I am sorry the Minister for Industry and Commerce did not see fit to stay here to answer arguments put forward in reply to the absurd charges he made yesterday by way of statement. I have previously referred, in connection with the Minister, to a well-known character called Sequah, who used to travel around the country carrying on tooth-pulling operations behind the blare of a trumpet and the beating of a huge drum.
Committee on Finance. - Vote No. 3.—Department of the President of the Executive Council (Resumed)
Debate resumed on the following motion:—
That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration (Deputy MacDermot).
The Deputy is late; we had that the other day.
It is copied from myself; I am the originator of it.
We had it from Deputy McGovern. Try another record.
I want to add this to it, that it was always well known that when the gum was a bit sore or the tooth old and diseased, the trumpet blared louder and the drum banged more. Of course, when people are facing up to cutting the old age pensioners by a so-called £100,000 which is much more likely to be £500,000, and to cutting unemployment assistance by a minimum of, at least, £300,000, it is quite right that the trumpet should have been blown and the drum beaten as loudly as possible. I still think it was bad tactics to put up a Minister to make statements unsupported by any documents and unsupported by any figures, when he is a Minister fresh from having his bluff called in the Dublin strike that we had recently. We know that, on that particular occasion, the Minister bullied and threatened both sides, to the extent that Deputy Norton was forced to criticise him as making oppressive use of authority. When he threatened the Labour people, one of his promises was that, if they persisted, he would provide for the citizens of this city adequate alternative travelling facilities. That meant something to people who were accustomed to seeing trams and buses carrying multitudes of people into town, and he provided 40 old army lorries. That is the relationship between promise and achievement so far as he is concerned. They did good work; they carried as many as could be expected of them, but nobody can say that they were adequate alternative travelling accommodation for the citizens.
The same Minister, of course, has been repudiated by a committee of Fianna Fáil in County Kerry, who told him, in regard to the establishment of factories down there, that he had only been bluffing and denounced him as being hypocritical. The same Minister told me in this House on a particular occasion, when the argument was vital, that he was not aware that any smuggling of cattle or anything else was going on across the Border, and he thought fit, quite recently here, to say that this Party had voted against the Unemployment Assistance Bill. He went further and said that it was so recorded in the Debates and the Debates were produced and there was no such record. Surely a Minister whose credibility is so weakened as his has been, and who is suffering so definitely, even in his Party circles, from the set-back which his reputation has got in connection with the Dublin tramway strike, should—if he means to rehabilitate himself, or has any chance of doing so—be put up here armed with facts, figures and documents, and not be allowed to speak in the way in which he did last night. It is certainly not an argument worthy of anybody in this House, and particularly a Minister armed with all the resources of a State Department, simply to say: "You are wrong; you always were, and I never expected any better from you"; yet that is one of the characteristic arguments—I might say one of the characterless arguments—which the Minister for Industry and Commerce most frequently uses. What did he say in those general statements of his last night? He said that there is only one way to reduce taxation, and that is to reduce expenditure. A little later he asked why did not the members of this Party put forward any services that they wanted cut. I thought there would come a time when the necessity for referring to the Ministers' own promises would have gone.
That document again!
Undoubtedly, particularly in view of what the President said here recently, that he wanted truth, honesty, fair dealing, and acceptance of contracts and contractual liabilities. Is there a word in that document, which deals with what Fianna Fáil was going to do for the people of the country, to the effect that there was only one way to reduce taxation and that was by reducing expenditure? There is a statement to the contrary: "When we grow our own requirements we shall have nearly 1,500,000 acres of additional tillage." Then there are mathematics interspersed with this, and the statement winds up by saying that this additional tillage will increase the earnings of some agricultural workers by £3,130,000 a year. We did get beet talk later. I suppose it is a mixed metaphor to talk about white elephants coming home to roost, but that is one that has certainly come back.
We were told here yesterday that the wheat scheme and the beet scheme had not given workers in the beet industry and on the farms where beet is grown very much of a return, but they had given some return, and the only way in which a good return could be given to them was by increasing the tax on sugar, and by increasing the tax on flour, and, therefore, on bread. I do not find that in this document. I find a definite statement that by increasing production—and there is no question of subsidy—the earnings of agricultural workers and small farmers are going to be increased by over £3,000,000 a year. Surely the men who think in terms of truth and honesty and fair play, the men who gained office on the strength of that document, should at any rate explain why they now find it necessary to say that you cannot decrease taxation unless you decrease expenditure. They should also explain why they forgot to say in that document that when they were going to increase production either in beet or in wheat, the price of bread would have to be raised and the price of sugar would have to be raised.
We are asked to name any service that can be dropped. I do not know of any than can be dropped, but I know that the Deputies opposite at one time thought there were some. The President in 1931 said that the Free State Army was costing £1,500,000, and was being kept up solely for the purpose of keeping down the people who, having been denied representation in the National Assembly through the imposition of the Oath, were thrown back on force. They are not now so denied representation, I believe. Are they thrown back on force? If not, why is the Army costing not merely £1,500,000, but something more? The police force came under criticism at that time; it was also costing £1,500,000. It was pointed out that both of those could be reduced, and great saving effected. The expenditure is now increased by over £300,000 between the two. The President was not the only one who said those things. The present Minister for Finance wanted to abolish the Army, and thus get a saving. Deputy Geoghegan thought we were maintaining the Army at far too great a cost, and it could be cut down. If we were going to war with a foreign power the Army was not adequate, and, with regard to civil war, who wanted it? Those were the only two thoughts which came into Deputy Geoghegan's head in connection with the Army. Then, of course, there was the famous Grangegorman speech by Deputy Cooney, in which he said there was going to be a saving of £2,500,000.
I do not say that those moneys can be saved, but the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who last night wanted to find out the services that could be reduced, did back those statements, and he now comes here backing proposals which increase the cost of those two forces by over £200,000. The Minister also in this advertisement promises £2,000,000 reduction in the estimates for the Civil Service, without doing any harm to anybody—without reducing the small salaries. The small salaries or the intermediate salaries were reduced, and we have not seen that £2,000,000 saving. Surely at any rate it requires some comment from those who made those promises then, and who are now keen on truth, honesty and fair dealing. It is up to them to tell us why their plans for the reduction of £2,000,000 have not been found capable of performance. It is up to them to tell us why they find it necessary to keep an army and police force at a more extravagant rate than were once necessary. It is up to them to tell us what is the new situation in the country, because we were told that once the political test, as it was called, was removed, there would be no necessity for keeping either a civil police force or an armed force. It almost went to this, that once the oath was removed you would hardly need a budget in this State. The Budget was a necessity only because there was still a Treaty with an Oath in it. Certainly it was always said that the old age pensioner was being kept out of what was due to him, and the unemployed were being kept out of work or assistance in lieu of work, simply because there was something in the Treaty or in the situation established by the Treaty which prevented the alleviation being given to those two sets of people that everybody wanted to give them. The Minister tells us that this Party always avoided doing the unpopular thing. Again, what was that advertisement? Was that an attempt to face realities? Was that not cajolery of the worst type? Was not that definitely an attempt to spread before the eyes of hungry people an amazing feast that they were bound to get if only they voted for Fianna Fáil? Was there any sense of reality about that advertisement?
We cannot read it over here.
I know that Deputy Kelly frequently sleeps, but I did not think he had slept on all occasions on which that advertisement was read.
Mr. Kelly
We cannot see it over here.
The Deputy has other senses as well as sight—at least I understand he has. He has often heard this document read, and I am not sure he was not in at the making of it. In case he does not know what it is about I may tell him that it is a series of promises. It promises £3,000,000 as a result of increased tillage. It promises £2,000,000 reduction through economies which were not going to harm anybody. It promises 84,605 people occupation in certain industries. It promises about nine other things.
Mr. Kelly
Yes, but those are only promises.
They are only promises, but the President—although Deputy Kelly is apparently not of the same mind—is keen on truth, honesty, fair dealing and the keeping of contracts. I do not know what the Deputy understands by promises.
Mr. Kelly
In certain places.
In certain places, but not in politics? That is the honesty we require in this House. We do want Deputy Kelly to realise that what would be the ordinary dealings between man and man in business ought to be the dealings between people who aspire to Government in this country and the electors. From a man like the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who backed this and who is probably responsible for the industrial side and for the economy side, surely something more is required than a mere series of statements about the grand condition this country is in? Something more than these statements is required, especially when he has got to the point of realising that all these promises of economies are sheer nonsense. Apparently he has also realised that the increased production of wealth in the country is so much moonshine. That is an answer to the Minister.
The Minister says it requires a reduction of expenditure in order to reduce taxation. It does not. That advertisement was founded on the belief that you could have reduced taxation without any reduced expenditure. The £2,000,000 of a saving were promised, but there was a vast amount of other things promised which would more than wipe that out. Is it not clear to everybody that if there is greater production of wealth in a State the greater will be the yield from taxes? An impost of 3/- in the £ on income tax at one period may bring in as much as an impost of 4/9 when there is less wealth produced. If the present Government could get the same production of wealth as in 1929 their 4/9 in the £ on income tax would be bringing in not the £4,200,000 which it is now bringing in, but over £5,000,000. You do not require a reduced expenditure in order to reduce taxation. You can carry the same load of expenditure on the same taxation— you can, in fact, carry more expenditure on the same taxation—if the yield from the tax is greater, and it will only be greater when there is greater productivity.
The speech delivered last night shows that the Minister realises there is a lessened production in the country and in those circumstances the argument goes further. You cannot carry on the same expenditure on the same old taxation if the production of wealth is decreasing; you have to raise your taxation. That is an economic truth that ought not to have to be stated more than once or twice in order to penetrate. I do not think anyone will deny that economic truth and it is at the root of all our troubles. The Minister is going to cut old age pensions nominally by £100,000. It will not be merely £100,000; if it were, Deputies would be in a far better position to secure a limitation to £100,000; but once you start tightening the administrative machine, then it is outside the control of the House. The administrative will work according to orders and if revenue is falling that sum will be increased to £500,000.
How?
By a tightening up of the administrative machine. If it were a matter of cutting down the old age pensions by a definite sum the Dáil would have control, but the Dáil has no control when it is a matter of tightening up the administration. That is under the control of the Executive, working away from this House, and Deputies are going to vote for that procedure. We are going to reduce unemployment assistance by £300,000. That may be done by further administrative economics. If so, it will be out of the control of members here. Deputies are here giving the Government their approval for a cut of £100,000 in old age pensions and £300,000 in unemployment assistance. Why is it necessary to give the Government approval for these things? Simply because the old taxes are not yielding so much and because there is not the same wealth in the country as there used to be. When that lesson is fully learned we will have got to a new basis, a new footing; we will have driven into the people's heads the fact that you can continue feeding the dog, or the under-dog, on his own tail only for a bit.
There is no use pretending that you are pleasing the people in poor circumstances. The fact is that you are advancing your schemes at the expense of people who are parading themselves as the folk who require benefits from you. When your ordinary channels fail to produce all that is required of them, there is only one resort. If you cannot get the strongest back you have to get the broadest back. In this case, the broadest back is represented by the people who are below a certain level. It is their savings, and the benefits that should rightly go to them, that will be taken and that is the truth despite all the Minister's talk and despite all his phrases.
Apparently, the Republic is now being left in the background, because the Republic was never mentioned. We are told here that we are going through a sort of purgatorial suffering. That may be all right, but the only point is that it is a purgatory that is not leading us to any heaven, because the Republic that could be visualised here, so far as economics are concerned, would be nothing but an absolute hell for most of us. I am thinking there will be another patch or two to be put on the hair shirt before we get near to the Republic. There was nothing of this sort promised to the people. There was no statement set out in the advertisement about the old age pensions being cut or the unemployment assistance being reduced. In order to make beet pay its own way they are raising the price of sugar and they are making wheat pay its way through raising the price of bread. That was undoubtedly an attempt to mislead the people. That, undoubtedly, spread untruth right through the countryside. It was an attempt to bridge an abyss that was in front of the present Government Party. How did they attempt to bridge it? By a series of sham promises that never should have been made. They knew, when they tried to put their ideas into practice, that the whole structure was bound to collapse under their own weight and, of course, it has collapsed.
When there is an appeal made to us to state our plan, there is right through this a missing of the point that is mainly in dispute between us. We held that certain things reduce the productive power of the people, and the Government held the reverse. Practice has borne out our view. All these schemes that have been hurriedly run into have not resulted in giving great employment and have not resulted in greater production. The difference between us is only that point, or can be made pivot on that point, that we have held right through, and soundly, that when production is lower the yield of taxation will fall, and in these circumstances you have to raise further taxes and put on new imposts and they add to the burden and they crush down further people who have already been crushed. Gaily the Government neglected ordinary economic laws, and they went into these things of beet and wheat. It is no answer to say that other countries are depressed and that other countries have not balanced their Budgets over a period. The comparison should not be made between this and other countries as they are now. The comparison should be made with this country as it was three or five years ago and as it is under present conditions and what it might be if this nonsensical economic war had not been entered into.
Leave out the past and leave out other countries. Look at the facts. There was a certain productivity which could have been improved on, but it could not be improved upon if the improvement was to take place under conditions of chaos and disorder. You can boil this whole argument down to this point. It is no answer to say you cannot get beet or wheat grown except by fostering it at a great price. Is there any necessity for these things in the country? Why are they made forced substitutes? Are those the things we would choose in preference to what is in the country? Why have we been made choose them? What is the advantage to be got from the forced choice? What will be the eventual advantage, because no one can show any advantage at the moment? That is the only economic truth that has to be faced at this moment.
We had it trotted out last night that our situation, even with the British, was not brought about by the present Government. That is denying what they previously said themselves. The President boasted here that the first shot in the war was fired by us. He boasted of that. The President may say to me that a man sometimes necessarily becomes the aggressor because he knows he is going to be on the defensive eventually and that it would be good policy——
I would like to see that statement? I do not recollect saying that we fired the first shot in the economic war.
The President does not recollect it?
No.
You do not recollect saying you fired the first shot?
There are so many things that I know I did not say and which I am accused of having said——
There are so many things that the President said and denies he said that I do not pay any attention to his language.
Let me see the statement.
The statement was made in the summer of 1932. I have not the quotation here, but the President knows very well he said it. He is only putting the proof on me. The statement has been made by him. Does the President now want to deny that he made it?
I say I have no recollection of that statement and I think it is an unlikely statement.
Very well; I am leaving the statement out. But does the President think, as a matter of fact, that he started the economic war?
I will see about that.
Well, I think he did that himself. And why? What was the aim of the economic war? Was it to mix politics and economics? Or was it not, as I think the President will admit, that he said of the economic war that it merely speeded up a scheme that had possibly to be put into operation in a more orderly way in a period of years. What was the scheme? Sometimes we hear the British market talked of as something to be avoided. Sometimes it is talked of with a note of regret. Recently in this House he said:
"You see that if we had been in that position we would only be in the same position to-day as New Zealand and Australia and they are not getting very much."
There was a hint in his voice there that we were not getting as much as they were getting. The Minister for Industry and Commerce told us last night that New Zealand and Australia had made offers to Great Britain and that they had been refused. I did not think that I would hear from the Minister praise for the British. The Minister for Defence told us before Christmas that the quota arrangements by the British in relation to our cattle were fair. I asked on that occasion what was the standard for determining what was fair or unfair. I got the answer, to take what cattle were sent in ordinary years to Great Britain, and against that to take the fact that the British were reducing their imports for a number of years and that our quota had been calculated on that standard or basis. I asked the Minister how could the proportion be found and I was asked to demonstrate how a fairer quota was possible. I did demonstrate here the grounds on which a fairer quota was possible and I gave three grounds: first, old-time associations with this country; second, the necessities of Great Britain in the time of war; and, third, the amount of their stuff that we took in return in this country. I was told then that using these arguments we could have demanded the whole of the British markets. But surely we could. Why tell us that Australia and Canada can only get this, that and the other settlement with England, when we have a completely different case from any of these countries?
Deputy Keating was called to order here last night when he put in one point that no Government spokesman will ever face. Admitting that there would be some shaking in the British market in relation to us; admitting that the British are for their own benefit adopting the quota system. Deputy Keating asked: "Have not the activities of the present Government destroyed whatever chance we had in the British market by 40 per cent.?" Suppose we argue on that basis of 40 per cent. that the Government has lost us, has there been anything done in this country since they took office in relation to beet, wheat, industrial alcohol or any of the numerous nonsensical things that have been attempted by them that would make up for that loss? Is there anything in the whole lot that would equate the loss of that 40 per cent. brought about clearly by the activity of this Government? That is the economic side of this question. The Minister told us last night, and I hope this will interest his Labour supporters, that he took advantage of the present situation, brought about by a plan of bureaucratic control and of measures designed to set that up, to organise a market here to extract from the consumers an economic price. Deputy Davin wanted the Prices Commission and when he got it he has queried here its activities and he is asking what prices have been controlled. I have asked the same question. As far as I am aware, the whole activities of the Prices Commission centre in one thing as far as results are concerned. That is to stop profiteering in the sale of small quantities of coal by coal hawkers. Since the Prices Commission has been set up—and it was set up so as to be paraded for political purposes and as a political stunt—its one result has been to check profiteering by hawkers who sell small quantities of coal. That is all the Prices Commission has done. The Minister for Industry and Commerce boasts here that the great advantage he is now getting is that he can extract from the consumer an economic price. The Minister's system of extracting an economic price results in the price of bread being raised. He has definitely raised the price of sugar. That is the advantage he has brought about.
During the debate on the Pigs and Bacon Bill Deputy Smith told us that you can, by lowering the price and making it uneconomic, drive certain people out of production. That is what we are brought to now in the region of economics. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has not shown himself appreciative of economic truth or as having read the new literature appertaining to the type of thing that he is now trying to run in the country. The Minister has power to wring from the consumer what he calls an economic price. The effect of this has been to extract a price not subject to any review outside.
The Minister boasted in the end of his speech last night that there was a fair quota with regard to cattle. I wonder why that boast came from him. He boasted that the Government has got an arrangement whereby they sent 150,000 extra cattle into Great Britain. He wound up with a flourish that this year there will be no surplus of cattle. Why? Because production has been forced down; because calves have been slaughtered; because we are setting up factories to do away with the old cattle and to turn them into meat meal. It is regarded as a blessing that we will not have any surplus cattle this year. I wonder will the farmer who had land and facilities for rearing a certain number of cattle annually, be pleased because of the fact that he has reduced production by a half and that he is going to get a higher price for that half? Surely what has got to be looked at is what he used to get by sales of cattle before, taking his costs of rearing and finishing into account, and what he will get now on the most that he can do. We are being brought to the condition in which we boast that there will be no surplus this year. Surely, looked at in a cold, calm way that is a condemnation of policy.
At the moment we are sending £38,000,000 out of this country for goods we bring in. At the moment we are getting from outside countries for goods we send abroad only £18,000,000. It is boasted that we have reached a stage at which that £18,000,000 cannot be increased. We have cut off the surplus at any rate, at the cattle end —the biggest end of our exports. I do not suppose we have cut off all the surplus, but we have cut off the surplus remaining after the British quota is exhausted. We have deprived ourselves of the possibility of bringing into this country, through sales, more money from abroad while, at the same time, our payments abroad, for goods we are forced to bring in, are going up every month. We sent £38,000,000 in the last financial year out of this country for goods we could not get at home; and in order to get money to pay for that £38,000,000 worth, we could only send abroad £18,000,000 of consignments.
Economists on the Government side are full of glee that we have reached the situation in regard to our main exports—cattle—that we have not any extra to send. It is not a case of cutting off all the surplus, of going to be self-contained and self-sufficient, but only that we are going to send into Great Britain enough cattle to pay the annuities. At any rate, we are going to keep to that point of production. We have lately, through this coal-cattle pact, got an agreement whereby we send in 150,000 head of cattle more than they require to pay the annuities. We further have got to the point where that 150,000 head of cattle going into England forms a fund of about £500,000 already earmarked by the National Farmers' Union in England, with the approval of the Government, as to the nucleus of a big fund to enable our competitors in England to get into the business we are so glad to get out of. By degrees we find that, through the money they have reaped from our stuff, we have put them in the position that they are going to supply more and more of that particular trade themselves; and we will be left where we can crow more loudly with glee because we have still further reduced the number of cattle that we send out of the country.
Would not that have come about anyway?
It would not. That is an argument that Deputy Donnelly is very fond of using. Where is the evidence that they would have done it? The evidence we have is that we were able to supply, as far as meat stuffs were concerned, a very small fraction indeed of all that England got in. We know that we have an advantage to offer in the way of mutual trade which will put us in a completely superior bargaining position for the future. We know that there are arrangements to consider to balance the imports which still continue, and must continue for years, of meat stuffs. There is consideration being given to Argentine, New Zealand and Australian meat, as well as some Canadian, and to our own. We have an extremely good bargaining position in relation to that. Until Great Britain has got to the point that she is not bringing in cattle or, at any rate, to the point that she is not forced to bring in the full number of cattle that we used to send, nobody should say that that market is gone.
Can anybody, looking at the trade returns, say that we are within two generations of reaching that point? They may get to it faster because of the mistakes made here. They may be getting, and it is reputed they are getting, the wherewithal to stock their lands from us, while exacting a tribute on what they get from us. They are getting not merely money on the beasts sold, but the very animals that will stock their lands. Nobody who knows the trade figures can say that Great Britain is near the point at which we must say that that market, even to one-tenth of what it used to be, certainly to the 100 per cent. of what it used to be, is gone, unless we are going to say that our situation vis-a-vis Great Britain is such that New Zealand, Australia, and even the Argentine, must get a preference beyond what we get, and must get a favourable situation in the British market.
There is our situation—that the Minister, who is put in charge of one of the Departments of State dealing with economics can find it a matter for rejoicing that this year there will be no surplus stock to export. That Minister knows that the reason why we are bringing in £38,000,000 worth of goods into this country, as against the £18,000,000 worth sent out, is because we have failed in our cattle supply to Great Britain—failed through British activity against us. That Minister knows that, as long as the situation remains as it is, and worse if it develops, there is no chance at all of the present taxation even yielding the present revenue. If the present taxation will not yield the present revenue, he is then at the point that, not merely must he reduce expenditure to ease the situation, but he has to reduce expenditure very seriously, or, alternatively, increase his taxation to the point that what is now crushing, and showing its crushing effect, will do immediately, progressively, and in every way, far more crushing and detrimental injury than even it is doing at the moment.
We should get these economics clear between ourselves. That is the situation as it presents itself to me. If that is not right, this is the place to say where it is not right; to put up figures and details and everything else against that contention. It is not the place to argue by merely saying, "You are wrong; I know you are wrong and I always expected you to be wrong." The opinions of members of this House count only in so far as they give arguments for their opinions. That is the argument we heard mainly from the Minister last night. The Minister knows well, when he boasts about factories, that he has to look at this: that these factories are not giving anything like the employment that was promised for them. The factories themselves are not helping to make any inroad on the unemployment problem. If people are going into work in relation to factories, although we have no precise knowledge, there must be people going out of work in other gainful occupations.
The Minister's own figures show that in the last financial year his fund advanced by less than £8,000. The Minister also knows that everybody, except those in domestic service, agriculture or horticulture, has to put a stamp on a card for every week they are in work. The proceeds of these stamps go into the fund and the fund last year only increased by £8,000.
This can be argued on the basis of half-time, quarter-time, or full-time. It does not matter, because we can get the basis of comparison. The Minister said the proper basis of comparison was the basis of full-time employment. Again I repeat that the calculation is simple. The stamp contribution rate at present for full-time occupation for fifty weeks amounts to £4 into the fund. £8,000 would mean 2,000 new people in occupation last year; and last year was the year in which the Minister boasted most of industrial activity and of vast increases. He talked of the opening of factories occurring every day, giving him an opportunity, that he could not take on a public platform, of making statements. Yet at the end of it all, his own figures—and they require some explanation if they are not to be taken in the way I take them now—show 2,000 people put into gainful occupations. In that year, the income tax, at a rate of 4/9, is only equivalent to what we got in on a rate of 3/6. In that year, the adverse trade balance increased to the difference between the £38,000,000 we send out of the country and the £18,000,000 we get in.
If the factories do not put men in employment; if they do not produce incomes for people on which income tax can be levied; if they do not produce something in the way of industrial activity which will enable us to refrain from buying abroad what we used to buy, what good are they? What test can you put on industrial activity other than these three items—better employment, better wealth production showing itself in a better income tax yield, and the production of things that we used to buy abroad? All three things are definitely against us. The income tax does not yield what it should; the employment figures are not going up; and the adverse trade balance is rising. The factories do not enable us to cut down our purchases from abroad. They do not give a bigger yield in income tax and they do not show a bigger income to the unemployment insurance fund. What are the factories doing? What advantage have we got from them?
In addition, there is another side to the question, and it is a serious matter. The wages in industries are going down and, at the same time, the cost of living has gone up. Despite what the official figures may say, the cost of living, in practice, has gone up. Again, we are faced with the peculiar set of circumstances that if there is production going on in the country, it is at a cost out of all keeping with that which the people can pay. The main activity in the country in the way of production has got to the point where a Minister can boast that the surplus has gone. We are now at the point at which we are simply feeding ourselves and have just enough left over with which to pay the British the annuities—not only the annuities, but all the R.I.C. pensions, judges' pensions and the rest. When we had the balance of trade against us in our day there was some way of meeting either the whole or part of the deficit from investments we had abroad or from remittances from our people who had gone abroad. It is notorious that the remittances have fallen off and it is demonstrable by figures that the investments we had abroad are falling. We are being nipped in both ways. Our resources, on which we used to rely to offset the deficit shown in the visible items, are being depleted. At the same time the adverse trade balance is rising, while there is no appearance of increased industrial activity in this country.
Despite all that, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, without a figure, without a datum, without anything to lean an argument on, except his own expression of opinion, says that this country is better off than it was and is better off than any country in the world. The one country quoted was France. Last night France was held up as a bad example. I remember when the columns of The Nation, run by the Party opposite, used to be full of praise for France. Self-sufficiency was the aim there and we were told what self-sufficiency had done for France. One has only to read the papers for the last few days to see the plight that France is in now. Why? Because the budgets have not been balanced there for two or three years. France was held up here as an example. I do not know whether it was a good example from the point of view of self-sufficiency or bad example from the point of view of not balancing budgets. France used to be held up by us as an example of an experiment that would end disastrously and the event has shown the prophecy to be true. Undoubtedly, it was the attempt to stifle international trade that prevented France from achieving that industrial activity that would give her a revenue through industrial taxation which would have enabled her to balance the Budget. Yet with that example before them, with that example quoted by the Minister for Industry and Commerce last night, this Government proceeded to do what an examination of the condition of four or five countries should have warned them of. We are told now that they are not in the position of Germany or France at the moment. These are the economics of the Fianna Fáil Party. That is the situation to which this country has been reduced through them.
There is another vital matter to the people of the country. The Minister for Industry and Commerce last night said that this Party was brazen and impudent in pretending to be in favour of law and order and that we were never in favour of law and order. Let us at any rate face that question as a reality here to-day. The Minister last night said that every member of this Front Bench, no matter how he might in words repudiate any lawlessness growing up in the country, was in fact in favour of it. I have no authority given me by the members of the Front Bench on this occasion, but we have always said that we do not favour lawlessness. We beat lawlessness out of you people. It was not a popular thing to do but that unpopular thing was faced by us and lawlessness was beaten out of you. We do not favour lawlessness. There is no good in linking up with movements that are going to end in the same disillusionment——
That is why you ceased to be a Government.
What was the main argument used against us then? The Public Safety Act! The Military Tribunal! Who is making most use of it now? What use did we make of it in comparison to the use that has been made of it since? If it was a jewel in our crown, it flashes with amazing brilliance at this moment when worn by the President.
If you were to obey the law, it would not be there.
I just want to come to that point. We have been faced here with the extraordinary situation in the last two or three weeks in which people have been paraded before the Military Tribunal and in their defence they referred to their activities under the authority of members of the present Government. No later than yesterday the papers contained a statement from a man who expressed surprise at the police being sent to his place to raid for grenades and bombs which he said he had dumped at the request of the President. Many such statements, in a variety of matters, have been made in defence of prisoners in the last two months. On a recent occasion when a certain group of these people were brought up they refused to recognise the court. That was alleged as a crime against them, for which they got some punishment. They refused to plead and that was used against them, properly used against them. Counsel who was appearing on behalf of the Attorney-General said that it was only right, he thought, that he should make to the court the defence that he thought these prisoners would make if they had been good enough to recognise the court and the defence that he assumed they probably would make was that they were the successors of the I.R.A. of 1916 and 1920 and that they stood for the same ideals. They could not merely have said that; they could have said a good deal more than that. They could have said: "We do not know whether we claim to be the successors of the men of 1916, but we claim to be the successors of those who claim to be the successors of the men of 1916."
Second cousins.
Possibly, and no more than once removed. They could quote the President in their defence because he spoke to that effect, not even in the time of the civil war and not even a year or two after the civil war was finished, but in this House, in March, 1929. The circumstances ought to be given. The President was declaiming, as he frequently does, that he sees no principle in this idea of majority rule; that it is only a working rule; that it exists only because you must have some rule to go by, but that there is nothing sacred about it and no principle in it. Having said all that, he said, at column 1400, vol. 28 of the Official Reports:
"My proposition that the representatives of the people should come in and unify control so that we could have one Army and one Government was defeated and, for that reason, I resigned."
Then, listen to this phrase, which surely gives authority to those men outside at the moment:—
"Those who continued on in that organisation which we have left can claim exactly the same continuity that we claimed up to 1925."
So that counsel, in pretending to put forward an argument—I do not say it was done deliberately; it was probably because he was not politically minded and did not know these details — for these people who were in the dock, could have said that these men could have claimed, on President de Valera's authority, that they were the successors of the people who were in the civil war, who fought the civil war and who continued as an armed force making preparations for further armed attempts until 1926.
In a speech a little later on — and this is of relevance at a time when men are being charged with, amongst other things, refusing to recognise the authority of the Courts—on the Juries Protection Bill, the present Minister for Industry and Commerce announced that there would be no respect for it in the minds of the Irish people; that it would be beaten and could be beaten, and he gave the method of its beating.
The matter before the House is the President's Vote. The motion to refer back this Vote makes the general policy of the Government a proper subject of debate. Ministers have been responsible to this House only since they were elected Ministers. Usually, the debate on an Estimate is confined to the administration of a department during the past 12 months. Twelve months ago, the House got an opportunity of reviewing the policy and administration of the preceding 12 months. As the debate might be somewhat restricted if analogies were not allowed to be made, and quotations cited to show continuity of policy, the Chair does not object to such within reason. But I submit that to quote from speeches made in 1929, three years before the Government came into office, is not reasonable.
May I make the matter relevant in this way: Men are at the moment, under the auspices of the present Attorney-General, being charged with refusing to recognise the courts, and I have here a statement by a Minister in which he said that if nobody would break the courts, he would do it?
As Minister?
He was not Minister then.
Ministers can only be held responsible to the Dáil from the time they assumed office. Furthermore—and the Deputy might resume his seat—much of the matter which the Deputy is now debating was discussed on the Vote for the Department of Justice. Specialised items dealing with another Vote should not be rediscussed on this general debate on Government policy. The established procedure precludes Deputies from doing so.
I specially raised this matter of this particular speech. and all that flowed from it, on the Vote for the Department of Justice and I was told that it was not the place and that it could better be debated on the President's Vote or on the Law Charges Vote. I was specially precluded from debating it on that ruling. It was not your ruling, Sir; but I was told not to debate it on that Vote and I did not.
The Military Tribunal?
This particular parading of people, the charges brought against them, and the historical antecedents which these people could claim, and I was told that it was more for the President's Vote or the Law Charges Vote. I had entered on the discussion but was interrupted.
With that ruling I am in full agreement, but I do submit that Ministers as Ministers are not responsible for statements of policy made by them eight or even five years ago.
I am not even trying to suggest that they are responsible. I am only saying that persons are being paraded at the moment on certain charges, and I want to show that these persons who have been paraded in the last 12 months, and who are likely to be paraded in the next 12 months, can claim certain sanctions for their activities. I can show that generally, but I should prefer, as I always do, to give documentation in respect of all these statements. I submit that it is quite relevant. There is no other way of demonstrating how iniquitous the present attitude of the President towards members of the I.R.A. and this organisation is except by referring to the President's own association with these people. I submit, Sir, that it is in order.
It is not for the Chair to argue or be argued with, but I put it to the Deputy, and to the House, that if speeches which were quoted from on this Estimate in 1931, 1932, 1933, or 1934, are to be quoted again this year the debate will be interminable. There must be finality. If the Deputy refers to these for his purpose, well and good, but the Deputy is quoting columns from old debates.
No, Sir.
Quoting from columns would be more exact.
Undoubtedly; I quoted from Volumes for that matter, but I confined one quotation to two sentences, and I propose to confine this quotation to two sentences. May I give the two sentences? The circumstances were the Juries Protection Bill debates. The Minister had said that the Juries Protection Bill would not meet with respect in this House and should be defeated——
The Deputy is referring to another Minister. The Vote now under discussion is the President's Vote, and it is not usual, to quote on one Minister's Estimate, the speeches of some other Minister.
May I again ask for a ruling on this? If the President, with his collective responsibility to his Minister, stands over his general policy here, and if that general policy is in complete contrariety to what he stood for six months previously, may the contradiction not be shown?
The Chair rules that quotations from speeches made by Ministers before they took up office are not relevant to any Estimate.
May I allude to the matter without quotations? The Minister announced that he would fight this Bill and go to jail himself. That was the Minister's whole policy, and the President backed that policy. The President made a similar speech on the Juries Protection Bill and announced that the Bill, which was definitely, he thought, of an anti-State character, could be broken by men refusing to recognise the authority of the courts, and that the measure would be broken by that method. These Ministers now parade people, when the President has been responsible for that policy, without any further warning and without any statement that his policy has changed, before the Military Tribunal which he condemned and has them charged on a variety of charges, including failure to recognise the court. The men in response to that can say: "The order not to recognise your court was issued by one of your own Ministers." Men can be charged with having ammunition, and they can reply: "That ammunition has been in my house for many years, and was dumped there at your request." Counsel can say in this case that there is one amazing difference between the old situation and what happened last year— and this is made relevant to the particular speech and made relevant to the sentencing of these prisoners—that then this so-called I.R.A. was functioning as some body of a dictatorial type not responsible to any Government.
Those men can say that if they acted in that way it was under the instructions of the present Minister for Defence, because the present Minister for Defence did send round an order that the I.R.A. was not a secret society; that it was subject to a Government; that it was subject to the Government of the Republic, and that once that Government lapsed from its allegiance to the Republic, then their allegiance to that Government lapsed automatically and they became a free lance force. The President said here on one occasion that he was not going to get after those arms as long as they were not brought out in public, and as long as no attempt was made to get in further stores. Again, without any warning, without any public statement as to this change of policy, men are being attacked—I submit correctly attacked; I submit that they should have been attacked years ago—for having those arms. The President issued a statement with regard to the I.R.A. that they are an avowedly military body, and have got to be suppressed for that reason. They are trying to get funds, according to the Irish Press, wherewith to attack the Government. Again, men paraded on charges have said from the dock that the Vice-President on one occasion had sent moneys home, and had written a letter in which he said that he was earmarking those for what he called the election fund, but of course there were other activities which he need not specify in a letter for which the moneys could be used.
Apart from those details, in general the I.R.A. according to the President can claim the same continuity as he had up to 1925. The I.R.A., for everything which they have been doing in the last two or three months can point to an order issued by some member of the present Government. Either with regard to the non-recognition of courts, with regard to arms, with regard to the destruction of property, or with regard even to an armed outbreak, they can quote statements, pamphlets, and orders. Yet the President considers that without any proclamation, without any definite announcement to the Press, he has made a wonderful change and turned his back right upon his past. He considers it is right and proper for him to bring those men before the Military Tribunal which he so roundly condemned—the Minister for Finance called it the seven bloodhounds of the Executive Council—and get those men sent for preservation in the glass-house with the Republic. That is the situation we have drifted into with regard to law and order.
If any Minister on that side wants to charge any member of this Party with promoting lawlessness, can he quote any document emanating from this Party, signed by, say, a front bencher, ordering the destruction of telegraph poles and wires, or the blocking of roads, and saying that men who were found repairing those were to be shot, because the men who have the continuity which the President claimed were ordered by the President's associates to do that earlier? Are we going at any rate, even in 1935, to have a definite statement from the President that anybody found in unlawful possession of arms— whether the humbuggers, as the present Minister for Posts and Telegraphs calls them, or the real thing as the President would phrase some of them—will get the full whack of the law? Does the President think he has the moral authority to do that—the President who said that those people had the same continuity and legitimacy as he had in 1925? If so what is the difference? Those are the two biggest items on which we want answers.
We were asked last night about agreements in this Party. We are not supposed to be able to agree on anything. One of those men sentenced by the Military Tribunal was able to refer to orders either of the President or some of his Ministers in relation to nearly everything he did. The present Minister for Defence, when his name was alluded to at a public meeting, said he never was any good. He had only been going about trying to make peace when there was fighting to be done. That was in the civil war time. It might have characterised some of the activities of the present Minister for Defence at the time. Then there was a meeting attended by a Deputy of that Party, protesting against that statement of the Minister for Defence. Where is the agreement? Are the activities of this man, backed by one Deputy of that Party, activities which are lawful and should be admired, or activities which are unlawful and wrong and which ought to be put down? Is one Deputy's vote supposed to cover his present activities, and the continuation to some future date of those activities? Does the President think that ought to be allowed to continue, or is the President going to turn his back on the principle that no matter what his past was in relation to the sabotaging of this country, that is going to stop for the future. The President knows that he can get the nearest thing to unanimity in this House on that.
On what?
That the will of the people should prevail; that when the will of the people is shown through the election of a Government, nobody else would be allowed to indulge in gunplay, or have arms, whether in favour of it or in opposition to it, unless they are armed by lawful authority. When the President was condemning those people, as usual there was not a clear-cut condemnation. They were described as an avowedly military organisation with the use of arms as one of its methods. But were they condemned for that? Not as far as this statement went:
"When an organisation which has the use of arms as one of its methods tries to intervene in a trade dispute"—
then, of course, there was trouble. Suppose there was a political dispute, does that statement apply, or is the denunciation merely in relation to the trade dispute which existed at the time? At any rate it surely ought not to cause any man a moment's deliberation, or cost him a glimmer of anxiety to declare in the most flat way that nobody outside the lawfully armed police and soldiers of this country should be allowed to have arms, whether for political purposes, trade dispute purposes, or any other purpose.
The President told us, when talking about the violence of those people, that that of course brings comfort and encouragement to the enemies of the country. Who are they? Is the President referring to the people opposite who carried on government for ten years, and who, according to the Minister for Finance, are traitors and Judases, fit to be coupled only along with Pitt and Castlereagh, or are the people whom he describes as enemies of the country the English?
"He finds it hard to understand how any Irishman with any sense of duty to this country can adhere to such methods"—
again, a little bit of restriction
"—during years when our economic life was being subjected to an attack from outside, and when every exercise of our right to determine the nature of our own institutions was being challenged."
When the exercise of our right to determine the nature of our own institutions is not being challenged are we going to revert to the disorder and anarchy of having groups of armed men in the country? Is that speech meant to be a cover for the President in reverting to his old tactics when the pendulum swings again, and he becomes the Opposition?
That will be a long time.
It may be a long time, but he is preparing for the day.
It will be a very long time.
That may be. Is the President preparing for that period, or is he preparing now to cast off those people who so favoured him and helped him to where he is? If he is, can we get a declaration as to where we are politically, because our economics turn on our politics. We have a very serious economic situation brought about here because of our interaction upon British affairs and theirs upon ours. It is supposed to be a matter of patriotic pride simply to stop criticising and approve of everything the Government does because there is something political about it. Let us have the political aim. The President wrote to the Dominions Secretary in England to know what would happen if a republic were declared here. Are we to await a favourable answer from the Dominions Secretary before there is any progress towards the Republic? Will the President state in language that ordinary people can understand what he proposes to do? One has heard of buying things on the deferred payment system, but here we are paying the full price of not being a member of the Commonwealth and we are getting deferred delivery of the Republic. One can understand the other process of making the burden of payments easy, but one cannot understand why one should suffer economically and financially all that will be suffered by a complete separation and not get the separation. That is the type of sabotage the President and the Minister for Industry and Commerce probably had mainly in mind when the President used the phrase so glibly the other day. But there is another meaning to be attached to it and another context in which it can be used.
The Minister for Finance introduced the Budget in which he told us there was going to be a conversion loan and he pleaded for help in making the change-over successful. He pleaded for help in connection with the flotation of the new loan. In connection with the Budget the President used the word sabotage. The flotation is some five or six months off. Will the President consider that I am not acting the part of a saboteur if I say, on the morning of the conversion loan, that the prospect is as black as night, that being the phrase used by his Vice-President, or that we are heading fast towards the bog of bankruptey, that being the phrase used by the Minister for Industry and Commerce on the flotation of one of our loans? Will he think I am helping the credit of the State and assisting the flotation of the new loan if I tell him that this Party intends to repudiate the new loan, because that is what his Minister for Finance, hiding it round with reservations, said prior to one of our loans being issued? The present Minister for Finance, speaking from these benches on one occasion when we were about to issue a loan, said that there was a certain test being put into local government legislation, and he said:
"Two can play at that game. Supposing that we were to say that as this money is going to be used for driving people out of political life in the country, for the enforcement of a Public Safety Act and the imposition of this test—supposing we were to say we will not accept any responsibility for any of the £17,000,000 you have collected...."
and then his sentence trailed off. But he was taken up immediately and, without any supposing, his statement came to this: "Cut out that test and there will be no repudiation." Later he said that he, for one, must state his mind and that was that there should be no acceptance by the then minority Party if they became the Government of any of the commitments entered into by the majority of the House.
Was that sabotage, or will the President say I am acting the part of a good citizen if, a week before the new loan is floated, I say: "We will accept no commitments entered into by the Government under the present circumstances and, instead of turning the whole matter upon politics, turn it on the harassed farmers and on the men driven out of occupation by Government weapons?" I wonder is that what the President means by sabotage, or will I have his gracious pardon, freedom from any such criticism, if I use phrases of this sort, prospects as black as night, bogs of bankruptcy and repudiating loans, when we come to the new issue?
That is the example that was given us. We do not propose to follow it. What we do propose is this, that here, six or seven months ahead, we are going to ask certain questions about the loan, and it affords an opportunity for a spectacular demonstration of the strength of the country's finances if our criticism can be answered. We prefer raising those matters six or seven months ahead than on the morning of the flotation, when they cannot be answered. We will give you an opportunity of telling us what the situation is. If you cannot reveal the situation it is not our criticism that will harm the loan, but rather the circumstances that you have brought about. And this all comes about from the war in which the President said that he fired the first shot. That is in column 1255. "If you want to continue," the President said, "I will admit that we have fired the first shot." Is that enough?
That is somebody putting it in a different way.
I will read it from the text and I will hand the book over —"If you want to continue, I will admit that we have fired the first shot."
Read the text.
I will hand you over the book. I prefer to have the President read it from the text. That is the situation. It started with our side taking the aggressive. I have shown you the results to-day. Our resources have been depleted and we do not even know in what cause we are suffering. We do not even know when we are going to get to the promised land, and whether it is going to be a barren or a fertile land.
You do know you will never get back here.
It may be that it would not be worth while getting back after the present Government have had another six or eight months, going as they are. It may be that there would be nothing left in this country capable of reconstruction.
We nearly found ourselves in that position, too.
The Deputy and his Party found themselves in this position, that there had been a careful conservation of the finances of this country and, in consequence, the Free State was able to withstand a shock that nobody thought it could withstand. But you have very nearly depleted the resources of the country and it may be that Deputy Cooney will find the task of government will not be so popular and, in fact, that it will be almost impossible. It may be that it will require bigger men even than those who put the British out of the country—it may require even bigger men than those to take on the job of bringing this country back out of the mess into which it is being brought at the moment. What is the good of talking in this House when Deputy Cooney thinks that is an answer to the arguments I have tried to put forward in detail and with some documentation? Is it any good labouring those points when Deputy Cooney thinks it an answer to say: "You will never get back to the Government."
Give us some suggestions.
I have given them. May I recapitulate? Carry out the economies you said were possible. What about the £2,000,000 of a saving? Does the Deputy remember the speech he made in Grangegorman when he said that £2,500,000 could be saved on the Army and unemployment could be wiped out in a year?
What did you say about unemployment?
Let us take quotation for quotation. The Deputy said on one occasion—in Grangegorman, I think—that their administrative programme included a saving of £2,000,000 on the Army and £500,000 on the Civic Guard and that enough savings could be effected in other overpaid Departments to put thousands of people into productive industry. He added that they had, after careful consideration, come to the conclusion that they could solve the unemployment problem in 12 months.
He said that in Grangegorman.
Does Deputy Cooney say that he did not utter those sentences?
What did the Deputy say about unemployment?
The Deputy is afraid to say anything now. He has been made withdraw several times.
I never withdrew it yet.
Where are the £2,000,000 that were to be saved? Where are the £3,000,000 that were to go to the agricultural labourers and the small farmers? Where are the 84,605 people who were to be put in industry? Give me those and I will be satisfied.
No starvation.
One of these schemes was worked out in detail and it meant that when our agricultural productivity had been added to, it would be the equivalent of £16 a year for every person, male or female, farmer or labourer. Why not give us that? You said all these things were possible. I never believed them possible. Anyhow, give us some of them at least, or tell us that all your promises are not possible? I think you have at last arrived at a sense of reality. The unfortunate thing is that the people who were promised wealth, more money, now find that in order to get money for essential services the Government have to grab £300,000 from the unemployed and £100,000 from the old age pensions and they have to put a tax on sugar and tea. They have a tax already on butter and they are going to tax bread. That is not in your famous advertisement and that represents a different policy and a different programme from anything you got in under. Until we get those promises carried out or until we have an admission from the Government that they are not possible surely we have not got down to realities, and it is not open to any Deputy on the Government side to ask people on this side to make suggestions when we can fall back upon the promises they made and ask why have they not carried out these promises or why have not these promises been achieved. The Government had promised increased production in this country. The policy that Deputies opposite are now backing is decreased production, and that production is going to be decreased still more. We aim at increasing production, and we think it can be done by an agreement with England. We think it would be better to get a trade agreement and pay £5,000,000 a year——
The Ultimate Financial Settlement.
Yes, the Ultimate Financial Settlement. It is well it should be spoken of. The President here said you cannot increase income tax in this country a point beyond the British. Is that because he is afraid that certain people will leave the country? The Attorney-General has already blessed their departure. He said the new wild geese were going and he said in his charity he would give them his blessing. Else he spoke without the book or the President is afraid of that. Is there anything about a double income tax arrangement in the Ultimate Financial Settlement? Is it favourable to this country? Is it a thing we should repudiate? Are we entitled to take one part of that Agreement and repudiate the rest? Why do we hang on to it? We were told it was unsatisfactory from the angle of this country. Is it unsatisfactory?
Yes, and so is the partition of the country and giving £5,000,000 a year to England.
We are talking now about the double income tax arrangement. Does the Deputy's policy or the Government's policy include the complete abrogation of the Ultimate Financial Settlement? Will the President suffer what his income tax experts tell him he is bound to suffer in the wiping out of the Ultimate Financial Settlement, or will he tell us there is something good in that Agreement? Let me get back again to Deputy Cooney. Trade is the only thing that will lead to any sort of resurgence in this country. There is only one natural outlet for our trade and that is England, and it is a good outlet. We can deal on favourable conditions there and we can give better conditions there than any other country that is striving to get into that market. There is nothing stopping us from getting these favourable conditions except the President's vanity——
A Deputy
And his past.
—— yes, and his past. The constructive suggestion that we have is: Pay England; you might as well pay them as have them drag it out of you. It is a benefit to you to pay them.
The Deputy is repudiating Deputy Cosgrave. He said land annuities would never be paid again.
I am not saying they will be paid again. I am saying it would be better to pay them than to have them dragged out of you with £500,000 in addition and to lose your trade at the same time. Let the Deputy ponder on that. If the Deputy thinks there is a substitute for production here let him see the unemployment figures and face up to the amount of money that has got to be spent on relief. When the President and his Minister for Industry and Commerce come to talk about production they inevitably tell us about forestry and unemployment relief, housing and division of land, but never a word about industry or the new agricultural production because they know themselves that that was only what Deputy Kelly called promises and I doubt if they were ever intended to be anything more than promises that were never intended to be carried out. If we can ever get to that fact we will have got to some political reality in this country.
With the exception of a few words in the closing speech of Deputy McGilligan, there was nothing but a repetition of his Budget speech over again. There was nothing in his speech except "pay the land annuities to England." There was no suggestion as to how this country would approach and make an agreement with another country. I listened to the speeches of other Deputies on the Opposition Benches. Except Deputy MacDermot not one of them faced up to the programme for settling this dispute. When asked for suggestions Deputy McGilligan has his quotations. Anybody who has said a word can be quoted and that will satisfy Deputy McGilligan rather than the giving of any suggestion of help to meet the present condition. I am sorry the Deputy has not remained in the House for a few minutes. He talks about the income tax having fallen. I suggest the fall in the income tax is not because, as he alleges, this State is being pauperised. That the income tax has fallen is not a fair criterion. While his Government was in power the income tax returns were high. That they were so high was no proof that the country was in a flourishing condition. It was because the Government went back in some cases to a period of 14 years and collected income tax that had been in arrears for that period. You are coming down to times now when you can only go back one year and the income tax returns are bound to become more or less a normal figure. That will be the position from this onwards. That is the main reason why the income tax returns are so low and not because the earning capacity of the country has gone down. The Ministers opposite when making that statement know very well that it is untrue. Deputy McGilligan talks about the ground being ripe for a favourable agreement and about this country being so near a neighbour to England that we are in a good position to make a good bargain with her. Is it not strange that when Deputy McGilligan's Party were in power that they did not make a good bargain with England? Why did they not when paying the annuities to England, make some definite bargain that would guarantee the English market to them? At that time they had a good slice of the English market. What benefit or advantage did the Irish people reap from that? It was stated that during the last three or four years of their term of office the Irish farmers were dragged into court to force them to pay their annuities; there were foreclosures by the banks and they reached a high limit. The numbers of people who went bankrupt reached a higher limit. We were told during that time that this country was flowing with milk and honey when the people had the most wonderful markets in the world. What are we asked to do now? Go back to grass and bullocks, not even with a guarantee if we do that the British will buy all our bullocks at a high price.
I shall come back to that later on. At the moment, what I should like to consider is the statement of policy made yesterday by Deputy MacDermot. I think it was the most deplorable statement ever made by any man who poses as a leader of any section and who might be called an Irishman. His policy was "Back to the Empire.""Back to the Empire" is the only hope of this country. You would imagine, from the convincing way he made the statement, that it was something original. There always have been men in Ireland making that argument. If Deputy MacDermot made that argument a year after the British first set foot on Irish soil, his argument would have as much weight then as it has now, and it would be heeded just as little then as it is now. His policy is: "Give up your nationhood; give up your effort to make this country a self-sufficient State; accept the Empire standard; accept the National Anthem; accept the King; be good loyal British citizens, and then English justice and English goodwill will see that your bullocks will be bought and that you will not starve." What guarantee has he that if we accept the British symbol, accept the English King and the English Crown and become a little British State, they will buy our bullocks at a high price and save our people from starving? No guarantee whatever.
He talked about the position in this country and, in other words, stated that in future the majority will is not going to have any say in this country. Deputy McGilligan to-day said there would be unanimity in this House if the President would only state that majority rule was his policy. Deputy MacDermot's statement yesterday inferred that in future the majority will have no say in the councils of this State. He told us in a very serious vein that we should remember that one-quarter of our people in the North were passionately attached to the British Crown. I dispute that figure, but let us take it at one-quarter. Because one-quarter are passionately attached to the British Crown and connection, three-quarters of our people, the vast majority of our people, are to sink their own ideals, hopes, and aspirations and accept the aspirations of the one-quarter in the North, whom Deputy MacDermot himself described as blinded with religious bigotry and racial hatred. Three-quarters of our people are to give up their ideals and aspirations and accept the will of that one-quarter in the North who are blinded with religious bigotry and racial hatred.
What about majority rule, if three-quarters of the people have not the right even to dictate what the rule is to be to a very insignificant minority? If that is going to be accepted as the policy of Deputy Mulcahy and the Fine Gael Party, I think they have departed from what is an accepted principle in every democratic country in the world. That policy could have been preached, and really was preached, by certain Irishmen every year for the past 700 years. If the Irish people accepted that policy at any time since the British first came here, they could have saved themselves many sacrifices and much suffering throughout the whole world, if it would have the results that Deputy MacDermot hopes it will have from British justice and benevolence.
I think Deputy MacDermot, who has come over here in the rôle of Lawrenco of Arabia, to get the Irish tribes to unite and accept the British connection, to get behind the British Empire and be fodder for guns, in order that Britain might buy our bullocks, should go to the North and preach his doctrine of tolerance there to the minority of our people, and tell them what he said here yesterday, that we were the most tolerant people in the world. As far as I can understand, he has no greater attachments in the Irish Free State than he has in England or the North of Ireland. As a matter of fact, if a northern constituency accepted him at one time he would not have come here for a political career; he would have found it quite easy to go to the North and take up his Lawrence of Arabia rôle and preach his doctrine of toleration to the people there. It would be much more fitting and he would be of much greater help to the Irish people. Surely as a learned man and a much-travelled man he cannot expect that three-quarters of the Irish people are going to give up their ideals and aspirations and accept the ideals and aspirations of a bigoted minority in the North. That is his doctrine.
That doctrine evidently is accepted by Deputy Mulcahy. It is about time that Deputy Mulcahy spoke a few straight words to Deputy MacDermot. Deputy McGilligan once told Deputy MacDermot in this House that he was only an emergency man; but he and his Party evidently have fallen to such a state of emergency that the emergency man has now got the leadership. It is time that Deputy Mulcahy told Deputy MacDermot that his doctrine of Britishising this State, of making us loyal citizens, of making us more English than the English themselves in order that our bullocks might be sold of making us more Unionist than the Orangemen in the North in order that the Orangemen might look upon us with more favour and unite with us, is not going to carry weight. Deputy Mulcahy, no matter what he might say in public, in his heart I know has not accepted that and his only game is to make as much use as he can of Deputy MacDermot and then cast him off when he is finished with him. Possibly Deputy MacDermot has the same view about Deputy Mulcahy. They might, at any rate, come together, and in talking about how they might get back to power let them consult Irish history and realise that they are not going to get the Irish people to make themselves into a bigoted Orange State here so that England might look upon us with more favour and buy our cattle in future. We have been told that if we do that, become good British citizens, unfurl the flag, and sing "God Save the King," this country is going to develop, and that that is our only hope.
Suppose the Opposition got back into power and those on the Opposition Front Bench composed the Executive Council, what policy would they back? Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney says that what they want is a free, unhampered and unfettered place in the British market. That is a thing that Great Britain has never given to any country yet. If they do get back to power and ask for a free, unhampered and unfettered place in the British market for Irish farm produce, is England going to do what she never did before —to give them that without a price? If they get a free and unfettered place in the British market, what is Ireland to pay? Is the return to be what Deputy McGilligan more or less suggested this afternoon—that English goods will have a free entry here? If that is to be the position, what is to happen our Irish flour mills, our Irish beet factories, our Irish boot factories, our Irish creameries and our Irish glass bottle factories? What is to happen, not only to all the factories started since the Minister for Industry and Commerce came into office, but to all that were in existence before that and which were only working on halftime? The only ones that will survive under such conditions are Guinness's and Jacob's. In return for that, with the developments which are going on at present on English farms, will the sale of a few thousand or a few hundred thousand cattle every year in the British market give work to Irish labourers in Ireland and provide our people with a livelihood at home? It certainly will not. It will put this country in the weakest position that any nation could possibly be in—back into a grass ranch, closed down mills all over the country and nothing to look forward to but to ship our young people to the British colonies, not even to America. We would have to ship them to the wilds of the raw British colonies. Irishmen would go out and become nation builders, as Deputy MacDermot would like to see them. He would actually bring one of them back again to be the Governor-General here, according to his statement yesterday.
That is the price you have to pay for a place in the British market. Deputy Mulcahy knows that, I am quite sure that neither he nor Deputy Cosgrave would accept a place in the British market at that price, but it is quite all right to attack the present Government in that way. If they got back into office again, however, they would have to follow in the footsteps of the present Government. We had a statement made only yesterday in Galway by a Deputy of that Party in referring to industrial development here. We hear many attacks on the Minister for Industry and Commerce, but it is a strange thing that whenever a factory is started in some part of the country, we have Deputies of the Opposition Party going down there, and because they have to speak there in the presence of their constituents, they make statements lauding the efforts of the present Government. The statement made by Deputy Brodrick in Galway yesterday was that, thank God, different political parties have found common ground in the industrial revival of this State. He said:
"Unless we have that, we can get nowhere."
Contrast that with the statements made here yesterday by Deputy Fitzgerald, Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, Deputy MacDermot and by Deputy McGilligan to-day. They have decried industrial development altogether. They have pointed out that industrial development is more or less an irritant to the British and that the more we attempt to develop in that way the more we are going to lose.
Who said that?
We have always been told by the Opposition that in developing industries here and cutting out British imports we were irritating the English.
They often said it.
Deputy MacDermot's statement on yesterday and Deputy McGilligan's to-day implied it. Certainly Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney has always stated that if we apply for a free entry to the British market, British imports must have a free entry here. I do not see on what other grounds or by what other right the Irish people could look for a free market in England. When the Pigs and Bacon Bill was before the Dáil Deputy Dillon said his policy was free trade and whole-hog free trade at that. If we were to go in for a policy of whole-hog free trade Deputy Mulcahy would have quite a lot to say about the closing down of factories here. He made quite a lot of capital out of the fact that a small factory closed down on the North side of the City since this Government came into office. How many factories would close down if we were to go in for a policy of free trade? Deputy Brodrick down in Galway says that industrial development is our only hope, while members of the Opposition here represented it as our one great despair. Why do they not at least adopt the same line of argument? It would be something that one could pin them down to and it would be a method of uniting their ranks across the way.
We have talk of the economic war dragged through every single speech made in this House by Opposition Deputies. This country is undoubtedly undergoing the biggest national crisis it has ever gone through. The people of this country have stood a bigger test than they ever stood in its history. I admit that standing up to that test and to all that it involves, has placed a very heavy burden on the shoulders of our people. Opposition Deputies say that they are not guilty of sabotage, but how can they at the same time urge that the economic war is not a national struggle? That has often been said by Deputy McGilligan for instance. He said that it is simply President de Valera's fit of pique, that it is President de Valera's private war and is not the people's war. They have told the people throughout the country "Do not stand in on that fight; it is not your fight, it is de Valera's." Is not that national sabotage? They attack the President because they say he brought on this war to satisfy his own pride and to have revenge on the country and on the Opposition. Is that not a disgraceful attitude to take up? It is unfortunately true that every leader of the people was attacked in the same way. Parnell's struggle was simply a fit of pique, the people were told. The very same thing was said by individuals of the calibre of Deputy MacDermot about men such as Deputy Mulcahy and Deputy Cosgrave in 1916. The struggle of 1916 was attributed to some queer strain in the Irish people, some spirit of pig-headedness. The very same argument is being used against President de Valera, and of course, Deputy Mulcahy knows it is absolutely wrong, but what does he care? He wants perhaps to prove that he was right at one time. I know that but for a certain past in the lives of most of us our present attitude would not be what it is, and it is because of something in the past of Deputy Mulcahy that he is opposing the President now.
Deputy Mulcahy has not spoken on this Vote.
I am talking about his attitude, which is the same as that of Deputy MacDermot, to this Vote.
No one the Deputy has quoted has ever said anything like what he has represented them as saying, so it does not matter.
Deputy MacDermot never said anything like that? Is that the point? Deputy MacDermot advised the people to go into the Empire. He advised the people that one-fourth of our population should be considered and that our ideas and aspirations were absolutely wrong.
Will Deputy Cleary say what is the Empire?
What is the moon, as Seán Ó Casey asked at one time?
It is a lot more material and is as easily found as the Empire of which the Deputy is speaking.
Deputy Cleary.
I suggest that the question, "What is the moon?" is just as intelligible as the remarks made by the Deputy.
You could hit your head against the moon if you went far enough.
You are rubbing shoulders with Deputy MacDermot. I do not want to hit the moon, the stars, or the Empire.
Or the Vote.
I certainly say that were it not for the past of certain Deputies in the Opposition they would support the President's Vote on this occasion. I think his policy is the only one that holds out any hope for this country. A certain Deputy said yesterday that President de Valera came into power finding the country in a state of absolute despair. Deputy MacDermot himself mentioned to certain Deputies shortly after he came in here that the state of the farmers of the country was appalling. That was in the course of a private conversation with a number of Deputies. He said that when he first went to Roscommon he discovered a very large number of farmers in an appalling condition of poverty. Those were his own words when he came over here first. I do not think those farmers in Roscommon are in as appalling a state of poverty to-day as they were then and that was after ten years of Deputy Cosgrave's rule, and after having more or less undisputed sway in the British market for ten years. As a matter of fact, if I take County Mayo after three years of President de Valera's disgracefully bad government, to quote Deputy Fitzgerald, I find that, in 1934-35, they paid their rates much better than they paid them during the years from 1926 to 1930. Deputy Mulcahy was Minister for Local Government during that period and I think he will not contradict me in the statement that County Mayo paid its rates with greater dispatch during 1934-35 than it paid during any of the years of President Cosgrave's Government of milk and honey. How is it that can take place if President de Valera has been carrying on a policy which is more or less ruining the farmers?
We have, of course, the question of unemployment looming largely in this debate and I will quote one item for Deputies opposite. In the town of Swinford, in County Mayo, during the year 1926, the number of registered unemployed at a particular period did not reach 30. It was some figure under 30. During that year 1,800 people entrained at Swinford for England as migratory labourers. Let me take the year in which Deputy Mulcahy and his Government went out of office. The methods of registration were changed by the present Minister for Industry and Commerce, and, during that year, registration jumped in Swinford town from six to 1,100. I must admit that before Deputy Mulcahy went out it increased to something around 150, but during the year in which Deputy Lemass rearranged the system of registration, it jumped to 1,100. During that year the numbers who went to England as migratory labourers—I have not got the exact figures but I am so informed by the railway authorities—did not reach 2,000.
At present, 2,200 people are registered in Swinford town as unemployed and less than 900 people have gone to England as migratory labourers. How did that come about? No factory closed down in that part of the country during that period. The people living there then—practically all these migratory labourers—are living there now. You have 2,200 registered there now and you had six in Deputy Mulcahy's time. As I say, no factory closed down and they cannot state that farming there is in a worse condition than it was then, because the figure returned for tillage in the district has more than trebled itself. Last year, there were only six acres of wheat in the particular parish around Swinford and this year there are 132 acres. They have barley and wheat sown this year which they had not then, and they are getting much bigger incomes out of their little holdings than they were getting then—and, still, you have 2,200 registered unemployed. I hold that the argument put up against us of the figures of registered unemployed being an indication of poverty is no argument at all.
What is the plan going to do for them now?
The plan is going to do a good deal. At least this year only 900 of them went to England; during Deputy Mulcahy's time 1,800 went to England. This year they have paid their rates with greater dispatch than in any other year. Since this Government came into power, £1,500 has been expended in the particular district every year. During Deputy Mulcahy's ten years, £500 were not spent, and there is no starvation in the district, so that surely the plan must have worked out a little to their satisfaction at least? I do not say that it has put every man into employment, but when I see the way in which they meet their dues in County Mayo I feel that they are certainly in a much better position than they were during any year of Deputy Mulcahy's régime. They have paid their rates and they have paid their annuities, and I do not hear the business community complaining that they are not meeting their liabilities to them. I know that there is not a very big circulation of money. We cannot say that they are living in luxury. I know that times are hard enough but they are better able to meet their debts than they were.
That is my argument against the argument put up by the Opposition as to this Government pauperising the farmers. I know that in the South of Ireland, owing to the policy of this Government, it is said, the farmers are pauperised, but how is it, if they are so beaten down with poverty, that they can build up an organisation, and, as we have seen from one of their reports, pay into the organisation fund the annuities that should have been paid to the State? Is that not what has been done in the South? Was there not such an organisation formed, and was it not decided to pay the annuities into an organisation fund so that if they were come down upon by the Government, in the way of seizures, the fund would compensate them? In that way, an organisation was built up to prevent the State getting its debts and when the State did not get them, the argument was put forward that they were not able to meet them. That is the ground on which the Opposition build their arguments, and it is certainly falling from under their feet now.
The Opposition have not in any way helped this Government out of its difficulties. The people are engaged in a hard struggle at the moment and the Government has some very hard work to do to build up this nation and make it self-sufficient. It is being attacked from outside and from within. I suggest that the Opposition should stand in in this struggle and that if they would accept Deputy Seán Brodrick's advice in Galway yesterday and cease talking politics and get down to the hard nuts there are to crack in this State in facing the unemployment question, we would be doing much better. If that policy were adopted by the Opposition, they would find unanimity amongst all members of the House and the Government. We are prepared to face up to facts at any time, but we are not prepared to continue listening to Deputy Mulcahy going back on old fables. They are out of date and should be brought up-to-date.
Deputy McGilligan in his statement to-day spoke about the outside world and said: "Let us cut it out altogether; let us discuss this country as a unit." That is a dangerous form of republicanism. It is republicanism, as it used to be presented to us, by Deputy McGilligan up to a couple of weeks ago. When this Government points out that other countries are also badly off, Deputy McGilligan says: "No; get outside the world; remain in isolation"—as he used to call it himself at one time. I hold that that is a dangerous form of republicanism and somebody should advise Deputy McGilligan—Deputy Mulcahy could do it—to get off that track or he will find himself in a very bad condition in the near future.
All the large questions that arise on such an Estimate as is now under discussion have been discussed so fully that it would be impertinent and a waste of time on my part to attempt to add anything to what has been said already, so I will come down from the large questions to a very few small points. After all, as a very great man has said, it is the small things that count. Owing to the enormous difficulties of his position, difficulties largely of his own making, I forgive the President many things, but I find it very hard to discover any excuse for his having sanctioned—as I presume, as head of the Executive Council he did sanction—the use of that mongrel word "Seanascal" as the title of the so-called Governor-General, who, by the way, is wrapped in the cloak of darkness. I object to the word on various grounds. In the first place it is suspiciously suggestive of "Seanasal." In the second place it is a mere Gaelic adaptation of an English word "Seneschal," which in turn is derived from two German words which mean "an old servant." In the third place it bears a very indifferent meaning, and it is very hard precisely to understand what it does signify.
I should like to draw the Deputy's attention to the fact that the Governor-General is not "the so-called Governor-General". Secondly, the name "Seanascal" has been there for years, and the President is not responsible for the title.
Mr. Burke
I am not for a moment questioning your decision.
Which was merely a statement of the actual position.
Mr. Burke
I know, Sir. I am not discussing the Governor-General in any way. What I am discussing is the word which has been adopted by the present Government, of which the President is the head. I am simply objecting to it on the ground that it is a very inapproprivate term for the Governor-General. If that is out of order, Sir, I shall at once, as I always do, submit to your ruling.
The Chair fails to see the relevancy of this philological discussion.
Mr. Burke
I am leaving the philological discussion, and am coming down to what I found in the Irish dictionaries to-day. I consulted three dictionaries. I consulted Bishop O'Brien's dictionary, which everybody —except some people who laugh in the House and who know nothing about Irish—is aware was published at Paris in the year 1769. I also consulted O'Reilly's dictionary, as well as Father Dinneen's. The word does occur, I know, in the Annals of the Four Masters, and other chronicles, but both Bishop O'Brien and O'Reilly disdain the word, and do not even mention it in their dictionaries.
How do those two gentlemen come in on the President's Vote?
Mr. Burke
They do not come in on the President's Vote, and the Deputy well knows that they do not. Father Dinneen defines the word——
The Chair will hear no more about the derivation of the word Seanascal.
Mr. Burke
Very well. I accept your ruling. Evidently some members of the House do not like to hear an Irish word or the meaning of it. The President, living in a Tir na nOg of his own imagining, has no place for cattle or coal or butter, because he is feasting on honeydew and the milk of paradise, but I think that at the same time, unknown to himself, he is merely jazzing along the primrose path which, as we know, leads to a certain bonfire, strangely happy in the honest belief that he is playing an Irish harp when he is, in point of fact, vigorously operating a saxophone while he is being helped by the Minister for Finance, loudly, as he always does, blowing his own trumpet. The result unfortunately must be disastrous for this country.
If the President were here at the moment, I should like to remind him, although my remarks will be very brief indeed, that a tax on tea lost to England her American colonies. Though I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet I am very much inclined to forecast that "tea," as it is, will be the end of Deputy MacEntee. I appeal to the House here not to be indulging in quarrels about red shirts, or blue shirts or white shirts nor in wrangles about red flags or green or any other flags, but for goodness' sake let them all unite to get rid of the flag of distress which is threatening the Free State.
In this debate we have heard very little from the Government benches which would indicate to us that they had any hope or faith that the policy being pursued by the President and his Ministers was going to bring employment or the hope of employment to any of the people of this country, or would make any more secure either agricultural industry or any other industrial activity in the country. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, by appearing to get vexed, endeavoured to persuade the House last night that he was talking about something constructive, but his remarks during this debate were simply in the first part of his speech the few stuttering words of a man who was being pushed into a breach which he was not prepared to enter or fight in, and then of a man blustering in the breach and trying to make a pretence to his own followers that he was fighting.
The back benchers of the Fianna Fáil Party are claiming to have a tremendous amount of solidarity among themselves. The way they demonstrate that solidarity is that they look for fissures and disagreements amongst the Opposition members. There is one obvious solidarity that the Fianna Fáil Party have, and it is the solidarity ascribed to them by Deputy Beegan. Speaking in Ballinasloe he said that there were now in the Dáil 77 living tomb-stones—the members of the Fianna Fáil Party—to some of the dead of the past. Now we see that those living tombstones are sitting in this House as monuments to nothing but the decay of their own intelligence, the surrender of their own minds and their own wills to a group of people who accept the responsibility of leadership but do not make any attempt to live up to that responsibility. They know they are being led by people who are capable of doing nothing but leading them with their backs to the wall; yet their own intelligence is so dead, and their own feelings in regard to what they see going on around the country are so dead, that they have been able to add nothing to this debate.
If it is any use addressing the President and his Ministers before the manhood and the spirit and the intelligence of such members of the Party as have those qualities lie down under the form of the living tombstones about which Deputy Beegan speaks, will they tell us what their policy is doing for any section of the people in this country, for the country as a whole, or anybody outside it? The President speaks in their name on Saint Patrick's Day, his words being usually addressed to "our exiled kinsmen in America," the people who fought for this country and had to leave.
He attempts, in so far as words go, to explain the principles that he stands for, to show how much achievement has been brought about in the 12 months that have passed, and, like far away cows having long horns, the principles look much better and sound much better when they are passed over the radio than they do when they are seen in operation here. There may be something in words to help the exile to picture up a condition of affairs here that we do not see. We have plenty of expression, plenty of the promises that have been put aside. Now we have paintings of the situation that exists here. But will the President, his Ministers, or any Deputies on the far side point out any particular class in the community that are better off to-day? Let us assume that the 2,101 people in Swinford registered as unemployed, 2,017 of whom are drawing unemployment assistance, are better off to-day to the extent of 6/- a week. What do they look for and what can they hope for in the present policy to lift them above the scale of 6/- a week unemployment assistance and lift their families to a position of confidence in the future?
What were they before that?
They were earning their livings apparently beforehand, and if they required public assistance the Mayo Board of Health, which is so lauded here and so close down to its people, was there to assist them with public moneys. There was not a single man or woman, infirm or able-bodied, who was not the responsibility at that time of the Mayo Board of Health. Will Deputy Corry say whether the Board of Health in Cork neglected the people who were their responsibility at any time? Will Deputy Cleary say that the Board of Health in Mayo neglected the people who were their responsibility?
If they looked after them, you surcharged them.
Will the Deputy say whether he thinks they neglected their responsibility?
Who looked after Adrigole?
Will the Deputy say his body neglected their responsibility in Adrigole? He will not. He will deny perfectly indignantly that anybody suffered in Adrigole who was the responsibility of the Cork Board of Health. Will he not do that?
They were your responsibility.
Whose responsibility? They were the responsibility of the Cork Board of Health and will the Deputy, in the interest of standing up for the honour and humanity of the Cork Board of Health, take some of his colleagues to the Department of Local Government and show them the report on the Adrigole situation? A word is very useful now and then. Adrigole can be made nearly as useful as Wolfe Tone to pull the wool across people's eyes.
And what about your 77?
And the 77 living tombstones to their own want of spirit, to their own want of manhood.
And to you.
The 2,017 people in Swinford who are drawing unemployment assistance to the extent of at least 6/- a week—Deputy Corry wants to know what were they doing four or five years ago. Deputy Cleary told us that quite a number of them were able to get work at agricultural operations in England during the period when they had not agricultural operations of their own to pursue. They may be better for the moment, even better than they were a few years ago, but where is this policy taking them?
It is keeping them at home.
There are 2,000 odd in Swinford, 2,630 in Ballina, 1,245 in Achill, 971 in Ballinrobe, 1,492 in Belmullet, 1,008 in Castlebar, 1,001 in Claremorris and 1,305 in Westport. What is the President's policy doing for them? He is doing at the present time, he says, a thing he hates; he is giving them money for doing nothing. What is their future? On that point we would like to hear some Deputies opposite. We would like to know where the general policy of the President is taking this country as regards the welfare of its people, their prestige, their spiritual happiness. He tells America in his last St. Patrick's Day message that Ireland remains a Catholic nation and as such she sets the eternal destiny of man high above the "isms" and idols of the day. Her people, he says, will accept no system which denies or imperils that destiny. He assured those overseas that "the ideals which we are striving to realise are the same ideals for which they fought: a Gaelic Ireland free and united, an Ireland cherishing all its children equally and guaranteeing them liberty and justice and security."
The President went to a broader platform than the one from which he addressed the exiles in America when he went to the League of Nations meeting in September, 1932. Where is the spirit of September, 1932, the spirit of the speech to other nations? Where is that here at home? He then said:—
"On every side there is evidence of an impending economic collapse. 25,000,000 of unemployed are crying out for recognition of the right of themselves and their families to work and live; a 100,000,000 people are faced with starvation in the midst of a world of plenty, a world where human energy and scientific and mechanical development have reached a stage of potential production capable of meeting many times the people's needs. It is our duty here to face this anomalous and desperate situation frankly and honestly, not as the representatives of States or Parties or special interests, but as men who realise that the primary duty of statesmen, national and international, is to plan for the well-being and happiness of their fellows—the plain, ordinary human beings in every country who feel and think and suffer."
What is the President's policy doing to help the world situation either by example to other nations or by actual achievement here arising out of the policy he is pursuing? He is destroying the income our people had, lying to them about the position—or rather misrepresenting the position. if I may not use that other word here—misrepresenting the position in every possible way, forcing the people on to a line of economy that is going ill to repay the people who are going to be forced to follow along that line. It will increase the cost to the people of this country who have to buy their own agricultural produce here. His policy is destroying the roots of our own agriculture here quite as positively as the people he sometimes talks about who burn wheat and coffee and cotton. There are world problems and there are our own problems and we are making here for ourselves the very problems which international war and international antagonisms and spite have made for other peoples. The Government took control of a situation which was comparatively free of these things and they are turning it into a war situation with all the curses and losses of war being brought down on our own people without any hope of having the wherewithal to pay for the destruction and the losses of that war, or to pay for the economic reconstruction of our country which will have to be carried out subsequently.
We are a Catholic people. Before the President ever went to Geneva to speak in these high terms he had been warned from a higher seat, from the seat of our Holy Father the Pope, of what the condition of affairs was throughout the world and what was at the bottom of that condition. Deputies on the far side talk very often about Encyclicals. There is not an act of theirs that they do not endeavour to wrap up in Encyclicals when it suits their purpose. Before the President went to Geneva to talk from a high statesmanlike point of view, to point out to the nations that they were doing nothing to solve either the problems of disarmament or unemployment, it was high time, in his opinion, for action—before ever he went there he had, as I say, higher counsel from a person who had watched with greater concern the economic affairs of the whole world as well as their bearing upon the spiritual welfare of peoples. Because on the 3rd May, 1932, an Encyclical had been issued under the title of Caritate Christi Compulsi in which the Holy Father drew attention to the terrible consequences of the economic crisis under which the human race was struggling. He pointed out that nowadays, unlike former days, the whole of humanity was held bound by financial and economic crises. He said—” Now on the contrary the whole of humanity is held together by the financial and economic crisis so fast that the more it struggles the harder appears the task of loosening its bonds; there is no people, no State, no society, or family which in one way or another directly or indirectly to a greater or less extent does not feel the repercussion.” He pointed out wherein lay the source from which all these economic ills arise. The Encyclical goes on:
"Right order of Christian charity does not disapprove of lawful love of country, and a sentiment of justifiable nationalism; on the contrary it controls, sanctifies and enlivens them. If, however, egoism, abusing this love of country and exaggerating the sentiments of nationalism, insinuates itself into the relations between people and people, there is no excess that will not seem justified; and that which between individuals would be considered blameworthy by all is now considered lawful and praiseworthy, if it is done in the name of this exaggerated nationalism. Instead of the great law of love and human providence which embraces and holds in a single family all nations and peoples with one Father who is in Heaven, there enters hatred, driving all to destruction."
In spite of his warning, in this way in spite of his own making up a situation of his own, realising the desirability that when he spoke amongst the people who were the representatives of the people of the world that he should speak in terms of co-operation to solve the economic difficulties of the world, he pursued a line here at home which is the personification in his own person of that egoism, an egoism that is at present ruining this nation, and the 77 living tombstones standing behind him make it appear that it is an example of a nation that is dragged down to destruction.
What is a living tombstone?
Ask Deputy Beegan, because he says that every one of his colleagues sitting in the opposite benches is a living tombstone. I had no idea what he could have meant by that. But I know now when I see this country going down to its destruction, its agriculture destroyed, its trade crippled, and the foundations upon which its main industry is laid disintegrating and rotting for want of capital. When I see 77 Deputies who were elected to be the representatives of the people and to give leaders to the people sitting there in their seats in a kind of spiritual, mental and moral paralysis, I then see what the 77 living tombstones are. It may not be what Deputy Beegan meant, but if the Deputies are not anything that fits in with that description, perhaps Deputy Beegan would tell us what section of our people is benefited or living in hope for the future.
Deputy Mulcahy knows more about unknown graves.
I know a lot about the graves of men who were killed by people who would not stand for their actions and would not carry them out except on dark nights. When we were the Government of the country, we were the Government of the country. There would have been less lives lost in this country, both actual losses of life and moral losses, if others could follow our example. We have policies pursued in this country for no reason under the sun that Deputies on the far side can mention, but that we are not going to pay what we do not owe. Pure downright personal egoism and bluff to hide their own faces, their incompetence, their want of will, their want of manhood. It has been paraded by Deputies on the opposite side and made a cause of international strife between our people here and the people of Great Britain. I reminded Deputies here before that Standish O'Grady once described the position between this country and the English as the position of a chess player playing a game against a veiled opponent. When the player was mating the king, or winning his game, the veiled player swept the pieces off the board in order to deprive his opponent of his victory.
He was right.
What else would he do?
Well, that was what the British did in the old days. They swept all the pieces off the board, whether with the assistance of Ulster volunteers or with the assistance of English statesmen, or not. But we came, and some Deputies on the far side assisted us up to a point, and we got a particular board that no player could sweep the pieces off. You did not face up and fight Ireland's fight around that board. We have thrown away the British market to-day, because the job that the Deputies had when they came in was to develop the economic freedom that had been obtained for this country, in the same way as the constitutional freedom, that was actually got for this country in 1921, was made clearer and more specific in the years that followed up to 1932. There was no further constitutional work that required to be done when we had finished that the Parliament in this country could not carry out without saying: "Miss, please," or "Mamma, please," to anybody. There was a job to be done. There was a job to secure and develop and improve the economic position of this country in relation to the other members States of the British Commonwealth. When they got that job to do. they ran away from it. In constitutional matters now, and in economic matters, Ireland's game is not being played because those elected to play the game have run away from the game.
The President pretends to drag across his economic dispute with Great Britain a constitutional issue which he has never made clear. There was one way in which the President could deal with such constitutional difficulties as he thought he had, and that was the way in which the Premier of South Africa deals with them. There is a journal which is not allowed into the Library of this House since the Fianna Fáil Party came into office. There was a time when this House subscribed to receive the journal of the Parliaments of what is called the Empire. But the ideas expressed by the leaders of young nations like Canada, Australia and South Africa were too manly for that journal to appear in our Library here; or it may be that it was the word "Empire," with whatever significance Deputy Cleary or Deputy Corry could attach to it, which kept the journal out.
What does it mean on the book?
You will have to ask Deputy Cleary because I do not know. I should like to direct the attention of the President to what a person in a similar position to himself, representing the nation of South Africa, can say with regard to some of his constitutional matters. I am sure that some of the members of this House who have got this journal will be glad to give Deputies on the far side a loan of it. But Deputies on the far side can imply what apparently was under discussion when in the House of Assembly in South Africa, on the 19th September last, one of the members moved a resolution to this effect:—
"That, having regard to the forthcoming meeting of Dominion Premiers in London, this House is of opinion that it is essential to repudiate the doctrine recently enunciated by the Prime Minister that the Union of South Africa may lawfully trade with the enemy of Great Britain in time of war, and that the naval base of Simonstown was during any such war severed from the Union in the same way as Gibraltar now is from Spain; and this House on the contrary affirms that the Union of South Africa is, in peace and war, an integral and indivisible part of the British Empire and bound by the obligations created by that status."
There are, apparently, some people left in South Africa who have the same imaginative mind as Deputy Cleary has. They think they know what the British Empire really is. The charge against the Premier was that he and his colleagues stood for a policy under which they might lawfully trade with the enemy of Great Britain in time of war. All that the Prime Minister, General Hertzog, had to say was:—
"Since the declaration of 1926 no self-respecting Dominion Prime Minister, taking for granted that the Declaration meant that he was the representative of a sovereign free State, of absolute equal standing with any other State in the British Empire, had thought of consulting or of asking the sanction of any other body for the action that he was taking. My honourable friend forgets that we are a sovereign free people who need not go anywhere for any constitutional rights any longer."
We do not need to go anywhere outside ourselves for any constitutional rights any longer. We have the problem of the unity of our people to settle. We have the reopened question of the financial relations between ourselves and Great Britain and we have our trade relations to settle, but instead of taking up the attitude that the Premier of South Africa takes up and instead of saying: "We need not go anywhere for any constitutional rights any longer," and "that no self-respecting Prime Minister would think of consulting or of asking the sanction of any other body for any action he was taking," the President and his Ministers sit down in a kind of political coma, strip themselves of their manhood by not taking up that attitude, and then find themselves completely prejudiced in their wills and in their dispositions to face the solution of the problems that lie in front of them—the union of our people and our financial and trade relations with Great Britain. Instead of that, they are driven to prevaricate and misrepresent every aspect of these problems to our own people here. Then, when the house of cards is falling, they are driven further to try to misrepresent to their own people here the effects of the policies they are being driven to pursue.
In a country which depended for the living of the greater part of its people on an agricultural market, the external part of which was twice the internal part, we find the income from that market being taken out of our farmers' pockets, with all the easily seen and foreseen effects on our people—the undermining of their purchasing power, the improverishing, not only of the farmers, but of the whole country, and the depriving of our country of capital with which to enrich and to build up our ordinary industrial development here. Our people were told, in the first place, by the President in his St. Patrick's Day broadcast last year, that when he came into office the great world slump in agricultural prices had come upon us to destroy us completely, it seemed. Then he stepped into the breach, and he stepped into the breach along a line of policy that tended to destroy and is destroying the particular kind of organisation here that protected us against agricultural depression, when agricultural depression did make itself felt throughout the world as a whole long before he came into office. Twelve months before he went to Geneva there was a report of a Commission of Inquiry, for the European Union, which was set up specially to inquire into the economic depression. In a report issued on the 14th May, 1931, page 13, there occurs this paragraph:—
It has already been pointed out that Europe suffered less than most other parts of the world, especially up to the autumn of last year. The national income of countries largely dependent on the production and export of cereals has been reduced more than that of manufacturing countries. Countries such as Denmark and Ireland whose principal exports are animal food products, were relatively slightly affected by the depression until the autumn of 1930. The fall in the prices of animal foodstuffs up to that date was not great and was largely offset by a reduction in the price of fodder."
The very nature of our agricultural industry here, the type developed and pursued by the Irish farmers themselves was such as to prevent their feeling the effects of the agricultural depression throughout the world in the way in which other European countries had felt it and in the way in which extra-European countries particularly felt it. The President's approach towards solving the problems of the world and our own problems here, at a time when that agricultural depression was still there, was to undermine and weaken the fabric of agriculture which as notable and as authoritative a body as there is in the world had declared to have withstood the agricultural depression throughout the world. Then when his politics had driven the President along these lines, the situation had to be misrepresented to the people. The people had to be fed with untruths, and as late as the 16th April last, speaking in Clonmel, the President was mouthing certain misrepresentations. Referring to the British market, he said that "to-day that market did not exist for anybody." A few months before that he said: "Put in our opponents and they will give you that market back. They raised the cry at one time ‘Restore our markets.' You might as well be asking me to give them the moon." What is the position with regard to that market?
Mr. Kelly
We shall take it for granted.
The matter cannot be taken for granted because it is a very serious matter for many people whose lives and incomes are being destroyed here. The market that was being destroyed, the market that could not be given back to anybody any more than the moon could be given to them, was the market for meat, cattle and other livestock and dairy produce in Great Britain. The first responsibility that fell on the President and his Government when they came into office in 1932 was to take part in a round-table conference with the representatives of Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Great Britain as men representing countries co-equal in status, in no way subordinate one to the other in any aspect of their internal affairs. They went there to stand for the rights of our people in these matters, rights existing as between partners in trade relations. That is the fight, as I say, that the President and his Ministers ran away from and that is the market which we are told no longer exists. Yet in the year 1932 Great Britain imported meat to the value of £80,970,000. In the year 1933 it imported meat to the value of £77,535,000 and in the year 1934 this vanishing market imported over £1,000,000 worth of meat more than it imported in 1932. In that year it imported meat to the value of £81,536,000.
During that time the quantity of meat taken by what the President calls this vanishing market, from those countries whose representatives sat at that round-table conference had risen from £19,000,000 in 1932 to £27,390,000 in 1934. The percentage taken in from those countries whose representatives attended that conference had risen from 23.5 per cent. to 33.5 per cent. In the matter of meat—beef, mutton, bacon and ham—the market was not a vanishing market between 1930 and 1934. In respect of goods taken from those countries whose representatives attended the Ottawa Conference, the percentage had increased from 23.5 to 33.5. Into that market of £81,000,000, £27,000,000 came from Commonwealth countries, while the Irish Free State sent in only £2,000,000 worth.
In respect of dairy produce this vanishing market was worth £52,920,000 in 1934. The Irish Free State sent into it produce value only for £2,331,000. The percentage taken from Commonwealth countries had increased from 49.5 per cent. to 53 per cent. in these three years. When we come to live cattle we have a further illustration of the vanishing market, because we were the suppliers of that market, and we made up our minds that we were going to have an economic war. We wiped out that market ourselves, and a total market of £16,014,000, to which we supplied £15,407,000 worth of goods in 1931, fell to £5,265,000, to which we supplied £4,381,000 in 1934. We wiped out £11,000,000 of a £15,000,000 market there, but that market is no more gone than is the £81,000,000 market for meat, or the £50,000,000 odd market for dairy produce. If the President and his Ministers can make up their minds that we are a sovereign people who need not go anywhere for constitutional rights any longer, and that he is a self-respecting Prime Minister, who has no thought of consulting or asking the sanction of any other body for any action he has taken, and who, in that manly stand and that manly frame of mind, goes to the people with whom we have a difference and sits down and argues these differences, the President need not be reminded within a few weeks of receiving the Prime Ministers of Australia and Tasmania here, that if he never met these, he has help when he sits down in council with Great Britain, having Canada on his right-hand side, Australia on his left-hand side and South Africa on some other side of him——
Like Balaclava.
Deputy Donnelly need not think lightly or speak lightly of the benefits of sitting down and arguing such problems as we have with Great Britain in front of the representatives of Canada, South Africa and Australia. If they were never there, and Irish leaders to-day showed traditional Irish manhood in the altered circumstances of absolute co-equality, they would not be afraid of arguing out the matter with the British alone. We were not, and I do not think there is either a Minister or Deputy on the other side who has had any experience of the British people, as such, who thinks that he would not get a fair deal with them. After all, the past is very dead; the pre-war past is very dead; the pre-1921 past is very dead, but even before these days there are some Deputies, at any rate, on the far side who will not tell me that they did not receive personal kindness and assistance from Englishmen and English women.
I do not think anyone will stand up on a public platform in Ireland and say that when we were fighting the British Government for our rights here, and when we were carrying on the struggle that gave us here an Irish State, co-equal in status with Great Britain, we did not get the help as well as the sympathy of very many wide sections of the English people. I do not think there is a single people in Europe with whom Irishmen could co-operate more readily, fight more effectively, and leave that fight with greater friendship than we could with the English people. Deputies and Ministers on the far side, since they came into office, and perhaps before, have met representatives of other European countries and they know in their hearts that that is so. They might even say it openly and it would be no harm for them to talk about these matters it openly and to make it clear that there are not two people on this globe, who, sitting down in co-equality, as you can sit to-day if you have the manhood to do it, and if you cut with all the political bogeys of the past, can more assist one another than the English people and ourselves. If you want to go a step further, having had the experience of the Australians, South Africans and Canadians, you could say the same with regard to these people, but principally with regard to their leaders, because we have had more experience of their leaders than we have had of the rank and file of their people.
There was not a single one of the politicals from Australia, Canada, South Africa or any other country who have been met recently by members of the Government or by their friends, who has not told them something about their connections with Ireland and particularly about the connections of his people with Ireland. If there is a problem that ought to be close to Deputy Donnelly's heart, it is the reunion of this country and the joining up of our people in the Six Counties, the other people of our nation, into one State, from Antrim to Cork. I think Deputy Donnelly and the Ministers will have to look outside to our race in Australia, in Canada, in New Zealand, and, perhaps, in South Africa as some of the influence that will bring us and the Six Counties back into an Irish State. Do not think that we were not helped in our struggle to achieve our present Statehood here by the people of these countries. We were. And if there was anything outside ourselves here which helped to influence the decent people in Great Britain, it was the spirit of nationality and the spirit of independence rising up, strong and fresh, particularly in post war and war circumstances, in Canada, South Africa and Australia that made it possible for many people in England to sympathise with the spirit of independence here. They were less afraid of an independent spirit in Ireland and less afraid of an independent State in Ireland when they saw an independent spirit in other countries which are members of the British Commonwealth of Nations.
If there was any sincerity in what the President said before the League of Nations; if there is any sincerity in his claim at Geneva that "it was their duty to face the anomalous and desperate situation, frankly and honestly"—that is, where you had poverty in the world, millions of unemployed and plenty around—"not as the representatives of States or parties or special interests, but as men who realise that the primary duty of statesmen, national and international, is to plan for the well-being and happiness of their fellows—the plain ordinary human beings in every country who feel and think and suffer"; if, seeing the condition in which Europe is to-day, not to travel further, the President has not realised that in co-operation with the nations of Canada, South Africa, Australia and Great Britain, we could help to show the world what international co-operation is, what international harmony is and help to show them, too, the benefits, economic as well as spiritual, that flow from that co-operation, it is no wonder we are being led up against a very blind alley so far as agriculture is concerned, so far as industry is concerned and so far as our political relations with Great Britain are concerned. It is no wonder we are being led into the blind alley of the decay of Irish culture and Irish civilisation. The Minister must have some inkling of what could be done both to solve the immediate difficulties of our own country and to give an example to the world, an example such as he himself says should be given to the world, an example such as the Holy Father calls for in the Encyclical I have quoted, Caritate Christi Compulsi, issued in May, 1932. It is an astounding thing that when we find ourselves to-day under a Government which came into office a few months before that was issued—the President's first big official visit having been to the League of Nations to preside over the assembly in the name of the State; the first important duty of his Ministers being to go in a delegation to Ottawa, to sit there among free men representing free nations, and to discuss economic and other matters—that Government should, to-day, three years afterwards be leading the country down the paths of loss and destruction along which this country is being led.
Every bit of detail that comes before the President must indicate to him the dangers which lie around. If we are to place any interpretation on what the Minister for Industry and Commerce said here last night, it would seem that agriculturists are to work in future along such lines that they are going to get a poor return for their work in the dairying industry, while our people are going to pay exorbitant prices for butter. They are going to get a poor return for their work on beet, and our people are to pay an exorbitant price for sugar. They are going to get a poor return for their cattle, and we are going to pay an exorbitant price for meat. In other words, our agriculture is to be organised upon lines that make it a burden on the people as a whole. Through political pique and national want of manliness and character, we are cutting our people off from the market that is theirs by right, and in which we had every right to demand a greater place. All that the President has declared in regard to it to a representative of an English journal, the Sunday Chronicle, is as follows: “We do not ask for any special advantages. We do not expect them, any more than any other country, France or Germany, for example, would.” We do. Our whole industry, and the results of the particular lines upon which the economic development of this country was stifled for years under the British administration, strengthen the ground under our feet. It is astounding to think that anyone speaking for this country, after what has happened in the past, and considering the want of balance between our industry and our agricultural development here as a result of British policy pursued in this country, could turn around and say to an English journalist that we do not ask for more than France or Denmark. We do, and we have always done so. You will not be respected unless you do ask for your rights. Well, we are losing our self-respect here and losing our prestige abroad because we have not the manliness to stand up for our rights, but go hanging around corners saying “They are keeping them from me.”
The President must see that every year of the decline in our exports and of the decline in our trade is reflected in the impoverishment of our people here. It was part of the President's Saint Patrick's Day message that industrially the year had been one of notable advance. We have nothing with which to measure that industrial advance. We got nothing from the Minister for Finance, nothing from the President, and nothing from the Minister for Industry and Commerce, to help us.
Deputy Norton asked yesterday for some information as to the repayment of income tax under Section 7 of the Finance Act, 1932, whereby repayments of income tax are made in respect of Irish capital invested in Irish industry since 1932. The Minister for Finance could not tell him. One could infer that there was no Irish capital invested in new industries in 1932 or 1933, except perhaps in the case of two companies. No information could be given with regard to 1934. We have no information, either, with regard to the great industrial advance that was made in 1934. We have no index to the increased employment in the various industries. We have the dope, the misrepresentation, and the untruths. We have the statement in the editorial columns of the Irish Press that there has been a decrease in the imports of goods here, and that that decrease has been the result of industrial development here, which has put 95,000 persons into industrial employment. We have the statement of Deputy Maguire, similarly reported, speaking at some place in County Mayo where he again makes the statement that 95,000 persons have been put into industries manufacturing our necessaries here. But the Minister for Industry and Commerce repudiates that figure. He trots out a figure in a way in which it could be misunderstood if we so desired, but when asked how many of those 95,000 persons were persons who got three or four days' work on the roads, he runs away from the figure, and says that he does not mean to say that all those 95,000 persons were put into permanent employment.
Those are people who were ignored when you were in office.
He says that 25,000 persons were put into industrial employment. If the Minister for Industry and Commerce knows that 25,000 persons were put into industrial employment surely he can tell us what industries they were put into employment in? We hear from time to time of employment in industry, but the funny thing about the whole business is that when we hear about employment in industry we hear only of those industries for the sound development of which the previous Administration laid the foundations. When the President broadcast to America in March, 1934, we were told that imports of outer garments, particularly for men and boys, had been reduced by half; that imports of underclothing and hosiery had been greatly reduced; that imports of boots, shoes, and leather had been reduced by nearly one-third, and that furniture and cabinet imports were rapidly disappearing.
All these were good old Irish industries that we turned our attention to and, by careful examination of their condition and by the assistance of tariffs, laid the thorough foundations for their subsequent development. We do not hear of any other industries particularly specified from time to time, either by the President in his broadcasts or speeches, or by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and yet the Minister has the rather barefaced audacity to say that industry was decaying when he came along, that none of the action taken by the previous Administration to develop industry had any effect, simply brought in huge taxes into the Exchequer.
We hear references to employment that has been given, increased employment in the industries towards the development of which we assisted. If the President is really paying attention even to these industries that he speaks about, I would ask him has he made any examination of the figures that are available for the year 1933, the second year of his administration? Has he interpreted in any way the very substantial fall in the consumption of the necessaries of life that these figures indicate? I have drawn the attention of the House to some of them. There is another that the President is fond of mentioning, the confectionery industry. As regards boots and shoes, the fall in the consumption of boots and shoes in 1933, the second year of the President's administration, as compared with 1931, amounted to £256,000.
Where is the Deputy getting his figures from?
From the 1933 issue of the Trade Statistics; that is the more detailed issue of the Trade Statistics issued by the Minister for Industry and Commerce.
Trade and shipping?
Yes, and the preliminary figures for the Census of Production issued by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, too, in respect of 1933. In the case of hosiery there has been a fall in consumption between 1931 and 1933 of £229,000, or 19 per cent. of 1931 consumption.
We are at a loss here. Will the Deputy explain how he arrives at that consumption? I find it difficult to follow.
The President will find in the Trade and Shipping Statistics from year to year that we import a certain amount of goods and that we export some others—we are exporting less now. I am giving the President for the years 1931 and 1933 the net import and the gross production, that is the gross production in this country, and I am showing that in the sum of the net import and the gross production for 1931 and 1933 there has been a fall in the consumption of boots and shoes of £256,000; hosiery, £229,000; clothing, £802,000 or 20 per cent. of the 1931 consumption; furniture, £82,000 or 11.9 per cent. of the 1931 consumption; soap and candles, £69,000 or 11.6 per cent. of the 1931 consumption and jams and sugar confectionery, 19.6 per cent. of the 1931 consumption. Will the President say if he has examined, in so far as he is able to examine them, the particulars for 1934? We are not able to say what the position was in 1934, except by a general inference from the statistics which the Minister for Industry and Commerce gives us in a general way in relation to employment. But in these articles of necessity there was a very definite and big fall in consumption in this country in the second year of the President's administration.
I have already put before the House figures developed in a different way, but bearing on the 1934 consumption, and it is perfectly obvious from the figures that are available, apart altogether from what we must know of the condition of things in the country, that people of every class of society to-day have less to spend on the necessaries of life than they had three years ago. It is not that prices have fallen, because there is no other direction in which the people are spending their money. The consumption of various classes of things that otherwise bring in revenue to the Minister for Finance has fallen considerably and now the policy that is pursued by the President puts an additional tax on almost every one of the necessaries of life. The President speaks of their housing policy. He is raising the tax on the people who own houses. Every person at the present time who is endeavouring to found a home in one of the State-subsidised houses is having thrown down on him, as one of the financial necessities of the President's policy, additional taxes on every blessed thing he has to buy for his house. The great mystery of the situation is salt. The Minister for Finance has not yet put a tax on salt.
Taxation does not fall for discussion on this Estimate.
I am asking the President where his policy is leading the people. It is cutting off the main source of income of our people generally; it is stifling industrial production here in two ways—it is injuring the consuming capacity of the people and is taking away capital that would naturally find its way into industry. Down on top of the whole of that, year after year in his Budget, the Minister for Finance has demanded from the people additional taxation. In this particular year, as a financial necessity, linoleum, wallpaper, mugs, glass and everything that the Minister for Finance has been able to think of are being made a further means of extracting money from the pockets of the unfortunate people of the country. I would like to put to the President the question that, in a more specific way, I put to Deputy Cleary, who stated there were 2,000 odd people registered as unemployed in the Swinford area. I pointed out to him that not only were they registered as unemployed, but that 2,017 of them were considered to be in such circumstances that it was necessary to give them unemployment assistance. I would like to ask the President what the future is to be, under the policy that he is pursuing, of thousands of persons who are registered as unemployed, say, in the western counties—Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Galway, Clare, Limerick and Kerry? You have the position in these counties, that whereas there were 30,000 persons registered as unemployed in these several counties at the end of July last, there were 63,318 by the end of March. While at the end of July 9,200 were getting unemployment assistance, at the end of March 50,329 were considered to be in such circumstances that the State had to come to their assistance and pay them unemployment assistance money.
I wonder would the President tell us what the agricultural economic future of these people is? He is pursuing a policy which is cutting away our agricultural market. The result of that policy is that the industrial development—which he promised the farmers was going to be such that it would give them alternative markets—is being starved and threatened. A number of important industries, some of them old industries, are reduced to a state of cut-throat competition. We have long established industries which were fostered by the previous Government and given further assistance by the present Government. They are now finding themselves threatened as to their future. In these circumstances I would like the President to tell us what is the future of these 50,000 people in the western counties who are at the present moment on unemployment assistance? They are not the counties in which the subsidised crops are to any very great degree extended, although in the case of Galway there has been a considerable extension. There some thousands of additional acres of wheat have been grown, and some 3,000 acres of beet are being grown this year.
Did the Deputy say 3,000 acres of beet this year?
I am dealing with the statistics for 1934 and I am quoting figures for 1934 as to beet, and wheat in Galway. In 1934, 7,098 acres of wheat were grown as against, 5,248 in 1933. There were grown 3,067 acres of beet in 1934, as against 4 acres in 1933. In 1933, the second year of the President's administration, the number of persons employed in agriculture in Donegal was 1,790 less than in 1931; in Sligo it was 291 less than in 1931; in Galway 1,236 less; in Clare 343 less, and in Kerry 681 less. You have these various substantial reductions in the number of persons employed in agriculture. Mayo was the only place where there was an increase of 115 persons employed in agriculture. Now you have the position in which I say that in these counties there are 50,000 persons in receipt of unemployment assistance. What is the President's plan and what is his policy doing for the people who are in this condition in the western counties? Those who look at the President's bill which is presented to the country should also look at the returns of unemployment statistics in the rest of the country. We see no possible hope for a settlement in life of these people in any conditions under the present policy that would be tolerable from a Christian point of view. If the President can argue that we can continue to wipe out our trade with Great Britain or continue even to do without it; that we can continue to encourage our people to develop industry on the rotting foundations that exist here to-day; that we can continue to bleed the people by the taxation that is being imposed on the country; that we can continue to leave our farmers in the condition in which they are, and hope still to develop this country economically, spiritually, and nationally, and to bring back our culture and our language, then we would like to hear from the President some details of his thoughts on the matter. We would like to hear how he thinks that this is going to be done and see him paint some kind of a picture in some detail as to the direction in which things are going to develop for the various classes of people who are interested in the economic well-being of the country. The picture as it stands to-day both statistically and in the eyes of everyone who can move around the country is one that gives an emphatic lie to the President. He can do nothing but destroy our people spiritually, economically and nationally by continuing the policy fostered by Fianna Fáil to-day.
I did not intend to intervene in this debate at all. I came into the House when Deputy Mulcahy had finished most of his speech and I rise because some of the figures he quoted are likely to indicate what is taking place all over the world in a way that Fine Gael and other interested Deputies wish to give to the public. If I am correct I think he quoted some figures of £16,000,000 for exports of cattle to England and of these the Free State exports were reduced to £5,000,000 in 1934. That indicates that in Great Britain the cattle fell from £16,000,000 to £5,000,000.
From what other country but the Free State did cattle come to England?
From Canada.
How much?
A very small quantity, but I am not speaking of that but of the fall in price. Here we are told by the Fine Gael Party that everything is due to the economic war. They do not take any account of the fact that prices have fallen nearly 200 per cent. Deputies take no notice of that at all. Everything is due to the economic war.
Does Deputy Dowdall suggest that cattle prices in Britain since 1931 have fallen 200 per cent?
No, I do not. I say that the value of the imports into Great Britain have fallen.
By 200 per cent.?
I have not the figures and cannot be expected to give them but it is approximately that much. The fall was from £16,000,000 to £5,000,000. That indicates that the price all over the world for all agricultural produce has fallen. Deputy Mulcahy was talking of the imports. He said that the market was there for us and that our proportion was there. I wonder has the Deputy examined the value of these exports and the quantities of goods being supplied by other countries to Great Britain at a price that could not possibly pay the producers? They have nothing else to do with their milk. The Argentine, and the other countries that are exporting meat, have nothing else to do with their meat. We have had a terrific spate of words in this House for the past two days, but Deputies absolutely ignored the fact that prices are falling all over the world and they never give any indication except the economic war.
I discussed the question of butter the other evening, and I pointed out that the penal duty on butter going into Great Britain from this country was 20/- per cwt. What is the farmer getting for the butter from the Government? He got up to 80/- per cwt. last year for that butter.
Who is paying it?
Never mind who pays it. 60/- is the amount that is added to the price the farmer gets on the market in Great Britain. He got this 60/- because the price he could obtain on the international market would make him bankrupt so far as the dairying industry is concerned. I trust that some importance will be attached to the fact that world prices have fallen. The Deputy has just given me the opportunity I wanted. If he reflects calmly and without political prejudice on the fact that cattle have fallen in a very short period from £16,000,000 to £5,000,000 he will get some indication of what is happening to agricultural produce imported from all over the world. Denmark and all the other countries which are supplying butter to England have had to come to the assistance of their farmers in order to keep dairying in existence. If they had not come to their assistance, the farmers in the various countries could not carry on the dairy business, which is practically the foundation of live stock agriculture, at all events. Deputy Mulcahy spoke of political bogeys. I should like to ask Deputy Mulcahy if Ireland a nation is one of the political bogeys of the past?
Bunkum.
It is not bunkum.
The question is.
It is perfectly clear that the Irish people at all times looked forward to the time when Ireland would be a nation.
I should like to ask the Deputy has he any conception of the Ireland of the future as a nation, and as to how it is to be made into one State?
I do not like to go back on the past but I remember a time in this House when after the Boundary settlement Deputy Cosgrave came in and wanted to get the Bill ratifying that settlement through the House that afternoon. I wonder whether the Party represented by Fine Gael now have got any remembrance of their own Party dividing this country because, mark you, it was not divided up to then? There was a Government in the Six Counties, but we had not given our sanction to that and we had not ratified it. We might have been able to get these Six Counties back but, once having given the seal of this State to that bargain, we can only get them back by force, which is unthinkable, or by negotiation. The Fine Gael Party had a great deal to do with creating that situation. I am not blaming them altogether.
Speak for your own Party. People in this House who would bandy words with one another as to who, in this House or outside this House, was responsible for partition, must have had their ears well stuffed with cotton wool when the Ulster Volunteers were making this country ring. They can have no recollection of the Curragh mutiny and of English politicians' dealings at that particular time.
That is very far back.
There is no question but that we would be in a far different position if the Cumann na nGaedheal Government had not given legislative effect to that in this House. They endeavoured to get it passed in one afternoon. At that time Senator Johnson, who was a member of this House, said: "This was only put in our hands fifteen minutes ago."
I can give you a whole list of "ifs."
Deputy Mulcahy was not interrupted.
I should like to hear the Minister for Finance on the subject.
Deputy Mulcahy spoke about the English people. I have stated before, and I say it again, that, so far as the English people are concerned, I have no fault to find with them. They are as good a people as any in the world. I would just as soon deal with them as with anybody else. But it is a different matter altogether with their Governments. Their Governments do not behave in the same way. So far as the English people are concerned, no matter how much they desire to buy from us, if we produce goods at a certain price and try to get a small profit on them, and if the English people can get these goods at a lower price elsewhere they will buy them. I am not blaming them for that. The fact is that there is too much produce going into England for the people to absorb except at a price at which it would pay no farmer in any part of the world to produce.
Some Deputies mentioned the President's pride and pique, and said that the Executive Council and others were anxious to preserve the President's face. I am certain that there are no people in this House or in this country who would do anything which was going to injure the country to save the President's face. They would look to the interests of the country rather than to saving the President's face. It is simply because the people recognise that the policy which the President has advocated, and which this country and most other countries are pursuing, is the only policy which has any hope of making this a country worth living in for the people in the future.
Deputy Mulcahy asked the President would he paint a picture of the future of the country. Of course he cannot. Let us not forget that the position in this country would be vastly different if the late Government carried out the policy which they themselves, when they were united as Sinn Fein, advocated—a policy to make the industrial arm of this country strong, as well as the agricultural arm. Had they done that for the ten or eleven years they were in office, the position of the farmers would not be such a deplorable one as has been painted from the other side. It is not as deplorable as people imagine. I am not saying that prices are not low. They may go lower still, but it is not our fault. The fact is that we were put in this position because England, legislating for her people, thought it best to adopt protection, and the adoption of protection by England has put the whole world out of gear—not this country only.
Deputy O'Sullivan, speaking yesterday, referred to the condition of the farmers. He said that the farmers would have to pay this and pay that. He referred to the deplorable condition they were in, and said that they could not carry on. Then he asked what was going to be done for them. Are there no other people in the country who want looking after besides the farmers?
And 125,000 unemployed.
There are 3,000,000 of people in the Free State, over 2,000,000 of whom require to be looked after badly. That is what the Government is doing and that is what, to a great extent, the Government that went before us did not do. Talking about extra taxation, if we had not imposed extra taxation, what would happen the people who are now unable to emigrate, and who emigrated during the régime of the last Government? They would be absolutely starving. They would die of starvation. If we are going to have an increase in population in this country, as we must necessarily have, any money that the Government feels called upon to spend for the improvement of the condition of the people must be spent. I sincerely trust that the point made about falling prices will not be forgotten, not alone in this House but outside it.
I think it is a pity that occasions like this are not availed of to keep definitely to two or three topics, so that we might have a clear-cut knitting of the differences between us. Unfortunately, the debate ranged over every type of subject and details that properly belong to the various Departments. If one were to attempt to answer all the points that were raised, the time for reply would be unduly prolonged. I do not, therefore, propose to deal with the smaller matters. I propose to try to do what I think should have been done largely by the Opposition—to deal with the major aspects of Government policy. Perhaps, however, before I start on them I should deal with one or two things which I think merit a certain amount of reference. Deputy MacDermot spoke about the position of the Governor-General. I indicated in dealing with that that I agreed very largely with the Opposition in the view that the functions of the office being what they now are, we could hardly justify bringing in an Estimate either for salary or for establishment. I am not going, at the moment at any rate, to go into the broader question, of which that is part. I mention it now simply because of what I regard as a very mean reference by Deputy MacDermot. I think it is my duty as one who is responsible for this Estimate to say that Donal Ó Buachalla, as he is to us, is one of the finest types of Irishman there is in this country, that when men were required he was there, and that there is nobody, from overseas or from anywhere else, with a full choice before us, we would choose before him for any position. I think that it is only just I should say that.
Shortly after we came into office a situation arose with which we had no time to deal as we should like. We had to look around for an Irishman who understood what the Government policy was and who was prepared to sacrifice himself to bear the misrepresentations, to bear the sneers of people on the opposite benches in order that the nation's interests might be served. Donal Ó Buachalla, at my urgent request, and much against his own will, accepted the position. This is not the appropriate time—the time will come when I can do it, I hope—for me to ask the Irish people to show Donal Ó Buachalla the appreciation which he deserves. I think, therefore, it was particularly mean that a Deputy on the opposite benches should refer to the salary which he is receiving in the way in which he did refer to it. I shall pass away from that.
Before the President does pass away from it, perhaps he would allow me to say a word?
I should be very glad.
I already stated yesterday that my remarks were not intended as any kind of reflection on Mr. Buckley. When I spoke of the preferability, in my view, of getting an Irishman from overseas to fill such a post, it was for the reason I explained to the House last year, that I would attach a special symbolical value to getting an Irishman from overseas. I had no desire whatsoever to cast any reflection on the qualities of the present occupant of the post of Governor-General. As regards the financial matter, again I was casting no sort of aspersion upon him personally. My point was that it seemed to me impossible for him in present circumstances to spend the salary, with allowances somewhere in the region of £4,000, but that nevertheless if he did spend it in entertainment or in some such way, the Government would throw him out of office. Therefore, the remarks I made were merely in the nature of an attack upon the Government and not an attack upon Mr. Buckley.
I am glad. The Deputy did try afterwards to make the matter clear yesterday, and I am very glad he has made it clear once more. Donal Ó Buachalla is not himself here. There has been a certain courtesy in regard to the person who is in that position exercised here until recently. I simply say again that there is no position in this country which Donal Ó Buachalla could not fill, and fill with dignity and with honour to the nation, and there is nobody from overseas or anywhere else who could fill it better. If he does not come and do things in public, it is because it is the policy of the Government that he should not do it.
Hear, hear! You will not let him.
He knew it and it was on these conditions and because he was a man who could be depended upon to do it that he was chosen. Deputy Mulcahy referred, yesterday, I think, to the fact that he was entitled to be at the Easter Week Commemoration. He was entitled to be there. He was entitled to be there as well as anybody who participated in it and he was not there, not because he would not wish to take part as a man who had played his part on that occasion, but because we did not want to have public controversy on the matter or misrepresentation of the matter. That is why he was not there. The trouble in Irish politics—and it is an answer to the points made by Deputy McGilligan and others—is that since the signing of the Treaty, the whole position has been bedevilled, to use the words of the former Minister for Agriculture when he was on these benches. It has been the aim of some of us, at any rate, to try to get back to a position in which normal politics might have an opportunity of developing.
I have been accused of inconsistency; Deputies on the opposite side are accused of inconsistency. Everyone of us, in trying to get a proper standard and a proper understanding of the duties of government and of the attitude of citizens towards it, has been prevented because of that position into which the whole country was brought originally by the mistake of signing the Treaty. Deputies on the Opposition Benches, of course, took the opposite side and they make their case on it. We have taken our side. It is a fact that there was a civil war fought; it is a fact that we fought on one side to maintain the State that was declared by the Irish people, when that State was being put aside without direct reference to the people. It is a fact also that that war ended in our defeat and that it was clear there was no longer a possibility of maintaining that State in arms. When that possibility was made clear to the participants, terms of peace, a basis on which the political life of this country might proceed on normal lines, were presented to the then Executive, who, having no foresight and no wisdom, and being more anxious, as the people at Versailles were, to try to put it out of the power of those who were defeated at the time ever to raise their heads again—because that was the attitude—refused them and we have a situation of apparent inconsistency and apparent inability of those who want to see order to stand for order firmly and not be misrepresented.
Are we ever going to get out of that position? Is this thing going to go on and on and on, or is there ever going to be a time when the people of this country, and the people on the Opposition Benches, will see that we must get back to some proper understanding and the terms that were offered by the then republican authorities, even though they were authorities in defeat, for the same conduct of government in this country be accepted as a basis? When we came into office, we strove to bring about the conditions which would be a realisation of that basis. We the whole republican movement at the time, offered to the Administration of that day that if there was a clear understanding between all Parties that the sovereign rights of this nation were indefeasible there should be no estoppel, by the action of one Party, which would appear to deny that of others in trying, in their time, to secure it. That was one of the principles we were trying to get acceptance for. We were trying to get political agreement which would supersede an imposed Constitution. But in the same way as the people at Versailles gave way to feelings which they are rueing to-day, this country has had to suffer because those on the opposite benches were more intent on completely crushing opponents than they were in looking out for the future welfare of the country. Is there any reason why all political sections in this country cannot agree upon the fact that this nation has a right to be free—as free as any other nation.
We do agree on it.
At the moment, I am not talking of the section immediately in front of me; I am talking of people elsewhere.
I hope they understand you better than we do.
You never understood much.
The Deputy understands full well what my meaning is. I mean that if our country was brought to the situation which the Deputy opposite held it was, when it could no longer fight for its rights effectively, when superior force was being brought against it and when it was regarded as the best policy at the time to surrender, that surrender should not be held to bind future generations; that we should not have documents like this held up against us; and that so far as binding succeeding generations, any future bargains that might involve a denial of the rights of this country to be as free as any other nation, should not be worth the paper they were written upon.
I, personally, am not any clearer yet.
You know all about it.
That was the first point which we asked our opponents to accept. Their answer was that it was in the Constitution and we knew that that Constitution was not the free expression of even their own opinions; that it was a dictated Constitution, and we asked them "If you have even to submit to it under duress, can you not at least admit to us and amongst ourselves that if we get into office, if the Irish people elect us to maintain the independence of our country, that bargain of yours would not be supported by you as against the rights of the Irish people." The next matter on which we wanted agreement—and it should not have been hard to get if there were people who were anxious to see this nation make progress, as, I believe, this nation can make progress even still, and progress that would be remarkable to-day if we could only get it—was that all Governmental authority should be exercised in this country as having been derived exclusively from the Irish people. Was there any difficulty in getting acceptance of that? Again we were told that that was so, that it was in the Constitution, even though that Constitution was admittedly one which had been imposed from without. We said that if those two points were accepted, so that there should be no estoppel on future action of the Irish people for their freedom, then we can on one other condition get a way for resolving all our internal political differences. We said, as a third point, that we would be prepared to accept, and we asked our opponents to accept, the principle that political policy would be decided in this country by the majority vote of the people of this country. We pointed out that we did not put that forward as a principle of right and justice. To-day I think somebody found fault with that statement of mine, but we had Deputy Fitzgerald yesterday standing for the same doctrine. I do not want to suggest that it is any sounder because Deputy Fitzgerald stood for it, but at any rate it shows that this majority is accepted not as a principle of right— it could not be proved to be a principle of right—but because it is a good way by which people who are likely to differ about policy, particularly in a situation such as ours, can get a peaceful method for settling inevitable political differences.
There was only one thing further that was asked, and that was that if there is to be this acceptance of majority decision as settling matters of national policy and expediency, then it must be open to every section of the community to put forward their representatives; that there should be no political tests such as the oath was; that that policy is a natural corollary, and we asked our opponents to accept that as a basis. We said further that we were prepared to have the arms which were in the hands of the republican soldiers placed in such a position that, once the people had decided, those arms would get under the control of the elected representatives of the people. If there are arms which are not under control to-day, it is because people on the opposite benches had not the foresight to see that the future of this country was worth the putting aside of those feelings that they had at the time against their opponents. Those arms would have been handed over on those conditions. There might have been a few here and there who would not agree. There might have been a few who would not accept those principles but the republican authorities of the time accepted them, and when we got into office we set out to try to get from those who had continued in those organisations a repetition of the offer which we in the name of the republican authorities at that time had made to the Administration of the day. We set out first to remove the test oath, because it is nonsense to think we could ask people to accept as a general principle of order here that political decisions affecting the nation should be taken by majority vote, unless we were prepared to let all sections have their say. We did that. It was for that reason that for the first year of office whilst the oath was still there, we made it clear that we were not going to pursue those who had arms. When the oath was removed, we confidently hoped that those who in those days saw an offer being made and had assented to such an offer being made, would be prepared to stand now by the position that was taken up by the republicans of that period. We hoped that there would be no less a desire on the part of the republicans of to-day—the republican section which is not in Fianna Fáil—than there was in 1923 to try and lay the future foundations of this country on sound lines. We have been disappointed. I frankly admit that. We have not been met in the way we hoped to be met. I know all the difficulties. I know how easy it is to forget changing situations, and to think in terms of ten years, twelve years or a longer period of time.
Indeed you do.
I know quite well how it can be done.
Can the President learn how not to do it?
The President is being constantly accused of inconsistency, from the opposite benches, because he does see changing situations, and does believe that changing situations mean that you must have changing tactics at times, and that there is no use in having a plan of campaign for one set of circumstances and thinking you can apply it to another. I have always thought that, and always tried—in so far as I was in any way responsible for shaping it—to shape the national policy to meet the situations which the nation had to deal with. But I understand the opposite view. I understand it very well, and, mind you, conservatism in that matter is as valuable as conservatism in any other direction. It may be a great clog at times, but sometimes it is a help. Sometimes it prevents people from being moved around by every wind. It is sometimes very valuable, and what this nation requires is to have the value of that, if it is possible to secure it within reasonable lines, without having to meet the situation that we have to meet here. This question of law and order is one of the big questions that have been raised. It has been raised by the Minister for Justice on many points. The problem of law and order in this country is bound to be, for a long time, in our circumstances, a very difficult problem.
The law was not respected in this country in the past. Why? Because it was an outside, a foreign law. English historians, dealing with charges that the Irish people were lawless, said, those of them who were observers, that there were no people on earth as naturally inclined to respect law as the Irish people. That might be an exaggeration or not, but it was at least a tribute that was paid by English writers to the Irish people when the cry of lawlessness was being raised against our people from another place. The fact to which we cannot blind ourselves is, that law was not respected in this country because it was not regarded as law that demanded respect. It was law imposed from outside, and because it was such the citizens had no respect for it. A change came about. The people, or the people's representatives at any rate, deliberately declared an independent State here in 1919 and the people were asked to give loyal and voluntary obedience to the laws passed by the representatives then chosen. There was a hope, it was rapidly developing, that the average citizen in the country would come to respect law because it was of social value and of national value. They were rapidly developing a sense of respect for law because it was home law.
If we had the republic continuing in existence we would have had none of these problems about law and order that we have to-day—at least not in my opinion—or if they arose they could be dealt with firmly and the Administration would have the feeling that their action was thoroughly understood and fully supported by the public opinion of the country, which in the long run is the only real support for government and for law. But then we had this Treaty business. The whole basis of government was affected by it, and we have had since a situation which it is extremely difficult to change. We have all these charges of inconsistency and all the rest of it which were levelled at us from the opposite benches in this debate. It is unfortunate that that is so, but we have to recognise that it is so, and we want the support of all Parties here and the support of the people, the public opinion of the country, in order to get out of that almost impossible situation if the country is going to make any progress. We can only do it by getting some basis for it. The Deputies on the opposite benches can say that they had a basis. They had no questioning; they recognised that their authority was supreme, that they had a right to compel, by whatever means were necessary, acceptance of their laws. To a certain extent they were successful, but they had to use these extraordinary measures which everyone with the welfare of the country at heart must deplore. Nobody deplores the fact that they have to be used to-day more than I do, and no one in the whole country, if it were possible to get on without these extraordinary measures, would be more anxious than I to do so.
Before I leave that I want to point out that we can only do it if we get some basis. We have undoubtedly been elected by the majority of the Irish people. We do not recognise any authority coming from any other source except, under God, through the Irish people to us. It is true that at the moment we are operating a Constitution which has not been wholly ours. I hope before our term expires that we will be able to bring in a Constitution which, so far as internal affairs at any rate are concerned, will be absolutely ours. If we could get an understanding with people who are not at present prepared to accept the authority that is here, we would be very glad to get it. But it must again be on some basis and not on the basis that a minority, a small group, can compel others to take their view of things. That is not possible, clearly. We offer to all sections of the community the offer that was made, and the conditions are there to-day—the offer and the conditions that were made in 1923, and if they do not accept them, then there is nothing for us to do but to go and defend the interests of this nation and the social interests as we see them.
There must be order. We undertook duties as a Government and there is no way out for us. We have to fulfil these duties or get out. There is nothing else left and, no matter how distasteful it may be to us, we will have to do that. We undertook these obligations and we are going to carry them out. Extraordinary measures are being taken. The first year we showed quite clearly that we had no intention of acting vindictively or harshly towards any section of the community. When the oath was gone we hoped to get co-operation, which was denied, as I have already said. Then we were faced with this situation, that there was an organisation, there were certain people going round the country organising, ex-soldiers and others, getting into a semi-military organisation, and we knew they had guns, we knew they had weapons; we knew if they were able to proceed to a certain point that they would be a direct and an immediate menace. And because we saw that, and to save bloodshed, as it would undoubtedly have led to bloodshed, we had to use the only weapon that was left to us to use and that was the Constitution Amendment Act, or whatever it is—the Public Safety Act it used to be called. We had to use it. There was no other legal method at our hands to deal with the situation. We, as the Executive, had the immediate responsibility for dealing with it and, repugnant as it was for us to have to use that measure, we did use it and we might as well all be frank about it.
If the ordinary operations of law cannot be relied upon to maintain order and secure justice, then if there is to be government at all the Government have to seek and use the powers which will make law operate. They have to do it; there is no way out for them. I will frankly say that I dislike it intensely, I dislike it to-day as much as I did when we opposed it from the opposite benches. I would like to say that the best alternative of all would be to see the ordinary law operating freely throughout the country. But if people will go into courts, local courts, and try to make an absolute mockery of them, if there is to be intimidation of jurors, if there is to be the possibility of citizens losing their lives as a result of an organisation of a kind in which guns are used, then it is clear the ordinary operation of law cannot be effective and if there is need, and I am sorry to think that there is possibly going to be need here, we must use those extraordinary measures.
If we were introducing a new Constitution to-morrow, I have got to confess that I believe if I had nothing whatever to do with the Government and was simply a member of a constituent assembly that would come in and go out immediately, I would have, as a result of my experience, to suggest to that constituent assembly that there should be a special provision to meet with emergency occasions in which there was a possibility of arms being used against unarmed citizens, and the courts, the ordinary courts, being set at defiance.
I say to reasonable people outside, no matter to what Party they belong and no matter what their views are, that what I am saying here is true. The ordinary laws will operate under settled conditions. But the ordinary laws cannot operate if conditions are not such as those for which these laws were designed. If we were introducing a Constitution here—unless there is a big change, seeing the state of the world as a whole—we would have to introduce in that Constitution certain emergency provisions which would give power to the Executive, in case the ordinary courts were set at defiance, to bring those who were acting in an unlawful and illegal manner before courts which could not possibly be intimidated. We would have to do it. Again it would be very much better if all Deputies would approach that question as if they were members of a constituent assembly, and as if it were something which is brought in by the Government in the public interest rather than some political weapon used by the Executive against political opponents.
With regard to law and order, we had to bring in these extraordinary powers. We had to do so in order to defend the country and to prevent the growth of an organisation which appeared to be trying to organise itself and to put itself on a military position, so that it might ultimately be able to take over power and defy the elected representatives of the people. In doing that we had the difficulty that for every step taken in that direction by this organisation there was a corresponding step taken in the other direction by another organisation that was prepared to oppose it by the same means. It would be only a short time before we would have another civil war in this country, or a situation which the Government could not control, and one which would resolve itself here in all probability just as similar situations resolved themselves in Italy and elsewhere, and finally we would have ordinary democratic government denied to the people. We were going to have a contest between two groups who were prepared each one to make good its promises and its policy by force. Eventually there was going to be a triumph for one or other, but when the triumph was gained what was going to be the position of the people and what was to be the situation in the country?
I expect the President will allow me to interpose for a moment. Perhaps it is hardly necessary for me to say at this hour of the day that our Youth Organisation never proposed any such thing as imposing its will on the people.
The Deputy does not know anything about it. The Deputy is an innocent in all this thing. I tried to tell the Deputy here before what he had to learn afterwards himself.
That they were getting guns from Hailsham?
I state the facts were plain to anybody: that there was a most dangerous situation for this country, a situation that was going to develop and give rise to conditions that existed on the Continent. I will at any rate admit this, that we did get democratic institutions here, and one thing, please God, we will do, no matter what it will cost us, we will hand back these democratic institutions to our successors, but with the Oath removed. I would say to the people of the country that this is not by any means a matter to be dealt with lightly. It is a very serious matter, a matter on which the whole future of our country depends. The question is whether we are to be torn here between internal strife for the next 20 years, or whether we are to set out as an ordered community to bring to pass the conditions that our energies and resources entitle us to hope for. I would ask the co-operation of all sections of the community in that. I know the difficulties; I understand the situation thoroughly; I have lived them inside and outside; I know them. I think I am not the innocent that Deputy MacDermot over there is with regard to the situation. I ask the people to realise as I do what can happen in this country if things like that were allowed to develop. I ask them to co-operate in bringing about a situation in this country in which no Irishman will be expected to subordinate his views with regard to the future of the country, politically or economically.
Hear, hear!
I ask them to come along and help us and say that we stand together with regard to law and order. All I can say is that in an extremely difficult situation with the bedevilment of the situation that I have referred to, handicapped as we have been by the whole past situation, we have tried honestly to do what we considered best for the country. We have not been taking illegal action against anybody.
Question.
We have not taken illegal action in the sense that we set out deliberately to do so. The courts have been there. Many Administrations have done things which the courts found were not in order. But the courts were obeyed and we submitted to the decisions of the courts. Even though very often we did not agree that these decisions were correct we obeyed them. We have not done what our predecessors did on a previous occasion, suppressed the courts when they gave decisions that our predecessors did not like. We have obeyed the courts. There has been no illegal action taken by this Government.
Question.
The Deputy has been questioning. He spoke yesterday about the case of a school teacher. It was in the time of our predecessors that that happened. It was not brought to my notice until a few months ago and the moment it was brought before my Department I brought it before the Executive Council and regardless of the fact that the illegal payment had begun in the time of our predecessors, I had it regularised.
It has not been regularised yet.
The steps necessary to regularise it were ordered to be taken.
It must be done by legislation.
Who tried Rory O'Connor?
The fact is that this Executive has proceeded with scrupulous regard by legal form and in a legal way. Any extraordinary measures that had to be taken in an extreme situation were things that I deplore. I wish they had not to be taken. I wish that conditions in this country were such that the ordinary courts would operate. If there was the slightest guarantee that that was so that Act, which was only brought in to deal with an emergency, would be immediately set aside.
It is not our fault, therefore, that these extraordinary measures have to be resorted to. If we have to resort to them it is because there is no alternative but disorder, no alternative but anarchy, no alternative but to let every section that thinks it has a grievance or a right to say: "Very well then, we are going to arm ourselves to win that right for ourselves," and, of course, the moment one section says it, the other section, which is opposed to it, has an equal right to say it. So much then for law and order.
Now let us come to another question —the economic war. Of course, it is too much to expect from Opposition Deputies, perhaps it is too much to expect from any people engaged in Party or political warfare, a scrupulous regard to what opponents say. I have always tried to refrain from taking statements made by opponents and quoting them because I know that in most reports in newspapers and so on the whole text is not given. Yet we have Opposition Deputies constantly bringing in documents which they know are not fully reliable. Not merely that, but they do not even keep to the text of the documents.
We had a typical example to-day. Deputy McGilligan repeated something said yesterday—that I was boasting that we had fired the first shot in the economic war. I questioned myself, "Is there any time that I am likely to have been boasting of that?" I do not feel like boasting of anything like that at any time. I questioned myself if, under any circumstances, I could conceive that I started in that strain. I challenged that when it was repeated to-day. I said, "Where is the reference? I do not remember it." I do not pretend to remember everything I said on every occasion: but I can generally remember my attitude of mind and the way I would approach this subject. I thought it most unlikely that I would have started off in a boasting strain about any of those things. I asked for the reference, and I was told, "Oh, it is there in the reports." Then, of course, there was a note of triumph on the opposite benches—"Here it is in the reports." What do we find in the reports? I find that I was speaking about the economic war. I was speaking about the absurdity of trade conflicts of that kind and I said, "Of course, the whole thing is absurd, but who began it? Who imposed these duties? We did not. We were giving substantial preferences." That was the introduction. At that point I was interrupted by Deputy Gorey, who shouted out, "Who fired the first shot?" I said, "If you want to continue, I will admit that we fired the first shot." To stop the argument about the question whether our withholding the annuities was the first shot or not, I said, "All right, I will admit it." That is turned round and made to appear as if I was boasting of the fact that we had fired the first shot.
We had another example to-day. It is a small matter, but it is useful as showing how the wind blows in regard to these things. I was supposed to have said, "The British market is gone forever, thank God." On any occasion on which I referred to that, have been speaking about the British market as it was known before to our farmers, that sort of British market which they were told could be suddenly brought back to them, and I said that that was gone and gone forever. I believe it is gone—that is, the market as it was before. Of course, the "thank God" part of it was a very simple addition. But again it was a complete misrepresentation of my attitude and of the attitude of the Government on the matter.
No member of the Government said "thank God."
I was supposed to have said it, and the member of the Government who did say it pointed out clearly in the context that what he had stated was that if that market meant the depopulation of this country, and all the rest of it, then we should thank God. These are two very different things.
Of course, Opposition Deputies are bent on trying to make it appear to our hard-pressed people that they are in their present condition through wilful action on the part of the Executive Council. Every time Opposition Deputies speak on this subject the one thing they want to suggest to the people is, "This position has been brought about wilfully; this country has been brought to suffer these things because the Executive Council have no regard for you at all." Pique on the part of one or two members of the Government is supposed to be responsible. The suggestion is that it is for reasons like that the economic pressure upon us has been brought about. Deputies who suggest that know it is nonsense. They know perfectly well what the cause of it is.
We had Deputy Mulcahy to-day taunting us and saying; if we were strong, we would tell these people what they had done to this country in the past and what justice demands they should do now; if we had only the courage to do these things, we could get anything we wanted from the British; all we had to do was to show the reasonableness of our case; to point to the fact that we were buying or had been until recently buying, from Great Britain more than any other country in the world; that they had brought us into the present position by a policy which was dictated in their own interest in the past; that we had been brought into the position in which we had no industries to fall back upon at a time when there was agricultural depression in the world; that our population had been driven out; that we had been paying them in taxation, over and beyond what was regarded as a fair proportion of our means, sums that have been calculated to be hundreds of millions by people who were not in favour of this country. What did they do? Those Deputies, who accuse us of bringing about this war wilfully, know that there was an Act of 1920 and that by that Act the annuities, which were being collected from the farmers by the State, as I should like to tell Deputy Fitzgerald, collected because it was due to the State, and which were going at that time to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, were to be retained in the treasuries both of the Twenty-Six Counties and the Six Counties; and that they are at this moment retained in the Six Counties under that Act. Deputies know that full well. They know that there was never a taking back by the British of that money— that they gloried in giving it. They said it was a gift.
Using the argument of Deputy Mulcahy, we could show it was not a gift at all, but a mere act of restitution. Deputies know full well that that money was never taken back. They knew that there was another clause in the same Act which made us liable for paying for certain Imperial services which the British were supposed to render under that Act, and that, by the Treaty, these services were no longer being rendered to us, inasmuch as we were doing these things ourselves. They knew that there was a change in that connection, effected by the Treaty, and that there was a provision in the Treaty whereby we would be held responsible for a share of the public debt of Great Britain and Ireland. They also knew that there was a new Treaty under which that obligation was wiped out.
When we saw those facts, we asked ourselves why were our people paying these annuities to Great Britain when all the legal facts indicated that they should be retained by us. The Opposition Party procured lawyers and fee'd them and got a legal opinion from them, and, when we refused to make these payments to Great Britain, and when we challenged the British Ministers to show us the basis for their claims, did they give us the opinion of these lawyers as the basis of their claim? No! They said that their claim is based on, I think, an honourable and explicit obligation to pay. When we, however, bewildered by such a claim, and never having heard anything of such an obligation, said that it was not in the Treaty, we were told that any obligations in the Treaty were wiped out by the 1925 agreement. Naturally, we wondered where was this agreement; and, eventually we found it. Here it is! I produced this document here in this House on previous occasions, and I have been asked by a Deputy to produce it here to-night. If Deputies on the opposite side want to know what is the cause of the economic war, or whether the economic war is due to the wilfulness of this Executive Council or the acts of its predecessors, then look at this document that I have in my hand! When I produced it last in this House, it was in a very tattered condition, but, as Deputies will notice, it has been put into decent shape since I produced it on the last occasion.
It should be in the Museum.
Yes, as the Deputy remarks, it should be in the Museum. However, it will be noticed that even the binding has not saved the original tatters of the document. I ask any Deputy in the House to come along and see this document. It is literally in tatters—half pages, parts of pages not typed, interlineations, and so on. Honestly, I never saw a contract of any kind presented in such a form. There is not even an Irish signature in it. We did not ask for the original of this document, because, even if the original were available, there was no reason why we should be bound by it; but this is the document that actually caused the economic war. Any Deputy in the House can examine it. They can see that it consists of half pages, torn pages, initials here and there, and so on. It is obvious, at least, that the document must have been written in a desperate hurry.
It is like the Treaty of Limerick.
I should like to see the version of the document signed by Deputy Cosgrave; but the real point that I am making is that this document, such as it is—and Deputies here can examine it for themselves —was never presented to this Parliament and that this so-called agreement was entered into after an actual resolution had been passed in this House making it quite clear that this House was not going to be bound, particularly in financial matters, by agreements that were not ratified here in this House. There is no Parliament in the world in which such a document would be held to be an agreement binding on the Parliament of the country concerned. We believe that these moneys are rightly, morally, and legally, ours, and we say that we are not going to pay that money. Of course, Deputy McGilligan says: "Oh! Pay it. Pay £5,000,000. It is cheaper to do it in that way." Well, I know that there are cases of people who have paid ransom because circumstances put them in such a position that they had to pay ransom, but I do not think that the people of this country want us to pay a ransom of that sort.
Would the President give Deputy McGilligan's exact words, just as the President insists on having his own exact words quoted?
If I have misrepresented Deputy McGilligan, he can call my attention to it.
The President has often done it.
As I was saying, this is the document which has caused the economic war.
Question?
You started the economic war before you knew of the existence of that document.
We were faced by the arguments of the people on the other side; to the effect that, surely, Deputy Cosgrave, the President as he then was, did not put his name to a document of that sort, involving the payment of millions of money by the Irish people, without knowing he did it or without knowing the reasons why he did it. My point is that this document was never before this Parliament. There was never any explicit dealing with it here. It was not even given to the Counsel, and what about the people who got the opinions of lawyers and who did not give them a document of that sort?
That does not affect the situation.
If it does not affect the situation, why then, are the British making it the basis of their claim?
I question that.
Deputy Fitzgerald will always question everything.
Well, that is the beginning of wisdom.
The beginning of wisdom? The Deputy never had any of it. However, as I was saying, this is the document upon which the British base their claim for the payment of these moneys. Any Deputy, who wishes to do so, can come along and see this document. What did we do when we were presented with that document? We said that the Irish people and this Parliament can only be bound by the Acts ratified by this Parliament voting together, and that, since this agreement had never been before the Parliament here, we would not recognise it. I do not remember, at the moment, which side suggested arbitration on the matter, but when the suggestion of arbitration was made, we said that we would be prepared to let it go to unrestricted arbitration. The British, however, wanted restricted arbitration, and we were not prepared to consent to that. Certain suggestions were made at Imperial Conferences as to agreeing with regard to submitting differences to arbitration of that kind. There has been no such agreement. As far as I can make out, it was agreed that, if it were found necessary to submit a matter to arbitration, and if it were agreed that that matter should be arbitrated upon within the Commonwealth, then the court to be set up would be such-and such. That is all. However, there is no——
I hate to interrupt the President, but I should like to say——
I do not care what the Deputy says; I shall not listen to him or answer him. I submit, Sir, that I have a right to continue my speech.
I know that it is awkward for the President.
I never regard Deputy Fitzgerald's remarks as being worth replying to. As I was saying, the British and ourselves have this difference: that we are not going to accept the kind of arbitration proposed by them. Then there was a question of negotiation. It is said to us: "Why do you not go over and show your case to the British, and expect that you will be treated properly?" We did do that, on more occasions than one. On one occasion on which a number of us went over in the form of a delegation all we got from the conference was this: that if we were prepared to accept this as a binding document, and to accept our liability, then there might be some mitigation. We are not going to accept that. We could not. We would not be maintaining the interests of our people, as we conceive them, if we did accept it. We do not accept that as a binding agreement, and we are not going to be bound by it.
Was that the only condition?
What does the Deputy mean by the only condition?
Was the acceptance of that document the only condition for a conference?
I cannot see what the Deputy wants to get. I simply say this: that we went over to that conference—I am not quite sure at the moment but I think it was a conference on economic and financial matters only —when this question was the question at issue. We were told that if we accepted this agreement, or this basis, or this liability, then we could make a plea for consideration, and there might be some mitigation. As I say, we would not be acting in the interests of our people if we accepted anything of the kind.
Now the next thing that happened was this. I believe that the Ottawa Conference was on before that. Our people went over to Ottawa. They sat down to consider matters of mutual interest particularly in trade. The attitude of the British, if I recollect it aright, was this: they said, when you keep your bargains, in other words when you go and accept documents like this, and when you accept the Treaty which we will not accept because it has been forced upon our people and we do not regard it as morally binding, then they said we will treat with you. That has been the position all the time.
I think it was made clear in the British Parliament not very long ago that the British regard other things besides the financial things involved. As I conceive it their idea is this that they are bringing economic pressure upon us now on the basis of this financial dispute, our side of which is not known even amongst their own people. Having started the pressure on that line, and hoping that it would be successful, they wish to pursue it to bring about other successes in another direction, namely, the political direction, to compel us to accept theories about our present status and present position which we do not accept and will not accept. That is the truth of the whole situation and of the conflict between the two countries.
As I said here two or three years ago when Deputy Gorey interrupted me, we have not gone out wilfully to bring about this situation. When Deputy Hogan was here I used to argue with him about the question of animal products coming into this country, on the necessity for keeping the market for these animal products for our own producers, and I remember saying then that that did not necessitate our losing the British market or ceasing to cater for it. At all times I have been sensible of this fact that these two countries have very close trade relations and have had them in the past. We were, until a year or two ago—I think we are about the second now— each the best customer of the other. For a number of years our industrial development here would mean that we would have to get from abroad machinery and other things, and that as such machinery could probably be got as good in England as anywhere else we were prepared to give them a preference in taking these things: that if they were of equal value at all we would give them a substantial preference even on the basis that our agricultural products would receive an equal preference from them. I thought it would be good business and so it would be, and that the British would consider it as good business if it were not for the position of dependence which we had been reduced to. If we were in a position really to make good bargains, if the position was not as I pointed out the other day, that they are taking 95 per cent. of our exportable surplus whereas we are only taking 5 per cent. of theirs—if we were in a good bargaining position—there is not the slightest doubt that we could make other trade agreements such as the coal-cattle pact. As I have mentioned that perhaps it may be no harm if I refer to it in a little more detail now.
What brought the coal-cattle-pact about? It was brought about simply because of the necessities on both sides. If it were not for the fact that it was good business for the English to put miners back at work they would not have made that bargain with us, and if it was not for the fact that we wanted to sell 150,000 head of cattle we would not have made it. That is the fact. The truth of the situation is that we were in a bargaining position, relatively, there because they were anxious to put their unemployed at work, and if we had a really sound, good bargaining position which would compel them to treat us on equal terms in this matter, then we could easily settle it, because commonsense would show that we were going to benefit by it. We have said more than once, we have indicated it in every way that it was possible to indicate it, privately and publicly, to the British Government, that we were prepared to do business on these terms. We are prepared to buy pound for pound with them. For a considerable time to come we will have cattle to export. We know perfectly well that some of the cattle we export are very valuable from their point of view. I do not mean now from the point of view of food. I am talking of the purely trading and agricultural point of view. We know perfectly well that all the Scottish feeders are quite well aware that our store cattle are the best that they can get, and that it is good business for them to take them. Ultimately that fact will assert itself.
It is time you realised it.
I realised it all the time. It is not this Government that has got to realise it, but it is the people on the other side of the water who have got to realise it. We realise it perfectly well, and because it is to the mutual interests of both countries to trade on these terms, we indicated that we were quite ready to make bargains on such a basis. But, again, the political question intervenes, and we are thrown back on this, although Deputies on the benches opposite tell us that we are free to do anything that we like politically. Yet, because we do not do politically just what the British want us to do, they say that they will make no bargain with us until we keep the promises and the pledges that were given by our predecessors: unless we keep these in the letter and accept not merely this Dominion status of co-equality that Deputy MacDermot and other Deputies on the benches opposite talk about, but unless we accept the inferior position which the British want to read into the Treaty of 1921. That is the issue. It was very funny to hear Deputy Mulcahy reading out what some Prime Minister—I forget who it was—said——
General Hertzog.
——telling us that he said that his people were not going to consult anybody about their constitutional changes. There was a lot of talk here, a lot of abuse of the Government, and a lot of abuse of me as the person who had actually introduced the Bill when we said that we were going to go on with our constitutional changes without consulting anybody. Was not the whole charge here that we did not go over and consult? Was not that precisely our position? Because we had rights which were inherent and because of what we believed our position to be, we were not going to consult, any outside Government or outside country with regard to our constitutional changes. That is the position we have held all the time. Now, when it suits Deputy Mulcahy, he comes along and quotes at me the very thing we have been doing. Deputy MacDermot, of course, takes a different view. He thinks that, by some process of Coueism, he is going to solve this whole problem. It is all right so long as he is free in his mind, so long as he feels himself free. But we want not merely to feel ourselves free but that other people should see we are free—that people who might not be as disposed as Deputy MacDermot appears to be to self-deception, in certain matters, will see that we are free. The test of freedom is exactly this—that you can do the things you think it is right in your interest to do.
Does not the President feel that he is free?
I do.
So do I.
I do to this extent: I feel free to take actions of various sorts, and I feel compelled in other directions because I know that retaliation is possible by those who do not want to admit my freedom. You can, if you want to deceive yourself, feel free within prison walls. I can assure the Deputy that I often felt very free within prison walls because I was not thinking of the immediate barriers around me. You need not notice that you are confined until you want to get out. The test of freedom is that, when you want to get out, you can get out. Deputy MacDermot seems to think that there is no difficulty about the matter—that our freedom is acknowledged everywhere. If that be so, why all this hugger-mugger about it? Why cannot we get this clear-cut declaration? What have we got up to the present? We have got declarations of various people that they can go out if they please, but we have not got declarations from other people that they admit their right to go out. We want that admission and we want also to secure that there will not be retaliation. There ought not to be, if we are free. Why should there be? What we want is that, when our people are deciding on these questions, they should be in a position not to be intimidated by the gentlemen who, at election times, do not hesitate to go out and try to intimidate our people by saying: "You are free all right, but if you exercise your freedom such and such are going to be the consequences." I put that question to the British simply because I knew they were not going to give a straight answer. They had burked the answering of such a question before and I wanted to see where we stood in the matter. I think that it is only fair to our people that they should know. Before I leave this question of the economic war, I want to say that our position is this—this war has been forced upon us. The alternative is the alternative Deputy McGilligan has given you to-day. You can take that if you wish——
Settle.
Deputy McGilligan indicated quite clearly to-day that it would be better to pay the annuities. If you think that better, if the alternative is to pay the annuities——
We have paid them.
What is the President's solution?
The only solution we can have is to keep what is your own as best you can and, if it is being torn from you, you have to do your best to put yourself in a position in which it will not be any longer torn from you. There is no mystery about the matter. Everybody knows that as well as I do. You have got either to accept that position or pay. We say we will not pay.
You are paying.
What is the use of talking like that?
What is the use of talking when we are paying?
We are not paying in the sense that we are accepting liability. We are not accepting liability.
We are paying.
I think that the Deputy ought to keep quiet. The alternative is to pay your annuities and look for a reduction afterwards. We say we are not going to accept that liability. We do not believe that these moneys are due. We know that a case could be made that, if they were due, they would be an unfair burden on us. We know perfectly well that we could make a far better case for the non-payment of that debt than the British are able to make for the non-payment of the American debt. But that is not the basis on which we are going, because we are not defaulting.
Why not work it on both bases?
If you do not get it on one, you will not get in on the other. What you will get if you are foolish enough to make this admission is the mitigation that was promised—nothing more. Undoubtedly, these moneys or their equivalent are being extracted from us. They are being extracted up to the present in, perhaps, a way that hurts even more than direct payment would hurt. I am willing to go that far, and to say that the dislocation and interference is probably heavier for the moment, but that is always the thing that follows when you try, against somebody stronger, to hold what you believe is your own. It is not right for any farmer Deputy to stand up, as Deputy Belton stood up the other day, and say that this whole burden is being borne by the farmers. That is not so. I shall deal with that in a moment but, before I do so, I want to deal with one misrepresentation by Deputy Fitzgerald. The Deputy suggested that the moneys which the farmer owes are owed to the bond holders, and that because they are not going to the bond holders——
I did not say that.
I shall come back to what Deputy Belton said. Deputy Fitzgerald said that because we intercepted these moneys and did not let them go to the people he says are entitled to receive them, we had no right to collect them at all. He wanted to give the farmer a ground for refusing to pay these annuities to anybody. The position is that these were moneys that were due to the State, and the only question between the British and ourselves is which State is entitled to get them. We hold that we are the State entitled to get them, and we give our reasons. The farmer had moneys advanced to him for the purchase of his farm on the credit of the community. That was what was behind the advance, and the moneys are being paid by the farmers to the community. We claim that we are the community with the beneficial rights to the moneys. That is why we demand and why we have a right to expect that they will be paid. We did that in view of the conditions generally in the country, and instead of derating we gave an equivalent to the extent of £2,000,000 to the farmers. We allowed them to retain and to make use of that £2,000,000. That is £2,000,000 that have gone to the farmers. In addition, we gave some £3,000,000 last year in direct subsidies. What have the farmers paid? According to a British report something in the neighbourhood of £4,600,000.
£4,700,000.
£4,552,000.
All are wrong. A British Treasury return presented to the House of Commons last month gives the amount as £4,692,000, so that Deputy Morrissey was nearest to the figure. That included about £100,000 duties on industrial products, so that the farmers' contribution, roughly, was about £4,500,000. We gave them £2,000,000 by way of reduction of the land annuities. We also gave over £3,000,000 for bounties, in addition to a number of other aids to the farming industry. For instance, we gave £125,000 for the wheat bounty.
Surely, it is not reasonable to include that in the calculation.
Of course, it is. The Deputy wants only to present his side of the account. It is quite unreasonable for the Deputy to say that everything is taken from the farmers. The whole question—and I want to argue it as reasonably as I can—is whether the farmers are being treated fairly by the rest of the community. Why should farmers not pay £2,000,000 in annuities? Of course, they should. They would be paying more, seeing that they were due to pay £4,000,000 only that we deducted £2,000,000. The rest of the community will have to be credited with having made available that £2,000,000. for farmers. The farmers have no setoff on that particular point. I will deal with tariffs afterwards. As far as annuities are concerned, there are £2,000,000 from the rest of the community for the farming community. Any prejudice or bias in my mind with regard to the matter is, I confess, on the side of the farmers. I said that at the start. My colleagues know, and the people generally know, that I have tried at all times to have it realised that the farming community is in a bad plight at the present time, not merely because of the economic war, but because of the general conditions obtaining in agriculture throughout the world. Let us keep to the account. We have £2,000,000 for land annuities, over £3,000,000 for bounties making £5,000,000 which more than counterbalances, as Deputies will recognise, the amount of the tariffs go. I agree with the point the Deputy made yesterday, that lower prices outside help to lower internal prices. That is a very important point from the point of view of the farming community. It is one of the reasons why bounties were given, in order to try to raise the position not merely in the outside, but the internal market. That is one of the things that those who talk about bounties should bear in mind. The Deputy can rightly and reasonably bring it into his account. The Deputy will see that if there was no economic war there would be the wheat bounty. It would be a gift or a contribution from the community to the agricultural community.
Because the whole community wants farmers to change their economy why should they have to pay for doing so?
Let us keep to what we are doing for farming. The community is paying farmers increased prices for bread to the extent of £125,000.
What did the President say for wheat?
The calculation I have here amounts to £125,000. The Minister for Finance thinks it will be considerably more. I find that it was estimated the amount was £125,000 last year, and that this year it will be at least £260,000. That represents another £260,000. The next item deals with remissions on home-grown tobacco. The rest of the community is bearing that.
Will the £260,000 be incurred this year?
Yes. The remission on home-grown tobacco is estimated at £100,000. There is a further sum for the stabilisation of dairy products in order to keep prices at a level far above what they are in the British market. The benefit of that to the farmers is estimated at £1,110,000. On the exclusion of bacon and other pig products, the general policy of the Government in that regard is estimated to give the farming community an additional market worth £1,400,000. Further, there is the establishment of the three new beet sugar factories, which are supposed to be uneconomic from the point of view of the community, but which mean that there is going to be an additional market here which will be worth between £700,000 and £800,000 to the farmers. I am not one of those who wants to blind himself to the difficulties of the farming position, but I want to say that it is not fair for the representatives of farmers to speak as they do and to pretend that the rest of the community is completely ignoring their situation, and is not helping them. As a matter of fact, I know before we came into office, that in the county in which I was brought up, in Limerick, the dairying industry was in a desperate condition, and that it has been comparatively improved by the policy of this Government. I think I can now pass away from the economic war.
I assure Deputies on all sides, and I want to assure the people of the country, that it is not our will or our desire it is being continued. In my opinion, it is mutually harmful. We are desirous of seeing it ended. We are quite prepared to enter into trade agreements with Britain £ for £. We are prepared to give them in the things we have to sell preference, if they are prepared to give us preference of a similar character in respect to things they want to sell. We are not blind to the fact that it would be good business for Scotch farmers to have our store cattle. That is one of the factors that would naturally count with Britain in a settlement, if they were going to deal with it on the basis of the justice of our claim. That is the only basis really on which business can be carried on, the basis of mutual advantage.
We are not blind to the fact mentioned by Deputy McGilligan here to-day that it is very valuable to have a source of food supply here in times of difficulty. We are quite alive to that fact. We know that it is much better to have a source of supply near at hand than to face the accidents of a long ocean voyage, for instance. All these considerations are there and eventually they will induce both sides, if they can only get a proper basis to consider these matters on their merits. We are prepared to do it and we have indicated publicly and privately that we are prepared to do it. The development of our industries will mean that for years to come the importation of outside materials, of capital goods of one kind or of another will be necessary. For a long time we shall not be in a state of such self-sufficiency as will enable us to supply even all the manufactured goods we require. I am not a free trader and I believe there are fundamental fallacies in the arguments put forward by Deputy McGilligan, but there is a point beyond which we could not go. Taking the case of turf, I should like to see our turf resources developed a good deal. I want them developed a good deal. I think it is much better to have a source of supply here at home in time of crisis but there would be a limit. There would be an opportunity then for saying: "Very well, we have got to this point and we are not going to push this idea beyond the limit when it would be altogether uneconomic." There may be a certain point at which it would be good policy for the State to consider outside sources of supply but we certainly could not stop in fundamental things like wheat until we are in the position that we could within a year expand our production to meet our entire requirements.
We should develop our resources so that within our existing production, we could in times of crisis produce all the wheat we require for ourselves. If that point were reached, again an opportunity for bargaining would arise, an opportunity for bargaining, say, with the cattle we could produce, for coal. We have certain resources in coal but even there again a point might be reached, taking the whole economy of the State into account, when it might not be profitable to push the idea of self-sufficiency to the point where it would be completely uneconomic. We are very far away from that yet but these would be the considerations which would arise, if there was a question of cattle and coal. Therefore, there are between these countries natural relations and a natural basis which do make trading mutually good for both countries. It is not through any wilfulness on our part that these relations have not been developed.
Perhaps I might now refer to the political situation generally with regard to ourselves and Great Britain. Our fundamental proposition is that the people of this country have a right to any form of governmental institutions that they desire, that is, the people of the country as a whole. We do not admit the right, but we have to take cognisance of the fact that certain of our counties have been cut off. I agree with Deputies on the opposite benches that the greatest boon this country could enjoy would be the unification of the whole country, provided that we got it on a basis that would give a chance of continuity and a chance of stability. The majority of the people of this country want to be completely free. They do not want the connection with Britain which the people in the North appear to want.
Some of them.
Quite right, some of them. We are inclined sometimes in our phraseology to speak loosely and not to draw attention to the fact that there is a relatively bigger minority in the Six Counties who are objecting to the present policy and the present conditions there than there are Unionists in the whole of Ireland. The Unionists want something very different from what is desired by the majority of the people. The Unionists want one Parliament for the two countries. They did not want to leave Westminster; they were quite satisfied with it. They were like Deputy MacDermot. They felt quite free in their minds and that was all there was to it. There was no repugnance on their part to that condition of affairs. Occasionally they should have seen that their interests, as residents of this country, were not served in that Parliament but they did not appear to notice that. They did not notice that their interests were not served by being governed in a Parliament where the vast majority had interests other than theirs.
That is the position, unfortunately, in the North. It has been cut off and at the moment, the majority of the people there have not the political outlook of the people here. There is no person on these benches or on the opposite benches or outside this House —let us face that fact—who can point to any plan which will inevitably bring about union. We do not pretend to be able to do it. All we can do is to expose the fallacies of Deputies who will not bring about union by their suggested plans and who will destroy even for the majority here, the position that they aspire to and prevent their getting it. In other words, they would deny the majority in this part of Ireland the fulfilment of their aspirations for no good purpose whatever. I challenged Deputies on the opposite benches— Deputy MacDermot referred to my challenge in his speech—and I ask him to show us any statements by any responsible representative of the people in the Six Counties that they are prepared to enter an all-Ireland Parliament on any conditions. Let us see them. I have seen no such statements. I have seen, time after time, the opposite. Responsible representatives in that part of the country have said, time after time, as explicitly as they could say it, that it did not matter what we did, they were going to keep separated from us. We have no plan on the other hand by which we can inevitably bring about the union of this country, I think partition is a disaster and a shame but we cannot by any action of ours remedy that. All we can do is to try our best to bring about union but no one can say how it can be inevitably done. The question for us is how far we should deny ourselves in order to bring it about. The question is: what is the likelihood? I am perfectly certain that large sections of our people would be willing to make very big sacrifices in order to do it. I have not the slightest doubt about it. I would not like to try to specify exactly the sacrifices but when we were in the position of indicating that, and taking responsibility for it, in 1921, we made it very clear that if we were to have here a united Ireland and if the minority was prepared to accept a unified State here, that State was prepared to become an associate of the States of the British Commonwealth, and that we were doing that expressly in order to meet the sentiments and political ideas of the people who were the minority in the country.
That was not successful and our present policy it that we here intend to go along in our own way, always leaving the door open, to use a famous phrase, for those who are separated to come along and join with us. We want them to join with us and we have said that many a time. We want them to join with us on a position of equality. They would have here full rights in accordance with their numbers and whatever influence their abilities would entitle them to. It is on these conditions that we want them. We cannot get them in; Deputies yonder cannot get them in and our policy is to go ahead in our own way. We are satisfied that so far from the development which we intend being a block or a barrier to their ultimate unity with us, it will be a help just as our attitude with regard to the British is a help in that they see that we are developing and that we have no desire whatever to hurt them by our development.
The freer we are here, the less interest we could have in any way injuring Britain; the freer we are, the more interest we would have, for instance, in the security of these two countries, because we could have a natural interest in preserving a condition in which we were independent and we would dread a change which might cause us the loss of our independence. It is quite obvious that the greater freedom this country has, the more friendly can be the relations between this country and Britain. There is the foundation there. Somebody on the opposite benches spoke about the natural understanding there is between the two peoples. We understand that and I should like to say to anybody who thinks we are too early in talking about reconciliation and about terms of friendship that I believe they are mistaken; that there is no time too soon for reconciliation; and that independence is not lost by a desire to be on friendly terms with one's neighbours.
The more we are determined to stand upon our rights in these matters the more are we really desirous of being on friendly terms with Britain. The Government, by standing for the rights of the people, can get the people into friendly relations, whereas if this Government seemed to be neglecting the interests of our people, our influence on our people in regard to bringing about friendly relations between the two countries would be lessened. I do not mind confessing here—I think I have said it more than once—that since I entered into public life myself—and I am beginning to be one of the older people now in it or one of the oldest of my colleagues, any how—I can honestly say that one of the objects I have had consistently before me has been to bring about friendly relations between the two countries and I took the stand I did because I was satisfied that on no other condition but the freedom of this country could these relations be brought about. Our people have been fighting for 700 years in order to secure that freedom and they are not going to give up that struggle. It is vain for anybody to think that they will. If we were foolish enough in the morning to blind ourselves into thinking that we were serving the interests of our country by giving way on vital matters, we would not bring our people with us. Our people would not be willing but if we stand for our people's rights and our people's rights are assured the two countries can be on friendly terms.
We can make trade treaties, as I have pointed out. I can even conceive conditions in which we could make defence treaties. There were some reports that seemed to suggest hostile action by us or that we were ready to give some foreign power the means of attacking Britain through us. I can say that so long as this Government is in office—and I think I can say it for any Government likely to be in office here—that our territory will never be permitted to be used as a base for attack upon Britain. We are going to get our own independence of Britain but we are not going—we think it would be bad policy if we were to attempt to do it—to allow our territory, under any conditions whatever, to be made use of by some foreign power as the basis of attack against Britain. We give that assurance—and we were always ready to give that assurance—all the more readily because we are determined that we are not going to be coerced, even by Britain herself.
I think I have wearied the House by going rather at length over the three main points raised. There is the point about law and order in the country; there is the point about the economic war; and there is the point about our general relations. I put it to the Deputies that the policy of this Executive is reasonable and that there is no other policy that can be adopted by any Party that wants to defend the interests of this country and, in the long run, to bring about the relations between the peoples of these two islands which I think ought to be brought about. We are working on the only possible basis and we have not any doubt whatever that the majority of our people support us in this. There may be people to-day who do not agree with us. By patient effort during the last eight or ten years we have brought about a situation which, I think, even the most sanguine amongst us could hardly have hoped for. We may get exasperated about the difficulties that exist and so on at times, but if we take a broad view of the matter and consider what might have been in the conditions which operated here some years ago and consider the present position, I think we will have to admit to ourselves that wonderful progress has been made. I believe it has, and I am willing, if the Deputies on the opposite benches want to make any claim for their part in it, to give it to them.
I believe we are in a position to-day which few countries in the world would have arrived at, if they had passed through the stresses and trials which we have passed through. Just take a view of it for one moment before I sit down. We were defeated in a civil war. Our predecessors were the Government at the time. We went to our people. We got a verdict in our favour and we are to-day operating in the name of the people. We have the machinery of Government which our predecessors established and handed over to us, to respect the people's decision as they did in leaving office, and I only wish that our predecessors had continued, because in leaving office they did more than they had ever done during their time in helping, and I wish that they did not lend themselves, good, bad or indifferent, to the sort of activities which were threatening the country a year or so ago and which were a complete negation of everything they were standing upon previously. While things are not as we would wish them to be, we can congratulate ourselves— and it does not matter to whom the credit is due—that we are extricating ourselves out of a position out of which, I believe, few countries in the world could have extricated themselves so well.
Question put: That the Estimate for the Department of President of the Executive Council be referred back for reconsideration.
The Committee divided: Tá, 37; Níl, 53.
Tá
- Alton, Ernest Henry.
- Beckett, James Walter.
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Broderick, William Joseph.
- Burke, James Michael.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John Aloysius.
- Curran, Richard.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Desmond, William.
- Dockrell, Henry Morgan.
- Dolan, James Nicholas.
- Doyle, Feadar S.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Fitzgerald, Desmond.
- Good, John.
- Keating, John.
- Lynch, Finian.
- MacDermot, Frank.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, James Edward.
- O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
- O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Mahony, The.
- O'Reilly, John Joseph.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Redmond, Bridget Mary.
- Rice, Vincent.
- Rogers, Patrick James.
- Thrift, William Edward.
Níl
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Boland, Patrick.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Cleary, Mícheál.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corkery, Daniel.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Timothy.
- Davin, William.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Donnelly, Eamon.
- Dowdall, Thomas P.
- Everett, James.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Geoghegan, James.
- Gibbons, Seán.
- Goulding, John.
- Hales, Thomas.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, James Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamonn.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Maguire, Conor Alexander.
- Moane, Edward.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
- Norton, William.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Pattison, James P.
- Rice, Edward.
- Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Doyle and Bennett; Níl: Deputies Little and Smith.
Question declared lost.
Vote put and declared carried.