Before dealing with the sub-heads I would like to urge again on the Minister the advisability of removing two of these sub-heads and placing them under the Votes which come under the purview of the Minister for Education. I think that sub-heads C and D would be more properly placed under the Vote for Science and Art. One has only to look at them to realise that it would surely be more appropriate that they should be placed under the control of the Minister for Education, particularly when we see it stated here that it is the Minister for Education who recommends this grant under sub-head D. I am very glad that the Minister has increased the subsidy for the Royal Irish Academy. It is, unfortunately, both too much and too little. It is not sufficient to place the Academy on a proper footing, and I hope that within the next few years the Executive Council will seriously consider the advisability of establishing a proper Irish Academy, fully equipped with funds, which the present Academy is not, and therefore cannot have the same authority in the country as a real national academy would have.
I put down an amendment to this Vote this afternoon, but the Ceann Comhairle would not accept it, as the notice was insufficient. I intended to move the reduction of this Vote by £500 in respect of sub-head B, the grant to the Abbey Theatre. The Minister did not refer to the fact that this grant has been increased from last year; that the taxpayers are now asked to provide £1,000. It is a grant in aid, but we are given no information as to why this sum is needed. The public have no knowledge of the financial position of the theatre, and as to whether this money is really necessary or not. One would have thought that when this proposal was put forward we should be given reasons for it. We got no reasons; we are simply asked to subsidise this theatre, although for all we know it may be in a most flourishing financial condition. The accounts of the theatre do not come before the Auditor-General, and we have no idea how this £1,000 will be spent. I would have liked to move this reduction for the reason that if any money is to be spent by the taxpayers on the Abbey Theatre it should be spent in the first place in giving the actors and actresses a living wage, which has not been the case in the past. I understand that for many years they have been paid starvation wages, and Ministers and Deputies, including Deputy Johnson, have supported the theatre, in spite of the sweated labour employed there. I think it is high time, if the taxpayers are to subsidise this theatre, that at least the first people to benefit should be those who have made the theatre and made its reputation, the actors and the playwrights. I understand that the royalties paid to the playwrights are so ridiculously below the royalties paid by other theatres that they are practically of no benefit whatever.
Quite apart from the fact that we have no information as to the financial position of the theatre and as to where the money is going, we are asked to subsidise this very contentious school of drama; we are asked to subsidise the new stage Irishman who is being invented by a modern playwright, "Joxer" and the "Paycock," a type of Irishman taking the place of the old stage Irishman with his shillelagh, and his pipe in his hat; it is an even more despicable type. The taxpayers are asked to subsidise this new stage Irishman. If this be a national theatre, and if the taxpayers are to support it by a subsidy, then the board for selecting plays to be acted in the theatre should be representative of the whole nation, and not any small clique or minority, which I think is the case at present, however distinguished and however cultured that clique or minority may be. I only wish to make this protest, and I hope that if this money is voted steps will be taken to see that at any rate some of it will go to increase the starvation wages of the actors.
This country has produced very great actors and actresses, and they have been driven out of the country because they could not live by acting at the Abbey Theatre. The Abbey Theatre, as somebody remarked some time ago, is nothing but an emigrating agency for actors. Actors come there, but are driven out of the country because they cannot live on what they are paid. Apart from these things, in view of the restricted control, in view of the particular mentality of those who control the theatre, and those who select the plays which shall be acted in it, many playwrights of national sympathies are boycotted. While their plays are boycotted we are asked to subsidise what was described by a distinguished member of another House as in reality "the apotheosis of sordidity," while playwrights of substantial genius are ignored. When we are asked to advance money I think that at any rate we should have some control of the spending of that money.
