It had no reference whatever to the order made on the 20th July last putting the Land Commission under the Ministry of Fisheries. I think it was Deputy Lemass who said he would prefer to have the Land Commission kept with the Department of Agriculture and that Department to have control of the Gaeltacht services. That matter has been dealt with by the Minister for Lands and Agriculture. I hope Deputies will not take it that I am endeavouring to answer any propaganda, but there is a disposition on the part of a great number of people to speak of economies in the matter of Ministries as if it were an easy matter. The Ministry of Agriculture, which is a very important Ministry, would not be affected by having a second Minister appointed, by having, say, a Parliamentary Secretary appointed to the Minister.
An expense of £1,000, or even £1,700, would be negligible in respect of services that could be rendered in that connection. I am not stating that it would not be an exceedingly difficult thing to administer by one head a Department, portion of which should be regarded as an economic unit, and another portion which, I think it is generally admitted, is not an economic proposition. That is the real trouble in the Gaeltacht, that it is not an economic proposition, that the conditions there are such that it is not regarded as being on a level with other parts of the country, in respect of either agriculture, industry or any other of the various activities which form its chief business or which are looked to by people as their means of support. In that connection I may say that I was rather surprised at Deputy Aiken's contribution, in which he said that if the money which had been expended on the Shannon scheme had been devoted to the Gaeltacht we would have saved a very big emigration from that area.
Those are two different matters altogether and they ought not to be confounded. The necessary power for industrial activity for the whole of the country is one matter, and this problem of the Gaeltacht is entirely another matter. It does not help matters to bring into comparison sums of money expended in other directions. As long as five or six years ago, speaking at an election in the City of Dublin, I stated that it was at that time my opinion that there would be considerable disappointment in connection with any development and any attempts at improvement which would be made by any Government in connection with the Gaeltacht. Those who have experience of it will admit that it is a problem fraught with many complexities and with great difficulties in finding a solution. That solution will not be found by legislative action or by the most benevolent attention which any Government could give it.
We are faced—no matter how good our intentions and our works are—with years of disappoinment, in my view, in connection with that and it is inevitable that it should be so. We are not going to stop emigration by any improvement in industrial conditions down there. By that I mean that you are not going to stop emigration immediately. Within the last eighteen months I was down there in a place which is a particularly densely populated Irish speaking district and we had occasion to go in through a gateway. The woman of the house had the key and after our business was done I noticed a very fine looking girl at the doorway. I inquired from the woman of the house if she were her daughter. She said she was and I asked her was she employed but she said "No," she was not looking for employment, she was going to America and she had her passage in her pocket for six months. To a very considerable extent that is the attitude in a great many parts of the Gaeltacht and in other parts of the country also. When coming across on the boat from New York I met a lady who informed me that she had engaged a cook. I asked her what salary she was paying and she said sixty dollars a month. That is £144 a year. Deputies who take any interest in domestic matters know that that is far in excess of what is paid to a cook in this country and that there is a natural ambition among people who see greater opportunities in other and richer countries to get away.
Our problem, and the problem of the people of this country for the next twenty or thirty years will be to endeavour to attract the young people of the country to remain in it and to see that there is a livelihood here for them which will be sufficient to keep their eyes off other countries which can afford them greater opportunities. Deputies will admit that that is by no means an easy task. Most of the people one meets at some time or another have had their eyes on other countries where there are greater opportunities. It was our hope when we initiated the Shannon scheme that that of itself would make some contribution towards having a greater attraction, greater possibilities, and potentialities for the young people of this country. It may be that something better might have been done but it has been done and it is there, and the best thing, I suppose, we can do is to portray its usefulness to all sections of the community and endeavour to make the country sufficiently attractive to keep people at home. The Ministry of Agriculture, as I have said, is concerned with agriculture as an economic proposition. The Gaeltacht, for one reason or another, has a different character. It does, and will, require the expenditure of considerable sums of money to make it a place in which people can live. I think it was Deputy Tierney who drew attention to one particular paragraph of the minority reports, I think of Father Cunningham, which deserves more than passing attention. He recommends a commission. We are not in agreement with that. We are proposing something very much the same which would do the same work.
He said:
"This Commission would effect a great saving, as the Gaeltacht would in a short time become self-supporting and prosperous. The recurrent poverty, destitution, and misery met with now would be prevented and those large, unremunerative relief grants with their inherent objectionableness, dispensed with."
That should be our aim in connection with this matter, not to be perpetually looking for some assistance from State funds. Assistance from State funds is requested in quite a number of services. It is being given to many services. It is being given to more services than is looked for or expected in other countries, more than is given in those countries to which the majority of the people of the Gaeltacht go. It is not a sound or sensible policy that in connection with practically every service there is a criticism that there is not sufficient Government money given towards it. All that money must come from other people. There are not many people in the country taxable for all those services we require. The sum of £100,000 that is mentioned in connection with the Gaeltacht is only a very small percentage of the total sum that will be required in future in connection with that area. It is not good business, in my opinion, to have the eyes of the Gaeltacht on the State for huge sums of money. We expect, and I am sure Deputies opposite and in all parts of the House expect, some contribution locally towards the solution of the problem, and without an effort being made locally there is very little hope of solving it with money. Money of itself will not solve it.
Deputy Fahy is not here at the moment, and I suppose I had better not refer to a certain incident with which he is acquainted in connection with that place. One Deputy remarked that people in the West had the same sort of boats as they had a couple of hundred years ago. There are people who say that no other boats would live in the waters in which they fish. If there was a disposition on the part of the people down there to go in for trawling and to operate in the same way as the Scottish, French or English fishermen, I am sure that the Ministry of Fisheries would be only too pleased to help in every possible way in the provision of boats, gear and machinery. But we must remember that the associations of generations are not lightly broken and that the people engaged in fishing down there are, to a very considerable extent, involved in agriculture or some other calling. Any man in business knows that if he specialises in one particular line there is a much greater chance of success than if he had his attention directed towards two or three separate businesses. I think we might have heard an alternative proposal in connection with this matter. I hope I am not getting out of order, but most of the discussion, I think, ranged itself around the suitability of the Minister rather than of the Ministry. I submit we ought to be fair in connection with the criticism of the Ministry of Fisheries. I do not think that there would be any great ambition on the part of any member of any party in this House to take on that Ministry.
