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Dáil Éireann debate -
Monday, 4 Dec 1922

Vol. 1 No. 35

DAIL IN COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ESTIMATES. - ADDITIONAL AND UNFORESEEN SERVICES.

I beg to move that the Estimate of £100,000 which will be required in the year ending 31st March, 1923, to defray the salaries and expenses of additional and unforeseen services, be granted.

This Vote is exactly as it is described. There are certain matters in which any Ministry might be committed at a given moment, and on which it might be unable to discharge its functions if some such Vote as this were not put on. One particular case had already arisen, and in this case a Supplementary Estimate will be placed before the Dáil. I take it that in future it will not be necessary to have an Estimate like this, but owing to the circumstances of the times it was necessary in this case.

I am not objecting to this, because it is clear as the Minister has said that some provision of this sort might be desirable in peculiar circumstances of a change of Government of this kind. But I would like to know if the Minister can say exactly what will be the relations between this sum and the sums included in the Supplementary Estimate, such as he indicated. In view of the possibility of providing a Supplementary Estimate is such an amount as this necessary?

Yes; because one could not discharge money unless it is voted, and it is in order to provide for some means of allowing the service to be administered, whatever service it may be, that this course is taken. In one particular case it is a question of the expenditure of about £10,000, and that expenditure enabled a certain industrial activity to be continued which, if we had not got that Vote we could not have entered into, We would have lost that industry—something like three or four hundred families have been affected, and an opportunity of getting five times the amount would have gone. Now, in that particular service it was not a subsidy to a particular firm, but one of those incidents which only occur once in a generation, that enabled us to use public money to an advantage, and we could not do it if we had not a provision of this kind.

I am glad the Minister mentioned the matter fully, because in doing so he has traversed the particular question that was in my mind. I presume that I have been dotting his i's and crossing his t's with regard to what he referred.

With the greatest perspicacity.

Well, I am aware that certain sharp criticisms have been made about that inasmuch as it involved a very grave decision that did not come before the Dáil. That is a possibility arising out of Estimates, and although I agree with that in these circumstances I think a recurrence might not be exactly desirable.

Motion made and question put:—"That the Dáil in Committee having considered the Estimate for Provision for Additional and Unforeseen Services in 1922-23, and having passed a Vote on Account of £100,000 for the period to the 6th December, 1922, recommend that the full Estimate of £100,000 for the Financial Year, 1922-23, be adopted in due course by the Oireachtas."

Agreed.

The Dáil sitting in Committee having considered the Estimates for:—

Public Education,

Intermediate Education,

Ministry of Local Government,

Transport Department,

Superannuation and Retired Allowance,

Dáil Eireann,

Land Commission,

Forestry Fund, and

Provision for Additional and Unforeseen Services in 1922-23,

recommend that the full estimate of £7,079,522 for the Financial Year, 1922-23, be voted in due course by the Oireachtas."

I move that the Dáil agree with the Committee in the said Resolution.

I beg to second that.

Question put and agreed to.

I issued to Deputies a list of nominations for the Senate as far as I received them on Saturday. I received a few names, three or four, a little after three o'clock to-day, and gave instructions immediately that they should be prepared for the Deputies so that they may get them in less than a quarter of an hour.

I would like to make a short announcement with regard to the position at present as far as my nominations to the Dáil for the Senate are concerned. I will give all the information at my disposal.

Páirlimint Shealadach concluded its proceedings at 4 p.m.

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