Vol. 75 No. 5
I move:—
Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £2,707 chun slánuithe na suime is gá chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1940, chun Tuarastail agus Costaisí Oifig an tSaor-Chíosa.
That a sum not exceeding £2,707 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1940, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Quit Rent Office.
This is a most interesting Vote, Sir.
Do not ask me again what quite rents are.
No. I was about to pay the Parliamentary Secretary a tribute. He very kindly — and finally, I have no doubt whatever — dealt with what are the functions of the quite rent office in a very interesting memorandum which he was good enough to read for us on a previous occasion, but oddly enough he stopped there, and did not give us the further interesting information as to what becomes of the quite rents. I venture to say there is not a single Deputy in this House, with the exception of a few of my colleagues on the Public Accounts Committee, who knows what becomes of the quite rents or where they go. I wonder does the Parliamentary Secretary know?
The whole quite rents office is one of those highly subtle and technical mysteries which I think the layman is probably a little disrespectful in even considering.
I will not press the Parliamentary Secretary, because I recognise that the question I raised was not anticipated. However, I am in a position to inform him that quite rents go to the Woods and Forests Fund, and I would be grateful if the Parliamentary Secretary would tell us now what is the position of the Woods and Forests Fund. Is it being used for any purpose, or is it a dormant fund, simply with an intake and no outlet? I think it is a dormant fund, and I think it is now reaching a pretty considerable figure. I hesitate to reveal this nest-egg to the present Government, for I have very little doubt it will be promptly raided for some wholly unworthy purpose, but if a useful purpose were at hand I think it might be very properly employed. I take it, Sir, that the Parliamentary Secretary is responsible for the Quit Rent Funds, and the disposal of those funds I understand is purely a matter of administration. I, therefore, suggest that this fund, which now amounts to the substantial sum of about £300,000 should be used not for the purpose of dissipating but as a fund to finance a semi-autonomous committee to guide and direct Gaeltacht industries. In the old days, forestry was pretty well identified in the Government mind with the congested areas and Gaeltacht problems. I imagine the old Woods and Forests Fund had some connection with forestry originally. Now that there is a Department of State for that purpose, this fund has ceased to be employed for that purpose.
I put it to the Parliamentary Secretary — in fact I put it to the House rather than to the Parliamentary Secretary, because I do not believe the Parliamentary Secretary is particularly interested in this matter — that what is wrong with the Gaeltacht Services at present is that we have not got any guidance for the producers as to fashion trends and suitable markets for the products of the Gaeltacht Industries. I do not believe that you can ever get any group of civil servants satisfactorily to do that job, because it is not a Civil Service kind of problem. You want people with an artistic sense; you want the very type of person to whom Civil Service employment would be perfectly intolerable; you want the very type of person whom you will never induce to go into the Civil Service. You want the very type of person whose genius for this work would be sterilised and destroyed by the necessary regulations under which all civil servants must live. I put up a memorandum to the Department of Lands and Fisheries suggesting the establishment of an autonomous body which would be charged with the responsibility of directing the development of Gaeltacht Industries in fashionable and luxury goods.
Would not that be more appropriate to the Gaeltacht Services Vote?
Any other money could be used for this purpose.
The quit rents are paid into a fund called the Woods and Forests Fund.
Is this not stretching it a bit? I think the Deputy should keep that for the Gaeltacht Services Vote.
The point I am making is that the Woods and Forests Fund should no longer be allowed to lie dormant. It is a fund into which money has been pouring for the last 50 years, and nothing has been coming out, because its functions are discharged by another Department.
If I may say so, that may open an argument from any part of the House that those funds should be used for various other purposes.
I agree.
Well, then, I think the Deputy should confine himself to the Quit Rent Office, and raise on the Gaeltacht Services Vote the point he is now making.
Very well. I am prepared to accept that view.
Might the Deputy have an assurance that he will not be ruled out of order when he raises the matter on the Gaeltacht Services Vote?
I do not think he could be ruled out of order.
I fully appreciate the difficulty. I see that if I pursue this line it would be open to anybody else to advocate expenditure of those moneys under any other Vote in the Estimates, which would widen the scope of this debate illimitably. There is this difficulty, however, that the fund into which the quit rent payments are going is now a dormant fund. A dormant fund is a dangerous fund, because it accumulates until it represents a substantial sum. When its existence is brought to the knowledge of the Dáil or the Oireachtas the tendency is for pressure to be brought upon the Minister to spend it rapidly for some ostentatious end, which would create a great splash and do no enduring good. I therefore suggest that this fund should be made to function for some purpose at the earliest possible moment, or else that it be wound up, and let the quit rents pass into whatever is the appropriate department of revenue to which they ought to go. I do not know — unless the Parliamentary Secretary can tell us — whether the quit rents represent repayments on capital sums disbursed. I do not think they do. I think they are old rent charges, which it is the policy of the Government to sell, to dispose of, to get rid of.
That is what happens.
If they are simply rent charges, then I think they might properly pass into revenue.
The income from quit rents passes to revenue of the fund. If they are sold, the capital values of them go into that fund.
Well, then, the quit rents are in fact being sold as quickly as the Government can conveniently get rid of them?
That is so.
That fund is there accumulating, and if it is not expedient to determine for what purpose it should be used, I want to urge strongly on the Government that it is a bad practice to keep it sitting there simply to fill up a revenue deficit in some inconvenient year. That is what is going to happen if it is not earmarked for some useful public purpose. The kind of useful public purpose that it could be earmarked for is some purpose of an experimental nature which this sum would be adequate to do, if it were possible to complete it economically at all. I think it could be usefully used for that purpose, and I shall take the opportunity on another Estimate to indicate the line I suggest. I particularly urge on the Minister that it is not desirable to leave that there, because the inevitable result would be that it will be used in a year of embarrassment to make up a Budget deficit, or else it will be used for some sensational and useless purpose which the Minister will find himself unable to resist.
I am not concerned with the sort of speculative matter which the Deputy has introduced into this debate as to the possibility of a particular form of corrupt use which somebody might make of this fund.
That is scarcely the appropriate word.
It has precisely the same meaning as that which the Deputy has been trying to suggest, but he would not use the word.
I do not want to exchange any bouquets or compliments with the Parliamentary Secretary. I did not allege corruption; I did not intend to allege corruption. When I do intend to allege corruption, I shall have no hesitation in doing so. I allege the danger of Treasury malpractice, which is not corruption. It is imprudent finance, an entirely different thing, the making up of a Budget deficit out of what ought to be capital funds. I do not allege corruption; when I want to do so I will do it without the slightest hesitation.
The Deputy is perfectly welcome to the difference between the words corruption and Treasury malpractice, the practice in a particular year, for political purposes, in order to balance the Budget.
Quite.
The Deputy is entirely at liberty to take to himself any difference which he can find between the words. What I am concerned with is the fund itself. This is under close consideration as to what can be done with it, having regard to its history and its legal surroundings. The fullest possible examination is being made of that, with the intention of solving that problem.
Am I to take it the question of using it for a Budget deficit has been considered and definitely rejected as being, in the Parliamentary Secretary's opinion, corrupt procedure?
I would be very glad if the Deputy would put that down as a Parliamentary question.
I shall remember it, however, if the fund comes to be used for a Budget deficit.
The Deputy should put it down as a Parliamentary question. It is now purely an insinuation.
