I move:
That the Hospital Sterile Supplies Board (Establishment) Order, 1965 (Amendment) Order, 1965 be and is hereby annulled.
The motion in the name of Senator Garret FitzGerald and myself seeks to annul Statutory Instrument No. 157 of 1965. This is a Statutory Instrument notice of which has been issued directly to every member and which has the force of law unless it is annulled by this House, or by the other House, within seven sitting days. This motion has been moved not so much in criticism of what has been done or what is intended to be done under this particular Statutory Instrument but rather in criticism of the lack of information which accompanied the making of this particular Statutory Order and the setting up of this particular Statutory Body. The motion is put forward not, as I say, in order to assert that what is proposed is of necessity bad and accordingly the order should be annulled but rather that there is far too little information available to the members of the House to enable them to allow this particular Statutory Instrument to pass into law without some questions being raised on it.
This particular Statutory Instrument, which is entitled the Hospital Sterile Supplies Board (Establishment) Order, 1965 (Amendment) Order, 1965 is, as its title implies, an amendment of a previous Statutory Instrument—Statutory Instrument No. 1 of 1965. Both these orders have been made by the Minister for Health under the Health (Corporate Bodies) Act, 1961. I should like to say straight away that in my opinion the 1961 Health Corporate Bodies Act was a good Act. Prior to the passing of that Act companies could be established under the Companies Act under which the Minister for Health could provide special health finance. Since the passing of the 1961 Act the Minister, instead of using the Companies Act, which was hardly drafted or enacted for such a purpose, can establish such corporate bodies by order. The 1961 Act gives a firmer statutory foundation for such bodies and gives more Parliamentary control over the establishment and the operation of such bodies in dealing with health matters.
I want to emphasise that I think the Act is a good one and I welcome the fact that the Minister has in several instances acted under this 1961 Act. What we are faced with here today is a particular order, which amends a previous order. The first point I should like to raise is that orders amending orders always raise a certain amount of suspicion in my mind. I remember a story, which has been told in many forms, concerning what is alleged to be army routine in accounting for loss of valuable equipment. One version of the story goes somewhat like this. On particular manoeuvres a water-carrier was, through gross negligence, lost over a cliff and the person who was responsible felt that this negligence would leave him open to reprimand and possibly courtmartial for the negligent loss of valuable equipment. However, an older soldier was able to advise him that there was an established procedure for dealing with this matter. It was that he should report to the effect that on manoeuvres he had lost over a cliff not a water-carrier but a water-bottle and send in a full and detailed report about the loss of the water-bottle. Several days later he should then send an amending memorandum saying for "bottle" read "carrier". Subsequently, the two documents would never be brought together in any file and the consequences the soldier feared would not follow.
I think it would be a bad thing if the whole machinery of legislation would allow itself to get into the position that an order is made, as the order was made in January last, establishing a particular body and then six months later in July a new amending order is made which seeks to amend that particular order. Remembering, as I say, this old story of the army procedure I am immediately suspicious and curious.
When the original 1961 Act passed through the Seanad on the 27th July, 1961—shall we say this particular Bill was a product of the dog days of legislation—we find the Minister for Health referring to the type of body which would have been set up under the Bill if it had existed previously. He mentioned in particular—the Mental Research Council, the National Blood Transfusion Association, the National Mass Radiography Association, the National Rehabilitation Centre, the Dublin Rheumatism Clinic and Saint Luke's Hospital. These are all bodies of a certain type exercising a specific health function, a direct medical function. These were the types of bodies which the Minister mentioned when he was piloting this particular Bill through the Seanad.
In Statutory Instrument No. 1 of 1965 there was set up a corporate body for the provision of sterile requisites for hospitals in the Dublin area. This particular service is certainly one which, while it is not directly medical in the sense that those which I have cited in quotation of the Minister were, was ancillary to a medical service. I do not think there would be much comment, query or call for explanation in regard to it.
In the present order made in July and which is the subject of the motion, there was an extension of the functions of this particular body to something further. There was an extension of its functions to cover laundry, supply of linen, bedclothes, clothing and other articles. Here, we find an extension of this original Sterile Requisites Board to cover a function which is even less directly medical; which is, I think, ancillary to the ancillary service of medicine and surgery. There is a call here for an explanation. A change such as this, with an extension of these powers, should have been accompanied by an adequate explanation on the part of the Minister for Health.
The members of the House all received, as I received, an explanatory note which was attached to Statutory Instrument No. 157, an explanatory note which explains nothing. It is on account of the deficiency in this explanatory note that this motion has been put down, asking for a reasonably full explanation from the Minister for Health as to the circumstances in which the functions of this particular board should be extended and as to the precise nature of the work that can be done. It is necessary and salutary that this explanation should be given and that this discussion should take place here in the Seanad today.
It may well be that what is proposed by the Minister under this statutory instrument is well justified but we want to be careful lest we do not proceed step by step and precedent by precedent from the original intention of setting up bodies to provide direct medical health services, until we find bodies set up under the same Act for services which would ordinarily be provided by people in private business or might well be provided by the hospitals themselves. I think we need an explanation as to what is the particular demand for this laundry service and what are the reasons which the Minister for Health considers that the existing services are unable to supply it.
I should like to mention a few further points in regard to this order. One is that there is a rather curious provision in it providing that the board, which is set up to run this particular statutory body, instead of meeting and going to the trouble of drawing up and going through resolutions is relieved of that necessity. All they have to do is sign their names at the end of a memorandum under section 5 of the statutory instrument which we are now discussing. We find in that section and I quote:
A memorandum signed by all the members for the time being of the board shall be effective for all purposes as a resolution of the board passed at a meeting of the board, duly convened, held and constituted.
I should like to know for what reason does the Minister for Health think it proper that the board of this particular body which he is setting up need not meet, that it can act merely by appending its members' several signatures at the bottom of a memorandum.
There is further provision whereby the board might delegate some of its functions. These might be delegated to some sub-committee which would be quite all right but in view of the previous provision in regard to the signing of a memorandum, I am a little anxious here lest, perhaps, the board will not meet at all but will merely sign memoranda.
I await with interest what the Minister for Industry and Commerce has to say on behalf of the Minister for Health in regard to the demand for this service, the extent to which he has satisfied himself that the existing bodies cannot supply it, what his explanation is in regard to the particular way in which the board is now allowed to carry out its functions and whether he has any intention of setting up similar bodies of this kind. Are we to have a statutory instrument in October to say that this body as well as doing laundry can also do window-cleaning, another following up in December that it can do chimney cleaning as well? We should like to know where this procedure will stop. On the face of it the order is not bad but this motion is the only procedure available to us whereby we can give the Minister an opportunity of coming in and persuading us that it is in order.