The Ministry in dealing with what the Minister calls the two most necessary needs for the physical well-being of our people, proposes to put the new Ministry of Public Health and the new Ministry of Social Welfare on an equal footing with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce upon which everything in the country must be sustained, including our social services. We are offered here, in the draft of the measure before us, in the explanatory memorandum, coloured white, that has gone with it and in the Minister's statement, just the results of the incompetency and the indolence which have characterised the Department of Local Government and Public Health for such a long period. We have the Government like bad workmen, complaining about their tools, complaining about the tools they have destroyed and off which they have taken the edge, and which they have failed to put into effective use. In their picture of what the effect on the lives of the people as a whole will be, they tell us nothing about that. They tell us nothing but that two new Ministries, new experts of a political kind under the control of the Government to direct two new sets of machinery, will be set up. We are told, in the face of statements that have been made on behalf of the Government both by the Taoiseach and other Ministers during the last 12 months at any rate, to confine ourselves to that. I think, from the impression the Minister's statement has conveyed to me, that his imagination seems to have lost its delicacy. If he had not blunted his literary talents so badly by the hack work he had to carry on as a very important part of his Departmental work in writing to the editors of the Dublin daily Press letters to be published over the name of his private secretary, he would have approached the introduction of this measure in a clearer, simpler, and more artistic way. He could have called the measure something like an Act to recall and then embody the great Twin Brethren who are going to save the mob of this State from all dangers that may arise in every possible way. He recalls days long ago when people were prepared to accept things without examining them. The great Twin Brethren—"and none who saw their bearing durst ask their name or race"; and looking to the future as to what the supposed effect of this measure will be, we can recall the effect the great Twin Brethren had long ago.
"Back comes the Chief in triumph
Who in the hour of fight
Hath seen the great Twin Brethren
In harness on his right.
Safe comes the ship to haven
Through billows and through gales
If once the great Twin Brethren
Sit shining on the sails."
And the mob of this country who are effective enough, intelligent enough and active enough, in their own way and through their voluntary organisations, to set up a Parliament here are being asked, without explanation of any kind, to accept a Ministry of Health and a Ministry of Social Services to look after everything with regard to their health in the most up-to-date way and to secure that their incomes will be properly maintained.
The Minister last night read a statement delivered by the Taoiseach in the Seanad in April last, and, when he came to the end of his reading, he said he had read far more than he had intended. He did, because he read the end of a statement by the Taoiseach which indicated that the idea of a Ministry of Health was born out of the fact that a Parliamentary Secretary to whom powers were transmitted had got out of hand, and it had to be explained by the Taoiseach to the Seanad that a Parliamentary Secretary, once he got the bit in his teeth, was almost completely independent of the Executive and could do things and take a stand which a Minister ordinarily would not do or take.
I asked the Minister in relation to his proposal here and his statement that the present Public Health Bill is being dropped to explain why, in April this year, at a time when the Taoiseach was making his statement in the Seanad, it was considered so important that that Public Health Bill, which is now lying on the political beaches of this country as big a wreck as anything on the beaches of France, should be proceeded with. In the most important financial period not only in this House but in the general history of our country, as we were getting out of the atmosphere and the circumstances of a ghastly world war, when the House was considering its financial business, down on top of that business was thrown the Public Health Bill, and, in Committee alone, or in two-thirds of the Committee period alone, the House was asked to spend 15 days discussing the matter.
We did give our services in the House to discussing the matter, up and down and inside out, and, with only two-thirds of the work on that Bill done, when we came to Holy Week and Easter Week, the House was taken by the throat by the Government, through the hands of the Parliamentary Secretary, and told that the matter was so urgent that the House had to spend Holy Week and, if necessary, Easter Week, in order to finish that Bill. This House sat every week from about 28th January this year until the end of July. There were only two short weeks in which any respite was given to members to enable them to lay aside their parliamentary duties or to attend in a systematic way to business at home and that period had to be eaten into by an ugly trick on the part of the Government.
It will be recalled that we, objecting to these tactics, left the discussion of the Bill after 15 days in Committee, and the Bill was simply pushed through the House. More than 100 amendments had to be discussed and it was slapped through in a few hours, simply because the Opposition were driven out of the House by the Government's tactics. It was urgent then and now it is thrown on the scrap-heap. We want a Minister for Health instead and we get a long list of the tremendous things the Minister for Local Government has to do and of the great advances which have been made in science in the world and we are told how important it is to have an expert, a political expert, with a new and costly machine under him to keep the country abreast of all the things that require to be done for health.
"Make no mistake about it—the root and primeval cause of all infectious disease, whether you think about the typhus that swept the country in the '40's or the gastroenteritis which decimates the population of the Dublin slums in our own time, is malnutrition."
That is a statement made comparatively recently by a very prominent medical expert in the City of Dublin, and while new Ministries and new expenses are being set up here so that our health may be safeguarded, the real work of the country which will sustain the health of the country is being neglected and left undone.
The Minister details in various ways what requires to be done in order that the health of this country may be safeguarded. He tells us that the social services can be co-ordinated, but we have pleaded, argued and spoken, year in and year out, for the doing of that, and we cannot understand an approach to the discussion of this measure by which the Minister can say that, in the remnants of the Public Health Bill now being cleared off the Order Paper, the Government has subscribed to the idea that if a person gets, say, tuberculosis or some infectious disease of one kind or another, he and his family will be maintained entirely at the public expense. But if a man breaks his leg, he has to exist on 15/- a week from national health insurance funds.