That was not what the Deputy, who always interrupts and cannot make a speech, poor dumb chap, envisaged at the time he was going for election. At the time of election we were to have all these things: continuous well-paid employment, better food, better clothing and security for everybody. The farmers were to get a rise in cattle prices, and to have less rents, rates and taxes to pay. Let us see what they are getting under the Minister's promise. The local authorities are going to have to subscribe to this £450,000 and individuals, we do not know who the individuals are, are going to have to subscribe, too. That is the end to all the rosy promises about factories. I suppose every county was supposed to have at least one factory corresponding to the Naas sausage one, and yet, when the autumn comes, the best the Ministry can visualise is 50,000 able-bodied men destitute. No wonder the talkative fellow is silent. That is a bit of a blow to him. The election posters did not carry anything of that. The farmers were promised the same reliefs as before. Then we had £448,000 deducted this year from the grants that go to the relief of farmers. £450,000 was going to be given to them, but now we find that they are going to be made pay for getting that. The necessity for that is because there are 50,000 people who will not, according to the Minister's statement, be in receipt of unemployment insurance. Mind you, not people who will not be in work. Some of those who will not be in work will be protected with unemployment insurance, but apart from them you will have this mass of people cluttering up the towns. You will have that, despite all the magnificent factories that the Fianna Fáil imagination so readily rose to: despite unemployment insurance, relief provision and the five million corporation that is to be established to put industry on its feet. Despite all that, this autumn we are going to require £450,000 to deal with a mass of people, estimated to be not less than 50,000 able-bodied men, destitute. That is the picture that should be in the election posters. I gave earlier to-day the figure of what was promised: 86,000 people in a few industries to produce goods that we are capable of manufacturing ourselves coming in at the date that the advertisement was issued—86,000 people, and the Minister for Industry and Commerce—the real Minister for Industry and Commerce—felt that progress had been made far beyond his expectations and that the only reason why certain industries were held up was that they were industries in which skilled workers could not be got. Everybody in the House knows that is rubbish. That was the second blundering achievement of the Acting-Minister in which he gave away so much on his colleague. He has been badly served, and the real Minister has been somewhat badly served also. In the provision under the statute for the relief of unemployment, when the contributory scheme is built up on the men's own wages, on deductions from the employers who employ them and on the State contribution, the Minister thinks this is the proper moment to throw into the debate the grave news that, after all the terrific achievement and as a result of all the magnificent promises, there are 50,000 people in this country who, but for this provision, would face the autumn without any help either from relief scheme employment or unemployment insurance.
I wonder how far is even this sum of £450,000 going to carry the people. The Minister for Finance and the President both calculated that a £250,000 relief scheme which was proposed one Christmas would provide about a fortnight's employment around Christmas. Let us double that amount —and this is not £500,000—and it will provide four weeks' employment according to their calculation. That is what the 50,000 able-bodied destitute are going to have provided for them against the Autumn. Does the Minister feel that there is going to be a terrific new outburst of factories— more castles in Spain like the others— which will carry off these 50,000 able-bodied destitute through the Autumn? We have got at last to the dole. That is what it comes to—the dole. The best efforts of the Ministry to find work for the unemployed, to get new markets for our produce, to develop the home market, to get invested money called home and to get nationals governing the industries in the country, and all the rest of it, end up now towards the end of July in the announcement that the dole is coming in the Autumn of this year, and that it must come, because there are going to be 50,000 able-bodied men destitute at that time. That is a hard fact. Just look at the figures which the Minister gave, about all the people who had gone out of employment, when his colleague had boasted of the greater employment provided. That was the preamble to a discussion on the Unemployment Insurance Fund.
Another hard fact sticks out from this. During the course of a debate this year I asked a question—probably it was the only question I asked that night, because there was a very hectic row going on between the members of the Labour Party and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance about the 24/- a week wage. The question I asked was: How much of the money that was being spent in these minor relief schemes was being spent on occupations which would be regarded as insurable occupations? I was told, in answer, that it was about 50-50. Let us consider then, not the minor relief schemes, which are mainly Land Commission schemes and, being chiefly agricultural, might have a bigger percentage of non-insurable work. Let us think of schemes of another kind, and there is extra employment of an insurable type given in transitory relief schemes. There is a real solid test with regard to that. Take the State contribution to the Unemployment Insurance Fund. There is a real solid test of the extra employment given in the country in insurable occupations, and that is by the sale of unemployment insurance stamps. By that means you can even get down to hours worked if sufficient trouble is taken. Over and above the contribution of £8,000 that was made last year there is a very simple sum to be done to find out what extra employment that £8,000 extra contribution means. That is the really good test, not of the actual amount of increased employment, but of the Minister's optimistic estimate of increased employment, and it is represented by the £8,000 for last year. It must be remembered that we were always promised employment in industry. It was not employment in relief schemes. It was not casual or passing employment, but employment in industry. We have got employment in relief schemes to a certain extent. How much of the £8,000, or of the employment represented by that sum, is absorbed by the relief schemes? The Minister ought to be able to make that calculation. Certainly, his Department can make it for him, and we can be told what extra number of men that £8,000 contribution represents. We can then find out and get a decision as to how many men were employed permanently in new industries in the country. From my memory of how that equation runs, and remembering the relief schemes that were provided, and taking it that only 50 per cent. were in insurable occupations, it means a decrease in industrial employment in the country foreshadowed for this year over that of last year. The Minister has it in his hands to make the calculation and he should give it to the House. That is the real test of the employment that has been given or of the estimated employment that is likely to be given next year.
Deputy Morrissey referred to another point, and it is an important matter in relation to this Vote. He stated— and, of course, it is beyond denial— that in any of these insurance schemes the good lives support the bad lives. Certain people have been paying contributions to an unemployment fund for very many years and have never drawn a sixpence from it nor are they likely to draw sixpence from it. Of course, they will get a refund of something when they reach a particular age; but the money that has been accumulated from their contributions bears a certain amount of interest or would bear a certain amount of interest in ordinary circumstances; and the contributions from the employer for those people over many years and the contributions from the State, equivalent to those contributions, remain in the fund. In that way payments can be made to bad lives, to people who are going in and out of employment rather constantly and sometimes are more often out of employment than in it. These people can get payments made to them on foot of the small contributions made by themselves. We have now got a hint of a new system from two places. First of all, the Government decided to casualise labour. Firms in receipt of moneys voted by this House have been asked to discharge men who were in their employment for many years——the good lives—and take in men who were out of employment. If that scheme is put into operation it means that some of these people may deplete the resources of the fund. Those men, when they go out of the employment in which they have been over a long period, will have to draw from the fund and, when they do so—those people who ordinarily never drew anything from the fund—it means that there is a bigger leakage and the fund goes down.
One local authority—Wexford—recently stated that, following the Government's example, they were going to adopt much the same programme, with a bit of a difference. Their activities, if copied by other people, will aggravate the trouble which I think the Government are going to cause in the actuarial balancing of that fund. If Wexford is followed by other counties, it means that certain people who were in occupation and contributing to the fund, and had local authorities and the State contributing for them in the ordinary way, instead of representing, as they have done for years, nothing but income to the fund will begin to represent an expenditure. So that you get a greater leakage, which will be more and more in excess of the normal, if the local authorities decide to follow what Wexford is doing. In the end, if the number of bad lives, so to speak, is multiplied, and the number of good lives decreases, there is only one result: that the fund will go bankrupt or, alternatively, the contributions to be made by everybody will have to go up and there will be only the same amount of insurance. That is probably a point that was not very fully considered when this decision was taken to put people out of employment and to let in other people who were not getting employment, even under the tremendous development, industrially and agriculturally, that we have been suffering under for the last 18 months. It must be taken into consideration now, and this Vote might be rehandled. When I see no movement towards increasing the deductions to be made from the wages and from the employers, with an extra subvention from the State; when I do not hear any announcement, because an announcement would be made if that were in prospect, and as we have no announcement that the fund is becoming more and more in debt, I take it to mean that this policy of casualising labour has been dropped to a certain extent. If the example of Wexford is followed by other counties, even though the Government drop the system of casualising labour, and it is taken on by other councils it will certainly result in bringing this unemployment fund to a very parlous state indeed.
Deputy Davin has spoken of the branch managers and has attracted attention, by his comments on them, to the fact that the numbers have risen. The numbers in the Employment Branch Out Stations Offices have risen by 40 from a total of 256; the temporary clerks, I suppose attached to these out stations, have risen from 91 to 136; and the remuneration paid to branch managers has gone up from £13,600 to £18,000. The Minister stated that the increase was partly due to an increase in the personnel and also to an increase in the emoluments paid. Will he give a division? Will he tell us how much of the increase of almost £8,000 was due to new personnel and how much to increase of salaries, and what is the necessity for the increase in the personnel? It certainly is not in getting men into work. If it were, we would not have the pessimism about the 50,000 able-bodied destitute. Is it just some idea of being a bit lax with the people's money again and increasing emoluments or finding jobs, at any rate, in the out-stations in the guise of unemployment officers for people who cannot get employment at all and who certainly are not getting it in industry and agriculture? Has the Minister considered the point put up by Deputy Davin? Does he consider these branch managers are doing a full day's work in the main for a half or a quarter day's pay? If so, will he tell us has he even, in this new personnel, changed the system, because the system undoubtedly used to be to employ men who were in part-time occupation already. The necessity was to get a man with some clerical experience and you generally got that from a man who occupied some post which required clerical training which, being lowly paid, and not entailing many hours work, left the man a certain amount of leisure to take up other work. I wonder has that system been changed. If it has not, then I do not think the Minister will find it very easy to answer Deputy Davin when he makes the general complaint that branch managers, on the whole, are being paid a half or a quarter day's pay when they are doing a full day's work. Undoubtedly they were not doing that before. There was a calculation made at one time as to the number of hours worked which certain activities of employment officers entailed and the payment was based thereafter on the work done as measured in hours of occupation. Unless there has been a change made, I cannot consider why, in these days of cuts on everybody else, it is thought necessary to increase the number employed in these exchanges and also to increase their pay.
I wish the Minister would, since he opened the matter at all, just venture a little bit further, at the risk of another eye-opener to the populace, and tell us who are the individuals from whom he is going to demand contributions for this able-bodied destitute fund, and what local authorities he has in mind. Has he any idea of the scale of contribution as between the State, the local authorities, and whatever individuals he has been referring to? It is only then that the country will be able to get some idea of what is ahead of it, and the local authorities some idea of the new bit of ringing the changes that is being done on them. Moneys in relief of agricultural rates used to be granted. These were increased. A further big increase was promised by the present Government. This year they reduced the amount. Then, when the clamour got too much for them, they crawled a bit, and told us that there was to be a subvention of £450,000 in relief of the ratepayers to meet these destitute people. This lasted for a month or two, and now we are told that the £450,000 will come in any case as, of course, it has to be paid, because there are the 50,000 to be attended to. But there is going to be a contribution asked. Some has to come from individuals, and some from the local authorities. It would be interesting to know how much. It would be a good thing, if they have to face up to a new demand, that they should know it as soon as possible, so that they may be enabled to reconstruct whatever programme they have, if even that is possible at this time, instead of having the same procedure adopted that was adopted at the time of the cutting down of the grant—a kind of decoying them into making a programme and then changing and determining that the grant was to be reduced, and so necessitating an increase in the rates. This is an interesting side development. The Vote itself and the small contribution also from the Government to the unemployment fund shows how hollow is all the talk about the increased employment to be given, or given. This Vote is a complete revelation of the absolute breakdown of these last promises made by Fianna Fáil both in relation to industry and agriculture.
