I raised with the Minister for Local Government yesterday certain aspects of the decline in population indicated by the recent census returns and asked him whether in view of the facts that were clear now, he would set up an inquiry under the Tribunals (Evidence) Act to inquire into the trend of population in this country from, say, 1929 up to the present date. The Minister declined to institute such an inquiry. I want to-night to get clear as to certain facts and then to show certain reasons why such an inquiry should be held and be held at once.
There are certain things that are not in dispute between myself and the Minister. The first is that the lowest point in our population curve was reached in 1930 and that after the middle of 1930 the population began to rise. That is not disputed. There was a dispute between the Minister and myself yesterday as to the point at which the population, which began to rise in 1930, began again to fall. I argued yesterday from figures given by the Minister, I think on the 6th November, that the population began to fall again between 1934 and 1935. I waived that point. We will take the more detailed figures now given by the Minister in answer to a question on 11th November. From these figures given by the Minister on the 11th November it is now established that the population of the Free State began again to fall before 26th April, 1936, with the additional fact that it continued to fall after that date. That is now definitely established on the detailed information provided by the Minister. It is necessary to establish what happened to bring about a decline in our population again before the 26th April, 1936, after it had begun to rise from 1930. The Registrar-General provided estimates every year after 1930 of what the population was. The Registrar-General estimated, before he knew anything of what the census returns of 1936 would show, that in the year ended June, 1932, the population had increased by 17,000. Again, he estimated that by June, 1933, it had increased by 19,000. that by June, 1934, it had increased by 20,000 and that by June, 1935, it had increased by a further 20,000. The Registrar-General's estimate of what happened in the year ended June, 1932, when he estimated that 17,000 was added to the population, was substantially correct because, in the light of the census figures, as the Minister admits, 16,690 persons were added to the population in that year. For the following year, instead of 19,000 being added, the Minister states that 12,132 were added and, for 1934, instead of 20,000 being added, only 9,108 were added. In the year ended June, 1935, instead of 20,000 being added, only 634 were added. In the following year, instead of an increase of about 20,000, there was a reduction in the population of 8,176. It is definitely established that something hit this country before June, 1933, which interfered with the position as estimated by the Registrar-General and his staff and that that continued to interfere in an increasing way with the population—a way that was not visioned by the official staff who deal with vital statistics. As a result, instead of the population being 3,033,000 in June, 1935, as estimated by the Registrar-General it was about 60,000 below that figure.
I have asked the Minister to set up a body that will examine into what happened by which, after waiting for so long and getting a turn of the tide in regard to population, the tide should, within two years after the turn, be driven back, so that, in five years after the turn of the tide, our population should again be falling. The Minister says he will not inquire into that. One thing stands out from the figures quoted by the Minister—that is, that one factor affecting the fall of our population to-day is emigration. In the year which ended June, 1928—the first year in which the Minister and members of his Party came back to respect Parliamentary institutions and to assist in a Parliamentary way in the work of the country—the number of emigrants from this country was 31,305. By the year ended June, 1932, emigration had stopped, and there was a net immigration of 3,000 persons. In four years after the Minister and his Party came in here, instead of an emigration of 31,000 persons a year, we had 3,000 persons of an increase, so far as emigration figures are concerned. We have now passed on four years to 1936. With the Minister and his Party in power, instead of immigration to the extent of 3,000, we have a progressive worsening of the situation. In the year ended June, 1936, 23,700 persons emigrated. I shall come to another point later and deal with another factor apparently operating to reduce the population. There are two reasons why an immediate inquiry is necessary: (1), the importance of the subject matter and its bearing on the industrial and social well-being of the country, and (2), the fact that the Government, through their Press and through their propaganda, are not only endeavouring to misrepresent the position, but are actually denying that these facts exist. They are declaring to the public that, ever since they came into office, the population of this country has been increasing. As part of that policy, they are placing obstructions in the way of Deputies who want to acquaint themselves with facts which are ascertainable by them. The President and the President's principal propagandist, when he was engaged at that work, directed themselves particularly to this question of emigration and the fall of population as a test of the well-being of the people and of good government. On the 27th January, 1932, the Government Press made the following statement in a leading article:—
"The ultimate test of a Government, as until a decade ago no Irish Nationalist would have thought of denying, is the moral and material welfare of the people under its rule. A declining population is not evidence of welfare; it is not a proof of good government. On the contrary, as every national leader from John Mitchel to Arthur Griffith consistently asserted, it is an evidence of misgovernment, the result of neglect of the economic interests of the people. For three generations, the fact that Ireland alone among civilised nations had a falling population was the most damaging argument against British rule."
From many platforms throughout the country, the President reiterated that. In February, 1932, he said in Dingle:
"We have clear evidence of bad government in the emigration of our people to America and other countries."
He repeated that at Cahirciveen:
"We have clear proof of bad government in the emigration of our people to the States and to parts of the British Empire."
He made calculations of what it meant to the country to lose these people by emigration and, at Kilkee, he said:
"These people (who emigrated) were wealth-producing and their value to the community economists reckoned as between £500 and a £1,000 each, so that, by their leaving, the country had been deprived of wealth which economists estimated at from £125,000,000 to £200,000,000.
The President's Press worked out that these people would produce wealth to the value of £125 per head. Let us take the President's estimate and apply it to the 53,790 persons who have emigrated, according to the Minister's return of 11,000 annually since his Government came into office. That is the net emigration which has taken place to Great Britain, as the census returns show since the Fianna Fáil Government came into office. These emigrants are producing wealth to the extent of £6,750,000 every year for Great Britain. The capital loss to this country is £26,000,000. That position is being accentuated at the present time. The Minister declines to set up a body that will examine into it.
The whole propaganda of the Ministers, when speaking to the farmers on the one hand, or the industrialists on the other hand, is to the effect that the farmers can afford to put up with present disabilities, because there is a growing market here that they will have secure for themselves and complete control of; and industrialists are being urged, at what the Ministers, I am sure, will admit is a very rapid rate, to invest their capital and set up a fabric in this country to meet an ever-growing population. There is the outstanding fact that, in spite of the most emphatic statements by Ministers that we have a growing population, we have really a decreasing population. In view of the statements of Ministers and in view of their plans and promises, I think they should be all the more eager to find out what is wrong with the situation and how it can be remedied.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce is not content with the estimates of the Registrar-General for the past few years. Where he was estimating that 20,000 people were being added to the population, the Minister went one better and insisted that at least 30,000 people were being added to the population every year. Anybody viewing the situation impartially and interested in the social and economic well-being of the country could scarcely refuse to subscribe to the setting up of an inquiry into the matter. The position is that the Minister not alone denies such an inquiry, but his Press declares emphaticaily that the population is increasing. The Irish Independent on the 28th August, after the publication of the census figures for 1936, wrote:
"The decline which began with the famine of the 40's still goes on, though at a pace now greatly retarded."
When a Dublin daily paper makes that statement, the Government Press vilify and criticise and deny. The only thing that is wrong with the Irish Independent statement is that it did not say what happened in between, possibly because the census returns did not show it at the time. It did not show that the falling population stopped in 1930 and four years of Fianna Fáil policy had actually sent it back, the first year of Fianna Fáil arresting the rise.
The Government Press emphatically state:
"In every year since the Fianna Fáil Government took office the number of people in the Free State has steadily risen."
The census figures point out that emigration is a large factor in the matter. I put a question to the Minister to-day asking for the number of births in a dozen different areas between the years 1921 and 1935. The Minister told me that they were published in the returns of the Registrar-General and I could go and look for them. I do not know whether this is a particularly sensitive matter with the Minister, but Deputies within the last few days, even in respect of school attendance, have been able to get statistics over a certain number of years. I brought in to the Minister a thing he never saw before. I brought him in the information he referred me to in order to find out the statistics I required.
