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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 1 Mar 1939

Vol. 74 No. 9

Committee on Finance—Vote on Account, 1939-40.

The Chair has received notification that the subject selected by the main Opposition for discussion on this Estimate is unemployment, including its effect on agriculture.

I move:—

That a sum not exceeding £10,855,000 be granted on account for or towards defraying the charges that will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1940, for certain public services, namely:—

£

1

President's Establishment

1,200

2

Houses of the Oireachtas

42,000

3

Department of the Taoiseach

4,800

4

Comptroller and Auditor General

6,620

5

Office of the Minister for Finance

25,100

6

Office of the Revenue Commissioners

295,000

7

Old Age Pensions

1,160,000

8

Compensation Bounties

23,000

9

Commissions and Special Inquiries

4,100

10

Office of Public Works

44,300

11

Public Works and Buildings

456,700

12

State Laboratory

2,900

13

Civil Service Commission

8,600

14

Property Losses Compensation

1,200

15

Personal Injuries Compensation

150

16

Superannuation and Retired Allowances

156,000

17

Rates on Government Property

42,000

18

Secret Service

6,700

19

Tariff Commission

250

20

Expenses under the Electoral Act, and the Juries Act

Nil

21

Miscellaneous Expenses

5,000

22

Stationery and Printing

59,000

23

Valuation and Boundary Survey

11,040

24

Ordnance Survey

11,390

25

Supplementary Agricultural Grants

450,000

26

Law Charges

23,100

27

Haulbowline Dockyard

2,600

28

Universities and Colleges

78,200

29

Widows' and Orphans' Pensions

150,000

30

Quit Rent Office

1,350

31

Management of Government Stocks

15,500

32

Office of the Minister for Justice

14,400

33

Gárda Síochána

653,000

34

Prisons

27,400

35

District Court

13,000

36

Supreme Court and High Court of Justice

18,000

37

Land Registry and Registry of Deeds

16,000

38

Circuit Court

16,500

39

Public Record Office

1,850

40

Charitable Donations and Bequests

960

41

Local Government and Public Health

450,000

42

General Register Office

4,340

43

Dundrum Asylum

5,300

44

National Health Insurance

97,630

45

Office of the Minister for Education

63,180

46

Primary Education

1,400,000

47

Secondary Education

157,820

48

Technical Instruction

107,920

49

Science and Art

19,150

50

Reformatory and Industrial Schools

57,000

51

National Gallery

3,120

52

Agriculture

198,070

53

Fisheries

16,040

54

Lands

723,390

55

Forestry

73,800

56

Gaeltacht Services

35,000

57

Industry and Commerce

102,550

58

Transport and Meteorological Services

21,200

59

Railway Tribunal

970

60

Marine Service

3,800

61

Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Assistance

379,290

62

Industrial and Commercial Property Registration Office

5,190

63

Posts and Telegraphs

838,000

64

Wireless Broadcasting

23,100

65

Army

1,084,000

66

Army Pensions

195,550

67

External Affairs

33,750

68

League of Nations

4,300

69

Employment Schemes

700,000

70

Export Bounties and Subsidies

202,000

Total:

£10,855,000

The items are set out on the Order Paper and on the Vote on Account in the White Paper. The total net provision in the Supply Services for 1939-40 is £30,248,897 as compared with £29,861,881 for 1938-39. The 1938-39 figures take account of the revised Estimate for export bounties and subsidies, the new Estimate for industrial alcohol, and the Supplementary Estimates to date. The net increase in the cost of Supply Services is £387,016, to which has to be added £370,000 for Supplementary Agricultural Grant, for which the House will be asked to provide in due course upon a Supplementary Estimate. The net increase is, therefore, £757,016 as compared with last year. The increase is due in the largest measure to the increase of £1,256,515 in the Estimate for Defence, with which the House is familiar, but there are also increases upon certain other Estimates which are worthy of note. It will be noted that on Vote 11—Public Works and Buildings—there is an increase of £181,479. The principal increase in this Estimate occurs under sub-head B, for new works, alterations and additions, amounting to £168,415. This is mainly due to an increase of £50,000 in the grant for the building of national schools, an increase of £12,000 for heating installation at the Central Model Schools, and several increases for new military barracks and ordnance stores.

May I call attention to the fact that there is not a quorum in the House?

Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted, and 20 Deputies being present,

Among the latter items are £16,000 for accommodation for Air Corps Cadets, £114,900 for the reconstruction of Kildare Barracks, a work which is long overdue, £55,000 for erection of magazines, and £20,000 for general storage. There is also, in addition to the provision of £194,000 for Rynanna, and £170,000 for Collinstown, a further provision of £60,000 for an aerodrome to be provided in connection with the development of air transport. On Vote 41 for Local Government and Public Health, there are increases of £1,500 for medical treatment of schoolchildren, £3,300 for grants for school meals, £6,500 for treatment of tuberculosis, and £26,890 in respect of contributions towards annual loan charges to local authorities for housing purposes.

There are many notable increases in the Education Votes. In Vote 46 for Primary Education, there is an increase of £15,000 under sub-head C. 6. in respect of grants towards the cost of heating and cleaning schools. A new sub-head, C. 10. provides £16,500 towards the cost of free school books for necessitous children, and sub-head D, Superannuation, etc. of Teachers, shows an increase of £8,400. On Vote 47, for Secondary Education, there is an increase of £28,120. On Vote 48, for Technical Instruction, there is an increase of £26,530 towards which sub-head B—Annual Grants to Vocational Committees — accounts for £23,349, caused by (a) increase in State grants in accordance with the provisions of the Vocational Education Act, 1930, and (b) the Continuation Education Scheme in Cork City, carried under Part V of the 1930 Act. In Vote 54, for Lands, there are increases of £59,000 under sub-head N, advances to meet payments under certain sections of the Land Act, 1931, and £13,000 under sub-head Q, Payments under Section 27 (2) of the Land Act, 1933, to meet deficiencies in the Land Bond Fund arising out of the revision of annuities. There is an increase of £1,250 for improvements of estates.

On Vote 55 for Forestry there is an increase of £25,000 under sub-head C. 1. for Acquisition of Land, and an extra £11,557 under sub-head C. 2. in respect of cultural operations, maintenance etc. Against these and certain other less important and casual increases there are decreases upon other Votes. The Vote for Agriculture accounts for a decrease of £238,599, due mainly to the disappearance, except for a token provision of £5, of the current year's figure of £220,000 under sub-head M. 7. for expenses in connection with the provision of butter for winter requirements. Under sub-head O. 9. there is only a token provision of £5 made for expenses on the purchase, storage and export of butter, eggs and some other products. The net decrease under this sub-head, after allowing for appropriations-in-aid, is £37,260. The cessation of the scheme for the distribution of cattle export licences accounts for a further decrease of £6,261. There is a decrease of £192,715 in respect of the production of industrial alcohol and there are also decreases under other Industry and Commerce sub-heads, as follows:— £12,400 under sub-head I, where there is a reduced provision for the exhibition at the New York World Fair; there is £23,452 under the M group of sub-heads relating to the Turf Development Board, Limited; and sub-head I of the current year's Vote relating to the Glasgow Exhibition disappears, involving a reduction of £10,000.

On the Vote for Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Assistance, there is a decrease of £94,000.

The Vote for Army Pensions shows a decrease of £117,000.

Lastly, on Vote 70, there is a decrease of £219,000, accounted for by the disappearance of certain export bounties on the termination of the economic war.

The position, therefore, briefly, may be summed up thus. The abnormal increase in the Estimate for Defence, which the uncertain international situation has forced upon us, accounts for £1,256,515 and to this may be added £265,900 for new defence buildings charged to the Vote for Public Works and Buildings. But additional money has also been provided for the following important public and social purposes:—for new schools and for education generally, £128,853; for housing and other social services administered by the Department of Local Government and Public Health, £28,300 approximately; for land purchase, etc., £51,648; for afforestation, £37,321; for Posts and Telegraphs, £42,880. Against these increases there are decreases on other Votes amounting in the aggregate to so much that, notwithstanding the increases which I have just enumerated, there would have been a net decrease in the Estimates for the year of over £1,120,000, approximately, if it had not been, as I have said, for the wholly unavoidable additional expenditure which has to be undertaken for the defence of our country and our people. I move the Vote.

The Minister has just tossed off his peroration on the Valuation Bill in which he gloried in the resources that were thereby made available to extract a greater revenue from the people of this country than had ever been extracted before. And true to form, he launches this Vote on Account with the announcement that it represents a Vote on Account of the largest bill that has ever been presented to the taxpayers of this country in the history of Ireland. The British Government in the days of its wildest extravagance in Ireland never dreamt of asking the people of the whole of this country to produce one half of the sum that the present Minister for Finance requires the people of 26 counties in this country to pay this year, and that, after an economic war which, by the admission of the Minister's own colleagues, has practically completely exhausted the people who live upon the Land.

Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted, and 20 Deputies being present,

It is interesting to note, Sir, and I need hardly say, it is absent from the mind of any member of the Government Party, that, in addition to this monstrous burden of taxation which they now heap upon the people, over the same period, one of the reliefs which they used to boast that they conferred upon the agricultural community, they have swept away. They used to glory in the fact that they had remitted one-half of the land annuities. That remission ammounted to the sum of about £1,500,000, but over the same period the total rate collected has gone up by £1,172,301. In the county health districts the rates collected amounted to £2,445,269 in 1932. In 1939, the assessment, less the credit notes, for the county health districts is £3,298,037, representing an increase of £852,768. It is true that agricultural land is relieved by the agricultural grant. It is, nevertheless, true that the increase in rates, taken as a whole, is represented by the figure of £1,172,301 as between 1938 and 1932.

It is also absent from the minds of the members of the Party responsible for this Vote on Account that the estimate of receipts and expenditure presented by the Government now is a wholly illusory document, because this Government has discovered the expedient of short-circuiting taxation, and a very considerable part of the tax burden imposed on the people, and mainly on the agricultural community, because they ultimately pay all the taxes, is represented by the concealed taxation. There is the scandalous levy which was made upon our people by the bacon curers under the Pigs and Bacon Act; there is the immense tax laid upon our people by the millers under the Wheat Act; and there is the immense burden laid upon our people by Customs and Excise, but that is not all, because that is included in the figures mentioned by the Minister to-day. Over and above the taxes levied by the Revenue Commissioners, and shown in the receipts, is the immense burden laid upon our people by the tariff-mongers, who collect an immense levy of subsidy direct from the people, instead of getting it from the Treasury, and although it does not pass through the Treasury, and is never shown in the public accounts, it leaves the pockets of the people, none the less, and contributes to the burden they have to bear. There is the tax on butter, and there are several others, such as the tax on sugar which represents about £1,000,000 a year. All these our people have to bear, in addition to the figures mentioned by the Minister in asking for this Vote on Account.

Taking the major ones amongst them, I submit that the tax on flour is costing our people to-day not less than £2,000,000 a year. I submit that the tax on sugar represents an additional £1,000,000 a year, and that the additional costs laid upon everything that our people have to buy in order to live by those who are benefiting by the tariff legislation of the Government represents another £5,000,000, so that the true tax burden on our people to-day, as a result of Government intervention, is nearer to £50,000,000 than it is to £30,000,000, and the body corporate is showing every evidence of the strain. One of the most deplorable and most dangerous symptoms of that strain is the decline in the population on the land. I could go through the economic indices of financial emergency which are abundant, such as the decline in our net external assets and the balance of trade, but these are the cold figures of statistics.

The feature upon which we may most profitably dwell now is the question of the urgent social problems which are being created by the financial strain which is being placed on the community, and first amongst them I would name poverty, the decline of the standard of living and the consequent flight from the land. Some of us in this House well remember the jubilant declaration of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, that not only was it his intention to provide employment for every man and woman looking for work in Ireland, but that he confidently and anxiously looked forward to the day when he would summon back from abroad the emigrants who had been driven there in the past, and would feel himself uneasy until he was assured that they would return in sufficient numbers to fill the vacuum of employment which it was his purpose to create. There are men, incredible as it may seem, still sitting on those benches opposite who believed him. One would have expected that, long since, they would have retired to the mental hospitals of this country. But far from it; they have found their way back into the Legislature.

On their return, they may contemplate the unemployment figures. What are they? If we take the total number of persons registered as unemployed and the average number of persons employed on relief schemes, we find that the average at the end of each month, for the year 1938, was 107,903, representing those unemployed and those working on relief schemes. There were 88,713 without any employment at all, and 19,190 employed on relief schemes.

Does that complete the picture— 108,000 destitute persons in this country called to take pick and shovel and to go out on relief schemes at whatever wage the Government is prepared to offer them? Does that complete the picture? Not at all; because it would be almost 100 per cent. worse but for the fact that the best fellows and the best girls in rural Ireland have been swept out of this country in the last three years in a tide of emigration more hideous than any that has been seen by any of us in this House. I have seen special trains, within the last fortnight, leaving the West of Ireland, full of boys and girls emigrating to England. For the last three years I have watched trains coming up from the West of Ireland, when I travelled between my home in Mayo and this House, week after week, and month after month, carrying thousands of boys and girls out of this country— not to good jobs in England, but to look for work in England. We have read in the papers, and we have heard from our friends, how hundreds of these boys and girls ended upon the streets in London, begging for the price of the fare to get home, or for enough to keep body and soul together. And that when they were supposed to be enjoying the incomparable blessings of a Christian country! The number of people who fled this country in 1936 was 23,711, and the number of people who fled this country in 1937 was 30,630.

A Deputy

Did they come back?

How do you know?

Because we have the records of the Deputy's own Minister to show what has happened.

The Deputy does not know it.

I do, and the Deputy himself knows it. He and his neighbours know, just as well as I do, what is happening, and he sees these boys and girls going every week from places in the West of Ireland, just as I see them going from Ballaghaderreen; and the Deputy glories in that fact, but I do not.

That is a lie.

A Deputy

Some of them go of their own free will.

One Deputy says it is a lie and the other Deputy says it is happening. What are we to believe? The fact remains that these people have gone, and it was you who drove them out.

A Deputy

It was thanks to you.

The fact remains that 80,000 of the best boys and girls in this country have been driven out in the last three years.

They have not; they are still at home, with a few exceptions.

The Deputy says that they are still at home—with a few exceptions. He may well add that, and I trust that none of the exceptions are here in this House now. The fact remains, as I have pointed out, that 80,000 of the best boys and girls have been driven out of this country in the last three years. Did any of them come back?

Yes, they did.

Deputy O'Rourke will have to cease interrupting.

I submit, Sir, that Deputy Dillon is asking questions and I am answering them.

It would seem, according to Deputy O'Rourke, that 80,000 people wanted to leave this country and went out of this country because they preferred to work in England rather than work in their own country. I think that shows how completely dead that futile Party is to the situation in the country they are supposed to represent. Just imagine a Deputy from a rural constituency in Ireland gleating over the fact that these thousands of boys and girls left this country, and glorifying over the fact that they went freely and gladly! How many other Deputies on the Fianna Fáil benches will glory in the fact that 80,000 of our people had to go to England to look for work within the last few years?

It seemed to me that certain Deputies gloried in it.

That is not so.

Does the Deputy regret that these people went?

Yes, if they went through necessity, but many of them went of their own free will. There was no necessity for them to go.

Did any of them have to go through necessity?

Yes, some of them.

The Deputy at least admits that some of them went through necessity.

Certainly.

Well, now we get down to the point that, although the Deputy denies that the whole 80,000 went through necessity, he admits that some of them were forced to go. It is some satisfaction to us to have that much brought home to the Fianna Fáil Party, and to have brought home to that Party what have been the consequences of their supposedly Christian State, which, as they told us, was to summon the exiles home to fill the vacuum of employment here. At least, we have that admission, when at the present moment there are 108,000 people in this country reduced to destitution and to unemployment or work on relief works, as well as the 80,000 more boys and girls who have had to go to England. And the Deputy admits that with regard to the latter, some of them at least went to England because they could not get a livelihood in this country.

What percentage of them came back?

I am trying to explain the facts to the Deputy on the Minister's own figures. I know that Deputies do not know the facts, and that is why I am trying to tell them the facts. I have been doing hard labour on these benches for the last six years trying to teach these Deputies what they should know. I admit that they are not doing so badly; they are gradually learning the lesson, but they have a lot to learn yet.

A Deputy

So has the Deputy a lot to learn.

At any rate, you have the fact of 80,000 emigrants to your record, and the Party opposite is only waking up to it now. If they do wake up to it now, well and good. If so, let them be as eloquent about that matter of the 80,000 emigrants and the 108,000 people whom you have made paupers, at the Party meetings as they are about the super-patriots. Let them be at least as eloquent about that matter at their Party meetings as they are about the super-patriots. In the three Party meetings a week that they hold, let them give the major portion of the time to this problem and give the spare time to the super-patriots. Up to this, you have given the three meetings a week to the attention of the super-patriots, but the destitute people and the emigrants were both out of sight and out of mind.

The Deputy has a very good imagination.

The difference between the Minister and myself is——

The difference between the Deputy and myself is that he has a vivid imagination and I have not. That is about the only difference.

The difference between the Minister and myself is that I live amongst the people in the country— amongst the small farmers. I was brought up amongst these people, and I know the circumstances under which they are trying to survive. I was brought up to glory in the rise of the small farmer from the depression into which the landlord threw him. Every improvement made in the lot of the small farmer or of the people of the countryside was something that the people of my generation gloried in, but I am living to see the day when, under our own Government, the improvements we got for the people amongst whom I live are being taken from them. The Minister has not seen such conditions and never will.

I have seen as much of it as the Deputy has. The Deputy never lived amongst these people in his life.

That is the trouble with the Minister. His outlook and mind, as well as the outlook and mind of most of his colleagues, are circumscribed by the North Circular Road. Dublin is his end-all and be-all. So long as everything is rosy in the garden, so far, let us say, as Lucan, everything is all right.

The words of an egoist!

No. It is a fact, and if the Minister and his colleagues would wake up to the facts they would be able to do more for this country. At least, there are some Deputies here, and in the Fianna Fáil Party also, who know the conditions of the people to whom I refer, and see upon those people the evidence of the depression that is being pressed down upon them by the present Government.

Deputies know the circumstances under which the small farmers, the ten-acre men, are at present living. They know what the increased taxes mean to these people. They know what it means to the small ten-acre farmer to be fined 8/- on the bag of flour when he goes to buy it. They know what it means to see him paying 2/6 on the stone of sugar. They know that that means the difference between a very modest standard of comfort and something closely approximating to pauperism. Take the agricultural labourer, and, mind you, the distinction between the ten-acre farmer and the agricultural labourer is not so wide. I doubt if the man with ten acres of land has an assured income any greater than the agricultural labourer who gets 27/- a week. But take the agricultural labourer getting 27/- a week, and picture that man going in to buy a bag of flour, which bears on it to-day a tax of about 8/-. He buys his bag of flour and pays 18/- for it. I have a case in mind. He pays 2/- a week off the bag of flour, and for the first five weeks he is paying for the flour. Then, for the following four weeks he is paying 2/- a week taxation on the flour. After he has paid for the flour, he has to go on for four weeks paying 2/- of his 27/- each week taxation on that food.

Can any man living in Dublin envisage what it means to have a family of five children and 27/- a week to keep them, and pay 3/- rent for a labourer's cottage out of that? I freely and openly say that I do not know how it can be done. Is there any Deputy who can devise a budget, which includes one item of 3/- for rent which must be paid, and which will maintain a family of a wife and five children on 27/- a week? That is the wage for the agricultural labourer in this country. How they live on it I do not know. But, in the light of that fact, why people should marvel that our people are flying from the land I cannot see. Who would not fly from the land if he had to subsist on 27/- a week, of which 3/- has to go for rent? So put, I think that dilemma goes home to Fianna Fáil Deputies.

But I ask them now to think of the ten-acre farmer. How many weeks can he be certain that he is going to earn 27/-? How many ten-acre farmers west of the Shannon have a guaranteed income of 27/- a week? Very, very few; they are living on less. It is on the shoulders of these people that you are putting down the burden that the Minister for Finance mentioned to-day, because ultimately it is those people who are going to pay the taxes. It is going to appear in the cost of everything they have to buy. It is at this moment appearing in the cost of everything they have to buy.

Take the small ten-acre farmer earning 27/- a week. He is a fairly well-off man. When he buys a bag of flour, 8/- of the cost of that flour is tax. If there was no tax on the flour, when he goes in with the price of the flour in his hand he could buy the bag of flour and bring home 4 lbs. of butter and bacon for the family as well. Under the dispensation of this Government that man must do without the butter and the bacon. Do Fianna Fáil Deputies want that? Do they think it is right, in the interests of the millers of this country, to tell the people living west of the Shannon that they must go without butter or bacon; that the money which they ought to spend on butter and bacon must go to the Minister for Finance? I think that is wrong, and I think that is what is driving the people off the land. I say that it is an inevitable consequence of piling on the body politic the burden of taxation which you have in mind to-day.

But where are you going? We always believed that when the economic war was over the tax burden was going to fall steeply and all the Fianna Fáil Deputies believed it, but, far from that being true, it is going up. Where is that going to end? It is not as if we had a country overflowing with milk and honey where we were doing everything we wanted to do. On the contrary, there are many things we ought to be doing and that would cost money to do; and the last farthing we have is being poured forth at the present time and the burden tends to rise. Surely it is time for Deputies to ask themselves if that is right. Surely it is time for Deputies who represent the small farmers to ask themselves is it fair that these people, struggling with adversity, should be forced to pay taxes on the things they have to buy to live in order to provide tax revenue and profits for people who are growing fat, sleek, and comfortable in the City of Dublin and the other urban centres.

Deputies will be told, if they make that complaint to their own Minister, that he is helping agriculture. I am sure Deputy Breslin of Donegal has often told the people of Donegal the inestimable boon the Minister had conferred on County Donegal by opening the alcohol factory at Carndonagh. Does Deputy Breslin know that there are tanks being built on the quay at Sligo now in which to store treacle imported from Florida for the production of alcohol for the Carndonagh alcohol factory? If he does, will he go to the farmers of Donegal and tell them that they derive any benefit from manufacturing alcohol from treacle carried from the United States of America or does it begin to dawn upon him that somebody was pulling his leg? Does it begin to dawn upon him that some of the benefits he was led to believe were going to bless the farmers are just cod, just eye-wash, just put there to fool him?

We have to face the question that unemployment and poverty are driving the people from the land.

We have got to ask ourselves the question are we prepared to face that situation and to remedy it. The thing that makes it peculiarly hard to bear patiently with the situation is that it could be remedied if only the Government of this country would face it. The first essential is to make agriculture pay, to make it yield a profit. How are you going to do that? You have got the market. You got it back under the Anglo-Irish Agreement. You have got the men. You have 108,000 unemployed waiting for work. You have got the land. Now you want the profit. What is the profit on agricultural production? Is it not the difference between the price you can get in the British market for the goods you have to sell and the price which it costs you to produce those goods on your own farm? If it cost you 5/- to produce an article on your own farm and you get 8/- in England you have a profit of 3/-. If it costs you 8/- to produce it on your farm and you get 8/- for it in England, you have no profit. We cannot raise the price in the British markets because we do not control the British markets. We have to take in the British markets whatever price we can get. Say, it is 8/- and here at home we find that the article is costing 8/- to produce. We might increase the farmer's profit by raising the price of the article in England. But we cannot raise the price in England.

But we could also increase the profit to the farmer by reducing the cost of production here at home. It does not matter so much to us if a thing costs 8/- to produce here and we get 11/- for it in England, or if we get only 8/- for it in England and we could bring the cost of production here down to 5/-, we could still get for the farmers of this country a profit. We can get for the farmers of this country a profit on all they produce within the next two years if we put our minds to bringing down the cost of production in this country. Unless we do that thing, so surely as we are standing in this House, the economic fabric of this country will be destroyed, and when it is destroyed, it is not the gentlemen who have grown rich by tariffs who will suffer, because they can fly away to whence they came. It is the poor of this country who will suffer. It is the poor living on the land and the poor living in the cities, all of whom depend on this country for their living, who will suffer. These people depend on this country for everything they possess. They are the people who will suffer if the economic collapse comes. It certainly will collapse, as the Government itself admits, unless we can make agriculture pay. There is no other method of making agriculture pay, but by reducing the cost of production in this country. So surely as that is done, by taking the tax off all raw materials of the agricultural industry, so sure will agriculture be made pay.

I am not now asking that the Government should abandon all their tariffs. We regard the present emergency as one of far greater gravity than would permit of our waiting to see the Government completely routed and overthrown. I want to see this Government in the immediate future taking the necessary steps to deal with the situation. I do not ask them to abandon their tariff policy, much of which I believe to be mistaken and wrong. All I ask is that they should review the tariffs at present in existence. Where the tariff operations raise the cost of some essential commodity that the farmer must buy in order to produce the agricultural goods which he is going to sell in the British market, that tariff should come off so that our farmers could get their raw materials at the lowest possible price. In that way only can their finished product earn the widest possible margin of profit. We have no other source of income in this country. The only asset we have got is 12,000,000 acres of arable land. Other countries have gold, coal and other natural assets of that kind which can be exploited to increase the public wealth. We have no such assets in this country. The only asset we have is the 12,000,000 acres of arable land. Now, 5,000,000 acres of arable land will produce all the foodstuffs of every description necessary for the people of this country, including wheat and sugar. If you fill every stomach to bursting point the produce of 5,000,000 acres will be sufficient.

We have, therefore, got to export the produce of 7,000,000 acres. It is on the profits we make on the export of that produce that the wealth of this country will ultimately depend. The urgent vital necessity at this moment is to restore the profits on those exports produced by our people living on the land. If we could do that we could stop the flow from the land. We could stop the wild tide of emigration that has carried away 80,000 of our people in the last three years. We can provide employment for thousands of the 108,000 at present unemployed. When I say employment, I mean profitable employment, not relief schemes. We can provide employment for these people to enable them to make their own livings and to contribute to the wealth of the nation as well. I do not want to say nor to pretend, in the hope of catching a few votes, that any policy that I have now can provide employment for every man in this country who wants a job. I wish to God I did know of such a plan. No money would be too much to spend on such a plan, and no sacrifice would be too great to put it into operation. It is an idle falsehood to pretend that by any legislation we could provide work for all who are anxious to work——

It can be done.

Not by any method of which I have any knowledge. If anybody can present me with a scheme which will provide employment for every man who wants it and preserve individual liberty in this State—I do not care what it costs and what sacrifice it involves—I am prepared to campaign for it.

The Deputy believes it can be done.

I am saying now that I know of no scheme that could do it. I wish to God the Deputy could tell me how it can be done. If he does I will go out and campaign with him to carry it into effect. I am looking for such a plan. But this country, in common with every other country in the world which has preserved individual liberty, has failed to solve that problem. The only solution so far has been the solution of slavery: to take the unemployed man who is there and to convert him into a slave—to force him to work on whatever terms his employer cares to impose on him. Unemployment is bad and poverty is bad, but slavery is ten times worse. Now, if we could get for our people the profits that they could earn if given the chance by their own Government, I have always believed, and I still believe, that we could get for our people the highest standard of living enjoyed by any agricultural community in the world.

It is not true to say that we could get for our people the highest standard of any people in the world, because being a predominantly agricultural country we cannot hope to have for our people as high a standard of living as a wealthy industrial country can provide in the existing state of the world, but we can get for our people, in my judgment, the highest standard of living enjoyed by any agricultural community because, by the mercy of God, we are in the Commonwealth of Nations and only 30 miles away from the British market.

Now, if we can get back that standard of living for the country I deliberately want to ask Deputies to consider two things—I am glad the Minister for Finance has returned to the House at this stage—which, I think, might contribute to the solution of the unemployment problem, one of which I am sure is desirable and good, and the other of which I am still in doubt. I mentioned here to-day the position of the agricultural labourer or, indeed, the small farmer whose weekly income is 27/- and who has four or five children. Now, I do not know how that man lives. The small farmer has some chance because he may have a few hens, he may grow a patch of oats and he may have a cow, so that with milk, eggs, oatmeal and potatoes he is just able to keep above the border-line of destitution; but take the agricultural labourer who has only 27/- coming in and who has to buy everything, because remember if he gets perquisites they are deducted from his wages, out of this 27/-. Not only has he to buy everything out of this 27/- a week, but he has to pay his rent out of it. How does that man live? I do not know.

He does not live; he merely exists.

There is no use inveighing against such a situation if we are not prepared to face the measures necessary to remedy it. I believe that when a man marries, in accordance with the right that God gave him to marry and bring up a family, he is entitled by some fundamental law to receive into his home the children God may send him with gratitude rather than with horror. I say that at the present time if an agricultural labourer in rural Ireland marries he may be able to struggle on after the first baby is born, but if that marriage be blessed with two, three or four children, far from looking upon those children as blessings, each one of them becomes a growing menace to the ability of the remainder of the family to survive; each one of them becomes a charge upon the minimum food that the family already has.

I say that in no civilised community, never mind a Christian community, should that state of affairs be allowed to continue. If we could recover for our people the prosperity they could get and the income they could earn if they be let earn it, and if we could bring this tax burden down to some more reasonable figure than it represents at the present time, and correct the immense appropriation for rates, I believe that we could find the money, and must find the money if we are to keep the people on the land and give to our people what the people of many other countries enjoy, and that is a family allowance of so much per week in respect of each child for persons earning less than a certain scheduled weekly income.

Hear, hear!

Now that may sound revolutionary to the ears of so prudent and conservative a financier as the Minister for Finance, but it is not. It is nothing wonderful. It is in operation to-day in Australia. It has been in operation for 20 years in New Zealand and they do not think it wonderful at all. If you said to them that, when people fall out of work, their children must roam the streets blue with starvation, they would laugh at you; they would use language which we in this country would regard as Bolshevistic. They would simply answer: "We would not let them go hungry." Is there any Deputy sitting in this House who, seeing his children hungry, would let them go hungry?

I often stand in amazed admiration at the patience of the poor. I admire it. I admit freely that they may be right and that I may be wrong, but I do say that we who are not poor lose half the enjoyment of the goods that we have got by the knowledge that families about us send their children to bed hungry because they have not the money to feed them. Now, I am not suggesting, and I do not want to be taken as suggesting, that the Minister for Finance in this Government is in a conspiracy to starve the poor.

I have no doubt that he might speak as freely on this subject as I am speaking, and may feel as deeply as I feel now, and is restrained from giving expression to those feelings by a grave sense of responsibility of the difficulty of finding the money for such a reform as I am putting to him, but so long as money cannot be found for that kind of reform, it is shocking that our Government should sanction expenditure on the wild-cat schemes that I have referred to, or should tolerate any policy which would rob our people of the capacity to earn the money necessary to finance such reforms. I do not think that people think of these things, and I suppose they do not think of them because they do not come in contact with them, but how can any of us sleep in our beds knowing that there are people in this country with 27/- a week—a man, his wife, and five children——

And sometimes ten and 11 children.

——who have got to go literally hungry, and that some of those children die because they have been starved. That is a situation that I do not believe would be tolerated to continue if people only realised what it meant. Now, Deputy Hickey—the Lord Mayor of Cork—has referred to even a larger family. It, of course, is a much greater dilemma. As a start, to tackle the problem, could we not agree in principle to a solution of that problem by providing at first that in any family with over four children there should be an allowance in respect to each additional child of 5/- a week for those under a certain income? I think, in the initial stages of such a scheme, we would have to resolve that the qualifying income should be very low. I think that, in the initial stages of the scheme, we would have to content ourselves with trying to abate the greater hardships, hoping in due course to provide for every child of a wage-earner a sum sufficient to make it possible for the family to rear that child and give it the minimum nourishment necessary to good health.

I think, if we are going to stop the rush from the land, we have got to face that, and make it possible for people to rear decent families. I do not think the agricultural labourer can now. I think we are asking him to do the impossible. I put it to Deputies to reflect that, if we could do that, bitter as is the burden of unemployment on the vast majority of unemployed men, it would be made much less harsh if they felt that, whatever misfortune they encountered, their children would not suffer thereby. Let us not overidealise this thing, because there will be abuses, and we all know that happens. You will find an odd man who, instead of improving his children and instead of giving every penny to his children, would spend it on horse-racing and other things of that sort; but 99 per cent. of the people whom we might hope to benefit would benefit immensely thereby, and 99 per cent. of the people of this country, whether they shared directly in the benefits or not, would be happier in the knowledge that we were able to provide them, because in the enjoyment of the goods we had ourselves, we would have the satisfaction of knowing that nobody else was left outside in the cold, hungry, while we were enjoying comparative luxury.

On that question I am as clear as day. That is a reform we ought to have, a reform to finance which we have to earn the last penny the land will yield, and it is because I want that type of reform brought about, because I want the standard of living of the people raised and their happiness made greater, that I should like to see the land used to its greatest advantage. That is why I lose patience when I see things done that strike down the capacity of our people to earn money, to improve their own lives and provide for their neighbours the minimum which makes it possible for a decent man to lead a decent life.

I heard the Lord Mayor of Cork assent to a good deal of what I said. I wonder will he assent to the next part? I think unemployment is a tragedy, and that view is shared by everybody in this House. But unemployment is a complex tragedy. The poverty that it causes is not the whole story. One of the grimmest consequences of unemployment is that the fellow who never has had a job, or who has lost his work, may become incapable of work altogether. He loses his physical strength, his skill; he loses being accustomed to a regular life, and all those losses go against him when he gets a chance of a job again. You have married men unemployed and you have single men unemployed. I think the necessity for preserving the home intact is so vital that we can envisage no circumstances which should require a married man to leave his home altogether and set up a separate establishment from which to do his work. Therefore, I feel that if a man cannot get work in the locality where he has made his home, for the present, in any case, we have to reconcile ourselves to unemployment insurance and unemployment assistance until we can find work for him in a place which he can reach from his own home.

The single man is different. I have no sympathy with the single man who is not prepared to travel to take up work or to leave home in order to do so. There is no reason why a single man should not be glad to go to Drogheda in order to take up work. I know he might not be very happy or contented to be working in Drogheda if all his friends are in Dublin. We have known men to go to places like India and to go to the very ends of the earth in order to take over jobs, and I think it is no great hardship for a young fellow if he has to go from one end of Ireland to the other to get a job. Therefore, bear in mind that in the case of the young and single unemployed the prime hardship, and the menace to the community of that problem, is principally the lack of work more than the lack of going to it; the fact that he does not keep his hand in, that he loses his physical health and becomes under-nourished in the period of his unemployment.

I think there is scope for something along the lines of President Roosevelt's C.C. Camps. I think, when confronted with that problem, President Roosevelt, in the United States of America struck on a very good plan and, oddly enough, it is one that the Republicans and the Democrats and everyone in America are agreed upon. To the young unemployed there he says, as I think we ought to say: "If you are out of work and if you cannot get a job and if you are hard up, we will provide a camp where you will get three square meals a day, where you will do useful work or, if you do not, where you will be given a life which will maintain you in good fettle and good trim and your hand will be kept in at whatever job you want to work at. Any day you want to leave, off you pop; you are quite free to go home to your friends and relations if you want to and live on them, but the State will not provide you with unemployment assistance if you are not prepared to come to the camp and work there either at public works or maybe only at physical drill, just to keep yourself in good trim. When work does come up you will be able to go straight to your job and do yourself full justice."

I believe that in that way we will prevent the immense demoralisation which any one of us would suffer if we went for years looking for work and never finding it. There is not a man here who, if he was year after year without any occupation, would not run to seed. If you take a youngster out of school, 16 years old, who never knows what it is to punch a clock or present himself on time, how can that fellow at 21 do himself justice if a job turns up? Certain families might feel inclined to say: "We would sooner give the boy some little thing and keep him amongst ourselves; we will look after him." To the fellow who presents himself for unemployment assistance I would say: "Come to a C.C. Camp. There is no question of conscripting you and there is no question of compulsion. If you want to go home, off you pop. All it means is that you get nothing when you go home. If you want something, you are welcome in the camp. You will be given useful work of one kind or another, and three square meals a day to keep you strong and healthy. Whenever you get a job, or if you want to go home, off you pop. If it is a job we will help you in every way we can."

Our aim should be to run these camps so that those who have jobs to offer will be glad to get a fellow from the camps. That is the case in America. In respect of anyone in a C.C. Camp there, no reference is asked; if he has been in the camp, it is all right. Surely it is worth considering that plan here? If we could restore the profit-earning capacity of agriculture, if we could deal with the juvenile unemployed by looking after them properly, if we could ease the condition of the family man and provide the children of the masses of our people with an assurance of security of the minimum nourishment in their own homes, surely those things are worth doing? Surely the time has come to realise that if we cannot do those things, independence and sovereignty and liberty and all the other things we fought for have proved a fraud. Is not that what freedom is for—to make this country better for our own people than ever it was before? I am profoundly convinced that in the situation in which we at present find ourselves we have an opportunity which may never recur to achieve those things.

I do not think it is unparliamentary to mention the fact that we have got an Irishman as Minister for Agriculture in the British Government—a good Cavan man. Why cannot our Minister go over to that man and say as one Irishman to another: "We are prepared to give you something—security in time of war, food when you want it —if you will give us something in return." Ministers on that side have paid a tribute to the general attitude of the British Government, and, if I am any judge of it, I think they would be glad to do a deal on those terms, and to get for our people a very valuable share of the British market on advantageous terms. If we can take anything off the cost of our raw material in this country, we are going to grow rich. I have been a prophet of evil, a prophet of despair, so long as the economic war went on. I tell you now that this country can grow not only comfortable, but rich, if we take our chance, and out of those riches we can provide comforts and happiness, not only for the farmers, but for the poor and for every section of the community. Surely that is worth doing? Surely it is something worth asking for? Surely it is more useful and less sterile than 90 per cent. of the codology that goes on in this House? If we can make a considerable part of our people happier, better and stronger than ever they were before, that is what this Party ask the Government to do. They have got a chance such as no Government or no representatives of the Irish people ever had before. I think it is the fervent prayer of everybody on this side of the House that, no matter where the political advantage may lie, for the sake of the country and for the sake of our people, the present Government will not lose their opportunity.

This Vote on Account, associated with the Estimates which were recently circulated, is, I presume, supposed to represent the cost of government in this country, or this part of the country, under normal conditions. This is the first year in which Fianna Fáil have introduced a Vote on Account, or Estimates, to be followed later by the Budget, under normal conditions, because, practically since they came into office, they have been associated with an economic war which gave them the excuse for refusing or failing to put their own policy and plans into operation. Before the Fianna Fáil Party were voted into office in 1932, they indicated to the country that if and when they came into power they would reduce the Estimates for nonproductive services by a total of £2,000,000. I have been reading some of the statements made by the Minister and his colleagues previous to that particular period, and they indicated that they would be able to make up this saving of £2,000,000 per annum from services such as the Oireachtas, Law Charges, Department of Justice, Gárda Síochána, the Army and the Civil Service, meaning, presumably, the Department of Finance and those servants of the State who come under its control.

It is interesting, and I am sure it will be instructive to quote, for the information of those who want to have the figures in this debate, the cost of the services referred to at that period compared with the cost of the same services in this year. The Estimates for 1932-33, which were the last Estimates presented to the House by the Cosgrave Government, indicated that the cost of the Oireachtas at that time was £114,360. That figure has increased to £125,070 for the current year. The cost of the Department of Finance for the year 1932-33 was £61,130 while for the current year it is £71,220. Law Charges in 1932-33 cost £58,767 while the cost for the current year is estimated at £69,293. The Department of Justice for 1932-33 cost £40,218 while for the current year its cost is £43,461. The Gárda Síochána in 1932-33 cost £1,683,365, while for the current year the cost is £1,880,551. In 1932-33 we were told that the Army would not be required at all, that it was likely to be abolished and that we might expect a saving in future years of the amount which was estimated for it that year, namely £1,318,455. Yet, in the Estimates for the current year, for the Army alone we are presented with a bill of £3,252,199 or 146 per cent. more than the cost of the Army in the last year of the Cosgrave Government. The six services which I have mentioned were the services which were specifically referred to by the Fianna Fáil Party and its leaders, as being services which afforded an opportunity for saving, before they were voted into office here. Members of the Fianna Fáil Party, who want to know, can now see the picture presented to the House and to the people who have to pay the increased charges for these non-productive services.

We are told, of course, by Ministers, when they sit at night at ceremonial functions in the city and in the country, that the country is much more prosperous to-day than it was during the last year of the life of the Cosgrave Government. How are we to judge the prosperity of the people of this country? The Minister for Finance in his wildest moments—and he sometimes gets off the track as he did here to-day —would hardly suggest that the increased number of motor cars in this country is any indication of the general prosperity of our people. I certainly would not rely upon the increased number of motor cars to justify the suggestion that the people of the country are more prosperous to-day than they were in 1932, 1929 or at any period prior to this Government coming into office.

What does the increase stand for?

If the Deputy, who, I suppose, like myself, has no motor car, will go and find out the conditions on which motor cars can be bought from those who are engaged in that particular industry, he will probably ascertain that the majority of them are got on the easy payment system.

Mr. Kelly

I am asking you what does the increase stand for?

I am hoping that I shall say something that will provoke the Deputy into making a speech, and I hope he will then give some indication, by way of figures or facts, to justify the suggestions made by his own spokesmen that the people are more prosperous than they were in 1932-33.

Mr. Kelly

What does the increase in motor cars represent?

When I talk about the prosperity of the people of this country, I have got to find out for myself what generally are the conditions prevailing amongst the agricultural community to-day. Is it to be taken for granted that the farmers in the country—and I should like to hear some of the Fianna Fáil Deputies from my constituency on this matter—are getting out of the beet growing industry because they are getting too much profit out of it? I speak with knowledge—and I should like to be contradicted if I am not stating facts—when I say that there is a considerable decrease in the acreage of land under beet, not alone in my own constituency but all over the beet growing counties. I suggest that the decrease in the acreage of beet is due to the fact that the beet-growing or tillage farmers of the country are unable to make that part of their industry pay. In other words, they are not getting a profitable return for their labour out of that particular section of the industry. I believe it is due to some extent to the fact that during a limited period of the time that has elapsed since the economic war was settled, the farmers, or some of them, have been getting an increased price for live stock. But another section of the farmers can prove to the satisfaction of those who want to find out that they have been getting a lower price during portion of that time than they received during the economic war. The figures at our disposal prove that from 1929 to 1938, there has been a drop of 10.2 per cent. in agricultural prices. On top of that, there is, to the knowledge of every Deputy who knows anything about the position of the farming or rural community, an increase of about 30 per cent. in rates, apart from increased cost of production. If the rural parts of the country are, as some people suggest, more prosperous than they were in 1932-33, how is it that the sons and daughters of the farmers are clearing out of the country and trying to find a livelihood elsewhere? The Minister for Local Government gave us on the 26th October, 1938, figures to show that, in the middle of 1936, the population was 2,967,000 and that, in the middle of 1938, it was 2,937,000. These figures show that there has been a decrease in the population of the State of 30,000 during that period. From the Minister for Industry and Commerce, we had the statement the other day, when he was introducing his Supplementary Estimate, that the number of unemployed in the rural areas had increased by 10,000 over the figure for the corresponding period last year.

Deputy Childers is a student of figures and has taken part in debates in this House. He may know more about conditions in his own constituency than I do, but I speak with knowledge of the position in my own constituency. I say that farmers and the people generally in my constituency have just passed through the worst winter for 15 or 20 years. I am in intimate personal contact with working farmers in my own constituency and I have the benefit of their experience, apart from the general knowledge that any Deputy can pick up. I am assured that the majority of farmers who had capital prior to the economic war have lost it as a result of the fight they put up during that war. As a result of the failure of the Government to find working capital for them, hundreds of farmers are working their farms in a way which they should not be allowed to work them. A farmer must have adequate working capital at his disposal in order to work his farm to the best advantage.

If he has not that working capital, he should be provided with it by some State or semi-State institution, so that he may stock his holding and purchase the necessary seed. A shopkeeper who has his shop only half stocked will not, if he keeps a full staff, be able to pay his overhead charges. The position of the farmer, from that point of view, was never worse since I was elected a member of this House in 1922. I am saying this because I want the Ministry to make up their minds to come to the aid of the farmers by providing the capital necessary to enable them to work the land to the best advantage.

During the last general election, the Minister went down the country and, with that tongue of his which knows no limit so far as slander and personal abuse are concerned, suggested that if his Party got a clear majority, they would immediately put their agricultural, transport, and industrial policies into operation. "Give us a clear majority," he said, "and we will put our policy in operation," conveying to any intelligent person who might be listening that the Government had an agricultural, a transport and a financial policy—a general plan—ready for operation for the solution of all the ills from which the people were suffering at that period.

Now that the Deputy has come to a period, I may remind him that to accuse a Minister or Deputy of slander is to accuse him of an actionable offence.

I am sure he would not deny it.

It is not parliamentary language.

It is a pity you were out of the House this evening, Sir, when the Minister was using language that was very doubtful.

That is a reflection on the Chair.

I did not use the word "slander."

He referred to a Deputy of this Party as Deputy Caballero. However, I am not going to follow in his footsteps. That sort of thing comes only from the tongue of a Belfast politician, and is typical of the Belfast politician.

The Deputy is getting back on dangerous ground.

I am not much annoyed by the type of language the Minister for Finance uses. What I suggest is that the Minister, his colleagues and the candidates of the Fianna Fáil Party misled the people when they told them that they had an agricultural policy. Instead of producing their policy for the solution of the difficulties of the farmers, they walked into the parlour of the Opposition and accepted a proposal to set up an agricultural commission. If they had a policy, there was no necessity for setting up a commission, consisting of 21 or 24 persons, who will probably sit in secret for four or five years, or until the eve of the next general election. I suggest that the Government should not wait for an interim or final report from the agricultural commission to make up their minds—if they have any minds to make up—to provide farmers and those dependent upon them with the capital necessary to work their land and make a decent livelihood. As this Government has, with the consent of the majority of the people, presented a Christmas box of £10,000,000 to John Bull, in satisfaction of a debt which they alleged for years they did not owe, they should be able to find at least £5,000,000 to provide farmers with money free of interest or at a nominal rate of interest for the development of their land. If they can ask the people, through this House, in which they have a clear majority, to vote £5,500,000 by that machine-like majority, for a defence plan which they admit is useless against the great European countries, they should be able to find the money necessary to enable the farmers to work and till their land.

The same can be said in regard to their failure to provide money for the relief of unemployment. We had the silver-tongued Parliamentary Secretary attempting the other evening to justify the present method of administering minor relief schemes and the rotational method of employment on those schemes. He asked me whether I was aware of the amount of money expended for the relief of unemployment under such schemes, or whether I was aware of the amount of money expended in my own constituency. I had to confess that I was not aware of the exact amount made available for that purpose, but it was very interesting— and I am sure it must have been interesting to the Fianna Fáil Deputies for the same constituency—to learn from him that 86 of one per cent. of the total Vote was allocated for the relief of unemployment under minor relief works in my constituency. It is no wonder that Deputy Gorry would blush, as he did blush on that occasion. I wonder will any Fianna Fáil Deputies suggest that that is the proper way to carry out the promises which were made during the past year? I wonder will any of them suggest that that is the proper way to carry out the promise to produce and put into operation a plan for the relief of unemployment?

What is the method of administering minor relief schemes? Certain individuals, a limited number of individuals, who are placed on minor relief works are told to take up their jobs on those schemes, and they have to work for a month before they get a penny in the shape of wages. When they cease work on those schemes they have to go back and register at the labour exchange, and it is two weeks before they are reinstated for the payment of unemployment benefit. That is the so-called Christian policy which this Government has put into operation so far as the provision of money for minor relief works, or the payment of those who are compulsorily employed on those schemes, is concerned. They can provide increased sums to the tune of millions for the Army, for the Civic Guards, for bounties which never get back to the producers, and for other non-productive purposes of that kind, but money cannot be provided for the purpose of supplying cheap loans or loans at a nominal rate of interest for the farming community, nor can sufficient money be made available for the provision of continuous employment at decent rates of wages for those who are willing to take work on any kind of scheme, rather than try to exist on the miserable pittances which are provided by way of unemployment assistance. They had their plan for the solution of the unemployment problem, and the plan so far has produced an unemployed register list of 104,000 people. On top of that we had it from the Minister for Local Government that there has been emigration from this country, to England presumably, during the past two years to the tune of 30,000 people. That is the plan which they promised the people of this country to put into operation when they got their clear majority.

What is their transport policy? The Minister for Industry and Commerce made speeches to enthusiastic thousands in Inchicore on the eve of the last general election. He repeated those speeches in other places where there was a large number of railway workers who had been thrown out of employment, and who were hoping that somebody would come forward and save from ruin the industry in which they had been employed for many years. The transport policy which the Ministry has produced since the last general election is a tribunal of inquiry to report to them by 8th February. I do not want to suggest that a tribunal could be set up which could possibly submit sensible recommendations inside the period mentioned by the Minister for Industry and Commerce when he was moving that motion here in the House before Christmas. I do suggest, though, that the Minister for Industry and Commerce and his colleagues misled the people who are dependent on a well-organised transport in this country. They misled them during the general election period of last year when they told them they had a plan and policy for the solution of the chaotic position in which the transport industry then found itself.

They promised that the necessary money would be provided for carrying out extensive schemes of bog reclamation, for afforestation, for drainage, and for every other kind of useful work, and those are useful works which would give valuable and perhaps well paid employment to large numbers of people. The money cannot be found. What are they doing in connection with the drainage business? Like every other Deputy from my own constituency, and like every other Deputy who deals with the communications that come to him from his rural constituency, I communicate from time to time to the Board of Works and other Departments proposals which I get from my constituency, suggesting that money should be allocated for carrying out drainage schemes in my constituency. They have a stock reply which now says that pending the findings or recommendations of the Drainage Commission— another commission which has been set up—nothing further can be done for the present in connection with the suggestions or proposals put forward by you.

Afforestation is the kind of work which can provide a good deal of valuable employment for the workless if the Government would make up their minds to find the money to enable them to carry it out. I dare say that in those matters the Government is largely influenced—I should like to hear the answer to it if they are not—by the advice given to them by their finance officials or by the bankers of this country who are behind the financial advisers to the Government. It must be admitted that there is a queer kind of mentality in this world of to-day when we find that every country, including this so-called Christian country and so-called Christian Government, can get millions of money from the people of the State for the purpose of supplying implements of destruction, but we cannot get the money from those so-called Christian-minded men, or those who are behind them, for increasing production or carrying out works of a constructive nature. I read recently, and was very glad to read, that this Government will be represented at a coming ceremony in Rome. I hope the representatives of this Government who go to Rome will spend a few days extra there trying to find out the real meaning of the Pope's Encyclicals, and not come back here and quote them here on suitable occasions, as they have been doing, but without carrying them out or giving effect to them.

The cost of living is a problem which affects large numbers of our citizens to-day. We have a Prices Commission, and the work of that Prices Commission has been under consideration in this House on several occasions recently. There are people sitting on the Government Benches and on the Opposition Benches in this House who know more about the activities of the Prices Commission than I do, but we have had it proved in the report of the Prices Commission recently printed by the Government that the bacon curers of this country have been making a little bit more than they should.

Mr. Brennan

Only a little bit?

Only about 3d. per lb. more than they were legally entitled to charge or rightfully entitled to charge, in the opinion of the Prices Commission, and they only made excess profits to the extent of about £308,000. Of course, that is nothing when you say it quickly, but it would provide a good deal of employment for our people in carrying out works of national and local importance in this country. We have had it denied repeatedly by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, before that report was published recently, that there was any such thing as profiteering going on in the bacon industry.

The Chair is in doubt as to what particular line of policy the Deputy desires to discuss. He should know, as an experienced Deputy, that matters which could be raised on the Estimates should not be raised on the Vote on Account. The matter with which he is now dealing will almost inevitably be raised on the Estimate.

Yes, but if I postpone the raising of those matters, you, Sir, might be kind enough to tell me that I am advocating new legislation when I raise them on the Estimate. It is very dangerous ground to travel on, but I realise from experience that this is one of the few occasions during the year that Deputies can travel over very wide ground.

The Deputy is travelling on forbidden ground.

May I submit, Sir, that this Vote on Account provides for the salary, over a certain period of this year, of the members of the Prices Commission, and also provides for the salary of the Minister responsible for the policy of that Commission?

The Deputy is again in error. On the Vote on Account the matters of wide scope are discussed, but the items of the Vote are not gone into in detail. In particular, when they may be raised on Estimates, they should not be raised on the Vote on Account.

Can we raise anything on the Vote on Account that cannot be raised on the Estimates?

Deputies will appreciate the difference between general policy and items of a particular policy.

If Deputies want to raise general policy, and want to make it effective, they have to illustrate it with details. Otherwise, it would be simply generalities—going nowhere.

The Deputy will have observed, if he has been in the House for the last 20 minutes, that Deputy Davin has attempted to go into the details on many items, from the Civic Guards through the Prices Commission to the price of bacon. What general line does the Deputy desire to follow?

I hope I am in order in saying that I want the Government, if they mean the Prices Commission to do valuable work, to establish it as a permanent body.

The Deputy may not advocate legislation on the Vote on Account.

May I respectfully point out that it is not necessary to introduce legislation to give effect to my suggestion? On the occasion that the last measure was introduced setting up the Prices Commission, the Minister said that he was prepared, in certain circumstances, to set up a permanent body, or to increase the numbers on it, or to duplicate it, should the necessity arise. We had it then from the Minister for Industry and Commerce that over 100 applications had been received from British industrialists, and the Minister, in his frank way, on that occasion suggested that it would perhaps take about three years to deal with the work which had been delegated to the commission as a result of the Trade Agreement with Great Britain. I am suggesting that the Prices Commission should be duplicated or be made a permanent body, or the personnel increased, in order to deal with the profiteering which has been going on. It is more important from my point of view, and from the point of view of the average citizen, that the Prices Commission should deal with matters referred to it by the Minister, or by other organisations in connection with allegations of profiteering internally, than be concerned about undue delay in dealing with the 100 applications received from British industrialists.

According to the details published in the appropriate Government Journal in 1932 the cost-of-living index figure stood at 155, while the latest figures to which I have access, up to November, 1938, show that the cost-of-living index figure was 176. That is a serious matter for the workless, as well as for the lowly-paid in every section of the community. If the Minister for Agriculture takes part in the debate I want to know what proposals he intends to adopt, or what action he proposes to take, to deal with the profiteering activities of the bacon curers, as a result of the information in his possession by the publication of the recent report of the Prices Commission. I am taking part in this debate for one reason only, because I feel it is a scandalous state of affairs for a Government to come to this House, and to ask it to provide millions of money for a defence scheme, which the Minister for Defence admitted would be ineffective in a general European war. The Minister said it would take £50,000,000 instead of £5,550,000 to provide an effective defence scheme for this State, so that in that way the spending of £5,550,000 this year, presumably on defence, is useless. I suggest if that money is available it could be spent more usefully, from the national point of view, in providing loans for farmers to enable them to work the land, to increase production, and to make a livelihood for themselves and their dependents. Another matter that I wish to raise on this debate is the attitude of the Government in connection with the applications made for military service pensions.

That is distinctly a matter to be raised on the Estimate.

It is a matter on which I heard the Minister for Finance making very plausible promises in my constituency.

The Deputy must wait for the Estimate.

Something will have to be done.

I will not hear the Deputy on that matter now.

The story is a bad one to tell, and I am sorry I cannot do so.

Not on this Vote.

I should like to have the matter disposed of before the end of the world or the Resurrection. According to my figures it will take 33 years to dispose of the applications that have been received, judging by the way that applications have been dealt with during the last four or five years. I appeal to the Minister for Agriculture to realise, as I am sure he must, the present position of farmers. I ask him to realise that many of the farmers who supported him in silence, and probably publicly also, in order to win the economic war that was carried on by the Government for three or four years, are to-day without any capital as a result of the sacrifices they made. How can the Government expect these people to increase production, and to provide a livelihood for themselves and their children on the land if they do not get the necessary capital to enable them to do so? If the Minister and his colleague do not face up to that pressing problem immediately, by taking the necessary steps to provide money that is urgently required, I think there will be a different tale to be told when the Vote on Account is brought before the House this time next year, by whatever Government will be in charge of affairs.

I think on an occasion like this it is better, if possible, to speak, as far as is humanly reasonable, aside from mere Party prejudice. I wish to support the Vote on Account, principally on the ground that to make any drastic changes at the present time would be extremely unwise, unwise because the economic war has only just passed, and also unwise in this respect, that a new situation has to be considered, and the country is faced with the danger of a change in its internal economy and in certain ameliorations, as well as matters which arose at the time of the crisis in international affairs. I feel that we should make no serious change in the Budget or the Estimates, on the ground that the Government cannot possibly have had time yet to study the Report of the Banking Commission, whose conclusions lead us to believe that the rate at which certain things have been done by the Government may be excessive, and that the cost of certain things done by the Government may be excessive.

All the conclusions lead us to believe that we should maintain our Estimates at approximately the same level and without any drastic changes. I think it is opportune now to refute many of the statements made by Deputy Dillon in which he gave the impression to the House that the country was going through a very serious financial crisis, that it was rapidly going downhill, and suggested that unless something extraordinary was done it would be in a very grave and precarious position.

Mr. Morrissey

Do you deny it?

I deny that definitely. On the contrary. I say that the position is far more complex, but taking what I consider to be an impartial survey, I advance the opinion that the Estimates should be left where they are. As far as the general financial position of the country is concerned, I take it that it can only be discussed in a general way until the Estimates are introduced. The general trade of the country is up by £20,000,000, but, at the same time, taking the period before the Government took office, we are, as far as external trade is concerned, £25,000,000 below the 1921 figures. That is offset, to a certain degree, by an increase in the circulation of money, through our industrial development, of over £10,000,000. The adverse trade balance, which was alluded to in the Banking Commission report, and which would give anyone cause for alarm who was presenting large estimates before a House, is, luckily, reduced during the past year by £3,000,000, and as the Banking Commission report suggested that there was a real adverse trade balance of over £3,500,000, after allowing for all invisible export items, we may take it that the worst of the adverse trade balance has been removed, that there is, in actual fact, for last year, very little excess adverse trade balance if the invisible export items are included in the account. At the same time, we have nothing to fear as far as the figures of the circulation of money show. The figures for the circulation of money show a constant increase, indicating that there is no serious position in that regard. It is true that, during the period of the economic war, in order to finance the economic war, for which we feel we had political justification, we lost a considerable volume of external assets. An important part of these were reinvested in home industries, and what the actual external assets lost, after eliminating the transfer of our external assets to home industries, is a matter that has not yet been determined, but there is evidence that the decline in those assets is beginning to cease.

The same thing would apply to our banking deposits, which showed a certain decline during the economic war, but which, according to the chairmen of the various banks at their recent meetings, showed a change for the better in the beginning of the present year.

With regard to the general financial position of the country, certain Deputies have already referred to increased export prices, since the lowest period of the economic war, to the general increase in agricultural prices.

We should bear in mind one thing in connection with the unemployment figures. You must not think too hastily on this question of unemployment.

Mr. Morrissey

We have been thinking for eight years.

We have to look back to the yet more important year of 1935, when we were in the middle of an economic war, and receiving very small support from the Opposition, carrying out a national policy that had been approved by the people as a whole. During that year there were 141,000 persons unemployed in October, and during this year, in February, there were 105,000, indicating a very distinct improvement; indicating, as I have said before, that the position is gradually getting better. What we are all anxious to do is to make sure that it gets better quickly enough.

Mr. Morrissey

80,000 people went to England in the last three years.

And, also, during the period of the Opposition's administration, over 250,000 left for England, under an economic system that was supposed to be ideal, under a system in which we did everything England wanted us to do, when we were joined by every sort of link with England. One quarter of a million went to England at that time.

During the same period there has also been a reduction in the number of people receiving home assistance. The figure is woefully large still, but the fact remains it has gone down by nearly 15 per cent. since the period of 1935, which was the serious period of the economic war. I come now to the question of agriculture. I come of a family part of whom have been in farming for many years. I am not a farmer myself, but I have taken opportunity to inquire with the greatest possible detail into the position of agriculture at the present time. I first of all would like to agree with Deputy Davin that, in the areas surrounding the Shannon, there has been very considerable distress, and in the areas where there are flat, low-lying lands, and I would like to ask the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Agriculture to consider seriously the position of the farmers of this country, at the end of an economic war, who are going to begin production in the spring, who, in addition to the losses entailed in the economic war, have also suffered serious losses in the value of their crops last year, and who have a lack of certain agricultural capital requirements, both in kind and in money, I would suggest to them that, from the psychological point of view, if not from the financial point of view, they do need special assistance if it can be given.

With regard to the agricultural position in general, here again I absolutely deny that you can describe the position in one word, because my conclusion is precisely the conclusion derived from the Banking Commission Report, in view of the fact that the deposits of farmers, their hard won savings which no one would encourage them to disburse with facility, in relation to their total debts, show a very large proportion to the good. There is no question that there are also certain classes of farmers throughout the country who have virtually gone out of production and who are not paying their rates or annuities, and who will have to receive assistance from the Government when the Agricultural Commission has made its report. For farmers of every size, of every acreage, in every part of my constituency, the position is, I feel, a complicated one. There are people who have obviously survived very successfully, and many others who are obviously in a very difficult position, and no generalisation with regard to the agricultural position is, I feel, safe at all. It is a matter which requires the careful and quiet consideration of just such a commission as the Government has established simply because it is not a simple problem. I feel more intensely every time I visit my constituency and become acquainted with conditions there that it is not a simple problem and that mere generalisations will never serve to solve the problem of increasing agricultural production. The farmers have been discouraged by the economic war and bad weather from investing any of their hard won savings in their industry. They have been discouraged by the uncertainty of the international position and by the uncertainty of what the future of agriculture will be. It is no use providing quick and hopeless remedies for that position. Only a clear and careful consideration will possibly be of any use in building up agricultural production.

I do agree with Deputy Dillon when he spoke of the necessity of reducing agricultural costs and increasing production. I feel convinced that, unless the farmers of this country can produce about 30 per cent. more off their present acreage of land, by Government assistance, by more modern methods, by greater certainty in their livelihood, and by general reduction in their costs, we shall never be able to continue to pay for the very heavy social services for which the people are now taxed. I admit that is a very serious problem and will require, not one month nor six months, not one year, but a number of years of research, before the matter is finally put right.

The same thing applies to the question of land reconstruction. I would not advocate for the moment that there should be a large increase in the amount of money allocated for drainage until we have been able to study the whole problem of what should be the contribution of, first of all, the State, secondly, the farmer and, thirdly, the average individual, towards the various types of drainage works on which depends a great part of agricultural prosperity.

One of the most difficult positions in the country at the present time is that in the "yellow" areas, as they are called by the Public Works Department, where there is not a sufficient number of unemployed at the present time to warrant the minor relief grant. The farmers in those areas are unwilling to undertake public works of great importance, partly because of difficulties they find there, and partly because they feel that grants should be forthcoming which, in fact, will not be forthcoming. That is a matter which also will require the attention of the Government in the future.

The question of rural unemployment, I think, is bound up with this whole question of uncertainty. I feel convinced, in my own constituency, that unemployment in rural districts is not due solely to economic distress that may have been occasioned to farmers but is due far more to the under-employment of agricultural labourers which is taking place because we are so near the end of the economic war and because there is as yet no definite policy advocated and there cannot be a definite policy advocated until the Agricultural Commission has laid down some lines for the future. I feel that very strongly, that the whole position of unemployment in the country is partly a matter of under-employment, rather than a matter of financial distress preventing employment, or rather I should say it is a combination of both. It is the existence of the combination of both these factors that makes it so difficult to advocate any general policy until we have had the results and the reports of these two commissions.

Would the Deputy say that it was due to a lack of purchasing power amongst the masses?

I said that it was due to a combination of two circumstances and that there were two types of farmers in this country—those who, owing to uncertainty, are unwilling to risk any small capital expenditure on new developments, and those who have definitely suffered from the economic war and who are not in a financial position to employ people.

Does the Deputy admit that a good deal of it is due to the lack of purchasing power among the masses of the people?

I will come to that in a few moments. Coming to the general position of the country, I say unequivocally that, without any question, the people of this country are better off than they were before this Government entered into office, that the people have a better appearance, have a better life, and, in the vast majority of cases, have more money to spend. I make that claim definitely. I claim that the whole position of the Government is exactly as I have described it, that it is not a simple problem, and I am willing to admit that the reason there is that money circulating is that the Government have enormously increased expenditure on State service, and have enormously increased taxation, which they have distributed amongst the less well-off section of the people. As a result, there has been a certain increase in our total dead-weight debt which will have to be paid off by a future generation. The problem is far more one of how to readjust our agricultural economy to ensure that our position is economically sound over a period of 10 to 15 years, rather than any immediate problem of how to deal with the question of any supposed lack of purchasing power in the country. I deny, from going around Longford, South Roscommon, and the Athlone district of Westmeath, that the people are not relatively better off than they were. I have gone amongst them, and I have spoken to them, and I claim that their position at the present time is definitely a tolerable position. There are areas where there is serious unemployment, and there are areas where there are congested districts and peculiar problems to be faced, but, taking it large and wide, the Government, by their wise policy of expansion in expenditure and development of social services and public works, have caused to circulate amongst the people of the country a sufficient amount of purchasing power to offset the worst effects of the economic war, and which leaves the country in a relatively stable condition.

I say that with full responsibility for knowing what I am saying, and I am prepared to go back to my constituency at any time and face the people there, in the full confidence that what I am saying is sincere and true. Our position now is a matter of adjustment, a matter of studying how to improve our relations to the English market, and how to overcome the difficulties that have arisen from the economic war. There is nothing fundamentally serious in it. I would add that so far as unemployment figures are concerned, in relation to the principal countries of Europe, we are among the five lowest figures, in spite of having fought an economic war. I do not deny the seriousness of the position, but let us be fair. We are among the five lowest figures for unemployment, even if we add the figures for two years' emigration during the past five years.

Since the debate has turned to a very considerable degree on the question of emigration, the Deputies should face up to reality, and I, in saying what I believe and perhaps being almost too impartial in the matter, have no hesitation in doing so. Emigration in this country has for many years been a pretty serious problem, and one of the cardinal facts of emigration which we all have to face is this: The position is exactly the same as it was in the 19th century, in this, that, in the 19th century, from 1851 for 50 years, emigration from Ireland and from Germany to America was in exact proportion, indicating that emigration is to a very considerable degree due to an attraction from another country, rather than to particular financial conditions in the country of origin.

Does the Deputy believe that?

The figures are definitely true. They cannot be denied. I say that there is that element in it. For many years, emigration from Ireland, under many changing conditions, has been equivalent to the emigration from Germany to America. I do not believe that the conditions have altered sufficiently seriously to warrant our changing our belief that it is very frequently, to a great degree, due to the draw from a country where they speak the same language as ourselves and where there are often temporary and permanent financial inducements. As far as emigration in the last three years is concerned, I would remind the House that the national income of the English people reached a record figure for all time in the years 1936 and 1937. The amount of money which the English people had to spend reached a record figure, due partly to a recovery from the depression, and partly to armament expenditure, and there was a demand for labour in England which had to be satisfied, and which could not be satisfied from their home sources, according to the admission of a British Parliamentary paper, and which would have drawn people, sadly enough, from this country, no matter what Government were in office and no matter what financial conditions were at the time.

That is a very serious fact which we have to face. We have also to take into account that, in 1940, the English population, according to their experts, will begin to decline, and the lure to emigrate to England will be more dangerous and serious than ever. It is a national problem which goes far beyond any Party delimitations, or any question of what our economic position is in this country. It depends on the changing economic policy of England, and not to a great degree on the effect of the last five years of government. As the House well knows, a great part of the emigration takes place in the Gaeltacht, in the very poorest part of Ireland, and there the position always is that if there is a certain amount of labour available in England, the people will leave, no matter whether this country is in a condition of great prosperity or not. I am not saying that more would not leave if the country were poor, but there will always be a certain number of people going to England for those positions. I need only remind the House at present that there are licences for over 12,000 non-nationals, Austrians in service in England, so great is the demand for a certain type of labour, and I suggest that if the British Government allow 12,000 people from Europe to enter domestic service, there must be a demand for labour, but no financial difficulties we have caused in this country, through the policy which we believe succeeded in determining a great part of our national problem, were in existence for a great part of that emigration.

That is a good, sound speech. I hope the Deputies opposite have taken it in. It will do them good.

Deputy Childers can certainly not be described as a young man in a hurry. If there is any serious problem, it has to be postponed for consideration, and the Shannon and the Brick and the Main may flood and destroy the countryside, making homesteads uninhabitable, but they had better not flood and destroy the countryside until the commission has reported.

In all seriousness, I suggested very definitely a particular exception to my suggestion of slow and calm consideration—that the Minister should give grants in respect of the flooded areas. Let the Deputy be fair.

With respect to the Deputy, I know something about drainage, and I do not believe that anything can be done in a small way in the two places I have mentioned. Something extremely big will have to be done, and the excuse we have always got from the Government for the last two years when we raised these questions is "Wait until we set up the commission." Twelve months afterwards, we ask: "Have you set up the commission?" and we are told: "No, we are going to set it up." We ask: "When will it report?" and we are told: "We do not know." We ask: "How long will it take after the report has been presented to deal with the situation?" and the answer is: "We do not know." The Government will have to consider the report; then they will have to legislate on the report; and then they will have to report on the schemes. Meanwhile the Shannon, the Brick, the Main and the various other rivers will have to conduct themselves and not overflow their banks. As I say, the Deputy cannot be described as a young man in a hurry.

We have the same thing with regard to agriculture. He admitted that the problem was complex and that there were a number of people who were fairly well off—I do not want to misrepresent him—others not so well off and others on the brink. Are we going to have to wait until these others are fully over the brink in order to get this commission to make up their minds as to what the Government have to do?

The whole plea of Deputy Childers was that the Government should not be hurried, and Deputy Davin's plea was that he hoped the Government would make up their minds to do something one way or the other. Candidly, I think that, when it comes to a matter of the Government making up their minds to do certain things, in view of many of the things they have done in the past, it would have been better if they had not been able to make up their minds to do anything. There have been so many things that have been harmful to the country, put through by the present Government, I think it would have been better if they had got away from this question of general policy altogether and had settled down to matters of detail, such as the question of drainage or the question of unemployment. I think that if they had dropped their general policy altogether and got down to matters of detail such as I have suggested, it would have been much better for the country.

I gather that the Government has been so busy during the last seven years, or whatever the number of years is since they came into office—since 1932, at any rate—waging the economic war that they had not time to think of the needs of the country—that they had not time to deal with these other matters. During the period of that economic war we generally used to hear that period referred to by Deputies on the Fianna Fáil Benches as the glorious years of the economic war, but at least to-night we have heard that period referred to as the "grim years of the economic war". We have that admission, at last. How was that period referred to from Deputies and Ministers on the opposite benches during the period in which the economic war was going on? How was it pictured by the Minister for Agriculture? We were then told that the farmer was never so well off as he was during the economic war. Now that the economic war is over, we are being told the same thing now—that at last the farmer is well off. The Deputy, it seems, has been down the country, and he comes back and tells us that this year is looking well for the farmers.

In my opinion, although the economic war is over, it is only now that the farmers and the people in the small towns in the country are beginning to feel the brunt of the economic war. Then, to add to their misfortunes, they have to contend with one of the worst years we have ever had in this country from the point of view of the weather. I quite admit, of course, that the Government is not responsible for the weather conditions, but the Government is certainly responsible, I hold, for putting the farmers in such a condition as makes it impossible for them properly to meet bad years like the present, when they come. That is the real position.

Then we have this talk about lightening or reducing the overhead charges on farming, but year after year we have these Estimates, each of which is higher than the one that went before it. Of course, if one looks at the cover of this book, one would imagine that the Estimate is smaller, but if you take one item—the Agricultural Grant—you will see that there is £370,000 there not accounted for; it does not appear in this figure of £30,000,000 because the necessary legislation is not there to provide it; but that legislation will be brought in. The case is similar with regard to other items. Then take the case of the Army or the Gárda Síochána—items that were always subject to severe criticism from the people opposite when they were in opposition. We were always being told of the savings that could be effected in connection with these items. Have any savings been effected? What has happened? The very opposite. Savings, it seems, have been effected with regard to agriculture and industry and commerce, and that is how the figures are apparently less than last year's figures, but in reality, so far as really useful services are concerned, there is a reduction, but actually the figures are a great deal higher than last year's figures. And yet we have Deputies speaking of the necessity of keeping down the overhead charges on the farmer. A nice way they are doing it! There is, undoubtedly, a type of expenditure that is not reproductive—that on defence. We discussed that here a short time ago, but I hold that if the Government is really serious about attacking the problem of keeping down expenditure, it should have put up a much better case for its so-called defence policy than was put up in this House.

Does anybody suggest that any satisfactory case for a defence policy was put up here by the Government to justify the expenditure that is now being made on it? We voted against it because no case was put up by the Government to justify that expenditure, even for the purpose of defence. Yet, the Government cannot cut down taxation, and Deputy Childers' great plea is: "Keep things as they are." They have not time to think of where they ought to save money! Give them a chance, we are told. They have only been in office for the last six or seven years, but "Give them a chance." and if you give them a chance for another 20 years, perhaps they might be able to strike on some place where they might be able to cut down expenditure and save money; but since they have spent so much money already, the plea that is now put forward is to keep it up, to keep things as they are, not to disturb them in their spending. Well, at least, that is as good a defence for Government policy as any that has been heard from the Ministers. I will say that at least for the Deputy. You cannot have all this kind of expenditure without a great deal of the burden being passed on to the consumer. Of course it is the consumer who has to foot the bill. As has been pointed out from these benches here, year after year, these items of expenditure which involve taxation are only a portion of the burden the people have to bear. We all know the clever—I was going to say, manipulation, but let us say the clever book-keeping transaction of which the Minister for Finance was guilty a few years ago by which he transferred, in the matter of taxation, the direct passage of money from the consumer to the manufacturer, and the people were led to believe that they had escaped taxation in that way, whereas they were paying up to the hilt just as they had been paying before. Our concealed taxes are a very heavy item in our burdens, but they find no mention in this £35,000,000.

The Government, apparently, has learned one lesson, at any rate. I gathered from the Deputy's speech that the one thing the Government had done, beyond involving us in the "grim years" of the economic war, was, that they had collected and spent more money than their predecessors. That, however, was called by another name. They helped the circulation of money, we are told. That was the principal service—the circulation of money, by taking the money out of the pocket of Peter in order to pay Paul, and so on.

The economic war was well fought and well borne by the country for that great service! No consideration at all is given as to where that policy will lead. Apparently, if we are to follow that particular line, the Government ought to be condemned, not for presenting us with a demand for £35,000,000, but for not presenting us with a sum of about £70,000,000, since the circulation of money would be all the greater in that case! Yes, that is the policy that was chosen, not merely by the Deputy who has just spoken, but by the man who was at that time Vice-President and is now the Tanaiste: namely, that they did raise this money and that they did spend it and would raise and spend more—one of the few successful industries they succeeded in establishing during their period of office—raising taxes. They did politically teach the people of this country one thing, namely, that no matter what some people may say it is not an unpopular thing to increase taxation and forget all about the future. However unsound that policy may be, the Government at any rate have learned that it is not a vote-losing policy.

A policy for agriculture! I had the good fortune a few days ago to read the address of the Minister for Agriculture to the Agricultural Commission. Not a single word of that could not have been spoken by the late Minister for Agriculture, Mr. Hogan. It is almost word for word a reproduction of the policy for which he stood. For six years they jumped from one thing to another trying to kill that policy, determined not to give it a chance. They tried every possible thing, except the one obvious thing they have now come back to—the return to Mr. Hogan's policy. We are told by the Minister for Agriculture in that address:

"Agriculture may be said to be the very life blood of the nation. It is the basis on which our whole economic structure is built up, and anything that affects the prosperity of farming is reflected in the conditions of livelihood of the whole community."

We preached that year after year and we were scoffed at for doing so and told that we were satisfied to have the country as a ranch for Great Britain. We were also told by the Minister the other day that other markets were hard to get, that they are very limited, and that we should try to make the most of the one which was once hailed as "gone for ever", but which we have been told in the speech just delivered by Deputy Childers has established new record years in its history.

This Government has a policy. I do not deny that it has. It has had ten different conflicting policies on agriculture. It has harmed the farmer with them. It has tried them all, and, as a result, it has come back to what was the policy of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, so far as agriculture is concerned. Let the Deputy himself read the account in the Press of the address of the Minister, and let him show me a single line of that particular address that could not have been put to the commission by the late Mr. Hogan. I should like to know what there is left in our whole policy that they, having tried other policies, have not come back to. They still do not attend public functions in tall hats, but I think that is about all that is left of them. That is all that is left of the original Fianna Fáil policy. I wonder how much longer that will last—perhaps a fortnight.

The Deputy spoke of emigration. Is he not aware that when that was first brought up by Deputies on these benches it was denied? I myself was accused by the Minister for Finance of shamefully drawing on my imagination because I called attention to it. Now it is admitted; it is something, we are told, that cannot be prevented, something that is natural, something that is not the fault of this country, but is due to the superior attractiveness of Great Britain. "The superior attractiveness of Great Britain"—and therefore the less attraction of this country —I should say that is the converse of it.

When people speak of the flight from the land, I know they are touching a complex problem. I do not pretend that it is a matter for which that Government policy alone is responsible. All sorts of forces are operative to bring about that flight from the land, as it is called. But that does not make it less regrettable. There is a general unrest all over the world, which you will find here as well as anywhere else. There is a desire on the part of the people of the country to get out of what they consider the dull life of the country into the towns. That is there; but if it is there, and if flight from the land is not desirable, surely there is all the more reason for trying to overcome that natural urge that people have to go from the country to the towns, all the more necessity for the Government to make the country more attractive, to try to realise that there is a problem there. From anything I heard to-night I gathered that in the minds of Fianna Fáil there is no problem there, or at least that it is not worthy of consideration, until possibly at some future date a commission will be appointed when the Government wake up to the fact that there is a problem.

What I hold is this. There is that natural urge on the part of a large number of young people to leave the country and get to the towns. But the Government have increased that urge; their policy has increased that urge. As the Deputy said, we are only just over the economic war, and the effect is still with us; the years are still "grim," no matter what the Government may say. They are particularly grim for a number of people in the country and, instead of trying to put a brake on this flight from the land, the whole policy of the Government is accelerating the flight from the land. That is why we criticise it—because they ought to be active in the opposite direction, in stemming, not in helping that flight. Their policy is helping the flight from the country into the towns, and that is our objection to it. We do not get rid of the problem by calling it complex, as the Deputy did. That is not to say that the Government are not one of the complex factors in a complex situation —they and their policy have been in no small measure responsible. They refused to face the problem of emigration three years ago, when it was first brought up in this House. They contented themselves with denying it flatly and completely.

The difficulty I find with the Government is, not that I have lost hope that in the long run they will adopt our policy, but that it takes them too long to do it. "Agriculture is the life blood of the country." Was it necessary to wait until the patient was drained practically of his life blood, was in a state of collapse from lack of blood, before making up their minds to that particular truth? We are either serious about agriculture or we are not. The Government ought to make up their minds as to whether they are going to save agriculture: whether they are going to take the necessary steps to save it or not. Is it fundamental? I hold that anybody who has watched their policy for a number of years past has drawn a very different conclusion. The whole policy of the Government, in so far as it favoured anything, was aimed at favouring industry in the towns against the agricultural industry. I do not say that they were completely unsuccessful in their industrial policy. They were not; not every industry was a failure by any means.

After the presentation of the Prices Commission's report on the bacon factories, what are we to think of a Government that were unaware of the fact that this was going on, that no amount of protest would get them to open their minds? Deputy Davin asked where were the motor cars coming from—and Deputy Tom Kelly intervened with an interruption. Three hundred and eight thousand pounds extra profit would buy a fair share of motor cars to go about the City of Dublin and present the Dublin Corporation, of which Deputy Kelly is such an illustrious member, with a parking problem and make it more difficult for them. There is no difficulty in explaining where motor cars come from. We on these benches never denied that a certain number of people were making easy money. Our whole contention was that it was extraordinarily difficult for some people not to make money under the policy of the Government in recent years; that it was extraordinarily difficult for certain people not to get rich quick as a result of Government policy in recent years. No wonder there is money for motor cars. It has at least one significance. The increase in motors cannot be regarded as an index of the general improvement of the country. The difficulty is that the Government always wait several years too long to discover what the policy ought to be.

We have heard much about unemployment. I am afraid the point of Deputy Morrissey's interruption was not quite grasped. If I take the figures mentioned by the Deputy I think they are, as far as my memory of his speech goes, 135,000 and 104,000. That is the reduction, that is, the Deputy claims, an improvement in employment. But it leaves out of account the fact that there was an increase of 80,000 in emigration. I fail to follow the course of the argument that leaves that calculation out in this "complex" problem. What are the figures? Are we not being told by the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance that the one thing you cannot do with figures in connection with unemployment is to base any conclusion on them? I often wondered why they were published.

Again and again we have been told by the Minister for Industry and Commerce and by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance that proper use has not been made of these statistics published by the Department of Industry and Commerce. But neither the Minister nor the Parliamentary Secretary ever told us or ever enlightened the House as to what proper use could be made of these figures. One point made was that whatever use is made of them the Government could not be criticised on them. That was the conclusion they reached—the conclusion was more fundamental than the premises. I gather there is not very much agreement between the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary in this matter. It is the Parliamentary Secretary for Finance who has to do with the problem of unemployment. Last week here he was asked how much it would take to put the present number of unemployed men into full employment. What was the answer? The Minister can look it up. He said it would cost from £10,000,000 to £15,000,000, then he came to £12,500,000. I wonder what figure of unemployment does that give? I suppose we take the average agricultural wage per week at 27/-, find how much is that for a year and divide the figure into £12,500,000, leaving so much for materials. In materials should not be included the amount of labour it took to produce the materials here in Ireland and to make them available that gives employment too. If you work that out you get a figure not of 104,000 unemployed but a figure running from 50,000 to 200,000 unemployed. Now, is it the Minister or the Parliamentary Secretary who is misleading the House? Having had experience of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I should not be inclined to say that it was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance who was misleading the House.

There is just another matter with which I wish to deal. I have referred to it already. Again and again the Parliamentary Secretary has justified his scheme of partial employment. My objection to that is the bad effect it has on the morale of the man. It has a bad effect on any man to give him this employment. He is entitled to what is called the dole, and now he is asked to work three days a week for the difference between the dole and the wages he gets for these three days' work. If you take that man as being an ordinary man like, say, any member of this House, does anybody think that he is not regarding that three days' pay as a dole? The difference is really only a few shillings per week extra. That is what it comes to. He is bound to regard it as the dole, and the system is destroying his morale.

And he has to work four weeks before he gets one penny.

You are getting that man into the sort of mentality that he regards work of that kind as a dole, and that he is quite entitled to give as little return for it as he can. I hold that a man of ordinary mentality like, say, any member of this House, will drift into the position of looking at it as a dole. I say that is a disastrous state of mind for every class in the community. We have had mounting expenditure. We should not object to that so very much if we thought there was any decent return; but the return we get is the "grim years" of the economic war, and the "grim" aftermath in which we now stand. There may be factories in some towns, but I know of many towns in the country that have in recent years been reduced to built-up deserts partly as a result of Government policy. Your Pigs Marketing Board has interfered with the ordinary pig markets in the country towns. It is the same with every phase of Government policy; the effect of this Government policy has been to destroy the ordinary business town in the country. Serious as is the position this winter for the farmers, the position in the towns is still worse.

When I go into these towns they remind me of built-up deserts. I have gone into them in my own constituency and in my own town, I have looked through the streets and I have not seen a single countryman in the town. The only people one sees there are the townspeople. Yet, we are told here, to-night, that the country is prosperous. There is a chance of doing something, but judging from what we have seen up to the present we are forced to the conclusion that every effort on the part of the Government in the way of building up only means interference and still more interference. We are told they are building up the country. Nothing of the kind.

The Minister for Agriculture at last realises that the Government cannot do much for the farmer. Well, at least, if they did not do much for him they did quite a lot to him. If they might now let him alone instead of pilling taxes on him and, indeed, on everybody else, there would be some respect for the farmer. Having destroyed the foreign market for six years, the Government are now engaged in destroying the home market. I suppose when that is destroyed we shall be told that the home market in this country is not of much use, and that the great and important market is the market beyond the water. We shall be told that that is what the Government always preached, and we shall be told that it. was only the wicked Fine Gael Party insisted on decrying the foreign market. But that was the market that the Fianna Fáil Party some years ago thanked God was gone, and gone for ever. However, if the country thinks that is a policy that is worth spending £35,000,000 a year on, well and good. But the Government are gradually learning their lesson.

Dr. Ryan rose.

Is the Minister to conclude?

No, he is not to conclude.

It is interesting to hear Deputy O'Sullivan talking of the Fianna Fáil Party coming round to his point of view. I would like Deputy O'Sullivan to give us part of his Party's election programme in 1932 so as to allow the House to realise what was their policy at that time, what they said of the things the Government had been doing and the things his Party have now sanctioned and are part of the Fine Gael programme. The one thing the Deputy stressed was that I made a speech at the Agricultural Commission which might have been made by my predecessor. Am I to be blamed for it if my predecessor made a sound and sensible speech?

Deputy O'Sullivan is clever enough to make the point but why did he not point out to me anything I said on that occasion that I was not prepared to say in the last seven years? The Deputy said I had departed from what I had been saying here. I do not know that I or anybody else said that the farmers were better off during the economic war than they were before.

We had to make the best case we could, I admit, because we were up against a powerful enemy, and with the Party over there willing to help that powerful enemy. In those circumstances we had, as I have said, to make the best case we could and show that the farmers were able to stick it out, and they did stick it out in spite of that powerful enemy, and in spite of the insidious propaganda of the Party opposite. They held out to the end, and we can say, at any rate, that they did not take the advice of the people opposite and give in.

Deputy O'Sullivan spoke of the Pigs and Bacon Act. That was one of the things that we agreed on, because, as a matter of fact, in 1934 the Pigs and Bacon Bill which came before this House was agreed to by all Parties. There was no division of Parties on it. It was sent to a Select Committee, and the Select Committee agreed on it, and when it came back to this House all Parties were in agreement on it. But, because some defects have developed in that legislation, the Party opposite now washes its hands of the whole thing, and puts the blame on the Government for whatever went wrong. That is the kind of talk that we get from Deputy O'Sullivan and the Fine Gael Party. At one period in his speech the Deputy was referring to his Party as the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, but I suppose the less said about that the better.

I propose to leave that subject and to deal with what is before the House —the mounting Estimates, as they have been referred to by Deputy O'Sullivan. How did they mount? I think that when discussing a subject like this we should try to get down to the facts, and not be satisfied with generalities such as Deputy O'Sullivan indulged in. The Deputy spoke about the big change-over to the Fine Gael side. He said that we had changed over to that side. He mentioned that Fianna Fáil took seven years to make up their minds on matters that they on that side would come to a decision on in a few months. That was the kind of talk we had from the Deputy. But let us get down to the true position, and find out how we really stand in regard to these Estimates, and, if there is anything wrong, let us see what the remedy is. We have heard a lot from the opposite side about the mounting Estimates.

The Deputies opposite, instead of coming in here and indulging in generalities, would, I suggest, be better employed in making a comparison between the Estimates for 1931-32 and 1939-40. If we do that we shall see where the increase in expenditure, so much spoken about on the opposite side, is taking place. I find that practically all of it is taking place in what are largely classed as social services. The Abstract of Statistics for 1937 is available for all members of the House. I have examined it, and on page 134 I find the Estimates for 1931-32. When I make a comparison between them and the present Estimates I can see there the reason why the Estimates have gone up. By taking only two items— Old Age Pensions and Widows' and Orphans' Pensions—I find that the Estimates have gone up by £1,250,000 as compared with 1931-32, when the Fine Gael Party were in office. That Party, according to themselves, could not afford to raise the old age pensions. As a matter of fact, they were defeated on a vote in this House on the question and resigned office rather than increase the old age pensions. They would not bring in a Widows' and Orphans' Pensions Bill because, according to them, the country could not afford it.

This Government brought in such a Bill, so that on these two items alone we are spending £1,250,000 more than the Fine Gael Government spent in 1931-32. We are doing that at a time when, according to Deputy O'Sullivan, we have gone over to the policy of Fine Gael. Does the Deputy want us to go back to their policy of 1931 and cut down old age pensions and drop the Widows' and Orphans' Pension Act? Not at all. The Fine Gael Party would not think of going to the country and saying that they were prepared to drop these items. In other words, they have become Fianna Fáil on that question and on many others, too, that I am going to mention. Fine Gael have approved of the Fianna Fáil policy on many of these matters, and have never suggested that we should go back to the Fine Gael, or Cumann na nGaedheal, policy of 1931. Yet, in spite of that we are told that we here have now gone over to the extent of 99 per cent. to the Fine Gael policy. Well, that is really too good a joke.

Let me take another item. On employment schemes we are spending £1,340,000 more than was spent by our predecessors in 1931-32. We have been accused of not doing much for the relief of unemployment. Well, at least we are raising this year, and intend to spend, ten times as much on employment schemes as Fine Gael did in 1931-32, and it only took us seven years to reach that figure, while it took Fine Gael 10 years to reach an expenditure under that head of £150,000. The Estimates for unemployment insurance and unemployment assistance are £1,000,000 higher than they were in 1931-32. As regards money spent on local government and public works—I mean money expended mainly on building work— the Estimate is up by £1,620,000, and in the case of agriculture, the Land Commission and export bounties, the Estimate is up by £2,000,000.

Is there one single item that I have mentioned in respect of which the Fine Gael Party will say the expenditure should be reduced? I am quite certain that they will not advocate any reduction in old-age pensions or in widows' and orphans' pensions, in the Employment Vote or in the amount spent on unemployment assistance. Neither will they advocate a slowing down in our housing schemes, or in the expenditure on the improvement of estates, or on export bounties. These items that I have taken tot up to £7,600,000. That is where the increased expenditure comes in, compared with 1931-32.

What about defence?

I will come to that. We have been accused of promising to reduce expenditure by £2,000,000. We are doing that and giving it to defence. As I have shown, we have increased our expenditure by over £7,500,000. I have given the House the items responsible for that increase. Is it not obvious that, if we are spending £2,000,000 more on defence, that we are spending it from savings? The Estimate for retired allowances and superannuation is down by £1,200,000, and that money is going towards defence. Instead of paying pensions to the R.I.C., as our predecessors did when in office, we are devoting that money to the building up of our own defence, and yet we are told that we are going over to the Fine Gael policy. I think the position is that Fine Gael is coming over to us instead of we going over to them.

If they were to come back to power, are they going to resume the payment of these R.I.C. pensions? Not at all. Fine Gael have adopted the Fianna Fáil policy so far as that is concerned. I have shown that we are financing defence and, further, that every halfpenny of the increased expenditure referred to is accounted for in the items that I have read out to the House. If Deputies will take the trouble of looking into the matter themselves they will find that this increased expenditure is going to social services—the division of land, improvement schemes, export bounties and the improvement of agriculture. If there is increased expenditure on defence it has to come out of savings, one of which I have mentioned—the saving on superannuation and retired allowances. I do not think that the Central Fund services have increased in any way as compared with 1931-32.

We must now find out how this money is being raised. Deputy O'Sullivan and others have told us that we are putting a great burden on to the people: that we are putting an impossible burden on industry, and that we are making it impossible for the poor man to live by taxing his essentials, foodstuffs and so on. I would advise Deputies to look up these matters for themselves and see whether that is actually so or not—to see whether we are doing the things that we are accused of doing. If we make a comparison between the last complete financial year, 1937-38, with 1931-32, it will be found, it is true, that there is an increase in the collection from customs duties, but when we come to examine the essentials that every man needs such as tea, sugar, clothes, boots and so on, what do we find? That the amount collected in customs duties in 1937-38 was lower than it was in 1931-32. Taking tea and sugar together, we collected about £500,000 less than Fine Gael or Cumann na nGaedheal collected in 1931-32.

On clothes we collect less, and on boots and shoes we collect less, so that we do not get our increased yield there from customs duties on such necessaries of life. Any Deputy can get these figures by looking up the Abstract of Statistics for 1938 and turning up Page 147. He will see there all that I am now telling him. Where we did get that was from tobacco, and that yielded a large amount, £800,000. That was almost entirely due to the increased consumption of tobacco. People smoked more, and they are smoking more than in 1931-32. If they are, it is a good sign.

The women are doing the smoking.

Even the women, when they smoke, have to pay for it the same as the men. On petrol we collected £730,000 and on imported beer £100,000. There is where we get our increased customs duties. None of these could be regarded as an essential. It is not essential to a poor man rearing a family to have tobacco, beer or petrol. In the case of the excise it is the same. When we examine the yield we find we collected a little more from the excise, a little more from beer and entertainments, and a little more from home-produced sugar and tobacco. In the matter of motor duties, estate duties and stamps we collected £1,000,000 more than in 1931-32. Under miscellaneous headings we got £1,500,000, which is to a great extent made up from the land annuities.

We have the land annuities here now. We have, we are told, gone over to the Fine Gael policy. I wonder would they now put up the leaflets they put up in 1931-32, stating that the land annuities must be collected and paid to England? If we were to say anything like that we would be told we were going over to Fine Gael, but we have no intention of saying that. The fact is that Fine Gael are coming to us. They have now adopted the Fianna Fáil policy of keeping the land annuities here. In income-tax corporation profits tax and excess profits tax we collected £1,000,000 more than in 1931-32. Taking it all in all, we collected £5,700,000 more in 1937-38 than they collected in 1931-32, and we have done that without increasing taxes on anybody—at least on essentials, I should say. We have taken over £5,500,000 in addition to what they collected in 1931-32 and we did that without hurting anybody. We took less on tea, sugar, clothes, boots and shoes.

How did the index figure go up so high between 1932 and 1938?

I do not say that Deputy Davin did it intentionally, but he quoted figures rather unfairly. He compared the figure in 1932, 155, with November, 1938. I will give you figures over the years. The cost of living began to go down in 1929, when it was 176. In 1930 it was 171 and the following year it was 160. That was the last year of the Cumann na nGaedheal reign. It went low in 1934 and 1935 and then it began to go up again, and it has gone up exactly as it went down. In 1936 it was 160, in 1937, 171 and in 1938, 173. It has not gone up perhaps as steeply as it came down. Deputy Childers spoke of imports being down, but, taking imports less exports, which indicates the balance of trade, there is no great difference between 1938 and 1931. I say, therefore, that we cannot be attacked with any reason, or any logic, on the cost-of-living figure. It has gone up, it is true. Naturally it has gone up as food prices have gone up. It has gone up for the last two or three years, but not as steeply as it came down during the last three years of the Fine Gael Government.

We have heard a lot about employment and unemployment Deputy O'Sullivan said he was warned not to place too much reliance on the unemployment figures. I do not know whether you can or not. Perhaps the Deputy is right: that you cannot put too much reliance on them. But there is one case where we have correct figures, and where there is no possibility of any error being made. That is as regards the number employed, according to the Insurance Acts, the National Health and the Unemployment Insurance Acts. I think everybody will admit that there is no employer who is going to buy stamps in order to show that there was a large number employed in the country.

You are doing it yourselves on relief schemes.

I suppose they have to do it legally—I do not know.

Do agricultural labourers pay insurance?

National insurance, certainly. The number of people whose cards were being stamped, and who were insured under the National Health Insurance Act in 1931, on 31st December, was 451,000; and the number on the 31st December, 1937, was 584,000. It had gone up by 133,000 in these years, and it was a very big increase, an increase of 30 per cent. over those years.

How much of that was due to relief schemes?

There would not be very much. There were not more than 20,000 on relief schemes. I believe there would be about that number.

Two stamps for every week?

At any rate, that would be the number of people. With regard to unemployment insurance, on the 31st December, 1931, there were 314,000, and when we come to 31st December, 1937, we had 428,000 insured, which showed a very big increase in employment during those years. In addition to these people being employed, according to the figures under the national health insurance and the unemployment insurance schemes, they would naturally be reckoned as additional consumers of goods, whether agricultural or industrial. We had also numbers of people in receipt of benefits under such things as the Old Age Pensions Act and the Widows' and Orphans' Pensions Act, and so on. In the case of the old age pensions and blind pensions there were 24,000 more in receipt of those pensions in 1937 than in 1932. But that does not give a true picture of the position, because what really was the true picture was this, that there were 36,000 more in receipt of the full pension, that is 10/-, in 1937 than in 1932, and these people naturally were in a position to purchase goods, and they were not in such a position in 1932.

Under the Widows' and Orphans' Pensions Act we had 48,000 drawing benefit at the end of 1937. I need hardly remind Fine Gael that many a time when they were in power they were asked when they intended to bring in a widows' and orphans' pensions scheme and they said the country could not afford it. If Fine Gael are going to stick to the old Cumann na nGaedheal policy, as Deputy O'Sullivan tried to infer, I wonder would they be prepared to say they would drop this widows' and orphans' pensions scheme? Have they not become Fianna Fáil-minded? I have no doubt at all that they would not go back on that scheme if they were to take over the government of the country. We had 60,000 drawing unemployment assistance, and there was a sum of £1,340,000 spent on employment schemes.

Surely to goodness all these moneys spent by people drawing these benefits must have made a very considerable change in the consumption of goods in this country in 1937 as compared with 1933? With regard to agriculture, one is given to understand in this House, listening to Deputies on the opposite side, that the position is much worse now than it was in 1931. Let us take the official figures. I know that Fine Gael Deputies will go on saying that the position is much worse while we contend that it is much better. The problem is never going to be resolved by having Fine Gael Deputies saying one thing while we say another, but let us look at the figures published officially.

The agricultural index price figure in 1931 was 110. In 1937, which is the last year for which we have complete figures, it was 104.9. The economic war was in full swing at that time. It was settled in the middle of 1938. If I were to be guided by Fine Gael speeches delivered during the economic war, I should add 40 per cent. to these prices after the economic war was settled, but of course that was not a fact. We cannot add 40 per cent. to these prices, unfortunately. There was no great change after the economic war. The farmers did not get much more than they had been getting during the economic war.

Mr. Morrissey

Hear, hear!

That shows that the Government had done a lot to compensate the farmer during the economic war for the losses he had incurred. If he had not been compensated in that way, after the settlement of the economic war naturally prices would have jumped up to a much higher figure. In fact, as I have said already, we had to keep the export bounties scheme in operation in order to prevent prices going down.

Why did you settle it so?

I do not know.

I hope that the Minister and Deputies do not desire to add another chapter to the many debates on the economic war.

I am informed that the agricultural price index figure for the last three months, although it is not officially published yet, is 112. I may be wrong, but that is the figure that I have been given by the people who will produce it eventually. I am only giving it for what it is worth. That proves that the price which the farmer is getting now is on the whole as good as he was getting in 1931. We will say that it is as good, though I think it is somewhat better.

What about overhead charges?

I shall give you that in a moment. The rates payable by the agricultural community in 1936-37 were £460,000 more than in 1931-32. As against that, they paid £2,000,000 less in land annuities. Therefore, taking the annuities and the rates together, the farmers in the aggregate in the whole country are paying much less in overheads, as far as these charges are concerned, than they were paying in 1931-32.

Why are they getting poorer?

That may be. I did not want to be accused of saying that the farmers are well off, a statement attributed to me by Deputy O'Sullivan. What I want is to ascertain how exactly they stand at present and that was the object in setting up the Agricultural Commission.

Are they not down and out?

They are not down and out.

They are.

There is no use in my saying anything then, because some Fine Gael Deputy will say exactly the opposite.

Does the Minister contend that there has been a reduction of £2,000,000 in the annuities since 1931-32?

There has been a reduction of almost £2,200,000 in the annuities. The amount payable in rates has increased by £460,000 but taking these two items together, the farmers are paying much less now than they were in 1931-32. In this same book of statistics for 1938, the figure given for costs of animal feeding stuffs, fertilisers, seeds, etc., for 1930 was 100, while the figure for 1937 was 99.2. Therefore, in 1937 they paid a little less for feeding stuffs, fertilisers, seeds, etc. They are getting at least as good a price as they were getting in 1931-32. They are not paying any more for fertilisers or seeds while their overheads, as regards rates and annuities, have been reduced by over £1,500,000.

Why did you set up the Agricultural Commission then?

We set it up to try to get the truth about this matter.

Mr. Morrissey

Hear, hear. It is obvious you have not got it yet.

I shall refer to the Agricultural Commission in a few minutes.

Is that not the truth you are quoting?

The figures I am quoting are true, but that does not say—and I want to make this plain—that the farmers are well off.

What is wrong then?

I say he is at least as well off as he was when Cumann na nGaedheal were in office, and that is not saying much for his position. I have already said that after the economic war was settled we had to continue the export bounties.

Where did you get them? Was it not from the people themselves?

Mr. Morrissey

Feeding them with a bit of their own tail!

Did you ever hear such a silly remark? Does the Deputy think that the Government could have paid these bounties by any other method than by feeding them with a bit of their own tail?

It is better than stuffing them with Fine Gael yarns.

I repeat that although they may not be well off at present they are in no worse position than they were when Cumann na nGaedheal were in office. The bigger farmers are in no worse position; neither are the small farmers. We brought in many schemes for their benefit such as providing grants for the erection of poultry houses, manure schemes, etc., all of which met with a very poor reception from Deputies opposite. In fact, whenever I introduce a scheme which meets with a poor reception from Deputies opposite I say to myself: "That means that it is good for the people."

Mr. Morrissey

Like the slaughter of the calves, I suppose.

I shall conclude with this point. When I spoke to the Agricultural Commission I talked about the position of agriculture in this country. Deputy O'Sullivan has stated that my predocessor in office, the late Mr. Hogan, could have said just the same. I take that as a compliment. Deputy O'Sullivan thinks I should not. I take it as a compliment if I say anything about agriculture that the opposite Party would have been delighted to say because, then, I say the opposite Party must be getting sense.

The farmers must be even better off than the bacon curers.

There is one thing I shall say about the bacon curers—but perhaps we had better leave it to another day. Here is what I said to the Agricultural Commission: "Do not mind the past."

A Deputy

Try to forget it.

I did not want them to go into the history of the economic war. I do not mind getting advice, but I did not want them to go back to ascertain the farmers' position in 1931-32, because if so, all the commission could do would be to tell us that the farmers' position is at least no worse to-day than it was then. I set up the commission, not for the purpose of ascertaining whether the farmer is worse off than he was at that period—I believe he is better off—but to get the advice of the commission, firstly, as to how the farmers stand in regard to credit, and all these other problems they are examining, and, secondly, to get recommendations from the commission as to how the farmers' position may be improved. So far as we can improve that position, it will be improved. It will be made at least much better than the position in 1931-32, when Fine Gael were in office. I move to report progress.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again to-morrow.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until Thursday, 2nd March, at 3 p.m.
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