Catholic Action and the Development of the Irish Welfare State in the 1930s and 1940s

Catholic Action and the Development of the Irish Welfare State in the 1930s and 1940sAuthor(s): Adrian KellySource: Archivium Hibernicum, Vol. 53 (1999), pp. 107-117Published by: Catholic Historical Society of IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25484177 .

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CATHOLIC ACTION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IRISH WELFARE STATE IN THE 30s AND 40s

Adrian Kelly

Catholic action and the development of the Irish welfare state in thel930s and 1940s

Introduction The focus of this paper is the interaction between two separate but overlapping ideologies in the first decades of independent Ireland, namely, the development of the welfare state and the rise of 'Catholic action'. In particular the paper examines the application of 'Catholic action' to the concept of welfareism; the

reaction of the church to the practical political initiatives in terms of the devel

oping welfare state; the complexity of church thinking and the absence of a

unified approach to the issue of welfareism; and the interaction of church

teaching and government policy. In policy terms the focus is on the publication of Sir William Beveridge's

Social insurance and allied services in December 1942, the debate over chil dren's allowances in the mid 1940s, the publication of the Irish government's

White paper containing government proposals for social security in 1949 and the subsequent Social Welfare Act, 1952.

The Welfare State At the outset it is necessary to define the terms 'Catholic action' and 'welfare state'. In the broadest sense, 'welfare' implies 'well-being', the welfare state

being concerned with the social and therefore the economic well-being of its citizens. From this 'basic requisite'1 comes a vast array of definitions and cate

gories of welfare state, a diversity which has its origins in the impetus behind and influences on the rise of a set of policies which allowed the term 'welfare state' to be applied to any given political system. The concept is culture-bound:

what constitutes welfare in Catholic west European countries varies from that of the Lutheran north European countries, welfare being 'dependent on the values of a particular society'.2 Even within societies the concept is an organic one.

Despite the complexity of definition, there are a number of basic ingredi ents and a generally accepted historical genesis to the welfare state. Spoken of

by European academics as 'an entire historical era in western society'3, it is a twentieth century phenomenon with its genesis lying in the final decades of the nineteenth century, the Bismarckian reforms of the 1880s and the societal transformation which necessitated them being considered the beginning of the

'present state in the development of the welfare state'.4 Most importantly the German reforms heralded a period of direct, national, state intervention in the economic lives of citizens through the introduction of insurance schemes for all

employees. By 1889 this included insurance against sickness, accident, old age and invalidity.

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ARCHIVIUM HIBERNICUM

It was a half-century after the Bismarckian reforms before the term 'welfare state' was coined, it being first used in Norway in 1939. In English, its first

usage is generally attributed to the archbishop of York, Sir William Temple, who used the term in a publication of 1941. Temple viewed the 'welfare state' as the strongest opposition to what he termed the 'power state' of Nazi

Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union.5 Others view the welfare state as 'a

compromise between capitalism and socialism'.6 The term was subsequently listed in the New York Times Index in 1949 while in 1955 the term appeared for the first time in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Analysts agree that the basic elements which constitute the welfare state are

equality of opportunity, income maintenance and income distribution, the latter two being described by, among others, Peter Flora, a most eminent contributor to the debate, as 'the historical core' of the welfare state, something which 'is

very unlikely to change substantially' ? In Ireland, and on the basis of income maintenance being one of 'the princi

pal characteristics when defining the concept of "welfare state'",8 a number of

periods can be identified in terms of social welfare policy marking the evolu tion from 'state welfare' to 'welfare state', i.e. the move from individual and restricted policies dealing with specific social problems and with a minimum of

cross-referencing to a set of co-ordinated policies, centrally administered, national in application and comprehensive in character. These phases may

loosely be said to date from the poor law and the introduction of the Old Age Pensions Act, 1908 and the National Health Insurance Act, 1911 prior to inde

pendence, to the institutionalisation of the welfare state with the passing of the Social Welfare Act, 1952. While the first decade of independence was one of

marked conservatism and retrenchment in terms of social welfare policy, the

period 1932-42 was one of expansion. The most important initiatives in this

period were the introduction of unemployment assistance in 1933 and widows' and orphans' pensions in 1935. The spirit in which these reforms were intro duced was as important as what they achieved in practice. By the late 1930s the initial enthusiasm of Fianna Fail governments was replaced by a return to a

more conservative approach to social policy reminiscent of the early days of Cumann na nGaedheal. However, developments in Britain, particularly the

publication of the Beveridge Report in 1942, precipitated a new and prolonged debate in Ireland on social security, resulting in the final abandonment of poor law ideologies for more progressive social thinking. Indeed the Beveridge

Report was the single most important influence in the formation of a co-ordi nated and expanded set of social policies leading to the institutionalisation of the welfare state in independent Ireland. Although a British report, it was fol lowed in Ireland by the establishment of the Department of Social Welfare in 1947 while an inter-departmental committee on social services established in

May 1945 concluded that 'the state is entering an era in which there will be an

increasing demand for the development and expansion of social services'.9 The establishment of the Departments of Social Welfare and Health in 1947 result ed in the first co-ordination of social welfare policies. Prior to this the

Department of Local Government and Public Health had responsibility for the administration of old age and blind pensions, widows' and orphans' pensions and national health insurance while the Department of Industry and Commerce

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administered unemployment insurance, unemployment assistance and chil dren's allowances. The 1947 legislation was followed by the institutionalisa tion of the welfare state with the publication of a white paper in 1949 and the

subsequent Social Welfare Act, 1952 resulting in the co-ordination, consolida tion and expansion of income maintenance and distribution policies. Significantly in this period the development of welfare policies enjoyed cross

party support, something which had not existed prior to the 1940s. The focus here is the extent to which Catholic action and the developing

welfare state impacted upon each other during the 1930s and 1940s, decades which saw the strenuous development of both ideologies.

Catholic Social Teaching According to Joan Higgins in her book States of welfare: comparative analysis in social policy (Oxford, 1981), 'the overriding importance of the church's atti tude to welfare issues',10 particularly in Catholic countries, is central to any

investigation of the welfare state, and the presence of a strong Catholic phalanx undoubtedly had a crucial impact on the social welfare debate in independent Ireland. The church became particularly involved in the debate on the develop

ment of the welfare state, a phenomenon viewed benignly by some Catholic writers and opposed by others on the basis of its similarity with the totalitarian state.

Why did the church concern itself with social legislation? Certainly there was no inevitability of involvement. Rather, the Irish Roman Catholic hier

archy, finding its feet and a renewed confidence from the turn of the twentieth

century was in a very strong position to influence whatever it wished to, and the publication of papal encyclicals on social policy issues provided them with the ideology in the form of 'Catholic action'. While the Catholic church in Ireland began to focus on 'Catholic action' in the 1920s, it was the early 1930s before the Catholic social movement, the major element of 'Catholic action', became a very significant part of the debate on Irish social policy, coinciding with the first period of expansion in Ireland in terms of social welfare. Its phi losophy was based on the papal encyclicals, in particular Rerum Novarum,

published in 1891, and Quadragesimo Anno, published in 1931 to commemo

rate the fortieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum. Rerum Novarum, which earned Pope Leo XIII the title of 'socialist pope'11

in some circles, was the papal response to the process of 'modernisation'. Referred to in English as the encyclical 'on the condition of the worker', its stated aim was to provide guidelines within which 'the misery and wretched ness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class'n might be addressed. Above all it forcefully rejected the socialist idea of the intervention ist state; 'the contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and household is a

great and pernicious error".13 Such intervention could only be tolerated in the case of 'extreme necessity'.14 Advising the merits of 'frugal living',15 the

encyclical stressed the importance of Christian charity which, the encyclical said, could not and should not be substituted by state-centralised relief. The

encyclical was unequivocal on what was termed 'the heroism of charity'.16 In

109




conclusion it may be said that Rerum Novarum preached private charity in

place of state support, and directly cut across what became the interventionist

philosophy of the welfare state.

Quadragesimo Anno, Pope Pius XI's encyclical on 'the reconstruction of the social order', was a more in-depth analysis and application of Catholic social

teaching. Dismissing both liberalism and socialism, and individualism and col

lectivism, it made a distinction between the idle and deserving poor, condemning those unwilling to work and quoting the apostle: 'if any man will not work nei ther let him eat'.17 Pius emphasised the centrality of Christian charity, the

encyclical rejecting all forms of state-centralised social policy and advocating in its stead syndicalism or corporatism (or, as it was to become known in Ireland in the 1930s and 1940s, vocationalism).18 The encyclical concluded by saying that 'no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist'.19

While the impact of Rerum Novarum in Ireland had been minimal, the impact of Quadragesimo Anno among official Catholic circles was enormous. It was

immediately adopted by the Irish Catholic hierarchy as the firm foundation for all social action. Extracts were to be found in a number of government depart

ment files, one file dealing specifically with the encyclical.20 As previously noted its publication came at a time when the Catholic church in Ireland was per

haps at its strongest and most influential, a fact witnessed by the estimated one

million people who attended the pontifical high mass in the Phoenix Park on the occasion of the 31st International Eucharistie Congress in June 1932.

Preparation for the 'intensive study of the social question',21 something urged in the concluding remarks of Quadragesimo Anno, was given priority by the Irish clergy. A 'regular course of social study' had been 'inserted by the Irish bishops in the programme of religious knowledge for the secondary school' by 1932.22 In July 1937 the Catholic hierarchy established a Chair of

Catholic Sociology and Catholic Action at Maynooth, endowed by the Knights of Columbanus. Several Catholic groups dedicated themselves to the study of the papal encyclicals and expounded the virtues and approaches contained in them. An Rioghacht (The League of the Kingship of Christ), established in 1926 in response to Leo XIII's encyclical, has been described as 'an important

mainspring in the intellectual drive behind Catholic action in Ireland'23 and was

specifically dedicated to the study and propagation of Catholic social princi ples. Some years earlier the Central Catholic Library had been opened in

Dublin, an important source of information on Catholic social reconstruction. Meanwhile groups like the Catholic Social Study Circle, established in 1937 by

the O'Connell Schools Union in Dublin,24 became more common-place. 'To

promote among Irish diocesan clergy the study of the church's social teach

ing'25 the Christus Rex Society was established at a meeting of newly-ordained priests in Maynooth in September 1941. Outside Dublin, Muintir na Tire, established in November 1931 by Canon John Hayes of Tipperary, was found ed as 'an honest attempt to bring Catholic sociology from the text books to the cross-roads'.26

The church's response to 'Beveridgeism' The vigour with which Catholic social teaching was pursued by the church would inevitably lead to an interaction between it and the developing social

110




welfare policies of the state. A source of particular conflict lay in the concept of

'private charity' as expounded in Catholic social teaching and state interven

tion, the central tenet of the welfare state. The dynamic interaction can clearly be seen in the period following the publication of Sir William Beveridge's Social insurance and allied services in December 1942 which was followed in

Ireland in 1949 by a government White paper containing government propos als for social security. The reaction of the Catholic church to both documents, which were crucial in the context of developing the Irish welfare state, pro vides an insight into the strength and forcefulness of the church's convictions

in regard to social legislation and the at times diverging opinions among Catholic writers. While such writers were guided by a similar set of principles as laid down in Quadragesimo Anno in particular, this divergence makes the

suggestion that there was a unified approach to social issues in church circles more than a little erroneous. Indeed the direct relevance of the encyclicals was

called into question in December 1941 by Bishop William MacNeely of

Raphoe in the context of serious poverty and in particular the lack of housing:

We may discuss encyclicals as long as we like and the various remedies

suggested, but until we get suitable housing for our people it will be

impossible to make any decent progress whatever in solving our social

problems.27

However, such a statement by a Catholic writer calling into question the practi cal value of the encyclicals was rare, if not unique, and the point of departure for Catholic interpretation of the papal encyclicals was the role of 'charity' and

'justice'. Exponents of Catholic action were agreed that Catholic charity was

eminently more desirable than state-centralised relief; however, it was also

agreed that 'justice' was due to everybody within the state. Whether 'justice' included the provision of income maintenance by the state in the absence of

employment or in the case of ill-health led to a complexity in the attitude

among Catholic commentators. Two of the main writers giving form to the Catholic church's views on the

Beveridge Report and the Irish government's white paper of 1949 were P?ter McKevitt and Cornelius Lucey. McKevitt was appointed first Chair of Catholic

Sociology and Catholic Action at Maynooth, a position he held until 1953. He

published numerous papers on Catholic approaches to 'the social question' and in 1944 the Catholic Truth Society published his book The Plan of Society

which formed the basis of McKevitt's course in sociology at St. Patrick's

College, Maynooth. Lucey held the chair of Philosophy and Political Theory in

Maynooth from 1929-1950, after which he was appointed coadjutor bishop of Cork and subsequently bishop in 1951. Both Lucey and McKevitt were prag matists and on the publication of the Beveridge Report they were far from dis

missive, despite government attempts at the time to portray the Catholic

response as essentially negative and therefore supportive of the government's opposition to the principles of Beveridgeism.

The principle of the Beveridge report was the abolition of want through the

provision of income security, mainly through compulsory social insurance. From an ideological view point Beveridge described his report as leaning 'nei ther towards socialism nor towards capitalism', but rather a blueprint for deal

111




ing with the 'five giant evils of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness'.28 The report received widespread press coverage in Irish newspapers, the constant and immediate thread running through the analysis being the desir

ability of adopting a similar scheme in Ireland. Catholic commentators would have been well aware of this slant on popular analysis in the Irish press and there would have been an awareness that their comments had direct relevance to the Irish context.

It was perhaps Lucey who best evaluated the huge appeal of the Beveridge report in Britain:

It was radical enough for the socialists; it was moderate enough for the

conservatives; it was complimentary enough in references to the Soviet

security system for the communists; it promised the working man what he had dreamt of but hardly dared to hope for; and it estimated an initial cost not so astronomical as to antagonise the Chancellor of the

Exchequer or unduly alarm the industrialists.29

He saw the plan as presenting more of a challenge to the Irish government than to Irish Catholicism, the only challenge to the latter being that the report was a

step towards rather than away from totalitarianism: 'However, one step, or even a few steps towards totalitarianism, though dangerous, were not disas trous.. . the plan did not bring them halfway on the road to Moscow'.30

Equally, Peter McKevitt wrote that 'the good points of the scheme are obvi

ous', welcoming 'the expression of the principle that the welfare and security of the worker are put in the first place'.31 However, he was obviously more

worried by the prospect of the omnicompetent state than Lucey, saying that 'totalitarianism may come gradually like the flow of the tide, and the series of

surrenders mount up until our freedom and spiritual independence have van

ished'.32 It was a point further emphasised by another frequent and well-known contributor to the debate, Rev. E. J. Coyne, S.J., who saw the ever-growing dependence of people on the state as leaving the way open for the state to dic tate to its citizens 'their way of life, of worship, of thought, of speech and of

work'.33 The other danger in such schemes according to Coyne was that people were 'liable to become morally flabby.... There is a danger that certain types of social services may sap and weaken the moral fibre of citizens'.34

The church's response to Irish initiatives Overall it may be said that the Beveridge report received a cautious welcome from the eminent members of the Irish Catholic clergy who concerned them selves with social policy issues. In Lucey's words, Ireland 'cannot afford to

ignore the report' and if successful in Britain '[Ireland] must perforce provide something just as good, if not better'.35 However, when the Irish government set about introducing the first comprehensive scheme of social security in reac tion to Beveridgeism the Catholic church became markedly less receptive, and

dogmatic conservatism replaced the Christian pragmatism expressed earlier by Lucey and McKevitt in the context of Beveridgeism. The problem seemed to be that, although commentary in Ireland concerning Beveridgeism centred on

the application of the report to the Irish state, discussion of the report by Irish

112




Catholic commentators was an intellectual exercise. The report was, after all,

produced for Britain and as such could be debated in a detached and scientific manner. However, the development of welfare policies by the Irish government would have a practical effect and perhaps this goes some way towards explain ing the change in emphasis among Catholic writers. The winds of change were first evident in the church's reaction to the publication in 1945 by Dr. John

Dignan, Bishop of Clonfert, of Social Security: outlines of a scheme of nation al health insurance. Known popularly as 'Eire's Beveridge Plan', the three

underlying principles of Dignan's document were the establishment of a

Department for Health and Social Services and the decentralisation and co

ordination of all social services. Describing the system then in existence as

reeking with 'destitution, pauperism and degradation', the Dignan plan provid ed for the total abolition of the remaining poor law services such as public assistance and envisaged a new scheme incorporating 90 per cent of the popu lation. Among other things the plan provided for improvements in the rates of

widows' and orphans' pensions, blind pensions, old age pensions, unemploy ment insurance, families' (or children's) allowances and workmen's compensa tion. The plan was framed along vocational lines, suggesting the newly co ordinated policies should be administered by a revamped national health insur ance society with central and regional committees on which the church should be represented.36 On the issue of the state becoming increasingly involved in the lives of its citizens Dignan was pragmatic: T suppose the state must step in and assist but the less it interferes with the rights of the family the better'.37

As in the case of the Beveridge report, the government strongly criticised

Dignan's plan. However, in the current context it is interesting to note that

despite its portrayal in the national and provincial press as an inherently Christian and positive document, none of Dignan's colleagues in the hierarchy publicly supported the plan. Neither did Irish Ecclesiastical Record or Studies

carry the same analysis of the plan which had earlier greeted the Beveridge report. The winds of change were indeed blowing.

The immediate changes precipitated in Ireland by the discussion following publication of the Beveridge Report were the introduction of children's allowances in 1944 and the establishment of separate Departments of Health and Social Welfare in 1947. This was followed by the Social Welfare Act, 1948, the publication of a white paper on social security in 1949 and the Social

Welfare Act, 1952, the formulation of which was the result of the efforts of all the D?il parties to a greater or lesser extent. It contained several positive aspects of the British National Insurance Act, 1946, and of the Beveridge

Report, and was a crucial achievement in the context of the Irish welfare state,

something not lost on Dr. James Ryan, the Minister for Health and Social

Welfare, who commented: 'Suppose it does. Suppose it does aim at creating a

welfare state. Is there anything particularly reproachful about that?'38 In an

attempt to bring on board the Catholic Hierarchy the Minister for Social Welfare at the time, William Norton, under whose direction the white paper of

1949 was drawn up, sent an advance copy of the paper to all the bishops of Ireland. Apart from the reply of Archbishop John D'Alton of Armagh, the let ters acknowledging receipt of the white paper were cool and non-committal.39

Criticism of the white paper by Lucey and McKevitt was widely reported,

113




McKevitt, echoing the pronouncements of the papal encyclicals, arguing that 'the state should not do for people what they can do for themselves by private

organisations'.40 Just how big the gap had become between the views of Lucey in 1942 and

his views a decade later when speaking on the subsequent social welfare legis lation of 1952 can be seen in a sermon delivered by him commemorating the diamond jubilee of Rerum Novarum:

This is the age of the State, the age of the eclipse of the individual per son and the family by the government departments and civil servants.41

Perhaps the 1952 legislation was a step too far towards Moscow. In his Lenten pastoral of 1952 Archbishop D'Alton expressed views similar

to Lucey's. Having privately complimented Norton's white paper for its poten tial for providing 'great help to a big section of the workers',42 he now warned

of 'the menace' of the welfare state and criticised those 'willing to barter their freedom for security'.43 Taking Catholic analysis to an extreme Bishop Neil Farren of Derry, speaking in April 1951 in the context of its welfare proposals, said 'the power and the spirit behind practically all social legislation at the pre sent time is taken from the worst principles of both Nazi and Russian imperial ism'.44

One could further emphasise the conservative and dogmatic response to Irish government policy by those who had been pragmatic and Christian in their reception of the Beveridge Report. However, the point would remain the

same, namely, that there was a philosophical shift among leading figures in the Catholic social movement. However, not every Catholic commentator objected to the proposals of the 1949 white paper, again underpinning the complexity of the Catholic approach to the development of the welfare state and the problem of talking about a single, monolithic Catholic reaction. In contrast to the state

ments of McKevitt, Lucey and D'Alton, Bishop John Dignan of Clonfert, who

produced his own welfare scheme in 1945, while welcoming the general thrust of the scheme outlined in the white paper criticised it for not going far

enough.45

The influence of the Catholic church A matter of significance is the extent to which the stance of the church influ enced policy in a practical manner, something which is difficult to assess. The

lively contributions of Catholic writers to the debate did not necessarily result in them influencing in a real or substantial way the actual course of legislation.

Certainly, historical analyses which claim the Catholic church 'had successfully opposed increased state involvement in welfare in the 1940s and 1950s'46 are incorrect. In this period, for example, the Department of Social Welfare and the

Department of Health were established, children's allowances were introduced

(1944), and the Social Welfare Act, 1952, was passed, a 'fairly comprehensive insurance scheme'47 establishing a general and co-ordinated scheme of compul sory insurance covering employees aged between 16-70 years for disability, unemployment, marriage, maternity, widowhood and orphanhood, and increas

ing the various rates of social assistance schemes including old age pensions,

114




unemployment assistance and widows' and orphans' non-contributory pen sions.

One could argue contra-factually, of course, that a good deal more could

have been achieved had the Catholic church been in favour of welfare state leg islation. However, when it came to the political influence of church statements, it is quite clear from government archives that social conservatism and finan

cial constraints were at least as important as pronouncements of the Catholic

hierarchy in determining the pace and extent of social legislation. Indeed

Fianna Fail governments in particular were not above selectively using state

ments by the hierarchy on social problems which argued against developing welfare legislation as a smoke screen for their own unwillingness to innovate

and for the conservatism of the Department of Finance. For example, the gov ernment chose to use the arguments of the Irish Catholic church to justify its

reluctance to introduce children's allowances in the mid 1940s. Offering a

coloured though expedient interpretation of the encyclicals Rerum Novarum

and Quadragesimo Anno, the Department of Finance in 1943, during a period of intense debate over children's or family allowances, stated:

Catholic writers have stressed again and again their dislike of the pre sent increase of state interferences in the private lives of families and have stated their fears that family allowances may tend further in this direction and towards 'the socialisation of children'.48

It was a highly selective use of Catholic pronouncements both national and international on the question of children's allowances, with high profile

Catholic figures such as Cornelius Lucey calling for the introduction of family allowances as early as November 1942. At a meeting in St. Patrick's College,

Maynooth, on the subject of 'Family Allowances', chaired by the Bishop of

Galway, Michael Browne, Lucey described children's allowances as most desirable.49 It was this insistence on the importance of children's allowances which led to Lucey being described as a 'well-known champion of the family allowance system'.50 In March 1943 Lucey's favourable disposition towards children's allowances was reported upon in the Irish Press, for all intents and

purposes the government paper.51 However, this did not prevent the govern ment from disingenuously using Catholic arguments in an effort to stall the introduction of children's allowances.

Conclusion From the foregoing it is clear that the interaction between Catholic action and the developing welfare state was extremely complex: various members of the Irish hierarchy made markedly different pronouncements on state centralised social legislation which cannot be simplified into a uniformity of approach. It is also important to note that individual adherents to Catholic action shifted their thinking in the period under discussion. The divergence in the analysis of the Beveridge Report from that which greeted subsequent moves by the Irish

Government to expand and innovate in the area of social policy may be partial ly explained by the fact that the Beveridge Report was a British report for

British conditions. Analysis of it in the context of the Irish Catholic social

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movement was an intellectual exercise, although there was a clear analysis of the Beveridge Report in the context of applying its principles to Ireland, some

thing Catholic commentators would have been aware of and shared in. Neither is it easy to judge the actual practical influence of the Catholic

church on the course of legislation. While Fianna Fail governments from the late 1930s quoted at length from the pronouncements of Catholic writers to bolster their lack of desire to innovate in the area of social welfare, it would

appear that such recourse was a front, not for Catholic-induced orthodoxy or

conservatism, but rather for a political, social and financial conservatism.

Certainly it is not possible to conclude that the Catholic church had any partic ular halter placed on the development of welfare state policies as defined in terms of the 'historic core'52 of the welfare state, namely, income maintenance and income distribution. Much more positively it may be said that Catholic action was a significant catalyst for discussion and intellectual debate on wel farism in the 1930s and 1940s.

1 Nicholas Rescher, Welfare: the social issues in philosophical perspective (Pittsburgh, 1972), p. 4. 2 Peter Flora (ed.), Growth to limits: the western European welfare states since World War 11 (Berlin, 1986), vol. 2, p.

xii. 3 Tapani Paavonen, Welfare state and political forces in Finland in the twentieth century (Turku, 1991), p. 3. 4 Stein Kuhnle, 'The beginning of the Nordic welfare states: similarities and differences' in Acta Sociol?gica:

Congress Issues: The Nordic Welfare States, vol. 21 (1978) Supplement, p. 12. 5 See Stein Kuhnle, 'National equality and local decision making: values in conflict in the development of the

Norwegian welfare state' in Acta Sociol?gica, vol. 23 (1980), nos. 2-3, p. 98. 6 Gunnar Heckscher, The welfare state and beyond: success and problems in Scandinavia (Minneapolis, 1984), p. ix. 7 Peter Flora (ed.), Growth to limits: the western European welfare state since World War II, vol. 2, p. xvi. 8 Tapani Paavonen, Welfare state and political forces in Finland in the twentieth century, p. 22. 9 Report of Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Services appointed by the Minister for Finance on 15 May 1945

(UCD Archives, MacEntee Papers, P67/361). 10 Joan Higgins, States of welfare: comparative analysis in social policy (Oxford, 1981), p. 48. 11 J.B. McLaughlin, The immortal encyclical: Rerum Novarum and the developments of Pope Pius XI (London, 1932),

p. v. 12 Rerum Novarum, Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Capital and Labour, 15 May 1891, para 3. 13 Ibid., para. 14. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., para. 28. 16 Ibid., para. 30. 17 Quadragesimo Anno, Encyclical of Pope Pius XI on reconstruction of the social order, 15 May 1931, para 38. 18 Ibid., para. 95. 19 Ibid., para. 120.

20 Extracts from 40 years after Pius XI and the social order (N.A., D/SW, I.A., 154/43(j)). 21 Quadragesimo Anno, para. 142. 22 Edward Cahill, The framework of a Christian state: an introduction to social science (Dublin, 1932), p. 262. 23 Maurice Hartigan, 'The Catholic Laity of Dublin, 1920-1940', Ph.D. Thesis, (N.U.I. Maynooth), 1992, p. 92. 24 Irish Catholic Directory 1938, p. 636. 25 C.B. Daly, 'Christus Rex Society', Christus Rex, 1 (1941). 26 Irish Catholic Directory 1943, p. 606. 27 Ibid., p. 599. 28 William Beveridge, The pillars of security (London, 1943), p. 42. 29 Cornelius Lucey, 'The Beveridge Report and Eire' in Studies, vol. xxxii (1943), p. 36. 30 Catholic Herald, 12 Feb. 1943 31 Peter McKevitt, 'The Beveridge Plan reviewed' in Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Mar. 1943, pp 147, 149. 32 Ibid., p. 150. 33 E. J. Coyne, 'Irish social services: a symposium', Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland,

vol. 17 (1942-3), p. 108. 34 Ibid. 35 Cornelius Lucey, 'The Beveridge Report and Eire', Studies, vol. xxxii (1943), p. 36. 36 John Dignan, Social security: outlines of a scheme of national health insurance (Sligo, 1945), p, 33. 37 Ibid., p. 8.

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38 Transcript oflecture on social security given by Minister for Social Welfare in Newbridge Town Hall, 12 December 1952 (N.A., D/T, Progress reports, 1949-63, S 15069 (A)).

39 Letter from John D'Alton to William Norton, 28 Oct. 1949 (Labour History Museum, Norton Papers, Item 114). 40 Limerick Leader, t Apr. 1950.

41 Quoted in Irish Catholic Directory 1952, p. 714.

42 Letter from John D'Alton to William Norton, 28 Oct. 1949 (Labour History Museum, Norton Papers, Item 114). 43 Quoted in Irish Catholic Directory 1953, p. 634.

44 Irish Independent, 18 Apr. 1951.

45 Rev. Dr. John Dignan, The government proposals for social security' in Christus Rex, 25 Mar. 1950.

46 Philip J. O'Connell and David B.Rottman, The Irish welfare state in comparative perspective' in J. H. Goldthorpe and C T. Whelan (eds.), The Development of industrial society in Ireland {Oxford, 1992), p, 237.

47 'The new social welfare scheme', Dec. 1952 (N.A., D/SW, EB 316481). 48 Department of Finance, Memorandum for the government on family allowances, 11 Mar, 1943 (N.A., D/T, S

12117B). 49 Irish Catholic Directory 1943, p. 648.

50 Catholic Herald, 12 Feb. 1943.

51 Irish Press, 19 Mar. 1943.

52 Peter Flora (ed.), Growth to limits: the western European welfare state since World War 11, vol. 2, p. xvi.

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Documents

Catholic Action and the Development of the Irish Welfare State in the 1930s and 1940s