Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 22 Apr 1971

Vol. 253 No. 3

Unemployment Assistance (Employment Period) (No. 2) Order, 1971: Motion to Annul.

Mr. Corish

I move motion No. 3:

That Regulations I, II and III set out at paragraph 3 of the Unemployment Assistance (Employment Period) (No. 2) Order, 1971 (S.I. No. 142 of 1971) be and are hereby annulled.

The shock announcement, or should one say the disclosure, that the Employment Period Order was made was typical of Government blundering. As yet, we have not had any good reason from the Minister for Social Welfare, from his Department or from the Government Information Bureau why the order was made on 1st April. The House will recall that another Minister for Finance, Deputy Haughey, scrapped entirely the Employment Period Order for 1967 in his Budget proposals. It is significant that the present Minister for Social Welfare was dealing with social welfare at that time. I do not know whether there was pressure by the present Minister for Finance on the Minister for Social Welfare to agree to the reintroduction of this Employment Period Order.

However, the injustice of this order was recognised by practically every section of the community, except I suppose that small clique who believe that people should not be paid unemployment assistance in the circumstances. There was an immediate reaction by the trade union movement particularly and the press, representing I assume the viewpoint of all sections of the community. There was this outcry but during a period of 24 or 36 hours no reason was given by the Government Information Bureau to the press and the other news media and there was no information from the Minister or his Department.

It is somewhat cynical that the order was made on April fools' day because it appears to me to be an attempt to make fools of unfortunate people who now have no means whatever. It is typical of the blundering of the Department that the news was made known not by any public pronouncement; as far as we are aware it was made known as a result of a leak in Limerick city. This was discovered by Deputy Coughlan who immediately got in touch with the Department of Social Welfare and complained about the matter. During all this time for some reason or another the Minister made no statement whatsoever. The first statement we had, so far as I know was in an interview during or after the news on radio on 9th of this month. In that interview the Minister said that the part of the order that applied to urban areas was being withdrawn and that the part of the order which related to rural areas was being retained.

There are quite a few questions for the Minister to answer on this matter. I cannot find, as yet, a real definition of an urban area. So far as I know, for the purposes of the Social Welfare and Social Assistance Acts, an urban area is an area with a population of 7,000 or more. I do not know if this is correct but this would mean that towns like Gorey and Enniscorthy, to mention two in my own constituency—other Deputies can mention other areas with a population of less than 7,000—if they are to come under the amended employment period order, will suffer hardship. In his contribution to this debate the Minister must give us clarification on that part of the order and define what is meant by an urban area.

The Minister has a lot of explaining and clearing up to do because he said that the order was wrongly drafted. Who drafted the order wrongly? Is this intended as a slight on some member of the Civil Service in the Department of Social Welfare? I believe this was an absolute try on and, if there had not been this outcry in the Press and from the community as a whole, the Minister and the Government would have gone ahead with it. If that is not so, it appears that the Minister did not read the order. If he did not read the order before he signed it, I do not believe he is worthy to hold the office of Minister for Social Welfare. I do not believe it is good enough to blame an officer of his Department, by inference or innuendo, for not having put a proper draft before him. Usually Ministers in this House defend rather than condemn officers of their own Departments, but the Minister is now casting some suspicion—or to use a well-known phrase there is now a shadow of suspicion—on some civil servant or civil servants in the Department of Social Welfare. This is scandalous behaviour. It looks like a rebuke to some un-named civil servant.

Ex-Deputy Kevin Boland, ex-Minister for Local Government, ex-Minister for Social Welfare and ex- a few other things, knows the mind of his former colleagues in the Government and he described the first attempt to introduce the Employment Period Order as a try on, as I did, and indeed it was. He is fairly experienced and expert in the art of government and the art of politics and he described this as government by kite flying. He knows his colleagues. We have many examples of kite flyers in the Fianna Fáil front benches and some of the ex-Ministers, including ex-Deputy Kevin Boland, were expert at government by kite flying. There is no doubt in my mind, and there is no doubt in the mind of ex-Deputy Boland, that if they could have got away with it they would have done it.

We suspect two motives in relation to the first Employment Period Order, first, that there is pressure by the Minister for Finance on the Minister for Social Welfare to save £1.35 million as was said yesterday—we do not know whether these figures are right or wrong—or secondly to give a false picture of the unemployment figure in this part of the country. If it was to save £1.35 million, or £1.6 million as the Minister for Finance said, it is a mean type of economising on the poorest section of the community. The Minister will have to be more explicit in his contribution this morning about the amount of money involved and the number of people involved. I do not know if he was fully briefed yesterday in his reply to the question asked by a Member of this party but there is room for further clarification.

We were told yesterday by the Minister that the amended Order, that is the Order relating to those who live in the non-urban areas, will mean a saving to the Exchequer of £1.2 million and that it will affect 13,000 people. These figures must also be reconciled because there appears to be a contradiction between them and the figures given by the Minister in reply to supplementary questions yesterday. In that reply the Minister said £1.35 million would be saved but in the Book of Estimates it appears that a saving of £1.6 million was anticipated.

I said that the second possible motive was to give a false picture of the unemployment figures. At present we have the unenviable record of having the highest unemployment rate in Western Europe. This is not a good image for the Minister for Foreign Affairs in his negotiations on our application for membership of the EEC. The Minister is proposing to cut off 13,000 people from the unemployment figure in a situation where we had 70,126 people unemployed on 8th April and 25,713 of them on unemployment assistance. This is the highest figure for this part of the year for very many years. The motive may have been to impress the EEC countries in our negotiations for membership. In the third quarter of 1969, unemployment was at the figure of 6.5 per cent and that had risen to 7.8 per cent in the third quarter of 1970. I cannot be contradicted when I say we have the highest unemployment rate in Western Europe and the idea may have been to try to change that picture.

The Government are cutting people off from unemployment assistance at a time when we have redundancies all over the country and closures of factories in many parts of the country due again, may I say, to the ineptitude and blundering of the Government and the bad agreement they made six years ago with the British, the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement. That disastrous agreement has been responsible for an increase in unemployment, for redundancies and for closures of factories.

The Minister must tell us this morning what is to happen to these people. They will have no employment and no source of income whatsoever. The Minister acts in a dual capacity in this House. He is also Minister for Labour and, as Minister for Labour, has a responsibility to provide work not only for these 13,000 people but for the 70,126 people unemployed at present. The assumption by the Minister, by the members of the Government and the members of the Fianna Fáil Party appears to be that there is work. There was a rather cynical and uninformed comment by the Minister for Social Welfare who is also Minister for Labour at an annual dinner of the Fianna Fáil Party at Kilnaleck, County Cavan. I wish to quote from the Irish Times where he is reported within the last week or ten days as having said at that dinner:

The problem of the dole was a major one and had to be tackled. While an ideal solution might not be readily forthcoming it should not be impossible to devise a scheme to ensure that the millions of pounds now being paid out in dole would be devoted to productive purposes.

He talks about millions being paid out to those who are in receipt of the dole. There are not millions being paid out and this is a filthy innuendo to people who would like to believe that there are workers who are getting money for nothing and that millions are being spent on those who have to line up at the employment exchanges in order to seek work and to qualify for a few pounds per year. We do not treat our unemployed as generously as that paragraph in the Minister's speech would suggest. I quote further:

Mr. Brennan said he hoped that by devoting this money——

These millions

——to productive purposes it would be possible to give to the persons receiving this money an opportunity to rid themselves of the stigma attached to the present system.

The Minister should first have had his scheme for using these millions to give employment rather than cut them off and say that we will have some sort of solution afterwards. He is reported as saying in the same speech:

The Government was fully alive to the hardship this order might cause and in consequence had made an extra £500,000 available for local improvement schemes to be spent in the west.

How much extra employment would that give? Perhaps the Minister would tell us when he intervenes in this debate. Of course he ignores entirely the rest of the country. An unemployed man who does not qualify for assistance in Cork is just as hungry as an unemployed man who has no assistance in Galway, Donegal, Louth, Meath, Limerick or any other county. Therefore if the Minister is thinking of introducing some alternative scheme or if he is thinking of providing employment for people, he should think not of one part of the country but of the whole of the Twenty-six Counties.

I recall that in the Dáil recently, in reply to a question, the Minister told Deputy Tully that workers were being brought back from Britain for retraining and implied—maybe said directly in the same reply—that workers who are signing on at our employment exchanges are unemployable. The Minister has a duty to the House and to the country to explain what he meant when he replied to Deputy Tully in those terms.

What is to happen to these people? Where do they get money on which to live? Who will give them money for food, clothes and rent? Where will the single man in a cottage on his own get money for his smoke, for a bottle of stout? Or are there some people in the front benches or the back benches of the Government party who believe they are not entitled to food or to money for rent, that they are not entitled to a smoke or to a bottle of stout? I am sure most members of the Fianna Fáil Party, as have other parties, as have my own party, have had dozens of these people coming to them, as I have had over the last week, asking what will happen to them, where will they get money. Are they being starved out of this country so that they will emigrate to Britain?

What about the single man who lives on his own and whose parents have died? What is he to do? He has no dependants. He will not get unemployment assistance and he certainly will not get home assistance. What about the single man such as approached me over the week-end? He lives with his widowed sister who gets £4 10s per week. Are the two of them expected to live on £4 10s per week or has the Minister a job to offer them down in County Wexford? What about the single man who is living with his widowed mother? Would she be regarded as a dependant or must the two of them live on the widow's pension which the mother receives?

It is no reply to say the local authority has a responsibility for those people who have no income and who are not entitled to any payments from the Department of Social Welfare by way of welfare benefits or assistance. In many counties the aim—and it would appear to be succeeding—seems to be to reduce home assistance. Many local authorities have struck their rate. There is no provision for extra home assistance and there is no indication that a special rate will be struck so that these thousands of people who now have no money will be provided for. Will this employment period order continue next year? If it does the public assistance authorities will have to increase the rate in order to provide for people who have no means. I can say this as far as members of the Labour Party who are on local authorities are concerned in any case; I do not know what the attitude of other parties in the Dáil will be.

I do not know whether on next Tuesday the Minister for Finance will, as I suggested in a recent speech, introduce particularly for these people a form of national assistance such as is operated in Britain at the present time. If that is not done it will mean starvation or emigration for those people who have been cut off from unemployment assistance. Would the Minister or someone else in the Fianna Fáil Party give us an indication as to where these people will get employment from 14th April, 1971, to 16th November, 1971? The Minister may say: "The employment period order was there when you were Minister for Social Welfare." There may have been some justification for it at that time. There may have been some justification for it years ago but the justification for it went when the ex-Minister for Finance scrapped the order in his Budget speech of 1967. Some years ago, as Deputy Tully reminded me, when there was the spring planting, when there was the summer haymaking and the autumn harvesting, there was employment for some people in rural Ireland. There was a prospect then of getting some insurance stamps. There may have been some justification when there were many more employed at road work by the various county councils than there are today; when there was more forestry work and when there were more employed with Bord na Móna. We recognise, as it appears the Minister for Finance in the Fianna Fáil Government in 1967 recognised, that the rapid growth of the use of farm machinery, the rapid growth of road making machinery and the rapid use of machinery in turf production have all minimised and reduced greatly the prospects of employment in rural Ireland. What are these people expected to do? They are expected to do what a lot of big farmers would wish them to do and that is to stand around at the cross roads and wait until they are beckoned and told that there is available a half-day's work or maybe two or three day's work. They are expected to be available all day until such time as some of these big farmers hire them for a few hours. There is no continuous work in rural Ireland for these people from the 16th April to the 16th November. The Minister must readily admit that there is still an average of 9,000 or 10,000 people leaving Ireland every year as there have been for a number of years past. These people leave because there is no work for them here. Yet, we have the Minister suggesting and implying that there may be work for them. Because so many people have not been able to obtain work, they have had to have recourse to unemployment assistance.

It has been suggested that we in the trade union movement and in the Labour Party were satisfied when that part of the order which applied to the urban areas was to be scrapped. I want to tell the Minister that so far as we are concerned we are opposed to this amended order in the same way as we were opposed to the first disastrous order made on the 1st April. We were outraged when, by way of leak, we heard this news and we are still outraged with the amended order.

I appeal to the members of Fianna Fáil, and particularly those who live in rural areas, to speak up now and let the Minister for Social Welfare know what are their views. I appeal to them to ask the Minister what is to happen to these 13,000 people who will not now have any income. Are they to starve or to emigrate?

The Minister claimed that the first order was a mistake, I suggest that he should be big enough to say now that the second order was a mistake also. We do not believe that the first order was a mistake; rather, we believe it was a kite-flying effort, a try-on. It was provided for in the Book of Estimates but the Government yielded to public pressure and indignation in respect of those in the urban areas. We ask that the same be done in respect of those in rural areas. In my view and in the view of my colleagues, this order, if allowed stand, will cause misery to thousands of our people who so badly need more help and not more hardship

Mr. Murphy

I second the motion proposed by Deputy Corish. It is a peculiar exercise after more than fifty years of self-Government that Dáil Éireann is discussing motions Nos. 3, 4 and 5 on the Order Paper. It would be a more pleasant task to stand up here and propose motion No. 5, if there was justification for it, rather than to propose motion No. 3. We must examine why it was necessary for the Labour Party to put down motion No. 3. This task is not a pleasant one for us. Down through the years our objective has been to have employment for all our people. That is still our aim and if it had been achieved there would be no need whatever for a motion dealing with unemployment assistance for any of our people.

With a population of about 2.9 million this objective should not be difficult to achieve. It would have been achieved if the right people had been in power but, unfortunately, Fianna Fáil have been in office for 33 out of 39 years since 1932. It is strange indeed that, despite all their talk at cumann meetings and elsewhere, there is still the necessity for unemployment assistance in this country.

In Western European countries, such as Holland, Belgium, France and Germany, which suffered the devastations of war there is no unemployment assistance simply because there is no need for it. These countries are fortunate in having capable men to lead them.

Year after year I have been agitating for the provision of employment for all our people. We do not like the idea of any person having to go to an employment exchange for unemployment assistance. I have stressed here time and again that it should be within the competence of an inter-Departmental committee to devise a system whereby continuous employment would be available for all our people and, particularly for those in the rural areas. There is a crying need for improvement in many spheres—in land reclamation, road making, house building, water and sewerage schemes, forestry work and so on—all of which would provide more employment. It would be a great advantage if, instead of money being paid out by way of unemployment assistance, it was channelled into a fund for prospective employment for the relatively small numbers who require employment. Out of a population of 2.9 million people, 70,000 is a reasonably sizeable figure. Let us assume that a percentage of those are unemployable. I do not know the percentage. I want to be quite factual about this. I have said that time and again both to the present Minister and to previous Ministers but nothing has happened.

It is cruel to find that in south west Cork and in many other parts of the country forestry workers who have had excellent continuous service for up to 14 years are told that they are no longer wanted, that there is no money to pay them and they must go to the employment exchange. As well as that, productive schemes are being held up. There is no need to remind the House at length about the nature of those hold-ups. The matter is raised here day in and day out at Question Time. Housing and water and sewerage schemes which would give good employment are held up because there is no money and instead workers who could be engaged on that work are forced to go to the employment exchange.

We know what the employment exchange is; it is not a building in which employment is provided but rather from which money is paid out to keep people on the move. That is distasteful to almost everybody. The Minister, Deputy Brennan, has been in charge of this Department for a number of years and why has he done nothing about it? I have no hesitation in saying that he has done a hell of a bad job as Minister not only in this sphere but in every other sphere. I cannot say much for his Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Geoghegan, either, who should have some knowledge of rural Ireland. It is all very fine to appoint a Minister for Social Welfare and a Parliamentary Secretary and supply them with cars and drivers and with secretaries galore but what have they to show? If you had brought in any two men that you would pick up in the street, at the time the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary were appointed, social welfare would be as far ahead as it is today.

Mr. P.J. Burke

That is very uncharitable, Deputy.

Mr. Cluskey

You can congratulate him when you get up.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): Do not talk about charity. It is an unfortunate choice of word.

Mr. Murphy

When Deputy Geoghegan and the Minister were appointed I congratulated them but in my view they have been found wanting. We have to be factual here. This is not a mutual admiration society. I would praise any man who was entitled to it but neither the Minister nor the Parliamentary Secretary is entitled to praise. Did the Minister ever think of having consultations with local authorities? Did he ever ask them if they had room for additional employees, men who are on the lists in the various exchanges, or where local authorities were laying off men, as is happening, did he inquire if Local Government, the Forestry Division or the Office of Public Works would have employment for them and keep them away from the exchanges?

I do not think he has done that. He is just sitting up there forgetting about everything else except social welfare allowances, forgetting about the vital problem, the provision of work for these people. Neither do I know what the team he has over there beside him are doing about this. So far as I know they have shown very little imagination in recent years in this Department——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy may not——

Mr. Murphy

——and that was——

An Ceann Comhairle

Will the Deputy please listen? The Deputy may not criticise officials; the Minister is responsible.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Murphy

That was made evident to everybody when the announcement was made. There is no need to go into the bungling nature of the announcement, or who was responsible, or how it came about, and how the mistake was made about urban and rural. Were they engaged in doing as they are doing all the time, that is, shady work, as Mr. Kevin Boland asked at Rathcoole? He is a man who was associated with the party for thirteen years or more as a Minister and he gave us some of the inside secrets which I am sure are factual. The Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary should be cleared out of the Department and somebody who would have a look at some of the boys should be put in and pack a few of them off too.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Murphy

Deputy Spring states that they would get no dole if they were sacked but they are well secured. They will not have to look for dole.

An Ceann Comhairle

Would the Deputy come to the motion? Would the Deputy speak to his own motion?

Mr. Murphy

I am on the motion and I will keep on it. There is no danger as far as the men to whom Deputy Spring has referred.

An Ceann Comhairle

What has this got to do with the motion?

Mr. Murphy

Of course it has something to do with the motion. I am surprised at you, Mr. Chairman. We know that the Government are going around collecting and borrowing money. Paul Singer is only trotting after them, or he was when he was operating, in borrowing money. We are trying to get money at home with interest rates as high as 9¾ per cent; we are trying to get money abroad, and at the same time we have State-sponsored bodies like the ESB trying to borrow money abroad. Due to the Government's inefficiency money is scarce. Possibly trimmings are justifiable but of all groups on which to start the trimming operation they take the people in receipt of unemployment assistance to whom work has been denied and who from April to November will be deprived of this miserable pittance.

Deputy Corish asked what is to become of them. Will they be sent to the assistance officer? In my part of the country, and I am sure in other parts too, there is no employment available. Public works are closing down and the employment content is being reduced. Why should the man who is in receipt of not more than £3.30 per week become the Minister's target for saving money? Imagine the allowance to a man receiving unemployment assistance—£3.30. In some cases he is a small farmer with possibly a cow or two and the amount is reduced and in many cases it would be about £2, which would possibly be a fair average. Why did Fianna Fáil select those people to trim to the tune of almost £1.6 million? If steps had been taken by the Government to ensure employment for these men it would be something to support the annulment of this Order but no such steps have been taken and, with the exception of the relatively small increase in local improvements schemes grants, no provision of any kind is made. The money for local improvement schemes will not help unemployment assistance recipients because these schemes are now carried out by the County Councils by the regular staff. There will be no extra employment under that heading for the recipient of unemployment assistance.

We all know that in lean periods for Fianna Fáil, when they wanted to get additional support which would probably make the difference between victory and defeat, they used unemployment assistance to buy votes. That was in the early days when people scarcely knew about this kind of assistance and were not expecting it but were expecting employment, even though it might be only three days a week. At that time, not too far back, people did not expect money for nothing.

Mr. P.J. Burke

I never heard of that.

Mr. Tully

Did the Deputy ever hear of Hugo Flynn?

Mr. Coughlan

That is the man who said no man was worth more than 50 bob a week.

Mr. Murphy

It is an accepted fact that the Government used this means. I suppose with the present situation we shall soon hear about it from some ex-member of the Government: the secrets are coming out now. We must thank Mr. Boland for some of them; I hope he will continue disclosing them and that he will write a book shortly.

I do not like this type of system. There is an obligation on whatever Government is in power to ensure that employment is available for all who are willing and able to work. That has been achieved in several West European countries smaller than ours and with greater density of population. I cannot see, with all the money supposed to be around, all the taxation being collected, why Irish Governments, through the years, have been incapable of devising a system to give employment to all able-bodied people.

As a representative of a constituency where, due to circumstances beyond their control, particularly in the peninsular areas and the islands and even in the towns because all West Cork towns are non-urban so far as this Order is concerned, I ask the Minister to withdraw this Order and agree to the motion put down by Deputy Corish. I do not know what the single men in, say, Berehaven Peninsula will do. To a large extent West Cork has been denuded of population by emigration and almost daily we have representations for jobs, even of a casual nature, from people receiving benefits, not only unemployment assistance but unemployment benefit. I am sure my colleagues can say the same. West Cork people do not like going to exchanges; they would prefer work and wages at the end of the week. That work has not been provided.

We now have the evidence of the inefficiency of the Department of Social Welfare. I should like the Minister to give us some inside information because we cannot understand how it is that after the blow-up—that may not be the best term but it is appropriate for the announcement in question—the Minister said: "We made a mistake so far as urban workers are concerned; we will give it to them. They must buy food and so on but the rural workers are out. Forget about them." What is the idea? One might conclude that possibly the Government hope that by the annulment of this Order many who, up to the early part of this month, were receiving unemployment assistance, will be forced to emigrate. Is that a reasonable conclusion? Is it that the Minister and the Government would like to get rid of a number of Irishmen to make room, possibly, for the influx of Germans and others who will be taking over here, on present indications, in the not too distant future?

I shall be asked by my constituents what they will get instead of this unemployment assistance. I will be asked if County Councils, the Forestry Department or any other employment departments will have work for my constituents, but my answer must be "No". I will then be asked what they are to do. Are they to go cap in hand to the local assistance officer? Imagine that happening in 1971 when sizeable wage increases are the order of the day and some people are getting away with what to my mind, they should not be getting away with? In most cases the people affected are making genuine attempts to find work, certainly as far as the men and women of West Cork are concerned this is true. What is going to happen to them? If they go along to the Cork Health Authority to look for help there is none forthcoming. Has the Government sent out orders to the Health Boards telling them to be difficult about making payments to disabled persons and others who receive payments from these Boards?

It would be a fine morning's work if the Minister was able to stand up and tell the House that some of his officials have devised a system whereby unemployment assistance would disappear, as it has in most Western European countries. Such a measure would be welcomed by everybody and especially those in receipt of it at the present time.

That is the kind of motion I should like to be seconding and that is the kind of motion the people would like to hear about, but Fianna Fáil have not been judging the Irish pulse so well of late. When they announced this trimming down to a section of our people who find it most difficult to fight back because of lack of organisation, there was uproar from many sections of the community and I was pleased to hear that uproar. I want to congratulate the national press for standing behind these people. They condemned the Government Order as did other bodies and in my view they did a good job of work in so doing, because these people needed someone to stand behind them. The Minister seems to be under the impression that everyone is against the person who is out of work and has to sign for unemployment assistance and simply wants to run him out of the country.

As a Deputy representing a constituency where unemployment is rampant I would ask the Minister to withdraw the order until such time as adequate steps have been taken to provide employment for these people.

Mr. R. Barry

I should like to refer the House to Motion No. 4 on today's Order Paper in my name, as Fine Gael spokesman for social welfare matters, which reads:

—That all the Regulations contained in paragraph 3 of the Unemployment Assistance (Employment Period) (No. 2) Order, 1971 be and are hereby annulled.

On 20th June next I shall have been a Member of this House for 18 years and I never thought I would see the day when I would have to stand up in this House and tell any Minister for Social Welfare in any Government that he was kicking the most defenceless section of our community, but that is what we are doing on 22nd April, 1971. People of all races, and particularly the Irish, will never forgive anyone for kicking a man when he is down. That is exactly what we are doing in Dáil Éireann this morning. As Deputy Foley knows, if a person kicks a man when he is down on the playing field he is promply and immediately sent to the sideline. In the political field several governments have been sent into the wilderness for kicking a man when he is down. Most people are now saying that this Government and this Minister for Social Welfare should be promptly sent into the wilderness. I believe I am expressing the wish of the people when I say to the Government that it is time they handed over to a party who would handle the situation in a reasonable, honest and decent manner.

We are being asked in this perfectly simple Order to grant absolution to three cardinal, social and political sins, committed with full knowledge and grievous intent. I want to spell out the three sins committed by Fianna Fáil and by the present Minister for Social Welfare. The first cardinal Fianna Fáil sin was committed by Deputy Haughey, who has just left the House, and his erstwhile colleagues in June, 1967, when, just before a local election, they extended the dole payments to rural Ireland on an all-the-year-round basis in a vain effort to win the votes of the electorate. The buying of the votes of the downtrodden, depressed people of rural Ireland with the taxpayers' rather than the party's money was a cheap form of political trickery which has gone on ever since Fianna Fáil introduced the dole many years ago.

The second cardinal sin committed by Fianna Fáil was committed by the present Minister for Social Welfare and his Cabinet colleagues, and I include them all, because it is obvious to everyone that this decision was a Government one, taken deliberately, clearly and plainly—and I shall refer later to their blaming the civil service, for whom I have the greatest sympathy— because they found themselves in the throes of economic trouble, self-inflicted by their mishandling of the nation's affairs. The miserable pittance that they had granted those people was to be taken off them in order to try and balance a budget. Is it not a complete condemnation of the Fianna Fáil Party that, having done absolutely nothing to provide employment for these people, they should take from them the money with which they bought their votes by intimidation and bullying? The Fianna Fáil Party and the Minister for Social Welfare stand condemned for their despicable treatment of that unfortunate section of our people.

The third card in the Fianna Fáil hand is the sending in here this morning of the Minister for Social Welfare. The Minister is, as everyone knows and accepts, a decent man. This is the man Fianna Fáil send in here miserably and carefully to retract the earlier decision because of pressure from public opinion. Here I should like to join with Deputy Murphy in commending all organs of the press for their stand for the downtrodden.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

Mr. R. Barry

It is unfortunate that it should be Deputy Brennan, the Minister for Social Welfare, who is sent in here to try to reduce the pressure of public opinion, to stand over a decision that I personally believe he did not want to make. Worse than that, he comes in here to defend allegedly a nameless civil servant. I want to put on record now on behalf of the Fine Gael Party our confirmed belief that the country is blessed with a great Civil Service organisation. It is unfortunate that it is becoming a growing practice here, and outside, for Ministers of State to make speeches and then put the blame for wrong decisions on our civil servants. Speaking as an ex-civil servant, I want to say that it is time this kind of thing stopped in Irish politics and Irish government. If you want to have the confidence of civil servants, in heaven's name do not shelter behind them or blame them for your mistakes.

Can anyone now accept that this was a civil servant's mistake? The order was quite clear. Among other things, the effect of the order was to exclude men who had no dependants from unemployment assistance during the period from 14th April, 1971, to 16th November, 1971. Can anyone really believe that the Irish people are so gullible that they will believe that this was a civil servant's mistake? The Minister signed the order knowing full well that it was a Cabinet decision to revoke the dole in both urban and rural areas. It is time we were honest with ourselves and stopped sheltering under the umbrella of a civil servant's mistake.

I wonder if the Minister for Social Welfare reads the Irish Independent. Perhaps he does not. Like a lot of us he may not have the time, but I imagine the first paper he reads is the Irish Press.

Mr. Bruton

The poor man does not even read the orders he signs.

Mr. R. Barry

If he does not read the Irish Independent perhaps I should not waste time quoting from it, but there is a bannerline which reads: “Boland Slams Fianna Fáil.” Now, Mr. Kevin Boland, whatever one may say about him, had a reputation here of being straight. He certainly proved he had principles of a sort, principles which are sadly lacking in this country today and noticeably lacking in Government circles. He was obviously talking with some experience of this Fianna Fáil Government and he was quite right, of course, in describing it as “Government by kite-flying”. I am quoting from the Irish Independent of 17th April. Mr. Boland said:

Not only had objectives been abandoned, but it was clear that the new technique, developed by the May, 1970, Government, had prevented Fianna Fáil from turning a full circle in regard to social policy....

The new technique is not to take decisions based on "well-known" Fianna Fáil policy but to take... decisions, to send up a kite on anything from prices and incomes to contraception and divorce, to haul it down and either scuttle it or trim it to accommodate the adverse winds experienced.

The explanation that the original Employment Period Order was a mistake is not credible. It was a clear and blatant try-on. Knowing the established calibre of the present Government there was, of course, no doubt that there would be a scurried retreat from the position of toughness originally taken up. The ominous thing, in so far as this party is concerned, is that a Fianna Fáil Government could even have contemplated a retrogression in the field of social welfare.

The Fine Gael Party and the Cumann na nGaedheal Party have over the years had to suffer the taunts and jibes of the Fianna Fáil Party because of a decision by a Minister in years gone by, in different times and a different era, to withdraw some social welfare benefit from a section of our people. Thanks be to God, on 22nd April, 1971, the deathknell was sounded for these taunts and jibes: never again can they be thrown at this side of the House by the people presently sitting over there.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

Mr. R. Barry

The taking of this miserable pittance from these unfortunate people, a few pounds a week, was an attempt by the Government, as Deputy Corish said, to falsify, first of all, the unemployment figures. They must be getting embarrassing when they are up to the 70,000 mark. Of course, the idea was to take the cost of this off the Exchequer and pass it on to the local ratepayers. Why, otherwise, would the Minister and the Government come out openly and admit that they are so bankrupt of policy and of money that this was what they had to do? I noticed Deputy Foley sitting behind the Minister and, if I read the signs aright, his intention is to speak when I sit down. I shall not keep him waiting too long and I forecast that what he will say will be something like all the things I would like to say if time permitted. They will come better from a member of the Fianna Fáil Party advising a Fianna Fáil Minister. A Fine Gael Deputy might, perhaps, be accused of trying to make political capital out of the despicable treatment meted out to these unfortunate people.

This Government have completely lost the confidence of the Irish people. As one Corkman to another, I want to tell the Taoiseach now—he is not here but I hope he will hear what I say—that he is completely out of touch with the mood of the people. The constituency I represent is fairly far flung and, since this order was made, I have travelled around it a good bit. I have had the unsolicited views of the people, and not only the people who would have been affected by this order. I would say to him quite deliberately that people have lost confidence in the Government. They have accepted that the Taoiseach and three or four Ministers are trying to carry the burden of running the country in most difficult times. Those who take part in public life or even those who read the daily papers know that this cannot be done.

The daily revelations are becoming more serious. The newspapers contain stories that Members on all sides of the House do not wish to read. At a stage when we are discussing entry into the Common Market, when there is much trouble in the six north-eastern counties of our country, and when there are events such as the blowing up of boats in Baltimore, it behoves all of us to act in a responsible way. When we take from the mouths of people the food they need to sustain them we are helping to drive them to the streets and to do and say the things we all deplore.

My heart grieves when I think of the town of Fermoy, to which I hope to return this evening. There I shall meet people, many of whom have been on the dole for 20 or 25 years. Here we are talking not only of the unemployed but of the unemployable and this is what the Minister for Social Welfare seems to forget completely. Many of the people in Fermoy who live outside the urban boundary will be obliged to come to me and ask for a note for the home assistance officer. In this matter we must talk about facts and this is what will happen. I challenge any Deputy not to feel sympathetic towards those unfortunate people. We should all be ashamed of being part of a set-up that compels people to come to their public representatives and ask for a note to take to their home assistance officers. Members of this House must have a sense of responsibility. I shall give Deputy Foley a few minutes to convince the Minister that what the Labour Party and the Fine Gael Party are saying is also what most of the Fianna Fáil backbenchers and supporters are saying, namely, that this Government should have the courage to resign.

Many adjectives have been used to describe the first order that was annulled by the Minister and the second order which the Labour Party have proposed be annulled—which proposal we support. The order has been described as mean, callous, unprecedented, ignominious, deplorable, incredible, distastetful, disgraceful, sorry, deceitful, irresponsible, astounding, unjust, cowardly, outrageous, stupid and retrograde. All those adjectives do not fully describe this very cowardly manoeuvre. Before this debate concludes at 1.30 p.m. I hope the Minister will have the guts to get up and tell us that, having revoked the first order, he has now decided that the second order be annulled.

When I say "the public" I mean those people who must find and pay the money in order to ensure that the unfortunate are not deprived of all means. There are many decent people in Fianna Fáil. I am sure the Minister for Social Welfare was caught up in this. If the Minister wants to save money and if the Minister for Finance comes here next Tuesday and tells us that in response to public demand this second order is annulled, Fine Gael will be very pleased to tell the Minister that we will get the money in another way in order to ensure that those unfortunate people who are in dire straits get the few pounds to keep body and soul together.

Mr. Foley

Before the Minister speaks I should like to say a few words. This is the first occasion I have had to come into this House and presume to defend an action of which I am utterly and completely ashamed. It is not consistent with Fianna Fáil social welfare policy that at this stage we should try to deprive the less well-off brethren in our community of the small remuneration to which at least 95 per cent of the people concerned are legally entitled.

We should go into the pros and cons of this matter very carefully. According to the Minister this matter came to light because of a leak from a local employment exchange. It appears to me that it is just as well that it came to light in that way because after two days the Government Information Bureau announced there had been a mistake. The very least anyone can ask is whether this mistake was really made and would it have been rectified were it not for the fact that there was a leak. I do not want to appear unreasonable but I am bound to say it is very difficult to see how a mistake was made. If a mistake was made surely the Minister could tell us now who was responsible and what individuals were involved? Was the Department of Social Welfare involved or was it the Department of Finance? Was it the transmission of a decision made by the Government, through the Secretary to the Government? He is a man who has never made a mistake so far as the Government are concerned and, in my opinion, he is a man who is not capable of making a mistake of this magnitude. These are questions I should like to have answered. I find it very difficult to believe that the mistake was made in the Department of Social Welfare. So far as I have been able to find out from my inquiries, it is a long time since we on this side of the House introduced An Employment Period Order to cover the whole country. Deputy Haughey, in 1966 or 1967——

Mr. R. Barry

1967.

Mr. Foley

——said that he was abolishing the Employment Period Order completely. If civil servants were asked to make An Employment Period Order to cover the whole country, it would be natural to expect that each and every one of them would have made inquiries as to whether this was not a change from the common procedure of making the order for the rural areas. If they did not do this, surely some of them would have had the common sense to ask the Minister what was the change of heart, and how did it come about. That did not happen. Therefore there is only one explanation which comes to my mind, that is, that this was a specific order given by the Government to make An Employment Period Order for the whole country and that no mistake whatever was involved. I feel that a mistake such as this is not sidestepped. It cannot be dealt with in the way in which it has been dealt with.

Mr. Donnellan

Will the Deputy vote against them?

Mr. Foley

So far as the civil servants are involved, I do not think they should be asked to bear the brunt of the responsibility for such a mistake——

Mr. R. Barry

Hear, hear.

Mr. Foley

——because a mistake was never made. The third possibility that the Government made the decision in error is hardly worth considering and hardly worth commenting on as far as I am concerned.

Dr. O'Donovan

With this Government?

Mr. Foley

It is not compatible with Fianna Fáil policy on social welfare. It is not compatible with the type of policy we envisage and to save the paltry sum of £1.5 million or £1.6 million is absolutely ridiculous in an expenditure of over £100,000,000.

Dr. O'Donovan

Hear, hear.

Mr. Foley

Why should we in this day and age pick on the weakest sector of our community to try to save £1.5 million? Why should we do this by putting the onus on this sector of the community? The onus rightly belongs on this side of the House to provide employment where necessary for these people who seek social welfare assistance. It is absolutely ridiculous to try to scrounge £1.5 million from such a large expenditure and to cause hardship to these unfortunate people in doing so. Innocent people are being asked to suffer here because we have not been capable of producing a watertight social welfare code. We have looked long and hard for many years at a social welfare code which was being abused, not so much in the rural areas but in the city of Dublin and in other cities.

The unemployment benefit section of the social welfare code is scandalously abused in the city of Dublin. I have made personal and private reports to the Department of Social Welfare about these abuses, none of which has been dealt with satisfactorily. None of the guilty parties has been dealt with to my satisfaction. They should have been deprived of social welfare benefits and they should have been made to pay back every cent of the money they got illegally, thereby placing a burden not only on the Government but on the taxpayers and the ratepayers.

We can all see these abuses for ourselves. If Deputies go down to the Dublin jetty they will see the country trucks coming in from Sligo or Leitrim or any part of the country. Those trucks must be loaded on the Dublin docks and they cannot be loaded unless the drivers have a helper. Where do they get the helpers? They get them outside the jetty gates. These individuals knock off at about 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday or Thursday morning for about two hours to sign up for the dole. They get £2 a ton for loading the lorries and they can do that two or three times a day. Connors pub is full of these type of people who can draw the dole because we will not make an honest endeavour here to provide a consolidated social welfare code under which they could be prevented from abusing it.

I am saying this against my own people but, if a principle is involved, personalities should not come into it and, so far as I am concerned, a very valid principle is involved here. I am sure these abuses occur in other places as well as Dublin city but I am familiar with abuses in the city. They should not be overlooked. The investigating squad about which we hear so much, and which investigate other matters which are not relevant to this debate, should be used to seek out these individuals and make sure they are brought to justice. They brought other individuals to justice who were not as guilty of receiving the taxpayers' money in an illegal way as these individuals are.

The same thing can be seen in the Dublin markets. I frequented the Dublin markets for eight or nine years before I came into this House. I was a farmer in County Dublin and I still am. The position was not as bad then, but times have changed radically since. Individuals there utilised the system which I have just explained to get money and then they went off to sign up for the dole. If these were just isolated cases I would say there are bound to be abuses of any scheme. There are abuses of our agricultural schemes and there are abuses of our other social welfare schemes. We are a group of people thinking up schemes for the whole country but the minds of the many are greater than the minds of the few. Therefore abuses and dodges will be thought up. If we make no effort to do anything about it then the fault does not lie with the people who abuse the scheme but with the people who institute the scheme and maintain it without doing something about it. Therefore I feel that, so far as this Act is concerned, if we are taking away something without having something positive to put in its place, we are failing miserably in our duty and we are not conforming to the characteristic performance on which Fianna Fáil have been commended down through the years in helping social welfare recipients in every way.

We hear a lot about that haven the Dublin docks. There are good people down there. I am not criticising every individual there. It is only natural that it is an area where all this carry-on takes place. Any day of the week you can get ten or 20 social welfare stamps for a paltry sum. These stamps enable people to carry on drawing the dole for a longer period than that for which they are entitled to draw it. All these abuses have been reported. The people who are responsible for carrying out these investigations do not seem to bother about it. If they do not bother about it why should I bother making these complaints repeatedly to the Department? If the Department are not prepared to accept that these things are happening, then they are far behind the times and are not doing the job they were put there to do.

It has been announced that £500,000 will be made available for employment in the rural areas. It is ridiculous to suggest that £500,000 will compensate these people for the dole they are losing. I think it was said here earlier on that if the local authorities are tarmacadaming a road in the rural areas and there is a laneway being done under the rural improvements scheme, they will not go to the local exchange for people to do this work when the machine is there to do it. It is wrong to give the impression that employment will be given to people in the rural areas. It is bad enough to take the dole from them but it is worse to mislead them into believing they will get employment.

This is my own personal view. Someone has to say it because what is being done is not consistent with the Fianna Fáil policy of which we have been so proud that we have ridiculed the Opposition for their performance over many years. If we were responsible for taking money from the old age pensioners we would be subjected to a considerable amount of ridicule. In this connection we are more liable to ridicule because we are not reducing the amount of money being given but taking the whole lot away.

There are many innocent people involved in this. A big percentage of them are unemployable; some of them are in rural areas where employment is practically nil. We have up-to-date machinery now for doing the work. There is no such thing as a busy period when additional hands are taken on. We have a rush period on the land; we have to beat the weather, but the machinery takes the place of the workers who used to be employed. Therefore, the supposed availability of rural employment does not carry any weight with me. If I were a western Deputy I would feel so peeved about this that I would not be able to stand on a platform again and criticise the social welfare policies of any other party. Another objection I have is to the manner in which this was implemented, by saying: "In a fortnight's time you will get nothing."

Mr. Corish

Less than a fortnight.

Mr. Foley

While I do not agree with the implementation of this order it would be less objectionable if a reasonable explanation was given for it and if people were told: "We intend to stop the social welfare unemployment benefit on such a date and in its place we shall introduce an additional scheme." If that were done I for one would applaud the proposal because I am not one who would plead for unemployment benefit for anyone who is capable of working. Nobody knows better than I do the abuses that occur. It is only natural. I live in an area which is close to the city and there are people there who are working and drawing social welfare benefit. Let no one say here that the workers of this country are so law abiding that they would not attempt to do that. There are people in every sphere of life who will do things which are no credit to them. Everyone will condemn this but no one, and particularly the Department of Social Welfare, will make an honest endeavour to stamp it out once and for all.

There are two people living side by side in my constituency. They drink in the same pub together; of course, they will not do that any more because in a fortnight's time one of them will have his unemployment benefit stopped and the other will not. Why? Because the city boundary comes between them. Naturally one will ask the other: "Why are you getting unemployment benefit while I am not? I do not see any reason for this. The £1,500,000 should be used to clean up in the social welfare system the abuses which have been haunting us for years. If it is not cleaned up, then not only will the rural benefit have been taken away but the urban benefit will be taken away as well. I was one of those who used very strong arguments in favour of our social welfare benefits at the last election. I did everything I could to hammer the Opposition about the tenpence a year and about the paltry sums they gave to social welfare recipients during their period in office. That was a different era. It was a time, I suppose, in which it was difficult to get money. It was a time when £1,500,000 was a great deal of money. Today it does not mean so much out of an expenditure of £500 million. It is time we all asked: what are we doing to these unfortunate people who depend on this dole? To deprive them of it seems to be a way of saying: "You had better emigrate." If they cannot get social welfare assistance from now on some of them will not have the price of emigration; some of them will come into the cities where they may hope to work for a while to get the money. However, we are all complaining about the rates. This is one way of putting up the rates so that at every county council and corporation meeting there will be bitter complaints.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

Mr. Foley

I say this because these people will be forced to seek local assistance. Of course, many of them will not so qualify but for everyone who does qualify, there will be an increase of between 1d and 3d in the £ on the rates. The allocation by local authorities of amounts for home assistance will be farcical if this proposal is implemented and most of these allocations have already been made.

I accept the need for a reduction in the total amount of the Estimate but it must have been very difficult for those with any conscience at all to have had anything to do with this proposal. Could we not have turned to other Departments? Could we not have forgotten about the Departments and turned to Bord Fáilte or to some of our elaborate embassies abroad?

Deputies

Hear, hear.

Mr. Foley

Could we not have turned to Government expenditure on Government entertainment?

Mr. Donnellan

Could we not have turned to the Tacateers?

Mr. Foley

So far as I am concerned this step is a retrograde one. It is one in which I never thought people on this side of the House would be involved. Personally, I am ashamed to have to come here and speak about such proposals. This step is not consistent with Fianna Fáil policy. It is not consistent with the policies that I have been preaching, the policies that have been handed down to me during the years.

The outcry from the public is only secondary to the principle that is involved here because in this case Fianna Fáil have resorted to what I call the tactics of the Opposition when times were different.

Deputy Begley rose.

Mr. Coughlan

A Leas-Cheann Comhairle——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Begley.

Mr. Begley

There have already been two speakers from the Labour Party.

Mr. Coughlan

I hope that, as agreed, we will all be given a chance to speak. I have as much to contribute as anybody else. After all, I am the man who started this and let that be understood by everybody.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I am sure the Deputy will have an opportunity of speaking.

Mr. Tully

Perhaps the Chair is not being quite fair. This motion was proposed and seconded by members of this party. If the seconder of the motion had been a Fine Gael member, it would be in order for a speaker from that party to get in now but in my opinion the Chair is breaching an arrangement that has been of long standing in this House—an arrangement which was the cause of a row here some time ago but I hope this will not happen again. Therefore, I think that the next speaker should be from these benches and I ask the Chair to reconsider his decision.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

There have already been two speakers from the Labour Party.

Mr. J. Lenehan

I wish we could turn them off.

Mr. Tully

The Deputy should go back to the bar which is still open.

Mr. Begley

After listening to Deputy Foley's contribution I can only hope that when the division bell rings at 1.30, his actions will speak louder than his words and that he will go into the lobby behind Fine Gael and Labour to vote against Fianna Fáil on this motion. That is the crunch. We have heard so many times in the past from Fianna Fáil, the right versus the left, the left versus the right but this is a golden opportunity for the rank and file of Fianna Fáil to stand up to the autocrats who have now taken over their party and to vote against this motion so that the dole may be restored to those who are now being deprived of it.

The timing of this announcement was very bad. It was made at a time when the Dáil was in recess. The order was the cause of despair and anger all over the country, in the cities and towns as well as in the rural areas. However, when the pressure was put on by those in the urban areas, their voices were heard immediately and we were told that the order was all a mistake. The Government could foresee the demonstrations outside this House, outside the Custom House and outside the Department of Social Welfare but, of course, it would take much longer for the people in rural areas to become organised. As I see it, it was because of the pressure that was put on in the cities and towns that the Minister backtracked.

How are these unfortunate people to live now? The county councils may say to some of them that they are young and healthy and should be able to work and, consequently, they will not be given home assistance but what is to happen to them if they cannot get work? Deputy Corish rightly pointed out a number of cases and I would like to reiterate some of those now.

What about the single man who lives alone? From where will he get help? What about the single man who looks after his aged parents? What about the unmarried man who lives with a married brother and who, because he was getting a few shillings at the weekend, had some degree of independence in so far as he was able to go out with the lads on a Friday night or to go to a football match on a Sunday? Must that brother turn now to his married brother and ask for a pound or two? He will have no alternative but to emigrate.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): Most of them will probably be too old to emigrate.

Mr. Begley

I am speaking now about the younger men but I shall mention the older ones in a few moments. From figures released in Britain within the past fortnight, it would seem that he would have no business going there either. What about the older men, say, those between the ages of 50 and 70?

A Deputy

They will have to go to the county home.

Mr. Begley

Last week while attending a funeral in my own area I met a hardy man from the Gaeltacht and he said: "A Mhichíl, chaithfidh mé dul ón leaba go dtí an chathaoir agus ón chathaoir go dtí an leaba." In one sentence he summed up his life which was from the chair to the bed and from the bed to the chair. No longer could he go to the "local" or to Ballyferriter or elsewhere.

Mr. Coughlan

Or Duncaoin.

Mr. Begley

That is Fianna Fáil area.

A Deputy

Or to Kruger.

Mr. Begley

Lord have mercy on the man. However, this man did not want to have to go into a public house and pay 3s for the first pint and depend on——

Mr. Coughlan

The tourist.

Mr. Begley

——the lads from then on. I would ask the Minister to take all these things into consideration. The few pounds gave an air of pride and independence to these people. I admire Deputy Foley for what was a lengthy contribution. He said that social welfare was one of the platforms of Fianna Fáil. During the last general election campaign I was a victim of that propaganda. We all received copies of the pamphlet which read "For your future vote Fianna Fáil. Let us back Jack Lynch." Then there was the one circulated in south Kerry from Seven Oaks, Killorglin, which was sent out by Deputy O'Connor, who today is conspicuous by his absence. He did say that certain aspects of the Fine Gael policy had emerged as a result of a meeting held in Killarney, presided over by the late Deputy Sweetman, may the Lord have mercy on him, and he said that their public relations officer handed in a statement to the Kerryman which quoted Councillor Michael Begley as saying that if he were elected the first thing he would do would be to do away with the small farmers' dole and all home assistance payments. Here we had it in black and white that the people were threatened and abused and they were codded. They were told that if they voted Fine Gael they would lose the dole. The people have now seen who are the real culprits and who are the people who are going to lose the dole.

I cannot take seriously the statement that so much money will be given to the western counties for rural improvement schemes and that this will provide the badly-needed employment to give the few people deprived of the dole the few shillings that will give them independence. It is well known that when these schemes will be operated the names of these people will no longer be on the lists at the labour exchanges. How then can they qualify for work? It will be the married people who are getting the high dole who will get the work. The Minister should make a clear statement here about how he is going to work this, how these people whose names are not on the lists can be provided with work. As I said, the married people will get first preference and the others will be left out. If Deputy Foley and his colleagues from the western counties exert enough pressure between now and 1.30 I am sure the Minister will reverse his order, which is damnable as far as rural Ireland is concerned.

The Minister for Social Welfare (Mr. J. Brennan) and Deputy Coughlan rose.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister.

Mr. Coughlan

Surely the Deputies who signed the motion are entitled to express their views? This was agreed this morning. We are entitled to say something that has not already been said.

An Ceann Comhairle

Does the House not want to hear the Minister?

Mr. Coughlan

Yes, but Deputies want to know the true facts and not what the Minister is going to say. You can anticipate what he is going to say but you cannot anticipate what Coughlan is going to say.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Coughlan will have an opportunity to speak.

(Interruptions.)

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister for Social Welfare. Time is running out.

Minister for Social Welfare (Mr. J. Brennan)

Subsection (3) of section 4 of the 1933 Unemployment Assistance Act empowers the Minister for Social Welfare to make an Employment Period Order. The duration of that order precludes persons who are otherwise qualified from continuing to draw unemployment assistance, commonly known as the dole. These orders were a common feature of the unemployment assistance scheme from the year it was introduced, 1933, by Fianna Fáil down to 1967. The orders varied from one year to another; they mostly followed the same pattern in their last years and there were two orders, one cutting off persons with valuations over £4 from March to October and another cutting off persons in other categories from June to October. Sometimes they varied. During the war years there was an order made which cut off all persons for a period. In the first year of the war there was an extended order and in the second year virtually everybody was cut off, but at all times it did not refer to the 16 particular urbans as set out in the regulations. None of them, no matter how they varied, at any time referred to these urbans. These 16 urbans have been excluded and I never knew why. Possibly it is because they make a contribution to the funds from rates. In 1967 when I was Minister for Social Welfare the Government decided not to introduce these Employment Period Orders and the then Minister for Finance in his Budget speech pointed out that it would enable small farmers to continue to work their holdings more enthusiastically because we had introduced the new means test whereby the disincentive to farming might be removed because the assessment of means was based on valuation.

Let me say before I move on to the more important part that we got no kudos for that. We were accused, as we have been accused here today, of doing it to collect votes. You cannot win on this. You are ruining somebody's life and depriving him when you make the order; you are doing it to collect votes when you do not make it. I think the public will understand the meaning of that. Deputy Corish like many Fianna Fáil Ministers as well signed one of those orders when there were 85,286 people on the unemployment register.

Mr. Corish

At least I read the order.

Mr. J. Brennan

I doubt it. If the Deputy did, he certainly made no comment.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. J. Brennan

The Deputy made no comment on the fact that he was cutting off people with dependants. They were cut off without any question as to where or how. Mind you, none of them starved. I am not making any complaint, but I like to be consistent. Let me say that among many other things in the consideration of the whole social welfare structure this is only one aspect of the social welfare code. When the Government decided that the order would be reintroduced this year naturally they had grave concern about the types of people it would affect. Any Government would have. Remember, it was not done lightly or without consideration. They decided that persons with dependants should not be included and that was a very generous gesture in bringing in the order, to exclude the really tough cases who perhaps would suffer more hardship than others, the persons with dependants.

I want to be clear here without equivocating about what happened in regard to the first order and the second order. It was the intention of all members of the Government that the order would apply as before to what are designated the rural areas and anything that happened was a misunderstanding in communications between Finance and my Department. There was no bungling, as some people said, about the order produced by my Department and I never used that word. I never used the word "mistake". The first order very definitely applied to all persons without dependants and my Department were not to blame in making that order and I want to say that plainly here. I want to say that to people who may have accused me otherwise. If anything happened that might have prevented the order being examined, it was released by a leak from an unemployment exchange——

Mr. Coughlan

It was not.

Mr. J. Brennan

——as a result of a circular which went out——

(Interruptions.)

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Coughlan will have an opportunity to speak.

Mr. Coughlan

You can keep your S. men in Dublin. They will get no information.

Mr. J. Brennan

I was accused of trying to have this done when the Dáil was not sitting. I think nobody seriously pursued that argument today because it is laid down in the Act that the order must be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas and there is a statutory period inside which anybody can move to have it annulled. That is what we are now debating. The allegation that this was done when the Dáil was not sitting cannot be substantiated. As soon as I discovered that the first order extended to people that it was not intended by the Government decision should be included and which was rightly interpreted by my Department as being included, I made a new order. That is the one we are now discussing.

Mr. Corish

The order was made on the 1st April and the Dáil was in session that week.

Mr. J. Brennan

It was signed on the 1st April to come into effect on the 14th. I think it was on Thursday. It was a simple matter of misunderstanding between the Department of Finance and the interpretation of the Government's decision in the order. It is the simplest thing in the world; to err is human. There was only one definite thing in the order as compared with previously. Many of these orders in the past have differed in the period covered and the type of people included but they never extended to the 60 "urbans" who contribute to the scheme.

(Interruptions.)

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister should be allowed to make his speech.

Mr. Coughlan

I confirmed by telephone in the presence of six witnesses who were standing beside me in Limerick that the order made that day applied to every single man in Ireland.

Mr. J. Brennan

Nobody questions that: I have stated that clearly. I have the order in front of me. As soon as I found it did not express the desire of the Government——

Mr. Coughlan

You made a complete mess of it.

Mr. J. Brennan

——I made a new order.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): It took the Minister 24 hours and then he announced it over the phone.

Mr. J. Brennan

That is not so long in Easter Week. I wonder if the Deputy would be available in Easter Week.

Mr. O'Higgins

Would the Minister explain the reduction in unemployment assistance in the Book of Estimates?

Mr. Corish

It was not Easter Week; it was Passion Week.

Mr. J. Brennan

The same consideration would apply. The order was made and everybody who could get on the band wagon to make capital out of it, did so. Everybody's heart bled for a section of the people about whom nobody thought before. I know what is involved better than most Deputies. If this has done nothing else it has made many people express themselves, people who never before had a kind word to say about our extension of the dole over the summer months. This has evoked a new attitude and has got people to say things they have not said before.

Mr. Tully

I have the debate here if the Minister wants to read it. He should not make things worse by telling lies about it.

Mr. J. Brennan

I am speaking of the reception given to this extension in the past. I now want to say something about the category affected because I think that is the all important thing. Every effort was made to ensure that the people to whom the order would apply this year would be those who would suffer least hardship. Those with dependants were deliberately excluded. Deputy Foley has talked about the prevalence of abuses in regard to unemployment assistance. We must accept it is not possible to eliminate abuses completely in any social welfare code but one must do one's best in that regard. In order to qualify for what is commonly known as the dole, one must be capable of, available for, genuinely seeking and unable to find suitable employment. If I get one complaint more than another from Deputies it is that our investigation officers are much too strict in the enforcement of the regulations. If the regulations were rigidly enforced in strict accordance with law most of these people would be deprived of the dole in any case.

Deputy Murphy always makes a case about providing work in lieu of the money paid out in unemployment assistance. In January, 1969, I produced a memorandum on this subject proposing to make it necessary for each recipient of unemployment assistance to do a unit of work commensurate with the amount he was drawing each week. I had this examined by different Departments. I proposed that a pool of work be made up from bog roads, accommodation and tourist roads, side paths, parks, community centres, swimming pools, drainage, landing places on inshore fisheries and along the coasts and one thousand and one necessary things requiring money. We are paying £9 million in dole. I thought it was possible to devise a scheme which would marry the two problems. I found it very difficult to get a suitable scheme but none of the problems put up to me by the Departments was the cause of my not pursuing it further at the time. I went out of Social Welfare shortly afterwards.

I did find that no matter how near perfection the scheme could be—and it is now under examination—it would not ensure that the money would go into the pockets of those already receiving it. That applies also to the £500,000 which we are providing for the West of Ireland for necessary jobs. At least it will enrich the countryside by doing work for which money is required. It will also give employment, but there is no guarantee that the money will go into the pockets of even a small percentage of those being deprived of unemployment assistance.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): That is honest, anyway.

Mr. J. Brennan

I should hope that everybody who speaks on this subject would be honest. I have no reason not to be. I want to face the problem fairly and squarely. I know more about it than the Deputy.

Mr. Tully

The Minister does not; he knows less than most of them judging by the way he is acting.

Mr. J. Brennan

The complaints I received at the party meeting yesterday——

(Interruptions.)

Mr. J. Brennan

Do Deputies think we do not have complaints at party meetings? It would not be a party if we did not and we had plenty of them.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. J. Brennan

The people who have complained to me have openly admitted that any scheme of employment that I bring in will not suit them. If Deputies are half honest they will admit that there is a category to whom work will not bring any relief and because of the rigid qualifications required for home assistance these people will not qualify for it.

Mr. Corish

What will they do? Where will they get money?

Mr. J. Brennan

Will the Deputy wait until I have finished? The one thing that the weaker sections of the community can always rest assured of is, irrespective of what mileage anyone may try to get out of this on the propaganda side, that the Fianna Fáil Government have never allowed anyone to starve.

Mr. Coogan

The British Government feed them when they go over to England.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. J. Brennan

The whole system of unemployment assistance, commonly known as the dole, will be the subject of examination in the near future. We have got to face the fact that we are paying money to people who do not fully qualify in accordance with the regulations as laid down. We cannot permit them to go without and anybody in that category who suffers hardship as a result of this order will be covered by a scheme which will be announced fairly shortly.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Tully

Will they be able to buy bread again this week?

Mr. J. Brennan

Some speakers said that we have lost contact, but I was looking round at our party meeting yesterday——

Mr. Coogan

We would love to have a look at it.

Mr. J. Brennan

I enjoyed it. At that party meeting every shade of opinion from every part of the country was represented and I very much valued the responsible contribution made on this subject.

Mr. Coogan

All kinds of everything.

Mr. J. Brennan

There is no better means of contact with the people than that.

Mr. Coughlan

What about the deputation from the Minister's own party which went to the Taoiseach on this particular subject last night?

An Ceann Comhairle

Will Deputy Coughlan cease interrupting?

Mr. J. Brennan

They did not need any assurance from the Government or me; they were perfectly aware that the Government are not prepared to allow any category adversely affected by this order to be left without the necessary assistance to make up for anything they have lost. This will be the subject of an announcement in the very near future.

Mr. Coogan

Announce it now.

Mr. J. Brennan

The present system of unemployment will have to undergo a complete change. We shall have to ensure that those now receiving it will not suffer any losses. People found to be paid unemployment assistance who do not fulfil the basic requirements of their being capable, available for or genuinely seeking——

Mr. Tully

Disability assistance.

Mr. J. Brennan

——should be paid under some other name——

Mr. Corish

The Minister can call it what name he likes, but he should give them the money.

Mr. J. Brennan

——than home assistance.

Mr. Coughlan

That is not home assistance; it is unemployment assistance. Home assistance is a completely different thing. It just goes to show how much the Minister knows about it.

Mr. J. Brennan

The Deputy can call it anything he likes.

Mr. Coughlan

We cannot call it anything we like.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister has just five minutes to conclude.

Mr. J. Brennan

There are between 12,000 and 13,000 in the unemployed class but we have many others under the old social welfare code to consider. Against the background of the Third Programme for Social and Economic Expansion, and our possible entry into the EEC we have boasted, and I think we have the right to boast, that anything done in the way of social welfare benefits has been done by the Fianna Fáil Government.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

Mr. Coughlan

They made a complete mess of it.

Mr. J. Brennan

What did the two Coalition Governments do for social welfare recipients when they were in Office? It is not relevant to bring this in, but there has been so much propaganda tossed around this House. Because it is an emotional subject, the Opposition hope to get the best propaganda mileage they can out of something Fianna Fáil have done, which was one of the common features of unemployment assistance in the past. This was brought in by Fianna Fáil with very little praise from the other side of the House except allegations like the ones made by Deputy Barry today who cried for the people left in destitution and at the same time said we only did it for vote-catching in the first instance. That is the tone of his approach to this serious problem.

I want to assure those who cannot make good by earning, and there are quite a few in this category who are not in a position to take employment, that they will be looked after.

A Deputy

When?

Mr. Coughlan

By whom?

Mr. J. Brennan

By the people who always looked after them.

Mr. Coughlan

Will it be the ratepayers or the taxpayers? The Minister should not shirk it.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order.

Mr. Coogan

This is the place to make the announcement.

Mr. J. Brennan

The amount we are paying is £330 in rural areas and there is a means test so I suppose the average will be £215 per person. I do not think anybody is going to die of hunger as a result of this order. I do not think anybody will be less well off. I am certain that the category which cannot benefit by alternative employment or the provision of extra money will also be seen to.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): Why was that not announced at the same time?

Mr. J. Brennan

Deputy Fitzpatrick knows as well as anybody else that the time has come when this scheme must be re-examined. It is not my job to anticipate any decisions that will emerge. I can assure the House that unemployment assistance is one of the things which are the subject of considerable study at the present time. As I said at the outset, this Employment Period Order was not invoked for the last three years and the storm which it generated throughout the country has in itself done a great deal of good.

Mr. Tully

It sure has.

Mr. J. Brennan

It has got those people who allege we use it only for vote-catching to shed tears virtually on behalf of what they call the weakest section, the section they allege Fianna Fáil were going to throw on the scrap-heap, the section for which Fianna Fáil provided every pound they got down through the years.

Mr. Tully

The taxpayers provided it.

Mr. J. Brennan

I hope we will discuss this subject responsibly and seriously.

Mr. Cluskey

The way the Minister handled it.

Mr. J. Brennan

I do not think this is a matter in which one should play politics. If there is any odium, then the odium is mine. Somebody said the Minister should be sacked and someone else said the Minister was not doing his job. I do not mind that.

Mr. O'Hara

Deputy Foley said that.

Mr. J. Brennan

He did not.

Mr. Coughlan

Deputy Foley said a lot more.

Mr. J. Brennan

I certainly am not going to pass any blame on to the officials of my Department. They were completely blameless in this.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

Mr. J. Brennan

If Deputies want to impute blame I am well able to take it.

Mr. Cluskey

The Minister said it was the officials.

Mr. Tully

The Minister himself said that.

Mr. J. Brennan

I did not. I said it was a misunderstanding.

Dr. FitzGerald

An error in drafting a circular. Who drafts circulars? The Minister. An error in drafting a circular—those were the Minister's words.

An Ceann Comhairle

It is now one o'clock and I am calling on a Fine Gael speaker to conclude.

Mr. J. Brennan

I need only a few minutes more. If in the future Deputies opposite show the same anxiety for these people as they have shown here this morning, that will make it much easier for this side of the House to do something worthwhile in this whole field.

Deputy Coughlan rose.

An Ceann Comhairle

I am calling the spokesman for the Fine Gael Party.

Mr. Coughlan

I want to make a protest. You promised me you would let me in. You said that about 20 minutes ago. If you do not let me in I will accept your ruling, but you did say that.

An Ceann Comhairle

The House agreed this morning that the spokesman for the Labour Party would be called at 1.15 p.m.

Mr. Coughlan

Did you not tell me half an hour ago that I would get my chance?

An Ceann Comhairle

Yes.

Mr. Coughlan

Now you are not giving me my chance.

An Ceann Comhairle

That is up to the Deputy's party.

Mr. Coughlan

The day will come.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): I assume I have 15 minutes.

An Ceann Comhairle

A full 15 minutes.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): The matter we are dealing with today arises out of an order which the Minister for Social Welfare made on 1st April. That order contains approximately 200 words and the effective part of it reads:

The period commencing on the 14th day of April, 1971, and ending on the 16th day of November, 1971, shall be an employment period in respect of the following class of persons, namely, every man who has no dependants.

Surely that is quite clear? It is unambiguous. There is nothing cloudy about it. That was announced on the radio on 6th April, on the midday news. It was repeated on the television news on the 6th April, on the evening radio news on 6th April, on the late night news on both radio and television and it was repeated the following day on the early morning news at 7.30 a.m., at 8 a.m. and at 9 o'clock. On the morning of the 7th every newspaper in the country carried a leading article condemning the proposal. As one who has on occasion criticised the newspapers, I want to say now that they behaved magnificently on this occasion. No Minister and no Government could withstand the barrage of editorial comment. It was not until midday on the 7th, at least 24 hours after the announcement was made, that the Minister came on the news between 1.30 and two o'clock, over the telephone, to say that it was a mistake. He had discovered then that it was a mistake. I join with Deputy Des Foley who, in a way not permitted sometimes by Parliament, called his own Minister a liar in this House this morning; he said he did not accept that this was a mistake.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): Neither do I accept that it was a mistake. I want the Minister to tell the House what form of document went from his Department——

Mr. J. Brennan

Deputy Foley did not use the word "liar" in the course of his speech.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): He did not and I have not.

Mr. J. Brennan

I do not want it to be recorded that he did use it when he did not.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): He said he did not believe the Minister. I want the Minister now to tell the House what document or memorandum he sent from his Department to the Cabinet meeting and I want to put it to the Minister that the document that went from him to the Cabinet was an invitation to the Cabinet to make an Employment Period Order, applying, as this one did, to every man who has no dependants. I invite the Minister to lay before the House the document he sent to the Cabinet. I claim it will bear me out.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): This did not come up out of nowhere. It came up for discussion at the Cabinet out of a prepared memorandum sent by the Minister to the Cabinet. If it was a mistake was the Minister's attention drawn to it? Was the secretary of his Department not sitting beside him when he signed the document? Did he read the document? He has not told us that. It contains 200 words of clear, unambiguous matter making it plain to everybody that it applied to every man in the country.

So much for that. The Minister says now that he is not blaming any civil servant. Of course he blamed the civil servants on the 6th, 7th and 8th of this month because he is reported in the Irish Independent of 8th April as saying the cutting off of the dole from all unemployed single men without dependants was a mistake. The Minister for Social Welfare, Deputy Brennan, claimed yesterday that an error had been made in drafting the circular reintroducing the Unemployment Period Order. The Minister did not contradict that.

Mr. J. Brennan

I did. I made it clear in this House today.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): In this House today in a muddled sort of fashion.

Mr. J. Brennan

No muddle. I made it absolutely clear.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): I want to know where we stand with the Minister. We are reaching the stage at which, as some newspaper said, it is difficult to believe anything that comes from a Minister. This order, which is the first of 1967, comes before this House and the country at different times. Many things have happened since 1966. The Taoiseach, Ministers and Members of this House have got substantial increases in salaries since 1966 and, according to rumour, they are prepared to take a further increase now. The whole pattern of agricultural life has changed. There was a time when there was employment in rural Ireland in the summer. The probability is that there is now more employment in the towns.

This order comes before the House at a time when unemployment has soared over the 70,000 mark. Factories are closing down and the cost of living has increased. Above all, the order is before us at a time when the Government are not attending to the business of the country. It is a time of wrangling within the Government. They have muddled through one political crisis after another, culminating today with one of their own Deputies saying in this House that he is ashamed to be a member of his party because they are not carrying out the policy of the party.

Let us ask ourselves to what type of person does this order apply. It applies to a body of people who, through no fault of their own, are unemployable. Already I have received letters on this matter. I had a letter from a daughter who told me her father was 69 years; she wondered how he was going to live during the next year until he qualifies for the old age pension.

The Minister has said that he knows more about this order than anybody else. Any Deputy who is attending to his constituency work knows that many of the people to whom this order will apply are elderly; they are not able to work, they cannot emigrate and many of them have a background that does not suit them for employment. Many of them have not married, perhaps for reasons of health or some other matter. I do not want to spell this out but the Minister knows that many of these people who will be cut off are not quite the same as the rest of the community. If the Minister has a scheme for these people why did he not tell us about it at the time he announced this order? There is nothing more pathetic than an elderly person who has to live on the charity of relatives for a number of years. His parents have died and quite often he must live with a married brother or sister who does not really want him. The few shillings which he received each week gave him some kind of self-respect. The Government have now deprived him of this.

The Minister for Local Government was at a convention in Cavan on the Sunday before the news broke. He could not tell the convention the amount of the grant for the local improvements scheme; he said it was under consideration and would be announced in connection with the Budget proposals. However, within a couple of days of this scandal being made known, the Minister for Local Government announced that the local improvements scheme grant would be increased from £500,000 to £1 million. He gave the impression that the extra £500,000 would make up to the people who were hit by this order but I knew, as did everybody else, that this was not so. The people who get work on local improvement schemes are those who live on the lanes on which work is being carried out; they are the people who pay the local contribution. It was a deception on the part of the Minister and I am glad that the Minister for Social Welfare today has admitted that this £500,000 will not be of benefit to the people who are hit by the order.

The Minister has made a vague general statement that the people on whose behalf I am speaking, those who are not able to work and who cannot emigrate, will be catered for in some undefined scheme which he has not announced. If this is so, it is being done under pressure from this side of the House and under pressure from the national newspapers, who behaved magnificently. This was not thought of on 1st April, or even on the 8th April. It was only thought of at the long Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party meeting yesterday when the Taoiseach and the Minister were nearly gutted.

I hope the scheme the Minister is introducing will not leave the unfortunate people to the tender mercies of home assistance officers. They are, under direction from the Government, operating a ruthless type of investigation of these people.

Mr. J. Brennan

That is not correct.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): I know a man in my constituency who was for months the subject of an argument between the Department of Social Welfare and the county council. The latter said the man was fit to work and that he should go and get the dole. The Department of Social Welfare said he was not fit to work and should get a disabled person's allowance. Only one point was accepted about this man, namely, that society owed him money, that society owed him something to keep body and soul together. The wrangling went on for months and the man got nothing. Finally, I am glad to say, he got £2 per week disabled person's allowance from the Cavan County Council.

I want the Minister to ensure that if a scheme is introduced it will be operated in a humane manner. Society owes something to these unfortunate people who cannot provide for themselves, those who are unable to work or who, through no fault of their own, cannot get work. When we speak about the tens of thousands of people who are leaving agriculture, those who are leaving rural Ireland and of the people who are living alone or with relatives, surely the Minister is not serious when he says that they can find work in their own areas? This is impossible in an age when machinery has taken over both in county council work and in agriculture.

This was a deliberate proposal by the Minister to put the Employment Period Order into force in respect of all people. It was a deliberate proposal put by him to the Cabinet, accepted by the Cabinet and an order was drawn up by his Department. If this is not the case, how can the Minister for Social Welfare explain his signature to this 200 word document?

An Ceann Comhairle

If the Deputy would allow me, I have agreed that Deputy Fitzpatrick should speak for 15 minutes as the House agreed this morning. I also agreed that the Labour spokesman will also speak for 15 minutes.

Mr. Cluskey

This will have nothing to do with the vote being taken after 1.30 p.m.?

Mr. Corish

Deputy Tully speaks for 15 minutes and then we vote.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): The Minister for Social Welfare has been in charge of that Department on and off since 1967. He told us that he knows more about social welfare than any Member of this House. He certainly should know more about these orders. If this was not deliberate calculated Government policy, how can he explain his signature?

Mr. Tully

Is it not a fact that the House agrees to give me 15 minutes to conclude and that the vote can be taken afterwards even though it is after the time laid down?

An Ceann Comhairle

Yes; the vote can be taken.

Mr. Tully

We have here today another example of something which the Government have adopted over the past 12 months, that is, Government by retreat. They started off with the Succession Bill. They introduced it and after it had gone three-quarters of the way through the House, they withdrew it and introduced one which was acceptable. They came along with the Prices and Incomes Bill last year and, after standing firm and saying: "Thus far shalt thou go and no further", they retreated bit by bit until we had something which was acceptable to the country. Having said that every man in the country in receipt of unemployment assistance is cut off with effect from 14th April, the Minister said first that people living in the 16 towns, I assume with a population of over 7,000, were excepted, and then today he said that they were only codding us and them and that everyone would get it.

Does the Minister realise the effect of his decision, or should I say the decision of the Minister for Finance, because it is quite clear from the debate here today, and particularly from what the Minister said himself, that he did not know one darn thing about it until the Minister for Finance made the order? He said he did not make the order. Therefore the Minister for Finance must have made it and that the Minister for Finance intended to include everybody is obvious from the figures in the Book of Estimates.

There was a boy at school with me years ago who used to tell lies. The teacher used to say to him that a lie has no legs and eventually the whole story collapses. I am not saying the Minister told lies deliberately. What actually happened in this case is quite plain. After the decision was taken the Minister was told this was going to be done. He was probably as horrified as we were when he discovered what had happened. He has been backpedalling since and he is now in this House, which is only right, with his back against the wall. He is saying the only thing that can be said, that is that we will not let them die of hunger and that we will in fact introduce something else.

The Minister said a few things which must be corrected despite the shortness of the time at my disposal. He said that when the idea of the abolition of employment period orders was introduced nobody welcomed it. When Deputy Haughey, then Minister for Finance, introduced this idea it was significant that he said:

To improve the incomes of those living on very small holdings has been a matter of special concern to the Government. The Minister for Social Welfare has been authorised to make changes in the present assistance schemes which will increase their cash incomes significantly.

He went on to say that this was something which would relieve the problems of those people. That quotation is taken from column 1269, volume 227 of the Official Report.

The Minister for Finance now wants to change that. In effect he is saying that we are now going to reduce their standard of living; we are now going to take that improvement from them; we are now putting them in a much worse position. If his predecessor claimed credit for that on the one hand, the Department must accept the debit side on the other hand. In fact, consciously and deliberately the Government decided to reduce the standard of living of a large section of the people. The Minister said that nobody complimented the previous Minister or himself when this was introduced. As reported at column 1501, volume 227 of the Official Report, speaking in the Budget debate I said:

I compliment the Minister on changing the system under which certain periods were known as employment periods. I could never understand why a man with a valuation of £4 or over in the country who was on unemployment assistance, or the dole, as we call it, was expected to be able to live for a considerable period of the year on that small portion of land. What was he supposed to do? Was he supposed to grow a certain type of grass which would remain green all the year round and which he could go out and eat during the period of the year when he was getting no income? Worse still, was the case of the unfortunate rural labourer, who, during the second employment period, was deemed to be in employment, even though he was not able to get enough to eat, had no job and was kept alive by a few shillings which he got through the local home assistance officer until he was lucky enough to go back on the dole again.

That statement was made by me and, if the Minister claims that that was not agreeing with and complimenting him on the action he took, I do not know what he thinks it was.

The Minister now says: "We will not let them starve. There are a certain number of them who possibly are not fit for work." God knows and we know that. The Minister said today that he knows more about social welfare than anybody else in this House. I challenge that statement. I have made a special study of social welfare and so have my colleagues, and we could run rings around him when it comes to the question of dealing with social welfare and matters affecting his Department. I suggested in 1967—I suggested it last year and I will suggest it again this year if it is not done, but I know it will be done—as reported at column 1502 of the same volume of the Official Report:

When introducing his Budget, the Minister might have considered the system whereby those who were ill and had for one reason or another less than 156 stamps and therefore were not entitled to draw sickness benefit for more than 12 months might be covered by some type of disability assistance.

Might I suggest that, from what the Minister told us today, he is now accepting that advice. In fact, he is getting authorisation to introduce a system whereby those who can no longer draw disability benefit and who are unable to work will be able to draw disability assistance under any name he likes to put on it. If he announces it, or if it is introduced in the Budget, we will welcome it because it will be a step forward.

Do not forget that between the time when these men were knocked off and now there has been hunger and want in this country. These unfortunate people thought they could depend on the Government to keep them alive at least. I had a letter from an unfortunate odd-job man who was never able to get more than 12 or 14 stamps in any year. He would draw unemployment benefit and then he would go on to unemployment assistance. He worked off and on but, when he was working, no one would stamp his card because unfortunately the rule still exists in the country that no stamp goes on the card of the man who does a job to oblige a neighbour and gets paid for it. That is the excuse. This man is now almost 70 years of age. When he was younger his parents lived with him. His sister stayed at home to look after the parents. Now he has a niece who is deaf and dumb.

He was getting £3 6s per week dole to keep himself, his sister and his niece. The Minister for Social Welfare has now knocked off his dole. I contacted the Department and said that this was a hard case. I asked was there anything that they could do for these dependants and a gentleman who, no doubt, had a good breakfast and was looking forward to a good lunch said: "Oh, they are not dependants. They may be depending on him but they are not dependants." These are the type of people we are talking about, these and the unfortunate man living on his own who has nothing except what he gets from the Department of Social Welfare by way of unemployment assistance.

It amused me to listen to some people here who do not seem to know yet the difference between unemployment benefit and unemployment assistance. I have heard people call unemployment benefit the dole. In fact, unemployment benefit is not the dole. For the benefit of those who still do not know what it means, the dole is unemployment assistance. The dole is the least amount that can be given and the people drawing the dole, as everybody admits, are the unfortunates of this country, the people who cannot get a job. Someone said we were encouraging them to emigrate.

Mr. Donegan

The Government are not paying for unemployment benefit; the people are.

Mr. Tully

Where the devil would they go? When they got the last £3 6s they were told that was the last they would get until 17th November next. How far would they go with that in their pockets? They do not even get a chance to emigrate. This is one of those instances where the Government were having it both ways. We must remember the number of people who have been made redundant in factories. Deputy Corish mentioned the people who were not employed this year, or last year, or the year before, because of the rundown in the ordinary working of Bord na Móna. A number of people in forestry are also being laid off this year.

The Minister and the Minister for Finance seem to have completely missed the fact that when there is a hope of a job and four or five men are looking for it, it is the fit man who will get it, not the man who has been on the dole for many years. People have been put out of jobs deliberately in the forestry division. The Government refused to meet their commitments when the last wage increase was granted and, when the local authorities put up the extra money for increased wages, the State refused to meet them and in many counties unemployment was the result. Then they say there is work in the country.

Deputy Corish was perfectly correct when he said that with the introduction of mechanisation in agriculture, long before 1967 indeed, the need for extra men for sowing and haymaking and at harvest time had disappeared completely. I agreed with many of the things said by Deputy Foley, and particularly when he confirmed that this is so. However, I want to say this for the benefit of Deputy Foley and anybody else who likes to hear it: I would hate to see any of my own colleagues on any side of this House turning themselves into informers for the Department of Social Welfare. If Deputy Foley feels that his conscience will allow him to have inquiries made into money being spent which he says should not be given to somebody, I do not know what is to happen, but I do know unfortunate people who are entitled to money and who are not getting it.

I know of one particular case of a man working for years on top of years who became ill and drew sickness benefit. His own doctor said he was not fit for work. The social welfare doctor said he was or, as they so politely put it, that he was "not unfit for work". He was knocked off the register. He drew unemployment benefit as long as he could and then went back on sickness benefit. Again he was knocked off by a referee who said he was not unfit for work. Eventually as his stamps were out, he finished up on the dole. This man wrote to me last week: "What do I do now? Where do I live? I cannot pay for my house. I cannot pay for food. I cannot emigrate because I am over 60 years of age. What do I do?" I asked the local authority could they help him and they said: "We will give him £2 a week." Would the Minister like to say what a man would do with £2 a week at the present time? The amount which they were getting was almost exactly the amount a Member of this House gets for staying overnight in Dublin. Then the Minister says: "We must cut down on this. These people are getting too much. They do not want to work."

Does the Minister not remember that some months ago in this House I asked him why he would not train some of the 60,000, as it then was, who were on the unemployment register for jobs for which he said he was bringing people home from England? Does he not remember saying most of them were unemployable? Does he believe that people who were unemployable then can get nonexistent jobs now? Does he expect them to go into the back of a hedge and live like a hedgehog, curl up and sleep until the next money comes along from the State, small as it is?

I know my time is running out and I do not want to detain the House. However, I am very glad of one thing, that the weight of public opinion was responsible for the decision being reversed; that friends in the press, on television and on the radio, the ordinary people of this country, in Fine Gael, in the Labour Party and in the back benches of Fianna Fáil were the people who made this change take place. They put the gun to the Minister's head and I take pleasure in saying we are glad we put the gun to the Minister's head. But before this week is out I want a definite statement from him as to when and from where these people will get this money. There is no provision for this in the Book of Estimates. Where will it come from? I do not want any backsliding when this debate is over. Government Ministers have been very cute in talking themselves out of awkward corners over the last 12 months. This may seem to them to be a very simple one. This is an issue which will be remembered in this country for many years, because it is a clear case in which the ordinary people have shown the Government, who have no care for them, they just cannot get away with a racket like this.

Motion put.

The Dáil divided: Tá: 57; Níl: 60.

Tá

• Barry, Richard.
• Begley, Michael.
• Belton, Luke.
• Belton, Paddy.
• Browne, Noel.
• Bruton, John.
• Burke, Joan.
• Burke, Liam.
• Burton, Philip.
• Byrne, Hugh.
• Clinton, Mark A.
• Cluskey, Frank.
• Conlan, John F.
• Coogan, Fintan.
• Cooney, Patrick M.
• Corish, Brendan.
• Cosgrave, Liam.
• Cott, Gerard.
• Coughlan, Stephen.
• Creed, Donal.
• Crotty, Kieran.
• Desmond, Barry.
• Dockrell, Henry P.
• Donegan, Patrick S.
• Donnellan, John.
• Dunne, Thomas.
• Esmonde, Sir Anthony C.
• Finn, Martin.
• Fitzpatrick, Tom (Cavan).
• Flanagan, Oliver J.
• Fox, Billy.
• Governey, Desmond.
• Harte, Patrick D.
• Jones, Denis F.
• Kavanagh, Liam.
• Kenny, Henry.
• Lenehan, Joseph.
• Lynch, Gerard.
• McLaughlin, Joseph.
• McMahon, Lawrence.
• Malone, Patrick.
• Murphy, Michael P.
• O'Connell, John F.
• O'Donnell, Tom.
• O'Donovan, John.
• O'Hara, Thomas.
• O'Higgins, Thomas F.
• O'Leary, Michael.
• O'Reilly, Paddy.
• O'Sullivan, John L.
• Pattison, Séamus.
• Ryan, Richie.
• Spring, Dan.
• Taylor, Francis.
• Thornley, David.
• Timmins, Godfrey.
• Tully, James.

Níl

• Aiken, Frank.
• Allen, Lorcan.
• Andrews, David.
• Blaney, Neil.
• Boylan, Terence.
• Brady, Philip A.
• Brennan, Joseph.
• Brennan, Paudge.
• Brosnan, Seán.
• Browne, Patrick.
• Browne, Seán.
• Burke, Patrick J.
• Carter, Frank.
• Carty, Michael.
• Childers, Erskine.
• Colley, George.
• Collins, Gerard.
• Connolly, Gerard C.
• Cowen, Bernard.
• Cronin, Jerry.
• Crowley, Flor.
• Cunningham, Liam.
• Davern, Noel.
• Delap, Patrick.
• de Valera, Vivion.
• Dowling, Joe.
• Faulkner, Pádraig.
• Fitzpatrick, Tom (Dublin Central).
• Forde, Paddy.
• French, Seán.
• Gallagher, James.
• Geoghegan, John.
• Gibbons, James.
• Gogan, Richard P.
• Haughey, Charles.
• Healy, Augustine A.
• Herbert, Michael.
• Hillery, Patrick J.
• Hilliard, Michael.
• Hussey, Thomas.
• Kitt, Michael F.
• Lalor, Patrick J.
• Lemass, Noel T.
• Loughnane, William A.
• Lynch, Celia.
• Lynch, John.

Tellers:— Tá: Deputies Byrne and Cluskey; Níl: Deputies Andrews and Meaney.

Motion declared lost.

McEllistrim, Thomas.Meaney, Thomas.Molloy, Robert.Moore, Seán.Noonan, Michael.O'Kennedy, Michael.O'Leary, John.

O'Malley, Des.Power, Patrick.Sherwin, Seán.Smith, Michael.Smith, Patrick.Timmons, Eugene.Wyse, Pearse.

An Ceann Comhairle

The decision on Motion No. 3 covers Motion No. 4, which cannot therefore be moved.