In raising this question on the adjournment, I want to point out, first of all, that I have not got any satisfactory answer to any part of the question I asked the Parliamentary Secretary this morning. My question was to ask the Minister for Fisheries if he will state whether there are any men employed as gangers in County Galway under the Irish Land Commission, who own farms of twenty acres of land or more, and if so, if he will state the number. Now he has absolutely refused to do either of these two things in the reply he gave to me. I further asked him in view of the present position of unemployment in that county, if he will consider the advisability of employing men on such work, who have no land or other means of livelihood other than such work, and his reply was: "In the interest of the efficient supervision of the men engaged in improvement works, it is essential for the Land Commission to secure men of experience and reliability as gangers. It occasionally happens that some gangers temporarily employed are small farmers, but their employment is generally necessary owing to their experience and their satisfactory record." Now, I did not ask anything at all in regard to that answer, and there is no part of that answer a reply to the question that I asked. As I pointed out a few seconds ago, I asked for the number of the men who own land of twenty acres and more. There was no reply given to that. I hold that there is great injustice being done to men all over the County Galway, and I suppose all other counties, if I could speak for outside of Galway. The men who are unemployed and who have no hope of employment, and men I hold who are capable of doing this work just as efficiently as the men who are employed. should be given that work. First of all, I do not know what their experience is, or where these gangers got their experience when they started off. Secondly, I know men who were appointed as gangers, and the only qualification they had at the time was that they had served in the National Army. That is the qualification they had. I am not going to say whether the men who were in the National Army should, or should not, get the position. I hold, and I think the House or the Deputies who are present will agree with me, that the men who are capable of doing the work should be the only men who should get the positions. Well, first of all, I know men who are employed as gangers who own fifty acres of land or more. Every Deputy listening to me knows that there are men capable of doing the work that these men are doing, and these men are walking about with no work, and they have nothing at all for a living. On a job of this kind there is such a thing as a supervising ganger. There is a ganger in charge of three or four roads, and his duty is to see that these men working under him make the road according to specification.
I do not see where the question of experience comes in there. There were men working for the Irish Land Commission and for the old Congested Districts Board who had no land, nothing but their jobs a few years ago. That would be up to six or eight years ago. Later on these men were given farms of land. The Parliamentary Secretary may get up in a moment or two and tell me that they had holdings previously, and that they got an increase of land out of the lands that were divided. But here, and now, I want to state that I can name the people who had no holdings of land at all, and had no qualifications at all, but at the present time when there is an election on, they probably get out and do canvassing or other work necessary for the Cumann na nGaedheal candidates in the county. Those are about the only qualifications some of those men have. We had a debate here some time ago on the matter of unemployment, about men who were unemployed throughout Ireland. We fought on that matter, and we heard it repeated over and over again here, and men on the opposite benches told us that it was the duty of the Government to find employment for all men willing and able to work.
If, taking a farmer and giving him a position like this is finding work for the unemployed, I wonder where we are, and I wonder what we are doing here. I wonder why we do not get out. The other day there was a debate on these benches and Deputy Maguire gave the details of the qualifications of ganger, and he told us he knew a man who, a week before the election, came out and went into a village and said: "This road is going to be done. I have got a certain amount of money for it." That man would be President of a Cumann na nGaedheal Branch. He said that he had got a certain amount of money for that road, and he said: "I am going to be the ganger." His son would be the supervising ganger. That man was qualified for work and capable to carry on the work because he was President of the Cumann na nGaedheal organisation. If this is the way that we are going to look after unemployment, then I say God help the unemployed. I have not very much further to add. There is no need for me to go any further into details. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary when he is making such appointments in future not to take into consideration whether this man belongs to the Cumann na nGaedheal Party or the Fianna Fáil Party or the National League or any other organisation. I would simply ask him to find out what the qualifications of the man are, and then appoint the man who is suitable. I am not asking him to put any man who is incapable of doing his work into one of these positions. But there are plenty of men walking about with their hands in their pockets not able to earn a halfpenny, and these men are able to do this work, and I hope that they will be considered in the future when gangers are being appointed.
