The Minister for Health and Deputy Barry have made long and detailed statements of their particular points of view. I agree with many of the points made by the Minister and by Deputy Barry and I disagree with others. I wonder if making these long, detailed points in the month of March on an Estimate which will run out within a fortnight or three weeks is really what we should be doing here. We are being slightly dishonest, all of us, in pretending we can influence future policy by debating a past Estimate. The Minister is a senior member of the Cabinet and I would ask him to do something to ensure that debates on Estimates take place as soon as possible after the Estimates are introduced. It is ludicrous that we should be debating the amount of money mentioned here at the end of the financial year.
I propose to be critical of a number of things in the Minister's speech but, before I criticise, I should like to put on record that the comments I shall make will not be of a personal nature. I have always found the Minister unfailingly courteous, not alone in his present ministry but in those he occupied in the past. I disagree violently with some of the things he says and does, but I give him credit for the fact that he never acts discourteously. He has certainly never been discourteous to me. It is only fair to put that on the record because so many of us find that discourtesy is the stock-in-trade of some of the Ministers in the Government and has been for many years. There are a few who have changed but the Minister for Health is one person who has been unfailingly courteous and it is only proper that I should put that on record.
We talk about the necessity of doing something about the people in the Six Counties and we are always anxious to build bridges and encourage the people of the Six Counties to come in here. Then we get an expensive report on health services which, if put into operation, will, in my opinion, cement for a considerable number of years the opposition of the people in the North to come in with this part of the country. They can reasonably say that an effort is not being made to level off the health services. Indeed, more and more people seem to be put into special categories which means they have to pay for whatever services they are getting. This is a big mistake. While I know that money does not grow on trees, an effort must be made some time, and now is as good a time as any, to try to raise the necessary money to pay for the type of service which we must introduce if we are ever to have a Thirty-two County Republic.
There have been comments on and criticisms of the health boards. I am a member of a health board. I have expressed the opinion and I repeat it, that we went off at half-cock with regard to the health boards, that we accepted something as gospel which had not been tried out. While the people in charge of the health boards, the staff of the health boards, are attempting to do what they think the Department want done they are making very heavy weather of it. I find it extremely difficult to come away from a health board meeting, and I understand the same thing applies to other health board meetings, feeling that we have done a good evening's work. There are certain matters we deal with which possibly will improve the health services in the area but very little and they could have been improved just as much under the old regulations. If I may use the expression, I feel there must be a revolutionary change in our approach to health if we are to get anywhere.
Deputy Barry referred to, and I suppose rightly condemned, words used by a member of a health board about a hospital in his area. I have been on a hospital visiting committee in my area and while we have not used the expression "the standard is low" we have found that the conditions under which patients and staff exist in some of those hospitals were absolutely unbelievable if we had not seen them for ourselves. We have reported to our board that in at least one hospital, possibly two, there is a serious fire hazard. We felt that people on the upper storey of that hospital could not get out of it alive if a fire occurred. This is a shocking condemnation to have to make of a hospital but it is true. There are hospitals which are very much under-staffed. One finds a hospital with, say, 50 or 60 seriously ill patients and into which accident cases are brought, with one surgeon and three nurses, all of whom must leave the wards and go out in the night to help to bring in accident cases, with toilet facilities almost non-existent. In fact, the female patients have to go through the male ward to get to one bathroom and there are no other toilet facilities on that floor. It is hard to believe that this sort of thing exists in 1972. We went into one physiotherapy section of a hospital in the afternoon. It was very cold because the heating system was not, and apparently has never been, effective. When we inquired about it from the lady in charge she was very local and said it had been very sunny in the morning and if we had been there then it was quite warm. Anybody who tries to tell me that the way to heat a physiotherapy ward in this country in January is to have big windows for the sun to come through is asking me to believe more than I would be prepared to believe. I am not blaming the Minister or the Department of Health for this but the task is far greater than FitzGerald realised it to be. By simply writing down plans and figures without getting the necessary knowledge from people on the spot, and it appears from the report that this was not done as it should have been done, we are bound to find people who apparently are living in a cloud-cuckoo land, who believe that the State possesses a bottomless purse and all we have to do is make plans and if the figure is £20,000 or £20 million for new hospitals that is all right because it will be done if it is written down. The fellow who writes it down will get paid anyway so why worry very much?
One of the priorities we must look at is what are we going to do with the old hospitals that are not capable of doing the job for which they are being used. In what way can we see to it that the necessary money will be made available to turn these hospitals into good local hospitals? The Minister is talking about not upgrading a hospital within 25 miles of a good regional hospital. The fact that FitzGerald talks about regional hospitals seems to be overshadowing the fact that existing hospitals can, if a certain amount of money is spent on them, be turned into hospitals which will do exactly what is required in an area. The Minister is making a mistake if he thinks that spending a relatively small amount of money on a pretty good smaller hospital is up-grading it. There is no question of up-grading it but surely we must do something to keep existing hospitals in proper repair and capable of doing their job until such time, in the dim and distant future, when the necessary money can be provided to carry out what is recommended in the FitzGerald Report.
In many of these hospitals the old routine has been there for many years and things have been done in a certain way. With the changes in the hours of work of staff it has been necessary to make changes in the running of a hospital. This is as it should be but some of them apparently have not got around to doing what is being done in neighbouring hospitals and we find one or two senior staff bearing the whole brunt. I could mention one surgeon who appeared to be the general factotum. I do not know when he got sleep because the number of patients he had to look after day and night— there was nobody to relieve him— meant that he seemed to be on duty all the time and he was not a young man. Something must be done to ensure that existing hospitals are staffed properly and the very best use made of them.
When the Health Act was going through here a number of amendments were suggested and a number of amendments accepted. A mistake has been made in one or two places. I want to highlight one. There is a hospital which is known as the country infirmary. Originally there were three trustees who helped to run the hospital and the balance of the board was made up of nominees of the county council. The original trustees died. They included the parish priest, or administrator of the parish, and the Church of Ireland minister in the area. At one time these two gentlemen or their successors were nominated as county council representatives on the board. Eventually there was nobody on the board except representatives of the county council. The clergymen apparently consider themselves as still being trustees. According to a section of the Act it appeared that since the hospital was in this position it should have passed to the health board from 1st April last, but it did not. The result is that it is now neither fish, flesh nor good red herring. If the county council with draw their representatives because, if the hospital continues as a voluntary hospital it is doubtful if they are entitled to have representatives, there will be nobody left but the parish priest or administrator and the other clergymen. Recently, when the hospital got into financial difficulties the legal advice was that the county council had no authority to make a grant towards the hospital or even to guarantee a loan. The Department of Health maintain that it is a voluntary hospital.
When the matter was taken up with the Minister he referred to the fact that the hospital had a big credit balance which they should use before talking about anything else. It was then discovered that either somebody in the Department of Health did not read the balance sheet correctly or that the person who prepared the balance sheet had not made the matter very clear because a figure of £30,000 shown to the credit of the hospital was found to represent the buildings and the contents of the hospital and that, in fact, there was a bank overdraft of several thousands of pounds.
Over the last few years the hospital has been losing money, mainly because the capitation rate is low, about one-third or one-fourth of the charge in other hospitals. When an application was made to have the capitation rate increased from 1st April last they were told that it would not be increased from 1st April last but it could be increased from 1st April of this year and that then everything would be all right. I mention this because the matter has not yet been solved. The Department have admitted that somebody misread the balance sheet and that there is a heavy overdraft. The fire officer has insisted that the top storey be cleared. Unless money is made available to provide alternative accommodation now—not next month or the month after—the fire officer will make an order that the hospital be closed. In that case the patients will have to be accommodated elsewhere but there is no alternative accommodation for them. The Minister may be able to do something about this matter which I have already discussed with him. I had a letter from him to which I replied but have had no further reply from him. I assume he is having the matter considered. I would ask the Minister to ensure that the financial difficulties being experienced by the county infirmary in Navan, which is a very old and very good hospital, are solved. The cost of providing alternative accommodation for the patients there would be far greater than the sum required to keep the hospital open.
I should also like to know from the Minister whether, in fact, it is a voluntary hospital and whether it should be passed to the North Eastern Regional Health Board on 1st April or to tell me who now owns the hospital. There seems to be doubt about that, which should be removed.
Another matter in which the local health board have taken a hand is the matter of medical cards. At present-I am not blaming doctors for this because, like everybody else, they must get an increase in income—it is an expensive matter to attend a doctor and an even more expensive matter for the doctor to attend at a patient's home. In the latter case, the fee charged represents in many cases a day's pay for the breadwinner. If the household has not got a medical card and the doctor attends at the house and charges £2 or £3 per visit and gives a prescription for which the local chemist could charge anything from £2 to£5, it is obvious that this imposes a serious strain on the household. The person who is sick and dependent on social welfare benefit may find that he is unable to buy food for the family or to pay the rent. Therefore, in my view the new arrangement in regard to medical cards is not a great deal better than the old one and in some cases it is a great deal worse. According to the North Eastern Health Board scale, a single person earning under £10 a week can have a medical card; a married couple with under £15 per week can have a medical card and there is an allowance of £1 extra per child.
Take the case of a man earning £23 a week who drives 40 miles from the middle of County Meath to a building site in Dublin and returns home in the evening and is doing this five days a week. He applies for a medical card. He may have a wife and six children. If he has over £21 per week he is not entitled to a medical card. It costs about £4 per week to drive in and out to work. This is not taken into account when assessing income for medical card purposes and therefore this man is disqualified. This is not an extreme case.
This matter should be considered by the Department. The health board officials tell me they have no jurisdiction in the matter, that they are allowed to make a certain allowance for rent but for nothing else. In such cases as I have instanced, if the person becomes ill and the doctor's fees amount to £8 or £10 and the cost of medicine is £5, that represents almost a week's wages, but the man does not get a week's wages for that week. If he is the type of person who does not like to absent himself from his job and stays out for only one week, he will get an allowance in respect of only two days from the Department of Social Welfare because the first three days are not paid for.
When I am told of how well the poor are cared for, cases such as I have mentioned come to my mind. In my view the matter of providing health services for those on the bottom rung is not being approached as it should be. A great deal more must be done for these people. I hope I am being fair. I am prepared to produce evidence to sustain my allegations, if the Minister has any doubt about them. It is too ridiculous for words to suggest that a medical card should not issue to a married couple who have no more than £15 a week, having regard to the fact that the minimum rate for agricultural workers is now approximately £17 per week. The system in operation is the sort of thing which causes trouble and annoyance. I would ask that something be done about this matter.
We now hear that choice of doctor is coming on 1st April in the eastern region and on 1st October in the rest of the country. I hope the Minister will be able to ensure that there will be no change in the date. He did promise that it would come into operation on 1st October last year but that did not happen. People come to me and say that they are paying 15p on their insurance cards for choice of doctor, and that they have not got a medical card. Anybody who has not got a medical card can choose the doctor he likes but will pay for the service. Therefore, the 15p does not apply in that case. I am not quite happy about the service being given to those covered by the new scheme, either the 15p or the £7. A number of local health authorities have attempted to introduce certain restrictions. The Department of Health, apparently, are not prepared to agree that those restrictions should apply. Until I asked the Minister for Health about X-ray and pathology charges there was at least one health board who were not prepared to pay for these services and who indicated that they were not covered by the new scheme. They now say they are covered by that scheme. Before the scheme was introduced if somebody went for treatment to a hospital outside his own region arrangements were made for payment of such hospital charges. In my constituency it is quite common for patients to go to hospital outside the region because most of the patients from County Meath and County Kildare go to Dublin hospitals where they are able to get quicker services. It is now being ruled that if patients go outside their own regions for treatment it is not possible to pay for out-patient services. I am also told that drugs and medicines obtained in such circumstances cannot be paid for.
In-patient or out-patient services given to a patient should be paid for provided a recognised hospital is used. It is often very difficult to get beds in the particular type of hospital needed. It is only right that if somebody can get a bed and be taken into hospital that he should be paid for in that hospital if the cost is not more than it would be elsewhere. I see no point in building up paper walls because they make people feel more important.
The object in introducing this scheme was to ensure that people who could not afford to pay for services out of their own pockets should get such services by paying the £7 per year. It is wrong that anybody should introduce an element which would prevent such services being paid for by inserting some small print which says in effect: "This is one fellow we can prevent from getting the free service." I ask the Minister to ensure that people who go to hospital for treatment shall have their bills paid, provided they do not go to a hospital which has much higher costs than those of the local hospital. Very often no beds are available in the patients' own area. Such people should be entitled to go where they can get beds for treatment because when a person is ill it is much more effective to get early treatment than to wait three or four months for a bed to become available.
I am wondering about the amount of money which the new contributions will produce. How much will be produced up to the end of March? The Minister mentioned £5 million as the amount for a full year, made up of the 15p and £7 contributions. I assume that the grants to assist the rates will come from that sum. If not, perhaps the Minister would tell us what will happen to the £5 million? Where will it go?
With regard to the assistance to the rates, while we are all glad that assistance is being given, we feel that there is something wrong with rates which have to be boosted so much by the State. In County Meath we have people who have been in charge of the health services for many years and they have been careful about overspending. This year our proposed expenditure, taking the county on its own, as part of the north-eastern region, was 42 or 44 new pence. The Minister does not allow it to go beyond 30 new pence so we get 14 new pence off. One of the neighbouring counties had 96 new pence and the Minister says it cannot go beyond 30 new pence, so they get 66 new pence. Is there something peculiar about this? Are some areas not doing their jobs as well as others? I would like to hear the Minister's comment on this.
I would like to know also about the cost of medicines and drugs which have to be bought. People who have to pay for these things say there is no point in going to a chemist's shop with less than £2. I am told that drugs and medicines have risen very much in price. It has been said that the cost of living has gone up, as has the cost of dying, and that the cost of getting better has also gone up dramatically. An effort should be made to find out whether excessive profits are being made on drugs. Up to a few years ago local authorities were supplying drugs at 48 per cent of their cost. They are now supplying them at 54 per cent of the price which is charged to people who buy these drugs across the counter in chemists' shops. Somebody is making excessive profits. An inquiry should be held into the costs of drugs and medicines. Some doctors feel that any new drug which comes out must be good. If a drug gets a good write-up they recommend it for their patients no matter what it costs. This makes it difficult for people without medical cards. The medical cards are very valuable.
I do not propose to delay the House for very long. I am standing-in for Deputy O'Connell. I would like to find out why private wards for patients cost so much in voluntary hospitals. I recently saw a five-bed children's ward. There was nothing luxurious about it. The five little beds were in one small room. I understand the cost per child is approximately £60 per week. That cost refers to the hospital alone and does not include the cost of specialists' treatment for the child. This figure cannot be justified by any standard. The costs of running a hospital are very high, but I cannot see why a room about 15 feet square with five little beds for five children should cost £300 a week. The children in it were small and were not eating much. The Minister may say that this has nothing to do with him, but all health matters concern him. If someone feels he would prefer to pay for treatment rather than wait for treatment at the expense of the State, it is wrong that he should be charged amounts like that.
I will cut across the FitzGerald Report here by saying that I believe that the Minister should make an effort to survey all the hospital beds available under every heading in each region. The regional officers could carry out such surveys. Old buildings which are in an excellent state of preservation should also be surveyed. Nobody wants to live in them because the rates are so high they cannot afford them.
We should find out if more hospitals can be made available at local level. This is a far better approach than talking in terms of getting £20 million or £30 million to build a couple of regional hospitals. When we talk about money like that, in view of the tremendous cost to get our services anywhere near like what they are in the North we are 20 or 25 years behind.
Deputy Carter will remember that the Minister's predecessor said it would possibly be 15 years or 20 years before any change could be made in Mullingar. I believe the situation has not changed, except for the worse, since then. In fact, the new regional hospitals we are talking about could be as far off as 15, 20 or 25 years, when many of us will be dead and will not be worrying about what type of hospitals will come after us. We should attempt to have a short-term, practical approach to this and with a relatively small amount of money these matters could be looked after.
I would like to pay a tribute to the staffs of the smaller hospitals throughout the country, many of whom are working under very primitive conditions. I was in a hospital recently where the operating theatre was so small that the anaesthetist had to stay in the passageway outside the theatre. There was no room for anything in that theatre. One or two people could fit by squeezing in. I am quite sure alternative accommodation could be found in the area if an effort was made.
One good thing the regional health boards did was to get people outside the area to have a look at these hospitals. As a result, there was a fresh approach. I disagree with Deputy Barry when he said that outsiders had been critical of areas because they were not looking at their own areas. People who come from outside an area are more likely to be critical of it than the people representing the area, people who have not done their job in the past and feel therefore that criticism of the particular hospital is criticism of themselves.
Mental hospitals present a big problem all over the country. I would like to congratulate whoever wa responsible for setting up clinics where people who are slightly mentally disturbed, instead of having to go into hospital every couple of months at tremendous expense, can attend regularly at those clinics, and get drugs which they can take when they need them. It is a great improvement to keep those people out of hospital. I know many people now living normal lives who were for years in and out of mental hospitals. This type of thing should be encouraged.
We do not seem to be able to segregate people in mental hospitals. There will have to be special wards for those who are seriously disturbed, slightly disturbed and particularly for the young. It is wrong that in some hospitals it is necessary to have young people in the same wards as old people who may not be in the same category as criminals but have been there all their lives and have an outlook on life which is entirely different to what we would like young people to have. There should be a more modern approach to people in mental hospitals.
Mental hospital staffs from the RMS down are dedicated people. We may criticise them but I do not believe we would like to do their jobs. We cannot give them enough credit for what they are doing. It may be said they are being paid for it, but so are we. Some of us do not do our jobs too well, but they have to do theirs all the time.
I want to refer now to the psychiatric nurses dispute. The Minister is not a man who is known to be unfair or to make intemperate statements, but he was very wrong when he commented the way he did on the agreement which was made at the settlement of that strike. I am a trade union official and nobody knows as well as I do how difficult it is when some type of grievance occurs to keep workers from going on strike to get something they cannot get any other way.
This situation was allowed to build up in the psychiatric service. Nobody regretted the necessity to take strike action as much as the people concerned. There was no vindictiveness and they were not trying to create hardship. When an agreement was reached at the end of the strike it was wrong for any Minister to say that he did not agree with the terms of the settlement. If he did not agree with the terms he should have said so before the settlement was made, not afterwards. This sowed in the minds of the people who were affected by it the idea that at the first opportunity the Department of Health would get their own back. It is unusual for the Minister for Health to be unfair in approaching difficulties but he was unfair in this case. If he got advice on this it was bad advice. I hope the matter will be finally settled and that an arrangement can be made which will prevent the necessity of ever having a strike again in that service or in any other hospital service. We must remember that the people concerned are human beings and if they cannot get their rights one way then they will attempt to get them by strike action.
I now want to talk about the ambulance drivers. Recently there have been discussions with the CEO's of the health boards regarding the ambulance service. The Minister must take an interest in this because it is a national problem. Nobody in this House or in the Civil Service would agree that their hours of work should start at 7.30 in the morning or earlier, should continue until 6, 7 or 8 in the evening, and that when they go off duty they should be on call. On call means that they do not leave the hospital or their homes during the night. If they are called out they must go. It is no use saying that they get time off the next day or they get paid for it. How many of us would agree after our day's work that we should be called back again and perhaps work during the night, then the next day be on second call which means if something happens you can be called out again. If we have the ambulances we have got to pay the drivers.
Ambulance drivers are dedicated people. Anybody who has gone with an ambulance driver can see the care and attention that is given to the patient, no matter how ill or how contrary the person is. We all know how well they look after people involved in a road accident. Advantage has been taken of those people by trying to make them Jacks of all trades, not very important people who can be called out and should be prepared to do duty 24 hours a day. We should not forget that the old slogan "They also serve who only stand and wait" applies to ambulance drivers as well as everybody else. They are on duty when they are waiting to be called out. Even in the Army a man who is on stand-by for a night gets the next night off.
The rates of pay they are getting are not commensurate with the job they are doing. The compensation they are getting for this type of stand-to is not adequate.
In one or two counties before the new health boards were established arrangements were made that they would be paid overtime for hours of work. They did not get time-and-a-half, which is the normal overtime; they were paid an overtime rate which was slightly more than the ordinary time rate. When the new arrangement was made it had to be changed because it was found they were earning as much in overtime as they were in normal wages. Why was this? It was simply because they were on the road night and day. It was definite proof that when they were being paid for it they had to be out all night. Therefore a nice arrangement was made whereby instead of getting £24 or £25 payment for overtime, it was agreed that they would get an extra £2.50 per week, and they would get that whether they went out or not. The man who earned £20 in overtime would do the same amount of work for £2.50. Can you blame him if he is discontented with what he is offered? The whole service must be examined and a new approach made to it.
Would the Minister, for goodness sake, find some way of bringing the dental service back to normal? I believe—and this is a personal and not a party point of view—that, until we can make an agreement with the ordinary dentist in the towns and villages and in this city for a fee per service, no progress will be made. A dentist told me recently he was doing work for the county council clinic. Normally he did a two-hour stint and six people were listed to him and notified to turn up. The average number that turned up was three. If the service they required was small he just sat down for the remainder of the time. He said to me: "If I were given a fee per service I could take about ten and it would not cost the local authority as much as it is costing them now." If that is true or even half true an effort should be made to hammer out an agreement.
Another group of people who are not appreciated as much as they should be are those who are responsible for the care of the aged. No matter what we may say about this being a great Christian country, we treat our old people shamefully. How many of them do we find in old folks' homes? They are just put in there and forgotten. Nobody visits them. Old people may have a farm or a house which they want to give to some of their relatives, and they will be looked after for the rest of their lives. There was a time when I recommended to these people that they should transfer their property and apply for the pension. I do not do it any longer, because a number of victims of that transaction found their way into the old folks' home. It is not that they are not being well cared for. The staff there do everything they possibly can to help them; there are people who go in to visit them and try to entertain them. However, all of us admit there is a vast difference between the comfort of a person sitting at his own fire and having to go miles and miles away where he does not know anyone. These old people may make new friends and they may not. Maybe they turn out to be contrary old men and old women, as I suppose we all will as time goes by.
I do not think that old people who cannot afford to stay at home should be put into this position. Because of the cost of their upkeep would it not be much better to give some assistance to them at local level which would enable them to live at home? Many of them are very independent people who like to be able to live their own lives and look after themselves. Many of them can do so, but some of them are living with a son or a daughter and when they get old or get ill and the family are coming along, the daughter-in-law is not able to look after the children and the mother-in-law as well, and the result is that the poor mother-in-law finishes up in the county home. I have made a comparison with a number of other countries and, as I said on more than one occasion, we have a worse record than they have in that we do not treat the aged with as much tenderness or consideration as those other countries that have not got our tradition of christianity.
The drug problem has been mentioned by other Deputies and I do not want to detain the House, but let me say that it does appear as if the drug problem is growing. When one looks for an explanation of some rather stupid act done by a person, if there is no other explanation, usually we find that drugs are responsible. The decision not to have hard drugs or indeed any drugs in a number of lock-up dispensaries was a good one. It was far too easy to get drugs in this way. I remember going into a dispensary with a doctor on one occasion; it was in bad condition and he wanted to show it to me. The first thing I found was that, although a new door had been put on, there was no lock, so we just pushed the door and walked in and everything in the dispensary was there open. He has since retired. I pointed out to him that I thought he was a very irresponsible man. He was rather angry and wanted to know if I expected him to put a lock on the door when the county council would not do it. Maybe he had a point, but I considered the drugs were left in his custody and he should not have left them so that any hobo could walk in off the street, push the door and pick up anything he wanted. The doctor subsequently said that nobody stole anything around that part of the country, and maybe he was right.
If we are really serious about the health service and particularly if we are really serious about attracting our Northern brethren in with us, we must with the problems involved.
I know there are a number of Deputies who wish to speak, so let me finish on a personal note. On a number of occasions I raised in this House with him the question of the validity of certain marriages which take place outside this country. Some people were surprised that I raised it with the Minister for Health, but it is the responsibility of his Department. The Minister pointed out that it was difficult to get the matter cleared up and that he proposed to introduce legislation as soon as possible to try to regularise it.
The simple facts are that some years ago it was the practice for some young couples to go with a Lourdes pilgrimage and when in Paris or in Lourdes to get married, have their honeymoon there and return. The idea was a very nice one, but the snag in it was that unless you were 21 days living in France you could not have a civil marriage and a marriage in France is not recognised unless there is a civil as well as a religious ceremony. In this country the religious ceremony is recognised as a civil one as well, so the matter is very easy to deal with. I suggested at the time that legislation should be introduced for the purpose of having it officially recognised here and the Minister pointed out that he could see snags in it, that he would see what he could do and that he proposed to introduce legislation.
That is 12 months ago and the position now is that people who go and get married in Lourdes are not married according to the laws of this State. They are married according to the church but the plain fact is they are not legally married according to the State, and if they die intestate the next of kin are not their wives or their children but the relatives they have on their own side of the family. There is the case of a wife who was dispossessed by her husband's relatives because she did not go through a civil ceremony here.
Mr. MacEntee when he was Minister introduced a Bill ten years ago but when it was almost ready for debate in the House it disappeared. People talk about belts of croziers. There is no question of anybody being in the wrong in this matter. I have discussed it with a bishop and those in the church are as anxious as anybody to get this thing rectified. It is unfair to mothers of families growing up because as far as the State here is concerned they are not married. Do not let us put our hands together and say that according to the church they are married. The fact is they cannot go into court and say they are married because the law says they are not.
To many people the spiritual aspect of marriage is more important than the civil but all will agree that we require the legislation I have been appealing for. I know the Minister is terribly busy but I appeal to him, nevertheless, to have this situation rectified. He wanted to know if many are involved. I estimate there are between 200 and 300 couples. I have as much respect for the clergy as anybody has but it is said that the clergy are preventing legislation by saying they do not think it is a good idea. That happened a certain number of years ago. If the French Government are prepared to agree, it should be a very simple matter for us. The Minister need not say to me that it is all right to go and have a civil marriage here. There is the problem of the children, and children already there are not covered by the marriage. Therefore, I ask the Minister to introduce the necessary legislation at the earliest possible opportunity.
