Certainly not. That is the proposition. Yet the Carlow sugar beet scheme cannot complete in the city of Cork with sugar which has that handicap. They have not been selling any sugar in Cork. What are we to think of the business organisation, the business brain of the best man, from the point of view of brains in Cumann na nGaedheal, if, in order to do that, he has rendered this country liable to a sum of two or three millions to enable it to be unable with a preference of about 30/- to sell sugar in Cork which can be bought f.o.b. at Hamburg under 9/-? That is probably his greatest achievement. For anyone responsible for that criminal waste of something approaching three millions of money in a country that cannot afford to find £300,000 for old age pensions, a bath in boiling oil would be just about the proper appreciation of an achievement of that kind in a country as poor as this is.
The future Minister for Finance, Deputy Daly, has reminded me of the Shannon scheme. The Shannon scheme has been a hobby of mine for the last thirty years. It has been one of the things which I have tried to believe in during all that period. It is a thing about which I actually read a paper before an engineering society more than a quarter of a century ago. I am not at all prejudiced against the Shannon scheme. If I could believe in the Shannon scheme, as a sound financial enterprise in this country, in its present condition, there is no man here who would be more anxious to do so. I want this House to compare the Shannon scheme as it was offered to this House with the Shannon scheme as it is in reality. The Shannon scheme was founded on the idea that there should be a network covering the whole of the Free State fed from the Shannon and distributing to every town of 500 inhabitants and over. It was to supply in bulk. It was to be self-supporting. It was to cost £5,200,000. It has already cost £6,000,000 visibly. Do not mind that; that is a perfectly reasonable variation in the estimate. I would not have been surprised, nor would I have blamed the Minister, if there had been considerably more divergence between the actual estimate and the actual cost, but it also contained, when we got it in its naked beauty in the 1927 Act, the fact that it was going to take over from the citizens of Dublin, without paying them anything, a property that was worth 1½ millions of money. That is not recorded in the £5,200,000 or the £6,000,000. I am a little bit doubtful about the figure, but it took an average of about £15,000 of income tax which up to the present day has been paid by the City of Dublin to the Minister for Finance and which will have to be found from some other source. There is a capital charge there of £300,000.
Unless the Act is changed—and the Act would not be changed unless this subterfuge had been shown up—it contains a provision by which the citizens of Dublin this year are out of pocket and would be, in perpetuity, milked of £30,000 a year in rates—£600,000 of capital not included in the £6,000,000. It contains the fact that the whole of that property spread over the whole of Ireland and representing probably £80,000 in rates is hidden in that scheme and represents, deducting the £600,000 for the Dublin rates, another £1,200,000. It contains the fact that this organisation is specifically prohibited from paying income tax, and the Electricity Supply Board can go to the courts and can claim back from the Minister for Finance the whole of the income tax paid by the holder of that portion of National Loan—the £6,000,000, and the £2,800,000 in addition which is used on the distribution network. There is another £45,000, or another £900,000 added to the £6,000,000, £2,800,000, £300,000, £600,000, £1,200,000, and the £900,000 hidden in the 1927 Act.
For the Shannon scheme to be a sound scheme financially it has got to pay interest and sinking fund not merely on its visible expenditure but upon its hidden expenditure also. It has not been suggested up to the present that it will do that. That is not really the gravamen of the charge. Mind, I am speaking as one entirely prejudiced in favour of the Shannon scheme development, as one who would hope to see not merely the Shannon scheme development but the development of the Liffey and other subsidiary water powers in Ireland, and who would be prepared to make considerable financial sacrifices over and above what was actually immediately profitable to have that done. I challenge any engineer to say that, given as common ground an electrical network covering the whole of the Free State, you cannot put down a steam station at the nodal points and feed the whole of that network cheaper than it will be fed from the Shannon.
Of course, we have the philosophy of Deputy McGilligan in what he once said in relation to his Patents Department. We pointed out the fact that it was hopelessly extravagant from the point of view of the State, that in order to get a patent here in Ireland you had to pay a cost which would be equal to the cost of getting that patent in England, in America and in the Free State, and that of the total charge which was put upon the patentee, the amount which the State received was probably not ten per cent. When that case was put to Deputy McGilligan here was his answer: "The total expenses of the Department are X. The total revenue of the Department is X plus Y. That is perfectly satisfactory." In other words, "So long as I can get more revenue than cost, the cost does not matter a damn to me." The Shannon scheme could undoubtedly have been substituted by a steam-station system, feeding into that common network, providing electricity for the Free State cheaper than the Shannon could do it. That may be an achievement for Deputy McGilligan.
I want now to put, in a few words, the other side which he is entitled to put up against that charge. He is entitled to put up against that total capital cost the whole of the money over and above unemployment allowance to the same people who are paid for unskilled labour. He is entitled to put up against it whatever political advantages, and I am afraid they are not very great, are involved in the fact that he will not have to import the quantity of coal which would be used by a steam station. Certainly, if Deputy McGilligan's record is to rest upon the Shannon scheme and the sugar beet scheme alone, though he may be the best case that they can put forward for that Front Bench, it is not the case to justify that Front Bench.
The Minister for Defence has already been adequately dealt with by Deputy Hogan, and I shall leave him there. According to the Minister for Agriculture, the Minister for Defence is a fraud. He is deliberately misleading this House. He is coming here and telling them that he is spending one and a half millions or so of their money on an army, and he has not got an army. If there is any reason for the continuance of Deputy Desmond Fitzgerald in the position of Minister for Defence, they can justify anything.
I now come to the last, Deputy Blythe. I have suggested a substitute for Deputy Blythe. In so doing I certainly was suggesting that something active should be done in his Department by his successor. It is not necessary, if the Department is to continue to carry on as it has been carried on, to substitute anything masculine. Any office boy could obey the orders of his Department with the same amount of inspiration and efficiency with which Deputy Blythe obeys the orders of his permanent officials. It is a Department without the shadow of imagination, without the shadow of inspiration, with no grasp of the big primal problems which have to be faced in relation to this country if it is to be rebuilt from the foundations up, as it has to be. Deputy Blythe, with the exception probably of the Minister for Justice, has probably less control of and less knowledge of what goes on in or less capacity to deal with his Department than any Minister on that bench of duds.
I simply now deliberately recall the list: Deputy Finian Lynch, Minister for Fisheries. Is there any man who would stand for him individually, any man who would employ him with his own money to carry on business of that kind? The Minister for In justice! Our 001 Deputy O'Sullivan. The unteachable Deputy Mulcahy. That bold, unbiddable child, Deputy Hogan. Our leader-writer, Deputy McGilligan. Deputy Desmond Fitzgerald, whose Army, according to the greatest Minister for Agriculture in the universe, is not worth a damn. And Deputy Blythe, who could be substituted by any person of ordinary elementary education in performing the actual functions which he does perform. At least it is coherent; at least it is consistent. They are on a level. They are on a level with the President, who draws his power from the fifteen whom he regards with contempt and who regard him with contempt. They are worthy of the President who is upheld by the Farmers' Party, whose leader he has described as bankrupt of intelligence, bankrupt of initiative; bankrupt of every thing of use and value in Ireland. It is worthy of the President under whose administration national principle in this country fell to the lowest level which it has touched in human memory, when they exploited the blood of a murdered comrade and tried to coin it into votes in a stunt election on the Public Safety Act. It is worthy of the President who, meeting the country in that stunt, had his power broken in his hand and was sent back here to wait for the day of his final dismissal, without the courage to destroy the child he had engendered which, under the name of the Public Safety Act, will be a lasting shame and disgrace to this House and to the country over which this House is supposed to be the sovereign Assembly.
