I move:
That Dáil Éireann requests the Government to immediately avail of the EEC aid which is available for the purpose and introduce a comprehensive scheme for the provision of milk and milk products in schools.
We should avail of this aid for a number of reasons. Basically, the EEC makes available 50 per cent of the cost of milk provided in schools throughout the Community. One-third of that 50 per cent of aid from the EEC will come from the FEOGA fund and the remaining two-thirds from the proceeds of a levy to be raised by the EEC from all milk producers in the Community, including Irish milk producers. Therefore, Irish milk producers, through that levy, make a contribution to a fund to provide milk in schools. As milk producers proportionately form a higher share of the population here than in most countries it is possible that the Irish are making a larger proportionate contribution to the fund that is being used in part to provide milk in schools than any other member state. However, we are the only country, with the exception of Italy, not availing of this scheme even though we make a substantial contribution towards it.
Between September 1977 and January 1978 almost £1½ million was collected from Irish farmers to be put into the co-responsibility fund. The collection was at the rate of .9 of a penny per gallon and it will continue for five years or more. In spite of that we are not availing of one of the important forms of service being made available by the fund, namely a scheme for the provision of milk in schools. Some people might say that as the majority of Irish people are reasonably well-off school-going children get a reasonable breakfast before going to school in the morning. Those people may ask if there is a necessity for milk in schools from a social and educational point of view. In fairness, it is probably true to say that the majority of the children do not need milk in school but we are not talking about the provision of social services necessarily or of majorities. We are talking about the less fortunate in our community who do not constitute the majority but who are the primary concern of our social services, namely the least well-off in our society.
I collected some figures which indicate that a substantial number of children go to school undernourished and are unable to derive maximum benefit from our educational system because of insufficient nourishment. This arises partly because of lack of means on the part of the parents to provide a breakfast for their children, partly because the children, particularly those in rural areas, must leave very early—in some cases as early as 7.30 a.m.—to get a bus to bring them to school, and partly, and most significantly, because of the fact that in a small minority of families the parents are not competent to provide adequate nourishment for their children. This happens through alcoholism on the part of one or both parents, through lack of education or severe subnormality of one sort or another on the part of either parent. They do not see it as their duty to provide adequate nourishment for their children before going to school. The result is that a substantial number of children, children about whom we should be concerned, go to school without adequate nourishment to enable them face the day.
In the course of a small survey which I carried out I asked a number of teachers what percentage of the children in their school would fit into the category of undernourished and not able fully to avail of the educational programme because of undernourishment. I was told that between 2 and 4 per cent of the children in the schools concerned fitted into this category. When one considers the total number of school children in the country the figure of 2 or 4 per cent is not that small because it accounts for many thousands of children. I should also like to give details of a survey which was carried out in a Dublin vocational school. In this connection I should mention that the school meal service which exists in Dublin does not extend to vocational schools; it applies only to primary schools. The survey in that school—I can give the Minister the name of the school concerned if he doubts the veracity of my statement— showed that of a school population of 250, 22 of the children did not have a breakfast. If the parents were not able to provide them with a breakfast it is unlikely that they were able to provide them with a lunch either and those children would have had to go through the day without any nourishment. It is hard to imagine how children who may have had their last meal at about 6 p.m. the previous evening could hope to concentrate on their lessons the following day without any nourishment.
That survey was a random one and was not done for the purpose of proving anything.
The third statistic I should like to cite for the Minister is that quoted in a study prepared for the Bishops on the meaning of poverty. That study shows that 2.9 per cent of the families surveyed by the sociologists engaged by the Bishops to carry out the survey—obviously, this is a larger sample than one vocational school and covers a substantial number of families—did not have any breakfast. Roughly 40 per cent of the families surveyed had a breakfast which consisted of nothing more than bread, butter and tea. There was very little protein content necessary for the maintenance of the body, in the diet of 40 per cent of the children in the families surveyed. That survey was not of the total population or of a cross-section. I do not know what precise method of selection was used but I presume the families were in the less well-off socio-economic groups generally.
That survey indicates that there is a problem of under nourishment in our schools. It behoves the Minister to seek every means possible to meet this problem. It behoves him to seek means, using our native resources to solve such a severe problem. However, when it transpires that another agency, the EEC, to which we are making a substantial contribution, is prepared to make available 50 per cent of the cost of a scheme which will provide the most balanced and complete food of all, milk, in our schools it certainly behoves the Minister to avail of that aid. It behoves the Minister to ensure that all children are provided with some means of nutrition during the day and in particular that the problem of the children I mentioned earlier is dealt with.
The aid being made available by the EEC in this case is by no means ungenerous. The usual pattern for EEC aid, as instanced in the case of the farm modernisation scheme in the case of aid to eligible farmers, who are only a small minority of the total number of farmers, is 25 per cent or one-quarter and the remaining 75 per cent must be provided by the Irish Exchequer. The rate of aid in this scheme for the provision of school milk is far more generous. It is proposed that the EEC provide £2 for every £1 provided by the Irish Exchequer, the idea being that for every £ provided by the Irish Exchequer, £2 would be provided by the EEC and £1 by the child using the milk. Even if one dispensed with the child's contribution the EEC would still be providing £ for £. In terms of rates of contribution from the EEC this is comparatively a much more favourable scheme than the farm modernisation scheme where the EEC provide £1 for every £4 provided by the Irish Exchequer.
The argument for school milk is primarily based I think on considerations I have already mentioned—the fact that there is a significant minority of children who actually seriously need this milk so that they may be able to avail of the education they are getting and so that they may develop physically and avoid starvation which will exist in any society, even in those more prosperous than ours, because a minority of parents, even though they may have the money, are not able, because of alcoholism or some other problem, to use it to provide nourishment for their children. There are other arguments but I again assert that this is the main one before going on to other arguments which also deserve consideration but do not take from the importance of the main one. The main consideration originally in the EEC's mind, though not in ours in availing of the scheme, in introducing it was to relieve the Community of the surpluses of milk products which have grown up over years in the EEC. They have decided to levy milk producers to create a fund which is being used for this and other means of promoting greater consumption of milk products throughout the Community.
Ireland, in proportion to its total population, has the largest milk production and therefore one would expect the Irish Government to be in the lead if a proposal is made to find means of expanding milk consumption so that the product we produce and from which we derive a substantial proportion of our total national income would be consumed to a greater extent. One would expect Ireland to give an example to other countries as to what can be done so that they would be encouraged to follow suit. There is need for this because there are substantial surpluses of milk products in the Community and this is leading other countries to propose drastic curbs on the common agricultural policy which provides a floor under our agricultural industry which provides a basic income for our farmers. Other countries are proposing, because of these surpluses, to undermine the intervention system and to reduce the common agricultural policy which was such an important reason for our joining EEC in the first place. Obviously, one would expect Ireland as a dairying and agricultural country to be in the lead in providing a scheme such as this, for which EEC aid is available, to increase milk consumption.
It has been calculated that about ten million extra gallons of milk would be consumed as a result of this scheme. That figure was produced by another agency; I have no figure but I have heard other figures which are less; some suggest three million gallons. I am not sure what the net extra consumption would be but I think it would be significant. Yet, despite these arguments the Irish Government is the last Government with the exception of Italy, to make any move to avail of this scheme. This is regrettable because we are trying to get other countries to do things which are inconvenient for them such as, in the case of some continental countries, the reintroduction of daily milk deliveries. We take daily deliveries for granted here but they do not exist in many continental countries. They play a large part in ensuring that we consume more milk per head than most other EEC countries. Germany and some other countries do not have daily deliveries. Their people must go to the supermarket to buy milk. We, along with the EEC Commission and others concerned about milk surpluses, are trying to encourage these other countries to introduce daily milk deliveries because it would obviously help to remove the surpluses. If we want to carry conviction in getting other countries to do something that may be inconvenient for them, it is only sensible to expect that we should do what is in our power to increase milk consumption in our own country. We can scarcely expect others to make efforts we are not prepared to make. The one thing we can do to increase milk consumption here is to introduce this comprehensive scheme for the provision of milk and milk products. We are not doing it.
The Minister has objected that the provision of free school milk would cost the Irish Exchequer an extra £6 million. If so, there would probably be another £6 million coming from the EEC to this country. The Minister may dispute the figure; it may be £4 million or £5 million. He may produce his own figure, but his estimate of the cost of £6 million is based on certain assumptions not all of which are necessarily valid. First, it is based on the assumption that there will be no charge for the milk to the pupil. Secondly, it is based on the assumption that it will be introduced in all schools, national and secondary, including schools which, perhaps, have no great need of it. For instance, if, as an initial measure, we were to introduce it only in national schools, that would significantly reduce the £6 million. If, on the other hand, one were to have a small charge which could be paid either by the parents or in the case of home assistance recipients who are the people we want to get at most, could be paid by the health boards to the schools. The fact that a charge would be levied from some of the pupils could be used to reduce to some extent the £6 million the Minister alleged would be spent.
In talking in terms of a global figure of £6 million the Minister is perhaps adopting the wrong approach. He should think rather of the benefits which would be given to a large number of children by the provision of this scheme. Existing schemes in this area—the provision of milk and school meals to children—are not exactly per capita the most expensive social service in the country. In terms of benefit to a large number of people they have the lowest rate of cost to the Exchequer. I have been informed that the existing school meal service which is available in 50 per cent of the urban areas and not available at all in the rural areas—one of my endeavours in promoting this matter is to get it extended to the rural areas and to get at least the milk products extended to the remaining 50 per cent of the urban areas—in 1975, the date for which the latest figures are available, cost 3.92p per meal per child. It is very hard to imagine a meal being provided less expensively even in 1975, and granted that there has been significant inflation in the cost of food since then, this indicates that we are not talking about a social service the unit cost of which is astronomically high and that there is a danger of people getting away with something or of children abusing the service. If in 1975 a meal cost less than 4p, at its most generous it would probably cost 7p or 8p now. We can see from that that the meals service is not the most expensive of the social services being made available at the moment.
The Minister's answer to my argument as to why we should introduce a scheme of this nature has been that he could see no great need for it. He declared himself to have been, I hope I am not misquoting him, initially, sympathetic to the idea but as a result of his personal investigations he did not see the need for it. One of the reasons for that was that 50 per cent of the urban authorities who already had the statutory powers to introduce a school meals service had not chosen to do so or to apply for EEC aid.
The Minister is expecting urban authorities of their own accord to come forward and seek to avail of this scheme—for instance expecting the Trim Urban Council to apply to the Commission in Brussels without the Minister asking for this aid—is being unrealistic, even assuming that the money could be obtained in that way, that they have contacts in Brussels and that they were able to process their claims. Even more important is the fact that this year it is not possible for local authorities to introduce new services, whether it be a school milk, school meal or any other service. They have been told that they may not levy any rates on houses, because of the abolition of the rates on houses. They must rely on collecting rates to pay their share of this scheme, on the one hand, from the non-domestic rates properties, such as factories and shops, and, on the other hand, from a rate which would be paid by the Exchequer as a rates grant in respect of the domestic rates which have been abolished. It is not possible for local authorities to increase the rates, to "print money" by simply increasing the rates on domestic dwellings by 20 per cent and hoping the Government will come up with the money to enable them to introduce new services.
They have been told by the Minister for the Environment that they may not increase the rates being paid by commercial ratepayers or the rates being paid in lieu of domestic rates by the State by more than 11 per cent. That 11 per cent barely covers the maintenance of their existing service. It certainly does not allow them the possibility of doing as the Minister for Health seems to believe they would spontaneously do, and that is seek to introduce new services such as school meal or school milk schemes, particularly when to get the EEC contribution towards the cost they would have to negotiate with Brussels themselves because the Minister is not interested in the matter.
This scheme was introduced in a directive in May and this Government came into office in July. From July until December the Government could not make up their minds which Minister was responsible for availing of the EEC aid for school milk. I raised the matter originally by way of a variety of questions to all the Ministers who could be responsible, and in reply every one said that he was not responsible and that he had had talks with the Department of Social Welfare, the Department of Education and so on, but that he was not primarily responsible for the scheme. No Minister was responsible. There is no such thing in proper Government circles as a scheme for which no Minister is responsible. Invariably some Minister has primary responsibility and others may be involved in a secondary capacity. From the questions I put down in November 1977 it transpired that although this scheme had been in existence since the previous May, no Minister accepted that he was responsible for negotiating with Brussels. Is it any wonder no decision was taken up to that? As a direct result of my raising the matter on the Adjournment the Minister for Health, who was in the House, refused to take it and said he was not responsible.