The President, speaking on this subject on the 29th April, was rather astounded that Deputy Morrissey should want to put down a motion to extract a statement on the Government's policy on this matter. He stated emphatically "Everyone in the House knows we accept the principle of this motion." The motion requests that steps should be taken forthwith to provide work or maintenance to meet the immediate needs of the unemployed. We have heard nothing from the members of the Executive Council on this subject which has not been adding to the needs of the unemployed. When we look back on the period between the 1st February and the 1st May, we find that in the City of Dublin there was a reduction in the number of persons registered as unemployed in that period as follows: 1928—1,200, 1929—1,200, 1930—1,500, 1931—2,300. The number of persons registered as unemployed in Dublin at the end of May, 1931 was 7,100. When we come to the same period in 1932, we find that the number of unemployed rises by 3,500, to stand at the figure of 13,500. Instead of a fall, as there had been in the four previous years, there was a rise of 3,500 and the figure stood at 13,500 as against 7,100. If we look at the country as a whole, we find that in 1931 in the same period there was a fall of 5,600 in the number of registered unemployed, the total at the end of May, 1931, being 23,000. This year there has been a rise of 2,800, the total number of registered unemployed standing at 34,000. In the country as a whole, there is an increase of 11,000— practically 50 per cent.—while in the City of Dublin there is an increase of almost 100 per cent. It is in these circumstances that the Ministry expound a policy which would shut down another factory in Dublin and throw 300 additional persons out of work, thus disturbing the confidence of anybody likely to come here and establish industries. It would take twenty factories giving the employment that Gallaher's factory gives to-day to absorb the numbers that have been added to the unemployment list of Dublin since 1st February.
And we are told by a Ministry that have all the facts of that situation and that expound a policy like that, that they stand by the principle of providing work or maintenance to meet the immediate needs of the unemployed. The Attorney-General went down to Templemore a week or so ago and he told the people of this country, through his hearers in Templemore, and through the Press, that such was the rush to establish industries and the new atmosphere created in this country, that there were dozens of applications from English firms to come in and buy Gallaher's Factory, and that it appeared that Gallaher's were likely to be put on the market. We are told now that it is not an Irish factory—that it is a London syndicate and that it must go because it is a London syndicate, and that English Companies are rushing over here to give the unemployed a chance of overcoming their immediate needs by receiving employment in their factories.
I suggest to the Ministry that we do want to have something more suitable to the immediate circumstances of the unemployed than what we have heard from them up to the present. All that has been said is that there is going to be more money put into housing, more money put into drainage, more money put into roads, and that the unemployed have only to be catered for in that particular way. We were talking about these matters as long ago as 1922. Deputies on the far side have had the experience of watching what has been done in that time. I suggest to them that on the housing side they have seen how money can be put into housing with good results and with the reduction of costs that is absolutely necessary to meeting our needs as well as to giving employment. I suggest to them that they are going to do nothing but increase housing costs at the present moment.
As to roads, Deputies here will remember that legislation was passed in 1924 and 1925 to enable £2,000,000 to be borrowed on the strength of the Road Fund and out experience of road work—of the effects of it on unemployment and of the work that might reasonably be done in a systematic kind of a way—was such that the highest we ever borrowed on the Road Fund was about £670,000.
[An Leas-Cheann Comhairle took the Chair.]
They are going to borrow a million now and, as Deputy Cosgrave pointed out, they are simply going to mortgage the unemployment of the people for a certain amount of work.
They have the experience of what can be done in an economic way with drainage. I asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance in connection with the estimate on the Board of Works to give us an outline of what, I understand, it was suggested he was going to have charge of in the development of immediate work. I do not think we have got that information and I suggest that we ought to have some of that information to-night before this debate closes.
The unemployed find themselves in this position to-day, that with £3,950,000 of extra taxation being forced out of the pockets of the taxpayers of this country, with a tax on the exports of some of our principal exporting industries reducing the amount of employment that is going to be given, the unemployed are offered £600,000 out of the additional £3,950,000. They are offered an additional £100,000 for immediate housing, if housing is begun before September next. I doubt if much of that money will find its way into housing, in the meantime, in view of the general atmosphere of instability and want of confidence that has been created and in view of the increased cost of materials. £150,000 is offered for immediate work, particularly in roads, with special emphasis on cul-de-sac roads. The proposal of the expenditure of that £150,000 reminds me of nothing more closely than the case of the Sligo County Council a year or two ago, when each of the County Councillors was allowed £100 to be spent on whatever road he liked—wherever he liked, over the head of the County Surveyor— a proposal that was not gone on with because the Department of the Local Government had to intervene. I suggest with regard to this £150,000 and the proposal that is made in connection with it, that it is the nearest thing to the proposal of the Sligo County Council, at that particular time, that has come before my notice. At the same time the whole responsibility of Local Authorities, to deal with problems that are only the problems of Local Authorities, is being weakened. Another £250,000 is being provided for the relief of rates, and £100,000 is provided from Central Funds for the distribution of milk to children—a function that has been the function of the Local Authorities for many years past and that, so far as I know, has been adequately and satisfactorily done with the necessary first-hand knowledge that the Local Authority has of the immediate needs, and a work in which the Local Authorities are helped by the operations of very many voluntary societies dealing with Maternity and Child Welfare. The Local Authorities are having their responsibilities for dealing with this constructive work weakened and are being put into the position of looking to the Central Authorities for all kinds of financial assistance, and the application of moneys that are got in that particular way may not achieve the necessary objects and may not be controlled in the way in which they would be controlled if they were their own local rates.
The Executive say they are standing by the principle of work or maintenance, but we have heard nothing of what is meant by that and what amount of maintenance they are standing up for. I suggest that that is a very important matter and one that some members of the Ministry might address themselves to before this debate closes to-night.
We have heard nothing from the Executive Council that would give us any hope that they are giving any serious or responsible thought to this particular matter—that would give us any feeling but that they say that they accept this in principle just in order to have that as a principle, a principle without good works—because, as I say, there has been nothing from the opposite benches that has not been entirely the other way.
The President has paid certain attention to the programme enshrined in the democratic programme adopted by the Dáil in 1919. He may not be able to address himself to that side now, but I suggest that, as he attempts to criticise what has been done inside of that Declaration within the last 10 years by the late Executive Council, that he would take that statement and reread it, and mark that particular part of it which he thinks has not been enshrined in the legislation that was passed through this House, or enshrined in actual proposals for, if he likes, the provision of work or maintenance for those people in this country who are in need of it.
