The Minister was very critical of the motion put down by the Labour Party and suggested to the House that there was no sincerity behind it. He said that our motion mentioned three things and that the various speakers did not refer to these particular things. If the Minister looks at his own amendment and studies it, he will find that he can only regard it as a pious resolution that says to those in receipt of social welfare benefits: "Live horse and you will get grass." His speech was one of smugness and complacency. From what he said, he does not seem to realise that there is extreme hardship and poverty amongst certain sections of the community here. There is no use in the Minister talking about an increase in the gross national product. There is no point in trying to pretend that we are a prosperous nation because the national income has been going up from year to year. It may also be true that there are not as many people in poverty today as there were 25, 30 or 40 years ago but the fact remains that there are people who have not any sort of a standard of living. The other fact is that the Minister and the Government of which he is a member have a responsibility for those people.
There is no point in telling us that prosperity and the standard of living has gone up for 95 per cent of the people if 5 per cent of them are living on £1, £2, £3 or even £4 a week. I do not think the Minister was serious when he was dealing with this motion. Deputy A. Barry was probably right when he said that there will be no result from this discussion because some Independents will support the Minister and his Party when the matter comes to a vote. This debate will end at ten minutes past seven o'clock and then these people will be forgotten again because there will be a majority against those of us who vote for the motion.
The Minister should read the motion again. It calls attention to the recent steep rise in the cost of living. Does the Minister deny that? It says that the cost of living is inflicting hardship on people in receipt of social benefits and asks for an immediate review of the situation for the purpose of increasing those benefits. That is what the Minister was asked to do at the recent Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis and that is what the Árd Fheis voted for despite the complacency when he said, as reported in the Irish Press of 18th November:
The worst thing we could do in the interest of social welfare recipients, and the community generally, would be to impose an unbearable burden on the economy, raising taxation to a level which would interfere with this growth. The only way to benefit social welfare benefits—and the standard of living generally—was to realise that the economy had to be expanded to yield these results.
The social welfare recipients have not got increases commensurate with the expansion of which the Ministers have boasted since 1957 and 1958. The Minister depends in this debate on the argument that increases in social welfare benefits have been made regularly since Fianna Fáil resumed office. He ignores other facts, I do not know whether deliberately or not. He said that increases were given to match the increases in the cost of living. If that were so, it still would not be sufficient, but it is not so.
First of all, what should be done for those people is to give them a standard and then to relate that standard to increases in the cost of living. It is not good enough in 1964, when we are told we are ready to go into a European community, that we can give increases to our social welfare beneficiaries only in accordance with increases in the cost-of-living figure, without first of all fixing a decent standard.
The Minister did not refer to increased prices. He referred to the cost of living in 1950, 1960 and 1961, picking out those years to justify what had been done by the present Government for old age pensioners. I have here what I do not think is an untypical letter. It appeared in the Evening Herald a few weeks ago, written by a person in receipt of sickness benefit. This is what he wrote:
I am drawing Social Welfare sick benefit for some years now, owing to bad health. I receive £2 2s. 6d. and, as I live alone, I have no other help or income. My rent for one room is 12s. weekly. I can only afford two meals of tea and a little bread and butter—no breakfast. Therefore, I have to go into hospital very often in a run-down condition. When coming out, I get a diet chart from my doctor which is put in the fire as how can I buy fowl, meat, fish and other nourishing foods, out of what is left after paying my rent?
I would say there are many people in similar circumstances. Nobody wants to talk about poverty in this country. Not alone do members of the Government, politicians, shy away from that word but other people in other places try to give the impression that there is no such thing as poverty. They point to the social services, to the different charities, but those of us who are close to the people, those of us who have to call on the people and on whom the people call, know that in very many cases bread and tea is a regular diet.
I know, of course, that the Minister has no direct responsibility for the local authorities. It is typical of many local authorities—I am glad to say Labour Party members are not responsible—that they refuse to provide the requisite money for the managers to pay decent amounts in home assistance. I know of one man who has no social welfare allowance and who is getting something like 10/- or £1 a week home assistance to live on. A married couple are expected to live on £2 a week. If there were children, the man would not be given a proportionately higher amount.
I have had a letter from a constituent with eight children. The local authority offer him £2 per week for himself, his wife and eight children. The allowances for children range from 5/- to 10/- per week. Therefore, the local authorities, as well as the Minister, are failing in their jobs of providing reasonably for people who have nothing. The Minister—all Ministers do the same—boasts monotonously about the progress made since Fianna Fáil came back to office, about progressive increases in the national income. None of these speeches is of the least consolation to the people concerned in this motion.
It is no consolation to the 250,000 to 300,000 people depending on our social services, who have not been compensated for increases in prices, even for increases as reflected in the cost of living index figure. Despite what the Minister has said, even considering his own standard, he has cheated the old age pensioners, the widows and orphans. The non-contributory old age pension at the moment is 37/6 per week. The Minister's speech last week seemed to be devoted mainly to the fact that Deputy Tully made a slip and gave the figure of 35/- instead of 37/6. I feel sure the Minister does not doubt that Deputy Tully, in his work in his constituency and here in the Dáil, knows all about benefit rates, but the Minister had so little to say that this seemed a good avenue of escape from the main point of the motion.
The non-contributory old age pension rate was 35/- a week in August, 1963. The cost of living index figure was 159 at that time. The cost of living figure in August, 1964, was 173. In a period of one year, between August, 1963 and August, 1964, the cost of living index figure rose by nine per cent. The old age pensioners did not get an increase of nine per cent. Again, if we take the Minister's standards, the last increase should have been 3/- instead of 2/6, so the Minister and the Government cheated the old age pensioners out of 6d. per week.
Apart from that, the object of this motion is not, as the Minister suggested in his speech, aimed at relating these increases or relating allowances to the cost of living index figure but to trying to get those beneficiaries a standard and then, if anyone likes —I feel sure we all would—to have increases related to increases in the cost of living as per the new standard. The Minister said there was no mention of prices by the mover of the motion. I have a long list here, given in reply to a Parliamentary Question, of prices for the period August, 1963 to August, 1964. In respect of food alone, widows and old age pensioners, the sick and the unemployed, were all hit by increased prices.
Of course, the Minister knows that the introduction of the turnover tax was one of the biggest factors in the increased cost of living, particularly involving food items. Beef, mutton, sausages, eggs, butter, margarine, tea, bread, sugar were all hit. They were all items which affected recipients of old age pensions and other such benefits. As I have said, the Minister cheated the old age pensioners even on his own principle. He has cheated the widows and orphans much more so. There has been no consideration at all for the widow with children. She got no increase. In August, 1963, the weekly pension of a non-contributory widow was 33s. per week. She got an increase of 2s. 6d. The widow with two children got only the same increase, no regard being given to the fact that she had children. Those who had more than two, those who had four, six, or even eight, were cheated more so, taking again the Minister's own principle of applying increases to the increase in the cost of living.
Deputy A. Barry referred to the Exchequer income from taxation. The Minister has never answered this adequately and he may think it monotonous for the Labour Party to go on mentioning it. We have heard it said: "If we got the money, we would give it to the old aged, the sick, the widows". They did get it, and in great quantity during the past six or seven years, but did not apply a fair proportion to social welfare benefits.
For the record, I want to repeat what I said on many occasions. In 1957-58 tax revenue was £102.7 million. Out of that £24.3 million was spent on social welfare. That represented 22 per cent. In 1958-59 the relationship between social welfare expenditure and tax revenue fell to 21.5 per cent. In 1959-60 it fell still further to 20.9 per cent; in 1960-61, to 20 per cent; in 1961-62, to 18 per cent. There was an improvement in 1963-64 when it went back to 20 per cent, but for 1964-65 it is down again to 19.1 per cent. Therefore, I would ask the Minister if the social welfare recipients are receiving their fair share of the moneys obtained by the Minister for Finance through the Revenue Commissioners and so on. Rather than the position of these people being improved, the contrary is the case. The Minister may say there is less unemployment. There is not. There is a smaller number of non-contributory old age pensioners because of the introduction of the contributory pension scheme. But if the number is smaller, surely there is a greater case for giving them a little more?
The Minister ignores all these things in his amendment. Compared with the firm and direct motion of the Labour Party, his amendment looks puny and watery. It says:
"that the Government should continue to implement its declared policy of arranging that improvements in the national income, resulting from national economic growth, should be shared by Social Welfare recipients, and notes that this has brought about increases in rates of benefit in every year for a number of years past."
Having regard to the increases in the gross national product, in national income and in the revenue the Government have got from the taxpayers, all these social welfare recipients have been cheated.
The Minister says: "You will not vote the money." We made our position very clear, especially on the Budget in which the turnover tax was introduced, and on the one before that and before that. We said we would not vote for these taxes when we saw that a fair proportion of the taxation was not being given to these deserving people. A week last Wednesday the Taoiseach came into the House and proposed that Irish industry be subsidised to a tune of X million pounds. The House agreed to give him general approval. Did the Taoiseach say how he was going to raise the money? We had a notion from the Minister for Justice to the effect that the turnover tax being such an easy tax, another half per cent or one per cent on it would get all the money we need. That is what we were afraid of when we opposed it in the first instance. By and large, in respect of that tax and other tax proposals of the Government, we were not convinced that a fair proportion of the money derived from them was being given to these deserving people.
The Minister criticised my regime in the Department of Social Welfare. I make no apology for saying that when I was Minister for Social Welfare in an inter-Party Government and two Budgets were introduced, the social welfare recipients were the people who got first consideration. If we could have a balance either by economies or increases in taxation, the first charge demanded by the Ministers for Social Welfare in those inter-Party Governments, who happened to be Labour Ministers, were the social welfare recipients. I do not think the present Minister can say, even if he did make the claim, that his Government listened to him in the past five or six Budgets.
The Minister's amendment says that the Government should continue to implement their declared policy of improving the position of social welfare recipients according as economic growth increases. We ask: how long must they wait? Even since the Minister came into the Dáil old age pensioners have died off. They have waited month after month and year after year, for somebody to come to their aid. Surely we will not let another decade pass until we can say to them: "Here is an allowance that will give you a reasonable standard of living and we will improve it as the cost of living goes up."
In 1963—I have not the figures for 1964—national income stood at £677 million. The old age pension in 1963 was 35/-. In 1957 national income was £469 million and the old age pension was 25/-. Between 1957 and 1963 national income increased by 50 per cent but the old age pensioner got only 40 per cent. Therefore, on cost of living figures, social welfare recipients have been cheated; and on national income figures they have been left behind. Yet the Minister drags in some phrase to the effect that when the economic growth is sufficient we will do more for them. Between 1957 and 1963 the gross national product increased by 43 per cent. But the old age pensioner did not get 43 per cent. Therefore, as far as the cost of living is concerned, as far as national income is concerned and as far as the gross national product is concerned, this Government have not done the right thing by the old age pensioners, the widows, the sick and the unemployed.
What is the policy of the Government in respect of these people? There was not tremendous mention of them in the two programmes for economic expansion. It is true they are not productive, that they do not toil or manufacture. But it is also true that they are our responsibility. I do not think anybody in this House would object if a Minister for Finance came in and said: "We want at least that amount of money from this sort of tax to give to these people." The Minister for Finance is getting £15 million per year out of the turnover tax. These people we are concerned about did not get their fair proportion of it. It can be given to this, that and the other section, but these people have to lag behind.
Our motion draws the attention of the Dáil—and, we hope, of the Minister—to the undeniable fact that there has been an increase in prices. This makes it extremely difficult for certain people to live. I have no hesitation in saying that some of these people die of malnutrition. There is a notion among some of the back benchers of Fianna Fáil that these payments are not supposed to be complete allowances but should be supplemented by allowances from other sources such as local authorities. The Minister knows that such is not the case. Others believe that because old age pensioners have a son married in Canada, Britain or elsewhere, that such people have responsibility for them. They have a certain amount of responsibility for them, but that does not operate in practice. In many cases it cannot operate because the young man with his wife and family, no matter where he is working, may find it difficult—despite what the Minister for Transport and Power says—to provide for them all.
Therefore, we ask that there should be an examination and a review of this whole question of social welfare. The Minister taunts us by asking: "Where do you get the money from?" Every Minister in this Government is spending money for which there will be no provision until the next Budget. When a Minister for Agriculture, a Minister for Transport and Power or a Minister for Defence embarks on new projects, he brings his Estimate to the Dáil for £1 million or £2 million, but in doing so he does not tell the Dáil or the people how he will get the money to pay for it. Similarly during election time, the Fianna Fáil Party promised many things—I am not objecting to the promises they made— but they never told the people they intended to impose a turnover tax. They want us to behave as they would not behave, as they will not behave, even though they are members of the Government and responsible for expenditure and the collection of money.
There is, therefore, an unanswerable case for this review of social welfare services which the Labour Party members call for. There is an exhortation now by members of the Government that in view of the circumstances in which we find ourselves, hardships must be borne. I suggest that if there are hardships, the burden should be borne by other than those who are mentioned in this motion. If there is a burden to be borne by way of expenditure, that burden should be placed on the backs of those best able to bear it. I suggest that the turnover tax was a burden that should not have been placed on people who could ill afford to pay anything extra for their foodstuffs.
I conclude by reminding the House again that, even by Fianna Fáil standards, even by the standards which the Minister lays down for increases in social welfare, he and the Government have failed. They have failed to live up to their responsibility and they are ignoring the fact that 250,000 of our people have a very low standard of living. I, therefore, ask the House, and ask even the members of the Fianna Fáil Party, to vote for this motion because it draws attention to the fact that there are hardships, that prices have increased and that there is a case for a review of the whole system. It is no more than what the members of the Fianna Fáil Party at the Árd Fheis last week asked the Minister to do.