Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 23 Oct 1946

Vol. 103 No. 1

Air Raid Precautions (Amendment) Bill, 1946—Second Stage.

Minister for Defence (Mr. Traynor)

I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. Deputies will remember that the Air Raid Precautions Act, 1939, was framed and passed before experience was gained of the nature of air attacks on the scale reached in the war. To meet the situation as it developed the Act was amended and extended by emergency powers. The amending and extending Orders remaining in force at the date of the expiry of the Emergency Powers Act, 1939, have all been revoked. The object of the Bill is to amend the Air Raid Precautions Act, 1939, so as to include in permanent legislation certain provisions in relation to air raid precautions which were heretofore secured by emergency powers Orders and which it is considered essential to retain.

The Bill covers six matters as follows:—

(i) Supplementary powers and duties of local authorities, their officers and servants in connection with arrangements for evacuation of the civil population and provisions for the accommodation, maintenance and welfare of evacuees. Existing powers cover only assistance by local authorities to the extent of collecting and furnishing information for the purpose of the preparation of plans for the transference of the civil population. These powers were found to be insufficient and under an emergency powers Order wider authority had to be obtained, i.e., covering transport, accommodation, billeting and the appointment of billeting officers, the purchase of equipment and the recoupment of expenses incurred by local authorities. It is not intended to continue all these powers now, but to retain a general provision requiring local authorities to perform duties in connection with evacuation arrangements to such extent as the Minister may direct after consultation with the Minister for Local Government; to authorise local authorities to incur expenditure for this purpose and to enable the Minister to refund the expenditure so incurred.

(ii) To continue a textual amendment to the Air Raid Precautions Act, 1939, which became necessary as a result of a typographical mistake in that Act where in sub-section (4) of Section 34 the words "of any borough" appeared instead of "off any borough".

(iii) To enable the State to recoup local authorities in full (rather than on the partial basis laid down in the Act of 1939) any approved expenditure incurred by the local authorities on the provision of food and rest centres where temporary accommodation and feeding could be provided for persons who might be bombed out of their houses.

(iv) Supplementary powers to cover the payment of State compensation to members of A.R.P. services injured in the course of duty in peace-time, for example, in incidents such as those which during the recent emergency occurred at Dún Laoghaire, the North Strand, South Circular Road and other places. The powers in the Air Raid Precautions Act, 1939, were limited to the payment of compensation to persons injured in the course of training or exercises in peace-time and did not envisage hostile acts against the State by any of the belligerents while the State was not engaged in war. Provision is also necessary to secure that any such compensation would not be reckoned as public moneys for the purposes of abatement of any military service pensions.

(v) In order to secure the availability of an adequate supply of drugs and dressings and hospital equipment to provide against the possibility of a large number of casualties, the Department of Defence purchased stocks of the necessary supplies to the value of approximately £60,000. The stocks were not held centrally but were distributed to hospitals throughout the country selected primarily for their strategic position and also having regard to the storage accommodation available. Some, if not a major portion, of these supplies are still difficult to obtain and arrangements are being made to retain as much of the supplies and equipment as possible having regard to the keeping qualities of the various items and the rates at which they can be consumed and replaced. A scheme has been worked out in consultation with the Department of Local Government and Public Health for the redistribution of the supplies to various hospitals that can consume and replace them. In this manner it is hoped to maintain in the country indefinitely an adequate reserve supply of medical and surgical supplies and requisites.

Powers are required to cover the acceptance of the supplies by hospitals, both as regards the powers of the hospital authorities to accept them and the ability of the Minister to enforce this acceptance. Provisions are also necessary to enable the Minister to secure that reasonable arrangements are made for the proper maintenance and storage of the supplies and for the recoupment of reasonable expenses incurred by the hospital in making provision for proper storage and maintenance.

In order to protect the patients and staffs of hospitals certain measures, e.g., shelter accommodation, anti-blast measures and protection from the effects of glass breakage due to bombing were considered advisable in the hospitals situated in or near the areas in which intensive A.R.P. measures were considered necessary, i.e., the four county boroughs of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford, and the six urban areas scheduled in the Air Raid Precautions Act, 1939, i.e., Drogheda, Dundalk, Dún Laoghaire, Bray, Wexford and Cóbh. Measures recommended by the Department of Defence were undertaken in many of these hospitals and arrangements were made for the recoupment of portion of the expenditure (not exceeding one-third) from State funds together with an equal recoupment from the funds of the local authorities in whose areas the hospitals were situated. The necessary powers for the recoupment of the expenses were secured under emergency powers Order and provision is made in the Bill for the continuance of these powers to enable outstanding claims to be dealt with to a conclusion.

The provisions of the Bill are designed to meet existing requirements only. For example, while provision is included to require local authorities to perform duties in connection with evacuation arrangements the most recent of these duties has been the winding up of the arrangements already made and the settlement of any matters outstanding in consequence of the organisation which was established and has since been broken down. Prudence requires that we should still maintain the powers necessary to organise A.R.P. and that as far as possible we should ensure that the maximum equipment necessary should be maintained in the country where this can be effected without waste or loss. In this connection, it may be mentioned that apart from an endeavour to ensure the maintenance of medical and surgical equipment, arrangements have been made on the advice of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health for the redistribution of the fire-fighting equipment for A.R.P. purposes to areas where the equipment will be of use and can be maintained. The Bill merely incorporates the various emergency powers Orders which were in operation during the emergency.

Mr. M. O'Sullivan

The Bill will naturally be regarded as non-controversial in every respect. I was interested in the Minister's statement that, in certain eventualities, 100 per cent. recoupment would be made to local authorities, and, in that connection, I want to direct his attention to Section 2 which imposes certain obligations on a local authority. Under the old Bill, it was competent for the Minister to make a grant to a local authority up to 75 per cent. of the entire expenditure, but in point of fact the only grant allowed, so far as the Dublin Corporation was concerned, was a maximum of 50 per cent.

As this Bill, in effect, merely provides for the shell of an organisation—quite a prudent step—and as it largely centres around the retention of certain stores, particularly those relating to the Auxiliary Fire Service and the Casualty and Rescue Service, and as all the saleable stores are, so to speak, on the market at present, it might be a suitable occasion to ask the Minister if he is prepared to devote the proceeds of the sale of these stores to the municipal exchequer, so far as Dublin is concerned, in view of the fact that the Department gave to the city authority only a maximum grant of 50 per cent. when the Act permitted a grant of up to 75 per cent.

Might I ask the Minister also, as a matter of interest, what the position with regard to the respirators is? At the conclusion of the emergency, there was a good deal of speculation as to what was to become of these respirators. May they be regarded now as the personal property of individuals, if they still exist? It would appear to me that their collection would involve too large an organisation. I understand further from the Minister's statement that he proposes to retain a certain amount of drugs. These obviously will be drugs of a character which might be regarded as non-perishable.

Mr. Cosgrave

In sub-section (2) of Section 5, provision is made for continuing the provisions of certain emergency powers Orders. That is a very unsatisfactory way of introducing legislation, and I suggest that a way out of the difficulty would be to incorporate in the Bill the actual provisions of these Orders. This, of course, is the simplest way of doing it. It is easy enough for Civil Service Departments to keep an accurate account of these Orders and amendments of them, but, with the exception of the Library here and of certain Departments, I do not think it is possible for anyone to find accurately, at short notice, all the matters dealing with air-raid precautions as contained in these emergency powers Orders. In the event of litigation or any other reason requiring a person to look up particular provisions, the individual is placed in great difficulty, and I suggest that the Minister should consider the advisability of introducing an amended form of this section on Committee Stage incorporating the actual provisions.

If these Orders are to be incorporated in permanent legislation, why not put them all in one Act? We have had discussion here time and again on the desirability of codification. The Taoiseach has expressed verbal agreement with that suggestion and, in fact, a committee has been appointed by the House for the purpose of codifying existing statutes. Now, as late as 1946, we are introducing a system of legislation by reference to existing Orders. In a few years, these Orders will not be available and great difficulty will be caused to anyone who desires to know the text of particular Orders or the actual matters dealt with therein. I suggest the Minister should consider introducing an amended form which will incorporate in the Bill the actual provisions of these Orders.

Mr. Coogan

I support Deputy Cosgrave's appeal to the Minister. It is a very difficult matter to construe law at present, having regard to the multiplicity of emergency powers Orders of all kinds which have to be consulted. Many of these have not been printed; some are only typed. I cannot say if that applies to the Orders mentioned in sub-section (2) of Section 5 but it would make for simplicity of reference and ease of reference if we had incorporated in the Bill the substance of the various Orders. I do not think it would be a very big job. Very many of these Orders, while they may appear at first sight to be long, have only one or two paragraphs of real substance in them, and I suggest that the Minister should consider embodying the substance of these various Orders in the form of the Bill itself.

The Minister has not given us any indication of the expenditure likely to be imposed upon local authorities, on hospital boards or committees or on local authorities in charge of hospitals, under the Bill, and I should like to hear something from him in that regard. I should also like to know whether the Government contemplate a continuance of the emergency situation. Are we living in a war atmosphere? Are we to continue to live indefinitely in a war atmosphere? This Bill, so far as I can see, is to become a permanent statute. There is no limit of time to the operation of the Bill. I suggest that the Minister might consider giving this Bill a duration of, say, five years. That would put us past the present emergency and perhaps bring us into the new one, if it is likely to arise. I do not think that a Bill of this kind should form a permanent feature of our legislation.

Mr. Traynor

On the point raised by Deputy O'Sullivan, I am afraid that is more or less outside my power. As to the point he raised in regard to respirators, some time ago we notified the public through the Press as to what we thought they should do in regard to the respirators in their possession. So far as I can remember at this stage, we asked the public to retain the respirators and to preserve them. It is, of course, true to say that the rubber and certain other material in the respirators are perishable to a certain extent; but, nevertheless, it is desirable that they should be retained until the extreme limit of their usefulness. After that, we will just have to write them off, because the expense which would be incurred in collecting them would be such that it would not warrant the collection of them in the manner in which they would be required to be collected. In regard to the point raised by Deputies Cosgrave and Coogan, this is, in effect, a form of the codification for which they are looking. A general order in regard to codification generally has been issued to all Departments of State and I understand that this is being undertaken. That, of course, is a colossal job.

Mr. Cosgrave

That is the very negation of codification because it presents the difficulty that it is not alone in Acts you have to find the matters referred to.

Mr. Traynor

I may not have taken Deputy Coogan up correctly, but to my mind he suggested that there would still be a necessity to refer to former emergency powers Orders. That would not be necessary in this case, because these amendments are, in fact, emergency powers Orders which we are incorporating in this amending Bill. Therefore, if there is any reference required, it will be to this particular amending Bill.

Mr. Cosgrave

If you wanted to see the provisions, you would have to get the Order.

Mr. Traynor

That may be necessary at this stage, but at a later stage it would not be necessary.

Mr. Coogan

Under Section 5, sub-section (2), you will have to refer to at least four Orders if you want to understand that section. My point is that, instead of legislating by reference, the substance of these Orders should be embodied in the sub-section. I do not think that that would entail any great difficulty in drafting and it would make for brevity and easy reference.

Mr. Traynor

I can have that examined. We are getting the effect that we require in the amending Bill as it is. I am no more anxious, I can assure Deputy Coogan, to continue a war atmosphere than he is. This is a necessity which has been forced upon us. If we did not perform this duty, I am sure Deputy Coogan himself would bring us to task for it. Even at the end of five years, I do not know what the situation will be, but whoever is in this position, if the necessity should arrive for removing the requirements which we at this stage deem necessary, it is always possible to do that. This is not the last word on air raid precautions. Like Deputy Coogan, I hope the day is coming when we will be paying attention to things other than the protection of our people against war damage, and so on.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered: That the Committee Stage be taken on Wednesday, 6th November.