I want again to repeat and to emphasise the fact that the Office of Public Works has definitely slowed down with regard to its operations in school building.
Estimates for Public Services. - Vote 10.—Office of Public Works (Resumed).
It has not. That statement was made last night, and it was disproved by the figures of the Deputy himself.
On a point of order, has the Parliamentary Secretary the right to jump to his feet and, in a disorderly way, interrupt the Deputy in possession with an entirely irrelevant interjection of that kind? Ministers are becoming grossly disorderly in this House, as are their satellites.
On a point of order, is the Deputy entitled to describe my conduct as disorderly?
Yes.
The Deputy was entitled to give his opinion. The Chair, however, did not see anything disorderly in the question, which was not a point of order. The Deputy in possession is within his rights in interpreting statistics and figures.
The Deputy gave way while I did express them.
I quoted the Parliamentary Secretary's figures last night, and I showed that for the years 1933-4 and 1934-5 an amount over the Estimate was spent. For the years 1935-6, 1936-7, and I assume 1937-8, the amount was not spent. In fact, £73,000, £68,000 and £41,000 were left unspent. As I have said, there is a crying necessity for new school buildings. As I said also, a good many of the illnesses among school children are traceable to the bad condition of some of those school buildings. Probably the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to give very good reasons for this state of affairs. I want specially to emphasise that between the Department of Education and the Office of Public Works there is not that cooperation which one would expect between Departments of Government. Sometimes we are told it is the Department of Education that stands in the way of expediting this building, but in my opinion the major share of the blame lies with the Office of Public Works. I should like if the Parliamentary Secretary, when he is replying, would tell us exactly what the position is with regard to his Department and the expediting of school building. I emphasise again that parents are compelled by law to send children to school, and I think it is bordering on criminality that children are compelled to go to school under such conditions.
Reference has been made to the airport which is under contemplation near Midleton and I should like to ask in what state of advancement that proposal is now. I attended a meeting some time last year at which the Cork Harbour Board, the Cork County Council and the Cork Corporation were represented. These bodies were to collaborate and co-operate in the erection of this airport. There was a grant to be made by the Office of Public Works, but for some time we have heard nothing about that matter. Probably the other airports and the conditions there have completely submerged the interest in this one. I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to tell us what exactly is the position and, if possible, to get some hint with regard to the wages to be paid in the construction of that airport. There is a very important consideration there, as I understand the workers were to be drawn partly from the city and partly from the rural district around that area. It would be necessary, therefore, to have some understanding with regard to the rates of wages to be paid. We do not want to see happening there what happened in other parts of the country when the work was in progress.
The Parliamentary Secretary also referred to the industry at Haulbowline. I am very glad of its initiation and before very long I hope we will have that industry in production. But I should like to point out that that is only a very small effort to absorb the unemployed in that area. People who know the district will remember the time when there were a few thousand people working there besides those working at Rushbrooke and Passage West. Now this industry in Haulbowline is to take the place of these three. In passing, I should like to say the conditions in Passage West, on the other side of the harbour from Haulbowline, are hardly equalled in any town of its size in the State. At one time there were very valuable docks there which have gone out of commission. I am told that in Passage West there is a big number of skilled workmen. In reply to a question here, I was told that it is hoped these men will be absorbed in Haulbowline. I do not see how everybody is going to be absorbed there, and I suggest that some use can be made of Rushbrooke Docks, probably in connection with some defence scheme. The docks there were purchased by Mr. MacLysaght, of Mallow, with the intention of setting up an industry something similar to that at Haulbowline. For some reason he was not able to get the necessary licence and the dockyards remain in his hands. With very commendable civic spirit, Mr. MacLysaght did not scrap the plant there that would be required if Rushbrooke is to continue as a dockyard and it is now lying on his hands. I therefore seriously suggest to the Government that it should be taken into consideration in connection with any defence scheme contemplated for that area.
Is it in order to discuss the defence scheme now, because I should like to discuss it also?
The Deputy is not discussing defence per se. He is advocating certain possible employment schemes.
We have an aerodrome in Galway to which I should like to refer if the discussion is allowable.
It is not permissible if not on the Estimate.
You have the money, we have not.
I am suggesting this, not so much as a measure of defence, but to relieve unemployment in that area. I am asking the Parliamentary Secretary if it is the intention of the Government to utilise that dockyard in connection with a defence scheme. I am not in any way raising matters of defence on this Vote. Owing to the amount of employment given in that area in years gone by and the number of unemployed there now, it would be necessary to make a very special effort to absorb the unemployed. I did not see any reference, either in the Parliamentary Secretary's statement or in the Estimate, to the conditions with regard to the leasing of the site at Haulbowline to that new company. We were not told what the rent is, what the length of the lease is, or the other conditions appertaining thereto. Probably the Parliamentary Secretary will give us that information when replying.
Taking this Vote as a whole, I think from what has been said from these benches that a very good case has been made out for the motion moved by Deputy Hogan. I have tried to supplement the reasons he gave for his motion. I have particularly stressed the wages and conditions of work on ordinary relief schemes. I have stressed the fact that school buildings have not been attended to in the way that they would be attended to under a more efficient Department. Incidentally, if attention were given to those buildings, you would have many of the people who are unemployed in rural areas absorbed in employment over a considerable period. That, I think, is a matter which the Parliamentary Secretary should bear in mind, apart from the other consideration which I have mentioned and which I think should be the paramount consideration of the Parliamentary Secretary and the Government.
I do not think there is much else that I can usefully add except to say that if it is the belief of the Government that the industry in Haulbowline will suffice for that area, they are very much out in their estimation. I have suggested to the Parliamentary Secretary that there are other ways in which employment may be provided in that area. I would very definitely ask him to consider especially the position of the Rushbrooke Docks. It is, I think, due to the people of that area that such consideration should be given, because it is rather an anomalous position that while we boast of the fine harbour we have in Cork we have no dockyard to repair even a fishing boat. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary, when he is replying, to say what is the position with regard to these dockyards at Rushbrooke.
The discussion on this Estimate has given rise to a considerable amount of trouble for the Parliamentary Secretary. It has been debated at considerable length, but, so far as I could see, he has got no credit for what his Department has done from any of the previous speakers. I must say that in my constituency of Western Galway the people are sincerely grateful to the Parliamentary Secretary for the amount of money he has spent in that area.
Do not make him blush. Was there a by-election in Galway recently, I wonder?
No, not for some time.
We shall have that in Monaghan soon.
Oh, dear me! I have no doubt the people in Monaghan will be truly grateful for the amount of money that will be spent there. I understand the band is ready to play.
Of course, the Deputy would not indulge in these disorderly interruptions.
In the western portion of my district—that is in the Gaeltacht area—it was customary at one time to give a fortnight's work before an election. That was during the time when Deputy Dillon's Party was in power. The result was that an election at one time was more anxiously looked forward to than any other event in that area.
Even to-day elections are looked forward to in that area.
The Deputy comes from East Galway, so that he would be more familiar with conditions there. The Parliamentary Secretary adopted an attitude entirely different from that of his predecessors when he took over control of the funds dealing with unemployment. We, in Connemara, are certainly very grateful for the amount of money he has expended in that area. I say that without any hesitation. I am sure that my colleague on the opposite benches, Deputy Mongan, would agree with that statement if he were here. Of course, Deputy Brodrick comes from a different area. At one time, relief works in my area always happened to coincide with an election or a by-election. That is not so to-day. At present we are getting our fair share of the money expended, according to the number of unemployed registered in the area.
There is only one snag in the matter of the allocation of grants to each area and it is this: In former times, when money was spent by the Land Commission and other Departments for the relief of unemployment and on relief schemes of various kinds, it was spent indiscriminately. Now it is being spent according to the number of people unemployed in a certain area. As a result of that system, the small farmer who is not always unemployed, and who does not wish to register as being unemployed, is sometimes placed at a disadvantage as no money is allocated for the upkeep or the making of roads into his land or into his turbary. The result is that by-roads in many places are getting into a state of disrepair. The local authorities will not repair these roads and the Parliamentary Secretary cannot give any grants for the improvement of them because the money is being allocated on the basis of the number of unemployed in each district. I do not wish to see that basis of distribution changed, because if people are unemployed and if they think it worth while to register as being unemployed, they are deserving of work.
I would, however, suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that he should ask for an extra grant for those areas that are not covered by grants given in respect of the number unemployed. At present, where you have a small farmer with a valuation of £15 or thereabouts whose land requires a certain amount of drainage or the roads into whose holding require repair—there are a number of such holdings in my area in the district leading into East Galway—these works cannot be undertaken by the Parliamentary Secretary at present because there is not a sufficient number of unemployed in that area. If a number of people are unemployed in a certain area, and if no useful work can be started in that area, would it not be feasible to have these workers transferred to an area where works are urgently required? That is a question that I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will investigate. If there are people unemployed in a certain area, but if there are no very useful works which can be done in that area, perhaps he could transfer these people, either by 'buses or some other form of transport, to an area where works are required but where the number of unemployed under the present system does not justify the starting of these works. As an alternative to that, perhaps he might ask the Department of Finance to give him some money which could be devoted to the maintenance of works that were formerly carried out by the Land Commission but which have now been pawned over on his Department.
I thoroughly agree with the case Deputy Hurley made about the schools. There are some schools in my constituency in very bad repair, and something should be done about them. In future, when schools are being built the Department's sanction to the plans might be looked to, because I think we are too conservative as regards the planning of national schools. If more money is required for the erection of schools, I am certain that every Party will agree to support the Parliamentary Secretary's demand for it. Some of the schools are in a very insanitary condition, the out-offices being a disgrace. I advocate schools and out-offices in each district being inspected by sub-sanitary officers. It is too much to expect teachers to look after that work. Some of the buildings are in a horrible condition, and it should be the duty of sub-sanitary officers to inspect them. Deputy Hurley referred to the necessity of an aerodrome in Cork. I wish to urge the provision of an aerodrome in County Galway, apart from the employment that it would give. There was an aerodrome in my constituency —and a very good one—when the British authorities were here. If the Department intends to expend any money on aerodromes, I direct the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary to the site at Oranmore, a few miles outside Galway. It is a very suitable place for an aerodrome, and if one is being established in the West I hope that the claims of Oranmore will be considered. I suppose it is too much to expect that the Parliamentary Secretary would give Oranmore first preference as against Cork, but I hope he will bear it in mind.
The Board of Works is responsible for the repair of many public buildings in Dublin and has control of certain funds. My remarks affect other Departments as well as the Board of Works, but at present I am concerned about parking facilities for motor cars, and the problem that has arisen in that respect.
That is the Lord Mayor's department.
If motor cars are parked in front of Leinster House they would be under the control of the Parliamentary Secretary's Department.
Subject to the jurisdiction of the Ceann Comhairle.
Some other places are under the jurisdiction of the corporation, and, to a lesser extent, I suppose under the control of the Local Government Department. The Parliamentary Secretary has certain spaces under his control which could be utilised for parking, and I do not know why he should not soften his heart and provide further facilities for motorists. There is no doubt about it that the trade and industry of the city is dependent on all the facilities that can be made available, so that motorists can park cars, do their business, and get away quickly. Of course, some people will say that Dublin is very well catered for compared with places like London, but the problem is growing and calls for attention. In another generation I suppose we may be considering the question of providing parking places for aeroplanes. The parking of motor cars is the problem to-day.
The Deputy might indicate to the Chair to what section of this Vote this matter relates.
The Parliamentary Secretary has control of parking in Stephen's Green, and I am advocating that motor cars should be parked around the Green. It is for the Parliamentary Secretary to say yes or no to the suggestion.
The Chair is anxious lest the Deputy should open a discussion of the whole traffic problem of Dublin. He would surely be followed by other Deputies equally interested. If the Deputy confines himself to the area of jurisdiction of the Parliamentary Secretary discussion would be orderly and advisable.
I submit to your ruling, Sir, but in addition in Stephen's Green, there is Leinster House, the Castle and a number of other places suitable for parking. I should like to know if the Parliamentary Secretary is going to soften his heart and throw these places open, or if the Local Government Department will say that the corporation should provide parking places. I do not intend to develop the question, as I merely want to make the Parliamentary Secretary responsible for his own Department and do not wish to saddle him with any other responsibility. I am afraid from the discussion we had on this Vote from different parts of the House the Parliamentary Secretary has enough on his shoulders without trying to add to his burdens. There is, however, an insistent and growing problem in connection with the parking of motor cars. As the problem is growing in other towns also, I urge the Parliamentary Secretary to consider it as a whole, and to say if he is prepared to allow Stephen's Green, the front and back of Leinster House, and some portion of the Castle to be used, or whether it is a matter for the Department of Local Government or for the corporation to be given power to acquire sites. Everybody agrees that the trade and commerce of the City of Dublin is the concern of all, and that it is affected by housing, unemployment, parking and other matters. Whether it is a question of housing or unemployment or any other matter unless trade continues in a proper manner all the rest will suffer. I should like to say that the question of parking motor cars passes through four distinct phases. We have just emerged from one of those in Dublin, namely, when you could park a motor car any place at any time for any period.
The Deputy is now getting outside the scope of this Vote.
Well, if you put that motor car outside Stephen's Green, inside the stones, I suggest that I would be in order and I have not indicated where the motor car of that description might have been left.
The Chair objects to the Deputy giving us the four stages of the development of motor traffic in which the Parliamentary Secretary has no responsibility.
I do not propose to go into that matter at any length. I have finished with the first one by saying that we have definitely passed out of that stage. The next stage, which we are in at the present time, is somewhere midway between the second and the third, namely, where there are free parking-places. The fourth stage, that we have not arrived at, and I do not suppose we will arrive at for a number of years, is where there are large buildings put up at somebody's cost where motor cars can be parked. I would appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary to consult with the Local Government Department, the corporation and the police. Undoubtedly the police have made a courageous effort to tackle the problem, and whether they are 100 per cent. right or 90 per cent. right I do not propose to go into, but certainly an effort has been made to tackle the problem. But the root of the matter lies with the Government, and, as I say, partly with the Parliamentary Secretary. I do not know how far the Government are prepared to consider any problem that is growing, or whether they are going to wait until the problem has become a major one for the city.
The Deputy must apply the brakes and get back to Stephen's Green or some area under the jurisdiction of the Parliamentary Secretary. Otherwise he may be asked to show his licence.
I would be very sorry to have to show my licence because you have been most kind to me. But, as I said, it is a problem in which four Government Departments are concerned, and it is a little bit like thimble-rigging, each Department of the Government saying it is the other three that are concerned.
The Deputy will probably agree with the Chair that, in the main, it is a matter for the Minister for Local Government and not for the Parliamentary Secretary.
That is where I join issue with you, because the easiest and quickest solution of this problem would be for the Parliamentary Secretary to give some relief in Stephen's Green.
If the Deputy parks there he will be quite within the law for the moment.
I will be very careful about taking my car outside of the railings in Stephen's Green. Possibly the Parliamentary Secretary may see difficulties in giving up a place such as the outer area of Stephen's Green. At the same time the problem is a growing one and—now I am coming near the edge—I would appeal to him to consult the other Departments and try to find a solution of a problem which affects the whole of the city and a number of Departments.
I suppose everybody here will agree that the present situation with regard to Government offices in this city is bad. They are getting more and more private houses of all sorts, and it is questionable, I suppose, whether the proximity of a Government office in a private house depreciates or appreciates the locality. It is obvious, I think, that steps will have to be taken within the comparatively near future to have them all organised into one or more large office centres. I am not suggesting that a large amount of money should be spent immediately on this because there are probably more pressing problems at the moment, but the point which I wish to make with the Parliamentary Secretary is that, at the present moment, the Corporation of Dublin are engaged in making a plan of the city, and it is obvious that one of the major things in that plan will be municipal and Governmental centres. If the Parliamentary Secretary's Department is in a position to indicate to the corporation that they have already prepared some scheme or have some scheme in mind at all events, as to what form these new Government offices should take, and where they should be sited, it will obviously make the position of the town planning consultants very much easier. It would be farcical for the town planning consultants to produce a town plan with the Government Offices situated somewhere and for the Government to come along and wish to put their offices somewhere else. It would obviously throw the whole thing out of balance. I hope that the Department, if they have not already done anything in that way, will consider that matter and pass on any information which they have to the town planning consultants in order to assist them in the preparation of the plan.
While touching on municipal matters, I would like to support Deputy Dockrell's plea that the Parliamentary Secretary should consider ceding a portion of the footpath around the Green, to enable cars to park diagonally rather than parallel with the footpath, and thereby accommodate at least twice as many as can be done at the moment.
Another point I wish to raise is the question of Bourn-Vincent Memorial Park. I cannot claim to have any personal knowledge of this park, but I understand that the purpose of its donors was that this park should be for the benefit of the population at large, that it should be the centre of a holiday place where people generally should be allowed to wander through and enjoy its present wild and verdant condition. As far as I can gather, that is not the position. I understand that portion of it is leased for the shooting rights and that no steps have been taken to open the park in such a way that it can be used as I believe it was intended by the donors. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to consider whether some provision could not be made by which footpaths or roads or some such could be cut through the park, and also the provision or facilities for the provision of youth hostels in that park, so that the present enthusiasm for outdoor life can be carried out in that area to the fullest possible extent.
There is just one other point, and that is the question of the lighting in this room which, I presume, refers to the overhead lights. In my innocence I had thought that the two already up were provided because the authorities thought the Labour Party needed more light, but apparently it is in the nature of an experimental scheme. I do hope that the others, when they are added, will not be different. The two existing lights are not in the same style, and I hope that a decision will be come to as to which style is to be adopted and that it will be a general one, so as not to have them all odd.
As usual, when discussing an Estimate of this nature, I think the first thing to start off with is the system of rotation schemes. I quite agree that it is very easy to utter a whole lot of destructive criticism, and in a good many cases it is very hard to offer anything constructive. Still, I think that everybody has admitted that the present system adopted by the Department is not satisfactory and that it has not been a success. It gives a lot of undue trouble to the officials of the local bodies, and it inflicts in a great many cases particular hardships on the men concerned in the work. A man works two days, then he is off another two days, on again two other days, then stops another day and signs for the following day. All that is punctuated by the local officials of the local bodies scratching their hair and trying to find out how they can work the scheme. I can only compare it to hop-scotch or "dot and carry one," or the old game "she loves me—she loves me not." That is how this thing of two days on and another day off strikes me. The officials of the local bodies do not understand it, and I doubt if even the Department understands it. I gathered that the Parliamentary Secretary stated that instead of the present system the men will work in future one week on and the other week off. That perhaps might be a better system than the one at present adopted. If a man works one whole week at a relief scheme, and is then off for another week, I think he would find that would be more beneficial to him in the long run. I do not know whether it would. Of course there is the possibility that if a man is working one or two days he may on the one or two days following, when he is put off, be able to secure casual employment for a day or two. But I know of cases where men have been afraid to take on casual employment lest they may not be able to get back again to the relief schemes. On the whole, however, I think it would work better if a man were given continuous work for a week and then off for the following week. In the meantime he could take on any casual employment that might be open to him. In this matter I am, of course, only expressing my views.
On this question of the relief schemes I wish to put a query to the Parliamentary Secretary. My query is whether the recent decision by a High Court judge concerning the payment of insurance sums on these relief schemes has been noted by him? I know the Parliamentary Secretary intimated that he was prepared to finance the cost of that case. I think that has been done. I would wish to know whether the opinion of the learned judge is going to be effective retrospectively. I wonder whether the Parliamentary Secretary, with certain limitations, is going to treat the judge's decision as retrospective?
If the Deputy likes, I will answer that question now.
Yes.
I am anxious to do so because the Deputy's contribution to this debate, up to the present, has been constructive and for that I am grateful. From the date of the judge's decision arrangements were made at once to implement that decision. But there is no power to make that decision retrospective. The actual position which is taken by the Minister for Industry and Commerce is that these men are not insurable. That decision is actively operative up to the date on which it is changed by the decision of the High Court judge. There is no power in the Department except by legislation to deal with that retrospectively. From the administrative point of view it would be absolutely impossible to go back on this matter retrospectively.
I suppose no new legislation is contemplated?
No.
I have nothing further to say on the question of the rotation schemes. It is a very difficult problem for which to find a solution. It is a problem which has received attention from Deputies on all sides of the House in order to do away with the hardships that have been inflicted on men engaged in these schemes. There are a few other remarks which perhaps may not be of the same nature as of those previously made. I refer to the airport at Collinstown. I have already expressed my views on this matter. At that time I was under a certain difficulty. I now wish to repeat some of what I said then with a view to seeing whether a solution can be found. I am not accustomed to throwing bouquets at the Minister or the Parliamentary Secretary and they are not being thrown from this side of the House.
Do not throw them; leave them in a vase.
Any representations I have made I made in all honesty and sincerity. I made them in the hope that they would receive the attention of the Department. A fairly decent effort has been made to rectify what I complained of.
Hear, hear!
But there have been other occasions. I know there is going to be a considerable amount of trouble at the Collinstown airport in the near future, and I am hereby warning the Department of Public Works of that. As the Parliamentary Secretary is aware, and some Deputies know, the actual work of digging the trenches and levelling the ground at Collinstown has been completed. We are going to have building starting now. That is where the trouble will arise. You will have organised tradesmen coming in there and you may rest assured that these tradesmen are not going to work with non-union labour, and with people who are being paid a non-union wage. I think the work actually started shortly before the general election last year. There is a big number of men employed there. The wages, if they complete a full week, are £2 2/- a week. Thereby hangs a tale. You have a lot of bad weather and broken time. That timekeeping has sometimes been worked rigorously with the result that the men have suffered hardship. These men are drawn from an area as far as Balbriggan 15 miles or 16 miles from Collinstown. Some of them have cycled that distance and having ridden 15 or 16 miles, got wet to the skin before they arrived there. It has happened that men got there day after day and that at the end of the week owing to weather conditions they received only 4d. or 6d. Certainly they received very small sums for the week.
I agree that one case of that kind did occur. The Deputy will agree with me that it was absolutely and outrageously exceptional. It was not a case of general happening.
But it did happen.
Yes, in one case.
Well it happened that men attended at the aerodrome four or five days and on a good many occasions received only 15/- at the end of the week.
But it is also within the Deputy's knowledge that the actual amount of broken time at the Collinstown aerodrome was relatively very small. I am prepared to give the House later on the actual figures.
Eight per cent.
Yes.
I have the figures too.
I am very glad indeed that the Deputy has mentioned the figures. We have taken them under the head of broken weather, sickness and other causes. I would be most happy to put those figures at the Deputy's disposal for his examination.
Thank you.
Also, we have a dissection on the ground of distance; that is to say, how they are affected by distance, and all these figures I will be very glad to have considered.
I suggest that something should be done to right the whole matter in connection with the Collinstown job now that we are approaching the buildings. I have no great knowledge of rates of wages or anything of that nature, but I think that now is the time when any little matters that may be the subject of complaint should be rectified. The men at Collinstown went on strike at the time there was a building strike in operation. I do not think that they were organised, and the result was that they were out for a long time and in some parts of the county they were deprived of home assistance. As a result, they had to go back to work. Now, the position is that many of them have been paid off, but largely because of the fact that they went back to work in certain circumstances, these men in the North of County Dublin are now completely disfranchised. They cannot get any building job or other work as a result of having gone back to Collinstown. The position for many of them is really serious. This is one of the principal jobs started in North County Dublin for a considerable time. Many of these men in Swords, Balbriggan, Rush and Lusk cannot go to other jobs and that is attributable to the trouble that existed at Collinstown and the fact that they went back there.
Who has disfranchised them?
I would say it was the result of the Government action in making these men go back to work at the aerodrome.
Who disfranchised them?
The trade unions.
It was largely due to the action of the Government, and a lot of these men are now suffering dire poverty, and something should be done to rectify it. There is a lot said about Cork in this House. The Parliamentary Secretary represents Cork, and I desire to assure him that I am in no way personal in whatever remarks I may have to make. There is so much said here about Cork that there are times when the course of the debate inclines one to think that it is a meeting of the Cork County Council. There were questions as to why there should not be an airport in Cork. One Deputy said that they should have an airport in Cobh Harbour, and he advocated that Cork seemed to be the place in which to put everything, no matter what disturbance was caused to the average individual elsewhere. On the Collinstown job it is a rather strange thing that a great many of the gangers and the key men have accents that certainly did not originate in the City or County of Dublin. I may say that I heard a good many more Cork and Kerry accents there than I did corncrakes or cuckoos.
They must have been good gangers, then.
In other parts of the country they are parochially-minded and it is time that we in Dublin City and County became parochially-minded. A lot of the single tickets from Cork to Dublin should be stopped. These people should be given returns, particularly when it comes to employment on relief schemes. This is the biggest relief scheme we have had in North County Dublin for years. It was very badly wanted and it is much appreciated. There should be some attempt made to stop these gentlemen coming in. A lot of them came up and by some manipulation they were able to acquire a residential qualification. It is a source of complaint that a great many of the gangers have come from outside Dublin County.
It shows their ability.
The men do not like taking orders from people who came up from Cork and Kerry. We do not mind if our own county men give the orders.
I may inform the Deputy that it is a rule of the Board of Works that they do not employ gangers in their own county. We deliberately bring gangers from other counties and that is practically universal. I do not know what occurred in this particular case, but that is the general rule and, if it did occur there, it would have been in accordance with the general rule.
May I take it that if men were working on an airport in Cobh or Kerry there would be a possibility that men from County Dublin would get jobs as gangers?
If they were competent.
On the Post Office Estimate I referred to a rather peculiar matter, what appears to me to be an enigma. I got no explanation from the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary may be able to explain the matter to me. The men in Collinstown are supposed to be paid £2 a week, with broken time. The Dublin County Council workers, the road men, are paid approximately £2 7s. a week, without broken time. Quite recently the Department of Posts and Telegraphs were laying a cable from Dublin to Collinstown aerodrome. They employed casual men and I think they paid 1/2½ per hour. The men laid the cable to Collinstown gateway and they continued to lay it through the field. Once they entered the aerodrome to lay the cable the men's wages, casual or otherwise, automatically dropped from 1/2½ to 11½d., the wages paid in the aerodrome. The position at the aerodrome boundary was that the men working at one end of a 20-foot pipe had 11½d. and the men at the other end were paid 1/2½. That was really a peculiar situation. There was a definite discrepancy between the wages of the men outside the gate and the wages of the men in the aerodrome. Once the men went inside the boundary their wages were automatically reduced. I admit the converse happened and when the men were brought out to cut trees their wages were automatically increased. It is a paradoxical situation and it may give rise to a great deal of discontent if there is not some adjustment. If the Post Office can pay 1/2½ why cannot the Board of Works pay the same? I do not think it is asking too much that they should pay the same rate of wages.
Is the Deputy familiar with the statement that hard cases makes bad law?
I do not say I am familiar with it, but in this instance I am merely quoting the facts and I should like some explanation. There is another peculiar position in relation to Collinstown. Let us say that there is a Catholic holiday. The men have to ride to work a distance of seven or eight miles in many instances and they have to report for work at 8 a.m. There is no Mass before 8 o'clock, and the men who go to Mass would come out approximately at 8.30. They cannot get to the aerodrome before 8.45. Ordinarily speaking, the men would not be one bit afraid to sacrifice that amount of time so long as they could hear Mass. It has been a tradition in this country, particularly with the working man, that he does not consider any sacrifice when it comes to a question of his religion. Suppose, however, he reports for work at a quarter to 9, he is paid by the Department, naturally —well, I shall not say, naturally, but he would not mind that to some extent —but if he reports at a quarter to 9, he is not allowed to start work until 10 a.m., that is, until a quarter of a day has elapsed, which means, in other words, that it costs that man a half-crown to go to Mass on a Church holiday. Now, we have in our Constitution —of course I am speaking with all respect to the members of every religious denomination in the House—but we have in our Constitution a clause or Article in which, I think, we acknowledge the special position of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church in this country. That is in the Constitution, and it would be interesting to know whether that clause has been inserted in the Constitution by the Government Party as a mere platitude, and perhaps to attract votes. That may be right or wrong. I do not say that it is right.
I may say that the particular position to which the Deputy refers has arisen in other places, and it has been dealt with in other places and is being dealt with in Collinstown.
But it is the case in Collinstown up to the time I am speaking. As I say, we have that clause in the Constitution and I suggest that this, possibly, is a way of implementing that particular clause in the Constitution, unless it was meant as a mere platitude.
What has been done is to alter the starting hours in particular cases where the Masses do not fit in with the possibility of a man's meeting the ordinary hours.
But it is going on in Collinstown at the present moment, and has been going on there for a long time. That is the actual position. Is the Parliamentary Secretary prepared to remedy the matter now as regards Collinstown? The fact that such a condition should exist there seems to me to be terribly inconsistent with that clause in the Constitution. We are certainly a predominantly Catholic country, and we acknowledge that in our Constitution. As I have said, this would be a very good way of implementing that clause in the Constitution, if the Government really mean what they say and do not mean it as just a platitude to attract votes. They can implement that clause by simply allowing men, say, an hour off on a Church holiday, and by not cutting their pay. I think that, if they are to be allowed an hour off to attend Mass on a Church holiday their pay should not be cut, and that is even putting it mildly, but if you cannot see your way to do that I certainly think it is not too much to suggest that if a man reports at a quarter to nine, he should be allowed to start at nine o'clock, and not be deprived of a quarter of a day. Otherwise, we can only accuse the Government Party of being political hypocrites and not meaning what they say. Of course, they may be accused of that in connection with many other things, but this is a very tangible case where they can prove that that clause in the Constitution is not a mere platitude. They can implement that clause by doing what I suggest. It may, possibly, be contended that the civil servants here in Dublin are not allowed time off in that way. I am not saying whether I agree with that or not, but I do say that you cannot compare the case of civil servants in Dublin with that of men in country districts. In Dublin, I think, one can get Mass at any time from 7 a.m. onwards, and I think that the average civil servant does not have to report for duty till 9 a.m. I may be wrong in that, but that is what I understand. Here, however, is a good way now of implementing that part of the Constitution.
In every case in which we have had a complaint it has been dealt with.
Well, if it is being dealt with, am I to take it that it will be retrospective, and that the men will get back the money that they have lost through this?
No. We cannot do anything like that. I think the Deputy is being rather like Oliver Twist now.
Well, the position is that, in this Catholic country of ours, men are practically being penalised on account of their religion as Catholics. It is a relic of penal days. As a matter of fact, there are some of the penal laws still on the Statute Book, I believe.
The Deputy is overstating a good case now.
Do I understand the Parliamentary Secretary to say that he will remedy this matter, but that it will not be retrospective?
In every case in which there is legitimate cause of complaint under that head, it will be remedied, and is in process of being remedied.
On a point of order, Sir. Did I understand the Parliamentary Secretary to say that he could not pay retrospectively, whether the action was legal or otherwise?
If it were illegal, recovery could be made by law.
Suppose it were a question of wages that can be adjusted, cannot your Department pay retrospectively?
I could not say.
Did not your Department do that in connection with the building trade strike, when there was something like five months' pay involved?
I am not prepared to say, in answer to a general question; to a particular question, yes.
Am I to take it now that I, or somebody in my capacity, will have to bring specific cases before the Parliamentary Secretary's Department?
No, but any man can bring any complaint to the Office of Public Works.
Well, can I take it that an investigation will be made on those lines concerning the Collinstown job?
Any complaint that is made, whether by a Deputy or by anybody else, will be received and considered.
Well, I am making that complaint, now, publicly. Can I get an assurance that a man in the position to which I have referred will be allowed to start work on a Church holiday one hour after the normal starting hour?
No. The Deputy cannot get that statement. He can get the statement that every possible consideration will be given, but I am not going to lay down a particular hour. Whatever is reasonable and proper to be done will be done. It is in process of investigation now, as it has been before and will be afterwards.
And you give the assurance that it will be remedied?
Naturally, if there is anything wrong.
I think that the Parliamentary Secretary, by his own words now, has admitted that there is something wrong. Will he give the assurance that it will be remedied?
I have already given all the assurances which are necessary to a reasonable man.
I am not suggesting that I am reasonable for a moment, any more than anybody else, but will the Parliamentary Secretary admit that, if the facts are as I have stated, there is a grievance there? Does he admit that?
I do.
And that if there is a grievance it will be remedied?
Unhesitatingly.
In listening to the debate so far in connection with this Vote, it would not appear that the Parliamentary Secretary would be likely to get many bouquets from either side of the House, except from his own Party, and it would appear to be somewhat dangerous for any Deputy in the House to do so, because when Deputy Tubridy wished to say something in that direction there was a jeer from all over the house, and one Deputy said something about a by-election. Listening to the speeches from the other side of the House for the last few days one would think that Deputies opposite were very deeply interested in the agricultural community, and it is therefore very hard to understand all this criticism to-day of this particular Department, because no other Department that I know of has been making such improvements for that part of the community living at the back of the mountains and in bog areas as this Department. The Department have been making roadways and passes to the homes of these people, trying to drain water-logged lands around the people's houses, and making improvements in the conditions of the people generally, and yet we have all this criticism of the Department instead of constructive suggestions. Apart from the criticism, there is actually a motion here to refer this Vote back, which would mean, if they succeeded in having their way, that all this work would be stopped. I think that is not very constructive or helpful.
I am not going to make a very long speech on this, but I should like to say with reference to what Deputy Tubridy said that there are areas to-day where you have quite a number of registered unemployed and have had them for the last few years where it might be possible to get works of public utility started. I know that it is not so easy to get works of public utility started at the moment, but you might have cases where there were genuine works of public utility, and if the Parliamentary Secretary could see his way to group two or three units together, if he is getting useful work done, I think the money would be better spent and would be to the advantage of everybody, even the labour employee.
There has been a good deal of discussion for some years past about drainage. I feel that we are not getting the return from minor drainage schemes that we would get if main drainage had been dealt with. We have been told during the past two years that main drainage will be dealt with. I would be glad if the Parliamentary Secretary would tell the House when it is proposed to deal with main drainage, because I feel if that were done minor drainage schemes would be a greater success than they are at present. We are all familiar with minor drainage schemes that have been carried out, and then find that, after four or five years, the works are in such a condition that one may say the money spent on them has been wasted, due to the fact that for one reason or another the drainage has got blocked up. I hope, therefore, that main drainage will be proceeded with. If you had minor drainage on some sort of a contributory basis for maintenance it would, I believe, be useful work for the country, but that presupposes that main drainage would first be fully dealt with. We could then look forward to the day when this work would be of a reproductive nature and would bring in a return to the nation.
In conclusion, I would like to say that in my opinion the Parliamentary Secretary has done more useful work for the farming community than any other Minister with the possible exception of the Minister for Local Government whose reconstruction schemes have been of enormous advantage. There is no doubt but that the Minister's scheme shines there. The work of both will add to the comfort and enjoyment of the farming community for very many years to come.
I have had occasion to criticise the administration of certain other Departments, and I think it only reasonable, when we come to the Board of Works Vote, that each one of us should speak of our own experience of State Departments. I am bound to say that I know of no Department of State with which I have had contact which is better run than the Board of Works, and it affords me pleasure to express my appreciation publicly of the help which is forthcoming from that Department to any person who goes into it looking for assistance or information. I have on occasion gone there, and I have really been ashamed of the paucity of information that I had when looking for help. I have been received with every consideration. Officials have gone to the utmost limit to try and find out exactly what it was that was wrong, and have gone to the utmost limit to put it right. That is something, I think, which deserves recognition in public, and it is something which, I think, gratifies any member of the House to be in a position to say. I must say I sympathise with Deputy McGowan. He finds himself somewhat embarrassed when he has to throw bouquets at the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance. So do I, but I cannot help it.
The Deputy does not feel quite as embarrassed as the Parliamentary Secretary.
I have got to admit that the Department over which he presides is extraordinarily well run, and that anything you put up to it is reasonably investigated: that you do feel if it is turned down it is only turned down after it has been given a fair show.
Having said so much, I would like to refer to an observation made by Deputy Benson to-day in regard to the construction of a Government building that is to be undertaken in the hereafter. It is true that at present the scattering of Government offices is a great embarrassment. In so far as the Department of Industry and Commerce is concerned, there is a proposal on the carpet at the present time to gather all their divisions together in one building which is to be situated on the vacant site in Kildare Street. Might I put it to the Board of Works that before immense sums of money are spent on a large building in Kildare Street, it might be well for it to submit to the Executive Council the desirability of examining the whole question of a building in Dublin the equivalent of Stormont in Belfast, so that the mind of the Executive Council might be definitely made up as to whether that is a practicable proposition in the immediate future or not? If it is not, then the Department of Industry and Commerce scheme may have to go forward, but if the Executive Council made up its mind that it would come to the Oireachtas for authority to build a Dublin equivalent of Stormont, then it might be better to postpone the Department of Industry and Commerce building and incorporate it in the general plan. I do not know whether that question has been mooted in Government circles or not, but I put it to the Board of Works that it might be well to initiate inquiries with a view to ascertaining whether that matter has been discussed, and if it has, whether the present instructions, in regard to the building for the Department of Industry and Commerce, might not be suspended pending the larger decision.
There are one or two matters arising out of the Committee of Public Accounts to which I would like to direct the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary. One is the matter of estimation. The Parliamentary Secretary and his Minister are responsible for preparing the Estimates for their Departments. For the last few years their Estimates bear no relation whatever to their actual expenditure. In the financial year 1936-37 their Estimate for Public Works and Buildings was £340,693 in excess of their actual expenditure, and at the end of the financial year they actually surrendered that sum to the Exchequer. That can be explained on the ground that they are the spending Department for other Departments, and that other Departments ask them to prepare plans and specifications and to make financial provision for certain buildings: that these Departments then change their minds and ask the Board of Works not to go on, whereupon the Board of Works does not go on and surrenders the money. I think the Board of Works ought to bring pressure to bear on these Departments not to give instructions lightly in these matters: to make up their minds very fully before they ask the Board of Works to come to Dáil Eireann to appropriate large sums of money, because the appropriating of large sums of money in this way, which are not subsequently spent, give an entirely false appearance to the Budget and an entirely false outlook to the Legislature when they are considering what sums they may legitimately spend on the various services that they have to finance in any financial year.
That is allowed for in the factor of over-estimation which is always included in the Budget.
Very partially allowed for. I do not think that so large a sum as I have mentioned is contemplated even in the factor of over-estimation. When we come to relief schemes, we find that in the financial year, 1935-1936, the Parliamentary Secretary surrendered in that year a sum of £172,245, in respect of relief schemes, which he did not spend. Does the Parliamentary Secretary remember his first year as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance? He became choleric when introducing his first Estimate for relief schemes, and said he rejoiced in this opportunity of exposing one of the meanest, the lowest, most treacherous, and contemptible political devices that had ever occurred to the brain of an astute politician, and that was the plan to vote large sums of money which were then handed over to the Land Commission that was already so heavily burdened with work that it could not possibly spend them: that, having allayed public anxiety by making ample provision for the unemployed, you handed that provision to a man so over-burdened with work that he could not spend it, with the result that the bulk of it came back to the Exchequer at the end of the financial year when the public had forgotten their anxiety about the unemployed. Does the Parliamentary Secretary remember his righteous indignation on that occasion?
I do not remember making the statement in an Estimate speech, but I do remember making it in an election speech. If the Deputy will allow me, he may find that what I have to say may be of help to him.
I do not want the Parliamentary Secretary's help. I have got him on the horns of a dilemma and I propose to keep him there.
A very useful thing. The Deputy will find, if he goes back on the records, that in every Estimate speech I have stated the absolute necessity of having a sum to surrender: that it was the only possible way in which we could carry over from one year to another. He will also, if he reads the Estimate speech of this year and the Supplementary-Estimate speech of last year, see that special provision has been made this year by the Minister for Finance to allow us to engage in schemes to a larger extent than we normally would, so that we would, in fact, be able to spend the amount of money we were given. The device of a re-vote has been fully explained to the House as an absolutely necessary financial device to enable schemes to be carried on from year to year and the new and better provision made this year by the Minister for Finance to enable, approximately, the amount actually voted to be spent has also been fully explained.
If the Parliamentary Secretary thinks he is helping me, he has never made a greater mistake in his life. He is trying to help himself and he has worked himself into a choleric passion. If he gets his secretary to go back over his many and tedious speeches in this House, he will find the speech in which he described this particular practice as one of the lowest, meanest and most contemptible devices to which a politician could resort. Hoping fervently that that speech had been forgotten, he proceeded to resort to that expedient himself, but the Public Accounts Committee caught him out. In the report of the Public Accounts Committee, for 1935-36, his attention was directed to that practice and he was warned that it must stop.
I suggest that the Deputy read the paragraph so as to put it on record.
Apparently, some new rag is to be taken out of the rag-bag this year to try to cover the nakedness of the Parliamentary Secretary. The only method of covering his nakedness is to tell the Dáil honestly how much he means to spend on this service and to spend it. When he knows that the capacity of his Department is not sufficient or the will of his Minister will not enable him to spend more than a certain sum, he should not come into the House seeking to appropriate a wholly fictitious sum in order to give innocent individuals, like Deputy Victory, an opportunity to get up and say: "Is he not a wonderfully generous man? Look at all the money he is spending in Connemara." It is rather a mean business. I must say that when the Parliamentary Secretary was inveighing against that practice some years ago, I had a certain secret sympathy with him. I thought it was a rather mean transaction to get up and hold yourself out as a benefactor of the poor of Connemara and, then, when you had got all the praise from the more gullible of your own supporters, to sneak out by the back door and put all the money you had appropriated for the poor into your own hip pocket.
There were certain other matters to which I had intended to refernotably one in connection with the sale of a wooden police barrack which had cost £1,460 10s. 9d. and which was subsequently sold for £60. There were certain special circumstances surrounding that transaction which the Department explained and an undertaking was forthcoming that this kind of transaction would not take place in the future. That, I think, takes most of the harm out of that incident, but I think these are matters which require to be noted not only by the committee but by this House with a view to impressing upon the Parliamentary Secretary that it is vitally necessary that experimental purchases of that kind should be eschewed, as they cannot be justified where the discrepancy between the purchase price and the subsequent realisable value is so very wide.
I want to raise a matter of principle in regard to a question which I have discussed with the Parliamentary Secretary as a Deputy discusses a matter with the Minister in charge of a Department. I make no charge of bad faith against the Parliamentary Secretary. It is purely a question of an honest difference between him and me as to what is the correct attitude of a Government Department in a matter of this kind. The man in question held the position of carpenter's clerk in the Board of Works. That is not a very skilled occupation. He worked in that capacity for about 13 years. At the end of that term of service, the Parliamentary Secretary, in the ordinary discharge of his duty, carried through a certain reorganisation in his own Department which affected the division in which this man worked. In the course of that reorganisation this man became redundant, whereupon he was simply paid off and put out on the street. It so happened that that man had been allowed to reach something approximating middle age in what is virtually a blind-alley occupation in the service of the Board of Works. I do not think I misrepresent the Parliamentary Secretary when I say that his position is: "If that man had been a charge on my own private purse, if he had been my own personal employee, I might have seen a case for making some special provision for him, but he was not. I am a trustee for public funds and my duty is to get full value for every penny of public funds I permit to be spent. Therefore, I cannot make jobs for people to be paid out of public funds and, if a person becomes redundant, I cannot allow him to become a charge on public funds. He has got to go. I admit that sounds Draconian. I admit that, in our private lives, we would probably not do that sort of thing. We would try to find some little job for that man to keep him in employment until we had placed him with somebody else. But we cannot do that kind of thing because we are handling public funds." There, I differ with the Parliamentary Secretary. I do not think that a Department of State is entitled to act the part of an entirely inhuman and impersonal employer. The fact that a man happens to be working for a Department of State should not mean that his personality is to be completely forgotten. It is not reasonable for a Department of State to employ a man up to a point where he becomes virtually unemployable and then throw him on the scrap heap. What is he to do? The man to whom I refer is trying to maintain invalid parents and he is not employable. He just fitted the particular job he happened to sit down in in the Board of Works. I admit the case made by the Parliamentary Secretary, that it is not a training which makes him very versatile, that it is not a job which makes it easy for the chairman of the Board of Works or the Parliamentary Secretary to draft him into some other branch. However, I think there is a responsibility on the Board of Works not to throw him out on the side of the road, just as there would be on any other employer not to throw a man out on the side of the road after he had spent a substantial part of his life in that person's service. I think we ought to settle that matter of principle between ourselves in this House and to settle the Parliamentary Secretary's mind in that respect. I sympathise with his position. He regards himself as a trustee of public funds and declines to be generous at the public expense, but I think the House ought to tell him that it does not set that standard for him, and that while they do not expect him to be taking on henchmen or place men, they recognise that a Government Department is an employer and has certain moral duties to its employees, just as any other employer has, and that one of those would be that where, as a result of the work an individual has done for them over a period of years, that individual has become virtually unemployable in any other capacity than that in which he has worked for them, they ought either to keep him in their service or make some provision for him. Doubtless, if the Parliamentary Secretary refers to this matter, he will state his view, but I do not think I have done him injustice in the way I have stated it.
A perfectly fair statement of the case, from your point of view, in my opinion.
I think the House ought to express clearly to the Parliamentary Secretary that he has a duty in this matter and that that man ought to be taken back into the service of the Board of Works in some capacity and kept there, unless alternative employment can be found for him. I think any ordinary employer who threw a man out on the side of the road in those circumstances would be looked upon askance by his fellow-employers and would be regarded as a very harsh person. I do not think the Board of Works is entitled to set a lower standard for itself than any ordinary employer in the State.
I see that a splendid swimming pool has just been built at Tullamore. I do not know whether the Board of Works had any hand in that.
It would be a Public Health Vote.
I have been trying to promote the building of a swimming pool in Ballaghaderreen with the assistance of the Board of Works, and I must say that they have been very helpful, although we have not managed to surmount all the difficulties which confront us in that enterprise. I think one of the great difficulties of getting a useful kind of minor relief work is that people do not know how to go about it. If the Board of Works made up its mind that swimming pools adjacent to country towns was a useful kind of minor relief scheme, that its amenity value was a good thing, I suggest that they should draw up four or five plans of swimming pools which would fit into certain sets of circumstances. For instance, where you had a fast-running river, a swimming pool can be built in this way, and showing how a little canal could be cut at one end to let the water in and a similar canal cut at the other end to let the water out, and that, where you have a spring, a swimming pool can be provided in a second way. If the Board of Works would envisage the various circumstances in which it is reasonably possible, and then have a kind of small draft scheme which could be adapted to the special circumstances of each case, useful proposals from local committees could be got.
What I envisage is that a local committee in Frenchpark, or some small town, would write up and say they wanted to help the Board of Works in the provision of a swimming pool, and the Board of Works would write back and say that they would be glad to help if the unemployment situation and the scheme commend themselves to the terms of the Vote, and enclose four or five plans which had been found to be practicable in other areas, stating that if these plans in any way corresponded with those obtaining anywhere near the town, it was worth going further into the matter. It might be found that one of the plans did so correspond. Unless you do that, when it comes down to the tintacks of putting up a scheme, you come up against a hopeless stone wall, because there is no local person fit to put up a scheme, and it is very difficult to get anybody to do so. Everybody knows what is wanted in a general kind of way, but nobody knows how to get down to the detailed plan. What they want is some kind of blue print to work from. If they get any kind of blue print, they will suggest amendments and adaptations of it, but to get a blue print down on paper is a responsibility they will never face. That is one of the great difficulties in getting any local improvement carried into effect. It is an analogous situation to that which has been met by the Board of Works in their questionnaire. They found it was extremely difficult to get people to give the really relevant particulars of a proposed scheme, and so they set out the really relevant questions in a most excellent questionnaire, and I have no doubt that they find that that has greatly simplified their work, because both members of Parliament and local people find that when specific questions are put up to them, it is far easier to answer them than if they are asked in a general way to describe what it is exactly they want done.
I will look into it and see if there is any possibility of doing that.
I should be glad if the Parliamentary Secretary would take occasion, when replying, to answer the specific question raised by Deputy Victory, that is, when the drainage inquiry is going to be set on foot, because it would save everybody a great deal of trouble if it was possible to say to persons who raise drainage plans and schemes: "The drainage inquiry will sit on 1st September, 1938, and if you have any representations to make, address them to the secretary."
I will answer the Deputy's question now if he wishes. The personnel is practically completed, and I hope that the inquiry will be ready within a month. I do not want to tie myself any more definitely.
That is very satisfactory. I do not know if the question of the employment of men on unemployment assistance comes under the Parliamentary Secretary's Vote, or whether it is a matter exclusively within the jurisdiction of the Minister for Industry and Commerce.
The Deputy might raise the point, and I can see how far it concerns my Department.
The complaint I have to make is that a man who is in receipt of a pension or other income and who gets, as a result of that, a very small allocation of unemployment assistance, labours not only the disadvantage of receiving a small unemployment assistance allowance, but is denied work on every unemployment assistance scheme, because I think the regulations which have been made by the Parliamentary Secretary are that when he applies to the employment exchange for unemployed men on a minor relief scheme, he has to be supplied with the men who are drawing the largest amount of unemployment assistance——
First, yes.
——and that the roster has then to be gone through gradually. Unless the minor relief scheme is sufficiently large to exhaust the roster in the local labour exchange, the men with a couple of shillings unemployment assistance never get work at all. It is a hardship, I think, that their pension should be taken into consideration for the purpose of depriving them of unemployment assistance, but that is clearly a matter which is not within the ambit of the Parliamentary Secretary's jurisdiction. It is a very great additional hardship that they should be permanently denied the opportunity of getting a day's work. Unemployment is in itself a very great evil. The effect of poverty is an immense evil, but that a man should get his hand unaccustomed to work of any kind, and get into a position in which he never gets work, is a tragedy.
Why should a person with a pension, as distinct from some other form of income, be in a privileged position? That is the aspect of the matter to which I should like the Deputy to direct his attention.
It does seem to me to be a very great hardship indeed that as a result of serving the State in the National Army or in some other capacity, and receiving some consideration for it, a man should be denied the right to work.
But the same condition applies in relation to a man with any other income which he does not derive from wages.
The number of persons so circumstanced is so small——
It is immensely high. It is 66 per cent. of the total on the unemployed assistance register.
Their case has not been presented to me, and without the information at my disposal I am not in a position to deal with the matter. But I am in a position to speak for persons in receipt of pensions for service in the Army, in the Irish Army or in the British Army or as a Connaught Ranger, or for a variety of reasons of that kind. All I am asking now is that their disqualification from work should be removed, and that, for the purpose of being chosen from the roster of unemployed, their income from that source should be disregarded.
Then it must be a general thing, and not apply merely to pensions.
I think I would even be prepared to advocate that.
Again, I am assuming that the Deputy is trying to get something better than we have?
Quite.
What happens at the present moment is that a man who is in most necessity, as judged by his unemployment assistance qualification, is the person who first gets employment. His unemployment assistance qualification is low or high dependent on whether he has income from some source other than wages. If a man has land, or investments, or a pension, his unemployment assistance is reduced in proportion. If the Deputy's contention is that all that has to be regarded, then it means that when we are employing people on relief schemes we have to take them entirely independent of their position of necessity. If that is the contention, well, the Deputy is entitled to contend it, but I do not agree with it, and I should be very glad to hear the case for it.
Let me be frank. I was not aware that the number of persons on the unemployment assistance register with income other than pensions was as high as 66 per cent., and I have not addressed my mind to that general question. I am primarily concerned with persons who are in receipt of pensions for public service. I do think that there is a certain distinction between their case and the case of a man who has property and is deriving income from that property, because I feel that the man in receipt of a pension got it as some kind of national tribute for the work he did. To me, it seems hard that that tribute should carry with it a stern penalty, represented by being deprived of work. I make that distinction between the man of property, however small, and the man who has been singled out to be the recipient of a pension.
But a man might have been saving money out of a small income all his life.
Frankly, I cannot pretend to consider and determine that case while I am standing here, but I am clear in my mind that the person in receipt of a military pension, or a pension for other public services, ought not to feel that he is permanently and irrevocably in effect debarred from getting work on any of those minor relief schemes. I think that the Parliamentary Secretary should seriously consider saying that in any case military pensions, and pensions for service of that character, will not be taken into consideration for the purpose of determining the appropriate place of a man on the roster when it comes to choosing those who are to be employed on minor relief schemes. There is another case which I think is deserving of the Parliamentary Secretary's attention, too. A married man with a wife and children dependent upon him will, of course, stand high on the roster, but it might very well happen that the responsibilities of a single man whose unemployment assistance is low— responsibilities represented perhaps by a delicate sister and invalid parents—are very heavy also. Yet, because no provision is made for an allowance for sisters or brothers or invalid parents, he comes very low on the roster.
I think all dependents are taken into account. At all events, the whole question of dependents is intended to be taken into account. As a matter of fact less single men are being employed on the basis of the unemployment assistance register than were employed when they were given a definite 25 per cent. outside the cities. We had a case in relation to Wexford last year where we were asked to employ single men. I said I would employ every single man who had dependents, and it turned out that there was not one individual single man on the register in Wexford who had dependents. But it would be absolutely the opposite in the country districts. In the country districts in many cases those single men have quite as many dependents as the married men. That is fully taken into account. Certainly, the intention is to take it into account.
Reference was made to the building of schools. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary's discretion in that matter is largely limited by the directions he may receive from time to time from the Department of Education. Nevertheless, I assume that the Parliamentary Secretary's Department has a certain advisory capacity in the matter. I suggest to him that the Board of Works ought to represent to the Department of Education that the Department of Education would get much better value for the money they are spending if they would erect some central schools, and permit the Board of Works to abstain from scattering money over a wide area on building a series of small unsanitary pill boxes. If the Board of Works is required to build a school to accommodate 30 pupils in a remote area, it is not possible to build a satisfactory establishment.
That is a matter for the Department of Education.
What happens is that the Department of Education comes to the Board of Works and says: "We want a school." The Board of Works control all the architects, all the quantity surveyors, and all that kind of thing. What I am suggesting is that the Board of Works should say to the Department of Education that the time is really come for a degree of parish planning in this business.
I am afraid that would not come within the functions of our Department.
That is really asking the Parliamentary Secretary to endeavour to influence the policy of the Department of Education.
I think that would be outside our functions. It would be interfering in a big question of educational policy. I do not think we would be entitled to act as superior advisers to the Department of Education.
The Parliamentary Secretary may say that he would not care to do it.
It is not our function. I do not think I can help the Deputy on these lines.
I see no reason why the Parliamentary Secretary should not say: "My architects, quantity surveyors, and so forth advise us that if you propose to build five schools in the parish of X——"
That is purely policy. The same thing might be said with reference to the Department of Agriculture.
I still make the statement, and if you, Sir, rule it out of order I shall depart from it. Let us assume that the Department of Education goes to the Board of Works and says: "We want to erect five schools in the parish of X." My submission is that it would be quite within the competence of the Board of Works to say: "We will undertake that work forthwith if your instructions are confirmed, but before you confirm the instructions to build five separate schools we desire to advise you that that will cost £15,000, and that for £10,000 we could erect one splendid central school and four shelters and endow a bus service in that parish which will give an infinitely better service to that parish than the five schools you contemplate."
If the Deputy said that to the Department of Education he might say it usefully.
The Parliamentary Secretary thinks then that it is outside his province?
I do.
It is a most extraordinary situation then, because there is no architect, no quantity surveyor, no planner, or no official with any knowledge whatever of building construction, design, or anything else attached to the Department of Education.
Suppose the Department of Education decided not to build any school in the parish of X, does the Deputy suggest that the Parliamentary Secretary should tell them that they should?
No.
Where does his responsibility arise then?
In an advisory capacity on the technical question as to how to provide the necessary accommodation. Is it not an extraordinary situation that if you raise the matter with the Minister for Education his reply is that he knows nothing about it, that all these matters are dealt with by the Board of Works?
I do not think he will say that.
I do not know whether he will or not. He could say that in his Department there was no architect, quantity surveyor, planner, or anybody else like that.
The Parliamentary Secretary is not responsible for that.
He is the man who must design, plan and lay out a school and advise the Minister on the accommodation, space and every other detail.
I think I ought to be called Atlas. I do not carry the world on my shoulders.
Is it not true that the Board of Works must advise the Minister for Education on the air space, cubic capacity and everything else?
Yes, but not on policy.
Pure technicalities.
I am raising the question of pure technicalities. I will depart from it as you, Sir, are obviously not to be persuaded in this matter.
Would you not knock teachers out of employment by that?
I do not think you would knock any teachers out of employment under the new planning system. Just imagine advocating the maintaining of insanitary schools to keep teachers in employment! God help us when the Labour Party comes to that.
The Labour Party is not in this at all.
If that day ever dawns in this country, it will be a bad day for the country. I should be long sorry to see the Deputy making that interjection advisedly. I have touched on the matter to which I wish to direct the Parliamentary Secretary's attention, and I hope he will take the occasion to refer to it when replying.
This Estimate for the Office of Public Works usually passes through after some few hours discussion. I had not the advantage of being here last week to hear the speeches on the motion to refer back, and I just wish to confine my remarks to one or two items mentioned in the course of the discussion. In the first place, I want to deal with the question of Haulbowline. The House has been made aware, of course, that a heavy industry is about to be established there; work is already in progress on the assembling of the plant, etc., and we do know that production will begin in a relatively short space of time. However, I am concerned mostly at the moment with the point made by Deputy Hurley, and when he reads over his speech he will see that things may be read into it which, I feel, he may not want to be read into it. He suggested, for instance, that whilst there was such a large amount of unemployment in the neighbourhood of Haulbowline, Passage West and Cobh, work in the Haulbowline dockyard should be confined to persons resident in that area. I do not know whether that was his intention or not, but, if it is, I certainly would like to challenge it. It must be remembered that in the old days in Haulbowline, while a number of workers were drawn from the areas referred to, the City of Cork supplied a very large quota of employees there when it was a British Government dockyard. Again, of course, regard must be had in any event to the fact that this industry has been established, not because there was unemployment in the neighbourhood, but as an ordinary private concern, and the persons who have put their money into that enterprise will certainly not confine the labour in it to residents in the areas to which I have referred. They will certainly have a choice, and are entitled to have a choice, and the right to employ those whom they wish in that particular industry in which they have sunk their capital.
On the question of aerodromes, a number of Deputies appear to be very anxious to have aerodromes established in their various constituencies. I wonder have they weighed up the consequences in the event of the wars occurring which are threatened, or which we have heard so much about during the week, when these aerodromes will be rather vulnerable points for attack by enemies, if they ever come to attack our navy and our obsolete forts. I hope that will be borne in mind by some people who are so anxious that aerodromes should be established in their neighbourhood.
Another matter which has been mentioned in the course of the discussion is the Rushbrooke dockyard. The Parliamentary Secretary was present some years ago, long before he became Parliamentary Secretary, at a meeting at which I was also present, and at which the whole position of the Rushbrooke dockyard was reviewed. At that period, the docks had been evacuated by the then owners. It was discovered after a very exhaustive inquiry by the committee I have mentioned that, even though promises of support were given by one or two shipping companies who were using the port, the docks could not be made even a line-ball proposition, speaking from the economic point of view. But a number of people feel, as I do, that money has been expended by the Government by way of subsidies on some industries in the country. If there is a lot of money knocking about I do not see why Rushbrooke dock should not get a subsidy. Now, that the Parliamentary Secretary is here I want to recall what I have just mentioned to the House—the committee which was set up and at which the Parliamentary Secretary was present. I do not think he was Parliamentary Secretary at that time, but he and I were present at the meetings. I have just said that it was found on examination of all the circumstances surrounding the case at Rushbrooke that it could not be made an economic proposition, that it could only be made an economic proposition by way of subsidy or some kind of artificial stimulus. I think the Parliamentary Secretary will bear me out in that.
That is so.
Now when we hear so much about industrial revival and the establishment of new industries with some kind of subsidy, I think it would be well if the possibilities of resurrecting Rushbrooke docks and making them, as I understand they could be made, an efficient dockyard for the repair of ships, would be explored. If a subsidy were granted, even if it would make the dockyard a line-ball proposition, it would be money well spent. In advocating that I do not want to suggest for a moment that I want industries in this country spoonfed, but from what I know of the possibilities, the potentialities and the past history of that dockyard, I do feel that with a little stimulus in the way of a subsidy it could be made a line-ball proposition, and it would be just as useful from the point of view of employment as the beet industry is at present. We do know that the only arguments that can be advanced in favour of subsidising the beet industry is that it gives a large amount of employment. I know that the beet industry has to be subsidised in every country in the world, and the only argument that can be used in England, this country or any other country for subsidising that industry is that the money comes back to the taxpayer by way of giving employment to people who would otherwise be on the dole.
I think the Parliamentary Secretary should exercise his mind, and whatever influence he has in the direction I have just indicated to see what could be done in the way of re-establishing Rushbrooke dockyard. It is a very sad thing to have to acknowledge that although we have one of the finest harbours in the world, second only to Sydney Harbour in Australia, that when a lame duck hobbles in from the Atlantic, the only assistance we can render is to enable that ship to go across to the other side for the repairs needed. It is a very sad thing that we cannot carry out these repairs in this country. We are told that certain things have been done elsewhere. I understand that something is being done for Dublin dockyard. However, I am not concerned with that at the moment, and I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to exercise whatever power he possesses in having the Rushbrooke dockyard re-established.
I would like to say a word or two about rotational employment. While I feel with other Deputies that some employment is better than none, there are undoubtedly many objections to the rotational scheme. The Parliamentary Secretary has never been able to convince me that it is the best policy for the country. I agree with him, or with any other Deputy or official, who will advance the argument that it is a good thing to provide employment for the greatest number of persons possible—the greatest good for the greatest number. It has two advantages, one an advantage to the State and, secondly, an advantage to the person who gets that employment. It certainly saves the State some money which it would have to expend on unemployment assistance or unemployment insurance and it does something to put a little heart into the unemployed man who gets even rotational employment. There are however several snags in this scheme. Deputy McGowan and others have referred to the hardships that are inflicted on workers, especially workers who have to travel long distances through rain and snow.
I would be very glad if the Deputy would recapitulate the actual objections he has to rotational employment.
I object to the system by which a man is employed for two, three or four days and is then laid off until his turn comes again. If you have a scheme which is spread over a period of say, six months, it ought to be possible to give every person employed on that scheme at least one week's, or perhaps two weeks, continuous work. That would satisfy those who are now employed on these schemes or who may be employed in future. I say that without any partisan feeling. I have never tried in this House or outside to make any Party capital out of any of these schemes. That has been my guiding principle in all these matters.
There is another matter to which I should like to refer but if the Parliamentary Secretary will inform me that the case is sub judice, I shall not refer to it. I was going to refer to the Hosford farm at Ringabella.
That is the subject of an appeal.
I have a very good case in regard to that, but I shall refrain from mentioning the matter now in view of the reply of the Parliamentary Secretary. I just want to refer to one other matter which possibly has been touched upon already. I was not here at the beginning of last week and I did not hear the speech of the Deputy who moved the reference back of the Vote. I presume it was Deputy Hogan. I want to refer now to the case of Rhynana. I have had contact with only two persons who were on the spot there. Any information I have about Rhynana has been derived from discussions here, from questions and answers in this House, and paragraphs which I have read recently in the Press. That is the source and extent of my information, but I gathered from these sources that the men who had unfortunately to go on strike for the betterment of their conditions at Rhynana were treated in a scandalous and most inhuman fashion. That is what I have been able to gather from reports in the Press, from reports of meetings held by men themselves and representations made to public bodies.
It does appear to me, having read a lot of the correspondence on the matter and the various pronouncements in the public Press, that these unfortunate men have been starved into submission. They are in a very remote part of the country; they had possibly a very loosely-knit kind of organisation, without any contacts or branches in any other part of the country beyond their own parish or townland. I feel that advantage has been taken of their isolated position, their rather helpless and hopeless position, to bring them down by a sheer war of attrition—hunger, starvation and misery being the weapons used to bring these unfortunate creatures to heel.
As a lover of dogs I would not treat the worst cur dog as these unfortunate creatures were treated. Spokesmen of the Constitution speak frequently of the practice of charity and Christianity. We hear all about that shouted from the housetops in this State. I have never yet, thank God, introduced into this House anything of that character. It leaves me cold when I hear people talking here about abstaining from Parliamentary work on Church holidays. I find in practice that most of these people are not Christians at all. We had evidence of a complete lack of Christianity in the way these unfortunate people at Rhynana were treated. We had comedy, or, if you like, a lecture for the Parliamentary Secretary from Deputy McGowan who, I presume, was in order when he was allowed to complain of the number of Cork, Clare and Kerry accents he had heard on jobs controlled or conducted by the Board of Works. The owners of the accents, he said, were usually persons in executive positions. I feel that that is a wonderful tribute to the Board of Works and to Cork, Clare and Kerry men. Deputy McGowan was rather wrathful because of that, and gave a wonderful display of insularity of mind, perhaps, I should say the worst display of insularity that I ever heard.
The Deputy was not here last week to hear the Cork Deputies speaking.
If anything of that character was said last week I am not sorry for being absent. We heard about the success of Cork people.
Thank God, as I have a return ticket to Cork—at the expense of the State— I will go back with my chest out. It will not be the first occasion I went back to Cork with my chest out.
A lot of Corkmen come to Dublin with their hands out.
When I was in London I found that those occupying very high positions were Corkmen, Claremen and Kerrymen, but when it came to the janitors and other posts of that type, and to people who got their positions by patronage, they had the Dublin accent. It was the same in the Civil Service. Most of the transferred officers in our service are men who won their spurs by open competition, while the Dublin duds got in by patronage. That has been my experience. I hope if Deputy McGowan again intervenes on the Board of Works Estimate, he will not proceed on the strain he went to-day.
The Deputy might come to the Estimate. I do not know that what the Deputy is saying has anything to do with it.
The Parliamentary Secretary was abroad and came back to this little country to help to give it a lift. I do not want to throw any bouquets, but I must pay a tribute to the work of the Department. Apart from the wages question and conditions at Rhynana, to which I referred, which are a snag and a fly in the ointment, and I believe a blot on the escutcheon of the Board of Works that should be removed at the earliest opportunity, I should say that the experience of most Deputies of that Department and its officials is that they deserve any bouquets that can be thrown at them. Outside the matters I mentioned, the Parliamentary Secretary has undoubtedly carried out the policy of the Government in his Department in a highly efficient manner.
Of course he is from Cork.
I think the Parliamentary Secretary could easily exercise his influence with the Department in order to remove the blots I referred to. Many people, including even industrialists, feel that these unfortunate wretches—I can hardly call them men —because of their want of proper organisation were unable to make the movement for better wages and better conditions a success. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will remove that blot at the earliest opportunity.
When introducing the Estimate, the Parliamentary Secretary indicated that it was necessary to have a re-examination of the drainage code. Since then he told us what had been decided upon. I should be glad to know if it is proposed to hold up larger drainage schemes until the findings of the commission have been published. I have in mind a scheme that has been under consideration for some time, on which a certain amount of preliminary investigation has been carried out on the Blackwater, which runs through portions of Cavan and Meath. Landowners along the banks of the Blackwater, whose lands were continuously flooded, are anxiously looking forward to having that scheme put into operation at an early date. While they have been particularly lucky this year owing to the prolonged drought, I hope the scheme will not be shelved until the furnishing of the report. In connection with minor employment schemes, of which we heard so much criticism, everybody acknowledges that these schemes brought exceptional benefit to a certain section. I refer to ratepayers living some distance from high roads, who have to use boreens that had been neglected for years by the county councils. These people were off the high roads, and the only person that came near them was the rate collector on his visits. The repairing of these boreens has conferred great benefit upon large numbers of people. The bog drainage carried out by the Board of Works, and the repairs to pathways leading to the bogs, has enabled people to get to turf banks and to get out the turf. The only matter in connection with minor relief schemes is that of the rotational employment which, I must say, is not popular in some of the areas I represent. I am aware of the difficulties confronting the Parliamentary Secretary, and I am prepared to make due allowance for the limitations that exist. When the Dáil votes a sum of money each year to be distributed by the Board of Works on these schemes, the Parliamentary Secretary has to examine the list of the unemployed and to distribute the money to the best advantage. I say that the Board of Works deserves great credit for having expended the money amongst districts where it was needed. There were no complaints that in the expenditure of public money any favouritism had been shown.
That is one thing anyhow that cannot be levelled at the Board of Works. There has been no favouritism, and they have definitely expended their money over the greatest number possible. In saying that, I know that the Parliamentary Secretary himself has been most sympathetic to the workers. Although there has been criticism of the Parliamentary Secretary regarding the administration of those schemes, I do say that, within the limitations of the money at his disposal, he certainly has shown, to us, Deputies, at least, who have come to him with our schemes and with our complaints, great sympathy with the working people. In view of the experience that he has gained, he has made some changes in the administration of the rotational schemes, and some of these changes have not been for the better. I refer for a moment to the rural roads works, where, in 1936 and 1937, single men were given two days, and married men with 9/- to 11/- unemployment assistance were getting four days. In 1937-38 there was a change effected, and single men got an increase from two days to three days, but the married men were reduced from four days to three. We had a case of a single man, or a smallholder, who would be only getting a small rate of unemployment assistance, getting as much as the married man who would be entitled to 11/- unemployment assistance. In the light of the experience that the Parliamentary Secretary has gained in these matters, I think he should consider the advisability of doing something for the married man. These married men, at least in the county that I represent, are depending altogether for their existence and the upkeep of their households upon the wages they receive each week. I know that these schemes have been devised with the object of relieving the black areas, or what the Parliamentary Secretary has described as the black areas, but in those areas we often find that the people, although they have rather congested holdings, are all smallholders and that they have some other means of livelihood. They have their small holding, and even though it does not give a livelihood, they have something to fall back upon for portion of the year. But in the county which I represent the workman has no means of that description to fall back on; he is depending entirely upon the wages he receives, and consequently, at the end of the week, he would like to have at least a wage that would be in some way helpful to him. That, of course, is a matter that I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary should see to, so that farmers' sons and smallholders getting a small rate of unemployment assistance will not receive as much as the married men—that the married men at least should be in a better position.
There is only one alternative to the present position, that is that the Parliamentary Secretary should give an extension of the time-work in that particular case. That might possibly depend upon the amount of money he will be able to receive from the Minister for Finance.
In connection with minor drainage schemes that have been carried out, very useful work has been done and I want to see a continuance of this work, but where a work has been started in one particular year and a certain amount of money has been expended on it I think that it should not be left with no Vote for it in the following year or two years following. I do not want to mention any particular schemes, but as an illustration I would give the Parliamentary Secretary the case of Castlejordan, where a necessary drainage had been undertaken in one year and the work was not proceeded with afterwards. I think that that work should be proceeded with until it is finished.
Has that work been actually interrupted?
Mr. Kelly
Not interrupted, but there was money given for it in one year and I am only asking that money should be devoted to it again.
I will look into it. The general policy is to complete work of that kind.
Mr. Kelly
There is another case, in the Athboy area, where the county council carried out a minor drainage under schemes they had in operation some time ago and the money was not sufficient to carry on the work as far as it was required, with the result that three or four farmers since then have had their holdings flooded. It is only a matter of relieving that portion into the drain that has been provided by the county council. I think the Board of Works has particulars of this case already. I think that in minor drainages very useful work has been done.
There is one other matter to which I would like to refer. Representations have been made to me some time past suggesting that a bridge should be put across the Boyne between Rosnaree and Newbridge. The River Boyne creates a border line which is most inconvenient to the residents and to tourists. To get from one side of the river to the other is a matter of travelling eight or nine miles. Newgrange, on the north side, is in the process of development. The Land Commission have divided a number of farms and they are continuing to divide land in that area. Communication with the south side of the river is of importance inasmuch as it would be for the general wellbeing of the residents on both sides. Their interests are mutual and they would be of assistance to each other in the development of the areas. Tourists who visit Newgrange, the caves at Newgrange, Louth and Dowth complain that they have no facilities to cross over to the south side to see where it is recorded lies the burial place of King Cormac. Consequently, they feel that their interests are being neglected to some extent. A dual purpose would be served by the erection of a bridge there. It would accommodate these people and, after all, it is necessary that we should see to the interests of the tourists if we are to enable them to carry away with them when they go back to their own countries favourable opinions as to how we are catering for their interests over here. Of course, it is recorded in history that William of Orange, after the Battle of the Boyne, sent his artillery around by the bridge of Slane. That may have been all right in those faraway days when time was not considered to be of such importance as it is in our progressive days. I think it is only in keeping with Irish progressiveness that we should in every way facilitate tourists and, at the same time, give the amenities to the local people to which they are entitled. I do not know whether the Parliamentary Secretary can bring this matter under relief schemes, but I do submit to the Parliamentary Secretary that he should consider the advisability of surveying the district with a view to ascertaining the practicability of such a scheme.
The Parliamentary Secretary, I think, is rather in luck this morning in having his Estimate discussed, as Friday morning seems to be a morning of compliments to the Parliamentary Secretary and his staff. Certainly, some of the work that is being done is done very well, but some work that should have been attended to is not being attended to in the manner it should be.
There is only one heading under which I can really compliment the Parliamentary Secretary and that is the upkeep of the national monuments. I see that great interest has been taken by his Department in this matter for some few years back and very good work has been done from what I have seen. I happen to live in a town where there is a very large number of these. Some of them receive a great deal of attention from travellers. There are a great many of those monuments and abbeys scattered around the country. It is well, even from the architectural point of view alone, to have them preserved. I do not think the people who will come after us will be so proud of the buildings that are being put up in our days as they will of the buildings erected in the 16th and 17th centuries. It should be remembered that these abbeys and monuments erected up to the 16th century have all got some history attached to them. Yet if one goes around to visit them one can only discover little bits and scraps of information about them here and there, and that little information is practically all different. You just get a few lines and no more. I do not know if it is in the power of the Parliamentary Secretary to arrange the compilation of a history dealing with these old monuments and ruins? We know that there must have been a great history attached to them. I know around all that area in Galway there are numbers of monuments and abbeys and the people know very little or nothing about them. Some of them are in the centre of the towns and market places. I would like if the Board of Works would pay a little more attention to these. Some of them require to be pinned up, otherwise some morning we may find that the county council ganger will be using the materials of these buildings to feed his stone-crushers.
I can assure the Deputy that I am very sympathetic along that line. There is a survey being carried out in connection with these monuments.
There are a few words I have to say as to the schools. I know that the Board of Works have done a good deal in the way of erecting schools. They have given good employment in their erection, and the schools built by them are very good, but many more are needed. I would like to see a good many of what are called the non-vested schools attended to. I have in mind a school down in my own town; the floor of that school is actually laid on clay. I know that at some of the elections in Galway Deputy Kelly and Deputy McMenamin saw that school. Each Deputy said it was a disgrace to have children attending such a school.
What is the name of the school?
The Athenry National School. The floor is laid on clay and it is badly ventilated; the roof is leaking. Several of the children attending the school have left for other schools in the parish, and even some children who had been attending that school for years have left and gone to schools outside the parish. The next thing we will find is that the average in the school will have gone down and that will not be through any fault of the teacher. It will be through the fault of the Department of Education or the Board of Works. Perhaps I should not have brought in the Department of Education on this Estimate.
Probably the Deputy should not have brought in the Board of Works; the Department of Education may be in fault.
Why I bring them in is because three inspectors have been down there looking for a site for a new school. This school was condemned as insanitary by the local medical officer as far back as seven years ago. The boundary wall is the boundary wall of a graveyard which has been practically out of use for the last 20 years. I brought up this matter a few times already on the Estimates and I questioned the Minister for Education on it as late as a week ago. The answer he gave me was that some of the sites offered by the manager were found to be unsuitable. I know two sites that have been offered and they are two very good sites. One is within 250 yards of the town and the sewerage arrangements are all right. Three inspectors have visited that site on behalf of the Board of Works. That would be within the last 18 months. The manager went so far that he purchased one of the sites. One of the inspectors approved of that site. It was because of this approval that the manager bought it. However, the inspectors from the Board of Works condemned it. I think in that matter the Board of Works are evading their duty in causing all this delay in the building of the school. I understand the site was approved by two inspectors and condemned by a third. It was within 250 yards of the water supply and the sewerage. There is a second site, a four-acre site, which the manager is prepared to buy as a site for a school. There is no use in my putting down questions every other day about this matter. When a farm of land is being divided in the country what happens in the selection of the site? Some site is at once approved of and they build on it. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will see that when next an inspector from the Board of Works goes down, it will be some inspector who will know something about sites for schools.
On the matter of drainage, I am pleased to hear that an inquiry into drainage schemes is about to be held. Such an inquiry is certainly very much needed. I have pleaded, time and again, that the drainage of this country should be taken over as a whole in the same way as forestry has been taken over. Drainage is really a national question. It is as much a national question as land division or afforestation. What I have seen wrong in the matter of drainage in the time of this and of the last Government is this that certain drainage works are done and have not been found successful. The Board of Works seem to be afraid to touch the outlet. Very often a drainage scheme is written down by the Board of Works as uneconomic. The reason is simply this that ten or 12 miles along a river some drainage works are being carried out but the rest of the river has not been touched. That is the reason why so many schemes are uneconomic; they are done piece-meal, whereas the matter of drainage should be tackled as a whole.
Again, there should be better co-operation between the Board of Works and the local authorities. If we take drainage schemes, in connection with which the outlets are all right, schemes such as exist in my own county—and I am sure Deputy Beegan will agree with me—and which cost up to £5,000, £6,000, or £7,000, those works have been done for five or six years and I cannot ascertain what is the reason some system cannot be introduced by which the county council would take over such works. Of course, there are some schemes that the county council should not take over, because they have not been a benefit to the locality. For one thing, the outlets have not been cleared, and if the county council were to take them over, they could be a great source of trouble, particularly in the collection of rates from people who derived no benefit. I know schemes which were undertaken five or six years ago and they are as bad to-day as when they were begun. These schemes are just as necessary to-day as they were five or six years ago. The conditions have not been improved, for the reason that there is no maintenance. Something should be done in connection with that matter.
I must say that in many instances drainage work is not being properly attended to. We have various relief works in progress, peat schemes, the making of bog roads and drainage through bogs. We find very often that the bogs are drained into a river on which no drainage work whatsoever has been carried out. That type of activity is really useless. We know it may stand for a time and may be of service for the time being, but at the best it is only temporary and can be of use only for a short time to the people who have to attend to turbary. Some provision should be made as soon as possible so that all the drainage in this country should come under the one head. I agree that the Parliamentary Secretary is looking after that matter by having this question of drainage brought before the board.
In the matter of minor relief schemes, I do not agree with certain aspects. For instance, in order to get a work done, you have to show that there is a certain number of unemployed in the particular district —registered unemployed. I am interested in a few schemes where there are small farmers whose sons do not register as unemployed. If such persons did register as unemployed, instead of the 91,000 you have at the present time, you would have practically 200,000 registered as unemployed. I think that is not the right basis on which to go. If a work is necessary in an area where works have not been done in the past and where, consequently, you have not people registered, that particular regulation with regard to registered unemployed should not be insisted upon. In the past, in and about the towns, works were carried out and afterwards the people engaged were registered as unemployed, but in the country districts works have not been carried out and the result is that in various areas there is no registration of unemployed. It is in some of those areas that certain works are very necessary. I have in mind a village where there are 24 families with valuations averaging £6. It is close to the border of County Roscommon, and the district is Cloonfaughna, at Glinsk, Ballymoe. I wrote to the Office of Public Works and this is the reply I received:—
"With reference to your letter ...relative to an inquiry... regarding a proposal for the repair of a road in the townland of Ardagh, I am to inform you that, according to the latest available returns, the unemployment position in the electoral division of Toberroe, in which this road is situated, does not warrant the allocation of a grant from the Employment Schemes Vote.
"In this connection, I am to say that while we appreciate the representations that have been made as to the necessity that exists for the repair of the road in question, I am at the same time to point out that the primary purpose of the Employment Fund is to provide employment for unemployed workers who are in receipt of unemployment assistance...."
The Board of Works are agreed that the work there is necessary but, at the same time, they cannot go on with it.
It is desirable—that is agreed.
I wonder can we expect a change in that direction? If not, many very necessary works will never be carried out. As it is, there are many works being carried out that are not quite as necessary. I have also in mind roads leading up to hundreds of acres of turbary, not stop-end roads, but roads leading from one road to another, connecting links. There is one, for instance, near Glenamaddy, in North Galway, and it is held up for the reason that I have just mentioned.
I should like to make a brief reference to the matter of air bases. I observe that Deputy Corry, speaking here, made reference to Cork and its suitability as an air port. I might mention, in passing, that it would be very difficult for the six Galway Deputies, unless they got assistance from the Ceann Comhairle, to fight against the 13 Cork Deputies. However, we expect some consideration in the matter of airports and other things in County Galway. We are making great headway in Galway, greater headway than the Cork people are making, in the matter of a port and an air base. Deputy Corry said that there was an Estimate for £994,000 to provide aerodromes, and he thought that "the premier harbour in this country is entitled to first consideration." Probably the Parliamentary Secretary would say the same thing. We had from Deputy Hurley this morning a plea for the consideration of Cork Harbour, because, as he said, they were not able to mend a boat in it.
That is a sort of reflection on the harbour.
I am surrounded by Cork Deputies. Anyway, Cork is a harbour that they want help for. In Galway we are doing it ourselves. We are spending over £200,000 in Galway, and we expect in a short time to be able to do more than mend boats in it.
More power to you. It is a great tribute to Galway.
We have an air base within three or four miles of it and I think we should receive some consideration when money is being spent on air bases and on those defences. Whatever we might say about the defences, we would like to get our bit of anything that is going. I do not think there is anything more I have to say on the subject, and I will conclude by urging the Parliamentary Secretary to deal with that matter of the national school, because it is in a scandalous condition at present.
A number of Deputies who have spoken have devoted their attention to local matters. I do not intend to go on that line. I shall try, as far as possible, to address myself in a general way to the Vote. So many matters have been brought up which require attention and the expenditure of money that I believe, instead of asking for a Vote to the extent of £1,500,000, we would require really a Vote of £6,000,000 in order to attend to all the matters that have been mentioned. Of course, it would be very desirable to have that huge amount, but then we should be prepared to face up to it and, if additional taxation were required, we should be prepared to meet it and bear our portion of it without coming here and criticising over-taxation.
One of the things I resent very much is the unjustifiable criticism of what is known as rotational schemes. I believe the thanks of this House and the country are due to the Parliamentary Secretary for the way he has tackled that problem. I believe there is no other system that will deal with the unemployment problem effectively except that other alternative that we do not wish to see in this country, a labour corps. If the unemployment problem is to be solved, I hold that the rotational scheme is sound in principle and the only thing required is to find the money, to be able to put up sufficient money and also have the necessary experienced people to take charge of the work.
There is this much that I see here now. We hear a great deal about unemployment, and I quite agree that there is a good deal of unemployment in the towns and cities and also in the back areas, such as Connemara, West Mayo, Donegal, Kerry and other places. I do believe, however, that in the rural areas of this country, generally, unemployment is much over-estimated and much over-rated, and that the problem will never be solved at all while it is being considered on a Party basis. If it is not tackled in a national way, by every Party in this House co-operating with the Parliamentary Secretary and the officials of his Department, it will never be solved at all. For instance, I read or heard somewhere that there was a number of people who, if they so desired, could get on the unemployment register, and that we could have 200,000 people in this country on the unemployment register. Well, I hold that there is a number of people on that register who should not be on it at all, and who have ample resources themselves if they were only willing to work their own holdings without being on that unemployment register. That is quite true, and any farmer who is carrying out work in the country will find that it is very difficult to find labourers to work with him, no matter what pay he is prepared to offer them. Therefore, I think that gives the lie direct to the people who say that, in connection with the public works that are being carried on, such as the scheme down at Rhynana, the hardships the workers have to endure are altogether inhuman, because I believe that if any farmer in the country will offer the same rate of wages and the same hours of work on his farm, and if there is in that particular area a public works scheme being carried on the labourers will accept the public works scheme in preference to work on the land. I am quite sure that that is true in Limerick, or Rhynana, or wherever the airport is located. I am quite sure that if the farmers offered the same rate of wages for the same number of hours work to the men at Rhynana, they would prefer to work at the airport instead of working with the farmer. Therefore, as I say, unless this question is tackled in a national rather than a Party way, we will not make the headway we would all wish to see.
As I said, there are certainly some abuses, and I firmly believe that many of the people who are clamouring that they are unemployed have no necessity for being unemployed whatsoever, because in this country at the present time you have agriculture subsidised more heavily than any other industry, and you will very often find that some of these people have resources at their disposal if they would only work them and take advantage of them. Yet they will demand a very high rate of pay from a neighbouring farmer who is willing to till his land, but they are not at all prepared, or they do not try, to realise why they should not be able to give the same rate of pay themselves to an outsider. That is what is putting up the unemployed list in many parts of the country. At least that is my experience and I am sure it is quite true.
Now, as regards the local contribution for works that are being carried out by local authorities and to which the Board of Works make a general contribution from time to time, that also has been severely criticised. I firmly believe that the local authorities should and ought to be there because, after all, the works that are being carried out are works that would normally come within the finances of the county council and would have to be met out of the local rates. It has certain advantages and very fine advantages because, in the first place, it indicates to the ratepayers in the county what they would have to pay were it not for the money that is being given to them from the Central Fund to carry out that work in the normal way. It would also give an interest to the people on the local authorities—a very lively interest—in seeing that a proper return is being given for the money that is being expended in that way. I must say that, in my experience anyhow, the county surveyor and his assistants in Galway who are carrying out that work are doing very good work and giving a very fine return for the money that is being expended. The work in general is being very well carried out.
The only thing that I find fault with in the whole business of rotational work is in connection with such work in the towns. For instance, relief grants are sometimes given, or are generally given, around Christmas or such times, to certain urban areas. Now, the type of work on which the men are employed is one of the things with which I quarrel. I hold that men in an urban area should be given some other kind of work than that of breaking stones with a hammer. Some of these men are not able for that work. It is work that demands a very healthy and physically fit person to undertake. Furthermore, in the case of a number of these people, their hands are not tanned to that kind of work, and I believe that there should be some other form of work, such as with a shovel or a spade, which is much preferable to the breaking of stones with a hammer.
Can the Deputy suggest any other work? I entirely agree with him, but my difficulty is to find the other work, and I should be glad to have a suggestion from the Deputy, if he has any.
Kill warble flies. Go after the warble flies.
Well, even the making of drains or any of that class of work that would be shovel or spade work would be preferable to sitting on a heap of stones breaking them with a hammer. The hands of these men are not tanned enough for that kind of work. That is one of the things I do not like to see, but I do not know whether the Parliamentary Secretary is as responsible for that as the officials that are carrying out the schemes under the local authorities. Work in connection with the clearing of sites and so on would be useful work. I was glad to hear the Parliamentary Secretary state to-day that the Commission on Drainage is being brought into being and will start its inquiries in the very near future. I do not at all agree with my colleague, Deputy Kelly, of Meath, that in connection with any schemes that are under way at the present time anything should be done until that commission had completed its inquiries. One of the hardships that we, in Galway, at any rate, have endured is that some of these schemes were not properly thought out, and are now a dead-weight on the local ratepayers. The work was not properly done and no maintenance is being carried on, and the people are not in a position to pay the amount that was charged to them. The result is that we are in very grave difficulties in that connection. We also have schemes that were carried out under the 1924 Act, which were to continue where the old existing drainage boards were. I am afraid that something will have to be done in regard to all these cases. The people are not able to pay the amount of money that they are being called upon to pay on those restoration schemes. That charge is weighing very heavily on the rate-paying community all over the country. I hope that when legislation is introduced the local people will not be called upon to pay on as large a scale as previously.
I also wish to compliment the Parliamentary Secretary on the work that has been done repairing roads into bogs. When introducing the Estimate, he said that that money was mainly devoted to bogs where there were co-operative turf societies for the production of turf on a commercial basis. I believe that if, from now on a considerably greater amount of money was spent on roads leading into bogs in areas where the turf is not produced so much for commercial use as for domestic use, it would be a very good thing. It is a matter of very great importance to the agricultural community. When they cut their turf and save it, generally in the months of July or August, but principally in August, a period comes when then grain crops are ripening. Instead of attending to the grain crop at that time they have to avail of the fine warm weather to bring the turf home. The result is that they lose a considerable amount of their crops, whereas, if they had proper roads going into the bogs they could leave the turf there during the month of August and would be quite sure of being able to bring it home later. During the fine, warm weather they would be able to attend to the reaping of the grain crops and save the hay. That is all that I have to say on the Vote. I want to again compliment the Parliamentary Secretary on the great lengths he has gone to in tackling the unemployment problem. He has tackled it in a way that it was never tackled before in this country.
I think the Parliamentary Secretary must be blushing inwardly and outwardly at all the eulogies that are being showered on him. It will be my duty to disabuse his mind that the people who have done that are in earnest. I feel sure he realises that anyone who ambitions to be a lord high executioner in the political life and government of a country must take the responsibilities of his office. The duties are of such a multifarious and diverse kind that the person who feels satisfied with his work must be lacking in intelligence. No perfect animal could do the work in the perfect way that has been suggested. You have been carrying on your work, and I am sure that in your sweet humbleness of soul you yourself must feel that you have not done your work as you think it should be done.
Neither the Parliamentary Secretary nor fellow Deputies should be addressed in the second person. The Deputy should refer to the Parliamentary Secretary as the Parliamentary Secretary, but he is excused on account of his not being familiar with the rules of the House.
I have no desire to be discourteous. I do want to deal with a matter of immediate importance which has been touched upon by a member of the official Labour Party. He did not seem to have complete knowledge of his subject, but I will try to help him out. The Parliamentary Secretary has already indicated that he would be glad of help in the matter. When the question of Collinstown was first introduced at the Dublin Corporation by a letter from the Department for which the Parliamentary Secretary has responsibility, it was suggested that we should join in with them in carrying out the scheme there; that the Corporation might undertake to do the drainage work, the engineering work and the construction work for the new aerodrome. I had occasion to bring the matter up again at a Corporation meeting. I am sure that my colleague, Deputy Kelly, will bear me out when I say that I was deeply interested in this new form of transportation. In fact, I have been all my life. I was able to convince my friends in the Corporation that we would be in favour of participating on a 50-50 basis with the Board of Works and the Department of Industry and Commerce in carrying this matter through. We had meetings with the Minister for Industry and Commerce and with representatives of the Board of Works. A certain basis of work was agreed on by all sides. It was recognised that a certain measure of contribution should be obligatory. What do we find? The Parliamentary Secretary has denied the statement made here by Deputy McGowan in reference to certain rates of wages paid—that £2 a week was the recognised rate in the Dublin area. Collinstown, I would point out, is less than seven miles from the G.P.O. For a number of years the Board of Works has agreed to follow out, according to the adjustments made, the agreement that has existed between employers and the representatives of workers generally.
In defiance of that, the Parliamentary Secretary and his officers violated the terms of the agreement with the Dublin Corporation and went out to employ men who, in the words of the last Deputy who addressed the House, are not entitled to employment. They went out to employ men, some of them with 40 acres and others 60 acres of land in the County Dublin—land that is worth more than land in any other county in Ireland. These men were employed in preference to hungry men, some of whom had been idle for three and four years. These men started work three weeks before Christmas in 1936. The wages they were paid was 30/- per week. The men in that area were not organised, largely as a result of the conditions that have obtained here during the last six years. We have been told very frequently that the only people in the front line trenches during that period were the farmers. I want to say that the labourers in North County Dublin stood in the trenches as well as the farmers and did not grumble. They would have stood in the trenches for ten years before they would sell their souls for a mess of pottage. Even though they were hungry they were entitled to some measure of equity. Some 50 of them were taken on before Christmas in 1936. When they went there they found that there was no place for them to cook a meal, and that there were no sanitary arrangements. When we took issue with the Board of Works, and the matter was brought before the Commissioners, the situation was adjusted to this extent that they promised to pay the same rate of wages as that paid by the county council in that area, namely, £2 2s. per week. Remember, these men had to work almost up to their knees in heavy Dublin wet clay, cleaning out drains, levelling ground and doing what in reality was engineering constructional work. There was a meeting representative of the skilled and unskilled trades held in Dublin with a view to adjusting matters. I should say that only 28 out of 170 were organised. We had active members of the Party sitting on the Government side out organising labour bureaux with a view to inducing small farmers with ten and 12 acres of land, and some as I have said with 40 and 60 acres, to come in and blackleg on the men who fought on the roadside, and in other places, for this country. The men could get no adjustment. All that the Parliamentary Secretary, his officers the Commissioners undertook to say was that they were going to carry on the work and had sufficient labour to employ. Of course they had. Unfortunately, we had individuals in the City of Dublin who went out there under those conditions. We had a representative of Galway to-day suggesting that there is a good deal of malingering on these jobs. There was no malingering on the job. in Collinstown. We had Deputy McGowan, the parochially-minded representative for the County Dublin, talking to-day about dialects on that particular job. I never had any feeling against a man in charge of a job because of his dialect, provided I saw that he had capacity. Why should you object to a man because of his dialect on an engineering constructional job or any other kind of job? If a man shows that he has knowledge and is able to do work in a more progressive way than others, then I must be a knave or a fool if I do not take advantage of his knowledge and skill.
You do not object to the Cork accent?
I was in Cork when you would not be so active in Cork. My only crime in Cork was that I had a Northern accent. I lived and worked and suffered in Cork. The men who founded the Citizen Army were Cork men—"Spike" Sullivan, who is dead, Tim Whelan and I. We, and no other men living in the country or outside it, decided to found the Citizen Army. I know where some men in Cork were in 1914, when the whole country swallowed the vomit. Some men stood up in Cork at that time with myself, and few we were. We do not forget that, and will not forget it. However, that is for another day. Turning to the position of the Parliamentary Secretary, he is a very courteous, intelligent man. I never saw the man at close quarters before except once. He is a very fine looking man, and his appearance expresses intelligence. When he spoke to me yesterday, I was quite sure that this intelligent man would adjust the little matter that we were concerned about. However, we could get no adjustment in connection with this particular question. We went through a regrettable period. We had no right to have the long dispute we had in the building trade. All that time I tried to get an adjustment. I am so enthused about this new form of transport that I would go out and work on that site or any other aviation site for nothing. That is not because I agree with what was rightly suggested by Deputy Anthony regarding this new form of imperialism which is enveloping the world—that we were inviting a visit from that imperialism. I am concerned about the civil side of aviation and the young men who know no limits of space and have capabilities which no other nation possesses, because they live on imagination. You get them even in the bogs of Connemara. We should not deny them the right to enjoy the opportunity of becoming aviators. When they have the opportunity, they will become better aviators than those of any other nation. The Board of Works broke the agreement in this instance, and, to some extent, the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I do not like to charge any civil servant with any offence. But I charge the Parliamentary Secretary, and he will have to accept responsibility. We agreed to put up £250,000 on two conditions—fair conditions of labour, 50 per cent. of the labour on the site at Collinstown to be city labour, and 50 per cent. rural labour. That was the bargain. When the British Government put up the Collinstown aerodrome, they paid city rates to every man and conveyed them out free. It would pay them then, because they wanted fools and knaves in this country to stand by them. Men like myself have been very much interested in these matters. Even when the present official Opposition started the Shannon Scheme, I was about the only man in the whole of the movement to which I belong who stood up and defended that tremendous experiment which has proved a success, and will go on from success to success. So in this case I was so sensibly interested in this matter that I wrought day and night to get an adjustment with my friends. I did not want the Government to pay city rates all over the job. I wanted this Government, which claims to be based on equity and principle, to carry out certain axioms of conduct between man and man, and to meet the objections which they themselves raised to the inequalities perpetrated for ten years previously. How have they lived up to that? How are they living up to it?
In this case, they refused to discuss the matter. They said it was agricultural work. Now, I have some knowledge of agricultural work, despite gentlemen on this side who think I have not. My people were engaged in agriculture for centuries. They were trying to hold on to their cultivated land when some of these gentlemen were trooping under Cromwell. I myself, in this city and county, carried on agricultural work and can talk about agriculture when it comes to the terms that should be applied. I and my colleagues denied that it was agricultural work. We said it was engineering-construction work. The Department ruled against us but that is for another day. How much did it cost to arrange the range finding column? How much did it cost to take it down and put it on another site—to reconstruct it within the area now covered by the Collinstown scheme? Who were the people who designed the original scheme and who laid out the site? How did it come that the range finding column was taken down and put on another site? Why were experts taken in when we had experts who were not even invited? There was an occasion when the man presiding over this assembly was brought in and by tolerance, good sense and intelligence the matter in dispute was adjusted. I suggest that he should be brought in again to see if there can be an adjustment before the Collinstown question goes any further. I say that the Rhynana men are not dispirited and demoralised. That they were driven back is not due to your Government but to the organised workers of this country who allowed you to drive them back. What did they do in the last few months in the immediate area—the official Deputy-leader of the House and others? We decried you for paying 30/- a week but you afterwards improved it to £2 2s. 0d—
The Deputy should not address the Parliamentary Secretary in the second person.
The Parliamentary Secretary knows that there was broken time on the job. There was so much broken time that, in one period, it amounted almost to 32 per cent. of the wage-content of the job. These last few months we have had exceptionally good weather, but, in January and February, there were periods when some men lost as much as 50 per cent. of working time on the job. They had to go home seven or nine miles, and were not allowed even to wet their tea on the job. There have been inhuman conditions on that job, and I suggest that you apply your minds to it. If you want facts that will not be challenged on the ground of exaggeration, then we of the Labour movement will go down and demonstrate them to you, if necessary. I move to report Progress.
Progress reported. Committee to sit again on Tuesday, 24th May.
The Dáil adjourned at 2 p.m. until Tuesday, 24th May, at 3 p.m.