Business will be as on the Order Paper from No. 6, Public Business not to be interrupted at 12 o'clock.
Order of Business.
Is the Minister moving that? Is there a motion for that purpose?
I do not know whether it is necessary.
Of course it is.
A formal motion is not necessary unless the proposal is challenged.
Certainly it is challenged. Will the Minister give any justification whatsoever for doing this? I understand that there are a certain number of motions on the Order Paper which the Minister and the Government would prefer not to discuss. Probably the Minister would like to treat them in the same lordly fashion as the amendments to the Bill which is to be before us to-day. There are many motions there, that ought to be discussed. The Minister has given no justification whatsoever for this interference with Private Members' time. He cannot plead urgency. Does he suggest that the particular Bill, the Committee Stage of which we were discussing yesterday, and which is again on the Order Paper to-day, is urgent, that it must be passed before—I think this is one of the usual pleas—the 31st March? Is it one of the items of business for which they again and again put forward the plea of urgency? At the same time that they put forward that plea, generally in connection with financial business, they bring forward Bills in this House that are merely not urgent, but certainly are not wise. The time of the House would have been much better occupied in dealing with urgent financial business than dealing with many of the measures with which the Ministry have wasted their own time, the time of the House, and the time of the country.
The Minister, I admit, has gone further than any other Minister in his treatment of the House in giving no replies whatsoever to the arguments put up to him. I admit he has a majority. I admit that even in a matter of this kind he will probably have a majority, but at least he might give a formal kind of respect to the House by putting forward reasons for motions of this kind. He is treating the House, even his allies, with contempt. We have a great deal of talk from the Government Benches about respect for democratic institutions, but they have always used their majority to show their supreme contempt for these institutions. They do not even pretend to give any reason for what they propose to do now. The Minister knew that this would be opposed. He must have known it. The motion, it is clear, is going to be challenged, yet he gave us no reason for it. The Minister knew it was going to be challenged. It was quite clear from the question that I asked the Ceann Comhairle that it was going to be challenged, and the Minister gave no reason.
On a point of explanation, may I say that I was not notified that there would be any opposition whatever to the taking of Private Members' time to-day.
The Parliamentary Secretary is not yet a Minister. I was speaking to the Minister, and he knew perfectly well, when I put a question to the Ceann Comhairle, that the suggestion to take Private Members' time was going to be challenged. Still the Minister gave no explanation any more than he gave an explanation on the various amendments to the Bill that we discussed last night. I suggest that the whole thing is a travesty on these popular institutions to which those on the opposite side give such lip sympathy and lip homage. We oppose this motion.
Deputy O'Sullivan has spent a long time in opposing a motion that was not even moved.
Is the motion not being moved, because the Minister said already: "I will move it"?
I said nothing of the kind.
I assumed, when the Deputy rose, that the motion had been moved.
I said to the Ceann Comhairle——
Is the motion being moved now?
A Chinn Comhairle, will I get a chance of talking at all? These jack-in-the-boxes are very busy. Deputy O'Sullivan is one of the last people that I thought would act the jack-in-the-box in this House.
Now, John, you should not say that.
You can have Seáníns in the box, too.
I asked the Ceann Comhairle if it would be necessary to move it.
Is it being moved now?
If the Ceann Comhairle says "Yes, that it must be moved," I will move it, certainly.
The Ceann Comhairle cannot say whether it should be moved or not; that is a matter for the Minister who, if he desires to move that Public Business be not interrupted at 12 noon, should put the motion formally.
I move the motion now formally. I may say that when I was asked by the Chair to state the Order of Business, as soon as I announced what it was proposed to take, Deputy O'Sullivan rose without giving me a chance of moving the motion that Public Business be not interrupted at 12 o'clock. I say that the business proposed for to-day is a matter of urgency. I do not suppose the Deputies opposite will agree with that. Judging by their performances on some of the amendments last night I think that is very evident. Besides the first business on the Order Paper for to-day, there are some Bills immediately following it that are very urgent. We are anxious to get on to them, and so also, I think, are some of the Deputies opposite. However, that is their business and they can decide it. With regard to the remarks made by Deputy O'Sullivan, if the Deputy chooses to be out of the House when I make replies to arguments put up in favour of amendments on the Local Services (Temporary Economies) (No. 2) Bill, that is his own affair, but he should not say that I have not answered the arguments put up to the particular amendment that we discussed last night.
The Minister left it to Deputy Corry.
Deputy Corry, I know, added his views. He gave his reasons why that particular amendment should not be agreed to. I gave my reasons also. Last night was not the first occasion on which that amendment was discussed, and I gave my reasons on the previous occasion that it was before the House. I now move: That Public Business be not interrupted at 12 o'clock.
First of all I did not quite understand from the Vice-President what the Order of Business was to be for to-day.
No. 6, and then Items 7, 8 and 9 with any Money Resolutions necessitated by the taking of any of those items.
The position then is that the Government believe that they must absorb the time set apart for Private Members to-day in order to discuss the Local Services (Temporary Economies) (No. 2) Bill, 1933. There is also on the Order Paper, in Private Members' time, the "Auctioneers, Valuers, House and Estate Agents Bill, 1933," for Second Reading. That Bill, I think, has been in the hands of Deputies for very many months. It may be that the Second Reading of it will be a formal matter, but it also might be controversial. The next item is this motion in the names of four Labour Deputies:—
That in view of continued widespread unemployment the Dáil instructs the Executive Council to make available forthwith sufficient money to permit of the carrying out of large scale schemes of public works, so as to relieve the distress caused by unemployment.
I presume these Deputies meant that when the motion was put down. I have not seen any indication from them that they do not want it discussed at the moment.
It is coming on on Wednesday.
I suggested rather appropriately the other day that the first prosperity day under the Fianna Fáil Administration should be the day when the unemployment figures topped the 100,000 mark, and it so happened that they did on the very next day. I do not suppose there is any less apprehension in the minds of Labour Deputies to-day on the matter of widespread unemployment than there was when this motion was put down, and when the figures had not reached the 100,000 mark. The next motion asks the Dáil to condemn "the Executive Council for its neglect to secure a quota for the export of cattle to Great Britain adequate to the needs of our agricultural industry." Is that motion any less pressing than the Local Services (Temporary Economies) (No. 2) Bill? We have also on the Order Paper to-day a "Slaughter of Animals Bill." The Vice-President might have urged that, in view of the contemplated slaughter of cattle, it certainly was necessary to get the Slaughter of Animals Bill and the humane slaughtering instrument introduced before we came to the wholesale destruction under the impact of Fianna Fáil prosperity. The third motion sets out:—
That the Dáil is of opinion that owing to the increasing distress of the farming community arising out of the continuance of the economic war the Executive Council should take steps to relieve agricultural land of rates during the financial year 1934-35.
The fourth motion asks the Dáil to express its dissatisfaction at "the manner in which the Ministry of Agriculture has allocated the export licences of fat cattle." That motion, of course, would give an opportunity to raise the whole matter of licences and, in particular, the handling of licences in the County Donegal in relation to flour. The next motion, which reads—
That the Dáil requests the Government, in order to maintain the present area under tillage and to prevent wholesale unemployment, to take immediate steps to secure a market for our 58 per cent. of surplus stall-fed cattle, and failing to do so to purchase the said cattle from the feeders at the price ruling in the British market,
surely deals with an important matter.
Finally, it is an outrageous thing for the Government to let hang over their heads the charge which is implied in the motion on the Order Paper No. 21. That motion asks that a tribunal be established to consider the following "matters of urgent public importance":—
Whether a meeting of engineers or persons purporting to act in that capacity as members of the organisation styling itself the I.R.A. was held on Saturday, the 10th day of February, 1934, at or near Parnell Square or elsewhere in the City of Dublin;
Whether the purpose or one of the purposes of the said meeting was instruction in or demonstration of the use or construction of a land mine or other explosive;
Whether the police authorities or the Government were aware that such meeting was intended to be held and of the purposes thereof;
Whether the police authorities or the Government were aware that such meeting, while in progress, was being held and, if so, why such meeting was allowed to proceed and why the persons taking part in such meeting were not arrested and charged;
Whether such meeting or the proceedings thereof were related to or in any way connected with the explosion which took place at Dundalk on the day following the said meeting, namely, Sunday the 11th day of February, 1934.
Are the Government content to have that matter, expressed to be a matter of definite and urgent public importance, and revealing itself as such by its terms, squashed out to allow us to discuss whether local administration is as rotten as Deputy Corry last night made it out to be; whether county surveyors, medical officers and vocational education officers should have their salaries hacked and slashed? What about the mine explosion and the meeting in Parnell Square? There is a boy going around at present minus an eye. It is a grim jest at the expense of our national outlook, that that should be so by reason of the fact that the blind eye of the Government was turned on Parnell Square.
It is obvious that the merits of any Bill or motion on the Order Paper cannot be discussed now.
I do not think the Chair can rule that I have gone into any details on any of these on this motion.
The Deputy appeared to be going into some detail when he singled out a particular individual.
I shall leave it at that. I have said enough to indicate that there was a grave charge and implication contained in motion 21 on the Order Paper, and the Government are content to let weeks pass without having that attacked, if it is going to be attacked. No effort is made to meet that very serious charge by bringing it up to a position of importance on the Order Paper or even putting it in the forefront of things to be discussed in Private Members' time. Instead of that we are going to have all this discussion to-day for the sake of saving £35,000 to save a country which Deputy Moore, by implication, last night asserted was on the edge of bankruptcy.
I wish to join——
I move that the motion be now put.
I submit that the Opposition is entitled to make some representation before the motion is put. The proposal is made here to-day to take Private Members' time to prevent us from discussing motions that have been on the Order Paper for a considerable time. One particularly important one has been referred to by Deputy McGilligan which affects the whole question of the decent administration of law in this country.
A Deputy
The same story over again.
It is noteworthy that any reference to this gravely important motion produces squeaks and howls from the back benches of Fianna Fáil.
It is better that it should produce squeaks and howls than laughter.
In addition to that there are motions Nos. 16 and 18 which deal with the condition of practically every farmer in the country at the present time. The Minister for Agriculture knows that when he meets his consultative council in the cattle trade the entire day is spent protesting to him that not only the cattle trade, but the dairy trade and the tillage products industry are being wiped out.
Is this in order?
Not a discussion on the merits of the motion.
I am drawing the attention of the House to the fact that the Minister for Agriculture whenever he meets his consultative council is upbraided——
I again submit that this is not in order.
——is upbraided by every member for that, by his gross neglect, he is allowing the cattle trade, the dairy trade, and the tillage products industry in this country to be wiped out. Nevertheless, when we put down motions on the paper for the purpose of opening this question in Dáil Eireann, where it ought to be opened, any obstructive tactics which the Government can take in order to prevent the motion being discussed are adopted. There is more being lost every week under the Minister's present agricultural policy than would make up the savings which it is proposed to effect under the Local Services (Temporary Economies) Bill.
The agricultural policy of the Ministry is not relevant.
The object of the Minister in moving to prevent us from having Private Members' time is to dispose of urgent business, and the urgent business is directed to saving £35,000 for one year. We want to discuss a motion calling in question the mad policy of the Minister for Agriculture. My submission is that his policy is losing infinitely more than £35,000 a week, and we are told that a Bill, which is designed to save £35,000 for one year, is of more importance than a motion directed to saving the people of the country infinitely more than £35,000 a week. In so far as saving money and protecting the men in this industry from bankruptcy are concerned, that is an extremely important matter which affects the whole future of this State.
There is an even more important motion on the Order Paper in the names of Labour Deputies dealing with the problem of unemployment. We were told by the Government, and are being told constantly and brazenly by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, that unemployment is decreasing. He gets up here week after week and, with the brass which no other Minister has—I will say that for them —he says that unemployment is decreasing, and week after week returns from his own Department come out showing an increase in unemployment of 5,000, 10,000 and 15,000 per week, until eventually we have reached the stage when we have 100,000 men and women unemployed. The Labour Party, in order to save their faces before the country, put down this motion:—
That in view of continued widespread unemployment the Dáil instructs the Executive Council to make available forthwith sufficient money to permit of the carrying out of large scale schemes of public works, so as to relieve the distress caused by unemployment.
When that motion was put down I doubt if there were 70,000 unemployed. To-day there are 30,000 more and there is not a whimper out of the Labour Party. Why? Because they have sold out to Fianna Fáil. And they have given Fianna Fáil an undertaking that nothing awkward will be discussed by the Labour Party; that no vote will be given by the Labour Party which would jeopardise the continued existence of the Fianna Fáil Government. Those gentlemen who profess to represent Labour in this country, who are continually protesting their solicitude for the welfare of the working people of the country, remain silent when the Minister tells them that he will not give them time to discuss the widespread unemployment and the distress caused thereby. Why? Because he wants to pass a Bill to reduce the salaries of every officer of a public authority in this country.
Let the Labour Party realise what they are doing this morning. They are going to support the Government in a motion to expedite the passage of a Bill designed to save £35,000 this year by cutting the salary of every servant of a public authority, and, in order to achieve that purpose, the unemployed, whom the Labour Party are supposed to represent in this House, are to be pushed on one side and left out of the discussion, because it might make the absent Minister for Industry and Commerce blush or it might make his ears burn to hear what ought to be said in this House on that problem. It is a dignified position for the two members of the Labour Party who are present. I trust they are proud of the position they took up to-day. They have tasted the bitter gall of humiliation on many occasions before in this House during this session, but, deep as their humiliation must have been heretofore, I think the incident in which they will take part this morning will crown their humiliation. They ought to blush, but they have lost the gift of blushing. We can only hope that when they go to the Lobby—and it does not make much matter which side they turn— they will have to blush. If they support us they will do it with hypocrisy written all over them; if they support the Government they will go out naked of any pretence of decency.
I am putting the Question: That Public Business be not interrupted at 12 noon.
Can we not have a discussion as to whether——
No one rose.
I was waiting.
Once the Question is put, there can be no further debate, not even on a point of order.
May I suggest that I was waiting to know if the Ceann Comhairle had finished the sentence. I did not understand that the House had agreed that discussion on the matter had ceased when the Ceann Comhairle stood up. I did not say a word until the Ceann Comhairle had finished the sentence he started. I think my reverence for the Chair compelled such a course, but I thought the discussion had not finished.
The Standing Orders preclude all discussion in such case.
I did not know what the position was.
Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 50; Níl, 31.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neal.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, William Frazer.
- Carty, Frank.
- Cleary, Mícheál.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Timothy.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Doherty, Hugh.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Gibbons, Seán.
- Goulding, John.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Jordan, Stephen.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, James Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamonn.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- Maguire, Conor Alexander.
- Moane, Edward.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Moylan, Seán.
- O'Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Kelly, Seán, Thomas.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Pearse, Margaret Mary.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C. (Dr.).
Níl
- Beckett, James Walter.
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Burke, James Michael.
- Dockrell, Henry Morgan.
- Dolan, James Nicholas.
- Everett, James.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Fitzgerald, Desmond.
- Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
- MacDermot, Frank.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Minch, Sydney B.
- Morrisroe, James.
- Curran, Richard.
- Davis, Michael.
- Desmond, William.
- Dillon, James M.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Nally, Martin.
- O'Mahony, The.
- O'Neill, Eamonn.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget Mary.
- Rice, Vincent.
- Thrift, William Edward.
- Wall, Nicholas.
Tellers:—Tá, Deputies Little and Traynor; Níl. Deputies Bennett and Nally.
Question declared carried.