asked the Minister for External Affairs if he will consider the establishment in certain cities in Great Britain, where large numbers of Irish persons live, of an information bureau which would render advice on employment and housing accommodation matters, and generally provide guidance and instruction for Irish persons in these centres.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Information Bureau in British Cities.
13.
In most British cities where there is a substantial number of Irish residents advisory services of the kind mentioned by the Deputy are in fact being made available by Irish societies and associations. These bodies are doing extremely valuable work which is deserving of great praise.
Advisory services of this nature are best provided, as at present, on a voluntary basis and the establishment of Irish government offices for the purpose throughout Britain would be altogether undesirable and impracticable.
Would the Minister not agree that, while the work being done by the existing charitable organisations is most admirable, the strain being placed on their available personnel is wellnigh intolerable and that they are, in fact, short of personnel adequately to cater for these requirements?
They are not nearly as short of personnel as they were when the Deputy was sending out 60,000 emigrants a year. I wish the Deputy would face up to these problems. He is prepared to recommend, when he is out of office, that a Government should do things he knows are impossible, simply because there are some people who will be deceived by his suggestions. There is no practical way in which our people can sustain and give social services to all the Irish who are over in Britain and I think it is a bad thing to encourage them to look for such services to be given to them in Britain. If they are prepared to stay here or to come back here, the Government are prepared to give them equal treatment with every other citizen in the country.
Acknowledging the faultless courtesy of the Minister's supplementary reply, I would renew my query as to whether, in cases where insufficiency of personnel was embarrassing the work of the charitable organisations to which he refers, he thinks any steps could be taken to help these associations to secure additional voluntary personnel even if these were constituted of volunteers from this country, to help them for limited periods of time.
Well, that is a different proposition. If charitable organisations here want to send volunteers over to Britain or elsewhere, that is a different matter, but to send people from here or to expect that we could help all the Irish in Britain who wanted to turn to us for help, is quite impossible and is the wrong type of policy. We have tried to help by the appointment within recent years of an officer in our London office who goes around to voluntary organisations and encourages them to set up this sort of advisory services and information centres. Good work has been done in the bigger cities and already in cities such as London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Middlesbrough, Manchester and Nottingham services of this sort have been set up which, I think, are fairly adequately staffed and fairly well run. If these organisations need assistance, I think they would have to get it on a voluntary basis. I am perfectly certain many people in Ireland would help out if they were asked.
In so far as existing organisations could be brought up to a higher degree of effectiveness, does the Minister think anything further could be done to publicise their existence and their availibility to young people in Britain who might be greatly advantaged if brought in contact with these organisations in time?
I think their existence is very well known to the Irish people in these cities.