Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 14 Apr 1937

Vol. 66 No. 6

Committee on Finance. - Vote 69—Employment Schemes (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:—

Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £750,000 chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Márta, 1938, chun Scéimeanna chun Fostaíocht do chur ar fáil agus chun Fóirithin ar Ghátar, maraon le cotas riaracháin.

That a sum not exceeding £750,000 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1938, for Schemes for the Provision of Employment and the Relief of Distress, including cost of administration.

Mr. J.P. Kelly

I understand that grants for minor relief schemes are allocated to districts according to the figures revealed by the census of the unemployed, taken in the early part of the year. I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that there should be some relationship between the grants and the numbers actually unemployed in a district. The census of the unemployed is taken in the early part of the year, and the grant is allocated at the end of the year. In some districts the number unemployed alters considerably during the interval. I have one area in mind, an isolated portion of Meath, sandwiched in between two neighbouring counties where there has been no land division, no peat development, and the unemployment position has not materially changed during the past few years. When the census of the unemployed was taken it was found that a number of men were working for a short period on a grant, but when grants came to be allocated these men were idle, and although registered in the labour exchange and representations made to the Department, the rules and regulations could not be got over and consequently that area did not get the amount of grant to which it should be entitled. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary could do something in future to ensure that an amount of money would be kept over until the winter season and that it should not be earmarked for expenditure until he found out where unemployment at that particular time was most acute.

While offering that suggestion to the Parliamentary Secretary I say that the minor relief schemes have conferred immense benefit on a section of the community that had hitherto been neglected, and I suggest that a continuance of these schemes would be appreciated. Two Labour Deputies who spoke on this Vote suggested that the Government had failed to find a solution of the unemployment problem, because the Parliamentary Secretary stated that it would take £15,000,000 to put all who are unemployed into employment for 52 weeks in the year. The Labour Deputies should know that nothing could be further from the truth. I wonder if they allow themselves to become the echo in the wood for Deputy McGilligan. Of course, we have a solution of the problem, but it has not been put fully into effect yet.

Mr. Morrissey

Will the Deputy say why?

Mr. Kelly

The figure of £15,000,000 will be less as the position improves.

Mr. Everett

Or as they emigrate.

Mr. Kelly

The figure was more than £15,000,000 last year, and I imagine that it was still greater when this Government took office. The Labour Party should be the first to admit that. The figure will continue to decrease as the position improves. I say that the figure is decreasing and that the position is improved. We have evidence of it if Deputies would only admit it. There is evidence of increased tillage, evidence of land distribution, evidence of the development of the bogs. All these schemes are as yet unfinished. Then we have the industrial revival in which operations have only commenced. If we take the figures in connection with unemployment stamps sold the year before this Party came into office and compare it with last year there is proof that the position is improving steadily. In 1931 unemployment stamps to the value of £532,000 were sold while in 1935 similar stamps to the value of £856,000 were sold.

General Mulcahy

Is the Deputy forgetting that the cost of the stamps was increased?

Mr. Kelly

In that matter alone there was an improvement represented by nearly £300,000 making due allowance for the increased cost of the stamps.

Mr. Morrissey

An increase of 6d. per stamp.

Mr. Everett

The man who works for two days pays for two stamps.

Mr. Kelly

The rotational system has come in for some criticism. At the outset, I say that the rotational scheme is fundamentally sound. If the Government is not in a position to give six days' work to the workers, the next best thing is four days or three days, as the case may be. There is nothing wrong with that system, and I find that it has worked successfully in respect of works under local bodies or under Government Departments where a full daily wage was paid. The question of its adaptability to minor relief works however might possibly be reconsidered in the light of the experience gained by the Department during the past year. There have been some complaints, and I myself have received complaints. The big grievance, as I see it, is that the remuneration is only maintenance and is nothing approximating to a family wage for a working day. When a married man finds that he has worked a certain period and has not got remuneration approaching a family wage, he feels that he has a grievance. We know that the Government accepted responsibility for providing work or maintenance for all working men. Until our policy is put into full operation, it is not possible to provide work for all our workers for the 52 weeks of the year.

Mr. Morrissey

What has become of the unemployment plan?

Mr. Kelly

The plan will not be in full operation for the next couple of years, and the Deputy is well aware of that. When the plan is in full operation, our men will be working for the 52 weeks of the year.

Mr. Morrissey

They will not be here then.

Mr. Kelly

You will not be here then, I am sure.

Mr. Jordan

He might be, but he will be where he is now. He will still be in opposition.

Mr. Morrissey

I will be here, anyway.

Mr. Kelly

The dole, as we know it—unemployment assistance — was given as a pledge of the Government's sincerity when they stated that they would give maintenance to the people, but when that dole was put into operation, we had all classes in the community raising their voices in condemnation of its demoralising influences. Therefore, it was necessary to consider some other scheme to take its place, and the rotational system was substituted. If hardship was inflicted on the workers by the introduction of the rotational system in respect of minor relief schemes, I think the Parliamentary Secretary will be the first to admit that any defects in that connection should be remedied. I submit that it is worthy of his consideration. Of course, the prospects for the coming year are much brighter, and I believe the Parliamentary Secretary will not be faced with the responsibility of providing for so many unemployed next season. He can go forward in the knowledge that the principle of the rotational system is sound, and that if changes are to be effected, they should be effected before the system is put into operation next season.

I think the Parliamentary Secretary could afford to experiment and to attempt to bring the scheme into consonance with the requirements of heads of families who may be working for short periods on minor relief schemes. I know there are difficulties, but these difficulties are not insurmountable. I know also that no relief scheme can be perfect. The very fact that it is a relief scheme proves that it is not an employment scheme, but a substitute for an employment scheme, and, as such, will never be perfect. It may not be possible financially to drop the scheme at the moment, and, if it were dropped and some other scheme substituted, that substituted scheme would have its defects also. No relief scheme can be perfect, but I must say that I have sufficient faith in the creative genius of the Parliamentary Secretary to believe that he can evolve a scheme which will eliminate all the existing grievances.

Mr. Morrissey

There is one thing nobody on this side can object to, and that is the faith which Fianna Fáil Deputies have in their leaders. Deputy Kelly is satisfied that the lot of the unemployed is going to be all right. His faith in the creative genius of the Parliamentary Secretary tells him that the unemployed are in perfectly safe hands and the outlook for them in the future is particularly bright. What justification has the Deputy for saying that? The Deputy and his colleagues should be apologising to the unemployed of this country. They are the Deputies who went before the unemployed five years ago, and told them that they had considered the whole question of unemployment here, that they had planned how they would put those men at work, that that plan had been tested by men who knew how to test it and found completely watertight, and that, in the words of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, with a few of the important industries, they would put so many men into employment that there would not be enough idle hands in the country. The President told us that if there was a Christian Government in power in this country, we would have no unemployment. The President told us that we had a solution for the unemployment problem such as no other country in the world had. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, speaking in his own constituency in York Street in 1932, said that within twelve months of the Fianna Fáil Government coming into office, there would be no unemployed in this country. Those are the Deputies who come here after five years in office and tell us that the plan is in operation, but that the full effects of it will not be seen for a couple of years. That is not what you told the people in 1932 or 1933.

The plan is in operation. What has made the biggest impression on the numbers of unemployed in this country since Fianna Fáil came into office? The numbers of workers, young men and women, who have fled from the country to Great Britain—at least 80,000 in four and a half years. The Deputy talks about the industrial revival and the Minister claimed three years ago that there were over 300 factories started in the country. At that rate of progress, I suppose there must be 900 new factories started now; but, notwithstanding that, notwithstanding the fall in population and notwithstanding the operation of the period orders which deem thousands of people to be at work, whether they are at work or not, they have never yet been able to bring the figure below 90,000, although, in the last 12 months, over 28,000 boys and girls left this country through Saorstát ports, not to talk of those who went from Derry and Belfast.

Deputies talk about unemployment. We are told that the unemployed are safe in the hands of the Parliamentary Secretary. The creative genius who is in charge of the unemployed is the man who said in this House that anybody on this side who would stand between the unemployed man and a wage of 21/- per week would be torn limb from limb. To such straits has the Fianna Fáil policy brought the workmen of this country that, in the opinion of the Parliamentary Secretary, if anybody dared to stand between them and the wage of 21/- per week, they would be torn limb from limb. In these circumstances, we are told by the Minister for Finance that the country is prosperous, that the signs of prosperity are everywhere around us. The fact that thousands of our best citizens are fleeing from a country supposed to be prosperous is the most devastating commentary that could be made upon that statement in the Budget.

Deputy Kelly talks about maintenance. He says that if the Government did not provide work, they provided maintenance. They provide 6/- per week for single men—less than 1/- per day. Does the Deputy contend that that is sufficient to maintain any human being in this country? They provide 12/6 for a man with a wife and from four to ten children in a rural area or in a town with a population of less than 7,000. Does the Deputy contend that, with the cost of living soaring, as it has been soaring for the last three years, it is possible for a man to maintain himself, his wife and children on 12/6 per week? Is the Deputy aware that the stone of flour, which could be bought by that workman or by his wife three years ago for 1/6, is to-day costing from 3/- to 3/2—an increase of more than 100 per cent.? Would the Parliamentary Secretary or the Deputy tell the House how many stones of flour would be consumed by the ordinary family living in the country in a week if they could afford the purchase? Will the Deputy or the Parliamentary Secretary agree with me that a married man with a family of five would use four stones of flour per week, if they could afford it, in those households in which the bread is baked at home? Whereas that flour could be purchased for 6/- three or three and a half years ago, to-day it is costing from 12/- to 12/6. I should like some of the Deputies to try maintenance for a week on the rates which they, apparently, consider enough for these men. Has the Parliamentary Secretary any conception of the increase which has taken place in the prices even of the necessaries of life for the last two or three years? Those prices are still soaring. The relief given in the Budget to-day will mean very little to the people concerned.

The Deputy says that the rotation scheme has proved to be fundamentally sound. It is the most fundamentally unsound scheme, from every point of view, that was ever started in this country. Has the Parliamentary Secretary considered what the married man getting four days' work receives at the end of the week to maintain himself and his family? He receives 16/-, less insurance. That is under a scheme that is fundamentally sound! A single man receives 12/-, less insurance. Even under the schemes that are run by, or with the co-operation of, the local authorities, there is not a great deal of difference. For three days' work a man in my own county receives 13/7 net, and for four days' work 18/7. The first charge on this sum of 13/7 or 18/7 in the case of men living in urban areas is from 3/6 to 5/- for rent. Having paid that rent under a scheme which the Parliamentary Secretary has described as "fundamentally sound," what is left to buy flour at 3/2 per stone and butter at 1/5 per lb.? We need not talk about meat now because, so far as the unemployed are concerned and so far as a good many of the employed workers are concerned, meat is beyond them. They cannot afford to buy it. Deputies ought to face up to the realities of the situation. I am satisfied that Deputy Kelly knows what the position is quite well. Notwithstanding all the industries established, notwithstanding all the extra tillage which is claimed, notwithstanding all the moneys borrowed by local authorities, notwithstanding all the experiments made by the Parliamentary Secretary, notwithstanding all the efforts of the Committee over which he presided for nearly three years, we are faced with the position that, in a country with a falling population, with from 70,000 to 90,000 of our boys and girls gone to Britain in five years, with thousands laid off and deemed to be at work under period orders, with hundreds of claims suspended from day to day for investigation, and with all the other subterfuges, you still have 93,000 persons signing the register. In face of that and in spite of the fact that the young people are going to Britain in thousands, the Parliamentary Secretary, after sitting on novel schemes for three years, confesses that he was unable to spend the money voted by this House last year, of which local authorities had to find practically one-third. That is dealing with unemployment in a serious way! I attended a meeting in my own town on Monday night, and one of the matters under discussion was this flight to England. One unemployed man asked who could blame the people for going to England, and indicated that, if they had their fare, thousands more would go. Deputies know that that is quite true. Neither Deputy Kelly nor any other Deputy can get up and truthfully say that there is any plan in the possession of this Government which is going to solve unemployment. Their major policy is cutting across the solution of the unemployment problem. Whatever efforts are made by one Minister to provide employment are being offset by the general policy of the Government. Those are the facts. Deputies cannot deny them.

Deputies, I am sure, will admit that when the Unemployment Assistance Act was passed through this House the rates of benefit provided under it were, God knows, small enough. Will any Deputy on any side of the House contend that the rates which are the same to-day will purchase anything like the same amount of food as that rate would purchase when the Act was passed in 1933? Not a single Deputy would contend that. I ask Deputies to face up to those facts and not to try to talk along the lines travelled by Deputy J.P. Kelly. Deputy Kelly has not succeeded in deceiving anybody who is dealing with this unemployment question, except perhaps himself. With all respect to the Deputy, I do not really believe that he himself believed what he was saying when he said he had absolute faith in the genius of the Parliamentary Secretary to deal with unemployment. I do not believe it for a moment, because the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance has not given any cause to prove to any Deputy in this House or to show the country why anyone could have any faith in his ever doing anything towards solving the unemployment question in this country.

I ask Deputy J.P. Kelly and the Parliamentary Secretary to say here and now whether the plans which we were told about in 1932 ever did exist? If they did exist let them be produced to this House and to the country. If that plan does not exist, Deputies on the Government side ought to admit that they succeeded in deceiving many sections of the community in 1932 and 1933. Many sections of the community have suffered as a result of that deception. But there is no section of the community that has suffered more —and, as far as I can see, are likely to continue to suffer—than those who are looking for employment and cannot get it. We heard £15,000,000 mentioned. Deputy J.P. Kelly thinks that conditions have improved as far as employment in this country is concerned. I wonder does he really think so? I wonder does any member on the opposite side of the House believe that? I wonder is there any member of the Labour Party who believe it? I do not believe there is, because the members of the Labour Party are fairly close down to what the position is. Many Deputies on the Fianna Fáil Benches are as close down to what the position is as we on these benches are. A great many of them are in as close touch with the workers and with the poor as we are. When they meet the people day after day in their constituencies they must know the extraordinary position to which the unemployed have been reduced. I want to say this frankly—and it is not anything to be proud of—that to my own knowledge in my own town, which is a typical provincial town in this country, I have seen greater poverty and more widespread poverty during the last winter than I ever saw in my own time. I have confirmation of this statement from the officers of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. These are the facts.

Unlike the Deputies on the opposite benches, I never did say that it was an easy matter to find work for every unemployed person in this country. I never said so. If it were so easy a matter, then every country in the world would have work for the people looking for it. The difference between myself and my colleagues on this side and Deputies on the opposite benches is this—that we never attempted to deceive the unemployed into believing that we could provide work for every man and woman in the country by simply waving the magic wand of Fianna Fáil over them. Deputies on the opposite side told us that they were going to start factories in every village and cross-roads within 12 months after the general election in 1932 and 1933. I do not expect any Government to do impossibilities. But that is exactly what Deputies on the Government side of the House told the people in 1932 and 1933 they were going to do. That is what the President himself said. That is what the Minister for Industry and Commerce and every member of the Party and follower of the Party through the country told the people they were going to do. Now, having failed to do these things, they still want to bluster and pretend that they have succeeded. The fact is they have not succeeded and they know they have not. The result of the activities of the Party opposite over the last five years has not been to reduce unemployment in this country but to increase it. Every person in the country knows that. There is no Deputy living down the country who does not know it. I would go so far as to say there is no Deputy here in Dublin who does not know it. There are very few Deputies, and I am glad to say very few of the unemployed, who now believe that there is any hope of the Party opposite providing employment for the unemployed.

I confess I have not the same faith in the creative genius of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance as Deputy J.P. Kelly has, nor do I believe in that sympathetic regard for the unemployed which Deputy Kelly attributes to him. I am only judging the Parliamentary Secretary by his record in dealing with unemployment. I am judging him by the standards he would set for the unemployed and by his statements in this House and his actions outside the House. We have had his standard of 21/- a week. Just imagine the Parliamentary Secretary believing that unemployment was so bad in this country that if any man dared to stand between an unemployed man and this wage of 21/- a week, he would be torn limb from limb. If that is the position the unemployed must be reduced to a terrible state indeed.

Deputies will remember the wages that were originally fixed for the Shannon scheme in Limerick. Some Deputies here gave us outside support for the stand we took up at that time. There was a time when these Deputies would not stand for a minimum wage of 32/- a week. Now they are standing for and supporting a wage of 21/- a week. I invite anyone to say whether there is any comparison as to the amount of food which could be purchased at that time £ for £, and the amount that can be purchased to-day. Deputies themselves know quite well that what could be purchased for 14/- four or five years ago would to-day cost £1. The Parliamentary Secretary may smile, but that is the reason why to-day in his own constituency in Cork there are 1,300 men on strike. That is the reason why there are to-day in Dublin 12,000 men on strike. It is because the cost of living is soaring, and the wages are chasing after the cost of living. That is a fact and the Parliamentary Secretary knows it is a fact.

Every Deputy here who knows anything about actual conditions and who has any knowledge whatever of the workers and of trade union conditions knows that the soaring cost of living is the main justification for the demands which are being made by trade unions in this country for increased wages to-day. If the cost of living is driven up wages must follow. Men must live. That is all right for those who are in employment and who have sufficient sense to be members of trade unions. They can band themselves together as one man, and when they have a just cause they can throw not only the full strength of their unions, but the full weight of public opinion behind them. But it is different in the case of those who are unemployed. Some of those have got no work during the last four or five years except very casual work. These men are not banded together in any organisation, and they cannot make their case and their fight as one man. I invite Deputies on the opposite side to go down and tell the people who are trying to maintain themselves either on rotation work or on unemployment assistance that they are well able to do it and that the rotation scheme is fundamentally sound. I say that it is the most fundamentally unsound scheme that was ever started in this country.

Mr. Kennedy

I do not for a moment stand over low wages, but it would be very interesting if a census were taken of the actual rate of wages paid in agriculture for the last ten years. I believe it would show a very low rate of wages all over the country, and it would be a revelation. In the course of his remarks Deputy Morrissey referred to unemployment assistance and the rate of wages for a single man and a married man. Whilst I leave the theme of Deputy Morrissey's speech to be dealt with by the Parliamentary Secretary, I want to say in passing that 6/- or 12/6 a week is better than nothing a week—the state of things that obtained five years ago —and that the winters for the unemployed are not so hopeless now as they were during the reign of Cumann na nGaedheal, because there are certain periods of work to look forward to, and conditions have improved yearly since Fianna Fáil took office.

Coming to one of the aspects of this Vote, namely, that dealing with minor relief schemes, the Parliamentary Secretary expressed the desire for as many minor relief schemes as possible to be forwarded for consideration. Whether I interpreted his speech rightly or not, I took him to indicate that there was likely to be a shortage of these schemes. Speaking for the part of the country which I represent, I can assure the Parliamentary Secretary that we have enough schemes relating to cul-de-sac roads, bog roads, secondary roads and minor drainage schemes to keep his Department going for the next ten years. I think in the system he is working out that there should be a period definitely fixed in which schemes should be submitted so that they can be examined and possibly done in the current financial year or the following financial year. I think there should be a definite date indicated.

Another matter I would like to emphasise is that the Board of Works should pay more attention to drainage schemes, particularly in the summer. Drainage schemes have been submitted periodically from various parts of the country. We are always told that during the peak period of unemployment in the winter it is impossible, because of the conditions obtaining, to do these drainage schemes. Then summer comes on and they cannot be done because of the increased employment in particular areas. They are not done and the schemes remain hanging over, and in this way they are sent from year to year to the Board of Works. I contend that there is an absolute necessity to do some of these schemes because they are of great utility. I might illustrate my point by referring to one scheme on which there was £50 expended by way of drainage. It happened to be a dry winter and it was possible to do it. The spending of that £50 was very beneficial because it exposed turf in a bog area, and turf has been available ever since in a place where up to that they never suspected there was turf available.

The contention is put up to the Department that when these schemes are done there is no provision made for maintenance. They say that the Board of Works have to take into account the question of maintenance when the work is done. I put forward the suggestion now that if these schemes were done periodically, say every five or six years, their utility would be maintained. The same system might well be applied to everything that comes under the term of minor relief work.

As regards the rotational system, it has got a lot of criticism here. I am not going to say anything for or against the rotational system. It is on trial.

Mr. Morrissey

It has been convicted.

Mr. Kennedy

I would like to say that in my own county—I want to draw special attention to this—I saw too literal an interpretation of the rotational system. I saw a main road in the making. Men were sent into the quarry to do two days' and three days' work and the plant on the roadway had to discontinue. The period was increased and still they could not feed the plant and eventually the men had to be put on whole-time employment. There should be an examination of the actual requirements before there is an application of the rotational system. I am aware of the benefits of the rotational system and there are places where it is the best that can be done, but I contend there are circumstances here, there and everywhere when there is no need for its application. That applies more particularly where there is a work of urgent necessity.

We heard a lot from Deputy Morrissey about the emigrants to England. He told us nothing about those who were disillusioned and have come back. He did not make any reference to the numbers of emigrants who were on relief in England. So far as I can gather from talking to some of those who have returned, the employment question is not as rosy as we are led to believe.

Mr. Morrissey

It makes my case all the stronger.

Mr. Kennedy

I submit that a lot of those who leave the country go in the spirit of adventure, and they would go no matter what conditions obtain here. I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that certain works of utility should be done periodically and then the question of maintenance will not arise.

Mr. McGovern

I have a few words to say upon the way this Vote is being administered. I have listened carefully to the statement made by the Parliamentary Secretary. He made his usual speech and asked for suggestions from Deputies. He said that any proposed schemes would get the greatest consideration and they would be judged on their merits. I would like to think the Parliamentary Secretary was sincere, but I am sorry to say that from my own experience of how this money is being administered I think it has been used for the benefit of one political Party rather than for the public service for which it was originally intended. In the first place, what type of men are appointed as gangers? Is it a coincidence that they happen to be either the chairmen of the Fianna Fáil clubs or the most active members of the clubs? Would the Parliamentary Secretary stand for that sort of appointment of gangers? Is the Parliamentary Secretary responsible for the appointment of gangers, and is he responsible for the fact that the most fitting and deserving men are passed over in many cases? Would the Parliamentary Secretary agree that, where it would be possible to name 100 —well, perhaps not 100, but at least 20 or 30—registered unemployed, it is right that a man in comfortable circumstances and with about £200 a year coming into his house is a suitable man for such a position? Does the Parliamentary Secretary stand over that?

Mr. Flinn

I should be very glad to hear of that case, if the Deputy will give me the particulars.

Mr. McGovern

I shall give the Parliamentary Secretary all the particulars. This kind of thing has been going on year after year.

Mr. Flinn

But give me particulars of the cases.

Mr. McGovern

Well, when I send in recommendations, I must say that I always get a courteous letter in reply, but that is all that comes of it. I sent in details of suitable schemes that ought to be carried out, and time and again I recommended schemes that should be undertaken, but they were passed over because, presumably, the recommendations did not come from the right political quarter. They were passed over in favour of other schemes that, presumably, did come from the right political quarter. If the Parliamentary Secretary will look up his files, he will see how many proposals for such works I sent in, and that were, for one reason or another, allowed to lapse. Of course, I got a lot of promises to the effect that, when the money would become available, these schemes would get consideration, but it seems that, when the money did become available, the schemes never got consideration, except in a few instances which were not very important.

Is that a fair way to administer the public money, and does it make it any better for the Parliamentary Secretary to profess, in this House, to be a very impartial gentleman and even to tell the House that there were two Deputies Hugo Flinn—one a politician and the other a benefactor of the poor? Now, which of the Deputies Flinn is responsible for these things to which I have referred? I should like to hear the Parliamentary Secretary explain these things here, but I should much prefer that a public inquiry should be held in County Cavan into these matters, and if the Parliamentary Secretary grants that public inquiry, he will find out how the money is being spent and what the public thinks about it. That money should not be spent to cut up the people, but to relieve the unemployment problem, and it should be dealt out fairly.

There is another matter to which I should like to refer. The Parliamentary Secretary is anxious to get suggestions, and on many occasions suggestions have been made to the effect that drainage is a more useful work than making roads where there are already too many roads, as there are in some cases. Of course, I know that drainage cannot be done very well in winter, but some drainage could be done in the winter, and certainly a good deal of drainage could be done in the summer. Well, I think that all the minor schemes in the summer season should be filled so as in some way to balance the expenditure of money as between these two types of work. I do ask the Parliamentary Secretary to pay a little more attention in the future to recommendations that are sent to him, no matter from what side of the House they come. Otherwise, he is leaving himself open to the charge of corrupting the people.

Mr. Flinn

Perhaps I might be permitted to intervene for one moment, Sir. Deputy McGovern, in the most genial manner possible, has made the same speech that he made on a previous occasion, in which there were accusations of favouritism of one kind or another. Following that previous speech of his, I wrote to him and quoted to him the words he had used, and I asked him to substantiate his charges. I spent quite a long time trying to get out of him any shadow or scintilla of evidence that he had in his possession in support of his accusations, but he failed to produce any.

Mr. Morrissey

What is this, Sir?

An Ceann Comhairle

It is in Committee.

Mr. Flinn

As I was saying, Deputy McGovern failed to produce any evidence. I am asking him now, publicly in the House, to make good his charges in writing. There is no one more anxious than I am, if there is truth in a matter of that kind, to find it out and meet it, but reckless charges of this kind, by a Deputy who, on a previous occasion, failed to make good his charges, are disreputable charges. I am prepared to table in this House the correspondence which took place between the Deputy and myself. I am prepared to leave it to anybody to determine whether the Deputy stood over his charges when he had an opportunity to do so. I am prepared——

Mr. McGovern

Will the Parliamentary Secretary grant a public inquiry? Is he prepared to go before the public?

Mr. Flinn

The Deputy failed to produce one single scintilla of evidence, and he ran away from his charges.

Mr. Pattison

On this Vote for employment schemes, Sir, I want to join with other members of the House who have protested against this abominable and reactionary policy of part-time work. Many of us, of course, are inclined, from time to time, to lay all the blame on the Parliamentary Secretary. Personally, I do not blame the Parliamentary Secretary, and I am sure that, on more careful consideration, nobody else would blame him. He is, I feel sure, merely giving effect to the policy of the Government. It is the policy of that Government which promised the unemployed they had a plan by which they would be able to put all the unemployed to work immediately they got into office.

In connection with that plan, the President himself said that they had got to find a plan. I think it was in Cork that on one occasion the President said that unemployment was becoming such a menace in this State that it would destroy the State. He also said it was the duty of the Government of the day to destroy a menace of that kind. He said, further, that they had got a plan by which they proposed to end that menace. The Minister for Defence also, speaking on a debate on unemployment in this House in, I think, the November or December before Fianna Fáil came into office, said that they were very glad to know that there were so many people unemployed because, he said, "When we get over there"—pointing to the Government Benches—"we want everyone of them to do reconstruction work and all the work which we have in mind for the building up of our country." The Minister for Industry and Commerce said, in or about the same time, that not only would they be able to put all the unemployed people at home to work, but he was afraid that in order to fill up the vacancies they would have to send cablegrams to America to get home our kith and kin who had gone out there to seek a livelihood.

I think it is about time that we had some admission from the Government as to whether there is really a plan or not. Deputy Kennedy made a very weak apology on the subject this evening.

County councils and local authorities generally throughout the country have been passing resolutions protesting against the system of rotational employment for more reasons than one. First of all, they regard it as of very little benefit to unemployed ratepayers in their area. Secondly, they cannot get the standard of work expected, particularly where subsidies have to be found from local rates for the provision of the work. Even in the President's own constituency, the Clare County Council, composed of a large majority of supporters of the present Government, unanimously passed a resolution protesting against this reactionary system. I notice myself, in recent times particularly, a complete lack of that enthusiasm that prevailed in the Government Party in regard to the abolition of unemployment. I should like to see a continuance of that enthusiasm with some effect given to it. I listened the other evening to an explanation given by the Parliamentary Secretary in regard to an incident that occurred in the distribution of certain documents. I have not seen them and I do not know what they were but, in any case, I, like other Deputies, expected that there would be one addressed to myself, but I was informed that they were only for members of the Government Party.

Mr. Flinn

You could have got them in the Library.

Mr. Pattison

I do not agree with the explanation of the Parliamentary Secretary to the House, because, personally, I have sent in schemes and many of them are yet awaiting attention. I am sure that many other Deputies also have not been behind time in sending in schemes for the provision of work in various districts and they are yet unattended to. In one particular case, I might remind the Parliamentary Secretary that quite a number of farmers who have always tilled their lands and paid their rates and annuities have written several times very strongly on the matter, but yet the road to their holdings is left in the same impassable condition.

Another aspect of this Vote which I should like to mention has reference to aged unemployed workers. In bold, bad England and in the black North workers who reach the age of 65 can enjoy State pensions. On the other hand, in this State of ours we find that under our Christian Government they are arraigned before courts of referees and told that if they do not walk four miles to relief schemes, and four miles back in the evening, they can do without any unemployment assistance. I think that is a matter the Government should rectify, and the Parliamentary Secretary should take steps to ensure that people who have served their country to the best of their ability up to the age of 65, or even 55 years, if the State is not prepared to provide pensions for them as neighbouring States have done, should at least be accorded some humane treatment and should be allowed to continue to receive unemployment assistance until they are given suitable work.

Much has been said about the general low standard of wages. There is no need for me to stress that point. I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary heard all about it before, but I should like to remind him that many of the workers employed on relief schemes do not get 21/- or 24/- a week. In many cases they get only 12/- or 15/- per week, out of which they have to pay national health insurance. In many cases they are upset to such an extent with their claims at the labour exchanges that they may be a fortnight or three weeks without getting any money. Representations are made to the county councils to pay them weekly, but I think that the Department responsible should have taken some action to see that the county councils arranged to pay wages weekly to men employed on these schemes. That is all I desire to say on this Vote. I hope the Government will make some earnest effort to give effect to the promises that were so lavishly given before they took up office.

Mr. Smith

It is only reasonable, I suppose, to expect that members of the Labour Party would be fairly critical of the rotational employment scheme. It is only reasonable, I suppose, to think that they should get up in this House and denounce such employment, but I think that it is only right, too, that one should expect from members of the Labour Party recognition of the fact that members of this House—I am sure, on all sides—are just as anxious as they to see that every unemployed man gets, not rotational work, but work for the 52 weeks of the year, at full time, if that is possible. The Parliamentary Secretary, in introducing his Estimate, referred to the cost of a scheme of public work for the provision of whole-time employment for all the unemployed. We have not heard members of the Labour Party say whether the provision of such a sum of money to give such employment is possible.

Mr. Davin

You are letting the cat out of the bag.

Mr. Smith

We should like to hear the members of that Party directing their attention to that aspect of the problem. While, as I say again, all of us would desire to see a scheme of full-time employment introduced to provide for all men who are genuinely seeking work, if, and when, that is difficult or impossible, and when members of the Labour Party challenge us to say whether or not we stand for this rotational scheme, I, for one, without hesitation, either here or outside, say that I whole-heartedly and absolutely support such a scheme. I am prepared to defend it with whatever limited ability I possess. I am prepared to defend the principle, and I see nothing wrong with it, of asking men who, perhaps through no fault of their own, become unemployed and who, as a result of their unemployment, become a charge on the State, to give to those on whom they are a charge some return in the way of doing work that would not otherwise be done by the State or by the local authority.

Mr. Pattison

Something for nothing.

Mr. Smith

Now, you made your case, and it was not a great one. That is my answer to members of the Labour Party on that criticism. It naturally is a political Party that must come in here and denounce the Government for the reason that the Government has failed, as they say, to provide a scheme of full-time employment for all those who are on the register and in receipt of unemployment assistance benefit. Deputy Pattison referred to the fact that he was not in the House when the Parliamentary Secretary gave his explanation as to how certain forms——

Mr. Pattison

I said I was, and I am not prepared to accept it.

Mr. Smith

I beg the Deputy's pardon. When the Parliamentary Secretary proceeded to explain how those forms came into our possession, Deputy Pattison pointed out that he and some other Deputies had made quite a number of recommendations to the Board of Works for certain schemes in their counties in which they were interested, and that so far those schemes had not materialised. I can assure Deputy Pattison that, as far as the Parliamentary Secretary's invitation to members of his Party for assistance in this particular way in the provision of suitable schemes in certain areas from which he had no applications is concerned, it is no blessing at all to any Deputy. It certainly means a good deal of extra work, and work which most Deputies— I think I can include myself amongst them—are not seeking. All of us have the same experience as Deputy Pattison in regard to applications which we have made over a number of years, and in spite of further requests for more schemes we find that in some cases hundreds of schemes which we have recommended over that period have not yet, for one reason or another unknown to me in so far as they refer to my county, been dealt with.

Mr. Pattison

I might say that I did not allege that there was preferential treatment in the allocation of schemes. I would not for a moment allege that.

Mr. Smith

What is left of the charge after that is not worth much.

Mr. Davin

He did not say it.

Mr. Smith

I understand, A Chinn Comhairle, that a Deputy from my own county—I was in the House only during portion of his speech—made a charge in which he accused the Board of Works of using public money for the purpose of corruption. He, too, made the charge that schemes recommended by him had not got the attention and recognition which he expected them to get. Deputy McGovern, as they say in his part, is no youngster, and I am sure that he can take his mind back to a period when a previous Government was in office here. I am sure he can take his mind back to the system that was then in vogue in regard to allocating and supervising works of this character, and I am sure that, even if he will not concede it, the general public in our constituency certainly will concede that there is no comparison whatever between the organisation which exists in the Board of Works to-day and the scheme as it was then carried out under that previous administration. During that period men were selected at random and given sums of money with which to carry out any kind of scheme they liked, in any part, in any parish, or in any area—men who had absolutely no knowledge whatever in the selection of works, and cared little except to use that money for purposes which must have been obvious to everybody. Deputy McGovern now comes along with this allegation, when you really have an efficient organisation—I would say, a very efficient organisation—under which the individual concerned makes application to the Board of Works, the Board of Works inspect the scheme, make their report upon it, give their estimate for carrying it out, and when the scheme of works for the county is complete it is then forwarded to the county surveyor and his staff. How you can knit into that scheme and that allocation an allegation of political corruption beats me. But, of course, when a man of the type of Deputy McGovern—who is, perhaps, incapable of taking his mind back even ten years, who is perhaps incapable of selecting a scheme which would stand a chance of being sanctioned by any responsible person—stands up to make a speech, one never knows what he is liable to say.

There is one point in connection with the selection of works to which I should like to refer. In making applications for minor drainage schemes it is pointed out that no minor drainage scheme can be approved in any area where a drainage scheme under the Arterial Drainage Act has been carried out, or in any area from which an application for such a scheme has been lodged with the local authority. I could understand an objection to the selection of a minor drainage scheme in an area from which an application for an arterial drainage scheme has come, but where an arterial drainage scheme has been carried out, and where a rate has been paid by the occupiers of land who had benefited as a result of such a scheme, I cannot for the life of me see—if there are any small tributaries inside that drainage area which have not been included in the major scheme— why a scheme should not be approved in such an area. I am prepared to concede that, if there was any question of doing through State funds a service to one section inside the drainage area as against another, there might be some point in that, but you might have a certain area in which you had an arterial drainage scheme and where some of those little tributaries had not been opened up— there might be 10, 12, 15 or 20 holdings affected—and I cannot see how injustice to anybody would arise if the Board of Works approved a scheme in such an area.

As far as an area from which an application had come to a local authority is concerned, judging by the time that you have to wait for an arterial drainage scheme sometimes even in that you have a very severe hardship because of the failure of the Board of Works to carry out the scheme under those circumstances. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to examine that matter, because I have on many occasions been disappointed through the failure of the Board of Works, in accordance with those regulations, to have a minor scheme in such areas.

There is also a further point to which I should like to refer. It is one of the really solid objections to the rotational scheme, but it does not come from the point of view that has been taken by the Labour Party. In many counties, I am sure in all counties, you sometimes have in certain arterial units a very small number of unemployment assistance recipients. At the same time you have a great deal of very useful and desirable work requiring to be done.

Because of the concentration of the unemployed around the little villages and the smaller towns, you will reach a period, I believe, in the near future when all types of useful work for rotational purposes will have been done. Yet, in areas where you have not work enough to justify the introduction of a rotational scheme, you will still find work of a useful nature not likely to be done, and for which no provision can be made under the rotational system. I can see the difficulty of providing money for an area of that kind, apart from putting into effect a rotational scheme. It is very hard, however, to justify that attitude to those who are interested in having that kind of work done. The people who urge schemes of that kind want them carried out for two reasons. In the first place, they feel that it is better that men should be employed for a few days doing something rather than being idle. No harm is going to come to a man from doing a little work. In the second place schemes of the kind are going to be of permanent benefit in those areas. Where you have the requisite number of unemployment assistance recipients they can always say: "Well, we are never going to get any useful public work done if you are going to continue on that basis, and the position will be the same next year and is likely to be the same the year after." They will say that their bog is going to be left undrained and their bohreen unrepaired. I can see the difficulty, on the rotational basis, of getting over that difficulty because of the uneven distribution of unemployment assistance recipients. I hope that somebody with better judgment, and with more intelligence than Deputy Dillon accuses me of having, will think out a suitable solution of that problem.

I do not think that I have anything more to say, except to repeat that I got up to speak in case any member of the Labour Party would think that our silence on these benches was any indication of any fears or doubts we had in the matter of standing over and behind the Parliamentary Secretary on these rotational schemes. If the Parliamentary Secretary can give two, three or four days' work—the more days he can give the better we shall like it. We are living amongst the people and we know their views just as well as Deputy Pattison. We know the views of those who are engaged on these schemes as well as of those who have to make provision for the people in receipt of unemployment assistance. We are not in the least doubtful or the least afraid to face the public, or to stand over these schemes. They have been very well organised.

While Deputies are perfectly entitled to criticise this system of rotational work, I am surprised that any Deputy should stand up and allege that there is any political tendency in their administration. To anyone who opens his eyes and uses his intelligence the evidence is all against that. In my own county the evidence is all against such an allegation. I am entirely and enthusiastically behind the Parliamentary Secretary and the Government in their attempt to get from men who cannot find employment and who are a charge on the State some return for what they are entitled to get from the State.

Mr. Daly

There are a few matters which I should like to deal with on this Vote. The last speaker said that, on behalf of the people who have to find the money for the unemployed, it is the duty of the Government and of the Parliamentary Secretary to get some work out of the unemployed in return for the payments made to them: to get from them two days' work, or three or four days' work in the week, for the amount they receive. I had a number of workers in my constituency with me a few evenings ago. They were from the Fermoy district. They went to work on Monday morning last and were informed that the amount they would receive for the week's work. would be £1 less the amount of the stamp. That means that they are to receive about 19/6 for the week's work. Does the Parliamentary Secretary deny that?

Mr. Flinn

I am very much surprised to hear it.

Mr. Daly

And so was I. I heard here this evening that some of the men employed on those schemes had received only 12/-, 14/- and 16/- a week. Does the Parliamentary Secretary think that £1 a week is sufficient for a man, his wife and eight children? Does he think that he can support himself and his family on that? I wonder where has the great plan gone to? At the last general election the Fianna Fáil candidates, from their platforms, told the workers in my constituency that if their Party was returned to power they would provide them with 52 weeks' work in the year. Instead of giving them 52 weeks' work we now find that men who have been unemployed for five months are asked to work for 19/6 a week. The men have informed me that they will not work for that wage. I advised them to continue at their work until I had an opportunity of raising the matter in the Dáil, of finding out if it was true that the present Government required men to work five days a week, from Monday to Friday, inclusive, for 19/6.

Mr. Davin

I think 19/4 is the correct amount.

Mr. Daly

They told me it was 19/6. That is the amount that a man, with a wife and eight children in the village where I come from, has to live on. Out of that he has to pay 3/- a week rent. He is left with 16/6 to maintain himself, his wife and family. How is he going to do it? We heard a lot to-day from the Minister for Finance about the prosperity of the country. I notice that this Vote shows a decrease, as compared with last year, of £65,000. I suppose that is on account of the increased prosperity in the country. I agree that a lot of very useful work has been done with this money, but I must protest in the strongest way I possibly can against the rate of wages paid on these schemes. At the last election the Fianna Fáil Party told the workers that they had a plan for dealing with unemployment. Now, after five years, they are asking workers to work for 19/6 per week. If that is not a broken promise I do not know what is. It is not for political motives that I am dealing with this unemployment question. It should be a matter of grave concern to every Party in this House. But the Fianna Fáil Party, who have been in power for the last five years, told the people that they had a plan for dealing with unemployment. The President, when broadcasting to the Irish people in America on St. Patrick's Day, told them of the great plan he had for the housewives in this country and the comfort in which he was going to put them. To-day he sat alongside the Minister for Finance when he was making his Budget statement. What relief did the housewives and the other people in this country get to-day from the Minister for Finance?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy will have many opportunities of voicing his opinion on the Budget.

Mr. Davin

The plan is still there.

Mr. Daly

It is about time it was put into operation. What is the position of the wives of the workers to-day? How is a wife receiving 19/6 for her husband's week's work on a Saturday going to provide for her husband and herself and eight children? It is about time this plan was put into operation. Then we have the Unemployment Assistance Act under which some of these men who have been working on these schemes have been signing up. I know of unfortunate men in the town of Fermoy who are married and have large families and who receive only 12/- a week unemployment assistance, out of which they have to pay rent and keep their families. The regulations governing this Act are disgraceful. I have received numerous complaints of the treatment meted out to these unfortunate people when they go to sign up or when they go to get work on these unemployment relief schemes and of the abuse that they get from the officers in the employment exchanges.

Mr. Flinn

Has the Deputy brought to the knowledge of the Minister for Industry and Commerce complaints of abuse of that character to people by the officers?

Mr. Daly

I have not.

Mr. Flinn

The sooner you do the better. I do not believe there is a word of truth in it.

Mr. Daly

I am not going to do it. These complaints have gone to the Minister from thousands of men all over the country and they have got no satisfaction.

Mr. Davin

Are you aware that these officers are as badly paid and as badly treated as the men on the minor relief works?

Mr. Daly

I have no more to say on this Vote except to ask the Parliamentary Secretary if the statement is correct that these men in my area were told on last Monday that their wages would be 19/6 per week?

Mr. Davin

I congratulate Deputy Smith upon the courageous speech he made when he very candidly confessed to the House, for the first time from those benches, that the Government had no plan and that the Government could not, in his opinion, reasonably provide continuous work at decent rates of wages for all the unemployed. He said quite frankly that the money could not be found to carry out the plan which the Government had repeatedly stated they had in readiness to put in operation when they came into office. I congratulate Deputy Smith upon the confession he has made, but I am certain that, when the President and the members of the Executive Council read the opening portion of that speech, Deputy Smith will very likely be spoken to very severely at the private Party meeting. Deputy Smith is, in my opinion, a very honest and sincere Deputy and is quite prepared, as a loyal supporter of the Fianna Fáil Party, to defend anything which that Party decide to do or not to do, as the case may be.

Mr. Flinn

That is not being honest surely.

Mr. Davin

I always understood that it was the policy of the Fianna Fáil Government to provide continuous work or maintenance at a decent standard for all those for whom they were unable to provide work. I have heard the President state here in this House on more than one occasion that he was prepared to pledge all the resources of the State for that purpose and that, if he found that he was not in a position to carry out his plan under the existing system, he was prepared to go outside the existing system for the purpose of providing work or maintenance for all our able-bodied population. To-day we have heard from Deputy Smith that the Government do not intend to go ahead on these lines because, in his opinion, the money is not available, and that is the reason why he is prepared to defend the rotational system of providing employment on minor relief and other public works. I say that the rotational system of providing part-time employment for some of our able-bodied citizens is completely demoralising and is not giving a good return for the money expended on these schemes. I seriously suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary, who has been inspecting some of these works down the country, that he would get a far better return for the money expended if he provided continuous employment for those who are willing and in a position to undertake that work, and that the system, so far as my limited experience of its working goes, is a complete failure and should be scrapped.

I should like to say to the Parliamentary Secretary that there is an opinion in the ranks of trade unionists that this scheme is being brought into operation for the purpose of smashing trade union conditions. Trade unionists in some parts of the country are brought in to work under non-trade union conditions. They are compelled to work or lose unemployment assistance benefit under conditions which they would not normally be prepared to accept. These conditions are being imposed at a time when there is a considerable increase in the cost of living, over and above what it was when a previous Government compelled men to undertake continuous work for 24/- a week. Deputy Daly does not seem to be well acquainted with the manner in which these schemes operate even in his area. He does not appear to have any more information than was given him in his native town. I suggest that if he went to the rural parts of his constituency he would find worse cases in the operation of these schemes than he was given recently in Fermoy. The Deputy is so unacquainted with the position, even in Fermoy, that he does not know the actual amount of money that was paid to the people who are supposed to have made the complaint. If the pay sheets were produced it would be found that the figures the Deputy quoted are not actually correct.

In connection with the operation of this Vote, members of this Party have not at any time suggested that political preference is given in the selection of works to be carried out. I have made no such complaint, and I do not think any Deputy in this Party has any reason to make such a complaint. I do not think any such complaint could be made. But we do not want to be misunderstood. I complain quite definitely that money is not provided to carry out works that are urgently required. I know of cases in my constituency that were submitted to the Board of Works three or four years ago, for carrying out repairs to bog roads; in some cases where people cannot get into the bogs to cut turf, or, when it is cut, cannot get it out. The Parliamentary Secretary's advisers come along and say that there is not enough registered unemployed in the area to justify the carrying out of such work, no matter how urgently required.

I say that that policy is wrong and should be changed. It should be the duty of the Parliamentary Secretary, as he is responsible for administering a Vote of this kind, to see that works urgently required, such as repairs to bog roads, should be carried out, provided that within a reasonable radius unemployed men can be found, registered or otherwise, to do so. I know of cases where men will not register because the distance from where they reside is too far from the labour exchange. Accidentally I heard on Sunday last of a case of that kind in an area where work is urgently required. It was put before the Board of Works for consideration, but was not carried out, although the necessary number of able-bodied unemployed men was available if sanction was given to a grant.

The Parliamentary Secretary attempted to explain why he did not send out the secret circular to all Deputies in connection with his desire to receive proposals for works that could be approved. Candidly, I do not accept the Parliamentary Secretary's explanation. I suggest that that explanation was given in order to dig himself out of a hole which he consciously or unconsciously got into. Like other Deputies in this Party, in fact like every Deputy who is an active Deputy, I put forward every scheme that comes to me through a local agency, or through a local authority. Unlike Fianna Fáil Deputies, I have never gone to any part of my constituency asking to have schemes put forward, and promising when that was done that the necessary grant would be made available. That is being done. Some time ago I asked the Parliamentary Secretary for the number of schemes that had been put forward over a certain period in Leix-Offaly; the number of schemes which had been examined; and the number of schemes which had been approved, and in which grants had been given. I got the usual Parliamentary reply, that it would take too much time on the part of important officials to prepare and give the necessary information I am afraid if the Parliamentary Secretary submitted particulars on these lines, he would find that schemes submitted by other Deputies would more than compare favourably with schemes submitted by members of his own Party. I would not mind if the Parliamentary Secretary dug out of the files of the Board of Works the schemes submitted by me for Leix-Offaly and made a comparison, for instance, with schemes suggested by Deputy Donnelly or Deputy Finlay. I am prepared to stand the test. I am prepared to have my record on that question compared with Deputy Donnelly or with any other Deputy on the Fianna Fáil Benches. Labour Deputies are prepared to have their work in that respect thoroughly examined and given the light of day, and a comparison made with the work done by Fianna Fáil Deputies. Is it possible that Fianna Fáil Deputies were not putting up enough schemes, or any schemes, and that as the Parliamentary Secretary was sympathetic, he was anxious to get as many schemes as possible from lazy Fianna Fáil Deputies? I do not suggest that all Fianna Fáil Deputies are lazy, but I suggest that some of them are mentally lazy, and would not acknowledge important letters received from their principal supporters, who have to fall back upon Labour Deputies— for instance, on Deputy Corish and myself.

An Ceann Comhairle

On unemployment schemes?

Mr. Davin

Yes. If there is any doubt about it, I am suggesting that the Parliamentary Secretary should examine the files of the Board of Works and make a comparison of the schemes submitted through Labour or other Deputies with Fianna Fáil Deputies. I am certain there is a pigeon-hole full of proposals from Deputy Finlay in the Board of Works. The same applies to Deputies on the Opposition Benches. That remark applies to Deputy Minch, who is most active. I say that because I see a smile on his face. I am prepared to give Deputy Minch credit for being very active in that matter, and also Deputy Finlay.

Mr. Brodrick

Like Deputy Davin.

Mr. Davin

I am prepared to have my record examined in that matter inside or outside this House. The same applies to other Deputies.

Mr. Flinn

About 54,000 Solomons.

Mr. Davin

I had occasion previously to complain—and I think the Parliamentary Secretary will agree that there is some justification for the complaint—that it is a ridiculous thing to allocate money over a period of four years for carrying out of minor relief schemes where the cost does not exceed £400. I have written to the Board of Works within the past few days stating while three allocations were made for repairing a bog road in Offaly it has not yet been completed, although the total cost of the scheme would not be more than £350. The Parliamentary Secretary is supposed to be an expert business man and to be the business representative of the Fianna Fáil Benches. Why in the name of common sense does he not allocate an amount that would complete such work and give good results for the money provided? A bad case of that kind was brought to my notice, and I suggest it was only one of many, as I have been assured that it is not an exceptional one, where nine men got work for eight days on a minor relief scheme near Portarlington and had to wait three weeks for their miserable pittance before they could pay the local grocer for necessaries they got on credit. I understand that as a result of local protests the foreman who was employed on the work eventually had to cycle to Tullamore to get the miserable sum of money that these men were entitled to, three weeks after they had been deprived of unemployment benefit. I do not know if there are other cases of the kind, but I suggest it is a disgraceful state of affairs to have men who got eight or nine days' work waiting for three weeks before they got the miserable amount provided for them. Something should be done to tighten up the machinery from that point of view. Whether the laxity is on the part of the Department or on the part of the local authority, the Board of Works is responsible when acting as agent in the matter.

I emphasise the fact that, in my opinion, the rotational method of employing men is demoralising and is a method which is not calculated to bring about the best results for the money expended. Notwithstanding what Deputy Smith so sincerely said, I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that that scheme is a failure and that the Government was prepared, long before they took office, to provide continuous work or maintenance at a decent standard.

We were told to-day for the first time—Deputy Minch is a financial expert, and he was not in the House when Deputy Smith confessed this— that it is impossible for the Government to carry out their plan for the relief of unemployment because they cannot find money. I hope that Deputy Minch, who speaks for the financial houses of this country, will get up and say whether this is or is not a fact, and, if it is a fact, that he will be generous enough to suggest to the Government some monetary system or scheme whereby they will be able to get the money to carry out their plan, and to provide continuous work at decent rates of wages for all those willing to undertake this kind of relief work, or any other kind of public work.

Mr. Corry

I want to deal first with the remarks of Deputy Daly. He spoke about how disgraceful it was to ask men to work for 19/6, and he asked us all about the plan. I regret that he has left the House. If Deputy Daly would cast his mind back a little and remember the position of one of those villages near Fermoy, he will remember that, when we came into office, there were 57 families there who had no shillings a week, who had no employment, and who had to pay rent and support themselves God knows how, until this Government restarted the flour mills in the district which had been closed under the régime of the Party he now supports, and gave employment. The Deputy might also cast his mind back to the town of Mallow in his own constituency. I am sure he saw the condition of that town when he was around the district on election work. He knew the unemployment there was in that town, and he knows its position to-day. I am not going to say that unemployment assistance is sufficient, because I do not think it is half enough. I believe that if we can, by any means, find work for these people, they should get it, but I do not believe that it is demoralising, as Deputy Davin says. I believe that those people do not want to draw money for nothing.

Mr. Davin

I agree with you there. Why not give them full-time work?

Mr. Corry

So far as we can, we are giving them work. We are asked why the money was not found. Deputies know the reason very well. Deputies who carried out a campaign of sabotage here for four years, and went around advising the people not to pay annuities and rates, know well why the money could not be found.

An Ceann Comhairle

That has nothing to do with the Estimate.

Mr. Corry

I agree, but we were asked why the money was not found.

Mr. Brodrick

And the Deputies in Fianna Fáil who robbed the country.

Mr. Corry

I am not in favour of the rotational scheme, and the reason I made these allusions is because we were asked why we did not find the money. I think that is a question that can be very easily answered.

Mr. Davin

Ask the Banking Commission.

Mr. Corry

Ask those who advised people to stop paying annuities.

An Ceann Comhairle

If the Deputy persists in referring to irrelevant matters he will have to sit down.

Mr. Corry

I want to deal with the most relevant matter, and that is the rotational scheme. I will not go beyond the Parliamentary Secretary's own constituency to give him the actual condition of affairs that exists under this plan. It is a scheme which I personally, as a representative of the ratepayers of my area, have a very decided objection to. The ratepayers in my area are paying, in addition to the burden of their own poor, two-thirds of the rates for the poor of the City of Cork.

Mr. Davin

And all the wealthy men there.

Mr. Corry

Yes, captains of industry and God knows what. There is either a want of intelligence in this great City of Cork—and I should be sorry to think it—or there is something very definitely wrong.

Mr. Everett

They are all up here in Dublin.

Mr. Corry

I think that a lot of Dublin found their way to Cork, and a lot of other counties, too, in the last four years. When you go around to-day you would scarcely know the accent. There is no Cork accent there.

Mr. Davin

What about J.J.?

Mr. Corry

You are planting it very well. To get back to the particular business before us, the rotational system, I admit that the work being done in this connection is good work, but the position we find ourselves in is that, in the first instance, we had to pay a sum of £80 to men who went on strike against the conditions, in order to keep their wives and families from dying from starvation, and, in the second place, while the men were actually working under a rotational scheme, we had to pay the sum of £26 7s. 0d. to 44 men, and, in that connection, if you will allow me, Sir, I will read the report of the superintendent home assistance officer. The superintendent home assistance officer, Mr. Forrest, reporting on the Spangle Hill relief scheme, said:

"For the week ended 3rd instant provisional assistance to the amount of £26 7s. 0d. was granted to 44 men engaged on relief scheme work. The assistance was given under the following conditions: The men only worked one day and received one day's wages, approximately 8/-. The assistance was given solely on the responsibility of the officials and will not be given again under similar circumstances. I accept responsibility for the amount involved."

Mr. Flinn

Could the Deputy give me the date on which that payment was made?

Mr. Corry

The week ending 3rd April. All parties are represented on our board of assistance, and every member admits that the superintendent home assistance officer is a most efficient and careful officer who will not pay money out unless he is very definitely satisfied that the conditions warrant it.

That is the position of affairs there. In rotational schemes, unfortunately, no account is taken of days on which men could not work on these schemes. Under the rotational scheme, every day is supposed to be sunny and fine, and, if a day is not sunny and fine, the men have either to go out and get pneumonia, and become another burden on the rates, or lie up altogether.

I do not think it is fair that we in rural Cork who have to bear two-thirds of the burden of home assistance for the people of Cork City should be asked, in addition, to meet the burden of relief due to a broken-down rotational scheme. This is the second payment. There was a third payment in question that day amounting to £65 which the board, in its wisdom or foolishness, defeated by one vote. That is the condition of affairs, and there is no use in burking it. It is not a condition of affairs prevailing in Cavan, Donegal or anywhere else; it is the condition of affairs prevailing in the Parliamentary Secretary's own constituency. I ask that this extraordinary position under which men who, while in receipt of unemployment assistance, were no burden on the rates, now, suddenly, became a burden on the rates under the rotational scheme——

Mr. Davin

That has happened elsewhere.

Mr. Corry

I do not know whether it happened elsewhere or not, but when it happens in an area in which the people I represent have to pay for it, I think it my duty to call attention to it here. I am prepared to say openly that, in my opinion, a full week's work ought to be provided. I do not know how the Parliamentary Secretary will fit that in with his scheme, but I think a full week's work should be provided. When a local authority boasts the glorious position of being managed and of possessing a manager who, as we were told on one occasion, was second to none in the Free State, and when that manager is paid a big lot of money for a little city like Cork, there should be sufficient intelligence between the Corporation and the manager to arrange a scheme by which these men would be paid at the end of each week. Cork County is a very large county, and our county surveyor and officials were able to plan a scheme by which men in Bantry—practically a day's journey from Cork City—were paid every Saturday night. I do not see why men living within a hundred yards of the City Hall in Cork, or working within a mile of the City Hall, should not be paid at the end of the week. The position of affairs which has been brought to my notice, as a member of the South Cork Board of Assistance, is one that should not be allowed to continue. I object to the ratepayers in my area being saddled with this burden owing to any scheme—I do not care what sort of scheme it is. I ask that the Parliamentary Secretary devise some means by which this kind of thing will not continue. I assure him that if he does not do so, I shall advise people, instead of bombarding the Board of Assistance, to take a run down to Rushbrooke and bombard the Parliamentary Secretary there. I think it is unfair that men should be in a position in which they have only a day's work in a week on which to support their families, including, perhaps, five children. While that man is supposed to be engaged in rotational employment, the ratepayers have to support his wife and children. It would be bad enough if the onus for support were cast on the ratepayers of the district only, but what I principally object to is that responsibility should be placed on ratepayers outside the district. I think that these difficulties could be very well and very easily remedied.

Deputy Kennedy told us about the rate of wages for agricultural workers. I do not know how many agricultural workers there are in the County Westmeath. During my travels in that county I did not see many of them, nor did I see any great evidence of their employment there. They may have changed since.

Mr. Davin

They do not work at all there.

Mr. Corry

The rates mentioned here from time to time are not the rates of wages paid to workers in any district of which I know. I invite other Deputies who are farmers to speak out their minds on this matter. I have heard sums of 12/- and 14/- per week mentioned. What usually happens is: a Civic Guard comes along and says, "Well, Mick, what are you getting?" He says, "Twelve shillings per week, sir." That is entered down as the rate of agricultural wages in that particular district. The fact that Mick is getting board and lodging, in addition to the 12/-, is not taken into account. I respectfully submit that the value of that board and lodging would be £1 per week extra. That would make his wages 32/-. In my own district the wage is 14/- per week and board. Still we are told that these men are paid the rate of agricultural wages obtaining in the district. From the work I have seen these unfortunate devils doing, I am surprised that they are running out of it to the farmers instead of running from the farmers to the work. That state of affairs can be straightened out if attention is directed to it. In my view, it is only necessary to have attention directed to it in order to have it straightened out.

Deputy Daly referred to the state of affairs in his constituency. Unfortunately, Deputy Daly and the others now representing that constituency have gained a lot of my sweat and labour; whilst I have to take over the derelict town of Passage from the Parliamentary Secretary, add it to Cobh, and try to do for both what I did for Clondullane and Mallow. I heard him referring to parties who were receiving 19/6 per week in certain villages. My mind went back, while he was referring to this matter, to the year 1930, when a mill which was giving a large amount of employment in that particular village was closed down. In 1932, at the time of the general election, there were 57 families idle in that particular village. They had no shilling to get and no unemployment assistance to get. To use a famous phrase, they might "die of starvation." The position is that to-day there are 57 men working in that particular mill. I would ask Deputy Daly to travel around through that constituency, and if he will do so he will see more evidence of my hard labour there in connection with finding permanent employment and other things.

An Ceann Comhairle

I did not think that Deputy Corry was in charge of this Vote.

Mr. Corry

No, I am not in charge of this Vote, but we were challenged here by Deputy Daly to tell him how the plan was working. That is why I call the attention of Deputy Daly and other Deputies who wish to look at the evidence as to the working of the plan in their own home town, and in particular in Deputy Daly's constituency, where the plan has been worked out fairly well, as it has been in the village of Clondullane, where there are 57 men now working in a mill in which nobody was employed in 1932. I submit that is an answer to those Deputies who are talking about the plan.

If Deputy Daly will go down to Mallow he will see that there are over 300 men working in the sugar factory where no man was working in 1932. The Deputy might ask himself where were these men working before they got work in the Mallow sugar factory. Where were these men getting the unemployment assistance at that time? Where, at that time, was the rotational scheme of employment? If the Deputy will cast his mind around to these matters he will have to admit before he again talks here on this question that I at least have left the sign of my hand in the shape of permanent employment in that area. I ask Deputy Daly to think of that. I hope too that the Parliamentary Secretary will think over the matters that I brought forward here to-night, and I hope we will have good results from that.

Mr. Curran

I am afraid that unlike some of the Deputies who have spoken before me I do not know everything about every matter in my constituency.

Mr. Corry

Then ask Deputy Dillon, who knows everything about everything.

Mr. Curran

I would like to draw the attention of the House to a matter that was brought before my own eyes this morning. I understand that the Board of Works are responsible for a minor relief scheme which affects the lands of a man named Shee, near Carrick-on-Suir. I visited the place this morning, and I am unable to picture to the House the condition in which the man has been placed as a result of what has been brought about there. It is only his poor little homestead and the small farm buildings that are not under water. The whole farm was one sea of water. Even the fruit trees that grew in the garden alongside the house were submerged. The man has not as much tillage land or pasture land uncovered by water as is represented by the square in front of you, Sir, in this Chamber. I am intervening in order to bring that case to the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary in the hope that something might be done to give this man some relief. The fact is that a minor relief scheme on an embankment was carried out there not long ago. It seems that since then another break occurred in the embankment and this man's whole place is flooded. Between 200 and 300 acres of adjacent land is also flooded, but as that is across the river it is not in my constituency. What I saw this morning was the worst case I have seen for a very long time. Notwithstanding that, this farmer is asked to pay his rates and his annuities, though in actual fact he has no land at the moment.

Personally I must admit that I have not sent in a great number of relief schemes to the Parliamentary Secretary. I do not think it is a Deputy's job to look after these schemes. The people who busy themselves with doing this sort of thing do it for their own personal advantage and nothing else. They do these things in order to get the votes from a particular district. That is why, in a good many cases, they do them. I am now bringing this matter before the notice of the Parliamentary Secretary in the hope that something will be done to remedy the position in which this man has been placed. As I inspected the work done in that particular place I had no hesitation in saying that it was an absolute disgrace.

Very many of these schemes, whether relief schemes or otherwise, are not satisfactory, and real value for the money spent has not been got. This scheme on the road or boreen I saw this morning has turned out to be a very bad job. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will take the matter up at once and see what can be done to bring relief to the people in that flooded area. Most people whose lands have been flooded have had some dry land left to them, but this man has none. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will look into this case at once and do the right thing.

Mr. Corish

When the Parliamentary Secretary was making a statement in connection with these rotational schemes in operation over the country one would imagine that the schemes were ideal ones and that the work done was thoroughly satisfactory, whereas we all know that the contrary is the fact and that a great deal of dissatisfaction prevails all over the country in consequence of the way the rotational schemes have been put into operation. I want to be quite candid and truthful in connection with this matter, and, speaking according to the experience I have of the working of the schemes, I want to say that I never thought the work would be so satisfactory as it has been. I am talking now of the efficiency with which the work has been carried out in spite of the handicap with which the schemes were confronted when the local authorities and the Board of Works tried at first to put them into operation. I think most of the dissatisfaction in connection with these schemes prevails in the rural areas, because in the urban areas, where trade unions are in a strong, healthy condition, good wages obtain. In Wexford, where relief schemes are in operation, the wages are £2 7s. 0d. a week. The men under these schemes get £1 3s. 6d. That for three days' work is pretty decent. I want to suggest that even though a good degree of efficiency is revealed in the working of the schemes, there is still a good deal to be desired in order to have the work carried out satisfactorily. I suggest that the men will be more content if they were permitted to work a week about. I suggested to the Parliamentary Secretary on three or four occasions since the work started that the employment should be given on alternative weeks. He stated that for some reason or another that was not possible. I suggested to the Parliamentary Secretary that in consequence of the men not being able to work more than three days in a week owing to wet weather, that sometimes they were only able to put in one or two days. He pointed out to me that arrangements were made by the county and borough surveyors by which the men were permitted to work another day in the week in consequence of one of the three days in the week in which they were employed being a day on which the men were not able to work because of the bad weather. I do know that is the case.

Mr. Flinn

That is the instruction.

Mr. Corish

I know, and it is being carried out. I suggest, however, that in a great many cases that particular man is an extra man out of his turn on the particular gang on that day and he interferes with the machinery and ultimately with the estimate which the engineer gives for the work he is engaged upon. I again suggest that if the work were carried out in a different way, if a week about were given instead of three days, and if a man then happened to lose a day he would not mind it so much. I should like to say that the amount of efficiency that we have seen in connection with these schemes is extraordinary. I think it is only right to say that on behalf of the men concerned, because a great many of them have not hitherto been engaged on jobs of this kind and it is to their credit that they have entered into the spirit of the thing.

Mr. Flinn

I entirely agree with that statement.

Mr. Corish

I think if the period were for a week about we would get better results altogether. I also know that local engineers are rather afraid about the prices which they have given for the jobs; they fear that the works cannot be completed for the estimate given. Of course, they are in a better position now to give a price that is better related to the job, because they have had experience of what men taken on in a haphazard fashion are in a position to do. I think in regard to some of the jobs taken up at the beginning of this scheme, and which have not yet been finished, it will be found that there is likely to be a loss. In these circumstances, I would like to know from the Parliamentary Secretary if the Board of Works will be willing to help the local authorities in defraying any loss that may occur.

There is one particular aspect with which I have come into contact on various occasions. The men who are in receipt of the lower amount of unemployment assistance are very anxious to be employed for the three days' period, and one hears complaints day after day that the same men are being put on whatever schemes are operated. That is to say, that if a scheme were in operation for a month or two, and if a job were finished, when a new work opens up instead of going to the list where the last man came off, the labour exchanges have received instructions to start at the top man again. I suggest that is very unfair and that the list should be exhausted over a certain period at any rate—that there should be a given period of three or four months, and then if the list were not exhausted perhaps they could go back to the beginning again.

I want to refer to one set of individuals who should really get some consideration. I refer to the British ex-service men. I know some arrangement has been made by which an ex-serviceman or a pensioner from the National Army is given employment and his pension up to a certain figure is not taken into consideration. There are a good number of British ex-servicemen in this country drawing 10/- and 12/- a week. I suggest that they have the same degree of need as the man who is drawing an equivalent sum by way of unemployment assistance; that is, 10/- or 12/6 a week. They have the same responsibilities and yet they are disqualified by reason of the fact that they have 10/- or 12/-. There is a good deal of dissatisfaction in these circumstances because these men have not been permitted to work on rotational schemes. I feel certain the Parliamentary Secretary will give that matter his attention. The same degree of need is there.

There are also many complaints being made by the single recipient of unemployment assistance. The single man is entitled to 6/- or 7/- a week. The Parliamentary Secretary also knows that the amount of money given to a single man is not based on the number of dependents.

Mr. Flinn

Oh, yes, it is.

Mr. Corish

Not to the same extent.

Mr. Flinn

The actual figure takes into account, whether for a married or a single man, the state of his dependency.

Mr. Corish

I think we are talking about two different things. I am talking of what he is in receipt of from unemployment assistance.

Mr. Flinn

That is so; it takes that into account.

Mr. Corish

There are many single men who have their fathers or mothers dependent on them, and in urban areas, where the number of unemployed is very large, up to now they have got no consideration so far as these schemes are concerned. I do not suggest that that is deliberately so, but it is due to the way the scheme has been worked that they have not been reached. In one area, in my county, when certain works were being done by a local authority in the past, representations were made through certain organisations that single men should get some work on jobs of this kind, and an arrangement was operated whereby 25 per cent. of the people employed were single men with dependents. I do not think we would be going too far if we were to suggest that at least 25 per cent. of single men with dependents should be given employment under these schemes. A great deal of dissatisfaction prevails in consequence of those persons not receiving what they consider to be their quota.

Deputy Smith was rather annoyed because of the criticism of the Labour Party so far as these schemes are concerned. I do not want anybody to think for a moment that the Labour Party object to people working as against drawing unemployment assistance. We have always made it quite clear that we prefer to see people working pretty constantly at a decent rate of wages. When Deputy Davin described the scheme as demoralising, I do not think he meant what was inferred by subsequent speakers. We have always made it clear that we prefer men should be working rather than drawing unemployment assistance.

During the course of the last two years a great many discussions have taken place here in connection with minor relief schemes. Time and time again we have condemned those schemes because of the low rate of wages paid. I was rather surprised to hear that those schemes are now being worked on the rotational system. I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that the wages for minor relief schemes are too low already, and certainly it is going too far to have these schemes carried out on the rotational basis. Men working on the rotational system on minor relief schemes for, say, three days a week, are given the magnificent sum of 11/5, while for four days they would get 14/5. Surely the Parliamentary Secretary at this stage ought to issue instructions that so far as these minor relief schemes are concerned, they should no longer be carried out on a rotational basis.

In rural areas, as has been pointed out by various Deputies, people have to walk long distances to their work. I suggest that the amount of money given for three or four days would not cover the wear and tear of their boots and clothes. When we criticised the minor relief schemes and the wages to be paid it was suggested to us that the work these men were called upon to do was equivalent to what a farm labourer was asked to do and they were given wages something in line with what farm workers were receiving. So far as that particular period is concerned, that may have been correct, but I do not think that the Parliamentary Secretary could stand over that statement at the present time, because work done under minor relief schemes is, I contend, equivalent to what county council workers are being called upon to do and for which they are receiving in any county no less than 30/- a week.

However, what I am chiefly concerned about on this Vote is to try to secure that the rotational scheme of employment would not apply to minor relief schemes. I think it is too much to expect that a man should be asked to work for three days for 11/5. I do not think I have anything else to say in connection with the matter, Sir, except to refer the Parliamentary Secretary again to the two or three points I wanted to make, and these are that at least a week's work should be given to men, that single men should get consideration, and that British ex-servicemen, who are in the same position as others in the labour exchange, should also receive consideration.

Mr. Fagan

As far as I remember, Sir, the Parliamentary Secretary, in the course of his statement, asked for schemes for new works, or likely new works, to be submitted. I should like to bring before his attention the question of a river in Westmeath, which goes into Killucan. This is a matter which I brought to the attention of the Board of Works about a year ago. If the Parliamentary Secretary, in his travels through that part of the country, should stop off at Mullingar, he would see the whole countryside flooded on account of this river. The history of that, roughly, is that years ago the landlord used to clean that river every year, but when it was sold to the Land Commission about 15 or 16 years ago nothing was done about it, nor has anything been done about it since, with the result that the whole countryside is flooded. As well as that, the railway company have a right to allow the overflow of their canal into this river, and they have given an undertaking that if that river is cleaned and drained, they would give something towards the cleaning. As I say, I brought this matter up a year ago but it was maintained that it was too big a job. It was brought up two years before that to the county council as a scheme of relief, and it was pointed out that it would mean a cost of £2,000 or £3,000, the result of which would be that the tenants would have to pay £2 or £3 each. I maintain that, if a couple of hundred pounds were spent on that river, it would mean a great relief to the people living in that part of the country.

There is also the question of four or five bogs in that part of the country, and the cleaning of that river would be of assistance to the big scheme carried out by the Turf Development Board on the Downs Bog. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to take a note of that, because the people are suffering great hardship along that river, and it is noted all over the countryside there. As long as I have been in the Westmeath County Council the people have been talking about it, and if a couple of hundred pounds were spent on it, I am sure it would be a great relief, because it is a main river into which a lot of tributary rivers flow. I think that, if the Minister looks up his files, he will find that this suggestion was sent in about a year ago, and if he will concentrate on draining a number of the small bogs, it would be a great help. It must be remembered that, apart from, let us say, one large bog, there are other small bogs near at hand very often, and when a scheme is dropped in connection with one bog, the work on the other bogs is stopped. If the Parliamentary Secretary likes, I can send him in particulars of dozens of those bogs. I sent him in particulars of the different districts, but he was afraid that, in some cases, they were too near one another. However, I think that if about £40 or £50 were spent on each of these bogs it would be very useful.

There is a case in Streete where certain work was to go on and where a certain amount was done, but not finished—about 20 loads of stuff were brought in, but not spread—and the result is that the people are worse off than they were before. It seems to be a question of working a bit, skipping a bit, and then working a bit, but in the case I refer to another £4 or £5 would finish the job. If the Parliamentary Secretary takes a run through certain counties, I should like to stress the point that he ought to stop off when he is going through Mullingar the next time, and if he does so he will see that a little money spent there would relieve the thousands and thousands of acres in the countryside.

Mr. O'Leary

I do not wish to take up the time of the House, Sir, but I am really disappointed in this Vote, and I do not see the necessity for it at all. It is rather unfortunate that now after five years of a Fianna Fáil administration, we are in the position that we have to be doling out money for relief schemes. As to the attitude the Labour Party has taken up, I can only say that one could be amused at their attitude, were it not for the seriousness of the position of the people of the country. As you all know, the leader of the Labour Party, in 1932 or 1933, told the people of this country that, if Fianna Fáil did not solve the unemployment problem, they themselves would be the Party in office soon, and that if Fianna Fáil did not solve the problem, they would go out of office in four or five hours. The Labour Party themselves, however, are only tinkering with the question now. They are criticising the Parliamentary Secretary for not paying a certain amount when everybody knows that the schemes concerned are not capable of supporting these people.

I appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary and the House to take this question seriously. This problem, to a great extent at least, has been created by the policy of the Government. The unfortunate farmers' sons who, in the past, were able to live within their own holdings, are now unable to compete with the worker who, in the past, was employed on schemes throughout the country. I had experience recently of meeting a farmer's son. He wanted a cheque for £4 10s. cashed. I asked him what it was for, and he said that it was a free grant for draining an acre of ground. I asked him how many cows he had, and he said that they had 20 cows, that they had two farms, but that this thing was forced on them and they took advantage of it. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to take this question seriously. Undoubtedly, there is demoralisation of our people, and the farmer, even at the present time, finds it very difficult to get people to work on his farm because, owing to the demoralisation caused by the Government, some of these people pass his farm and smile at the farmer and his sons working there while they go out to draw their dole of a few shillings a week.

Deputy Hogan, speaking in the House last week, said:—

"The principal point in the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary was the abandonment of the idea of solving the unemployment problem. He has clearly abandoned that idea. He told us it would take some £15,000,000 to put all the unemployed working every day of the week, I do not know at what wages. However, I will take the Parliamentary Secretary's word that it would take £15,000,000. He said that, of course, was a thing the State could not attempt to do."

After all, did the Government not tell us before they got into office that they had a plan to solve the unemployment problem? I should like the Parliamentary Secretary, when replying, to state if this is the only plan he has for solving the unemployment problem. I would ask the Labour Party also to state what their attitude with regard to this question of unemployment is. Their leader said five years ago that they would ginger up the Fianna Fáil Party for the next five years. Will they now see, because the Fianna Fáil Party have not carried out their promises in regard to unemployment, that, as their leader promised, that Party will be turned out of office inside 24 hours?

Mr. Everett

In the course of this debate several Deputies have criticised these schemes on the basis that since last October an unemployed man could secure employment only for four days a week on Government relief schemes. I venture to suggest that since October these relief schemes have meant a great saving for the unemployment Fund because instead of the four days per week, which the Parliamentary Secretary intended to provide for unemployed men, owing to the inclement weather, men have been able to obtain an average of only two and a half days per week since last October, and they have only been paid on that basis. Many of the schemes, sanctioned by the Department and for which grants were made out of the rates by public bodies, were not carried out owing to the inclement weather. Public bodies were obliged to provide home assistance for these men owing to the fact that the men, although they worked for only two days per week, were not paid for a fortnight afterwards. We had the admission here, from the Government Benches, for the first time after five years, that this is the Government's solution, the very best they can do, and that there is no possible chance, as far as the Government is concerned, of solving the unemployment problem; that the 50,000 men who were unable to find work, need have no hope of being provided with even one day's work on a Government scheme. We have also the admission here to-day that, notwithstanding the fact that we have 90,000 men unemployed, various Government Departments have transferred back to the Department of Finance a sum of £350,000 instead of making that money available for public bodies to finance the provision of work for men who are willing and able to work.

I have no complaint to make against the Department in connection with the submission of any scheme by myself personally because, as the Parliamentary Secretary knows, since these schemes were initiated I have protested against the Government's reducing the wages of working men to 24/- per week and I have, therefore, submitted no schemes since that wage was adopted. Although I have not done so, my county has received every consideration and the men unemployed have not suffered by the non-submission of schemes by their representatives, as schemes have been submitted by the county surveyor under which suitable employment was provided for certain of these men. There is, however, a grievance in connection with these schemes which I suggest should be remedied, namely, the question of the delay in the payment of men who are employed, even though only for two and a half days. They are paid fortnightly. It is often from 14 to 16 days after a man starts to work before he receives any pay. In such cases, pending the receipt of payment, the men have to be assisted by the home assistance officers. I have known several cases in which, owing to the delay in payment by the county councils, the local authority—the board of health— through their home assistance officer, had to come to the assistance of these men. Take the case of a man who has been in receipt of a miserable pittance from the labour exchange. In the middle of the week he is offered work on a relief scheme and his unemployment assistance is stopped. After doing two and a half days' work he is not entitled to receive any further assistance from the labour exchange, and he has to wait a fortnight for his wages from the county council. How is such a man expected to exist in the meantime? The fact that a man is employed only four days on a rotational scheme is bad enough, but the men to whom I refer are employed on the average only two and a half days a week. They are receiving much less per man for working than they would receive if they were drawing unemployment assistance.

Deputy Kelly talked of the wonderful prosperity in the country as proved by the fact that the revenue from the sale of insurance stamps has increased considerably. He omitted to tell the House that the men who work only for two and a half days per week have to buy the same amount of stamps as if they were working for a full week. Men employed on these relief schemes for only two and a half days have had to purchase these stamps—and that shows great prosperity, in Deputy Kelly's opinion! He tries to blow hot and cold. He says that the Parliamentary Secretary is waiting for them to provide schemes. I am glad that the Fianna Fáil Party are taking responsibility for this wage of 24/- per week, because my experience has been that their attitude on this question previously was: "Oh, it is not our fault; it is the Parliamentary Secretary's fault." They let the Parliamentary Secretary carry the baby. As I have pointed out, each and every member of the Fianna Fáil Party is responsible for that wage much more than the Parliamentary Secretary, because he came into this House and voted for that wage on these works. The Government will go down in history, in my opinion, as the 24-bob-a-week Government and nothing more.

Then we are told, "Oh, they are paying the same wages as the farmers." I have had experience of negotiating settlements and agreements with farmers and I say that in my area farmers, notwithstanding the depression in agriculture, are paying a much higher rate of wages than the Fianna Fáil Government has decided to pay in the county. I know that no farmer employs a man on casual work. No farmer employs a man and, if it is wet, sends him home. No farm labourer is employed for only two and a half days a week. He is employed on a permanent basis and he is not dependent on his wages alone. He receives perquisites such as milk and fuel. The large majority of farmers in County Wicklow, notwithstanding the secret advisory committee which the Government has to advise them as to the rate of wages for agricultural workers in each county, pay much more than the Government rates on these schemes. Whoever the members of this committee are, we have never seen them nor do we know their names individually. Notwithstanding all the information which they are supposed to have got, they have never come to the trade unions or to the Labour clubs to get any information as to the wages paid. I suggest that the figure they decided upon as the wages which farmers are paying exists only in their own imaginations. Agreements which we can produce with farmers provide for a much higher wage than the Government are offering at the present time.

Some people are criticising the work, and saying it is not good value. How can you expect to get 100 per cent. value from hungry men taken from the labour exchange, who have to wait a fortnight or 15 days for their first payment? Notwithstanding all the drawbacks, notwithstanding all the difficulties, notwithstanding the fact that the men have got no alternative but to accept, I say there is good value given in the circumstances. I say that in urban areas you are getting 100 per cent. return at the present time. In the rural areas you may not be getting it on the minor relief schemes.

We cannot solve the problem. I hope that Deputy Smith and the Fianna Fáil Party will draw no other smoke screen, but will make this an issue at the election—that we are unable to solve the problem and are not in a position to give more than 24/- a week. Make that the issue and have no other smoke screen. I have no doubt whatever as to what the decision of the unemployed and the working people of this country will be. Some of the Fianna Fáil members had the courage to get up here and approve of the scheme, pointing out that they are prepared to defend it before the electorate. They will have an opportunity of defending their actions; they will have an opportunity of defending the policy that they are not in favour of any more than 24/- a week being paid, notwithstanding the fact that the prices of the necessaries of life are increasing wholesale. There is no necessity to go into that; it is too well known. I say that if the unemployed and the workers of the country are going to have this as an issue put before them by the Fianna Fáil candidates, then we can assure them at least that there will be a different Government returned—a Government which will carry out the promises they make, and will not get up and state after they are elected that the banking institution of this country is a wonderful institution.

This is not all the taxpayers' money. One of the conditions of the grant is that public bodies must put up a certain amount—50 per cent in many cases. We had areas where there was a large number of unemployed, and the public bodies were unable to put up any money towards the relief grants. What happened? The unemployed were allowed to remain hungry. In some cases they were offered work nine or ten miles from their area. We have had an unemployed demonstration in Bray. We had what are called hunger marches. I should like to know what was the reason why the Bray Urban Council's appeals for grants were refused by the Government. Was there any reason for it? Were they not in a position to repay the loans from the Department of Finance? If that was the reason, how are the unemployed going to live? Because the urban council failed to fulfil their obligation to pay back their loans were the unemployed to suffer? Were 400 men to remain unemployed with no hope of even four days' work or two days' work simply and solely because their public body could not meet its liabilities? I should like to know from the Parliamentary Secretary whether that is going to be a condition for future grants, because I can visualise a day when the public bodies throughout the country will say: "Well, we are not going to continue any longer paying extra money to a Government which will give only two or two and a-half days' work to the unemployed men, the public body having no say in the selection of those men." In the majority of cases the public bodies endeavour to co-operate with the Government. I do say that, without the co-operation of the public bodies, all the Parliamentary Secretary's genius and all his powers of persuasion would not get the men even two and a-half days' work. You have the co-operation of the public bodies, but how long will it last?

I do say that some extra amount should be given to public bodies to employ a couple of girl clerks so that the men who will get this work will not have to wait a fortnight or three weeks for the first week's pay. I can give instances to the Parliamentary Secretary where the men received double pay for the one week; they got the payment from the county council and board of health in one particular week. Then when the work closes down they might have to wait a fortnight or three weeks for the first pay. During that time they have to be maintained by the public body. The public bodies might say: "What is the use in providing any grants, because it is costing us more? After giving the money to the Government and maintaining the men while they are working for the first fortnight, and for the first fortnight after ceasing work, it is costing us more than if they were not working at all."

I do not agree with some Deputies who say that we object to the men working. I have always maintained that I prefer to see them working. While I pointed out to the Parliamentary Secretary when he initiated it that I did not agree with the rotational scheme, I said that if you had a continuation of the work it was certainly better than having them on home help. But the men are working only for four days in one week, and then have to wait a fortnight for another couple of days' work. If you had a continuation over a period it would probably save the public body a lot of trouble, and you would get better returns in connection with the whole administration. We are unable to provide any more money. We have not got the money. If we had the money, what would we put the men to work at? Deputy Smith is now here. He was looking for suggestions. According to him, the secret document which went out invited suggestions. Whether that may be so or not I do not know. If you give the farmers in the rural areas a guaranteed price for all their produce they in turn will be able to absorb a large number of unemployed in the rural areas at guaranteed wages. You would then be absorbing a large number of the unemployed, and giving greater benefit to the farming community. I have always maintained that. The farmer wants a guaranteed price for all his produce. In return for that, when you have an Agricultural Wages Board, get him to pay guaranteed wages to his agricultural workers.

I hope the Agricultural Wages Board will not take it as an instruction that the farmers are not to pay high wages; that they are to reduce the wages of their employees to the level of the standard set up by the Fianna Fáil Government—24/- a week if they are lucky enough to work a full week. If not, two days' work and two days' payment is held to be suffcient for a man and his family. That is the spirit of the Fianna Fáil Party. The policy adopted by the Fianna Fáil Party is that two or two and a half days' work per week for a few weeks in the year is all that the unemployed are worth and all that they are entitled to. It is all that this Government is going to give, and all that the unemployed can hope for. If that is to be the only hope for the unemployed, well, then, I say that the unemployed may have to adopt different measures to those which they have adopted.

If the unemployed are going to receive a less sum than it costs to maintain a prisoner, as was pointed out in reply to a question in the Dáil, then it would be better for those men to be in jail than to be unemployed outside. It will cost the Government more to maintain them in prison than it does outside. I am glad that the members of the Fianna Fáil Party have come out openly to-night on this question. That is the hope that they have to give to the unemployed men of the Free State. They have said "that is the best that we are going to do for them." They have said that they are unable to do more; that, on account of the position of the country, they are more concerned with the capitalist class than they are with the unemployed. After being five years in office, all that they can promise to give to an unemployed man is two days' work. That is the only hope that the unemployed are able to get from the present Government.

Mr. Seán Brodrick

It is rather remarkable that after being five years in office, the Fianna Fáil Government and Party have had to confess to-night that they have no plan to solve the unemployment question. It is probable that we will get the plan in four or five weeks' time. What has surprised me in this debate is that the members of the Labour Party should have fallen in with the ideas of the Fianna Fáil Party. I heard some members of the Labour Party speak on this Vote, but I did not hear one suggestion from them as to how the unemployment problem in the country should be solved. They referred, of course, to the unemployed who are only able to get two and a half days' work in the week, and to the amount of unemployment assistance benefit that these people lose. We had that from the Labour benches, but no suggestion as to how the problem should be solved. Years ago we were told that if the Fianna Fáil Government did not solve the problem, the Labour Party would be there to ginger them up, to secure better conditions for the unemployed, to see that more men and women were put into employment, and that the workers would receive higher wages. The position to-day, after five years' experience of a Fianna Fáil Government, is that the wage earner is receiving far less than he was getting in 1932. As a result of the Fianna Fáil plus Labour policy in this country the results are these: the workers are earning less, we have more unemployed, the cost of living has gone up, and we have more people going to another country in search of employment.

With regard to relief schemes, I thought that, after five years' experience of a Fianna Fáil Government, we would have put before the House some form of scheme that in time would solve the unemployment question. Nothing of the kind, however, has resulted. We are in the same position now as we were four years ago. There is £100 put into a bit of a road here, £150 into something else in another part of the country, and £100 or £200 is being spent in some area cleaning a drain—to drain water into a main river still choked up. I know the Parliamentary Secretary has done a good deal. I want to give him every credit. I know that he has been most attentive in seeing that councils and surveyors carry out their duties. He has put great energy into his work, but with all that I would expect something more from the Government, especially in view of the fact that it has had the support of the Labour Party.

What I have to complain about is that we are getting no results from the sums voted each year for the relief of unemployment. We find that a bit of work is done in some district to-day, and that in two or three years' time the same work has to be done again. That should not be the case. I have raised here, by means of Parliamentary question, the position of men in Letter more, one of the poorest districts in the West of Ireland. There you had men who had to travel from ten to 12 miles to their work. The great majority of them had to walk during the winter months, and they could only get work for three days a week. When turning out to work on a Monday the morning might be fine, but if it were raining when they reached the place where the work was to be done they were not allowed to make a start and consequently lost their day's pay. They had to walk home again in the rain. The same thing might happen to them on Tuesday or Wednesday. Someone on the Labour Benches referred to men walking 20 miles for 4/5. Here you had men walking 20 miles and getting nothing. While that was so, you had a staff of gangers in every one of those districts in well-paid fulltime employment. Most of them are brought in from other districts and put in the position of gangers over those poor people. I believe that the men I speak for are as honest and as good workers as the people brought in over them. I think it is a terrible injustice, when men walk such a long distance to work, that they should lose their day's pay because, in the opinion of the ganger, it is too wet to go on with the work or too wet for him to stand out in the weather in his oil-coat.

There is a very big acreage of bogs in the country. With regard to the development and drainage of them, I would like to know from the Parliamentary Secretary if there is any understanding between his Department and the Land Commission. If, say, the Land Commission have three or four hundred acres of turbary in their possession for division, can the Board of Works go in and do the necessary drainage and make the necessary roads? I think the position some years ago was this, that where the Land Commission made the roads they charged the people so much per perch. I am anxious to know if the Board of Works can go into those bogs, drain them and also make the necessary roads. I must say that any work that I have seen done by the Board of Works was a credit to it. It has sometimes happened, of course, as has been pointed out by a Labour Deputy, that a job has had to be left in a partly unfinished state because there was not sufficient money in hands, but, apart from that, the work that I have seen done by the Board of Works is a credit to it. I think that in cases where the Board of Works do a good job in making a road into a bog some guarantee should be given by the people who buy the turbary, by those interested, that they would keep the road in repair for a number of years afterwards.

Mr. Flinn

I would be glad if that could be done.

Mr. Brodrick

I have seen it done on several occasions in the west.

Mr. Flinn

It has been done in certain cases.

Mr. Brodrick

I found it very satisfactory. The tenants themselves are quite satisfied with it because they have an interest in the work. At the time when the bog was being cut away the Board of Works or the Land Commission came to their help again and gave them another grant to continue the road. Deputy Corry mentioned about the great work being done in Cork. He criticised Deputy Daly's speech on the matter of relief work. He also told us about the beet factory in Mallow. We happen to have a beet factory in Tuam, and I should like to know what provision is going to be made for the workers after the campaign in the factory is finished. During the campaign, which lasts for three or four months, you have up to 800 men working in the factory. During the summer months, I suppose there would be up to 150. Out of the 800 men a certain number have come to reside in the town of Tuam. For eight months of the year there is no work whatever for these people. Roughly, the unemployment benefit to which these workers are entitled would only be about 30/-, or 2/6 per stamp for the three or four months they have been working. Between rent and rates, the labourers in that town were paying up to 8/5 per week for their cottages. What are they to do for the remaining eight months of the year? That would apply in every place where there is a beet factory, I should say. The population is growing, and at the same time unemployment is increasing. What provision will the Government make to deal with that question? It is a matter which should be considered very seriously because in my constituency the ratepayers are grousing about it. When their unemployment benefit is run out, a good many of these men have to go on the dole or have to be supported by the local authorities. Some provision should be made to meet such cases.

The last point I wish to raise has reference to the minor drainage schemes, as in some cases a great mistake, I believe, is being made. There are main rivers which have not been cleaned for a number of years. Some Deputy mentioned that in days gone by they were cleaned by the landlord. The Land Commission then were to do it but did not. The local authorities did not take advantage of the several Drainage Acts. I know that the Board of Works had difficulty in carrying out drainage in some districts where the main rivers have not been done before. It may not come under relief schemes, but some consideration should be given to the matter to see that where minor drainage schemes are being carried out the main drainage is carried out before the minor schemes are gone on with.

These are just a few points which I wish to raise on the Estimate. I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to give attention to the matter of the two and three days' work and the question of wet days. That will not apply so much in the future, but in the winter great hardship was caused. I have had several communications from men who, after walking ten miles to their work, were told by the ganger that the day was too bad and they could go home again, so that they had to walk back the ten miles without getting anything. At the same time, I must say that the Parliamentary Secretary and the surveyors down the country are giving serious attention to it. There is one thing I cannot agree with, and that is the policy of the Government and the Labour Party. After five years, the position is as it was ten years ago, when the Government then in power were criticised because it was said they were wasting money on relief.

Mr. Anthony

Much as the Parliamentary Secretary has antagonised me, and much as I have antagonised him, at least I have in me an element of fair play. I think the Parliamentary Secretary has stood a fairly long barrage from various sections of the House and, let me say, he deserved every bit of it. At the same time, I want to make a few remarks on this Vote and to register the opinion here which I have registered before and, not later than last evening at a meeting of the Cork Corporation, had to register again. The Parliamentary Secretary is a man who has had considerable experience of the engineering profession and must know, possibly better than anybody else in this House, that the rotational system of employment which has been in existence on many of the relief schemes is a most objectionable system from many view-points. It is the considered opinion of very many eminent engineers that it is wasteful, extravagant and uneconomical. I know that this phase of these relief schemes has been laboured time and again in this House for the last week or two, but I want to get the Parliamentary Secretary to appreciate the point I am making and which was made again last evening by the Cork Corporation. We know that because of this rotational system of labour much dissatisfaction has arisen, and rightly arisen, in the ranks of the unemployed in Cork City, and what is true of Cork City is also true wherever the system operates. Some very exceptional cases have been brought under the notice of the Parliamentary Secretary in which men received for two weeks in which they had to rotate something like 15/- or 16/-. I think it was Deputy Keyes who drew attention to that fact. These may have been exceptional cases. I want the Parliamentary Secretary to direct his best energies to seeing that at least a week's employment will be given. That will obviate a lot of trouble for his Department and I am suggesting it in the best interests of the Government that he represents. This system of rotational employment has proved to be a most objectionable system and is causing an amount of trouble to various public bodies in the country.

There is another point for which, possibly, the Parliamentary Secretary is not fully responsible, but for which to some extent he does share responsibility. The responsibility, I suggest, is jointly shared by the Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister for Local Government. The Government are at present putting local authorities in a most embarrassing position. First of all, they are presenting a local authority with a cheque for something like £20,000 on the condition that the local authority shall raise a sum of, say, £8,000 or £9,000. In some cases it used to be a fifty-fifty proposition. The last grant offered by the Department concerned was £20,000 to Cork City.

Mr. Flinn

On a 20 per cent. contribution.

Mr. Anthony

I think it came to about £8,800.

Mr. Flinn

£4,000.

Mr. Anthony

I accept that; I am not going to quarrel about it. I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to be quite honest with the House in this matter. He must have known, and, if he did not, I will excuse him, that when that offer came to the Cork Corporation, the corporation had already met and, at their rates meeting, had decided on a rate of 21/3 in the £ or whatever it was. Senior counsel advised that, once having struck a rate, the corporation were not entitled to include this sum of £4,000 in their estimate, the estimate for the financial year ending 31st March, 1938. The members of the corporation are put in this most embarrassing position, that, if they refuse the grant, they will be told they are no friends of the unemployed and the Parliamentary Secretary can get up on any platform in this country and say: "We flung £20,000 at the Cork Corporation to do necessary work and the members of the corporation refused to put it into operation." The Parliamentary Secretary will get up at some cross-roads and say: "Get rid of those persons who represent you in the Cork Corporation because we gave them a free gift and they refused it." This is one of those wonderful gifts the Government is passing on to us, but, in my interpretation of the word "free," and in its ordinary sense in the King's English, "free" means gratis or for nothing. This free grant is not a free grant, in the proper sense of the dictionary term.

We are told that £20,000 goes to Cork to-morrow, but mark what happens. The persons who will be put to work on a rotational scheme are persons in receipt of unemployment assistance, to which fund, by the way, the citizens and ratepayers of Cork are contributing 1/6 in the £ on their valuations. The Parliamentary Secretary understands that.

Mr. Flinn

I do, yes.

Mr. Anthony

Let us see this wonderful Greek gift. This gift comes to us for the poor unfortunate unemployed who, by the way, are exploited in a most marvellous fashion always about election times. Solicitude has been expressed in this House for the poor and unemployed which I have not heard expressed for many years, except on the eve of an election. I think the Parliamentary Secretary will agree with me when I say that I have said unpopular things in this House, and by "unpopular" I mean that I have not played to the gallery. I said a thing on the Education Vote in respect of which I took certain risks and I was prepared to take further risks because I believe in telling the truth. If I felt that the £20,000 offered to our people was a free gift, I would naturally jump at it, but I think the Parliamentary Secretary knows as well as I do that we pay 1/6 in the £ in our rates.

Mr. Flinn

About £18,000.

Mr. Anthony

We pay £18,000 towards the unemployment assistance fund. We were told with a wonderful flourish of trumpets in this House that, when this Unemployment Assistance Act became law, the poor and helpless people would not be humiliated by being compelled to look for home assistance, or, as it used to be called in the old days, poor law relief. What do we find? We find that every other day the home assistance authorities, in other words, the poor law authorities, are being bombarded with applications for home help. It all goes to show that this Unemployment Assistance Act has not fulfilled the functions we thought it would fulfil.

A good deal of comment was made in this country some years ago when the Shannon scheme was initiated and carried to a very successful conclusion by the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy McGilligan. On that scheme a wage of 32/- per week was paid, and the condemnation of that wage was not so emphatic or so voluminous as it is now when the Parliamentary Secretary initiated schemes on which 24/- a week was paid. Although certain members of the Labour Party did object at the time, they are just as much responsible for that 24/- a week as are the Fianna Fáil Party, because they supported the Fianna Fáil Government in almost every act of theirs until they were compelled by the force of public opinion to object to the 24/- paid on certain schemes. Why is it—and this is a matter on which I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary for some information—that the Cork County Council can give to persons who are available for work under relief grants, a week's work instead of four, two or three days that may happen in the case of rotational employment? The Cork Corporation have been charged with negligence, and almost told that because of their want of initiative, their want of pluck, etc., they have been compelled to subscribe to this rotational employment. We—and I am speaking both as a Teachta Dála for the City of Cork and as one of the aldermen of the city—have been asked, and I subscribe to the proposal, to contribute to these schemes—and I would contribute again even though my rates go up by 5/- in the £, because I feel that way in relation to the unemployed. The Parliamentary Secretary must be aware, from the figures given by the Minister for Finance, with which I was quite familiar, that the debts due by local authorities up to the 31st March amount roughly to £24,500,000. That is borrowed money and amounts almost to the National Debt.

While prepared to do anything and everything to provide work for the unemployed, I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that the rotational system has become so abhorrent, even to the unemployed people, that it would be in the interests of the Government, and in the interests of the Department to grant the very polite request of the Cork Corporation, asking that that horrible system be ended. I do not suggest that the Parliamentary Secretary is responsible for it, because, after all, like any other Minister he is the servant of the Executive Council. With all his faults I do not put that responsibility on him. The Parliamentary Secretary knows that he has antagonised me, and I know that I have antagonised him, not that I compare myself with him, as that would be a far-fetched comparison, but the fact remains, and I challenge the Parliamentary Secretary on the point, that for every £4 voted by this House, local authorities are spending on this particular purpose something like £3, while all the kudos and credit go to the Parliamentary Secretary and the Government.

Mr. Flinn

I do not think we got much credit to-night.

Mr. Anthony

I want to give you all the credit to which you are entitled. It is not a whole lot, as you know. For every £1 that the local authorities contribute, the State spends something like 13/-. The greatest fraud of all is when the unemployed are told that £20,000 is given to Cork Corporation, or that £70,000 is given to Dublin Corporation. That would be all right but for the snag. The men put into employment are those who are in receipt of the highest rate of unemployment assistance. These men are then taken off that register and put to work, and the Central Fund is saved precisely the amount of money that would be paid to the persons who are taken off the unemployment assistance fund. In other words, if employment is given to 1,000 persons in Cork, these are the persons who are drawing £1 and over in unemployment assistance, the Central Fund is saved over £1,000, and the Government gets the kudos, after putting these men on the rotational system. I know what the Parliamentary Secretary will say in reply. No later than last night we had to turn down an offer in Cork—although the Corporation was willing to accept it—because it was received too late for inclusion in the estimates. A motion was carried by a big majority, in view of a condition attached to the acceptance of the £20,000, pointing out that the rotational system as now known should not obtain in connection with employment, and that if there was to be rotation it should be week about instead of three or four days. I want to impress upon the Parliamentary Secretary that the present system is most objectionable, and is causing a lot of trouble to the workers, to the employment exchanges, and to clerks in engineers' offices when administering the schemes.

Mr. Dillon

May I say a word in connection with a matter that arose?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy has spoken already, and another Deputy wishes to speak.

Mr. Dillon

I beg pardon. I was not aware of that.

Mr. Norton

I want to add my protest to that which has been already made against the rotational scheme of employment. It would be too much to expect that Deputy Anthony could make a speech without misrepresenting the Labour Party. He indulged in his usual misrepresentation this evening when he said that the Labour Party was in favour of 24/- a week paid on minor relief schemes.

Mr. Anthony

Read the report.

Mr. Norton

If the Deputy had any regard for the truth, he should know that the Labour Party put down a motion condemning the payment of 21/- a week on minor relief schemes, and in the course of a debate on the question criticism was indulged in by the Labour Party against similar rates of wages, and, in some cases, even less wages than were paid by the previous Government. Apparently the Labour Party will never be forgiven for one grave crime it committed in respect of Deputy Anthony.

Mr. Anthony

They got rid of Moscow. Is not that it?

Mr. Norton

We got rid of something much more humorous. The main discussion on the Vote this evening, and on a previous occasion, has ranged round the rotational scheme of employment, and in my opinion nothing whatever can be said in justification of that type of employment on relief schemes. We are told with a flare of trumpets sometimes that there are 25,000 persons working on relief schemes, and at other times we were told that the number had increased to 45,000, but when you come to examine the type of work available under these schemes you find that it is for three or four days per week at such a low rate of wages that workers are compelled to exist for a week on the wages they get for a few days. The whole policy of the Executive Council in respect to rotational schemes is entrenched in the giving of periodic part-time employment to those not able to secure regular employment in industry or agriculture. Part-time employment, particularly of the type provided in the relief schemes, is, in my view, a most reactionary policy. It compels workers to toil at hunger rates for a few weeks and to try to exist for the rest of the year on the miserable pittance they receive under the Unemployment Assistance Act. We have rotational schemes in operation in Kildare and other counties. Where a grant is made and is administered by a county council, the workers employed for three days a week receive 15/- less the cost of national health and unemployment insurance contributions, so that their remuneration is something like 13/6 a week, or, if they, are fortunate enough to get four days' work, they get 20/-, less the cost of two stamps, leaving their entire remuneration 18/6 a week. Where they are employed on minor relief schemes under the Board of Works, and only partially employed on rotational schemes, those who work three days a week receive the magnificent sum of 11/5, and if they are employed for four days under the notorious 24/- a week policy of the Board of Works they get 15/5.

I would like some of the Government apologists for these relief schemes to tell us what standard of living it is possible for a man, his wife and four or five children to maintain on a wage of 11/5 for three days, or on 15/5 for four days' work. I hope some of those who claim to be so interested in the progressive schemes undertaken by the Government will tell the House what standard of living is possible for a married man with a family who is compelled to work for such intolerably low rates of wages. Bad as the rates of wages are, the conditions attached to the paying of them are even worse in many cases. When a man starts to work under these relief schemes, and works say for three days a week, because of that he will get no unemployment assistance benefit and, although he has worked that week, he will not be paid for a fortnight or three weeks. So that a man working on a relief scheme this week gets no wages and no unemployment assistance; the following week he gets no wages and no unemployment assistance but, in the third week, he gets the wages which he has, perhaps, earned a fortnight previously. This is the scheme of employment about which there is so much talk. This is the scheme of employment heralded as a boon and a blessing to the unemployed. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary and those who stand for this particularly reactionary policy of part-time employment what is the objection to giving the workers a full week's employment? If there were a scarcity of men, one could understand the difficulty, but we have an abundance of men available for a full week's work or even for 52 weeks' work in the year. Why are they not being employed for a complete week, or why are they not being employed for a complete year? Whatever the difficulty may be as regards their employment for a complete year, there ought to be no difficulty whatever in employing them for a complete week, and thus enabling them to earn something like a normal sum in wages. The scheme for employing them for short periods of three or four days per week is simply a device to prevent these people from drawing unemployment assistance benefit. A man in receipt of 8/- or 10/- unemployment assistance may get a little more by working three days per week on these relief schemes, but the fact is he gets an amount entirely inadequate to his needs. Every man working on these minor relief schemes or regular relief schemes under the rotational system is being compelled to exist on a rate of wages insufficient to provide him with the minimum standard of subsistence. Then, quite a considerable number of persons who have a small pension from the British Army or a small pension by reason of being a member of the Volunteer reserve—men with responsibilities and commitments—can never get a chance of employment on these schemes, because the people who get the preference are those drawing the maximum amount of assistance benefit. They get the preference not because of any sympathy or generosity, but because the more of those taken off the register at the employment exchanges, the greater the saving to the Exchequer at the end of the year.

Will those who defend this scheme say what is the difficulty in giving workers a complete week's work or what is the difficulty in giving them a complete year's work? There ought to be no difficulty on the part of any Government in giving them a complete week's work, and it is rather notable that it was this Government which introduced the rotational schemes of employment as a means of spreading out relief schemes moneys—spreading them out by reducing the standard of living of the workers. Neither ought there to be any great difficulty on the part of this Government in employing these men for 52 weeks in the year instead of employing them for a few days each week for a few weeks. We were told in 1932 about the famous plan which was to bring back the emigrants and, at the same time, provide employment for all the unemployed people in the country. Now, we have reached a stage at which we are not only unable to take back the emigrants but we are actually unable to stop a dwindling population from emigrating. The whole scheme which is being enforced through the Board of Works amounts to a confession that there was nothing whatever in the story that Fianna Fáil had a plan to absorb the unemployed into industry. The fact that the Government find it necessary to resort to this part-time type of work at low rates of wages is a clear indication that the Government cannot solve the unemployment problem and does not know in what way to attack it effectively. In 1932 there was a plan to absorb the unemployed. Now, when you ask what has happened the plan or what the Government are doing to provide work for the unemployed, you are asked what you yourself would do—as if Fianna Fáil had not patent rights to this famous 1931 plan. We are asked, "Do you know how much it would cost to absorb all the unemployed?" That by a Party who, in 1932, were not only going to absorb all the unemployed in the country but were going to bring back the United States emigrants as well! There is no use in the Government asking other people for remedies for unemployment if that plan is still green, still capable of being implemented, and still capable of achieving its authors' high objective in 1932. The fact is that this whole rotational scheme of employment is a confession of bankruptcy on the part of the Government as regards the solution of the unemployment problem.

We are now told that there has been an improvement in employment in the Free State. There probably has been. There has been an improvement in employment in every other country of the world. Such improvement as has taken place here is no greater than the measure of improvement which has taken place elsewhere. The Government has no right to plume itself on the ground that there may be an improvement in the unemployment situation here, in view of the general, world-wide tendency towards improvement.

The fact remains that over 90,000 people are registering for employment at the employment exchanges and satisfying the rigorous tests imposed under the Unemployment Assistance Act to prove they are entitled to benefit under that Act. A substantial number of other people are unemployed and, because of the methods of administration of the Unemployment Assistance Act, have long since lost hope of getting any benefit through the employment exchanges. That is due to the methods adopted to keep down expenditure under the Act. Bad as the rotational scheme of employment is, the rate of wages paid by the Board of Works is particularly obnoxious in existing circumstances. The sum of 24/- a week, which can only be obtained by men working for six days of the week, is the maximum wage available for work on the minor relief schemes. That rate of wages— intolerably low—is still adhered to by the Board of Works notwithstanding that there has been a very substantial rise in the cost of living during the past few years and that the tendency is towards further increases in that respect. In face of a rising cost of living, the Board of Works adheres to a rate of wages which would be utterly indefensible even if the cost of living were much lower than it is to-day. That rate of wages could not be justified if the cost of living were substantially lower than it is at present. That brings me to the point of inquiring whether the rotational schemes of employment and low wages on minor relief schemes is not part of a deliberate policy to try to intimidate this proposed new Agricultural Wages Board from doing anything decent in the matter of fixing the rates of wages for agricultural workers.

The Dáil has passed an Act designed to establish an Agricultural Wages Board. The object of that Agricultural Wages Board is to fix a minimum rate of wages for agricultural workers. That Act has now been passed for some time, and it has taken the Minister for Agriculture a period of several months to select 12 people to act on that board. A considerable number of people have grounds for believing that the delay in setting up the board is not unassociated with the Government's general dislike of that particular legislation. The agricultural workers throughout the country are calling out for the establishment of machinery which will enable them to get something better than the rates of wages at which they are working to-day. But in case they are likely to get too much from this Agricultural Wages Board, we have the Board of Works now setting a standard wage for the agricultural workers and a headline for the Agricultural Wages Board. The Board of Works are doing that by paying a low maximum wage of 24/- a week in relief schemes. In fact, they are paying as low as 11/5 and 14/5 a week on relief schemes. In other cases the wage of 15/- and 20/- a week is being paid in ordinary schemes under the rotational system. I think the Board of Works ought to be ashamed of the kind of mentality that allows this wage. It is an effort to cut down to an intolerably low level the standard of existence. In this matter those who may contest before the Agricultural Wages Board the agricultural workers' right to a decent rate of wages will be able to point to the fact that a great State Department, the Board of Works, is only able to pay a maximum rate of 24/- a week, and, in fact, a lower rate in some of the western and southern counties.

That will be used as an argument or reason why the Agricultural Wages Board are not to fix more than 24/- a week in respect of agricultural wages. It can also be urged before the Agricultural Wages Board that the Board of Works regards an income of 12/-, 15/- or 20/- a week as sufficient for workers under the rotational scheme of employment. That will be urged as a reason why agricultural wages should not be raised to a decent level by the Agricultural Wages Board. I think the whole policy of the Board of Works in respect of minor relief schemes is an outrageously bad policy from the point of view of those who are the victims of it. The Parliamentary Secretary tries to justify paying this low rate of wages by arguing that if you give more wages then there will be a lesser number of people employed. We were told recently that the workers employed in Rynanna were happy and contented. On another occasion we were told that anybody who interfered with the workers receiving 24/- a week would be torn limb from limb——

Mr. Morrissey

Not 24/- but 21/- a week.

Mr. Flinn

Deputy Norton happens to be right for once.

Mr. Norton

I am right oftener than the Parliamentary Secretary. We have his statement that 4/6 a day was enough to make the workers at Rynanna happy and contented while they were building an aerodrome for other countries. We were told on a previous occassion that if anybody interfered with the workers getting 24/- a week on minor relief schemes he would be torn limb from limb. That makes it clear that the Parliamentary Secretary is firmly convinced in his own mind that 24/- a week is a good enough wage for Irish workers. The enthusiasm which the Parliamentary Secretary imports into defending that rate of wages—and he does it even with glee— shows his mentality on the matter. He said that if the men were given a higher rate of wages there would be less employment for them. Why, that kind of policy and that kind of reasoning would justify the payment of 10/- a week to workers. The State has placed upon it the moral responsibility for paying a just wage. It cannot escape that responsibility. It has placed upon it a responsibility for setting a fair standard of wages. But the only standard that they fix is one of 4/- a day, less broken time, and then we are told that if anybody tries to get any more for the workers he is going to be torn limb from limb. That is because, of course, he would be disturbing the happiness and contentment of these workers who are toiling for this starvation rate of wages. And we have that condition of things in the face of a very substantial rise in the general cost of living.

I would like to know from the Parliamentary Secretary whether we are to have a continuance of this policy of rotational employment during the current year? I would like to know from him whether the Government are relying on this method as the best remedy for dealing with a very serious unemployment situation? Are we to have a continuance of a wage policy that is represented by paying the workers a rate of 15/- or 20/- a week? If that is their policy, the Government ought to be ashamed of standing over it. Are we to take it from this that the Government has no solution of the unemployment problem? Are we to take it that the Fianna Fáil plan has now been definitely abandoned and derided? We have a right to an answer to these questions. I do not think it is any answer to have the Parliamentary Secretary asking: "Do you know the cost of providing employment for all the workers?" I cannot see any of the enthusiasm and the buoyancy about the plan to-day that we saw in 1932. In many respects, I can see a definite feeling of failure and a feeling of helplessness on the part of the Government in respect of this policy— a failure to deal effectively with the whole problem of unemployment. I want to know now whether this policy of misplaced rotational employment is to continue? If it is, there ought to be some method by which that policy could be challenged in this House. I challenge the Parliamentary Secretary to allow this question to a free vote of the House. If he does that, I am certain that he will not be able to get his own Party to go into the Division Lobbies in its support.

Mr. Coburn

As it is now 10.30 p.m., I move to report progress.

Progress reported. The Committee to sit again to-morrow, Thursday, 15th April.