OUTDOOR RELIEF (IRELAND) BILL. (Hansard, 3 August 1898)

§ MR. DILLON

Upon the Second Reading of this Bill the right honourable Gentleman the Attorney General stated that the expenditure of relief in Ireland would be, roughly, about £60,000, and it is proposed to charge about £10,000 of that £60,000 to the distressed unions. Now, the object of this clause is to prevent that being done, and if it is added to the Bill the Government will necessarily be obliged to pay the whole of the money. I know perfectly well what the right honourable Gentleman the Attorney General will say, and that is, if this Bill is not passed the money expended for the relief of the poorer unions will have to be paid out of the Guardians' pockets, but I think the Government ought to pay the whole of the £60,000 instead of charging £10,000 to these unions. I am astonished at the attitude of the Government in this matter. I am surprised that the House does not give expression to a strong feeling of disappointment at the way in which they have dealt with it. Nobody can accuse the Government of being unduly liberal in the relief of the distress in Ireland They have been obliged to pay £60,000 in relief works, and up to the present the invariable course has been that the cost of relieving distress has been borne by the Imperial Exchequer, and certainly not by the poorest of the distressed districts. There has been, however, an attempt made in the present Session to start an entirely new policy, which consists of throwing a portion of the cost of relief upon these wretched districts. leave it to the sense of justice of the honourable Members of this House to say, is there any rhyme or reason in throwing £10,000, out of the £60,000 which it has been found necessary to spend in relief, upon the wretched rate payers of these distressed districts, who if they have not suffered from actual starvation themselves, have been suffering from a condition bordering upon starvation; the consequence of which has 1114 been that the capacity for the payment of rates has been enormously lessened in the case of the ratepayers who have not actually been reduced to the lowest extremity of starvation. In order to carry out their new policy the Government are proposing now a system, of throwing upon these unfortunate unions a share of this expenditure. Now, there is one clause in the Bill to which the right honourable Gentleman the Attorney General referred, which is an improvement, and that is clause 3, which gives power to the guardians of these unions, in case they should find it impossible to produce their share of the expenditure in one year, to borrow the necessary sum and spend it over a period; but I condemn the whole policy of the Government, because they feel that they cannot, in common justice, throw the expenditure upon the unions and enforce the payment in one particular year, and therefore they introduce this clause to enable the Guardians to borrow the money and spread it over a period. I think it is very unreasonable. No doubt it would be better than enforcing the payment of the sum in one year, but it is obvious from that very provision that the Government feel that they are not right in the line they have taken in saddling these unfortunate districts with this expenditure. But this has been done in pursuance of the policy of the Government. If the Government refuses to accept my clause I shall not at this hour go to a Division, but I do urge that they should look carefully into the financial state of these unions before they decide that they shall pay this charge. I say it is a cruel and monstrous thing to condemn these unfortunate and unhappy people to a long struggle against bankruptcy and insolvency, and I do urge the Government to examine carefully the conditions of the unions before they enforce this policy.

MR. BALFOUR

As the honourable Gentleman has stated that he will not take a Division at this hour of the evening I shall not discuss the question; but I think I ought to point out to him that his provision is inconsistent with the Bill we have already passed. The principle underlying the Amendment of the honourable Gentleman has been discussed 1115 at great length, upon no less than three previous occasions, and upon each occasion he has taken the sense of the House upon it. I do not think, under the circumstances, that we should take the sense of the House upon this question for the fourth time to-night. I will, however, state for the satisfaction of the honourable Gentleman that the Irish Government are quite willing to undertake to make a careful investigation into the financial conditions of the unions before any conclusion is arrived at. I hope that will satisfy tin hoourable Gentlemen, and I will say that, at all events, the provisions of this Bill are to be, and will be, carried out with the utmost regard to the conditions of the unions concerned.