Is there agreement to taking the next stage to-day?
Agreed.
Children's Allowances Bill, 1943—Report and Fifth Stages.
Question—"That the Bill be received for final consideration"—put and agreed to.
Question proposed: "That the Bill do now pass."
I should like to offer a few considerations on the Final Stage of this Bill. I was much impressed by the speech—I think a very remarkable speech—made by Senator Tierney on the Second Reading, and I have pondered on it a good deal since. I take it that the main idea in Senator Tierney's mind is that much better value could be obtained for roughly the £10,000,000 spent in this country on social services. He probably would say for £10,000,000 there need be no poverty, if the money was wisely spent. As a general statement, of course, that makes one think, and it is difficult to disagree with it, but I think it is generally agreed that a great deal of the money spent on poverty goes to people who do not need it while others who need it do not get relief.
It is a big question and the only way I can see it can be approached is that the Government, if they are in sympathy with that approach, should appoint a commission to consider the whole question of the social services. Perhaps they might all be brought within the purview of one Minister, and it should also be the purpose of that commission, at any rate, in the first instance, to have no regard for what is being done now, but to set down a scheme as if the slate were quite clean, and, having done so, say if we had £10,000,000 we would do it in this way and make recommendations immediately, or in the long view, to accord with those schemes. At the same time, a body of that kind could inquire into the relationship of State and voluntary charitable services. I think close regard is due to the philosophy enunciated by Senator Tierney, and I feel that the Government might consider approaching it on the lines I have indicated.
I would like the Minister to indicate if he can say, at this stage, how the administration of the Bill will be carried out. The Minister may recollect that I raised a question on the Second Reading about the particular machinery that will be evolved to carry out these proposals. We hear of investigating officers, but will the investigating officers be charged with the payment of the allowances or the existing old age pensions officers? To the latter body, it is a matter of some import, because if they are to be burdened with these duties in addition to the many onerous tasks they discharge at present, certain questions will arise. Some of them have asked me if I can ascertain if it is proposed to ask them to administer the Act. If that is the case, there are cognate questions of remuneration, etc., which I would like the Minister to clear up.
I would like to some extent to join in the appeal made by Senator Sir John Keane that the whole question of the social services should be carefully examined in the sense of unifying them instead of having a lot of scattered and more or less separate services. When this Bill was going through the Dáil a remark was made that the country need not hope for any further advancement of the social services for a long time to come. I do not remember the exact words, but that was the sense of the remark. It meant that the Government was going to close its eyes to the need for further development of social services until the country had recovered from the expenditure of the money required by this system of children's allowances. It seems to me that that is a hopeless position to take up. The social services have been a scattered patchwork since the State was founded.
I hope the Government will not hold itself firm that no further development should take place until they had forgotten about this £1,250,000 to be spent on children's allowances. I would like to call attention to another point. It was not adverted to during the discussion on the previous stages of the Bill but it is this: the effect that the institution of children's allowances is likely to have on wages. It seems almost certain to me that this additional income coming into everybody's house will have its reaction on the tendency for wages to rise to fit themselves to changing circumstances. Suppose a wage dispute arises and a tribunal is dealing with the matter. The tribunal is bound to take into its mind, consciously or unconsciously, the amount of income received by the house, and to consider it in the light of the question of fixing future wage rates. That seems to me to be a very dangerous procedure, and I am very much surprised at the encouraging attitude towards the Bill adopted by certain members of this House who would generally be regarded as interested in labour questions. It would be out of order to refer to them as Labour Senators when this is a non-political House. If this Bill passes it seems likely to me that they might deeply regret the amount of assistance they have given to make it the law of the country.
Senator Sir John Keane has referred, in terms with which many will agree, to the fundamental value of the speech which Senator Tierney has made to the House. It would be impossible to summarise in a few minutes what Senator Tierney tries to teach us, both practical and theoretical, but it seems to me that his speech was very largely devoted to the same end as that of Senator Sir John Keane's to-day—the development of social services on logical and well-organised lines instead of on the haphazard lines of years past. The danger was increased by the remark which, I understand, was made the other day that we need hope for no more social services. That seems to me to be a very helpless attitude for the Government to take. Perhaps these observations would have come in more appropriately at an earlier stage of the Bill, but I was not able to attend here regularly during the last few weeks, and I do not think we could let this measure pass the House without drawing attention to the points I have mentioned.
I had no intention at all of saying anything on this stage of the Bill, but in view of the fact that Senators have referred in such kind terms to the remarks I made on the Second Reading, I feel bound to say one or two words. I refrained altogether from trying to amend this Bill on the Committee Stage, for the reason that I did not see that any amendment of the Bill, that would be of any value, was possible inside the rather admirably rigid framework that the Bill provided. Once the principle of the Bill was accepted, to my mind, we were committed to practically everything it contained. I should like to say that I have seldom seen an example of a Parliamentary measure being so carefully and cleverly articulated together as this Bill is, or so difficult to amend or alter in almost the smallest particular. It reminds one of those latest types of battleships which are so constructed that, no matter where a bomb or a shell hits, it bounces off. This Bill is something of that kind, but in spite of my admiration for the skill displayed in the draftsmanship of the Bill, I still regard it as a bad Bill, and one that is calculated to do very little good and which may do a great deal of harm.
So far as my remarks on the Second Stage are concerned, I was agreeably surprised to find, without my having had consultation with anybody, what a large volume of support my views received, both by way of correspondence and otherwise, from members of the outside public, some of whom were in a position to speak very authoritatively, especially about the moral aspects of this Bill and what I referred to on the Second Stage as its relation to Catholic and Christian sociology. I should like to repeat what I said then in regard to that matter. A Bill of this kind does not fulfil the requirements of the Christian ideal. It falls short of it in very many ways, and it ought to be repeated and borne in mind that, according to the most authoritative teachers, the Christian social ideal is not family allowances of this kind, paid by the State, but a family wage; that the real crux of the problem is the living wage paid to the wage-earner, who is entitled to receive such a wage as will enable him to support a family in reasonable comfort. Anything that falls short of that falls short of the ideal, and anything that is done to make up for the defects in the present wage system, falling short of that ideal, is to that extent by no means perfect, and is to that extent nothing but a palliative which, while it may perhaps do a certain amount of good in tiding over a difficult situation for a short period, is likely in the long run, if it follows on imperfect lines, to do more harm than good. Accordingly, I am afraid that I must continue to regard the whole notion of handing out these allowances from the State indiscriminately to all citizens, whether they are in need of them or not, as a dangerous notion and one that is likely to lead, in practice, to a great deal of trouble.
As I said on the Second Reading— and the Minister himself indicated as much—this is far from being likely to be the last Bill of this kind. In spite of what Senator Rowlette said, I am quite convinced that in a few years you will have pressure put on the Government—whatever Government it may be—at any rate, to increase these allowances, and that whatever else may happen, the bill for these social services is certain to go on increasing, and I cannot contemplate any increase in services of that kind without feelings of the most profound alarm, because what this Bill is doing is taking money out of the pockets of people who are already poor and distributing it among people who, in many cases, are no worse off than the people from whom the money is being taken.
This Bill is certain to have two sides to it. It will do a certain amount of good to what I believe is a small number of people, and it will inflict considerable hardship and injustice on a larger number of people who are at least as badly off as those people whom the Bill is designed to help. That is an aspect that we should not forget. I am not talking now of income-tax payers or the better-off citizens. The taxation that will be necessary to carry out the purpose of this Bill will fall heavily, and most heavily, on the poorer classes of the community, and to contemplate calmly an extension of a service like this, and the raising of more millions of money in this particular way by the State, is to me something that we ought not to allow ourselves to indulge in. For that reason I should like to wind up by agreeing with what Senator Sir John Keane has just said: that if we want to avoid a further rather casual and unsystematic expansion of this kind, of what to me at any rate is undoubtedly wasteful expenditure, we ought to have in the shortest possible time a complete and far-reaching inquiry into all these social services.
I am very far from denying or trying to deny that there is an enormous problem of poverty in this country and that a great deal needs to be done to alleviate it, but I am questioning whether this or any similar machinery is going to do anything real at all to alleviate that problem, or whether, once this machinery has been set up and put into operation, we will not find, after a few years, that we still have the problem at least as bad as ever it was and, in some degree, perhaps, aggravated by this very machinery. If we want to avoid that, and to avoid going into a quagmire of unnecessary expenditure and increasing poverty, we ought to take steps to have a clear and complete inquiry into all our machinery for alleviating distress and putting an end to poverty, and we ought to try to find some means by which we can calculate the extent of remediable poverty in the country, and some means by which we can apply redress to that poverty. It ought not to be beyond the capacity of any legislature to deal with a problem like that if the proper means are taken, and the proper means, to my mind, consist in a full and most painstaking and complete inquiry into the conditions that exist. Until we have that we will get no further at all with the problem, and we will not be able to prevent a further extension of the damage that Bills like this, to my mind, are quite certain to do to the community as a whole.
I have the feeling that it is questionable whether we should be proud of passing a measure like this, or whether we should be in the frame of mind which Senator Tierney indicates to the House that he is in about this measure. I really do not know whether it is something that we ought to boast about or not, because if we regard our social services as being at a high level, I know that it seems to be a popular thing to acclaim what has been done by way of the improvement of social services. This measure, I think, despite what Senator Tierney has said, will be regarded as an improvement from the point of view of the social conditions of a considerable number of people in this country, but while saying that I am rather inclined to agree with Senator Tierney's view to this extent: that it looks like beginning rather in the middle of things: that the introduction and passing of such a measure as this would seem to be starting off in the middle of things rather than starting down at the foundations. I am convinced absolutely that the right line of approach to an improvement of social conditions for all our people is to seek out a plan by which we would be enabled to give full employment to the people who are able to work, and when we would achieve that much we would, to a considerable degree, measure the sort of social problem left for us to solve.
There would not be any.
The Senator interrupts to say there would not be any. I think there would. I am not inclined to agree with Senator Tierney when he suggests to the House that, having found a condition of full employment for all, there would not, even then, be a necessity for a scheme of family allowances. In my opinion there would, because I cannot see how you are going to have conditions in which, for instance, you would have two agricultural labourers, one an unmarried man and a good worker and the other a married man with eight children, and not such a good worker, and you could meet them both adequately in the matter of wages. How am I going to be expected to pay the married man a wage which will equate his expenditure on the upkeep of his family? It cannot be done. In equity and justice I must pay, and would be expected to pay, in relation to the sort of service I get from these people, and there is not, I think, an obligation on me to pay the father of the eight children a larger sum because of that fact. There is a social problem there.
I think that there is a fault there in Senator Tierney's argument. I am in agreement with those who suggest that an improvement in the whole social standing of the people can only be brought about by starting where we ought to start. In the first place it is a matter of regret that we have not more information before us from the Minister—the kind of information on which he based his decisions. We have done nothing in this country the equivalent to what has been done in Britain by Mr. Rowntree. If we had any data like that, which would be an example to us of the costs involved, the incomes and the salaries, and the allowances in respect of rural and urban centres, we would have the sort of data which is necessary to enable us to determine the degree to which even this measure is going to alleviate the poverty and hardship that we know exist at the moment. But we have nothing like that. I think, myself, that we should all make up our minds that to just go on boasting about our social services is not good enough. There are various ways of improving social conditions, and I am in agreement with Senator Tierney in the view that you may not be actually improving the social conditions of the people by taking a certain proportion of some people's incomes and distributing it among others, when there are possibilities that, by a better planned economy, we could raise the income level of all the people in the State.
There are a good many people in this country, and I am one of them, who are convinced that it is possible for us to do that. I think if we started in that way we would be getting down to the root of things. If there is to be an investigation at all—Senators Sir John Keane and Rowlette have expressed the view that the whole problem of social services should be studied with a view to seeing how they could be better co-ordinated—the first question to which we should try to find an answer is what are the possibilities of finding full employment for all the people able to work. If there are people able to work but not willing to work they have got to be dealt with, and the sooner we face that the better. Because these people are a real social problem and a real social menace, and they are trying to live on the income of other people, and quite a number of them are managing to do it very well.
On a point of order, this debate seems to be developing into a debate on social security in general. If it does I am afraid we will be here all night.
On the Fifth Stage it is quite allowable to have a wide discussion on matters cognate to the Bill.
When you get an interruption like that it may have the effect of turning your thoughts into other channels.
That would make it worse.
You cannot ignore the fact that this Bill which we are passing is only the beginning, and there is no use any Minister saying that we are not going to have any additions to social services for a long time because we are going to spend so much on family allowances. I wish we did not have to have additions. I wish we could set about ensuring that all our people would be earning a living wage, and that into their own homes from their own industry would come sufficient to provide the necessaries of life for themselves and their families up to a reasonably decent standard of comfort. That ought to be our aim, because it is only then that we are going to be able to cut down the necessity for, or even the extension of social services.
It is undoubtedly a matter for regret that we are going to impose such a drain as this on the normal incomes of the people at a time when these incomes are actually contracting. That is one of the real problems which the Ministry are going to be faced with. The total income of all our people— there may be a degree of inflation be cause we are getting a certain amount of income from people who are earning outside the country and who are not producing physical goods inside of it— is not being increased in the quality of goods produced and available for redistribution. In fact, that amount of goods is falling. It may be that the money value of them is rising, but that is an unsatisfactory condition of things. The truth is that the real income of the State is not increasing, and from that lower quantity of goods, which in fact ought not be increased in value, you are going now to take this considerable addition to the national expenditure and re-distribute it over the people. I agree that in the circumstances of the time that seems to be imperative. I think that even Senator Tierney will agree that the problem of living is such a grave one for many citizens that something had to be done. There is general unanimity that this measure is an approach to the solution of the problem. I agree that it would be better to increase the incomes, by some means, of the people whose incomes are at present too low and that this measure ought to apply only to the people who require an increase in their incomes to give them a standard of living that will keep them in full health. These allowances are to be given to all, and they are to be given to all without those who receive them making any contribution on their own. I think it would be sounder economy and psychologically would give better results if the people who are to draw these incomes from the State were expected to make some contribution towards the pool from which these incomes will be drawn, because I agree with the point of view that if we continue taking from the State and expecting to get everything from the State, the State must become the all-powerful concept in the lives of our people, and we have built that up perhaps to a degree which is not desirable.
The Minister has shown a good deal of ability in drafting his measure, in piloting it through the House, and in explaining his point of view, but I think he ought to go much further. We are only scratching the surface with this measure and leaving the great problem of a better living for all our people still unsolved, and, I am afraid, not even tackled. Things will not be better until we can sit down, not to make an inquiry as to how better we can co-ordinate our social services and cut down the costs of administration, but to make an inquiry which will point the way to a planned economy and to the carrying out of a policy which will provide full employment for our people at productive labour within the country. You will then raise the incomes of all our people and to the extent that you may have to extend social services on the other side, you will have such an increase of income as will enable you to do so, if it is necessary.
I think this is starting things in the middle. Nevertheless, the circumstances of the times are such as to demand that some action like this be taken. The Minister regards it as the only way, but there are other points of view. Generally, the acceptance of the measure throughout the country is such that one can scarcely feel that it does not represent public opinion and does not satisfy the public demand; but while this House may put it through by a practically unanimous vote, I think it is of importance that it should be recognised that, as Senator Tierney says, there are dangers in the propagation of the policy which this measure embodies, and that we should all recognise that it is not by any means the final solution of the difficulties which confront us in regard to finding a better living, especially for people on the lower income levels whose position can only be improved when we are able to find them productive employment which will enable their earnings to give to their families the standard of living which decent men ought to be able to enjoy in their own country.
Like my colleague, Senator Kehoe, I was somewhat perturbed as to the administration of the measure, and as to whether it would be better to have it more localised or centralised. I put down amendments dealing with these points, but, after the Minister's explanation, I agree that he has made a very good case for his view that centralised administration for a start at least would be most effective. I think that when the Bill is working smoothly, it will have a very good effect on the poorer classes. Reference was made to Senator Tierney's speech on the Second Reading with which most of us, I think, could agree to a great extent. He remarked, incidentally, that there were people in the House, and probably outside, speaking about poverty who knew nothing about poverty, and he gave as an example his own experience. He said that he and the other members of his family had been raised on a ten-acre holding and that they really knew what poverty was. I had the experience of being raised in a very poor part of the country.
I am afraid, Senator, that would be for Second Reading, and as a matter of fact it was dealt with on that stage.
But reference has been made to Senator Tierney's speech. However, I can close the matter by saying that there is no poverty known in the poorest part of the country comparable with that which may be seen in the slum parts of towns and cities. It has also been suggested that certain sections, the poorer sections in particular, are not quite prepared to help themselves to the extent they might and that they are always making demands on the Government; but that is not entirely confined to the poorer classes. We find it amongst every section. We find it amongst the wealthier classes. We find it amongst that section which is bursting the walls of the banks with money. If that money were more evenly distributed amongst those who earn it and who work for it, there would be very little necessity for Bills of this kind. There is not a day that one looks at the paper that one does not see demands for increases in prices, subsidies, and all that sort of thing. The only point I want to make in that connection is that the poorer sections have no monopoly in the matter of demands on the Government. The demands come equally from every other section. I think the Bill has the imprimatur of the general bulk of the people. It has been well received and I hope it will have the good effects which we all hope it will have.
I was rather amazed to hear the views given utterance to in connection with this Bill, particularly by Senator Tierney. In one breath, Senator Tierney tells us that the principle of the thing is bad, that it was simply taking from one section and giving to another, and, in the next, he deplored the making of the statement that social services would not be further extended for a long period to come. So far as this measure is concerned, I personally feel that if there were any politicians in this non-political House with the courage to go out on the hustings and denounce it, they would get their answer from the people.
The Bill has been welcomed by every class. We are told that it is not the ideal Catholic solution. We agree; none of us has suggested that children's allowances represent the ideal Catholic solution, or conform to the principles enunciated by Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclical. The ideal solution is to give the father of the family a sufficiency to keep him and his family in frugal comfort and to enable him to put by something to maintain him in old age and infirmity. We are not suggesting that this is an alternative to Pope Leo's dictum as far as the family and a family wage are concerned but until the ideal of the home as envisaged by Pope Leo XIII comes to be realised I suggest that it is not fair to criticise this measure and by innuendo or otherwise to suggest that it is not in conformity—I take that word from Senator Tierney's speech—with Catholic social teaching.
I want to say that, as far as I am concerned, I believe the Minister and the Government have done a very good day's work. If the people who stand up here and smugly talk about being reared on a ten-acre farm would come along with me through the slums of the City of Dublin, they would appreciate what poverty means to thousands of families in the City of Dublin. I have always maintained, though I believe some people will disagree with me, that poverty is not known outside the city, that the poverty that we find in the city is not to be found in the rural areas. People may be poor in the rural areas; probably they are but they are never as poor as one finds some people in the cities. If these people who talk about being reared on ten-acre farms would come with me through the slums of Dublin they would see in every step they take justification for this measure.
I approve of this measure and, if it were necessary to divide on it, I would certainly vote in favour of it. I do not, however, approve of the method of its origination and its introduction because I do feel that this Bill, which represents the general wishes of the people as a whole and cannot be regarded as a political measure, should have been introduced, not as a Minister's Bill or as a Civil Service Bill but as the result of an inquiry or a commission before which all expert and interested parties could give evidence and on which all expert and interested parties could be represented. I have read with great interest the debates in the Dáil and the Minister's answers and I would again like to pay tribute to the arguments he put forward, but how much more convincing would these arguments have been if they had been adduced to a tribunal trying to find out the best method and the best shape into which to put a Bill of this nature rather than in defence of the Bill already introduced by the Minister, almost every point of which he felt bound to stand over, both because it was his Bill and also in honourable defence of his staff who had taken part in drafting it.
I do not subscribe, and have never subscribed, to the rather thoughtless and somewhat humorous criticisms which are passed on the Civil Service. It is said by a lot of people, half in jest, that civil servants are under-worked, overpaid and incompetent. I entirely disagree from that. I believe they are underpaid, that they are overworked, and that they are competent but, having said that, I do not accept the proposition that the Civil Service contains within its own circle all the wisdom of humanity or that a Bill of this nature dealing with a most complicated and interlocking subject, a Bill which is to serve as one of the lynchpins of our social system—I do not accept the proposition that the last word on a Bill such as that can be expected from, or that the ultimate truth can be discovered by, either Ministers or the Civil Service because it is perfectly true that every profession and every occupation tends to develop a mind of its own and to look at different things from a particular point of view.
I am also familiar with the jokes one hears about the lawyer's mind and the lawyer's point of view. I gather that jokes of that nature find sympathy amongst a great number of my colleagues in this House. I am glad of that because it serves to emphasise my point. There is also the Civil Service mind. In fact, one might say that every single profession or occupation suffers from what I might call occupational myopia. They are short-sighted along their own particular lines. My reason for addressing the House at the present moment is that I think this Bill has suffered and the plan has suffered, because there was not put into its framing the experience of all classes, because evidence was not taken by a commission, because it was not separately investigated by economists, by trades union leaders, by representatives even of capital, and of all the interests which must be affected by a Bill such as this. I appeal to the Minister not to introduce a Bill such as this in future without having it independently examined by people without any bias, people with expert knowledge. I appeal further to the Minister to consider whether all the social services which have grown up in the most haphazard manner—administered, some of them by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, some of them by the Minister for Agriculture, some of them through the Post Office, a great many through the Local Government Department—could not be simplified and unified under one Minister. Historically, they have grown up in the same way that you stop holes in a leaky boat—where the water is coming in too fast the person nearest shoves in something to stop the leak. In the case of social services, whatever Minister appeared to be nearest shoved in something to deal with these various needs. I am appealing to the Minister that, in regard to any similar Bill, he will first have it independently investigated and, secondly, that he will see whether he cannot interlock his system with the systems administered by other Ministers so as to have something in the nature of joint control over all these social services.
On this Fifth Stage of the Bill you, Sir, certainly have been very patient. I notice that the only thing you ruled out was autobiography so that I cannot compete with those people who on Second Reading explained in some detail in what extravagant poverty they were reared. What I feel about the Minister for Industry and Commerce is that he is clear and he is very often frank, but he was never clearer or more frank than he was in this House and in the other House on this Bill. He made it clear that the Bill is one which will not in his judgment—and I think he is entirely right—raise the marriage rate or the birth rate. He bases himself entirely on the necessity for helping people with large families. May I say, Sir, at once, that on the question of whether this particular measure is in accordance with Catholic teaching, I have always found it very difficult to make the argument that a particular measure is or is not in accordance with Catholic teaching. Catholic teaching after all lays down certain principles and, as Senator Colgan has said, it is true that the Pope has laid down that there should be a proper family wage, but presumably that wage in the nature of things can be no more than a wage for the average family. What this Bill purports to do is to help families which are above the average. Statistically the Minister told us that the average family of children under 16 is about two. On that basis he proceeds to help by money allowances people who have more than two children under 16 years of age. That is a pretty logical basis, but one has doubts on the whole matter. One the Minister has already referred to, and I, too, would have dealt with it had I an opportunity on the Second Stage, that is, whether we should take any pride in social services because the extension of social services implies, in fact, a failure of the ordinary realms of production. Now the Minister—let us give him due credit—recognises that, and the Beveridge Report about which there is so much talk, recognises that, too. It suggests certain increases in social services in England and boasts of the possibility of complete employment for everybody.
In this country our position is that we sometimes boast of keeping step with England, or other places, with regard to social services, but we also must keep step with those countries in production. For example, the British in this war have made an enormous improvement in their agricultural economy. We have not kept pace with them, and unless we can keep pace with them and bring our agriculture on a scientific basis up to a greater degree of productivity, then inevitably our social services must decline. I think that is a thing the Minister made allusion to himself. It is a thing which we should have in our minds always when agreeing, as we are agreeing in this particular case, to an increase in the social services. It is easy to take the view of the robust conservative and say that, after all, we know cases where families of eight, ten, 12 and 14 were raised, and there was no old age pension and no social service of any kind. That, of course, is quite true, although I think it is only a partial statement of the case to say that they were well reared.
But, whatever one may think of that, we are now living in an era when it is recognised that large families are an asset to the State and ought to get assistance. What one wonders is, whether the getting of a certain amount of money, whether it be 2/6 or 5/- a week for one child or two children is, in fact, going to be of very great use to them. I do not want to enter into an autobiographical competition with Senator Colgan, but I do know something about the working-class citizens of Dublin, and something about the country, too. I have grave doubts whether the mere increase of, say, 2/6, 5/- or 7/6, just handed out, does give you what you want if we cannot improve our production, if we cannot improve our scientific agriculture, and if we cannot change by some method of training the habits of our people: their food habits and, for example, their cooking habits about which our friend, Senator Mrs. Concannon, sometimes tells us. Unless we can improve the capacity of our people to spend their money more intelligently, and to use the food that is available to them more intelligently, we may, in fact, be spending money and not be getting very much value for it.
In reading the statistical abstract— I gather it is the last one that was issued and the Minister may have something to say about it—I find that transportable goods, for example, have not increased in production since 1937. That is to say, that over a very considerable range of industrial production, we are at a standstill, and were at a standstill even before the war. Our emigration is increasing, and it is certainly true of the City of Dublin—I know acute cases of it myself—that it was never more difficult for a boy to get an opening than it is to-day. These are problems that we have to deal with. There is, for example, the problem of the immense growth of Dublin and of the decline in school averages in the country, both of which have relevance, I think, to this particular subject. We boast that we are now opening in Dublin the largest schools in Europe. It is very debatable whether schools should be so large at all or not. But, while we are doing that in Dublin, we are dismissing teachers in the country because school averages are falling. That shows us a red light: that no matter what sort of measures we have, and no matter what amount of goodwill we have towards solving the problem of poverty, that by merely giving out more money we are not really approaching a solution at all.
It is very easy to say that you want to redistribute wealth. Since the passing of the Land Acts it is the rough truth to say that there is not any wealth in this country to redistribute. What you are going to do is to redistribute earnings. You are going to take money from other earners. Senator Tierney referred to the small number of people whose incomes are over a certain figure, to the small wage-earners and the small salary earners. If I understood the Minister aright, he was quite frank in indicating what he expects will be the arrangement under the Finance Bill, namely, that people who had an allowance for children will have that allowance reduced. They will lose, roughly speaking, £1 per child. It has also been prophesied, and I take it the prophecy will be fulfilled, that income-tax will be increased. That means that a very considerable number of people will have their standards of living reduced. It also means, as the Minister pointed out in the other House or perhaps it was here, that an increase in income-tax will mean an increase of the cost of living. It also means a reduction in the opportunities for employment, so that with the passing of this Bill you are creating other problems as well. Take, for example, one class of the community which is never mentioned. Senator Colgan was quite right when he said that if you went to a public meeting in Dublin or in the country and denounced this Bill, you would not make much profit out of your denunciation, politically.
There are certain circles in the country, however, in which this measure is regarded with considerable alarm. Take the case of young professional people who have got a job at University College at £250 or £300 a year, and who have the temerity at the age of 26 or 28 to get married. Is there any class in the community worse off than they are? After all, they cannot go to work in a muffler. They have very considerable problems. Take the Government's attitude, owing to financial stringency if you like, towards the Civil Service. A civil servant with a salary of over £500 a year gets no increase in the bonus which has been stabilised. Some of those people are extremely badly off. Take Government messengers and the lower grades of the Civil Service, in the Post Office and other Departments. They also are extremely badly off. Only a comparatively small number of them, not the average by any means, but only the exceptional cases where there are more than two children under 16, will get any relief at all under this Bill, and the relief of 2/6 a week which will be given will hardly, I think, make up for the increase in the cost of living that will come from increased taxation and of reduced standards elsewhere. Unless, therefore, we can solve our problems of agricultural and industrial production at a cost that the ordinary person can pay, and that the agricultural producer can pay, then our social services and our social fabric, indeed, are in for a very difficult time.
The Minister answered the point made about co-ordination here from his own point of view. I agree with what has been said that we should endeavour to bring all these social services into one Ministry and under one control if it could be done. It is very difficult to do that. I gather that the Minister himself, when he was preparing this Bill, went into this question, and found that it would be impossible. I am not including unemployment insurance as a social service. That is an insurance service. I refer to the other services where money is going out for nothing, and these apparently cannot be co-ordinated. If anybody goes to a place like Crumlin, where there is a big housing area, he will find himself surrounded by Government inspectors looking after all kinds of things—old age pensions, national health insurance, unemployment assistance and, in addition to these, you will find other people distributing writs of ejectment on unemployed people who have got houses there and cannot pay for them. One feels that all these matters are of very great moment, but, in the meantime, if we cannot find any better scheme this may serve.
I should like to support what has been said—I think I am supporting the Minister himself in saying—that we are doing these things at a cost, and that we must all pay. Eventually, in a community like ours the recipients themselves must pay. There is no means of handing out money to certain people and of preventing them from having the pressure come on them ultimately. I think recent experience proves that there is not any such scheme. The Minister told us that there must be extra taxation to meet the cost of this measure. I wonder is there nothing we could do to avert that? Must we have low production, out-of-date agriculture to a considerable extent, and the trappings of a modern State with an immense Civil Service to supervise its dwindling production, with more men on point duty and less traffic to direct? These social services will mean increased taxation and, in the end, we all must pay and, in spite of what it may be easy to say in certain surroundings, if you do depress the conditions of life in this country, you will find it difficult to hold here the kind of person whose services are essential to the country. You are not able, owing to your proximity to England and the freedom with which they can go there, to prevent people going. We have not solved any of our problems and one of the things we cannot do is to depress our standards of remuneration for special services to such a degree that we may lose the specialists themselves.
I agree with what has been said and I do not think I will vote against the measure; but I do think what has been said should be emphasised, and that is that, unless we can increase our production and employment, then this is only a palliative. It is a palliative which we will not have the money to pay for unless we can increase our production and alter the habits of our people so that they will be better able to cope with their own problems, domestic and otherwise.
The Senator went over the whole gamut of Government policy; he dealt with economics and other things, but he left out the Army; he never mentioned the Army.
If Senator Foran is referring to my speech, then that is a monstrous misrepresentation.
The Senator left out the Army.
I did not put in the navy.
Senator Rowlette was very brief and to the point. I think he contributed more in usefulness to this debate than anyone who has spoken up to now, including myself. I should like to refer to some of his remarks. He said he was rather alarmed that no people had taken exception to the possibility of unscrupulous employers taking advantage of children's allowances to depress wages. That aspect of the matter was referred to by me on the Second Reading. I told the House I was quite a modern convert to children's allowances. Hitherto I was opposed to them because of the helplessness of ordinary workers in the country with no trade union protection; there was a feeling that they would be exploited and advantage taken of their income to depress wages. That fear is no longer there. The people for the most part are largely in a position to resist the rapacious employer. The only people who will be really subject to that kind of thing will be the agricultural labourers. Unfortunately, they are unorganised and not in a position to defend themselves as well as they ought to be.
Have they not the Wages Board?
I know there is a Wages Board there.
Do you not know the employer has to pay the statutory wage?
There is a minimum wage.
Have they not inspectors all over the country?
I must apologise to the Senator. I did not hear his speech and I had no intention, if I did do so, of misrepresenting him.
I agree that that matter should be raised and the need of watching this aspect should be observed by the Government. All employers are not the model Christian employers we hear so much about any more than are all workers model and Christian workers. Somebody ought to be there to see that advantage is not taken of the situation by the type of person I have mentioned.
Senator Tierney gave us a good deal of Christian and Catholic philosophy, deplored that we were dealing with this matter in a piecemeal way and called for a national inquiry to co-ordinate all our social services in order that we may get the best possible value from them. With that I am in entire agreement. There is a cancer in our midst, the cancer of unemployment. We have registered at the employment exchanges some 50,000 or 60,000 people. Surely it is the duty of the State to ensure that these people are not allowed to starve, so far as it is humanly possible to avoid starvation. That is a Christian obligation on the State. In addition to the 50,000 or 60,000 people registered at the employment exchanges we have exported between 80,000 and 100,000 young, vigorous people to take up employment in England.
I mention these facts because it has been stated by the Government that we need not look forward to any advance in our social services in the near future. I think the Minister ought to clarify that statement. One imagines the Government are concentrating on post-war planning and, certainly, in any post-war planning they may be contemplating social services should figure very largely. I sincerely hope the Government statement will be clarified, as it has made a considerable number of people very uneasy. They say that children's allowances will be very welcome, very helpful and very necessary, but we may be paying too big a price in another direction if the Government are to shut down on social services because of the amount of money involved in these allowances. I hope the Minister will expand that statement, that we need not look to any development in our social services in the near future because of the enormous cost of children's allowances.
Those of us who live in a real world and are in close touch with its tragic realities must recognise that some help must be given to large families whose want is increased by the number of children that have to be provided for. The social lay-out is such that, for the present, something like that is necessary. We all look forward to, and we all should strive soon to reach, the time when we can achieve the increased production which Senator Hayes stresses, the employment for everybody which Senator Baxter puts before us as our chief aim, and such education as will make people employable—and that is a very important thing—and make the most of their production. That is the happy time at which to aim, but we have a long way to go and there are many people who will fall by the wayside if something is not done to help them.
Most of our social services have come into existence in response to clamant and very urgent calls and possibly that is why they have not been co-ordinated. If we could start from scratch in the ideal world which Senator Tierney seems to think exists, we could have everything planned out in such a way that everybody would be working and producing to the maximum; the country would be giving all it was capable of, and it would not be any great burden on the rest of us to keep the poor and needy people going. But that is not the position. We have to strive towards that aim, and it was well that, in the speeches we have heard, the aim that should be before us was emphasised. In the meantime, we have to deal with a clamant problem. We have to deal with poor children some of whose fathers are unemployed, while others are earning such wages as, with the present cost of living, make it impossible to provide such necessaries as clothes and boots.
There is great need for such a Bill as that which we have before us. I think that it was the Government's recognition of the urgency of the need that made them, more or less, rush this measure. That was, probably, one of the reasons why they had not the commission to which Senator Kingsmill Moore referred. I am quite sure that the Minister would have welcomed such a commission of social workers in touch with the people whom this Bill is intended to benefit and that these social workers could have given valuable help in the framing of the measure. But I can understand that the position was so urgent that action had to be, more or less, hurried. And so we have this measure.
I welcome the Bill, which will help a great many people. However, I have to recognise that it contains some faults. One of these is that family need was not made the qualification for the allowance. There was over-simplification in that respect. So long as people have the requisite number of children, they can get the allowance though they may not be in need of it. That, perhaps, simplifies administration. A certain sum has, however, been fixed-£2,250,000—as the cost of the measure and, if people who do not need the allowance can obtain it, there is, consequently, less left for the people who really need it. If possible, I think it would have been well to make need the criterion under the Bill. That would have involved a means test but I think it would have met the situation in a better way than the method proposed. Another thing which will affect the usefulness of the Bill is the lack of provision to see that the money which will be taken from the pockets of the taxpayers and which will add to the cost of living will be applied to the purpose for which it is intended. I understand that there are difficulties in securing that. I thought a great deal about it but I could not propose any solution. At the same time, we all must recognise that this is a flaw in the Bill. It is a pity to take money from the pockets of earners and pay it to other people without any assurance that it will be spent for the purpose for which it is intended. When I made this point last night, it was pointed out that we should have to question the old age pensioners as to whether they used portion of the money given them as pension to take a "little drop". That is quite a different matter. When you give this family allowance to a man, you give it in trust for another object; there are two parties concerned. When you give the old age pension to a man, it is for himself and, if he prefers a bottle of stout to a loaf, that is not our concern. It is a pity that we do not seem to have thought out any means of securing that the money to be given to a man to help him to rear his family will be applied as intended. I think that there was a moral obligation on us to have devised, if possible, some means of securing that. With those two exceptions, I think the Bill must be welcomed. It will help a great many poor people with large families. While waiting and striving for the ideal world, we must welcome this measure.
This Bill is welcome for two reasons. The first is that it does not contain a means test—a test that, I think, characterises all our other social legislation. Secondly, it will be in the nature of a contribution towards the better health of the nation. It is, I believe, quite true, as Senator Hayes said, that this Bill will not stimulate either the marriage rate or the birth rate to any great extent, but there is one thing we can be sure of— that it will ensure that a great many children in the country in general and in the City of Dublin in particular will be healthier and happier as a result of the additional contribution that will go to necessitous families. I should like to emphasise the point to which reference has already been made by some of my colleagues—the necessity for co-ordination of the social services generally. Even though children's allowances will assist many families, I am afraid that in Dublin, at any rate, people on home assistance may lose somewhat because of deductions from the amount they are at present in receipt of. If the social services were properly co-ordinated, anomalies of this kind would not be possible, because the aim should be to ensure that the income of a family would be sufficient to secure that each child of that family would have such a standard of living as would assure it good health. From my point of view, any standard of living that falls short of that is not a good standard.
As a worker who comes to this House from a rural district, I claim that this Bill is welcome to agricultural workers. I have had occasion at times to visit the families of agricultural workers. A short time ago, I went to the family of an agricultural worker to deliver some money from the St. Vincent de Paul Society. He was earning 36/- a week and he had six children huddled in a very bad house without fire, the children being without clothes or footwear. Yet, they were the children of an agricultural worker earning 36/- a week. His wife told me that she had not the wherewithal to give the six children three substantial meals a day. I welcome the Bill and I congratulate the Minister for Industry and Commerce on coming to the rescue of the workers in the rural areas. We may be told by Senator Baxter that there is a wage board in existence. I admit there is, but Senator Baxter will admit that a wage of 36/- a week for a man with a family of nine or ten to support is altogether inadequate, having regard to the cost of living. It is one of the best days' work done by the Government. Those who have to pay income-tax to provide the 2/6 per week in children's allowances thank the Almighty and All-Powerful God for giving them the money to pay that income-tax to relieve the hungry and suffering poor both in Dublin and in the rural areas. I thank the Government 100 times for giving even 2/6 per child, while I believe they could go further, and I hope they will in times to come.
The Minister has told the Dáil that, when this allowance comes on, there should be no grumbling. I am sure there will not be grumbling, and that the people who are able to pay for this allowance down the country heartily welcome it in all sections of the community. Even the farming community welcome it. I contend that the farmers are well off to-day. There may be some complaining with reason, but the majority of farmers in my county are well-off and never were better off, to my knowledge. I would be glad to see farmers driving in golden chariots, but at the same time I think they ought to recognise that the Government had reason to introduce such a Bill as this. It is one of the best Bills introduced and I hope it will not be the only one. I hope that better Bills will follow and that, in times to come, the Government will see its way to give something more substantial than 2/6—say 7/6 per child.
I think what interests most Senators at the moment is the fact that nobody has accepted the Minister's suggestion to offer an alternative form of spending this money. It is very easy to decry the methods of spending money on social services, but it is very difficult to give constructive solutions or some other method of spending. It would be well, before people begin to criticise the Bill in any sense, that they themselves should offer constructive alternatives. The Minister suggested that he would be prepared to consider any alternative he thought to be more desirable. So far as the expressions of Senators Tierney and Baxter are concerned, I think the Minister himself would agree with them that the dignity of a man is something that should be preserved and that "work for all" is a desirable general principle. The advocacy of "work for all" by Senator Baxter would be entirely accepted by the Minister or by any sane man. It is the best and finest solution, but under the system of economics or economists which we have to-day, it is a solution which is quite impracticable.
While industrialists welcome the Bill from a sociological point of view, there is one reaction that we think it may have on the working classes, through the consequent rise in taxation. The Minister should suggest to his colleague the Minister for Finance that, instead of financing this Bill through indirect taxation, in view of the fact that there has been a colossal increase in deposits in banks, as indicated by the banking returns in the last few weeks, the whole financing should be done through a loan. I have already pointed out that young industries have suffered radically both in making allowances for depreciation of machinery and in finding it hard to make any dividends at all in some cases, due to the very high taxation imposed on them at the present moment. Any addition in the form of indirect taxation will have a defeatist effect on another object of the Minister for Industry and Commerce—the creation of a sound industrial position. I just mention that as a suggestion.
Any of us who can afford to pay income-tax gladly give it to any form of social benefit. While Senator Honan may have a doubt on this matter, I think we should not break the camel's back. Certainly, it will not help to develop Irish industries if, at every development, new taxation is placed on them. Despite the fact that it may to some extent reflect on the dignity of man, as expressed by Senator Tierney himself, it will not solve the economic problem. Generally, we should welcome this Bill from the broad social point of view.
The debate on the Fifth Stage of this Bill has covered a wide field and many aspects of social policy were referred to. I trust the House will not expect me to deal with all the matters to which reference of one kind or another was made. I propose to confine my remarks to the observations which appear to have very direct and immediate relationship with the proposals before the House. It is true, of course, that any project for the expansion of the social security services of the State, any proposal to spend more money on those services, must inevitably give rise to those general considerations of policy to which many Senators have referred.
No doubt, it was that idea which prompted Senator Sir John Keane to suggest we should have a commission of inquiry. I am not quite sure as to what the terms of reference of that commission would be, but, in my own view, a commission of inquiry into social policy in general would be of very little value, as we could not give that commission the scientific data, the reliable information, which would enable it to add substantially to our store of knowledge. I mentioned already that we have never carried out a social survey in this country, we have never investigated in a scientific way the social conditions of our people, either in relation to the geographical areas in which they reside or to their occupations. No doubt, at some time such a survey will be undertaken. It will be elaborate and, perhaps, even a costly business, but the results might well justify the time and money which will be spent upon it.
We have delayed in undertaking such an investigation up to the present, for the simple reason that at no time in recent years have conditions here been such that they could be regarded as stable. Unless there are stable conditions, an investigation carried out may be of little value when the results derived from it come to be published. It has been suggested, however, that we should have had a commission of inquiry before we introduced this Bill. I fail to see what purpose there would be in the establishment of such a commission. So far as the Government knew, every political Party in the State was in favour of the principle of the Bill, while the spokesmen of the churches and of various social organisations had all given expressions of approval to the principle behind it. There was, therefore, for discussion at such a commission, only the question of the amount of money that we would make available for this service and the manner in which the money would be administered.
I feel sure that Senators will recognise the practical impossibility of getting agreement amongst any body of individuals, representing different political interests, on the amount of money that should be provided for a service of this kind. I doubt very much if it is the type of body which should approach it at all. Clearly, the decision as to the amount of money must be taken, in the last resort, by those who have the responsibility of finding the money, that is, by the Government for the time being. The manner in which the money will be spent to achieve the purpose which the Government has in mind, and believe to be desirable, is a question of administration. In my experience, it is very difficult to get people who have not had practical experience of administration of this kind to understand what is involved in the administrative problems that arise inevitably in connection with it.
There has also been a suggestion that we should have investigated the desirability of co-ordinating our existing services. The word "co-ordination" is very frequently used to cover vagueness of thought. It is true, as was said here, that our existing social services have grown up in a somewhat haphazard manner. The illustration was given of a man at sea in a leaky boat. I was never at sea in a leaky boat, but, if I were, I do not know what the practical alternative is to stopping the holes as they appear.
When you got to harbour, you could leave the boat.
Yes, if you contemplate the situation where you can withdraw from the struggle until effective repairs have been made; but surely that is not the position of a Government which has to deal with problems from day to day. They have to remain at sea and, while there may be some alternative to stopping the holes as they appear, a very practical consideration is that, if you do not stop the holes as they appear, you are likely not to be long in the boat.
It is obviously a matter with which the Government must concern itself. The administrative arrangements enforced here are the most efficient and least costly that can be devised. When this Bill came up to be considered in detail by the Government, we did examine the desirability of grouping in one scheme all the children's allowances at present paid under different social services—the children's allowances that are paid to persons drawing benefit under the Unemployment Insurance Act, the Unemployment Assistance Act, the Widows' and Orphans' Pensions Act, and so forth. We came to the conclusion—surprising though it may appear to Senators—that the cheapest and most efficient method of administering this Bill was to superimpose it on all the other Acts and not attempt any such grouping.
At some stage, there might be a recasting of Government responsibility between Ministers, and the adoption of the suggestion which was made here that there should be one Minister in charge of all social services. That suggestion appears desirable on the face of it, but it is not obvious that the advantages which will result will be very substantial. I doubt if they will. In practice, the existing services are worked very largely through combined staffs and it is only in some less important respects that the danger of overlapping appears.
Senator Rowlette appeared to think that, when employers are negotiating rates of wages to be paid to their workers, they take into account the workers' needs. I am quite sure there are individual employers here and there who do. They are the employers who are in a position in which they can easily pass on to the public any increase in their labour charges. The average employer in a competitive industry is concerned with making the best bargain he can for himself. Our economic system has given rise to the institution of the standard wage. Whether it is or is not true that, in the past, employers had regard to the needs of the workers, or whether it is or is not true that, as Senator Tierney said, the Catholic doctrine requires that wages should be related to the needs of the workers, in practice we have the standard wage and, under the standard wage, the needs of individual workers are not taken into account at all. In fact, it is true to say that the average worker in this country is best off when he has finished his apprenticeship and is drawing a full journeyman's wages. He is better off at that time than ever he will be again in the whole of his life. At a later stage, he contracts matrimony and, after matrimony, he has family responsibilities, but he is drawing all the time for his work the standard wage, whatever that may be, and that is related, not to his own needs or his productivity, but to the practice established in the occupation in which he is employed.
It is because we have that system of remunerating workers that it is necessary to devise some such service as this, owing to the want that arises in large families through the inadequacy of the standard wage to meet all the requirements of large families. Nor are these circumstances confined to workers employed for wages. We have in this country a very high proportion of people working on their own account. The amount of income they get from their work is not determined by their needs, but by the productivity of their farms, by what they earn on fishing boats, or by what they earn by any skill they have. In their case, also, responsibility for large families means poverty or hardship unless the income that they can get from the ordinary occupations they are employed in can be supplemented. It is to effect that supplementing of the income of large families that this Bill is designed. It seems to me that the need exists irrespective of whether there is an increase of national productivity by economic measures, or whether we achieve the ideal that Senator Baxter referred to, full employment for all workers seeking employment.
I have been represented as having said that this is the last addition to our social services for a long time. That is not quite what I said. I endeavoured to emphasise the relationship that exists between social policy and economic policy. We cannot allow our social policy to run ahead of our economic development, no more than we should allow our economic policy to develop without regard to the social consequences. The productivity of our country, the extent to which we can add to its wealth by the application of human labour to the national resources available to us determine the national income. We could possibly increase the productivity of this country substantially by the mechanisation of agriculture, by a reversal of the policy of the Land Commission, by the elimination of small farms, and the concentration of farms into large production units, but whether that would be desirable from the social point of view is at least open to question. We might gain economically but the cost of that gain and the social hardship that would be caused by putting a number of people off the land might be more than the gain is worth. The success of our economic policy must determine what our social policy will be. I want to emphasise that we cannot hope to build up here the full system of social protection which many people regard as desirable unless we can as a prior condition make our plans for economic development more successful and get as a result the resources wherewith to do it.
Senator Hayes rightly reminded the Seanad that the Beveridge Plan, which has now been taken as a sort of headline for the social services of all Governments, was made conditional by Sir William Beveridge upon full employment in Great Britain. We can hope in the post-war years to apply our abilities here to the expansion of our material resources and thereby make possible an improvement in our social services. But, so long as we have to mark time in economic development in this country, as we are marking time at the moment, then the proportion of the national income which we can divert to this purpose is limited.
Furthermore, I want members of the Oireachtas to remember that the provision of £2,250,000 for this service implied a decision to spend money on this service rather than on another, and to recognise that, having decided that the maximum amount that could be provided does not exceed that figure, we were precluding ourselves, under present conditions, from making a permanent improvement in the social services in other directions. I emphasise permanent improvement. The Government is adjusting the provision being made for the relief of distress to the development of circumstances during the emergency. Since I spoke last, it has decided, as announced in the Press, to provide a substantial sum of money to increase the provision for old age pensions and widows' and orphans' pensions. That is done, however, as an emergency measure and does not represent any long-term decision. Any long-term decision will have to be related to a long-term economic policy.
It is wrong to conclude that the Government introduced this Bill without a means test because it considered there was some virtue in paying these allowances to all persons whether they needed them or not. That is not altogether the position in fact. I told the Seanad that the whole scheme of children's allowances would come before them in two parts. This Bill represents one part. The other part will come in the Finance Bill, for raising the money to provide the allowances and in the scheme for raising the money there will be provisions to ensure that persons, in the income-tax paying classes would not gain under the scheme at all.
Senator Mrs. Concannon appears to have an idea that if we had a means test in the Bill we could provide more money for those who qualified under that test. I think the reverse might be the case. What the Government in fact decided was that the additional cost of paying the allowances to everyone without a means test, but subject to the adjustments in the income-tax code to which I referred, would be less than the cost of enforcing the means test. The enforcement of a means test involves a great deal of expenditure on costly administrative machinery, and we felt that in the interests of getting the best use for the money we could make available, it was more desirable to pay it out in this way without examination of individual means, rather than set up machinery for such an examination.
I do not want, however, to be taken as expressing a view contrary to that which was referred to in speeches made here, that in the normal course where the Government proposes to raise revenue by taxation for the purpose of relieving need, that there is an obligation on the Government to establish that need does in fact exist. Nor, do I think it unreasonable to expect that those who are applying to the community for assistance in their need will show that, in fact, they require it. Let us be clear, however, that need can arise from a number of causes. I emphasised that in the course of a Second Reading debate, and I want to do it again.
Full employment may remove need arising from one cause. We all desire to see all our people fully occupied, and all the resources of the country fully employed, but, even if we achieved that ideal position, there would still be the necessity for social services. Need can arise through ill-health. The breadwinner of a family may meet with an accident or contract an illness which makes it impossible for him to earn. Need can arise in a family where the breadwinner dies. Need can arise through old age, and there are a number of circumstances where need can be created, and nobody can say that the need was avoidable by the persons concerned. There are, of course, persons who are in need through their own fault. It would be a very wide debate if I were to express views as to the obligations of the community to assist those in need through their own fault, but, even in their cases, there are certain obligations on us to see that they are assisted.
These obligations are discharged through the public assistance authorities at present, and are also discharged through some of these social services to which I referred. If a person over 70 years of age applies for an old age pension he does not have to show that he might have been more thrifty in his early days and could have provided for his old age. Similarly, in the cases of widows and orphans, it is possible that they might have been provided for by the breadwinner of the family. We do not blame the family and deprive them of assistance because the breadwinner did not do that. Even in the cases where it could be argued that the circumstances which made an appeal for assistance necessary were avoidable in the family, we believe that there rests on the community an obligation to assist the destitute.
On the other hand, there are some people who, no matter how much you give them, will become destitute eventually, and for them very little can be done. I doubt very much if it is desirable that we should carry out an elaborate investigation into the manner in which individual families spend their income. It may be argued that unearned income is always demoralising, but it can be no more demoralising when the income is derived from public services than from the proceeds of investments. I am quite certain that a contrary point of view could be put forward.
In an English journal a week ago, I saw it stated that all great advances in science and culture in that country were inspired largely by people who, because they had unearned income, were protected from any anxiety as to their livelihood. That may not be true, but I submit that there are results other than demoralisation possible from unearned income. But, where persons are in want because they are ill, or old, or incapable of work for one reason or another, there is no alternative to giving them unearned income. In so far as they are in want through unemployment, they are not always unemployed because of their own fault. If you cannot put them at work, there is no reason why you should not give them unearned assistance.
That is the general principle, but it has very little relation to this Bill. This particular service will become of more importance to the community, and more people will benefit under it if we get economic progress and, as a result, full employment. However, it has been demonstrated in the course of the discussion that any particular project of this kind is not a rose without thorns. There are economic and social reactions from every change of this character. Some of these we can foresee now; others will become apparent only later on, but, from the examination of the subject which it is possible for us to make, we are satisfied on the whole that the enactment of this measure will have important effects on social conditions.
Question—"That the Bill do now pass"—put and agreed to.
Ordered: That the Bill be returned to the Dáil with one amendment.