Deputy Johnson gave notice of a question which he would raise on the adjournment to-night.
THE ADJOURNMENT. - REPLIES TO SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTIONS.
In the course of a discussion on the Shannon scheme the Minister for Industry and Commerce made certain statements, and arising out of these statements I put two questions. The first question was as follows:—"To ask the Minister for Industry and Commerce whether under the Shannon (Siemens-Schuckert) contract the estimated cost of material and the cost of transport of machinery from Germany to Limerick includes delivery on quay or on rail at Limerick or Long Pavement or at the works." The answer I received was as follows: "The contract does not contain separate items for the cost of material or for the cost of transport of machinery."
The second question was: "To ask the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he will state what is the proportion of the total estimated costs under the Siemens-Schuckert contract which come within the categories (a) Cost of transport of the machinery backward and forward, (b) Cost of its hiring and maintenance referred to on page 79 of the Experts' Report"; and the answer I received to this was: "Separate items for the categories mentioned are not included in the contract." The Minister refused to answer any supplementary questions designed to evoke a reply. The reply he gave was an evasion of course. The question I raised was based upon the following, which is taken from the Experts' Report: "The total estimate is based on basic prices appearing in Messrs. Siemens-Schuckert's report, and the authors of the report have arrived at these prices partly as a result of their own inquiries and partly in accordance with figures given them by the Free State Government. The unit prices mentioned include social obligations (insurances, etc.), general expenses and contractors' profits, but do not include the cost of the building machinery. At the end of each section of the estimate, items are given covering the transport of the machinery back and forward, and the cost of its hiring and maintenance. Under the section ‘general' the erection of necessary premises is included, such as storehouses, canteens, dwelling-places for employees and workmen, sanitary and other buildings, workshops and other offices." I want to draw attention to the words "at the end of each section of the estimate items are given covering the transport of the machinery back and forward, and the cost of its hiring and maintenance."
The Minister says that separate items for the categories mentioned are not included in the contract. Well, of course, we have not seen the contract. We are obliged to depend for the estimate for the scheme on the report of Messrs. Siemens-Schuckert and the report of the experts, and the reason why it is necessary to have some information on a matter of this kind is because the Minister refuses to give the House, or Deputies, or the country information as to the finances of this scheme. When we were dealing with the labour costs—the proportion of the total contract which is absorbed by labour charges—the Minister said that normally—normally, I presume, in Germany—one-third of the total contract was estimated for labour; that no account was taken of the number of men, but that a lump sum proportion was estimated as the proportion chargeable for labour costs. I presumed, and I still presume, that those labour costs are intended to be labour costs in Ireland, and not to include management costs.
The Minister went on to explain that numbers, such as 2,100 or 2,500 were reckoned as the number of men likely to be engaged and employed on this scheme—the first number being the number in Messrs. Siemens-Schuckert's report, and the second number being the number suggested by the experts —as well as the number of 3,000 which was his own rough general estimate. He said that so far from 32/- being the amount upon which the total labour cost should be based that very many men included in the 2,100, the 2,500 or the 3,000, as the case may be, would be higher-paid men, which, of course, nobody contradicted. But to illustrate his point he showed that we have also a certain number of dockers engaged on the scheme, and he said they are not getting 32/- a week. That is another element of calculation—the number of dockers who are going to be employed on this job. He refers to other men engaged who were receiving a higher wage than 32/- a week, because they were working in Limerick city. Now, my desire was to find out whether the Minister had any right to bring for ward the wages of dockers when he wants to speak of the cost of labour in the Saorstát, and when he wants to speak of the proportion of labour charges against this contract. I asked whether the cost of transportation was to be included in the cost of labour or the cost of transportation; whether the cost of discharging ships in the course of transportation was to be included against transportation costs or against labour charges in Ireland. The Minister refused to answer or to divulge that information.
I was not asked for that.
He refused to divulge the information because he says it is not in the contract, and that separate items are not mentioned in the contract. His experts say that, in the estimate at any rate, items are given covering the transport of machinery back and forward and the cost of its hiring and maintenance. The Minister says he was not asked that.
Not the question you have now put.
The question I asked the Minister was whether, under the Shannon contract, the estimated cost of material and the cost of transport of machinery from Germany to Limerick includes delivery on quay or on rail at Limerick or Long Pavement or at the works. That is transportation. Now, it is important for a proper understanding of this position to know whether labour cost, that is 36 per cent. of the total, is to include labour cost of transportation, and at what point the cost of transportation ceases to be a charge against transportation, whether at the works or at the railway siding if they come by rail, or on the quays at Limerick or elsewhere. If the discharge of steamers is not included in the cost of transportation, then we should understand it, and if it is included in the cost of transportation, as one would normally assume, according to practice, then there was no point in the Minister stating, when referring to labour costs in Ireland, that the number of dockers employed on the job should enter into the calculations.
The second question was drafted precisely in the words of the experts; they said: "At the end of each section of the estimate items are given covering the transport of the machinery backward and forward, and the cost of its hire and maintenance." I think it is a reasonable question to ask the Minister on a matter of this kind, what is the proportion of the total estimated cost which comes within those categories? He says that they are not included in the contract. Presumably they were included in the estimate according to this report, and, presumably, the contract was based upon the estimate. I ask the Minister now if he will not answer a question on the paper or a supplementary question designed to elucidate the point he refused to answer, on a question of which notice was given? Will he give an answer to the House now when he has had considerable notice? It is surely important to know what proportion of the total contract is estimated to be paid for transportation of machinery backwards and forwards, and, even more important, what proportion of the total cost of the contract is to be charged for its hire and maintenance. Presumably that, at least, will be known to the Minister in the general estimate, because it is going to be a very considerable proportion of the total cost. I think that it is not unreasonable for the House to have that amount of information as to how the total five million two hundred thousand odd pounds' contract is to be met proportionately—so much for wages, so much for material, so much for hire of machinery and capital charges. That, I submit, is a reasonable request to put to the Minister, and one that should be answered for the satisfaction of the House and of the public.
May I ask what was the point Deputy Johnson gave notice of his intention to raise at this moment?
The point of which Deputy Johnson gave notice was: "To raise the question of the refusal of the Minister to answer questions."
I have heard nothing about that.
Deputy Johnson mentioned subsequently: "It is a definite refusal to inform the House of the terms under which a five millions contract has been made."
Is it not the practice of Ministers in this House to answer supplementary questions? So far as I know, during my three and a half or four years' experience in this House, I have never known any Minister take up the attitude which has been taken by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, definitely refusing to answer supplementary questions. On occasions Ministers have stated that they were not in a position to answer a supplementary question and have asked if the Deputy putting it would give them some notice. But in this case, some of us, at least, on these Benches, believe that the Minister for Industry and Commerce was in a position, if he so desired, to answer the supplementary questions.
He was not.
He has refused to answer supplementary questions put to him to-day, and he also said that he would answer no supplementary questions in connection with the Shannon scheme. It has been the practice, I suggest, in the House that supplementary questions should be answered, and I ask you, sir, whether it would come within your province to say anything in connection with the matter.
The Deputy has stated the practice correctly, but it does not come within my province to compel a Minister to answer a question—either the original question on the paper or a supplementary question.
It is said that I stated that I would answer no supplementary questions on this subject. I may have used such language in any interchanges that took place, but I stated my position quite accurately to Deputy Johnson at the beginning of this series of supplementary questions this evening. The Deputy asked me about the contract. I have given an answer to that and my answer stands. I must repeat what I said on a former occasion, that these supplementary questions involve technical details with which I cannot deal at a moment's notice, and as the Deputy has announced himself as an enemy of the scheme, and his colleague has stated that he will use legal and illegal methods to prevent its going through, I cannot answer these supplementary questions.
On a point of explanation, the pronouncement of my being an enemy of the scheme was a qualified one. The Minister knows that. As far as I am concerned, I am as desirous as the Minister or any member of this House or anyone in the country for the success of the scheme.
And the Minister knows it.
The position is that certainly I do not desire its success at the expense of want and misery to the people employed.
The qualification is: "I will withdraw what I have already stated to be the economic basis of the scheme." If that is the qualification of the Deputy, and if he thinks it right to go to the country saying that he will by legal and illegal means prevent it——
If the Minister is going to insist on paying starvation wages, certainly.
I have asked for proofs of these starvation wages. I have asked for the figures. I am not going to allow two thousand sheltered workers, with certain specified perquisites, to get a bigger wage than is paid to over two hundred thousand rural workers. I have given these figures, and they have not been challenged.
We are not now discussing the question of wages on the Shannon scheme.
Deputy Johnson was allowed to bring in the matter of 32s. a week, and am I to be allowed an opportunity to answer to-night what he put to me the other evening when he abused the privileges of this House by raising a question on the adjournment, when he spoke for 24 minutes giving me but six minutes to reply, during which I was subjected to numerous interruptions.
On a point of order I deny that I abused the privileges of the House, and I ask the Minister to withdraw that statement unless he can prove it to your satisfaction.
What I submit is that it seems to me to be an abuse of the privileges of this House to raise a question on the adjournment, to speak for 24 minutes, to give the Minister six minutes in which to reply, and to subject him in the course of his reply to repeated interruptions. If my epithet is not justified I withdraw it.
I do not say whether the epithet is justified or not. It is a question of opinion.
I remain by my opinion, that it was an abuse of the privileges of this House for a Deputy to make a speech occupying 24 minutes and to leave me but six minutes to reply on a point on which the Deputy had already made erroneous calculations which he simply repeated ad nauseam that evening.
The Standing Order says "At 8.30 p.m. the Ceann Comhairle shall take the Order of the Day for the adjournment of the Dáil whereupon any Teachta can bring forward any matter for discussion of which he has previously given notice not later than 6.30 p.m."
There is nothing in that that prevents me or any other person speaking for 30 minutes if he has given notice that he will discuss a matter. The Minister can find opportunities to reply if he wishes. I was not putting any question to him at all. I was raising an issue.
That is not a point of Order.
Is it not the point of order that I raised a question for him to reply to me? There was no necessity for him to reply that night.
The Deputy raised a question to which I was to reply. That is the essence of it, and he repeated it so many times in his speech, and also introduced so many irrelevant considerations that he took 24 minutes to say what any ordinary Deputy might have said in three minutes. He gave me six minutes to reply. Then, not content with that, Deputies of his Party subjected me to interruptions.
As you subjected Deputy Johnson during the twenty-four minutes.
I subjected him to interruptions?
Several.
He lasted for twenty-four minutes, and in the six minutes I had to reply, I was subjected to interruptions. It is not an abuse of the House to say I was not given an ordinary opportunity to make a case against the so-called case that Deputy Johnson had put up. That was the 32/- matter. There will be an opportunity of dealing with that matter in the Seanad to-morrow.
Is it in order for a Minister to accuse a Deputy of abusing the privileges of the House if there is nothing in the Standing Orders limiting that Deputy from going the full thirty minutes? He may not have treated the Minister fairly in only giving him six minutes to reply, but he is not in order in stating that the Deputy abused the privileges of the House.
I have taken your ruling, and I am not going to accept Deputy Byrne's ruling as to whether it is a mis-statement for me to say whether it is an abuse or not. I am sticking to my own contention with regard to the matter raised to-day. I am asked a question; what is the supplementary question? "Will the Minister refer to page 79 of the Experts' Report?" I had not the Experts' Report. I do not carry it about with me. I am asked later on in a sneering way: "Will the Minister state that he knows nothing about it?" Am I supposed to be able to state out of my memory what is in page 79 of the Experts' Report? Then, if I do say anything, Deputy Johnson will avail himself of the opportunity to go down on one of his campaigns during the weekend in opposition to the scheme, and draw all sorts of erroneous conclusions from something I might say on a technical matter of which I had not got notice.
You had notice of this question to-day and you refused to answer.
I am refusing to answer supplementary questions when dealing with technical matters of this kind, and certainly I am not going to answer supplementary questions from a man who has described himself as an enemy of the scheme, ready to do anything to put out the present Government.
The Minister must have a very bad case when he descends to this kind of misrepresentation.
I should like to have the misrepresentation explained.
To begin with, it is untrue that I said I would descend to anything. I said I would do anything within reason, within constitutionality, to defeat the Government on this scheme, because I believed—as I do believe—that they have entered upon a line which was going to be disastrous for the country. I believe that, in regard to this scheme, and I believe it is simply a development of their general attitude on this wage question and I think it is necessary, if I can do it, to put a stop to the Government's career. It will be difficult, I have no doubt, but it is surely within my right as a Deputy, as a citizen, to take that attitude, when I believe they are doing disastrous things to the country.
The Deputy may wish to query this comment from the Press. I will give it to him. It is what I am going on. It has not been denied.
What paper?
The Irish Times.
If you read any of the local papers you will see my statement and I am reported correctly in them.
Will the Deputy deny this? I will take his explanation afterwards. It excuses me for saying what I have said when I take a comment in a paper which has not been contradicted, and which I have referred to twice without drawing any contradiction from the Deputy up to this. This is the comment:
He for one would do his utmost for anything that he thought was going to promise success in bringing an end to the present Ministry.
That may be wrong. I am going to accept the Deputy's statement, if he has been mis-reported, here and now, when given to me. That is what I am going on.
What does it mean?
That he will descend—if I might paraphrase Deputy Morrissey—to legal and illegal means.
What are illegal means?
The Deputy will have his own conception. If he means that his words are not to be taken exactly and that it was only a sort of blowing off of steam to a local audience——
I meant every word.
You meant every word of it?
I meant every word.
Deputies will please address the chair.
The Deputy means every word of it with regard to legal and illegal means, and, in that atmosphere, I am supposed to answer technical questions involving technical details to people who have stated their opposition, as I thought Deputy Johnson had, concluding from that extract, and as Deputy Morrissey now informs us, he definitely had. I must certainly persist in this attitude. I am not going to be catechised in the way of supplementary question on technical details. If the Deputy's complaint is that a question is not properly answered, that is different. Let him frame his question in another way. If he had put to me any question with some suggestion that I was wrong, the other evening, in bringing in this rigid consideration on the matter of the workers and the question of wages to be paid——
It would be quite out of order.
It could have been framed in a question. I could frame a question for the Deputy myself.
I would be glad if you would.
And give the answer here and now.
What is the answer?
That the dockers were an analogy to the question of skilled labour. I asked the Deputy the other night, in the short space of time I got to answer, would he just take a rough figure of two thousand men at a particular rate and one thousand men at a skilled rate, and I took all the dockers' work as a skilled business—I am not going to insist that the dockers are included in that.
Then it has no appropriateness to the argument.
Undoubtedly it had. The Deputy was going on 2,100 men or 2,500 men at thirty-two shillings per week, and I wanted to remind him that there are a great many more than unskilled men engaged in this work.
We knew that.
It never appeared in the calculations made by the Deputy.
Certainly it did.
Did the Deputy ever calculate one thousand men at a skilled rate of wages and two thousand at the unskilled rate? If he did, he can tell me what the final calculation is.
It shows how the Minister's heat and prejudice in this matter is destroying his judgment. The whole argument that I made—and the words are here—was that on the basis of that minimum there was only to be absorbed a certain sum of money that left a margin over and above that minimum, and I stated, too, that there were higher skilled labourers being paid. I did say that the margin on the basis of either 2,100 or 2,500 was sufficiently wide to allow of a much bigger wage than 32s. per week, and I recognised that a considerable proportion were engaged at more than 32s. per week. But is it not obvious that the more people that are being paid over the 32s. per week the less increased charge upon the scheme would the increase on the remainder be? The more the Minister is right in his contention, the greater emphasis he wants to lay on the number of people who are getting skilled labourers' pay, the less would be the deficit, if there is to be a deficit, which I deny, supposing you were to give all the labourers a reasonable wage—the stronger the Minister's argument the less effective his case becomes.
We are speaking on the matter of my refusal to answer questions. I stated my position to-day. I might attempt to answer technical questions, matters involving technical calculations, to people who were not going to make an absurd and unreasonable use of them, and to people who had treated me fairly in the Dáil, but I have a certain right to refuse to answer any matter involving technical calculations to anybody, and that right I am going rigidly to insist upon with regard to Deputies who have put themselves in the position of enemies to this scheme that the Labour Party has.
Does the Minister mean to say that anything stated by a Deputy outside the Dáil is to affect the attitude of the Government towards those Deputies in the Dáil?
It will affect me—decidedly.
The Minister is the real enemy of the scheme.
Does the Minister mean to suggest that he is always going to contend that his attitude is to be determined by what the questioner has said at some time outside the Dáil? He has accused Deputy Johnson of acting unfairly towards him, but he is acting now unfairly towards us. We might retaliate in kind, but that would mean that we would have no questions down at all, and Ministers might be pleased at that. I think that is putting us in an unfair position. With regard to his asking Deputy Morrissey if he would withdraw what he was alleged to have stated at Limerick, I would like to suggest that Deputy Morrissey, bad and all as he may be, is not like some of the Ministers. One of the Ministers withdrew—yesterday or the day before—a statement he made a month ago, and about a fortnight ago, on the amending Bill to the Civil Service Act, there was a statement made here by an External Minister, in reply to a question, to the effect that he wished to God that he had no women in his employment. Every paper in Dublin and in the country reported that statement, and next day practically every Deputy discussed the matter at tea-time or in the lobbies, and wanted to know how he would explain that statement to his constituents at the next election—if he is interested in it. He can quite easily contradict that statement for this reason: that it was ignored completely in the Official Report regarding that day's proceedings. I should like to know how that happened. That has never happened Deputy Morrissey so far.
I am not responsible at any rate. I am not responsible for the omission from the Official Report. If Deputy Morrissey wants to put himself right with the Dáil, in so far as this contention of mine goes, he can do it. If he likes to stick to what he said, he can do it. But I have a particular attitude with regard to these technical matters, and I am going to insist rigidly upon what I conceive to be my rights.
I want to tell the Minister that I am going to stick to what I said as firmly as the Minister is sticking to what he said.
Deputy Nagle has succeeded in being delightfully irrelevant. I listen to the debates, but I do not, so to speak, repeat the dose by reading the debates, and I was not aware that the statement alluded to was not in the Official Report. It was not taken from the Official Report by my instructions, if Deputy Nagle's case is correct.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m.