This measure has for its main object the creation of two new Ministries to deal with social services and public health. There has been much discussion about the introduction of the Bill and many Deputies have given their ideas on whether these Ministries should or should not be set up. My own attitude is that I cannot support in any way any Bill providing for the appointment of two new Ministries, no matter what services are involved or what they have to do.
I agree that we would need a Minister for Public Health and a Minister for Social Services, if we could get a guarantee that the appointment of these Ministers would result in an improvement in public health and an increase, not in the doles, bounties and other gifts to the people, but in production, in the national pool of wealth from which the money for the administering of these services must come. Neither of these results can possibly materialise, and it is idle for the Labour Party or anybody else to expect an improvement in any of the services which will come under the jurisdiction of these two Ministers. It is from the people that the money for the provision of staff and so on must come and the people are not wealthy enough or the country big enough to give encouragement to any such scheme.
I admit that it may be hard for the Minister for Local Government to keep an eagle eye on the three Departments, for two of which new Ministers are to be appointed, but what we want is simplification. In this case, it can be done if the Government would agree to introduce legislation to grant the meagre 10/- per week to every old age pensioner. How much saving in staff would that bring about and how much worry would be avoided for Deputies who have continually to be in touch with the Department in an effort to wring the miserable 10/- out of the Department? If the Minister would agree to do that, he would automatically simplify the administration of old age pensions.
I fail to see any great medical man arising who will give us better provision for the public health or will give us anything better in the matter of social services than we have. All I see in this proposal is the creation of two new jobs, two nice soft posts for two lucky, or unlucky, men to be chosen from the Fianna Fáil Party. In time, I suppose, there will be added to each of these Ministers—perhaps not next year but within the next two years—a Parliamentary Secretary, and there is no use in the Minister saying that there will be an economy in staff through the creation of these new Ministries. There cannot be, because each will have to take on a separate section of the Civil Service and will have to have civil servants appointed to it in an effort to clear away a little of the fog of incompetence. In my view, they will succeed only in making it much thicker.
We are to have schemes for hospitals under the guiding hand of the Minister for Public Health, and I will not disagree with the proposition that bigger and better hospitals are essential, but this country, with a declining population, emigration and so on, is not in a position to find the immense amount of money required to finance these proposals. I find it strange that the Department of Local Government and the proposed Department of Public Health should be cut adrift from one another because everyone knows that any man or woman who has a good, roomy, airy house, who can get three and maybe four substantial meals in the day and who can do an honest day's hard work is not as likely to contract disease as those who have to live under bad conditions, in circumstances in which they have no money and can get no work to enable them to provide the necessary food to build sound constitutions and healthy, virile and active bodies. But, nevertheless, no step will be taken by the Government to provide those things.
I may be going outside the scope of this Bill as many Deputies have gone, but I am only trying to point out that an improvement in public health can never be achieved by the creation of a new Ministry. The same thing applies to social services. Social services are no credit to any country. No Government can make a boast of the fact that it has created a Minister for Social Services, a Minister to dish out free milk, free boots, free clothes to a people with a tradition of being the hardest working people in the world. They are to look to the State for everything they want, to look for shoes for the child and sometimes for the husband or wife, to look for a certain amount of money to provide them with fuel and clothes and, not the least, for a form of assistance which does not come under this Bill, but which nevertheless should be regarded as a social service, the dole, which keeps them in a condition of living which is worse than the workhouses 50 or 60 years ago. None of these Ministries will solve these problems. I do not see how they can. If the money to be spent by the creation of these Ministries could be spent on something in the line of production which would give our youth employment, we would not be continually watching them going to Great Britain. Questions would not have to be asked, as they were asked to-day, about the conditions of our people when they go to Britain. If something could be done in that way, every Deputy would be glad to give it his support.
I am sorry to say that the present Government have been moving steadily along the line of administration which we have had in this country for over 100 years. They have not the courage to cut adrift from the old red tape and incompetence which has continued for so long. The idea is to make State paupers of our people. As the last speaker said, the more social services we have, the more State paupers we have. All these people will automatically become Government servants who can be used at certain times to gain certain advantages. I believe that is the reason for the creation of two new Ministries. I think that the ten Ministers we have are quite sufficient. They are as much as this country can afford. If we had 6,000,000 or 7,000,000 people here I would not object; I do not think it would be right to object to the appointment of a Minister to fill some post or other. But we have a small and declining population. The Minister told us that there was a decline in the population of Europe. He knows well there has been a decline in the population here. He knows just as well as I do what is the cause of it—that the average young man or woman is not willing to settle in this country and see nothing before them only a State bounty, a spoonful, if you like, from the State bowl. It cannot be described in any other way.
