It is said that I tried to hold Deputy Cowan and DeputyBrowne — naturally I am delighted to hold them, if I can — because I adopted Deputy Browne's scheme. I said here in introducing my Bill that I was taking exactly the White Paper issued by me in 1947 and following it exactly, having made some changes after meeting the county councils and so on. Deputy O'Higgins has the art of not sticking to the truth. I never said 2/- or 3/- on the local authorities — I said 2/-. The Deputy is able to build up a case by saying 2/- or 3/- when it should be 2/- or 1/6. I said to the local authorities that my estimate was 2/-, but they asked me, every single one of them, to reconsider the matter from the point of view of whether a charge could not be made for hospital attendances.
I agreed because I am a good democrat and Deputy O'Higgins finds fault with me because I agreed. He says I got them to object purposely so that I could do so. I did not, but I listened to them and agreed, and because there is now a reduced sum in relation to central and local authority funds, I say that my estimate is 1/6 in the £ instead of 2/-. That is how that arises.
With regard to the Estimate, it was put down last July. The Dáil adjourned for the Summer Recess without considering the Estimates for certain Departments and mine was one of them. The Dáil very kindly gave us the money to carry on, provided we introduced a £10 token Estimate to give the Dáil an opportunity of discussing the Health Department, and that is what we are discussing to-night. I wonder what Deputies think of the performance by members on the benches opposite. The expenditure of the Department of Health is somewhere about £5,000,000. It has a lot of activities, and the House has heard what Fine Gael had to say about it. Is it not a nice example for anybody coming in to listen to this deliberative Assembly discussing these matters and to hear what the Fine Gael Party, the Opposition in this country, have to say about the Health Department in respect of a full 12 months? Any outsider who came in here and listened to the discussion would go away with a very pooropinion of this Dáil, but I suppose we have to put up with the material we have. We cannot get any better on that side.