I have no doubt that unemployment has increased to an alarming extent within the past twelve months. I can safely say that that is true as far as Limerick City and County are concerned. Our respected leader, Deputy de Valera, has pointed out that protection is the best means to relieve or help to solve the unemployment problem. I have no hesitation in saying that farmers, merchants and traders in Limerick are on the verge of bankruptcy and that unless the Government come to their rescue immediately by adopting a policy of protection there is little hope for them. Deputy J.J. Byrne pointed out yesterday the figures for unemployment. I believe these figures are most inaccurate. Deputy Hogan alluded to that yesterday evening and proved that they are inaccurate. I would say further that there are hundreds of young men and women who never have gone inside an unemployment bureau for the simple reason that they can never get work, young people from 18 to 22 years of age, so that Deputy J.J. Byrne can rest assured that his figures were entirely inaccurate in regard to unemployment.
Unemployment Relief Bill, 1931—Second Stage (Resumed).
Deputy J.J. Byrne, in yesterday's oratorical outburst, brought us on a trip round the world, one of the usual trips on which he relied on that peculiar elastic imagination of his to convince the House that the Free State is the best of all States to live in and to die in, if necessary. Had Deputy Byrne been listening to the speech of the Minister for Finance in moving the Second Reading of this Bill he would not have quoted the figures which I listened to him quoting here last night. The Minister for Finance himself admitted, in moving the Second Reading of the Bill, that the number of people on the live register had increased by 5,000 since this time last year, and to that extent there was, and is, in my opinion, a good case for a greater sum than the £250,000 provided for in this Bill for the relief of unemployment and distress. I would like to hear from the Minister, on his own admission, why a greater sum is not provided in this Bill, a sum greater than the amount provided last year, especially if he admits, as he has admitted, that the position is worse than it was last year. Deputy Byrne asked the House, and he was particularly anxious to find out from the Labour Deputies, what was the cause of the existing distress and depression throughout the State. Some Deputies, in discussing the position of the State, failed to realise that the agricultural community in the State have to rely to a very large extent upon a foreign market for the sale of their agricultural produce. Anybody who has made a study of any kind of the situation across Channel must realise that the cotton workers of Lancashire who two years ago were working and receiving wages and who to-day are out of work, and as a result of being out of work have been obliged to cut their domestic circumstances accordingly, are not in a position to buy Irish beef, bacon, butter and eggs in the same way as they were when they were working. The same applies to the coal miners of Wales, Northumberland and Durham, and to the shipyard workers of Birkenhead, Glasgow and Newcastle. In other words, the reduction in the purchasing power of the working class population in Great Britain is one of the real causes leading up to the agricultural depression which we have existing at the present time. My colleague says: "Shoot Gandhi." I do not know if there are any Deputies in the House who would share that view, but at any rate Gandhi knows his own business better than we do, and knows what he is entitled to receive either here or hereafter.
On top of the peculiar situation which we all know exists across Channel and which has these disastrous results on the demand and consequently on the price paid for Irish beef, bacon, butter and eggs, which have hitherto been exported in large quantities to England, there is also the fact that the demand on our own home market has been reduced as a result of the reduced purchasing power of our own people. What is the present Government doing and what do they intend to do to make better provision in the home market for the agricultural produce which is here in large quantities and which cannot be purchased by the 100,000 people receiving home assistance or the 70,000 or 80,000 people who have no work to do? Nothing of considerable notice has been done by the present Government to engage in work of national development which would absorb the 100,000 able-bodied people who to-day are receiving home help at the expense of the ratepayers and who, if we had national housing schemes or more arterial drainage schemes, would be in a position to buy produce on our own markets if they were given work and wages to enable them to do so.
Those who represent rural constituencies, of course, have read and listened to the debates in connection with the Housing Bill recently passed through the House and which, in my opinion and the opinion largely of those who represent rural constituencies, will do little, if anything, to provide houses needed in non-urbanised areas. There is practically no encouragement to boards of health to proceed on anything like a national scale to build houses that are badly needed in the non-urbanised areas and to absorb in the towns and villages, where those houses are badly needed, the men standing at the corners who should be working and receiving wages if there was any national housing scheme put into operation.
Deputy de Valera seems to pin his whole faith on the future development of the country by endeavouring to develop new industries and maintaining existing ones through the agency of tariffs. We on those benches do not pin our faith, speaking from the experience we see round us, in the development of industries by tariffs and tariffs alone. This House, as far as I have been able to understand the latest figures on the matter, through the agency of the Trades Loan (Guarantee) Act has advanced or guaranteed advances to the extent of £325,000, £200,000 of which, I understand will have to be met eventually by the taxpayers of the country as a result of the failure of new industries, which, even with tariffs and guaranteed loans could not hold their own and continue in existence. What is the cause of the failure of such State-assisted industries to maintain their status in the home market? It is due to the fact that people in the country who have money, that Irish citizens who have money at their command, banks and private individuals, have been foolish enough—and I say foolish deliberately—to send £195,000,000 out of this country and to invest it in British War Loan, in Coats, Courtaulds and other speculative shares in the British money market, money which should have gone to the development of industries in our own country. A sum of £325,000 of the people's money has been guaranteed to assist tariffed industries and notwithstanding that most of them have collapsed. We have the case of firms engaged in the furniture trade, the glass-bottle industry in Ringsend, the dead meat factory in Drogheda, which received generous financial assistance from State sources but which were unfortunately not supervised by State Departments. In consequence of the lack of proper supervision these firms have gone out of existence.
There is no hope in my opinion, and in the opinion of the Deputies who sit with me in this House, for the development of new industries in this country or for the maintenance of the few industries that we have until the State comes in and takes a hand in organising the industries of the country, providing the necessary capital for the maintenance of existing industries, and giving the necessary supervision to the carrying on of these concerns. I disagree with Deputy de Valera when he says that he pins his whole faith as to the future development of industries in this country upon tariffs alone. The saintly leaders of the present Government Party will say here or elsewhere that what I am now preaching is Communism. I have read a speech delivered recently by the President and a speech delivered by the Chairman of the Cumann na nGaedheal organisation, the Minister for Education, referring to statements made recently by Deputy de Valera in the country, in which Deputy de Valera, in advocating the development of industries in this country in fact copied the policy advocated by the Party of which I am a member in connection with the same matter. I am sorry to think that Deputy de Valera departed yesterday not a little from speeches made by him on previous occasions in the country on this same matter. We hope to persuade him, as the result of the painful experience of the people, that our policy in regard to the development of industries is the only one that will save the few industries that we have remaining, that will help to build up other industries, and that will provide for the population of this country articles that they are now importing from other countries.
The Minister for Finance, in what I may say was a very moderate speech, did not indicate to the House the extent to which the sum now asked for would help, even in this Christmas period, to provide work for any reasonably large number of people. Assuming that £50,000 out of the £250,000 now asked for will have to be set aside for the provision of material for the works to be carried out with the consent of the Minister for Finance, there is only a sum of £200,000 left for wages for those now out of work and who will be hoping to get work as a result of the passing of this Bill. What does that mean? I think Deputies from the various Parties in the House will admit that the number of unemployed is in or about 70,000 or 80,000. Assuming that there will be only £200,000 available out of the £250,000 for the payment of wages, that will mean, as far as I can work out the figures, that the amount available will give employment to 28,570 able-bodied men out of the 70,000 or 80,000 who are to-day unemployed, for only four weeks at a wage of £1 15s. a week. That is no contribution, even at this season of the year, to the solution of the problem that confronts this House and the people of this country. The sum asked for and provided for in this Bill will only provide work at £1 15s. a week for 28,570 able-bodied men for one month.
I candidly admit, from the experience I have had of the spending of money of this kind, that the money already allocated to relief scheme work in my area has been well and wisely spent. I candidly admit that, and unlike one or two Deputies from the Fianna Fáil Benches I do not say what I do not believe. I do not believe that political influences have been brought to bear in the allocation of that money. A small amount has been allocated and spent both by the Local Government Department and the Land Commission in the area which I represent. The money spent in previous years in works of this kind has been mainly devoted to the work of making bog and other roads under the supervision of the Land Commission in those areas where these roads were badly needed and where the work carried out was very satisfactory and will have lasting results in the eyes of the local people. I am glad to think also that the Minister—I hope I am right in the way I interpreted his speech—will, when he comes to make provision for grants from this fund, consider the claims of towns and villages where they have been unable to carry out sewerage and water-works schemes on account of the heavy cost to local ratepayers. I know areas in my constituency where applications for such assistance have been made in the case of previous grants, and I would suggest to the Minister that, when he comes to the allocation of the money available under this Bill, he should give preference to the areas from which applications were made when money was previously available and to which no grants were given on these occasions. I will also suggest to the President and to the Minister for Finance that for the sake of the ratepayers of the country preference for employment provided by moneys made available by this Vote should be given to the able-bodied destitute who are to-day being maintained on home help at the expense of the ratepayers. I think that from the human point of view, from the point of view of the ratepayers and from every Christian point of view, able-bodied men who are married and who have families and dependents should, if there is any preference given, get the preference for work under schemes of this kind. It may relieve the ratepayers to some extent from an increasing burden. In my constituency the estimates for home help during the present financial year are bound to be exceeded; and if Ministers can see their way, in working the scheme, to give employment to men receiving home help assistance, to that extent the ratepayers will be relieved and I believe a good return will be received for the preference so given and the money so expended.
The only complaint that I have to make in connection with this matter is that the Ministry do not go far enough. I am not quite sure that the Minister had been well-informed by his own supporters in this House as to the state of affairs that exists in different parts of the country and particularly in the tillage farming districts. I represent, or misrepresent, one of the biggest tillage farming districts in this country. I am making a present of that observation to those who say that I misrepresent some of them. I am here to represent at least a section of the people of the constituency where I was born and reared and where my people have been carrying on farming either on a large or a small scale for two or three hundred years. I want to say this—and the Government Deputies and the Fianna Fáil Deputies from the same area will admit the truth of what I say—that the policy of the Government or, at any rate, the policy of those responsible for failing to bring about a settlement of the Beet Factory dispute, is going to result in my constituency in the cutting out almost altogether of the acreage under beet for the present season. I want to say—and Deputies who sit on other benches will agree—that the members of the farming community who had the good sense to grow beet under the beet proposal that was originally introduced are the only farmers floating with their heads above water in my constituency. And there is this fact that because of the dispute these people are harder hit now than in any previous year. I would say that that is another reason why this Vote should be increased if there is any intention, as I believe there is an intention to a certain extent on the part of the Government, to meet the situation which they must know exists in all parts of the tillage farming counties. I hope that when this Vote is passed steps will be taken as quickly as possible to invite schemes from the public bodies in the areas concerned and that when inviting applications for grants some definite information will be conveyed to the local authorities as to the type of schemes likely to receive grants. Ignorance on the part of certain local authorities in my area in the past has been responsible for their sending up schemes of a type which the Minister would not sanction. For these reasons I hope that the Ministers will indicate clearly to the local authorities the type of scheme for which grants are likely to be made available, that they will, in the course of a couple of weeks or so when they get more information regarding the extent of the distress in the country, provide an additional sum and that the money will be allocated and administered in the same fair way as in the case of previous Votes.
A number of speeches have been delivered in this debate which were in the main irrelevant. The Government have been accused of laxity in practically every branch of the service. I am only concerned, however, with one charge which has been made. It has been said that we have denied the existence or failed to realise the existence of unemployment. The number and the condition of the unemployed in any country are governed by its economic condition and by the measure of prosperity in its various industries. Deputies have taunted us with talking about the relative prosperity of the country. We have never said that the country was as prosperous as it should be, or might be, but we have said, and I repeat it, that our industrial and agricultural condition is as good as, if not better, than that of any other country. We have said, and I say it there was no unemployment or that the condition of the unemployed was good. We have said, and I say it again, that relatively to our population the number of the unemployed in this country is less than in greater countries than ours. If Deputies opposite were really honest they would admit that the real cause of their complaint about this grant is that it has taken them by surprise, as they did not believe there would be any grant this winter. There is nothing so irretrievable as a lost opportunity, and in their failure to anticipate this grant, and to make previous capital out of it by demanding a grant of a larger amount lies the reason for their make-believe criticism of this measure.
Suggestions have been made that we should really start to solve the problem. Deputy de Valera proceeded on his usual economic lines of tariffs for industry and a wall around the country. I am glad that Deputy Davin blew these sky-high. If the United States, with its tremendous resources in industry and agriculture and its huge tariff imposts has to-day such a number of unemployed, what hope is there for a similar policy in this small country? America is certainly a self-contained country. It is a great agricultural country and it is highly developed industrially. Even with its huge tariff wall and all these aids to prosperity, there is to-day in the United States a greater number of unemployed in proportion to the population than there is here. I do not deny the unfortunate existence of unemployment, and none of us say that this grant is going to solve the problem, but we do say that it is an honest attempt to relieve the prevailing depression. We all wish that the grant might be a little larger than it is, but in the present state of our finances it is as large a measure of relief as we can give. I hope the grant will be administered as previous grants have been administered, fairly and squarely, and that it will be allocated to those districts where it is needed most and spent on works which will give a return for the money expended on them without regard to centres or districts. In that connection, I hope the Minister will not forget Limerick. As every other Deputy has put in a claim for his constituency, I may say that I believe that there is just as much unemployment, no more and no less, in the city and county Limerick as elsewhere. I am glad Deputy Davin has paid a tribute to the Government as to administering these relief grants honestly and without any attempt to get Party advantage out of them. We all realise that unfortunately the necessity is there. The only regret I have is that the grant was not received in various parts of the House in a better spirit than it has been.
I am afraid that Deputy Bennett fell into the old fallacy of comparing the number of unemployed here in proportion to the population with the number in America or elsewhere. I wonder will the Deputy take account of the fact that the American population has gone up from 10,000,000 to 120,000,000 and that ours has gone down from 8,000,000 to 4,000,000. If we had our natural population here we can calculate what our unemployment figure might be as compared with what it is to-day.
If!
If you want to be honest, add the emigrants to the unemployed and then you might be near the figure. I do not know that the Labour Party blew the tariff wall sky-high, as Deputy Bennett said. They disagreed with certain aspects of that policy but I do not think they are anti-tariff.
Certainly not.
This £250,000 has been got by a raid, if you like. There are certain occasions on which raids are not legal, but those who will benefit will not, I expect, inquire too closely into the source of origin of the £250,000. We are told by the Minister that certain portions of this grant may be devoted to providing seed potatoes and seed oats. That will be in some months' time. It would be well to know what proportion or percentage of the grant is to be devoted to that very laudable purpose, as in the meantime the amounts given for relief will naturally be lessened by that proportion. Town and county are in need of this relief. I do not want to go into figures. A certain Cumann na nGaedheal Deputy, representing a City of Dublin constituency, yesterday tried to minimise these figures, and there is just one aspect of it to which I should like to draw attention. About a year and a half ago in a Dublin street three boys who had got through the senior intermediate came to me looking for employment. One had got a scholarship from the Dublin Corporation. I managed to get one of them a job as a messenger, the other two are still idle and they are not on the registered list of unemployed. That is an economic and social problem for Dublin, and I am told that it obtains elsewhere. There are a lot of boys leaving school and who are seventeen or eighteen years of age who have not succeeded in getting employment and that is a very serious state of affairs. That is a concrete case that came to my own knowledge of three boys, and two of them are still idle. Other Deputies, no doubt, could give similar instances of similar cases.
I know of twenty-five B.A.'s looking for work and cannot get it.
That may be so, but I think it is not quite so dangerous in their case. The case of boys of 17, 18 and 19 years of age being idle is very dangerous, because they might get demoralised. Then we have the problem of the uneconomic holdings and the small farmers. Now that emigration has been stopped, what is the small farmer to do who has two or three sons requiring work? They are not registered as unemployed, though they need employment for a few months every year. I think they should certainly be included amongst the unemployed. Road schemes and sewerage schemes and sanitation, and also water schemes, I dare say, will be considered. I submit that there are enough schemes on the files of the Land Commission to enable them to go ahead without waiting for any inquiry. Many such schemes were approved of, but it was necessary to shelve them for want of finance. Some of the money under this Bill should be devoted to such schemes as these. From representations received from Galway town and Ballinasloe I know that the problem of unemployment is very grave there. This is not, I believe, a good time of the year for building, but I understand that there is a training college and a preparatory college to be built in Galway, and these should be commenced as soon as possible, because they would relieve the unemployment conditions to a certain extent.
Deputy J.X. Murphy, when Deputy de Valera stated yesterday that putting 60,000 unemployed people to work would produce six and three-quarter million pounds, seemed rather surprised; but, taking the census of production, according to the figures each person engaged in agriculture produces £96 per year, and in other industries £225. These are the figures and they may be a bit lower now as compared with the time they were compiled. There are three persons engaged in the agricultural industry to every one in every other industry, and if the Deputy will work out the sum in compound proportion he will find the figure is £128 per individual, and Deputy de Valera only calculated £112, allowing for less value and production now, so that there is nothing very surprising in these figures. If the Deputy speaks I would like him to controvert them and to show us whether it was that Deputy de Valera was wrong or that the figures of the census of production turn out to be wrong. We have had reference made to those on the register as unemployed and we have had reference to bog roads and so on. I remember staying in Belfast some years ago and being awakened very early in the morning by three mill girls singing in strident and defiant tones the "Old Bog Road." That song, I think, should be sacred to Galway and Mayo. There has been a long debate, but we should not spend too much time in considering this scheme before us.
It was not my intention to take any part in this debate, and I would not have done so but for the extraordinary statements that emanated from some Deputies on the benches opposite. It is an extraordinary thing that everything that is done in this House in the way of trying to provide grants for unemployment is always described as an election stunt. We had the prophecy in September, 1927, that we would have a General Election in the spring of 1928. That did not come off. Then when a grant was voted of £150,000 in 1929 we were told it was a forerunner of a General Election, but it did not come off. Then £300,000 was voted in 1930, and again we were told that it was the forerunner of a General Election, and that prophecy did not come off. Now there is a vote of £250,000 at the end of 1931—
Is it going to come off now?
I suppose that at last they will land somewhere, but they have not proved to be good prophets. A statement was made by a Fianna Fáil Deputy yesterday which I saw in the papers to-day to the effect that in the County Mayo certain money expended for relief was expended on a political basis, that gangers were placed in charge of men, and that no man in Mayo, no matter how deserving he might be, would get employment unless he paid one shilling into the organisation of Cumann na nGaedheal. I would like to take this opportunity of branding that as a false and villainous statement made by an irresponsible and reckless Deputy, who, if he happens to be in the House, may thank proportional representation for putting him there. I am sorry he is not here now. I suppose we might find in the precincts of Trinity College some of those people who denounce Unionism and Freemasonry and things of that kind. I brand the Deputy's statement as a false and villainous statement but it is a statement well worthy of the Deputy. I repeat that were it not for proportional representation that Deputy would never set his foot in this House, and the only place he could ever enter would be the visitors' gallery where he would come in on sufferance. If he is here as a Deputy he is here by accident.
The sum of £250,000 for the relief of unemployment is not appreciated by our friends on the opposite benches. In fact, it is regarded as nothing but a crime, especially as it came, as Deputy Bennett has said, as a great surprise to them. Those who had the capacity to make that sum available and bring about this relief are branded as criminals from Fianna Fáil platforms, and are denounced as doing nothing to assist those who are suffering. But what have Deputies opposite brought about? I certainly say this to their credit, that they have a better method for relieving unemployment and a quicker method than the Government ever adopted. It is astonishing that the Government never thought of adopting such a plan of action. If they did they would only have to send out not their engineers but what I might describe as a number of handy-men to blow up bridges here and there.
Would the Deputy come back now to the Bill and avoid the bridges?
I bow to your ruling. I quite agree it is somewhat beside the question, but when Deputies opposite are allowed to indulge in statements such as were made yesterday I do not think it is out of place that perhaps others should be allowed to reply to these statements. I do claim the right to say that these people seem to forget in connection with the past that they were not so helpful in this country, and they ought to blush at the thought of accusing others who have been of great service to the people and who are now endeavouring to relieve unemployment by placing at the disposal of local authorities the sum of £250,000. That is what I find fault with. I make every allowance for fair criticism, but when it comes to statements such as have been made by Deputies on the benches opposite I say it is time to cry halt and to give them a reminder of their own past.
I desire in conclusion to take the opportunity of congratulating the Minister. I think he deserves the greatest possible credit in very trying times, in times which everybody must admit have tried the greatest countries in the world. At this moment countries are struggling with millions of unemployed, whilst the number of unemployed in this country is very trifling. The efforts made by the Government to relieve those who are now suffering do great credit to the Government. We have heard prophecies from day to day. In the near future we will have an opportunity of giving the prophets a chance of testing what the people think with regard to their statements and their past. Perhaps the decision that the people will give will be the best answer they can get.
I do not want to enter the debate on the lines of the other speakers, but I would like to call the Minister's attention to the needs of my constituency in County Dublin. The Minister for Local Government will remember that through some lack of foresight on the part of the County Council, County Dublin was unable last year to participate in the grant to the extent to which it was entitled. I hope the Minister will make up the arrears for the County Dublin this year. It must also be recollected that people flock to Dublin from all parts of the country for work. When they do not get work the onus of keeping these people falls on the ratepayers in the County Dublin. I think that is an aspect which the Minister should bear in mind when administering this relief grant.
The speech to which we have just listened from Deputy Davis goes to show how uneasy the Deputy and those other Deputies on the Government Benches who happen to represent Mayo feel at the prospect of having to face the electors. I do not wonder at that uneasiness. There is good and ample cause for it. I confess, however, I am unable to follow Deputy Davis in his references to Trinity College and the statement which he made, that if we had not proportional representation in this country one of the Mayo Deputies who sits on this side of the House would not have been elected. We all know that Deputy Davis and the Cumann na nGaedheal Party have got the support of the three Independents who represent Trinity College, and from the other Independent and Unionist Deputies who sit on their benches. We know that were it not for their support Deputy Davis and his Party would not be in control of the Government to-day. It is owing to the support that Cumann na nGaedheal have got from the Trinity College Deputies, the Unionist Deputies and the Masonic element in this House that they are able to carry on as a Government.
After the speech that we have heard from Deputy Davis I am quite certain that the introduction of this relief measure, and the economy proposals which have been promised, are part of the election arrangements of Cumann na nGaedheal, the setting of the stage for the appeal to the country, an appeal which cannot be very much longer delayed. This dole which the Government proposes to give to the unemployed is, in my opinion, nothing more than a mere sop intended for the purpose of obtaining votes at the next General Election. The Government themselves are aware that this relief grant of £250,000 is not going to provide adequate relief, or reasonable employment for the 60,000 persons who are walking about idle at the present time. The very fact that the Government has been forced to introduce this Bill is an admission on their part of their failure to tackle the unemployment problem. It goes to show that after ten years of office they have been unable to provide useful and productive employment for the citizens of this State and that their only solution for unemployment is the giving of doles, at the expense of other sections of the community. These doles are not sufficient to give more than three weeks' employment to the idle thousands. It is only when a General Election is in the offing that the Government manifest any consideration for the unemployed or their dependents. But for the fact that a General Election is due to take place within the next few months it is very doubtful, even now, whether the Government would have introduced this relief measure at all.
The Government, of course, can be relied upon to administer this grant in rural areas for election purposes. They will take good care to see that the money is spent in such a way as to gain the greatest possible amount of support for their candidates. It is not the unemployed that will be considered or the most necessary and productive works, but the amount of votes that this money is likely to obtain for Cumann na nGaedheal. If this grant is administered in my constituency in the same way as previous grants there is very little hope that employment will be given in districts where the greatest amount of distress prevails. At the time the last Relief of Distress Grant was passed in this House the Sligo County Council, which includes members of all parties, submitted a list of necessary and deserving works to the Land Commission with a request that money would be allocated and spent in carrying out these works, so that the maximum amount of employment might be given in areas where the greatest amount of poverty and distress existed. This list of works was compiled by members of the council who had intimate knowledge of the conditions of distress and unemployment that existed in their own districts. How many of these works were carried out by the Land Commission? The Land Commission treated the Sligo County Council with such scant courtesy that they even refused to disclose whether any of the works submitted by them was ever considered or not. The total amount spent out of previous Distress Grants in Co. Sligo was utterly inadequate to provide the necessary relief and employment.
At the present time a grant of £5,000 would not be sufficient to provide work for the very large number that is unemployed in Sligo town alone. The distress and unemployment in this town are very much worse than in previous years, and unless a sum sufficient to provide employment is allocated immediately there are many of the unemployed in Sligo and their dependents who will have to rely on the generosity of their neighbours for a Christmas dinner. The same conditions exist in all the smaller towns in farm produce, and in particular to the around Ballymote town, where there are hundreds of breadwinners without work.
In the rural areas of the county, and especially along the sides of the Ox Mountains, the Curlew Mountains and Arigna, the conditions are very bad. Owing to the slump in the price of farm produce, and in particular to the drop in the price of pork and milk, most of the small farmers in these areas have been reduced to a state of abject poverty, and unless immediate relief is forthcoming they will be unable to provide the bare necessaries of life during the present winter.
In many other parts of the country where the land is poor and the farms uneconomic the conditions are equally bad, and if famine conditions are to be averted the Government will have to provide adequate relief.
I hope when the Land Commission set about administering this Relief Grant in Co. Sligo that an ample sum will be made available to complete the drainage of the Owenmore. Already a considerable sum has been spent by the Board of Works on this river, but the flooding still continues, and it will require the expenditure of a further sum of £5,000 or £6,000 to complete the work in a satisfactory manner. Now that the Land Commission will have considerable sums available, I hope that this much-needed work will be carried out as soon as weather conditions permit. Apart altogether from the necessity of completing this drainage work in a satisfactory manner, there is also the fact that there is a considerable amount of distress and unemployment among the small farmers along this river, and the expenditure of an additional grant would give much-needed relief and employment.
In conclusion, I would like to express the hope that in the distribution of this money the Land Commission and the Board of Works will see to it that the money will be distributed as evenly as possible over the whole of the country; that those districts which are poorest and where the greatest amount of unemployment exists will obtain the greatest possible amount of assistance; that when moneys are being spent in particular districts those who are unemployed and those small farmers who have large families to rear will get preference, and that employment will not be given, as it has been given on former occasions, to well-to-do people who could afford to live on their own farms without having to obtain work under a relief scheme.
I do not propose to follow the last speaker and many other speakers in troubling the House with any observations relating to my own constituency, not because there is not there, as elsewhere, very great poverty, but because I do not think that anything I could say is hidden from the authorities, and because I have confidence that the Land Commission or whatever other department is charged with the expenditure—and I hope, incidentally, that the Gaeltacht Department of the Ministry of Fisheries will spend a considerable portion of the money—will spend whatever is available to the best advantage and will help the poorest families in the manner Deputy Carty has spoken of. I listened yesterday with the greatest interest, as I always do, to Deputy de Valera. Although this is not an opinion shared by all my colleagues, I believe that Deputy de Valera, like myself, if I may very humbly make the comparison, is a seeker after truth, but I confess as I listened to and read Deputy de Valera's speeches that I became more and more mystified as to what is the economic policy he really desires to be followed in this country. He devoted the greater part of his speech yesterday, as I suppose he was well entitled to, to an attack on the policy of the Executive Council and to an adumbration of the policy which he himself would prefer. I think the word "adumbration" is not inapt, because as I listened to him there seemed always to me to be many shadows cast from the clouds. The more I listen and hear, the more puzzled I become as to what, in this sub-lunary sphere, Deputy de Valera really means.
Mr. Jordan
Why blame Deputy de Valera?
I know it is absolutely my own fault, but I am seeking after information. I refreshed my memory by reading the truthful columns of the "Irish Press." Therefore the extract that I am quoting will not be challenged:
"And the position to-day is that these Twenty-six Counties, this small country, with a population of less than three millions, is buying from the Six Counties and Britain more goods than any other country in the world."
"The Twenty-six Counties bought from January to September last £29,000,000 worth from Britain and the Six Counties. The amount exported by us was £26,000,000 worth. There was nothing new about the fact of there being a balance of trade against us. But the extraordinary thing was that the great populations of the United States, France, and other countries should buy less from Britain than we did."
Now, as the Deputy himself suggested, two distinct points arise here, the possible balance of trade and the actual volume of our imports. With regard to the first of these, two observations, I think, fall to be made. The first is, as everybody knows, that in order to arrive at the true view of the trading conditions as between any two countries, you have to take account not merely of what are called visible exports and imports, but also of what are called, in the rather curious language of the economist, "invisible exports"—that is to say, dividends on foreign investments and so forth. Though, as far as I know, no very exact figures are available in that matter between ourselves and Great Britain, I believe there is good reason to think that when you take account of what I call invisible exports they go a long way, at any rate, towards filling the apparent gap between what are called visible exports and imports. So far as it is suggested—and it was certainly suggested yesterday—that this apparent, unfavourable balance of trade is due to a pro-British bias on the part of the present Executive Council, I think it is pertinent to point out that other countries which are not under the blighting influence of President Cosgrave and his colleagues show precisely the same thing. Many of them are, according to recent returns, in a very much worse condition than this State. So far as I can recollect, no considerable country in Europe—not even France, strange and almost inexplicable as it seems— has got a favourable balance of trade. I am not sure that even the United States of America is an exception. How that is to be explained is a matter that is too high for me, and not wholly apposite to this debate. At any rate, the fact that it is so—and I do not think it can be denied—is surely the plainest possible proof that our plight in this matter is due to other causes, and cannot be, with any justice or reason, imputed to the policy of the Executive Council.
I turn to the larger question. Why these huge imports from Great Britain? In part the answer seems to be given very candidly in the editorial columns of the "Irish Press" itself this morning: Imports represent payment for exports, and if we cut off imports we must forfeit our export trade also. That is surely true as a general proposition, although we know it is subject to certain deductions and allowances. Another answer I suggest is this, that trade follows not so much the flag as the general convenience of traders. Ireland and Great Britain represent to one another mutually convenient and accessible markets. Nowhere else can Great Britain find so convenient and so profitable a market as in this country for her exports; nowhere else can we find so accessible, convenient and profitable a market for our goods. That does not mean, of course— and certainly has never been understood by the Government to mean—that we should not strain every nerve, looking to our own interests only, to produce here for our own home market whatever we can produce profitably. Why else, may I ask, have we one tariff after another? So far, I imagine, we all agree. Here we come to the parting of the ways. I have stressed "what we can profitably produce here." The Government policy in the matter is perfectly clear. Can we say the same about that of the Opposition? We are bidden to look forward to a vast increase of population. Deputy de Valera spent some time yesterday telling us what the population of this country would be if we had the same density to the square mile as certain other countries. The newspaper report does not give these particular figures, but I remember that on one other occasion the speaker mentioned 17 millions as the desideratum. This increased population, if I understand Deputy de Valera aright, is to be fed from the present exportable surplus produced by our agricultural population. How is it to pay for that? The answer, I understand, is, through a great addition to the industrial population. There is to be a vast addition to our manufactures. I have said that up to a point we all agree. Whatever can be profitably manufactured in this country with the help of tariffs— reasonable tariffs or otherwise—is to be manufactured here. There is no disagreement on that. But I understand Deputy de Valera is not satisfied. He wants to go further.
In this connection, it is just as well that we should remember the spectacle presented by Australia, Germany, and by the United States of America, the last two countries with millions of unemployed in spite of—some people even say because of—the enormous tariffs these countries have set up. When tariffs, however high, have achieved all that they can achieve, then, says Deputy de Valera, if there are still industries which the private manufacturer cannot, in spite of the tariffs, carry on at a profit, then the State is to take them over and run them, presumably, at the expense of the taxpayer. We must produce everything we need—I do not know whether that applies to tea or coffee—regardless of whether it can be produced profitably or not. I wonder what addition to our existing taxes would be sufficient to meet that demand. There, sir, you have in the words of the "Irish Press" the two policies. On the one hand you have sane and ordered progress, looking to what can be profitably produced here, seeking to encourage it wherever it can reasonably and sensibly be done by means of tariffs, and you have on the other hand wild proposals leading inevitably to individual and to national bankruptcy. If the country is asked to choose between these two policies I have no doubt as to what the choice will be.
Mr. O'Leary
I would like to reply to a statement made by Deputy Carty. When speaking about the countries that got grants in the past, the Deputy made charges against Cumann na nGaedheal with regard to the administration of the money. I challenge any supporter of Fianna Fáil in my constituency to say that the grant was administered in the interests of any party. I interested myself in one case in my own parish, and I asked the ganger to employ the most deserving people, apart from their politics. Outside of that I did not interfere. I do not think it is fair that an attack of that kind should be made on the Cumann na nGaedheal Party.
When President Cosgrave paid a visit to Waterford City last month, he stated to one of the deputations which he received that he could hold out no hope that any relief schemes would be introduced or any money would be made available during the winter months for the unemployed, owing to the economic state of the country. In the interval he requisitioned his magic financial wand and there mysteriously appeared a sum of £250,000 for the relief of the unemployed. I sincerely hope that that sum of money will not mysteriously disappear but that it will be put to useful, reproductive work which will return a £ in value for every £ expended. I regret that I have not the same statement to make as regards unemployment in the constituency of East Cork that Deputy Bennett made. No constituency in the Twenty-Six Counties suffers more from unemployment than does the constituency of East Cork at present. No later than last Monday a deputation from Buttevant went before the North Cork Board of Public Assistance looking for relief or employment. A very large deputation of unemployed walked seven miles from Buttevant to appeal to the Board in connection with the distress existing in the town. That is one of the instances which I wish to put before the Minister. It is a very deserving case. The town of Buttevant largely depended upon the British military. Within recent months, a flour mills was burned down. A number of those who went before the Board of Public Assistance in Mallow were working in these mills. I hope the Minister will provide some work—road work or any other reproductive work—which will bring relief to these people and their families during the Christmas months.
I was unavoidably absent from the Dáil yesterday and I thought I would be late for this snap-apple scramble and that the whole of this money would be gobbled up by different Deputies and spent in their various constituencies. I came along to-day as quickly as possible to put a few matters before the Minister and to urge that some of the money should be devoted to the relief of the unemployed in East Cork. In the town of Fermoy, there are 600 or 700 unemployed. A committee, established by the Gaelic Athletic Association, are negotiating for one of the old military barracks for a Gaelic athletic arena. The grounds could also be used for recreation purposes by the children of Fermoy. If a small grant were given by the Government, a great deal of work could be provided for the unemployed in laying out these grounds. That would bring the children off the streets, where they are at present in grave danger owing to the bus traffic. A great many boys and girls in the country districts are attracted to the towns and cities by the cinemas and dance halls. There they are aping the foreign fashions which their ancestors were quite ignorant of. These people could be usefully employed if they would give their services at a wage which the farmers can afford to pay. There is no class so hardly pressed as the farmers are at present. Every farmer Deputy knows the strenuous time which agriculturists are going through. They are working from dawn to dark, trying to keep body and soul together and to make a living for their families. The unemployment problem is a difficult one for any Government to solve. It will not be solved by oratory or by false prophets standing up in this House and trying to score off their political opponents when they should devote all their time to solving this difficult problem. There will be a greater problem to face before next year. Deputies cannot close their eyes to the fact that there will be some measure of relief required from whatever Government is in power next year for the relief of the unfortunate farmers. What is the position at present amongst the farming community? There was a bad harvest—one of the worst for a long time. The prices for cattle and stock have fallen by fifty per cent. in the last six months. The potato crop is a complete failure and it will be very difficult to find seed potatoes and seed oats next spring when the farmers will commence to plant and lay down their ground. I suggest that some of this money should be spent on afforestation schemes. That would be reproductive work and, in years to come the timber would be a valuable asset to the State. In East Cork there are thousands of acres which were under wood some years ago. This land could be bought very cheaply and could be replanted. I also wish to mention a water supply which has been approved by the North Cork Board of Health. I am one of the interested parties myself. For a number of years we have been trying to get a water supply in my district. It has now passed to the Cork Board of Health and has been sanctioned. I would be very slow owing to the economic state of the country to put a penny extra on the taxpayers who are groaning with the weight of taxation at present. If we want to relieve unemployment, we must bring the economy axe into operation in every Government department. I hope that after the next general election there will be appointed a Minister of Economy who will have no scruples in cutting down the high salaries of officials. We have had nine years of reckless extravagance, with highly paid officials tacked on to the coat-tails of the Government. Where is all this money to come from? Who is to keep up a Government so extravagant? We have to pay £22,000,000 or £23,000,000 per annum and that is beyond the capacity of the taxpayers. A lot of work could be given to the unemployed in the steam rolling of roads which are in a scandalous condition around my district. I brought it under the notice on several occasions of the Cork County Council and of the County Surveyor. I do not know what reason he had for not repairing the roads in my district. Perhaps I had not the right wire to pull to bring him along to spend some of the money which had been given in road grants time after time. There is in the village of Castlelyons a road which would be a scandal in any civilised country in the world. We have two churches there, schools and a creamery. I saw with my own eyes people walking along the street right up to their ankles in mud. I saw people going to Mass likewise. I have seen farmers sending in their milk to the creamery in the morning. Young lads taking in the milk chase each other along the roads to see who will be first at the creamery, and I saw gallons of milk spilt along the road owing to the ruts there. It is like a village one would see after a siege during war time. I hope the Minister for Local Government and Public Health will take notice of these matters.
There is also the question of the sanitary condition of the schools. Year after year the schools have been closed periodically owing to outbreaks of diphtheria and scarlatina. That is due to the bad sewerage and the conditions under which the pupils live. As I have already stated, a large number of boys and girls could get employment amongst the farming community if they wished to work for the wages which the farmers could afford to pay them. My experience of the young boys and girls is that in the winter months they retire like the bees and they are not to be seen until the spring of the following year. They go into winter quarters and do no work whatever. I sincerely hope that the few matters which I have brought before the Minister will receive his serious consideration and especially that he will take some measure to relieve the unfortunate people of the town of Buttevant.
This debate has gone on for a very long time and I did not intend to intervene in it. Deputy Davin in his speech said that he did not agree that tariffs were a remedy for unemployment in this country and that the tariff policy of the Fianna Fáil Party did not find favour with him as a remedy. I am quite in agreement with Deputy Davin on that point. Then Deputy Davin went on to say that industry wants more capital in this country. He made the statement that the Government under the Trade Loans (Guarantee) Act advanced, I think, about £320,000 to industries and that the taxpayer was going to suffer a loss of about £200,000 of the £320,000 advanced. In the next breath the Deputy began to criticise the capital of this country that was invested abroad and said that it should be invested in industry in this country. I would like Deputy Davin to state what incentive there is to invest capital in industry in this country when £200,000 of the taxpayers' money is lost in money advanced trying to keep up industries in the country. While I am quite in agreement that tariffs on a large scale, as advocated by the Fianna Fáil Party. are no remedy for unemployment, I think that when we come down to the fundamental causes of unemployment in industries in this country, Deputy Davin and I would not agree. I will not say any more about it at present. While the tariffs are no remedy in operation—I agree with Deputy Davin about that—I think we would not agree upon what perhaps would be the fundamental causes of unemployment or why we have not more employment in industry in this country.
Another speech to which I listened with pleasure was that of Deputy J. J. Byrne, because I thought that Deputy Byrne as a representative of the City of Dublin, tried to prove that there was not very much unemployment in the city. I think he said that in insured trades there was less unemployment now than a year ago. The reason I was pleased about that was because as a representative of a rural area, I hope that the city area which Deputy Byrne represents will require less of the grant and that we, therefore, may hope to get a little more in the rural areas.
It has been pointed out or put forward as an excuse from the benches opposite that if there is unemployment here there is a good deal more unemployment in other countries. We are told that in the rich countries there is a good deal more unemployment than in this portion of Ireland. We have less than 3,000,000 people in the Free State. In one city, not even in one of the largest cities, in those rich countries you have a bigger population than in the whole of the Free State. While we are told that world conditions are bad, at the same time I think it will be admitted that we in the Free State are capable of producing enough food to feed ourselves and have a good deal for export. We could also produce the necessary clothing for ourselves here. The Government have been in office for nearly ten years and during that ten years a good deal of the land of Ireland has gone out of cultivation. We are producing more grass now than ten years ago but at the same time we have a good deal less cattle to eat that grass. We are not producing the food now that we could produce. We are an agricultural country, we are told, but we are not producing wheat. We are not even milling wheat for our own bread. Our wheat is being milled for us in England and other foreign countries. The amount is increasing every year. We imported nearly two million pounds worth of bacon last year and we are an agricultural country.
At a meeting of the Harbour Board in Cork one of the members said that the figures connected with the importation of unnecessary goods always had a tendency to waken up people to their national duties. We are importing a lot of unnecessary goods and some of the Deputies on other benches say that they do not believe in tariffs. The time for tariffs has nearly gone in most things. Tariffs will not do much now. What we want is total prohibition. Some of the rich countries about which we heard have gone to the extent of prohibiting the importation of luxuries. Yet luxuries are coming in to Ireland still, a good many of them free. Any body who walks round the City of Dublin to-day and examines the goods in the shop windows, if he knows anything at all about an industry or any business, will see that over ninety per cent. of the goods are of foreign manufacture. Not alone is that the case in Dublin City but it is the case in every town throughout the Saorstát.
At that meeting of the Cork Harbour Board yesterday it was also stated: "The great increase in the imports of flour considering the state of the mills and the fact that when the question of the monopoly by English millers was under discussion some twelve months ago, they had an assurance from the Government that they would see that no such thing would take place...." A little over twelve months ago an English combine or some English millers came over to Ireland and got control of some of the mills in Cork and in Dublin. They control, I think, about 30 per cent. of the Irish mills. That fact was pointed out to the Government at the time and the Government gave an assurance that those mills would not be closed down but that they would be used and worked here. What is happening in Cork is that those mills are working, they are producing a certain amount of flour, they are producing flour for home baking, but the bakers' flour is practically all imported and is being sold by these mills. The bakers' flour is milled in Liverpool and imported here and sold by these millers, who control 30 per cent. of the milling industry of the Saorstát. The Government has sat idly by and allowed that to go on. The workers in our mills are idle, but still it is, of course, no part of the duty of the Government to find work. They will come along every year and give a grant of a quarter of a million or a little more or a little less. The quarter of a million this year would not give half the unemployed work at a fair wage until Christmas. That seems to be their solution of the unemployed question. They are supposed to have a lot of supermen working for them on the front bench and in their offices, and after ten years we have to find money to relieve unemployment for a short time. I would advise them to get rid of the supermen to whom they pay big salaries, and to get ordinary men who understand the conditions, and to give them a chance. They could at least do better than has been done; and out of the population of less than three millions we should not have so many unemployed as we have at the present time. There are a good many ranches that could be divided up, the division of which would give the people who are land hungering in the different places work in a way that would enable them to produce a little food for themselves. But it takes years and years to divide up a ranch in this small country. Last year I put down a question to the Minister for Finance as to when it was proposed to start work in the Irish College at Ballyvourney, and the answer was that it was proposed to start work there in the autumn. We are well into winter now and nothing has been done yet. If work had been started in Ballyvourney it would help to relieve unemployment in that district and in the districts around it. But nothing has been done so far, and the autumn has gone. I wonder shall we have to wait until next autumn for the work to start.
We are to get £250,000 for the relief of unemployment. Of that sum, £25,000 was long ago allotted for the making of a road from Mallow to Killarney. I hope that, even though the Cork portion of that road has been steam-rolled long ago, that district will get its proportion, or at least, get something out of this grant. There is another portion of the road there that wants to be steam-rolled—the portion of road leading from the steam-rolled road to within a few miles of Millstreet, a distance of about 3½ miles. That work was supposed to be done under these grants years ago, but nothing has been done. I hope something will be done now. There are also a number of schemes in North Cork for roads and other work, some of which have already been inspected and some of which have not been inspected. I think that some of the money will be well-spent in carrying out some useful work there.
I did not intend to take part in this debate until I heard Deputy Kent saying that he came up specially from Cork to collar some of the £250,000. I then began to think that, after all, there is something in talk. My contribution will be very brief. I listened yesterday to a Deputy saying that he regretted the action of the Minister in at all putting this £250,000 at the disposal of the poor and unemployed of the country. I do not intend to go on that tack. The poor and the unemployed of my constituency hail the proposal with joy, and they are looking forward hopefully to getting a good slice of the money down there. My colleague, Deputy Hogan, put very forcibly last night how rampant unemployment is in Clare owing to the partial failure of the potato crop. Owing to that failure the people are going to have a tough time between now and next spring. I hope that the Minister for Agriculture, with that watchful eye of his, will see that they will get a supply of seed for the coming spring. The public bodies in my county, realising the state of affairs down there, put up large sums of money—the County Council, the Urban Council of Kilrush, and the Commissioner at Ennis did it; and I hope that the Minister, in allocating this money, will be generous and give those bodies a good sum of money.
The Land Commission did very good work in Clare under the last relief grant. They carried out a lot of useful work there. No matter what some of my colleagues from Clare may say, I believe that the money was fairly and impartially distributed. As a matter of fact, some of my constituents are continually saying to me that Deputies Hogan, Houlihan and Sexton can get this, that and the other done, but that I cannot get anything. I ask the Land Commission when they are dealing with works in Clare to give consideration to the unfinished works under the last grant and also to the schemes which were sent in then but which, owing to lack of funds, had to be put off. If there is one Minister more than another who deserves praise for what he has done in County Clare it is the Minister for Fisheries. With the very small sum placed at his disposal last year, he did marvellous work for the poor people living along the seaboard in that territory. As a matter of fact, he is responsible for a new industry down there, the conserving of the winter weed, which I believe will revolutionise the kelp business. For that reason I hope that when this money is being allocated the Minister for Fisheries will get a large portion of it for distribution. When the money is being allocated I hope there will be a big import of it into the County Clare.
We have to regard this Vote somewhat as a hardy annual. Year after year prior to the Christmas adjournment a Vote is generally introduced for the relief of unemployment, and we pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves and the people, at least those who are foolish enough to believe it, that we have done our duty towards this problem. I regard this as an annual demonstration of the Government's incapacity to govern. The President recently told us about the functions and duties of a Government. I submit that if there is one duty above any other, it is the guardianship of the welfare of the citizens. Notwithstanding anything said to the contrary, no one can deny the fact that starvation and poverty are rampant in the country. There are approximately 60,000 registered unemployed, with their dependents. Of course we had Deputy Byrne last night submitting an array of figures in a very crude effort to prove that unemployment has decreased since the Government came into office. No one will be foolish enough to believe in the accuracy of the Deputy's figures, because he left entirely out of consideration the fact that there is always a large number of unemployed going out of benefit, but not going into employment, because their benefits have become exhausted. According to the Deputy, we are supposed to take that as an indication that unemployment has decreased. I should like Deputy Byrne to repeat the speech which he made last night to the citizens who he claims sent him to represent them. I should like him to go through his constituency and examine the situation there and see if he can get up on a platform and repeat that speech.
The Leader of this Party last evening stated that we were importing £30,000,000 worth annually of manufactured goods which could be manufactured at home. The only attempt which any member of the Government Party has made to answer that has been to compare conditions here with those in other countries. Why is it, in dealing with a problem which is primarily an Irish problem, we cannot deal with it as Irishmen instead of dealing with the conditions which obtain in other countries and saying that because our unemployment figures are relatively lower than those of other countries that is proof that the Government have done their duty? That is worthy of the line of action which the Government has pursued during its period of office. As I say, this Unemployment Relief Vote and the discussions which it generally gives rise to, and the speeches which we have to listen to from Ministers and Cumann na nGaedheal back benchers is a pitiable annual demonstration of the Government's incapacity to function as a Government should. Deputy Davis stated that for the past three years, when the Relief Vote came up we always prophesied that it was the prelude to a General Election, and that our prophecy always proved false. In reply to that I can say that were it not for certain circumstances our prophecy might have come true. We know that there have been not one, but several crises in the Executive Council, and that there have been occasions on which a number of them, at any rate, thought that the hour had struck which would provide them with a suitable opportunity to get a new lease of political power. We also know, from the editorial policy of the "Irish Times" and certain other organs that they have been brought to book for certain things which they have done. It has not been a happy family during the last few years, that same Executive Council. The fact that the people have not got an opportunity of passing judgment on the work of the Government is due to a variety of causes. At any rate, unless they have another "three-card trick" up their sleeve, we will soon have the opportunity of going to the High Court of Appeal and dealing with this question.
Deputy Law pretends that he is unable to follow the line of policy advocated by the Leader and other members of this Party in respect to this problem. He stated that, like Deputy de Valera, he is a seeker after truth, but the more he listens to Deputy de Valera and the more he reads his speeches the more confused he becomes. As a Deputy on these benches reminded him, Deputy de Valera is not responsible for the Deputy's inability to follow his line of argument. As I say, our attitude has been explained very fully and definitely. We have put forward a case and proved conclusively by quoting trade statistics that there is being imported into this country approximately £30,000,000 worth of manufactured goods annually which could be produced at home. Will the President or the Minister for Agriculture or the Minister for Finance tell us why that is so? No one has yet attempted to deal with that. They talk about trade relationship being based upon profit as a guiding principle. Now, what are we to say of profit in trade relationship when we have 60,000 people walking about the streets of our cities and towns unemployed? Is it by creating such a condition of affairs, by increasing the unemployed roll and carrying on a policy of foreign imports that we are to make a happy and prosperous country? The Government did say on a previous occasion that it was not a Government's duty to provide employment. Nevertheless we have proof here that, directly due to their policy of allowing foreign dumping in this country, and to their opposition to the policy of Fianna Fáil in this respect of protection, unemployment is surely and gradually increasing instead of decreasing.
The Government policy since they came into office has been from the outset one of lowering the standard of the masses of the people. First of all we had them permanently identifying themselves with a campaign of wages reduction, lowering the purchasing power of the community. Like Deputy Hogan (Clare) who said last evening that he did not like opening the wounds of the poor people, I do not want to go into the details connected with the conditions in the constituency that I represent, but I do really think it is pitiable and shameful that Deputies on either side of the House who go through the streets of the city should come in here and talk platitudes as they have been doing, when Votes like this come up, thanking the Government for the introduction of this annual relief grant of £250,000.
After nine years of office the unemployment problem, towards the solution of which the Government, we were told, had been devoting their efforts, is on the increase. This, the gravest of all problems, as somebody said last night, is not only an economic problem but a social one. For the past three or four years young boys leaving school have been unable to find employment even to the extent of earning ten shillings per week. A few weeks ago President Cosgrave and his colleagues came here in the garb of great and holy men and told us there was a very serious menace threatening Christian institutions in this country and that the attitude of all Christians was very clear. The President pointed out the necessity for rallying to the defence of these Christian institutions. The future of Christianity was at stake, we were told, so far as this country was concerned. And his remedy for that was a new coercion measure. In the discussion upon that we pointed out the cause. If such a state of affairs existed, which we then denied, and still deny, as justifying that measure, nevertheless, we said as a result of the Government's economic policy there was, undoubtedly, growing up in this country a problem which would be very difficult to deal with the longer it was allowed to develop. How does President Cosgrave and his colleagues—and I am really serious in asking them —and particularly the President, reconcile his professed regard for Christian principles with his position as President of the State and the duties appertaining thereto, in view of the fact that there are thousands of decent honest citizens requiring bread who cannot get it, requiring and seeking work and cannot get it? The President has been in that position now for quite a number of years. We are told he is a great Catholic and a defender of Catholic principles. How does he reconcile his position, as President of this State, with the terrible problem which he and his Government have failed to deal with? Does he really believe that an annual vote of £250,000 is in any way a serious attempt to cope with this problem? If we take the figure of 60,000 unemployed workers and their dependents, I would ask him how far that will go to tide these unfortunate people over the Christmas holidays? I cannot, for the life of me, understand how these men can go up and down the country talking about prosperity and efficient, honest and constructive administration which they claim to have in the country for the last nine years, and can close their eyes and deliberately ignore the fact that there are thousands of people starving. I asked last year, and I repeat the question again:—Will they have the courage to get up and admit that this problem is there, that they know it is there and that they cannot deal with it within the limits of their powers and have no method whatever of finding a solution for it?
I certainly could admire that attitude if the Government would adopt it. The real fact is that we have now in this country a Government by the Bank of England. The old enemy is still in control. There is no Irish attitude being adopted towards Irish problems. As the leader of this Party has stated, there is an Irish solution for these problems. Why cannot we find that solution? Why must we go to France, America, Germany and Denmark, quote unemployment figures there and then say that in comparison with the conditions in those countries we are in a very happy position?
The Government have boasted of their contribution to the housing problem. I think it cannot be denied that during this debate sufficient figures have been quoted, and we have heard, if one may so term it, sufficient constructive criticism during which schemes have been mentioned, the adoption of which would relieve unemployment in the various districts referred to. We have heard the Government from various platforms proclaiming their great contribution to the solution of the housing problem. If tackled really in earnest the housing problem would also give a solution, to a great extent, to our unemployment problem. But when the Corporation of Dublin put forward a scheme recently which any impartially-minded man must view as the most brilliant attempt that has been made in recent years for the solution of that problem, what was the attitude of the Government towards it? It had not the blessing of President Cosgrave's Executive Council. It was not their child, and therefore it could not be of any use, and they said: "We must turn it down; we must oppose it." Every proposition which comes from the Opposition Benches in this House or from any local body in this country meets with the same fate from the Government. Their attitude is always the same. They and they alone are the super minds. Unless an idea or a proposition is born in their great minds it is bound to fail.
I read an extract here last evening from a recent issue of the "Irish Independent," where some speaker at the Myra Fete, held a few months ago, said that poverty was greater now in this country than it was even during the famine years. He gave figures and facts in support of that argument, particularly in relation to Dublin. Poverty is greater than it was during the Famine time; the housing conditions are worse than then. Only the other day I was asked to go and see a place where seventeen families were herded together like cattle in one house. That is only one of hundreds of such cases. This recalled to my mind a passage which I read ten or twelve years ago, where Pearse—the man to whose memory we all pay lip service—walking through the slums of the city in company with James Connolly, and viewing the slums and the horrible conditions prevailing there, said that before God he believed these conditions to be due to British rule in Ireland.
What would Pearse say to-day after an experience of nine or ten years of native Government? Are the slum conditions better? Worse. Hunger is far more rampant than it was when he decided that the only remedy for these conditions was to go and sell his life in an effort to end them. Here we have a native Government under President Cosgrave—a great and holy man, we are told, with his great and holy colleagues around him. I submit that it is time that this House wakened up to these facts. At any rate, I suggest this, that until some real earnest effort is made towards the solution of those problems the President and his colleagues and every member of his Party should cease to pay lip service to the memory of Pearse and Connolly.
The Deputy who has just sat down told us he was going to speak only for a short time, but he disappointed us. He spoke for twenty minutes, and what he said in those twenty minutes could have been said in two. It is perfectly clear that the Deputies opposite are not concerned with unemployment or its solution. What they are concerned with are politics; and but for the fact that I have such an abiding faith in human nature, I would give up all hope for this Dáil. We have listened all day and yesterday to the Party opposite. The Dáil has become purely propagandist, and has ceased to be a critical Assembly. It was impossible to discover anything of intelligence or interest or understanding in the speeches to which we have listened from the Deputies opposite. There is a complete lack of these things in them. I had for my sins to listen to some of those speeches, and, listening to them, I came to the conclusion that the sooner, in the interests of efficiency, we have a general election to get rid of these propagandists the better. The Dáil at present is a disgrace. With regard to this particular problem of unemployment, they say that £250,000 is not enough——
Is the Minister carrying on a private conversation with you, sir, or is he addressing the House? We cannot hear a word up here of what he is saying, but, of course, if the conversation is private I would not like to interrupt it.
Mr. Hogan
That is a pity. I would like to repeat it all over again.
The Minister has always something interesting to say. That is admitted.
Mr. Hogan
We are told that this £250,000 is not enough and that the Government must find more. What the Opposition really mean is that the taxpayer, and not the Government, must find more money. We do not find any part of the £250,000. We are told that the proper way to solve this unemployment is to impose general tariffs. That is Deputy de Valera's fixed idea in economics. He treated us to a speech in which he told us that we might produce all the boots, clothing, hosiery, implements, woodwork, etc., required by this country, and then having calculated how much employment would be given in each industry, he found we could employ 80,000 people more. We are seriously supposed to listen to drivel like that as a contribution towards an unemployment debate, and we are supposed to do that in the year 1931, after the experience of every intelligent man who takes the trouble to read the papers and knows the conditions in this or in any other country. In the light of that experience we are told by the Leader of the Opposition that the thing to do is to put a high tariff on all imports of manufactured articles and that 80,000 men would, as a result, come into employment, and that we would all live happy ever afterwards. That is supposed, in this Assembly, to be a serious contribution towards a debate on unemployment. I doubt very much if in Jugo-Slavia or some of the minor Balkan States that sort of thing would pass for political wisdom, and yet it is trotted out here by the Deputies opposite. But the Deputies opposite must remember that there are high tariffs in America, there are high tariffs in Australia, and that there are high tariffs in all these continental countries. There are high tariffs in practically every country in the world except Great Britain and the Free State. When I speak of high tariffs I mean that the preferential tariffs in most of those countries are 60 to 80 per cent. and the general tariff is 90 to 100 per cent. These are the conditions in which all these countries have been living for the past twenty or thirty years. When I was young, I thought tariffs were a great thing, and until all these countries had some experience of international trade they thought that they were all going to get rich quickly on high tariffs.
May I be allowed to say one word on politics, in view of the fact that every speaker mentioned them? Politically we are thousands of years behind the times. At the present moment we are trying to defend majority rule. That was admitted, at least in theory, if denied in practice, in every first class State a thousand years ago. At the present moment we are one hundred years behind the times economically. You have the fatuous statement like that statement made by Deputy de Valera, that all we have to do in order to get rich quickly is to adopt a rigid system of high protection and that we will be all right. Over 100 years ago that principle was found out, and here I am in 1931 under the unfortunate necessity of having to take that seriously and to debate it seriously here. How can we ever get on if that is the point of view, when big problems are debated in the Dail?
Remember success is a question of detail. Success in business is attained by attention to detail. The success of a country is attained by attention to detail. Only children, when they come to commerce or business, generalise, and until we give up all this generalisation and learn from the experience of other countries and get down to the details of our own country, this country cannot progress; and until the Dáil gives a line in that direction the country cannot progress. What do Deputies mean when they say "Put a high tariff on all our imports, woodwork, implements, hosiery, etc."? They mean "tax the consumer." Who is the consumer? The consumer of woodwork is a man who makes hosiery. The consumer of implements is a man who buys clothes. Tax them. What is the the theory? No industry is able to stand on its own legs or to rest on its own foundations. So each industry has to get money from the other. We are all to live by taking in each other's washing. Then we will have no unemployment. That is the contribution put up, and in this country unfortunate Deputies like Deputy Cooney and others get up and give lip service to statements of that sort. Does Deputy Cooney really believe that at this hour of the day? What happened Australia, where you have such a great Labour Party?
Do you believe that your policy will solve the unemployment problem?
Mr. Hogan
I am dealing with yours at the moment. Give me a chance to do it.
We have experience of yours, you have not tried ours.
Mr. Hogan
We are not going to— make absolutely sure of that. What is more, if you got into office to-morrow you would not try it yourselves. I wish we could try it out to-morrow if it did not cost the country too much. High tariffs are going to cure everything. Did they help Australia?
We are not dealing with Australia.
Mr. Hogan
What about the United States? What about every high tariff there is in the world? What is the position? High tariffs have brought them all to the verge of bankruptcy. In my opinion the only country in the world that made a decent attempt to keep the wheels of trade going was England. I say that deliberately. One of the few countries in the world who ever attempted to use the tariff method intelligently was the Irish Free State. What is the position now? Now we are forced, just as England was forced, to impose certain high tariffs in order to save ourselves from the bankrupt sales of countries who have been brought to bankruptcy by high tariffs. Any man with any glimmering of intelligence who faces the problem with seriousness must say that whatever the temporary necessities may be, even though countries like England or Ireland who have stood out against the welter of high tariffs which have led the world to bankruptcy, for the purpose of saving themselves from the bankrupt goods of those bankrupt countries may have to impose a tariff as a temporary measure, there is no future for the world in tariffs. The only permanent hope for the world is less protection and more free trade.
Deputy de Valera indulged in a typical quibble—he cannot make a speech without it and I do not know why. He said one of the reasons why this country could adopt a rather high protectionist policy without running the risk that is run by other countries is because it has no exports of manufactured goods but on the contrary that we have imports. What does that mean to the man who listens to him? It means that this country has no problem of an export surplus; there is a constant shortage in the home market and all we have to do to deal with unemployment is protect the home market and produce goods for ourselves and give employment in that way. He says there is no problem of an export surplus.
There was an indication there which showed that he was learning some little economic sense. The implication is that if we had an export surplus our problem would be different because we would have to market that export surplus abroad in a market that would not be protected. Underlying his whole statement was what he wanted put as a fact—that there is no export surplus in this country. Speaking relatively, the two countries where you have big export surplus problems are Great Britain and the Irish Free State. Imagine being told at this hour of the day that we have no export surplus and that hence the problem of selling our goods in a foreign market does not arise. Just imagine that. The Deputy who made that statement knew it to be untrue but he made it.
I suggest that the Minister is not in order.
I quite agree.
Mr. Hogan
Then I shall say he knew it to be inaccurate and incorrect. He must have known it. He muddles his head often enough by statistics. I know that because I read them. Every Deputy sitting opposite me knows that. What is our position if all imports of agricultural produce were now stopped or prohibited? We would still have an export surplus of close on thirty million pounds worth of agricultural products which this market cannot absorb. If the Irish market were to be supplied exclusively with Irish bacon, Irish butter. Irish beef, Irish mutton and eggs there would still of these products be a surplus of close on thirty million pounds which must be marketed abroad.
I said a moment ago that the policy advocated on the benches opposite was a policy of living by taking in each other's washing. It is even worse than that. Unfortunately in this country the farmer cannot be protected. That is demonstrably true now. A few years ago Deputies on the benches opposite might have said: "Apply agricultural tariffs, protect bacon products, butter products, beef, etc." Can they now? Has the butter tariff raised the price of butter? And it is a prohibitive tariff. It is as good as prohibition. No butter is coming into this country, no butter can come into this country. We have a production of nine or ten million pounds worth of butter. The Irish market requires about five. We export about five million pounds worth of butter and milk products. We have now stopped all imports, but we have still an export surplus. Has our tariff, which amounts to prohibition, brought up the price by one penny?
Has it helped the farmer?
Mr. Hogan
No, not one iota. When we imposed a tariff on butter, the price of butter was something like 130/-. A month ago it was 120/-. The Department of Agriculture, through the creameries it owns, sells probably more butter than any other one institution in the country. We have been able to get on the whole a slightly higher price in the English market than in the Irish market. The price of butter in the Irish market since the opening of the season up to the present has been on an absolute parity. Can any Deputy here deny that? If that is so with butter, because of the reason I mentioned, that we have a constant export surplus, where is the hope of any tariff helping the farmer except temporarily? It is true that when we put a tariff on butter the price mounted immediately. That was because of the dislocation and the seasonal shortage. I remember being told by Deputies that it was the wrong time to put it on. Of course, if we had not put on a tariff at that time, and if we had waited until the summer, the price of butter would not rise, even for the short period. When we imposed the tariff at a period of shortage the price rose and the moment there was a surplus the price went down. Will Deputies tell me what is the difference between the butter position and the position of bacon, beef or oats? There is a rise in the price of oats at present, but what will be the position next year?
Who got the benefit?
Mr. Hogan
The farmer. What will be the position next year? I make a prophecy now. I made a prophecy about butter. The price of oats next year will be the same as the world price. It is well that farmers should realise that. The price will be exactly the same price as the world price and not a penny more. What is the moral of all that story? It means that it really makes no difference whether you impose tariffs on agricultural produce or not. In the main it will not do any harm or any good. What I protest against is that in this country, where you have a huge export surplus of agricultural products, and where in that way you cannot do any permanent benefit to the farmer, you have a campaign for high tariffs on industrial goods which will do him permanent injury. I said a moment ago that their policy was a policy of living by taking in one another's washing. That would be strictly true if tariffs benefited everyone. We have one class who we know, apart from statistics, produce most of the wealth. That producer cannot be permanently helped in his present production by tariffs. You may have to impose tariffs because of the bankruptcy of other countries, or to deal with an emergency situation. The tariffs which we have imposed up to the present have made it abundantly clear that tariffs cannot be of any permanent help to an industry which is producing goods to such an extent that after supplying the home market there is a big export surplus. Tariffs can do no good to the largest producer in the country. They cannot increase permanently the price of what he sells.
The policy of Deputy de Valera for the relief of unemployment in that state of affairs is to impose a tariff on everything that that producer will have to buy. And that is going to relieve unemployment! It is going to bankrupt the country finally. Tariffs judiciously used can be useful. We have used them judiciously, and if Deputies on the opposite benches were responsible for government they would have to use them judiciously. I have no opinion at all for most of those on the Front Bench opposite, and I have no great opinion of the Deputies behind them, although I admit some of them know something about farming, about business and about agriculture. I know perfectly well that they must know that this policy of indiscriminate tariffs is so much bunkum, but still they must give it lip service. Deputies on the Labour Benches and other Deputies know that it is bunkum, but they must give it lip service also. They know that by the experience we have had of tariffs and the experience other countries have had of high tariffs. Yet, this policy is solemnly brought forward with a view to deceiving the electorate when we bring forward a Vote like this. There are many problems in this country very difficult to solve. That is not to be wondered at. The world is passing through the most acute economic crisis in living memory. I should say it is passing through the most acute crisis that has occurred during the last 300 or 400 years. The strongest countries financially are hardly able to stand up against it. Countries with the best civil service, with the best traditions, the best education, and the greatest institutions find it very difficult to deal with these problems. We have been lucky enough up to the present.
We cannot deal with this problem— I know Deputies opposite will be glad to hear this—in the atmosphere of the Dáil as we find it at present. An efficient Government is very important, but Deputies who profess to believe in democracy should remember that an honest and an efficient Opposition is just as important. What saved England in a great many crises was the national feeling that was there. There was a feeling for the country, a constructive feeling, common not only to the Government but to the Opposition. I say deliberately that there is no such standard here; there is no such point of view here. We have been endeavouring to save the country and to keep it together. I listened to Deputy Cooney speaking about the famine. He stated that conditions were as bad now as they were then. It makes me ill to listen to that. I wonder has the Deputy any idea of what the conditions here really were in the famine times. I wonder if Deputies opposite who have no real Nationalist tradition, such as we have —we in the Cumann na nGaedheal are the Nationalists—I wonder if these Deputies have any idea of what the problem before the country in 1881 was, what the ambitions of the country in 1881 were, the problems that had to be faced then, not to speak of the famine times. We have, because practically every Deputy on these benches, though we may not boast of ourselves as Sinn Féiners, has a good long Nationalist tradition and a record of real love for this country.
What saved England on a great many occasions, and saved other countries, was a public spirit common to every section, to every class, and to every political party. France had "La Patrie" and England "God save the King." That spirit is completely absent here. I say deliberately that the policy of the Party opposite, for the last year especially, has been an unscrupulous policy of wreck. I say that in order that the situation can be cleared up. I have no information about the General Election but the sooner the situation is cleared up by some means the better. It is quite impossible to tackle all the practical problems that will confront this country in the next two years, unless there is common honesty, some real love for the country, some real desire to serve its interests rather than the interests of a narrow section—unless we have that not only in the Government Party but in the Opposition Party. We have not got that at present.
I confess that I am not in the slightest degree moved by the tirade we have just listened to. If Parliamentary institutions, democratic government, and modern claims to statesmanship depend on such statements as we have just listened to from the Minister for Agriculture, then statesmanship must have fallen very low indeed. When the Minister tells us to look, for example, to the British Parliament, I say: Go to the records of the British Parliament and produce, even in the most heated moments of party strife, statements from any responsible Minister during the past hundred years who sat on the Government Benches in the British House of Commons, accusing political opponents of rank dishonesty, deceit and treachery to their country, and, above all, of being liars, whose only function in the public life of their country is that they preach doctrines for political ends, that they have not the courage or the decency to believe in themselves. It was stated by a Deputy on the Government Benches this evening that a statement made from this side of the House was a deliberate and venomous falsehood. The Ceann Comhairle was in the Chair. That statement referred to a matter on which there may be a difference of opinion, although, if I went into the question, I think I could show the House that there are plenty of Deputies on the Cumann na nGaedheal Benches who are enabled to secure election because of the Irish taxpayers' money which was spent in their constituencies at election time, which the unfortunate people, through no fault of their own, thought was coming to them through Deputy Tierney, Deputy Davis, or somebody else. I am not going into that question.
They sent you about your business anyway.
More credit to them for doing it. I hope they have not made a mistake in sending you in my stead. I, for one, since I came into this House, have not tried to rake up these questions. I realise that these things are bound to occur in districts where the people unfortunately are on the brink of starvation. I quite agree that what ever Party is in power it is quite natural that, under the circumstances, a certain benefit should accrue to them when a large sum of money like this is put into areas of the kind. I do not say that the Deputies concerned were responsible for that. I simply say that there are two sides to the question. I hope we will hear no more about it.
Before the Minister for Agriculture criticised the policy which Deputy de Valera has put up, he ought to give the House and the country an opportunity to examine him on his record as Minister for Agriculture. Why this talk about Britain and the British market? Why tell us that Britain is the only country that has done things properly—a thing that Englishmen themselves do not seem to believe. Whether that talk is sincere or is simply directed when hard pressed elsewhere to the "Irish Times," and the support which is likely to come to the Government from that quarter, I do not know. What I do know is that it would pay the country better if the Minister looked into the matter more closely before indulging in such wild criticism of a policy which is not Deputy de Valera's policy or the Fianna Fáil policy but which is Griffith's policy and the Sinn Féin policy. The Minister for Agriculture talks about the impossibility of tariffs. What is the alternative? Concentrate on the British market, where our position has become so serious that in live stock alone our exports for the first nine months of this year are down by £3,000,000 as compared with last year. If we go to the second heading in the statistics of our exports to Great Britain—products of animal origin—we find that if the state of affairs which obtained for the first nine months of this year continues we will probably be down by £3,000,000 in respect of that group of exports. That is a big loss to the Irish farmer, who was complaining last year and in previous years that he was not getting sufficient return to enable him to pay his rates, his annuities and to keep our expensive Minister for Agriculture and his very expensive Ministry in office in order to teach him how to do his business a little better than, according to them, he has been doing it. The value of the two main groups of our agricultural exports is down by £6,000,000. I estimate that our adverse trade balance for the present year will be something like £16,000,000 or £17,000,000. I do not know what effect the crisis in England will have on the figures for the last three months of the present year. I am inclined to think that the figures will be worse than they have been during the last nine months. Assuming they are the same and that England has bought and will buy during the last three months of the present year in the same proportion as she bought for the previous nine months, we shall have an adverse trade balance of something like £16,000,000. If the Government had a policy to deal with that situation and could show the Irish farmer how, by continuing to keep all his eggs in the one basket, by continuing to concentrate on the British market, there was hope for him, I would say that we should listen to them. But they have not shown us how, under any circumstances, the prices of Irish produce on the British market are going to increase. Nor has the Minister for Agriculture shown us that there is any hope of increased exports which might make up to us, as it made up to the Danes, for the loss they have sustained by the fall in the £ sterling and in world prices generally.
The Minister for Agriculture occupies his time telling us that the farmer has gained nothing by the tariff on butter. It is very easy to say that. If the tariff on butter had not been imposed, would not the farmer be in a much worse position than he is? I admit—nobody on the Fianna Fáil Benches has ever denied it—that no system of national protection can alter world prices. When world prices are sinking to a level that they did not reach since the early years of the last century, it is ridiculous to say that they are not bound to have a repercussion, no matter what tariff barriers you erect. But I say that the countries that have tariff barriers and that have a national system of economy are better off than the countries that have not. We are too much inclined in this country to look at everything through English spectacles. We seem to forget that England has enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity for 150 years. We forget that she has 3,500 million pounds invested abroad and that she could continue, if she wished, to pay her enormous army of unemployed without endangering her vast reserves. Here we are in an entirely different position. When the Minister talks about economic nationalism and tries to deride what lies behind that phrase, I point out to him that the basis of that theory was laid down by Griffith, who took it from Frederic List, the German economist, who was responsible, in some measure, for the building up of Germany and of the United States. To found an argument against protection on the ground that these countries are in difficulties at present, due to abnormal circumstances, is just as silly as the contention of the "Cork Examiner" in a recent leading article that the position in Australia is an argument against the Irish case for the retention of the land annuities. There is no comparison whatever. Look at France. France is a country where economic nationalism is, undoubtedly, the national creed. There is no other country so prosperous. It has a diversified economic system. Most of their people are living on the land, and that is the foundation of the wealth and strength of the country. In this country, most of our people are on the land. If we think that the British market is going to mean more people on the land in this country, with greater security for them and better conditions, let us by all means concentrate on the British market. But if we look at the British market to-day and see the extraordinary rate at which our exports are declining; if we observe how those countries which the Minister for Agriculture sneers at —countries that have only sprung into existence since the war, like Lithuania, Esthonia, and Finland—are not alone competing with us but are actually going to pass us out, if things continue as they are in the matter of dairy produce, we are quite entitled to ask the Minister for Agriculture why is it that he, who has been responsible for holding up Ireland's flag in the English market, has not done more?
I know he can make claims, but when he uses arguments of the type he has used against the Fianna Fáil Party and charges them with being a lot of dishonest politicians, who have no real interest in the matter or no sincerity, I am naturally tempted to ask him how is it that all those countries, far away on the borders of Russia, can compete successfully on the English market while we, who are supposed to have the good-will of Englishmen, who are the Englishman's best customer, who have a common language and innumerable business links and ties of sentiment even—how is it that we are being gradually squeezed out of the English market and that John Bull prefers to buy his produce from other countries? I think the Minister would be well advised to look into that matter. Whether Deputy de Valera is an economic prophet or a pope of economics is not my affair. What I know is that the Minister is not an infallible prophet.
The very first discussion which we had when we came into this House was on this very question of unemployment. I was reading the Minister's speech last night about the 200 acre farm, and I was surprised at the glibness of it, surprised on reading it after four or five years how well it had gone down, and how well he had carried it off for the moment, but when you look into what he said two, three or four years ago and see how the thing has worked out, you will find that in succeeding speeches he contradicts himself and that the doctrines he has laid down do not hold. The doctrine, for example, of the 200-acre farm had to go by the board. It was admitted by the Minister himself in replying to Deputy Ryan, when Deputy Ryan pointed out that even on the 200-acre farm you could consume more home-grown grain, that it was feasible and possible. Yet the Minister made his whole statement and his whole speech in defence of his policy on the assumption that a large increase in the area of Irish grown grain is an impossibility, that it cannot be absorbed, that it would be, in the long run, cheaper for the Irish farmers to buy foreign stuff. That has gone by the board now with a tariff on oats. So has the argument about the cost of living.
The Minister, who talked so much about the farmer getting nothing out of the tariff policy, has two strings to his bow. Either the tariff is no use because it is going to increase the cost to the consumer, and therefore it is not of any of use to the man whom it is supposed to benefit, the producer— either that or he comes forward with a second string that the tariff will increase the cost to the consumer, and it will therefore increase the cost of living to the community in general, and that that is the intrinsic rottenness of the whole system of tariffs. I admit that there are weaknesses in a tariff system, but when we are placed in the present position, whatever system we are going to have in the future, we ought to go in for it with a will and with more determination than in the past. If we believe, like the Danes, that the salvation of Irish agriculture depends on the British market, we ought to produce more for that market. On the other hand, we may think that there should be an alternative policy, at least a policy that, side by side with that, we should develop our own resources and, as Arthur Griffith pointed out, not be in the position that we are always the backyard of another country, that we have no productive powers of our own, that we regard everything purely from the point of view of barter and exchange; that, rather than have a manly Irish national Christian feeling that we can make things for ourselves, we are relegating ourselves to the position of a lower form of civilisation; that we are going to do nothing but produce beef, that we are allowed to make nothing else in this country, and that we are simply going to buy everything we can in exchange. Griffith's reaction to that was that if we are entitled to be a separate nation we ought to build up our own productive powers and we ought to try to produce things rather than import manufactured articles.
I do not suggest that we want in this country to produce manufactured articles for export, nor do I suggest that within a few years we are going to be able to produce everything that is imported at present, even in the case of food, clothing and shelter, but I say we should make a strong effort in the present crisis and depression. I say that we should make a strong effort when we see that in spite of our tariffs five and a half million pounds' worth of foreign-manufactured apparel is still coming into the country. When we see the Minister for Industry and Commerce coming along with his Road Transport Bill and suggesting that 'bus proprietors and 'bus companies will not get a licence unless the 'buses are Irish-made, I ask is that not a very peculiar form of tariff? Why was not the ordinary tariff given instead of telling a man that he must buy an Irish 'bus and that unless he buys an Irish 'bus he will not get a licence?
Furthermore, take the case of Irish stationery. Was there any reason why the Irish paper mills should not be protected? I see from the last trade statistics that we are importing well over a million pounds' worth of stationery. Is it suggested that we are so backward in this country, that we are so lacking in all technical proficiency, that we cannot tackle these imports of apparel, of stationery or flour—one and a half million pounds' worth of flour, and bacon to something of the same amount? I suggest that if there are these big items of flour, of apparel and so on, if we cannot make our country self-supporting, we ought at any rate to try to make a real effort to change this adverse trade balance. While I am told by economists like Deputy Law that there is no adverse trade balance, where are we going to draw the line? Australia had an unfavourable trade balance. Are we to take it that Australia was paying by means of her foreign investments? She certainly was not. I wonder if we have sufficient foreign investments in the present financial crisis and is it an opportune time for us to realise our foreign investments to pay the millions that will be necessary to meet this annual adverse trade balance of over £16,000,000? A certain amount of that might be met in the ordinary way, but I think some of it has to be met by the realisation of securities. This is a time that you cannot afford to do that, England believes that she cannot afford to do that, and if England believes that she cannot afford to do that and that it is better for her to keep out the foreign article, surely we in this country are not above taking a leaf out of our neighbour's book.
The Minister for Agriculture and others have referred to the question of State-run industries. I know as well as any man in the House what the arguments are against State-run industries. I know how extravagant and inefficient they get, but I say that during the time that we are building up our own industries in this country we ought to go as far as ever we can to enable them to be established, and when they are established it will then be time enough to ask why they are not able to look after themselves. It comes, I must say, most inappropriately from a Government that has been responsible for the Shannon scheme and for the extraordinary interference with private enterprise and private initiative that that scheme has occasioned, a Government that has been responsible for such a costly experiment as the beet which the farmers who are growing it do not believe by any means is to their benefit as much as it should have been, a Government responsible for the creameries, the creameries that the Minister for Agriculture has bought over at a cost of something like three-quarters of a million pounds, shutting out private enterprises in order to make these creameries pay— it comes, I think, very inappropriately from that Minister or from any Minister who casts his mind back on the Government's adventures in the way of State trading and the unfortunate results that have accrued to the Irish taxpayers from, in some cases, the mismanagement and in other cases the partial failure of these enterprises —it certainly comes, I think, very inappropriately from them to talk about the question of State-run industries.
We have only three millions of people in this country—Deputy de Valera might have strengthened his argument by reminding the House and the country that we have less people in this State than England has on a permanent unemployment roll—and still we say that we cannot take steps to deal adequately with the situation. We are tied up in a foreign economic system that the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Industry and Commerce consider is native to them. I say that it is not native to them. If they are Irish Nationalists they must know that the doctrine of laissez faire, which was responsible to a large degree for denuding this country of its population, and the doctrine of mass production which the Minister for Industry and Commerce talks about, are not native to this country nor are they relevant to the conditions of this country.
I say that this £250,000 is going to be a help. It is going to put £250,000 into circulation. It is going to be a great help in the poorer districts where, as I have often said, a pound means more than ten pounds elsewhere. But I want to see more money put into circulation. I want to see more money spent on tillage. I believe that the argument that there is something intrinsically good in international trade and an exportable surplus is rubbish. Internal trade, as the example of the United States has shown, can mean just as prosperous a community and just as high, or a higher standard of living. We cannot change our present system overnight. But we ought not to deceive ourselves into believing that there is anything infallible in this system which England has now abandoned. It was a good system while certain conditions lasted. These conditions have passed away, and it is now up to us to establish a new system.
I simply want to say in conclusion that, instead of concentrating on the English market, I believe in what other countries have had—a five or a ten years plan for building up our industries. I believe that only in a plan extending over five years or ten years for industries and for agriculture, which will mean the reorganisation of industries and the co-operation of the people now engaged in them, is there any hope for this country. We cannot allow things to drift as they have been drifting. We cannot allow ourselves to continue in the way that we have been going. We must take definite steps. When I look around an area fifty miles from Dublin and see the county of Kildare with something like 172,000 acres of land owned by 443 people, or something like 390 acres each, and when I see the county of Meath with 235,000 acres owned by 631 persons, something like 390 acres each also, I ask myself is there anything wrong in this system that professes to establish security and prosperity and stability, and everything else in this country, by continuing this state of affairs and maintaining these huge tracts of land for the rearing of bullocks for the English market.
Do the present conditions, do the present prospects of the English market warrant any Irish Government in saying that that state of affairs should be allowed to continue? Above all should it be allowed to continue when you have 30,000 persons every year who cannot get out of the country starving in the bogs of Donegal and Connaught, living on holdings with a valuation of a shilling an acre—twice the population that you probably have living in the counties of Meath and Kildare and these other ranching areas around Dublin? It is going to cost money to take the people out of these areas; it is going to cost money the same as the solution of the Dublin slums problem is going to cost money. I realise that. But let us have an intermediate stage. Let us do the best we can according to our circumstances and according to our resources. If we cannot take these people out of these wretched holdings with valuations of ten shillings and a pound and thirty shillings, we are bound to have a policy in this country which, failing to give them industries and industrial employment, is going to give them employment on the land. The Government has established the beet industry. It has spent large sums of money on that industry in order to give employment to the farmers and the labourers. I want to see an extension of that system so that the small farmers in other parts of the country in this trying period will be enabled to carry on. This £250,000 now, with the £250,000 of last year and the £250,000 of the year before, would do a great deal to encourage tillage, would do a great deal to give employment; and as a result of that increased tillage you would probably have an increase in your production for the English market; you would certainly have an increase in your poultry and eggs. And along with that you might have a better system of agricultural education, and you might be able to induce the young men to feel that after all any reasonable amount of employment and of security even on their wretched holdings was better than the existing system, and that times might improve. You might be able to give them sufficient education to enable them to feel that, after all, the land is the best place for them now that they have no other place to go to.
I feel that the Fianna Fáil policy does not want any explanation. I feel that the Minister's attack on Deputy de Valera's speech is not even doing the Minister himself justice. I feel that the Minister for Agriculture has represented very creditably the Free Trade policy in this House. But if he were honest and if he were candid with the House, he would admit that the time has gone when this country can any longer depend upon it. The only hope is in protection, not protection for the inefficient at the expense of the community, but the protection that a native Government and a native Ministry can give the native manufacturer to enable him to build himself up, so that he will not be getting these advantages at the expense of the community, but so that the manufacturer and the agriculturist will both do their share in giving value for the taxpayers' money that has been spent upon them.
If there is one thing more than another that this Bill has done, it is that it has made the dead come back to life. On every side of the House we have dumb-bells opening their mouths and making election speeches in order to get publicity. The Government, at least in this one measure, have enabled the dumb gentlemen in this House to open their mouths after four years. And if the Government did nothing else but that they deserve the thanks of this Dáil, which has been compelled to sit down here and look at an empty House year after year while this important question has been discussed. I am not going to participate in the farce that has been carried on in this House for the last two days. The air of unreality that surrounds this hardy annual, as Deputy Cooney called it, is too much for me, and I can stand quite a lot. Year after year, since I came into this Assembly, we have had the same propaganda being made out of the unemployed; year after year, the same pathetic speeches from the Cumann na nGaedheal Benches; year after year, the same futile alternative proposals from the alternative side of the House, year after year, the same protestations from the representatives of organised labour; yet for the last two days we have had a debate which, for unreality, has not been excelled in this House since I came into it.
The official title of the Bill, according to the Order Paper, is the Unemployment Relief Bill. Yet, this most important subject, which deals with the 80,000 unemployed citizens of the Free State, has received very scant attention from all sides of the House compared with the attention that the coming general election has received in the speeches. Cumann na nGaedheal back benchers have now found their voices. A miracle has occurred. Fianna Fáil back benchers have suddenly discovered an Aladdin's lamp, and are propounding magnificent theories to relieve the situation. The Labour Party, always insisting that their only care is the unemployed, have advanced their theory. No matter how much Deputy Derrig may say that the Fianna Fáil policy needs no explanation; no matter how much the Minister for Agriculture may refer to the magnificent results of Government administration; no matter how much Deputy O'Connell may refer to the fact that only through their panacea shall there be regeneration for the unemployed, there is one fact which no Party in this House can ignore, which is a salient fact, and which is going to be the factor that is going to upset all their theories, and that is, that there are 80,000 people in this State hungry. It does not matter a damn what their opinions are. They are hungry, they are unemployed, and they are out of work. One Party has passed a Public Safety Act to quell the legitimate expression of their grievances. Those on the other side have offered them a lot of dope, high-sounding phrases, and promises that if they only get a chance they will show them the Promised Land. Yet, all your actions and programmes have proved that you are wrong, that you do not mean what you say. Here on the Labour Benches is a Party that should stand for the unemployed, a Party which more than any other Party should be the exponent of the rights of the class that has suffered more under British capitalists and Imperialist domination than any other class, and they have stood by whilst the House has deliberately ignored the claim of that class.
I have not yet heard in this debate any claim or argument advanced that if this State cannot find work for its people it should at least maintain them. You talk Christianity, and people over here speak of Pope Leo, and you prate you are Catholics first and Irishmen second, but I have not yet seen you attempt to put into practice the basic principles of Christianity—feed the hungry. If the State cannot find work for its people, at least it should maintain them. If it fails in the Christian duty of finding work, it should be able to evolve a system, even under this capitalistic administration, whereby no man would starve while there is food in the country. Yet, we hear from one side of the House talk of future prospects; from another side of the House, "give us the opportunity"; and from another side of the House futile dope about tariffs. In other words, substitute one gang of monopolists for another. What hope is there for the people of Ireland and for the unemployed from them? The general opinion expressed is "a plague on all your houses." You have passed your Public Safety Act; you here are trying to fool the people into believing that if you get a chance you will do better. There is a body of men outside this House who are wanting work and cannot get it. There are people who do not know where their breakfast is coming from in the morning. The unemployment debates here year after year have been futile. You have pinched at the problem instead of attempting to find the solution of it. You have introduced Bills year after year tinkering with it, giving out a dole here and there, just the same as the people long ago, who gave soup to the Irish people to induce them to abandon their religion. You are doing the same thing now. You are giving soup in the shape of £250,000. You gave £300,000 last year; you are giving £250,000 now, which will not be spent until long after the General Election, because you are surrounding that grant with so much red tape that it will not be humanly possible to ensure that any sufficient number of unemployed people will get work under it between this and the date of the election. There was even a balance left over after the last relief grant. You think that your lofty phrases, your high-sounding promises, and all this camouflage and smoke screens about a legitimate authority legislating for people in want, is going to keep them quiet. You think that because of your Public Safety Act, because you have suppressed every workers' organisation that counted for anything in this country, you are going to keep them from doing anything. Let me tell you, just as a warning, that you are making a mistake.
Perhaps the Deputy will tell me.
Let me tell you, sir, since you insist, that there are in this country the same circumstances that have produced social discontent in other countries, and that whether Catholic statesmen on the one side or super-Catholic statesmen on the other, prate about religion or anything else, there is a greater thing than that, and that is the right to live. Although Pope Leo has insisted upon that right, although a greater Person than any person here insisted nineteen hundred years ago on that right, in the course of the Sermon on the Mount, so far as I can see, speaking as a kind of Orphan in the Storm, this Government and no other Party in the House seems to insist that that right exists. There is no law of God or man which says that a man shall starve when there is food available. Your relief grant is only a paltry thing. This attempt to solve the the problem is only an election dodge, and the utilisation that is being made of it by criticism on both sides of the House is only playing for votes at the election. I hope people will have common sense enough on this occasion to wake up and realise that they are being made the instruments by which politicians can climb into power. I hope they will make up their minds that this unemployed grant, while it may relieve the pressing necessities at Christmas time for a certain number of people, will not solve the problem. No really constructive proposals have been put forward. All we have had is nebulous proposals from one side of the House that it is the duty of the State to find work for the people.
In this unemployment grant the Government are not touching the question of the farmers. Farming is in a desperate and deplorable condition. Farmers are not able to pay their annuities, agricultural prices are gone to rock bottom, still there is no sympathy and no hope and there has been a motion on Order Paper for several months dealing with that matter which has not been discussed. Under this unemployment grant no attention will be paid to that class of the people. I do not intend as I said to participate in this farce except to tell every Party in this House that they are facing grave responsibilities, and that upon them will be the responsibility for whatever may happen in this country. Remember they tell you that this is a Catholic country. The super statesmen on both sides insist upon that, but even Catholies can be driven too far, and hunger will drive man a long way. Remember what happened in Catholic France in 1793 may be with in the bounds of possibility in Catholic Ireland in 1932. And your Public Safety Bill will not stop it. I say in conclusion devote your energies not to tariffs or fine talk which is intended to catch votes, not to final appeals to the people in Ireland to return you as the saviours of the country, but to see that at least this Christmas in this country there will be no starvation and no want. There is food enough here to feed the people. If this Government were worth a curse they would have long since set up a prices tribunal to ensure that at least in that way there would be decent justice done. They have not done so. Let them as a last minute gesture to the people ensure that this grant of £250,000, small as it is, will be expended before the new year. Do not let us have the same situation arise that existed with regard to the other relief grants within the past four years—brought in in October, passed in November, not spent until the following March or April. That is no good to the unemployed. There are 80,000 people out of work in this State and remember you may drive them too far. All the talk you have here and the atmosphere of unreality you have created will not get away from that fact or absolve you from a responsibility if the crash comes.
Deputy Mullins was at least refreshing in that I heard in the early portion of his speech once more much the same sentiments I heard expressed on the Swansea sands twenty-two or twenty-four years ago from Keir Hardie and Bruce Clayton. It was the very same type of stuff with a little variation which brings it up to date. He came down then to inner things and spoke about the expenditure of this money, and said that the Government should insist that the money should be spent by a certain date—the 1st January. If there is one thing that we lay ourselves out to make sure of in proposing this relief grant it is this, that as a result of the expenditure some permanent good should be done. It is not always easy to do that because of the necessities in one place or another you are driven to do work that could not be said to be of any permanent good. But at least, so far as we can possibly arrange it, our aim is that permanent good should result in the expenditure of this money. Any hurried expenditure of money of this kind means inevitable waste. That has been our experience in the earlier years in Relief Votes of this kind when there was a rush to spend the money by the 31st March. The money was ladled out and undoubtedly wasted, admittedly wasted by everybody. Last year was the first year we put an end to that kind of thing. We said, "Come along and do the work proposed; carry out your scheme that has been carefully prepared, and if the money is not spent by the 31st March it can be re-voted." The very worst atmosphere one could create when you have £250,000 to spend would be to say you have but a month to spend it, as Deputy Mullins suggested. He suggested you should fire out your quarter of a million in a month, and to the devil with the consequences. That is the essence of Deputy Mullins' request.
There have been schemes enough in hands, prepared in the past two years, to spend two millions.
There may have been, but I am looking at this £250,000 now being voted, and I say that the last thing we should fall for is that kind of demand that you should rush your expenditure wildly without seeing where you are going, and without trying to get value for your money. From the speeches generally that have been made one would imagine that this quarter of a million was the only money the Government was expending towards the relief of unemployment. One would imagine that the State was not financing other schemes through all its Departments towards the same purpose. What are the facts? Through every Department of State money is largely being spent which is, in fact, for the relief of unemployment in all areas in the country. Take my own Department. Through the Land Commission, for instance, large sums of money are being spent in the improvement of estates. In my own end of the Department we are spending large sums in various ways in the Gaeltacht. Through the Gaeltacht Housing Act, we have already allocated out of £250,000 made available the sum of £222,000. And it is up to persons who have applied and got sanction to build their houses so as to claim that money. It is spread through all the Gaeltacht, in Clare, Cork, Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Mayo, and Waterford, where-ever the Gaeltacht is. Through other ramifications of the Land Commission money is being expended in other places outside the Gaeltacht. It is ridiculous, therefore, to suggest, as one would almost imagine from the speeches of Deputies opposite, that the £250,000 was the only sum being expended by the Government for the relief of unemployment. Deputy Derrig spoke of the big ranches in Meath and Kildare. He referred to the 390-acre farms of land in these counties, and said here was an avenue for employment and that instead of having ranches and bullocks there you should have men tilling farms.
I would suggest to Deputy Derrig that it would be well for him just to consider for one moment what the effect would be if you carried out to the last ditch land division, and to consider the effect it would have on the Gaeltacht, which is my particular concern. I can assure you that if you break up to the last extent the ranches in Meath and Kildare you will break the small farmer and the Gaeltacht as far as cattle are concerned. The small farmer in the Gaeltacht cannot finish his cattle there. If there is no place where his cattle can be finished there will be no market for his cattle. He will have no men coming down to his markets in Cahirciveen, Dingle or Kenmare and other parts of the country with which I am less familiar. The breaking up of the ranches can go a little too far as far as the Gaeltacht is concerned. You are going to put the smallholder in the position that he will have to stop producing the calf or the couple of calves in the year. He will have no outlet for their disposal.
There was on the face of it one constructive suggestion from the Fianna Fáil Party on the question of the utilisation of persons on relief works. It was made by Deputy Moore on the question of derelict holdings throughout the country. On the face of it, I say it looks good, and it is a thing which, I think, is worth examining. But what is exactly the position? As far as we know from the Land Commission there are about sixty such in the whole country. Most of them are a couple of acre-holdings, where it would not be at all profitable to put people into them. There are other defects. Mostly these are derelict because of the fact that the owners, the tenant proprietors, have resisted the sale, and for the very same reason you would have the very same difficulty operating against utilising those holdings for putting in persons to work on them. You would have the same difficulties as you are faced with for disposing of the holdings because of the failure to pay land annuities, etc. Our outlook in dealing with the £250,000 is that, as a result of expenditure, some permanent improvement should be created and something should be done in each particular area which would obviate the necessity for relief in that area next year or the year after.
As far as I have been expending the money allotted to me under these Votes, that has been the aim I put before me, and I believe I achieved that to some extent. Last year, if you remember, I got a special Vote for the erection of enclosures for winter weed which is used in the kelp industry. We paid men to put up the enclosures, and we paid men for collecting and putting the weed into the enclosures. The experiments we carried out gave such results as proved that the winter weed was worth collecting. This year there is no need for providing any relief to get them to put in the winter weed to the enclosures. They are doing it themselves because they think it is a sound proposition. I told you in a Supplementary Estimate last year that the weed showed an iodine content of .9 to 1.2 or 1.3. It was an amazing result to us, because in Brittany it never showed an iodine content beyond .6 or .7. The result is the winter weed produced off the coast of Clare is worth £8 to £10 per ton, as against £5 or £6 per ton in Brittany. While they will not handle any money as a result of the weed they put in now until May or June, if they have the weed there it is an asset which they will get credit for from shopkeepers or others.
That was our aim in disposing of any money we had to deal with, to get some permanent work done which would enable us to do away with the relief schemes by degrees and eventually to get away from the situation where we would be voting this money year by year for relief work. I do not say it is entirely possible. You would want a fairly big general revival of trade and a revival of the prices in agriculture and so on before you could do away with a Relief Vote at this time of the year, but I think it should gradually be lessened and become more confined, and that, as a result of the expenditure, certain things will be done which will obviate in future years the necessity for any expenditure.