and dismissing them, unless they can increase business at any cost. One company is going to be given a fairly privileged position under this Bill. It is said, and said with authority, by people whose word cannot be disputed, that the annual casualties of that company in the matter of dismissals amount to about 1,400 yearly in Great Britain. Its record in this country is no more creditable. In a Bill of this kind, surely we ought to insist, when we are giving a specially privileged position to companies of that kind, that the unscrupulous exploitation of our own nationals should be discontinued. We are entitled to expect from a company of that kind something in the way of decent treatment for the Irishmen it employs.

As there is no proposal in this Bill to deal with the position of agents of a company of that kind, I suggest to the Minister that that kind of exploitation should be ended, and that insurance companies should be required to observe, in respect to their employees, something in the way of decent conditions of labour, and be compelled to pay a fair standard of wages. Deputy Morrissey stated that the present attitude of some of the assurance companies was that they were prepared to employ as many as ten agents in a small place, the only test being: "Can you get any new business?" The result is that those agents are tumbling over one another looking for new business for the same company. As they cannot retain the employment on a commission basis, they cease to take any interest in the collection of the premiums. The policy then lapses, the member of the staff concerned loses his job, the policy holder loses the premiums, but the insurance company is the richer by the transaction. Could we not do something in a Bill of this kind to end that kind of undesirable employment? Could we not do something to prevent insurance companies from engaging whole armies of part-time and spare-time underpaid employees? On these people devolves the responsibility of negotiating insurance policies. If the Minister asks about their incomes he will find that, in the main, part-time employees are paid a rate of wages that is utterly incapable of sustaining them and their dependents. Yet, these are the people who will continue to collect premiums from policy holders. These are the people who are expected to be paragons of virtue in respect to security, in respect to responsibility and trustworthiness, and all the other virtues that one rightly associates with the negotiation of insurance and the collection of premiums.

I suggest to the Minister that in this Bill provision should be made that companies of that kind, whether they are native or foreign, should be required to observe, in respect of their employees, something better than the wretched conditions of employment which exist to-day, and that, in any case, the big British companies which are operating here, and one British company in particular, ought to be compelled to give up the present unscrupulous policy of exploiting their Irish workers. If the Minister has not information on that matter, he knows where he can get it. I venture to say that even the staff of his own Department are not unaware of the conditions which operate in respect of agents in insurance companies. I know of no more exploited form of employment than the part-time insurance agent; I know of men who work under that dreadful speeding-up system under which many of these part-time agents are compelled to work to-day; and I know of no Legislature which still tends to have any kind of national sanity left which would allow an extern company to operate conditions of that kind in this country and be given a special privileged position in legislation.

The Minister, in the course of his speech, said that he did not anticipate that the passage of this Bill would result in the disemployment of any of the staff of existing companies. I am sorry to say that I cannot wholly share the Minister's optimism in that respect. If Deputy Kennedy's prognostications are to be believed, in five years' time the expense ratio of Irish companies will be reduced, and everybody who has given any consideration at all to the position of insurance knows that that same policy was embarked upon in Great Britain and was accomplished by means of wholesale dismissal of staffs employed by British assurance offices. There will, I fear, be disemployment of workers under this Bill and there will be disemployment of workers if these amalgamations take place. If the Minister wants any evidence of that, he has only got to look at the position in Great Britain where it has been frankly admitted, by the companies themselves and by persons who have studied the position of assurance legislation, and the assurance business generally there, that the whole tendency in Great Britain has been towards a reduction of staffs employed by the offices.

I fear this legislation may have the same results in some respects, but it is extremely difficult to argue that the expense ratio should be maintained or increased in order to retain the existing persons in employment, which, in many respects, is of a very unsatisfactory character. The primary consideration in the matter of the solvency of a company and its expense ratio in relation thereto must be the position of the policy holders, and their interests in a matter of that kind must be paramount, but, at the same time, we ought to realise that a Bill of this kind may result in some disemployment, may result in dismissals, and, if the present policy of some of the offices is persisted in in the matter of the conditions under which they employ their people, it may happen that many people who have given a lifetime to insurance may find themselves disemployed.

The Minister said that if that happened and if persons who were affected by the measure were dismissed, they would be fairly dealt with. There is no provision in this Bill for dealing fairly with such employees, and surely we ought to have some definite provision made whereby employees who lose their employment as a result of the enactment of this legislation will be given guarantees of compensation through the medium of the legislation before it leaves this House. We ought to have from the Minister also an indication as to the manner in which they will be compensated—whether it will be out of the income of the company; whether it will be out of the capital of the company; or whether it will be out of new capital provided by the Government. At all events, this Bill ought not to leave the House without some definite provision on a reasonable scale being made for those who will lose their employment under it.

It has been mentioned by more than one Deputy who spoke that this Bill probably did not go as far as was desired. I am one of those who take the view that the Bill stops very much short of what is desirable and necessary, if we are going to bring into existence here a healthy assurance organisation, capable of writing policies for our own people and capable of insuring in our own country all the risks common to life in our own country, but I realise, at the same time, that an organisation of that kind must be built on strength, must be built on security, that honesty towards its policy holders and the community must be the keyword and the keynote of its policy and that it should only function, having regard to the extent of the assurance business and its importance to the lives of the people, under rigid State control and under effective State supervision.

I think this Bill may possibly bring about the creation here of a single company which will be capable of insuring Irish risks in a wide field. I think it may create here in this country an organisation capable of writing life policies in the ordinary and in the industrial branches, and if the Bill has that objective, I think it has much to commend it, and if it has that result, I think those of us who want to see that position created will have every reason to be satisfied with the object of the Bill. I am sorry, however, that the Bill even as introduced still proceeds along the lines that it should be the business of a private organisation to make profits out of the efforts of people to provide for misfortune, and that it proceeds along the lines that the attempts by the community to provide for the rainy day, for old age, for education and for all those risks which are common to our ordinary life, should still be undertaken by a private company in which the highest prize offered is the profit of those who establish the company.

I believe a strong case can be made, especially in a small country such as this, for the State ownership and State control of insurances of all kinds, and that a specially strong case can be made, in a country of men and women of modest means and modest ambitions, for bringing the life assurance business under the agency of the State in such a way as to guarantee, as no other private organisation in the country can guarantee, the safety of their investments and the stability of the organisation so created. The Minister, however, has seen fit to allow this Bill to proceed along the lines of enabling private companies to make profits out of the efforts of people to be thrifty and to provide against misfortune, but I hope that, at all events, even though this Bill falls very far short of my ambitions in the matter, it will at least take one step, and I think it will probably take a substantial step, towards lifting our insurance legislation out of its present unsatisfactory position and towards giving policy holders more security and more stability than they have to-day.

If these achievements are made possible through the medium of this Bill, it may yet be possible, in the hands of some other Government, to introduce legislation of a kind that will give the country a nationally-owned and nationally-controlled assurance and insurance scheme. In such a scheme there would be stability and fair play between citizens and the State; there would be an avoidance of those sharp practices which have disgraced many insurance companies and, on the whole, a scheme of that kind would redound not merely to the benefit of the policy holder but to the benefit of the State and would place at the disposal of the State large sums of money which could be utilised by the State in sound investments of a kind calculated still further to enrich the standard of life and the amenities of life in this country.

This is a Bill of far-reaching importance. It is important to every citizen of this State. Anything wise in this Bill will be for the benefit of the State. Should anything unwise creep into it, it would be a national disaster. Judging by the Minister's opening speech, it is his intention to ensure greater security for the policy holders. Than that there could be nothing better from the standpoint of the Minister or from the country. The policy holders are pre-eminently important in this connection. The Minister's decision that it is not possible by any sudden stroke of the pen or any spectacular movement to take the liabilities which are held on a very broad basis at present and bring them on to a national basis is obviously sound. Insurance business is pre-eminently an international business. Insurance is spread not only nationally but internationally. We have only to think of the disaster which occurred at San Francisco some years ago and the reactions of that disaster on London insurance companies to focus our minds on that point. The Irish companies in their wisdom, as well as all the other companies, reinsure their risks. They reinsure them internationally and they could not do otherwise. If the Minister can get a basis for making that more national it may, perhaps, be a wise course but it will need the fullest and most careful consideration by experts in insurance work.

Insurance shares of every sort are held by Irish people. I do not know if the Minister has gone into that point but I am assured that hundreds of thousands of pounds are invested in insurance companies by Irish nationals. As to Deputy Norton's point regarding the employees of the companies, I have made inquiries and I am assured that the employees in the insurance business in the Free State are 98 per cent. Irish nationals. Anything that would tend to shake the stability of these people's employment should be very carefully considered beforehand. I was rather taken aback by the figure the Minister mentioned in column 1722 in connection with fire insurance and I have made inquiries regarding it. He took 5/- per cent. as the average. The figure I have got is 3/- per cent. throughout the Free State and the difference is .750 per cent. instead of the Minister's figure, 1.250 per cent. That difference is considerable in the turnover of insurance companies and I am sure it will have an effect on the Minister's calculations. It really means that the risk that the Minister looked forward to as a very serious one and as one which might involve a national catastrophe is 40 per cent. or 50 per cent. worse than he pictured it. I hope that the Minister will give as much time as possible between this Stage and the Committee Stage of the Bill. Time will be required both by the Minister and Deputies to consider all the implications of the Bill. Every Deputy should take a keen and careful interest in it and bring forward any amendments which may be of help to the Minister in making a success of the Bill which, I think, is the desire of everybody.

I am, perhaps, representative of about 90 per cent. of Deputies so far as my mentality on this Bill is concerned. My view is that a Bill of this kind should be studied in such detail that the time required could not be afforded. Deputy McGilligan's proposal simply is that a Select Committee of the House should be set up for the purpose of investigating the whole insurance position. As I said at the outset, 90 per cent. of the Deputies must be in a similar position to that which I occupy—a position of colossal ignorance on the whole insurance question. It is too much to ask Deputies to vote now on so intricate and highly technical a measure. I have listened for the past few hours to speeches on this Bill. Every Deputy who stood up seemed to have some bee or other in his bonnet. Deputy Norton, for example, looks at the Bill entirely from the policy holders' point of view. He represents a rural district, and he tells us that anybody with experience of rural districts will know what terrible enormities are perpetrated on the inhabitants of these areas by insurance companies. Let us look for a moment on the other side of the picture. What type of contract is being regulated by this Bill? In law, it is known as a contract uberrima fides—a contract in which one of the parties has almost all the knowledge at his disposal. Let us assume that a person proposes to take out a policy of insurance on a son or daughter or proposes to take out an industrial policy on the life of his mother in order to pay the funeral expenses when his mother dies. He is asked a number of questions on the proposal form. I think one of the most important questions is with regard to the past health of the person assured. The object of that question is obvious. If the person assured is in a bad state of health, different considerations will weigh in the mind of the insurance company. The premiums will be different or the life may be refused altogether. Another important question is that of age. If a person is 71 years of age it is important that his age should not appear on the proposal form as 51. Again, the reasons are obvious. The premium on one life would be altogether different in amount from the premium on the other. I mention this only to bring to the notice of the House the fact that what appeared to be cases of hardship when the claim is refused are really not such cases of hardship when the matter is fully investigated. Surely it cannot be contended that the Irish people are so grossly ignorant that they are not able to give a truthful answer to two such material questions as those which I have just mentioned. That is the type of contract with which we propose to interfere. It is right, I think, that the policy holders throughout the country should get some protection, but to make the passage of this Bill through the House an occasion for the type of slanderous and vituperative statements which we have just heard from the Labour Benches is, to put it mildly, taking the matter much too far. What I wish to make clear before I sit down is that the motion which Deputy McGilligan has down in regard to this Bill is a motion which I would recommend the Minister to accept. The number of members at present occupying their places on the Government Benches is a fair indication of the amount of interest which is being taken by the Government Party in this measure——

There are not so many on your own benches; there are only four of you there.

——and I may say the same of your own benches. I will, at least, give this guarantee to the House, that when Deputy Costello and Deputy McGilligan have finished with this Bill on the Second Reading the House will be very much wiser than they are at present, having heard the Minister for Industry and Commerce and his colleague the Minister for Agriculture.

The remarkable thing, Sir, about the debate which has taken place on this Bill so far, is that those who spoke in favour of it, having given lip-service to the Bill, proceeded straight away to demonstrate that it was one of the worst Bills ever introduced in this House. They all spoke against it, and the logical conclusion which the Minister must have drawn from the speeches of his own supporters is that he must withdraw the Bill before his own supporters will have talked themselves into voting against it. Whatever views may exist as to whether this is the appropriate time for the introduction of this Bill, or whether it should have been introduced earlier, or whether it would have been better to introduce it a little later and after perhaps a little more consideration, I think we will all agree that there is a very considerable amount of public satisfaction that at last the Government's proposals have seen the light of day, and that the degree of disquiet and uneasiness which has been spreading for the last 18 months or more throughout the business community, throughout the policy holders in the Irish Free State, throughout the employees of insurance companies and the managers and shareholders in the Irish, British and foreign insurance companies concerned, will be, to some extent, dissipated, not because of any satisfaction that they may derive from the proposals contained in this Bill, but because at last they know the worst. Bright hopes were entertained by the Irish companies, their shareholders and managing directors, as well as by their employees, as to what this particularly paternal Government was going to do for the native industry that had been built up by the efforts of Irishmen in the last 13 or 15 years in connection with Irish insurance. They had built up hopes that this Government, which was so lavish with its tariffs and bounties in other spheres of industrial activity, would do for the Irish insurance industry what they had done for other branches of industrial activity in the Irish Free State, and that they would get their share of tariffs or bounties or something equivalent. Instead of getting either a tariff or a bounty they get a bounteous measure of inquisition and supervision under this Bill.

A few short months ago, a new company was formed in this country, with the benediction of the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the benediction of the Minister for Finance. In the prospectus that was issued on behalf of the proposed company, inviting the Irish people to invest their money in this new Irish Insurance Corporation, one of the inducements held out with the approval of the Minister for Industry and Commerce and with the approval of the Minister for Finance—and that is apparent on the face of the prospectus which I hold in my hand—was that this paternal Irish Free State Government was going to give some additional measure of protection or benediction to Irish insurance in general, and to this new corporation in particular. In this prospectus, as an inducement to Irish investors to invest their money in this corporation, we find the following statement emphasised and set out in leaded type:—

"State Policy and National Development.

"The general desire that the Irish Free State insurance should be preserved to a much larger degree than heretofore to companies under national control is made evident by the introduction by the Government in An Dáil on 13th December, 1934, of a Bill"——

then in inverted commas the title of the Bill is given—

"to make further and better provisions in relation to assurance business, and persons carrying on that business or any branch thereof, to authorise the establishment and maintenance of a system of reinsurance by the State, and to make provision for other matters connected with the matters aforesaid."

That was an inducement held out to prospective investors to put their money into this new corporation, on the faith of that statement which was subscribed to by the Minister for Finance, one of whose officials put on the face of this document his benediction also, to the effect that the issue of shares would be subject to favourable terms in reference to income-tax. That Bill was withdrawn: That Bill, which was introduced into this House on 13th December, 1934, was withdrawn, and that statement, on the strength of which many people invested their money, is false. It is a criminal offence for people who are asking the investing public to invest their money, on the face of inducements in a prospectus, to make false statements. That statement in this prospectus is a false one. The Bill is a different Bill from what we are here considering to-day. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, when opening this debate, himself admitted that the Government had under consideration different proposals to those embodied in the Bill which we are now discussing. He says, as reported in column 1716:—

"The Government has given the matter very careful and prolonged consideration, and has arrived at the conclusion that the present Bill is the best means to that end, taking all factors into account. Another type of measure is, of course, possible and was, in fact, at one stage contemplated by me—a measure to confine insurance business or classes of insurance business to qualified Irish offices only."

That is the Bill apparently that was referred to in this prospectus, on the faith of which many people invested their money. The Bill that the Minister contemplated would confine insurance business, or classes of insurance business, to qualified Irish offices only. Now, we are presented with the Bill which we are at present considering. I take the Minister's own description of this Bill in the final sentence which he used when introducing the Bill to this House. He said, as reported in column 725:—

"The Bill which is before the House represents the conclusions of the Government as to how best the problems associated with insurance in the Saorstát can be dealt with and it is considered unlikely that any more satisfactory set of proposals would emerge as a result of the deliberations of such a Select Committee as is proposed."

We are here given in this Bill the conclusions of the Government, and we are ordered to take them or leave them— the conclusions of a Government which has wobbled about on the best methods of treating the problem that is proposed to be treated in this Bill. The only case that has been made for the proposals now before us is the fact that they are the Government's conclusions, conclusions about which they have been wobbling, as I say, for many months. The Minister, when he was making his introductory speech, gave the very sketchiest account of the proposals in the Bill. Deputy Norton gave utterance to-day to a number of observations on what he conceived might happen if such and such a thing were intended by the Bill or if something else were intended by the Bill. He said that if such and such a thing happened as a result of the Bill, then it would be a grand Bill. He obviously did not know whether or not the Bill contained any of the hypothetical things as a result of which he said the Bill would be a good Bill.

The Minister has not explained the Bill in any detail whatsoever to the House. The Bill itself contains 54 pages. It has 96 sections and six Schedules embodying the conclusions of the Government on the best proposals that can be made on the very complicated and complex problems that are to be dealt with. Deputy Norton confined his whole speech, in so far as it was intelligible at all and in so far as it was not a platitudinous utterance of generalties, to the portion of the Bill dealing with industrial insurance. The Minister gave no account of the proposals in the Bill dealing with the very urgent and very vital matters relating to industrial insurance. We agree with the Minister when he says that the primary purpose of this Bill is to look after the interests of policy holders, but we find it a little difficult to understand why it is, after all these matters had been studied, after all these proposals had been considered in reference to Irish offices, the proposals which are now embodied in the Bill should be set before us and should be boosted to the House, as the Minister in his speech endeavoured to boost them, as proposals which would establish new conditions "in which the bulk of the Irish insurance business will come to Irish offices." We find it difficult to understand how the problem can be solved by this Bill which, he says, as reported in column 1718, "will result in the formation of a company or companies so strong and well-managed and so secured against the possibility of failure that no member of the public will have any hesitation in investing in its policies." That is the way that Irish insurance activities are to be fostered and maintained by this paternal Government which promised so much to those companies.

A strong, well managed and solvent concern or concerns is to be built up as a result of the Bill. How is it to be built up as a result of the Bill? The proposal in this Bill is that each of the Irish insurance companies should submit itself, immediately this Bill is passed, to a major operation, and if it should emerge alive from that major operation, then for the rest of its life it is to be subjected to strong doses from the Minister and his officials of preventive medicines in the way of checks, balance sheets, inspections, valuations and all the other systems of inquisition which are provided for it in this Bill. I agree with Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney when he said here to-day that right through the Bill and the Minister's speech, there were veiled suggestions that the Irish companies, if not insolvent, were on the verge of insolvency, and that so far as the Irish companies are going to benefit by this Bill, they will benefit on the principle of the survival of the fittest. "If after you go through this major operation of cutting in two, you are able to stand up to the very detailed and very onerous conditions imposed by the provisions of the Bill, in the way of inspections and all the other matters that must be observed, if you succeed in living after that operation, then you will be a company in whose policies it will be safe for any Irishman or Irishwoman to invest; you will be a good and a strong company, and you can hold up your head, but not otherwise." That is how the problem is solved in this Bill.

We approach this Bill in no sense of political controversy. We believe the Bill should not be the subject of political controversy. The Minister, speaking in reference to Deputy McGilligan's motion, said that possibly the amendment that was tabled in his name was put down as a matter of Parliamentary tactics. That motion was put down because Deputy McGilligan knows better than any man in this House the complexities and the details of the problems that have to be solved by such a Bill as this. Knowing, as everybody knows, that these people, including employees of the companies operating here in Ireland who are being affected by this Bill, got only five days in which to make their case on the very drastic proposals made in the Bill, we felt it was only fair that they should get a reasonable opportunity in order, if necessary, to make their case before representatives of the Dáil, to state their opinions before these representatives, and to put forward any suggestions they had to make so that the whole subject-matter of insurance could be dealt with in a calm atmosphere with the assistance of experts, and with the assistance of the suggestions made by the various interested parties. That was the reason why this amendment was put down in this form. The Minister's statement and every speech made supposedly in favour of this Bill are a justification of the amendment, because the Minister gave no reasonable or adequate explanation of the provisions of the Bill.

There is a precedent for the amendment tabled by Deputy McGilligan. When the Industrial and Commercial Property (Protection) Bill was going through the House, if my recollection serves me aright, Deputy McGilligan, who was Minister for Industry and Commerce, at that time invited the cooperation of every member in the Dáil on that very complicated and technical measure, and I believe referred it to a Committee of the House. It was in that spirit that this motion was put down. It is in the spirit of the sentence which I have read from the Minister's speech that this Bill is being pushed through the House: there are the Government's conclusions; we wobbled about them so long that we cannot wobble any longer; right or wrong, you have to take them without any explanation and without giving any adequate opportunity for consideration by people whose lives and livelihoods will be vitally affected by the provisions of the Bill.

The Minister has done something paternal again for the Irish companies. He forces them, immediately this Bill is passed, to submit to the major operation to which I have referred. If they have been carrying on a composite business, they must at once divide that business into life and industrial assurance and fire and general accident business. They must submit to that very drastic operation. Any company that is carrying on only one class of business at the time of the passing of the Bill or subsequently must have a capital of £200,000, of which £100,000 must be paid up. That apparently very innocent proposal, on its face, really means that Saorstát companies carrying on a general accident and fire business will be subjected to Corporation Profits Tax in future. Another way of fostering native industries! The Bill provides that they have to submit themselves to this major operation. If they only carry on one group of business, other than life and industrial, then they are subjected to Corporation Profits Tax.

I was anxious, and looked forward with some interest, to hear the explanation by the Minister of the necessity for that provision. I have not heard it yet. The Minister did not give it in his opening speech. I do not know even yet why that proposal has been adopted, except that it appears to be the line of least resistance. The Minister, in his opening statement, referred to the Clausen Report and to the fact that the recommendations in that Report were stated by the people who recommended them not to be perfect. No human proposals are perfect. Why is this particular proposal that was not recommended by the Clausen Committee taken by the Minister and put before the House as the conclusion of the Government, after all their wobbling for the last two or three years, to be accepted or rejected without any reason—certainly without any reason that has been given so far?

The Minister stated in his opening speech that some misapprehension appears to exist as to the amalgamation proposals in the Bill. He said it was only in reference to insolvent concerns that the compulsory amalgamation provision operated. It seems to me to be a rather extraordinary provision, that an Irish insurance company, after going through its period of formation, after having survived, as some of these companies certainly have survived, a period of great anxiety and reached a position of at least comparative security and solvency, should find itself faced with the proposition, because another company is insolvent, that it has to take that insolvent and dud company upon its back.

What provision of the Bill does the Deputy refer to?

Deputy Dillon, when speaking the other day, emphasised the provision in Section 65 to which Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney has referred to-day. It seems to have become a mania with the present Government to take away ordinary matters in dispute between citizens from the jurisdiction of the courts. Section 65 provides that in certain contingencies either party to a dispute may bring the matter before the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who is to decide it, if he likes, through the medium of an inspector. The Minister for Finance has come into the House now and perhaps he will tell us—perhaps there is no necessity for him to tell us when it is so self-apparent on the face of the Bill itself— why it was necessary to provide that the poor person, whom Deputy Norton spoke so eloquently about, whose rights are to be protected and adequately safeguarded by the Bill, instead of going to the judges, who are paid by the taxpayers, where he can get his case heard comparatively cheaply, has to give a fee to the Minister for Finance or the Minister for Industry and Commerce before his case can be heard and determined by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. It is not enough that you have a trained body of men paid by the taxpayers to decide disputes; it is not enough that disputes should be taken away from the ordinary courts and sent to the departmental inspector appointed by the Minister for his decision, but there has to be a fee paid as a condition precedent by these poor people whom Deputy Norton so eloquently spoke of to-day.

What justification has the Minister for the provisions contained in Section 95? Where did that proposal to fix the rates of premiums come from? The Minister, in his opening statement, slid very carefully over the proposals embodied in that section. He gave no reasons, except in parenthesis, for the drastic, far-reaching and unprecedented provisions contained in Section 95, providing power for the Minister for Industry and Commerce, in his absolute discretion, to fix the rate of premiums that may be charged. The Minister hinted that was put in to protect the policy holders. I would imagine that the exercise of that particular power by the Minister would have precisely the contrary effect, and, instead of keeping down the price of premiums, any interference by the Minister would inevitably tend to raise the amount of the premiums payable by the policy holders. But, at all events, by whatever reason or cause that section got into the Bill, we have up to the present moment got from the Minister no adequate explanation of its presence or the methods by which he intends to operate it.

The Minister used a remarkable phrase in the course of three or four lines of his speech on this measure. He said: "In case it should become necessary to intervene in the fixing of rates, with the object of preventing the exploitation of the insuring public, it is proposed that the Minister should be empowered, if, after consultation with the companies concerned, he should think proper to do so, to fix the rates of premiums to be charged for any class of insurances to which the Bill applies other than life insurance and industrial assurance." It will be noted that the Minister added in parenthesis, "with the object of preventing the exploitation of the insuring public," and that parenthesis is the only explanation given for Section 95 of the Bill. We have the Minister's peculiar phrase, "after consultation with the companies concerned." There is not a single word in Section 95 as it stands at the moment providing for consultation by the Minister with the companies concerned. I do not know whether the Minister intends to introduce an amendment to provide for this consultation, but at the moment the provisions in Section 95 give the Minister arbitrary power to interfere in what is nothing more than an ordinary industrial concern. There is no arbitrary power in the section to fix the rate of premium to be charged by the company.

Deputy Dillon, when he was proposing the amendment in the name of Deputy McGilligan, drew attention to some outstanding features of the reinsurance proposals in this Bill. I have already directed the attention of the House to the fact that the prospectus which was issued by the Insurance Corporation of Ireland in regard to the Bill introduced into the Dáil on the 13th of December, 1934, pointed to the title of that Bill and suggested that it was the intention of the Government to set up a system of reinsurance by the State and to make provision for that reinsurance. As a mere matter of curiosity, if for no other reason, perhaps the Minister would enlighten the House as to why he abandoned the principle of State reinsurance which he apparently intended when he introduced that Bill and why he took up the particular class of company which it is proposed to be set up under the provisions of this Bill.

I gather from Part VI of the Bill that it is an ordinary company that is to be set up in which the Minister may or may not have shares, in which the capital is to be got in some way or another and, presumably, the profits are to be distributed amongst the holders of the shares. If there must be a system of reinsurance of the type stated, at the moment I see nothing in the Bill as to whether the profits of that company are to go to the State or whether they should go to private individuals. I think the House should know the reason why the Minister changed his mind. Knowing that the Insurance Corporation of Ireland, Limited, proposed to get money from the investing public on the faith of the statement in the prospectus that there was to be reinsurance by the State, the House should know why the Minister made that statement and allowed the Minister for Finance to make it and why he allowed money to be got on the faith of that statement, which is now admitted to be a false pretence. Why has he now changed his mind?

The tendency of the Minister towards bureaucracy is again manifested in the Bill. The Minister guarantees for a number of years payment of the liabilities of reinsurance by the corporation which is to be set up. The Minister is to guarantee payment but under no circumstances is he to be brought into a court of justice in this country. He is not to be sued. That is the express provision in the Bill. The Minister is to guarantee that but there is no method of enforcing that guarantee. I would like to know what is the explanation of that. I would like to know if the Minister has considered having provided that it will be compulsory on every insurance company, before they reinsure business left with them with any other person or company, to submit the risk to the reinsurance corporation to be set up under this Bill; whether the residue of discarded business from this new corporation is thrown back on the company concerned or whether under the provisions of Part II and Part VI of the Bill, taken together, the company can do nothing whatever about that, and whether by reason of the provisions in Part II he has not precluded the company from reinsuring with any other company. Reinsurance is ordinary insurance business, and provision is made earlier in the Bill that reinsurance can only be with this corporation. The Minister might explain why the Government, without any help from this side of the House, have changed their minds on this matter within the past 12 months.

The Minister might tell us why this wobbling Government have come to the conclusion that this is the best measure that can be got, or has it any doubt that Deputy McGilligan's amendment should be adopted and the provisions of this Bill considered without any political considerations and with a desire to deal fairly with everybody, to secure the interests of the policy holders and to secure the rights of the people who have invested their money in the Insurance Corporation of Ireland on the faith of the Minister's promises? The provisions of the Bill may be good or they may be bad. At least they should bear some examination and some explanation should be given by the sponsors of the Bill. The Minister's speech occupied something less than three-quarters of an hour. It was the skimpiest speech I have ever listened to dealing with a Bill of the complexities of this measure. It is only people who know how complex is insurance business, not only on the legal side but on the business aspect as well, who can appreciate what reactions this Bill may have on policy holders or on investors in the insurance business in general.

On another occasion, I said it may be a matter of importance to remind this House that it is the elected House in a country that is still supposed to be run democratically. It is supposed to be a House that disposes of whatever business comes before it by methods of argument and reason, and I hope argument may prevail here. If argument does prevail here some illumination of this complicated measure that is supposed to be here for disposal by the House will, I hope, be given to the public. At the risk of being tiresome I want to say that again. I want to point out that its function, and not merely its function but almost the sole duty of this House, is to debate matters and to hear the reasons for and against measures advanced here so that if argument does prevail, there will outside this House be well-educated opinion on the measures. Knowing that Ministers will never advance proposals without feeling that they can justify themselves to the community by argument, one would have thought that a measure of this sort ought to have been debated with the greatest frankness, that all the cards would be tabled, that statistics would be revealed and that the position as to the relative strength or weakness of the companies in relation to one another or the relation of one group of companies to the other group would be put before the House and that the House would get an opportunity of coming to definite and sound conclusions.

From my knowledge of the insurance business derived from an examination of the administrative side, I did realise that the frankness which ought to attend an ordinary debate would not attend this one; that there were details that could not be promulgated to this House. Therefore, realising that there was no hope of getting the type of debate that one would associate with an important measure of this kind, I did make the suggestion of a Select Committee in order to have our minds illuminated. With the confidence that would flow out from that, those people who count themselves important people in the insurance world would realise that this measure was being handled properly and, even though some people might say there were certain matters not dealt with, they would realise that there was a watchful eye being kept on a situation which, if not watched, might degenerate into one of greater weakness than the present situation, and that watchfulness and that safeguarding would be so applied as to bring about a strong and a good position. Hence, I ask this House to refuse to give a Second Reading to this measure until a Select Committee has been appointed to inquire into and to report on the whole question of insurance. And that Select Committee could inquire in secret, if need be, on certain points and could have its deliberations in the open on certain points that could be discussed with the utmost frankness.

It is quite evident that there are certain misapprehensions about this Bill, that there is undoubtedly a great deal of anxiety about it, and that there is almost complete obscurity as to what it means. I will just take three Deputies whom I heard speaking here. Deputy Norton blesses this Bill—if it goes further than what he thinks it does. It stops short, he says, of what is desirable. Why will the Deputy approve a measure that stops short of what he thinks is desirable? If he were informed, he might be told that to go to the further point in the present circumstances would be wrong. But he has not that information; he has no such assurance. He told us that the Bill may create a company capable of doing the entire insurance business of the country. He apparently has his doubts. The Minister has not given him any reassurance. Could he get the reassurance anywhere else?

Deputy Kennedy would bless this Bill, would approve it completely, if he thought that the income of English companies was going to be diverted to the Irish group. He asked, does this Bill give this assurance? He, too, has his doubts. The Minister for Agriculture, thrown in to support the argument, tells us the Bill is the best that any good Government—and, of course, the present Government is the best that could be thought of—could produce. Why? I do not think I ridicule his reasoning by saying it amounted to this, that insurance is an intricate business, therefore Fianna Fáil must interfere with it. The Fianna Fáil bull does not like going into a china shop unless the production is delicate and rare. The experience of the Minister for Agriculture, as revealed to the people, is undoubtedly that—that the more intricate a business, the more inviting it is to him to interfere and the greater the mess he makes of it, I suppose, it is only the more proof to him that he was right in his first conclusion, and that was that the matter was intricate.

But that is the attitude of the Minister for Agriculture on this. It is an intricate business; therefore the Government must control it. The only question, he said, is what is the proper type of control. I waited, pencil in hand, to get the answer to that, and then he said he had the greatest confidence that the present proposals were the best that could be thought of. I suppose that the Minister, who had touch in a very intimate way with insurance business, knows very well that certain matters cannot be brought forward in this House. He apparently thinks it sufficient on a far-reaching proposal of this type simply to say this is the best that can be done. Is there anything that has been said that could give anybody confidence that it is a good Bill, even in the circumstances as revealed? Can anybody say that the proposals are definitely going to bring about a better situation? Can anybody advance to the further point and say the proposals are the best that can be submitted and that they will have the best possible effect?

Could information on that not be given to a Select Committee, and could a group of Deputies not have that assurance given them, not have the likely effects put before them? Could leave not be given to people, who do not understand what the result of this Bill is likely to be, to go before the Select Committee and make their case for and against the measure? At least have some sort of decently-informed public opinion, even a small group, on the matter. I have always been informed that a certain number of people, hearing of the good of this or that, the knowledge will percolate and spread. If you give those whose fortunes are going to be affected by this an opportunity to make their case, they will at least have the satisfaction that they got a fair hearing and they got a chance to present, in relation to the specific proposals, their detailed consideration and their detailed counter proposals.

Deputy Norton thought this Bill was good in two points. As regards industrial insurance proposals, what did the Minister tell him? "While the provisions of the Bill affecting this particular class of assurance are comprehensive and far-reaching, they do not involve any drastic changes in the practice of the companies transacting such business. In general, the system and method of industrial assurance business, as conducted in this country, are already largely in conformity with what are now proposed to be made matters of a statutory obligation." The Deputy had not read that. Deputy Norton was under the impression that industrial assurance was being treated in somewhat of a revolutionary fashion, but the Minister assured him that was not so.

Deputy Norton went on to say that he was sorry there had not been a further proposal with regard to nationalisation. I am sorry his colleague, Deputy Davin, was not in the House at that moment. They appear to be the last two people keen on nationalising anything, and I am sorry they could not have been present, even as silent auditors, at the Ard Fheis yesterday. I do not think it would be possible to get Deputy Davin silent on such a matter. He would have broken either silence or a blood-vessel if he heard the Minister, who used to speak the same sort of rubbish as Deputy Norton and Deputy Davin do still about nationalisation—if he had heard him give his considered views on that. It was only an echo of what he said at a meeting in Trinity College during the last six weeks. Surely the Minister realises, apart from the details of the measure, that there is certainly amazement over the proposals in this Bill. Does he not know, so far as Irish companies are concerned, that there is a certain state of bewildered and angry disappointment over the Bill, while on the part of the English companies there is, on the contrary, a sense of almost incredulous relief and rather timid joy as to what is proposed. No doubt the Minister remembers that on one occasion not so long ago, when he broke the bread and took the salt of a particular insurance company at a dinner they gave, he referred to these outside insurance companies as little alien outposts set down in this country; that they were people who would neither subscribe to the funds of this country nor invest in anything that it had to offer; that they would not employ Irishmen as their employees, and would not even print their circulars on Irish notepaper. That was rubbish, incidentally, and the Minister apparently thought better of it. But he did say that. When the Minister was in the middle of that insurance company, at which, at any rate, he thought fit to speak of alien outposts, had he in mind, or had he really contemplated, that there was to be brought into the Dáil a measure of this kind and that it was in emergence?

There are certain things that I suppose the veil cannot be lifted from. The Minister set down a warning that if a committee was set up to go into the activities of these companies, that investigation might entail very serious consequences indeed. If the Minister thinks that, with his sense of responsibility, I am not going into the tablets of my memory to relate things that might be debated here upon that subject. He has the responsibility at the moment. But there are things he revealed. What about the proposal to divide the business? We are told that there are certain desirable reforms that ought not to be delayed merely because of the inconvenience that might be caused to companies doing both classes of business. Can the Minister justify that statement on the ground of temporary inconvenience—if not here, can he justify it elsewhere? Has the Minister ever considered the proposal that, inasmuch as certain of the English companies have already made that division of their business, Irish companies, who have not yet reached this particular decided stage of development, might, with five or six years warning, be in a position to do so? When this was going on, had the Minister realised the desirable end in view when he said that assets should be kept separate, and that "it is intended to prohibit the practice of borrowing on the security of assets representing life assurance funds?" Why does he say now that it is necessary to make this clear-cut division? Would the justification for that be to say that it would only cause temporary inconvenience? It will only cause temporary inconvenience to very strongly solidified offices, which, in practice, have come up to that point. Is he quite certain that this particular imposition, with others—it is the accumulation of these impositions that matters—will not cause a great deal more than temporary inconvenience? He says again with regard to the furnishing of certain particulars:

"Assurance companies will be required to furnish to the Minister more detailed information concerning their transactions and affairs than is contained in the accounts and returns they make at present."

Here we have his conclusion on that matter without any argument or statement of the strength of the different companies, without any statistical information given to this House as to their ability to assume the financial burden that this will place upon them. That shows that he believes that this imposition will not impose any undue strain upon these offices. Suppose it does not impose a strain, will the publication of the particulars help or will they impede these particular companies? Which companies will it be likely to impede? Will the furnishing of these particulars, as a statutory return, help as an advertisement in favour of certain companies and against others? Is this a time, without notice, without giving them an opportunity of putting their houses better in order, to impose this particular burden whether by way of publicity or by way of financial strain upon these companies? Is this the time to impose that burden upon them?

The Minister takes power to wind up companies which appear to be insolvent. He does not think it could be seriously contended that the Government should tranquilly allow an insolvent company to continue in insurance business? I asked the Minister for Agriculture, if he thinks this is so good a Bill, would it not be a better Bill by being post-dated? We have at any rate revealed here— although we are not supposed to breathe the word "insolvency" in regard to any company—that if any company is insolvent or nearly insolvent, the Government is going to stand behind it. Once that decision was taken, what harm is there in allowing that company to engage in life insurance business, if the Government has taken such a decision as it has, and has decided that State resources must be behind such a company because of the disaster that would occur if any company went broke. If the State takes that decision they will have to determine what companies are insolvent and what companies are not and, in that connection, is the State intervention likely to be more advantageous to the companies now than later? Is the State intervention likely to be more of a sacrifice if the State knew of it now than at a later time? Why is this being chosen as the appropriate moment? What makes this the time for entering upon this business as long as the State is determined that insurance companies will be protected by Government intervention in a financial way? What is there to make undesirable the continuance of the present situation? Can the Minister tell this House or could he tell a Committee whether there has been any change in the carrying on of insurance business in this country in the last ten years? Has there been any progress made? Has there been any set-back recently? And, if not, have the companies themselves considered that the linking of their companies together in groups is going to leave them in as advantageous a position as that proposal would put them in some years hence?

I could not understand the attitude of the Minister for Agriculture in this matter of State aid. He objected apparently to somebody who said in this House that the getting of the loan of money did not put a company, if we can consider the possibility of insolvency, in any securer position, and that it would be an additional debt because whatever was given by the Government would appear in the balance sheet as new capital; there was an entirely new situation. Unless the capital is not to be repayable—and I shudder at that idea—surely there is a liability? If there is a liability then the argument that the Minister was endeavouring to counter seems to go. At any rate he told us that the Government is going to come to the aid of insurance and that they are doing this by joining one or two not very healthy companies together, and that thereby there will be better results. Might there not be better results later when these companies have developed towards a more healthy point and have become more robust in the way of financial health? The Minister seemed to me to deny that the economies that are likely to be effected will take place at the expense of the staffs. If not, how will they take place? The Minister has told us that, with regard to staff, he does not think the provisions of this Bill will result in any number of persons losing employment. Taken by itself, that is a strong statement, but caution creeps into the next phrase, where he says: "and it is my intention that persons who are dependent for their livelihoods on insurance employment and who are affected by the measure will be fairly dealt with." If the Minister thinks that nobody is going to lose employment, there was not the same necessity for caution. The caution creeps in, nevertheless, when he says that it is his intention that persons who are dependent for their livelihoods on insurance employment, and who are affected by the measure, will be fairly dealt with. I think that here we are getting perilously near the phrase used in the transport code about people occupied continuously and whole-time in the operation of certain matters. The Minister knows very well that there are very few people employed whole-time in the insurance business; or at least he knows that such people are not likely to be affected, and that the people who are likely to be affected are those people who are engaged in the insurance business as a part-time occupation. They will certainly lose, and a considerable number of them will lose.

If the Minister tells us that there are going to be economies, and at the same time says that the economies are not going to be economies at the expense of staff, where are they going to occur? Will I be told that there is sufficient business to keep a big number of companies alive here, and, if that is not so, do the proposals in this Bill seek seriously to limit the effective competition for insurance business merely in order to secure the amalgamation of one or two companies, and particularly to secure the amalgamation of one or two weak companies, and leave all the strong companies still agitating and fighting for business? It is not likely to make it a profitable enterprise for, say, the junction of two weak companies to enter into, with the stern competition of these strong companies still operating against them; and there will still be a waste of money because there is a considerable waste already in the fight for business. We are told, however, that there are going to be economies, or at least that there must be economies because there is a new situation. On the face of it, the joining of a few companies in that way does not seem to be good business in itself, and if there are not going to be economies effected by the deprivation of the livelihoods of these people, where will the economies come from?

If this measure were to tend towards a very big movement in the way of amalgamation I would object to it. I think that this country has seen enough of these amalgamations to be weary of them. There never yet has been an amalgamation scheme put up that was not full of the most rosy optimism as to the new situation that would develop as a result of it, and we have yet to see where such amalgamations have brought about anything like the results that, on paper, could be proved to be certain to result from them. It must be remembered also that in a country like this, where there are not so many fields for enterprise, if by Government action certain businesses are collapsed into one huge business, it means that the field for endeavour in this country, small as it is at present, is going to be more limited than ever before. It is a bad policy and it means that even the necessary healthy competition already existing is disappearing. Apart from that, in all these amalgamations, so far, there has been the inevitable effect that certain people will lose their employment. Joined up with that in the country at the moment, you have the demand that any man who loses his employment in anything must get some compensation from the State. If that compensation has got to be given and paid for by the amalgamated company, it is saddled at the start with a burden, and I do not know if the second situation is going to be any better than the first.

The Minister is taking power to fix rates. Let us hope the power will never be exercised, and let us particularly hope that the Minister will not be impelled by the thought that has struck his colleague: that because it is a dangerous matter to meddle with, therefore he ought to run in. There have been dozens of Bills in the last few years in which Ministers have taken power to go into all classes of business—flour milling, maize-meal milling, the slaughtering of cattle, the selling of cattle, and everything conceivable—and all done with the greatest of optimism, with the Ministry well knowing that they are not in any way affecting themselves and that they are playing with other people's money. There was an example quite recently with regard to the slaughtering of cattle. An inspector from the Department of Agriculture was sent to certain people who had made a particular matter their business, and the inspector told them to remember that in the end the Minister for Agriculture would take over this business from them and that they should bear in mind that money or the loss of money was no object. That mentality runs through quite an amount of the legislation which we have, and it makes its reappearance here.

The outside companies were dealt with very sketchily indeed by the Minister. He says:—

"Through their investment policy, they have power to exert a very potent influence upon the financial stability and credit of the country. It is, therefore, desirable that the State should assist in securing that there should be established and maintained native offices, equipped with the necessary resources to undertake a large share of this important business, and that the whole business of insurance should be regulated by legislation to ensure conditions favouring orderly development along sound lines."

May I compliment the Minister, at any rate, on having got away from the "little alien outpost" nonsense? This is mild by comparison. The Minister speaks of their potent influence, but there is not a whisper there of what was so loudly said before, to the effect that they have exercised that influence detrimentally to the people of this country. I do not know what was the evidence for making that statement, but it was made. We are now reduced, however, to their exertion of potent influence; or rather it is said that they have power to exert potent influence.

What does the Minister say of the native companies? It must be remembered that in all this, whatever veils may have to be drawn over certain things, there is no reason why we should not open our eyes to what makes insurance a complicated matter to deal with legislatively in this country, and that is that there is a small number of companies that, from their beginning, have remained in a state that can be described by the word "native"; that there are certain other companies which were started here and operated in that way and then got entangled with other companies, some of which freed themselves from these entanglements; and that there are other companies which are and always have been external companies. The whole insurance position is clouded and involved by that very situation. Now, what does the Minister propose to do? He says that the aim is: "to build up an Irish life assurance company or companies so strong and well-managed and so secured against the possibility of failure that no member of the public will have any hesitation in investing in its policies." That is the end of a paragraph which starts by saying that the great majority of the Irish people would prefer to place their life assurance business with Irish offices subject to the condition that they could get anything like as good results. The Minister says, with regard to the native companies, that there had been unequal terms with which they had to compete, the most obvious one being the matter of money and the great disparity between their limited funds and the vast resources available to their competitors. He points out that another factor is that, owing to their comparatively recent formation, the Saorstát offices are still contending with many of the special difficulties which attend all insurance organisations in the early stages of their development, and that, along with that, there is the high ratio of administrative costs consequent upon the relatively small volume of business transacted by each separate company. He points out that, furthermore, there is the fact that the Irish companies commenced operations in the period of high post-war costs—that the expenses were high. Now, that was all recognised many years ago.

On many occasions the Minister, when standing here in this bench, lectured me on the necessity of scrapping the external companies; that I should recognise these difficulties that he spoke of in that limited way the other day. He asked that there should be an arrangement made, if not immediately certainly within a very short time, to bring about a new situation, and that new situation was the prohibition of the external companies doing any business here, or else—this was his second line—the institution of a system of taxation which would make it less lucrative for these external insurance companies to do business here. The Minister certainly, as far as he could by his speeches, lent volume to the talk that there was in the country about the vast drain out of the country of insurance moneys. It was represented in this House, and through the country, as being an easy matter to prevent insurance companies, external to the State, doing business here, or else to hamper them by differential taxation. We were told that if that was not possible in the life business, it was certainly the easiest thing possible— that it was only timidity that prevented it being done—with regard to general insurance.

Note the change. On Friday last the Minister said:—

"I say at once that no Government could undertake the risks associated with such a course."

That is, the course of either prohibiting the external companies from operating in life business or differentiating against them by taxation. The Minister went on to say:—

"It might easily result in heavy losses to many of our people and produce a very serious financial crisis."

Now, that is a considerable reversal of public form on the part of the Minister. Has he any reason to offer people why he has abandoned his old views? Is it that he was ignorant when he spoke previously and knows more about it now and does not like to admit that? Has he any other reason to offer? Can he say why this would be attended by disaster? Can he say that there would be the likelihood of very heavy financial risks and serious loss, and if he can answer that on life—and there is an easier case to be made there—what about the second point? At first sight it would seem a comparatively less difficult matter to give Saorstát companies a monopoly of general insurance business arising in the Saorstát than in the case of life business. From the purely legislative point of view that is undoubtedly the case, but then caution crept in again and, remember, this has got to be placed against the old vociferations about the drain of money from the country and the necessity for stopping this awful hæmorrhage: how easy it would be to do that and how unpatriotic it was not to do it.

And now reason enters. It is a question whether the gains to be secured are proportionate to the risks involved and whether what is desired cannot be achieved without all manner of risks. What are the risks? Does the Minister not think it his duty to the representative body in the State to say what the risks are. Can he set against that the gains? Is it possible that the gains are less now, in his view, than what at one time they seemed likely to be, or is it just the balance of convenience? Surely that is a point on which some enlightenment should be given to the House. Is it not a point upon which, in the matter of general insurance business, leaving life out for the moment, we should be told if there is to be a progressive policy of excluding one type of company from the community and throwing the business to another type of insurance society. Surely that is a matter upon which the insurance societies themselves might be allowed to say their say to a select number of Deputies from the House who can either agree or disagree. But certainly such a committee could extract from them the best information they have at their disposal and, in that way, enable Deputies to come to a proper conclusion on the matter.

The Minister thinks that he will get a Saorstát company. He is going to get it with the operation of this peculiar reinsurance clause. I think it was the third shot that was always in the locker of the Minister when talking in a pompous way on insurance matters: that if you could not interfere in life business and if you were too timid, too cowardly, and too unpatriotic to do anything about the general insurance business that, surely, there was the great outstanding matter of reinsurance: that some Irish company should be allowed a grip of that, and that if an Irish company did not do it, then the Government should step in. And so the Government, if not exactly stepping in, it has tip-toed in, and there is this reinsurance provision.

Under this provision there is to be a reinsurance company set up, and to it all the Irish companies must, in the first instance, offer their business. Now, why they must I do not know. If this reinsurance is going to benefit both the community and the reinsuring company, surely it might be left a matter of choice to the individual companies, particularly when they are told that the vast majority of their policy holders are inclined to favour insurance in an Irish company rather than in any other company. But we have got to introduce compulsion, and all business must be offered for reinsurance to this company. The point has been stressed in favour of that by the Minister for Agriculture that this company may cede back some business. What benefit is that going to be? I would take it that the insurance company operating at the moment carries whatever risk it thinks it is fit to bear and reinsures the rest. Why will it be in any better way to offer reinsurance made to it if all insurance has been ceded, in the first instance, to the reinsurance company? That seemed to be stressed by the Minister for Agriculture as if it were some benefit.

The Minister himself has told us why it would not be possible to permit the whole of the insurance to be retained here because, on fire alone, he said, the risk covered must be in the neighbourhood of £400,000,000. Deputy Beckett's statement to-day was that the figure is not £400,000,000 on fire alone but at least £600,000,000. So, we could not carry that, and, therefore, the reinsurance company is to be allowed to carry, not that sum, surely, but some fraction of it. The rest will be reinsured abroad as heretofore. It was said from some side of the House to be a good thing that that should happen. What is going to be the new situation? The reinsurance company will have the offer of all the business. It will skim the cream and hold that, and it will pass on the rest.

Will the rest be passed on at the old rates? Will there be any change? If so, in what better position are we, after that has been accomplished, than we were before? Then the Ministry are going to intervene. The Minister for Finance is going to guarantee. A grand guarantee it is. Section 83 is the best example of "Heads I win, and tails you are up a gum-tree," ever revealed in any assembly. The Minister will guarantee, "but no right of action shall lie against the Government of Saorstát Eireann under such guarantee or otherwise in respect of any liability on foot of such contract," for ten years. The peculiar situation revealed is that in fire alone there is a risk of anything up to £400,000,000. It is going to benefit this country that the reinsurance corporation, backed by the Government will take some of it. It has got to be a very small portion of the total, and when it does back it, those who have insured with that particular insurance company are told that for ten years the Minister has guaranteed a certain amount but that they cannot enforce that guarantee by action. What good is the guarantee? I am sure that is the reason why this offer of insurance business for reinsurance is made satisfactory. If anybody had any belief in good effects from the State coming in with State backing for the company, nobody would consider it of any good if ten years had to elapse. For ten years the Minister will solemnly pretend that he is backing a particular form of business. He is going to try to help this insurance company until eventually it is able to carry a big proportion of the £400,000,000 per annum risk with regard to fire. But for ten years, if anything happened, and if the funds of the company were not sufficient to stand the burden, the Minister could stand aloof and say: "I gave you my guarantee, and for ten years my fingers are crossed." That is represented in this measure as if some benefit was given. These are matters that can be openly discussed here, and even discussed openly in the way I have tried to discuss them.

The House has not before it the details required for the proper consideration of the measure. We do not know the strength of the different companies, we do not know how far one group of companies can stand as against another and against heavy and probably increased competition in the future. We do not know what percentage of the risks is covered in this country by each of them. We do not know how far, say, the native companies are in a better position for the last ten years. We do not know how far they are encroaching on territory that used to be occupied by extern companies. We do not know what discussions they have had, one with the other. We do not know what is the position with regard to their employees. We do not know how far economies will be possible by the cutting off from people of certain additions to their livelihood. The whole debate has been conducted under a cloud, and possibly would have to be conducted under a cloud in this House, meeting as it is, as the first deliberative assembly in the country. At any rate, there is one way in which information could be given, and that is by having this matter referred to a committee. After this measure is passed—if it is passed with the present procedure— there is going to be a complete sense of dissatisfaction operating with quite a number of companies, because they have not got an opportunity of explaining through a select group of Deputies what their position is, and how they will be affected adversely by the proposals in this measure. It is possible, notwithstanding what the Government said about their own measure, that a series of better proposals might result from the deliberations of such a committee, even conducted in secrecy, than what is now before us. The Minister is in an advantageous position. He might warn the people of the evil results that would follow from publicity, or he could tell us that this was the best that could be done. We have not the information with which this whole matter should be argued.

If they have good reasons for interfering now rather than at some other time, he could have given them, if not here, to a body meeting upstairs. I cannot see why this proposal to have this matter referred to a committee should be referred to as a hostile movement against these proposals. If the Ministry get a chance to give a clear explanation of the whole difficulties of the insurance position, and to tell us what is the immediate urgency of this, there will be satisfaction, particularly if it can be proved that contrary to the views of internal companies, it is clearly meant for their benefit and will work out to their benefit. Will not the Minister then be in a better position and have much greater help in carrying the proposals to fruition than if he has to operate against a group of people who believe that the Minister will not explain because he cannot do so; and that he has not attempted to justify them because there is no justification for them? All that could be relieved, if not completely removed, by some proposal such as I have put down. I believe the Government would then get their measure just as quickly. There is information available in the Department of Industry and Commerce, as well as in reports since 1923. There were actually two other reports. If one takes it by the individuals who reported there are about five reports. Surely it is easy to get information and to have these reports brought up to date. It only means getting extra figures for three years, and possibly the views of a certain number of people. It will not take any great length of time. The matter is easy enough to explain with the figures before a committee. If a company liked to come along, seeing that there are not many native companies, which are the ones peculiarly affected, it would not take much time. As far as the other companies are concerned they could be dealt with by group delegation. I do not think that would impede the Bill. There is no reason and no special warrant for hastening this measure. The Minister did not seem anxious to get any limited time. I believe this Bill would be better considered, and that there would be greater satisfaction, and that it would be passed as speedily if the amendment were accepted. Before it goes too far I suggest that the Minister might signify, even before he carries the Second Reading, that all information will be available for Deputies as a whole or within limits, or without limits, before a select group. If the Second Reading passes I do not think the Minister can give that information which I think is essential in the whole business, the right of the companies to be represented and to make their own case. Surely that is a thing that any companies operating here, that got the encomiums that the Minister bestowed upon them, are entitled to get now before the proposals go too far.

The Deputy who opened the debate on behalf of the Opposition, Deputy Dillon, and the Deputy who closed it, Deputy McGilligan, both attempted to give reasons for the adoption of the proposal embodied in the amendment for delaying the Second Reading of the Bill and establishing a Select Committee to inquire into the whole question of insurance. The reasons, as I gathered, are because it is desirable to have delay in order that Deputies may get information about insurance from some sources which were named. Deputy McGilligan stressed the case for delay, and Deputy Dillon stressed the case for getting information. If it could be shown that any useful result would come from that committee, that there was an alternative policy to that embodied in the Bill to be considered by such a committee, and if, furthermore, it were clear that there is no good reason for expediting the passage of this measure, it would be hard to argue against the proposal embodied in the amendment.

Deputy McGilligan spent a large part of the time occupied by him in attempting to prove that there has been a variation in the policy of the Government in relation to insurance, or, at any rate, in the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party. If there has been such a variation, it has not been very considerable, but the fact that there has been a slight variation points to one fact—that there is a policy. I think the outstanding feature of this debate has been that there has not come from a single Deputy any suggestion, or even a hint of a suggestion, of any alternative policy to that in the Bill, with the possible exception of Deputy Norton's proposal that industrial assurance should be nationalised. Did one Deputy from the Party opposite convey, even by innuendo, that his Party had given this matter consideration or had any alternative to the policy in the Bill, apart from the alternative of leaving things as they are? No; and why should we set up a Select Committee, having ourselves given this matter prolonged consideration, having examined the reports of previous committees to which Deputy McGilligan referred, and having decided in the main to act upon those reports, either to delay this matter further when delay is not desirable, or else for the purpose of getting information for the Deputies opposite, information which they can procure in any event?

It is not desirable that there should be a delay. The need for urgency in the reform of the law relating to industrial assurance was stressed by the McCann Committee, the Inter-Departmental Committee which reported in 1924. They stressed then the need for urgency in reforming the law, and that need has grown, and grown considerably, since then. We should have heard from Deputy McGilligan, not a case for further delaying legislation in that matter, but the reason for the failure of his Government to act upon the report of the Committee they set up when that Committee's report made it quite clear that there were abuses which were growing in volume and growing in seriousness and which it was the function of the Government to eliminate. In so far, therefore, as this Bill reforms the law relating to industrial assurance and provides new safeguards for the members of the working classes of this country who avail of that form of insurance, it is urgently required.

The Bill, however, deals with more than that. It implements also the policy of the Government for the development of Irish assurance companies. Is there a case for urgency there? It is not, as Deputy McGilligan pointed out, easy to discuss that matter fully here without referring to the circumstances of individual companies, which is not desirable. Deputies can get information concerning the position of all the companies engaged in assurance business here from the returns published by the Department of Industry and Commerce. I agree that it requires a very close examination of these returns to get from them the essential facts which they have to show. The latest returns relate to the year 1932, and any Deputy who gets them and studies them will agree with me that there is a situation there which calls for a definite policy by the Executive of the country and the rapid implementation of that policy. The proposal for the establishment of a Select Committee and for deferring consideration of this Bill is, therefore, largely a device adopted by the Opposition to avoid putting forward any constructive alternative proposals which, as critics of the Bill, would otherwise be expected from them.

It is possible, of course, that that Select Committee could carry out some of its inquiries secretly, but in so far as it did that it was defeating the very purpose for which Deputies argue it should be set up, that is, to give information to the general body of members of the House. If any weight is to be given to the contention of Deputy McGilligan that that information would nevertheless percolate from the members of the committee to other members of the House, there is no stronger case for the establishment of the committee in consequence, because Deputy McGilligan can, I am sure, percolate whatever information he thinks necessary to the members opposite, and I will look after the members on this side.

Deputy Costello dealt in a very slipshod manner with this Bill, and at the conclusion of his address I had on my knee a blank sheet of paper, because I was unable to get the point, if any, of his remarks. He referred at some length to a prospectus issued by a new company that was launched during the year. Why that particular matter should have been dragged into this discussion rather than any other transaction in insurance company shares that took place during the year, I do not know, but apparently he was trying to contend that some people were induced to invest in that company by the title of the Insurance Bill, as originally introduced, and that the Bill, as it finally appeared, was so different that these people could claim to have been defrauded. The only difference is this, that whereas originally we were setting up a State reinsurance office, we are now proposing to set up a reinsurance company that will be guaranteed by the State. I am afraid Deputy Costello was not taking the matter very seriously, judging by the speech he made.

There were, however, a number of things said during the course of the discussion with which I want to deal. There were a few constructive suggestions—whether there is anything in them or not I do not want to say at this stage—put forward by Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney and certain Deputies on this side of the House, but these suggestions can, perhaps, be considered with more freedom and in greater detail on Committee Stage. The arguments which were brought forward in relation to the Bill, even though they did not affect the policy of the Bill, have to be dealt with, and the first of these to which I want to refer is the one put forward by Deputy Dillon, which was re-echoed by certain Deputies on the Government side and which has appeared quite regularly in pamphlets and leaflets published on behalf of certain interests and associations connected with Irish insurance. It is that a great many of the wealthy English offices, when at the same stage of development as Irish offices are now, were not stronger than these offices and that they could not have progressed if they had been subjected then to the same conditions as those to which it is now proposed to subject the Irish companies, and that, therefore, the development of these companies is being impeded by this measure.

That argument was used by Deputy Dillon and has appeared quite regularly in the newspapers. To a certain extent, it is true. So far as a number of the existing British companies which are quite wealthy and powerful to-day are concerned, it can be said that when they were as long in existence and at the same stage of development as the Irish offices now are, they were no stronger. It is an entirely fallacious argument when used solely in relation to those English companies which survived that stage of development and, ultimately, became strong. It ignores the fact that a great many English companies and companies in other countries which achieved the same stage of development as the Irish offices have now reached and were no weaker than these offices are, failed, and, in their failure, spread ruin and destitution in many homesteads. To ignore the lessons of these failures, to ignore the consequences of these failures, to take a gambler's chance that the same circumstances would not arise here, would be utterly reckless and particularly so when it is in our power to take action that would prevent it. Furthermore, we must remember that, whereas in Great Britain the failure of one insurance company—and there have been a number of failures: some quite recently—would not, because of the widespread organisation of insurance business there, produce direct reactions outside the immediate area of disaster, in this country the collapse of one Irish office, or the failure of one Irish office to meet an undisputed claim, would bring not only that office down but would probably bring all the Irish offices down in a common disaster and produce reactions which might delay the development of insurance business on a sound basis in this country for more than a generation. It is also necessary to bear in mind that many of these great English companies built themselves up by the widespread use of practices which are now illegal.

But still largely in operation.

I do not agree, but it cuts across my argument which deals with a different point. I was dealing with the argument that we are impeding the development of the Irish offices by imposing on them now restrictions more severe than those which were imposed upon the English offices when at the same stage of development. Many of the practices which insurance companies used then were illegal. That was particularly the case in relation to industrial assurance. They played upon the ignorance, improvidence and powerlessness of their working-class clients. Though now, in their security, they very sanctimoniously condemn the practices they used then, it was in that manner they became as powerful and wealthy as they now are. It is the very story of the manner in which these companies developed which makes it necessary for us to bring into force the provisions of this Bill—provisions which are long overdue—in order to secure that no company will become powerful and wealthy at the expense of Irish workers in the same manner in the future. The argument I am dealing with also presupposes a state of affairs which is, perhaps, not in strict accord with actuality—that is, that the Irish offices are gradually developing out of their difficulties and becoming stronger with the passage of time. Some Irish offices are but there are some in respect of which it can be said, from the returns submitted, that that does not seem to be the case. If it should happen that their insolvency is increasing rather than decreasing, I think it will be agreed that it is wiser to take action now than to deal with the position when damage has been done to the whole position of Irish companies operating here. I have already stressed the point that if one of these companies was to get into difficulties, the other companies, which may be emerging from their difficulties, would be immediately affected—and very adversely.

The provisions of the bill dealing with the division of business—the provisions which make it illegal for the same company to carry on life and general insurance business—have also come in for serious comment. It has been assumed by a number of Deputies that that is an innovation adopted in this country without good cause. I think that the principle of a life company doing general business is recognised throughout the world—even in Great Britain, where it is practised—as utterly unsound. The practice should never have been allowed to grow up and, now that we are introducing legislation, it is, I think, desirable that a reform should be effected. In effecting that reform, we are bringing our insurance law into conformity with the insurance law of the great majority of the countries of Europe. The reasons for it were stated by me in introducing the measure. Deputy McGilligan said I made no such statement. What I said may have been brief but it was sufficiently clear to indicate, in broad terms, the reasons why that reform is required. I said:—

"The contracts involved in life assurance and industrial assurance being of a long-period character, as contrasted with general insurance contracts intended to cover a short period of risk only, make it desirable in the opinion of the Government, to separate the life and industrial branches from the other branches of insurance business. It is proper that policy holders in the life and industrial insurance branches should be afforded the full security of the separate funds formed by the assets which their premiums have created and should be protected from the possibility of such funds being applied, directly or indirectly, to make good the losses and cover the expenses incurred in other classes of insurance."

Deputy Moore raised a query as to why it should be assumed that the operations of a company doing the two classes of business would be in only one direction—in the direction of making good losses on fire insurance out of life assurance funds rather than in the other direction—transferring profits from fire and general business to the credit of those holding life policies. It is necessary to remember the essential difference between each class of business. Life assurance involves long-term contracts and the accumulation of reserves comes from the investment of premiums, not from the investment of profits. In most well regulated insurance companies, the profits are derived from the interest earned on invested funds and the whole of the premium income goes into the life funds for the greater security of the policy holders. Deputy Dillon said that we were going to prevent any Irish company from doing the two classes of business whereas we were leaving extern companies to do that. That statement is, of course, entirely at variance with the terms of the Bill. The provisions dealing with the division of business apply equally to all companies—both Irish and external companies—so far as assurance business in this country is concerned.

Would the Minister quote what I said? As reported at column 1729 of the Official Debates I said:—

"The Minister knows that for a long time most of the English companies could do life business through parent companies and employ subsidiaries to do fire, accident and marine business. They are at present doing that, and there is nothing to prevent their going on doing it under this Bill."

In fact the provisions of the Bill, which make it impossible to issue a new licence except to a company which is a national company as defined in the Act, make it impossible for an English company to adopt that device; whereas if they have done it already—if they are now two companies, one doing life business and the other fire and general business—then those provisions do not affect them at all. If Deputy Dillon's suggestion is that those companies which are now doing both classes of business could adopt the device of forming subsidiaries to do fire, accident and marine business, the provisions of the Bill operate to prevent that.

They are already adopting the device.

If they are two companies, they are not affected by the Bill any more than Irish companies in the same position would be affected.

The Irish companies have not got subsidiaries; that is the whole difficulty.

Deputy Dillon's assertion is contrary to the terms of the Bill. We had also from Deputy Dillon a number of other criticisms of the measure which indicated either that he had not read a number of the sections or had failed to understand the meaning of them. I will deal with some of them, perhaps briefly, in order to begin the process of education which Deputy McGilligan was so keen to secure. He contends that the manner in which it is proposed to provide additional finance to amalgamate companies is unsound, and that the money should be advanced on loan on the security of debentures. The financial position of the companies which are likely to be involved in those financial transactions is not such as would justify the granting of loans. The only companies which are going to be concerned at all with those provisions of the Bill are companies which are facing the alternatives of being wound up for being insolvent or amalgamated for the protection of their policy holders.

Nonsense!

In any event the only security that could be offered by such a company for the loan that is proposed to be made to them would be the assets representing the insurance funds, and against those assets the liability of the policy holders would rank in priority to the loan. Deputy Dillon also stated that Irish companies. are being called on under the Bill to make more elaborate returns to the Department than any external company. Again, the statement is incorrect. It is true that Section 88 of the Bill enables the Minister, if he so thinks fit, to accept in lieu of the abstracts and statements which the company must make under the Act of 1909, or this Bill, the abstracts and the statements which that company is required by the law of its own country to make to the Government of that country. That is an entirely different matter from saying, as Deputy Dillon stated, that whatever satisfies the Governments of those other countries will also satisfy us. The Minister will obviously not use that discretion unless the returns which have to be made by those companies to their own Government—the returns which the law of the countries requires them to make— are satisfactory to us and give us all the information we desire.

And are as full as the returns required from the Irish companies?

If the returns which the foreign companies have to make are equally adequate and full as the returns which this Bill requires all companies to make, then the Irish companies are obviously not placed at any disadvantage, as Deputy Dillon contended.

Would the Minister answer a specific question?

I think I had better proceed by way of speech than by way of cross-examination. Deputy Norton referred at some length to the question of conditions of employment, but before I get on to deal with that I want to make sure that he does not misunderstand me or cause me to be misunderstood. He stated that I had said, in introducing the measure, that there was going to be no disemployment, and that there was going to be compensation for any person who became disemployed. I said:—

"I do not think that the provisions of this Bill will result in any number of persons losing employment, and it is my intention that persons who are dependent for their livelihood on insurance employment and are affected by this measure will be fairly dealt with."

It has been contended, and Deputy Dillon was the first to do so, that this Bill will inevitably mean a large number of persons now employed in insurance being dispensed with. It is perhaps desirable that I should say something about insurance employment. There are too many people employed in the industry at the present time to permit of its being conducted on sound lines. The industry as at present conducted is peculiar in this respect, that it is under no necessity to restrict the number of persons who can at any time be taken on as agents, since they may be paid wholly or mainly by commission——

Is there anything in the Bill about it?

——and the question of redundancy of staff is not an important consideration for the company. Consequently there are many agents whose collections occupy a very small portion of their time, and whose earnings from collectible commissions are insufficient to provide a living. Such an agent, finding it possible to make his collection in a fraction of his time, devotes the greater part of his time to canvassing for new business, and strives to increase his earnings thereby. It is from the fees obtained from the new business which he introduces that a very large part of his income is derived. That system, which was instituted by the companies, lends itself to over-canvassing, and to persons being induced to take up policies which their incomes do not justify. There is frequently an inability to maintain payments on those policies, with the result that there is a loss to the insured, and not infrequently a loss to the insurance company, only the agents making a profit out of the transaction.

Not always.

This over-canvassing, which, in a sense, is forced upon the agent, the bulk of whose income depends upon it, is, in fact, one of the primary causes of many of the unsatisfactory features of industrial assurance business.

Is there any provision in the Bill about it?

If I am going to continue my speech, I think I should be allowed to do so without further interruption by Deputy Morrissey.

The Minister has received the minimum of interruption. He himself has of ten interrupted very much more.

That system also means that as an entire body the agents are in the main paid on commission an increase in the premium income of the company does not necessarily mean any reduction in working costs. The system is itself obviously undesirable, both on account of the conditions of employment which it imposes and the abuses to which it gives rise. There are alternatives to that system, and whether it would be possible to apply those alternatives in the circumstances of this country it is as yet difficult to say, but obviously no alternative system can be instituted unless stronger units than the existing Irish companies emerge as a result of this Bill. If such stronger units emerge, and if it is possible successfully to work some alternative system of operating industrial assurance, then the adoption of measures to require it can be considered, but not before.

It is quite true that the proposed amalgamation of companies will operate ultimately to reduce the existing redundancy of staffs. It does not follow, however, that redundancy can only be dealt with by disemployment. Undoubtedly it would be a burden upon an amalgamated company to have to carry excessive staffs, but the burden would be lessened with the passage of time by the increase of its premium income and by the normal wastage that could be expected. However, there are obvious circumstances which make it impossible at this stage to meet difficulties which may arise in connection with the disposal of the staffs of amalgamated companies and which may not arise. The matter will have to be considered when each amalgamation scheme is submitted. I again express the opinion that no substantial disemployment of persons who are now getting their living from industrial employment need result from the Bill. I believe the campaign conducted against the Bill on that ground has ulterior motives behind it. However, I must again emphasise that the primary purpose of the Bill is the protection of the public, and that, in the consideration of any matter that may arise in connection with it, that must continue to be of primary concern.

Reference has also been made to the reinsurance provisions. I admit that there is some doubt as to whether the wording of the existing sections of the Bill will enable the reinsurance company to operate in the manner in which it is intended it should operate. It was, however, in view of that doubt that I took pains in introducing the measure in my opening statement to explain carefully how it was contemplated that the proposed company should operate.

It is the Bill we are now dealing with, and the Minister should give it his attention.

The reinsurance company will operate as an ordinary company and will give and take reinsurance business. The result of that will be that the Saorstát licensed companies will get their share of the reinsurance business that will be available. The reassurance provisions will not apply to life insurance.

Surely they are not going to take in one another's washing?

It is intended that the reinsurance company will enter into agreements with the licensed companies for the reinsurance of risks arising in the Saorstát. It is also intended that the reinsurance company should by treaty cede a proportion of the risks reinsured with it to licensed companies. The section will not operate to prevent a company retaining in whole or in part all the risk, but the company will not be obliged to grant reinsurance to any company which does not retain such proportion of the risk as the reinsurance company shall decide. It is also intended that the reinsurance company will do business on the usual terms.

Deputy Dillon waxed eloquent about the proposal to give the Minister power to determine disputes which he said was undemocratic, unprecedented, and bureaucratic. The provisions of Section 65 of this Bill are based upon the provisions of Section 32 of the British Act of 1923, amended, as the InterDepartmental Committee of 1924 recommended it should be amended, by the substitution of the Minister for the Industrial Assurance Commissioner set up by the British statute. The section does not, as Deputy Dillon stated, debar any person from having recourse to the courts. It provides, however, that on the joint application of the company and the applicant, or, where questions of the validity of the policy, fraud or misrepresentation do not arise, on the application of either party to the dispute, the dispute may be determined by the Minister who, for that purpose may, and in fact will, appoint an inspector to hold an inquiry. That provision is a necessary safeguard for industrial assurance policy holders who are often deterred from securing their rights by the prospect of the costs involved in taking legal proceedings. It is not unknown for companies to rely on that deterrent, and however innocent Deputies opposite may be, there can, I think, be no opposition to that section on practical grounds. It has worked well in Britain, and it is a necessary reform here. The attempt to attack the provision on the grounds of principle is merely stupid.

Deputy MacDermot asked why it was considered necessary to have the Minister determine disputes on the application of a single party. That is, of course, the essence in one sense of the safeguard in so far as the policy holder is concerned, but even for the company, the procedure offers certain advantages. There are certain disputes in respect of which an application might come from the company alone, such as in a case where there were two claimants to benefit under the policy and it was impossible for the company to determine on the facts which was the bona fide claimant or where it was desired to get a declaration of death where the insured person had disappeared. If companies were to be allowed to object to the determination of the dispute by the Minister, then a very large portion of the benefit of the section would disappear.

What power has the Minister to give a certificate in that case?

If I am going to finish the debate at 9 o'clock, Deputy Dillon will have to restrain himself.

You will not finish.

Reference has also been made to the section which gives the Minister power to control premium rates. I admit that I have an open mind as to the desirability of that section, but on balance I think it should be there. Certainly strong representations were made some time ago that the Government should have such powers. These representations followed the enactment of the Road Traffic Act. Obviously, when the principle of compulsory insurance has now become enshrined in legislation, there should be some provision for regulation of rates where, having regard to the circumstances, the Minister considered such regulation as necessary. I appreciate that the existence of these powers may result in considerable pressure being placed on the Department of Industry and Commerce and that the Department may be put in the position in which it would appear to be taking responsibility for the rates charged when, in fact, the final responsibility should be on the company. We can perhaps discuss the desirability of that section in greater detail when we come to deal with the Bill in Committee.

Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney was, I think, correct when he suggested that Section 9 of the Bill would require certain amendment in its wording to make its meaning clear. It is not desired to prevent the doing of classes of insurance business, to which the Bill does not relate, with unlicensed companies. In so far as these classes of business are concerned—marine insurance, burglary insurance, live stock insurance and so forth—no change in the existing situation is being effected. It is also necessary under that section to make it clear that reinsurance business can be done with unlicensed companies, that is, companies not licensed to do ordinary insurance business in the Saorstát. From the discussion which has taken place on the Bill, I am more convinced than ever that its general policy is sound and that, although certain amendments may ultimately be inserted in Committee, it is reasonably sound in detail. These are the words I used in introducing the measure and nothing that has been said in the course of the discussion has induced me to alter that opinion. Certainly I think that those who attempted to criticise certain of its details should have felt obliged to put forward their own ideas as to how the difficulties which this Bill is designed to meet should be overcome. The fact that they had no alternative suggestions to submit is an indication that they did not feel that any ideas they had in this matter, any proposals that they might be prepared to bring forward for consideration, would stand examination against the proposals embodied in the measure, and it is with complete confidence that I recommend the Dáil to adopt it.

Might I ask if it is the intention of the Minister to introduce amendments on the Committee Stage to implement the statement he made when introducing the Second Reading and now in his concluding speech regarding compensation—the very qualified statement?

I suggest that the Deputy should wait until he can read what I have said in the Official Reports and then perhaps he will understand it.

Will the Minister say if it is his intention to put something into the Bill? I think I am entitled to ask for information before I agree to or disagree with the Second Reading. Is he going to give compensation or is he not?

I have made my meaning quite clear to the average Deputy.

The Minister spoke of the returns that would be required from Irish companies and the returns that would satisfy him from extern companies licensed to operate here. Is he now prepared to say that he will require identical returns from the Irish companies and the English companies, or will he at least require returns from both companies reproducing the same information for both?

I think the meaning of the relevant section of the Bill is quite clear.

Surely he can say yes or no to that question?

I prefer to give the answer I have given.

You prefer, in fact, to wriggle.

During his speech the Minister gave the impression that it was not compulsory on all companies who are licensed to reinsure with this company. It is in the Bill that they must reinsure.

It is intended that they should effect reinsurance with that company.

The Minister's statement was not quite clear.

It is intended that all licensed companies will enter into reinsurance treaties with the reinsurance company.

You did not deal with the point where reinsurance was rejected by that company, or they only took a certain portion, and the corresponding fraction could be had only at a heavier rate. Deputy McGilligan made that point and the Minister did not reply to it.

I think we will have adequate opportunity of discussing it in Committee.

The Minister has no observations to make on it?

I have already made certain observations on it.

Question put: "That the words proposed to be deleted stand part."
The Dáil divided: Tá, 74; Níl, 52.

  • Aiken, Frank.
  • Bartley, Gerald.
  • Beegan, Patrick.
  • Boland, Patrick.
  • Bourke, Daniel.
  • Brady, Brian.
  • Briscoe, Robert.
  • Browne, William Frazer.
  • Cleary, Mícheál.
  • Concannon, Helena.
  • Corbett, Edmond.
  • Corish, Richard.
  • Corkery, Daniel.
  • Corry, Martin John.
  • Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
  • Crowley, Timothy.
  • Daly, Denis.
  • Davin, William.
  • Derrig, Thomas.
  • Doherty, Hugh.
  • Flinn, Hugo V.
  • Flynn, John.
  • Flynn, Stephen.
  • Fogarty, Andrew.
  • Geoghegan, James.
  • Gibbons, Seán.
  • Goulding, John.
  • Hales, Thomas.
  • Harris, Thomas.
  • O'Dowd, Patrick.
  • O'Grady, Seán.
  • O'Reilly, Matthew.
  • Pattison, James P.
  • Pearse, Margaret Mary.
  • Rice, Edward.
  • Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
  • Ryan, James.
  • Hayes, Seán.
  • Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
  • Houlihan, Patrick.
  • Jordan, Stephen.
  • Keely, Séamus P.
  • Kehoe, Patrick.
  • Kelly, James Patrick.
  • Kelly, Thomas.
  • Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
  • Killilea, Mark.
  • Kilroy, Michael.
  • Kissane, Eamonn.
  • Lemass, Seán F.
  • Little, Patrick John.
  • Lynch, James B.
  • MacDermot, Frank.
  • McEllistrim, Thomas.
  • MacEntee, Seán.
  • Maguire, Ben.
  • Maguire, Conor Alexander.
  • Moane, Edward.
  • Moore, Séamus.
  • Moylan, Seán.
  • Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
  • Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
  • Norton, William.
  • O Briain, Donnchadh.
  • O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
  • O'Doherty, Joseph.
  • Ryan, Martin.
  • Ryan, Robert.
  • Sheridan, Michael.
  • Smith, Patrick.
  • Traynor, Oscar.
  • Victory, James.
  • Walsh, Richard.
  • Ward, Francis C.

Níl

  • Anthony, Richard.
  • Beckett, James Walter.
  • Belton, Patrick.
  • Bennett, George Cecil.
  • Brennan, Michael.
  • Broderick, William Joseph.
  • Brodrick, Seán.
  • Burke, James Michael.
  • Burke, Patrick.
  • Coburn, James.
  • Cosgrave, William T.
  • Costello, John Aloysius.
  • Curran, Richard.
  • Daly, Patrick.
  • Davitt, Robert Emmet.
  • Desmond, William.
  • Dillon, James M.
  • Dockrell, Henry Morgan.
  • Dolan, James Nicholas.
  • Doyle, Peadar S.
  • Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
  • Fagan, Charles.
  • Finlay, John.
  • Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
  • Good, John.
  • Haslett, Alexander.
  • Holohan, Richard.
  • Keating, John.
  • Lavery, Cecil.
  • Lynch, Finian.
  • MacEoin, Seán.
  • McFadden, Michael Og.
  • McGilligan, Patrick.
  • McGovern, Patrick.
  • McGuire, James Ivan.
  • McMenamin, Daniel.
  • Morrisroe, James.
  • Morrissey, Daniel.
  • Mulcahy, Richard.
  • Murphy, James Edward.
  • Nally, Martin.
  • O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
  • O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
  • O'Leary, Daniel.
  • O'Neill, Eamonn.
  • O'Sullivan, Gearóid.
  • O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
  • Reidy, James.
  • Rice, Vincent.
  • Roddy, Martin.
  • Rogers, Patrick James.
  • Thrift, William Edward.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Little and Smith; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Bennett.
Question declared carried.
Question—"That the Bill be read a Second Time"—put and agreed to.

I propose to ask the House to take the Committee Stage when the Dáil meets after the Recess —5th February.

Make it March.

I have not the fixing of it.

This is the Bill that was so expeditiously required.

It has taken 12 years to get this far.

And three attempts by the Minister for Industry and Commerce.

Committee Stage fixed for the 5th February, 1936.

Barr
Roinn