I think the House ought to know something of the background of workmen's compensation and of the slow and early beginnings of our code of social legislation so far as workmen's compensation is concerned. The original and principal purpose of the workmen's compensation code was to provide compensation for injured workmen. Every other aspect of our workmen's compensation code was subsidiary to that main consideration, namely, to make provision for the man who was injured. I should, therefore, like the Deputies who are supporting this Bill to keep that point of view in the forefront of their perspective and to remember that the whole approach to this problem must be to consider the main purpose of the original and every subsequent Act. Our workmen's compensation code is probably the oldest of any piece of social legislation now in existence. The original Workmen's Compensation Act was passed in 1897. Prior to that workers had no right under any workmen's compensation code. Admittedly they had rights of common law against negligent employers or under the Employers' Liability Act of 1880 which was in operation for the 17 years between the enactment of that Act and the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1897. However, the workers' rights of common law then were both difficult and costly to establish.
The enactment of the 1897 Act represented a very substantial revolution in workmen's compensation inasmuch as it enthroned the first Workmen's Compensation Act and established the worker's right to compensation in respect of industrial injuries in a manner which had not previously existed. The Act at that time covered specially hazardous occupations such as employment on railways, in mines, quarries and engineering works and was then limited to persons in those classes of employment. In 1900 the Act was extended generally to take in agriculture and in 1906 it was extended to cover all classes of employment where the relationship of master and man existed, except for non-manual workers in receipt of salaries in excess of £250. That £250 was increased to £350 for non-manual workers in the 1934 Workmen's Compensation Act.
The Act of 1934 did one thing in respect of medical fees which was not done under any previous code of workmen's compensation legislation. It established for the first time the rights of a medical practitioner to go to the courts, either in person or through a solicitor, at the time the settlement was being made there and to ask the court to award him a sum of money in respect of his treatment of the injured workman. The court could, if it thought fit, grant the medical practitioner a sum not exceeding £5 in respect of his attendance on the injured worker. However, bear in mind that the outstanding feature under which a doctor could get £5 medical fees as set out in the 1934 Act was this. He could go to a court or a solicitor. The court had a right to say yes or no to his application and the sum could never exceed £5 in respect of any one doctor. Two doctors could make an application and both could get £5 or, presumably, 32 could make an application if they could show they had attended the injured worker, and they could all get it. But the amount could not exceed £5 for one doctor, and the court had the right to say whether or not he should get £5, £1 or anything between £1 and £5. That was the setup. Bear in mind that up to 1934 no previous workmen's compensation code had ever provided for the payment of medical fees to persons who attended injured workers and since 1934 no workmen's compensation code, either in the Six Counties or in Great Britain, provides for payment to a doctor who attends an injured workman as such. The 1934 Act, therefore, was responsible for the introduction of what might be called a medical novelty in the sense that it provided the right under certain circumstances to a doctor to secure a maximum fee of £5 in respect of attendance on an injured workman. That has been the position from 1934 until the present date. We alone in this area of jurisdiction provide that entitlement to fees. No such entitlement is provided in Britain or in the Six Counties.
I said at the outset that the Workmen's Compensation Act was passed in the main to provide compensation for injured workmen. It was not intended that it should provide sources of income for insurance companies. It was not intended as a source of income for doctors, dentists or surgeons. The main purpose of the Act—and it is still the main purpose—was to provide compensation for the injured workmen because the legislators said that a workman injured in the course of his employment had a legitimate claim against his employer for compensation in such circumstances.
A feature of all our workmen's compensation legislation has been that it was always restrictive in character. If a workman met with a very serious accident, was mauled in the wheels of an engineering plant and, as a result, suffered not only serious physical damage and impairment but suffered also a very considerable loss in earning, the maximum amount of compensation to which he was entitled under the 1934 Act was 30/- per week. Thus, under that Act, a workman earning £6 or £7 a week, with a wife and four, five or six children, when he met with an accident in the course of his employment which resulted in his being unable to follow his occupation for three, six, nine or 12 months, got as a maximum 30/- per week. That is all he got between 1934 and 1943 when, under an Emergency Powers Order, the maximum compensation was stepped up from 30/- to 37/6 a week.
In the Workmen's Compensation (Amending) Bill, which I introduced in this House recently and which is now law, the maximum compensation has been raised from the 1934 level of 30/-to the current level of 50/- per week. It is worthy of note that here again that is still the maximum compensation which can be secured by an injured workman incapable of following employment as a result of injuries sustained in the course of his work. Even though that workman may to-day, if he had not met with the accident, be capable of earning £7 or £7 10s. 0d. a week, he can get only one-third of his normal wage as a maximum—that is, 50/- per week. Not only in the 1934 Act, but in all previous pieces of workmen's compensation legislation there has been that restriction by the Legislature.
The workman is entitled to some compensation, but the compensation has fallen short, in some instances very substantially short, of his normal rate of income. Even if the workman should lose his life, under the 1934 Act his widow and children going to court cannot get from the court the actuarial value of his income, ascertained by actuarial standards. There is a limit set there to the amount of compensation which the widow can get if she loses her husband. The actuarial value with regard to a man of 30 years earning £8 a week might be reckoned at £8,000 or £10,000. The widow cannot get that. There is a ceiling of £600 for the widow if her husband is lost at the age of 30 years. That is another instance of the restrictive character of our workmen's compensation legislation.
In short, therefore, the 1934 Act said to the injured workman: "The maximum compensation you will get under this Act, mainly introduced to provide compensation for you, is 30/- per week," now adjusted to 50/- per week. That was a variation of a rate of benefit which existed from 1897 to 1934. The medical attendant of the injured workman previously could not recover from the employer. It was in the 1934 Act for the first time he got the right to recover from the employer. The employer did not employ the doctor. The employer may not be in the country at all, but he may be liable for the workman who meets with an accident in the course of his employment. Under the 1934 Act the medical practitioner got the right to recover compensation from the employer, even though the employer had nothing to do with engaging the doctor.
The 1934 Act said to the injured workman: "Your ceiling is 30/- per week," and to the doctor it said: "Your maximum fees will be £5." Since 1934 we have amended the 30/-maximum compensation for the workman so as to enable him to get to-day a ceiling of 50/- compensation. That is the maximum amount to which he is at present entitled. Nobody will deny that that legislation was overdue, inasmuch as it gave to an injured workman some additional measure of compensation for the shrunken purchasing power of money and to compensate for the fact that wages generally had risen.
This Bill is seeking to break new ground, not on behalf of the injured workman, but on behalf of doctors and dentists and surgeons who may attend injured workmen. In the past the court was empowered to give a doctor who attended an injured workman a sum of not more than £5 as fees for his attendance on the injured man. But it was not an automatic right to pay. The doctor or his solicitor had to go to the court and say to the district justice or the Circuit Court judge trying the case: "I claim payment of fees for attending the injured workman" and the court could grant a maximum of £5 or it could refuse it. That was the relationship of the doctor and the injured workman under our 1934 code of workmen's compensation legislation, and that is the relationship which exists to-day, with the 1948 amending Act grafted on to the 1934 Workmen's Compensation Act.
This Bill wants to reverse that relationship entirely. From a position in which the doctor or his solicitor had to go to the court and ask for payment of fees, subject to a maximum of £5, this Bill seeks to put the medical attendant on the injured workman in a position immensely superior to anything he has occupied in the past and in an immensely better position than the injured workman, for whom all our compensation legislation was introduced. The amending Bill says that whereas in the past the court might, if it thought fit, award compensation, it will take completely out of the hands of the court the right to refuse compensation. The doctor has merely got to go into the court and say: "I am proceeding under Section 73 (1) of the measure introduced in the Dáil by Deputy Maguire and Deputy Brennan," and the judge thereupon looks at the section and says: "Well, I have got to do what these two Deputies desire; I must award compensation." He cannot refuse. He has to start off from that angle.
Every time a doctor demands payment under Section 73 of this measure, if it is passed, the judge has to find out how much he has got to award. He need not bother asking himself will he make any award at all. This measure renders it unnecessary for the judge to trouble himself with such an academic question as whether or not he will make an award. Deputy Maguire and Deputy Brennan say to the judge: "Forget about it; it is none of your business in the future. You have got to make an award and you have no discretion whatever to refuse." The judge says: "How much have I got to award?" and he looks at Section 73 of the Act of 1934 and he says: "Under the Act of 1934 I am limited to awarding a maximum sum of £5." But under this new Bill the sky is the limit so far as medical fees are concerned. He is not obliged to award a maximum of £10 or £20 or £30. Any Circuit Court judge can award £1,000 medical fees between surgeons and specialists and psychiatrists and dentists or anybody else under Section 73 of this new Bill; and each of those could get the full amount awarded.