Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 29 Apr 1936

Vol. 61 No. 13

In Committee on Finance. - Estimates for Public Services. Vote 57—Industry and Commerce (Resumed).

Mr. McGilligan

I was on an argument which Deputy Donnelly presented me with, drawing an analogy between persons who are in receipt of relief moneys throughout the country and the industrialists of this country, some of whom, to my mind, abuse the relief that has been given to them through tariffs as much as any worker can be accused of abusing the particular money he gets to keep him from starvation and destitution. If I might get the thread of the argument together again, I am attacking Deputy Donnelly's main thesis, that a tariff policy is bound to be good and cannot have evil results. I am inclined to point out to Deputy Donnelly, and through him to the House, that if a tariff policy has not been properly conceived, if the price level is raised too high, if the allowance given to manufacturers to over-charge—because that, in its essence, is what a tariff is—is put at too high a point and is abused, then this country is getting no benefit from the tariff policy, although individual manufacturers and their families may.

In answer to Deputy Moore, I was endeavouring to show that that result of a tariff policy is not one that can commend itself to the people who vote here and is certainly not one that any Deputy would stand before his constituents to explain and justify. I stated that when tariffs were at a low level and, particularly, when there was the counter weight that prices were eased to the consumer to make up for any increase put upon him by reason of a tariff, then there was an ideal tariff situation, because the industrialists were given a chance to operate the tariff, the workers got employment, the people did not suffer, and the level of the tariff was so low that there could not be anything seriously dubbed profiteering. The situation is entirely different when tariffs are at a 60 to 80 per cent. level, because then industrialists do undoubtedly take advantage of that, and do overcharge.

In that connection, as I see Deputy Dowdall in the House, I should like to remind the House of what was said on two or three occasions with regard to tariffs. As far as I can remember, Deputy Dowdall has made three comments upon tariffs. I should like to explain, before I go on to say anything about Deputy Dowdall, that I understand he has, to some extent, attempted to explain away one of these phrases. I think he has left the second alone and the third I am going to quote from for the first time. One of the Deputy's statements was that if those who had money and who were making good out of tariffs—I think his particular phrase was waxing fat on tariffs—went behind the present Government, they ought to be —with a rather profane observation —ashamed of themselves. The second was when Deputy Dowdall, facing a meeting of a Cork industrial body, said there had been complaints about manufacturers making use of tariffs to charge high prices. His comment was that that was what a tariff was for and he personally intended to get as much out of tariffs as he could. The third was when Deputy Dowdall commented on certain beliefs current in his own Party to the effect that England was on the down grade. His comment was that he did not believe it was so, but if it was so, that the downfall of England would have been brought about by the interference of the Government and of Government officials in industry and business and he put forward the second leg of that argument by a further statement that England had reached her greatest point of glory industrially at a time when Government interference was at a minimum and Government officials had least of all to do with business.

I think Deputy Dowdall was entirely and completely frank with the country in his attitude towards tariffs. What are tariffs for? They are to enable manufacturers to charge more for their goods; they are a licence to overcharge in the sense of charging more than before. Whether they are overcharging in the sense of profiteering depends on themselves to a large extent. Deputy Dowdall stated the business-man's point of view very frankly—make as much as you can out of a tariff. I wonder does Deputy Donnelly begin to think that there is a possibility of tariffs going wrong? Would Deputy Donnelly agree with Deputy Moore that a group of manufacturers and their families are enabled to live in conditions of better comfort than before and give no extra employment to workers; or possibly—there is another possibility— giving more employment, but not giving bigger purchasing power? I could repeat this to drive that argument home. As one of the community who pays and has to pay a little bit more for tariffed goods, I delight in paying it if I believe that the product of the payment that I and others make is going to relieve unemployment, to get people out of unemployment into active work. I can rejoice at that without being in the slightest altruistic. If I get workers out of unemployment into employment there is going to be less necessity for the dole, less necessity for relief works and less necessity for the taxation to provide these things and I will gain by that in the long run. But I strongly object to the use of a tariff policy which enables manufacturers and their families to live more luxuriously on what I, and particularly on what the very poorest elements of the community have to pay in the price of tariffed goods, if they do not give a very big increase in employment or, alternatively, while keeping the same number employed, if they do not give a very big increase in purchasing power.

What are the facts? I am stating the theory which I believe to be a correct theory; I am stating the theory that I will put up on any platform to any group of workers or industrialists and, in the case of the group of industrialists who revile me for what I am saying, I will accuse them of condemning themselves out of their criticism of me because they cannot believe that this country submitted itself tamely to the extortion of money from the consumers, merely to make richer a few industrialists and their families. The most valuable part of a tariff policy, is that which aims at getting workers into employment or else getting the workers already in employment more wages. Even if it cost quite a considerable sum, there may be an argument for keeping certain industries alive in order to give occupation to the young people. But that is not a general argument. It applies only to particular industries and very small groups of industries.

Can anybody say that he is certain that the tariff policy has worked successfully? I think we can all agree that it has to this extent, that it has ground money out of the consumers, and amongst the consumers are the very poor, because almost everything that a person eats or wears or uses in ordinary life is tariffed. I should make this general exception at this point: If I thought all Irish industry depended on tariffs I would despair. I do not think all Irish industry depends on tariffs. I think a very small proportion of Irish industry depends on tariffs. More than that, I think a very much smaller proportion depends on extravagant tariffs that have been given and my main urge at this moment is against extravagant tariffs because the people who get them, ostensibly to use them for the good of the community, are in fact using them for their own benefit. There is no doubt that the people have been charged more. There is a variety of facts upon which that can be based. We used to be told that our tariffs were put on merely for the purpose of drawing revenue. We are told the present tariffs were put on for quite the opposite purpose, and we are told the result will be made apparent in the revenue returns. Nearly £3,000,000 more has been collected from Customs duties compared with what was collected in our time. There is the tax on wheat to come off that and the few that were deliberately and cold-bloodedly put on articles of food, on articles of consumption, on the workingman. I think it was the argument of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance that the workingman must pay, that he must be taught it is his duty to pay. There has been a considerable increase in the revenue derived from these tariffed articles.

It is not a remote jump from that fact to another fact. One cannot deduce from that, that the burden that is being borne by the consumers should be reflected if there is a benefit corresponding to the sacrifice in extra purchasing power amongst the community. But there is something to be examined when it is discovered that the Customs duties under a so-called protection Government, not a revenue-collecting Government, are bringing in £3,000,000 more than they did at the height of our taxation on dutiable articles. There is this other fact to be observed. Supposing one were able to get a segregation of these articles and find out that only half of them, representing £1,500,000, belonged to articles which are supposed to be in process of manufacture at home, that is not a tax on the consumer; it is part of it, but it is not it all. If one discovered in a particular category of articles that the Customs duty brought in £250,000 and that there is an average 60 per cent. tariff on all this group of articles, the £250,000 only arises from the people who cannot get a particular class of article in that group they require at home, or can get it cheaper even though there is a 60 per cent. tariff on it. But taking the people who are buying articles under a protection of 60 per cent., that is nowhere reflected in Customs duty, but it is reflected in the home budget. Supposing the industrialists under those tariffs on those classes of goods have raised prices to within 10 per cent. of what the incoming article bearing 60 per cent. tariff would be sold at, for every article sold the consumer is bearing some portion of a fine imposed on him in relief of Irish manufacture. It is very difficult indeed to find out what the amount of that may be, but, at any rate, that there are millions in it is unquestionable. What is the other side? What satisfaction are people in this country getting from tariffs?

Mr. Dillon

Not to speak at all of quotas.

Mr. McGilligan

Tariffs on the descending scale are only the first point; quotas are the second. Reserved commodities are a danger which can only be vaguely conceived. On this matter of tariff there is an interesting sidelight of what might be done in Ireland at a particular time, and which I thought some Labour member might have adverted to a long time ago. Every intelligent Labour man, and every Socialist, must have James Connolly's "Labour in Irish History" on his shelf. I think that, as a thesis of a philosophical kind, was exploded, but he does make comments on certain facts that he said he found, regarding two or three illuminating statements as quotations, if only from the angle of showing the danger inherent in a tariff situation. Speaking about the time of Grattan's Parliament, James Connolly makes certain statements of facts and draws certain conclusions from them. He rather hostilely criticises the statement of those who said that there was a wonderful improvement in this country when Grattan's Parliament was set up. In particular he alludes to those people who said that it was a marvellous tribute to the attractiveness of Irish character, and a sound argument for Irish Nationalists in those days, that a group of people were found in the State, at the time of the setting up of Grattan's Parliament, who turned from being Unionist to being Irish, and became far more Irish than the Irish themselves. He examines that, and finds that most of it was due, not to the attractiveness of Irish character but to the credulity and gullibility of Irish character that allowed themselves, under Grattan's Parliament, to be fleeced for the benefit of a small number of Irish industrialists who, as in the case at the present moment, were of foreign origin. The successful industrialist under Grattan's Parliament had no touch of Irish origin.

Mr. Donnelly

I do not think Griffith would agree with that.

Mr. McGilligan

Let me go on. Is Deputy Donnelly going to have his faith shaken in Griffith by a mere instance of what a superficial examination will reveal? Has it not struck him as peculiar how so-called Unionists, over-night; became the strongest Nationalist supporters of the Grattan Parliament? Would it not strike him as peculiar that if he ran over the list he would find quite a number of people who could not be classed as republicans here, and are now strong republicans — stronger than Deputy Donnelly himself? Deputy Donnelly has not his fingers in the industrial problem. Some of those people have. I would like to see a very critical examination made of some of the factories that some of those quick-change artistes in politics run, to find out how many extra employees they have, to find out at what price their goods were sold, to see what percentage of the profits of their factories is going to workers and what percentage is retained in the hands of the industrialists themselves, and remains here after the spending by the industrialist and his family.

James Connolly further makes examination with regard to wages rates, and gives quotations. All he says is that he could draw no conclusion that the success of Grattao's Parliament penetrated far into Munster, pre-dissolution of the Union and after. Does Deputy Donnelly ever stop to consider what are the wages that are being paid at the present moment? Does he know that there is a considerable decrease and that the decrease is very striking? Does he know that in fertilisers the wages per head of those employed, as between 1931 and 1934, shows a decrease of as much as £26 per man? Does he know that in the clothing industry there is a decrease of £5 per man, and that in hosiery it is down by £5 per man? Does he know that in the jam and confectionery business wages are down £5 per man; in the tobacco trade £6 per man; brick making £13, matches £10; engineering trades £19, and boots and shoes by £19 per man?

I do not want these figures to be taken as absolutely fixed calculations. There may be some explanation. The explanation may be that in order to get employment as well as for stricter business reasons, wages would be lower. It may be that out-workers play some part in it, although I always discredited the argument that there is so much juvenile employment. That cannot be shown. But for some reason or another, although we are in a heavily practical régime, and the costs to the community are increasing, wages, that is the actual money received by workers, shows a decrease in most groups of the practical industries. Now, as to the actual moneys received by the workers, you have the fall ranging from £5 per head up to as high as £26 per head. It may be supposed the wages, the actual money received, was at the same point as it was in 1931, but it is not. I do not think that Deputy Donnelly would be bold enough to claim that the same value could be got for £1 to-day as used to be got for it in former years. The real value of money has gone down and that must be related to the actual wages paid and to the actual purchasing power of the wages paid. That leads to the third point, in relation to numbers. On this I have argued at length. That is to me the solid basis on which to raise any argument on this matter.

I believe employment is increasing in certain areas of work. I believe it is decreasing in other areas of work. I believe the net gain, as far as numbers are concerned, is to be found entirely and completely in three items of work, namely, building, relief works and the sugar beet industry. The campaign arising in connection with sugar beet is not very old, but were we not assured by the President that the numbers that would be employed in the three factories where sugar is manufactured, would be between 2,500 and 3,000 most of the year, and 900 all the time?

Let us take the remnant of the 2,500 after subtracting the 900. I am not sure whether the figures were meant one to include the other. Let us take it that the 2,500 included the 900. They are about 1,600 campaign-season people and there are about 900 all-the-year round people. The part-time people would be employed about three months. That is equivalent to about 400 people employed all the time. That represents about 1,000 people in the sugar beet factories. I am not speaking of the people in the fields. I am speaking only of those in insurable occupations whose cards must be stamped, the money that is paid in this way going to swell the Unemployment Insurance Fund. The figure is about 1,000. I take the old calculation I have so often taken and I do not see how we can get away from it. If my figures are right, the only way my argument can be countered is by showing that there is a very big number of people in insurable occupation for whom cards should be stamped and for whom cards are not being stamped. I do not believe that there is any great non-compliance with the Unemployment Insurance Act. Certainly, it is not sufficient to make any big change in the figures.

Taking the matter roughly—I am not going into odd thousands—in my last year of office, the unemployment insurance fund showed an increase over the year before. The present figures show an increase over my last year. I shall take the old calculation. Roughly speaking, if we take, as our basis of comparison, a man in employment for 52 weeks of the year, that man, being in insurable occupation for 52 weeks, must be represented by £4 in the unemployment insurance fund. If I take it—as I can show by one particular calculation—that there was £60,000 extra in the fund between my last year and the year preceding it, it means that there were 15,000 extra people employed whole-time in insurable occupations. The fund has gone up by roughly £100,000 since. Divide that by four and the comparable figures are: In one year, I showed 15,000, or thereabouts, of an increase and there has been an increase of 25,000 since. Is that increase of 25,000 the result of tariffs? I say no. At least, I say that if 10,000 people can be shown to have been put into occupation through tariffs, 10,000 must have disappeared for some reason or other.

I turn to the Minister's calculation of a particular date. The Minister for Industry and Commerce got so alarmed in the year 1934 over all the comments being made about the huge number of people reporting as unemployed that he called together the Press. On the 26th October, 1934, he issued a statement to the Press. I always thought that the amazing thing about that statement was that the Minister in charge of industrial development, who felt that the people were being unduly alarmed over the "unemployeds" and their numbers, when calling in the Press to reassure the public through them, founded his reassuring comments not on industry but on house-building and relief works. He estimated the direct employment on house construction in May, 1934, at 21,500 people. To get that related to the comparison I sought to make, two or three things had to be done. You had to have an examination made as quickly as possible to find out whether or not the May figures would be the maximum figures.

I should have imagined that, if the Minister were dealing honestly with the public, he would have taken a month which would have shown the all-the-year-round figure. Let us take it that he was frightened by the numbers reporting as unemployed and that he took the best possible figure for himself. I asked questions firstly from the Minister for Industry and Commerce and afterwards from his colleague, the Vice-President, to find out whether house-building was or was not an industry in which there was great fluctuation in regard to the numbers employed. I found that there was not much variation. In the first figures given me, there was not a variation of 1,000 in 7,000. Later, the figures showed some variation but nothing more than that. I had to find out one or two other things. I was able to assume, as I think most people would assume, from the figures of the Vice-President, that house-building is not subject to very marked fluctuation between the winter and the summer period. Employment in it is very much the same in both seasons. When speaking of these figures, 1,000 makes very little difference.

I asked the Vice-President to give me a calculation as to the number of houses that were being built. He retorted that he could give me statistics only of those houses which were being subsidised—houses which were being built by private persons, public utility societies and local authorities and which were being subsidised. I got a calculation and it showed that, if I were to take houses in progress and completed, the 1934 figure was 15,000 houses. For 1935 the figure was 25,000 and for 1936—to the 31st March, 1936— the figure is 38,500. When the Minister was speaking he referred to "direct employment." He did not depend on subsidised houses. He depended on those plus whatever houses were being built by private builders, and of the up and down sway in those houses we have no knowledge. The Departments profess themselves unable to give us the figure. The only gap to be filled is that of private houses not in receipt of subsidy, because private houses in receipt of subsidy are included. For 15,000 houses built or in progress, the Minister claimed 21,000 persons employed. By the 31st March, 1936, that figure for houses had gone to 38,000. On the 31st March, 1935, it was 25,000. We get this progress in regard to the building of subsidised houses— 15,000, 25,000 and 38,000.

I have made a calculation and, in that calculation, I am basing myself, as the Minister did, on the unemployment insurance fund for the calendar year, 1935. At the end of March, 1935, there were 25,000 houses being built or completed. At the end of March, 1936, that figure had risen to 38,000. I think it is a calculation I would be allowed to make that, in the calendar year 1935, the figures being between 26,000 and 38,000, I am erring on the moderate side in taking the figure at 30,000. The Minister claimed 21,000 persons directly employed for 15,000 houses actually built or in progress. For the unemployment insurance year 1935 there were more than double the number of houses being built or completed.

To what point is the figure of 21,000 persons, directly employed in house-building alone, swollen in 1935? I think I am moderate again if I say 30,000. I am putting it up by half. How many of those in this type of construction are new employees? Again, I put a question to the Vice-President and it appears that the number of houses being built in my last year, with which I am making comparison, represented employment to the extent of 5,000 persons. If that calculation be correct, or anything like correct, there are about 25,000 persons employed at house-building who were not employed at such house-building before. There are 1,000 employed in the sugar beet factories. I think I am going moderate, again, when I say—I asked for the figures and have not got them yet, but I made a calculation on old figures —that there are certainly 3,000 more in insurable occupation in the guise of relief works, not being housing, than there were in our time. If we take the figures 25,000, 3,000 and 1,000, we have almost 30,000 between sugar beet, relief works and housing. The unemployment insurance fund barely shows an increase of 30,000 people. If these figures are correct, I want them examined from that point of view—whether I am right in including house-construction as more or less steady, and whether the Minister was right in this respect in claiming 21,000 persons. May I point out here that his claim was in respect of those directly employed, and had nothing to do with those in the furnishing trades employed indirectly because of the provision of new houses. It had nothing to do with any people but those directly employed in the process of house-building. If I am right in making the calculation I have made, as between the 21,000 persons and the houses then being built, the 25,000 and the 30,000, the increase in the moneys of the unemployment insurance fund can be said to be represented entirely by those engaged in house construction, the sugar beet factories and relief works. I am conscious that there are people employed in industry. I know there are, but I believe there are not half as many as are claimed. Let us say that there are 10,000 more employed in tariffed industries than in 1931.

If these calculations of mine, founded on the income of the unemployment insurance fund, are correct, 10,000 people have got employment in tariffed industries, and 10,000 who were employed in insurable occupations have, in some way or other, gone. If that is the situation, the tariffed industries have not helped us, or, at least, they have not been such an advantage to us as, say, the economic war has been a disadvantage. Remember, this is all the unemployment insurance fund and, therefore, is dealing entirely with people in insurable occupations. It has no relation to farmers or their families. There may be hosts of farmers and their families knocked out of work owing to the non-settlement of the economic war. They are not reflected in these figures. They are something beyond that.

Will Deputy Donnelly come back with me to his argument that Arthur Griffith in deciding for tariff development was Irish, and that anyone who spoke against such development was unIrish because, according to Deputy Donnelly's argument, no development of Irish industry through tariffs could have evil consequences? Supposing the plus and the minus in the Unemployment Insurance Fund are about equal, and that that is due to tariffs—I do not say it is—and supposing that by making the cost of articles dear to consumers, while not increasing their purchasing power to any extent through wages given in tariffed industries, you find unfortunate men with £1, £2 or £3 weekly faced with an increase in the price of everything, and obviously unable to make the £1 stretch to as many articles as previously, they have to restrict purchases, with an immediate reaction on other trades, the goods of which cannot be bought and the employees of which must go out of occupation. I do not know if Deputy Donnelly would consider that as rosy a picture as the one his imagination paints. He tells us what Arthur Griffith said in 1914.

Mr. Donnelly

In 1922.

Mr. McGilligan

Any year you like. The Deputy thinks there cannot be evil consequences from tariffs. I do not say that there are evil consequences. I am speaking rather of the results of tariffs and I say that once you get into the region of 60 per cent. or 80 per cent. tariffs, once you allow a manufacturer a licence to charge 10 per cent. under that point, you are going to have, undoubtedly, very bad effects upon the price of the article, and a bad effect on the cost of living, and unless purchasing power of wages is increased you will, undoubtedly, have a falling off in the demand for certain other articles. I have been reminded about quotas. Tariffs are bad enough, but a tariff movement is a sound movement properly managed, tariff management to keep prices low, to see that the benefit is passed on to the worker or to create an extra demand for articles or to try to get industries started. That type of tariff is sound. Supposing you have a tariffed industry which allows 60 per cent. or 80 per cent. of a tariff for the asking, and that allows the manufacturer—because he cannot be prevented —to raise charges to the point mentioned in Deputy Dowdall's argument, in order to get profits that he thinks he is entitled to get, and supposing you have the community crushed under so big an increase in cost, and that is multiplied over a big number of articles whose prices are increased, that is a serious situation. But a tariff is always under control. It is under the control of the Prices Commission. The Prices Commission simply cannot manage this as we have been shown. I think Deputy Donnelly's view is sound and is a popular one. The Prices Commission has been condemned by popular opinion. It is a futile body. It is not futile in the sense that the members are not exceptionally able but the Commission is not able to do the task put upon it.

The tariff weapon is always one which can be turned against the bad manufacturer, because the height of the tariff can be lowered, goods can be let in, and prices can be brought down under the stress of competition. Alternatively, we have not so many manufacturers here that their employees could not be looked after. The difficulty about attempting to increase wages in certain tariffed employment, and not to increase them otherwise, is that inequality is brought about, and demands will be made by those in non-tariffed or slightly tariffed industries when they see colleagues in 60 per cent. or 80 per cent. jacked up industries getting increased wages. Surely workers should be protected to this extent, that whatever benefits accrue to a group of manufacturers from tariffs, some attempt should be made to share them out amongst the workers. You can do these things. It takes a lot of effort but it can be done, and it will be done in the end by labour troubles if not in some other way. You get into a second and a worse region in quotas. You get into an extremely dangerous and I think a completely immoral state of affairs when you have reserved commodities. Let us take any reserved commodity. There are not so many of them in this country. A manufacturer is given the sole right to manufacture certain things here which the public must use. He is protected not merely from outside competition but from internal competition. No one can set up a factory against him. He can charge what he likes subject to the will of the Prices Commission, which I regard as being only a bogey, as most of these people discovered it to be a bogey. He can charge what he likes. Who gets the profits? I did not find it to be notorious that the employees in the few reserved commodities are very generously paid but I found it to be notorious that the public are being very heavily overcharged. I do not agree with Deputy Moore or that it is a proper return to the community to say: "Oh, the manufacturers who are getting these profits will spend them in the country and there will be a diffusion of wealth." There may or may not. At any rate, there is not the same utility in their spending as there would be on the part of a couple of thousand workers getting wages, or even of the original workers getting better wages.

When we get to the region of reserved commodities and to the region of quotas, I often wonder how people can justify the capitalistic system at all. Of course, there is a very dangerous tendency against what I consider to be the useful capitalistic system if too many of the quotas are seen. Analyse again a reserved commodity as it is operated in this country. A man is given a field for exploitation by means of tariffs. He can charge what he likes and is subject to no competitive interference. The fruits of the capitalist system used to be that a man embarked his own capital and took that with his enterprise, brains, energy and ability to get up earlier and to work later, and to get the most, in a sympathetic way, out of the men working under him. He might have drawn big profits under such a régime, but he was operating against other people in the same system, but if he won out, it was first of all through his courage in embarking his own capital in a particular venture and, secondly, through his energy and ability in getting a return on that capital.

Why should any man be given unlimited profits in a field that is handed over to him for his sole exploitation? Although I object to Government interference as a practice, when we have Government interference and have it so widespread as we have, I cannot understand, when we are in the region of reserved commodities, why the Government do not do as they did in the case of the Sugar Company and a number of other things and say: "We shall provide salaries for the managers; we shall give them good pay, and we shall see that we get value for the pay we give them. If the public are going to be fleeced in the prices charged for the goods, then they shall have the satisfaction of knowing that the profits will go to the Exchequer to swell the revenue." I think it is an extremely wrong practice that people should have handed over to them some article for exploitation. There is no Government supervision— I am not sure that Government supervision would be effective—to see that these people get a certain recognised rate of profit. They can get two or three times the recognised rate of profit without interference.

The Minister spoke some time ago about industrial disputes. With conditions such as they are, with wages down in many cases, with very little increases, certainly no increases in the number of workers, I have wondered that there are not more labour disputes, and there are going to be more if this matter is not attended to. I do not know whether people are going to drift to Communism, but there is going to be a hardening of feeling against the attempt to keep alive the capitalist system under conditions in which we have all of what is described as the vices of the capitalist system with none of its virtues. The only time that you can get the virtues of the capitalist system is when there is a free field for competition as there can be under the best type of a capitalist régime. We get under the other system the manufacturers grabbing their profits. We do not know what they are doing with them. We do not know whether they are going to put them to reserve, to build up a cushion against a depressed time. All we do know is that we are being charged more heavily for the same type of article than we were charged when it was allowed to be imported. We are not aware that there is any great increase in the purchasing power as a result of the handing over of the reserved commodity to a group of individuals. The State is getting little or no advantage from that. That is the worst development of the system under which we are working, and it is increasing. That is the situation we know to be here as a result of the tariffs.

I want to have as complete an analysis as is possible of employment in industries that are getting the benefit of protection. I want to have analysed as well the prices charged to the consumers for the articles so protected. I want a complete exposition of the number of workers, the wages given and if there is anything of a peculiar type in any of these factories —say the employment of juvenile labour, the employment of outworkers or anything of that kind which would give us on the surface a good view of the situation and a presentation of prices and wages. In order to get our minds clear on the subject, we ought to know how many people are getting employment on the building of houses in the country, how many are getting employment through relief schemes and how many are getting employment in the sugar beet factories because we know the cost of them. I have found the figures relating to employment are confined almost entirely to the building industry. I think there are other signs that that is right.

I asked a question the other day and we had the illuminating answer from the Vice-President that the indebtedness of local bodies from the 31st March, 1933, to the 31st March, 1935, has gone up by £6,000,000. £6,000,000 in two years! What is that being spent on? I think everybody is clear that the biggest amount of that is spent on housing. That is where you are getting your employment from. But we cannot go on increasing the indebtedness of our local authorities by £6,000,000 in every period of two years, apart from the fact that the saturation point in regard to housing must be reached some time. What is the hope for the future? If I am right there are about 20,000 or 30,000 employed in house-building. If it is a fact that whatever gains we have got from the tariffed industries—leaving everything else out of consideration except the numbers employed—have been offset to the point of equalisation by losses, what about the rosy future? During these first four years of 60 and 80 per cent. tariffs, of every inducement to manufacturers to come in— capital guaranteed to them, capital loaned to them, tariffs promised, quotas established against their competitors, and reserved commodities at certain times—we have ranged widely over a number of articles. We have raised the barrier very high indeed and we have it in operation for a bit over three years.

If it is a fact that the sole gain to the country is the number occupied in house-building our hopes for the future must be very dismal indeed. Remember we have got to catch up on the problem. It was said that there were 70,000 out of work in my time. That figure was examined, analysed and explained. Assuming that there were 70,000, there are a number of people not reporting at the moment, the Minister having deemed them not to be unemployed. You do not satisfy people by deeming them to be employed when in fact they are not. It may be a satisfaction to the Minister to have this notional figure of unemployment but it is no satisfaction to the people who cannot get work. There are 117,000 people not fully occupied or not occupied at all at the moment. We are told that the population of the country has increased or is increasing at the rate of some 50,000 per annum. The Minister has said, in some of his many speeches, that we have got to look to industry and not to agriculture to take these people off our hands. The Minister is not making any appreciable progress. He says now that we have got to go to agriculture and not to industry.

Lately the tune has changed a bit. Up to about seven or eight months ago the Minister always flattered himself that it was industry would mop up the people who were out of work. We have had an interesting development since. The Minister goes to industrial dinners and says "Remember that agriculture is the basic industry of the country. Unless that succeeds, industry cannot succeed." On the other hand, the Minister for Agriculture goes to farmers' dinners and says "We are employing on the land as many as we can. Industry will have to absorb the remainder." That is a criss-cross type of argument. We shall deal with agriculture at another time. We are on industry at the moment. There are supposed to be about 20,000 coming of age each year for whom we have to find occupations and there is a large number on our hands. We have indulged in a very heavy building programme. We have experimented in a very wide field in this matter, with very high tariffs, and the best we can say is that there has been an increase of 25,000 in the number going into insurable occupations and the most of that has been explained by the activity in house construction. Now, if that is the case, and if it is not the case I want to be shown how it is not, but if it is the case, then the case for tariffs has not been conclusively proved in this House, even to Deputy Donnelly's satisfaction. Supposing even that we have got 10,000 in, if these 10,000 have been offset by the 10,000 that we have lost from the simple angle of people in employment, we are no better off, but from another angle we are much worse off, because we have undoubtedly been taxed and taxed frightfully to the point of trying to get people into occupation in the last three years; certainly without any spectacular success.

I have alluded before to the change in the mentality of people. I was sorry to see that yesterday, again, the Minister decided that he had to go back to it. This itch for interference in other people's business is desperately on the Minister. He has not got over it yet. I have observed several times that there are good lessons to be learned from other countries. Men should not just be so completely absorbed in their own activities and movements that they cannot look beyond a sort of limited horizon. The Minister talked of self-sufficiency and search for it. I wonder has he ever considered the remarks that emanate from time to time from the Labour Office in Geneva, and in particular has he ever looked at the report of the director of the International Labour Office of two years ago? In that report there was stressed this which may have some bearing on the problem here. He said that it might be wise for the representatives of Governments in certain States who were keen on self-sufficiency to stop for a moment and examine what was their position with regard to raw materials. Supposing we accept that as a line for examination, what is our position as regards raw materials? In our search for self-sufficiency, can we ever reach our objective? What raw materials have we, what industry is there in this country about which it can be said that, from the production of the raw material to the presentation of the finished product everything can be done at home? When you name about three things you are finished. If we had concentrated on these three things we might have got a great deal of development in a short space of time without a great deal of sacrifice to consumers. But we have scattered ourselves over all sorts of peculiar articles, and all in a search for self-sufficiency.

Apart from that, it is a peculiar thing that the countries that led us into this morass are now the most anxious to get us out as far as their example can help anybody in their direction. I have always felt that when people are writing about the last decade, or the last 15 years, they will certainly put their fingers on the United States of America and on France as the two countries that led the way in the raising of tariffs; in all these matters of protection, rates of exchange, quotas and limitations of different types. But it is an amazing thing that in the last 18 months both the French Government and the American Government have been found to enunciate publicly their view that self-sufficiency is a myth, and that economic nationalism has led to the impoverishment of the peoples. That was stated by the French representative who was Prime Minister for three or four months and is now the Foreign Minister in France. He stated clearly to his House of Representatives that no example could be given where economic nationalism has proved a success. At the last meeting of the Assembly of the League of Nations, in the autumn of last year, the American representative, Mr. Cordell Hull, brought before the Economic Committee what was an expression of the American point of view, that economic nationalism was a failure, and a resolution that the League should institute a study of a series of products with a view to getting tariff barriers lowered and international trade revived. More recently still, at a meeting in March of the Labour Office, the American representative again proposed that an inquiry be undertaken into the effect that changes in commercial policy may have on the employment and wages, and the real income of workers. He stated that the United States had gained experience in this connection and had taken certain measures towards freeing the channels of international trade. He added this, that it was a proven fact to-day that the closing of frontiers by tariff walls did not protect workers against unemployment, and that if employment was to be encouraged tariff barriers must be lowered.

The representative of, I suppose, the best placed industrial community in modern Europe was on the same line. The late Minister for Foreign Affairs in Czecho-Slovakia, and now its President, instituted a series of conversations with his neighbours, the old Austria-Hungarian Empire and Yugo Slavia. His view was expressed in this way. He said:

"Economic nationalism has not proved a success; it is not a success with us; we must open up the barriers that are against us, and in complement to that we must lower our barriers to these countries that are around us."

The dictator of Fascist Italy inaugurated a series of conversations with the States surrounding him. He signed three or four commercial pacts as between Italy, Austria, Hungary and Yugo-Slavia, and his phrase in introducing these was that they must exploit the complementary national economies of all these countries, because not one of these countries can live without the other, and if there is to be any increase in productivity and wealth they must lower their barriers as regards rates of exchange, quotas and the rest that they had erected against each other.

Last autumn when the American Congress was going out of session, President Roosevelt asked for an amazing power to be given to himself, and that was—without calling together the elected representatives of the people he could lower any tariff in existence in America by 50 per cent., but that if he wanted to lower it by more than 50 per cent. he had to call Congress together. He stated his reasons for asking this amazing power, and they were that America, by the hard process of learning, had discovered that they must depend for employment for their workers on their export trades, that they must get other countries to lower barriers against their products, and that the only way in which that could be done was by America lowering her barriers against the goods of the countries with which America wanted to trade.

All round the world, except where you have a peculiar situation, such as in Germany, owing to the Treaty of Versailles—even Germany is trying to get out of the net but cannot, and if Deputy Donnelly will read what the Controller of the Reichsbank has said he will find that if Germany is struggling behind tariff barriers it is not of her own wish—all round the world the movement is not, remember, towards complete free trade but towards freer trade. This country in the teeth of all that, despite all the sad experience of all those other countries that have been wallowing in the mess for the last five or six years, is able to produce a Minister who yesterday was buoyant about economic nationalism and self-sufficiency. He criticises anybody who wants even to slow down the processes that he has adopted for building up tariff walls. The united wisdom of the world must be worth something, and it would be no harm if Ministers in this country would at this moment confess that their rosy optimism about tariffs before they came into office has had another colour put upon it by their experience in office.

Deputy Donnelly has spoken of our criticising so fiercely all that has been said about tariffs. I will continue to criticise the sort of folly which was responsible for getting the Government elected. The Deputy asked me if I had any of the advertisements. I told him I had this one—that fatuity about the more and more money and why should it ever stop. If there is no reason why it should stop why are we not getting the stream coming a bit more abundantly and copiously towards us? Need I repeat again the nonsense that was talked about this country having a more obvious cure for unemployment than any other? President de Valera was annoyed with the advertisement about Hoover and MacDonald and Hindenburg not being able to meet the problem of unemployment in their countries. His answer was if those statesmen had the cure staring them in the face as we have here they would have ended unemployment long ago. What is it? Why stand staring the cure in the face? Then we have the Minister's famous folly:

"If we would only do this, produce our own food, make our own clothes and build our own houses, there would not be enough idle men in the country to do the work. We would have to call back some of the 250,000 who emigrated within the past nine years."

Not to be outdone, the President gets up on a platform a few days later and says that if the country were to stop buying the foreigners' produce we could support a population of 17,000,000. Is it any wonder that people would criticise? That is what we want done in the country—to call back the emigrants and have a population of 17,000,000.

Mr. MacDermot

I think Arthur Griffith said that too.

Mr. McGilligan

I think he did not.

Mr. MacDermot

I think he said 20,000,000.

Mr. McGilligan

I think he said that this country, under a certain control earlier, when other nations had not started an industrial fight, could have advanced, but he never said that simply by making our own houses, producing our own food and making our own clothes, there was going to be such a dearth of idle hands that we would have to call back some of the emigrants.

Mr. MacDermot

He said we could support a population of 20,000,000.

Mr. McGilligan

He might have said we could support a population of 20,000,000 under other conditions if this country had got an industrial start at the time when we were prohibited from having any start in industry. If we had been allowed to keep our population here when the agricultural industry could have supported vastly more, we might have got a far bigger population, but that is no argument faced as we are with about 3,000,000 people who have got to bear the huge taxation which there has been for the last three years. Having borne it—not with any great willingness; nobody ever does bear taxation willingly— they find that there is no greater number of men in employment, and they find that their burdens in the way of unemployment assistance have not been relieved as they should be relieved if there were factories giving employment.

Deputy Donnelly finally is of the opinion that Fine Gael has adopted the Fianna Fáil policy. I tried to explain that in relation to certain remarks made by Deputy MacDermot the other night. He was not here. I should like now to explain the same thing to Deputy Donnelly. This Party stands for continuing even things that they think are not economically sound, for the reason that Deputy Donnelly read out of that particular piece of literature—that it is not a good thing to have an economic revolution as an aftermath of each general election in this country. You will not get stability that way. As far as agriculture is concerned—I only touch on this as it is in the argument—I do not believe a bit in wheat as a method of getting a big number of workers employed here in an economic fashion. I am sorry we ever started the beet experiment ourselves, and therefore sorrier still to see that extended. I do not think there is any good in it, but the country must learn by experience between two policies when they are both getting the same chance, and we have the belief that if we were to continue subsidising wheat at the time when we will get, as we can get, the British market open for our old type of agricultural export, wheat will die a natural death.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear!

Mr. McGilligan

But it has got to be tried out, even though it costs the country something. It is better to have that tried out on an equal basis than to have some other set of people, five or ten years hence, again deluding the unfortunate electors into the belief that there is an absolute windfall in wheat growing. With regard to tariffs, we had an experiment in tariffs ourselves. I think we had a better tariff policy than the present Government. It was not so spectacular. We did not give industrialists so much chance of making money, but we did try to equalise the sacrifices that we thought the people would have to make through consumption, by giving them remissions in other ways. We think it is a wise and proper thing to continue tariffs for a couple of reasons. One is that people have put their money into the country. That has got to be protected. We will want money again and we cannot do what the Minister did with regard to railway stock. We cannot do that. The second reason is that we can continue tariffed industries, but with a difference, and I am strong for that difference. I see no good in continuing industries that are limping along under a tariff—limping as far as the worker is concerned, and speeding gloriously as far as the manufacturer is concerned. I think that on examination some of those tariffs would show either that the tariff can be reduced, consequently bringing down the prices which consumers are being charged, or, if that is not the case, and if the consumer has still got to pay heavily for the goods, the benefit of that should be more evenly divided between workers in the particular type of factory and the employer. You can continue, but continue with a difference.

When I mention capital, may I say this: this country has got capital invested in it recently. I wonder do any of the labour people in this country ever stop to think of the cost of it. Money is about the cheapest thing in the world at the moment, outside this country, but the people of this country will be faced hereafter with the desperate problem that industrialists who have been brought in here with the promise and with the achievement of certain big profits will certainly look to a continuance of that, and if any of these people have got to be bought out hereafter—if there is some scheme about purchasing out, say, people making reserved commodities, as there was in the case of transport vehicles—you may find that somebody will settle the price upon so many years' purchase of particular profits allowed to be made in this country as a return in money at a time when money is, as I say, the cheapest thing in the whole world. The workers hereafter will have on their shoulders the payment of an extra I, 2 or 3 per cent. more than what should be allowed under the present conditions of trade. We are for continuing the tariff policy—we had a good one—but it is being run at a dangerous speed at the moment. There are a great many casualties, and we will have to observe certain warnings apparent now from the way it has been run. If tariffs can give employment without offsetting that employment by losses they are good, and good judgment can be passed on them; but if they are not, with due respect to the workers employed and the people who have put their money into them, they will have to be replaced by some more productive type of industry—productive in the sense of giving better production in the way of wealth at home and more employment to men.

I have often wondered why the Minister for Industry and Commerce could find it possible to shut his eyes to the things going on around him, but he explained himself recently. In December of last year, he went to the Insurance Institute of Ireland and spoke there and you get his political philosophy in a few short phrases indeed:

"There is a certain amount of Couéism in public affairs. If everybody believes that things are going to improve, they generally do. The reverse is also the case."

December was an odd time for the voice of cuckoo-ism to be heard in the land, but we did get it, and that is what is carrying Deputy Donnelly and his Party along—believe that everything is going to be right and it will. Why not analyse a few figures?

Mr. Donnelly

Faith is a good thing.

Mr. McGilligan

Belief is a great thing, but it is a terrible thing if it allows you to go along blindly in a path which has been unwisely chosen. Why not stop and analyse a few figures? There ought to be signs of improvement if there is the improvement the Minister says there is.

Mr. MacDermot

He did not believe in Couéism when he was in opposition.

Mr. McGilligan

No, the reverse was operating then. It works both ways, the Minister announced. Do not let us have Couéism either for or against, either towards optimism or towards pessimism. Examine; analyse the figures; and let us assume with Deputy Donnelly that everybody is almost automatically in favour of tariffs because this country has been left industrially denuded; but let us understand that tariffs are a dangerous type of policy, dangerous to the consumer, unless there is some immediate benefit coming in a roundabout way to the consumer via the worker. There are quite a number of figures that can be analysed. They show, I think, not very many men employed so far as industry is concerned, but quite a number, so far as house-building is concerned. The conclusion I draw is that house-building cannot go on. We cannot pile up these debts. We cannot provide the money, apart from the fact that there will soon be more houses than there are people to occupy them, unless we call back some of the 100,000 who have emigrated, just to house them comfortably while there is no work for them.

I pivot my whole argument on that. If it is house-building that is keeping up the number of employed in this country, it is a passing phase, and it is a dangerous thing to build a policy completely and entirely on that. Industry will have to be examined to see what it has given in the way of employment and we shall have to find out where have the losses—the Minister's word was "casualties"— occurred and why. I cannot say that it is Party loyalty only that makes me argue that the tariff policy, as run by the Fianna Fáil Government, has not proved a success. Their building programme has, but their building programme is based on the capacity of the local authorities to borrow money, and £3,000,000 a year for two years is a very heavy sum to involve in the building of houses in this country. If tariffs cannot do better than that, we ought to reverse engines.

Mr. P. Hogan (Clare):

There are one or two things I want to say with reference to some industries. Deputy McGilligan told us that the industrialist is just as much in the position of drawing a dole as the workman is when he is unemployed. Of course, that is true, and more true in respect of the industrialist than in respect of the workman, because the industrialist may put into an industry inherited capital, whereas the workingman can only put into industry the labour he has himself. Industry, to my mind, is service to the community, and if the organised State protects a service that protection ought to be afforded to everybody engaged in that industry. At the present time, that protection is not being afforded to everybody engaged in that service, and the Minister cannot say that he has not sufficient machinery to afford protection to everybody engaged in that service.

Mr. Lemass

What form of protection does the Deputy mean?

Mr. Hogan

I will develop that in a moment and indicate what form of protection I want given. At the present time, the industrialist seems to be getting nine-tenths of the protection—practically all the protection —and the worker seems to be giving all the service. Let us take the woollen industry, for instance. The Minister has ample powers to see that the worker in that industry is protected.

Mr. Lemass

Protected in what way?

Mr. Hogan

Protected in the matter of conditions of employment and protected in the matter of wages. Surely, if the industrialist is entitled to be protected against unfair conditions of competition, the worker within that industry is entitled to protection when he is producing that wealth for the community? Both are service to the community and the worker is entitled to get protection for that service.

Mr. Lemass

Do I understand that the Deputy is advocating the regulation by the Government of wages in industry?

Mr. Hogan

I am advocating that, notwithstanding the poor effect of certain boards in respect of industry, and how ineffectively and inadequately they afford protection, they at least afford some protection to the workers in industry, and I am referring in particular to the woollen industry. The Minister has power to establish a trade board for any industry in which it appears to him that wages are unduly low or that there is no effective machinery for regulating wages. These two conditions are amply fulfilled in the woollen industry. I do not know whether the Minister has satisfied himself that the wages paid in the woollen industry are sufficiently high. I know there is a woollen mill in my county, the Thomond Woollen Mills, more commonly known as Messrs. James O'Flynn and Son or Company—I do not know which. That mill got from the taxpayers of this State, under legislation, something like £12,000 at a very low rate of interest. The owner invested that money in the development of his mill and, I am told, doubled his output. One would imagine that the conditions of employment and wages paid in that mill would bear some relation to the cheap rate at which he got his capital and to the condition in which he was put by the present Government, but there is no relation whatever. Representations have repeatedly been made to me with respect to that particular mill. Boys have been brought from the Artane Industrial Schools and put working there at 12/6 per week. The position was so hard that the boys were not paid the money; it was paid over to local women to maintain the boys. The women found, however, that they could not maintain the boys because the fines were so heavy that in some cases 5/- or 6/- was the only payment the boys got. Therefore, that position had to be discontinued. It is a position about which the Minister should satisfy himself——

Mr. Lemass

The firm was prosecuted for it last week.

Mr. Hogan

What was it prosecuted for?

Mr. Lemass

For these fines, these deductions from wages, under the Truck Acts.

Mr. Hogan

I had a question down last week and I do not know whether it was that fact that had the effect of putting the machinery of the law into motion——

Mr. Lemass

Machinery moves slowly. The Deputy would want to start earlier than that.

Mr. Hogan

It moved very slowly. For the past 12 months I have been raising this matter with very little effect, and I am taking this opportunity to draw as much public attention as I can to it to force the hand of the Minister to take some effective action in the matter.

Mr. Lemass

I do not want to mislead the Deputy but I want to tell him that the firm were prosecuted and the district justice thought fit to let them off under the Probation of Offenders Act.

Mr. Hogan

I am not concerned with what the district justice did. The district justice decides matters of fact as he gets them, but I want the Minister to be put in the position that he will have power to enforce his orders under the Act and that he will put into operation some protection for the workers in this factory. I have here an extract from a letter written by somebody who knows what he is talking about in reference to this matter. The extract is:—

"There was an investigation at O'Flynn's Woollen Factory in regard to the fines and workers' wages. Since then the fines are much the same as before, but to-day (28/3/36) Mr. O'Flynn put up a notice stating that the workers would be paid at 12 o'clock, that they would work until 1 o'clock and that at 12.45 they must repay to the clerk in the office the amount of the fines. It is further stated that anybody who does not pay up the fines won't be allowed to start on Monday. This is a new move... The fines to-day were from 1/- to 4/6. Altogether he collected £3 in fines. This firm got a loan from the Government at 2½ per cent. and the loan is costing him £250 a year, but he collects most of that amount, certainly not less than £200 a year, in fines from the weavers."

He pays the interest and, possibly, the sinking fund of the loan by means of fines that he gets from the workers. It is nearly time the Minister took some action on this matter.

Mr. Lemass

What could be done except to prosecute?

Mr. Hogan

Has not the Minister power under the Trade Board Act to appoint a trade board there?

Mr. Lemass

There was no application.

Mr. Hogan

Under the existing law if the Minister himself is satisfied that in any trade or industry wages are unduly low, or where there is no effective machinery for regulating wages, he can set up a trade board. Is the Minister satisfied that wages from 5/- to 12/6, or, if you like, to 20/- a week, are proper wages where £12,000 of the taxpayers' money has been given to subsidise an industry? Is the Minister satisfied under the circumstances that that is a satisfactory wage? Will he go in and make an Order setting up a trade board which would have power to fix a minimum rate of wages for all workers employed in woollen mills? Will the Minister make inquiries into this matter? As to what wages are paid by Messrs. J. O'Flynn and Sons, Sixmilebridge, I had an inquiry the other day as to some contracts placed by the Government with that firm. There is a fair wages clause in connection with all those Government contracts and I made inquiry as to whether that clause was operative or inoperative, or whether such a clause was inserted in these contracts. What is the good of having such a clause when this sort of thing is carried on? Before the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs placed a contract with Messrs. O'Flynn and Sons, Sixmilebridge, he ought to satisfy himself that fair wages were paid by this firm and that the conditions were such as would give the workers something approaching even a decent standard of living. No such inquiries had been made, and I want to put to the Minister now that this protection that he has afforded this firm at the expense of the State, to the tune of £12,000, should percolate to the lowest worker in that industry. It is time that were done and it is time that the Government, after giving that loan of £12,000 at 2½ per cent. interest, should see that the firm gave some consideration to the workers. Further, before a Government Department placed a contract with these mills they should see that decent wages were paid there.

Mr. Dillon

I want to underline one or two points made by Deputy McGilligan. I really do not desire to add anything to the general statement made by Deputy McGilligan because I find that he has covered in detail and with accuracy the programme which our Party have and that he has described accurately the attitude of our Party to the general question of tariffs, protection and quotas. He referred to the potential evils of tariffs; to the potential evils of quotas and the almost inevitable evils of monopolies. I want to underline for the House the kind of evil that is arising in connection with one monopoly of the few already created. That is the evil that is arising in connection with the Irish thread monopoly granted to the factory at Westport. It has been argued by the Minister that the danger of the public being exploited by such monopolics is remote, because, in preparing the licences under which they operate, he inserts conditions providing that the interests of the consumers will be adequately protected. When he proceeded to issue these licences for an Irish trade monopoly he assured this House that one of the conditions would be that the thread would be sold to the Irish consumers at prices and qualities identical with those charged by the British concern to their customers in Great Britain. When that firm originally started its operations in this country, for about six weeks they did make available supplies on the same terms to their Irish customers as their Irish customers had enjoyed from the merchants in Great Britain theretofore. But shortly afterwards this astute alteration was made: The price quoted for an ordinary reel of sewing cotton was 16/9 per gross of reels of 120 yards each. It is extremely difficult to get the public to understand the technicalities of a trade like the thread trade. Sewing thread is sold in a number of different qualities and these qualities are indicated by numerals. No. 10 is for purpose; No. 20 is for another purpose; No. 30 for a different purpose; No. 40 for a fourth purpose, and so on. Nos. 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100 are all for different sorts of thread. Now certain merchants may require only No. 10 thread; if they were to buy No. 40 or No. 60 they would never be able to sell it because no customer dealing with them would ever require it. If you buy No. 40 thread you must have customers who use sewing machines to purchase it and if you reside or do your business in the congested districts in the West of Ireland, where the people cannot afford sewing machines, then none of your customers will buy No. 40 thread. They will want nothing but No. 10 thread wherewith to do hand-sewing. Before the monopoly, merchants could buy any quantity of thread at 16/9 a gross, and if they wanted nothing but No. 10 thread they could buy it. Then the Irish monopoly issues a price list in which they say the price of sewing cotton is 16/9 a gross. But when you order the quantity of sewing cotton that you require you are told that 16/9 is the price for an average assortment, and that if you want to buy what you require, instead of what the Irish cotton monopoly wants to sell, you have got to pay 18/9 a gross for it. It is extremely difficult to get the public, even to get Deputies of this House, to understand that that is a vital and fundamental departure from the undertaking given to the Minister to charge the same price for sewing cotton as was charged before the monopoly was established. In fact, it means an increase in the price of sewing cotton of 2/- a gross or an increase of 12½ per cent. Deputies will observe that the Minister can always say: "Oh! no, there has been no increase in prices. These people are still prepared to sell cotton thread at 16/9." The unfortunate merchant replies: "But that is not the kind of thread I want, I want only No. 10 thread; I would not be able to dispose of the others." And the Minister replies: "Surely you do not want me to go into personal disputes between the merchants and the millers. All I can tell you is that sewing cotton is offered at 16/9." The average Deputy says to himself: "Is it not nonsense to be wasting time as between 16/9 and 18/9? Are they not selling cotton thread at 16/9?" They are. I cannot deny it. They are prepared, however, to sell it on terms which, they know, no sane customer will accept, and when it comes to selling sewing cotton on the only terms which their customers will ordinarily seek, sewing cotton is 2/- a gross more than it was. Artifices of that kind can be successfully practised, and it is virtually impossible to prevent them, but, in fact, they operate to increase the cost of a reserved commodity in this country by at least 12½ per cent.

I desire to direct the attention of the House to another matter arising out of that monopoly licence which has been adopted in this House and in Seanad Eireann, and that is that certain threads supplied to shirt manufacturers in this country, which cost, before this monoply was granted, 48/-, are now costing the same manufacturer 67/-, and that a certain thread, which cost shirt manufacturers 112/- for a given quantity, before the monopoly was established, is now costing the same manufacturers 148/-, which means, approximately, 1/3 on shirts; and that, as a result, it interferes with the success of the shirt industry, which, hitherto, was having a considerable amount of success. As to the matters arising out of this question of sewing cotton, I can certify of my own knowledge, as I have mentioned before——

Mr. Lemass

Not once, but many times.

Mr. Dillon

Yes. As the Minister says, "Not once, but many times." In regard to the manufacturers themselves, I can stand over what has been said on the authority of a shirt manufacturer of long experience in this country. I have raised this matter before, and I am raising it again, and am directing the attention of the House to this matter in order to point out to the House and the country the things that almost invariably accompany the monopolistic policy of the Minister, and in order to emphasise the worthlessness of any undertakings such as the Minister has relied upon here for the protection of the consumer. In this connection, I should like to join with Deputy McGilligan in saying that, if the Government determines on a policy of monopoly—which I consider to be an unmitigated curse— then, let that monopoly be carried on by the State on socialistic lines; because at least, if that policy is carried on on socialistic lines, you will get whatever is good in socialism, albeit you will have the disadvantages of socialism, whereas if you endeayour to carry on—the word springs to my lips, although I almost fear to use it here—a policy of capitalism, then, as Deputy McGilligan cogently pointed out, you are going to have all the evils and none of the advantages of that system, to the great detriment of the country as a whole. Let me add to what Deputy McGilligan said with regard to the industrial policy of the Government, that, in addition to the evils that are daily accruing to the working of industry in this country, and the consuming public, there is a very much greater danger adherent in the whole catastrophe, in my opinion, and that is that the name of industrialists in this country, who gave good value for the money they got, and who manufactured good merchandise with modest protection in the form of low tariffs, is being besmirched by the misconduct of other persons, who are profiteering behind tariff barriers of 80 per cent. and 100 per cent, and under the protection of quotas. It is my opinion that there is going to come a time, as a result of this policy, when the public at large in this country will identify profiteering with Irish industry; and, if that time comes, very grave injustice will be done and very great injury to the prospects of Irish industry will have been achieved.

There are men in this country— notably in the boot trade, the confectionery trade, and certain other trades —who did build up industries under modest tariffs, and who, having operated under modest tariffs, at first were not in a position to give as good value as could be given from external sources of supply, but who, operating under these protective tariffs for a short period—a quinquennial period or thereabouts—were giving just as good value as could be given from any British or other source of supply, and who could give that value at just as cheap a price.

I notice that the Minister is leaving the House. I hope he will be back in time to reply, because he might say that in his absence I may have stolen a march on him. The Minister interrupted Deputy Cosgrave last night when the Deputy was referring to the powers that the Minister was taking for the purpose of compelling persons to purchase turf. The Minister, apparently, was outraged at any fault being found with the taking of such compulsory powers, and he described Deputy Cosgrave's remonstrance as pussyfooting with Victorian liberalism. If one could find a German vernacular expression for that kind of reasoning, it might be summed up in "Mein Kampf." Anybody who objects to be taken by the back of the neck by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and who objects to having his nose rubbed in the turf that the Minister cannot sell, is pussyfooting with Victorian liberalism! Well, I wonder what de Valeraesque modernism is? Does it mean that anyone who sits on the Front Bench of this House on the left-hand of the Ceann Comhairle is entitled to do anything he pleases, or that these gentlemen have been erected to a position, such as was known, I believe, in the days of the worst despotism of the Roman Empire, as protectors of the people? It will be remembered that when the Roman Emperors had made up their minds to be absolute dictators and to execute everybody who was even suspected of being against them, it was their practice not to describe themselves as emperors or kings, or anything else of that sort, but as protectors of the people. I wonder does the wrath of the Minister with us, who are old-fashioned believers in individual liberty, for pussyfooting with Victorian liberalism, suggest that at no far distant date we are going to have such Roman protectors of the people here who will woo us in no uncertain voice from our Victorian prejudices and show what good government by resolute Ministers can do.

I mention that because I want to indulge in what the Minister for Industry and Commerce pleases to describe as a little Victorian liberalism. I want to protest against the licensing system introduced into this country by the present Minister. I want to say that in my opinion the licensing system for which the present Minister is responsible is going to corrupt the public life of this country. I say that a very considerable number of persons in this country already believe that favours and concessions can be wangled, and that a general atmosphere of that kind of dishonesty is beginning to manifest itself throughout the mercantile community—a belief that you have got to keep in with the Minister and his Department if you are to get a fair crack of the whip; a general reluctance to criticise the Minister or his Department in public for fear that retaliatory measures might be taken.

Mr. Lemass

Has the Deputy known of any reluctance to criticise the Minister?

Mr. Dillon

Not on my part.

Mr. Lemass

On the part of manufacturers?

Mr. Dillon

Yes, a very common readiness to complain of difficulties and perplexities, but an absolute refusal to allow their names to be used, because they feel that they must go to the Department for licences or concessions in the hereafter, and it would not suit them to be put down as critics of the Department of that kind. I have argued here time and again that political corruption was manifesting itself in our public life, particularly in regard to the Department of Industry and Commerce, and not out of any love for the Minister for Industry and Commerce, but simply because I believe it is due to the good name of the country, I have deliberately differentiated between political corruption and what I describe as base corruption. I have been careful to say, and I now repeat, that I do not believe, and I do not believe any rational man in this country believes, that there is any member of the Executive Council or responsible officer of the Minister's Department who would be susceptible to what is plainly known as a bribe, and when I use the word corruption I am not alleging, and I do not wish to allege, bribery of any kind, bribery of a monetary or base character. If the time comes when I have reason to believe such a thing was happening—God forbid I ever should— I would not hesitate to say so. At any rate, I do not. I do, however, allege political corruption.

I want to take an opportunity that I have long been waiting for, and that was to bring home to the Minister that not only is it existent, but it is existent with the Minister's approval. I have always maintained here that no merchant or trader in this country has a right to ask the Minister to exercise a discretion under his licensing powers in favour of one citizen at the expense of another, and that if the Minister exercises a discretion under his licensing powers in favour of one merchant, he must make a similar concession available to every other merchant. I regard anything short of that as unfair, and if that unfairness is got through political influence, I say it amounts to political corruption.

If a member of the Fine Gael Party, or of the Fianna Fáil Party, goes to the Minister or his Department and says: "I want a concession for Mr. XY who is doing a certain business," and the Minister examines the case and says: "On the case stated, I think he is entitled to the licence you ask for him," I am of opinion that the Minister should resent a suggestion from any T.D. that that licence should be made available only to Mr. XY and not to the other merchants or manufacturers who are in Mr. XY's business. I hold that the Minister should say: "On these facts stated a case for a licence has been made out and will be made available to all persons circumstanced as Mr. XY is circumstanced." If he does that, no difficulty will arise. In my opinion the Minister does not do that, and to judge from a letter I have received from the Minister himself, and which I now propose to read to the House, it appears to me that the Minister does not think it is necessary to do that. On the contrary, he suggests that it is perfectly legitimate and even desirable that members of this House should go and seek favours for individual citizens from his Department.

I am sorry that I must trespass on the time of the House, but I desire to place the House in full possession of the facts and, if necessary, that the Minister should have them too. The facts are that a shirt-manufacturing company in the North of Ireland, in Donegal to be precise, engages amongst other things in the manufacture of semi-stiff collars and shirts in which the cotton textile used is a semi-stiff material. That semi-stiff material is not manufactured in Saorstát Eireann and never will be manufactured in Saorstát Eireann, but these people export considerable quantities of these semi-stiff collars and they also sell large quantities of these semi-stiff collars within Saorstát Eireann. For these reasons, it became peculiarly desirable that they should have duty-free supplies of this material, because it was not possible to get a rebate of the tariff that they had paid on this material coming into Saorstát Eireann when sending out the finished shirts and collars, as it was so difficult to assess just how much of the semi-stiff material there was in any given shirt or any given collar.

Accordingly, acting on behalf of my constituent, I rang up the Department of Industry and Commerce, from the officers of which I have always received every courtesy to which any rational person could conceive himself to be entitled. I should say that I called at the office and the responsible officer was engaged on Government business and was not in a position to see me. I was received by another officer who told me the name of the responsible officer who would deal with my application, and I undertook to call back. In fact, however, I had not time to do so, and I rang up and spoke to the responsible officer. When I spoke to him I explained my case and said to him:

"I may not have made myself clear as to the nature of the textile to which I refer, but there are one or two manufacturers in Dublin who handle this textile for the manufacture of their shirts, and if you refer to them they will be able to explain to you in technical language the exact nature of the textile in regard to which I am speaking."

I happened to mention the name of one manufacturer in Dublin, who happened to be a personal friend of my own, and whom I knew to be a very enthusiastic supporter of the Fianna Fáil Government, and the Minister in particular, and who, I knew, would be readily available to assist the Department in a technical matter of this kind.

I mention that fact because I want to explain to the House that my case was that a licence of this character should be issued to all shirt manufacturers in Saorstát Eireann and that I did not ask, and did not want, any special concession for an individual manufacturer. I would have regarded it as politically corrupt on my part to ask the Minister to give a licence to one manufacturer and withhold it from the others. In due course I got a letter from the Minister for Industry and Commerce, saying:

"I am directed by the Minister for Industry and Commerce to refer to your recent telephone conversation with an officer of the Department, in connection with the importation of cotton webbing by Messrs. John McLaughlin and Co., Buncrana. I am to say that the Minister has had an opportunity of looking into the facts of this case but he sees no grounds for granting concessions to this company which are not granted to its competitors in the shirtmaking industry in the Saorstát. He is unable, therefore, to recommend the issue of licences for the free importation of the cotton material in question.

"The Minister has given further consideration to the question of the importation of cotton cloth for use in shirts and collars for export, and for the time being he is prepared to consider sympathetically applications for licences for the importation, free of duty, of cotton cloth for such trade. It will be necessary, however, for any applicant to furnish to the Department details of export orders in respect of which the duty-free cotton cloth is required."

Deputies will observe that the Minister here says that he sees no grounds for granting concessions to this company which are not granted to its competitors. If the Minister did not know, his officers must have very well known that I was not seeking any concessions for a company which would not be granted to its competitors. I was seeking for concessions for the whole trade. I replied to that letter very emphatically. In the course of my letter I said:

"I recommended to him (the Minister) that cotton webbing should be admitted duty free to all shirt manufacturers in Saorstát Eireann, because

(i) special machines had been installed to make up this particular type of cloth;

(ii) because this webbing is not manufactured in Saorstát Eireann;

(iii) because the practical difficulties of segregating export orders from home-market orders when ordering supplies of raw materials were insuperable.

I did not at any time suggest that discrimination should be exercised in favour of any individual firm."

This is the concluding paragraph, which, I think, pretty reasonably irritated the Minister:

"I shall take suitable precautions in future, when transacting business with your Department, to record in black and white whatever passes between us, as the possibilities of a defective understanding on the part of your officers seem formidable, and somewhat reminiscent of the unfortunate methods of the potential blackmailer."

It may be observed that had I let the Minister's original letter pass uncommented upon, it could be produced in the House hereafter to prove that, while I was protesting against the granting of licences to individuals at the expense of others, here was I looking for a special licence for Messrs. McLaughlin and Co., my political colleagues, which I did not want anyone else to hear about, so I answered the Minister pretty trenchantly and, if he laid a trap, then he caught his own toe in it. The Minister got on his high horse, and I received the following communication from the Minister, which contains a most astonishing paragraph:—

"I am directed by the Minister for Industry and Commerce to inform you that your letter dated 28th December has occasioned him no small measure of surprise. On the 29th November you interviewed an officer of this Department, and on the 5th December you had a telephone conversation with another officer; in each case your representations were directed to securing certain licensing facilities for the firm of Messrs. John McLaughlin and Co., Buncrana."

That statement is not true. On each occasion I explained that I was moved in the matter by Messrs. John McLaughlin and Co., of Buncrana, and I referred the Minister to several manufacturers in Dublin who would elucidate any obscurities in my application, naming some of them, in order to facilitate him in that matter.

"Each officer made a record of his conversations with you on the date on which it took place...."

I did not know that my conversations were of such mighty importance that every unfortunate officer was taking shorthand notes of what I said. However, that is apparently true.

"...and the Minister is not prepared to accept your suggestion ...."

I am also, apparently, a suspected person.

"... that two responsible officers have misrepresented to him what you said."

I do not believe they misrepresented to him what I said, but I believe the Minister thought a trap could be laid. The trap did not come off. This is the paragraph I want to draw particular attention to, because it represents a direct cleavage between myself and the Minister:—

"There is, of course, not necessarily anything reprehensible in making representations on behalf of an individual firm, and the first paragraph of this Department's letter of the 18th December last merely conveyed the Minister's decision on your representations."

The letter goes on to say:—

"I am to return your letter herewith and to say that the Minister takes grave exception to the terms in which it is couched; it is offensive in tone and unwarranted by the facts. He welcomes what he understands to be your intention of making in writing any further representations you may wish to bring before him, and he desires me to express the hope that any communications which you may in future have occasion to address to his Department shall conform to the standard of courtesy which is ordinarily observed by persons who correspond with Departments of State."

I desire to give the Minister's entire letter so that no misapprehension may arise in the mind of anybody. I think it is highly reprehensible for any Deputy of this House to make representations on behalf of an individual firm to the Minister for Industry and Commerce in order to get for that firm concessions which they do not intend to secure for the other firms engaging competitively in the same trade. If the Minister does not think it reprehensible to make such advances on behalf of individual firms, I think it is. If the Minister thinks it is not reprehensible to make such advances available to Deputies interested on behalf of individual firms, that is to my mind a type of political corruption.

Mr. Lemass

My view on the matter was expressed in the first letter you read out.

Mr. Dillon

It may be the Minister's standards differ from mine and it may be the country accepts the Minister's standards, but if Fianna Fáil T.D.'s are entitled to go to the Minister and get from him concessions for individual manufacturers or individual merchants under the licensing powers conferred on him by the various Statutes passed by the House, that to my mind amounts to political corruption, and is calculated to corrupt the entire public life of the country in time.

Mr. Lemass

In this case it was a Fine Gael Deputy who did it.

Mr. Donnelly

We can get nothing.

Mr. Dillon

In this case had I made the request which the Minister attempted to father upon me I would have been guilty of gross political corruption. It is for that reason that I answered the Minister in very trenchant terms, to make it perfectly clear I believed he wanted to level such a charge against me on a future occasion and to support it by his version of the conversations I had with his officers, and I took particularly good care to snap that trap before the Minister would get a chance of putting it under my feet and I did so, to the Minister's considerable confusion and alarm. It is very important that this House should make up its mind what standards are to obtain in regard to this matter of issuing licences. Do they think, as the Minister, that there is nothing reprehensible in a Deputy asking for licensing concessions for an individual firm which are not to be extended to everybody, or do they not? I think it is reprehensible and undesirable, and I think it is going to lead to corruption in the public life of the country.

On this general question of licences, I renew my request that a public register will be opened wherein particulars of licences issued for the free importation of merchandise will be made available to the persons interested in the entire business life of the country. At present one merchant will get a licence from the Minister to import certain merchandise, free of duty, while his next-door neighbour will have paid 30 or 40 per cent. import duty on the same commodity. I asked was the Minister prepared to issue licences for the free import of flannelette, and his answer was that he was considering his action on that matter. But I happen to know a merchant who had imported flannelette and paid 33? per cent. duty on it. I do not know what decision the Minister may take or whether he will decide to admit flannelette free of duty, but the Minister may change his mind to the advantage of one merchant and to the very material disadvantage of another. A licence may be issued to one merchant, and that licensee does not then bother to ask for another. You have a situation where one man is to pay a duty on a commodity and another may get the same commodity in duty free. I allege licences are being given inequitably at the present time; that substantial justice is not being done between one merchant and another, and that there is no satisfactory method whereby the mercantile community can discover that justice is being done by the Department unless some register of licences is published. Every rational man knows that a system of licences issued under cover of darkness is going to corrupt the public life of the country. It is going to introduce into our public life elements that never existed before and a form of corruption will manifest itself which it would be extremely difficult to extirpate once it has taken root.

The Minister has taken objection to the opening of a register of licences on the ground that it would publish secrets relating to the business of certain individual merchants. I know no member of the mercantile community that will substantiate that objection. All the Minister is asked to do is to provide a register which will contain no more than the name of the licensee and the commodity he is to import. If such particulars were published the position is guarded for every other licensee and all he has to do is to ask the Department for a similar concession if he is interested in the same commodity. If he is unable to get a licence to import some commodity he has his remedy. He can ask a Deputy to ask the Minister why he will not make the licence available in that particular case, or, he can ask the Minister himself a simple question. He can say you have given a licence to A.B., why will you not give a similar licence to me? What single objection can there be to providing information of that kind? Is it not obvious to every Deputy that the evils of not providing such information may be very great and that their general tendency is to grow?

I think it would be a mistake, certainly from my point of view, to underline the general review given by Deputy McGilligan here to-day. I particularly wish to raise these two points relating to monopoly and the evils arising from trading under a licensing system. But I think before I conclude, lest Deputy Donnelly should feel dismayed or disappointed, a word should be said upon the Spanish agreement. When I first raised that scandal in this House, the Minister with his usual audacity did everything short of telling a lie.

Mr. Donnelly

Is the Deputy now talking about eggs or oranges?

Mr. Dillon

Both. The Minister did everything short of telling a lie in order to cover up his tracks. In the course of his diatribe he sought to twist certain words I used into an attack upon the Limerick Steamship Company.

Mr. Lemass

I did not accuse the Deputy of attacking them but I said that he accused them of supporting Fianna Fáil.

Mr. Dillon

What more insolent or damaging attack could any man make? The facts are gradually coming to light. I said we were forced to send our best eggs to Spain and that the Spaniards would not pay us but eat them, and I said that the Spaniards were sending us oranges which when compared with Jaffa oranges were rubbish. A pious letter appeared a few mornings after, signed by Mr. Connolly Shaw, showing that he was too economically-minded to put an advertisement in the Press, stating that his firm had lovely Spanish oranges to sell and that they would show me the best oranges that were ever brought into Dublin if I would go down to the North Wall. The Attorney-General will tell us that that kind of codology does not amount to misrepresentation. It is simply puffery and is a well-known practice on the part of some kind of merchants. But the fact remains that three weeks later certain fruit merchants—not Messrs. Shaw—in the city had the courage to take action on this matter. They signed a round-robin and sent it to the papers three weeks ago and stated that anybody would fail in the attempt to persuade the public that these oranges compared in quality with the Palestine oranges available before. Deputy Mulcahy demonstrated that the price of these oranges, to the consumer in this country, was very nearly twice as much as had been charged for oranges before this trade agreement was made. The egg merchants who shipped their goods to Spain published the fact that they could not get paid for their eggs and that, as far as they were aware, the Spaniards had eaten them. They could neither get the eggs nor the money nor any satisfaction from the Minister who induced them to send their eggs to Spain.

Mr. Donnelly

Were none of these eggs used during the Spanish general election?

Mr. Dillon

If one of these eggs hit President Azana he would not only not be in the Senate but he would be in his grave. They were there long enough for that. That was the agreement which induced our unfortunate people to send £35,000 or £40,000 worth of eggs to Spain and to pay the exporters of these eggs £18,000 for sending them. And that is described as something of more value to us than the British market. We are upbraided on this side of the House by the Minister for decrying this valuable trade asset which he secured for this country. And he defended the gentlemen who waxed so eloquent about the excellent quality of the lovely oranges they are bringing in, and who are the only people in a position to bring in such oranges under this Spanish trade agreement.

Though there are 139 import quota licences issued by the Minister, there is a condition put in each licence which effectively prevents anyone from bringing in oranges save the patriots who published the letter about the lovely Valencia oranges. There is no express prohibition in the quota licence. The form is gone through. Quota licences are issued to 130 or 139 orange importers but the condition is inserted therein that the oranges must be brought direct from Spain to the port of Dublin without touching any port in Great Britain.

A Deputy

Hear, hear.

Mr. Dillon

"Hear, hear," say the prudent warriors on the back benches.

Mr. Donnelly

Do not let them draw you, whatever happens.

Mr. Dillon

Some of them might give a portion of their spare time to a consideration of the economics of bringing a shipload of merchandise from a Spanish port to Dublin and sending the ship back in ballast. Then, they would understand what an economic and desirable enterprise that was. Then, they would understand why it was that the only person who could attempt to bring in oranges on terms that would make it possible for him to sell them here at all was somebody who was in a position to give a charter party from Spain to Ireland, and a charter party from Ireland back to Spain. Unless you constituted yourself a trading company of that kind, any possibility of dealing direct with Spain would be out of the question. But if you got a tip in time to organise yourself along these lines you might find yourself in the happy position of being only one of 139 persons who received quota licences to import oranges, but being the only one of those 139 persons who could use this quota licence. You would get the pleasant job of bringing oranges into Dublin and all the other holders of quota licences would come down with their hats in one hand and their quota licences in the other and ask you if you, of your kindness, would take the quota licences from them and give them some of your oranges for them.

The Minister will get up and say that all these statements are erroneous. How could I prove that? Does he imagine that his henchman is going to come to me and tell me the whole story for the purpose of bringing it up in this House? If his henchman did that, would he continue to be his henchman? If he ceased to be his henchman, what else would he be? If the henchmen of Fianna Fáil ceased to live on their employment as henchmen, would they not revert whence they came—to the South Dublin Union? I do not now refer to those merchants. They are men of good mercantile standing in the community. I do not want to suggest that they are potential inmates of the Dublin Union. They are men of standing in the mercantile life of the country. But if certain individuals are enjoying special benefits at the hands of the Government, it is absolutely impossible for somebody whose duty it is to direct attention to these facts to get conclusive proof of the evils existing, because nobody has that proof but the concessionaires and the man who gave them the concession. There is one way of making an end of all that obscurity, doubt and difficulty. That is, by setting up a register of licences which will be available to anybody who desires to peruse it.

Mr. Lemass

It happens to exist in this case.

Mr. Dillon

It does in the matter of quotas. As the quota system is being administered, I am sorry to say that, for the reasons I have just set out, even that has not served as an adequate safeguard. In regard to licences, I think it would serve, because all that is necessary is that everybody should know the nature of the merchandise and the name of the licensee. The quota system is, unfortunately, open to evils even greater than the tariff system. I urge on the Minister most strongly to take early and vigorous steps to eliminate these evils from the normal administration of his Department, and I warn him that unless they are removed, and removed very soon, they will give rise to bigger and greater abuses with which it may not be within his capacity to deal when he does come to deal with them.

Mr. Anthony

There are one or two matters to which I wish to direct attention. On a former occasion, I raised in this House the question of the temporary clerks employed in the labour exchanges of Saorstát Eireann. I think that the Minister gave me an undertaking then that an examination would be held to absorb these temporary clerks into the permanent service. I should like him to give sympathetic consideration to the case of these men, who have given loyal and good service to the Department, but who have not yet been absorbed into the permanent staff.

I should also like to call the Minister's attention to the fact that, in many cases in Cork City recently, workmen who suffered injury in the course of their employment were involved in grievous financial loss because their employers had not insured under the Workmen's Compensation Act. No redress was open to the workmen in these circumstances. Another matter to which I think the Minister should direct his attention in the near future is the administration of the Unemployment Assistance Act. I am aware that the problem is a very serious and a very difficult one. The Minister must, however, be aware that a good deal of dissatisfaction has been expressed in respect of one secton of the Act, which provides that, where a man is found not to be genuinely seeking employment, he is immediately cut off unemployment assistance.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Is there not a special Vote for unemployment assistance?

Mr. Anthony

As it comes under the aegis of the Minister's Department, I thought I would draw attention to it now.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

We cannot duplicate discussion in that fashion. That Vote will come up afterwards.

Mr. Anthony

I am quite satisfied. In respect of the issue of licences, which has been referred to by two or three Deputies this evening, I have had several complaints. When I drew the Minister's attention to the matter by way of question on a former occasion, he threatened me with all sorts of pains and penalties if I were to be seen in his office at any time. A lot of provocative things are occuring in the trade and commerce of the country. These things are capable of remedy and should be remedied. I have here a communication from a firm which ordered a certain commodity. There is no necessity to name the commodity. I can hand the letter to the Minister if he requires it. The letter is as follows:

"Dear Sirs,—We thank you for your order of the 18th inst., for... but regret we are unable to supply. We have at the moment ceased to manufacture this

—it is a tariff commodity—

and it will be some months before manufacture will be resumed. In the latter event, we shall be glad to receive your orders but, in the meantime, must ask you to kindly excuse us."

Surely the Minister will agree, that in cases of that character and for goods that are in general use in nearly every commercial office, the firms concerned should get the necessary permits to import free of duty?

Mr. Lemass

What class of goods is the Deputy referring to?

Mr. Anthony

I did not care to give details but this referred to six dozen of paste. I will hand the communication to the Minister when I am finished. I could multiply complaints received by me in the City of Cork from week to week, about articles which are not manufactured in this country, or some of which are manufactured here, but which are not sufficient to supply demands. In these circumstances, I think the Minister should consider the desirability of admitting the class of goods I have referred to duty free, until such time as we are in a position to satisfy demands. There are other matters which I can take up with the Department, by correspondence or otherwise. I direct the Minister's attention to this provocative practice, if you like, where goods in everyday demand cannot be supplied by local manufacturers, so that an opportunity to import them free of duty should be given. That is a moderate request. Notwithstanding the Minister's threat I intend to go to his Department about these matters. I do not know if I will be put out of the office.

I also received communications from a number of persons who were employed in mills on the Shannon, complaining that they had lost their employment owing to the operation of the Shannon scheme and had received no compensation. I replied to these letters and pointed out that the Minister had already decided cases of this character on representations that were made to him from Clare and Limerick. I ask the Minister in cases where hardship has been created, such as occurred before the passing of the Cork Tramways Act, or where hardship has been created as a result of Government action to consider the desirability of setting up some sort of committee as was set up on the dissolution of the Cork Tramways and Electric Lighting Company to deal with that type of case. I do not think it would cost the country very much. It would certainly be a great benefit to men who have lost their employment through no fault of their own.

Mr. Lemass

This debate may be regarded as having unusual significance because, during the course of it, the veil was lifted slightly from the policy of the Opposition Party. For the first time to my knowledge during the course of the past four years we had an attempt made, however inadequate and however incomplete, to give us an indication of the viewpoint of the Party opposite upon important matters of Government policy. That attempt was made in the speech delivered by Deputy McGilligan, and because that speech was delivered in this debate I think to-day must be regarded as the most significant occasion in the history of the present Dáil. I am very glad to learn that my efforts to induce the Party opposite to give us an indication as to where they stand upon broad and important matters of public policy are at last bearing fruit. For the rest, we have had from speakers who addressed themselves to the Estimate, the usual mixed grill of matters, relevant and irrelevant, to which we have been accustomed on these occasions. That description applies particularly to the opening speech from the opposite benches delivered by Deputy Mulcahy. The Deputy had apparently worked very hard preparing a lot of statistics and acquainting himself with a number of facts to deliver himself of, but with all these statistics he forgot to tell us what he set out to prove, and certainly did not prove anything. He reminded me of a mouse in a revolving cage who works very hard and very energetically, but succeeds only in staying where he is, no matter what energy he expends. Deputy Mulcahy's statistics and facts ranged over a large number of commodities. He started with cement, then passed on to eggs, oranges, boots and shoes, and he got mixed up for a time, but not for long, with artificial fertilisers. He concluded with a reference to wearing apparel and commodities of that description. I was particularly interested in his reference to eggs, because apparently eggs are of considerable importance in the minds of the Deputies on the opposite benches. Quite a number of the speeches referred to eggs, but Deputy Mulcahy it was who got the brilliant idea of comparing the price of Saorstát eggs in the London market with the price of Chinese eggs. I could understand the price of our eggs in London being compared with Danish, Dutch or Polish eggs. Such a comparison would be a natural one, because the principal suppliers of the English market are Denmark, Holland, Poland and ourselves, and in any event there is a certain similarity between eggs coming from these countries and eggs from this country. I can understand Deputy Mulcahy not making that comparison, because it would not suit the particular point he appeared to be trying to make. The price of our eggs compares very favourably with the price of those other eggs. During the past few weeks, as Deputy Mulcahy could ascertain from the current issue of The Grocer, the price of Irish Free State selected eggs, which are 15 lb. to the great hundred, ranged from 7/9 to 8/3 per great hundred. The price of Dutch eggs, which are slightly heavier, weighing 15½ lb. to the great hundred, ranged from 7/6 to 7/9; and Danish eggs, which are the same weight as Dutch eggs, from 8/- to 8/6, while Polish eggs realised from 5/6 to 6/9. It will be seen, therefore, that any comparison of the prices we received for Irish eggs in London with prices received by other principal suppliers of that market could not support any argument that Deputy Mulcahy wanted to make, and so he went to China and tried to make a point against the Government on the ground that the price of Chinese eggs in London was higher than Irish eggs. That was Deputy Mulcahy's strong point on the question of eggs. For the information of the Deputy, who may not be aware of it, there is a slight difference of opinion between the Chinese and ourselves as to what constitutes a good egg. In Ireland a good egg is regarded as a fresh egg, and the fresher it is the better, but in China a good egg is an old egg, and the older it is the better. In China eggs are preserved for some time.

Mr. Corish

For elections.

Mr. Lemass

Oh, no, for some period. I understand an egg becomes marketable when it changes colour. When it becomes black it is saleable, but a black egg is not regarded as of very high value. In fact, the lowest price for Chinese eggs is in respect of black eggs. When they keep eggs a few score years longer they turn violet, and when violet they bring a slightly higher price than black eggs. When kept for a much longer period, say, three or four generations, they turn green, and if really green they fetch the top price in the market. It was that top price Deputy Mulcahy quoted. According to The Grocer, we are informed that Chinese eggs have been in moderate request and that quotations have been maintained. The green eggs fetched from 10/- to 10/9, the violet eggs from 9/3 to 9/8, and the black eggs only 8/8. This is the new piece of Cumann na nGaedheal propaganda against the Government—that we are not getting as much for our fresh eggs in the London market as the Chinese eggs are fetching. Perhaps if we kept them as long as the Chinese and developed the methods they practised for 1,000 years, then by the next century we might be able to compete with the Chinese in that special market.

Mr. Anthony

Green, white and yellow eggs.

Mr. Lemass

For the time being we are content to export fresh eggs, and we are quite satisfied if we can get, as we are getting, for our fresh eggs a price slightly higher than is secured by our principal competitors there—the Dutch, the Poles and the Danes. That is the position at the present time. Deputy Mulcahy twice tried to attribute to me the statement that the Spanish market was more valuable than the British market for eggs, and twice I corrected him. Then he withdrew the allegation that I had made the remark, and proceeded to make a speech on the basis that this remark had appeared in the columns of the Irish Press. In regard to the quantity of eggs which we can dispose of, the Spanish market is much less important than the British market. We can dispose of a larger quantity in the British market than in Spain, because our imports into Spain have been regulated by quota, but the price secured in Spain was slightly higher than the price secured in Britain, and the prospects of extending the market in Spain, when the temporary difficulties which have been holding up the trade have been removed, are very good. Deputy Dillon has been making his usual point about the difficulties which arose in securing the release of the foreign exchange in Spain to enable our exporters to be paid. He will be glad to hear—and I am paying him a compliment, when I express the opinion that he will be glad to hear— that the arrears which have been outstanding in respect of eggs exported have been paid. I shall deal later with the matter of the Spanish agreement, which agitated Deputy Mulcahy and Deputy Dillon equally, to whatever extent it is possible for me, having regard to the fact, of which Deputies were informed last week, that negotiations are at present in progress between ourselves and the Spanish Government.

The matter of the price of cement was also raised. It was raised last week, and the week before, but the position in relation to it is one that can be easily understood by anyone who is familiar with the conditions that have prevailed in the cement market during the course of the past few years. There has been intense competition. Certain continental countries were competing with one another on what appeared to be an entirely uneconomic basis in this market. As I repeatedly pointed out, Danish cement was being sold here at a price much below that at which it was being sold in Denmark. Belgian cement was being sold at a price much below the price in Belgium. Similarly German cement was being sold here at a price much below the price at which it could be sold in the country of production. That situation was bound to end sometime. In fact, it ended this year when these Continental suppliers of this market got together and decided amongst themselves the price they were going to charge us and the extent to which each of them was going to supply the market.

When that situation arose, the price of cement was bound to increase. It has been increased. I am not accepting the present price as a reasonable price or as an economic price. I am not accepting the amount of profit secured by the distributors as reasonable, but the explanation of the increase is that which I have given, and not the explanation as given by Deputy Mulcahy, that the increase in price is an inevitable consequence of the institution of a quota. It is nothing of the kind. The increase would have arisen whether the quota had been instituted or not. The main, in fact the only, method by which we can make ourselves independent of these combinations of producers in foreign countries, in respect to the price of cement or of any other commodity is to produce it for ourselves, and I hope that this year we shall have a definite start made in the construction of the two factories which we have planned for the production of cement within the country.

Deputy Mulcahy tried to make some point, from the information which had been given to him in the preliminary returns from the Census of Production, that the purchasing power of the people was declining. There is no evidence of any decline in the purchasing power of the people. In fact, whatever evidence there is points in the opposite direction. There has been a definite increase in the purchase of many classes of commodities, and it is particularly noticeable that there has been a very definite increase in our total purchases of commodities which may be classed as luxuries. I do not know where Deputy Mulcahy got his figures relating to boots and shoes. He said that there was in 1933 a decline in the total value of the boots and shoes purchased.

General Mulcahy

From the Minister's published statistics.

Mr. Lemass

I do not think so.

General Mulcahy

Oh, yes.

Mr. Lemass

I think the Deputy must have totted up his totals incorrectly. Certainly I could not get the same result as he got. In any event, I want to impress on Deputy Mulcahy that he will not get any reliable figure which could be taken as representing our requirements of any commodity by adding together our imports and our production in one year. All sorts of factors arise, that may inflate or deflate figures of either production or imports of a single year.

General Mulcahy

I gave it for two consecutive years.

Mr. Lemass

Quite, and the Deputy having taken it for two consecutive years, will have realised that our requirements in boots and shoes appear to be increasing. There has been no evidence of a decrease, and, in fact, whatever evidence there is, is that the demand is increasing. I think that that in itself is a natural development and that it would have taken place even if my assertion that the purchasing power of the people is increasing were not correct. There is a tendency to use a lighter type of boot or shoe than was worn some years ago. That tendency is affecting a larger number of people every year, with the result that the total number of pairs of boots and shoes used in each year is generally higher than in the previous year.

I shall deal with some of the minor matters that were raised at a later stage. I want to get on to what are the most important points that occurred, mainly in the speech of Deputy McGilligan. Deputy Morrissey ranted a bit, but perhaps he will excuse me if I leave him until I have disposed of Deputy McGilligan. Deputy McGilligan attempted to express what I might describe as the philosophy of his Party in the matter of protection. He wandered a bit now and again, but generally he gave it as his point of view, that the protective policy of the Government was to be condemned for three main reasons—firstly, he said, because it was doing the country no good; secondly, because it is taxing the people of the country; and, thirdly, because it prevented a more satisfactory kind of tariff policy being put into operation. Let me deal with the third point first. Deputy McGilligan argued strongly with Deputy Donnelly against the idea of proceeding with the development of our industries, by methods of protection or otherwise, irrespective of consequences.

Now, nobody can say with any degree of certainty what are going to be the consequences of the industrial development drive that is taking place at the present time. We are fully informed of the consequences of ignoring our industrial possibilities, and Deputies who are influenced by Deputy McGilligan's remarks should bear this in mind, that there is complete historical information as to the consequences on this country and its people of a policy of ignoring its industrial possibilities and of concentrating upon the production of agricultural produce for exportation to Great Britain and securing our requirements of industrial goods from outside our own borders. That policy has been tried and has been condemned, condemned not merely in the minds of thinking men who have given close study to the question, but condemned by popular opinion, not once but many times. It is a policy contrary to the general conception of what an independent Ireland should attempt to achieve, but in any event its material results on our population, on the standard of living of our people and upon the resources and wealth that are available to the people: upon their productive capabilities and upon their morale have been such that nobody could possibly contemplate, in cold blood, restoring that policy into operation again.

Deputy McGilligan stated, however, that under the policy of the previous Government tariffs were applied in a much more sensible manner than they are being applied now, and said that these tariffs were successful. He gave the House an example of what he called a successful tariff, a tariff of 15 per cent. ad valorem imposed in 1926 on boots and shoes. He advanced that as a successful tariff. It is his example—not mine. When we come to consider whether or not a tariff can be regarded from any point of view as successful we must, first, ask, ourselves what constitutes success. Surely, the success of a tariff must be measured by its effects in increasing the internal production of the goods tariffed, and in increasing employment in the production of these goods. I agree fully with the point of view expressed by Deputy McGilligan that nobody will attempt to justify tariffs on the grounds that they increase the profits of manufacturers or enable a small group of manufacturers and their families to enjoy better conditions of living than they had previously. The acid test of the effectiveness of any tariff is its results in increasing the production of the goods tariffed, and in increasing employment in the production of these goods.

Now, on that basis—and I take it from Deputy McGilligan's remarks that it is accepted on both sides of the House—how can this tariff on boots and shoes imposed in 1926 be regarded as successful? Deputy McGilligan contended that their policy in relation to tariffs was superior to ours, that it gave better results to the country, and he gave as the supreme example of the successful tariff policy of the previous Administration this tariff on boots and shoes. When that tariff was imposed in 1926 there were 887 people employed in the boot and shoe factories of this State according to the census taken in that year. These factories were producing between them considerably less than 10 per cent. of our total requirements of footwear. Two years after that tariff had come into operation, this successful tariff which is advanced here as being symbolical of the wisdom of the whole tariff policy of the previous régime, the total number of persons employed in the manufacture of boots and shoes in this country was 959 or 72 more. In the course of two years, 72 more people had been put into employment in that industry. The total number of factories had not been altered, while the total production of boots and shoes was still under 10 per cent. of our requirements in footwear. By 1931, five years after that tariff commenced to operate, there were 1,097 people employed in the industry, an increase in five years of from 887 to 1,097, and the industry was still producing less than 10 per cent. of our requirements. Is there any Deputy who, applying any test, would regard that as a successful tariff? In 1932, this Government took charge, and there are now employed in that industry 4,500 people. Five new factories are being established this year, and by this time next year we will have 5,000 employed in the industry. I submit that that industry is as efficient now as it could have been under any system of development. I agree that in some of the newer factories the workers may not be as fully trained or as completely efficient as they are in other countries, but taking the average output per individual worker in the Saorstát factories and comparing it with the average output per individual worker in British factories and making due allowance for the smaller size of the units existing here, the industry is as efficient as we could reasonably expect it to be in the circumstances.

We had reference made to the fact that a particular firm in Kilkenny paid a dividend of 25 per cent. on its ordinary shares this year. A very false picture of the situation in the boot and shoe industry could be conveyed by a mere reference to the profits earned by one firm. It is possible in any industry, in any country, for an individual concern by adopting particular methods of production or because of the abnormal efficiency of its management or of its equipment to make profits much higher than the average, and that may be the explanation of the fairly substantial profits earned by this firm. But it ought to be said here that the 25 per cent. to which reference was made was the dividend distributed upon the ordinary capital of that firm which has a rather unusual financial structure in so far as the ordinary capital represents a very small proportion of the total capital invested in the business and the profits earned, although large, were not sufficient to enable 25 per cent. to be distributed on the whole of that capital. I think the firm made profits which, if they were made generally throughout the industry, we should have to regard as much too high; but, in fact, the other firms engaged in the industry have not been making profits to that extent, and have, in fact, been representing to me that in certain lines competition is becoming so keen that some concerns are likely to show losses. They have been urging me to restrict the entry of new firms into the industry. We have not taken any positive steps to secure that, and, in fact, as I have stated, five new concerns are coming into production this year.

Mr. Dillon

All that ordinary capital is held in England?

Mr. Lemass

So I understand. That is another objectionable feature.

Mr. Dillon

It is on that that they get the 25 per cent.

Mr. Lemass

Let us take the question of price which was one of the matters to which all the speakers opposite made reference in the course of this debate. There are three ways by which, in the circumstances of this country, it is possible to control the prices charged by the manufacturers of tariffed goods. The first is by securing the development of sufficient internal competition to ensure that the making of undue profits will not be possible. That is the most desirable one. Secondly, by securing definite undertakings from the manufacturers of the goods as to the prices they will charge, and, if they depart from those undertakings, removing or reducing the protection afforded to them. Thirdly, by means of a system of price control such as the Control of Prices Act provided for. We have it represented here, however, that widespread profiteering is taking place. I must say that very little evidence to that effect has been produced by any speaker, and very little evidence to that effect is, in fact, available. There are in some industries, no doubt, reasons to fear that the prices could be reduced and that profits are being kept up unduly, but over the great range of industries, there is no evidence that undue profits are being secured, and I think we have sufficient safeguards against the possibility of undue profits to make us quite easy in our minds concerning the situation. In the majority of industries, competition is going to settle that. It is true that during the initial period of our development the element of competition was absent. It is now appearing in most industries, and in others there are either price agreements in operation, which are being observed, or the machinery of the Prices Commission, when it is improved a bit, will be quite capable of dealing with the situation.

I have frequently had to complain about the hypocrisy shown by certain Deputies on the opposite benches who criticise the Control of Prices Act, the Prices Commission and the work of the Controller of Prices. The Control of Prices Act which is now in operation is not the Bill which I introduced into this Dáil. Deputies opposite should take in full their responsibility for the watering down of that measure to an extent which impaired its effectiveness. It was members of their Party in the Seanad who faced me with the alternatives of accepting their amendments or having the Bill held up for 18 months. If they have now changed their minds upon the question of the nature of the machinery that should exist in this country in the circumstances of our times for the control of prices of protected commodities, or of articles which are necessary for the sustenance of life, then let them admit that they have changed their minds, and promise me their full co-operation when I come to the House this year with the Bill for the amendment of the Control of Prices Act. In any event, let me say that there has been no increase in prices. The index of the prices of industrial products shows that the level of prices in 1934 was just about the same as it was in 1931. Taking the range of products that are brought into account when the cost of living index is being prepared the retail prices of those products are lower to-day than they were in 1931. It is, therefore, entirely incorrect to condemn the tariff policy which is now in operation, on the grounds that it has involved a substantial increase in the cost of living or a substantial rise in the general level of prices. The cost of living has not increased as compared with 1931. It is lower than it was in 1931.

Mr. Morrissey

Ask any housekeeper.

Mr. Lemass

Ask any housekeeper. Take the present prices, which are published in the Irish Trade Journal, of the various commodities which are the concern of the average housekeeper, and compare them with the prices in 1931, and you will find that the present prices are lower. Some commodities have gone up in price, but taking the general level of prices there has been no increase. Taking it all round, there is a definite decrease in respect of commodities which are taken into account when the cost of living index is being prepared.

Mr. McGovern

The price of agricultural produce has gone down.

Mr. Lemass

The price of agricultural produce has gone down? I am anxious to find out the attitude of the Party opposite upon this question of the price of agricultural produce. On one day, they are bewailing the lot of the farmers, telling us how hard it is for the owners of agricultural land to carry on because the prices of agricultural produce are too low, and the next day they are bewailing the lot of the townspeople who have got to pay higher prices for this agricultural produce than they had to pay last year. On which leg do they want to stand permanently? They cannot have it both ways. There is only one way of improving the position of the farmer, and that is by widening the gap between his cost of production and the price at which he sells his produce. You can do that in two ways. One is by reducing his costs, and we have done that. We have halved his annuities; we have given large subventions to the payment of his rates, and by various measures adopted through the Department of Agriculture his costs have been brought down. If you still want to increase the margin, there is only one way to do it, and that is by increasing the price of his produce, and you cannot increase the price of his produce except by raising the price of those goods to the consumers of them. Are you prepared to stand for that? No; you are not, because on every occasion upon which a measure designed to that end was introduced in this House, you voted against it.

Mr. Dillon

What about raising the price to the British consumer?

Mr. Lemass

Then, completely forgetting the attitude they had taken up, they come in here again bewailing the lot of the farmer and urging that something should be done to improve the price of his produce.

Mr. Bennett

Might I suggest one other way of increasing the price of his produce?

Mr. Gibbons

The price of cereals has gone up substantially since 1931.

Mr. Lemass

Deputy McGilligan said our tariffs are not doing any good. There are 70,000 people employed in the protected industries in the Saorstát. Does Deputy McGilligan think it is going to be any good for this country to wipe out that employment by clearing away the protection which has made those industries possible, and shutting up those factories again as factories were shut up when he was responsible for the conduct of our industrial affairs?

Mr. Morrissey

70,000 people are employed as a result of your policy?

Mr. Lemass

70,000 people are employed.

Mr. Morrissey

As a result of your policy?

Mr. Lemass

No, but the great majority of them since 1932, and all of them are in employment because our policy is now operating.

Mr. Dillon

Oh!

Mr. Donnelly

And you would continue our policy if you came back to-morrow.

Mr. Lemass

They have said so. On many occasions they have declared that to be their intention, but it was made clear here why they said so. They said so, not because they believed in that policy, but because they believed they would not get votes if they had not made those declarations. They had no other purpose except a Party purpose. It was an attempt to secure that their total disappearance from the political life of this country might be delayed a year or two.

Mr. Donnelly

Stick to your own plan and do not mind ours.

Mr. Lemass

Deputy McGilligan came back to his original calculation in respect of unemployment. He gets amazing results from those figures when he addresses himself to them. I think he could prove, if he tried, that there is nobody employed in this country. He gets amazing results by a series of ingenious devices which I think worthy of examination. He first assumed that the total increase in employment which took place since 1932 was 25,000. He got that figure from some place which I do not know; where he got it is a mystery to me. But he did build up his whole case on the basis of that figure, which is a purely notional one, and entirely contrary to the facts. Between 1932 and 1935, the average number of persons employed weekly in occupations insurable under the Unemployment Insurance Acts increased by 36,000. That is not the total number of persons who got new employment; it is the increase in the number of persons employed each week. If we were to assume that every person employed was employed for the whole year, then the total increase in employment over those three years was 36,000. I ask Deputies to keep that figure in the back of their minds, because Deputy McGilligan based his case on the figure of 25,000, and, as Deputies will see, he was only two-thirds right. He said, "I can account for the whole of that 25,000—21,000 in housing, 3,000 in relief works, and 1,000 in the sugar factories"—and there was no more employment. Very simple. He proceeded to take the figure for the sugar factories first, and made a rather elaborate calculation. "There are 900 people employed the whole year round, and 2,500 employed for ten or 12 weeks; let us average it out, and say 1,000 per day for a year." Deputies however, did not perhaps notice that he did not do quite the same thing in relation to the figure for persons employed in housing. He took the figure for one day in May, 21,000, and assumed that 21,000 were employed for the whole year.

Mr. Dillon

He quoted the Minister as assuming it.

Mr. Lemass

No, he quoted the figure I gave as representing the number employed in May, 1934, but he did not average that out, although house-building, as all Deputies know, is a seasonal employment. It can only proceed at certain times of the year.

Mr. Dillon

The Vice-President denies that categorically. When asked if it was a seasonal employment, he said it was not.

Mr. Lemass

It is seasonal employment, and the number employed at certain periods is more than double what it is at other periods.

Mr. Dillon

The Vice-President denies that.

Mr. Lemass

Does the Deputy deny it?

Mr. Dillon

I am not in a position to say, but the Vice-President denies it.

Mr. Lemass

In so far as relief schemes are concerned, the greater part of the employment on relief schemes has been deemed not to be insurable under the Unemployment Insurance Acts. Perhaps I should emphasise that it has been decided by me that it is not insurable, but my opinion has been contested, and the matter may go for final determination in the courts. But so far as the calculations of Deputy McGilligan are concerned, Deputies can take it that the great majority of the persons who have been employed on relief works paid no contribution to the Unemployment Insurance Fund.

Mr. Dillon

He only referred to 3,000 on relief works. Surely they pay—3,000 out of all the people on relief works?

Mr. Lemass

Deputy Dillon is again falling into Deputy McGilligan's trap— 3,000 per day. Relief works are generally conducted over certain periods of the winter. They are not continued all the year round all over the country, but Deputy McGilligan based his figure on the assumption that that work was spread out the whole year round, and took the figure of 3,000 as representing the full employment for the year. He assumed that the actual number of persons who paid these contributions did so in respect of the same number of days as contributions would have been paid by 3,000 persons if they had been employed all the year round.

Mr. Morrissey

The Minister will land himself somewhere in a minute if he keeps on that line.

Mr. Lemass

These figures proved what? In any event, they were all designed to explain away the substantial increase in employment that has taken place. Deputies cannot ignore the fact that there has been that increase in employment. There are more people in employment in the Twenty-Six Counties constituting the Free State now——

Mr. Morrissey

And more unemployed.

Mr. Lemass

——than there ever were since the Free State was established, or since any records of employment have been kept. We will deal with the question of unemployment in a minute. Let us get one concrete fact set right— the actual number of persons employed. And that is a record. It is a record for this year; it was a record for last year; and it was a record for the previous year.

Mr. Dillon

And you have borrowed £6,000,000 in the last two years to expend on public works largely to get these people into employment.

Mr. Lemass

Six million pounds were borrowed by local authorities for a purpose for which it was quite legitimate to borrow —for the erection of waterworks, for the provision of sewerage schemes, as well as for housing and all sorts of public works. It is a normal function of public authorities to borrow money for those purposes.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear. And to employ these people—a most excellent business.

Mr. Lemass

As a matter of fact, on works of that kind, the proportion of the total cost which goes in wages to workers is very low, and where the Government spends money for relief schemes, we try to get an 80 per cent. labour content, if we can. Not a single one of these schemes for which local authorities are borrowing money would qualify for a Government grant under that condition.

Mr. Dillon

Housing schemes employ 21,000.

Mr. Lemass

They are not assisted out of relief grants.

Mr. Dillon

No, but they are out of housing grants.

Mr. Lemass

The Prices Commission has been made the subject of attack. I want to pay a tribute here to the members of the Prices Commission, both the permanent members and those who have come in to assist at special investigations, and who have done so without reward, and as a public duty, and who in my opinion, have performed a very valuable service for this State, not merely in investigating prices charged for particular commodities, but in instituting, for the first time, in the minds of the public, and particularly in the minds of manufacturers, the conception of the State as having authority to regulate prices in the public interest. That is a new idea. It was so new in 1932 that the Party opposite could not accept it. It has now come to be regarded, however, as a normal function of the State to institute general supervision over prices, and to back up and support that supervision by action to regulate prices wherever abuses can be shown to exist. The Prices Commission has been effective in the narrow limits of the powers which the Oireachtas decided to give it. It has kept down prices in many industries, and it is because it has been effective that we are proposing to extend its powers, to give it a wider field to operate over, and to take away a number of the shackles which were very mistakenly, in our opinion, imposed on it by the Oireachtas in 1932.

We have had this ranting about the reserved commodity procedure. A number of reserved commodity Orders have been made and there is no control over the activities of the firms which got licences under these Orders, so Deputy McGilligan says. There is one such Order. One reserved commodity Order has been made, and one licence has been issued. Under that licence, the most complete degree of Government control and supervision of the activities of the firm concerned has been provided for.

Mr. Dillon

One only? I thought there were thread and tyres Orders.

Mr. Lemass

No reserved commodity Order has been made in respect of tyres. The only one was in respect of cotton thread, which Deputy Dillon is so fond of. The Deputy must not interrupt me again, or I will lose the thread of my remarks.

Mr. Dillon

I beg the Minister's pardon.

Mr. Lemass

In the case of cotton thread, we made that Order, and issued the licence. Under that licence, we control that company, completely and entirely, in respect of the prices of its products, and the control exercised there is designed to ensure that the price at which that thread is sold ex factory at Westport will not exceed, in like conditions of sale, the price at which it is sold by the British Thread Mills ex factory at Leicester. I have no evidence that that undertaking has been departed from, and if Deputy Dillon will produce any such evidence, I shall be glad to get it. If it is proved to my satisfaction that that company has departed from the terms of its licence, that licence will be revoked.

Mr. Dillon

Here is the document.

Mr. Lemass

The Deputy has quoted a number of figures here, and my answer to those figures is that the conditions of sale imposed on the Westport Company are similar to the conditions of sale imposed at Leicester.

Mr. Dillon

I have been peppering the Minister's Department with letters which he has been courteous enough to answer.

Mr. Lemass

When the Deputy accuses the Minister of trying to blackmail him——

Mr. Dillon

That was in connection with another matter.

Mr. Lemass

I thought the Deputy was reserving to himself the sole right to make allegations of that kind. Deputy McGilligan proceeded to get on to the ground of general theory, and told us that the leaders of the great industrial nations, Great Britain, the United States, France, and Italy, had declared that economic nationalism had not been a success. It is a lot of good for us to know that the Prime Ministers and Presidents of great industrial countries, the prosperity of which depends on their continued exportation on a large scale of industrial goods, condemned economic nationalism when adopted by us or by nations similarly circumstanced to ours.

What is the alternative to it? That is what Deputy McGilligan forgot to tell us and it is because he forgot to tell us that I said that the veil had been lifted from the policy of his Party only slightly. What is the alternative to the policy in operation, to the policy of economic nationalism? It may not be a success in the United States of America with its vast resources and its limitless possibilities of doing an export trade. But does that mean that there is any alternative policy for us? I concede at once that in an ideal world in which there were no separate nations and in which there were no differences of race, language or religion that complete freedom of trade would be the ideal arrangement——

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear.

Mr. Lemass

——and these conditions would be accompanied by complete freedom of movement for the population.

Mr. Donnelly

Utopia.

Mr. Lemass

Yes, that would be an Utopia, but we are dealing with world conditions, with existing conditions and not with dreams or Utopias. We have got to deal with the fact that in the minds of individuals there is a strong desire to preserve the existence of these nations and to promote the welfare and well-being of the various tribes and groupings of the population in different parts of the world. That is a fact that you cannot ignore and these economists who write text books ignoring it end in futility. Our task here is to promote the well-being of the people living in this island. It is of little advantage to us to know that they would possibly be better off in America of England or some other country to which they would have to move if complete freedom existed and if no separate nations were recognised.

Mr. Dillon

They are moving to England in very large numbers now.

Mr. Lemass

We are concerned here with the preservation of the Irish nation and with securing the well-being of the people who constitute this Irish nation. That is our aim and there is no alternative to our present policy. If Deputies opposite think there is they must tell us what the alternative is. They cannot possibly hope to get away with it at a general election on the basis of asking the people for a blank cheque. We want to know where they stand and I warn them if they want to secure their own political existence in this country they will have to define their policy. They cannot get away with it without giving us their alternative.

Mr. Morrissey

Better produce the plan.

Mr. Lemass

Yes, our plan was to end unemployment. It was stated in the quotation that Deputy McGilligan read that we were to end unemployment. If we produced here the food, the clothing and the housing that we require we could end unemployment but we are not producing the food, the clothing and the housing that we require. We are not producing here the materials which constitute the housing. If we were able to-morrow to organise production so that we could supply all our requirements in food and clothing, all the materials that go to the making of clothing and all the goods that are necessary to meet our requirements in housing and the things that produce these requirements with the necessary tools, we would be able to abolish unemployment for the time being.

Mr. Dillon

What would we have to do before we could bring all our emigrants back?

Mr. Lemass

We could not do these things at once because of the difficulty of organisation and finance and because of the difficulty of breaking down the prejudices which exist in the minds of those who control the capital necessary to develop the nation. That was our biggest task. One thing I claim in which this Government has been most successful has been in removing the prejudice against Irish industry and in bringing about faith in its stability and continuity in the minds of those who are able to make capital available for investment here. In the past week three industrial issues of shares were over-subscribed.

Mr. Dillon

By whom?

Mr. Lemass

By the public, and remember that has happened in a country in which less than ten years ago a Banking Commission set up by our predecessors reported that it was utterly impossible for any Irish enterprise to seek to get capital by a public issue of shares in Ireland. Deputies will realise the change which has taken place in the outlook of our people when they look back over the past 12 months and note the successful flotation of companies that has taken place over that period. We undertook to do that, but we never promised the people to abolish unemployment in eight months.

Mr. Morrissey

You did.

Mr. Lemass

I defy Deputy Morrissey to produce any statement in which we gave that undertaking.

Mr. Morrissey

You actually made that promise yourself.

Mr. Lemass

We did state that we were going to pursue a policy designed to have that end and we have operated it to the success which it has achieved. Our efforts have been acclaimed by the people on every occasion on which they have been consulted. The people have given us encouragement to proceed along the lines we are following. Deputies have heard Deputy Dillon speak about the Spanish agreement. I am not going to talk now about the import arrangements made with Spain. That was a good treaty, and it would have worked out satisfactorily only for the difficulties that arose on the Spanish side in making available foreign exchange for the payment for exports. The difficulties that arose there have now been adjusted and these difficulties will not, I hope, arise in the future again. Deputy Dillon tried to convey the impression that by some arrangement I had given to one firm a monopoly to import oranges. The Deputy said so. That followed his assertion that he was accusing the Government, and myself in particular, of political corruption. I presume he intended to convey that the one firm to which I gave a monopoly is a firm that could be described as political supporters of the Government. The firm of Connolly, Shaw & Co. is English, and I do not know anyone connected with that firm.

Mr. Dillon

I named no firm. I do not know whether it is desirable in this House to name firms or individuals who have no spokesman here. I think it is better that persons or companies be not named here. I will give the name of the firm to the Minister in private.

Mr. Lemass

There are 193 importers of oranges, and, so far as I am aware, any of those importers can secure the fulfilment of the conditions which qualify them to import those oranges direct from Spain. There is an Irish shipping service operating between this country and Spain on which any firm importing oranges can get accommodation for their imports. The allegation that we made that arrangement for the purpose of securing a monopoly for one particular firm is entirely unfounded. I might take occasion on another Estimate to deal with the matters raised by another Deputy in connection with the Transport Act and in particular with the proposed acquisition by the Great Southern Railways of the services of the Galway Omnibus Company.

Deputy McGovern talked about our trade relations with countries other than Great Britain, and said that we were importing eight times as much as we exported to those countries. We can end that if Deputy McGovern can tell us of any country in which we can purchase oil, timber, maize, tea and tobacco and that is prepared to purchase our goods in return. If you take these things, oil, timber, maize, tea and tobacco out of our imports from countries other than Britain you will find that the rest does not matter. I have also been asked to state the manner in which Relief Vote grants for mineral development have been expended. This money is expended in the first place to secure the relief of unemployment in these particular areas in which it is expended, and secondly, it is expended in a manner designed to facilitate the permanent development and working of our mineral resources in such areas. The results secured up to date have been very satisfactory indeed. There were other matters raised in the course of the debate to which I would like to refer, but perhaps another occasion will arise for doing so. I am sure we will have all these matters over again upon the general Budget debate, and therefore I am now concluding my remarks.

Mr. Morrissey

There is just one question I would like to put to the Minister——

Mr. Lemass

I am anxious to get this disposed of to-night. I will deal with the Deputy's question on another occasion.

Amendment—"That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration"—put.

The Committee divided: Tá, 30; Níl, 60.

Tá

• Bennett, George Cecil.
• Broderick, William Joseph.
• Burke, Patrick.
• Byrne, Alfred.
• Cosgrave, William T.
• Costello, John Aloysius.
• Davitt, Robert Emmet.
• Desmond, William.
• McGovern, Patrick.
• McMenamin, Daniel.
• Morrissey, Daniel.
• Mulcahy, Richard.
• Nally, Martin.
• O'Leary, Daniel.
• O'Neill, Eamonn.
• Dillon, James M.
• Dolan, James Nicholas.
• Doyle, Peadar S.
• Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
• Finlay, John.
• Keating, John.
• Lynch, Finian.
• McGilligan, Patrick.
• O'Reilly, John Joseph.
• O'Sullivan, Gearóid.
• O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
• Reidy, James.
• Rice, Vincent.
• Rogers, Patrick James.
• Rowlette, Robert James.

Níl

• Aiken, Frank.
• Bartley, Gerald.
• Blaney, Neal.
• Boland, Gerald.
• Bourke, Daniel.
• Brady, Seán.
• Breathnach, Cormac.
• Briscoe, Robert.
• Concannon, Helena.
• Corbett, Edmond.
• Corish, Richard.
• Corkery, Daniel.
• Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
• Crowley, Timothy.
• Derrig, Thomas.
• Donnelly, Eamon.
• Dowdall, Thomas P.
• Everett, James.
• Flinn, Hugo V.
• Flynn, John.
• Flynn, Stephen.
• Fogarty, Andrew.
• Geoghegan, James.
• Gibbons, Seán.
• Goulding, John.
• Hales, Thomas.
• Hayes, Seán.
• Houlihan, Patrick.
• Jordan, Stephen.
• Kehoe, Patrick.
• Kelly, James Patrick.
• Kelly, Thomas.
• Killilea, Mark.
• Kilroy, Mark.
• Kissane, Eamonn.
• Lemass, Seán F.
• Little, Patrick John.
• McEllistrim, Thomas.
• Maguire, Ben.
• Maguire, Conor Alexander.
• Moane, Edward.
• Moore, Séamus.
• Moylan, Seán.
• Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
• Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
• Norton, William.
• O'Briain, Donnchadh.
• O'Grady, Seán.
• O'Reilly, Matthew.
• Pearse, Margaret Mary.
• Rice, Edward.
• Ryan, James.
• Ryan, Martin.
• Ryan, Robert.
• Sheridan, Michael.
• Smith, Patrick.
• Traynor, Oscar.
• Victory, James.
• Walsh, Richard.
• Ward, Francis C.

Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Doyle and Bennett; Níl: Deputies Little and Smith.

Amendment declared lost.

Vote 57 put and agreed to.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.40 p.m., until 3 p.m. on Thursday, 30th April, 1936.