Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister for Social and Family Affairs to the House. The Bill is enlightened and progressive social legislation which will be welcomed by those who deal with people with disabilities. Comhairle and the citizens information service are important public services. The thrust of the Bill is to ensure that the service will be expanded and better resourced. Of course when informing people of their rights, nothing beats local radio discussions of points relating to particular categories of entitlements.

The concept of advocacy goes beyond the provision of information, which is necessary in cases of persons suffering a disability. The term "disability" covers a host of different circumstances and conditions. If this advocacy proves successful, will there be a case for extending the concept to other parts of the social welfare system? I can already hear the objection from colleagues in both Houses that politicians would be doing themselves out of a job. I do not believe that any more than the liberalisation of the taxi system in Dublin put existing licence holders out of a job. As many and as varied a range of workers in particular fields is required.

Some ask what is constituency work when a citizens information centre would do the job nicely? Public representatives do not just act as conveyors of information but as advocates with the system. There is a further distinction which even the advocacy role will not cover. Problems, not just individual ones, brought to the attention of legislators allow them to highlight some defect or gap in the system. Legislators also have more direct access than ordinary citizens to Ministers and Departments in their decision-making capacities.

I get very impatient with the conventional, metropolitan, editorial wisdom that legislators should just legislate and not make representations on behalf of individuals. If one thinks through the logic of this, under this notion public representatives would be cut off from their constituents. It is healthy to listen to people's problems.

I speak for myself as well as my colleagues in saying that many of the issues we raise on the Order of Business are problems that are brought to our attention by constituents. It is rarely the case that they are issues that affect only the individuals in question and nobody else. In many cases, they are problems that affect a wide variety of people and which should be brought to our attention. In terms of legislation and the way in which any administrative system operates, there are always questions of judgment and margins of discretion. In that capacity, a public representative acts as an advocate.

It is easy for a correspondent to The Irish Times, living in the leafy suburb of Glenageary or Foxrock, to deplore clientilism and constituency representations and to insist that legislators should be in the Chamber from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Such persons live only six miles from the centre of power and may have civil servants as neighbours. Living in the capital, one has easier access to many facilities. There are many others, however, who live a long way from the capital and do not regularly encounter senior civil servants let alone Ministers. Such people may want help in communicating their needs and concerns to the places where decisions are made, which is mainly, though not exclusively, Dublin.

One of the positive aspects of our political system is the accessibility of public representatives, from the highest officeholder down, to the public. In some more heavily populated countries and under different political systems, the people who make decisions are impossibly remote. This is a positive feature rather than a deplorable one and something we should retain. A substantial bulk of the representations we receive come under the departmental responsibilities of the Minister for Social and Family Affairs and involve people who are in a relatively disadvantaged position.

I draw Members' attention to a fine statement by the former Taoiseach, Seán Lemass, in 1963. It represents the very opposite of the philosophy often — wrongly, in my view — attributed to him in the context of his comments on a rising tide lifting all boats. The quotation is so eloquent that I have included it on the back of my visiting card:

All human experience bears out the lesson that social justice must be organised, that governments have the duty to intervene to protect the common good of all citizens without preference for any individual or group, although giving more attention to the less fortunate citizens who are less able to defend their rights and assert their legitimate claims, and that unless this is done, indefensible inequalities persist and tend to become more widespread, including the too ready assumption that social benefits would follow automatically economic achievements and that they would be fairly shared amongst our community.

Defending the rights and asserting the legitimate claims of the disadvantaged is what this legislation is all about. Criticising the "too ready assumption that social benefits would follow automatically economic achievements" is the diametric opposite of the notion that a rising tide lifts all boats.

This Bill is fairly and squarely within the spirit of the enlightened social philosophy of Seán Lemass. I congratulate the Minister on it.