This is a motion declaring it to be "expedient to authorise such payments out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas as are necessary to give effect to any Act of the present Session to establish a co-ordinated system of social insurance", etc. Of course, when the Minister made his speech on the Second Reading of this Bill we were not privileged to see the Budget. But, since then, we have seen the Budget, and in the light of the terms of the Budget this Resolution seems to be misleading. We were told on the Second Reading of the Bill that the scheme of social welfare introduced by the Minister was one in which the workers were going to get certain insurances at a lesser charge than they would have to pay under the previous Social Welfare Bill. It is true, of course, that under this Bill they are not getting retirement pensions which were included in the previous Bill, for the retirement pensions for men at 65 and women at 60 are killed in this Bill. Those who will be covered by the Bill for other purposes will not be entitled to the death benefits provided under the previous Bill. That provision is being killed as well.
In addition, the previous Bill, which I had the honour of introducing, provided for an increase in maternity benefits from £2 to £5. Those persons are not going to get £5 now. They are going to be tied down to the £2 which runs to-day and which has been running for many years. The maternity attendance allowance provided under the previous Bill is similarly killed with the three other provisions I have mentioned in the Bill which has been introduced by the Minister. But, notwithstanding that fact, the workers' contributions are going to be increased in this Bill, in spite of the assurance we got from the Minister in March in 1951, that there would be no increase in the contributions under this Bill. We were then told that the Exchequer would pay the additional cost involved, and that workers would not be expected to make any additional contribution whatever.
That statement has been falsified by the provisions of this Bill which is increasing the contributions of workers although depriving them of four vital benefits, four valuable benefits which were in the previous Bill, and four benefits which were not in any respect mere risks. To a great many members of the community they would be, not risks, but almost certainties. They are killed in this Bill. We were told on Second Reading that the additional cost of this Bill was to be paid for out of moneys provided by the Exchequer. The Minister has had to admit that the workers' contributions are being increased under this Bill. The Exchequer, we are told, will pay the rest.
That is a fraud; that is a sham; and that is deliberately deluding the workers because, under this Bill, not only is the contribution of the worker increased but he will have the delightful privilege of paying his employer's share and the Government's share. He will pay all that out of the money which he will now yield up to the Exchequer in the form of higher prices for bread, tea, sugar, flour and butter, higher prices which he will pay for cigarettes and, if he takes a drink, higher prices which he will pay for beverages.
Instead of this being a Resolution purporting to say that the money will be provided out of the Exchequer to finance this Bill, this Resolution could more appropriately be described as a Resolution to search the pockets of the workers, to take more money out of those pockets by making them pay higher prices for foodstuffs, beer and tobacco. Out of these higher prices they will get back a fragment in compensation and the rest will be utilised by the Government to pay the employer's portion and the Government's portion of the social welfare scheme.
Is it not as clear as daylight to anyone, any single man who takes a drink and smokes a pipe or cigarettes, who eats bread and butter and likes tea and takes sugar in it, that by the time he is finished paying the extra charges for these commodities the amount he will pay will be vastly in excess of what he would have paid under the previous Social Welfare Bill and that under that previous Bill he would have got much more valuable benefits than he is getting under this Bill?
In short, Sir, as we see this Social Welfare Bill now, we can understand the haste which was displayed in trying to push the Second Reading through the House as speedily as possible. Not only will this Social Welfare Bill be financed entirely, so far as the State contribution is concerned, but there will be a surplus over, out of the additional moneys which will be taken out of the pockets of the workers by compelling them to pay increased prices for foodstuffs and increased taxes on cigarettes and liquor. All the humbug and all the pretence that this Bill would be introduced, that the workers would get a social welfare scheme as good as the previous one and without any increased cost, has now been unmasked. The Bill before us is a shadow and a miserable shadow of the previous Bill and the workers will have the privilege under this Bill, taken in conjunction with the Budget, of paying not only their own share but the Government's share and the employer's share as well. That is offered to them as a Bill which is supposed to be better than the previous one.