To continue where Deputy Cosgrave left off, let us give a thought to the condition of the 18,000 disabled people compelled to live on 47s 6d per week and wonder how will they be affected by devaluation. I suggest they will be the first victims. The House noticeably thins when mention of disabled persons is made.
Private Members' Business. - Disabled Persons (Employment) Bill, 1967: Second Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
You are like Edmund Burke.
No finer compliment could be paid to me.
It was not meant as that.
You might choose your insults more carefully. The involuntary insult is very inadvisable. As the Parliamentary Secretary has thrust himself upon my attention, I propose to deal with him. Last evening I had come, by a process of examination of the contributions of various Deputies to this debate, to the name of the Deputy who masquerades here as a representative of the unfortunate downtrodden people of the West and who so successfully is able to parade himself in quarters where he is not known so well as he is to those of us here as a champion.
He is lucky to be here.
Speak for yourself: no football now.
Could we keep to the Bill before the House?
It occurs to me the Parliamentary Secretary might indeed have improved on that compliment and compared me with Deputy Burke rather than Edmund Burke.
Would Deputy Dunne make an effort to speak on this Bill of his before the House?
I am coming to that, Sir. Surely you will observe I am being grossly provoked?
That will be the day, or the night.
In his contribution to this discussion, made as long ago as 15th March, the Parliamentary Secretary came in here with malice aforethought to ensure that his Minister would not be put in the embarrassing position of having to make a contribution at that stage. To enable his Minister to prepare some sort of excuse for opposition to this Bill, he proceeded to execute what has come to be known as a filibuster.
"If Dunne can't do it, it can't be done," especially by me.
Last night I was referring to the fact that he dragged this debate to a level at which I have seldom seen it in almost 20 years of membership of this august establishment. Even his erstwhile leader, Deputy MacEntee, that dithyrambic rambler of other days, seldom achieved the crudity the Parliamentary Secretary managed to reach on that occasion. Among the useful criticisms of my proposal he had to offer was this statement in relation to the Labour Party he made at column 857 of the Official Report of 15th March:
They have no use for the members of the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Legion of Mary.
I was quoting your own words.
I have been put out of the House on more than one occasion for plain, blunt language, being, as I am, a plain, blunt man.
For sure.
It is a prevarication. We will leave it at that. The Parliamentary Secretary knows there is no group in the House more for these excellent organisations. Indeed, I doubt if any Party has as many members in these organisations as the Labour Party.
I can almost see the halos over your heads.
We have indeed. Please do not get me to describe the virtues of some members of your Party. It would draw a blush to the visage of the Parliamentary Secretary if I were to do so. The Parliamentary Secretary boasted by implication of the fact that his Government were paying these people a miserable allowance of 47/6d a week.
You gave them nothing.
That is not true.
When the Labour Party were in coalition with Fine Gael, nothing was given.
We gave them the first rise. We brought them up to 17/6d.
The DPMA was introduced by Fianna Fáil.
Has the Parliamentary Secretary not spoken on this already?
I am not speaking; I am interjecting remarks.
You reminded me in similar terms last week.
If you all have finished, I will proceed. He boasted about the miserable pittance of 47/6d.
You gave them nothing. There was no DPMA before Fianna Fáil.
That is not true.
It is true.
When the opportunity presents itself, we will look after them as they should be looked after, and, please God, that day is not all that distant.
The millennium.
No, far from it. If the devious machinations of the western Deputies do not succeed, I am afraid this House will not be graced by the presence of many of them after the next election.
They have a better method of keeping in power than the Unionists in the North.
Let us proceed with this analysis of the extraordinary mind of the Parliamentary Secretary. He went on to say, and I quote his exact words:
As far as the employer is concerned such a person will be a better buy.
"A better buy". It has often occurred to me how a few simple words light up for the benefit of the hearers the dark recesses of the mentality of the person who uses such words.
Quote me in full.
I do not want to bore the House with that. I have more sympathy for my fellow Members here than to quote Deputy Carty at length.
They had very little sympathy for the Deputy. They walked out when he started to speak.
As the Deputy knows full well, he will be quoted in full in the Western People.
I do not appear in the Western People—The Connacht Tribune.
I knew it was one of those.
Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,
I apologise to most of the Deputies for this, but not all of them. It is only fitting that Dáil Éireann should hear a little about the disabled persons and did show some concern for their condition. I am sure the Deputies will not complain about being dragged from their sausages and mash. Let me proceed with the position of the disabled and particularly with the remarks of Deputy Carty on this Bill made in March last. One of the things Deputy Carty was at pains to make crystal clear to the Dáil was his abhorrence for anything British. When I said I had taken as a model for this Bill the Disabled Persons Act as enacted by the British Government and as operated by the first post-war socialist British Government, Deputy Carty threw up his hands in horror and turned green with nationalism at the thought that anybody would mention such a thing in this House. Anybody who did not know him and who might have strayed into the Gallery for a casual visit might have been persuaded that he was not, in fact, the gentleman that he is, that he was not a member of the Party whose hands are dripping red with the blood of the Union Jack since the Trade Agreement when they made their peace with England and we enacted the Act of Union last year.
Let us get back to the Bill.
It has been axiomatic in the Fianna Fáil Party, when all else fails reach for your principles.
I thought the Deputy was going to say "reach for your gun".
That has gone out of fashion. One time it was fashionable enough all right, but I think it was before the Deputy's time. That cowboyism no longer gets votes except perhaps in certain isolated parts. Among the more intelligent of our people, Deputy Carty's advocacy of the return of the gun to politics, which he now seems to be bent upon——
Now, now.
——would gain little support.
Did you not take the gun out of politics, or was it Fine Gael?
Indeed it is true that the inter-Party Government, during their period of office, made a greater contribution towards internal peace in that sphere of activity than was ever made before.
We saw what happened in 1956.
They turned against one another.
Most of them were deserters from the Fianna Fáil Party, frustrated young men.
I admit there was a time when the morale of the nation was endangered by the insidious propaganda of the Fianna Fáil Party. At any rate, Deputy Carty strung out the debate by a succession of puerilities that would be hard to equal in the House, and we have a pretty good record amongst Parliaments for such productions.
The Deputy is the past master of it himself.
In any event, I observe—and I must observe, of course, and must comment upon—the great freedom of expression of opinion that prevails here because I must confess that I have not found such facility of interruption afforded to me. If I attempted to say what Deputy Carty has been saying——
The Deputy is inviting it.
I am not doing anything of the kind.
The Deputy has been inviting it for the past 20 minutes.
The Parliamentary Secretary is interrupting my train of thought and my carefully prepared speech. The Minister who is not here this evening unfortunately—he is in the Seanad—intervened last week and, for want of a better excuse, trotted out the old argument that I was seeking to do by compulsory methods what the employers of Ireland were yearning to do by goodwill and voluntary methods.
This brings me to the net point of disagreement and difference as between members of this Party and members of the two conservative Parties occupying the benches around us. We feel as a firm and deeply held conviction that the State has an obligation to regulate the relationship as between different sections of the community in a manner which will secure the maximum equity for all concerned. The State has an obligation to do this. The Government take the stand that, if we leave things alone, in the sweet by and by we will eventually come to a position where everyone will be happy and those who are humble will be exalted by the goodwill of those who humbled them. I do not accept that.
The whole history of the social services and social legislation which is to be found on an examination of any other country apart from this— and, after all, the history of our efforts is relatively short in comparison with the experience of other continental countries as well as Britain—demonstrates clearly that any social improvement which has come about has arrived as a result of a conscious re-organisation of society on the part of those who were in control of the Government of that country.
We hold to the proposition that, if we leave the situation as it is, while there are in existence excellent voluntary bodies—and I know perhaps as much about some of them at least as any Member of the House, and the great work they are doing—at the same time, the greater part of this problem of providing for the disabled will never be solved, or come within any distance of being solved, unless and until the Government take the courage and the trouble—perhaps "the trouble" more than "the courage" would be appropriate—to act in respect of these maltreated citizens. Every effort that has ever been made in any country in the world— particularly in the countries with which we are most familiar, Britain and the continental countries, but taking Britain specifically—to improve the conditions of any group of citizens who were oppressed, or downtrodden, or neglected, or suffering by reason of the indifference of the people generally or the central authority, has invariably been classed as harmful to the State, inopportune, wrongheaded and, in the long run, economically disastrous.
In mid-19th century Britain, the economists tried to justify the employment of infants in the various industries and factories and, when there was agitation to reduced the working hours for little children from 12 hours to 11 hours per day, the economists, those with the long polysyllabic words, of whom we have our share about us even yet, were able to prove to the satisfaction apparently of the British House of Commons, to the satisfaction of the majority of those who had the franchise in Britain at that time, that if those little children were not worked for the full 12 hours per day, and if they were let go after 11 hours, industry would make no profit whatsoever, that all the profit was made in the twelfth hour. They made that argument and it was accepted and used to defeat in the British Commons the first weak effort at social reform which was introduced there.
Every subsequent Bill and every subsequent proposal right down to the present day, right down to our own discussions here and now, met with the same mentality and the same argument. It is nearly 20 years since I had the great privilege and the great good luck to introduce a Private Members' Bill here which provided that agricultural labourers, farm labourers, would get a half day in the week. This House resounded with eloquent argument which demonstrated to the last detail and particularly that, if this dastardly proposal were to go through, the Irish economy would suffer a staggering blow from which it was doubtful that it would ever recover. That was 20 years ago, but we pressed on and we secured the passage of that Bill.
I am happy to see in the House yet members who supported the passage of that Bill, apart from members of my own Party. I recall that Deputy O'Donnell of Donegal was one of those. We got the Bill passed and it was an extraordinary thing but we lived in a period of relative political liberalism then. There was an inter-Party Government in power and it was possible to come in here and make a case, and, if it was convincing, you had a chance of getting a majority of Members of the House to go with you in your arguments. Under the iron rule of Fianna Fáil, no such liberalism will be permitted. No such independence of thought will be permitted.
No such bargaining will be permitted.
God help any Fianna Fáil Deputy who would dare to step outside the line on any issue when the diktat is handed down by the Fuehrer Carty. I see behind his expansive smile a devious and calculating mind.
We in Fianna Fáil never know what kind of bargaining went on, what Fine Gael gave you and what you gave Fine Gael.
There was none.
I am delighted to hear it.
What is the use of asking?
Just curiosity.
There was no bargaining.
Whatever decisions were arrived at were made after the due democratic process had been operated.
Does the Parliamentary Secretary think that it was a bad bargain that Deputy Dunne negotiated?
I do not know what kind of bargaining and what kind of huckstering.
It was left to a man's conscience.
That is the trouble with Deputy Carty. He cannot think except in terms of huckstering.
I can never think of coalition except in terms of huckstering.
He brings to my mind the words from that piece of beauty created by our great national poet, Pádraig Pearse. He mentioned huckstering: "Would you bargain or huckster with God?" I would apply these words to this Bill: "And is this my sin before men to have taken him at his word?" Is this our sin to have taken Pearse at his word?
He also said to beware of the men with the long thin faces.
He was not talking about you.
He was talking about the front bench of Fine Gael.
That was Shakespeare.
No, Pearse.
I have heard them accused of a lot of things but not of having long, thin faces.
He was talking about the lawyer element.
I thought you were talking about Deputy O'Donnell.
No, not Deputy O'Donnell.
I have some knowledge of the lawyer element. From where I sit, the benches on my right are as populated as the benches on my left by those gentlemen. After all, they do fulfil a function.
Ah, no. They have a monopoly.
No. There are six in your own Cabinet. Count them.
There is a difference. Some may never be accounted lawyers.
Would Deputy Dunne make an effort to get back to his Bill?
I mean no disrespect to you when I say that, surely, your admonitions on the matter of order might be directed to other people rather than to me?
I do not want any advice from the Deputy on the question of order.
I am not trying to give it, nor would I be so presumptuous.
The Deputy should relate his remarks to his own Bill.
I am trying to do that and, indeed, having been speaking on this matter about which I feel so deeply for over four and a half hours, I cannot be accused of that most heinous parliamentary sin of repetition which your predecessor referred to in a recent interview as being the most insufferable of all, with which sentiment I most heartily agree; nor would I be at all guilty of such a thing as repetition if I could possibly avoid it unless I am dragged into it by the interruptions of Deputy Carty.
I want, if I may, to draw a parallel between what I am trying to do here and the obscurantist opposition I am meeting with and the efforts which have been made in the past by social reformers and the methods by which it was attempted to defeat their aims. Every attempt at improvement of the condition of people who are suffering is met by the self-righteous by shouts about goodwill, charity and so on. As one very eloquent cartoon has it, reforms are all right as long as they do not change anything. At the back of this pretence at sentimental sympathy with the conditions of the disabled there seems to be a desire to keep things as they are, to keep the ship floating along as it is and not to rock the boat unduly.
There are many people in this country who find the economic set-up to their liking. Most of them have come to this happy situation through what are called business operations. One could embark upon a lengthy disquisition in regard to the bona fides of business operations but I will leave that for another time. The vast bulk of the people comprise persons who are living at subsistence level. I am referring to the wage-earners and salary-earners and those on fixed incomes. Below those again there are what are loosely called the social welfare classes. At the very bottom of the social welfare classes are disabled persons—almost 20,000 of them. It seems to me that this House would not be worthy of being called a parliament if it did not take seriously to its heart and to its mind consideration of the plight of these people.
There was some question in the minds of contributors to this debate as to how the Disabled Persons Act has operated in Britain. I went to the trouble of trying to get some information about this because the allegation —not the allegation but the innuendo, the half-truths and half-lie—was that it did not work at all, that the Disabled Persons Bill which was introduced in Britain had reference only to persons incapacitated as a result of war action, and so on.
I have here the Consumers' Guide to the British Social Services—a Pelican publication. The following is an extract:
The disablement resettlement officer: The key worker to help over the Ministry of Labour Services outlined above is the DRO. Each Employment Exchange has one; his job is to deal with applications for registration from disabled people and generally to help and advise them about getting suitable employment.
In my Bill I propose a register of disabled people, as Deputy Carty and others will have observed, as a first effort to get a census of the number of disabled persons in the country and as to the number of employable disabled persons in the country. One of the early sections in my Bill proposes that there should be set up a register of disabled people and any disabled person should be free to apply for registration in that register. This is the register referred to in the paragraph I have been reading. It already exists in England. The job of the disablement resettlement officer is to deal with applicants for registration and generally to help and advise them about getting suitable employment. The DRO register has two sections: one for those able to work in ordinary conditions and the other for those unable to work except in sheltered conditions.
There are special resettlement officers to help blind people, but not at every employment exchange. The suggestion to register with a DRO is usually made by a doctor or the hospital, sometimes by the YEO, employers or trade unions, welfare officers or other social workers. But any disabled person can call at his local employment exchange and ask for an interview with the DRO. A detailed form giving medical evidence of your disability——
obviously this is addressed to the disabled person——
has be to filled in—usually by your own doctor or the hospital —to help the DRO know what work you are able to undertake and also to ensure you are eligible for registration. The period of registration varies between twelve months and ten years but is in any case renewable where necessary. Only employable disabled people can register and in this way the register differs from that of the local authority Welfare Department, which can include anyone who is severely handicapped whether employable or not. Registration is voluntary and without obligation but it has advantages. For example, all except small firms with less than twenty employees must employ a percentage of registered disabled people, who cannot be dismissed without good cause. Then again the DRO has special information and knowledge about suitable employment and vacancies in his area. Clearly it is not always easy or possible to find the right job for every disabled person and, inevitably, a good deal will depend on the keenness and understanding of the DRO you come across, as well as your own situation. In fact, there are well over half a million men and women registered with DROs. About eight out of ten of these have jobs— though not necessarily all found through the DRO.
That is a factual statement of the position resulting from the passage of that much earlier British Act, on which I, to the distaste of the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Carty, based my proposals. It was an enlightened Act. It behoves us now to beat our way out of the fog and shadow of Chauvinistic exclusiveness we have built up in this country. We should take a good example where a good example is to be found. It is a remarkable thing that in matters of social legislation we have to take our example from what has happened across the water. This is due, of course, as every student of history knows, to the advances made by the labour movement in Britain over the past 60 years and the enlightenment in education prompted by the great socialist pioneers in Britain, who were ahead of their time and many of whom were of Irish parents. A great part of the corpus of social legislation, as we know it today, emanated from the writings of men like Davitt and, before him, from the influence of the Irish who were concerned in the Chartist movement and various other democratic socialist movements for which England became so well known in the last century. We see the work of our own countrymen reflected more effectively, in fact, on the British Statute Book in matters of social legislation than it is reflected in our own legislation. That is a sad commentary upon ourselves. Surely charity should begin at home, if it is to begin anywhere at all?
Disablement has had some extraordinary end results. There are many instances in world history, and even in the history of our own country, of disabled people rising to great heights in every sphere of human activity. In the artistic world, Toulouse Lautrec was cruelly treated by nature. Davitt was a disabled man; Lalor was a hunchback; Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the great American liberal, suffered badly from polio and was crippled by that disease. But these are exceptions. These are the men who accepted disability as an extra spur to greater endeavour, another challenge that had to be met and overcome. One cannot expect the vast run of disabled people to have the qualities displayed by these outstanding men. I think it was Confucius who said he cried because he had no shoes until he met a man who had no feet.
Confucius is often misquoted.
We are very lucky and we should avail of our luck to do the right thing for others. I am not asking for pity, or compassion, or anything like that. I am not appealing to any sense of righteousness or sentimentality. I am talking about an obligation on two very practical levels. We are throwing away productive potential in the shape of many thousands who could be turned to remunerative and productive employment. We are doing worse than euthanasia. We are doing worse than killing the spermatozoa in the womb or the misshapen child at birth. We allow the human being to grown up to become part of a family, loved by that family and part of the social unit. Yet, we treat these people with ruthless disregard. Flag days salve our consciences. We put a couple of pennies in a box and we go along the street thinking we are great fellows. We tell ourselves there is stacks of goodwill. We have sympathy for the man on crutches or the man in the wheelchair. That is not good enough. Sympathy and pity are useless. They are an insult to the intelligence of most of these highly intelligent people.
That is why we put down this Bill for the kind consideration of this House. Nobody, surely, can argue that it is a threat to established society, although Deputy de Valera said he was afraid it would disturb the balance, to which I make the reply that that is exactly what we want to do because the balance is loaded against the under-privileged, the poor and the weak of the world. This cannot disturb the balance and yet it is rejected by the Government.
I am persuaded that this Fianna Fáil Party which is now in power places before all other things the conviction that whatever is to be done in the country must appear to be done by and to originate from within the Fianna Fáil Party. I have no doubt that, with the passage of time, the principle underlying this Bill will be incorporated in Fianna Fáil policy for the purpose of capturing a few votes. There are no votes now, at any rate, and I do not care two damns whether or not there are. I do not care if I offend the susceptibilities of the employing class by trying to insist that they have a social responsibility by proclaiming here that we are not content that they should exist only to make profit.
This is the kind of Bill for which this Parliament was created and which Parliament, to say the least of it, is utterly disappointing to many of the thousands of disabled who no doubt voted for Government Party nominees in elections in various parts of the country and who may probably be misled into doing so again.
There is very little for me to say upon the principle I have tried to get accepted here. I have given a good deal of thought to it and, it may be said, squandered a great deal of the time of the House on it. Again, the words of our national poet, Pádraig Pearse, come back to mind: "I have squandered the splendid years." If I had the time of the House, I would squander it all over again for these people. There are many classes of disabled persons on whose plight I have not had time to do research and on whose condition I should have wished to dilate at length. I think of the deaf people and the many others who must go through life disabled— but what is the use?
Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 48; Níl, 67.
Tá
- Barry, Richard.
- Belton, Luke
- Belton, Paddy.
- Burke, Joan T.
- Burton, Philip.
- Clinton, Mark A.
- Cluskey, Frank.
- Coogan, Fintan.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Coughlan, Stephen.
- Creed, Donal.
- Crotty, Patrick J.
- Desmond, Eileen.
- Dockrell, Henry P.
- Dockrell, Maurice E.
- Donegan, Patrick S.
- Donnellan, John.
- Dunne, Seán.
- Dunne, Thomas.
- Farrelly, Denis.
- Gilhawley, Eugene.
- Governey, Desmond.
- Harte, Patrick D.
- Hogan O'Higgins, Brigid.
- Jones, Denis F.
- Kyne, Thomas A.
- Larkin, Denis.
- L'Estrange, Gerald.
- McAuliffe, Patrick.
- McLaughlin, Joseph.
- Mullen, Michael.
- Norton, Patrick.
- O'Connell, John F.
- O'Donnell, Patrick.
- O'Donnell, Tom.
- O'Hara, Thomas.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.K.
- O'Leary, Michael.
- Pattison, Séamus.
- Reynolds, Patrick J.
- Ryan, Richie.
- Spring, Dan.
- Sweetman, Gerard.
- Treacy, Seán.
- Tully, James.
- Tully, John.
Níl
- Allen, Lorcan.
- Andrews, David.
- Blaney, Neil T.
- Boland, Kevin.
- Booth, Lionel.
- Boylan, Terence.
- Brady, Philip.
- Brennan, Joseph.
- Brennan, Paudge.
- Briscoe, Ben.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Burke, Patrick J.
- Calleary, Phelim A.
- Egan, Nicholas.
- Fahey, John.
- Fanning, John.
- Faulkner, Pádraig.
- Fitzpatrick, Thomas J. (Dublin South-Central).
- Flanagan, Seán.
- Foley, Desmond.
- French, Seán.
- Gallagher, James.
- Geoghegan, John.
- Gibbons, Hugh.
- Gibbons, James M.
- Gogan, Richard P.
- Haughey, Charles.
- Healy, Augustine A.
- Hillery, Patrick J.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Kenneally, William.
- Kennedy, James J.
- Kitt, Michael F.
- Carter, Frank.
- Carty, Michael.
- Childers, Erskine.
- Clohessy, Patrick.
- Colley, George.
- Collins Gerard.
- Cotter, Edward.
- Crinion, Brendan.
- Cronin, Jerry.
- Crowley, Flor.
- Davern, Don.
- de Valera, Vivion.
- Dowling, Joe.
- Lalor, Patrick J.
- Lemass, Noel T.
- Lemass, Seán.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- Lenihan, Patrick.
- Lynch, Celia.
- Lynch, John.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Meaney, Tom.
- Millar, Anthony G.
- Molloy, Robert.
- Mooney, Patrick.
- Moore, Seán.
- Moran, Michael.
- Nolan, Thomas.
- Ó Brianin, Donnchadh.
- Ó Ceallaigh, Seán.
- O'Leary, John.
- O'Malley, Donogh.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Wyse, Pearse.
Tellers: Tá: Deputies James Tully and Pattison; Níl: Deputies Carty and Geoghegan.
Question declared lost.