National Health Insurance.

Part of Government of Ireland Act, 1920. – in the House of Commons at on 27 February 1922.

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Photo of Mr T.P. O'Connor Mr T.P. O'Connor , Liverpool Scotland

Very well, my hon. Friend the Speaker of the Northern Parliament says "No." I would like to ask him a few questions on that point. Is it or is it not the fact that all these insurance bodies, Orange, Presbyterian, and Catholic, have, with great vehemence, protested? I trust no political heat will be imported into this matter, but that the House will give its verdict on plain business grounds. The Chief Secretary has learnt a great deal in his time, but perhaps there is one thing the right hon. Gentleman has never learnt, and that is about insurance—except, of course, the matter of his own personal insurance. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that, alert and quick as is his mind, he will find this one of the most difficult of all problems of learned society. I was speaking to a big insurance man the other day, who had been 40 years in the business, and he said that even now he was learning something more every day. When you break up a large complicated machine like that of insurance, you are dealing with something much more difficult than you anticipate at the start. Insurance is one of the most delicate machines in the world conducted by men of very great skill, regulated on the narrow and difficult margin of averages, and, therefore, a machine which, above all others, being so delicate, ought to be left untouched by the Government. These men belong to Orange Societies, Presbyterians and Catholics, and they know this business, and with one common assent, forgetting all their differences, political and religious, all these heads of insurance companies in Ireland protest against this provision. All the insurance experts of England also protest against this breaking up of Irish insurance as being very dangerous, not only in Ireland but also to those associated with Irish insurance in England. That is my main objection.

The Chief Secretary always does drag a political argument into a business proposition. I daresay the right hon. Gentleman is in some difficulty with the rival Governments in Ireland, and if he gives something with one hand he naturally feels called upon to give something with the other hand to the opposite side. But could he not wait? There are certain common things in Ireland that every man must agree must be the common work of some common body which has authority to act for all parts of Ireland. Take the case of the railway workers' dispute. Recently the Minister of Labour in the Northern Parliament met the Minister of Labour in the Provisional Government, and the result was that between them they were able to fashion out an agreement which restored peace to Ireland and brought the railwaymen back to their work and thus saved Ireland from a great disaster. Why are the insurance men of the six northern counties and those representing the rest of Ireland not allowed to meet together and arrange a common system which would not break up the machinery? We all know that there is no kind of accountancy more difficult than that which deals with great sums of money which is derived from small subscriptions, and very often in such cases when the capital involved is over a million, even experts feel bound to leave the accountancy to the Bank of England which has had experience in these matters. Anyone who has been connected with industrial insurance knows that when the amount is gigantic the work of accountancy is extremely difficult.

Apply that principle to health insurance. How are these men in their offices in Dublin to reach their various clients in Belfast and the other towns of Ulster? How are they to reshape all their accounts? There are towns in Ireland which are in two counties. My own native town is in the county of Roscommon in the province of Connaught, and the other part of the town, separated only by a bridge, is in the province of Leinster; and you find the same problems of geography all over Ireland. An insurance company may not know whether a man lives in the centre of Strabane and in one county, or just a few yards away and in another county. My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary says that by the Act this division could not take place until the Parliament of Southern Ireland was functioning. Why did not the right hon. Gentleman wait? Supposing the Boundary Commission makes considerable changes in the present boundaries—or some changes? Supposing a portion of Tyrone is taken away, or a portion of Fermanagh? You will have to reconsider the whole question.

There are two ways of approaching this unhappy division between Ulster and the rest of Ireland. One of the ways, the way which I most favour, is by the two Governments finding as much ground for common action as possible; and every man hopes, and most men foresee, that when passions are dying down—the horrible passions of to-day—there will be more and more inclination on the part of the shrewd business men of Belfast and the rest of that portion of Ireland, to find as much common ground as possible between the two Parliaments. In the face of that prospect the right hon. Gentleman throws into chaos the whole national health insurance business in Ireland, and puts an additional obstacle in the way, instead of smoothing the path for that unification of the general powers of Ireland which every patriotic Irishman desires.