I have very little else to say except that I would urge the Minister to make sure——
Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, 1960—Second Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now a Second Time."
Would the Deputy allow me to raise a point of order? Courtesy in this House contributes to the dignity of our procedure. As I understand them, the rules of order prescribe that when a Deputy is addressing the House no member of the House will wittingly pass between the Deputy speaking and the Ceann Comhairle.
That is the rule.
We all agree that this is perhaps not a matter of cataclysmic significance, but if these rules are no longer observed by us the standard of conduct in this House will gravely deteriorate. I respectfully submit it should be the privilege of members of the Front Benches on all sides of the House to set an example in the matter. May I respectfully submit that your indulgence for us should not extend to tolerance of an habitual breach of that rule?
All I can say is that I commend very strongly Deputy Dillon's suggestion to Deputies on all side of the House.
What was his suggestion? We did not hear it.
There is a rule that when a Deputy is addressing the Chair another Deputy shall not pass between the Deputy speaking and the Chair. That is the matter Deputy Dillon referred to now.
I would make an appeal to the Minister to consider carefully the claims of bona fide people. I am not referring to people who obtain benefits by fraud. There are many people who did not have their health insurance stamps properly contributed and who may lose benefit as a result, and where a genuine case is pleaded the Minister and the Department should at least give the benefit of the doubt to the insured person. I would ask that this matter be publicised to a far greater extent, either by Ministerial speeches or by advertisements. It behoves every member of the House to try to explain what are the great benefits that accrue from this Act and how necessary it is for insured workers to make certain that the proper number of stamps are affixed to their cards so that, by no fault of their own, they would deprive themselves of benefit. Unfortunately, in the past, many insured workers did not keep records and I would urge them strongly to keep their own records in future so that there will be no danger of their losing benefit.
The Deputy does not seem to be dealing with the provisions of the Bill before the House.
Insured workers should see to it that the proper number of stamps are affixed to their cards. That is all I have to say.
This has been a most interesting debate and in some respects has been very revealing. For the past nine months Fine Gael headquarters have been giving notice of a coming interesting event, the mighty deliverance of a new Fine Gael political programme. We have been told that the deliverance is at hand and, therefore, this debate will be of great interest to those who are wondering what is being hatched. It will be interesting also to those who are speculating as to whose brain child the new programme will be, whether it is going to be Deputy Dillon's, with a squint to the right, or Deputy Declan Costello's, looking rather pink. We have had an inkling this morning of what the programme is likely to be, from speeches made by the Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues on the Front Bench.
We have heard some rather startling hints as to what is in the offing, that is to say startling from the point of view of those who hitherto have habitually supported Fine Gael. We have had statements which show that Fine Gael is so greedy for office that it intends to secure it almost at any price, and the taxpayers have had a clear warning to look out. If ever again Fine Gael brings in a Budget, if the speeches this morning are any indication of sincerity of purpose, the people will be called upon to face a spectacular increase in taxes. We have had strong hints that the food subsidies are to be restored at a cost, in present circumstances and at present prices, of about £20,000,000, and that old age pensions are to be given out to recipients irrespective of the needs of these persons, irrespective of their means, and at a cost of many more millions of pounds. Yet, during the Budget debate, Deputies who now appear to be preparing the way for a programme which would cost at the minimum about £25,000,000 to give effect to in respect of a few things mentioned here this morning——
Why not say £50,000,000 or £100,000,000 while you are at it?
——grumble because a penny was imposed on the packet of cigarettes in order to provide the major part of the cost of the benefits in this Bill, and in order to meet the expense which will fall on the Exchequer in relation to the other Social Welfare Bill.
It would be very interesting to know who is responsible for this conversion, particularly in respect of the food subsidies. Has it been Deputy Dr. Browne of the National Progressive Democrats or has it been Deputy D. Costello who is supposed to have hankerings after the National Progressive Democrats? Deputy T. F. O'Higgins who was very vocal about the food subsidies said not a word in the Budget debate of 1952. I must relate that to what has been said today.
It has been argued that the primary reason we are bringing in this Bill is to compensate for the cost of living. Deputy Dillon said this morning that it is because the price of butter has gone up by 3d.——
So the Minister for Finance says.
No. One thing one can always bank on is that when Deputy Dillon says that a member of the Government or a member of the Government Party says something he has to put his own gloss upon it and, in fact, the words he ascribes to his opponents are not to be found there at all. I took the opportunity of leaving the House while Deputy Dillon was speaking just to find out precisely what the Minister for Finance did say when introducing the Budget. He did not say a thing about 3d. per lb. on the price of butter. What he did say was this, as reported in the Official Report, Volume 18, No. 2, column 168 of 27th April, 1960:
While the effect may be to add only one point to the consumer price index—not a very serious matter for those whose wages, salaries or profits have increased—I am concerned about the position of families on rather low, fixed incomes, especially those dependent on Social Assistance.
—not what Deputy Dillon has been saying, not one point to the consumer price index, that is, 0.66 per cent. of the present value of the index——
What did the Minister for Finance mean?
Will the Deputy just wait, please? I was patient with him.
The Minister fled out of the House.
One can always bank on the Deputy's proclivity for trying, as the Parliamentary Secretary said this morning, to paint the lily.
What did the Minister mean?
He meant that the increase to be made in the old age pensions would not only compensate for the 0.66 per cent. rise in the cost of living but would also provide them, over and above that, with a substantial improvement in their real money income.
One shilling a week?
Will the Deputy allow me?
This is the most miraculous shilling.
We did not take it off.
Let us hark back to Deputy Dillon and I shall come back to Deputy O'Sullivan in due course, if I am permitted. This morning, Deputy Dillon's opening gambit was this: He said that, under the Social Welfare Bill which the House had passed and under this Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill which is now before it, we were doing everything for practically every section in the community, for the townsman and the others, but doing nothing for the farmers. That was Deputy Dillon's opening gambit this morning.
Then, when the Minister for Finance does something for the farmer——
What did he do?
——and points out that it will produce an immediate reaction in every household in the country, when the Minister for Finance doing something for the farmer also as I have said points out that the inevitable consequence will be that there will be additional charges on family budgets, Deputy Dillon first complains we are doing nothing for the farmer. Then, when we come in with a Bill which more than compensates certain sections of the community for the consequences of what we have done for the farmer, he immediately begins to grumble also. It is time there was some consistency and some sort of rational thought on the part of those leading the Opposition.
One penny for the farmer; one shilling for the old age pensioner. They will get fat on that.
Even if at the moment there should be a sort of schizoid element in the Fine Gael Party, one represented by Deputy Dillon, the old fashioned Liberal, and the other represented by the up and coming Deputy D. Costello, their leader ought to do better than that.
I cannot see them getting fat on one shilling and one penny.
You never gave them a penny.
We have nothing to give except the people's money.
The Minister.
Deputy O'Sullivan referred sneeringly to the relaxations and concessions in this Social Welfare Bill. He said this was all we were prepared to do for the social assistance classes. It is all we are prepared to do in present circumstances but it is a great deal more than any Coalition Government did.
Many of the provisions in this Bill are the fruit of some search and of some concern for the conditions of those in receipt of social assistance. The Deputy supported two Coalitions. Some of the provisions I am repealing in this Bill at a cost to the taxpayer of over £200,000 were in the social assistance and old age pensions code for over 50 years. The hearts of those people are bleeding now for the old age pensioners. They come here and talk glibly about only one shilling. Deputy Dillon snaps his fingers at a shilling. All during the period he was in office, the haemorrhage from his heart stopped, and he turned a blind eye to all these imperfections in the social welfare code. I am not saying we are doing anything very great in giving these relaxations and concessions but, at any rate, they indicate an amount of concern and regard for the position of these people which was strikingly lacking during the period the Coalition were in office.
Let us get back again to butter. It has gone up by 3d. per lb.
Tenpence per lb.
Threepence.
That was the last jump.
Tenpence.
I am talking about this year. Because we have done something for the farmers in the last Budget——
Done what?
Deputy O'Sullivan represents a farming constituency——
Yes, I do.
He comes here and says we have put the price of butter too high for the people to consume——
Correct.
——and that because of this, we were exporting butter and paying people abroad to consume it.
That is right.
We have agreement on that. Will the Deputy then tell me why he proceeded to say that the people to whom we exported our butter were smuggling it back? What can we deduce from that but that the people to whom it was exported were too poor to eat it?
That is an astonishing proposition.
It is a logical deduction.
(Interruptions.)
The logical deduction is that it was necessary for them to try to sell it back because they were too poor to eat it. Why was it necessary for them to try to smuggle it back across the Border? If they were smuggling it back across the Border, is it not because they were not prepared to pay for it?
Hear, hear!—or able to pay for it.
The people to whom it was exported found they were too poor to consume it; so they reexported back again illegally to those who were prepared to pay for it.
Alice Through the Looking Glass has nothing on Seán Through the Looking Glass.
Deputy O'Sullivan's argument this morning is typical of the sort of inconsistent claptrap he talks. I would not mind a fellow talking claptrap if he would only keep in step with himself.
The man who could keep in step with the Minister would be a sprightly man.
(Interruptions.)
After all, with Deputy Dillon and his devoted followers, we have to expect a little claptrap and a little rumbustious remark from time to time.
Deputy Dillon walks backwards.
Let us get back to the argument which was advanced this morning by Deputy O'Sullivan and Deputy T.F. O'Higgins. Deputy O'Sullivan said we were only compensating the recipients of social assistance benefits for the increase in the cost of living. Let us consider the position of the country when the second Coalition Government were in office in February, 1957. It happens that the consumer price index figure is published in mid-February so we have some measure of what the cost of living was to the ordinary consumer in this country. In mid-February, 1957, that figure was 135.
What is it now?
Wait now; I am going to tell you. It is now 144.
It was 147 not long ago.
The difference in that figure as it stood at mid-February, 1957, and as it is now represents an increase in the cost of living of 6.6 per cent. What is the position in relation to the old age pensions? It happens that the Fianna Fáil Government which took office in mid-summer, 1951, increased the old age pension by 2/6, from 17/6 to 20/-, and increased it by a further 1/6 in the following year, making it 21/6. The second Coalition Government came into office in mid-June of 1954, and, as I have said, were thrown out by the country in mid-February, 1957. During that period of almost three years, they increased the old age pension only once, by 2/6.
Having increased it by 7/6 in 1949.
Of course that is not true.
Give us the facts.
The facts were that the rate of pension, including the supplement, was 15/- per week in mid-August, 1947. There was no further increase in that figure until January, 1949, when again it went up by 2/6. There was one increase in your term of office. That appeared to be the maximum of what you were prepared to do —not what you might have been able to do, but what you were prepared to do—for the old age pensioners because, remember in your first term of office, you succeeded——
The Ceann Comhairle was not a member of the Government.
Very well. Deputy Dillon and his colleagues succeeded to what was described as a fair inheritance. You succeeded to a country that was rich and well-established——
It was virtually bankrupt.
——and going ahead——
In 1947?
Yes, and prosperous.
The Minister should be allowed to make his speech without interruption.
You succeeded to a country which was progressive and prosperous, and in your first Budget in 1948, you were able to reduce taxation by over £4½ million, keeping the food subsidies at the same time, which was absurd—but that is a matter for argument. However, remember from the time you took office in 1947 until you left office in mid-summer, 1951, you increased the old age pension——
By 7/6.
——by one 2/6.
Thirty pence.
As I have said, the old age pension was twice increased under the Fianna Fáil administration——
By how much?
——which was in office from mid-summer, 1951, to mid-summer, 1954.
By how much?
By 3/6d. in two instalments.
2/6 and 1/-.
There was no further increase in the old age pensions until 29th July, 1955, when again the second Coalition Government increased it, as I have mentioned, by 2/6d., and there it remained.
By 10/- of course.
And there it stood in mid-February of 1957 when you fled from office. It was not a case of relinquishing office—when you fled from office——
I suggest that if the Minister used the third person, he would get less interruptions.
Perhaps he will tell us the price of butter.
——when the coalition Parties, as I say, fled from office because they were afraid to face the country with the Budget which they would have to present in the following April or May. So the figure in relation to pensions on which we must base our calculations is the rate of the old age pension as it stood in mid-February, 1957 and it was then 24/-. Under this Bill, following the two increases already granted to the old age pensioner, the rate of pension, as from the 1st August, will be 28/6d—that is 4/6d. more than it was when we took office and 4/6d. more than it was under the second Coalition Government. That 4/6d. represents an increase on the pension which Deputy Dillon and his colleagues were prepared to pay of 18.75 per cent. The two figures that have got to be contrasted are these—a rise in the consumer price index of 6.6 per cent. over the three and a quarter years that we have now been in office and over the same period a rise in the rate of old age pension of 18.75 per cent., so that far from merely compensating the old age pensioners for any increase that may have taken place in the cost of living we have compensated them threefold.
Does the Minister believe that?
Those are the facts.
What about the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis resolution?
Order. Surely the Minister is entitled to speak.
Unanimously passed.
Of course, members of Fianna Fáil know that, when they pass a resolution like that, we give serious consideration to it. We do not go in for window dressing of an agenda at Árd Fheiseanna in the same way as some other Parties who pass resolutions which they know will never be given effect to and which will be ignored as soon as the country bumpkins have dispersed.
That is what the country people are?
No. That is what you think they are.
That is what you said they were.
The Deputy was looking for it and now he has got it.
The Minister is being constantly interrupted. I think he is entitled to speak without interruption.
On a point of order. The Minister in so far as he violates the rules of order by addressing members on this side of the House directly elicits a reply. If the Minister confines himself to the orderly rules of debate, I submit that the interruptions will cease.
I suggest that the Minister should use the third person.
I shall try to do that but when I seek to address Deputy O'Sullivan saying: "You did this or you did that", I was using the pronoun in its collective sense. I was addressing the members of the Fine Gael Party collectively and not Deputy O'Sullivan individually.
And when so addressed, they will reply.
Collectively? They do that and then talk about orderly conduct in this House.
The Chair should be addressed on all occasions.
Deputy Corish thought the Bill was good in parts and not so good in other parts. He did not wholly condemn any of it. But he did try to do something which is a mistake. He said that we were providing so much, in his opinion not enough, for social assistance recipients, and he then went on to say we were giving so much more to people engaged in the tourist industry; so much more to people engaged in trying to build up our industrial economy here. He suggested that there was something wrong in doing that. He wants, in short, to equate social assistance payments with the inducement given to industrial and other enterprises to expand their activities, to increase production, to earn more for the community as a whole and give greater employment.
The basic difference between the two types of State expenditure is this. After all, the social assistance recipients live on the community. They do live on the productive elements in the community. If we cannot induce the producers in the community to expand their efforts to earn more for the community as a whole, we will not be able to increase the benefits given to social assistance recipients. It is quite wrong to stir up what amounts to class prejudice as between one section of the community and another, particularly to stir up class prejudice among those who merely by reason of the fact that they are in receipt of social assistance are a non-productive element in the community and in a vast majority of cases are non-productive, not due to any fault of theirs, but due merely to the vicissitudes of life or the effluxion of time but to whom the community has a duty and an obligation, a duty and an obligation which can only be discharged provided that the discharging of it does not impose such an intolerable burden on the productive elements that they will cease to produce or find some other field for their enterprise and some other country in which to live.
It is a very serious matter that any Leader of a Party in this State should try to stir up the "have nots" against the "haves", particularly those "haves" who are engaged in trying to build up our economy and trying to expand industry and production so that we shall be able to carry more people and provide a better standard of living for those who are in receipt of social assistance.
Whom does the Minister describe as non-productive?
I should hate to see the new Leader of the Labour Party, who has emerged in circumstances which, perhaps, are more propitious for him than they were for his predecessor, continuing to develop on that line. There is nothing to be gained by trying to stir up one element against another or embitter any element in the community because of the position in which it finds itself. Deputy Dillon referred to Section 6.
I am very much obliged to the Minister for circulating the amendment. It meets the point.
As I intend to seek the permission of the House to give me all Stages today——
We cannot do that. Perhaps, the Minister would take the Committee Stage on an early date next week? We could not take all stages today.
All right, but the only difficulty about it is this. I may be engaged in the House for the greater part of next week and I may have to be also in the Seanad.
The Parliamentary Secretary's contribution to-day was a great tour de force. I think the Minister should agree that it would be unreasonable to take all Stages today. We will take the Committee Stage at an early date next week and then facilitate the Minister.
Perhaps I had better allow this Stage to be concluded in the regular way.
Question put and agreed to.
Committee Stage?
I suggest we order it for next Tuesday and in the meantime I shall circulate the amendment.
I should like to take the opportunity of thanking the Minister for meeting so promptly the matter I raised in connection with section 6. Perhaps, he would excuse me casting a grateful eye in the direction of the Parliamentary Secretary. This means a lot to people in Monaghan, Cavan and County Kildare.
Committee Stage ordered for Tuesday, 12th July.