The Vote on Account quite properly affords the House an opportunity of reviewing not merely the extent of Government expenditure during the year but the tendency of Government policy and enables us to take stock of the road on which the nation is travelling. Some of the speeches made from the Government benches in this debate and in other debates would appear to indicate that everything in this country is satisfactory and that the country is on the high road to prosperity. But, unfortunately, for that type of mental complacency, there are very disturbing factors which do not at all justify the claim either of prosperity or of economic stability. There are many factors by which the prosperity of the nation can be judged. Deputy T. Kelly speaking last night thought that farmers were necessarily prosperous because, on the occasion of an All-Ireland football final he saw a large number of provincial motor cars in town. But history, and economic facts which are easily ascertainable, tell us that you can have in a country enormous wealth on the one hand and abyssmal poverty on the other. The fact that there may be an increase in the use of motor cars is no indication in respect of masses of the people that they have attained either prosperity or economic security.
Committee on Finance. - Vote on Account, 1939-40 (Resumed).
I gave more reasons than that.
I know that the Deputy gave some very interesting and humorous reasons. But we can advert to certain factors and test the tendency of the national barometer by them. We can refer to these factors and see to what extent they indicate either progression or retrocession. If we take, for instance, the problem of unemployment, I think nobody will for one moment pretend to believe that the situation in this country to-day is comforting in any respect. According to Department of Industry and Commerce figures, we had on the 13th of last month 105,000 persons registered as unemployed at the labour exchanges; and on the 14th January, the last date for which figures are available, we were informed by the Department that 38,000 persons were employed on relief schemes.
Of the 38,000 persons employed on relief schemes, I suggest that not less than 60 per cent. were employed on the notorious rotational schemes which enable them to obtain employment for three or four days per week and at a rate of wages only slightly in excess of what they would receive, if they were entirely idle, under the Unemployment Assistance Act. So that in a small State such as this, with a dwindling population, we find 105,000 persons registered as unemployed at the labour exchanges, satisfying the rigorous tests imposed by the Unemployment Assistance Act that they are in fact unemployed and genuinely seeking work; and we have another 38,000 temporarily off the regular list of unemployed by resort to devices such as the rotational schemes of employment. When we talk of prosperity and delude ourselves into believing that the country is on the high road to prosperity, we ought to try to leaven our enthusiasm by advertence to facts of that kind.
Passing from that, we come to the question of home assistance; and here again, according to departmental figures, we have 80,000 persons in receipt of home assistance or outdoor relief. If you survey the problem of unemployment and, at the same time, survey the extent to which it is necessary for persons to seek home assistance, you get a picture of a vast mass of poverty-stricken people in this country existing on standards to-day which do not enable them to provide themselves with an adequate livelihood. Every person in receipt of unemployment assistance benefit is in receipt of a scale of benefit much below the poverty level. Nobody could pretend to believe that the inadequate rates of home assistance granted in this country are capable of providing even a poverty level of existence for those who are unfortunately compelled to resort to that method of sustaining themselves.
The position, therefore, in respect of these two twin and inter-related problems is a deplorable one, and there is no evidence whatever that the magnitude of the problem tends to decrease in any respect. But we need not test the tendency of our national march by advertence only to these factors. Another, and perhaps a more illuminating field can be explored, and that is the field of emigration. Between the years 1936-7 and 1937-8 the population of this country went down by 30,000 people. In the ten years from 1926 to 1936, according to official figures, 166,000 persons emigrated. In other words, during that period, for every three persons who died one person emigrated. Between the same years, 1926 to 1936, births exceeded deaths in this country by 163,000 persons. Due, however, to the fact that emigration exacted from the nation a toll of 166,000 emigrants, we find that the nation has lost its entire natural increase in population within those years and, in addition, we have exported 3,000 other persons for the same period. So that, what we are doing to-day as a nation is: we are losing entirely the natural increase in population in this country by emigration, and we are even going further: we are exporting even some of the residue of the population as well. That toll of emigration is the most serious indication that the position of the nation is far from healthy. Every progressive country in the world to-day— certainly every country where unnatural methods in the limitation of population are not encouraged—is showing a substantial increase in its population. Here in this country our natural increase in population is being eaten up by emigration, and even the balance of the population is not kept at a stable level either.
That represents the position of the nation as a whole, but the position in the rural areas, of course, is even worse. The whole tendency, particularly in recent years, has been for people to leave the countryside and try to seek in the towns and cities the employment and the amusement and the excitement which are lacking in the countryside. The Minister for Industry and Commerce recently indicated that that was not an unhealthy tendency and that, in fact, there was nothing to worry about in a continuance of that movement. The Minister may express these views, and he may find comfort and solace in them, but everybody who has surveyed the same problem in every country in the world has come to an entirely different view, and that is that it is unhealthy to see the agricultural population leaving the land, going into the overcrowded towns and cities, going in to compete for employment in an already overcrowded labour market and adding, in these towns and cities, to the grave problems which go hand in hand with huge aggregations of population.
In this country the tendency to drift from the rural areas into the urban areas has continued on a scale that ought to excite the grave concern of every person charged with the problem of distributing our population in the manner best calculated to promote the maximum productivity. If we examine the position in rural areas we find a very disconsolate picture confronting us. I have examined the picture in respect of certain counties which have a substantial rural population. During the ten years from 1926 to 1936, the County of Leitrim has lost 9 per cent. of its population; Roscommon has lost 7 per cent. of its population; Cavan has lost 7 per cent. of its population; Donegal had lost 7 per cent. of its population; Mayo has lost 6.6 per cent. of its population; Kerry has lost 6 per cent. of its population, and Clare has lost 5.5 per cent. of its population. That is a tendency which clearly indicates that there is a considerable exodus from the land and that the inevitable development, unless we take steps to arrest it, will be to denude the rural areas of population and to intensify the social, economic and industrial problems as they exist in the towns to-day.
If we pass from emigration and come to another factor which can be examined in respect of our national tendency—the question of the marriage rate in this country—a picture presents itself to us which is anything but comforting. Official statistics show that of 460,000 males between 25 and 50 years of age, no less than 250,000 of them are single: equivalent, therefore, to a population of single males, between those ages, of 54 per cent. There are in the country 200,000 males between 25 and 35 years of age. Of that number only 56,000, or 28 per cent., are married or are widowers. Of that enormous and virile population, not less than 72 per cent. are single. The position, of course, is bad when you take a national figure, but it is even worse when you advert to the position in agriculture. Of all the males between 25 and 35 years of age who are employed in or associated with agriculture, not less than 82 per cent. are unmarried.
These statistics show that the nation is in a dangerous and in an unhealthy condition. They show that, so far as the population is concerned, "The Celt," as the London Times stated on one occasion, “is rapidly going.” There is no other end for a nation except extinction, where you have emigration on the gigantic scale that exists to-day, and such an inordinately large number of the male population unmarried. It is not from choice that the males elect to remain unmarried. The low marriage rate is merely an outward symptom of a very dangerous inward disease. It is a kind of external sore, indicating that the patient is in a very serious condition, and that position will tend to get worse, and the evils less easy to grapple with, the longer we delay applying the obvious solution which it calls for. If we advert to such factors as the low marriage rate, the gigantic scale at which emigration is taking place, the large number of persons in receipt of unemployment assistance benefit, or registered as unemployed at the employment exchanges, or to the home assistance figures, we will get, conjointly, a picture which ought to cause considerable perturbation in the minds of the Government. When we remember that we are a small country territorially, and small from the point of view of population, the extent of the problem, under the four heads to which I have referred, must inevitably demonstrate that courageous handling of the situation is called for, if it is not to get very much worse.
That brings me to the point of asking whether the Government has any plans for dealing with a situation of that kind, whether the Government proposes to take any steps to deal with it under these heads, or whether we are, merely, to have a continuance of the policy of drift that we have seen in operation so long, with all the appalling consequences that inevitably go with that policy. In the industrial sphere there is no indication whatever that any phase of the Government's present programme is calculated to absorb the unemployed people into productive employment. The London Agreement, especially Section 8, has caused considerable uneasiness amongst industrialists. Wherever industrialists have gathered at banquets or conferences, there has been a general complaint by them, that they have reason to fear the effect on Irish industry of implementing that section, which provides for a review of tariffs which were imposed on imported commodities.
If you talk to any industrialist whose business is being supported by the continuance of the tariff policy you will find that he has grave fears as to his ability to compete against foreign products, if there is a review, in the interests of British manufacturers, of tariffs which were imposed on imports. I do not think it can be denied that since the London Agreement, not only has there been a slowing down of production here, but there has been a considerable contraction in the number of persons finding employment in industries.
Industrialists are uneasy as to the results which are going to flow from the London Agreement, and such reviews as have taken place by the Prices Commission all indicate that their fears in that respect are well founded. There have been reductions of tariffs under the Agreement, and also since it was made, on certain commodities. Industrialists fear that other reductions are about to come about. The reductions are not being imposed for the purpose of protecting Irish consumers, but, in each case, are the result of applications by British manufacturers, to have existing tariffs reviewed. Judging by the decisions of the Prices Commission, the English manufacturers have no reason to complain about the sympathetic manner in which their applications are being considered. The Agreement had a very disconcerting effect upon Irish industry and Irish industrialists. Those who had their cases heard before the Prices Commission, on applications made by British manufacturers, even though the decisions involved reductions in the tariffs on goods, are in a much more satisfactory position than those whose cases have not yet been reviewed. At least, in cases in which decisions have been given, it is possible to know what the difficulty in future will be, and to try to plan to meet it, but in the other cases, where the results are still unknown, there is considerable uneasiness. By the time their cases come up for review, they fear that the existing uncertainty and uneasiness will give way to the very definite fear that it is not possible to compete advantageously with British imports.
I remember reading the buoyant Government advertisement that was issued during the last election, promising all milk and honey, and an abundance of factories. I think we were told in one advertisement that 300 more new factories would be established. I have been watching patiently to see a substantial instalment of these factories established. How many new factories and how many new industries have been established since the London Agreement? Far from the possibility of having new industries established, there has been no real industrial development since the London Agreement.
I know of two groups who were in terested in putting up new industries, who inspected sites, discussed the question of getting local capital, and arranged to make deposits of capital on their own behalf and who took steps to advance the establishment of the industries. Then the London Agreement came along, and they said it was too risky to put money into industry now, so long as British manufacturers could, on application to the Prices Commission, manage to secure a review of the tariffs which had been imposed, and, in that way, make it a highly risky and speculative undertaking, to try to compete in a small country, with a limited market, with goods from highly developed, highly rationalised, and highly capitalised undertakings, on the other side of the Channel, with a long tradition of craftsmanship to support them. There is no sign of the 300 factories. If there is, I am entitled to ask the Government where they are, and what employment they are providing. If they are not there, I am entitled to ask when we may expect them, seeing that that was part of the covenant on which the Government asked for votes at the last general election.
At one time the Government believed that it had a very easy solution of the unemployment problem. We had rosy pictures about the solution of unemployment in this House from members of the Government when they were in opposition. One might refer, without wanting to be merely ironically humorous, to the prophecy of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, that he was afraid it would not be possible to get all the people required in this country to do the work the Government was going to make available, and that it would be necessary to comb out the cities of America in order to bring back the exiles.
One may also refer to the speech made by the present Minister for Defence, who, when told that there were 70,000 unemployed said "Ah, well, should we not be glad to have them to do all the work that the Government is going to make available for them." These speeches have an ironic ring about them to-day. They only indicate either how little the present Government then knew about the problem of unemployment or how weak and inept they are to-day in trying to grapple with that problem. But one expects that a person like the Taoiseach, when speaking on the subject of unemployment, would at least use words which he felt represented a solution of the problem on responsible lines. Let us take some of the Taoiseach's speeches as indicating what his policy in respect to unemployment was then, and see what has been done in the meantime to implement the promises which he then made or to give effect to the views which he then uttered. Speaking in this House on the 2nd December, 1931—volume 40, col. 2362—the Taoiseach said that the problem of unemployment
"Is not a new problem; it has been there for a considerable time. ... We have partially solved it by emigrating people from this country who could not get employment in it."
That was two months before the Taoiseach took office. Later he said:
`The cure for unemployment in this country lies in supplying ourselves with the manufactured goods which at the present moment we needlessly import.... The solution of unemployment is easier to find in this country at the present moment than it is in any other country facing that problem.... We will find that there are over 55,000 unemployed. ... I feel certain that a figure like 60,000 is a minimum figure for the number of people who are unemployed at the present moment."
On that occasion the Taoiseach felt that we had a problem which we partially solved by emigration, but that it was a problem which was easier of solution here than in any other country in the world. After seven years of government by the same Taoiseach we have, according to the latest figures from his Department of Industry and Commerce, 105,000 persons registered as unemployed at the employment exchanges, and over 20,000 of them working on minor relief schemes, getting low wages for three or four days' work per week. The Taoiseach then realised realistically that there was considerable waste involved in having a large number of persons unemployed. Addressing the House in the same debate, he said:
"These 60,000 people, if they were employed and distributed even in the present proportions between the agricultural and the manufacturing industries, would produce yearly something like £6,750,000 worth of wealth. So that ... the gross economic loss, the loss to the community in deprivation of wealth is something like £6,750,000 per year."
So that our 60,000 unemployed people at that time, by being unemployed, were losing by their inactivity the nation wealth to the value of £6,750,000 per year. Since then the number of our unemployed has increased from 60,000 to 105,000, and the cost of living has increased in the meantime by 14½ per cent., so that if we take the Taoiseach's valuation at that time and apply it to the higher number of unemployed, and to the increase in commodity prices, we find that under that test the loss to the nation to-day is approximately £13,500,000. The Taoiseach was very gravely concerned at that time when he was told that the nation was losing through its unemployed people £6,750,000 per annum. The nation is losing to-day more than twice that figure, according to the Taoiseach's own calculation, and the Government, of which he is the leader, has no plan whatever for putting into productive employment the 105,000 persons who are unemployed to-day: no plan whatever for avoiding the loss of wealth which concerned him so much on that occasion.
The present Minister for Industry and Commerce also had optimistic views as to the solution of the unemployment problem. Speaking in the same debate—column 2378—he said:
"This year, in addition to the continual worsening of the unemployment problem, which has been going on for a number of years, we have the fact that due to the economic conditions in the United States and in Great Britain emigration has ceased, so that 25,000 or 30,000 young people who would normally emigrate are at home and remain idle."
Under the same Minister for Industry and Commerce there is one aspect of our relations which has now become normal again and that is emigration. The trade in emigration is normal to-day. If anything, it is abnormal. It is one of the flourishing industries in this country, taking men and boys, girls and young women out of the country to compete in Britain with a swollen unemployed labour market, for the employment which they cannot get here. The crowning declaration by the present Minister for Industry and Commerce on that occasion is one well worthy of quotation. Speaking in the same debate he said that
"Deputy de Valera showed and showed fairly convincingly to anyone open to conviction that unemployment need not exist here, that it exists very largely because of the lack of directive ability on the part of the Government."
That was when we had 60,000 persons unemployed in the country. Unemployment then existed because of "the lack of directive ability on the part of the Government." Now we have 105,000 persons registered as unemployed. What can one think in these circumstances of "the lack of directive ability" in a Government which allows the problem to grow from the figure then quoted to the figure which exists to-day. The Government appears to have had an abundance of plans and an abundance of schemes for dealing with the unemployment problem before it assumed office, but once it assumed office it had no plan whatever. It is merely kicking the industrial football all round the field and it has not a notion as to where the goalposts are.
We had a most enlightening declaration from Deputy Hugo Flinn, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, in a debate in this House a fortnight ago. The problem of unemployment, he said, was not a problem of money. It was a problem of getting work to do. Outside a lunatice asylum, did anybody ever hear of a worse declaration than that? In this undeveloped country, where social and human amenities are conspicuous by their absence, and where the standard of living is so low for a large number of our people, to tell us that the problem to-day is not a problem of money, but a problem of getting work, is just the economics of a mad house. There is an abundance of work to be done in this country to-day. There is an abundance of work to be done in lifting the country, and the rural areas in particular, out of the deplorably bleak and miserable position into which they have been allowed to get through generations of neglect and generations of alien misrule. We ought to-day to be harnessing all our efforts to improving the amenities of life, particularly in the rural areas, but, according to the man charged with dealing with the unemployment problem, the real problem is to find work for the people to do. It is in the hands of a man with vision of that kind that our unemployment problem is to-day.
The most disquieting thing in connection with any review of our economic and industrial position is the complete absence of any plan on the part of the Government. One could understand unemployment continuing for a while; one could understand suffering; one could understand some kind of industrial dislocation causing unemployment, if one could see that there was some plan at work which in the course of time would enable that problem to be dealt with. But here we have to-day an army of unemployed people within a small State, and a Government drifting helplessly and hopelessly with no plan whatever for dealing with that unemployment problem. In the discussion on the Defence Estimate it was made clear that this year we are raising an extra £5,500,000 for armaments— most of which will be obsolete in five, and certainly in ten years, at the outside—apart from the normal expenditure of approximately £3,000,000 on the Army as well. We can raise that gigantic sum of money in this small country for an armaments programme, which I do not think, even when it is in full swing, would keep out of this country an invasion of bees. When it comes to a question of raising money for armaments we can raise all the money that is necessary.
We can talk in the language, if not actually in the figures of some of the Continental dictators, of some of the countries immensely more wealthy, immensely greater from a territorial and a population point of view than we are, and with interests very different from ours, and far more widespread than ours—interests in defending ill-gotten gains in other portions of the world. But £5,500,000, plus another £3,000,000 are going on armaments this year. We are spending that, mind you, in the same year as we are giving a maximum unemployment assistance benefit of 14/- per week to a man with a wife and six children in the small towns and the rural areas throughout the country; an allowance equivalent to 2/- per day for eight people; an allowance which enables that family to spend only 1d. on every meal which each member of the family eats. We can see millions being raised and spent on armaments. The Government is doing Brewster when it comes to spending money on armaments, but their policy in regard to the unemployed is the policy which Mother Hubbard used so successfully on the dog. Millions for armaments; pennies for meals for the unemployed people—that is the policy we are backing and enshrining in this Vote on Account.
There is one statement by the Minister for Industry and Commerce with which I agree, and that is his statement that in this country a lack of directive ability is at the root, to a considerable extent, of our unemployment problem. We have in this country a relatively undeveloped nation. We have here brains and brawn capable of being utilised in the development of the nation, but, for some extraordinary reason, whatever other way we can apply our talents and apply our credit facilities, we are failing lamentably to apply them to a solution of the unemployment problem. The only policy of the Government to-day in regard to unemployment is that worthless one that Micawber practised with such catastrophic results—waiting for something to turn up; just letting things drift along to see whether anything will turn up. Then, when it does not turn up, they say: "In any case the other people were really worse. We are doing things better than the other people." It does not matter to the unemployed people whether there is less employment than in the days of the Fine Gael Government. So far as the unemployed man is concerned, unemployment under any Government is a detestable evil which he wants to get rid of. If I were to make one suggestion to the Government, it would be to cease making comparisons of that kind as affording any solace to him, but to endeavour to get to the roots of a problem which, if not completely soluble in the circumstances of this country, can at least be brought down to very manageable proportions.
Just before we entered on this discussion this evening we spent time dealing with the Town and Regional Planning Bill. We spent time dealing with the Town and Regional Planning Bill when we ought to be spending our time and energies not on planning houses or mansions or castles in towns but on planning a national life for our people, a national life which will succour our people from the dread misery and terrifying insecurity which go hand in hand with long continued unemployment. It would pay the House and pay the country better if, instead of wasting time on some of the legislation we are asked to pass here, we were concentrating our endeavours on dealing with the greatest problem in this or any other country, the problem of unemployment. A visitor to this country will not be so much impressed —unless he is merely a "main-roader"—with what some of our towns and villages look like; he will be concerned with the standard of comfort, the standard of living, the standard of social security which each and every one of our citizens possesses. I think we can give our people that security. I think we can provide employment for our people. I think the resources of this country, the confidence and the capacity of our people, and the credit position of the nation, are such as to encourage us to apply a radical solution to the unemployment problem. We were told by the present Taoiseach that if he could not find a solution within the present system he would go outside the system. The Taoiseach is still within the system, and a painful monument to that fact is the existence of over 100,000 unemployed people in the country to-day. Are we always going to accept the philosophy that we must have a vast army of unemployed people here? Does this Government accept the philosophy that it is the right or the destiny of over 100,000 Irish men and women always to be idle, or does it conceive that it is for them a national and a moral responsibility not merely to save them from the cancerous influences which go hand in hand with unemployment but to harness their efforts to the creation of more wealth for a nation that badly needs the creation of more wealth? I believe that we can find a solution of our unemployment problem if we face up to that problem on the lines of spending nationally, thinking nationally and acting nationally, allowing no precedents in other periods to deter us from facing up to whatever is involved in finding a solution of a problem which threatens the very existence of the nation itself.
We could, in this country to-day, survey its resources and ascertain its needs. We could mobilise the manhood of the country, arrest emigration, and utilise the credit resources of the nation to ensure that every man and woman able and willing to work, in a country where there is an abundance of work available, would be guaranteed work at rates of wages capable of sustaining them in decency and comfort. It is along lines such as these that the industrial and the social rot which is eating into the vitals of the nation to-day can be stopped. It is only by tackling the problem along these lines that the decay of the Celt as a race can be avoided. I know, of course, that to suggest a solution of the problem along these lines to minds which are saturated with the file mentality, and whose outlook is conditioned by precedents and by minutes, is to suggest a solution which will be bitterly and vigorously opposed. The country has got to choose whether it is going to have the existing personnel at headquarters dealing with routine matters, or whether it is going to build up a directive organisation there which will allow nothing to stand in the way of applying to the unemployment and emigration problems the radical solution which these problems need so much to-day.
I think the Government must by now, after eight years of office, have realised that all its past tinkering with the problem has been a gigantic failure; that tens of thousands of people are losing heart and faith in the Government's policy to solve the unemployment problem. In every city and large town in England, tens of thousands of our people are living, having escaped from the misery and poverty that they were enduring in this country. If the Government are wise and prudent, they will face up to their responsibilities on this unemployment problem with more enthusiasm than they put into the armament problem, and with as much determination to tackle the problem in the same vigorous way as apparently we are going to find money for armaments.
If the Government have the courage and the vision to do that, we might see the end of the problem, but if they drift as they are drifting to-day, then we can only visualise a continuance of the same miseries, the same widespread poverty and suffering, and emigration on a large scale, with tens of thousands of people enduring an inordinately low standard of life, all because we are legislatively too lazy to organise the nation and to give them a better standard of living.
It is difficult in a country that has had the hand of Government so hard down on its industry, including its agriculture, for the last six years, suddenly to become normal. But with the improved position in which our agricultural industry is, as a result of the Agreement that gives it back, to some extent, the export market that it had, we may expect to see some natural improvement in the economic situation here. As far as realising what the unemployment situation in the country is, or as far as indicating how it can be stopped or improved in any way, nothing that we have been told in this House since we turned the present year gives us any light or comfort. The Minister for Agriculture intervened in this discussion, and he told us that, outside the £2,000,000 additional that we will spend out of the revenue on defence this year, they are spending £7,600,000 more than the Government they superseded in 1932. He indicated the lines upon which the additional expenditure of £7,600,000 would go. When we add the £2,000,000 for defence, the additional expenditure reaches £9,600,000.
Let us see how that is being spent. Additional old age pensions and widows' pensions will account for £1,225,000; on employment schemes we will spend £1,340,000—that is, relief schemes organised and set going by the Government. The Minister tells us that unemployment assistance will represent an expenditure of £1,300,000. There is additional building work, which will cost £1,620,000. The Land Commission and the Department of Agriculture are going to spend £2,000,000. Most of the expenditure that is there is simply patching a situation. There is no constructive application of a plan there. There is nothing organic in the rehabilitation of the country economically, and there is nothing there that is going to create a natural situation in which men are going to find employment.
It has to be done, and it can only be done as far as I can see by getting the real facts of the situation in front of us. We have to get down to where the real fundamental things in the economic situation are, and we have to face the facts, and it is in a modest way, seeking to get one or two things done, that I intervene in this debate at this stage. I am encouraged to do so by recent reference in the Press to the points I speak about. There are three matters I would like to deal with here One of them is dealt with in a leading article in the Irish Times this morning; another is dealt with in a letter to the Irish Press by Miss Louie Bennett, of the Irish Women Workers' Union; and the third is dealing with a parliamentary phenomenon, by the Cork Examiner. The Minister for Finance can be satisfied that, as we are keeping the Irish Independent out of the discussion, there is probably something worth talking about.
The first point concerns the position existing in the City of Dublin with regard to young people leaving school. I speak particularly of boys, and I want to speak particularly of the problem that exists in the case of boys from the age of 16 to the age of 20. Something over 5,000 boys leave our primary schools alone, in Dublin, every year, and there is nobody who had had any experience of city life and who knows the conditions, not only of workers and of what would be called working-class families, but of the middle-class families and every class of family in the city, who does not realise that there is no connection between the school as an educational institution and employment in the industrial world outside. These two things are broken by an absolute gap, and any boy leaving school, particularly the primary school, and I could say the secondary school too, in the City of Dublin, goes out into, I might say, a blank wilderness so far as hope is concerned. As the leading article in the Irish Times pointed out this morning, there is no machinery in the city that can serve them. A number of boys go to the Juvenile Employment Committee, but only a very small number, and numbers of those that go there are not really catered for.
What I plead for at this stage is not a plan for putting boys of that particular kind into work, because I think that a plan of setting out definitely to put boys like that into work would lead nowhere but would lead simply to an extension of the relief scheme and an extension of the public works scheme that, I believe, have no real sound organic growth in them at all. What I do plead for is immediate investigation this year of what the circumstances are. I suggest that a census should be taken of boys between 16 and 20 years of age, in the City of Dublin, who are looking for employment at the present time. It will take a month or two to see on what lines that census should be planned and to get the machinery going for taking that census, but it should be quite possible to plan a census of that particular kind and put it into operation in the autumn, so that you would not only have a clear, scientifically set out examination of the position that exists at the present moment but you would see the position as it will be after the usual annual influx has taken place from the schools this summer. I believe that an examination of that situation would put in a perspective that has not been seen before the unemployment situation in the City of Dublin. It is fundamental to the whole situation here, and unless that position is reviewed and examined and looked at, then there is going to be no definite plan and there is going to be no definite appreciation of what the economic position in the city is. That can be done simply, and it can be done thoroughly and scientifically for the City of Dublin, and I suggest that it should be done at once.
The second point I want to refer to is a thing that, if done, would create in a good and economic way additional employment in the City of Dublin and would do for the building industry a thing that is very necessary at the present time, that is, give it something of a clear, definite outlook. Just take a letter like this:
"I am married two years, with one child; at present living in a basement flat in such-and-such a street, paying 15/- per week for two rooms. The accommodation here is very bad. My wife is at present under the doctor's care. There are a number of steps down to our flat, and having to lift the pram, etc., down the same is causing great injury to my wife."
This man is paying 15/- a week for two rooms. He is employed in permanent employment as a fitter and his wages are £3 16s. a week. Here you have a person who is one of the stable, employed workers in the City of Dublin, who is in permanent employment and has a wage of £3 16s. a week and, as Miss Bennett points out, is prepared to sacrifice a certain fair amount of that money to get a decent house. He cannot get it. That is typical of hundreds, if not thousands, of cases in the City of Dublin. I suggest that, if a census were taken—and it could be conveniently and rapidly done—of the number of persons in fair employment in the City of Dublin, let us say permanent employment at, say, this man's wages of £3 16s. or £3 a week, who wanted a house to rent, then you would have information that would be a foundation-stone for a real economic and progressive piece of building work in the city here.
As long ago as 1931, I pointed out that that class had to be catered for and was not being catered for. When the Minister for Local Government introduced his 1932 Bill, we warned him that he was leaving that class completely out of his calculations, and I understand that, yesterday, in the Seanad, he admitted that what we warned him against then had actually come about. Whether he admitted it or not, the fact is that there are thousands of fairly economically-paid workers in the City of Dublin ready to pay a reasonable and economic rent for a house and cannot get a house. In the meantime, you have a building industry in which there is a very considerable amount of unemployment and which is absolutely bewildered in its outlook. So that in the circumstances in which we are spending £9,000,000 odd more than the pre-Fianna Fáil Government was spending, and spending it in the most wasteful way, a way in which it is simply spent and gone, without building up anything with organic, economic growth from it, in a year in which we are proposing to do that, I ask that an examination be made of the juvenile unemployment situation in the City of Dublin in regard to boys from 15 to 20 years, and that an examination be made of the number of people who can pay for a house, who are in stable, satisfactory work in the City of Dublin, who can pay rent for a house and who cannot possibly get a house. Why? Because that situation is not definitely examined. I believe that, if it were definitely examined, there would be a resurrection of the building industry in the City of Dublin and that the very fact that the building industry in the City of Dublin was founding a considerable section of its work on a substantial basis like that would strengthen it and enable it to give greater assistance in the direction of building houses for those people who are not able to pay an economic rent at the present time and who have to be assisted by the Corporation and the State.
Unless focal points like that are taken in the unemployment situation and unless focal points in the economic situation are concentrated on, the facts clearly brought out, and the logical deductions made from these facts towards Government action, then you are going to be spending £9,000,000 this year and £10,000,000 the next, and £11,000,000 the next and the story of emigration and unemployment and general demand for Government assistance, which Deputy Norton has spoken about, is going to continue.
The next point that I would refer to, and my last, is a point that arises out of the intervention in this discussion by the Minister for Agriculture the other day. In its editorial page, yesterday, the Cork Examiner has an article headed “The Silent Voice”, which indicates that democracy in this country is seriously threatened by the Party system, which muzzles a whole body of representatives of this country behind a front bench group of Ministers. No matter what members do, and no matter what they say, and no matter what is the likely effect on the country of their actions and legislation, not a word of criticism, not a piece of expression of opinion that might be regarded as the real expression of the opinion of their constituents, is heard. To my mind there is a bigger danger than that and it is a danger that increasingly in this House we are being confronted with, that is, that you cannot get the truth out of Ministers.
The Deputy may not accuse Ministers of telling untruths.
I am not accusing Ministers of telling lies, Sir, but I am saying that, as far as this House is concerned in debate, as far as the facts of the situation in this country are concerned, we cannot get the facts out of them. I will call it by any other name that parliamentary procedure or even politeness suggests but I mean that we cannot get the truth out of Ministers here. Now, how can we be a Parliament, in the accepted sense of the word, if, when we are discussing legislation and plans for economic improvement, we cannot at least be satisfied that what will be stated here by Ministers and by Deputies from every side will be, so far as they can state them, the facts of the situation? At any rate, can we get this, that we will all try to get what are the facts of this case, and that if Ministers are challenged, and if it can be shown that they tell us things which are incorrect, not only will they accept correction, but, in the interests of this institution as a democratic institution, and in the interests of the well-being of the country they will do their part in helping to get before this House information which is correct?
Let us take the Minister for Agriculture. One of the danger-signals in the figures that we have for employment are the figures that come from the equation of the contribution fund of national health insurance to full-time employment. The Minister referred to employment in column 1257 of the Official Reports of 1st March last. Professor O'Sullivan had been saying that we should not rely too much on some of the figures with regard to employment and unemployment that were bandied about, and the Minister for Agriculture was prepared to agree with him. He said:
"There is one case where we have correct figures, and where there is no possibility of an error being made. That is as regards the number employed, according to the Insurance Acts, the National Health and the Unemployment Insurance Acts."
He then went on to say that, according to the national health insurance contribution fund, between December 31st, 1931, and December 31st, 1937, employment had gone up by 130,000. "It was a very big increase, an increase of over 30 per cent. over those years," he said. Well, it is not true. That is the first thing to say about that. The second thing to say about it is that if he is taking the employment position as shown by the figures of the national health insurance contribution fund, the position is that full-time employment, in 1931, was 342,000 persons and, in 1938, 416,000 persons, that is, there was an increase of 74,000, which is about half the figure the Minister gave us. This, however, is where I come to what disturbs me about the position disclosed by the national health insurance fund figures. The publications that have been issued by the Department of Industry and Commerce on the trend of employment have concentrated, and rightly, on the figures for the National Health Insurance Fund and the Unemployment Insurance Fund as real things that show the amount of employment in the country, and in the accounts that have been issued, they have made a thorough use of these figures. They show that between 1926 and 1931, five years, full-time employment, as measured by the national health insurance calculation, rose by 57,000 persons, or by an average of 11,400 a year. Between 1931 and 1938, they show that, in those seven years, the increase in full-time employment was 74,000 persons, or an average of 10,571 a year. I take the national health insurance figures because they are more embracing than the unemployment insurance figures, in that, as well as including the unemployment insurance people, they include agricultural workers, domestic workers and others not included in the other figure.
One would have imagined by all the great propaganda there has been about the increase of employment in the country that the rate at which people were being put into employment during the last seven years would have been greater than that of the years before. We find that it was, in fact, 829 persons per annum less. There would not be much to complain about in that if we had not to take into consideration that when you figure out the increased number of houses built during the last seven years and express it in terms of increased employment in the ordinary way which is accepted, that is, that the building of one house, every aspect of it, gives employment to one and a half men for a whole year, you find that the excess number of houses during the last seven years over the number of houses built yearly in the previous five years accounts for an increase in employment, in connection with house-building, of 8,000 per annum.
Then we go to relief schemes. The figures given in the publications with regard to the trend of employment, and the figures given in reply to Parliamentary Questions, show that last year, 1938, there was an average of 19,000 men employed on relief schemes in every month of the year, and that there was an average of 22,000 men employed for every month of the year in 1937, so that when we take the increased employment, as a result of increased house building, and of relief schemes, leaving out entirely the point made by Deputy Davin that a full-time week on a relief scheme may mean two stamps because of the broken time, the rate of increase in employed persons under the National Health Insurance contribution scheme for the last seven years is about 4,700 a year less than the rate of increase in the five years before Fianna Fáil came into office. Now, when you consider the large number of people who have been put into employment requiring unemployment insurance, we have disclosed to us that a very remarkable change has taken place in the position of employment and that while people have been added in the new industries, in agriculture, in commercial life and in domestic service, there has been, at the same time, a tremendous weakening of the employment situation here.
Doubt has been expressed as to whether the number of persons that are now in industrial employment are going to be able to continue there. We hope they are and we hope that nothing will be done, in any kind of hurried or thoughtless way, that would jeopardise their continued employment, but the facts that are before us show that there has been a very serious weakening in the economic situation among those classes that are outside the unemployment insurance scheme. I think that that is one of the serious things in the situation that is going to react on us particularly in the near future, after the present situation has had a little more time to develop. As I say, here we have the Minister for Agriculture getting up to persuade the House by a statement to which I suppose, naturally, being the statement of a Minister, a certain amount of authority attaches, that in the first place the number put into employment requiring national health insurance is twice as great as it actually was, and, in the second place, hiding up the situation that abnormal things did go to raise that figure in relief schemes, in the doubling effect of the way relief schemes have been worked, in the way in which national insurance is paid and in the increased number of persons employed in the building of houses. That is entirely obscured. Give us a chance in our discussions here by putting the correct facts in front of us, and by presenting the facts in such clearness here that none of us will be tempted to misrepresent them.
That is not the only way in which the Minister for Agriculture misrepresented the situation. To take the trade situation, he said, as reported in column 1257, "that taking imports less exports, there was no great difference between 1938 and 1931." There is this much difference, that we got £12,000,000 less for what we sent out of the country, and that our adverse trade balance was increased by £3,000,000. I do not mind back benchers getting up and saying, as was said, that our trade position has been improved by £20,000,000 when, as a matter of fact, last year our total trade was down by £1,500,000. I do not mind that, but I do mind the Minister hanging on to a statement like that and attempting to gloss over it, to show that, as far as trade position is concerned to-day, it is as good as in 1931.
Then, speaking of the moneys that have been spent by the Government, he said:—
"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..."
He says that because they are getting more revenue from tobacco, and that people are smoking more tobacco, it is a good sign. He says also that taking tea and sugar together, they collected about £500,000 less than Fine Gael or Cumann na nGaedheal collected in 1931-32 and, generally, that the moneys they took from the people were taken in respect of things that were not necessaries of life. I would not be allowed to describe here the Minister's statements in the only words that could really describe them. There must be more consumption in the country! People are taxed less! Just let us see. We have had the experience for a long time past that when we drew attention from these benches to these things— that is, the falling power of the people to purchase these things, and the falling consumption—we had simply spat back at us the statement that we did not know how to read things. Let us take for one thing the Bacon Report published the other day. The Bacon Report published the other day shows that the consumption of bacon which was in 1931 828,000 cwts. has been reduced to 572,000 cwts. in 1937—a fall of 31 per cent. What is the real position with regard to bacon? We were invited by the Minister for Agriculture to go to the Statistical Abstract for 1938 if we wanted to see the facts of the situation. The Statistical Abstract for 1938, in regard to consumption at any rate, only brings up to the year 1936. I shall just take three items here, as regards the increased consumption alleged by the Minister for Agriculture on the one hand, and the way in which taxation has been shifting on the necessaries of life on the other. When we take the bacon position from 1931 to 1936, the Statistical Abstract shows that, instead of eating 812,891 cwts., as we ate in 1931, in 1936 we ate 201,371 cwts. less. Did we pay less for it? No. We paid £220,887 more.
For a lesser amount?
For 613,520 cwts. we paid £220,887 more than we paid for 812,000 cwts. five years before that. Now, in regard to flour, what is the position? Again, from the statistical abstract that we were coming to, our consumption of flour in 1931 was a little over 7,000,000 cwts. We paid for that £3,474,213. We eat 253,398 cwts. less flour in 1936 than we did in 1931. Did we pay less for it? I said that, for the bigger quantity in 1931, we paid £3,474,213; for the smaller quantity we eat in 1936 we paid £1,710,907 more than we paid for the bigger quantity eaten in 1931. That did not appear as taxation. When the assistance to the flour position was being given, out of revenue, in the earlier years it reached £300,000. Then, when it was getting a run, it was shifted out of the taxation accounts, and this additional £1,710,907 is unnecessarily paid for flour in 1936. That was continued in 1937; it was continued in 1938, and it will be all read when the statistical abstract for the time brings these things up to date. That was paid, as well as the additional taxation, but it does not appear in the accounts.
Now, as regards sugar in 1931, we consumed 2,091,260 cwts. of sugar and the charge for that, without talking of taxation—I shall talk of taxation afterwards — and without counting the customs duty or excise, was £1,236,454. Then, in 1936, we ate a little more—2,279,422 cwts.— but it cost us £2,269,309.
Will the Deputy tell the House what sugar cost the consumer in 1931, including the duty?
I am going to tell the Minister that when I tell him what these figures I have read out to him mean. They mean that if the sugar that we got in 1936 was got at the same price as that at which we got it in 1931, it would have cost £919,000 less.
I hope Deputy Hughes is taking this in.
I understand the figures all right.
I am quite sure Deputy Hughes is capable of taking it in and I hope that the Minister and Deputy Hughes are going to allow us, when discussing these matters here, to have the facts in front of us and not to think that it is advisable in any interest, economic or Party, that facts should be left unbrought-out here. It is right that we should see them in their proper perspective. The cost of the sugar that we ate in 1936 and the same presumably applies to the years 1937 and 1938 was £919,000 more than it would have been if there had not been Governmental tampering with it.
Now, the Minister wants me to talk about the taxation. The Minister for Agriculture talked about taxation. He said that, taking sugar, in 1937 and 1938 they collected about £500,000 less than the Cumann na nGaedheal Government collected in 1931-2. That is £500,000 less across the public taxation counter. But across the shop counters in terms of wholesale prices, £900,000 more was paid.
Who got it— the farmers who grew the beet?
I would like that Deputy O Briain would take some day off and look at the figures and see how much of that money went to the farmers; how much went to the agricultural labourers and how much went to the sugar company. Because is it not right that these facts should be available to him and that he should have them? Why cannot we get them? It is because the last things Ministers want to face at the present moment are facts. The only thing that will bring back to Ministers any intelligence they had is to be brought into the presence of facts. As long as they shirk the facts, they are going to come in here and they are going to tell us that they are spending so much on relief schemes, and so much on public works, so much on widows' and orphans' pensions and so much on defence.
They tell us they are going to defend this country. When Ministers really settle down to face facts and not run away from them and when they come in here to meet representatives from one end of the country to the other— people who have come here to face facts and help by their actions to make facts less troublesome and more promising for the people of the country—it will be better for the Government, who ought to help to put the facts in front of us.
We have seen the position with regard to flour, with regard to sugar and with regard to bacon. I know that the Minister for Agriculture says that it is not essential to the poor man rearing a family to have tobacco or beer or petrol. But the Minister boasts of the fact, as indicating that the situation is excellent, that the people are getting more tobacco. There is not more tobacco being used in the country to-day than in 1931-32. If the Minister will look at the position, the tobacco that is used in this country is manufactured in this country and there is a small number of persons less employed in the tobacco business than was employed in 1931-32. At least, the last available figures of the Census of Production of 1937 show that there was a smaller number of people employed in the tobacco industry in 1937 than there was in 1931. I think the wages paid in the tobacco industry in 1937 were £21,000 less than they were in 1931. We are not using more tobacco but we are paying more taxation on it and very much more taxation. In the year ending March, 31, 1938, tobacco smokers paid £933,000 more on the tobacco they smoked than was paid in 1931-32 because the Government had increased the taxation on it.
And that was a sound sign?
That was a good sign! An excellent sign!
Of national health.
The Minister also spoke about the agricultural index figure, and, as reported in column 1264 of the Official Report, implied that all the commission would do was to tell us that the farmer's position is at least no worse to-day than it was then. What better index figure for agriculture can you have than the figure showing the number of men engaged in agriculture? What does that show? In reply to a Parliamentary question on Tuesday, official figures were given showing under various headings the number of men employed in agriculture. As compared with 1931, there were 25,351 less men engaged in agriculture in 1938. That is the index figure that I like to look for annually to see what the position is in the country. But we had the Minister for Agriculture pointing out to us that 1934 was an important year, and we had Deputy Childers asking us to realise that 1935 was an important year, that that was the real trough of the economic war depression, and we should measure ourselves against 1935. If we are going to measure ourselves against 1935 as to the position of employment in agriculture, what do we find? We find that between June, 1935, and June, 1938, the number of men employed in agriculture fell by 36,309. But I should like to think of the year 1934, when Fianna Fáil plans for resurrecting the farmer and subsidising him in every possible way had got some kind of a chance to get under way. Between 1934 and 1938, the number of men employed on agriculture fell by 42,000.
I bring these facts to the notice of the House, and I ask them to look back at the speech made by the Minister for Agriculture on the 1st March, and ask themselves how long can this Parliament function as a democratic institution, hoping by our discussions here to do good for the country, if Ministers, from their authoritative seats in the House, are going to come out with the dope given out by the Minister for Agriculture. Why is it necessary to tell us things that are not true about the most fundamental facts of our economic and social situation? I reply to the Cork Examiner in this matter that I quite agree that the silence which has been so conspicuous behind the Front Bench of Fianna Fáil during the last couple of months is a silence that threatens democratic institutions here. But I add that what threatens it more is the persistent line of misrepresentation and mis-statement of some of the most important facts in this country that come from the Government Front Bench.
I hope that the Minister for Finance, facing his financial year with this Vote on Account will realise what it means to the country, and to the discussions here and their bearing on the country, that we be allowed to see what the facts are, and that such facts as are in the hands of the Ministry to be published in official statistics will be allowed to stand for what they are before the country or anybody who cares to examine them, and that the Government's concern will be to get these understood and not to misrepresent and abuse them. In every single thing that the Minister for Agriculture touched upon in his speech on the 1st March, the position with regard to trade, the position with regard to the consuming capacity of our people, the position with regard to employment as represented by the national health insurance figures, the position with regard to the way in which taxation falls upon the people, even the position with regard to the way in which rates fall on the agricultural community has been worsened, because as well as increasing the normal taxation of this country by £4,000,000, plus the hidden taxation that has fallen on the agricultural community, the Minister for Agriculture says that in the year 1936-37 their rates were £460,000 more than in 1931-32. In the current year, they are £850,000 more than they were; they have gone up by 34 per cent. The rates for the country as a whole have gone up by £1,170,000.
Let us get away from the misrepresentations of such facts as are obvious and must be seen in their proper perspective and faced up to if we are going to do anything for the country, and take things that are definite and important and examine them in a scientific way. Dealing in a scientific way with small problems here and there, we can gradually extend that technique. Again, I want to emphasise two things that require to be examined at once in the City of Dublin: (1) the lack of hope of employment facing young men coming out of our primary and secondary schools and the necessity for having a census taken in the autumn of this year of that position as regards youths from 16 to 20 years of age; (2) an immediate census of those people who are in fairly stable employment, who have fairly good wages, who can pay a reasonable rent for a house, so that a new housing movement can be begun on some kind of a solid basis here.
Bhí mé ag éisteacht leis an óráid a thug an Teachta Ua Maolchatha agus Teachtaí eile, agus an cur síos a bhí acu ar staid na tíre. Tá eolas agam ar mo cheanntar féin agus deirim gur bréag é an rud adubhairt siad——
An bhfuil sé in ordú do Theachta é sin do rá?
Tá sean-eolas agam ar an Teachta, agus tá a fhios agam cadé atá uaidh anois. Tá a lán Teachtaí ag cur síos ar fheilméireacht agus gan aon eolas acu ar an obair. Ní dhearn siad aon obair ar fheilm ariamh. B'fhéidir go bhféaca siad feilméirí ag obair ach sin a bhfuil ann. Níl aon taithí acu ar chéird an fheilméara. Tá eolas agam ar chuid de na feilméirí go bhfuil lucht Fine Gael ag plé ar a son agus níl mórán maitheasa ionta. Ach tá na Teachtaí ar an taobh eile den Tigh ag iarraidh airgead a fháil ar son an dreama so anois. Deir na Teachtaí ar an taobh eile go bhfuil na daoine ag éalú as an tír. Rinneadh a lán cainnte ar na daoine atá ag dul anonn agus anall go Sasana agus go hAlbain. Téigheann na daoine seo anonn gach bliain agus an rud adubhairt an Teachta O Diolúin ina dtaobh aréir, nó arbhú aréir, deirim-se gur bréag é.
An bhfuil cead ag an Teachta é sin a rá?
Gach bhliain téigheann na buachaillí agus na cailíní seo anonn go hAlbain agus tagainn siad ar ais fá Nodlaig. Bíonn go leor airgid acu agus cuidíonn siad le n-a n-aithreacha agus le n-a maithreacha leis an airgead sin. Ma tá galar ann, cad chuige nach dtugann na Teachtaí thall an leigheas dúinn? Cad chuige nach n-abrann siad go mba cheart na tailte móra do bhriseadh agus do roinnt imeasc na ndaoine seo atá ag dul anonn go hAlbain agus go háiteacha eile gach bliain? Níl na Teachtaí thall sásta sin do rá. Agus cad chuige nach bhfuil? Toisc go bhfuil siad ag troid ar son an dreama ag a bhfuil na feilmeacha móra seo. Deirim-se gur riachtanach na tailte seo do bhriseadh agus do roinnt, má tá uainn deireadh do chur leis an imeacht go hAlbain gach bliain. Na Teachtaí atá thall agus ag a bhfuil eolas agus oideachas, ceapann siad go bhfuil siad in ann cleas d'imirt ar na daoine san dtuaith. Saoileann siad nach bhfuil aon eolas ag muinntir na tuaithe ach tá eolas acu ar ar thárla nuair a bhí siad-san i réim. Tuigeann siad go bhfuil Riaghaltas in oifig anois a dheineann cúram speisialta den bhocht. Isé seo an Riaghaltas a chuidigh leis an mbocht agus ní hé an Teachta Norton ná na Teachtaí ar an taobh cile a chuidigh leo.
Go bhfóiridh Dia orainn!
Tá sean-eolas agam ar an Teachta. Saoileann sé nach bhfuil an t-eolas san agam.
Ba cheart duit níos mó céille bheith agat.
Tá an Teachta ag iarraidh mé a chur amú, ach táim chun a bhfuil le rá agam ar an gceist seo a rá. Tá a fhios agam gur labhair a lán feilméirí den dream thall ar an gceist ach tá eagla orm nach raibh a lán acu i ndáiríribh san rud a dubhairt siad. Cad chuige nach ndubhairt siad go mba cheart na feilmeacha de 400 no 500 acra do roinnt? Ar chuid de na feilmeacha seo, níl ach fear agus madadh agus ní gá feilm de 300 no 400 acra do chur ar leathaoibh dóibh-sean. Tá neart talmhan ann chun maireachaint do thabhairt do na daoine agus tá bród orm go bhfuil an Riaghaltas atá ag treorú na tíre fá láthair ag deanamh a ndíchill chun na daoine do choimeád san tír agus paiste talmhan do thabhairt dóibh.
Agus tá 3,000 níos lugha daoine ag obair ar an dtalamh na mar bhí bliain o shoin.
Níl an ceart agat.
Tá na figiúirí ceart.
Is minic cheana a bhí na figúirí mí-cheart agatsa.
There is one thing about the debate that, I think, shows some healthy omens. There was a tone from the back benches of Fianna Fáil, from Deputy Childers, Deputy Corry and Deputy Kennedy, and, in a way, from Deputy Harris, which was altogether different from the tone and attitude of 12 months ago and of the debates previous to that. There was more of an understanding and more of a clear admission of the facts than there had been previously. The speeches of 12 months ago and the speeches of former years from those benches were a denial of the position, whereas the speeches of yesterday and the previous days were a frank admission of the position. Before I go any further, I might say also that Deputy Corry threw out one suggestion that has been received very favourably by the agricultural portion of this Party, and that was when he asked that the farming Deputies should come together and try to solve this problem. In reply, I say that we are ready to try to see what can be done in that direction.
I shall begin with Deputy Childers. Deputy Childers made what, in my opinion, is—if you will allow for a little Party colouring—a very fair statement of the position. I am not going to deal with the conclusion that might be drawn, but I do say that in most of the things he said he made a very fair statement of the position for a Deputy on the Fianna Fáil Benches, considering his Party affiliations. Speaking on this Vote on the 1st March—volume 74, column 1234, he said:—
"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."
He goes on further to say:—
"I feel more intensely every time I visit my constituency and become acquainted with conditions there that it is not a simple problem."
He admits the problem, and he says that he feels more intensely every time he visits his constituency that it is not a simple problem, and says that there are many other people who are obviously in a very difficult position. Now I should like the Minister to follow in that line and try not to misrepresent the position. The economic war is over now, and there is no use in trying to deceive the people. A case could have been made 12 months ago for trying to deceive the British with regard to the position here. One could understand that there was some excuse for that from the national point of view, but there is no excuse to-day for that. There is no excuse for trying to deceive us, to deceive the public representatives of the people here and to deceive the country. Deputy Childers, in column 1235 of the same date, says:—
"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."
Now, Deputy Childers, evidently, at that stage, decided to leave his constituency, which is a sample of the other constituencies—to leave that constituency of which he certainly has knowledge for the last six or seven or eight months—and began to talk about the part of the country that he knew. He goes on to say, in column 1236 of the same date:—
"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."
It is quite clear there what Deputy Childers meant to convey. He talked, not of the constituency that he knew for six or seven or eight months, but of the city that he has known for years. He did not know the country in 1931, but he knew Dublin in 1931, and when he talks about coming to the general position of the country he is talking about that portion of the country of which he had experience and which he was able to judge and make comparisons about. He says that the people have a better appearance, have a better life and, in the vast majority of cases, have more money to spend. He says, unequivocally, that without any question, the people of this country are better off than before this Government entered into office.
Now, that is my own impression as far as this city is concerned. When I came up to Dublin in 1937, after an absence of a few years, I was struck by the change here, by the display of wealth and by the beautiful and well-fed appearance of the people here. That struck everybody who came to Dublin after an absence of some time, and I agree with Deputy Childers that his description is true so far as Dublin is concerned. He gave a true pen picture of the position in the city, and it would be interesting to know what conclusions he came to as a result of the fact, that there was more money to spend here in the vast majority of cases, and that the people had a better appearance and a better life. At any rate, that will be refreshing and welcome news to the people of my constituency, and, I am sure, to the people of Deputy Childers's constituency, as well as to the people of every other rural constituency in the State.
I think I might leave Deputy Childers's statement now. There is nothing in Deputy Corry's statement to quarrel about, I think. As I say, I welcome the feeler that Deputy Corry threw out; but to come to other matters, I think Deputy Corry gave one valuable piece of information. He said that when we made this claim for derating, and when we put down that motion here, asking that a commission should be set up, and supported it, we walked into it. He said that the other day, and he also said it to me in private, that we walked into it. I am beginning to agree with the Deputy that we walked into it in so far as we agreed to the setting up of the present kind of commission, and the making of a packed jury of it, so to speak—so much so that I have no intention of attending it or giving evidence there, and intend to ignore it utterly. That is my attitude. There is no doubt about it: that commission is set up in order to say "No" to the derating claim.
The Deputy realises that the constitution of that commission has nothing to do with this debate.
I am not quarrelling about the commission itself, Sir, but I am quarrelling with the people who set it up for a definite purpose, and that was to say "No" to the derating claim.
I suggest that that is somewhat of a reflection on the members of the commission.
No, Sir, I do not think so. As a matter of fact, even people who are sympathetic have publicly proclaimed themselves as being opposed to it.
The Deputy cannot discuss the question now.
I shall not discuss it further, Sir.
Very good.
Coming back to the question of derating, the ordinary land of this country can be called good and fairly good land—corn land. Every three acres based on the valuation that these acres carry, are bearing at the present time a load in rates equal to the interest on £100 borrowed from the Credit Corporation.
County Dublin, County Cork and several other counties are highly rated. Kilkenny is not quite so highly rated, the rates there being about 9/4 in the £. Based on valuation the rates to-day are so high that three acres are bearing a load equal to the interest on £100 borrowed from the Credit Corporation. I want the House to understand that this issue about rates has been played with by this Government. They have played one class of farmer against another, evidently ignoring the fact that the larger farmers, with valuations from £40 to £50, are the only employers of agricultural labour in the Twenty-Six Counties. They play the small farmers against the large farmers, by offering them better terms, and reductions on loans, knowing that they may get a considerable amount of votes in that way, and that they cannot lose the votes of agricultural labourers working for these large farmers.
It is the large farmers are paying all the agricultural wages, yet, in face of that, an Agricultural Wages Board was set up recently, and it fixed wages with an utter disregard as to whether farmers were able to pay them or not. We know that a considerable number of labourers were let go by their employers during the past year and a half, owing to the operations of the Agricultural Wages Board, principally because the farmers could not pay them. There was utter inability to pay. If the present load was taken off the farmers' backs, the amount of money that could be saved to those who employ agricultural labourers would almost equal the amount they have to pay under the Agricultural Wages Board. That load should never have been put there. In the early days we know that there was little or no rating, and that revenue was made from farming. That was the only source of revenue then in the country, and it was also the landlords' income. Rating then represented only 4d. in the £. There were very little social services then compared to the services there are now. With new developments and the introduction of new ideas, the whole load has been placed on the agricultural community. They have to supply services that they have to do without themselves, or, if they have them, they have to provide them at then own expense. They cannot in most cases provide them at their own expense because they have not the means. Farmers are without social services to-day, and are almost without any of the comforts of modern life; yet they have to pay for the provision of these services for every other section of the community.
I have personal experience of another important aspect of agriculture—pig production. I stated here some months ago that, to my knowledge, the great reason for the falling off in the production of pigs and fowl was the fact that the producers had neither the means nor the credit to buy food, so as to keep up production. I know from the operations of some concerns that a big feature of their business, during the last five or six months, has been the fact that large feeders, notably millers and maize meal merchants, have gone in for pig production increasingly, while small feeders are responsible for the grave reduction that has taken place in pig production during the same period. That is further proof that farmers have neither the means nor the credit to continue production.
There is no question about that. I know many suppliers and I know the number of pigs they sent in. Anyone who wishes can see the weekly supply book at the factory. Big feeders, notably millers and maize merchants, have increased production, while ordinary farmers have considerably reduced production. Another feature in connection with pig production is this, that ordinary farmers are taking their pigs to the scales, although they need a further month or six weeks' feeding before reaching the proper weight. Jobbers are also coming along and buying these pigs, keeping them for a month, and turning them into the factory as the finished article. Is not that further evidence of the position in the country? I could give other proofs.
I have made it my business to go into the offices of several creameries to ask how the sales of butter to shareholders and suppliers compared with sales five or six years ago. In the case of a creamery I know, I learned that for four years butter has not gone into the houses of some suppliers, many of whom have 40 or 50 acres of land. I am not saying that is the in every case, but I say that butter has not gone into some homes within a mile of my house for four years. I think it was Deputy Harris asked if wheat was not a profitable crop. I agree that it is. So could grapes and so could oranges be a profitable crop if the subsidy was sufficient. It would be the same in the case of any other crop that we cannot grow at present without a subsidy. Standing on its own, and having to meet the competition that other farm produce has to meet, there is no hope whatever for wheat as a profitable crop. Wheat is profitable on the basis that everything could be a profitable crop if it was subsidised.
What is not subsidised?
I have my own opinion. Deputy Corry suggested that we should come together to try to hammer out a scheme for the salvation of the farmers. I accept that offer.
I asked the Deputy to name one crop produced by farmers to-day that has not to be subsidised. Name one product, either on the live stock or the tillage side?
The live stock side is getting no subsidy.
What is there a subsidy on butter for?
Butter is not live stock.
It is the foundation of it.
I agree that it is part and parcel of it. There is a distant relationship. As a matter of fact that is not a question for this House at all, but for Deputy Corry, myself and others to solve.
Wheat is one of the problems.
There has been an appeal made to forget the economic war, and all the losses and destitution that it brought on the country. It is easy for people on whom the economic war left no trace to offer that advice, but the people who bore the brunt, whose doors it did not pass, whose pockets it emptied, and whose families it left in destitution cannot take such advice. Those who grew crops on which there were no tariffs, or that were not shipped across the water by means of a subsidy, bore very little of the brunt of the economic war. Those who had to send their produce out of the country had all the load placed on their backs, and that load amounted to at least £15,000,000 a year during the period of the economic war, according to statements made in this House that were not contradicted. Deputy Corry said a good deal about the dropping of the admixture scheme. It has been dropped.
Not yet.
It is an amazing thing that people who grow corn are the people who are going to provide manure to feed the land that grows it. The extraordinary thing about that scheme is this: that the people who grow that corn feed less of it than any other class in the community. They want somebody else in the State to produce beef and bacon and to pay a price to them for the corn that they will not use themselves. As I have said, that is a question that could be settled by Deputy Corry and some of us across a table. If the decrease in our poultry and pig population can be traced in any way to that scheme making it unprofitable for our people to produce fowl and bacon and all the rest, well then I say, taking it all in all, it is more a curse than a blessing to subsidise it. Cheap money has been advocated here as a cure for all our ills. If loans were guaranteed we were told that the people would be able to pay their rates and annuities. If that is to be made a condition for a loan, then I hope we will never get one.
What I say is, remove the rates and remove the annuities, but certainly remove the rates. If you do the people will get a chance to recover. If not, they will have no chance. If you do not remove them the time will come when they will be removed, and make no mistake about it. The politicians are not going to continue to rule, because the country is wakening up. There is no question about that. I am not a politician. I have taken sides, it is true, but I am not a politician of the type that gets into loggerheads here about 1922.
The Deputy is not as bad as the rest of them.
There is no bitterness on my part or on the part of the people with me over politics. I can tell the House that the people are coming back, and I say that it will not be long until, as Deputy Corry indicated, the whole of the rural community will be under the one banner to defend itself. I hope that day will come soon.
The Minister for Agriculture made some extraordinary statements in the course of his speech. He says that the position in the country is better: that Fine Gael claim it is worse, and that Fianna Fáil claim it is better. I do not know if it is worth wasting time making comments on that kind of speech. As Deputy Mulcahy remarked, the man who said that must have imagined himself still in the period of the economic war. My opinion of the Minister's speech is that he was simply putting up a case to cod the people: a case that has no relation to the facts and no relation to the actual position. I do not want to use harsh words, but I regret that that class of speech should be made by a responsible Minister: that he should say a thing that is not— I will not say it is a lie—but it certainly is not true. There is no foundation for it in the official statistics or anywhere else.
It is not surprising, I think, that all who live by agriculture in this country should be in their present deplorable position. The Government came into office with a policy which, whether they believed it was the right one or not, has since been proved to be entirely wrong. It would be a good thing for the country if they admitted that right away—that their agricultural policy is entirely wrong. If they did, I think there is not a Party in the House but would try to help them out, in order to restore agriculture to the position in which it should be.
I am primarily concerned with the position of the farmers and their losses over the past 12 months. It may be all right, or it may be all wrong to set up this agricultural commission, but I am convinced that unless something is done in the meantime, the findings of that commission will come too late to save the agricultural community. The Government, as far as I can see, have a Dublin idea. It is a Dublin Government. But if the members of the Government were to consult the members of their own Party who represent rural constituencies, they should become convinced of the serious position to which agriculture is drifting. In the last 12 months the farmers suffered very heavy losses. Apart from everything else the season was a very unfavourable one. The Government, of course, is not responsible for the weather, but I want to urge on them that if agriculture is to be saved it must get help immediately. The Deputy representing a rural constituency needs to have some courage at the present time to go through the country to meet his constituents.
Travelling up from the West of Ireland to Dublin one sees nothing but sheets of water. This morning I observed that the whole country from Ballinasloe into Athlone was a sheet of water. I know people down in the South East part of that constituency who have lost all their hay, lost their corn and lost at least 50 per cent of the 1938 potato crop. I saw in the newspapers the other day where a complaint was made at a meeting of the Clare County Council that in that county calves four and five months old were dying at an alarming rate. These are the problems that we should be dealing with, while the agricultural commission is sitting, and trying to find a remedy for them.
I propose to give the House some figures to indicate the losses that farmers throughout the West of Ireland engaged in tillage have suffered. I have been supplied with the names of 12 men who grow potatoes for export. Their names have been taken at random. They live seven and eight miles apart. These 12 men do mixed farming. In 1937 they grew 35 acres of potatoes for export, and out of that acreage they got 231 tons 14 cwts. of potatoes. The same 12 farmers grew 35½ acres of potatoes for export in 1938, but the produce of that area was only 58 tons 6 cwt. You had there a reduction from 231 tons 14 cwts. to 58 tons 6 cwts. although the acreage was the same in each year. If that is not taken as proof that something needs to be done, I think it is going to be disastrous for the country.
Taking the question of the unemployed, we were told here years ago that there would be very little unemployed in this country in a short time. We had the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance here a few nights ago stating that he had no trouble from the West—from Galway. Later, he mentioned West Galway. He said there were 3,000 people at work there in the constituency of West Galway. Imagine a man boasting that the people were well-to-do where, out of a register of 45,000 people, 3,000 people are getting work at 14/- per week. Is that prosperity? He said he had no bad report from the West. That was only West Galway. What about East Galway, where the farmers' sons were asked why they did not register as unemployed? There is no reason why they should register as unemployed, because no work will turn up. We will be asked what useful work can be carried out, or how the unemployed can be absorbed. First of all, the Government itself, by some of its legislation, has created a good deal of unemployment in this country. They are the culprits. I believe that, were it not for Government policy, you would not have 105,000 unemployed here at the present time, although 40,000 or 50,000 have gone to another country. I am now referring to the building trade, of which I have some knowledge. There were two pieces of legislation here, one was the introduction of tariffs, the other was the Conditions of Employment Act, and between them they have increased the cost of building in this country by at least 35 per cent. As soon as that was done, people were put out of employment, because there was no money to be got for building.
There is also another matter to which I should like to refer. We have a Drainage Commission. But what is to be done until that commission reports? We should like to know what progress it is making, when we may expect a report, and when we may expect legislation by the Government to deal with that big problem in the country.
Obviously, those are matters which the Deputy would get in on the Estimate.
Mr. Brodrick
I merely referred to it because unemployment was being dealt with in this debate. I suppose I would also be debarred from mentioning anything about afforestation, although it would give a good deal of employment if taken seriously?
Mr. Brodrick
The Government is not taking it seriously. They will talk about afforestation. We will be told by the Minister for Lands about the number of acres secured for planting purposes. Why then is planting not going on? That land for afforestation does not cost much. The highest price paid by the Government for land for afforestation purposes is £2 10s. per acre. This is work which will give plenty of employment in this country, and work which will serve the country well. I do not wish to go any further into this matter, except to say that it is very hard for the people to exist in this country. Down in Galway ten or 12 years ago the county rate was 8/6 in the £; to-day it is 15/-. What is the cause of that? I think Deputy Moore said it was because of an increase in the social services. But are we getting the benefit out of that increase? I say that we are not. We have at the present time throughout the country a high number of inspectors, toppling over each other, and doing nothing but harassing the people. The Civil Service has increased by thousands since the present Government came into office. The Estimates are creeping up year by year. I appeal to the Government to take the matter seriously. If they would even consider the opinions expressed by the members of their own Party, I am sure that, whilst we are waiting for the reports of those commissions that are sitting and about to sit, they could help the people of this country, both the agricultural community and the unemployed. If that is not done, and done quickly, then, no matter what report the Agricultural Commission or the Drainage Commission brings in, it will be no use to this country.
The Minister to conclude.
A Chinn Comhairle: This debate, according to the statement which you have made from the Chair, was to deal with the subject of unemployment, with particular reference to agriculture. But the debate has not confined itself within those limits, and, in so far as it has dealt with the problem agreed upon, anything of substance that has been said by the speakers either from the Labour Benches or the Opposition Benches has been dealt with, and dealt with very satisfactorily, by the Minister for Agriculture, and by Deputy Moore, Deputy Harris and the other Deputies who have spoken from these benches. Accordingly, Sir, I do not propose to traverse the whole ground in this debate, but only to deal with perhaps one particular aspect of it. A number of Deputies who spoke here made the assertion that the farmers were in great difficulties, largely by reason of the fact that they cannot get reasonable credit facilities, and that in consequence of that there was much rural unemployment.
Deputy Belton referred to the position of the building trade in the City of Dublin, and, in that connection, alleged that one of the reasons for the present unemployment in that sphere of activity was the fact that the Dublin Corporation had been hampered in its endeavours to provide the necessary finance for its housing programme by the issue of the Financial Agreement Loan which was floated last year. I would like to say that there is no truth whatever in that statement. It is true, as the Deputy stated, that the Dublin Corporation, about April or May last, had made arrangements to float a loan of, I think, about £1,500,000, for the purpose of carrying through its housing programme. It was pointed out to the Corporation at the time that, as the State was about to raise this loan of £10,000,000, it would be desirable that the Dublin Corporation should not make a public issue at or about the same time, because one issue was bound, with the very limited resources, at the disposal of our community, to react adversely upon the other. Accordingly, the Dublin Corporation did not make the intended public issue. But, since May of 1938, the Dublin Corporation has succeeded in raising a sum of over £1,500,000 for the purpose of housing and for the purpose of the water supply, and it has succeeded in raising that through the good offices of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health and myself.
It is quite true that recently the Corporation has been experiencing difficulties in financing its proposals. Indeed, I am bound to say that so long as a man with the irresponsibility and the temperament of Deputy Belton has anything to do with the finances of the Corporation of the City of Dublin, I am afraid that it is going to have difficulties so long as a Deputy occupying a position which Deputy Belton does in relation to the finances of this city, comes into the Dáil and states that the Government is going to spend a sum of £9,000,000 upon defence in this year, and when it is pointed out to him that he is quite inaccurate in that statement, that, according to the information which was given to the House during the debate upon the Supplementary Estimate for Defence, the amount of capital expenditure upon the Army equipment is going to be £5,500,000, and that it is to be spent over a period of three years, and the Deputy's response to that is: "A few millions one way or the other does not matter."
What are responsible business men to think of that mentality when you have a gentleman in charge of the finances of the City of Dublin who thinks that, where public money is concerned, a few millions one way or the other does not matter? It is very easy to understand why there should be a certain amount of hesitation upon the part of those who are responsible to their depositors for the safety of the moneys which have been entrusted to them, in dealing with him, a certain desire to see in connection with the question of Dublin housing finance that there will be a more responsible attitude than that towards the expenditure of public moneys. Accordingly, I am bound to say this, that so far as employment can be increased by the execution of public works, and so far as unemployment is caused by the fact that public works are held up because the necessary funds are not forthcoming from the private investor and the private lender in this country, Deputy Belton's speech in this debate is not going to have a good influence, and is not going to have a good effect. So much for the effect of this debate upon the unemployment position in our towns, and particularly the unemployment position in regard to the building industry.
We had the same sort of ill-advised assertion and injudicious statement in regard to some aspects of the agricultural industry. One of the great agencies for employment in certain agricultural areas is the beet-growing industry. There are, I think, almost 30,000 growers employed in that industry, and when the factories are in full operation, there are, I think, about 2,500 people employed in them during the period of the campaign, and there are between 600 and 700 people —talking in round numbers—employed there all the year round. Yet we have had speeches in this debate which, I think, are calculated to make the position of that industry a very precarious one. We had Deputy Belton, who admits that he has not any interest in the industry, getting up here and trying to deter farmers from growing beet. We had a number of other statements from Deputy Hughes and certain other Deputies, all to the same effect, all calculated, as Deputy Harris said, to give farmers the impression that the price which was being offered for beet during the present year was not sufficiently remunerative and was not a fair one.
Now, if the factories do not get the beet, naturally the factories will have to close down and the whole position of that industry is going to be put in jeopardy, and I do not see how the speeches of these gentlemen, the speeches of Deputies like Deputy Belton, who have no interest at all in the beet, as he said—I do not see how such speeches are going to encourage farmers to grow beet, and I do not see how speeches of that sort, which are going to discourage farmers from growing beet, are going to help to provide employment for the agricultural labourers.
Mr. Brennan
Did the Minister hear that statement from other people— Deputy Corry, for instance?
Let me develop. Now, this industry is a very peculiar one. One might say there are three interests involved in it. There is the interest of the consumer which, I would say, bearing in mind the present price of sugar here, and bearing in mind the cost of other necessaries of life, is the paramount interest, because it affects, not 30,000 beet growers, but it affects 3,000,000 people in this country, and, accordingly, that interest has to be very carefully looked after. We were told by Deputy Mulcahy to-day that the wholesale price of sugar, ex-duty, was £919,000 higher than it was in 1931—a very considerable factor in every family budget in this country, and therefore one which has to be very carefully considered by those who have an interest in putting this industry in a sound position, and in maintaining it here in this country.
The position of the consumer fixes a limit to the cost of the sugar. If the position were to develop that the 3,000,000 consumers of sugar believed that they were being unduly exploited by any section of the community, in their hands is the political power to close down every one of those factories to-morrow. And make no mistake about it, the price of sugar is something which is very carefully considered in every household in this country. It is one of the things that the farmer's wife, just as the wife of the workingman in the town and the wife of the middle-class man in the town, looks at twice, because it is a figure that in this country has been stabilised within certain limits for many generations. There is no use talking of sugar here and looking at sugar here as a commodity that can be priced as it is priced in Czecho-Slovakia or in some other countries. It cannot. On the other side of the Border there is a standard of comparison to which every consumer in this country is going to look, in order to find out for himself whether the maintenance of this industry is worth the candle or not. If the bulk of the consumers of this country come to the conclusion that they are being unduly exploited by that section of the community which is participating in the benefits of this industry, then the position of the industry becomes, as I say, very precarious, and its future very uncertain.
It is with a full appreciation of that fact that Deputies like Deputy Belton, who has loudly proclaimed that he has no interest whatsoever in sugar-beet growing and who would not be affected by it if the factories closed down to-morrow, endeavour to induce these farmers, who do grow beet, and who would be affected if the factories closed down, to believe that they are not getting a fair price for their sugar.
If you knew the elements of economics, you would not make a statement like that.
Whether I do or do not, I know that in regard to the price for sugar beet a very competent board considered that matter and gave their verdict as to what was or what was not a fair price. Notwithstanding the unstinted admiration that Deputy Belton has for his own abilities and the unmeasured praise which he showers upon himself as a farmer or businessman, I do think in regard to this question of the price of beet, that most people in this country and most farmers are prepared to take the decision and abide by the decision and accept the decision of the board which the Government set up to investigate that matter and to report upon it.
I am afraid the jury was packed.
There is a dissenter in the camp. Was not the original price of beet 35/- a ton?
I have dealt with the position of the consumer, and, to some extent, with the position of the grower. There is another point to be considered in relation to this matter and that is the position of the investor, the individual investor, who has provided the money for building these factories. The Government has gone to the private investor and, by means of public loans, has raised £500,000, among other sums, which it has invested in these factories. The Government and the Deputies in this House and the Minister for Finance are all responsible to those who subscribed to our Fourth National Loan, in connection with which, when it was floated, it was stated that some part of those moneys would be used for the purpose of building and financing the new sugar factories.
The Government which has made that issue is, in my view, responsible to the people at large, who have entrusted the management of its concerns to it, to see that the money which is so invested receives a fair commercial return—a moderate one, if you like, judged by any standards—but receives, at any rate, such a return that the community as a whole is not going to be at undue loss by reason of the fact that the company is not able to earn normal profits and to meet all the charges that would be normal charges upon its capital and upon those profits. But, apart altogether from the £500,000 which the Government itself, on behalf of the community as a whole, has invested in this industry, £1,500,000 has been directly invested in shares and in debentures of the company by private individuals in this country, and invested by individuals who have been prepared to risk their savings in order that the industrial policy of this Government, which was the industrial policy of Arthur Griffith, might be given effect to.
Steady now. Do not blame Arthur Griffith in the wrong.
I read the United Irishman perhaps as long ago as Deputy Belton, and I remember that one of the projects Arthur Griffith used to advocate most strongly, week after week, was the growing of sugar beet in this country and the manufacture of our own sugar. In article after article he described the development of the industry on the Continent under Napoleon, and then he used to enforce the lesson and say that we ought to do the same thing here because that particular industry was well suited to Irish agricultural conditions.
As I was saying, however, most of this £1,500,000 which has been invested in this Sugar Company by private individuals has been invested in it by private individuals who learned their national economics from Arthur Griffith. They are not rich and wealthy men who have entrusted that £1,500,000 to this Irish industry. This £1,500,000 was money which they had saved, and which they could have put perhaps into rearmament shares or some of the ordinary English industrial stocks, and have made a very high profit out of the capital appreciation which has occurred during the past three or four years on the British Stock Exchange. But they are, as I say, small men in the main and because they were patriotic Irishmen they put their capital into this company.
The company issued £1,000,000 of debentures and £500,000 of 6 per cent. preference shares. The preference shares were issued at a premium of 2/6. The £1 preference shares were offered at 22/6, and they were fully subscribed, mainly by small investors. What is the position of that industry and of that company in the eyes of the small investor who put his money into that concern in the hope that, not merely would he help Irish industry but would get a reasonable return when he made that investment? How are they looking at that concern to-day?
Was there any guarantee?
I want to be allowed to develop this because it goes to the root of this question of credit for agriculture. How are these people who invested their money in this concern looking at it to-day in view of the sort of ramp that has been going on recently and in view of the sort of speeches that have been made by supposedly responsible men like Deputy Belton?
In view of their experience, Sir.
Here is a letter that I have received. I am going to read only a portion of it, if I may:—
"Dear Mr. MacEntee,
"I have a rather good share of my money invested in the Irish Sugar Company, Limited, and, from what I hear, it seems that my shares are not of the value that I thought when investing. The Preference Shares are now down to 19/9. I cannot afford to run any risks either to my principal or dividends as I have nothing to live on except the interest on money like this, all of which is invested in Irish stocks and shares."
I happen to know that man personally. He is asking me what he would do with his shares, whether he would sell or hold. He is a man who is well on in life, I would say, going on to 70. He has lived a very active life, worked very hard, saved a little money. Unfortunately, he has had in recent years a considerable amount of illness and he is no longer able to work. He is looking to me to advise him what he is going to do in relation to the money which he has put, at the instance of the Irish Government and of this Dáil, into this Irish industry.
He is wondering what he is going to do with it because he says that if the sort of speeches we have been listening to are going to be allowed to continue, "I cannot see any future for that company." When we are told, as we have been told now—and it is better to be frank about this because it is an aspect of the matter that is very often overlooked—that it is up to the farmers on one side or the other, the beet growers on one side or the other, to let those who put their money into this industry go hang——
No suggestion of that kind has been made.
Ask Deputy Corry what he thinks about the price.
The Minister must, and will be allowed to make his speech.
If any people are getting their 6 per cent. in this industry, it is because they have sunk their money in it, and they are entitled to get that 6 per cent. That is the condition upon which the shares were issued, that they would carry a 6 per cent. dividend, and if that dividend of 6 per cent. was not offered at the time, we could not have got the money and there would have been no factories and no market for sugar beet, whether at 35/-, 49/6, or 55/-. Deputies know as well as I do the fable of the man who had the goose which laid the golden eggs.
We have been asked by Deputy Cogan, by Deputy Bennett and by every other Deputy on the opposite benches who thinks that the farmers of Ireland are mendicants, that we should provide them with £7,000,000, £10,000,000, £30,000,000. There is no limit to the amount we have to sink in Irish agriculture. Where are we going to get that money? If money is going to be provided for agricultural credit, it can only be got by going to those people in this country who have saved money, those people who have pinched themselves and deprived themselves of many enjoyments in order that they might make provision for the end of their lives when they would not be able to maintain themselves, and asking them to lend us their money and telling them that we will see that once they have entrusted that money to us, the capital will be safe and they will get a reasonable interest in respect of it. Now we are told that people who, at our instance, in the years 1933 and 1934, entrusted us with £1,500,000 to put into a certain industry can go and whistle for their dividends.
Nothing of the kind.
No such thing.
That is precisely what is behind these speeches we have listened to. Deputy Hughes and Deputy Belton think that all they have to do is to come along here and squeeze the Government, and then the Government will squeeze the consumer, and, one way or another, the man who invested his money will get his interest, and Deputy Hughes, Deputy Belton and the rest will get more than a fair price for their beet.
Oh, no. We want a fair price, and we are not getting it.
Does the Minister want to make the farmers the white slaves of the industry?
Whatever I want to make, I want to make this quite certain, and Deputies had better realise it: there is no use in any Government or any Party asking anybody to provide credit for the farmers unless those who profess to speak for the farmers realise that once obligations have been entered into, they have to be honoured——
Let the Minister develop his argument from that point.
——and that, accordingly, people who have put their money into any undertaking which is designed to help agriculture in this country will be certain that that investment of theirs will be at least as remunerative as if they had invested their money on the other side of the water, or if they had invested it in any other industrial concern in this country.
Agreed. Go ahead on that line.
The Minister must be allowed to make his speech in his own way.
With that, I do not intend to delay the House much further. I said at the beginning that it had been represented that the root cause of such unemployment as exists in this country is the fact that credit facilities are not available for agriculture, and that credit facilities are not available for house building. I pointed out one of the factors which have contributed to make it difficult to finance house building in Dublin City, and I have pointed out that some of the speeches that have been made in this House during this debate, in regard to credit for agriculture, would have the effect of destroying such credit as the Irish farmer has, if people were to believe that those speeches truly represent the Irish farmer's point of view. They do not represent the Irish farmer's point of view. They represent the point of view of a few politicians who would like to exploit the Irish farmer for their own ends, but, as was said by a Deputy on the other side, when the Irish farmer does enter into an obligation, he is prepared to honour it, even at great cost to himself.
Mr. Morrissey
And against your advice.
The fact that this is generally recognised by those who have money to invest has enabled the Irish farmer to provide himself with a considerable amount of capital. Deputy Bennett spoke in terms of £7,000,000, £10,000,000 and £30,000,000, but the Irish farmer has already in the Irish banks, and available for him, if he wants it, £35,000,000.
How?
£35,000,000 of the deposits in the Irish banks belong to Irish farmers and, to my mind, the fact that that money is there is a clear indication that the general mass of the farmers, the general body of the farmers, do not want to be spoon-fed in the way in which Deputy Bennett would ask the House to believe. The money is there. It is theirs, and they can use it if they are in want of capital, and any of them who feel that they can profitably employ capital will take it out and put it into their land, and into their industry. Apart altogether from that, there is a number of unfortunate farmers, a small percentage of them, not representative of the general mass of the farming community who are in difficulties, but, mind you, the way to help them out of their difficulties at present is not to make credit too easy for them.
We were told about the disappointment that followed the settlement of the annuities dispute. We were told how people had bought cattle in the expectation that prices were going to rise, but that so far from prices rising after the dispute, there was a tendency for prices to drop. Now, let anybody who thinks that the agricultural future is rosy and that all the farmer wants at the moment is to get additional capital in order that he may stock up his land, look at the course of agricultural prices in the world to-day. In regard to a considerable number of commodities which do fix the price of our produce in the English market, there is a pronounced tendency to slump, and I think that, in view of that situation, you would be doing a poor kindness to the struggling farmer to give him easy money and to encourage him to launch out now into what might be a speculation that would be very uncertain of a return.
It would be far better for the farmer to work with his limited resources, even though the times are hard, and, mind you, they are hard, due to an act of God, and not due to any economic factor. The past year, as we have heard, has been one of the worst for a generation from a climatic point of view. In so far as helping the farmer with seeds and manures and that sort of thing to enable him to get his land back to good heart, everything possible should be done, in order to remedy the position which the bad weather of last year has created. But so far as encouraging any small farmer with limited capital, or with no capital, to launch out now into live stock, or any thing like that, is concerned, I certainly, looking at the world as a whole and the position which at the moment is developing, do not think that such a thing should be encouraged by providing him with cheap money at this moment.
It would be much better for the farmer to work away within his limited resources until there is a definite change for the better and world prices for agriculture tend to rise. At the present moment, as I have said, there is a slump in certain commodities which is bound to react here. It would be better for us that the farmers should work prudently and cautiously within the means which they have at their disposal for the time being and, if the present international situation clears up and if employment conditions elsewhere improve, then there might be something to be said for encouraging our farmers to go further; but I would not force the pace now, particularly on those who have no resources to stand losses if losses should occur.