I think it was 24,000 or 25,000 at that time. With respect, the Minister should have given that figure in his opening statement. This practice by the Minister and his colleagues of giving utterly inadequate opening statements on vital matters of this kind should cease. Clearly the most important figure for the Dáil is the number of people who are being affected by this. The 30,000 people to whom the Minister refers are those people who, because of the Minister's tardiness and the Government's delay, have gone out of compulsory insurance over the past six years. We are now in a position in which over one-fifth of the workers are not socially insured. It is proposed to remedy that to some extent by this proposal but even within the lifetime of the existing national wage agreement many of the workers who have been brought back into compulsory insurance for their own benefit today will be outside it. We know that the experience has been—and this is without regard to what Government held office—that the Oireachtas has delayed, time and time again, in making the necessary amendments. Once artificial ceilings are fixed for anything, social insurances, taxation, penalties for offences or any other purpose there is always delay on the part of the Parliament in bringing those ceilings up to contemporary money values. On that score, we believe the Government deserve to be very severely censured.
What has happened the Government's legislation? What has happened the proposals that we were told two years ago in a most expensively produced public document had already, presumably, reached the draftsman office? I do not want to go into the multitudinous distractions and disruptions in attention to duty which we know are afflicting the present Government but it is indicative of the terrible collapse of concern on the part of the Government that such a vital matter has been so long delayed. Here we have this patchwork legislation once again being brought before the House. I have no doubt that the Minister in replying will make the kind of specious promise which he and colleagues in the Government give, that it is now receiving active consideration and that we shall probably be soon considering proposals for the abolition of the ceiling on social insurance and he will probably capture the headlines with that statement in the same way as they captured them in 1969 and before that, but it is about as empty as the promises to do something about the ever spiralling demand on rates, particularly in relation to health services.
As Deputy Barry has already pointed out, so far as Fine Gael are concerned there is no justification for having any limit and, as more and more of our people pass from being self-employed into the category of being employed by others it becomes easier to insure our population. It is now acknowledged that it is much easier to have everyone within the insurance net. In that situation we accept as some measure of improvement the Minister's proposal but we cannot allow the occasion to pass without protesting about the Government delay in giving effect to the overhaul so vitally required in our social insurance code. If the Government do not do it there will be that kind of tragic situation of which we are all too well aware, such as has occurred in the past and is still occurring in which people drift away from insurance, even from making the voluntary contributions in relation to widows' and orphans' pensions and then with the inevitable experience of mankind in some cases, meet with terrible family tragedy.
The whole purpose of having social insurance is to organise our society to protect people against that kind of situation, against human frailty and the tragedies that arise out of forgetfulness, out of man's natural optimism in thinking that tragedy will not come his way but is the experience of others. That can be avoided by having an adequate social insurance system. It is not good enough today to be limiting this to what is estimated to be the equivalent of £1,200 six years ago. The ceiling must be removed once and for all. We regret the Minister had not some proposal of that kind today and if he had not, at least he could have gone to the figure of £2,000, which Deputy Barry mentioned. That might have led us to a situation where in three years time we would not be in the state of distress in which we have been for the past four or five years when, instead of increasing the limit, we left the matter in abeyance.
The Minister's excuse for this was that he was preparing more comprehensive proposals. We now find the proposals are not before us. We still have the old system and there is no political, economic or social indication that the Government will have any time in the foreseeable future for the necessary overhaul of our whole social outlook. On that account, we accept the Minister's proposal with reluctance because it is not better and we hope this is the last time we shall try to patch the quilt and that it will not be too long before Dáil Éireann, with a different Government, is considering the sort of social revolution that is necessary if we are to have what we can well afford to have, a society in which all these calculable risks and inevitable experiences of mankind can be provided for. We have all the necessary techniques and skills and it is high time that this was done.
