Whether officially or otherwise, I cannot say, but there is a general impression amongst the members of the House that the Parliamentary Secretary is the person in the Ministry who has been charged with producing Government schemes for the relief of unemployment. I thought that he would have taken this opportunity of telling the House what the Government's plans were to relieve unemployment. In reply to a question which I put to him a few days ago, the Parliamentary Secretary indicated that plans were at present under consideration for the expenditure of money in certain directions which it was thought would take a considerable number of unemployed persons off the employment exchanges. I suggest that he ought now to tell the Dáil what are the Government's specific proposals in this direction. Instead, however, of indicating to the House what the Government's plans are, the Parliamentary Secretary has come here and asked for approval of this Estimate as if it were a casual, routine matter, and as if we had not the serious unemployment problem which there is in this country to-day. According to the latest figures of unemployed registered at employment exchanges, there are 103,000 people seeking unemployment assistance or unemployment insurance benefit, and I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that that figure will probably be increased to 130,000 in the course of the next few weeks. It is only being kept down to 103,000 because of the fact that we have only just come out of an Employment Period Order, and that the rise in unemployment consequent on the cancellation of the Order has not yet had time to show itself at employment exchanges. We may take it, therefore, that even subjecting unemployment to the test—and it is a pretty severe test—imposed under the Unemployment Insurance Acts and under the Unemployment Assistance Acts, we have 130,000 unemployed men and women—men and women available for work; men and women anxious to obtain work, but men and women who, under the existing system of society, are unable to secure work. Since society, as at present organised, cannot utilise their services, they are condemned to endeavour to exist at the miserable rates of benefit provided under the Unemployment Assistance Act.
I should like to know from the Parliamentary Secretary what are the Government's specific proposals for dealing with that serious unemployment problem. One hundred and thirty thousand people will be registered at the employment exchanges within the next couple of weeks. When their wives and children are taken into consideration that figure will become enormously swollen. If we survey the problem after having made allowance for their wives and dependents, it will be found that we have got in this country an army of unemployed people —an unemployed State within a State. That is the serious problem which is confronting the Ministry to-day. I know it is quite true that because of the existence of the Unemployment Assistance Act a considerable number of people are now registering for employment and are now claiming unemployment assistance benefit who formerly did not come to the employment exchanges, in order to seek for benefit or in order to seek for work. In the first instance, there was no benefit available for them. In the second instance, their pilgrimage to the employment exchanges was, from their point of view, an extremely unprofitable and disappointing one, but the fact remains that we still have an unemployment problem indicated by 130,000 unemployed people, who satisfy the rigid and rigorous tests imposed by the Unemployment Assistance Act. We may take it that those people are unemployed, that they are available for work, and are unable to obtain work. Now the Parliamentary Secretary comes to the Dáil and asks for approval for an Estimate of £150,000 — £150,000 to be divided amongst 130,000 unemployed persons, sufficient only to give each a little more than £1 for one week only. That is the extent of the provision which has been made for the relief of unemployment by this Estimate. I think we are entitled to ask the Parliamentary Secretary what are the Government's proposals for dealing seriously with this problem. The present Estimate is an indication of the hotch-potch method of dealing with unemployment which has been an all too common feature of administrations in this country.
In asking the Parliamentary Secretary to tell us what are the Government's proposals, we are not being needlessly curious. It is not so long ago since the Minister for Industry and Commerce told us that the Government had plans which would put every idle man to work. The Minister then thought there was a danger that we would not get enough idle men in this country, and the Minister for Defence, speaking afterwards, said that we ought to be glad to have idle men in this country so that we could utilise them for the vast schemes of reconstruction which the Government had in mind. Even if we are not satisfied with those two important announcements from two Ministers, we have the statement of the President that in his opinion unemployment ought not to exist in this country, and that there was no need for it. I think the President was right. I think the other two statements were optimistic ones, especially in the light of the subsequent activities on the part of the Government, but there really is no reason why we should have an unemployment problem here, if we only had the courage to organise the nation and organise the unemployed in such a way that their services could be utilised to develop the resources of our country, the industrial and agricultural possibilities of which have so far been only barely scratched. Instead of telling us in what way the optimistic prophecies of the Minister for Defence and the Minister for Industry and Commerce were going to be realised, instead of telling us in what way they were taking steps to bring into actuality the dream of the President that unemployment need not exist here, the Parliamentary Secretary comes to the House and asks for a vote of £150,000, which, as I said before, is going to mean only a little more than £1 each in one week for the vast army of persons, numbering about 130,000, who are at present registered at employment exchanges.
One would imagine that almost every conceivable kind of public work in the country had already been done, and that the difficulty now was to find new schemes of public works on which unemployed persons could be put to work. On the contrary, as the Parliamentary Secretary knows, there is a vast untapped field of public works which is available for utilisation as a means of absorbing the unemployed persons into productive employment. Public Health works afford a very wide field for the activities of the State. Local authorities throughout the country could be compelled to proceed with sewerage and water schemes, in some cases where they are doing nothing, in other cases where they are not proceeding with sufficient alacrity, and in other cases where they do not seem to have any real appreciation of what modern life ought to be. There are vast possibilities and an urgent need for road reconstruction throughout the country, because, although much has been done in the matter of improving the surface of our roads, much still remains to be done in the matter of widening them. Much needs to be done to make our roads capable of standing up to modern traffic conditions. Much needs to be done in the way of taking off dangerous bends and corners. There is need also for considerable acceleration in house building activities. As the Parliamentary Secretary must know, a number of local authorities seem to be oblivious of their responsibility to house the people properly. Many of them seem to be unaware of the benefits which are made available to them under the Housing Act of 1932.
Similarly the Parliamentary Secretary must know that in the matter of land distribution and the improvement and division of estates, there is a vast field of potentially useful work, not merely in the breaking up of randies and putting people to work but also as a means of taking off the labour market many persons who would be taken off if they could be set on economic holdings. There is need for cleaning up towns and for the provision of town parks; there is need for the construction of footpaths; there is need for improvement of graveyards; and there is need for the widening of streets in towns and cities and creating arteries for traffic which are very necessary under modern traffic conditions. In respect of the planting of our timber-denuded lands, there are again enormous possibilities which, if fully availed of, promise to give in time a substantial return to the nation at a period when, according to the experts, there is likely to be a world shortage of timber. In the sphere of drainage, we have a country which lends itself to the expenditure of vast sums of money in respect of the drainage of swampy land and the consequent improvement of lands for tillage and pastoral purposes which would be advantageous to the community.
I should like to know from the Parliamentary Secretary if the Government have any concrete proposals for dealing with these vast schemes of public works which demand attention to-day and what precisely the Government intend to do in order to absorb into productive employment the large army of unemployed. In my opinion, the utilisation of the unemployed on large scale schemes of public works will do much to improve the amenities of life, particularly in towns and rural areas, and, at the same time, create valuable national assets which will be of benefit to the whole community. I have got a suspicion, however, and I think the reluctance of the Parliamentary Secretary to disclose the Government's plans for the relief of unemployment gives colour to my suspicion, that the Government have now got into a state of mind in which they think it is cheaper to allow the unemployed to draw unemployment assistance than to put them into productive employment on large scale schemes of public works. The Government seem to me to have become obsessed with the idea that the relief of unemployment through the expenditure of £1,000,000 per annum under the Unemployment Assistance Act is a cheaper way of dealing with unemployment than by utilising the energies, the brains, the brawn and the ability of the unemployed to create the valuable national asset which would be created if these people were put to work on large scale schemes of public works.
If I am wrong in that suspicion, I am willing to be converted by a statement from the Parliamentary Secretary to the effect that the Government have some definite plans for taking people off the employment exchanges and putting them to work at reasonable rates of wages instead of the miserable pittance which many of them are compelled to accept to-day in the form of unemployment assistance benefit. The expenditure of £150,000 will probably do something in many areas temporarily to relieve the scourge of unemployment. It will do something to alleviate the hardships on men, women and children who do not know what it is to get a decent week's wages for many weeks in the year, and, to that extent, anything that brings even a very ephemeral ray of hope into homes such as those must, I suppose, have the benediction and good will of all parties in this House. The Parliamentary Secretary, however, should not be under the impression that the expenditure of £150,000 on a scheme of that kind is making an adequate contribution to the relief of the unemployment problem. It is not making any such contribution and it is time that these schemes which the Government had in mind when in opposition were now put into practice, and we ought to know definitely in what direction the Government is working in its efforts to relieve the problem.
Deputy Davin stated that in his constituency there was a serious unemployment problem. I think the same can be said by every Deputy who represents a rural constituency. One has only to go through the towns and villages, and through the countryside, to see the enormous congregation of men who are craving an opportunity to work and hoping that, in some way or another, some relief scheme will come to the area which may enable them to secure a few weeks' work, to be followed by a long period of unemployment, and the same cycle of hoping that a relief scheme will eventually find its way into the area. That, as I said before, is a hotch-potch method of dealing with unemployment. It is an inadequate method of dealing with it, and the Government ought to take their courage in their hands and say definitely what their proposals are for dealing with that serious problem. I give the Parliamentary Secretary credit for having good intentions in this respect. I give him credit for having applied himself with zeal to the task before him, but I am sorry I cannot give either him or the Government credit for having dealt with the unemployment problem in the courageous way we were entitled to expect them to deal with it in view of previous declarations by members of the present Ministry.
Here we are asked to vote on an Estimate of £150,000 for the relief of unemployment, and there has been a singular reticence on the part of the Parliamentary Secretary in regard to telling us the Government's precise proposals for dealing with that problem. I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to tell us what the Government's proposals are; I hope he will be able to tell us that the Government have at last made up their mind to finance a scheme of large scale public works, which, in my opinion, is one of the best ways of alleviating the present problem. Not merely will it alleviate the problem, but it will create national assets in addition, and will give many unemployed people a decent income which few of those now registered for employment have had for a very long time.
In any proposals submitted to this House for dealing with unemployment in a courageous way, the Government can be assured of the support of every Party and of every Deputy in the House who wants to see that problem dealt with vigorously and courageously, but my great fear in all this matter, is that the Government here are merely adopting methods which have been adopted without success by Governments in other countries. This Government, however, used to talk at one time of being a radical Government, and, in their wilder moments, some members of the Party used to talk of its being a revolutionary Party. Let us have some evidence of radicalism and some evidence of revolution in their proposals for dealing with unemployment. There will be abundant support in this House for any proposals which will make war on the poverty, misery and destitution which many unemployed people are compelled to tolerate to-day, and, paradoxical though it is, compelled to tolerate in a country which, if it were properly organised, is capable of giving a decent standard of living to every man and woman in the country.