Vol. 4 No. 13
I beg to move that a sum not exceeding £9,750 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in the course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1924, for Grants administered by the Congested Districts Board, including Grants in Aid.
(A sum of £160,000 had already been voted on account).
On a point of order, I desire to say that on the Order paper which came into Deputies' hands this morning, none of these votes were mentioned on it. I had been asked to raise some questions on this particular Vote, but inasmuch as it did not appear on the Order paper as coming before the Dáil to-day, I did not bring the papers with me dealing with the case I had intended to refer to. Deputies who wish to deal with matters in the Dáil, and who use the Order papers put into their hands in the morning as a guidance for the procedure of the day, are put in a very difficult position when there is a departure, as there has been to-day, from the procedure.
A notice was circulated to every Deputy some time ago stating the order in which the balance of the outstanding estimates was to be taken, and that order has been followed with the exception that, at the request of certain Deputies, the estimates for Intermediate and University Education, were postponed.
I appreciate that very thoroughly, but, on looking at No. 3 on the Order paper, it will be found that we are running in excess of the information we received this morning as to the business that would come before the Dáil to-day.
In the papers we received this morning it was intimated that estimates up to, I think, No. 20 would be taken to-day.
That is the document I have just referred to. It is a fact that, on the Orders of the Day, there is nothing to show that we were going beyond Estimate No. 20 to-day. I do not know whether the point that the Deputy intends to raise is of such importance that he would ask to have this estimate postponed.
I do not intend to ask that the consideration of the Estimate be postponed, but I desire to point out that a departure from the procedure indicated on the Order paper for a particular day is calculated to place Deputies in a rather difficult position.
My view is, that it would be open to any Deputy, who had an important point to raise on any of the estimates not on the Order paper for the day, to ask whether it would be convenient to have that estimate postponed to a later day, but as the Deputy does not seem to desire to do that, I think we can go on.
I am not going to assess the importance of the point that I had intended raising. I was merely asked to raise certain points, and I had intended to raise them as a matter of duty without assessing or minimising their importance in any way whatever.
I do not wish to have the form in which the estimates are arranged disturbed, but at any time that I have been asked to have an estimate postponed I have agreed to that course. If the Deputy wishes that this estimate should be postponed, I am quite agreeable.
If a request was made to the Minister in charge to have a particular estimate postponed to a later date I have very little doubt that he would accede to such a request.
I have not the particulars before me now of the case that I wished to refer to, but briefly, without going into any details, it dealt with the case already made in the Dáil when a certain Bill was before the Dáil, with regard to the status of the Congested Districts Board's officials. Fuller details have been put into my hands since then, and perhaps it is just as well that I have not them here at the moment. But there is this question which could not be dealt with in the Bill itself. It was left over from the Land Commission Bill for an Executive decision. It was suggested at the time that a suitable place to raise this question of the status of these officials would be on this Vote. I would be glad if the Minister would state exactly what is being done in this matter. It will be remembered by him that the case put forward was that the Congested Districts Board's officials, according to their length of service, should be treated as though they had been, what in effect they were, though in fact they were not, Civil Servants, and should be transferred into an equal grade in the Civil Service when taken over into the Land Commission.
I did not know that this question was going to be raised, but I do know that the matter has received the consideration of the Ministry of Finance. From recollection, I would say that my information on the subject was that these officials had not passed the Civil Service examination, and that in seeking to get the advantages of Civil Servants they were asking for something which was not in contemplation at the time they entered the Service. An effort is being made to get them into the Land Commission, but I have no information as to the details or as to how the work is getting on. All I can say is that no general direction has been given or accepted by the Ministry of Finance that they are entitled to be regarded as Civil Servants in the way in which ordinary Civil Servants enter the Service.
This is one of the Boards that has been condemned. I would like to find out from the Minister something in regard to the expenditure of these Grants in Aid. I know that the sum voted last year may or may not have been spent, but if it was not spent it was not liable to surrender. I would like to know whether, in fact, it was spent, and further to hear from the Minister for Fisheries some information regarding the intentions of that Ministry concerning the fisheries in these congested districts. I would like to know if the Minister has any information to communicate to the Dáil regarding the fisheries in the congested districts. I understand that since April the expenditure of the money, or such part of it as may be affected by the fisheries, has been expended by him, and as there are special problems relating to the fisheries in these congested areas, quite apart from the general problem, the Minister may have something to say in respect to his work and intentions in regard to these special problems. When we were dealing with the Vote for the Ministry of Fisheries the Minister made a general statement regarding the work of his Department, but not with special relation to the congested districts. Perhaps this Vote will give him an opportunity to say something on these matters.
All I can say on the subject is that I have had repeated applications from the Minister to effect some severance between the sums due to his Department in respect of this and other Votes. I cannot say anything about the development of his Ministry. I think he did not anticipate that this estimate would be on and I do not know whether he is in the House or not.
Neither did I.
I must say further in connection with what Deputy Figgis raised, that this particular Vote is different from others by reason of the fact that whatever money is voted does not come back. It is a dead loss to the Finance Minister. Once it goes out it is done with. We do not get any change out of it.
Can the Minister say whether there has been any accumulation or that there will be a larger sum than £169,000 expendable this year?
I was under the impression that there was an accumulation, and in the Bill that was passed dealing with the Congested Districts Board it was provided that the accumulation should be handed over to the Land Commission to be used by them. My recollection is that that was expressly provided in the Act.
That is correct.
The Board was to be wound up and the moneys in hand were transferred by the Act to the Land Commission to be administered by them in their Vote.
The part of the case that has been put up on the previous occasion, to which I was now making reference, was that certain promotions in the Congested Districts Board, which had been promised, did not materialise—promotions that in the Civil Service proper did materialise—and these advances were being claimed as partly due in respect of these premises. The answer that was put forward by the Ministry at the time that that argument was made was, that this would mean a certain demand on the Exchequer which this country was little prepared to pay at the moment. To that a reply was made by those of us who put forward the case on behalf of those employees that there had been certain accumulations and that these accumulations existing could be used for that purpose, justly and rightly used, without making any call upon the Exchequer. If I might use the expression, the claim of these employees in respect of pledges which they had received was, that these accumulations should in the first instance be garnisheed by them before the balance passed over to the Central Fund. That was the argument put forward at the time and we were asked to raise that argument again on the estimates for the Congested Districts Board.
That could scarcely arise now, because that surplus, by a Bill which has now become law, has actually been voted away to the Land Commission. Therefore, it cannot arise upon this estimate.
I might say in connection with the point that Deputy Figgis has raised that what he sought to bring before the Dáil with regard to the claim of Civil Service status for Congested District Board clerks was, you yourself will remember, dealt with by an amendment proposed by you and supported by me and adopted, in a modified form, by the Minister for Agriculture. I was requested on behalf of those clerks later to propose a still further modification. I submitted it to the Minister and we discussed it, and he satisfied me that it was impossible to introduce it into the Bill for the purpose which we had in view. I think that is the answer to Deputy Figgis's enquiry at the present moment. The undertaking that was given was that these men would be brought over into the Land Commission service and that in due course the Civil Service certificate would be issued to those of them who were qualified for it, and in that way they would be put upon the permanent staff as Civil Servants. I personally was satisfied with the undertaking that I received on their behalf.
