It is intended to resume the Estimate which was uncompleted yesterday now. The Dáil will go into Committee on Finance.
ORDER OF BUSINESS.
Are we not taking the Land Bill? It is first on the Paper. I am informed by the Assistant Minister for Industry and Commerce that his Estimates will not take very long, so I daresay it is just as well to proceed with the Estimates.
I was informed that the Estimates were to be taken first. It is rather ridiculous that one Minister makes one arrangement and another Minister makes another arrangement.
I have made no attempt to make any arrangements, and the Ceann Comhairle should be a little more careful in the use of his adjectives.
Order.
I was informed the Estimates were to be taken first. That arrangement was made yesterday evening. I made that announcement and the Minister for Agriculture rose now to alter that arrangement. That is the case.
When did you make the announcement?
Just now I announced that the resumed debate on the Ministry of Commerce and Industry Estimate would be taken first.
I understood you to ask whether the Estimates would be taken first, and even if you did make the announcement it was perfectly open to me to make another suggestion.
It is open to the Government to make arrangements as to how it is to conduct its business. When one Minister has made an arrangement it is surely, to put it mildly, trying, that another Minister should not know of the arrangement, and should endeavour to alter it.
Trying on whom? I think the Ceann Comhairle should learn to bear these things with a little more equanimity.
It is a ridiculous method of conducting business, and the Minister for Agriculture will have to learn to conduct his business properly. I am here to see that it is conducted properly.
I think you ought to take lessons in that art also yourself.
Order. I will not take any further impudence from the Minister for Agriculture. He should learn something about the Order Paper before he comes into the Dáil. He should know the order in which Government business is to be taken, and he should not be interrupting it. When the matter is explained to him he should not endeavour by any use of language to avoid the point. The Minister for Agriculture is not going to be allowed to be impertinent, and the Minister for Agriculture will have to learn that he cannot be allowed to be impertinent to me here. If the Minister for Agriculture desires now to continue the matter——
I desire only to say this —that you are in a position to lecture at the moment.
That is simply further impertinence from the Minister for Agriculture. I would like the Minister for Agriculture to learn that this is not the place for a display of impertinence.
I have nothing to add to what I have said.
I do not wish to add to anything that has been said, but I do feel about what has occurred that if any other Deputy had been guilty of saying the things that have been said against the President over this Assembly he would be required to withdraw them. Surely it is but just to the Assembly as a whole, as well as to you, that these things should be withdrawn.
I have no desire to have things withdrawn. I am merely interested in the proper conduct of business, and the remarks of the Minister for Agriculture, and his persistence in them, constitute more a reflection on himself than on me. The Dáil will now go into Committee on Finance. The Estimate under discussion was for the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, and the amount moved was £193,445; £102,000 was voted on account. We had arrived at the sub-head "Office of Consulting Engineer to the Government."