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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 8 Mar 1934

Vol. 51 No. 3

Central Fund Bill, 1934—Second Stage.

I move: That the Bill be read a Second Time.

After the eloquent speech of the Minister for Finance, I propose to be almost equally brief. Having said what I thought most important to say on this subject yesterday, I am intervening to-day only for a moment, on account of the fact that an incorrect report of something I said appeared in certain newspapers to-day—Irish and English. I said yesterday that I had no difficulty in thinking of a number of individuals —and I mentioned, as an instance, Lord Russell of Killowen—who would make admirable chairmen of an arbitration tribunal, and whose impartiality and ability could not be doubted. What I said was correctly taken down by the official reporter; I consulted the typescript of the official report. I am also correctly reported in the Irish Times, but in some newspapers I am incorrectly reported as having said that I was able to state that Lord Russell of Killowen would be willing to act in that capacity. I wish to make it plain that I neither stated that nor meant that. I have a great dislike for rash statements or sloppiness about matters of fact, so I thought it desirable to make this correction.

The Minister, or the Ministers, I presume, made their statement on this particular Bill yesterday. The public, of course, realise that there is a certain amount of danger that they may be misled by the way in which the Estimates appear. It may be following the custom, but even the Minister for Finance in his speech made it clear yesterday—and I think it should get full prominence—that the increase in the expenses to be met this year is not something under £2,000,000 but practically £6,000,000, and so far as I can see that £29,000 odd which we are voting is not the final Vote for this year. Apart altogether from the money that is necessary to carry on the Central Fund services, there may be many Supplementary Estimates that the Dáil will be compelled to meet this year, and, therefore, many further burdens that they may have to put on the country. I remember when the Fianna Fáil Party were in Opposition how eloquent they were on the possibility of running the country on much less than were the Budget requirements of that particular date. Some of them were so eloquent and so rash as to promise to do it, if they got a chance, on, I think, £11,000,000 or £12,000,000. Remember that that was altogether independent of the question of sums that were paid in the way of meeting the land annuities charge, or paid to Great Britain in connection with certain other claims. This was to be a saving made in what I might call the spending Estimates.

At the time, many of the opponents of the present Government found it necessary to warn the people that, if the present Government got the chance which they were asking the people to give them, in ten years the Budget would not be £21,000,000 or £26,000,000, but nearer to £40,000,000. To many people at the time that looked an absurd over-statement. Nobody could imagine that the expenses of running this country would amount to anything like that, and yet after two years of office they are approaching that figure. They are certainly much nearer to that figure than they are to the figure that was handed over to them by their predecessors. Not only from the progress that we have seen in the past under the Government policy, but from the speeches of the Ministers and from the lightheartedness with which they approach the imposing of taxation burdens and expenses on the country, it is quite obvious that we need not wait for ten years, if the present Government is allowed to continue in office, before the £40,000,000 mark is reached and passed. Anybody who has the future welfare of this country at heart need only cast his eye over the figures for the last couple of years, and it does not require very great imagination or any gift of prophecy to be able to suspect very strongly whither the Government is driving the country. Not merely was the promise made in speeches, but the promise was made, officially almost, by the Fianna Fáil Party in their published programmes, that they could run the country on something over £12,000,000, and yet the Vote on Account now is approaching that £12,000,000, and if we take the two sums mentioned in this Budget —the amount added on by way of Supplementary Estimates—we have surpassed for a mere one-third of the year what the Government undertook to run the country for for a whole year. As I say, the fears that many of us expressed in the last years of the office of the late Government have proved well-founded, that if these Fianna Fáil Deputies got into power, they would show themselves to be exactly as spendthrift in the management of the nation's finances as their supporters in local administration had proved themselves to be, and that they would be as prodigal and as wasteful of the nation's resources as they have been prodigal and wasteful of the moral foundations of the country.

The promise at that time—and we all remember how it was placarded all over the country—was economy. State services were too costly, and administration expenses must be cut down. What are the facts? Everybody, unfortunately can see them too clearly. Is the boast now of economy? Does the Government even pretend it is? What was the lesson to be learned from the speech of the Minister for Finance last evening—that the motto of a wise Government ought not to be "Save and save"—that was good enough while they were in Opposition —but "Spend and spend, and the more you spend the better for the country?" Waste and waste; money will circulate all the better; people will have time to buy more watches and clocks"—a great proof of prosperity, certainly! If the policy of the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Agriculture is allowed to continue much longer, I admit that the people will have nothing else but time on their hands and will have very little else to measure except the passage of time. The only real success that the Government has registered is in this direction of keeping up and increasing expenses. Not a week passes that the Government, that was so eloquent in reference to the cost of administration when they were in Opposition, do not create some new job, some new position. It is not merely that they are spending in various services but they are spending more in the administration itself, and the cost of administration has gone up. Remember that their promise was not to save by keeping the annuities and the other sums that Great Britain claimed were due; the promise was to effect savings and the savings were to be in addition to these withheld sums. It is quite true that they have kept the annuities, but, as has been pointed out again and again, they have kept the promise in the letter, but not in the spirit.

The annuities money goes from the farmer and more than the annuities money—at least more than is necessary to pay the interest on the annuities, which is all the English Government, I understand, is meeting at the moment. Therefore, there is no redemption of the land taking place, even, so far as these sums collected are concerned. The annuities money even goes, and obviously, we are not to be free from that particular phase of the matter until the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Agriculture have succeeded, by their conjoint policy, in destroying the whole export trade, or 95 per cent of the export trade, of this country. Then, we may be in a position to boast that not merely have we kept the annuities, but that we have kept the annuities moneys, or the moneys to pay the annuities. When the members of that Party deal with the very serious situation that is confronting the country, I suggest that, besides repeating libels on Deputy McGilligan, as was done last night, that have been contradicted and controverted in this House again and again, they address themselves to the actual facts. Falsehoods against a Deputy, even if he is an ex-Minister, should not be current coin in this House.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce boasted last evening: "We are an expanding business." His Department certainly is and so is the Government. They are an expanding business and the rate at which they are expanding is enough to give even the most enthusiastic supporters of the Government pause. I suggest that it is one of the few big businesses in the country that can boast to be expanding. It is expanding in its collecting powers, expanding in its expending powers, expanding in the staff it employs. So far as real industry in the country is concerned, the industries that are being made a real success of by the Government are the levying of taxation, the expenditure of money, and the meeting of the needs of the people by doles and various other expedients of that kind instead of allowing these things to be met by a proper economy.

However, everybody realises now what the Minister for Education was so naive as to plump out, namely, that people should not take Fianna Fáil promises seriously. The promises did the job; they got the present Government in, but to utilise them here in a debate was not, he thought, quite the thing. I suggest that all Government promises, whether on the hustings before an election or from the Front Government Benches, are pretty much of the same value. The last place you can look for truth at the present moment is in Ministerial statements, and the people know that. We listened here last week to two speeches from the same man, the President of the Executive Council. We had a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde performance, so far as the general effect was concerned, but his followers down the country know perfectly well how to interpret those speeches. His followers at Ballybunion on Sunday, firing on people going to a meeting and arming themselves with hammers and iron bars to utilise against the official forces of the State, knew precisely what was meant. "Up de Valera and down O'Duffy"— that was the burden of his speech, too. These were the cries. It is one thing to make an appeal for the giving up of farms illegally held, but the representative of the State, in a case that was before the court yesterday, apparently, sees no harm in the arms being held. I am not now going into the question of the arms being used to fire a salvo over a grave—that is a mere nothing, judging by Government action—but the question of the arms being illegally held. In fact, an ex-Minister for Justice, a member of the President's own Party, instructed by the State, does not attach much importance to the statement of the President on that particular matter.

We can expect very little in the way of candour from any Ministerial statements at the present moment. It is useless for anybody who knows the condition of the country to suggest that the purchasing power of the community has increased. I admit that the paralysis of business has not yet crept up to the cities; but it has certainly crept in from the country to the country towns, and I have heard it said by business people and by others —and this is a little more important, possibly, as an index, than watches and clocks—that this is about the worst Shrovetide that this country has experienced for quite a long while. What is the Ministry's remedy? Their remedy is taxation—increased taxation—increased taxation must follow increased expenses. According to them, increased taxation is a stimulus to industry—the higher the tax the better for the industrial and economic life of this country. That is the new doctrine. The Minister had to wait till he left the Opposition and got into the Government Benches to realise that saving truth! Could anybody imagine such a topsy-turvy type of thinking in economics, politics, and in everything else they do? What the ordinary man in the street regards as sane, they regard as insane, and what the ordinary man regards as insane, they regard as sane. They have turned everything else upside down—nationalism, liberty, and everything else. Why should they not turn the finances of the country upside down? If the taxpayer pays, the Minister for Finance says that he can put on more—that it is proof that the taxpayer is prosperous. If the taxpayer says that he cannot pay—if he finds a difficulty in paying—I presume that the new Vote for the secret service will be used to nose out non-existent conspiracies.

The President knows that, when he made a statement in Dundalk about a suggested widespread conspiracy, everybody who read his words must have been aware that they could only have referred to a case actually before the courts. We gathered from the President's speech on the last night the respect he has for the courts. Apparently, one of the few industries the Minister has increased is secret service, and he increased it from £10,000 to £25,000. I suppose he and the President between them will be able to get such reliable information as they got in the case of that "widespread conspiracy," or as they got in the case of Deputy Mulcahy. That is the purpose of the secret service. The people's money is going to be used to ferret out lies against the opponents of the Government—to invent lies against the opponents of the Government. Naturally, if you pay out a sufficient sum of money you will get lies, all right, and the topsy-turvy President, when he gets that lie, will argue in his topsy-turvy fashion that he is conferring a benefit on Deputy Mulcahy. The ordinary man, however, will believe that he is slandering the Deputy and putting his life in danger, but, like the Minister for Finance, the President has no difficulty in saying that such a suggestion is absurd. The Ministry at present can stand on their heads. As I say, where the ordinary man sees a gross libel, they see a benefit conferred.

Right through the life of this Government so far, you have, in the case of their promises before they came into power and in the case of their performances since they came in, the proof that words mean one thing and that performance is an entirely different thing. Despite all the statements of the Ministry and Deputy Corry it is evident to everybody that at the present moment the country is not in a prosperous condition, that farmers are not in a prosperous condition, and that the 40-acre farmer is not £40 a year better off than he was before the Government took office. This should be the very last time, when the resources of the people are least capable of meeting the strain, to push this country economically into a mire from which it cannot get out. Not merely are they heaping expense on expense, but, notwithstanding all their promises, and gross and cynical violations of these promises, they are mortgaging the whole future of the country in everything they do. What is their policy? Not merely are they making the country poorer and trying to bankrupt it, but they are pauperising the population of the country as far as they can. Their policy is seen in this present Bill which is to give effect to the Vote that was agreed to here last evening, and that policy is that they are determined to try to smash any independent-minded person in this country. That is the aim of their economic policy; that is the aim of their political policy; and that is the sole outlook they have so far as this country is concerned.

In great matters and in small matters the whole future of this country is being put in jeopardy and is almost being put beyond the possibility of recovery. They are continuing the policy that should have been plain to any level-headed person from the first Budget statement of the Minister for Finance. They are continuing that policy and they are continuing in the same callous, light-hearted fashion in which the Minister for Finance introduced his first Budget. Let any member, even of their own Party, ask himself has he the same enthusiasm for that policy now as he had two years ago. Have they, or their supporters in the country, the same belief in the policy for which this money is being asked? Everybody knows that there is no such thing now as that enthusiasm. They are frittering away not merely the resources of the country but the belief and enthusiasm of their own followers, as everybody who goes through the country knows. They had a plan. They had a plan for everything. They had a plan for employment. Where are the factories, and what is the type of employment? It has been impossible to "draw" the Minister for Industry and Commerce on that particular matter. No information has been given to the public, except the merest statements from a Minister who is completely irresponsible when it comes to statements. The country is asked to rely on such statements, but no method is given to the public whereby they can check whether there is a word of foundation for the statements.

The same Minister spoke last evening of the Fianna Fáil plan in relation to agriculture. The farmers of the country would like to know what the plan is. The Ministers have had six and a half years in this House and two years of office as a Government. Have not those years and the experience which they should have got but have not got, weaned them from the weakness of regarding as a policy a few vague, general statements?

As to the Fianna Fáil plan for agriculture, we heard it very definitely acknowledged in this House by the Minister for Agriculture himself—I remember I made the point against him and he admitted it was perfectly sound—that if his wheat policy succeeded it meant more root crops and more root crops would mean more cattle. Therefore, the Minister for Agriculture's policy must mean more cattle. What for? Useless slaughter, according to the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I admit that is a policy, but the ordinary man in the country may be forgiven if he thinks it is a policy of sheer madness. And that is the Fianna Fáil plan to save agriculture—more wheat, more root crops, more cattle! What for? Slaughter. They are thinking it over —the measure is not yet ready—but that is the famous Fianna Fáil plan to save agriculture.

Everything else is in precisely the same position. If a policy of this kind were conceived outside a lunatic asylum then undoubtedly the people would take steps to see that those conceiving it were put inside the walls of the said lunatic asylum. But, apparently, it is good enough to deceive the country. The country need not be surprised at what it is getting at present. That was clear from the moment the Minister for Finance addressed himself in this House to the financial condition in this country. Gone now all talk about taxable capacity! Gone all the arguments and suggestions that taxation will hamper business! All that has disappeared. The great, supreme and sovereign remedy now to promote industries and business in this country is to increase expenses and increase taxation!

We were told by President de Valera that "the British market is gone for ever, thank God." What is the position of the agriculturist and the farmer to-day? We are told to till more land and fatten more cattle. Where is the market for the surplus cattle? The Minister for Industry and Commerce last night told us that cattle were making a better price than two years ago. I wonder where the Minister got his information. Any cattle that are not carrying with them an export licence are making 10/- per cwt. live-weight less than cattle with an export licence. When the requirements of the home trade are filled there remains 58 per cent. of the fat cattle in the Free State for which there is no market. I am anxious to get the Minister for Agriculture or some of the other Ministers to tell me where is the alternative market that is needed now. Those of us who live in tillage and stall-feeding districts are running short of roots and hay. What is to become of the stall-fed cattle when they are turned out? Where is the alternative market? It is not a laughing matter—it is a very serious thing. It means bankruptcy for the country. If the farming industry is not prosperous, no industry can be prosperous. It is time for the Government to waken up and get us back our markets or the alternative markets that we were promised.

We are told that the Government have done a lot for the dairy farmers. There is one thing they have done for them, anyway, in my constituency. Two years ago a dropped calf was worth £4; to-day it is worth 15/-; so that they have taken £3 5s. off the value of calves. We hear a lot about the price of pigs at present. What is the cause of the rise in the price of pigs to-day? In November, 1932, pigs went as low as 17/- per cwt. live-weight. There was a loss of £2 per head on every pig produced in the country. That is the reason why pigs are a good price to-day. When we have a surplus of pigs it will be the same as when we have a surplus of cattle—there will be no market for them.

Then we are told to grow wheat— that that is the saving of the country. Any practical farmer knows that to grow wheat you have to have rotation; that you must stall-feed cattle and fatten pigs. You will have to have farmyard manure to put into the land or you will not grow wheat very long. The growing of wheat is very heavy on the land. If a farmer is not in a position to put farmyard manure back into the land he will not be able to grow roots or to grow wheat a second year. I ask the Government, as business people, to start and get us back our market or the alternative markets that we were promised. We do not want the British market if we can get a better one, but we want that market found for us. In conclusion I can tell the Dáil that the farmers of the Free State, and especially the farmers in the County Wexford, are in a very bad way. We were promised that we would be able to get away 40 per cent. of our cattle under licence. My experience is that up to now a farmer with 20 cattle only got four away. Therefore, it is time for the Government to do something for the people.

Before I came into this House I was told that politics were a dirty game. During the two years I have been here I have learned that it is a very dirty game. I have listened to the speeches of Opposition Deputies and the remarks they addressed across the House to Ministers were simply scandalous. They come in here and pretend that Ministers are so inexperienced that they have no knowledge of the people and of the needs of the country and that all the genius is represented on the benches opposite. I am not inclined to place a tremendous value on words. Deputies on the other side seem to imagine that words mean a lot. I have heard misrepresentations here time and time again with regard to the position of the country and to the impossibility of doing this and that in relation to tillage and building up industries. I have no doubt whatever that all these things are going to take a considerable amount of effort on the part, not alone of the Government, but of the Opposition and the people of the country. We, in this Party, want the assistance of everybody who can help in the slightest degree to try and uplift the country to a condition of things that will give us an opportunity of having the people live here in a state of ordinary frugal comfort. To hear Deputies speak here in this House one would imagine that we were to get the millennium in this world. This world is a vale of tears and we will never get the millennium here. Let us make the best use of the opportunities presented to us and of the circumstances which exist. The Deputy who has just sat down accused the Government of making promises that they would reduce taxation. I am not contradicting him when he states that they did make promises, but I am inclined to think that they did not make the promises, they simply made statements.

A distinction without a difference.

It would be just as well if Deputy Anthony would listen to what I have got to say and he may alter his mind if he does. I am not contradicting Deputy Professor O'Sullivan in what he stated, but I am putting it that in my opinion the Ministers did not make promises. They simply made statements, and I can quite understand their making statements that they would reduce taxation if they got the power. I am speaking altogether personally in this matter and I am not voicing the opinions of the Fianna Fáil Benches nor of the Ministers. I am not in their confidence to that extent.

You will after this speech anyway.

When I have made my speech the gentlemen on the opposite side of the House will have an opportunity——

One honest Corkman anyway.

Ministers made certain statements. I am not asking the House to accept it as a fact, but the way I put it is this, that they made statements, not promises. What is the result? They came into the Dáil and they took up the functions of Government. They found, as a matter of fact, that the position was much worse than any of their worst expectations. It was much worse, and they found that instead of being able to reduce taxation they were faced with the necessity, in order to keep the people alive, of increasing taxation. What is taxation for? It is used for the benefit of the Irish people, to keep them going, to keep them alive, and I think that is a very useful purpose in which to employ the revenues of the nation. They made some sort of an attempt in the interests of the people to make the Government in some way Christianlike.

Deputy Dillon last night called attention to the fact that we shipped a certain number of cattle during a certain period. I think during this year we shipped more than last year over a certain period and got no increase in money for them. It was clearly agreed that we shipped 5,000 or 6,000 head more cattle and got some thousands of pounds less for them. What is Deputy Dillon's point? By chance, I have got the gross figures dealing with these exports. I have got certain figures here with reference to the reduced price. What do we find from these figures? In 1931 the Danes shipped 367,000 tons of bacon to England; in 1932 they shipped 383,000 tons. That is an increase of 16,000 tons. They got £1,400,000 less for the increased quantity owing to the difference in price between 1931 and 1932. Now, we will take butter——

The Deputy is comparing different years.

I am comparing two years and I will tell the Deputy why I am mentioning that. The figures are not comparable in bacon for the simple reason that the supply of Danish bacon came down by 141,000 tons in 1933. The Danes made up their minds that bacon was not paying them and that they would not go further in that trade. I want to tell the Deputies that those conditions that they object to and complain of here exist in other countries. One would imagine from the talk used by the Deputies here that those conditions do not exist in any other country but this and that it was the fault of the Government. In the case of butter, the Danes shipped in 1932 6,000 tons more butter to England than they did in 1931. But they got £2,200,000 less for it.

To come back to the bacon trade developed by the Danes, I remember when the Danish bacon trade started the Danes did not know how to cure it and in the month of June it used to be returned to the wholesalers in Manchester and the Danes had to stand the loss of that. That was some 40 years ago. In 1931, the Danes shipped 367,000 tons of bacon to England. We shipped in that year 14,800 tons or the equivalent of about two weeks' supply of the Danes. The Danes had no political dispute with England about the Oath. They had no economic dispute with England about the annuities. The English Government calmly turned about and told the Danes: "Keep down your supply of bacon by 20 per cent." What does 20 per cent. represent? About 70,000 tons. That represents, according to the size of pigs cured for bacon in Denmark, about 1¼ million pigs. The Danes were told to find a market for their pigs elsewhere, that the English could not take them. The poor simple Danes!

I read to-day in a paper connected with the trade that a few years previous to that the Danes were congratulating themselves on the enormous quantity of bacon they shipped to England. They stated that if they shipped less they might have got more money for it, but that the policy they were adopting was not without its compensation because of the fact that their bacon on account of the lower prices penetrated into the lower strata of society and that when the price rose these people would still get Danish bacon. The Danes did not expect that they were going to be cut off in the way they were, that they would be asked to reduce their export of pigs by 1¼ millions and that they would have to get rid of that number elsewhere. The Danes got rid of not alone 1¼ million pigs but of 2½ million pigs. In 1931, they shipped 367,000 tons and this was cut down in 1933 to 226,000 tons, that is a reduction of 141,000 tons of bacon.

I do not want to take up the time of the House at too great a length but I want to get Deputies to see these things from a different point of view. Those figures are from the trade returns for the year 1933 given here for the advantage of their readers by the Grocer newspapers. We hear a tremendous lot about the British Commonwealth of Nations. I believe that Deputy MacDermot is very anxious that we should remain in the British Commonwealth of Nations. He does not say so, but one can read between the lines. Here is a gem, and they are official British figures. In 1933 the Danes shipped to England 125,000 tons of butter, New Zealand shipped to England in the same year 125,000 tons of butter. I know something about the butter trade and, honestly, if I were asked which butter I would prefer I would certainly say Danish. The 125,000 tons of butter were worth, I should say, about £250,000 more than the New Zealand butter. The Danes got £15,000,000 for butter in 1933 and the New Zealanders, for butter practically as good, only got £10,000,000, so that £5,000,000 less was given to the daughter of the Empire than was given to the Danes. The fact is that the Danes have an alternative market. That is the reason they were able to command their price. We cannot get these markets because others are in possession of them—90 per cent. of them.

What are you going to do?

What alternative markets have the Danes?

We hear Deputies talking continually about what Ministers intend, and what they do not intend. The Deputies draw on their imagination. It is what they think Ministers think they tell the people and this House. They reiterate the same thing ad nauseam. There is direct misrepresentation of the Government's intentions. Deputies and ex-Ministers should be very careful, because they have got a duty to the people. They are part of the Government here, being the official Opposition, and their responsibility is as great as that of Ministers.

Tell us what they intend?

Yes, the responsibility of the Opposition is as great. I say that the Government found things in a rotten condition when they came into office. If any Deputy intended to build a house, if he did not make a start, the work would never be finished and his family could not occupy it. If a Government neglects the duty it owes to its people, it is a negligent Government. Every measure that the Opposition, when in office, should have taken they neglected to take, and it was left to the present Government to come in to clean up the mess. I heard a gentleman of wide experience, a man who is fast approaching 70 years—I may say that I am in the same position myself —say that if that bunch—he was referring to the previous Government —was in for another couple of years it would not be worth anybody's while taking their place. The present Government took office, notwithstanding the condition in which they found things, and they are doing their best for the country, despite an Opposition that has no consideration whatever for the people, judging by the way in which they are opposing this Government. The man I am referring to went further and said:

"If I were one of the Fianna Fáil Party I would not take over the Government until the mess was disclosed and the blame given to the proper people."

He did not know the Fianna Fáil Government.

I spoke of a man who was going to build a house for his family, and I said that if he did not start to build there would be no house for the family to go into. We have an increasing population because the countries of the world have closed their doors to emigration, and it is no longer possible for our people to get work in these countries. What is going to be the condition here if the Government did not make an attempt to increase tillage and to start industries? All the people will be idle. It is well known that the devil finds some mischief still for idle hands. That is what is going to happen. The sooner people with money, people who have property, and an interest in this country realise that, the sooner will they give this Government a helping hand. The misrepresentation that has taken place has been continuous on the part of the Opposition since the Government went out of office. The Opposition see that they have no chance whatever of getting back on the Government Benches, by reason of their neglect of the people's interests. I do not think it is relevant to this debate, but the reason they are giving their help to the Blue Shirt Party, by allying themselves with it, is in order that they can bludgeon their way back to office when they are strong enough. It is because they realise that their bluff has been called, and that the Blue Shirts are not going to be permitted to get sufficiently strong——

That is not relevant.

Would it be relevant to ask the Deputy why Deputy Cosgrave could not address a meeting in Cork without having it smashed up?

We will discuss that if I am here when we are talking on some other subject.

Stick to butter and tillage.

I have already told one story of the old gentleman who was full of wisdom. He told me another story which I would like Deputies to remember, to see if it would not in some way help to alter the behaviour of the Opposition in this House, not in the interest of the Government, but in the interests of the people. The country between Mallow and Cork is very hilly. There is a place there known as the Ballinahoura hills. I have been up there several times and I advise Deputies to go there, because the view is a glorious one. The story told me by this old man was that on one occasion when two brothers were going up the hills with a heavy load of sand the horse was not able to do the work. These brothers were giants of men. They took the horse from under the cart and one of them started to haul the load. When they got to the top the man who was hauling said: "I never in all my life had to work so hard. I did not think I could do it." The other brother replied: "No wonder you found it so hard, because I was pulling you back." The other brother said: "By that means you lose a brother." In this country the Government is pulling one way and the Opposition is pulling the other way, but between the two, if all of us do not pull together the nation is not going to succeed, and the only policy which is likely to bring success to this country cannot be carried through. I earnestly exhort Deputies to give some more thought to the general world position to-day. This is not confined to Ireland. We have a very difficult problem here—a vastly different problem from the problems of the other nations because we had our industry and our agriculture out of order and we have a new situation by reason of the increasing number of people in the country. If preparation is not made for that increasing population, there is going to be a calamity of some description. That will not happen if the Opposition unite with the Government—I do not want them to agree upon everything, but not to try to push the cart backwards.

At the outset, I want to deny an allegation made a few days ago by the Attorney-General. He said that I charged him with interrupting at a public meeting. I am sorry he was misinformed. I made no such charge against the Attorney-General and never thought of doing anything of the sort. From what I know of the Attorney-General, he is the last man who would be guilty of conduct of that sort. I wish all his followers were as well-behaved as he; if they were there would be no trouble. I stand, however, by what I did say and the Attorney-General can deny that if he likes.

The last speaker touched upon some points upon which we can all agree. He thinks that there should be co-operation amongst the different parties. I agree. Where he makes the mistake is in throwing all the responsibility for co-operation on the Opposition rather than upon the Government. If the Government Party wish to have co-operation, they should set the good example. I am sure that they will find the Opposition quite glad to co-operate on certain broad principles, which have been stated time and again. The Deputy stated—and rightly stated—that there is too great weight attached to words here rather than to deeds. He dissociates himself from the Fianna Fáil Party and their pledges. He says they were not pledges, that they were only statements. That is a very fine distinction. It is the first time that we have heard in this country that promises made at election meetings for the purpose of securing votes are simply statements and not pledges. I suppose that is the Fianna Fáil doctrine, but it is a new doctrine so far as this country is concerned. Whether intended as promises, or statements designed to deceive the people, the people accepted them as promises. When members of the Fianna Fáil Party were making those statements they knew that they would be accepted as promises. And they were. Therefore, they must be regarded as promises. The Party that secured a mandate upon those statements, or promises, claim now that they are putting some of them into operation, but they are doing the very opposite.

Deputy Dowdall referred to the Danes and to the business they are doing in the British market. According to our Minister for Agriculture, the Danes have been trying for 100 years to get a footing in the British market. For 100 years they did not succeed in doing that—until the Fianna Fáil Party came into power. Our Minister for Agriculture gave them an opportunity to add greater strength to their position in the British market than they were able to do for the last 100 years. This is the first time the Danes have succeeded in winning a war against this country. Instead of this being an economic war between this country and Great Britain, it is an economic war between this country and the Danes. The Danes have won, I am sorry to say. I hope, however, that we will oust them again. I hope that a Brian Boru will arise who will succeed in winning the economic war and clearing the Danes out of the position which we hitherto occupied in the British market.

It is an information "Boru" we are to get.

I hope we shall get a Brian Boru later on. Deputy Dowdall referred to our increasing population and what is to be done regarding that problem. The Opposition is quite aware of the increasing population. We are well aware of the difficulties and are prepared to make provision for the increasing population by finding employment for them. The increasing population cannot be maintained upon doles and unemployment assistance. Productive work must be found for them. Otherwise, the country will go into bankruptcy. You cannot live by spending capital on keeping a population idle. The doles and unemployment assistance will run out in a few years and the country will be bankrupt. What will happen then? We must keep to facts.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce takes credit for establishing industries. I do not want to detract from that credit. I wish him success in establishing industries. I should be glad to see 1,000 industries instead of 300 prospering in the country. The great mistake the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Agriculture made was that they virtually killed the industry that was three times as good as all the others put together. Not only that, but the baby industries the Minister is starting here are dependent on the main industry, which has been practically killed. These new industries are unable to stand upon their own legs. They are walking upon crutches. They have to be supported by tariff crutches and these tariff crutches have to be supplied by agriculture. The agricultural community are the consumers of the manufactured products of these industries. How will the agricultural population be able to purchase the products of these new industries if they themselves are getting less than the cost of production for their produce? That is really what is happening at present. I challenge anybody to deny that nine-tenths of what agriculturists are producing is being produced at less than the cost of production. In a specially favoured area where the land and climate are suitable, they may be able to grow a few acres of wheat and a half acre of tobacco and these crops may prove economic. They may even provide a profit, but you must have regard to agriculture as a whole. You must consider the whole agricultural population and take the rough and the smooth into your consideration. You must take county with county. Unless practically the whole of the agricultural population get an opportunity to produce at an economic price and are provided with a market for their produce, there is no use in talking about the produce of 100 or 100,000 acres out of the 12,000,000 acres in the country.

There is no use in talking in thousands where millions are concerned. There is something like 12,000,000 acres of land in this country, and unless that can be turned to profitable production there is no use talking about our being in a safe position. Unless agriculture is prosperous all those other industries depending upon agriculture will fall like a house of cards. It is absolutely foolish to talk about building up industry, and providing employment for the population, while the one industry that can stand upon its own legs is crushed as agriculture is being crushed in this country. We ought to get down to facts, and to recognise that the principal industry in our country is the one that must get a chance. It cannot be protected merely by tariffs. It is all very well to talk about protecting the home market, but the agricultural produce of this country would support a population of about 10,000,000. We have only 3,000,000. What is to be done with the surplus? We are told that there is going to be a Bill brought in to destroy the surplus. I hope no member of the Government has gone so far from commonsense as to introduce legislation of that character in this country. We have to give our agriculture a chance. People working all their lives, and their fathers before them, in a particular industry and district, know what they can produce properly and economically. Unless something is produced economically it is no use; we cannot afford to produce it at a loss. If everything is produced uneconomically how can you pay your way? The fact is the people are living on the nation's capital at the present time, and, such prosperity as the Minister boasts of, is a false prosperity. It is a prosperity brought about by the expenditure of capital on public and private buildings, in grants for home assistance, and one thing or another. But there is nothing being built up for the future, no return for the money expended. We have to get to the foundation some time or other. Therefore, I think we should begin with the basic industry, and give the people engaged in it a chance of making good. Then the other industries will come along, and make good, because they are dependent upon agriculture.

I heard the Minister for Industry and Commerce, when Deputy Dillon showed how the adverse trade balance has increased although our total trade had been reduced to about half, state that that was a good sign of the times. He said it was a good sign of the times to see the adverse trade balance going against us. I cannot understand that. It is the first time I ever heard it said by any responsible person. I wish the Minister would make his position clear, so that we can understand what he means when he says that the increase in the adverse trade balance, while our total trade was being reduced, was a good sign of the times.

That was just a statement of his.

Is it that he did not mean it?

Ask Deputy Dowdall!

We hear a good deal about Denmark and the position that that country holds. We are told that while there is depression here, there is also depression generally all over the world. We might agree there is depression and that it is not confined to this country. But there has been, and is, improvement in many countries at the present time. Instead of going to European countries, and comparing our position with them, I think, as a member of the British Commonwealth, we should compare our position with the other Commonwealth countries. I shall give some figures to show the position that other Commonwealth countries are in in the British market, compared with this country. Let us take for comparison the years 1931 and 1933. The Irish Free State, in 1931, exported to the British market 4 per cent. odd of the whole British imports. Although we are told now that the British people are not able to buy our goods, the most they imported from us in 1931 was 4 per cent., so that we were only able to supply a little over 4 per cent. of their requirements. But what was the position last year, 1933? Our exports to that country were reduced to 2.63 per cent. of Great Britain's requirements. That is a reduction of 38 per cent. in the value of our exports to Britain since 1931. What was the position of other Commonwealth countries? The average increase in the value of the exports from the other Commonwealth countries within the same period, that is, 1931-33, was 31 per cent. I shall give the figures for each country. Canada increased the value of her exports from 3.81 per cent. in 1931 to 6.84 per cent. of British requirements in 1933.

Does the Deputy know what the Canadian exports to the British market were?

I am taking the figures from the Independent and I am prepared to stand on them.

That is about the best thing to do with them.

Newfoundland increased her exports to Britain from 0.24 of Britain's requirements in 1931 to 0.32 in 1933; Australia increased from 5.31 of Britain's requirements in 1931 to 7.19 in 1933; New Zealand increased from 4.39 in 1931 to 5.50 in 1933 and South Africa increased from 1.52 in 1931 to 2.14 in 1933. In every case there was an increase and the average increase for all those countries was 31 per cent., whereas the Free State, instead of increasing, has decreased its exports to the British market by 38 per cent. That is the position. We are told that all countries are suffering alike, but the depression has passed in some countries. The worst time for them was the year 1931, and there has been a steady decrease in depression in these countries since then. But there is no indication of a decrease in the depression here, and it certainly is time that there should be.

Last night we were told about the price of pigs increasing since this time 12 months. Why compare the prices now with this time 12 months? Why not compare them with prices across the Border just now as the prices across the Border represent the prices to which we are entitled were it not for Fianna Fáil policy? That would be a fair comparison. The price for pork and pigs has increased all over the world, at least on the British market and in Northern Ireland. It has increased much more than it has here. In yesterday's paper I noticed that the price for pigs and pork in Northern Ireland was 82/6 per cwt. and in the Free State 58/6, showing a difference of over £1 per cwt. Taking the whole year round, generally speaking, there is a discrepancy of £1 per cwt. on the average between the prices paid in Northern Ireland and the Free State. The reports in the newspapers prove that. The same thing applies to cattle. The cattle trade has been so often discussed here that there is no need for me to deal with it now. But the difference in prices that applies in the case of pork and pigs applies also to calves, turkeys, eggs and to everything else that the farmer has to sell. I give the Government a little credit for what they did to help the dairy farmers, but what is it worth? I happen to live near the Border. I am well acquainted with the conditions that obtain on both sides of it. Last summer we on the County Cavan side of the Border got 3¼d. a gallon for our milk. Of course, that was not a great deal, but it was better than what they got on the other side. The price in Fermanagh was 2¾d. a gallon, the difference in favour of the Free State being a halfpenny per gallon. But when I say that we have to remember that half of that halfpenny came out of the farmer's own pocket, so that the net gain to him was only ¼d. a gallon more than his neighbour on the other side of the Border got. Therefore, it comes to this: that we can give the Government credit for increasing the value of his milk supply to the farmer by ¼d. a gallon. What does that mean to the farmer? Take the average 400-gallon cow in the County Cavan. It means 400 farthings to the owner, or 8/4. That is the whole gain. Against that we have to set down a loss of £5 on calves, £1 per cwt. on pork, 6d. a dozen on eggs, £6 a head on cattle and so on.

It is impossible for the country to carry on while the principal industry has been struck at in this way. The fact is that taxation has been increased by £8,000,000 since the present Government came into power. They got into power on the strength of the statements they made that they were going to reduce taxation by £2,000,000 a year.

Promises.

They were only statements. We cannot call them promises any more. We cannot take them seriously any more, no matter what they say. At any rate, they got in on the strength of the statement that they were going to reduce taxation by £2,000,000. That means, now that the Estimates have gone up by £8,000,000, that taxation has been increased by £10,000,000 a year over what it should be. With taxation going ahead at that pace how can progress be expected in any direction? Certainly the industries upon which the Minister for Industry and Commerce appears to be relying so much will not thrive. They will fail unless he tackles the root of the problem and puts our basic industry on its feet and gives the farmers a chance to make ends meet. If the farmer does not get that chance how can he afford to give employment on the land? He cannot continue to produce at less than the cost of production and not even the Minister for Industry and Commerce can compel him to do that. He cannot compel the farmer to continue losing money. If the Government want the farmers to produce, then they must make it remunerative for them to do so. Make it worth their while to do so. They are all anxious to make money and a living out of their land. In fact they have to do it as they have no other means of earning a living. When the people about whom the Minister for Industry and Commerce is so much concerned find that they cannot produce the goods in which they are interested at a profit because of the competition they have to meet from other countries they at once form themselves into a sort of a ring and say: "If we can put up a good case to the Minister for Industry and Commerce he will put on another 100 per cent. tariff on the goods that we want tariffed and then we can charge another 100 per cent. higher for our products." There is not much trouble in getting an increase in a tariff. Of course some of these people may want a certain amount of protection to enable them to meet outside competition, but as regards the agricultural community how are you going to protect them? You cannot do so because they have an exportable surplus, and in any way there is no question of protecting them. The little bounties that they are getting on the sale of cattle, pork and other things do not represent one-fourth of the tariffs that they are obliged to pay, so that instead of protecting the agricultural community and of giving them 50 per cent. over and above world prices what is really happening is that they are producing at 40 per cent. less than world prices and in many cases their losses are much greater than that.

Let me give a few instances. I am aware that bulls bought in the Free State for £3 were sold for £9 in Enniskillen. Instead of a tariff of 40 per cent. that was 200 per cent. The same thing happened in the case of sows. The trouble in connection with these tariffs is that animals of small value have to carry the same tariff as animals of greater value. There is a flat rate. For instance, you may find poor people with old cows and aged cattle. Ordinarily they would be worth about £5. Across the Border in Enniskillen they realise about that, but they are sold for about 10/- on our side. There is a difference of 500 per cent. there as between the prices prevailing on each side of the Border. In view of those conditions I do not see how the farmers can continue. The sooner this thing comes to an end the the better. I do not want to delay the House much longer, but as a practical man coming up from amongst the farmers and knowing their position, I want to warn the Minister that unless there is a change in Government policy soon the country will go down in bankruptcy. The Government should do something in time and not wait until it is too late.

I do not know how this taxation is going to be raised. The people that I know in the country are not able to pay any taxation. I would like to know what the annuities are being collected for. They are not being paid over to Great Britain. It is plain to everybody that the farmers have paid these annuities three times over in tariffs. At least they have paid them twice over in the various losses that they have sustained since this economic war started. Would the Minister tell me what these annuities are being collected for?

To pay for their land, what else?

Not according to some members of his Party. Are they being collected to buy land for distribution: to purchase untenanted land to make tenant farmers?

I told the Deputy.

The Minister for Finance ought to know, and I would like to have an answer from him. What is the Land Bond Bill for if the annuities are being collected for the purchase of untenanted land? Can the Minister for Finance tell us that? If he is not able to answer it, then I will give him the opinion of some of his colleagues on the subject. Here is what one of the Fianna Fáil Party, Mr. Smith, said at a meeting in Tullyvin, in the County Cavan:

"Look at the plan the Opposition adopted in order to attack them most effectively. They said: ‘When these annuities are not being paid to Britain, why pay any of them at all?' adding: ‘If Britain is not entitled to these moneys, surely no one else is entitled to them.' They forgot that while the Government had given 50 per cent. reduction in the annuities, there was such a thing as untenanted land——"

Would the Deputy please give the reference?

This is the Anglo-Celt of March 3rd, 1934. The quotation goes on:—

"and they knew it was their policy to take that land and make it tenanted. For that they must have money and, therefore, they must get the other 50 per cent. from the tenant farmers in order to make more tenant farmers."

I should like to ask is that what all this money is being collected for—yes or no?

A Deputy

Both.

I should like to know what is the Minister's answer?

Does the Deputy want a statement or a promise?

A statement will do.

You will get neither one nor the other.

I do not care whether it is a statement or a promise so long as it is an answer. Are we going to get that information or are we going to be left in the dark? I ask the Minister again to answer this question, because the farmers are very anxious to know the answer. Some of them are doubtful, but the Minister for Finance should be able to give us some little instruction as to what this money is being collected for, or at least say if it is being collected for that purpose. If so, what is the Land Bond Bill intended for? This House should not be humbugged by bringing in a Land Bond Bill to provide for the purchase of land——

The purchase of land cannot be discussed on this Bill. The House may discuss expenditure, and some aspect or aspects of Government policy relevant to expenditure.

We are dealing with Estimates, and one of the Estimates is for the Land Commission. These remarks apply to the Land Commission.

We are not dealing with the Estimates.

The House is discussing, not the Estimates, but the Central Fund Bill.

You are talking about half an hour, and the Minister does not know what you are talking about.

I shall not stress the matter, as the Minister does not seem to know.

You have said enough to make the Minister think.

We were promised alternative markets, but I think that the alternative markets have all gone west. I think it is generally recognised, on both sides of the House, that there are no alternative markets. I join with other Deputies on this side of the House in asking the Government, when they cannot provide the alternative markets that they promised, to get us some market and so give the agricultural community an opportunity to make good and enable them to produce economically instead of producing at a loss. If they are producing at a loss they are unable to pay taxation or support the other industries that are being started. Unless this demand is met, unemployment will increase from time to time. Instead of there being a reduction in unemployment, unemployment has been steadily increasing. It will continue to increase because no man will employ labour if production is unprofitable. The small farmers and the small farmers' sons are unemployed but they are not registered as unemployed. The small farmers with four or five acres and their sons are almost starving. They are not registered as unemployed but they are unemployed nevertheless. This is a serious matter and I appeal to the Minister to bring this economic war to an end and to give the agricultural community a chance to work their bit of land and make some sort of living. It may not be a very good living but they will be able to exist on it at any rate. I know that in County Cavan there are thousands of young men who would be away, if they could get away, out of the country. They have been told, and promised, that if they stood by Fianna Fáil work would be provided for them. There is no work for them now except a few relief schemes, but any of the industries that are started up here are of very little use to them. Not one of them is getting a job in them. I think it would be only fair, if I might suggest it within the rules of order, that in these industries that are being started up here there should be a certain quota of workers taken from counties like Cavan and Leitrim where there are large numbers of people who cannot find employment in the country. They have nothing to look forward to and they are entitled to some consideration. I think that the Minister for Industry and Commerce should take a quota of the workers from such counties and give them employment in the new factories.

Might I suggest that we take a vote, if there is to be a vote, on this stage of the Bill now and resume the debate on the Fifth Stage?

The Minister may be assured that he will get all stages of the Bill to-night and that there will be no discussion except on this stage. I submit, a Chinn Comhairle, that the most appropriate stage to enable this discussion to continue, following the discussion yesterday, is the Second Stage.

As I say, the Minister has the assurance that he will get the Bill to-day.

It seems to me that, whether they were promises or statements, the election advertisements of Fianna Fáil have been a God-send to the Opposition. Without them, I wonder what on earth they would speak of? This is the third Budget or the third occasion on which financial questions came up for consideration since the new Government arrived, and it looks as if this third period is to be as full of quotations as either of the other two periods. It looks as if the mental laziness that has characterised the Opposition, since they became an Opposition at all events, is going to express itself in simply repeating useless quotations from Fianna Fáil speakers once again. It is very disappointing, very disappointing at all events for those who do not feel that the time has yet arrived for a Fascist Government in this country, and who believe that this Dáil is the best way to settle the problems of the country and to keep the country in existence as a going concern. It is very disappointing to find that the Opposition which had ten long years of government, and the Ministers of which must have again and again discussed these financial problems—must have repeatedly looked around for experiments and new methods in the matter of financial expenditure—are now satisfied on all big occasions to take refuge behind quotations. It is a disquieting circumstance for the future of the Dáil that all they have got to offer the House is the constant reiteration of Fianna Fáil promises. It so happens that I am not concerned with Fianna Fáil promises, because I do not remember that I personally ever made any promises to the electorate, but whether such promises or statements were made or not, I think it is time that the Opposition really abandoned that line, and that they addressed themselves to a criticism of the financial position and financial policy of the present Government.

In all this pretty vast sum that is proposed for expenditure during the coming year, is there nothing to induce Deputies—especially those who have had experience of government—to offer some little criticism other than criticism that comes from comparing performances with promises or criticism that comes from prognosticating the most terrible disaster? Deputy Professor O'Sullivan's speech to-day was simply a repetition of the speeches he made on last year's Budget and the Budget preceding that; that the country was on the verge of ruin, that the paralysis was creeping along; it has not yet reached the big cities, he said, but is in the small towns. If anybody in this House goes to the trouble of looking up Deputy O'Sullivan's speech last year when the financial position was being discussed he will find those identical phrases and that identical prophecy—that paralysis (I think that that was the word he used) had not only set in but was gradually making headway. We know that Deputy Hogan of Galway, the ex-Minister for Agriculture, speaking on the first Budget of the present Government, prophesied that within six months the country would be in a dangerous position. On at least two or three occasions since he has prophesied that we were on the verge of bankruptcy. Now is that helpful, I wonder? Is that real criticism? In the whole of Deputy O'Sullivan's speech to-day there is nothing but a number of general statements like this: "Meeting the needs of the people by doles and so on instead of letting those things be met by a proper economy." Why cannot Deputy O'Sullivan tell us what he means by a proper economy?

Ask Senator Connolly, the Minister for Forestry.

I am speaking of Deputy Professor O'Sullivan. I am just asking why an able man like him, who has had a lot of experience of government, cannot enlighten us a little bit further than that.

It is your job. You undertook it.

Why cannot he enlighten us a little bit further than by criticising doles—we all know they are not a desirable thing—and saying that the needs of the people should be met by a proper economy? Any child in the country could make a remark like that provided he is not challenged to explain what it is. Surely a proper economy is the biggest thing in the world to describe.

Deputy O'Sullivan went on to state that the paralysis of business had not yet crept up to the cities, but it has certainly crept up to the small towns. "This was about the worst Shrovetide for years and years." What in the name of goodness is the use of making statements of that kind? As a matter of fact, I think I would be correct in saying that so far as the Christmas trade is concerned it was extraordinarily good last year and the year before. I have not much knowledge of the Shrovetide trade, but I hardly think that reference can be regarded as a serious argument. He talked of the Government pushing this country economically into a mire from which it cannot get out, and mortgaging the whole future of the country in everything they are doing. "Not merely are they making the country poorer and trying to bankrupt it, but they are pauperising the population. Their policy is a determination to smash any independent-minded person in this country." It is not at all helpful to find the leading spokesman for the Opposition relying on generalities of that kind. If the country is in a serious condition, if farming is in the very dangerous plight that it is represented to be, surely there is something more to be expected from those who take that view. Is there not something of a more detailed kind to be expected than mere statements of abuse? We all know that farmers are in difficult circumstances at the present time. There is nobody on this side of the House who would say for a moment that farming is a prosperous business——

A Deputy

Except Deputy Corry.

There is, I suggest, plenty of scope for suggestion and genuine criticism as to the system of helping farmers by means of bounties. In my opinion bounties are justified. I think they are doing a great deal of good, but I know that there are a great many people throughout the country who are sceptical that the full amount of the bounties is reaching the farmers. There you have, at all events, seeing the very large sum provided this year for bounties, reason for constructive suggestion and for genuine criticism. Yet, instead of that, we are told that the country is going straight to destruction, and that all that is required is a change of Government. I have not found the farmers taking that view. The remarkable thing is that while farmers admit they are in difficult circumstances, the very best farmers in the country are adapting themselves to the new circumstances, and believe that those new circumstances had to arrive in any case. They are glad that they did arrive, and they feel that their prospects will be very much greater under the new system than if they had been under the system where their whole reliance was based on supplying a market which varied in value from day to day, irrespective of any influence they might exercise, and irrespective of any wish on their part; which varied in its demand and varied in the prices it offered, and over which they had absolutely no control. It will be found that the very best farmers in the country take the view that that was not a secure position for farmers to rely on, and particularly that it was not a secure position on which a country should base its economy.

Considering the very short time that we have now had the new policy in existence it is a remarkable thing to me how many farmers have now come to accept that condition, and to say that they are working in much more hopeful circumstances and not at all dissatisfied that the change has taken place. Similarly, the country generally is satisfied that the industrial effort which is in progress at the present time had to be begun; that it was too long delayed; and that it is essential it should go on to its proper completion. There is nothing but enthusiasm for the efforts that are being made to balance the country's economy so that it will be no longer dependent for its requirements on other countries. There is general approval of the Government's policy. Though this bill is undoubtedly a big one—and we will not be able to judge how far it corresponds to the country's ability to pay until the Minister has presented his Budget—it is a fact, I think, that the great bulk of the expenditure here meets with the determined approval of the people. Not only that, but it has caused the people to believe that now, at all events, they have a Government in power which is genuinely desirous of helping every legitimate effort in the country, and of assisting those without property to a better and more wholesome life. I challenge the Opposition to say what particular item in the whole list of proposed expenditure they are prepared to say is uncalled for and is objectionable. They are not prepared to say that of the bounties, I think, and they cannot be prepared to say it of the big sum of £1,250,000 provided for unemployment assistance, since they themselves agreed to the Bill that went through, but, in that connection, there is surely plenty of room for suggesting as to how that sum can be reduced by the provision of public work or as to what would be the most desirable policy for the Government to adopt in regard to it. Frankly, I do not like to see that sum provided at the same time as there is a reduction in the amount allotted for relief works. On a superficial glance, it seems as if the Government might run the risk of depending on that assistance and give up the effort to employ people by means of public works. I hope that is not the case. I have only my own impression to go upon but I should be glad if the Minister would deal with that matter in his reply.

There are two or three other matters on which I should like some information; for instance, with regard to the grants for fisheries purposes. The grant under that heading is reduced substantially. Does that mean that the Government despair of making the fishery industry a prosperous industry? Does it mean that they are prepared now to let it go its own way and that the Sea Fisheries Association has not so justified itself as to enable them to continue supplying the Association with funds as they have done heretofore? That, in my opinion, would be a very regrettable decision and I should like some explanation of the reduction. There is another matter I wish to refer to before I sit down. Yesterday, the Acting-Leader of the Opposition, in his speech on the Vote on Account, referred to the Government repudiating its debt to England. It seems to me that that is a very regrettable word to use, and, particularly from one in his position, it is a most undesirable word. The word "repudiation" has a very ugly meaning, as Deputy MacDermot himself showed in the course of his remarks. The Government of the Free State, so far as I am aware, have never repudiated their debt in the ordinary sense; they have never repudiated a debt that was plainly due. They have simply challenged the claim that this debt was due and that is very different from repudiation. It is a strange thing indeed to see one who is usually so careful of his language as Deputy MacDermot using that word, obviously in an opprobrious sense——

It appears to me that if a nation says that a debt is neither legally nor morally due and proceeds to stop making payments of the interest on that debt, repudiation is the only appropriate word in the English language for the conduct pursued.

I, for one, do not at all agree with that interpretation. Repudiation would arise where payment was refused of a debt that was admittedly due, but to refuse to pay sums which you consider you do not owe and in respect of which you say: "I have no evidence that these are either legally or morally due," would not be repudiation, and I suggest that if that were repudiation we would all be guilty of repudiation in our personal affairs from time to time. Nobody is going to pay a debt unless he is satisfied that it is legally and morally due, and to be accused of repudiating a debt because one denies liability would be an extraordinary use of the word.

As I remarked in the beginning, it is a great pity, from the point of view of the prestige of the Dáil, that we have not a little more genuine criticism of Government policy on an occasion like this. I think there is plenty of room for such criticism. I think, as Deputy Dowdall said, that the Opposition have a very serious and responsible duty in the House, and I frankly think that they have not been discharging it. Their constant references and misstatements with regard to the economic war and their tendency to take refuge behind such things as pre-election promises on the part of individual members of the Fianna Fáil Party indicate that they are either bankrupt of ideas or too mentally lazy to exert themselves. I rather think it is due to laziness on their part because assuredly, when such big accounts are presented, when there is such a variety of items to be considered, it should be possible for them to offer something more useful than the rather barren contributions we have heard during the past two days. Certainly, there is no speaker from the Opposition who has made one remark that would induce a member on this side of the House to consider that the Government was not entitled to his vote on this occasion.

I am gratified to hear Deputy Moore awakening to the idea of mental laziness, where he thinks he sees it, and I hope that the Deputy will continue his appreciation of that particular specimen or thing, will get after it, hunt it down and begin to talk to it. If he looked around or if he could look in a glass, I think he would see a very fine specimen of it, and if he starts in a courageous kind of way to tackle the monster, would he ask himself why he does not go up to Cavan, or even down to Wicklow, and correct some of the things he said long ago, which, undoubtedly, misled people as to the condition of things then, and the prospects that were before them, and try to correct some of the false ideas they now have as regards his many statements? If he will do that, I will undertake to give him a couple of months to turn, but I cannot help giving him a kind of push along that road by asking him to remember one of the statements that he made, and to find which we have to turn, like our friend from Cavan, to the Anglo-Celt. I am not going to call it a promise, but Deputy Moore told the people of Mullinalachta in 1929—I admit that it was a number of years ago——

Where is Mullinalachta?

It is not in Cavan.

What did Gladstone say in '66?

Deputy Moore said:—

"Did they not read time after time that the load of taxation on the people was greater than the country could afford?"

The date is of a certain modern significance because the taxation of this country was very considerably lower than the Minister for Finance has it to-day when Deputy Moore went out as an evangelist to evangelise the people to the cause of lower taxation. The Deputy was there anyway, and he can look up his diary if he doubts it.

I never heard of it before.

Good enough. The Deputy now appreciates how important it is, for the general education of the Fianna Fáil Party, including their knowledge of the geography of their own country, to recall some of the statements they made before, so that the Deputy will have a lesson in geography as well as in economics. But he continued to say that it was greater than the country could afford. He said:—

"...The lavish expenditure on pensions and salaries to unnecessary officials and all sorts of useless services should be drastically curtailed. It was no fault of the Fianna Fáil Party that their appeals had not been so successful as they should have been. If the people seriously desired that the money should be spent economically, they could not expect to achieve that end by electing a Government which had shown a gift for the most reckless extravagance and irresponsibility in regard to the people's money. If the men and women who went there that day looked the facts in the face they could not feel satisfied that a bill for taxes amounting to £21,000,000 a year plus £10,000,000 for local government——"

which was an exaggeration of the Deputy's,

"——all of which had to be paid before they thought of bread for themselves or clothes for their children, was fair or just in the present circumstances of agriculture...."

It must have been a great reporter who reported that. I never spoke so fluently in my life.

No wonder the Deputy would come here and cry to Deputy McGovern and other Deputies from this side of the House: "Kamerad! Do not hit us with what we said previously." There are people in this country who want to hear Deputy Moore and other Deputies on the present position, and if they hear them on the present position well and clearly enough, they will not ask the Deputies to bother about 1929. The only way in which we can bring moral force to bear on the Deputies on the far side in order to make them face their own people and answer for the responsibility which is theirs, in spite of what Deputy Dowdall may persuade them, is to remind them of what taxation was in those days and what they had to say about it then. When Deputy Dowdall speaks of statements and promises, there is a lot of subtlety in what he says; but there was a lot of subtlety used by Deputies on the far side in the brave days of old.

A Deputy of the Fianna Fáil Party then said:—

"Mr. Cosgrave costs us over £12,000 a year. We would cut down the salaries of the President and of the Ministers of the Executive Council to one-half of the large sum connected with the office of every one of these gentlemen."

The Deputy will please give the reference.

It is from the Kerry Champion of 6th December, 1930. How much of that £12,000 has been cut down? This Deputy said: “Mr. Cosgrave costs this country £12,000.” According to that Deputy, they would cut the salaries of the President and the Ministers down to half. They would cut down considerably the expenses of these gentlemen. The expenses of the gentleman who has replaced Mr. Cosgrave have been reduced as against Deputy Cosgrave by £677. Deputies will see that it stands at £11,568, as against £12,245 for 1932-33.

I think the Deputy is mixed up in his dates. Does the Deputy want us to follow on that line?

I want the Minister to understand that some of the stuff that was passed over on the country by way of statements, with implied promises and other things implied, were statements of that particular kind—that Deputy Cosgrave, when President, cost the country, personally and in his office, £12,000 a year, and that they would halve that. I want to ask the Minister how it is that he has reduced that great cost, in spite of all these statements, by simply the sum of £677. Deputy Moore, reasonably enough, asked why Deputy O'Sullivan did not give criticism—and by criticism I understand that the constructive mind of Deputy Moore means constructive suggestions—as to what ought to be done. There is just one constructive suggestion as to what ought to be done, and that is—get out! When an electrician goes into a power-room where there is something dangerous and urgent to be done, he does not usually want a bunch—to use the elegant word of the gentleman friend of Deputy Dowdall—of fellows running around him asking what does he think they ought to do. He wants to go in and deal with it himself, and there is only one useful and reasonable suggestion we can give to Deputy Moore's friends, and that is—get out; because to the people who can stand up here and ask you what they ought to do with regard to agricultural industry there is no use in giving any suggestions, if they cannot see what is plain under their noses, and that is that they cannot build up this country industrially while they are smashing up the products of agriculture. There is no use in making any suggestion to such people other than the suggestion I have referred to.

The Deputy asks, nevertheless, for some criticisms—some items that ought to be changed here. There are some items to which I should like to refer. There was a time, when the Fianna Fáil Ministry of Finance started, when it stood like a three-legged stool. We had the Minister for Finance himself and his Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Flinn, and we had the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Senator Connolly. Then, Senator Connolly went across to London while the great scheme of the Land Act for land settlement was being dealt with here in this country—the only scheme that many people in the country looked to in order to do anything to improve production in the country. One leg of the Ministry of Finance went to the World Economic Conference in London to settle world affairs, and after he had settled everything over there he came home and he was presented with a sum of £121,804—double the amount that the Cosgrave Administration allocated to forestry in their last year of office—and he was told to take himself away to the side of a mountain with that sum of money, and we were told that we need not expect any results from him for the next thirty years. Although he came home in time to tell the Seanad what he thought about his great schemes under the Land Bill, we have not heard a word from him yet. He has gone off, as I say, with just twice the amount of money for forestry that the previous Administration allocated in their last year of office, and he has gone off to hide himself on the side of a mountain. One leg of the financial stool was gone. The second leg has been doing rather badly. It was a bit shaky when it was found that income tax was not going to be wiped out. Recently, the Minister for Finance saw a fellow in a hotel giving a tip of a shilling to a waiter or a porter in the hotel and he got the bright idea as a result of which waiters in hotels are now being assessed for income tax on their tips.

I would remind the Deputy that the Second Stage of this Bill affords a recognised opportunity for discussing certain general aspects of Government policy in relation to expenditure. The incidence of any particular tax or the method of collecting it is not relevant and should be raised at the appropriate time.

I only mention that to show that the second leg of the stool is completely gone and we are left with the financial stool standing on one leg. It is probably leaning up a bit against one of the Minister for Industry and Commerce's new factories. There is really nothing keeping the stool up at present but that particular kind of uplift which the Minister for Finance himself showed us that he had here the other night. It is somewhat balloon-like and gaseous on the top. It is keeping itself apparently upright, but I suggest that it is in a very unsteady position at present. It is full of uplift, full of gas, and a lot of other things that, if they could be transferred to the people of the country generally or to the Opposition, might keep us standing upright. We are presented in this spirit of uplift by the third leg of the stool with a bill for £29,709,000, where two years ago we were dealing with a bill for £21,969,000, presented by an Administration that was crushing this country under a tyranny of taxation, that was making it impossible for agriculturists or, indeed anyone else, to live in the country, except a few fat Ministers and a few fat civil servants.

When we turn, on the invitation of Deputy Moore, to consider some of the items, we are struck by certain pronounced increases. The Army has gone up by about £158,000. The Civic Guard has gone up by £991,000 and the Secret Service, on the face of it, has gone up by £15,000. Reviewing what this means we are reminded of the statement of a gentleman that the Fianna Fáil people very often quote, particularly in view of the leadership they would like to follow, a gentleman who, when he was leaving politics, said that his people should avoid the necessity of overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious of liberty, but which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. That was Mr. Washington, on the position of republican liberty and military expenditure. The people who are increasing the Army by this substantial sum to-day are people who had a definite mentality about Army expenditure, about expenditure on the Civic Guard and expenditure on the Secret Service long ago. The second leg of the Ministry of Finance that has recently tottered had an outlook on the Army the same as his outlook on income tax. Speaking on the 11/5/29, as reported in The Kerryman, he said:—

"The cost of maintaining order in the Free State, whoever was responsible, was higher than they could afford to pay. Ireland was not a criminal country. A British Prime Minister had said that there was less crime in Ireland than in any country in the world. Why, therefore, should they maintain in this country two bodies in addition to the courts, one costing £1,800,000, and the other £1,400,000 per year just to keep them in order? Whoever is responsible for them is engaged in very unpractical politics. The cost of the irritation of a section of their population at the present time was millions of money, and it had got to be stopped. He advised any member of Cumann na nGaedheal who may be listening to him to use his influence to have that state of things ended and he would be doing more useful service to his country than anything he (speaker) could think of at the present time."

He was speaking in 1929 when he said the expenditure on the Army was £1,800,000. I should like to call the attention of the Minister for Finance and Deputy Moore to the position with regard to the proposed expenditure on the Army, the Guards and the Secret Service in the light of what happened in the past. In the year 1924-25 the total sum spent on the Army was £2,994,000. Three years afterwards, in the year 1927-28, it was £2,017,000. Three years after that again, in the year 1930-31, it was £1,133,000. In the year 1931-32, the last year of the Cosgrave Administration, the total sum spent on the Army was, £1,160,000.

One of the present Ministers, Deputy Derrig as he was then, had an attitude towards the Army when in March, 1931, just three years ago, as reported in the Dublin Chronicle, he said:—

"Huge sums of money were being annually expended on the maintenance of the Free State Army. Fianna Fáil advocated the disestablishment of the Army, and it was stated in reply to this contention that by its abolition a large number of men would be placed on the dole. That might be the case, but if they were to disband it and put the men on a heavy dole the expenditure would not be as heavy as that at present, something like £220 in the year per man."

That was the Fianna Fáil attitude to the Army. I should like to ask the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Education and Deputy Moore why they are raising the cost of the Army to £1,442,000 this year as against £1,160,000 in the last year of the Cosgrave Administration. The increase in the case of the Army as against the last year of the Cosgrave Administration is £298,000; in the case of the Civic Guard, it is £119,000.

When we come to the Secret Service we have an interesting story. In the year 1925-26 the actual amount paid out for Secret Service was £8,000. In the next two years no money was paid out for Secret Service. In the following year, 1928-29, the amount was £3,498; in the following year £1,504; in the following year £1,409, and in the last year of the Cosgrave Administration, £2,200. The present Ministry started off with an expenditure of £891 in 1932-33. The estimate which has been made yearly of that expenditure was as low as £10,000 but under the present Administration we are going to have £25,000 voted for Secret Service, as against approximately £1,500 spent annually for the last three or four years. What are we going to get in return for that? What is the necessity for the increase?

Can we discuss that? Can we discuss details?

Is it a detail to ask the House what we are going to get for an increased expenditure of over £250,000 on the Army; an increased expenditure of £120,000 on the Gárda and an additional sum of £20,000 for Secret Service?

The Estimates come up separately.

This is not a question of Estimates. It is a question of broad, general policy and a question of peace. We were told by the Ministers three years ago, that it was the irritation caused to a section of the population that was responsible for the high cost of the army and police, and that less irritation on this section of the population would mean a reduction of millions in the amount of money spent on the army and police here. It is perfectly obvious to us here that this increased expenditure this year is due to the increased irritation in the country—increased irritation of every class of person in the country who is trying to earn his living in an orderly honest way—it is due to the increased irritation amongst the farming population which sees three-fourths of their cash market wiped out, and it is due to the additional irritation that is brought about in the country because of the fact that the Ministers have succumbed to the temptation of harassing and harrowing their political opponents. We see a sample of what we are going to get for this money which is to be used for the purpose of crushing out political criticism, crushing it outside the precincts of this House. Here now we see Deputy Moore getting up in a sanctimonious way asking us a number of questions. If we take what is happening at the hands of the Attorney-General and at the hands of the Minister for Justice at the present time, if we look at the simple type of case that came before the Military Tribunal yesterday, and the various samples of shooting over graves with rifles by unauthorised people, we will understand what is taking place.

I understand that case was tried before the Military Tribunal and that sentence has not been pronounced. The merits of the case cannot be gone into. It has never been the custom of this House to review the actions of any judicial or quasi-judicial body and, though a nice distinction might be drawn in the case of the Military Tribunal, the Chair, following analogy, precedent and reason, and realising as Deputies must realise, that it would be most inadvisable to debate such matters in the Dáil, rules that review of the actions and decisions of the Military Tribunal cannot be allowed.

I hope, Sir, that you will not find fault with me for discussing details that you consider out of order, but I think that this is a matter of grave moment for the Parliament of this country. What I am dealing with is a matter that cannot, I submit, be ruled out of discussion here—I refer to the grave miscarriages of justice that are going on in the country. I am not going to discuss these——

If the Deputy suggests that there was a miscarriage of justice in that instance, it is a matter that cannot be raised here. The Deputy is proposing to review the jurisdiction of a duly constituted court. That is a function which this House is not qualified to perform.

I submit that I am in a position within limits to discuss the different lines of action taken in Cork, Kerry and Mayo in these cases. I submit I am in a position to discuss the facts that different action was taken in relation to these instances by the Minister for Justice in Cork, Kerry and Mayo——

The actions of the Minister for Justice are relevant.

On the Minister's Vote.

I am talking of the action of the Minister for Justice as it affects the peace of this country and I am saying that it is possible in the case of one type of action for the parties to be brought and charged before a court other than the Military Tribunal, as in Cork, and it is possible that in the case of an action of the same kind in Kerry to have the parties brought before the Military Tribunal; again, it is possible to have another action of the same kind take place in Mayo under a permit of the Minister for Justice, given, I suggest, after the occurrence had taken place. That is the position as far as the Minister for Justice is concerned.

I might raise the point here that the Minister for Justice, in connection with the case in Mayo, made a statement of the facts to the House—that the permit was given on application before the event, and I submit that Deputies are expected to take the Minister's word.

Such has been the custom.

At any rate, I am pointing out the actual happening. I am perhaps going a little close to the wind because it is a matter of vital importance to this country. That is the case that was dealt with yesterday where sentence was given. There was a verdict of guilty and a suspended sentence was imposed. The facts in that case were that certain people were in possession of unlawfully held arms. Other cases have been brought before the Military Tribunal for being in possession of arms and ammunition held in other ways and the parties have been sentenced to an imprisonment.

The Deputy is not in order in attempting to discuss a sentence of that court.

Well, part of the reason why there is going to be an additional expenditure of £298,000 over the enormous expenditure that Ministers considered there was on the Army before their time; and part of the reason why £119,000 additional is being spent on the Gárda Síochána, and part of the reason why nearly £25,000 additional is being spent in respect of the Secret Service is because the people of this country are being unfairly and unjustly dealt with, as between the different classes, by the Minister for Justice and the Attorney-General, but the courts directly appointed by the Minister for Defence or by the Executive Council are discriminating between the different classes of people in the country. I would ask, in passing this additional money for the Army, the Gárda Síochána and the Secret Service, is that policy that we see up to now going to continue? I would further ask is the policy of neglect on the part of the Minister for Justice or on the part of the Gárda by direction of the Minister for Justice, to follow up serious crime, going to continue in the way it has continued? Will the Minister tell us is this policy of neglect of their duties by the Gárda acting under the Government going to continue? Does the Minister promise a change in the attitude of the Department of Justice? If his Department gets this additional £25,000 for the Secret Service is he going to direct them to find the murderers of O'Reilly and Daly in Cork and is he going to discover who carried out the appalling outrage in Dundalk?

The Executive Council has been asked by Deputy Cosgrave to set up an inquiry into the deliberate neglect of the Guards, on the direction of the Minister for Justice, to deal with an assembly of persons, who acted unlawfully in Dublin on the 10th February. There was a deliberate neglect by non-interference, where they knew that persons calling themselves engineers, and as being engineers of the I.R.A. were meeting for the purpose of making a mine which was to be exploded on the following day. The Minister for Justice and the police are charged by us with having knowledge that on that Saturday persons were assembling in Dublin for the purpose of making a land mine, which was to be exploded on the following day near Dublin. These persons came from different parts of the country. They were traced by the police from different parts to Dublin, where they assembled under observation. Nothing was done to interfere with them and there was the appalling outrage in Dundalk on the following day. The Ministry have denied that there is any connection between one and the other. We asked for a judicial inquiry into the whole matter. The Ministry that denies that there was any connection between the Dublin meeting and the Dundalk occurrence, know that on the following week houses were searched in Tipperary and arms got. A considerable quantity of explosives was got, also exploding apparatus and coils of wire, and it is known that people were traced by the police to Dublin. They know that one of those persons has Dundalk connections. Yet we are told, with as much brazenness by the Minister for Justice as if he was the Minister for Industry and Commerce, that there was no connection between the meeting in Dublin and the affair in Dundalk. We demand that the public shall know the full details, in the interests of the Government itself, and in the interests of a proper response on the part of the people to the administration of law. What is the use of taking £25,000 for Secret Service, if we are to get no open explanation from the Ministry as to what their difficulties are, in the first place, in arresting murderers like the murderers of O'Reilly and Daly in Cork——

The Attorney-General

I do not think that Deputies should refer to these cases at the moment. They are under investigation.

It is not sufficient to tell months after the occurrence that cases are under investigation.

The Attorney-General

I ask the Deputy not to refer to the Cork cases. These are the cases I referred to.

The Attorney-General's face contains a certain amount of what he would like to call assurance, or that he would like to be felt as assurance. What assurance can the Attorney-General give us with regard to Dundalk?

The Attorney-General

I would ask the Deputy not to refer to the Cork cases.

I am asking the Attorney-General if he can tell us about Dundalk, or if he has anything to say about the Ministry of Justice and police non-interference with those people who, to their knowledge, came on that Saturday prepared for such a deed. See the position that this House has got into, when it is asked to vote substantially increased sums for the Army, for the Guards and for Secret Service.

The Attorney-General

I will let the Deputy into what is in my knowledge about Dundalk. He asked for an assurance about Dundalk. I do not think it is proper for him to refer to the Dundalk incidents now. If the Deputy asks me to let him know, as far as I know, what is within my knowledge about Dundalk, I am prepared to let him know.

Surely some kind of public statement is wanted from the Ministry on the matter. No statement at all will satisfy the people except a full judicial inquiry into the circumstances of that Saturday, what led up to it, and some of the events that followed.

The Attorney-General

I do not think it would be proper for me to make any statement about Dundalk.

The position I suggest up to the present is that we have an incorrect and an untrue statement from the Ministry with regard to it. The sooner the Ministry make up their mind that they are going to meet the suggestion contained in Deputy Cosgrave's motion, the better for order generally, the better for the taxpayer, and the better for the morale of the different forces looking after the administration of order in this country.

The defence put up for the enormously increased taxation is the great service that is being given. It may seem rather cantankerous on my part but I object very strongly to this proposal. The President when speaking last week gave lip service to what I might call the rights of persons as against the State, but it is quite clear that in this country we are moving as quickly as we can to the condition in which we shall have a totalitarian State, to be run by the Government of the day. It has increased taxation by about £9,000,000 over what it was a few years ago. It is going to make the people of this country civil servants. The farmers are civil servants already. The Government's social policy is that the labourer shall not be worthy of his hire, because he shall produce something that will not be enough to pay him for the work done. We are told that the Government of the day has done wonderful things and has given the farmers bounties and subsidies. That means that they are getting the farmers into their grip. The only hope held out to farmers by the Government is that they shall be salaried officials, of a sort, because the Government can do what it likes with them. If farmers do not run their business as the Government decides then the bounties or subsidies can be stopped. The Government scheme includes turf, wheat, beet, tobacco and industrial alcohol. It is admitted, when a man has worked and produced tobacco, that what he has produced would not be sufficient to pay him for his work. But the Government will come along and give him a subsidy. It is the same with wheat. If we are to get away from cattle, and if farmers are to produce wheat, the Government will come along and subsidise them. If farmers go in for industrial alcohol an equivalent of what will cost 3/- could be purchased for 4d., but the Government will come along to assist. The Government policy also includes an enormous system of tariffs, which means that manufacturers are practically in the Government's control. It works out in any tariffed industry in the same way.

When we see all the taxation the Government is putting on the people, we overlook the fact that this system of enormous tariffs is either subsidising manufacturers by exemption from tax, in that they do not pay a tax which other people have to pay, or it is a farming-out of taxation. Let us suppose that the Government put a tariff of 70 per cent. on some import. I have no doubt that some people have every reason to be grateful to the Government for providing them with a way of making a quick fortune. These people can be put in the position of being able to impose taxation on the community to the extent of 70 per cent. of the value of their goods. As a result, they are, perhaps, able to employ a certain number of people. These people are being paid, not for what they produce in the way of value, but out of taxation levied upon the people by virtue of the powers farmed out by the Government. Here we have a position in which the Government can get control of the wealth of the people and distribute it around and nobody, we are told, has any right to complain. When the Government Party were in opposition, members got up and cried out about the taxation of the State. They got into power and they are increasing the taxation enormously.

Although the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who does most of the talking on agriculture, does not really want to pretend he knows anything about the condition of the country outside his few little factories, he must know, as everybody knows, that the farmers, when it comes to the end of the year, find that, far from having been paid for their labour, they have to live on their capital. Roughly, their position is: the more work they do, the less they are paid for it. The Government, first of all, by its own wanton act, creates a position in which a large section of the community are not able to make a profit out of their labour. On top of that, the Government piles an enormous load of taxation, so as to reduce whatever little accumulated capital the farmer may have. The Minister for Industry and Commerce always likes to challenge my authority. I say that that is a perfectly immoral position. It has been laid down as a distinctly unlawful act for a Government to dissipate the patrimony of the people by an overwhelming burden of taxation, such as this Government is imposing at the moment. The Government having set out to create a condition in which they will control all the wealth and the people be able to live only in so far as the Government, having collected the wealth from the people, will distribute some of the collected wealth, proceeds to prostitute justice. Justice should be the mainstay of a Government. It is said that justice is the conserving force of States. We have had to refer even to the action of the Government in that regard. Yesterday, we had counsel, feed by the Government, to go into court to see, so far as we can judge from the action of counsel, that the law was not applied against certain people who were law breakers. That is an appalling state of affairs. We had yesterday men charged with having been in unlawful possession of rifles, parading with them and shooting with them. These rifles, they were careful to see, did not come into the control of the State. They were not handed over to the officers of the State. They were handed over, presumably, to an unlawful association whose purpose is to overthrow this State. A week before, men were brought before the court—quite properly—for having been in unlawful possession of rifles. So far as I read the report in the papers, one man concerned had had the rifle since 1923, when it was given to him for the purpose of protecting people whose lives were in danger from certain criminal organisations. In that case, the arms did come into the possession of the Government.

Surely the Deputy is now criticising the decision of a court. He is alleging partiality against the Military Tribunal.

I am watching the Deputy very carefully to see if he makes any reference to the decision of the court. So far, he has made no such reference.

I know that this is a painful subject for the Government and that they want to cloak their action. Every time we get up to speak on this matter we are subjected to constant interruption. The Government prosecuted certain men who had rifles in 1923. They were not guilty of parading with them or of using them. These rifles came into the possession of the Government. Yesterday, the other men were brought before the court, charged with illegal possession of and with using rifles. They saw that the rifles did not get into the possession of the Government but that they got into the hands of an unlawful association. At the same time they refused to recognise the court, thus carrying out part of the policy of trying to overthrow this State. Counsel, feed by the Government, went into court practically as a defender of these men and indicated to the court that the Government considered that no punishment should be imposed in these cases.

Has the court decided?

The court has decided. I agree that the court had no option——

The court having decided, the Deputy cannot, on the basis of criticising counsel, criticise the action of the court.

It is very far from my intention to criticise the action of the court. If I were a member of the court, I could not have done otherwise than find as they found.

The position is that counsel made certain statements before the court. On the assumption that we are criticising counsel we are, in fact, criticising the decision of the court.

If I may say so with all respect, we are now voting money for the Department of Justice and the Minister for Justice. The Minister for Justice and the Attorney-General, who is associated more or less with his Department, are responsible for keeping the law and for the prosecution of people who break the law. Acting on the instructions of the Minister for Justice or the Attorney-General, a certain line of prosecution is taken. What I am criticising are the instructions given and the line taken by the Department of Justice which, notwithstanding that it is called by that name, has used its power and authority, not in the interests of justice, but in the interests of injustice. Not only is it a crime against justice, but it is a crime against the people that, by the action of that Department, a situation is created whereby it is indicated clearly to a section of the people that this Government entirely approves of the breaking of the laws, provided they are broken by the right sort of people— the people of whom the Government approve. That is the criticism that I am putting forward, and I have nothing whatever to say to the court.

We have members of the Government Party going around and misrepresenting the position in this country. We have a Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Little, who writes—I admit that there is a great opportunity for dodging the giving of a subscription— and states that a certain organisation, which is pre-eminently constitutional. is unconstitutional. That is all part of the same policy of partial justice— partial justice which can lead to nothing but the promotion of disorder and crime. We are now asked to provide money for the carrying out of the Government policy. What do we find? The very head of the Government announced here some time ago that Deputy Mulcahy had seen Lord Hailsham, clearly indicating that the purpose was to get arms into this country. He said that he had received a report to that effect. In making that scandalous speech in this House, he was speaking under privilege. If he had made that statement outside this House it is quite clear that he would be uttering a criminal libel against Deputy Mulcahy. It is the duty of every ordinary citizen of the State, and still more of members of the Dáil, and, of course, it is pre-eminently the duty of members of the Government and especially of the President, to protect the citizens of this country. Yet the President, in this case, by refusing to take proper action by disclosing the name of his informant is compounding a felony. He is sheltering a man who propounded that criminal libel, not only by not giving his name, but by making the statement under the privileges of this House. The President knows the man who uttered that libel, and it is his duty, as a good citizen, to enable the law to be put in motion by General Mulcahy by bringing proceedings against that man. But the President shelters him and preserves his anonymity.

Last week the President kept us here for several hours, speaking about himself. If anyone says anything about the Minister for Industry and Commerce, for instance, he is really providing matter for that Minister to deal with. But when the whole Government is, as one might say, labouring under a statement which implies disgrace to the Government, it is the duty of the Government, not only to persons who make the charges, but to the country as a whole, to clear themselves. A statement was made some time ago by the Leader of the Opposition about a celebrated meeting in a house in Parnell Square on a certain Saturday. The Leader of the Opposition said this meeting took place, and that those engaged in it were dealing with the land mine, that the police were aware of it, and took opportunities to observe what was going on there. We know that the next day a land mine was exploded in Dundalk. The Minister for Justice got up after the Leader of the Opposition had made that charge, but he refused to say anything except that he was satisfied that there was no particular relationship between the meeting in Parnell Square and the outrage in Dundalk. If it is a fact that the police were aware of this meeting, dealing with land mines to be used against the people of this country or to be used against the State, then the Government is guilty of criminal neglect in not proceeding against those people. If, on the other hand, it is untrue, then the welfare of the country requires that the authorities should be cleared of that imputation. When we wanted an opportunity of discussing the matter, and wanted to have a judicial inquiry into the matter, we were unable to have a discussion on the subject, because Private Members' time was appropriated by the Government. The Dáil sat late the same day, not dealing with matters in which the rights of the people were involved, but discussing whether Private Members' time should be taken for new legislation. This Government, which has taken from the people their patrimony, not a share of their earnings during the year, but whatever little capital they may have, now turns round and says to the people these things do not matter, but what is much more important is that the Government have a right to dictate to the people what they are to wear.

Apart from this taxation, implied in the Central Fund Bill, there is other taxation which the people have to bear. The British are taxing us. Members of the Government maintain that we are living in an era of enormous prosperity in this country, but, surely, they do not expect to be taken seriously. Take the figures given in the British House of Commons a short time ago. The farmers of this country used to pay £4,000,000 in land annuities. Roughly £3,000,000 was paid under Acts prior to the Land Act of 1923, and, roughly, £1,000,000 under the Act of 1923. In paying that £4,000,000 they were paying, first of all, interest on the money they borrowed, and they were, also, liquidating the debt by means of a Sinking Fund. What is their position now? Instead of being in the position of paying £4,000,000 a year, and paying off the money they borrowed, Mr. Thomas's figures go to show that we paid in a year and nine months to the British Government £7,000,000, that is, £3,500,000 a year. Ministers now say to the farmers: "See how generous we are. Instead of paying £4,000,000 you are now only paying half the annuities so that you are only paying £2,000,000 a year now." That is to say, in reality that where the farmers were paying £4,000,000 a year before for the money they borrowed, they are now paying £5,500,000. Judging by the figures we get from the British side, it is apparent that the British Government is paying off the interest on the land bonds, but not the Sinking Fund, so that the farmers, while they are paying £5,500,000 where they previously paid only £4,000,000, are not paying off in Sinking Fund the money they borrowed. If there was a settlement to-morrow the farmers would have to pay two years' further instalments. The Government said this condition is going to go on for ever, so that the farmers are paying annuities that were to be terminable not of £4,000,000 as previously, but £5,500,000.

The main aspect of the policy of any State is, one might say, justice, the maintenance of order, the economic side of the country's affairs and foreign relations. Now, I happened to be speaking with President de Valera a few nights ago, and we talked about big nations and small nations. The one thing that one would judge was clearly approved at that gathering was that the making of treaties between countries was a very big matter. Countries make treaties one with another. It is always possible for the stronger country, by the use of material sanctions, to force its will upon the weaker country. The operation of treaties is a sort of bond of honour and saves the bringing into operation of those material sanctions and permits them to come to a sort of friendly agreement. When we consider which is likely to stand for the breaking of treaties, we see it is the stronger power because it can make its will effective by the use of material sanctions. The people that clearly benefit by observing the rule of honour, in keeping treaties, is the weaker side. This Government is now asking money for the management of external affairs. Yet it has admittedly set out to break the Treaty. If I were English I would not so much mind the breaking of treaties, because I would say: "We have the Army and the Navy and the Air Force, so that if treaties are to be broken we may break them more effectively." Where the stronger country breaks the treaty with the smaller country they can do so because they are backed by the greater strength. But our country comes along and says: "Treaties be damned. In so far as they do not suit us we will not keep them. If there is anything not coming to our side then we do not care and will not keep them."

What is the real position? This country should be the very country to denounce any such policy. We have to make arrangements with other countries. If these countries do not keep their arrangements with us we are not in a position to send our forces to crush them and make them keep to their arrangements. If we make treaties with the big Powers and they like to break them they can do so. We can do nothing against them. The very fundamental ideas of foreign relationship are completely reversed by this Government. They throw their weight about and talk about running an economic war with England, which, I suppose, is another thing that we are paying for out of this Vote. Who is winning the economic war? The Minister for Finance and his colleagues went around and said that they would have won the economic war only for our criticism, and, according to their theory, truth is incompatible with Irish nationalism. We were traitors and should be shut up. We had a general election a year or more ago so as to make it abundantly clear that we did not represent the people and that the Government did for that purpose, and the purpose was to enable them to bring to an end and to a successful conclusion the undesirable conditions at this moment existing between this country and England. The Minister for Finance goes around and says that they are bound to win the economic war, and conveys to the people of the country that they have some means of bringing England to her knees, of forcing upon her a sort of pusillanimous surrender in which she will agree that no matter what we do our goods must always go perfectly freely into her market and that is a possible meaning of their phrase "winning the economic war." But there is another meaning, and it is that this Government had a certain amount of negotiation with the British. As told to us by Government spokesmen, disagreement resulted as to whether or not the claim to the legal retention of the land annuities here should be considered by a Commonwealth court or by an international court. I can quite see that the Government could turn around, if the British agreed to put the matter before an international court, and say: "You see we are the victors; we have won, as we promised, in this quarrel with England: we are going to be the victors." Conceivably, that could happen, but what is the position?

A year ago or more I asked the Attorney-General if, as a lawyer, he would get up and say, first of all, that he thought it practically certain, or probable or at all likely or possible that an international court could be expected to decide as between us and England as to our legal right to retain the land annuities here: that they would give a decision in our favour. The Attorney-General was very careful, as a lawyer, not to give an answer in the affirmative. I am satisfied that he knows perfectly well that it is as certain as any human thing is certain that, if that part of the dispute went before an international court, there could only be one decision, and that is, that legally we are bound to pay these annuities. I am also quite certain of this: we have at election times and other times pointed out to the people that we were satisfied that an agreement could be made with England which, even if it did not completely remit the payment of these sums to England, would at least mean an enormous reduction, say, to something like less than half the full amount. I am perfectly satisfied that the Ministers on the Front Bench have good reason to believe that that is so. So that the victory the Government talk about: that the British would surrender to this Government and agree to let the matter go before an international tribunal, which must, almost of a certainty, decide that we are legally bound to pay the annuities, would mean that we should continue to pay the sum that was previously paid. That is the victory, possibly, that they are asking us to bring about. The alternative to that is that the British would not surrender on that point: that they would refuse to surrender. This Government could negotiate, but instead they are committing themselves beforehand to accept the findings of an international court which will almost certainly be that we will have to pay the full amount.

I do not know whether the Government would actually deny that they are satisfied themselves that by negotiation an agreement could be come to with the British under which they would only have to pay less than half what they previously paid. Yet we are asked to vote money to this Government for a policy which even if it were successful would mean that our people would have to pay twice as much as they would have to pay if the Government were unsuccessful in their policy. Now every activity of the Government, as I have pointed out, is getting a greater control over the people pre-eminently through this method of taxation. It used to be thought that whatever other disadvantages there were in being a farmer, at least, one was independent. What is the position now? That the farmer who used to own his land, subject to the payment of a terminable annuity, is having new taxes imposed on him. He now has to pay this Government £2,000,000 a year in the way of land annuities. Previously he was paying back money that he owed, money which had only to be paid for a term of years, at the end of which he became absolute owner of his land. This Government, with all its arrogance and extending its functions beyond its proper sphere, is now seizing the farmer's land. The farmer only holds his land through paying what is actually a rent to the Government. We have Fianna Fáil Deputies going around assuring their henchmen, the chief appeal to whom appears to be the promise that they will get something that belongs to somebody else, that if the farmers do not run their farms exactly as this Government dictates, then the land will be taken away from them. I have already pointed out that this Government proposes that the farmer must use his land for producing wheat. The Government's own action is an admission that the production of wheat is not a paying proposition for the farmer: that the labourer is not worthy of his hire because the price to be got for the wheat would not pay him. It recognises that, and says to the farmer "You must be given money out of taxation; otherwise clearly it would not be worth your while to grow wheat." It is the same with regard to tobacco. No man in this country would grow tobacco if the Government did not assist him either by a subsidy or by exempting the tobacco from taxation. If it did not do that he would be simply wasting his time and his labour.

That is the sort of economic policy that is proposed here. Then we had the Minister for Industry and Commerce going to the Belton Street Technical Schools propounding a new theory there: that one of the troubles in this country was that people had interpreted the Bible too literally: that unless a man works neither shall he eat. He said this Government had a great policy: that the first step in their economic policy was an unemployment relief scheme. The great advantage of that scheme he said would be that it would prevent a whole lot of people from working. He indicated that, to an ever increasing degree, people must stop working. Apparently his idea is that the growth of machines not merely increases production but will eliminate man: that man is going to be wiped out by machinery. Then the Minister is going to make the country prosperous by making fewer and fewer people work; by having a constantly growing leisured class doing nothing, but merely living on the production of the few who continue to work.

One knows that the Minister for Industry and Commerce is pre-eminently an astute politician. One had thought that when he got into office he would drop the catch cries with which he set out to fool the people of this country, and that he would do all he could to save his face on that point: that he would not go out of his way to propound an even more futile and lunatic theory than he had propounded before. We are asked to give the money which is got out of the labour of the people producing in this country to run the Minister's Department, the purpose being to make us richer and richer by having fewer and fewer people working so that less will be produced, and that is an economic policy according to Lemass. As I tried to point out, if you take the general State policy, the general State policy is the totalitarian State, and as Deputy Lemass always challenges me, I shall just read this quotation:

"Hence the prudent Pontiff had already declared it unlawful for the State to exhaust the means of individuals by crushing taxes and tributes."

That is exactly what this Government proposes to do under this Bill. Its justification is that it is extending its activity from day to day so that it now says whether we are to wear one colour or another. The farmer is merely a tenant worker for the Government, dependent just the same as a civil servant is dependent, in order to maintain his family, on any little doles or bounties the Government may give. If you consider the number of people in this country who are living by grace of the Government, you have the farming community, you have the Civil Service, the Army and the police; you have the unemployed and the old-age pensioners, and the policy of the Government is that it should take possession of all the wealth of the country and that it should distribute it to support them. That, of course, is the policy of Russia where they have class distinctions. If one looks to the administration of justice in this country and the jobbery of the Government, one always finds these class distinctions. If you are one of an organisation that puts the Government into power you can take out a gun, shoot it off, and the Government will pay a man out of the taxes to see that you are not punished, whereas if you should belong to an organisation which does not, heart and soul, support the Government they will legislate to put you into prison unless you dress exactly as they decide you should dress. So the Government, extending its powers over the person in this country, at the same time prostitutes justice. So in its relations with other countries, its theory is that treaties should be broken, not thinking for a moment that the one country that should stand for the sanctity of treaties, even when in some particulars they might not be in our favour, is this country, which is not in a position to force its will on other countries by material sanctions.

The Government also proposes that our chief industry should be orientated having in mind that the British market is gone. Time and again they have gone around telling the farmers that the British market has definitely and finally gone and that nothing that we could possibly do will bring that back again. They put their argument this way: "Will they not see that the British are going to be self-supporting in future in agriculture?" Now, England is just about twice the size of this country. They have 40,000,000 of a population, which means, presumably, that an area in England equal in size to our country could feed about 25,000,000 people. At the same time we, in this country, if we produce in agriculture in the same manner as they say England is going to do, should be able to produce agricultural produce to support 25,000,000 people. If we are going to do that it means that we would have to export sufficient agricultural produce for 22,000,000 people. We never have done that and I do not think that we are ever likely to. For that reason it is not possible in England to raise agricultural produce sufficient to supply her population.

Our Government, again, turns round and says: "You see, in the old days the British had a free trade policy; now they have a tariff policy. You may rest assured that although your goods went to England in the old days without paying any tariff, although you are told that the payment of tariffs is brought about absolutely by the action of the Government in running the country into the economic war, that is all rot; it is all Opposition talk, because it is part of the British policy to have tariffs in future." I think it was in the year 1926, at the Imperial Conference, when we were negotiating with the British, the British Government said that they intended at that time to go in for a tariff policy, including the imposition of tariffs on agricultural produce. We did not protest. On the contrary, when an election came along in Britain and a new Government came in whose policy did not include tariffs, they did not write over to us to say: "You must be very delighted at the change in policy, because agricultural produce will not be subject to a tariff; the whole tariff policy comes to an end." On the contrary, the British Government voted millions of pounds for the Empire Marketing Board, which they recognised as a very inadequate substitute for what would have been possible if they had gone on with their tariff policy, including the imposition of tariffs on agricultural goods. The position in England now is exactly what they apologised to us for not making it before. They voted millions of pounds to try to make up to us for the loss implied by the change of policy at that time. Our Government now points to the present policy of the British Government, which every one of the Dominions wanted in 1926, and they say: "You must be prepared to suffer; you cannot expect to get into the British market. The fact that the British Government have embarked upon a policy of tariffs, including the imposition of tariffs on agricultural goods, puts them in a position that they were not in previously. They can stop supplies, and can arrest the marketing of our goods in Great Britain."

This Government, having gone on with that completely dishonest propaganda and having promised, if I remember aright—the Minister for Industry and Commerce will correct me—that everybody engaged in agriculture should be richer by £16 per person per annum, having made them much worse and it being no longer possible to pretend that the millenium is coming, they now say that even if things are worse it is going to continue, but that it is not humanly possible to get the British market back. It is perfectly clear to anybody who takes the trouble to think that, first of all, the British cannot support themselves on home-produced agricultural goods. Secondly, it will be observed that the other Dominions have been able to export rather more into the British market during the time that we have been precluded from sending our goods in. It will be observed too, that now, as was not the case before, the British are in a position to give our goods more favoured treatment as against goods coming from non-Commonwealth countries. If one went through all the items it would be perfectly clear to everybody, not blinded by Fianna Fáil prejudice, that in a general way the less money this Government is given the better, because they use money for the detriment of the people and not for their good.

I only propose, in connection with this Bill, to deal with the general State position, the totalitarian State. In spite of the high-sounding speeches of President de Valera—we know that whenever he makes a high-sounding, high-principled speech we can be prepared for something rather drastic in the way of tyranny from him—I think it an appalling situation that you have an economic policy in which the labourer knows after he has done his day's work, his week's work, or his year's work, that his work has not been capable of producing sufficient wealth to support himself and his family, that he is not dependent on his labour or the produce of his labour but that he is dependent on the dole he is going to get from the Government. Whether he be a manufacturer taking advantage of the tariffs; whether he be an employee working inside a factory, which exists and continues to exist only by virtue of having the power to impose taxation on the people; or whether he be a farmer who is not now a peasant proprietor having to pay a debt which would vanish at the end of a period of years, but who is now a tenant of the Government carrying on at the will of the Government—and whenever that Government takes the whim that his work must take this form or that form, the Government have him in their power and will be able to deal with him—he is in an equally bad position.

That unfortunate man who previously paid £4,000,000 annuities is now quite clearly paying no less than £5,500,000 a year. So far as I can judge, and I should be glad to hear that I am wrong, whereas previously in paying £4,000,000 a year he was actually reducing his debt by a sum of practically £700,000 a year, now in paying £5,500,000 instead of paying £4,000,000 he is not paying off that £700,000 a year, as in the present state of this country the farmer must continue indefinitely to pay almost half as much again as he previously paid for his land, being no longer owner of his land, not paying off the debt he previously contracted, and being able to carry on only at the will of the Government. I know the Government's mind is entirely working on the lines of constantly increasing the Government's activity, to the detriment of the freedom of the person and of the natural human initiative operating in this country. If that goes on long enough—unfortunately it cannot go on very long, because the present policy of the Government means a very strict time limit before we have arrived at bankruptcy and the disorder inevitably following on that—but if the Government were actually able to continue indefinitely, it would really mean that we would all suffer from that demoralisation which inevitably comes to the unemployed man who is dependent on doles, because it means that the Government takes possession of whatever people are producing in this country, and then as an act of grace gives to one or another such share of the results of that production as it in its goodwill fancies.

I think the whole line of the Government, apart from the material bankruptcy that it is leading us to, is leading to the moral bankruptcy of our people, and to a disimprovement in the whole character and morale of our people. I think this constant and appalling increase in taxation is not really a lawful act of this Government, but an act quite contrary to natural justice; an act which is merely an act of expropriation of the possessions of anybody who, in previous good times, may through thrift have accumulated money or goods, or cattle or land. This Government now proposes in effect, not honestly and not directly, but clearly in ultimate effect, to expropriate those people of their goods. Consequently, I think that everybody should try to put a stop to this career the Government is embarking on. This constant increasing of taxation is something which cries out loud for remedy. We know perfectly well that with all the fine talk of the Minister for Industry and Commerce about those factories he has started, the unemployment figures are constantly growing, and must inevitably grow until this country goes out of production.

The Lord offered to spare the sinful cities if they produced five just men, and Deputy Moore offered to forgive the Cumann na nGaedheal Party if in the course of this debate they produced one constructive idea. My inclination is to be even more generous with them than Deputy Moore. I will forgive them if they produce one clear idea. I have listened to the whole dreary debate, and in not one single speech was expression given to one clear idea, not even in the totalitarian speech of Deputy Fitzgerald. Deputy Mulcahy, when challenged to give expression to one constructive idea, said the only idea he had was that the Government should go out of office. Deputies opposite have misread those figures so as to bring themselves to believe that they point to an increase in taxation. Assuming for the moment that their reading of the figures is correct, although it is obviously incorrect, I want them to tell us clearly and precisely what they want done about it. They are supposed to be a responsible Opposition Party. They include amongst their number men who were Ministers of this State for ten years. Surely, after some cogitation and labour, they might produce one constructive suggestion as to how the possibility of increased taxation might be avoided. What do they want reduced?

Inefficiency.

Deputy Belton has said that he wants inefficiency reduced. That records another point of agreement between Deputy Belton and members of the Fianna Fáil Party. If he keeps on asking for things of that kind, he will soon be unable to resist the temptation to come back to the fold. There is set out upon that White Paper the estimated expenditure under various headings. Deputies who want to see the total of those Estimates reduced must indicate where savings are to be made. What do they want to save on? The total excess between the figure for the coming year and the figure for last year is, as I pointed out yesterday, roughly £1,800,000; an excess which is more than accounted for by the difference in the figures in respect of the Local Loans Fund. The estimated total of the advances to be made from the Local Loans Fund in this year is £4,200,000, as against £2,150,000 last year, a difference of £2,050,000. That difference accounts for much more than the total excess about which all the Deputies are agitating themselves. As they are well aware—or, at least, as some of them are aware—advances from the Local Loans Fund are made to local authorities upon a repayment basis, interest being chargeable upon the advances until repayment is completed.

On the basis of those figures, if there were no other factor in the situation, no other charges to be met, and no additions to be made to that total, Deputies could be rubbing their hands in anticipation of a reduction of taxation in the coming Budget. They do not understand the figures, and that is why they have been speaking so much about them. If they had made the slightest effort to examine the figures and understand them, if they had done more in relation to the whole publication than look at the totals, they would have come in here and made speeches which would have suited their political policy much better by assuming that reductions in taxation were coming, and arousing public anticipations concerning them. As it is, the public must be pleasantly surprised no matter what happens in the Budget, because Deputies opposite have painted so dire a picture and pointed out such an appalling prospect that even the worst things which the Minister for Finance could conceive will appear to be trivial, in comparison with the fears which the Deputies opposite are arousing in the taxpayers' minds. That is bad politics. It is quite clear from the speeches of the Deputies opposite in the course of this discussion that they have not yet discovered why they lost the election in 1932. They must have in their Party headquarters a staff of clerks engaged on the task of conducting an inquiry into the reason for their defeat. They go back over all the advertisements published by the Fianna Fáil Party, over all the speeches made by members of the Fianna Fáil Party, and examine into every detailed utterance that was made, every idle word that every member of Fianna Fáil ever spoke——

You have said it!

——in order to find the reason for their defeat. They even traced Deputy Moore as far as Mullinalachta in 1929, and we have an ex-Minister, a Front Bench member of the Opposition, coming in here with his Press cuttings bearing on Deputy Moore's speech at Mullinalachta in 1929——

To wallop poor Deputy Moore!

——to explain why his Party lost the election in 1932. The only answer I have to make to all that is, that not merely did they lose the election in 1932, but they lost another in 1933, and they are going to lose another in 1937. They have not yet found out why they lost, and they will not find out so long as they follow their present channels of investigation. They will want to look at themselves and within themselves to find out the real reason for their failure. It is quite true that I and other members of Fianna Fáil said frequently, prior to 1932, in this House and out of it, that on the basis of the Estimates for Supply Services prepared by our predecessors, savings amounting to £2,000,000 were possible. They were possible, and on the basis of those Estimates for the same services very nearly £2,000,000 have been saved. If Deputies opposite will only examine the figures in detail, if they will only try to exert themselves for a few hours and do their duty as an Opposition, they will find out that that is true. I am quite prepared to admit that the full £2,000,000 has not been secured, and it has not been secured because Deputies opposite fought so desperately to prevent economies being effected that the Government plans were in part nullified.

The Deputies opposite do not want economies. That is their public policy. When the Government introduced here a Public Services (Temporary Economies) Bill, not merely did they oppose it but they obstructed it. They produced, I think, 250 frivolous amendments for the Committee Stage and they continued the debate on these amendments over two weeks, in a vain attempt to prevent the Bill going through. They are adopting precisely the same tactics in relation to another economy measure which is now before the Dáil. They do not want economies and it is sheer humbug on their part to pretend to criticise the Government for not effecting all the economies we believe to be possible, when we cannot get the co-operation of the Opposition in the achievement of even much smaller economies than were originally spoken of. Economies have been achieved despite the Opposition and economies will be achieved wherever the opportunity offers, but in so far as there has been an increase in the Estimate for Supply Services, it is due to the fact that new services have been created. I urge Deputies opposite to tell us if they want those services stopped and tell us clearly if they want those services stopped, and not to give us the type of speech we have just heard from Deputy Fitzgerald which one might understand if one got it in print and read it five times every day for a week. We want to be told, in plain language that the ordinary man can understand, which of the new services set out in this official publication they want to abolish and which of these services they will abolish, if, by any misfortune, they should ever become the Government of this country again.

There is an item of £4,200,000 in the Local Loans Fund for housing. Do they want to stop housing? If we stopped housing, we could effect a saving in the Estimates for this year that would be greater than all the saving that was ever accomplished in any other three years put together. That is the biggest single item upon that list. A sum of £4,200,000 will be advanced from the Local Loans Fund mainly to finance housing activities and to the extent that it does not go into housing activities, it is going to finance public health schemes, sewerage and water works, throughout the country— schemes that are necessary in the public interest in many towns.

And within the country's capacity.

It is quite within the country's capacity to provide the money for that purpose.

That is the trouble.

There is an increase in the Estimate for old age pensions. We know the policy of Deputies opposite on that question; they do not need to tell us. When they were a Government, they sought economy by reducing the amount of the old age pensions. They did not offer to reduce their own salaries; they did not seek for savings in the ranks of the civil servants; they did not seek for savings through the elimination of waste. They sought and found them by reducing the amount paid to the old and destitute poor. We have reversed that. A Bill was introduced here in 1932 to amend and improve the Old Age Pensions Acts, which resulted in that increase. Do Deputies want to stop it? Mind you, I think that we could possibly contemplate some revision of that measure and the opportunity of doing so will arise when the unemployment assistance scheme is in full operation; but its main principles are quite sound, and although improvements upon it could be effected which might result in some saving without occasioning hardship, nevertheless, on the whole, this House was quite justified in passing it. If a Cumann na nGaedheal or Fine Gael or Blue Shirt Government comes into office in this country by any means, fair or foul, are we to understand from them that one of their first acts will be to repeal that Bill and effect savings in consequence?

Is it in order for the Minister to suggest that the official Opposition will come into office by fair means or foul?

Have the official Opposition not been suggesting all day that this Government got into office by foul means?

Is it in order, Sir? The implication is quite clear.

I take it that it is a political reference.

Does the Minister admit that?

Of course, it is.

Carry on, then.

And if they ever do get into office, it will be by such means.

It is the way everybody gets in, apparently.

They never will.

The next substantial item showing an increase is the provision which has to be made this year in consequence of the passage of the Unemployment Assistance Act. Will Deputies opposite repeal that if they get the chance? If they do these three things—repeal the Fianna Fáil Housing Act, repeal the Fianna Fáil Old Age Pension Act and repeal the Fianna Fáil Unemployment Assistance Act— they will save £6,000,000, or at least, they will reduce the total of the Estimates by that amount. No wise person would call it economy but they will reduce the total of the Estimates by that amount. Are they going to do it? Can we get any reply to that question in the course of this debate? The people of this country, to whom the Deputies opposite are making speeches every Sunday at the cross roads, are entitled to be informed of these things and not of the abstract thoughts that wander occasionally into the mind of Deputy Fitzgerald. Let us finish, once and for all, this reference back to the Fianna Fáil election advertisements.

It is very distasteful.

We have not achieved these economies. We told the people before the election in 1932 that on the basis of the services then maintained, these economies were possible. We achieved certain economies but not them all and we found ourselves, at the end of 1932, in a position different from what we had contemplated, in consequence of the development of the dispute with Great Britain and the attitude of the Opposition Party, and we went back to the people and, in January of 1933, with a full knowledge of the fact that it was not possible for us to carry out that part of our policy, with a full knowledge of the fact that in respect of other parts of our policy modifications were being forced upon us, the people sent us back here with an increased majority.

To settle the economic war.

We came back, and that is the main thing. Deputies opposite were repudiated despite the efforts they made to filch the Fianna Fáil policy and masquerade with it as their own. We are now in office following an election in which the people clearly understood that the new situation arising out of the financial dispute with Great Britain was going to necessitate increased expenditure and that, in fact, such increased expenditure was going to be sound national policy under all the circumstances.

Let us consider what Deputies mean when they talk about the burden of taxation. This country could not afford to waste £5,000,000. This country could not afford to pay out £5,000,000 for which it got no return. If the total amount that we raised in taxation next year were only £5,000,000 it would be too great a burden for our people if all that money were wasted. This country could afford to spend a much larger sum than we contemplate taking if it gets full value for it. In 1929 and 1931 there was a burden of taxation that was too heavy for our people, because too much of the total revenue secured was being exported without benefit to the country and too much was going in waste.

Is it not going still?

No. The country is getting value for every penny of it now, and 80 per cent. of the total amount raised in revenue goes back to the people in some form or another— whether in the form of unemployment assistance or housing grants, agricultural subsidies or old age pensions, or in some other way which helps to constitute the incomes of large numbers of our people. In so far as that is happening it is merely a re-distribution of the national income, so that those with too much are being asked to part with some in order to help out those with too little. That is not a burden. Taxation only constitutes a burden when the revenue is wasted, and I submit that any impartial critic, looking through the Estimates, examining them in detail, and comparing them with the Estimates of our predecessors, will be forced to agree that there is very little wastage, if any, as compared with that which was experienced previously. Certain wastage, no doubt, there must be, where large sums are being dealt with; but taking the total amount raised and the total amount that goes back to the people, the wastage is very inconsiderable indeed in relation to the wastage calculated upon the same basis in any year of the previous regime.

There was a suggestion here, however, that the country would be better off if we got back to the conditions prevailing under the Cumann na nGaedheal Government. That is a theory worth examining. If there is any illusion in the minds of anybody concerning a matter of that kind, it is just as well to dispel it. Let us clear away some of the fog that has been created by Deputies during this discussion, and let us get that particular contention out clearly so that we can have a look at it. If the same legal and financial provisions operated now as operated on the day upon which Fianna Fáil came into office, the price of butter would be lower; the price of oats would be lower; the price of bacon would be lower; the price of milk would be lower; the price of sheep would not be changed; the price of cattle might have been a trifle higher, but that is open to question.

Can you give any proof for what you are saying?

Certainly. During the period of office of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government the price of agricultural produce was determined by the price in the British market. Is not that so?

It is determined by it now, less the price of the tariff.

The price of butter would be lower. Does the Deputy dispute that? The price the farmer is getting for it now is higher.

Because of the subsidy.

The price of bacon would be lower. During the last year of the Cosgrave régime £1,200,000 worth of foreign bacon came into this country.

Who put the tariff on it?

There was a tariff, but it was a farcical tariff.

What was the net effect of the tariff on bacon? Was it not prohibitive?

I am told that the tariff on bacon was prohibitive. It is just as well to get that matter cleared up so that Deputies cannot make the same contention again. Bacon imports in 1929 were valued at £1,600,000. Bacon imports in 1931, the last year in which Deputy Cosgrave was President, were valued at £1,229,000.

When was the tariff put on?

That is the value of the bacon imports during the last year that Deputy Cosgrave was President.

When was the tariff put on?

By the Fianna Fáil Government in its first year of office—in July of 1932. The Deputy is wrong, as usual.

A tariff was put on by the previous Administration.

A tariff which was farcical.

When was it put on?

The tariff put on by the previous Administration was ineffective, and it was designed to be ineffective. It was designed merely to yield revenue and not to protect the industry.

What was the net effect on the pig industry?

The effect has been that there is a 50 per cent. increase in pig prices since.

What was the effect on pig production?

At the present time pig production is less than required.

And our export trade was lost.

Nonsense. It is going up. Has the Deputy read the figures which are sent to him by the Department free of charge?

I have read them.

I want to get back to the original point. What would be the position here if in every way conditions were the same as they were at the time when Cumann na nGaedheal went out of office? The price of butter and the price of bacon would be less and there would be still £1,200,000 worth of bacon coming in. The price of wool would be less. The price of sheep would be no higher. The price of barley would be less. The price of wheat would be less. The price of cattle, as I said, might be somewhat higher, but that is very doubtful.

Will the Minister explain, if cattle would be higher in price, how feeding-stuffs would be lower?

The price of cattle might be higher, but the doubt arises from the fact that since 1932 the British have adopted a cattle quota, and they have not adopted that for our benefit alone. They are applying it ruthlessly against other countries, and they are applying it no more ruthlessly against them than they are applying it against ourselves. It is impossible to estimate accurately what the effect of that quota would be upon cattle prices independent of tariffs. Let us assume for a moment that the removal of the special duties upon Irish cattle would have resulted in some increase in price. I again, however, want to express my doubt, because the surplus of fat cattle not exportable would be just the same and would, in consequence, sell at no higher price than it is selling at the present time, so that the increase that might have resulted in cattle prices would be very slight indeed. The farmers would be paying £5,000,000 a year to England.

They would be paying £3,000,000.

The farmers would be paying £3,000,000 and the rest of us over £2,000,000.

The farmers are paying £5,000,000 at present.

They are not paying anything of the sort.

Who is paying the duties?

The British consumer.

Economics up to date.

I want any practical farmer, not a member of Cumann na nGaedheal, but somebody with intelligence, just to examine those facts and ask himself whether he would be prepared in cold blood to substitute existing conditions, bad as they are, for the conditions that might have existed if Cumann na nGaedheal had not been cleared out of office in time. What are Cumann na nGaedheal going to do if they get back into office? Are they going to adopt their declared policy in relation to butter? They voted against the Price Stabilisation Act here. Was that vote a declaration of their policy? Are we to take it from that that if they come back into office that Act is going to be repealed with the Housing Act, with the Unemployment Assistance Act and with the Old Age Pensions Act? We must take it unless we have a clear declaration to the contrary. If they come back into office, are they taking the tariff off bacon and going to provide that market, worth over £1,000,000 per year, again for the American and Canadian exporters to the detriment of our own pig producers?

I am not taking Deputy Belton as speaking for the Party in that matter. I want that statement confirmed by each one of the ten leaders.

I am able to speak on that matter.

Are they going to abolish the scheme for the admixture of native cereals with imported grain for feeding stuffs?

Is the Deputy speaking the Party policy in that matter or only his own? Let him summon a meeting of the grand high council and see if he can get a unanimous declaration in that matter.

There is a unanimous declaration of the feeders on that.

The Cumann na nGaedheal Party may have abandoned all hope of getting support in the counties where the grain is grown, but I should like them to consider the consequences of a declaration to that effect before they make it. We have some idea of what Deputy Mulcahy meant when he said that the only constructive idea he had was that the Government should get out of office, presumably to allow his Party to get in again. It is just as well for Deputies, including the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, and their supporters outside the House, to understand what that change is going to mean—the repeal of the Housing Act and the cessation of housing activities; the repeal of the Unemployment Assistance Act; the repeal of the Old Age Pensions Act; the repeal of the Butter (Price Stabilisation) Act; the repeal of the Cereals Act; the repeal of the protective duties that have benefited the pig producers; the repeal, presumably, of other measures which are equally beneficial to the people, which Cumann na nGaedheal opposed for no other reason except that they did not think of them themselves when in office. That is their policy. That is what they are offering to the country. It is upon a programme of that kind that they have the audacity to think they would even get at another election half the seats they got at the last.

We have had this question of the economic position of the country discussed so often that I am not going to go over it again. I merely repeat what I said before, that there are more people in employment in the Free State to-day than ever there were. The revenue to the Unemployment Insurance Fund from the sale of stamps is higher than at any time since the Free State was established. The number of unemployment insurance books exchanged at the end of the last insurance year was higher than at any time since the Free State was established. The imports into this country of the goods, the consumption of which indicates a rise in the standard of living, were higher last year than the previous year. We brought in more tea, we brought in more sugar, we brought in more tobacco, we brought in more wine, we brought in more motor cars, we brought in more wireless sets, we brought in more clocks, and we brought in more watches.

And we sent out less milk.

The increase in the imports of those goods which we do not make ourselves, and most of which are luxury products, is an indication that conditions here, if not as good as we would like to see them, are improving. As Deputies are aware, the total of the bank clearances is generally accepted by economists as the index of commercial activity and the total was higher than in any year since 1924—£269,173,000 as against £267,348,000 in 1932, and £249,980,000 in 1931.

What years are you quoting?

1933, 1932, 1931. In 1933 they were £269,173,000.

My figures are £267,120,000 from the journal quoted by the Minister for Finance.

I am giving official figures: 1932, £267,348,000.

My figures are £273,057,000.

They are wrong. 1931, £249,980,000. The value of the bank notes in circulation in mid-December, 1933, was higher than at any time since Free State bank notes were issued.

What is it to-day?

To-day, it is lower than it was in mid-December.

It is lower than ever it was for the last three years.

Nonsense. The bank note figures fluctuate from week to week. The figure in mid-December, in anticipation of the Christmas trade, is the only figure which can be quoted with any degree of surety as to the relationship with the figure on a similar date in previous years.

I am giving average figures for the years 1931 and 1933, and there has been a drop in 1933 of £200,000. Does the Minister contradict that?

I have not got the figures here.

May I give another figure?

No, it is probably wrong. Before I leave this general question of the economic position of the country I should like to say a few words about the fantastic theories expressed a few minutes ago by Deputy Fitzgerald. Mind you it is only when we hear Deputy Fitzgerald and Deputy Mulcahy and others like them speaking in these debates that we realise how they succeeded in bringing this country into the hopeless plight in which they left it in 1932. The appalling ignorance of the elements of political economy which they have displayed in the course of these speeches is the only explanation of their extraordinary incompetence as a Government.

The arguments put forward by Deputy Fitzgerald would not be advanced by a first year student of political economy in any university in the world. Yet that Deputy and Deputy Mulcahy were for ten years here responsible for directing the economic affairs of this country and its political destiny. Is it any wonder they failed? The Deputy makes the extraordinary contention that the imposition of tariffs is in some way a farming out of taxation. He has not even attempted to get the theory of protection right, much less to examine the actual results of the various tariffs that have been imposed. Is it a farming out of taxation to impose a tariff on imports of woollen cloth? This country is able to export woollen cloth into protected markets and sell because of its quality? The latest figures of exports show a substantial increase in the exports of woollen cloth since we imposed a duty on that item and gave the industry the security of the home market on which to build up an export trade. We put a duty on linen cloth, and in the matter of linen cloth exports we have to-day the same result—an increase of exports. Right through every other branch of industry the same thing has been shown.

I do not know what the Deputy is talking about.

There are four wireless stations in the country—Athlone, Dublin, Cork and Deputy Dillon. If Deputy Morrissey wants to be recognised as the fifth he will have to send in his application on the usual form.

That is very clever, but perhaps the Minister will get back to the point.

The point of wireless! The duty imposed on wireless sets imported into this country was imposed by Mr. Reginald McKenna in 1915, and was inherited by the Free State when it was established.

That is very cheap. Get back to the point.

I do not know what the point is.

The Deputy does not.

If the Deputies who want to make speeches on matters of this kind will even hold a Party meeting before determining what they are going to say, and ask the members of their own Party who know what is happening in relation to the various industries it would be better for themselves and for the House. In that way, they might be able to start with a knowledge and experience of some members of their own Party, and not make statements such as Deputy Fitzgerald made here to-day. Were they to do that, I would be prepared to take them seriously. But I do not believe that there is inside the ranks of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party or, as they call themselves now, the Fine Gael organisation——

The Minister is getting mixed up.

——or amongst those in external association with it a Deputy who knows anything about industry who is not standing 100 per cent. behind the policy of the Government in relation to industry, so much so that the Leader of the Party has had to swallow his words, so much so that his latest outburst shows that he has been forced to admit, as Deputy MacDermot yesterday admitted, that the Government's policy in relation to industry was sound in every respect. It would, I think, add to the dignity of this House if members of the same Party, speaking upon the same subject, would try to use the same information and hold the same opinions. It is rather peculiar that we had Deputy Fitzgerald a few minutes ago indicating that the Government policy was wrong in everything, and that their whole programme was rotten, when a few minutes earlier we had Deputy McGovern congratulating them on their milk policy, and previous to that, we had Deputy MacDermot congratulating as, as he did yesterday, on our industrial policy. The fact is that each Deputy supports the Government on matters that affect himself and condemns them on other matters, but between them there are some of the Opposition Deputies prepared to support the Government in every part of their policy.

I listened with considerable astonishment to Deputy Fitzgerald speaking of the land annuities and appearing to take it as fundamental that might was right; that any country which was strong enough to break treaties; or any other country that was strong enough to seize the property of others, was entitled to do it; that countries too weak to enforce their will upon others were to put up with what they were able to get. That is the sound national policy that Deputy Fitzgerald and his Party are prepared to advocate for this country—"take what you can if you are strong enough and if you are not strong enough put up with what you get." It is a good job that in all Irish history there were considerable numbers of people who had a very different outlook to that and it is a good job too that at the right time in the history of this country there were men found with a very different outlook from that, men some of whom I am sorry to say are now amongst the Cumann na nGaedheal Party and who have lost the dignity of their nobler boyhood.

But to come back to economics, it is indicated here that this Government had done something extraordinary in subsidising wheat. The Government embarked upon a wheat scheme and they have subsidised wheat. One fact I will bring to the notice of Deputies here and that is that the Canadian Government are subsidising wheat production. Deputy Hogan used to talk about the impossibility of growing wheat here in competition with Canada. The Canadian Government has subsidised wheat production.

Not production; Canada is over-producing wheat. It has subsidised the marketing of wheat. The Minister is on dangerous ground there when he talks about Canada subsidising production.

The only other matter that was raised was the Department of the Minister for Justice. The Minister for Justice is unwell and unable to be here and apparently Deputies felt they could criticise that Department and the Government because certain political crimes have gone unpunished. I do not want to treat this matter in a Party spirit. It is a matter which is of rather grave concern to all Parties here. If Deputies will cast their minds back over the years which preceded the change of Government they will remember a number of outstanding political crimes which went unpunished. That state of affairs arises out of our history.

For many generations it was regarded as a patriotic attitude to refuse to give information to the police. That attitude towards the police and towards the cause of justice and law has persisted despite the new conditions prevailing here. It is because of the prevalence of that attitude which is in its conditions a slave attitude that both our predecessors and ourselves have been unable to get in relation to a number of political crimes the necessary information which would enable the culprits to be brought to trial. I would ask Deputies opposite not to endeavour to make Party capital out of that. Any Party capital that they can make out of that attitude will be at the expense of the whole country. They should endeavour to co-operate with us so as to get a new spirit into the people, a new sense of duty into the mind of the ordinary citizen in relation to the State, so that we will at some stage come to the point at which every citizen will consider it his duty to report to the responsible authorities all the information he may have of any offences against the law. I have now finished talking in a non-Party spirit, and I will say this that General O'Duffy might give a lead. I notice that he said in a recent speech that he had information about a number of bank robberies that were about to take place. The police are still waiting for the tip as to where they are to take place, so that the robbers can be apprehended.

You have spoiled the effect of your statement.

I was taking General O'Duffy seriously. He said that he knew of a number of bank robberies that were to take place. It is his duty to pass on the information to the responsible authorities, so that the necessary protection can be afforded to the banks.

That is ironical.

With regard to that, I ask General O'Duffy to give the source of his information, and I suggest that Deputies opposite should help the Government to carry out its duties or should refuse to take from public servants information that should not be given to them.

On a point of order, does the Minister allege that public servants have improperly communicated information to members of this Party? If so, I feel that he should allege it bluntly and not by implication, because what he alleges is false. What he said was implied, without alleging it. I challenge him, as a Minister of the Executive Council, to say that any public servant has communicated information to us improperly. If the Minister says so I will deal with it.

I did not think it was denied. I assumed after Deputy Cosgrave made his statement about Parnell Square, and after Deputy Mulcahy made his statement to-day about the same thing, and about what took place in Tipperary, that they had some foundation for their statements. There was only one possible source of information.

Do you allege it?

Certainly I allege it.

It is false.

I am very interested in Deputy Dillon's statement, because we must now assume that anything said by his colleagues on matters of this kind are the products of their imagination.

Establish the tribunal and find out.

It might be worth while establishing it to find that out.

Well, if you agree will you support our action?

It is not necessary that any additional measures to those we have already should be taken to find it out.

May I remind the Minister that a situation which was already difficult and critical has been, worsened by the Ministerial pronouncement that information did come from members of the State Services. In view of that statement there is a further argument why the tribunal should be established.

There may be another explanation. I had better qualify my statement. I noticed that General O'Duffy stated that a number of the I.R.A. were joining the Blue Shirts. Perhaps that may be the cause.

It is possible.

Put it to the test and set up a commission to get all the information that is demanded.

I do not know that we are demanding any information that we have not got. I ask Deputies, if, the debate is to go on any longer, to try to meet my initial plea, that they should give some clear idea of what they want. They have been in a fog up to the present. Deputy McGovern is no more clear than Deputy Fitzgerald, and Deputy Fitzgerald is no more clear than Deputy Mulcahy. They used many words but did not convey to me any clear idea of what they wanted done, or any clear idea of what they would do if the responsibility was theirs. I want some responsible member of that Party to answer my question. That rules out Deputy Dillon. If there is any such member in that Party, with authority to speak, it will be of considerable benefit to the people and to this House if that information in some clear form is made available.

It is a pity the Minister did not read the speeches he made when in opposition.

Some gentleman associated with the French Revolution spoke of audacity. The motto of the Minister for Industry and Commerce all his life is: "Brass, brass, and still more brass." So far as brass goes to dazzle the eyes of the public and to prevent them from seeing what is scabrous in the public life of this country since he became Minister for Industry and Commerce, I do not complain. But when he continues, and attempts to slander public servants of the State, I resent it. The Minister, in the meanest possible way, sought to imply, without having the courage to make the charge, that there were certain servants in the public service of the Saorstát who were betraying their trust. From the back-benchers that kind of filth is insignificant, but from a Minister of the State it is scandalous.

It is true.

If it implies, as is alleged, that they betrayed their trust there ought to be the judicial inquiry for which we have asked to put that matter to the test before an impartial court, and to let public opinion in this country pass judgement on the verdict. The Minister to-night began with the same preposterous misrepresentation that he began with last night. He said that the total Estimates this year amount to £29,709,000 and that last year they amounted to £27,000,000. They were nothing of the kind. The Estimates last year were £22,000,900; this year they are £29,709,000, and no amount of wriggling on the part of the Minister will get away from that fact.

Obviously the Deputy does not understand the Estimates.

I understand the Estimates too well. On top of the Estimates must be put the Central Fund, and on top of that such Supplementary Estimates as the Government must bring in in the course of the year. Last year these amounted to about £5,000,000. They will not amount to so much this year. But we do not know. That will represent a total expenditure in this year of between £35,000,000 and £39,000,000. That communication is made to this House while I have in my hand one of the documents that produced the miracle of Fianna Fáil being returned to office in two succeeding general elections. You can fool them once, and I am sorry for them; you can fool them twice, and I am sorry for them again, but if you can do it the third time, then God help the dupes. Here is what they are fooled with, a delightful piece of Fianna Fáil literature. It is written more in sorrow than in anger, and is headed "They call it folly." What do they call folly? When the Fianna Fáil Party expressed horror at the huge sum that Cunmann na nGaedheal promised to spend in the government of this country—£27,000,000—they called it folly.

"When the Fianna Fáil Party proposed a reduction of £3,000,000, Cosgrave denounced the proposals as childish folly, and used the automatic majority to vote down every argument used by Republicans in favour of this reduction. The Irish people are far poorer than they were during the Great War. Yet during the Great War the British governed the whole of Ireland at a cost of £12,761,666."

The base, brutal and bloody British Saxon, according to the Ministry, governed this country for £12,761,666. Let us take the Minister's statement as representing the fact, as it was on that he based his argument. Great Britain governed this country for £12,761,000. It continues: "Everybody knows that Great Britain was not niggardly in spending Irish money."

On a point of explanation——

I am not prepared to give way. "To-day," says the leaflet, overflowing with solicitude for the agricultural community,

"the agricultural prices show that, for every £100 they made in 1911, the Irish farmers now make £131, but for every £100 of taxation in 1911 under the British, the Cosgrave Government now demands £376. When Fianna Fáil pointed out these facts in the Free State Parliament and declared that they showed the absolute necessity for a reduction in the appalling cost of government, Deputy Cosgrave and his automatic majority called it childish and voted down the proposal even for a reduction of £3,000,000."

A paltry £3,000,000.

"The Cumann na nGaedheal candidate stands for this impudent refusal to reduce taxation nearer the pockets of the people. He asks the people to vote for more impoverishment still.

Vote for the Fianna Fáil candidate and taxes the people can bear."

£27,000,000 and now a minimum of £35,000,000, with a possible £39,000,000. The trade then was represented as being only £30 per cent. higher than in 1911. It is now substantially lower than it was in 1911. Yet, the Minister for Industry and Commerce has the incomparable audacity to get up in this House and defend those extraordinary proposals. In the usual childish Fianna Fáil way, he does not attempt to defend the items responsible for this inflated taxation. What he says is: "If you have anything to suggest, suggest it. We are waiting for you to say something."

I was not thinking of you.

The Minister, in his endeavour to be facetious, desires to escape the unpleasant facts. But it will not work. I shall tell him what he could reduce and reduce very conveniently in these Estimates. He could reduce the Secret Service Vote. He could reduce the £25,000 to a figure no greater than his predecessors ever asked. In their last year in office, his predecessors spent £2,700 on the Secret Service. This year, Fianna Fáil—the Government of peace, prosperity, love and Christian charity—requires £25,000 to pay their spies. The Minister could reduce the Estimate of his own Department. The cost of his own Department is up by £100,000.

For one purpose.

That is the Department which has the handling of the licensing provisions of the statutes passed through the Oireachtas. That is the Department that distributes flour licences in County Donegal.

The Department of Finance.

That is the Department which is responsible for imposing a tariff on egg boxes.

The Department of Finance.

Twelve months ago, the Minister for Industry and Commerce stood up here to sponsor a tariff on egg boxes. I warned the Minister then that if he did that he would do an additional grievous injury to an important branch of the agricultural industry. He did it in his usual ignorant way and, as a result of that tariff, thousands of Irish eggs were a few weeks ago taken out of the cold stores in Glasgow and destroyed by the public health authority, as unfit for human consumption. Bear in mind that these eggs——

On this Bill, specific tariffs may not be discussed nor can the administration of particular tariffs be discussed.

I should like to suggest to the Deputy that he should consider——

Is this a point of order? I object to being interrupted by the Minister.

He should consider whether statements of that kind are going to help the country's trade in eggs. Wild statements of that kind should not be made.

The Minister had plenty of time to make his speech. This very question, I should like to point out respectfully, was raised on this Vote before, and representations were made in respect of it. I merely desire to raise the same matter that was raised on the Vote before in order to draw the attention of the House to the Minister's reaction to the representation.

The House is considering not a Vote, but a Bill. The Vote on Account was debated yesterday. When the Estimates for the Departments come up for consideration, details may be discussed. That will be a more appropriate time.

I think I should be allowed to conclude, briefly, in view of the attempt of the Minister for Industry and Commerce to misrepresent me.

When the Chair rules that a matter is not to be discussed, that ends it.

The Minister said that with the deliberate intention of ensuring that you would take a particular view. He knows it is not true, and I hope you will permit me to refute it. The quality of the eggs, as shipped, was the finest quality going into the Glasgow market——

The Deputy is not in order in suggesting that the Minister acted on the presumption of the Chair ruling in a certain way.

I should be long sorry to reflect on the Chair in any way, but I would have no hesitation whatever in reflecting on the Minister. I know very well what the Minister's intention was.

It is a reflection on the Glasgow cold storage.

It is a reflection on the competence of the Ministers on the Front Bench. A substantial economy could be made in that Department. As regards the Army, we all remember that, year after year, Fianna Fáil challenged the then Government to reduce the Army Estimate. This year, we have the Army Estimate raised by £250,000 and that for the purpose of putting arms into the hands of every young man in the country. That is a reduction that might well be made. There could be a reduction of £2,250,000 in the bounties if the Government had the courage to go and settle the economic war that they were responsible for precipitating. Their own President has said in public that he fired the first shot in that war. He has stated in public that he thanks God the British market has gone. And he has an estimate for £2,250,000 to-day in order to buy his way back into the market that, he thanks God, he threw away. That is an economy that might be made. If that economy were made and if you afforded an opportunity to our people to earn their living without subsidies, grants, doles or anything else, there would be a lot more to be said in defence of the swollen Estimates now before us.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce wants to know whether we would be prepared to advocate the repeal of that part of the Cereals Act which provides for the Indian meal admixture scheme. I should be prepared to vote for the repeal of the whole Cereals Produce Act because they have gone about the promotion of cereal production in the most inefficient, extravagant, and ineffective way they possibly could have gone about it. So far as flour production under the Cereals Act is concerned, it is costing the country little short of £750,000 per annum. The employment afforded by it cannot exceed 300 men in the mills of this country. I say that the Indian meal admixture scheme is costing the farmers of this country £2 a ton on their feeding stuffs. I have not computed the average annual cost of that to the whole country, but it must be a break and a burden for pig producers, fowl producers, egg producers and cattle raisers in this country of an appalling nature. Neither the Minister for Industry and Commerce, nor the Minister for Finance, knows the first thing about the interests which, in their ignorance, they are injuring and destroying in this country. We are told we are to have a grand experiment now for the improvement of Irish manufacture in the promotion of the manufacture in this country of industrial alcohol. That is held out to the unfortunate people driven to despair by the misery inflicted upon them by this Government. Anxious to cling to any straw, they turn to the vague promises of the Ministry to set up an alcoholic industry in this country. They know, and we know, that the price of that is about 3/- per gallon and that the product for which it is substituted can be bought on the Dublin quays at 4d. per gallon. And we are told this is a necessary means of relieving the industrial problem in this country.

Nothing, to my mind, is more revolting than the dragging of the unemployed into discussions, and using them in a kind of game of battledore and shuttlecock in this House. I have not the slightest doubt that the Minister for Industry and Commerce is just as anxious as I am to get the unemployed men of this country back to work. We never impugned his honesty on that score. I am sure there is not a Deputy in this House who does not share that anxiety. But it is more than patience can bear when we see men losing their jobs—many of them losing permanent jobs that they held for years—and then to be told by the Minister for Industry and Commerce that the unemployment problem was never better than it is to-day. I am not going to dwell upon that. All I say is ask the Leader of the Labour Party, and ask the members of the Labour Party, to get up in public and state their views as to the conditions of unemployment in this country. In every speech they make they declare that the present situation is bad, and they point out to the Government the enormous and the growing problem confronting us. Let us make no capital out of that. For goodness' sake, let Ministers join with us in the face of this great and growing problem, in agreeing that what we have done so far does not seem to have struck at the root of the problem and that we must try to do something more. We have our view, and that is that unless you can restore the general prosperity of the country unemployment is bound to rise, and that, struggle as you may, if you destroy the sources of your main industry, factories must close and the rate of unemployment must rise. You must restore prosperity to the consuming public and unless you secure that everything else you do is going to go by the board.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce talked about making economies and said that when the Government tried to make them we obstructed them. All last week, he said, the Local Services (Temporary Economies) Bill was held up by the Party opposite. Has he forgotten what the Fianna Fáil promises were? Has he forgotten that what induced the Labour Party to call upon the people to return the Fianna Fáil Party to power was the promise that they would reduce taxation by two millions per year, without interfering with anybody's salary and without reducing the public and social services? The only contribution the Government has made to that promise is to reduce salaries. In present circumstances, I am one of those who think that something could be said for reducing salaries if you have no other means of effecting economies, but what taxes one's patience is to see men's salaries cut while dozens of other officials are appointed to swallow up the economies you are making at the expense of your own workers. It is the same principle that the labour sweater has advocated ever since the wheels of machinery turned in Manchester. If you want more work cut down the employees' wages and hire a few more men. That is the rottenest form of economy that could be embarked upon. Unless you start out with the principle that you are giving every man a fair day's wage, and insisting upon every man giving you a fair day's work, and even expecting him to lend a hand, and to give a little extra effort to help you out in time of stress you are on wrong lines. If you reduce staffs to the lowest possible level consistent with efficiency and that you are satisfied every man is giving you the best and that you are still in difficulty, then I say that it is just to go to the employee and say, "you must share these difficult times with me. I, as employer, will make my contribution to the deficiency and I ask you to make yours." But before doing that you should make sure you have made every form of economy that efficiency and good directorship can secure. Unless you have done that you are making for inefficiency in the public services and endangering the Departments of State. The Minister gets up and says, "do you want us to build houses?" Of course, everyone wants the Government to build houses. No one is a more strenuous advocate of housing than I am. I was a strenuous advocate of the building of houses before the Minister for Industry and Commerce began to talk about it. We could spend all this money on social services if the financial stability of the country was not being destroyed. If there was any light on the horizon, or any prospect of revival, a burden of that kind could be borne comparatively easily. It is a legitimate thing to pledge the future prosperity of the country in order to redress the present crying evil. But the whole problem is that, so far as any rational man can see, there is no future except disaster. We are squandering our capital on this infernal economic war. We are also pouring it out all over the country when we should be applying it to social services, to solving the housing problem and things of that kind. But we are trying to burn the candle at both ends. At the same time that we are spending huge sums on social services of this kind we are wiping out the sources of our income in the agricultural industry. That is why this note of warning is struck. That is the whole case put from these benches. Our trade is dwindling, our prosperity is vanishing and at the same time the Estimates for the Government services are going up. Improvement, says the Minister for Industry and Commerce, can be made and will be made in the old age pension system. That is a very interesting declaration. What is the nature of this improvement to be? I think every Deputy in the Fianna Fáil Party ought to pay a call to the Minister for Industry and Commerce and ask him what the improvements in the old age pensions legislation are going to be. Is it going to be tightened up, or what is it? I do not know of any Act for which the Fianna Fáil Government is responsible that is more deserving of commendation than the Act by which they restored the pensions to the old age pensioners, and I freely give them credit for that.

Will Deputies, asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce, repeal the Unemployment Assistance Act when they come into office? They will not, and if the Minister would throw back his mind a few months he would remember that the first time the principle of that Act was accepted in this House it was on a motion put down by Deputy Morrissey for discussion, calling on the Government to provide work or maintenance for the unemployed. I well remember President de Valera getting up and saying at the conclusion of a long debate "Very well, we are accepting the principle of that motion and when we call on you to implement it we hope you will stand by us in doing so." We did stand by the Government in doing so. The motion was put down and spoken to, and we meant what we said, so that the Unemployment Assistance Act was the consequence of the introduction of that motion from this side of the House.

Now the Minister for Industry and Commerce is a remarkable man in the way in which he tosses things off. Sometimes he would like to forget them. Somebody said to him, when he rejoiced in the fact that he had come back to office the second time, "How did you come back?""What does it matter," said the Minister for Industry and Commerce; "we came back and that is all that matters." That is the doctrine of Fianna Fáil. Out on the hustings, promise the people anything: promise the sun, moon and stars, but get back. Do not fail to promise anything that may be necessary to get us back; promise them a reduction in taxation, an increase in social services, a settlement of the economic war, the de-rating of agricultural land, an increase in the Gaeltacht services: promise them, in fact, anything you like, it does not matter, we will endorse any promises you make until the election is over, and then we will all try to forget. If the people will not forget, we will put up the Minister for Education to explain to them that when you are fighting an election you have to make promises that you do not mean, or we will put up Deputy Dowdall who will explain to them that promises made off election platforms are not promises but just statements.

A respectable name for a lie.

I hesitate to be quite so trenchant as my colleague, Deputy Burke, who says "A respectable name for a lie." I cannot imagine Deputy Dowdall ever telling a lie, but it is an interesting outlook on life: on the hustings, promise them anything, bearing in mind that promises made on the hustings are not promises, they are only statements. If the people do not know what Fianna Fáil statements are by this time, well then more foolish are the people.

They returned us twice.

That is the sore point.

It is difficult to have patience really with the extraordinary indifference of the Minister for Industry and Commerce to the implications of what he himself has said. He proceeded to compare the prices that were current in this country in 1931 with the prices that have been current throughout 1933 and 1934. Now, in order to do that he had to look at the trade returns for those years, and how he could do so, without visibly blushing, I do not know. I am going to read for Fianna Fáil Deputies the trade returns, month by month, since they came into office, and the trade returns relating to the year before they came into office. In the January before they came into office our exports were £2,991,000; the figure for January of this year is £1,255,000. The adverse trade balance in January, 1931, was £563 on exports of practically £3,000,000. This year there was an adverse trade balance of £1,076,000 on exports of £1,255,000. Next month the figure is £2,915,000 as against £1,356,000; next month £2,951,000 as against £1,774,000; next month £2,636,000 as against £1,447,000; next month £2,630,000 as against £1,582,000; I should say that in October 1933 the trade was £3,848,000, and last October £1,942,000. The trade of this country is progressively vanishing. The adverse trade balance is within measurable distance of being as great as our total exports now. In this year of grace, with these figures before our eyes, the highest Estimates that have ever been introduced in this House, except in one financial year at the very beginning of this State, are being presented by a Fianna Fáil Government. Is it any wonder that people are astonished at the effrontery of the present Administration? The Minister for Industry and Commerce quoted, as evidence of our increasing prosperity, our rising imports of tea, tobacco, etc. I dealt with that contention last night at some length, and I do not propose to cover that ground again. By some extraordinary whimsey the Minister seemed to hear from Deputy MacDermot an unqualified endorsement of the industrial policy of Fianna Fáil. I do not know how he heard it, nobody else heard it. Deputy MacDermot has been criticising and condemning the general policy of Fianna Fáil up and down the country during the last few years, and he has been amply confirmed in his prognostications and in his views.

When Senator Connolly arrived in the Lower Rosses with tar barrels, with sods of turf blazing on hay forks, and with Deputy Brian Brady in the midst of the throng, we were told that the Senator had come to the Rosses with salvation in one hand and a bag of gold in the other: that the bogs were going to be converted into gold mines, that the Rosses were going to flow with milk and honey, and that all that the people had to wait for was to give the Senator time to get back to Dublin until he proclaimed the millennium and sent back Deputy Brady and Deputy Hugh Doherty with their hands dripping with benevolence. They are still waiting. I wrote a letter on behalf of a poor fellow who lives in the Lower Rosses to say that several months ago he wrote to the Gaeltacht Housing Department to know would they lend him a few pounds to build a pig sty. Now that was not much. That was not an awful lot, but I got a letter to-day from the Department of Gaeltacht Housing to say that they had received my letter and that they were sorry to tell me that the Minister had a great many applications to look into and that he could not look into the question of this poor fellow's pig-sty for several months to come. Now we are told that the Government is ready to pour out money for housing to improve social conditions, but here is an unfortunate fellow in the Lower Rosses who wants to build a pig-sty and the Minister has not time to look into the question, he has so many applications to consider and he will not be able to look into it for some considerable time. In fact, he regrets to inform me that he does not know when he will have time.

The Deputy has been told that to debate an individual tariff would be out of order. How much more, therefore, would a debate on the question of one pig-sty in the Rosses be out of order?

Surely it is relevant to suggest that the Minister, having gone up there with these sods of turf, his tar barrels and Deputy Brian Brady, and having come back to Dublin and having got with his tar barrels and his sods of turf and Deputy Brian Brady what he wanted from the people of the Rosses, that he has very rapidly forgotten the people from whom he got what he has got on false pretences?

Surely the question is whether this money should be voted?

The question is whether we are providing enough money for proper purposes or too much money for wrong purposes. The Minister is well aware, having listened to his colleague, that the fullest indulgence was asked of the Chair and was graciously granted. I do not propose to go one inch further than the Minister's colleague went, and certainly I think, when I bring Senator Connolly or his successor face to face with the pig-sty from the Rosses, the people of the Rosses will fully understand what the promises that were made to them by Senator Connolly, Deputy Brady and Deputy Hugh Doherty in the light of the tar barrels and the sods of turf were worth. They were aptly described by Deputy Dowdall—just mere statements. That is what the statements were worth.

In conclusion, Sir, reference was made to the Vote for the Department of Justice. I am sorry the Attorney-General is not here. It is none of my concern to comment, nor do I intend to do, so, on any verdict of the Military Tribunal, but I do want to comment on the instruction received by counsel appearing before the Tribunal. Some men were brought before the Military Tribunal on the charge of carrying firearms and using them without a permit. I have no complaint whatever to make of men, who were associated in arms with another man who is now dead, paying any tribute they deem proper over the grave of their deceased comrade; but I have every complaint to make that men should use an occasion of that kind, which should be sacred to every man, for a flagrant breach of the law and a defiance of the duly elected Government of this country. I have every complaint to make that State counsel, when they come to prosecute these men, go into court on instructions which amount to this: that the court is invited to say, by counsel representing the Attorney-General, that a man who illegally uses a firearm, and who retains possession after he is prosecuted, is to be let go, even though he openly defies the jurisdiction of the court and defies the right of the court to try him by refusing to plead, while other men who are not charged with using a firearm, who were admittedly men of high character and law-abiding men, are prosecuted to conviction for having in their possession a firearm and are sentenced to six months in jail.

The Deputy said he had no intention of doing certain things. He is now contrasting two sentences.

I want to make this clear——

The sentences of the court cannot be debated.

I have no comment to make on the decision of the court. What I desire to comment on, without any reference to the decision arrived at yesterday by the Military Tribunal, is the speech made by counsel for the State before the Military Tribunal. I have no comment to make on the sentence of six months' imprisonment on a man for having arms illegally in his possession.

Surely this is a matter that should be raised on the Vote for Law Charges?

Surely I am entitled to raise it here.

One moment. I am addressing the Chair. I am suggesting it is a matter that would be more properly discussed on the Vote for the Department of Justice or the Vote for Law Charges.

There is a part of the Vote for Law Charges in this Bill.

The Deputy does not know what this is—the Central Fund Bill.

The matter could be more properly raised on another occasion, but the Deputy is not out of order in raising it now.

Would not that apply to every item that is covered by the Vote on Account?

This is not the Vote on Account.

This is the taking up of the Vote on Account.

The point I make is this. I do not desire to comment in any way on the verdict which condemned a certain man to prison for six months for the possession of arms, but I do desire to complain that State counsel should go into court with an instruction, when making exactly similar allegations on behalf of the State, deliberately to ask the court to take an entirely different course. It does not matter what the court subsequently did; it does not arise. The fact is that the Attorney-General instructs counsel to go in to make identical allegations against two different men and he instructs counsel to say—"Press for a conviction against A. and ask the court to acquit B." That is not justice, and the Attorney-General who gives such instructions should be ashamed of himself. I would not complain if the Attorney-General's instructions to counsel were to state the facts and make no comment, to leave the matter to the court, but I do complain that one attitude is adopted towards one body of men and another attitude is adopted towards another body. That has been done. Life is not worth living in a country where common justice is going to be withheld from the people in that way.

"Do not make an arrest until you get instructions from headquarters."

What has that to do with this?

It has to do with what happened in 1924.

We have got tired swallowing that.

There is not the least use in the Minister coming in now——

There may be some more which, possibly, the Deputy would like to swallow.

I suggest that the Minister should keep order until I have finished. He can then speak as long as he likes.

Oh, no—until 10.30 p.m.

Well, as long as he is allowed. There is no use arguing, if it is the intention of the Minister to argue, that because somebody did me an injustice in the past I am entitled to do the other fellow an injustice now. I do not for a moment accept, as I have already indicated to the Minister, his version of a lot of things that happened in the past, and he will not accept mine. There is no use in going into those things——

Why do it then?

——because we both know, when we are starting off, that neither can hope to convert the other. He has one view; with me another view obtains. Here is a question that we can discuss as two individuals in the public life of the country, and here is the Attorney-General who is responsible for it. I am particularly glad to see him here on this occasion. I say it is not dealing out even-handed justice to instruct State counsel going into court—I am repeating this, A Chinn Comhairle, because the Attorney-General has just come in—to conduct the prosecution of two different groups of men charged with an identical crime, to prosecute one to conviction and to prosecute the other with a clear request to the court to acquit, or at least to forbear from sentencing. That is not justice. That is not holding the scales of justice impartially, as the Attorney-General claimed to hold them a couple of nights ago. I do not underestimate the difficulties attendant on the duties of the Attorney-General in this State, no matter what Government he belongs to. The courts are there, and there is necessity for judicial consideration of the facts laid before them. You have two groups of men, both charged with illegal possession of arms, and you have one body of men going into court and saying: "I desire to make my respectful submission to the court, to receive its verdict, and to abide by its sentence, whatever it may be," and you instruct State counsel: "Those men should be prosecuted to conviction—not vindictively, but prosecuted to conviction." You have brought before the court another group of men, charged with having and using firearms, and they get up and say: "We will not plead," which is as much as to say: "We do not recognise the court; we do not recognise its right to try us; we do not recognise the right of the Attorney-General to arraign us." After adopting that attitude before the whole country, State counsel comes forward and as much as says: "We had to prosecute them, but we do not want to have them convicted." That is not justice. It is the worst form of injustice; it is administrative injustice; it is interference by the Executive with the courts. There is no remedy in the hands of the civilians of the State against that kind of thing. If it develops in this country then God help everyone who had the misfortune to be born an Irishman.

If conditions are going to arise in this country in which the Attorney-General will adopt different attitudes towards different men, simply because some of them belong to one political organisation and others belong to another, justice and decency in the administration of the law will have ceased in this country. He has an enormous responsibility on his shoulders. On him rests the responsibility for preserving a tradition that has been well maintained in this country for the last ten years—even justice for every citizen. No one will be more culpable than he if that tradition is destroyed. He is the head of the Irish Bar. The traditions of the Bar and the traditions of the profession are in his hands. He got them clean and decent, and he is well able to maintain them if he wants to. In so far as he gave his instructions to counsel in the case before the Military Tribunal yesterday I cannot see how he can reconcile it with his sense of duty. That reference was made—and it was properly made—on the Vote in respect of the Department of Justice. There remains the last matter which I referred to as a possible source of economy, and that is the Secret Service Vote. I should like to hear the Minister for Finance——

That is four times you have referred to that.

Well, I am very anxious to hear the Minister for Finance explain how it is that when £10,000 was sufficient for his predecessors, the greater part of which they did not spend in any year, it has become necessary for him to spend £25,000. I ask him to remember, when he is paying spies to spy on his political opponents, that they will concoct stories so long as there is money forthcoming to pay for the stories. I ask him to bear in mind that if panic and hysteria are being created in Government circles by the information which is reaching them it is largely their own fault. If they put out notices offering to buy that information they will get plenty to avail of the offer. I want to remind them that they would be much better employed in spending that money on something else. So far as we are concerned, the spies are welcome. As I said last night, if they can turn an honest penny mooching around our premises, or prying into our letters, or conducting the other laudable occupations of a paid spy, they are welcome to it, but public money could be better spent. I suggest to the Minister for Finance that before the Budget is introduced he should consider the economies under the heads I have mentioned, and I suggest to the Attorney-General that after yesterday he should steel his resolution to stand a more stern custodian over the honour of the profession of which he is the head in Ireland.

A Chinn Comhairle, while the Attorney-General is here. I should like to follow immediately in Deputy Dillon's footsteps in speaking with regard to the contrast in the type of prosecutions of those who are before the Military Tribunal belonging to two different political parties. Like him, I should like to make clear at the outset that I have no fault to find, good, bad or indifferent, with people who may differ from me politically to-day when they assemble either by way of firing a volley of shots, or by way of paying any other tribute to the memory of a man who was unquestionably a gallant soldier of this country. When I refer by way of contrast to the type of prosecution that was aimed at men from Cork, and to the type of prosecution that was aimed at men from Leix, I am dealing purely with the instructions delivered to the prosecuting counsel in each of the two types of case in which the offences were exactly the same.

We had a group of men from the South of Ireland before the Military Tribunal and the offence was, that they had arms in defiance of the existing laws of this State, and the fact, undisputed and uncontested, was not only that they had those arms but used those arms, and, in addition, that those arms are not now in the custody of the State. We had two men from Leix, neighbours and friends of my own, before the same Tribunal in the same week—men whose records as soldiers of Ireland would only be second to that of the man who died in Cork—and their offence was that they had arms. There was no suggestion, no evidence, that they had used those arms, and those arms are now in the custody of the State. A learned gentleman, instructed, I must presume, by the Attorney-General, pointed out the gravity of the offence committed by these Leix men—the gravity of holding arms, the gravity of being within reach of arms —and those men were sentenced to a heavy term of imprisonment. They knew they broke the law. They did not whine at the imprisonment. They did recognised the court and I am not complaining of the sentence. What I am pointing out is that it was quite evident that the instructions of the prosecuting counsel were to press that case and to press for a heavy penalty. I was there when the case was on. Then, we had another group, charged with the same offence of possessing rifles in defiance of the laws of this State—belonging to a different political party, it is true—and except counsel flew in the face of the instructions he got, clearly his instructions were not to press the case, not to ask for any penalty, not to demand any punishment—and no punishment was inflicted.

We heard a lot in the last week about impartiality, about holding the scales of justice equally and about there being no discrimination against political opponents and here, hot foot on all these protestations, we have in the same week, pressure for a heavy penalty for a certain offence and a demand that no punishment be inflicted for a similar offence. The Executive Council has power to remit sentences and while I am not complaining of the sentences imposed on those two Leix men, I would urge that if the Executive Council is not to be discredited for all time as the most partial administrators that ever occupied a Government front bench, and if the Attorney-General is to keep the honour and respect which has always been accorded to his office, this is a case where the Executive Council should step in and equate the penalties where the offences are equal. In those two cases, there is no punishment for one group and a long term of imprisonment for the other. I am not urging punishment for the southerners. I am urging that the same treatment should be given to the Leix men; and it is within the power of the Executive Council to step in now and equate things by remitting the sentence imposed on those Leix men.

It is a test of impartiality; it is a test of the equal pressure of the law and of a fair crack of the whip of the law, when you get two cases, the offences being exactly equal but the political labels in their coats different and different instructions issued to the prosecuting counsel. I do not think that I am exceeding what is common knowledge when I say that different instructions were given in each case to the prosecuting counsel, because, in one case, the counsel said that it was the type of case in which he had to look for a heavy punishment and in the other case, if it is properly recorded in the newspapers, the prosecuting counsel said "I am not here to press for punishment." In other words, he said clearly to the court that in spite of the breach of the law and in spite of the offence committed, he was not there, as representing the Attorney-General, to look for any punishment. Be that as it may, the one thing that I am urging in this case and the one thing that is necessary if the Government and the office of Attorney-General are to keep the respect they should get from the country, is the remission of the sentence in one case, so that when men commit the same offence, they will have equal liberty and will both be allowed to go home to look after their families and their farms. I raised that point because I thought that if I was going to deal with such a point, in fair play to the Attorney-General it should be dealt with when he was present, and I hope that when he speaks in this debate, he will give an assurance that any influence he has will be used with the Executive Council to remit the sentence on those two Leix men and to see that, for the same offence, they will enjoy the same amount of liberty or the same punishment as men who hail from County Cork.

I have often heard that figures can prove anything but all my life, I have been rather bad at figures and I am not easily convinced by figures. We have heard figures used in this debate from one side and the other to prove directly opposite points of view, but while I am not easily impressed by figures, like most other people, I am impressed by facts and whereas we may either agree or agree to differ as to the rightness of the present economic policy of this country or as to the national necessity for some particular course, I think that any Deputy on the opposite benches, who keeps his feet down on the ground, will admit the facts of the situation and that all the Couéism which the Minister for Industry and Commerce can bring into play will not "kid" the people of this country into believing that, in fact, they are prosperous now. Any honest Deputy on the other benches who goes down the country and moves amongst the people knows that, whether it is necessary or not, there was never in our recollection as desperate a state of affairs existing in this country as exists at the present moment, and any Deputy who has the courage to stand up and say it, knows that whether you take the farmer, the working labourer, the labourer who is out of work, the shopkeeper in the town or the professional man, everyone in his own walk of life is unable to look round the corner of one month, that county finances are running out and that the prospect ahead is as black a prospect as ever was witnessed in this country.

It is not honest and it is not fair to the people for any Minister with a glib tongue to get up from the front bench here and to announce that we are living through the boom of prosperity, that work was never so plentiful, and money so loose and free in the country. That is a bad joke at the expense of the people who are going through it. It is doing no good, because when people, knowing the facts, listen to that kind of tommy-rot, the result is that they lose faith in any form of democratic institution in this country. They will say: "These men up in Government Buildings know nothing about the country. They are up there saying we are prosperous, and where am I to turn for work?" It would be better in the long run—even better politics—to face up to the facts as they are and to grapple with them. You cannot, by a glib tongue or a noisy speech, convince a hungry man that he has had his dinner. You cannot, by a glib tongue or a noisy speech, convince a fellow who is out of work that he has work. Neither can you convince the man who is getting rotten prices that he is getting good prices. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

What are the two big sums that we have? There is one huge sum, something nearly £1,500,000, for maintenance of the unemployed. I do not begrudge one penny of that, but why is it necessary? It is necessary because unemployment is prevalent and because destitution is rife. What is the other big sum? We have £2,500,000 to get stock out of this country and into England—£2,500,000 to help stock out, and £5,000,000 on the other side to help it in. We have £7,500,000 for the sake of sticking on to £5,000,000, and losing our good name. We are asked how this Vote could be reduced. A little sprinkling of common honesty would reduce it by £2,500,000 on the figures before us. It is not denied that you are paying your annuities to John Bull. You are paying them on the head of every beast going into the market, on the beak of every chicken and on every hamper of eggs that go into the market; and according to the figures published, and not disputed, the equivalent of what is being retained is being collected. Now, that might be contradicted because the figures are not actually equal. Neither is the length for which one is being collected and the other retained. Tariffs were imposed on, I think, the 11th July, and the annuities were retained from the 1st January. Making allowance for that particular six months, the exact equivalent of what you are retaining is being collected on the other side.

Collected from whom?

From the unfortunate "mugs" of producers that put you there.

Oh no, from the British consumers.

They are being collected from the unfortunate farmer by a tax on his produce. Who else do you think is paying? That is the kind of silliness that this country is suffering from. It is that kind of shallowness that has brought about this situation where we have a grant of £1,500,000 to bring about employment in this country. That kind of silliness is at the bottom of the curse that is over the country at the moment, and as long as we have that kind of irresponsible, frivolous mentality in charge of one of the most important Departments of the State, we will find these sums going up year after year as they have gone up since that particular mentality took charge of that Department. It is irresponsibility flavoured with dishonesty, because I do not care whether a promise is called a promise or a statement, the promises of public men are the only thing to which the electorate of this country can pin their faith. If the people are constantly disillusioned, if they lose faith in the integrity and honesty of the public men of the country, and if they cannot put trust in the words these men say publicly, then they will lose faith in Parliament and the end of this country will be worse than the beginning.

We hear a lot of talk deploring unconstitutional action. We hear of throwing our arms in a heap in order to build a cross out of them. If there is one thing calculated to drive the people of this country back into unconstitutional action, it is for responsible people to be reckless about the words passed by them to the public. Here we have year after year a mounting bill; and it must be recollected that it is only just three years ago since we had the Minister for Industry and Commerce, then Deputy Lemass, and the Minister for Finance, then. Deputy MacEntee, speaking from these benches here and weeping crocodile tears at the extravagance and the undue height of taxation in this country. We were told that we were a little island people, that we were aping the expenditure and machinery of a great empire; that we had our Civil Service moulded on the Civil Service of a great empire; and that the people of this country or the industry of this country could not afford to keep a Civil Service of the size we had, or an Army of the size we had, or a police force of the size we had. With all the accompaniments of play-acting, we had from these benches year after year an attack on the people who sat over there for the size of their Army, the size of their police force and the size of their Civil Service. We had, by one speaker after another, pledges given that they would reduce the strength of all those services and bring the size of those services into line with the strength of the country. That was just three years ago, and since that time, since Fianna Fáil got into office, you have every one of these services growing visibly month after month and year after year; more tens of thousands of pounds required—hundreds of thousands of pounds required—and hundreds and thousands more people taken in, so that the Civil Service is inflated beyond recognition. If there was any honesty when these people were over here, then there must be absolute dishonesty when they got over there; and if they are honest over there now, then they were completely dishonest in their statements over here. We have a Civil Service grown beyond recognition. We have a new Army super-imposed on the old Army. We have a new police force added to the old police force. Then, to keep the face of economy on the most extravagant Government that ever cursed this country, we have an axe applied to the salaries and wages of the servants of the State. Even then, no lesson is learned by the fact that if you interfere with salaries you will have so many going out on pension that the economy will end in increased expenditure. So we have, in this year's Estimate as against last year's Estimate, an extra £25,000 for pensions. In the light of that, this economy, which means increased expenditure, must be carried down to local services. We have been asked to make suggestions with regard to reductions.

Deputy Dillon has made many suggestions. He has pointed out your increase in Secret Service expenditure. Will we get any explanation of that increase? We know there have been tales carried to the Government, tales which have even put the President in a most humiliating position. We have action taken based on these silly stories that were carried to the Executive Council, and that action has plunged this country into an expenditure of hundreds of thousands of pounds. We had silly stories about Deputy Mulcahy's movements, we had silly stories about General O'Duffy's movements, and following each silly story we had more and more expenditure. Is that what the country got from increased Secret Service expenditure?

A Vote increased by 150 per cent. wants some explanation, not the details of the expenditure, but the conditions that necessitated the increase of 150 per cent. We have this new Vote for a new Army, for a new police force, and we have this launched as a non-political Army. But we have every possible precaution taken that it must be a political Army. We have only one group in key positions, and we have it laid down that these men give the certificate without which nobody can go before the tribunal or committee. We have every precaution taken that it must be a political Army.

In view of the economic circumstances existing in this country, in view of the slump in trade, in view of the loss of markets, in view of the widespread destitution and the amount of unemployment, I think the first gesture of real economy and the first gesture of impartial administration would be the abolition of forces that are going to cost much money and which are definitely political in their nature and foundation.

I did not intend to speak on this Estimate, but when I heard the speech made by Deputy Dr. O'Higgins I considered that something might be said on that subject. The Deputy speaks of economy and how the Government should economise in much the same way as he would have spoken when the late Government was in power. I take it that he would admit that economy, as far as government is concerned, in a country that is highly protected, is totally different from the economy that is practised in a country that has free trade. We here have decided to protect this country, industrially as well as agriculturally. I do not think that that is exactly our decision. Many people and parties previous to us had come to the conclusion that protection was one of the things this country demanded and needed. In fact, for generations it was preached and accepted by the people, but their misfortune was that they did not just have an opportunity of putting it into practice.

I take it, Deputy O'Higgins will agree with me on this point, that the economy as practised now is somewhat different from the economy practised before the advent to power of the Fianna Fáil Government. You had then in power a Government which was semi-protective. They had gone as far as to satisfy more or less what they would call, perhaps, the extreme men in their own Party. But we had decided that we would practise to the full the policy of protection. We found that certain occurrences here gave us an opportunity and, perhaps, forced us to take the opportunity of protecting this country. In the few months after we had adopted that we found that other countries were inclined to do the same thing. A great country like England, which based its prosperity largely on free trade teachings, was ultimately compelled to adopt the same attitude as we did. In fact, the world position to-day is that all countries have erected around them tariff barriers, and all countries are giving bounties and subsidies on the exports of their produce.

What I want to refer to particularly is world conditions. Deputy O'Higgins spoke exactly as if things were the same as they were two years ago, or 20 years ago. But we must remember that world conditions are not now the same. A week ago we had the Minister of Agriculture for England speaking, I think, in Scotland, lamenting the position and sympathising with the farmers of England and saying that this year was the worst year that they had experienced in farming in 130 years. It is quite obvious that it is not sunshine with them there. One of the main arguments used here is that we deliberately gave away the market, referring always, of course, to the British market. Now, the British market was a valuable market. It was a valuable market.

It is gone, thank God, the President says.

We will come to that later.

We are there already.

In the British market?

One of the most extraordinary things is that we are demanding the British market.

Not according to Deputy Brennan.

What about the English farmer? Has he any claim or any standing there? I think he could do with a little assistance in getting that market. He might give us the benefit of it. But as he is to-day he does not own his own market. His Ministers admit that; they are not denying it. They are making every effort possible, and one direction is in the direction that we talk most about, and that is the market for beef. The English farmer will have considerable difficulty ever to get that market. None of their responsible Ministers there deny that difficulty. Deputies here spoke of the English farmers. What do they say about it? They say, if they could keep out the Argentine and South American meat they would have a chance for their own industry. But what do the Ministers say? The Ministers and the Government say: "This is a very delicate question: we will proceed slowly." What do the working population of England say? They say: "No, no, we are not going to pay 1/- or 1/6 for meat when we can get Argentime meat for a few pence." We have got to face up to that position. Whatever we do to carry on, to some extent, on the stores side. I believe we would have to do what the British did, to think seriously about the beef question and about where markets are to be got. The value of poultry produced in Great Britain and Ireland last year was as great as that secured from beef. About 80 or 90 per cent. of the meat used in Great Britain is foreign. Are we entitled to continue to hope that within the next 20 years that market will ever be recovered by the British farmers, not alone by us? Deputies on the opposite benches should consider all these facts. Instead of lamenting what is gone, they should co-operate with us to see if something more substantial could not be done for the future. Deputies on these benches will not turn down any workable suggestions from the other side.

Give us a suggestion.

Suggestions have been made. One thing is that it would be unfair to the farmers of this country to tell them to depend on a particular market. It is only fair that farmers should be told to do what we have told them to do, and what the Minister of Agriculture in England has told the farmers there to do—to change their system. No one will deny that. The same day that the British Minister told the farmers to grow more wheat, as the only thing to do, the Minister for Agriculture here was saying the same thing to Irish farmers. It is not fair or right to encourage a body of men to pursue a course that is doomed.

A Deputy

And thanks be to God for it.

Speaking seriously, I do not think the people have much to regret. I know as much about the meat and the cattle trades as any Deputy. I know that as a result of following a certain policy the people were forced out of this country as rapidly as they could get away. An industry that does that, and that reduces our population below 3,000,000, is not one that any democratic Government should wish to maintain. As an alternative industry I admit that it is good enough if it can be kept going and is profitable. What is the position here? Since 1929, which was the year of the great collapse, the cattle industry has been going down year by year. This question has been made a political one by the other side. The Party opposite believe that if they could start this stunt they could torpedo the people into supporting them. They failed, because the people are sensible and understand the ins and outs of the question. They know what the position is in England, and what it is in every country that depends upon agriculture. Our export surplus was all agriculture. Was it not time, and only fair to the country to try to make some change? Like sensible men those on the opposite side are beginning to recognise what their leader definitely admitted when he said: "We will do all we can to pursue the policy of the other Party. We will support the industrial side and the wheat policy." Those on the opposite benches profess to have great hopes of a settlement with England. How are they going to bring about a settlement? They could turn their minds to something constructive, and tell us how they are going to bring about the settlement. They could tell us, if tariffs are imposed, what will be the position of English farmers who purchased cattle that cost them £9 here in addition to £6 duty and £2 for other expenses, or a total cost of £17. Where is the English farmer going to come in there? Is there not a problem there? The British farmer wants his own market, but he is willing to give us a slice, if he gets hold of that market. As a matter of fact, the English farmers have less hold on the English market than we have. People on the opposite benches should think the matter over. There is no use going along other lines. The Leader of the Opposition Party is taking up that attitude each Sunday. He adopts a big slice of our policy every week as being the correct one. Next Sunday there will be less to say against it. There is nothing else for that Party to do.

When Deputy O'Reilly intervened at this particular juncture I wondered what was behind his remarks. I wondered all the more when he was speaking for a few moments because, on the rare occasions that he speaks he is very lucid. He was more involved this evening than the average Fianna Fáil back bencher. I thought the Deputy was going to tell the Minister for Finance something about the tobacco industry, in which he is very interested. I thought he was going to give the House his views on the policy of the present Government regarding this year's tobacco crop.

I leave that to the other side.

The Deputy went on to deal with agriculture, and naturally we imagined that he would be very interested in the Irish farmer, and would devote his time trying to explain the policy, or lack of policy of his own Ministers. He spent most of the time in making a plea for English farmers, telling us the policy of the British Minister of Agriculture. With all possible respect, I suggest to the Deputy that the British Government and the British Minister of Agriculture are well able to look after their own people. The British farmer is making a better effort to look after his own interest than perhaps the average Irish farmer. I suggest that the Deputy might, with profit to himself, and to his Party, and certainly with profit to the Irish farmers, give that deep study and consideration to the position of Irish farmers which apparently he has given to British agriculture. I want to be brief, because I realise that this Bill, in accordance with the practice of the House has got to go through to-night. Before concluding I want to say that the conclusion I came to at the end of Deputy O'Reilly's speech was that he was put up to kill time. He almost invited interruption. Let it be said to the credit of the Party on these benches, that there was no interruption, because we were not going to play into his hands.

I want to say a few words on what, to my mind, is the most important side of this question. That is with regard to unemployment. I want to deal with the amazing speech delivered last night by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and the even more amazing speech which he delivered this afternoon. Those of us who have had to listen to the Minister for the last seven or eight years, and to a lesser extent, perhaps—because we do not even take him so seriously—to the Minister for Finance, I must say never heard a more barefaced untruth.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce told us last night that the unemployment situation was much better than it was two years ago. I had expected—even yet I am an optimist —that the whole Front Bench of the Labour Party would have jumped to its feet on hearing that. The Minister talked about 45,000 being put into employment in two years. There is not a member sitting on the Labour Benches or on the Fianna Fáil Benches who does not know that that statement is absolutely untrue. What is the basis for that statement? I am prepared to accept the Minister's statement that there were 45,000 extra employment books issued. Has any man on the Fianna Fáil Benches any knowledge of how the unemployment exchanges are worked? You can get 100,000 extra books to-morrow by giving 100,000 men one day's employment. There was not a single member of the Labour Party to remind the Minister of the fact—although they have a motion down on the paper for the last 12 months—that there are to-day more registered unemployed, according to the figures issued by the Minister's own Department, than there ever were in the history of the State. There are 100,000 unemployed. The Minister talked about emigration being stopped. Of course, it is. But he implied that it was the Fianna Fáil Government that stopped emigrations. We all know that if the American Government had not shut down immigration completely, instead of 30,000 going out, as went out three years ago, there would be 70,000 clearing out, or probably more. The Minister for Industry and Commerce should have some appreciation of his responsibilities so far as the unemployed are concerned. I know that the members of the Labour Party are in close touch with the actual conditions, notwithstanding the amazing speech made by my friend, Deputy Keyes, last night. He said that conditions in Limerick were never so prosperous, that shopkeepers were never so well-off. I challenge Deputy Keyes to say in Limerick City that there is not more unemployment to-day than there was 12 months ago. I challenge him, or the Minister for Finance, or the Minister for Industry and Commerce, to go into any part of Limerick City and ask any shopkeeper or professional man if he is as well off as he was 12 months ago or two or three years ago. I shall, however, only go back for 12 months— the first 12 months of Fianna Fáil government. Let them deal with that. I challenge any member of the Government to go to any fair in Tipperary and to say that things are improving. The Minister for Industry and Commerce says that things are getting better every day. The Minister for Finance told us a fortnight ago that the farmers were never better off, that they were never in a better position to pay their debts and that the shopkeepers never found it easier to collect their debts. I challenge the Minister for Finance to ask any shopkeeper who is a supporter of his own in the town of Tipperary if that statement is true. Of course, it is not true. I wish the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who was talking about the country improving and the farmers being prosperous, had been at the fair in Nenagh last Monday or at the fair in Thurles on Tuesday, when men were glad to make a sale for as low as £5 per head for a two-and-a-half year old beast and £3 5s. 0d. per head for a two-year-old beast. Then they would know something about the country. I realise that the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Finance, above all Ministers, speak with absolute recklessness and without any great regard for truth, hoping that they will stagger a bit near it. In attempting to stagger towards truth, they stagger away from it. The facts I have stated are well known and, so far as we are concerned, there is no necessity to refer to them. The statements made by the Ministers are so palpably absurd that the most foolish supporter of the Government in the country knows that they are untrue.

Mr. McGilligan rose.

Before Deputy McGilligan begins, I should like to call the attention of the House to the fact that there was an understanding that the Vote on this stage would take place at 10 o'clock and that all the other stages would be taken before 10.30. I suggest that some time ought to be allowed to the Attorney-General or to myself to conclude.

I understand that the arrangement was that all stages would be given to the Minister before the House rose at 10.30.

I have yet to learn that Deputy Morrissey is Whip. The arrangement has been made between the Whips, and I am putting it to you, Sir, whether or not we are going to be allowed to reply.

There is no use in putting that question to me if an arrangement has been made between the Parties. My duty is to call the members of the different Parties according to the usual convention.

I understand that Deputy McGilligan has not yet been called. I think that we ought to have some statement from him as to whether or not he will conclude his speech in time to permit the Attorney-General to conclude. If not, in accordance with the usual convention, the Attorney-General will present himself as a speaker from the opposite benches.

The Attorney-General can speak now, so far as I am concerned.

The Attorney-General

I merely want to deal with a matter which was referred to by Deputy O'Higgins and some other speakers. That is the contrast drawn between the manner in which a case was presented to the Military Tribunal yesterday and a case which was tried last week. I presume that most of the Deputies have read in the newspapers of both these cases. It should hardly be necessary for me to go into the facts in order to show that these cases were as far apart as the poles in respect of the circumstances out of which they arose. Deputy O'Higgins referred to a charge of possession of arms by a firing party in County Cork. It is hardly necessary to remind Deputies of what happened in that case. One of the accused men named Hennessy pleaded guilty and his counsel, Mr. Moloney, on his behalf stated

"that Hennessy was in the old days of the Anglo-Irish war a companion-in-arms and otherwise of John Nyhan, whose funeral he attended. Hennessy, who was wounded during that war, suffered throughout it with Nyhan. When Nyhan died he was invited by other companions to go and pay the last respects to his soldier-comrade. At the burial ground he was given a rifle from a car. He used it in firing over Nyhan's grave. When the proceedings were over he returned to the car and replaced the rifle. As far as the rifle was concerned, he absolutely knew no more about it.

"The prisoner was not now, and had not been for a long time, engaged in war-like activities. He and Nyhan, and their companions," said counsel, "have done their work for the country, and he has laid down his gun. He is not an active member of any organisation, and as far as the incident at the funeral was concerned, he only went to pay the last respects to the memory of a soldier. The prisoner had no intention of causing injury to any person, or of any deliberate rebuff to the Free State. His action was purely sentimental, and there was nothing in it which could be interpreted as criminal."

Then the statement of Mr. Geoghegan representing me was in these terms:

"The terms of the Firearms Act were so clear that any citizen who was not a member of the State forces, or otherwise excepted from the provisions, and possessed a rifle, was guilty of an offence, no matter how laudable might have been the object which prompted him to have the firearms.

"Circumstances of an explanatory and perhaps extenuating nature have been put before the court," continued counsel. "I am not suggesting that it is anything other than praiseworthy to pay respects to a dead soldier.

"Nyhan was a very gallant man and a very brave soldier. There is no conflict regarding the attitude that any patriotic citizen should adopt to his memory. There is many a right and admirable thing, however, which can be done in a very wrong way.

"What was done in this instance was in itself splendid, but unnecessarily wrong. It may be, perhaps, that there was a want of knowledge. Where it is thought right and fitting that a volley should be fired over the grave of the dead soldier, the Government are prepared not merely to permit, but to facilitate this payment of a last tribute.

"If permission is asked by anyone in charge of such a ceremony it will be given in any proper case. Nyhan's was, undoubtedly, a proper case. Not merely that, but rifles and ammunition will be loaned for the occasion, and for the purpose, to responsible citizens.

"This is undoubtedly the first case of this nature in this court. The court will, no doubt, take the fact into account. I am not here to press for punishment, but rather in the interests of public order. If there is, however, any repetition of this kind of occurrence it will be a far graver and more serious matter."

The other prisoners declined to plead; they declined to recognise the court. First of all, the court had dealt with Hennessy who had pleaded guilty and had that submission made on his behalf which was considered by the court and it decided to postpone sentence for 12 months. I do not suppose the Opposition, however they may criticise me, would wish to criticise what was done by the Tribunal, in the exercise of its diseretion, in view of all the circumstances before them. The other case related to exactly the same occurrence, and although the prisoners met the charge in a different way, or made a statement which is reported in the papers, the court, again in its discretion, saw fit to deal with that case in precisely the same way. I am not going to say that my action, or the action of counsel representing me, may not possibly be criticised. Some Deputies on the opposite side of the House saw fit to criticise it very severely; but I think it will be admitted by most Deputies that in that particular case there were certain circumstances arising out of a long history of that kind of incident which did distinguish it from cases in which people were found in possession of arms without permits and were brought before the court and charged either with the possession of arms or for an offence involving the use of arms. A warning was given there by counsel, and I repeat it here, that such an attitude will not be adopted as far as I am concerned in any future case of the kind. I certainly intend in future, if cases of a similar kind arise, not to allow any sort of excuse to be made on the ground that the persons who engaged in the use of firearms, did so for even such a laudable enterprise as this, without having obtained a permit for the rifles or to use them for that particular purpose.

Deputy O'Higgins seeks to parallel that case with the case before the Tribunal last week. I think Deputy McGilligan appeared for the defendants in the case to which he referred. The suggestion was made that counsel on my behalf pressed that particular case. I have here the report of the case and I think if I read the opening remarks of Mr. Haugh who represented me it will be clear even to the most biassed mind that there was no parallel between the two cases.

"Peter Mahon, Main Street, Stradbally, and Edward Dowling, Courthouse Square, Stradbally, were jointly charged before the Tribunal with intimidating John Reilly from lawfully driving a motor car along the public highway, and with unlawful assembly; and with conspiracy with other persons unknown to intimidate John Reilly from driving a dance band to the dance hall at Wolfhill. Mahon was further charged with unlawful possession of a Lee-Enfield rifle and with membership of an unlawful organisation, the Army Comrades' Association.

"Mr. Haugh said the cases arose over a hold-up of a dance band on its way to the dance hall at Wolfhill on Sunday, January 28th. Evidence will be given that the dance was being held under Fianna Fáil auspices and that the prisoners belonged to the political parties opposed to Fianna Fáil. On the night in question the dance band was proceeding by motor, and they came to an obstruction on the road. They stopped the car and observed four masked men, at least one of whom carried a rifle, and another a revolver. The masked men told them that they would not be allowed to proceed to the dance, and ordered them to turn back. Three rifle shots and one revolver shot were fired over their heads. The band turned back and proceeded to the dance by a circuitous route.

"Counsel then proceeded to detail the evidence that would be advanced to connect the accused with the hold-up of the band."

I presume that is what Deputy O'Higgins referred to when he suggested that that charge was pressed. Well, undoubtedly, the charge in that particular case was one that nobody would deny was a charge that should be pressed. The hold up of a dance band by masked men with rifles is surely a charge any prosecuting counsel would be justified in pressing. I gave no particular instructions in regard to the case. I relied on the good sense of Mr. Haugh, who is an experienced counsel, to deal with the case as, in his discretion, he thought fit. If, as Deputy O'Higgins says—he was present in court—the case was pressed, I accept his point, but I ask any reasonable person was it not perfectly right that it should be pressed?

Will the Attorney-General state the result?

The Attorney-General

I am going to state the result. I am not accustomed to concealing anything or playing any tricks with the House.

Indeed you are!

The Attorney-General

That is just the sort of charge the Deputy would make.

Yes, and I can give evidence of it.

The Attorney-General

I was about to say, and it is only fair to say it, that in regard to that particular case, on the charge of holding up, the accused were acquitted. But it is also fair to say, and Deputy McGilligan himself will have to admit it, that the presentation of the charge against his clients in the closing address of counsel for the prosecution was eminently fair.

The Attorney-General

That is admitted. How Deputy O'Higgins comes into this House to suggest that the case was pressed in view of what I, personally, happen to know from counsel himself who opened it, is more than I can understand. I do not know that it is necessary to do more than detail the facts of the case to show the difference between them. Deputy O'Higgins has thrown out a suggestion that in view of the fact that these men were acquitted on that charge—I am not saying in any way that they were not innocent of the charge—I will consider that. I think only one of them was acquitted.

The Attorney-General

One in that case and one previously. I will certainly consider the suggestion that he has made, although I think he might have hesitated to present his charge against me in the way he did: that they were two precisely similar cases and that a completely different attitude was taken up in regard to them. Notwithstanding that, I will look into the facts in connection with these cases and see whether the suggestion that he has made may be acted upon.

I will content myself by saying something about these cases. I do not think I would omit one word of what Deputy Dr. O'Higgins has said about them. When the Attorney-General stands up in his mild manner and tells us that he has been criticised, I wonder has he any appreciation of the value of the word criticism. There must be scorn and contempt, and a hissing about the Attorney-General's ears because of the manner of his presenting these two sets of cases here to-night. It just showed the partisan biassed mood in which these cases are dealt with. So far as this House is concerned, his presentation of these cases stands, in this way: Guns were taken and shots were fired over the grave of a particular soldier— a dead man. That is one case. That is the fair presentation of it, and then, with regard to the other, what has the Attorney-General to say? That two men were charged with a hold-up of a dance band. That is what he stressed, the hold-up; but there was not a particle of evidence about a hold-up. The court found that there was no hold-up so far as these men were concerned. That is the equal presentation of the two cases that we have got. Let me add a little to it.

The Attorney-General

I read the newspaper account.

You did not read the newspaper account. You had counsel prosecuting for you. You did not state here the full details that I am sure have been given to you.

The Attorney-General

Would the Deputy like me to state them? It might not suit him if I did.

I will give the Attorney-General time and opportunity to state what has been told to him. With regard to most of these men, was this contrast made: that they refused to recognise the court; that they had rifles in their possession; that they did not say where they were, and did not offer to surrender them? Were these men interrogated? Were the powers of the Public Safety Act used against them? Were they questioned? Failure to answer questions might be made a substantial charge against them. Let us get the other side. One man is charged. The question of an attempt to hold-up should not have been introduced against him, because there was not a scintilla of evidence put before the Military Tribunal with regard to one of these men that he had anything to do with the so-called hold-up. What is he charged with? With having a rifle, and he had a rifle. Was that charge withdrawn? Was there any statement made at the Attorney-General's behest with regard to the time he got the rifle, or the purpose he got it for? The Attorney-General did not state that here. I stated it before the Tribunal, that both these men who were accused of having rifles and who were found guilty on that charge got them on a particularly sad occasion when Deputy O'Higgins's father had been murdered.

The Attorney-General

Was that the original statement?

The Attorney-General

No.

Deputy O'Higgins's father was murdered and people were asked to come and guard the house.

The Attorney-General

I have the statement here if the Deputy wishes to see it.

This is what was sworn to.

The Attorney-General

I asked was that the original statement.

The Attorney-General got his chance. Deputy O'Higgins's father was murdered and the people in the neighbourhood felt, as these two men said, that the assassins would not be content with the old man's blood: that they would return again and attack the family and the house. Men were asked would they come and guard the family and the house against the return of these assassins and they said they would. Lacey and Mahon were picked. They got guns. They got them from the Curragh, in the most open way, and they used them when the assassins did return to that house from which a murdered man's corpse had barely been removed. Was there any failure to press the charge against Mahon and Lacey: the charge that they had rifles? Was there any evidence even put forward that Lacey had used the rifle ever since? Why did not the Attorney-General say that, after the case had concluded, Mahon was recalled by the Tribunal in order to be asked and to make it clear in every way that he had not been in this so-called hold-up. He was asked could it possibly be that the rifle had been extracted from where he hid it without his knowledge and used by somebody else. His answer was such that the Military Tribunal accepted his statement.

Mahon and Lacey recognised the court. They were interrogated at length. They were interrogated beyond the powers the police have under the Act under which they presumed to act. There were five charges preferred against one of these men. Two were dropped through irregularity, and the court dismissed the others except the single thing which had been admitted by men who recognised the court that they had the rifles. One of them gave to the court in great detail the occasion upon which he got it. If further substantiation was needed it was that these very rifles were used a few days after the death of Deputy O'Higgins's father against the attack that was made upon his family and house. The Attorney-General's counsel in that case presented the case fairly. He did it in this respect that he said that undoubtedly the charge about unlawful assembly could not be substantiated. He said that undoubtedly the charge with regard to the membership cards could not be substantiated. He said there was a grave doubt about the whole matter of the hold-up but did he say one single word so as to get the Tribunal to remit any of the penalty with regard to the possession of the rifle? Not a word, and then the Attorney-General presents these cases as if they were equal—the case of men who recognised the court, men who had stood their defence and who were interrogated. Their rifles were taken from them and they are now serving six months. The Attorney-General thinks that is fair and equal as compared with what his counsel said yesterday in relation to those others. That same counsel appeared before the same Tribunal in two other cases. I raised a question with regard to one of those cases on the Adjournment two weeks ago. It was the case of a man charged with having a rifle. An expert was called and said that the rifle was obsolete. The President of the Court asked that it should be handed up, and having examined it, he said that it was obsolete and would not harm anybody. The counsel who appeared in these other cases yesterday and made an appeal for leniency in relation to those charged said in this particular case I am dealing with that it was not for a man of the type of the accused to be left to judge for himself whether a rifle was useful. It might be made usable he said. The man who, in the eyes of the Tribunal, had the obsolete rifle, was found guilty of that charge and bound over in a particular way.

Is the Deputy not going dangerously near criticising the decisions of the Tribunal?

Not even as near as the Minister is to balancing his Budget. Does the Attorney-General remember one other case when a number of farmers were brought up for what he yesterday called "the no-rates campaign" but had to correct subsequently to "the alleged no-rates campaign," and when that same counsel who pleaded yesterday for leniency talked about the savage methods of terrorism and intimidation which had been indulged in in that particular portion of County Waterford, and when the other counsel representing the Attorney-General said that he had to rub his eyes to assure himself that he was living in Catholic Ireland and not in Bolshevik Russia? Yet the Tribunal in the end said "not guilty." That is called justice, and that is the Attorney-General who says that he can hold up his head in pride and that he is not a person who is in the habit of abusing these powers—powers that were always dangerous in anybody's hands but are particularly dangerous in the hands of a weak and incompetent man. So much for that.

We are discussing at the moment a Central Fund Bill which asks us to vote £2,000,000 for certain purposes and £10,000,000 for others; to vote £10,000,000 out of a sum of nearly £30,000,000 which stands in the Estimates for the year. It is an oft told tale, but I want to repeat it again, the tale of what was promised with regard to the public services, with regard to taxation, and with regard to economy. Does the Minister remember: "Here is what a Fianna Fáil Government can and will do for you"?

You should burn that.

On the day the cattle are slaughtered I will put it with them. Here is what they said about economy:

"Economy means the elimination of waste, getting 20 shillings value for every pound of the taxpayers' money spent in the public service. Fianna Fáil is satisfied that substantial economies are feasible without reducing social services, inflicting any hardship on any class of Government servants or impairing in the slightest degree the efficiency of the administrative machine. It has examined with minute care—"

I am sure the Minister was one of those who made this minute examination—

"the Estimates for Public Services for the current year, and is convinced that a saving of many hundreds of thousands of pounds without including such items..."

I will not go into these. They refer to pensions and the rest of it. It goes on to say:

"The burden of taxation can be lightened by not less than £2,000,000 per year."

Instead of that we have £29,709,000 Estimates for the year. When that sentence was written, the Estimates were in the neighbourhood of £22,000,000. We have jumped up by £7,000,000 instead of going down by £2,000,000. We have reduced the salaries of Government servants and we have not, to quote the rest of these promises, "86,000 people put into employment," and that in only a few of the industries. I have often turned against the President his famous figures, the ratio of 66 to 1. What does it amount to?

It was quoted yesterday.

We had better quote it once more. It is a great figure. On that basis it would represent by the English Government an increase in its Budget of about £500,000,000 in the year, and this at a time when it had failed in nearly every other one of its promises. We were to get 86,000 people into employment and the Minister for Industry and Commerce last night in my absence here said that I had agreed with him that 14,000 people had gone into insurable occupations recently. It is a typical performance of the Minister that he should say that. He gave these figures and I challenged them. I rose to refute them and he gave the hint to his colleague to move the closure. Then I am adjudged to have agreed with him. I suppose it is another way of slapping one across the teeth to move the closure. It certainly stops argument, but it does not always give a man the right to say that his statements are not challenged. I now challenge his statements with regard to people put into insurable occupations. Does the Minister remember the way he represented the increases? Speaking one night here, taking just a chance, as he often does, and hoping that no one would notice the funny gap he had left, he challenged us on this matter of the sale of unemployment insurance stamps and the contributions to the fund. He said that was the real test and he gave us the figures in this way: "The income from the sale of unemployment insurance stamps in 1928 was £655,000; in 1929, £679,000, and in 1930, £703,000." That is the real figure on which he based his argument. For 1930, or before the Minister assumed office, the figure which he quoted was £703,000. He then jumped on to 1933 and said that "if the old rates of contribution had continued to be paid the figure would have been £760,000, showing an increase of £60,000, which represents 15,000 men getting employment for 50 weeks." He continued: "It is on facts like these I base my contention that there are more people in insurable employment in this country now than ever there were since the Free State was established... Deputies opposite quote statistics which obviously they do not understand." From 1930 he took a sudden jump to 1933 and said in that period we had £60,000 of an increase and he took the credit for it all. We thought we would prick that bubble and we asked a question and divided up the dates somewhat as between 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1933. This question was asked half way through November and the Minister was asked to give the exact figures for 1931 and 1932, and to compare these with 1933. That was on the 16th November and he must have known what the actual amounts were up to that date, and he must have known also what was the percentage of the entire sum that was received in the last six weeks of any year. He had to attempt an estimate and the £760,000 went up a bit. The £703,000 for 1930 was lowered. The Minister had nothing to do with that year so that it could be depreciated without any harm to the Minister. It became £699,193. That is a thing that does not matter. For 1931 the figure was £744,000, an increase of £45,000 for the year with which the Minister had nothing to do. Taking his own basis of £4 per man it meant 11,000 people put into occupation. In 1932 the figure rose to £767,000, an increase of £23,000 over the previous year. On division by four, that means nearly 6,000 people. In 1933 the figure is £773,000, an increase of £6,000 or 1,500 people.

An under-estimate.

Although the Minister was within six weeks of the end of the year and had statistical information as to how much of the Fund rolled in during the last six weeks of the year? But that was not good enough, so we got it raised to £700,000. In 1931 the figure is increased by £44,000, the other remains at £767,000, but in 1933, six weeks later, it is found that the figure is not merely the estimate of £773,000 but it rises to £784,000.

The final figure.

I am not sure if this debate had waited until after Easter that it would not be well over the £800,000 mark.

It might be for next year.

That is the Minister's type of figuring. One night when he thought he could get away with it he claims the whole £60,000 between 1930 and 1933 as his work, and when we check up we find that £45,000 of it does not belong to him at all, and that all he can claim is £23,000 in the first year of his magnificent tariffs and bounties, and £6,000 in the second year, with all the subsidies and bounties and tariffs. Then he comes along with a new idea. Even if you take the new figure of £784,000 it only represents an increase of £40,000 on the year 1931, and 40,000 divided by 4 gives only 10,000 people. The Minister is again at a sorry disadvantage over the whole thing, because in two years on that figuring he has only put 10,000 people into occupation, whereas in the last year of the decaying Cosgrave Administration——

"Decaying" is the proper word.

——11,000 people were put into occupation.

Why not calculate on the actual figures?

The Minister, the other night, wanted to make the figures bigger, so he says: "No longer will we divide by 4, because that is no longer the value of the stamp; we will divide by 52 weeks multiplied by 1/1." What has he built up his adjusted figures on? Is it on 1/1? The Minister talked of thimble-rigging last night. It is about time that we should get the thimble lifted off himself for the evening. I could say a great deal worse than that.

You do not have to tell us.

Look at that for a method of calculation. The Minister apparently said to himself: "We will claim the 60,000; nobody will notice it. It is nothing like as brazen as the other things I have done. Think of the factories. We will claim the 60,000, and when it is challenged, and it is discovered that 40,000 does not belong to me at all I will exaggerate the figure." How did he exaggerate it? He took not the real figures but the adjusted figures, the real figures being based on contributions amounting to 1/1. He adjusts that to the old rate of contribution of 1/7. Having got the new figure built up on that rate, he divides not by the 1/7 but by 1/1, and so he gets the 14,000 for himself. That is typical of most of the Minister's calculations. And that is what I was supposed to have admitted! Let us take it that the chancy work had come off. The Minister took his chance. Supposing he had got away with it, what did it amount to at best? It meant that in two years of the new economy, with the tariffs and bounties and everything which one could hope for in industry in this country, he could claim 14,000 people in insurable occupations, and in my last year I could claim 11,000; and I had not a tot of 100,000 registered unemployed, and I had not a tot of 130,000 people getting home assistance. Fianna Fáil prosperity is on the march; the tide is rising, I understand the Minister for Finance said the other night. The tide is rising! We will all be submerged by it soon. Fianna Fáil prosperity is going forward. Let us have a Prosperity Day. The Labour Party have a Labour Day. Why not have a Prosperity Day? I will give you a few appropriate dates when it might be held; say when the figure for unemployment goes over the 100,000 mark.

Very soon.

Why not let us have it in memory of the day on which for the first time the Government of this country sought to get money from the people of this country on their credit as a Government, and failed?

The first time?

The first time it was a failure. That is one thing which the Minister can claim credit for— accomplishing a failure.

Evidently Senator Blythe did not take the Deputy into his confidence.

The Minister for Agriculture is not here. The Minister for Industry and Commerce often represents him, or perhaps it might be more correct to say misrepresents him. What about the day we slaughter the cattle? That would be a good idea for Prosperity Day for the new State. We are getting people out of agriculture; even Deputy O'Reilly admits that. They are going with the cattle. At the moment, they have only reached the half-way house of being unemployed. They are on the dole. This Vote on Account rises by £1,200,000 this year to make some provision for those unfortunate folk whom the fanaticism and stupidity on the other side have driven out of the work for which no substitute has been provided.

More people than ever are employed. That has been admitted.

There are more people on the dole; more people on home assistance, and more people registered as unemployed. I want to make a suggestion to the Minister about those slaughtered cattle. We are going to offer burnt offerings to economic nationalism. There used to be a common habit of breaking a bottle of something on the bows of a ship when it was being launched. Why cannot we go a bit further on this scheme for destroying good food in this country? In the classical times, when a man died they put what was the equivalent of a farthing in his hands to case his passage across the Styx when he was going below. Why cannot we bury part of the fodder with those cattle? Why not get rid of some of the surplus variety of things we have? As a special offering to stupidity of the fanatical type, as we launch those cattle into eternity—whatever kind of eternity they have—could we not break a bottle of Bass on their foreheads? We could thus play up to what I call the stupid patriotism on the other side, even so stupid that the new people decry them, and to the economic nationalism which they do not yet see fit to decry. We are effecting a change over rapidly, according to the Minister for Industry and Commerce, from the old bad economy of this country to something far better. What is the something that is far better? We are getting the people into productive work? The Estimates, according to the Minister for Finance, represent in the main expenditure of a productive type in this country; £1,200,000 given to people for merely doing nothing is productive expenditure! Let us take one of the good schemes. The Minister for Industry and Commerce last night said: "Before you go to bed every night say "Wheat, beet and peat,' " Provided you repeated that you would go to Grangegorman. I will give them another slogan. As well as saying "Wheat, beet and peat," add butter, and bread and alcohol. Let us take, in a metaphorical sense, alcohol. We are going to have industrial alcohol in this country. We are going to spend £100,000 on this productive work this year.

When the Minister was speaking of it about ten days ago I asked him was it a fact that the lowest price at which he could produce in the factory an imperial gallon of industrial alcohol would be 3/-, and that that had to be compared with 4d., the c.i.f. price of petrol at the Port of Dublin, and he denied it. Since that, we have had the advantage of seeing a particular publication and 3/- is stated as the price by a chemist in this country who controlled the biggest, if not the only, industrial alcohol plant England had during the war, and he advised them that if they could not burn the place down they should blow it up, so uneconomic was it. He states his opinion that if we got a particular type of tuber grown in this country which we cannot grow and got a certain bigger yield to the acre than we get at the moment, and if we got a particular starch yield from that more than what we get at the moment, we might hope to get industrial alcohol produced at the factory at 3/- a gallon. But the Minister has better hopes. That chemist goes on to say that there is no doubt that in the earlier years the price will be much higher, because he does not expect to get this peculiar concatenation of favourable circumstances, if he ever gets them—but he will not get them at once—and he does say that 3/- is the lowest figure, and we are going to spend £100,000 to brew in this country a half million or so gallons of industrial alcohol which will be produced at 3/-, without any selling charges, and that has to be compared with petrol which comes in from outside at 4d.

Has the Minister considered the losses there are in other countries on this matter? Does he know that the French Government loses over 500,000,000 francs in the year taking in subsidies and the loss of revenue that used to come from petrol and does he know that the calculation has been made that in America, where the stuff is brewed from maize, if the American Government paid the farmers of the United States something short of 300,000,000 dollars for the maize and burned it, they could save another 300,000,000 dollars? That is what is called productive work—the spending of £100,000, to get industrial alcohol at 3/- in the factory compared with petrol at 4d. at the Port of Dublin. Would the Minister not stop before he spends a penny on these factories and calculate that if he bought all the potatoes in the Cooley area and dumped them into the sea, he could spread all the benefit which he is going to spread through Cooley by the purchase of potatoes for manufacture into industrial alcohol and save the State considerably if he stopped short of this mad idea of establishing one, two, three or four factories of this type in the country for that particular purpose at those prices?

That is what is happening and it is only a miscroscopic way of showing up the folly that is going on all round. We are to say "wheat, beet and peat" before we go to bed at night, but if you had any thought for the future, you would not go to bed after saying those things. Resources can be wasted and the Government can have the melancholy satisfaction that it will be others who will have to get the people of this country out of the mess they are landing them in. They will have nothing to do with it. It is the other people who will come afterwards who will suffer from the squandering of the limited resources of the country, from their action in putting up all these numerous plants which are of no earthly use to anybody and from the lowered credit of this country brought about by obvious maladministration, financial and economic, of the country in the last two years. I have queried this whole matter of the land annuity payments and the supposed retention of the money in this country on other occasions. We are told we save the money. It is as plain as a pike-staff to anybody who can see that not merely are the farmers of this country paying every shilling of the annuities, save only the Sinking Fund payments, but that they are paying, in addition, something like £2,000,000 for R.I.C. pensions and other matters, and after these have been paid, they are being fleeced to the extent of half the old annuities, and we are told by the Minister for Finance, in a mood of equanimity, that we do not pay, but that the British pay. Has the price of food gone up in Britain by reason of the addition of the tariffs on our goods? That is the test as to who is paying, and we can apply that the other way. Of the British goods coming into this country which we tax, in respect of how many has the price been raised on us?

Folly brings this about, that not merely do the farmers pay every penny of the annuities, but they pay these things, in addition to the land annuities, to this spendthrift Government, and the people of the country are being mulcted in the payment of what are called retaliatory tariffs, the majority of these being imposed on goods which we cannot buy with value anywhere else and for which we must pay plus the tariff while we still continue to import them here. Deputy O'Reilly thinks that the British market is gone. "The British market is gone; the British are looking after that market themselves." The Deputy went back to 1921, progressed from that and then jumped to the year 1929 with regard to the figures. Would the Deputy take home these figures and consider them for himself? About the year 1928, in meat of all types, eggs and butter, the British imported into their 45 million nation about £330,000,000 worth of goods, and produced less than £140,000,000 worth of them. They consumed about £330,000,000 worth and produced at home less than £140,000,000 worth, and we supplied less than £30,000,000 worth of the residue. Have the British stopped consuming now and if so, by how much? Have the British made up the difference between, say, the odd £140,000,000 worth which they produced at home and the £330,000,000 worth which they used to consume to any great extent by home production? They have made it up to this extent that we cannot get food in to the extent of the £30,000,000 worth that we used to sell there when we were wise and until you get to that point, nobody ought to be fool enough to say that the British market is gone.

If we are being crushed out of the British market, we are being crushed out by the Argentinian and the Dane and we are being crushed out by these people because the British have taken us at our own word in one thing and have decided to regard us as strangers to their Commonwealth economically, and Deputy O'Reilly knows as well as any man that, supposing we were back on a business footing with the British and supposing we even adopted the procedure of sending over coupons for these duties to the British and allowed them to collect the annuities on them, we would not be paying the annuities then any more certainly than we are paying them at the moment. If we did that and paid those moneys over decently and straightforwardly, instead of having them collected from us, with the maximum of expense and the maximum of trouble, we would, at the same time, have more favourable regard from the British with regard to entrance into their market and we would proceed to get preferential terms with regard to the amount of meat of all types and butter and eggs which the British are not yet able to produce for their own consumption and which are now being supplied by other members of the Commonwealth or by people who are completely and entirely outside the Commonwealth. I have asked the Minister for Finance several times to keep, at any rate, his best eye on the situation to the extent that he would find out and let us know at what stage, prior to the close of the financial year, the British would, in fact, have collected from us all the annuities so that we would know that we had not to go on paying any more and so that this country might have one test week—and a good test it would be for people like Deputy O'Reilly— during which these tariffs would be taken off and the ordinary flow of trade between the two islands might start again even though it has been interrupted by the unfortunate history of the past two years.

The Minister, however, must turn his blind eye to that situation. The Minister will not admit that the moneys are being collected, and for that reason we have got to go into this absurd business about beet and wheat and industrial alcohol, and for that reason we have got to have expenditure swollen in an attempt by the Minister for Finance to get by taxation out of this people what he otherwise would have got by funding and borrowing, if the credit of the country had only been good in his hands and he had been able to get any decent response to his Fourth National Loan. Shall I move to report progress, Sir?

I have been informed that an arrangement was come to between the Whips whereby I was to have half an hour to speak.

If an arrangement was made I shall give in to it.

Deputy Mulcahy stated here in the House this evening that he would give an undertaking that all the stages of this Bill would be concluded this evening.

I said that discussion, as far as we were concerned, would be finished by ten minutes past ten, and that all the stages of this Bill would be given to the Minister to-night after a division on the Second Reading.

I am sorry to tell the Deputy, through you, Sir, that I am informed by the Whip that the vote was to be taken at 10 o'clock. Of course, as usual, the agreement is not being kept.

Take the vote now, if you like.

I suggest that if the Minister is desirous of speaking he can speak now, and can speak until 10.25.

No, there are the other stages of the Bill.

There is nothing to prevent all the stages of the Bill being concluded after the division is taken, as there will not be any division but the division on the Second Reading.

As I was listening to Deputy McGilligan speaking, some lines out of a song in "The Tempest," with which many Deputies, I am sure, are familiar, came to my mind. They begin: "Full fathoms five thy father lies," and they end up to the effect that "Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something new and strange." It will never be said of Deputy McGilligan, however deep he lies, that we shall ever have from him something new and strange. I knew, when the Central Fund Bill was down for discussion this afternoon, that he would appear in his usual role of an old sandwich-board decked around with old and worn-out advertisements. We did say when we were in Opposition that we would reduce taxation by £2,000,000, because it was clear to us that any Government doing so little for the Irish people as the Cumann na nGaedheal Government was doing, and doing it so inefficiently, was at least wasting £2,000,000 of public money. Accordingly, we promised the people that we should do the same work as they were doing for £2,000,000 less. But we are doing much more. I recited yesterday what additional benefits and what additional projects we proposed to carry through in the coming financial year. I pointed out that in one vote alone, the vote for the Local Loans Fund, we were providing mainly for the housing of the people a sum of £4,539,000 as against £730,000 provided by Mr. Cosgrave. For the relief of the unemployed this year we are providding £1,500,000. And there is not any comparable figure or any comparable service that we can point to under Deputy Cosgrave's Government because, as you know, one of the things that most of all turned the people of this country against them was their callous disregard for the sufferings of the unemployed. We are providing, I pointed out, the sum of £102,000 for an experiment in the manufacture of industrial alcohol. We are providing additional money for the teachers. We are providing £350,000 for public works, and we are providing a host of other benefits and advantages for the people of this country, which bring the total bill up, according to the Supply Estimates, to £29,709,000.

It is a large sum. It staggered Deputy Dillon and it staggered one or two other members of the Opposition; but we asked them to point to one out of all those manifold services that they would do without and to tell us what it was. What was their rejoinder? Deputy Dillon pointed to one—an insignificant item, something less than a mere flea-bite—the vote for the Secret Service amounting to £25,000. He said that that was one service we could do without. £25,000 out of £29,709,000 is the only item of expenditure in the whole of that list that Deputy Dillon would forego. That was the one he emphasised most and the one to which he referred most often.

That is like the quotation from the Cork Examiner.

What do we want the Vote for the Secret Service for? We do not desire it at all, but one thing which has distinguished this Government from its predecessors is that whatever other qualities it may lack, at any rate, it has the quality of foresight. When we see an organisation growing up in this country, telling its members that they must establish a secret service, that they must have their intelligence agents working in every branch of the Public Service, that they must enlist in its ranks postmen and others; and when, on top of that, the man who is the head of this organisation tells us that he has had advance information as to when bank robberies and other crimes were being planned and suggests that in regard to these he had the same sources of information as he always had; when we know that the only political Party in this country that is likely to benefit from outrage or robbery, loot or riot, is the Party of which that gentleman is the titular head, and when he admits an association and connection with bank robbers and other criminals, then, I think, it is time for any Government to take steps to ensure that at least it will have the same information as he has. We do not want to increase this Vote for the Secret Service but it is being made necessary. Possibly none of the money will be spent, but possibly the whole of it may have to be spent, and perhaps more in addition. We are going to put down and curb and deal with the illegal associations which at the present moment are being set on foot in this country.

With what illegal associations? There is only one illegal association in the country at the present moment according to the Attorney-General.

What other services would Deputy Dillon forego? He mentioned the Department of Industry and Commerce. Why? He has apparently; since he has always got the worst of his bouts with the Minister for Industry and Commerce, a wish to abolish him altogether merely in order to gratify his injured feelings. We are to dispense with the service of the one Minister and the one Ministry which, by common acclaim, is held up to be the most successful Minister and the most successful branch of a successful Government. I have heard present supporters of Deputy Dillon state positively that whatever else may go in this country, they wish to see the present Minister for Industry and Commerce remain in that position.

Oh, spare his blushes.

Deputy Dillon, because he comes off second best in his encounters with the Minister for Industry and Commerce, wishes to abolish the Minister even if, at the same time, he had to wipe out the whole of the Department of Industry and Commerce. What would be the extent of that saving? About £120,000. Then the Deputy says: "We can do without an increase in the Army." He suggested that substantial economies can be made in the Army. How? When Deputy Fitzgerald was Minister for Defence here he emphasised over and over again that an efficient army could not be maintained in this country on a less expenditure than £1,500,000. Even with the provision we are making for the new Volunteer Forces the expenditure on the Army is well below £1,500,000, and a large part of the additional expenditure on the Army will be represented by the provision of Volunteer Halls throughout the country which will, from a social point of view, meet a crying need in some districts. The other services with which Deputy Dillon would dispense is, I think, the bounties on exports. Does Deputy Dillon want us to drop the bounties? Is he one of those who, unlike Deputy Keating, believes that the bounties do not go back to the producers.

There would be no necessity for them but for Fianna Fáil.

The Deputy believes he gets no share of the bounties, and that the producer gets the lot. He believes——

He believes the Minister is a fraud.

Does Deputy Dillon differ with his follower, and does he, on the contrary, believe that the producers get none of the bounties? Is that the argument that is put forward? Is that why he wants us to drop the bounties? I should like to know if that is the only contribution that Deputy Dillon can offer to the farmer in his present difficulties—that we ought to drop the bounties? Is that the Deputy's one contribution?

The Minister ought to be ashamed of himself.

My conscience will have to become more tender.

The Minister's conscience !

Is it the case that the exporter collars the share of the bounties which, according to Deputy Bennett, should go to the farmers?

I have only a moment or two left, but I want to say one or two things about the state of the country. In the course of his speech yesterday the Minister for Industry and Commerce pointed out that every economic index indicated that conditions were improving in this country.

Home assistance!

The Minister for Industry and Commerce pointed out that we were buying more meat, more vegetables, more potatoes, more tobacco, more tea, more sugar and more drink than before.

And more blue blouses.

That is quite true for the Deputy.

I can give Deputy Dillon the figures.

If the Minister sets up a factory for blue blouses I can promise him he will want no subsidy or bounty to be given to them.

We are spending more money on drink, more money on betting, more money on entertainments, more money on matches, more on petrol, more on watches, more on clocks, more on meat and more on everything——

We are having a royal time.

That is a very apt remark, but the Minister might well say to his colleague:"Et tu Brute.

And yet we have Deputy Dillon getting up here and talking about the unfortunate people being driven to despair. I can tell the Deputy that not only are we spending more on entertainments, on drink, tobacco, tea, sugar and meat than ever before, but that the revenue is exceeding the estimate under practically every head.

Give up drink.

We know that nothing is going to enlighten the gloom that enshrouds the members on the opposite benches.

Except Deputy Jordan.

I think the only thing the members of the Opposition read is their own speeches. I do not think they read the speeches of the Dublin business men. There was a case tried in the Dublin courts recently and it got a great deal of publicity. In the course of the testimony given by the manager of the firm, one of the largest concerns in Ireland, he stated that the depression which they had anticipated in 1932 had not materialised and that the depression anticipated in 1933 had not struck Clerys yet. Deputy John Marcus O'Sullivan said that the Government was the only expanding business in this country. But that business is expanding and other business is prosperous. We are told, in the words of the manager of Clerys, that this depression, of which Deputy Dillon and Deputy O'Sullivan seem to have some foreknowledge, has not struck Clerys yet. What was said by the manager of Clerys was repeated yesterday by the chairman of Todd Burns & Company, who told the shareholders that while they had a large loss in trade in 1932, that loss was changed in 1933 into a profit of £9,200. He went on to point out that, notwithstanding their expanding trade, the amount of money which they had lying out with their debtors was much less than would be warranted by the increase which had taken place in their business.

The Minister is aware that they are contractors for the Blue Shirts.

I think that would put them under a disadvantage as compared with competitors, and that they are waking up to the fact that it might be better for them to discard the manufacture of that unpleasant looking garment. What was said by the chairman of Messrs. Todd Burns was also said by the chairman of another rather different concern. Speaking yesterday at the shareholders' meeting, the chairman of Messrs. J.G. Mooney & Co., Ltd.— no doubt Deputy Dillon knows them well—a firm with a very enviable reputation the world over——

What is the imputation?

——pointed out that the profits for 1933 had exceeded the profits for the year 1932 by no less than £700. A shareholder, seconding the adoption of the directors' report, stated that in 1932 they had the benefit of the Eucharistic Congress, which brought tremendous crowds to the city and benefited it, and that cognisance of that should be taken in considering the accounts for 1932. In 1933, the year they were told conditions had become worse for the farmers, Messrs. J.G. Mooney & Co., Ltd., had even a better year than what they all thought was the bumper year of 1932.

Drowning the universal sorrow.

The Deputy can put all the gloss on it that he likes. These are the facts. There is not a single economic index that can be taken, whether the consumption of food, increased expenditure on clothing, on entertainment, on amusement, upon betting and beverages, no matter what type of concern it may be, which does not show that the country is more prosperous and better this year than last year. That is true I say of the country as a whole.

Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 68; Níl, 53.

  • Aiken, Frank.
  • Bartley, Gerald.
  • Beegan, Patrick.
  • Boland, Gerald.
  • Bourke, Daniel.
  • Brady, Brian.
  • Brady, Seán.
  • Breathnach, Cormac.
  • Breen, Daniel.
  • Briscoe, Robert.
  • Browne, William Frazer.
  • Carty, Frank.
  • Clery, Mícheál.
  • Concannon, Helena.
  • Corish, Richard.
  • Corkery, Daniel.
  • Crowley, Timothy.
  • Daly, Denis.
  • Derrig, Thomas.
  • De Valera, Eamon.
  • Doherty, Hugh.
  • Donnelly, Eamon.
  • Everett, James.
  • Flynn, John.
  • Flynn, Stephen.
  • Fogarty, Andrew.
  • O'Briain, Donnchadh.
  • O'Doherty, Joseph.
  • O'Dowd, Patrick.
  • O'Grady, Seán.
  • O'Kelly, Seán Thomas.
  • O'Reilly, Matthew.
  • Pearse, Margaret Mary.
  • Rice, Edward.
  • Geoghegan, James.
  • Gibbons, Seán.
  • Goulding, John.
  • Hales, Thomas.
  • Harris, Thomas.
  • Hayes, Seán.
  • Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
  • Houlihan, Patrick.
  • Jordan, Stephen.
  • Keely, Séamus P.
  • Kehoe, Patrick.
  • Kelly, Thomas.
  • Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
  • Keyes, Michael.
  • Killilea, Mark.
  • Kilroy, Michael.
  • Kissane, Eamonn.
  • Lemass, Seán F.
  • Little, Patrick John.
  • MacEntee, Seán.
  • Maguire, Ben.
  • Maguire, Conor Alexander.
  • Moane, Edward.
  • Moore, Séamus.
  • Moylan, Seán.
  • Norton, William.
  • Ryan, James.
  • Ryan, Martin.
  • Ryan, Robert.
  • Sheridan, Michael.
  • Smith, Patrick.
  • Traynor, Oscar.
  • Victory, James.
  • Walsh, Richard.

Níl

  • Alton, Ernest Henry.
  • Anthony, Richard.
  • Beckett, James Walter.
  • Belton, Patrick.
  • Bennett, George Cecil.
  • Brennan, Michael.
  • Brodrick, Seán.
  • Burke, James Michael.
  • Burke, Patrick.
  • Coburn, James.
  • Costello, John Aloysius.
  • Curran, Richard.
  • Davis, Michael.
  • Davitt, Robert Emmet.
  • Desmond, William.
  • Dillon, James M.
  • Dockrell, Henry Morgan.
  • Dolan, James Nicholas.
  • Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
  • Fagan, Charles.
  • Finlay, John.
  • Fitzgerald, Desmond.
  • Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
  • Good, John.
  • Haslett, Alexander.
  • Keating, John.
  • MacDermot, Frank.
  • McFadden, Michael Og.
  • McGilligan, Patrick.
  • McGovern, Patrick.
  • McGuire, James Ivan.
  • McMenamin, Daniel.
  • Minch, Sydney B.
  • Morrisroe, James.
  • Morrissey, Daniel.
  • Mulcahy, Richard.
  • Murphy, James Edward.
  • Nally, Martin.
  • O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
  • O'Leary, Daniel.
  • O'Mahony, The.
  • O'Neill, Eamonn.
  • O'Reilly, John Joseph.
  • O'Sullivan, Gearoid.
  • O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
  • Redmond, Bridget Mary.
  • Reidy, James.
  • Rice, Vincent.
  • Roddy, Martin.
  • Rogers, Patrick James.
  • Rowlette, Robert James.
  • Thrift, William Edward.
  • Wall, Nicholas.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Little and T raynor; Níl: Deputies Bennett and G. O'Sullivan.
Question declared carried.

The remaining stages of the Bill being unopposed may be concluded after 10.30 p.m.

Bill passed through Committee without amendment, received for final consideration, and passed.

This is a Money Bill within the meaning of Article 35 of the Constitution.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until Friday, 9th March, at 10.30 a.m.

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