PUBLIC BUSINESS. - RELIEF OF UNEMPLOYMENT—MOTION BY DEPUTY MORRISSEY. (DEBATE RESUMED.) – Dáil Éireann (6th Dáil) – Thursday, 3 Nov 1927

PUBLIC BUSINESS. - RELIEF OF UNEMPLOYMENT—MOTION BY DEPUTY MORRISSEY. (DEBATE RESUMED.)

Motion: "That the measures hitherto adopted by the Government for the relief of unemployment are insufficient and ought to be extended immediately."—(Deputy Morrissey.)

Debate resumed on Amendment:—

To delete all words after the word "That" and substitute therefor the words—"recognising that further measures for the relief of unemployment will involve additional provision out of public funds and may consequently impose fresh charges on productive enterprise, the Dáil is of opinion that while no reasonable method of promoting further employment should be neglected, care must be exercised in the adoption of relief measures to ensure that the evil which it is sought to remedy is not aggravated by the placing of an undue strain on the resources of industry and agriculture."—(Minister for Finance.)

Mr. T.J. O'CONNELL

This debate has wandered over a very wide range of subjects, from the history of the Huguenots on the one side to what constitutes the balance for car wheels on the other side. We have had economics, highbrow and lowbrow, political lectures and fiscal policy. Both of the big Parties have availed to the fullest of the opportunity of having it out with each other, over all these matters of high politics, if we might so call them. Goodness knows where the debate would lead us if, occasionally, a Deputy from these benches did not intervene to try to bring the discussion back to the subject—really to bring it back to earth, as it were. When thinking over this, it struck me that we have an illustration of how near both the big Parties can come to this discussion in the election speeches that were delivered during the week in Carlow and Kilkenny. Although unemployment is admittedly the most important subject before the country, and although this debate has been going on here for the last fortnight, anyone who took the trouble to read in the newspapers the election speeches that were delivered last Sunday will find that it was not unemployment the big guns of either Party were concerned with. They were concerned more about what was done in 1921 or 1922, and as to who fired the first shot in that disastrous civil war. In that connection I can only say that if the advice the Labour Party tendered both these Parties at Christmas, 1921, and in March, May and June, 1922, had been taken, that first shot would never have been fired, and the trouble we are now discussing would not, possibly, have assumed the proportions it did assume in the meantime.

I want to protest, too, against the attitude adopted in this debate by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. He is the Minister mainly and primarily responsible in connection with this subject. He puts down, when this motion was tabled, a platitudinous amendment, and instead of standing up, as, in my opinion, it was his duty to do, as the first speaker from the Government Benches, he adopts the quite unusual tactics of getting another Minister to propose the amendment. Of course, we have it from the President that he is not going to speak until the last Deputy on the Labour Benches has finished. That may be good tactics, it may be good strategy, it may be counted clever, but it is not treating the House and this subject properly. This is not a game of Party tactics. The motion has not been put down to seek Party advantage. In fact, it was deliberately framed so that its adoption by the House might not necessarily imply want of confidence in the present Ministry. It may be no harm to read the resolution at this stage of the debate. It asks the Dáil to affirm "that the measures hitherto adopted by the Government for the relief of unemployment are insufficient and ought to be extended immediately." The President told us all that has been done by the Government. Other Ministers have done the same and have taken credit for what they have done. It is not my purpose to deny them any credit that is due to them. If they want credit for doing the duty that was imposed on them when they were given control of the resources of the State, by all means let them have that credit. Even though much has been done, and we are ready and willing to give any credit for the Government's efforts in that direction, the question that faces us now is: Have the measures that have been taken proved sufficient for the relief of unemployment? I maintain that the test of the sufficiency is whether or not there are still any unemployed with us. The sufficiency of the measures will be proved only when the unemployed have disappeared for all practical purposes.

Let us examine that position. We have the registered unemployed—those who have registered in the Labour Exchanges. We have those, whose existence anyway is known of, who do not register because they cannot see any immediate benefit accuring from registration. They have exhausted any benefits coming to them, and they are not going to the trouble of travelling long distances and possibly standing in queues to register. We have what might be described as the semi-unemployed— the numerous uneconomic holders in the west, south and north-west, who are employed in the proper sense of the term for only a very small portion of the year, because they have not sufficient work on their little holdings for themselves and their families. We have the migratory labourers, who have to seek temporary employment in England and Scotland. In addition to that, we have the 25,000 or 30,000 people who emigrate every year to get employment somewhere else. In face of this, I hold that nobody can stand up and say that sufficient measures have been taken by the Government for the relief of unemployment. Unemployment is still with us, and it is still a problem to be solved. No doubt the Minister for Industry and Commerce will overwhelm the House with statistics when he comes to speak at the end of the debate. He will tell us all the people that have been employed and all the people who will be employed. But the bald fact remains that there are a number of unemployed people—let the number be, as Deputy Morrissey said, in the region of one hundred thousand or fifty thousand— the fact is that these people are there still unemployed.

The Minister for Finance was rather inclined to minimise the position. He said in fact that it was not too bad— certainly it was not as bad as in previous years. On that point I should like to quote just two opinions—one from the City of Dublin and one from a typical western county. I have here an appeal issued over the name of a distinguished civil servant by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Dublin. In the course of that appeal it is stated:—

"The intensity of the prevailing distress is without parallel in the experience of our members."

In a resolution adopted by the Roads Committee of the Mayo Co. Council within the last week occurs this statement:—

"The conditions in Mayo are worse now than they have been within living memory."

I put these to the Minister for Finance to show that when he says that things are not too bad, in fact they are not as bad as in previous years, there are other people, in any case, who hold different opinions and people who have, I maintain, some right or authority to speak on the subject.

The President claimed that during the last four or five years the Government have done all that was reasonably possible to tackle and solve this problem. Looking back over those five years and the attempts which were made by the Government to deal with the question, I was struck by this remarkable thing, which may have escaped the attention of many Deputies, especially the newer Deputies. Early in 1923 a Committee or Commission was set up, after a discussion in this House, and pressure brought to bear by the Labour Party at the time, on reconstruction and development. That was a representative Commission of employers, labour and financial interests. I believe that a respected Deputy of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, now sitting in this House, was a prominent member of it. This Commission brought in an interim report in which schemes were recommended which would give immediate employment to 40,000 men. The President, instead of accepting that report and acting on it, denounced the report and said with regard to one of the recommendations that it was a scandalous recommendation. Although this Commission, after the issue of the interim report, was setting about devising other schemes which would go towards solving this problem in a permanent way, in view of the President's attitude towards their findings in the interim report there was nothing left for them to do but what they did, namely, to dissolve.

The PRESIDENT

Will the Deputy explain why I said it?

Mr. O'CONNELL

The President may have an explanation.

The PRESIDENT

The explanation is on the face of the report and no explanation is necessary from me.

Mr. O'CONNELL

In any case my memory is that in later years the policy outlined in the report was the basis to some extent of the policy adopted by the Government with regard to roads. If that Commission had been allowed to function, if its recommendations had been treated in the spirit which they deserved to be treated by the Government, it is quite probable that to-day the problem of unemployment would not have assumed the dimensions which it has assumed. The Minister for Finance said that this was largely a question of ways and means and I agree. But it is also a question of the attitude of mind towards the problem, the spirit in which it is faced, the extent to which the Government accepts responsibility for dealing with and settling the problem. That too has to be taken into account.

The President has said that the prime consideration of the Government during the last five years was the development of industry. I cannot see that they have been particularly successful in that regard. I am prepared to give credit for the Shannon scheme, for the Beet Sugar industry, and for what has been done under the Trade Loans Guarantee Act, although I must say with regard to that that it was very difficult to find any result. I hope the Minister for Industry and Commerce will elaborate what his Department has done for the development of industry under that Act, that we heard so much about when it was brought in. There has been no appreciable impression made on the ranks of the unemployed by any schemes I know of that have been developed under that Act.

My chief criticism of the Government is that they appear to have no settled progressive policy, no broad or long outlook for dealing with the unemployed question. It always seems to be a hand-to-mouth business with them, just something to get us over the next month or two or three months; no consideration for developments that may take place within the next three or five or ten or fifteen years. If we except the Shannon scheme, where there has been that outlook, where an attempt has been made to foreshadow events and developments that may arise in the course of ten, fifteen or twenty years, we cannot see that any progressive policy has been adopted by the Government, although such policies have been urged in this House and elsewhere upon them.

Take the question of housing. They have a housing policy, but it is only for this year, or possibly for next year. How many houses do they say are necessary in the country? I think if the Government adopted a housing scheme for the provision of the number of houses necessary to satisfy the needs of the country and laid out a certain period of years in which these houses were to be supplied, it would have a great effect on the building industry, because people, whose duty it is to provide materials, could look ahead and see that inside the next five or ten years it might be necessary to built ten or fifteen or twenty thousand houses, as the case might be. They would set up new machinery for the provision of building materials—doors and window frames— and all the various things that may be made in connection with housing: materials, bricks, and so on—but no firm or company will do that because they are not assured of continual employment. That, too, would undoubtedly have effect on the labour market and on the question of unemployment.

I cannot quite follow the Minister for Local Government and Public Health when he told us that 1,000 houses was the limit of output with regard to Dublin. I think he confined it to Dublin and indeed I am not quite sure whether the statement was made by the President or by the Minister.

A DEPUTY

By both.

Mr. O'CONNELL

There certainly was a hint that there was something limiting them to that and there was a hint that it was the supply of labour. I cannot understand how that would square with the fact that in the principal sections of the building trades during the past two or three years there have been always idle men on the books of the Unions and many men have had to go to Liverpool and Manchester and elsewhere to get work in the building industry, so that the trouble must not be there wherever else it is. We have a similar want of outlook shown in other matters. It is only within the last year that an attempt has been made to lay down a progressive programme in the matter of afforestation. The Minister announced, a few days ago, that they had a progressive programme but no preparation has been made for the carrying out of that programme. They have to import seedlings from other countries. The same thing about want of preparation applies to the reclamation of land. In the fishery industry we have often from these benches urged the need for re-organisation, and the creation of home markets that would enable those engaged in the industry to dispose of their catches.

Another matter that is worthy of attention is the question of fuel supplies. Only last year, owing to the coal trouble in England, this country was left in a precarious position with regard to fuel supply, and, indeed, the conditions might easily have been worse. Suppose the same thing were to happen again. No one can say whether a similar state of things may not occur again. We have no fuel supplies in this country, although we have abundant supplies of natural fuel which could be provided. It might be worth while considering whether provision might not be made to lay in a stock of fuel to meet an emergency of that kind. Has the Government made any provision for emergencies in the national life of the country? What would happen if war broke out between Great Britain and the United States? We know what happened in the previous war. At that time we had the protection of the British Navy. We were all under the one Government, and were one unit of government then, and it was considered part of the duty of the Empire to supply us with food as well as to supply the English people with food. But it is no longer any part of England's duty to see that the Saorstát is provided with food in case of war. What provision has been made by the Government, or are they likely to make provision, to lay in a stock of food, or to encourage the growth of food in such circumstances? These are all matters worthy of consideration, but so far as I can discover they do not seem to have received any consideration from the Government in regard to the questions themselves, or in regard to their effect upon the lessening of the unemployment problem.

We are always met with the same objection, when things of this kind are discussed: "Where is the money to come from?" Happily there is no need for me to answer that question to-day. It has been answered very definitely by the Minister for Finance. Speaking on the first day of the debate, he said: "Our credit is good enough. So far as the getting of money for productive, remunerative work is concerned, I think we can get any money we require, and get that money on fairly good terms." The Minister for Finance knows where he can get the money, so that there is no need for us to answer that question which is so often asked from the Cumann na nGaedheal Benches. The Minister tells us it is a question of finding remunerative work that can be done. It is all narrowed down to that. The Minister spoke a lot about the danger of putting a burden on industry. I am afraid there is too much made about this burden on industry.

The Minister confined his attention almost entirely to the necessity for reducing direct taxation, despite the pains the Government have gone to in reducing income tax to three shillings. Great play was made by the Minister on the necessity of reducing overhead charges so that there would be no burden on industry. I misunderstand the income tax regulations if that argument can be successfully used, because I understand that income tax is a tax on the profits of business after all the overhead charges have been met. Perhaps Deputy Good will explain whether that is the case or not. If it is the case, why bring in income tax as a burden on overhead charges? It is, as I say, a tax on profits after all overhead charges have been met. Taxation of that kind cannot necessarily cripple industry, especially if the proceeds of taxation are used to relieve the unemployment problem, and are spent on useful work, because if we increase the purchasing powers of the general body they will spend the money in the purchase of different classes of goods in a way different to that in which the original owner of the money who pays the tax will spend it.

A person who gets that money in the form of wages will, generally speaking, spend it in buying food, clothing and articles which can be produced at home rather than on luxuries upon which possibly the payer of the tax would spend his money. In this connection it may not be out of place to recall a matter frequently referred to here, namely, that coincident with the relief from this direct taxation in their Budget last year, they economised in expenditure, but all the economies took the form of cutting down useful services such as land development, fisheries, agricultural development and so on. It was in that direction that economies were made to balance the reduction in income tax. In this connection, perhaps, a quotation from a report of a committee of experts, whom even Deputy Good will recognise as having some authority to speak on the matter, might not be inappropriate. I refer to the report of the Committee on National Debt and Taxation, commonly known as the Colwyn Committee. They say:

"The late Lord Leverhulme suggested that the public's purchasing power was directly affected by the burden of excessive income tax. smaller output and higher prices being indirect consequences."

That is something like what we hear in this House from Deputy Good. The report goes on to say:—

"This opinion regarding the effect on the general purchasing power of the community appears to be untenable. Moreover, the use of income tax revenue cannot be ignored. In particular, so far as it is applied in the payment of pensions, relief of unemployment, etc., it supports the purchasing power of the worker and increases the total effective demand for necessaries."

If it increases the total purchasing power of the worker and the demand for necessaries it obviously increases consumption and production. Perhaps Deputy Good would, on a suitable occasion, read over that report of the Colwyn Committee and I can promise him that he will find something very useful in it. Deputy Good, as I have mentioned, spoke at length yesterday and painted a woeful picture, as somebody said, of the amount of money which it would take to maintain the unemployed. The fact is we are maintaining the unemployed in some form or another. Industry is maintaining them. If we are not maintaining them in useful work we are maintaining them out of home assistance. That, in fact, seems to be the only remedy which the Minister for Local Government had to offer. I am thinking of the problem that would face, for instance, County Mayo or County Donegal. They can maintain themselves out of their own resources.

Deputy Good has not told us, and did not, in fact, consider that there was any necessity to tell us what his solution or what his alternative was. Is it his alternative to let them starve? He has not told us. He also referred to the fact that the low standard of education was responsible for much unemployment. I am inclined to agree with him, and I would like to pay tribute to him in that respect. In spite of the criticism which I have to offer on other matters, I should say that on the question of education he has always taken a progressive line. I give him full credit for that. I do not always agree with his statements in regard to education nor with his conclusions. He has told us that sixty per cent. of those who leave the national schools are in the fifth standard or under it. I do not accept those figures, but what I am less inclined to accept, and I think that those who know anything about national schools will be less inclined to accept, is that boys and girls who reach the fifth standard are barely able to read and write.

I know some boys who reached that standard and who could read and write and, probably, speak more commonsense than some Deputies who took part in this debate. There is one aspect of this question of education which deserves attention. Deputy Good and other Deputies, including myself, have repeatedly urged the raising of the school age from 14 to 15 or 16. That is a question that has a real effect on the unemployment problem, because children, especially young girls, are taken into employment in various businesses at the age of 14 and are dismissed at the age of 16, and thrown on the unemployment market, because for a girl of 14 no insurance cards need be stamped. It often happens in families where there are two, three, or four girls, children from 14 to 16 years of age, one or two will be employed, while their elder sisters are unemployed.

I am told that in Dublin that is a common practice in the smaller industries, in the sweet and confectionery trade, and in the ready-made clothing trade. I would draw attention, especially that of the Minister for Finance, to the fact that these are protected trades, trades that have the benefit of protection. They should not be allowed, and in future schemes of protection care should be taken to see that they are not allowed to engage in sweated labour to help in carrying on such industries. We do not want to encourage, by protection or otherwise, the inefficient employer. I would point out to Deputy Good that although the standard of education among the workers in this country may not be everything which we desire it to be, it can compare favourably with the standard of education among workers in other countries, and certainly it can compare more favourably than the standard of education and the efficiency of employers in this country compared with the standard of efficiency of employers in other countries. Deputy Good, and those who argue with him, will talk about the cost of production and all that kind of thing, and the first suggestion you hear from people who make these statements is: "Oh! the cost of production is too high, the labour costs are too high." In other words, wages are too high.

Mr. GOOD

Output too low.

Mr. O'CONNELL

Yes, output too low and wages too high. I have a few quotations from people who have considered this matter, and it might be no harm to read them. One is: "High wages and other costs of labour have everywhere operated as incentives for employers to discover, adopt and improve other economies, technical and administrative which have more than offset the cost of labour." Again: "To lower cost of production by reducing wages is to take a backward step in civilisation; to achieve the same result by some machinery or process, some economy of the use of power by developing and discovering a market for some by-product, by better bookkeeping, cost-taking and management, is to take a forward step in civilisation." I would like Deputy Good would quote some progressive businesses in which low output has been the result of an increase of wages. I can quote several in this country and outside of it in which the opposite has been the case, in which high output has been the natural result of an increase in wages. But that is always the remedy, and the only remedy, that presents itself to the inefficient and non-enterprising employer in this country, to cut down the cost of production by a reduction in the cost of labour, forgetting all the time that he is cutting his own possible market and the market of his fellow-employers. When you reduce the purchasing power of the employed person you there and then limit the market for the supply of the goods you are producing. The Labour Party had the benefit of a lecture from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Bourke, and we were told what line we might follow. He said something to the effect that by adopting that line we might strike out for a higher standard of living. We are always glad to get advice and suggestions, but I do not think the Labour Party would be inclined to place much value upon suggestions from a Deputy who when Minister for Local Government was responsible for issuing a circular to county councils not only urging, but forcing them to pay wages to their employees down to the very lowest standard, of 26/- per week in County Mayo and County Donegal. We will look to some other direction for advice as to how we are to conduct our business in the Labour Party. Deputy Esmonde had something to say about us too. I really do not know whether we should take Deputy Esmonde seriously or not. He is that kind of political Harold Llyod who seems to be always balancing himself on the edge of a cliff and keeps our hearts in our mouths as to which way he will fall. I do not know whether he is orthodox at present. I should like to tell him that so far as the Shannon scheme is concerned a distinction must be drawn between the purpose of the scheme, the object which it was sought to achieve, and the conditions of labour in connection with that scheme.

There were no stronger supporters of the object of the scheme when first propounded than the Labour Party, but we were not supporters of and do not approve of the conditions and the headline which the Government in the carrying out of that scheme sought to impose on the workers, and the headline they sought to lay down for other employers. As I told Deputy Esmonde, we have nothing to regret and nothing to apologise for with regard to our action in connection with the Shannon scheme. There are many other speeches to which I would like to refer, but I do not wish to go into all these points. The problem, as I have said, has been narrowed down for us by the Minister for Finance. It has two aspects. One is immediate and urgent, and that is what must be done to relieve distress. In so far as that is concerned there is no other scheme open but the granting of money under the heading of relief schemes, and the setting about putting these schemes into operation as soon as possible. That means the granting of relief in the form of money, whether as wages in connection with relief schemes or the extension of unemployment benefit. Somebody asked was there any place in which unemployment benefit was given except on an insurance basis. You have only to go a few miles across the border to find that there is uncovenanted benefit paid. The amount of money which appears in the Estimate we are to consider in a day or two is, in my opinion, inadequate to deal with the problem which must be solved during the next two or three months. It represents an average of say £6,000 per county. What is that, or £10,000 or £20,000, in counties like Donegal, Mayo or Galway? How far will it go to relieve the present distress? Of course, we can fall back always, as the Minister for Local Government might remind us, on home assistance. We have always that left. Even though the sum were doubled, trebled or quadrupled, that would only deal with the immediate problem, and there would still remain the necessity to find a solution for the permanent question.

Various suggestions have been made in this House for the solution of the problem of permanent unemployment, and they have been discussed. Some of them are in the nature of freak suggestions, perhaps, but in a general debate of this kind one can only make suggestions as to the lines along which an investigation might proceed. That is the extent to which any suggestion can profitably be made in a discussion of this kind. I will make another suggestion. I referred some time ago to the Committee on reconstruction and development which was set up in 1923, and which had such an inglorious ending. If the Government had changed their attitude of mind since 1923, would they be prepared to set up a committee on the same lines? I am not suggesting a committee or an economic council such as I understood to be suggested by Deputy de Valera. It would be something in the nature of a permanent advisory committee of a non-party character, with representatives of Labour, employers and all interests that ought to be represented, with the one condition only, that all were earnestly anxious to discover a means of solving the unemployment problem. The object and duty of such a committee would be to explore some or all of the various suggestions put forward here and elsewhere for the relief of unemployment, and find out how many were practicable and could be put into operation immediately; to find out in fact what the Government might or could do towards the solution of this problem. I can imagine that if a committee of that kind were to make recommendations that would get the support of this House the Minister for Finance would have less difficulty than he anticipates in finding the money for the carrying out of schemes that would have the backing of the whole community behind them.

This debate will conclude sometime, I suppose. A vote may be taken on the amendment, which may be carried or lost, and the same with the motion, but unless there is something definite and practical done all our talk will have gone for nothing. What practical outcome can we have from this debate? I put it to the Government seriously, and as evidence of the fact that this motion has not been put down purely for the sake of party capital or anything of that kind, that it is their duty to leave nothing undone to seek a solution of this unemployment problem. I have put the suggestion before them that a Committee, somewhat similar to the Committee established in 1923 on reconstruction and development, should be set up with a view to looking to the immediate future, that it should look a long distance ahead and devise schemes that would gradually absorb our unemployed and surplus population. If they agree to set up a Committee of that kind in the spirit in which the suggestion is made, then our purpose in putting down this motion will have been served. If they honestly take that suggestion and give a promise to set up such a Committee, setting a reasonable time-limit on its operations, then so far as we are concerned we are not going to press this motion. I am putting that suggestion forward as the test of the Government's sincerity to get something done. I believe that there is a possibility, working along those lines, of getting co-operation on a national basis, because there is no party in this House or outside of it that is not anxious, even though we may have different views as to how it is to be done, that this problem ought to be solved, and I believe the experiment is worth trying. I believe we are not so bankrupt in ideas that people of goodwill who have the opportunity of studying this question at first hand would not be able to devise schemes which might go a long distance towards solving this problem.

Mention was made yesterday by Deputy Good about what he called peace in industry. So far as we are concerned, the desire for peace is always stronger with us than it is possibly with any other class. The reason for that is that when there is a war in industry it is the workers who suffer most. Our desire has always been for peace in industry, but it is not a peace at any price in industry. The workers have never been the first to break away from conditions of peace or conciliation agreements, and at the present time we have some evidence of that. I hope that before the debate concludes we will hear something from the Government Benches as to what practical steps they propose to take, whether they are prepared to accept the suggestion that I have thrown out with regard to finding a solution of the unemployment problem. This debate has shown one thing, in any case, and it is this, that though we may have various suggestions in our minds, there is at least amongst all parties in the House a definite desire to do what is possible to solve the unemployment problem.

MINISTER for INDUSTRY and COMMERCE (Mr. McGilligan)

The Deputy who has just sat down, as well as some other Deputies, complained that presumably as a mere matter of tactics I had kept my seat until this time. Nothing is more natural than that I should have done so, and that I should speak at this particular time. The motion speaks of the measures that have hitherto been taken for the relief of unemployment, and asks that they should be extended. One of the big questions to be considered in deciding on the motion or on the amendment is what, in fact, is the number of unemployed? Why should I have interfered earlier until I had got some idea of what people believed to be the number of unemployed in this country, and until I had got some idea of the foundations upon which their calculations were made. Why should I interfere to say whether or not a further extension of unemployment relief schemes should be made until I had found out what proof Deputies were able to bring forward as to the inadequacy of the measures that we had brought before the House, and which are already in operation, and as to what constructive suggestions were going to be made by Deputies from any party in the House as to the future? We have got information, accurate and inaccurate, as to the numbers of the unemployed in the country, but we have got barely anything approaching a suggestion as to how unemployment can be relieved in the future beyond what relief has been given in the past. There are two minor points that I would like to clear out of the way before dealing with the first big question—the number of the unemployed. It was Deputy Mullins, I think, who spoke of seamen and of certain hardships that they are under by reason of the fact that they are made pay into insurance funds, and that when they go out of employment they cannot receive benefit. That is a detail about which the Deputy might put down a question to me, or raise it on the adjournment. Until I have some exact information before me with regard to these seamen that he speaks of I cannot say what is possible with regard to them. What he said was: "Certain men are, in fact, having deductions made from their wages on ships, and the deductions should not be made, and are illegally made." As regards Irishmen domiciled here, but serving on ships registered and owned outside of this country, they do not get benefit, and the counter to that is that they should not pay contributions. That was the point made by the Deputy, as I understood him. There are certain other cases in which we can act, cases relating to men about whom we have got reciprocal arrangements so far as England is concerned.

The same remark applies to a statement made by Deputy O'Dowd. He spoke of the Arigna miners who pay into an insurance fund but who, when they are thrown out of employment, find that they are debarred from benefit, with the usual statement that that is simply because they have an acre or two of mountainy land. That is one of the hardiest of the annuals that comes up in this House. On that point I have already challenged Labour Deputies who have spoken most frequently on it to bring forward specific cases so that we could have the question discussed on the adjournment. Let us have actual cases brought forward. These then can be viewed in the light of the various items that I have from time to time spoken of the acreage of the holding, the valuation of it, the time at which the claim was made and is said to have been rejected, and also the applicant's previous industrial history. I do not believe that it is possible to find a case in which it could be said that there is any hardship accruing to men who are made pay into an insurance fund and who when thrown out of work are debarred from benefit because it is said they have an acre or two of land.

Deputy Morrissey put forward the figure of 90,000 unemployed in the country. That figure was put forward simply because of a certain statement that was made in a report regarding the prolongation of the Insurance Act. The Commission speaking of that said: "It is clear that the tests with regard to unemployment under the prolongation of Insurance Act were not applied, and that a big number of that 90,000 may have gone into insurable employment, may have died or emigrated, or, in the case of women, may have got married. At any rate, the insurable population dealt with under that particular Act is over 450,000, whereas the insurable population of whom I am speaking is the insurable population under the Unemployment Insurance Acts—and there is no basis whatever for any statement arising out of that Act or from any report of the Commission upon it with regard to the unemployed in the country. A man who may be getting benefit under the National Health Insurance Act may, in fact, have taken sick while he was at his work, and there is no relation whatever, as far as these Acts are concerned, as between insurance for health purposes and insurance for unemployment purposes. I have often had this question put to me and my figures have been questioned. The Exchange figures only show those who register as unemployed, and we are told that is only a fraction of those who are unemployed in the country. I have often asked in debates of this kind, what am I to do to get correct numbers if the system that holds at present is no good? I wonder do Deputies know how far-reaching that system is. There are about one hundred exchanges through the country.

There is no compulsion on people to register. Anyone who wishes to be registered must be registered. There is compulsion on the office to accept anyone who comes along and gets registered for either of two purposes, either as a claimant of benefit or as seeking work knowing that he has no benefit. There are one hundred offices through the country. Anybody wanting to avail of those offices and living within a radius of three miles of the office is supposed to present himself one day a week. If a man was unemployed there surely ought to be no hardship in coming three miles to an office one day a week to sign the book. If a man lives outside the radius he registers by post. In the first instance he must apply to the principal officer of my Department, and his letter need not bear a stamp. Every application thereafter either for registration if he has gone to employment and gets out of it again, or any other communication sent back to him from the office carries with it a franked envelope. The position in the country is that the unemployed have one hundred offices, those within a radius of three miles of any office are asked to come in one day a week to sign the book, anyone outside that radius is supposed to communicate by post, and his letter is carried free of charge. Is there a simpler system that could be devised? Only this country and England have a national system with regard to the registration of the unemployed. On whom is the blame to rest if there are 100,000 or 120,000 people unemployed and only a certain number registered in the year? The employment exchanges are well known. The machinery is simple. There are clerks available in each of them, and it is the clerk who does all the work. All the man has to do is to sign his card if he lives within a radius of three miles of the office. In the case of the application by post it is a little more difficult, because there are three forms to be filled. If the forms seem not to be accurate they are sent back, and on every occasion a franked envelope goes with the return.

The Deputy is not so foolish as to think that I should give an answer to that? The Deputy is an employer, I believe. I wonder will he guarantee to those he takes on that permanent employment will be given.

Mr. BRISCOE

I was taking the figures of the Minister as being exact— 16,000 per annum placed in vacancies.

Mr. McGILLIGAN

I think my words were "16,000 vacancies filled." I did not say "16,000 men put into employment." I want to make that clear—"16,000 vacancies filled."

There is a further point misunderstood with regard to these figures. Deputy Lemass has fallen into error for one. He made a statement as to the number of people unemployed, and Deputy O'Connell has talked this evening as if the figures given by me represent all that he would call the unemployed —those unemployed for the whole period of the year, because he spoke, in addition, of the semi-employed or semi-unemployed. These, in fact, are the semi-unemployed. There are very few on the register unemployed during the year. We have a test for them. There is the insurance year to start with, which is a varying period. In addition to this there is the statistical insurance year, which is, for statistical purposes, made to correspond as exactly as possible with the twelve months' period. We are aiming to make it correspond with the twelve months' period in future. In the case of anyone who registers for the first time in the statistical year we call that fresh registration. Anyone who has been on the register in the current statistical year, but outside a current statistical month, and who goes into employment in that statistical period we count as re-registration. It is simple enough. There are people on the books for a year. That is fresh registration. A man may get work, go off the books, and come on again.

If we are taking any particular month, say the month of February, we get a man who had been for the period of twelve months surrounding that February on the books who had gone off the register as being in employment, but who had come on again in February. We count him re-registered. I have a few figures with regard to unemployment. Take the month ending the 7th February of this year. The number on the register at the beginning of that month was 23,791. The number of fresh registrations was 9,761, and the number of re-registrations was 7,231. No one of those people on at the beginning got work. At the beginning of the month ending the 7th February, if the 23,000 were, what Deputy O'Connell makes them out to be, unemployed for the whole time and the fresh registrations came on, then we should have a fine total at the end of that month of over 40,000 people. We had 23,789, a difference of two.

Mr. CORISH

What does that prove?

Mr. McGILLIGAN

I am going to show what it proves. It proves that there is a turnover of the unemployed, that there is a big number of people on the register at any time who get employment for considerable periods of the year, and to take the figure at any one moment gives a completely wrong impression of the amount of unemployment in the country.

I can take the same figures for the other six months period. It is simply magnifying these conditions. It works out at the same thing. You get definitely this same calculation, that there is a turnover of 81 per cent. in the numbers registered at any time. Over 81 per cent. of those found registered as unemployed at any time are going to be found in employment within a few weeks after they have registered. The fact that people are going on registering, going on and coming off and going on again, the fact that there are so many applicants who keep on registering when they cannot get benefit, and the fact that there are so many vacancies filled during the year by the employment exchanges, make me believe that the present system is working well and that the numbers on the unemployment register at any one time, if properly understood, do represent fairly and accurately the number of unemployed in this country, and represent more than the insurable unemployed in this country.

I say that because we have, definitely, people on this register of whom it can be said that, looking two or three weeks ahead, they are not likely to get benefit for a certain period. That is all I have to say on the matter of the number of unemployed. If people say that that is not an accurate statement, and that that system is not presenting a fair view to the people of the country of those who are unemployed at any time in the country, I want to have a better method suggested. I want a method suggested which will entail less labour and less expense to the unemployed and at the same time less expense to the country.

If people do not register under these conditions, whose fault is it? At any rate, the unemployed, if they know anything of politics during the last two or three years, must realise that these figures are constantly turning up and that they are not acting in their own interests if they do not register. They have a definite incentive to register and to register solidly and to keep it up until they get employment.

Whatever the mass may be, let it be 90,000 as Deputy Morrissey says, or the decreased figures that I speak of, or 90,000 plus 40,000 that emigrate and that Deputy O'Connell speaks of, plus some extra migratory labourers, you get the figures of 90,000, 140,000 or 150,000. We are supposed to decide here that the measures hitherto adopted by the Government to relieve unemployment are inadequate and should be extended immediately. There is very little difference between what the Minister for Finance said and what Deputy Morrissey says on this point. The Minister for Finance said, and I would agree with him, that we would not plead that the measures hitherto taken have been adequate if the only test of adequacy were that put up by Deputy O'Connell about there not being a single unemployed man in the country. That test is the ideal set in front of him. If he thinks that we are going to get a period of time when there will not be left a single unemployed man in the country——

Mr. T.J. O'CONNELL

An abnormally unemployed man.

Mr. McGILLIGAN

I want to get rid of that. I want to know what is the test. Is it that so long as one man remained unemployed, the measures taken by the Government are not adequate? Nobody could say that. When the Deputy says it ought to be extended we will agree with him. Deputy Morrissey said his statement did not involve that care should not be exercised. If we are to take from that, that we are to take care of the finances of the State, and that we are not to do rash things now, then we are in thorough agreement with him. Where are the resources of the State going to be injured? What is going to be the provision made in the future and how far should any immediate extension be made in the way of relief schemes to meet the immediate needs?

We get this motion dealt with by the Fianna Fáil Deputies from another point of view, from the point of view of people who have a policy which is going to put an end to emigration and unemployment and from the point of view of the wider exponents of that policy that it is to be done immediately. If the 90,000 figure is accepted, plus the 40,000 emigrants, all these people are to be kept in the country, and to be provided with work at once. Deputy Lemass said that he believed that with the co-operation of the practical working farmer and with the co-operation of the business men who are in their ranks "that we can," and further, he said that "we have in fact hammered out an economic policy which if put into operation will speedily alter the condition of affairs existing in the country." The use of the word "hammer" is the Deputy's metaphorical way of expressing that he is dealing with this rather malleable problem and he has a solution. Deputy de Valera has very clear-cut ideas as to how the country is to be reorganised and as to how the unemployed are to be set to work and how emigration is to be stopped. Deputy Lemass had the problem thought out and hammered out. He said, speaking of unemployment, that there was not merely unemployment in the towns but in the rural areas, and he went on to a series of calculations. His calculation with regard to rural industries is based upon the return with regard to unemployment and distress in the Saorstát presented to the Dáil on the 22nd July, 1927, he said, by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I wonder has the Deputy that return now, and I wonder could he tell me how he arrived at the statement that that return was presented on the 22nd July, 1927? I wonder does that seem like the return that the Deputy refers to? It is certainly the only return with regard to rural unemployment that I ever brought in here and which was presented to the Dáil on the 27th July, 1925. It is just only a difference of two years in this matter. This document here is one of the documents on which he based his calculations, but he is out two years in that document. The Deputies who were in the House in 1925 know exactly the period we were facing then. It was a period in which it was stated that there was a tremendous amount of unemployment in the rural areas. There had been failure of the crops, and we were told that the rural problem was a much more harsh one and a much more difficult one to deal with than unemployment in the towns.

Deputy Lemass, dealing with that return, said: "In County Mayo, for example, I note that no actual distress has come under the Inspector's notice, although I see that, according to this morning's ‘Irish Times,' there is starvation in Mayo, and that carrigeen moss is the sole diet of a large number of people." That little note about Mayo, and the pretended quotation from the report, was obviously introduced in order to give the Deputy an opportunity of bringing in this biassed thing that appeared in the "Irish Times" that morning. Then he goes on reading from this article: "Some money has been spent on relief work, making roads on the tops of bogs and tearing up the few handfuls of earth from between the rocks to make fences round nothing." That is just the type of unbiassed speech that Deputy Lemass would make if he got going on a platform. That is all founded on the report alleged to have been presented by me to the Dáil in July, 1927, purporting to deal with the position in 1927. The statement is brought in that the Inspector could see no actual distress in Mayo. Now, when I look at that return, as presented by me in 1925, I find that with regard to Mayo, South, nothing is given under the "distress" column, and in Mayo (North or South not defined) the statement is:—"Distress not more marked than in previous years." In that return for 1925 I find that, under Louth, the statement is made: "No actual distress has come under the Inspector's notice." In order to get in the little jibe from the biassed contributor to the "Irish Times" the Deputy has been forced to take a return of 1925 from its true position and apply it to 1927, and distort openly in this House a report, applying a phrase used for Louth to Mayo. It is possibly a matter of amusement to the Deputy. But it is apparently some of the tactics that we have to put up with. Is it really a fair way of dealing with the problem of unemployment in this House to take a return two years old, which was presented for a special purpose, to refer that to this year, and to take a phrase regarding one county and apply it to another in order to get in something about eating carrigeen moss?

The gentleman who made the application which the Deputy in the House was defending——

Mr. MacENTEE

On a point of order, is it fair for a Minister who occupies a position of privilege in this House to make an attack on any person not a member of this House, a person who can be quite easily identified?

Mr. WALSH

And a person whom the Government thought it well to make a Senator.

The PRESIDENT

That comes well from the Fianna Fáil Party.

AN CEANN COMHAIRLE

We will have to hear the Minister.

Mr. McGILLIGAN

I do not know why the Deputy should be so much afraid to have this transaction examined. What I am going to quote is from the particular gentleman himself when he was arguing in Cork in the month of April this year and making a special plea for protection as a policy. He said that one of the sort of doctrinaire arguments against it was that it led to foreign combines coming into the country and establishing, under the safeguard of protection, an industry in the country. He said that nobody need fear that in this country, because the country was so small and the market offered was so small, that there was no inducement offered to a foreign combine to come in. The tariff application was withdrawn, and the reason given from the Benches opposite is that we must beware of foreign capital. We got that back later on from Deputy Lemass, and later again from Deputy Aiken. That is the first big suggestion we get in regard to unemployment— beware of the people who have, in fact, created employment in the country.

Mr. LEMASS

Would it be any harm to point out that the statement "beware of foreign capital" was first uttered in this country by the late Mr. Arthur Griffith?

The PRESIDENT

Give us the date of that statement.

Mr. LEMASS

It was a favourite phrase of his.

Mr. McGILLIGAN

Deputy de Valera has very clear-cut ideas about this subject of unemployment. The recital of his very clear-cut ideas and the details will be of immense relief to the unemployed when they hear them. "The only way that we can see that it can be tackled... is by regarding it as part of a great scheme of national reconstruction." One could almost have asked before the phrase was uttered if there were likely to be any objectors to such a statement. We have such platitudes as that under the guise of clear-cut ideas. The next question is: "How is this whole scheme to be tackled?" Then Deputy de Valera's speech goes on: "As we see it, it is not likely to be tackled by an Executive that takes upon itself the duty to bring in Bills every second day, as we find here—passing legislation on the consideration of which no proper time can be spent. Therefore, we believe that if this question is going to be tackled seriously at all it will have to be tackled by some body set up—an economic council, a development commission, or any name Deputies care to call it—in association with the Executive of the day, to envisage the whole problem and try to find a solution of it as a whole."

If I expressed myself as having very clear-cut ideas about unemployment I would not get up and stultify myself by saying that what we must do is to set up a commission to envisage the problem as a whole; a man who has clear-cut ideas about a thing ought to have already envisaged the whole problem, and ought to have some attempt at a solution already prepared. "The first thing for such a commission to do would be to find out the position in which we stand, to find out what is the position of the country as a whole." That, as a term of reference to a commission, would not be very clarifying. Deputy de Valera went on to say that statements were going to be made by members of his Party, who would be able to give us a picture of conditions in the country if they chose, and said: "That picture will make it quite clear to you that we have all over the country a condition of things which one cannot simply ignore." Then we come to the gem of the whole thing—"What is wrong is the want of will." It is not details; it is not a question of money, or the terms on which money can be got; it is not a question of the schemes upon which money can be profitably used; it is not a question of how many men can get employment on a particular scheme, and what that will cost the State in the way of cost of living, or anything else. It is "want of will."

For five years we have been showing that there was no lack of will to deal with this problem. We had even certain commendations given to us from the Labour Benches for the efforts we were making in that direction, although our efforts were always criticised by Labour Deputies on the grounds that they did not go far enough. I do not remember any criticism being put forward as to want of will shown, not by this Party alone or by any Party in the House, with regard to this question. It was only a question of ways and means to discover as to how the money could be raised and spent. I can tell later, even though it may annoy Deputy Morrisey and Deputy O'Connell to recite again what is being done, how many men have been put into employment, and how we have done it, not being terribly apprehensive as to what foreign capital is going to do or how it will operate to the detriment of this country, because we have not yet found it operating to the detriment of the country.

After that, according to Deputy de Valera, "we have to make up our minds as to what is our conception of the sort of life that we want in this country, and as to what the economic system is for," again a point that anybody would agree with, but it was talking theoretically, not talking with any appreciation of the problem that was to be faced, and faced within a short period. We get a negative answer: "We are not going to take our standards from industrial England, industrial America, or any other industrial country, on that particular matter, and we are not going to be guided in the steps we would take to solve the problem by any means that have been adopted in these countries." We are going to be completely and entirely unique. We are not going to look for models anywhere. Industrial America and industrial England do not teach us; nor does any industrialised country. Just starting off with our agricultural community, we are going, from our own minds, without looking to any other country, to get out a policy: we are not going to follow any other steps that have been taken in any of these other countries with regard to dealing with this problem. That would knock on the head Deputy O'Connell's suggestion about a committee of reconstruction, because I am afraid that has already been adopted. The scheme of putting the unemployed on the roads is the one ideal method of absorbing the unemployed in a time of great and abnormal unemployment. Deputy de Valera proceeded to say: "In order to work towards that ideal, we will have to ask ourselves if we are going to get towards it by building up great industries or by the ruralisation of industry." And after that Deputy de Valera delivered himself of the statement which gave me the greatest shock of all that I had to listen to from him. One of the things that the Deputy is glad of is "that the development of electricity power will give an opportunity of bringing power to the people of the country, instead of bringing human beings up from the country and putting them in the slums or the large cities to starve."

"We are glad that the electrical power of the country is being developed." The Deputy, who has never failed to avail of any opportunity of criticising that development, who did nothing to help it, who has never yet realised that it is a great national scheme and who has never yet given any indication that he has any basis or foundation on which he could criticise that scheme or that he knows anything at all about the development of electricity which would entitle him to act as a critic, is glad that some effort has been made to develop electricity in this country.

The Deputy has raised many objections to the development of electricity in this country as it is being done. He said at one time that it was not half as good or half as economic a scheme as the scheme presented to the old Dáil. That scheme, unfortunately, was sent to the four European experts who came over to deal with the Shannon scheme, but they were not of the same opinion as Deputy de Valera, and they had much more right to talk of electrification schemes than Deputy de Valera has. He also believed that instead of starting on the Shannon we should have developed power on the Liffey, because that could have been done at a cost of about three quarters of a million pounds and would give employment at the greatest centre of unemployment. So that when you are dealing with a big national scheme and developing it to supply power in abundance to all the industries in the country, and when it would give an opportunity of ruralising industry, the Deputy states that you are not to look so much for the best scheme, or the cheapest scheme, or the most economic scheme, but for one that will give employment where the greatest centre of unemployment is. We are not going to get rid of economic depression if we go about developing a thing, with the first and the important consideration that it is to be done at the greatest centre of unemployment. We had a further objection to it. The Liffey should have been started. "They could train their own engineers, and as they went on to develop other places——

Mr. BRISCOE

On a point of order. Would the Minister say what he is quoting from?

Mr. McGILLIGAN

The "Independent" of May 16th, 1927.

Mr. BRISCOE

I thought the Minister was quoting from the debates of the last few days.

Mr. McGILLIGAN

"They could train their own engineers and as they went on to develop other places and put them up under a general scheme, they could have their own engineers trained to do it instead of having to bring over Germans." That is a pretty radical objection to the scheme. It is a pretty radical objection to the foundation of any industry in this country at the moment if it is to be done in a speedy way. Are we always going to have this point of view with regard to industry, not merely the Shannon electrification scheme, but with regard to any industry, that we are to proceed in a small way first so that we can always train our own people and not bring in foreigners? We are going to have the foreign experts kept out now, as well as the foreigner with his detrimental capital, and we have hopes for the relief of unemployment by deciding that we must always proceed in this small way, that we must train our own people as we go along and that we need not bring in foreigners. I wonder do Labour Deputies realise what that policy would mean if applied to this country, that we would refuse the aid of any foreigner who came here with plant, whether he came in with his own money or not, simply because at the beginning foreign workmen would have to be brought in to teach the people of this country, who are inexperienced, how certain processes are to be carried out.

Peat is a subject that was considered by very many Commissions and the best view I have been able to obtain is that the best chance of the development of peat comes, and comes only, when there is cheap power for the purpose of certain processes, and that peat at this moment offers no way either of solving this fuel problem or the unemployment problem.

After that we have a calculation as to tariffs, in which the Deputy comes to the conclusion that

"It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could, if we organised ourselves for the purpose, produce here, in the Twenty-six Counties, half our total imports, and that would enable us, if we set out to do it, to wipe out the present adverse balance on trade."

We will have another debate on tariffs, and I need not go into that point at just the fullest length. But, if one was to examine the list of imports and find out what was the amount of imports brought into the country, I think a division can be made under three headings: goods that are non-taxable; goods that are either prohibited, if people want to make people in this country do without them, or else let them in as they are; goods that can be taxed. These goods that could be taxed can be divided into two classes, those already tariffed, and those that are not. There will be a division of opinion as to what the actual division of the list will be into these three classes. There should be no division of opinion as to the third—the second sub-class—those that could and are being taxed. The calculation I have is that out of £62,000,000 imports, £32,000,000 represents non-taxable goods; that about £15,000,000 are taxable and taxed; and that another £15,000,000, or something less, are possibly taxable and are not yet taxed. In other words, if we take the full trade of this country as shown by the import list—that side of it—we can make a division that really one half of it is non-taxable, and that of the other half 50 per cent. has already been taxed. What is the difference as far as the adverse trade balance is concerned—what is the reduction shown? Not a sufficient reduction to warrant any assertion that if we taxed the other half the trade balance would disappear.

I have already read it twice, and every Deputy can make up his mind as to whether I have misquoted Deputy Flinn or not. He said he is in favour of "every sort and kind of protection."

AN LEAS-CHEANN COMHAIRLE

Perhaps the Minister would proceed.

Mr. McGILLIGAN

AN LEAS-CHEANN COMHAIRLE

We cannot allow the debate to continue on those lines, and I must ask the Deputy to allow the Minister to finish his speech. Deputies will have an opportunity of speaking later.

MINISTER for LANDS and AGRICULTURE

The Deputy has completely missed the point. It was not a question between Irish and foreign capital. The Deputy can look over the statement.

He pointed out the fact that the tax on boots alone brought in a certain revenue, and that the tax on apparel also brought in a certain amount. He had not to wait until the finance accounts were made up to make that discovery. In the Budget speech which he made when these taxes were being put on there was a definite statement to the effect that it was realised that both these taxes could not have the effect of getting these goods manufactured in the country immediately, that consequently, as they would operate as a tax on the people, some remission should be given otherwise as a set-off against that tax. In one year the duties on sugar and tea were either removed or reduced, and in the second year a further reduction in the sugar duty was made in order to equalise the amount which the Minister said would accrue to revenue owing to the fact that the tariffs could not operate fully as protection in the earlier years. There never was one of these items put on purely or mainly for the sake of getting revenue. One saw that while there was an appreciation of revenue coming in, there was a corresponding reduction in some item in the Budget given as a relief on necessaries.

Mr. O'CONNELL

What about the wireless tax?

Mr. McGILLIGAN

I raised the question of a self-denying ordinance. I want to point out that our leader said he did not consider that a Minister should receive more than £1,000 a year. That does not apply to one side, but to everybody.

The PRESIDENT

The Deputy said that there was a certain proposition put to the officials of the Dublin Corporation in 1920. He led us to believe that a suggestion or a request had been made that they should allow their salaries to be reduced. That is not the truth, and the Deputy knows what the truth is. The truth is that they were asked to remain out of 25 per cent. or one-quarter of their salary for nine months, and the alternative was that if they did not agree to that, a sufficient sum of money would be borrowed on which they would pay the interest for nine months. That was a different proposition from what has been stated.

Mr. LEMASS

I do not think we have attempted to misrepresent the President. I have an idea the President might not have a full knowledge of the matter, because the President, about that time, was recovering from a nervous attack in Liverpool.

The PRESIDENT

It was my own proposal.

Mr. CASSIDY

Is the House discussing employment or Party policy or Party funds? What the people want to know is what is the country going to do about employment.

AN LEAS-CHEANN COMHAIRLE

I would ask the Minister not to draw so much fire on himself. He can talk to the amendment, but let us have the amendment discussed and nothing else.

Mr. McGILLIGAN

We have an answer to the motion tabled here, the motion stating that the measures hitherto adopted by the Government for the relief of unemployment are insufficient and ought to be extended immediately. Our answer is: To delete all words after the word "That" and substitute therefor the words—"recognising that further measures for the relief of unemployment will involve additional provision out of public funds and may consequently impose fresh charges on productive enterprise, the Dáil is of opinion that while no reasonable method of promoting further employment should be neglected, care must be exercised in the adoption of relief measures to ensure that the evil which it is sought to remedy is not aggravated by the placing of an undue strain on the resources of industry and agriculture."

There are three funds—the main fund, maintenance fund, and a second special fund. There are moneys still in the hands of councils from all three funds, and there is much more money for the trunk roads than for anything else.

Mr. BRENNAN

Does the Minister know why these moneys are not being utilised?

Mr. McGILLIGAN

I do not know.

Mr. BRENNAN

As far as the county council of which I am chairman is concerned, we have not machinery enough to enable us to utilise the money. We have a large amount of machinery which cost a lot of money, and if we buy any more machinery, that machinery may next year be a drug on our hands. Consequently we cannot go any further, and the money is not being availed of at present. I believe the same thing prevails all over the Saorstát.

Mr. McGILLIGAN

Let us get that examined. I cannot answer details of that sort; that is not in my special department. But there is this big amount of money there, and until it is shown that there is some impediment, something to prevent it being utilised, one must accept the fact that it is there, and that employment can be given by it. Then there is this £150,000 to relieve others who cannot get relief through the money we are just referring to. That is a fair facing-up to this problem as an immediate problem. I say that everything done up-to-date is on the line of creating permanent employment in the country, and not a single suggestion has been made that is going to have the effect of putting a single man who is unemployed into employment at once. The suggestions that have been made tend more in the direction of preventing the development of any industry, and throwing on to the streets the men who are now engaged at work.

Mr. MacENTEE

The Minister dealt with this problem in a more or less superficial way. It was quite clear from his speech that he could argue any question if given a brief on any side, and that he is not, as Deputy Briscoe has shown, too particular about his facts. It is quite clear from the declarations that have been made in this debate as to the amount of money that is on hands for allocation to public bodies to provide schemes for employment, that the saturation point of the service of local bodies has already been reached, that they are not capable of absorbing those at the moment out of work, and, consequently, the great bulk of unemployed must be absorbed by private industry.

Deputy O'Connell said that unemployment was still with us, and would remain a problem to be solved even after this debate. Let us devote ourselves to examine the cause of unemployment, and, if we do that, no matter how discursive or seemingly irrelevant the speeches may have been, I think the debate will not be fruitless. I said that obviously the saturation point in connection with the local services had been reached, and that private industry must absorb those now out of work. What has crippled industry in this country? The Minister for Finance stated the Government had reduced taxation. What actually are the facts? In the Command Papers, No. 707. issued in 1919-20 by the British Government, the cost of the Irish domestic services for that year was £19,519,700. What was the net cost of these same services for the year 1926-27? The Central Fund and Supply Services for 1926-27 amounted to £27,125,136. That included Army, External Affairs and Marine Services, which were more properly included in 1919 under the Imperial tribute. If we deduct the amount expended on these services from the total amount of the Central Fund and Supply Services we get £24,618,193. That amount has been spent providing ordinary domestic services in the country. Contrast that figure with the figure collected in 1919, not from twenty-six counties, but from the whole thirty-two counties, and you will find there one cause of unemployment, one reason why industry has been crippled and hampered by President Cosgrave's Government.

The figures as I have given them are astonishing enough, but if you remember that of the twenty-four million pounds collected in 1926 every pound had a purchasing value of 45 per cent. in excess of the amount collected in 1919, you will find the figures more astonishing still. Every pound collected by President Cosgrave's Government represented 45 per cent. more labour and the products of labour; 45 per cent. more real wealth and more profits and more sweat, toil and hardship for the working classes in Ireland. If you remember those millions were collected in that way you will see the real taxation of the 26 counties in terms of pounds of 1919 was not twenty-four millions but nearer to thirty-five millions, almost twice as much as the British collected in 1919 to run the internal domestic services of this country.

Furthermore, not only was the total taxation greater, but the taxation per head was even proportionately much greater. In 1919 these millions were distributed over four and a quarter millions of people. In 1926 there were only 2,973,000 souls to bear the burden. That £19,000,000 distributed over 4¼ millions of people represent £35,500,000 in terms of pounds, shillings and pence in 1926-27; and this is distributed over 2,973,000 people, amounting in the first case to a taxation of £4 12s. 9d. per head of the population as compared with £11 19s. 0d. per head of the population in 1926-27. Those figures that I have quoted are not cyphers. They mean something and they express something. They are a tale of pounds, shillings and pence extracted ruthlessly and expended extravagantly by the Government. They tell, undoubtedly, of the sufferings of the destitute and the misery of the poor.

The Minister for Finance has been responsible for their collection. I understand that the Minister for Finance is referred to in the constituency for which he sits as Deputy Blight. These figures are a measure of the blight that has fallen upon our country. Those millions were wrung from a decaying industry. They were taken from the declining profits of the employers and from the vanishing wages of the workers that should have remained in industry to provide for its expansion. These millions should have paid for new plant, provided for the purchase of raw materials and for the maintenance of the rate of wages. Instead of that they were exacted without reason and without judgment. It is common knowledge that in order that they might be collected, factories were sold out and industries closed down. The result of this is shown eloquently in the decline of the total volume of our exports. It will astonish Deputies, as it certainly astonished me, to learn that the volume of our staple exports to Great Britain in 1926-27 is only 86.7 per cent. of the volume of the average annual export of the years 1911-1912 and 1913. More astonishing still is it to find that the exports in—mark the years—1924-25 and 1926 were less than they were in the years 1921, 1922 and 1923. In the year 1922, for instance, the volume of exports of cattle, sheep, butter, pigs, bacon, hams, eggs, horses, biscuits, porter, hides, skins and wools—and most of these exports are commodities over which the Minister for Agriculture exercises a fostering care—in 1922 and 1923 the volume as compared with the years 1911, 1912 and 1913 is only 106.5 as compared with 100. That is to say it was 6.5 per cent. greater than in the earlier years. In 1923 there was a slight decline as against 1922. In 1924 the exports had fallen to 104.7 and in 1925 and 1926 when President Cosgrave and his Government felt themselves firmly in the saddle, the volume of these exports declined to 87 per cent., and 86.7 per cent. Now the years 1925 and 1926 were years of comparative peace. We used to be told that the Irregulars and Republicans were responsible for all the ills that this country had endured. But 1925 and 1926 were years of comparative peace during which the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Agriculture might have been particularly active. They were years in which under the fostering care of a Government really concerned with the welfare of its people, trade and industry might have expanded. There were no Black and Tans in those years, and there were no Irregulars, nothing but President Cosgrave's Government to scourge the land and the people. And, yet, notwithstanding that, our exports in these years amounted to only 86.7 per cent. of what they were in the bad years 1911, 1912 and 1913.

Mr. McGILLIGAN

Have you the full figures for all Ireland in those years?

Mr. MacENTEE

No, I have not; I am only quoting from a publication issued by the Minister for Industry and Commerce himself.

Mr. LEMASS

He never read it himself.

Mr. MacENTEE

Well, he never misread it, I suppose. He will find in page 10 "an estimate of the volume of exports in the year 1921 as compared with the year 1911. The average export of the years 1911, 1912 and 1913, in which he states the total volume of exports as taken in these years under the Irish Free State is taken at 100, and these are the figures of the Minister's own statistician:—

1921	97.5 per cent.
1922	106.5 per cent.
1923	Omitted.
1924	104.7 per cent.
1925	87.0 per cent.
1926	86.7 per cent.

You will notice that even under war conditions we were able to recover our position.

AN CEANN COMHAIRLE

took the Chair.

Mr. MacENTEE

Now it is, and must be manifest that the Government must accept responsibility for the decline in trade during these years, and this House has a duty in the matter, and we do put it to the House that they can only discharge that duty adequately when they drive from power the administration that the unchallenged figures show to have been even more baneful and pernicious to this country in times of peace than in times of war.

It may be pleaded, and it has been pleaded, as a matter of fact, on platforms in this country, that trade depression, the cycle of trade depression through which we are now passing, is the inevitable aftermath of the Great War. I have read statements by the President of the Executive Council to that effect. There are many Deputies in this House who have had actual experience of the Great War conditions. There are some of them who sit on these Benches, and some of them—they are not there now, who usually sit on the other Benches in this House, and I would ask them, and I am sure they would all concur and agree in saying that this country did not suffer one-tenth or a thousandth part of the economic dislocation that was suffered by Belgium and France.

I would ask the Dáil to contrast the position of those great belligerents as compared with ours. Let us take France. France is the country that, on the day of the Armistice had been bled white. Yet here is what an impartial observer has to say about the present condition of France. I am quoting from a report dated November, 1926, by the British Commercial Attaché in Paris to the British Board of Trade. It reads:—

"Within the eight years that have elapsed since the Armistice, France has completed by her own resources the formidable task of the industrial and agricultural restoration of the ten devastated counties, and in the accomplishment of that work of reconstituting and re-equipping thousands of factories and of building anew hundreds of thousands of farms and dwellings, she has transformed that area into an economic whole of far greater capacity than heretofore. In several other areas emergencies and developments had stimulated a considerable industrial expansion and renovation which momentum tended in the early after-war years to persist with little undiminished vigour. For the last five years France has enjoyed an unbroken period of tense industrial and commercial activity.

For the Labour Deputies:—

"Unemployment has been nonexistent, and although aliens to the number of one and a half millions have been introduced, yet, even with this contribution to labour power, and with her greatly enhanced mechanical equipment, her output has been constantly limited by labour shortage.

"With State aid and subventions the railways have undergone renovations on a large scale, the northern and eastern railways and the State railways (the two former for the reconstruction of their heavy war damages) having being special beneficiaries of public funds. The great electrification schemes of the Paris-Orleans and of the southern railways have likewise received substantial subventions. Public authorities have assisted, and are assisting, the organisation and maintenance of the new and numerous motor and light-railway services in country districts. Seaports like Bordeaux and its outports, La Pallice (the deep-water port of La Rochelle, Marseilles, Brest, Nantes, St. Nazaire, Caen, Cherbourg, Rouen, Havre, Calais, Boulogne, have all been improved or better equipped either during or since the war, and mainly with funds provided or guaranteed by public authorities. The State created one of the four national fishing ports (near Lorient), and has greatly assisted the vast transformation and improvement schemes at the inland port of Strasbourg. The Rove tunnel, the greatest canal tunnel of the world, which was completed and filled in the summer of 1926, is to provide the essential means for creating a large outer Marseilles port. Numerous canals and waterways have likewise been improved."

The position which has been stated by that informed and impartial observer is corroborated by every factor of economic significance that can be found, by the state of French trade, for instance, and the general lack of unemployment in France. We have been practically given to understand by the Minister for Industry and Commerce that unemployment must be always with us; that it is an incurable evil. Here are the conditions that prevailed in France during the period I have spoken of. France is a country with at least forty millions of people. Here are the unemployment statistics from June, 1921, to December, 1926:—June, 1921, 47,331; December, 1921, 10,032; December, 1922, 2,221; December, 1923, 464; December, 1924, 509; December, 1925, 645; June, 1926, 489; December, 1926, 17,178.

These are the actual facts and figures, corroborated by the general impression and by the judgment formed by a commercial attaché in Paris on conditions in France. I ask Deputies to contrast these figures with the corresponding figures in Ireland, where fifteen per cent. of our population are unemployed, and they will see what a native Government, resolutely concerned to grapple with this evil, could have done here if they had set about it in the same way. Not only has France reconstructed the devastated regions, but in doing so she has won for herself a place in the markets of the world. She has become one of the great exporting nations. We hear a great deal to-day about an adverse trade balance. I am not going to argue that in all circumstances an adverse trade balance is an unfortunate thing, but we, at any rate, have good reason, considering the condition of our workers, to regard it as an unfavourable indication of the general economic condition.

In 1913 French imports amounted to 9,396,000,000 francs, and the exports to 7,311,000,000 francs, so that there was an adverse trade balance against France. In 1925 the imports had risen to 44,130,000,000 francs, while the exports had risen in a much greater proportion, to 45,548,000,000 francs. You will see, therefore, by every test that could be applied, by the testimony of keen, informed and impartial observers, by the statistics of trade and by the general dearth of unemployment, that the economic position in France is much better than it was before the war; is I dare say, better than Great Britain, and beyond all conception is better than conditions in this State. How has this been accomplished? We have consistently emphasised the importance that credit facilities can play in developing industry.

In France you have a practical example of that. You have seen what France did, as this British observer says, by her own resources. She had not to borrow abroad. The money, credit and capital, as well as the labour to do this, was provided by France. How has that been accomplished? The Government controlled the credit and retained control of that credit, notwithstanding the inducements made to it by foreign financiers to surrender it. The Government was not under the control of the credit manufacturer, as the present Government in Ireland has been since the day the Provisional Government accepted their first loan from the Bank of Ireland early in 1922. Controlling that credit power, the Government of France compelled it to the service of the State. It never allowed it to restrict itself so as to cripple industry, but forced it to expand, when such expansion was necessary to carry through the great schemes of national reconstruction that the State had framed. Compare the blessings that the policy of that enlightened and patriotic Government brought to its people with the misery and suffering we have endured under Mr. Cosgrave, who has kept us all the time tied up in a strait-waistcoat of Threadneedle Street.

The President is a fair sort of economist, an ardent disciple, I think, of the Manchester School, and an excellent specimen, I would say a relic, interesting and sometimes amusing, of an economic policy of bygone age. But, unfortunately for this country and its people, his economic development ended, I should say, before he was born. In the course of his speech he said that he listened to more economic heresies here than he had ever listened to in his life. To the President everything is economic heresy that is not in the economic gospel according to John Bull. The independent statesmen of France had no such faith in that economic gospel, and they did not tie up the French franc to the British £ as we are going to tie up whatever the new sovereign is to be called. They did not tie up their currency to the British £, and industry was not hampered by the chains of the monetary system which one of the leading bankers —the most eminent, I should say, of British bankers—condemned as unfitted for the requirements of modern production and industry. Whatever we may say about the Currency Bill and the system to which we are to link ourselves, at any rate here are the unchallengeable facts. France has prospered under an independent financial system. We have decayed, and we believe that in addition to the excessive taxation heaped on the people, the Government's failure to assert the financial independence of this country and to maintain it is the principal cause of the decay, unemployment and misery which now prevail. We have heard a lot about highbrow economics, but these are, if you like, a few lowbrow financial facts. I ask Deputies to judge the matter in a practical way by the results. On the one hand there is the policy of financial independence and elastic credit which has prevailed in France, and the practical and economic good of the country as a consequence, and on the other hand you have the financial subserviency practised by Mr. Cosgrave and his Government, and you have the consequences of that expressed in the motion of the Labour Party. Deputies can weigh the matter for themselves without prejudice, can judge it fairly as men concerned to find a way out of this problem, and can then ask themselves if they are justified in continuing this Government in office. There are business men here, on the other side— or at least they ought to be there—and farmers whose declining fortunes are expressed in the figures I have quoted, just as there are workers whose miseries are expressed in these figures.

And that a commission of investigation should be set up to inquire into the administration of Government departments. I suggest that the two great spending departments where that might be done are the Post Office and the Office of Public Works. Of course, I will be told in reply to that that there is already a commission of economy set up, or possibly the Minister for Finance has forgotten about it. But the Commission we are pressing for is a commission of independent business men and Deputies, not civil servants, because, as I suggested to the Minister some time ago, there is no use asking the sheep to shear themselves— a commission that will go ruthlessly through every department, and where unnecessary or redundant officials are to be found, will dispense with them. We say that that is the proper thing to do. People may say, of course, that it is going to create more unemployment. I say that every redundant and unnecessary official is an idle and inefficient one and the cause of idleness and inefficiency in others. He makes the Civil Service parasitic upon the workers of the community, and Irish workers are unable in their present position to maintain parasites.

There is another thing. I suggest that the monetary policy of the Government should be framed so as to place Irish capital and credit at the disposal of Irish enterprise. We have been told that they provide certain facilities under the Trade Loans (Facilities) Act. They say that there is still something like £900,000 unavailed of. Why? If we examine the question we will find that there is nobody going to avail of it because the Government have not made up their minds definitely to a certain tariff policy. There is nobody going to borrow money and invest it in industry in Ireland—in industry which would require protection in the earlier stages at any rate—so long as the President and the Government remain in their present undecided frame of mind regarding that question. They do not know but that the President, who changes his mind so often—changed it, for instance, in regard to the boundary question and the boundary settlement; made a complete change inside one week, and the Minister for Finance turned the same somersault with him— might reverse his present policy even of selective protection and become again a whole-hog free trader. Therefore, men who are going to start industries are not going to assume obligations in Ireland so long as the Government remains in that vacillating mood and frame of mind regarding the whole question.

The third and last suggestion that we made, and I think it will be agreed that it is a good one, is that a development commission should be set up. For what purpose? To consider the whole question of national development, and to consider it as a whole, to see how we can co-ordinate the various aspects of the problem, so that whatever money is expended will provide the greatest amount of employment. One of the chief faults and defects in the Government scheme is that they have tackled this question in a happy-go-lucky, haphazard way. Most of the huge schemes, or at least one of the huge schemes, they have embarked upon, I believe, has provided more work for the foreigner than it has for the native. There are numerous instances of it. I am sure other Deputies could substantiate what I am going to say. There is one instance that arose in my mind particularly during the course of the debate. We were told that cement works are closed down here. There are tens of thousands of tons of cement being used at present in connection with the Shannon development scheme, while our cement works are closed down. A special correspondent of the "Financial Times," who, I think, had an interview with the Minister in this matter, was able to tell the British people that they were reaping some benefit from the Shannon scheme, because all the cement that was used there was imported from Great Britain and not manufactured in Ireland. That is the sort of thing we want to stop.

It is just the same in regard to housing and other schemes. We feel that a commission, such as Deputy de Valera suggested, would prevent that sort of thing being done. Instead of rushing haphazard into huge schemes, which, as I said, provide more employment for the foreigner than they do for the native, we would be able to get going at the same time a number of schemes which would fit into each other and would help us to build up a real industrial organisation here. I could talk in the same way about the money being spent on the roads. A large proportion of it is being spent in buying machinery from England. There are numbers and numbers of cases I could quote. I am not going at present to refer to the Shannon scheme, but I think that Deputy de Valera's suggestion was the right one, that we should have begun with a small scheme, which we will show would have provided for the country for half a generation, involving an expenditure of one-fourth or one-fifth of what the Shannon scheme will ultimately involve, and would enable us to train our Irish engineers to carry on and to take up the larger works when they should be necessary. That is the way we want to look at the problem. We want to take a long view and to see that every penny we spend in industrial development is spent in a way that the Irish workers will get their share. That is how France dealt with her problems, and she had as big a menace after the war as we ever had to deal with. She did not go and rush at things haphazard. She did not bring in any more foreigners than were necessary.

There are a few other points, but I do not want to deal with anything else now except the question of foreign capital. The workers ought to know that the men who control their industries control their lives. The question for them to consider is this: Is it not wiser to encourage Irish and native capital rather than to bring in the foreigner unnecessarily? We do not wish to shut out foreign capital if it comes here and wishes to invest in Irish industries. We welcome it, but we want to see that it does not get control of Irish industry. Foreign capital has been a menace to the peaceful development and advancement of other countries. When the Minister for Industry and Commerce was speaking, Deputy Boland interjected: What about Mexico? What about Mexico, what about Russia, what about Rumania and a dozen other countries in a state of intermittent, cyclical civil war owing to the fact that you have groups of foreign capitalists contending for the economic control of the country and the economic control of the workers of the country? We want to see that the Irish workers are masters in their own land and not the chattel slaves of foreign capital. I think that is a view point nearer to the views held by James Connolly, who was good enough to stand side by side with Irish Republicans fighting for the same ideals and voicing the same principles that we are voicing in this Dáil to-day.

Captain REDMOND

The fact that this debate has taken so long and has taken place at all is, to my mind, proof positive of the unfortunate existence of this problem and of its present nature. Unemployment seems to be both chronic and excessive, and certainly unmanaged, if not unmanageable, in this State. I am not going into the question in detail. We have heard a considerable amount of details in the course of this discussion. Neither am I going into the question of statistics. Let me say at the outset, as far as I am concerned, I am utterly in the dark as to what the extent of unemployment in the country is. What I do know is that on every side of me every day the problem is brought home to me in my capacity as an individual representative here that there are, as I said in June last, hordes of unemployed in the Free State.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce took exception to that particular statement of mine on the last occasion, but from the speech we listened to this evening from him I think I am doubly justified in using it again. Can the Minister say—he certainly has not yet said—whether unemployment has decreased since the occasion of the last debate? At that time the tone and temper of the whole discussion as has been stated in all quarters of the House was very different to what it has been on this occasion. And there is very good reason for it. I do not think it is because of any great economic changes that have taken place in the meantime. The only difference in that respect that I can see is that perhaps we have had a fairly good harvest; but there is this great difference: a General Election has taken place and Ministers when speaking in this House to-day are speaking to a different assembly. They are speaking now to a House composed of representatives from all quarters and from all parties in the country and they must look forward not to a majority of 24 which they succeeded in getting on a previous occasion but to a majority of four. I think that accounts considerably for the notable change in attitude and tone especially in the case of the Minister for Industry and Commerce.

On the last occasion as far as I can gather that Minister showed no realisation whatever of the gravity of this subject and made no attempt at either its adequate treatment or its cure. Indeed he treated the whole matter in a very unsympathetic way. But to-day we have been treated by him as we have been by every other Minister who has spoken to a sort of display of sweet reasonableness. I was almost inclined to blame Deputy Morrissey for consenting to the postponement of this motion some time ago until I heard the speeches from the Ministerial bench. I think Deputy Morrissey is to be congratulated upon the skill he has displayed in parliamentary tactics, for judging from the Ministers' speeches there has been nothing but a plea of guilty or perhaps if that may be thought too strong, certainly there has been a plea of confession and avoidance tempered perhaps by an amendment consisting of pious platitude advocating caution.

I confess that some time ago I endeavoured to say a few words and am now very pleased I was not afforded an opportunity because until I heard Deputy O'Connell speaking—and certainly judging from some of the remarks made from other portions of the House—I was led to think that the object the Labour Party had in view in bringing forward this motion was that it should merely call for something in the nature of a temporary palliative and that fear was strengthened by the statement made by the President at the conclusion of his speech. The President said the amendment takes into consideration the purpose of the motion which means either extending unemployment insurance benefit or giving money in relief. Now that was not the meaning that I placed upon the motion. I was of opinion that this word relief was not in any way confined to merely extending unemployment insurance benefit or to giving money out of public funds. I considered rather that it included economic measures designed to increase the normal level of employment by providing suitable conditions for profitable and productive enterprise. Therefore I was very pleased to hear Deputy O'Connell when he spoke about what he described as the long outlook. To my mind, as has been said also by Deputy O'Connell, there are two aspects to this problem. There is one of immediate relief and there is one that should be based upon an attempt and a serious attempt to grapple with this problem on a permanent basis.

So far as immediate relief is concerned, I do not know how far the sum of £150,000 would go. We have not been told even how it is going to be expended, or, indeed, how far it will be relief, if any. Of course, though I am strongly in favour of accepting something in the nature of a stop-gap to tide us over the immediate winter, I am equally strongly of opinion that that is not the way in which any Government should endeavour to grapple with the problem. Therefore, I think that when it has been suggested that all this talk about tariffs and the creation of new industries, or the preservation of existing ones, is moonshine, I think that suggestion is entirely unfounded. Are we to have this problem recurring year after year or after every six months? If not, is it not time for us to get down to business and endeavour to do something to solve the serious problem that confronts us?

A suggestion was made by Deputy O'Connell, and, although I was present for most of the speech of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, I did not hear any reference to it beyond a passing one. The suggestion made by Deputy O'Connell is an admirable one. It is, so far as I can gather, that there should be set up, I do not know whether he said a committee or a commission, but I take it that he did not mean to confine that body to members of this House, and that that commission or committee should investigate what I consider to be the most serious economic problem of the day, namely, how best to use the powers which we have at our disposal, fiscal and otherwise, for our own benefit and for the welfare of the State. I would go further in support of that suggestion and say that that commission should be strongly representative and independent, and should have within its purview allied subjects such as the incidence of taxation, the question of transport charges and facilities, and the control of internal prices. The object, I take it, of such commission is that an impartial body of representative men should do their best to investigate by what means this problem should be met. It has been suggested from the Government Benches that Deputies have said that if tariffs were put on to-morrow the question of unemployment would be settled at once.

I do not think that any Deputy would be so foolish as to make a suggestion such as that, but there is no doubt that if we want to reduce the abnormal amount of unemployment such as exists to-day, the only way whereby we can attempt to do that is to see how, with the powers, both fiscal and political, at our disposal, that can be done. That will be approaching the question, not in a haphazard, happy-go-lucky, de-die-in-diem spirit, in which it has been done up to the present. The whole question of the incidence of taxation, of possible readjustment of taxation, should be considered, because it has often been stated, especially by some Deputies on these benches near me, that high wages are a large factor in producing unemployment. Therefore, to investigate the question of readjustment of taxation would, I venture to say, be one of the principal means by which we could ascertain whether anything could be done in that direction. Therefore I, for one, strongly support the proposal made by Deputy O'Connell, and it differs, so far as I can gather, only slightly from the proposal put forward by Deputy de Valera.

Deputy de Valera's proposal was, I think, that there should be something in the nature of an independent body or a development commission. I think he mentioned the words "economic council." I rather shy at that proposal, because it seems to me that it would in some way, perhaps, be a means of undermining or, at any rate, taking away from this sovereign legislature the rights and duties which it at present enjoys. Rather would I be in favour of a commission or committee on the lines suggested by Deputy O'Connell which, though of independent composition, should in every way be subject to this legislature and should report to this House, or indeed to the Executive Council, to be more accurate, on the conclusions that they have arrived at. I think there is another method of approaching this problem. Some time ago it was suggested that employers and employees should come together and endeavour in free conference to do something towards speeding up and increasing production. Looking back upon the debate which took place on the 29th June last, I find that Deputy Corish referred to this suggestion and said:—

"Deputy Good made a suggestion that a conference should be held between the representatives of labour and the employers. The President agreed that such a conference should be held. The Labour Party, through three or four of its members, agreed that such a conference should be held, but we found that when the President sent out certain invitations the lines on which the conference was about to proceed were not in keeping with the suggestions that we had made in this House."

He went on to say:—

"We found that some people were trying to use the medium of this conference in order to reduce the wages of the workers."

I think if that was so it was a great pity, but it is not too late yet to have some such conference as was proposed by Deputy Good. I agree that it would be no use having such a conference if it were not a perfectly free and friendly one. It is no use proposing that the employers and employees should meet and then start off by laying down certain conditions as to the reduction or even the increase of wages. It was the Government's duty to bring that conference together. I think that they have been remiss in their duty by not doing so, and I do not think that it is too late now to suggest that they should call it into existence, or, at any rate, endeavour to get these two parties together. In my opinion the amendment, as I read it, is merely camouflage, because there is nothing in it except that caution should be exercised. Indeed, the Minister for Finance went so far as to say that it would be quite easy for him to accept the motion, and for that reason, because I think it would be easy for him to accept the motion, which in itself is justified in the light of the past four years, and in the light of the present circumstances of the unemployed, I, for one, will support the motion if put to a vote.

Mr. REYNOLDS

I agree with Deputy Morrissey that in unemployment we are faced with a serious problem. The Government might be in a position to relieve unemployment temporarily, but it should be the aim of this House to get rid of it for all time. I heard a Deputy on the Fianna Fáil Benches say that the unemployed are divided into two sections—that is, the unemployed in towns and villages, daily wage workers, and the unemployed among the small farmers and agricultural workers. I think that is a fair classification. Money expended on road work would improve the position of the first class. I do not think Deputy Morrissey exaggerated in the figure he gave as representing the number of unemployed. The small farmers are in a very bad way this year. Whatever stock they bought last May they sold at a less price this month than they bought them for. The pork they reared from May to November would hardly pay for the feeding, and now the farmers have to pay rents and rates in November. There is scarcely any sale for pork or cattle. Some will say that the Government is to blame for that. I cannot see how that can be true, as the position of affairs is the same in England and all over Europe. There is no sale for cattle at present in any country in Europe. I think something should be done with regard to the pork industry. We are selling our pork at a very small price and buying American bacon, an inferior stuff, at a high price. In the constituency I represent there is unemployment in the mines and railways and among the farmers and road workers. If money could be procured unemployment could be greatly relieved. I heard a Deputy state yesterday that the railways and transport system of this country were in the hands of foreigners, and that that is not good for the industries of the country. In my constituency there is a coal mine owned by two or three local people, and it at one time gave employment to a number of miners. The road to this pit is in a very bad way. If we got money from the Land Commission, or by way of relief grant, a road could be made to this pit and that would relieve unemployment. We could afford to have 100 miners working there and consumption would be got for the coal locally. If money were loaned for the establishment of a pork factory in that area we could save our pork and sell it in our own country, and get a better price for it than we are getting at present. Loans given to farmers to help them to drain their lands, or to buy cattle, or to repair houses that are uninhabitable, would also afford employment. All this would take a great deal of money, but the money will have to be got. The Government have got plenty of money up to the present, and the Fianna Fáil Party procured plenty of money for the elections. The money the Government got was spent in doing something for the country, and the other side spent money in creating trouble. If the Cumann na nGaedheal Party and the Fianna Fáil Party united something could be done for the country. At present the Government get no credit for what they do. They are always wrong, according to the other side. Deputy Redmond said that if the employers and the employees united it would be the best way of settling the unemployment question. It is a wonder he did not suggest that the two big Parties should have a conference with a view to uniting. If they were united they could send two leaders to America representing a united Ireland.

A DEPUTY

Representing a united twenty-six counties.

Mr. REYNOLDS

If we were united and progressing in the Free State it would not be long until we would have Northern Ireland in too. They are only waiting and watching what we are doing here. We will get nowhere by remaining disunited. The only way to get rid of unemployment is for the two parties to unite. That would make for progress in the country, and that cannot be done by the parties finding fault with each other from opposite benches. Let them try to raise an enormous loan that will finance the country and take it from its present position.

Mr. D. BURKE

I support the motion of Deputy Morrissey. I have seen in Limerick hundreds of able-bodied men go through the streets daily in search of work. These people are eager for work, but they cannot find it. I was glad to hear Deputy Daly, who sits on the opposite Benches, in his speech the other day favour a tariff on flour, wheat and barley. Deputy Good referred to the great amount of unemployment existing in the engineering trade. I agree with him, and I can say further that there is a vast amount of unemployment in the coach-making trade, and this despite the advice given us by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I hold that further tariffs ought to be imposed. I would suggest a tariff on locomotives and engines imported into this country and on the parts for them, and also a tariff on carriages, vans and buses, and parts for same, imported into the country. If that were done I am sure it would relieve unemployment to a very great extent. You have, roughly, three thousand Irish railway shop workers who are deprived of two days' work every week for close on the past three years. These men would be working at least six days a week if the tariffs that I suggest were imposed. I hope that in the near future the Dáil will take the matter up and impose such tariffs.

Mr. CORISH

The Minister for Industry and Commerce as usual tried to confuse the issue with a long list of figures. He told us that there was no need for alarm so far as unemployment is concerned in this State. He quoted certain figures, and said that so far as his statistics enabled him to arrive at a conclusion, the number of unemployed here at the moment is 23,000. He was very careful to say that he took the figures from the people who had registered in an effort to get unemployment benefit. He told us that if that was not the correct number who were unemployed, that the medium of the exchanges was provided for the people who were unemployed in order that they might register and so that the Government would know the exact number of people unemployed.

About this time last year, a debate such as this was initiated by the Labour Party. The Minister for Industry and Commerce used the same arguments then that he used to-day. He told us that the Labour Exchanges were not taken advantage of and that people could not be induced to sign. I remember that on that occasion I took him at his word and in my own constituency, in the towns of Enniscorthy, New Ross and Wexford, I asked the people to register so that the Minister would be in a position to find out the number of unemployed in my area. I put down a question on the 7th December, 1926, and asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce to state the numbers unemployed in the areas of Gorey, Enniscorthy, New Ross and Wexford. When he had given the number, I asked him a supplementary question. I said, "Does the Minister consider that conditions could be normal in Wexford in view of the great number of 830 being idle, and would he not consider the advisability of trying to do something to relieve the distress that undoubtedly prevails." The Minister's answer was: "When the Deputy speaks of 830 being idle, he must remember that 410 of them have registered as unemployed at the Deputy's own suggestion. The fact whether they are unemployed has to be ascertained." No other inference could be drawn from that statement but that I had asked certain people in my constituency to register at the Labour Exchanges, whether they were idle or not. I think that was unworthy of the Minister and just shows whether the Government is prepared to accept figures or not. The President speaking a fortnight ago in winding up the debate on his nominations for Executive Ministers, asked the House for the future not to try to score points off each other, that we should not view things from a Party angle but that we should endeavour for the future to try and move forward shoulder to shoulder and do something for this country of ours. I think the President's own Ministers ought to be the first to take that good advice. Anyone who listened to the Minister for Industry and Commerce this evening knows quite well that he has not taken the words of the President to heart. In the course of a two hours' speech, the Minister, in his usual callous fashion, ignored altogether the pleadings that have been made on behalf of the unemployed by Deputies from all parts of the House and devoted most of his speech in trying to score points to the advantage of his Party from slips that might have been made especially by new Deputies not used to the procedure or rules of debate.

A great deal was said by the President, the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Industry and Commerce about the foreign capital question. So far as that matter is concerned we ought to try and understand the position thoroughly. I understand I think what was meant by Deputy Flinn and other speakers from the Fianna Fáil side when they talked about foreign capital. As far as I am concerned I have no objection to foreign capital coming in here to start new industries, but when there is a tariff placed on any industry in this country I have every objection to foreign capital coming in in an effort by unfair competition to ruin that particular industry that was there before the foreign capital was brought in. On that I have in mind a concrete example which I will give to the House. In the largest town in my constituency, in my native town of Wexford, we manufacture there agricultural implements. Up to the year 1919 there were about 1,000 men engaged by the three firms in that town but to-day there are only 300 men engaged by these three firms. I have repeatedly approached one of the proprietors of these firms with a view to his making representations to the Commission that is now sitting to secure protection. His answer to me was that he was afraid to do so, that if he secured protection an English firm would come across to Dublin and start a similar industry and crush him out of existence. I suggest to the Minister that that kind of foreign capital should be prohibited from coming into this country. There is such a thing as protecting one county in the State even against another county if there is in that county an industry that is able to cater for the needs of a certain other industry in the country such as the one I mention. I think that that county should be protected as against the interests of another county in the State. The tendency up to this has been for every new industry almost to start in Dublin. I think the Government ought to realise and recognise that there are other counties in the State besides Dublin.

I am not against English capital coming in, but against English capital coming in when a tariff has been placed on a certain industry, because everyone knows that capital will not be brought in were it not that a tariff was put on. That is how I understand the suggestion from the Fianna Fáil Benches. The President gave us a lecture on Irish manufacture. So far as I am concerned, I have always tried to support Irish manufacture, and the day on which the President made that suggestion to the members of this House a question was on the Order Paper addressed to the Minister for Agriculture by Deputy O'Hanlon, of Cavan, which had reference to a money loan to farmers with a view to placing them in a position to buy agricultural implements. I asked the Minister for Agriculture, as a supplementary question, was he prepared to stipulate to those farmers that they should buy agricultural implements made in Ireland, and he answered, without hesitation: "No, I am not." I suggest that the first person to take notice of the advice given by the President should be one of his own Ministers. I had reason to complain to the Minister that inspectors in his department were interfering to such an extent that when people in Mayo and Galway were about to purchase machinery made by Pierce, of Wexford, they recommended English machinery when the machinery was almost purchased. These things may appear small, but they affect employment in this country to a far greater extent than the Government would be prepared to admit. The President appeared to think that we were afraid of the recitation of the usual litany of what the Government had done. I, at any rate, am prepared to give the Government credit for the great amount they have done to relieve unemployment. At the same time I think they will have to admit that there is a problem still here to be solved. I suggest that the number of unemployed to-day is from 60,000 to 90,000.

So far as my own constituency is concerned, I have gone to the trouble within the last fortnight of trying to secure figures which might be considered semi-official in so far even as the Labour Exchange is concerned. I find in Wexford, a town of 11,000 or 12,000 inhabitants, 1,527 people idle. That is one-eighth of the population. When the Minister for Industry and Commerce was, I might say, lecturing this evening he spoke about uncovenanted benefit, and the application of the present unemployment insurance fund to the unemployed. In a great many cases there are people who have been working since 1911, when the Unemployment Insurance Act came into operation, up to two years ago. Under the Unemployment Insurance Act, unless those people had twelve stamps within the last twelve months, the stamps which have been placed on their card, and which they have paid for, were absolutely useless. I suggest to the Minister that men of that kind, who have been working continuously from the beginning of the Insurance Act up to 1924, should have the stipulation removed requiring twelve stamps on their cards. There are undoubtedly cases of hardship all over the State because of that particular section of the Act.

The Minister for Local Government told us that there is something like a million and a half available for county councils, and that it is not being taken advantage of. I think the Minister might have gone further and told us what particular counties this money is available for. There may be that amount of money available for the county councils, but the Minister ought to know that even though there is a certain amount of money earmarked for a particular county, that in road making it is not usual or desirable to put a number of men on that road and absorb all that money in a short space of time. He knows quite well that perhaps two-thirds of the money is allocated for the reconstruction of trunk roads, and that these things cannot be done in a rush. The amount of money available for main roads, if there are any, would be ear-marked for maintenance purposes, and could only be used at certain periods of the year.

He also talked of houses, and tells us that year after year there is a certain amount of money voted for subsidies for people prepared to build houses, and tells us that for the last three or four years all the money available from Government sources has not been spent. We know that, and the Minister knows the reason. He knows it is because of the fact that local authorities are not in a position to borrow money for a term of forty or fifty years, and that it is not an economic proposition for a local authority to build houses under present conditions here. The longest period for which a bank will lend money to-day is ten years, and it takes £500 to build a five-roomed house. You get £100 subsidy from the Government, and, therefore, have to pay interest on £400. The President will have to admit that it is an impossible proposition to build houses in a small municipality to-day, to borrow that amount of money from the bank, and afterwards to let that house at a price commensurate with the position of the ordinary working man. That is why that amount of money is left in the hands of the Minister for Local Government. I suggest that representations by the President's Department or the Minister for Local Government's Department should be made to the banks to give money for a longer period so that the housing question may be tackled. Better still, when an amount of money is to be voted under the Local Loans Fund, the President should make some of that money available for the building of houses. I believe if local authorities are able to get money for a longer period than we have been getting it for the last three or four years, the Minister for Local Government will not be able to say he has any money on hands. He knows that is true. The Minister for Finance said that if the position was serious, a case might be made for uncovenanted benefit. I have not heard anyone deny that the unemployment question was serious. I suggest that if the Minister for Finance goes into the question properly and asks the Minister for Industry and Commerce to take a proper register of unemployment through the medium of the exchanges, he will find the position is serious enough to warrant uncovenanted benefit being paid at once.

AN CEANN COMHAIRLE

resumed the Chair.

Mr. CORISH

I do not suggest that there should be benefit paid indefinitely. I do not suggest that that is going to be a contribution towards solving the unemployment problem. But I do say that whilst we have people on the verge of starvation as we have to-day, that the Government should come to their relief in a manner such as this with uncovenanted benefits. The Minister stated that one of the reasons which enabled him to arrive at the conclusion that the position was not as serious now as last year was because of the fact that no application had been made by the local authority to his Department for loans. It is quite easy to understand why applications were not made. When the estimates were being struck last year the Party to which I belong raised the question as to why no vote was being made for this purpose and it was of course reported in the Press and so the local authorities knew quite well that there was no money available. Every year up to this since this State came into being a certain amount of money was brought in by the Government to relieve unemployment. This has not been done this year. I suggest that was the reason why no application was made this year.

The PRESIDENT

Was it done last year?

Mr. CORISH

I am sorry if I am wrong. He says that the contribution to the unemployment insurance funds indicate that employment is better and that the situation is not as serious now as last year. I suggest that that is no criterion of employment being bettered in this country. I suggest that there is more compliance with the Act and that there is more vigilance on the part of Inspectors to see that the Act is complied with. Everyone knew that the Act was not complied with and that there were evasions with regard to that Act. I do say that the Inspectors have been doing their duty in that respect more energetically during the last two years in making people recognise the Act.

Deputy de Valera made suggestions which to my mind have not been sufficiently noticed in this House. He suggested a commission. I really do not know what he means by a commission. I hope that what he meant is not a commission but a committee, a committee representative of every party in this House who would examine the whole industrial situation in this country. The setting up of such a committee would be a step in the right direction. How often have we heard in the course of the past four years that the fact that this Party on the Opposition Benches being outside the House contributed to the state of uncertainty and instability that existed in the country? Now we have that Party inside the House and I suggest that a committee representative of that Party and every other Party in the House should be set up in the endeavour to find out what is wrong with the industrial situation in the country. I submit that would be the biggest contribution ever made to the solution of the unemployment problem, because it would show to the country generally and to the people who have the money, and who have any hesitation in investing it, that every Party in the State was interested in solving the unemployment problem, and prepared to take upon itself the responsibility of trying to solve it. I do suggest that the President should take more serious notice of that suggestion made by Deputy de Valera, and that something should be done about that in the near future.

It is all very well to talk about a Tariff Commission and about a committee set up composed of civil servants and people of that kind. Civil servants are estimable people in their own way, but they have not to deal with the people through the country such as the Deputies representing various constituencies in this House have to deal. They have not the same opportunities of coming into contact with the people, and of knowing the conditions that exist in the country. They are not in touch with the people. They may examine the question from the point of view of figures and finance, and from the point about which we have heard so much—highbrow economics—but they cannot understand the problem in all its seriousness unless they get in touch with the people of the country in the same way as the Deputies here do. I would say that a committee composed of every Party in this House would make a greater contribution towards the solving of this question than anything that has been done here for a considerable time. I suggest that in this matter of dealing with industries the Ministry of Industry and Commerce is not serving its proper functions at all. The Minister objected to somebody reminding him that a certain number of industries had been closed down. He suggested that we ought to table the number of industries so closed down, and submit the list to him. I suggest that that is his job. I suggest that when an industry is forced to close down in any part of the State that it is the duty of the Minister in charge of that Department to report that through the medium of the Trade Journal to the House, and to the country generally.

I have in my hand here a list of the rates which, to my mind, should be attended to by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I had down a question about this matter yesterday. I received an answer from the Minister and I suggested to him that the rates charged here were not equitable rates. He made an answer to me that he thought they were. I leave it to the House to make up its mind as to whether these rates were equitable or not. On Saturday last Deputy Esmonde, Deputy Allen and myself were in Wexford, and we were brought down to the Wexford Bacon factory and asked to try to do something with a view to having the rates reduced so that the factory could continue to go on. The Minister for Agriculture is familiar with this place, and he knows that this factory is making an earnest effort to carry on. The people in that factory pointed out to us that the rate charged for the carriage of pork from Cork to London was 94/- per ton; from Waterford it was 81/- and from Wexford to London 95/8 per ton. There surely must be something wrong there. The charge by the Great Western Railway is 1/8 per ton more from Wexford than from Cork although Cork is farther away from Rosslare. Wexford is only 11 miles from Rosslare. Surely that is not equitable treatment so far as Wexford is concerned. This is a matter which should engage the attention of the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Agriculture. There is certainly something wrong here which should be attended to. I suggest that in various parts of the country things of this kind are happening and happening to the detriment of some particular industry in that area. If the Ministry of Industry and Commerce were functioning properly it is things of this kind that would be engaging its attention.

I also know that in the town of New Ross, another part of my constituency, a tannery has been closed down during the last few months. There are now very few tanneries in the Free State, and I do think that the Ministry should consider it its first duty to try and prevent things like that. Up to a few years ago this tannery employed 160 men. In a small town like Ross the loss of that much employment is felt to a greater extent than one would visualise in a large city like Dublin.

MINISTER for LANDS and AGRICULTURE (Mr. P. Hogan)

Would the Deputy mind giving these rates again?

Mr. CORISH

Yes, I will send them across to the Minister. I do not think there is much more left for me to say in the matter. This discussion has travelled far from the base set for it by Deputy Morrissey. I hope the debate will have the desired effect of getting everybody keenly interested in solving the unemployment problem. I would again suggest that Deputy de Valera's suggestion should be taken serious notice of and that we should have some committee representative of this House altogether set up in order to endeavour once and for all to solve this problem of unemployment.

Mr. HOGAN

May I make an explanation on behalf of my Department?

AN CEANN COMHAIRLE

I hope the Minister will be brief.

Mr. HOGAN

I understand that Deputy Corish stated that it was the policy of the Department of Lands and Agriculture to give an actual preference to English machinery.

Mr. CORISH

Oh, no. I will explain that.

AN CEANN COMHAIRLE

Deputy Tubridy.

Dr. TUBRIDY

I do not think that this debate should be allowed to close without some reference being made to the unemployment in the Irish-speaking areas, the Gaeltacht. In the constituency from which I come, West Galway, Connemara, I think that there are probably more unemployed than in any other constituency in Ireland. I will admit that at all times there was unemployment in Connemara, but I do hold that never in any period has there been so much unemployment, misery, and distress as there has been in the last five years, and I believe this will be keener in the coming winter. I have seen within the last three weeks a man who has been looking for work for about two years. He is now unable to work, and, of course, they do not pay outdoor relief in Connemara to able-bodied men, unless they are sick.

General MULCAHY

They are entitled to.

Dr. TUBRIDY

It is not done. His eldest child of eight years of age is now ill from lack of food. I do not believe the child will ever be able to walk. The next child of four years is in the same condition, and the baby in the cradle had a bottle containing black tea. Those are the conditions under which the people in Connemara are existing. There is semi-starvation there, and unless something is done to relieve unemployment this winter you will have another outbreak of fever. The emigration from Connemara has been very great during the last five years. Every young man and woman who can get money from friends in America is going away. They are leaving not in twos or threes, but in hundreds. The very best of the race are going because the medical test imposed by American doctors is very searching. Of all the young men and women I knew years ago fully 50 per cent. or more have left the country. Yet, this does not seem to have relieved unemployment.

In the islands around Connemara at least 50 per cent. of the people are living on money that they get from friends in America. The reason that the conditions are worse now than at any other period is largely due to the failure of the local industries. The kelp industry was at one time a very paying industry. It is now practically dead. The Carrigeen moss industry is now carried on by one buyer, with the result that it is not worth while to engage in it. As regards the fishing industry, I see that the Minister for Fisheries has issued reports regarding the condition of the industry along the coast from Galway Bay to Arran, and including Bofin, Cleggan and Roundstone.

At one time these were great centres of the fishing industry, but there is now no boat fishing, with the exception of small curraghs or yawls. That is the condition of affairs at the present day. It was fashionable some time ago to say that we in the decadent West would not fish even if we had the boats and, alternately, that we lacked the courage to fish. But I can assure you that the people in Connemara are only too anxious to get the boats and gear in order to engage in the fishing industry again.

An Industrial Commission sat in 1919 and it gathered a lot of information, probably at great expense. That Commission made certain recommendations, and I observe that not one of these recommendations has ever been carried out, particularly with relation to the fishing industry. There were recommendations as regards production and marketing. At that time it was suggested that a light railway should be run to Cashla Bay to take all the fish from Arran and the surrounding districts. That would be too costly, and therefore we cannot apportion any blame in that respect. But lorries would do just as well, and if prices were bad in London there are plenty of opportunities for developing the home market in the inland towns. It was recommended by this Commission that boats and gear should be provided for fishermen, but up to the present that has not been done. Fishing is done in curraghs and small yawls. These boats are very unsafe. Even in the inlets it is dangerous to work them. We are all aware of the tragedy that happened down there a few days ago, and these people were not very far out at sea. They cannot go more than two or three miles out with their present boats.

I would ask the Minister for Fisheries if he is not in the position to do something for the fishing industry, to encourage the revival of other industries down there. In one report we are told: "There is no great hardship involved in forcing the borrowers"— of gear for curraghs—"to meet the instalments. In such cases full legal pressure is being exercised against the borrowers and their sureties where the loans are in arrear." The people got the gear some years ago, and they are not now in a position to pay off the money. The fishing industry has gone down; in fact, it is non-existent in Connemara. There is one industry that could be developed, and, if it was taken in hands by the Minister for Fisheries, not alone would it benefit unemployment immediately, but it would be a permanent relief to the unemployed in Connemara. I refer to the shell-fish industry. Some years ago, in order to see if it were possible to get the shell-fish industry started, some of us got a lorry. We dealt only in the cheaper form of shell-fish; that is all the Connemara poor can deal in. To deal with the dearer form, such as lobsters, would require the establishment of ponds. We could deal only with the periwinkle and smaller forms of shell fish. We could send £15 worth of shell-fish in a lorry every day. We had plenty of stuff to send. At present there is only one man buying shell-fish. He buys from Clare, Connemara and up to Achill. He buys and sells when he likes, because he has a pond where he can keep the fish until he gets a market. Very often he leaves lobsters on the hands of the fishermen. That man buys from 5/- to 9/- a dozen, and in the London market gets something about £2.

I ask the Minister to look into the shell-fish industry and to see if he can help it by the erection of ponds or banks for the storage of the fish. That would help the unemployment question very considerably. The Minister might say that that is a question for private enterprise, but he took over the lace factories from the C.D. Board, which was a very useful Board in Connemara, and the factories are being run successfully yet. If the Minister took over the matter of shell-fish, it would be a good day's work for that part of the country. Up to this the only solution for dealing with poverty and unemployment there was the making of roads. Whenever an outbreak of fever occurred down there, or even during election periods, we had roads started all over the place.

These roads generally were useless. In my own dispensary district twenty-two roads were started on the 1st June and ended, I think, on the 10th. They led nowhere and are only monuments of Government inefficiency. If we could induce the Minister and his officials to spend the money on making roads into the piers and slips the people could export their turf to Galway and Clare, and their shellfish to England. One industry at present is dying, and it is practically the only one in Connemara, that is turf cutting. The people are engaged in turf-cutting on all the islands during the summer months, and the boatmen carry the turf to Clare, Galway and the surrounding towns. During the storm last year the pier at Spiddal was knocked down, with the result that the boatmen have no place to go for shelter. It is risky to go to Clare or Galway without this pier, as it provided the shelter that they required. I know that early in June engineers were sent down to inspect the place, and I think a deputation went to the Minister for Fisheries and the Minister for Finance. I was led to believe that the deputation was given good reason to understand that the pier would be repaired. It is a positive danger for any man to go out in a boat at present until the pier is repaired or a suitable one in its place provided further out. The erection of such a pier would help both the fishermen and the turf boatmen. There is a big area of bog between Galway and Connemara, thirty miles in extent, which could be cut. At present the turf cannot be got at, as there is no pier there for the boats to load it. In connection with the roads, I notice that while Galway was at one time third on the list of counties which got advances from the Road Fund it is now twelfth. Out of £2,610,997 it received this year £83,139, or one-thirty-second portion, while in July, 1926, it received one-thirtieth portion. Tá fhios agam go bhfuil tuairim £3,000 curtha ar leith ag Comhairle Chonndae na Gáillimhe chun na roiligí sa Chonndae san do chur in ordú agus chun ballai do thogailt thart timcheall na roiligi. Ba mhaith liom do dtabharfadh an tAire Rialtais Aitiúla cead do'n Comhairle gan mhoill an t-airgead do chaitheamh chun go dtabharfaoi obair do mhuinntir na dhúitche sin.

Dáil Éireann debate - Thursday, 3 Nov 1927