I think this motion is of great importance to the very people about whom we have heard so much this afternoon, that is, the unemployed. I am rather surprised that it should be necessary to put down such a motion at all. The operation of this system of minor relief schemes means that the unemployed are looked upon as a class apart in the community, and the hardship they undergo because of that system is most unfair to them. Those men are employed for three days in the week on a basis of 27/- per week, and in most areas they are doing work which is appropriate to the county councils, so that it is only fair that they should be paid at least the county council rates of wages in the area. There is another matter I should like to point out, and that is that while those men are working for 4/6 a day for three days in the week they must pay their contribution to the unemployment fund, the national health insurance fund, and the widows' and orphans' pensions fund. Very often, because of inclement weather, they cannot work for three days, and are put on for a day or two in the following week, which means that they must pay two contributions. Further, they have to go long distances to work on those minor relief schemes. I am speaking from my knowledge of the position in Cork, where at the moment we have quite a number of workers housed outside the city boundary, and they have to go as far as two miles to work for three days a week on those minor relief schemes. I think it is most unfair that they should be asked to do that. I do not think it is necessary to elaborate on the matter any further, because it was fully explained by the speakers who discussed it on the last occasion. I do hope those men will be given six days a week when they are employed. We do not ask that it should be a question of a months' work or three months' work, but that when they are employed they should be given six days' work in the week, and be paid the rate prevailing in the district.
Private Deputies' Business. - Minor Relief Schemes—Motion (Resumed).
When this debate was adjourned, in February last I think, a fairly good indication of the reasons that prompted the submission of this motion had been given to the House. Even then, however, I do not think a full picture of the humiliation associated with schemes of this kind had been adequately presented. There can be no doubt about it, one of the objections to the system connected with minor relief schemes is the humiliation inflicted on the working people. Deputy Hickey has referred to it. He has pointed out the kernel of the position in the fact that the workless people in this country have been set aside for special treatment for less sympathy, for less wages and for less opportunities, because of their difficulties. In other words, the policy associated with the administration of minor relief schemes is taking definite advantage of the helpless position of the people who have to depend on the casual employment they get on this particular form of work. I emphatically object, and I have objected ever since schemes of this kind were introduced, to the regimentation of workless people by the manner in which relief schemes are carried out. In the United States of America some time ago, in regard to the attempted schemes of reconstruction embarked on by President Roosevelt, there was a slogan about the forgotten man. Surely in our country it is not difficult to find the forgotten man in the unfortunate person who is dependent on the kind of irregular and badly paid employment which is afforded under minor relief schemes. It is no answer to those men to say that schemes of this kind are better than nothing. That is not what the people of this country have the right to expect 17 or 18 years after a national Government was established here. Some of us remember as children hearing of the hopes and aspirations that the people of this country cherished in regard to the conditions which would prevail when self-Government had been achieved. Surely we have nothing to be proud of in the public employment that is being afforded on minor relief schemes.
This demand is a modest and reasonable one. It asks for recognition of the right to work for a week, and it asks that the rate of wages should be that paid by the local authority in the area. The wages paid by the local authority in this country are not very extravagant. Roughly, they range from 30/- a week to something like £2 a week. Perhaps there is only one county in which the latter rate would be paid, that is, County Dublin, and I take it that minor relief schemes do not operate very generally in County Dublin, so that the rate would be something like 30/- to 35/- or 37/6. I think there is nothing unreasonable or unfair, or extravagant in that demand. In the contention that people have a right to work I am backed up in a notable statement made recently by a very distinguished ecclesiastic in this country. The Bishop of Clonfert, deploring the appalling position of unemployment in this country, said there was no reason why more employment should not be given, and why a financial and economic policy which would provide for that employment on fairly decent and regular lines could not be evolved. I have not got the exact quotation, but I think that is a fair interpretation of the statement which was made. I think the Government ought to take words of that kind to heart. I think they symbolise a feeling that is growing in this country, a feeling that will have to be reckoned with, whatever Government is in power, before very many years have elapsed.
If there was reason in the submission of this demand in February last, that reason is very strongly backed by the circumstances that have since arisen. Working people engaged in minor relief schemes in rural areas receive, as a result of their four-day period of employment, something more than the unemployment money that they would receive if they had no work. 14/- a week would be the maximum amount of unemployment assistance in the rural areas, and four days' work at 4/6 a day would give a working man and his family 18/-. The period is very often only three days, but, putting it at its maximum, it would be four days, and I am putting it at its maximum in order that there will not be any suggestion that the position was distorted in any way. A working man in that position-and this will obtain only for a few months of the year-finds that his clothing, such as he can afford, his food, his tobacco, his boots and everything that is necessary for himself and his wife and children—his sugar and all the other things necessary in the household—have increased in price.
I ask, in all reason, what answer can there be to the request that such public employment as he is afforded at present should be paid for at the rate paid by the local authority in his area? There is a special reason for this at the present time. We are approaching a period when the hardest hearts in all countries relax to some extent, and there is a disposition to get the real pleasure out of Christmas by seeing people who ordinarily are in difficulties having those difficulties eased somewhat and conditions made just a little happier. I hope one does not mention that matter in vain in this country, where we are not credited with being as materialistic or hard-hearted in our outlook as they are in other countries—although one has grave doubts about the truth of that philosophy sometimes. At least in the period between now and Christmas, regulations of this kind might be relaxed and the results reviewed with a view to seeing how far they could be changed permanently in connection with the administration of these works.
I want to repudiate emphatically the contention contained in the Parliamentary Secretary's statement when he spoke in the House last February. He said there seemed to be no contention now on the question of rotation. There is quite definitely contention on the question of rotation and there must always be that contention as long as this system continues to be imposed on people who have very little redress. In the case of people who refuse to accept conditions of this kind, their unemployment assistance money can be withdrawn. If they go up to the local authority their action in connection with this matter is referred to, perhaps, by some vigilant home assistance officer, who does not want to see the burdens on local ratepayers increased. They have no redress and they have to accept a system of this kind as the best that a grateful Irish nation can offer. It is a poor tribute to the efforts of the people in this country; it is a poor reward for those people who are doing the highest service to the country, endeavouring, in the wretched conditions under which they have to exist at the present time, to rear families to inhabit the country in the future.
In Great Britain, in the last few weeks, thousands of workers in regular employment have had their wages increased. The workers in the agricultural industry have had their wages advanced and in the transport industry, along the docks, in the mines and in the mills, throughout the whole gamut of the industrial life of Great Britain, increases have been granted—and that in a country where prices of the necessaries of life are lower than in this country.
The Parliamentary Secretary asked us to believe, when he spoke on the last occasion, that there was a menace in the proposal to raise wages on the relief schemes, because the people engaged in agricultural work would be tempted to leave that work to get employment on the relief schemes. That is not a serious argument, because anybody knowing the conditions in the country would be aware that the possibility of people leaving agricultural employment, employment in which there was any security or any prospect of continuity, to take up precarious, uncertain work of this kind under the irregular conditions of labour afforded under those schemes, was very remote, and the people who were likely to do that would be people whose mental condition would have to be examined in order to ascertain whether they were sane in making a choice of that kind.
The Parliametary Secretary may gloat here over an electoral victory. He may think he is scoring a very effective point in stating that the people who put forward this motion have not been able to get the number of first preference votes that his Party have been able to get in successive elections; but I may tell the Parliamentary Secretary, coming from an area where minor relief schemes, a very large number of them, have been carried out from time to time, that there can be no doubt of the fact that in that part of the country, and in many other parts of the country, there is a rising tide of discontent. Just look at the unfortunate position of the workers, at the limitation of their opportunities, and at the cynical way in which their scanty weekly earnings have been eaten into by the increase in prices. That, in my opinion, represents a very real danger, one that will overshadow any passing advantage in Party politics in the future. If it is not remedied it will be a challenge to the very existence of this nation at a period not very far away.
I sincerely hope that wiser counsels will prevail, and, without any desire to scoff at one another here, to score the kind of points made here occasionally, I trust that there will be a feeling in the Government and throughout the House generally that this reproach to our economic life, by reason of the way we treat the unfortunate unemployed in this country, will be removed and removed speedily. That is the course that we should follow if there is any sincerity in our hopes for the future of this country.
I should like to say a few words in support of this motion, or at least the portion of it that deals with the proposal that workers should get six days' work in the week. I want, first of all, to point out that on 99 per cent. of these relief schemes there is very good value got for the money expended. That is due to two causes: it is work being done for the benefit of a number of people in the locality and the persons employed are generally out of that particular area. Therefore, the work is something that brings them some advantage in their daily lives. Secondly, the ganger who is appointed in charge of them is anxious to show that he can get good value for the money and I must say that, as far as I know, the gangers are a sort of slave drivers in a case like that. They are harder taskmasters than any other form of workers. I say that I like that, in a sense, because it means that good value is got for the money and the workers are giving a good day's work for, not a good day's hire, but something that, if they got it for the six days, would be worth while. Therefore, I rise to support the motion that they get the six days' work.
I must also support the section—and therefore it means I am supporting the whole motion—that these workers should get the same rate as the county workers in the area, because these minor relief schemes are carried out under the supervision of the county surveyor in most cases and it is rather strange that the county surveyor has one body of men working at one rate of pay and another body of men working at another rate of pay. It means jealousies and all that sort of thing, and if the thing continues you will not get the best results.
On the question of the three days or four days a week, I think it is very bad. I know of unfortunate men, who have been unemployed, who are willing and anxious to work, walking as much as five miles—six miles in some cases—and if they do not, they are broken off the unemployment assistance. They have to show that they could not get to the work and they are out of that for weeks and weeks and weeks. That is very serious. But, anyhow, these people walk that distance, give themselves considerable hardship, and then, after three days' work, they are told that they will have to stay off for the following three days, and then they get another three days' work. The result is that when they have got that three days a week for, say, five or six weeks at the maximum —five or six weeks is the longest time on the minor relief schemes, at least in the constituency I represent—when that is over, the case that I mentioned this evening again arises: that man is out of his unemployment assistance for several weeks again.
I think the Deputy is mistaken there.
At least he is out of it for a fortnight.
If he exceeds the six weeks, he is.
He does not exceed six weeks, that is the point. He may come on again but he is not allowed to last for a period which will put him out of unemployment benefit.
He will only be allowed 16 days in the four weeks.
Anyhow it is an astonishing situation. This is something to help the unemployed and really, as a result of it, the wearing of their boots and everything like that, they are a good deal worse after the work is over than when they started If they have to go any distance they have to get a bicycle and they borrow their neighbour's bicycle and all that sort of thing. That would be all right if they got the six days' work. It would not be so bad. Therefore, I think the Government should seriously consider this matter. I agree with what the speakers to the motion have said to-night that it looks as if the unemployed are a class apart. We are driving them nearly to become untouchables. I think that is a situation that should not develop in this country. I know many of these men who served their country well in its hour of need, and I am satisfied they would do it again if required. Their position at the moment is very hard. They cannot get their military service pension, for one reason or another. It is held up indefinitely and they have to plod along on this three days' work a week and really upon half rations. Something should be done to amend the position.
I have not very much to say on this matter at the moment except to deal with one or two points that I think should be made clear to the House, and, perhaps, to the country. The Parliamentary Secretary in his speech on this motion stated that under the present system, that is the rotation system, as many as 45,000 workmen are simultaneously employed during the winter months. I think that is the first point we ought to keep in our minds—that as many as 45,000 workmen are affected by this motion. There are considerably more, of course, but as many as 45,000 are simultaneously employed.
There are 45,000 workmen who were last winter, and I presume will be this winter, in the happy position, if they are lucky, of getting a maximum of four days' work per week at 4/6 per day. Does any member of this House contend for one moment that that is a state of affairs that we ought to be proud of, because the Parliamentary Secretary is proud of it. He boasted of it. There is 4/6 a day for four days a week for 45,000 workmen after eight years of a Fianna Fáil Government and, roughly, five years after the Parliamentary Secretary had been specifically given the job by the Government of providing schemes. He was chairman of an employment committee and that committee laboured for three or four years, and we see to-day the results of that labour.
The Parliamentary Secretary boasted also that those men did not object to rotation work. When the only alternative to rotation is starvation you have not very much room to object. The position is that those men can either accept the three or four days per week at 4/6 a day or they can starve because, if they dare to refuse this work under this scheme they are deprived of unemployment assistance and they are deprived of home assistance. Therefore, there is nothing left. That is the position. The Parliamentary Secretary is only playing with words—and he knows that—when he states that this scheme is welcomed by the men. It is comparable, of course, to the statement he made on another famous occasion that anyone who would dare stand between an unemployed man in this country and 24/- a week would be torn limb from limb. That shows that Fianna Fáil has brought the country even to a lower depth than ever I thought, that men have been driven so low and their condition is so bad that they would tear anybody limb from limb who would stand between an unemployed man and 24/- a week. The Parliamentary Secretary did not see for the moment the implications of the boast he was making.
We talk about four days a week. Very often there is no such thing as four days' work a week. I wonder, say, in a wet week like last week, how many unemployed men were able to put in their four days or how much broken time there was on the schemes? How many men had only two or three days' pay to get? That is the position. We have a Parliamentary Secretary who, in my opinion, because of his statements here, is utterly unfitted to be in charge of this particular Department; a man whose mentality is such that he thinks it is something to boast about that ordinary workingmen down the country ought to be proud of the fact that from this State they are getting 4/6 per day for four days per week, if they are lucky; a man whose mind on this matter is such that he says: "If you dare to stand between them and that, they will tear you limb from limb."
I do not want to say anything more upon this subject. I have stated my views in this matter on more than one occasion in this House. Like Deputy Murphy, I think conditions to-day call more strongly for the acceptance of the motion by this House than they did even when it was put down. This motion does not ask much from the Government or the Dáil. It merely asks that a man should get at least six days' work per week. We do not say that he should get continuous work even. We say, "If you can only give a man a week's work in four weeks, let there be six consecutive days' work." What are you asked to pay? The rate of wages paid by the county council in the particular area. Deputy Murphy, I think, went a little too high in the rates he quoted for the county councils. I think if he started at 27/- and went up to 35/-, he would be giving the rate of wages paid by county councils more truly. There may be one or two, like the Dublin County Council, that pay a higher rate, but, so far as I know, the average for county council workers is about 35/-. I do not think anyone would contend, with the prices of necessaries at what they are to-day, that 35/- for a full week's work is too much to ask. I think the motion is a very modest one and I do not see any reason why it should not be accepted by the Government and passed by the House.
This Party has suggested from time to time that this question of relief for the unemployed should not be made a political question. The problem is too serious at the present time for any Party to try to make political capital out of it. I suggest that the Government have no case to make for not paying the men on minor relief schemes a similar wage to that paid to county council employees with the sanction of the Government. The case cannot be made that there is not good value given by these men. Deputy MacEoin has pointed out that, from his experience of them, these men on minor relief schemes give a very good return for the money. It has been suggested that in most cases these men get four days' work per week. My experience is that in the majority of cases they only get three days' work per week owing to wet days and other days on which they are not allowed to work. An unemployed man with a wife and five children would receive 14/- per week, but if he is working on one of these schemes for three days he receives much less. When the insurance is deducted, he receives 12/1 for three days' work, while he would get 14/- per week if he had not been at work. Probably he has to travel five miles to get to his work and he receives 1/11 less than if he were unemployed.
I suggest that there are not 45,000 men employed on these schemes the whole year round. There may be 45,000 employed for one month in the year. There could be many more than 45,000 absorbed on minor relief schemes. From an answer given to a question asked to-day, it would appear that this is one of the matters in which economy is going to be made on the recommendation of the Economy Committee, and that less money is going to be given to local authorities this year for the relief of the unemployed. The excuse given for that is the introduction of the compulsory tillage scheme. In County Wicklow, at least, compulsory tillage will not absorb one extra man in the rural areas, because the farmers there till much more than the Government are asking them to till. There will, therefore, be no extra employment given in Wicklow.
Another complaint in connection with the minor relief schemes is that the number of unemployed in a particular area is supplied by the labour exchange six months previous to the time when the grant is allocated. The result is that we often have from the Parliamentary Secretary's Department a statement that there are not sufficient unemployed in a particular area for the carrying out of a minor relief scheme, and at the time the communication is received we find that there is a much larger number unemployed than was given in the return, which was made six months previously. I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary, with the cost of living as it is at present, and after his action in supporting a Budget which inflicts great hardship on people who are in constant employment, not to speak of the unemployed, that whatever justification he had last February for not granting the same rate of wages to the men employed on minor relief schemes as is paid to county council employees, he cannot put forward any case for it tonight.
The Government should realise that these men are only in casual employment, and that they are at least entitled to get the same rate of wages as those employed by the county councils. County council employees are entitled to holidays and to a half day on Saturdays. They leave off working at 12 o'clock on Saturdays, while the men employed on minor relief schemes at 4/6 per day have to work eight hours on Saturdays. That is causing great discontent. The county surveyors and the assistant surveyors receive an allowance for clerical assistance as well as an allowance for their own work in looking after these men on minor relief schemes. I am surprised that county councils allow their surveyors to take any responsibility for those employed on relief schemes. I never had any great regard for these minor relief schemes. I recognise that they are a means of giving employment in a particular area—just merely giving something more than the men would receive in home assistance. These men have to bring their food with them to their work. I suggest that a man and his family are much worse off when the man gets three or four days' work on these schemes. The man would be better off getting 14/- per week unemployment assistance than working for 16/- or 17/- per week and having to take his food with him and travel five miles to his work.
There is no such thing as a change of clothing for these men when they work on wet days. We are not blind to what is happening throughout the country, and there has been some criticism of what has occurred in recent weeks. On the approach of Christmas I appeal to the Government to see that these men receive a full week's work, and that they be paid at the same rate as county council workers. I am also asking that permission should be granted to county councils to give the difference out of the rates. Permission was refused on a previous occasion, but at one time the Government sanctioned such payment for the purpose of having useful constructive work carried out, such as preparing material for the roads, and carrying out work in the quarries. For the past two years the Government refused to allow public bodies to make the extra wage payments out of the rates. As a result the unemployed had to get subsistence allowance from the boards of health, and that cost the ratepayers and the Government more money. For that reason there is no justification for reducing the wages of the small number of men employed on relief schemes. They should at least get the same payment as county council workers. In that way some happiness would be brought into homes of people who seek such employment at Christmas time.
I wish to support the principle of giving, at least, six days' continuous work to those who, unfortunately, are in the position that they have to accept relief work under conditions that, according to ordinary standards, they would not put up with. It has to be borne in mind that this employment is given at the worst period of the year. No matter how severe the weather, the men have to work on schemes which give the greatest labour content that can be devised by the county surveyors. The matter has been brought home to me because, in my constituency, two or three schemes are in abeyance, owing to the fact that the men could not stand the conditions under which they were employed, having to work in perhaps two or three feet of water. Because of the climatic conditions the time was cut down, while the wages paid compared most unfavourably with those paid to agricultural workers and to county council employees. In County Cork the wages paid by the county council amount to 35/- a week, and even that wage, owing to the increase in the cost of living is fairly small for those employed. They are taken on because of the size of their families. They are working at a period of the year, when the weather is most severe, for 4/6 a day, and for intermittent periods.
The time has come because of the rise in the cost of living, to ask the Government to increase the wages of these men and to give six days continuous work. The figures given by the Government show that 45,000 unemployed sought work on relief schemes. Expenditure on these schemes has been cut down, in one case by £150,000 and in another case by £100,000 and that lessens the amount of useful work that might be done. These schemes are looked upon by very conservative county surveyors in the different localities as being very useful work on which there will be a good return for the money expended. The men employed work well or otherwise they would be put off. At times the climatic conditions were so bad that the men were unable to continue working and had to seek home assistance. It was refused by the local superintendent unless the board of health took the responsibility. That is an indictment of a policy which is supposed to cater for unfortunate people who are unable to find other work. I say definitely that the time has come, in view of the rise in the cost of living and the dearth of employment, to rectify the abuses enumerated in the motion. The motion is a moderate one and I have no hesitation in supporting it.
I wish to support the motion, I do not wish to pillory the Government now, because I believe that the Parliamentary Secretary has been trying to deal with the unemployment problem. However, it is hard to expect men on relief schemes to work beside other men whose wages are higher. I do not think that tends towards good work or economy. It makes those who are getting lower wages disgruntled. All men working under the supervision of the county councils should receive the same wages. I am mystified about these relief schemes and all the trouble that the men who go to the labour exchanges get when seeking work. Is it impossible to find out who is at fault? In many cases, especially during the summer months married men are idle while single men are working. The labour exchange and the police say that that is caused by men who are living inside or outside certain districts. That procedure tends to create jealousy and trouble. I think the Parliamentary Secretary, in co-operation with the Board of Works, the Department of Industry and Commerce, the Land Commission and the Minister for Finance should endeavour to improve the conditions of employment. I hold that there is a good deal of money wasted. At the same time, I am certain that the Parliamentary Secretary is trying to do his best to see that the money is well spent. However, I am satisfied that men working two or three days weekly are badly treated. If they try to work for a half a day for a farmer or if their relations get a loan of a horse they are I might say treated criminally. That may not be so in all cases.
He goes and spends a half day with some farmer who gives him a horse. It is reported by the local police sergeant, who is certainly bound to do it and who is only doing his duty. I have often reproached these people for not doing their duty in that matter; but then you have trouble for three or four weeks, there is no inquiry into the matter, but the word of some official is taken, and that man loses his unemployment assistance for three or four weeks and he will not get a job on any employment scheme. This is a matter of serious import in the country. I admit that there are cases of evasion, where men actually do some work and get away with it, but the man who does not evade the law and who is honest is treated in this way.
I want to bring this matter before the Minister for Finance especially, because I am certain that his Department, with the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Land Commission, can help a great deal in this matter of relief schemes and can certainly give a lot more help than they are giving at the present time. I do support this motion, however, and especially that part of it which asks for a six-day week for the men working on these relief schemes. I cannot understand how any Government Department cannot work out some scheme whereby a man could work a full week and draw an ordinary full week's wages, and then draw unemployment assistance for two weeks, if you like, when he is idle, and work a full week again. This thing of giving three and four days' work is certainly tending towards dishonesty and evasion of the law by the very people who are working on these schemes, and while I have heard from several county council officials that it cannot be fixed, I cannot believe but that the Government could fix it in such a way that these people should get at least a full week's work and draw their six days' pay for that week's work, even though they have to go idle for two weeks.
There is another matter to which I should like to refer. I believe that a man can work one day, stay idle two days, then work one day, stay idle two days, and still draw unemployment assistance or unemployment benefit. The thing is so intricate that it is very hard to understand, and, seemingly, neither the people at the labour exchanges nor the Guards understand it, and unless you go to the manager of a whole district nobody seems to know when a man should be knocked off or when he should be put on. At any rate, I am told that a man can work one day, go idle two days, work one day, go idle two days, and so on, and still draw unemployment benefits. Is not that an extraordinary thing? I am afraid I have got outside the terms of the motion, and I am thankful to the Chair for allowing me to say so much, but there is one thing that I do appeal for, and that is, that the men whom you employ on these schemes should be given the same rate of wages as the county rate of wages in the same district.
With the increase in the cost of living that you have at the present time, it is no more than their just right that these men should be given the same rate. Otherwise, you are only making men jealous of one another and you are tending to make them dishonest, putting them in the way of evading the law—doing work when they are not supposed to be doing it and trying to get unemployment assistance at the same time. No matter how the position stands, or what it appears to be, I do not think that the cost would be very great, and it would help greatly in putting into these men some kind of civic spirit and enable them to stand honestly by the country and do their ordinary work and not be trying to evade the law.
I also am supporting this motion, mainly in connection with the request for a full week's work. In my district we have a big number of registered unemployed, and these people may be allotted two days of the three days in the week. For instance, if a man is allotted three days, and one of these days happens to be a wet day, he gets only two days, and he has no redress. If two days of the three happen to be wet, he only gets one day. Now, some of these men may be married men, with a family, and yet such a man has to be content with two days and, sometimes, even one day. If he gets the three days, he and his family have to depend on 13/6. In the majority of cases, in the rural areas, at any rate, a broken week is of very little use to that class of workers, because they will find it very hard to get other work if they are employed on these schemes for two or three days in the week. I believe that, if they were to get a full week's work, they would try during the following week to do work for themselves or, perhaps, they might be able to get employment from somebody else, such as a farmer. The farmer may not be disposed to take on a man for a broken week. He has to suit his convenience. He might want the man at the beginning of the week, and not at the end of the week, and so on, and the time he might want him might be when the man was employed on one of these schemes.
I am also of opinion that the workers employed on these schemes in rural areas should get the county council rate per week, as, in the majority of cases they are under the supervision of the county engineers and gangers. I would recommend that that should also apply to the workers in urban districts, and that they should get the same rate on relief schemes as the urban rate of wages in urban districts. In mentioning this, I have in mind cases where relief schemes are going on in urban districts and where, at one end of a street, you may have urban workers drawing pay at the rate of £2 a week, and others in a mill or factory drawing £2 5s. od. a week, and then you have men at the other end of the street employed on these relief schemes, getting three days' work in the week, and drawing 13/6. That leads to a lot of discontent, and I feel that something should be done to meet that situation. I am satisfied that these relief schemes cannot have the sympathy of some of these workers when they find that they are not being paid more or less at the same rate as other workers are paid in the same area. For these reasons I support the motion.
I also have great pleasure in supporting the motion, because I believe that what it asks for is needed very much at the present time. I am certainly quite satisfied that it is a very bad thing to have two different rates of wages operating in one district or area, because that tends to produce jealousies of all sorts. It would be very much better to have the one rate of wages in each county, and it would be far more satisfactory that, in connection with these rotation schemes, the rate of wages operating in the different counties should be paid in connection with these schemes. I confess that I was never in favour of these rotational schemes, but I admit that they have done some good, and something had to be done. I believe that the Parliamentary Secretary has done his best. He had a hard job to do, and he certainly did his best. After all, bad as these rotational schemes were, if we had not got them, I suppose we would have had bloody revolution, and anything is better than that.
In my county there are at least double the number unemployed as were unemployed last year, and our county surveyors and assistant surveyors are very much alarmed and perturbed because these various relief schemes are not being put into operation immediately. They are being inundated with calls for work that they cannot give, and they do not know why the schemes are not put into operation. The Parliamentary Secretary should see that these schemes are put into operation as soon as possible. One thing I should like to bring to the notice of the Parliamentary Secretary has to do with bog schemes. I am not satisfied that his Department has got the proper engineering ideas as to how to drain a bog. Hundreds of thousands of pounds have been squandered in my county on bog schemes which were absolutely futile. They merely did damage to the lands and bogs around. I must say that the Parliamentary Secretary was providing good work for the people, but that good work went for nothing. Canals in bogs on which hundreds of thousands of pounds were spent are closed in altogether. That was really a waste of money.
I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to go a little further in connection with repairs to lanes. There is a large amount of swamp on the land of farmers, and these men could be usefully employed draining ditches—work which would give a good return. I ask also that the Parliamentary Secretary should allow these men to go a longer journey. I should not like to see them going too far, but in some areas the same amount of unemployment occurs year after year. This work is given where the greatest amount of unemployment exists, with the result that the same lanes are getting repaired year after year, whereas lanes a mile further on in another district are in a state of disrepair. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to widen the scope of his schemes whereby lanes two miles further on could be brought in.
This motion does not deal with the class of work which should be undertaken, but with the working conditions.
I submit that the same rates of wages as are paid by the county council should be paid on these schemes. I do not think that one class should be placed in a position of superiority to the other class. Let them all work at the same wage and let them work for six consecutive days. A three-day week is a scrounging kind of arrangement, and it would be easier for the clerical staff if the men worked six days, even if they were called off the following week. I do not believe in this rotation system whereby men are employed for three days. Let it be six days or nothing.
While I should like to support this motion if I thought it were feasible, I cannot see the sense of it. We have heard a lot about the reduction of taxation recently. I do not see how the State is going to be able to increase the number of those working on relief schemes unless you increase taxation in some way. I do not see how that could be done with the money at present available for these schemes. Deputies do not seem to appreciate that these schemes are relief measures. Everybody in this House would be delighted if we could pay these workers more money and keep them working longer—every week, if that were possible. Everybody would be delighted if we could do that for the workless people, but I think the object of the Parliamentary Secretary is to keep as many persons as possible working as long as possible.
If you are going to distribute the work evenly and if you are going to give every man a fair crack of the whip, you have got to split up the work in this way. The arrangement is also suitable to the agricultural community in constituencies such as I represent, where you have a large number of small farmers. One of these farmers who gets three days a week on a relief scheme can devote the other days to his farm. That means that these people can keep their ordinary farm work going and, at the same time, earn a couple of pounds on these schemes. That is a suitable arrangement in areas where small farmers preponderate. By a small farmer I mean an uneconomic holder with a valuation under £10.
Do I understand the Deputy to suggest that a man can work on his farm for three days in the week and still be registered at the labour exchange?
Sixty-six per cent. of the people are in that position.
If a labourer with no such qualification is found working for a single day he is disqualified for unemployment assistance for six months.
Does the Deputy want to deprive the small farmers of unemployment assistance?
No; but there should be equal treatment for the labourer who is found working a single day for a farmer, even as an "obligement", because he has got the loan of horses to plough his plot. He is deprived of unemployment assistance for six months if he does that.
Is the Deputy's point that a resident in a congested district is not to be allowed to work on his farm?
I want equal treatment for the two classes.
The Deputy has, evidently, two different definitions of a worker. According to him, a small farmer with a valuation under £10 is not a worker; a worker is only one of his own classification. I hold that an uneconomic holder is as much a worker as anybody the Deputy talks about.
Agreed.
The small farmer in my area does not get preferential treatment.
The Chair would like to be informed as to who is in possession.
I was for a time.
I do not know what particular type of farmer there is in the Deputy's area, but, in my area, there are no complaints. I challenge any Deputy from my constituency to say that there is any such thing as preferential treatment so far as this relief work is concerned.
Deputy Everett does not say that either.
If any of the Deputies supporting this motion can provide a scheme whereby we can keep all the people registered as unemployed working six days a week, I shall be one of the first to support it. As I understand, Labour Deputies want to keep the workers occupied for six days a week.
That is what they wish certain people to believe they want.
If the Labour Deputies can provide a scheme to keep these workers occupied for six days a week and show where the revenue is to come from, I shall be delighted to support it. However, I cannot see, for the reasons I have stated, how you could get a better method of dealing with this question or how you could distribute the employment more evenly than at present. It is for the movers of this motion to show to the House by this method, or in any way they can, that we can keep all the workers of this country working for six days a week. It is for the Deputies moving this motion to show that and to say where the revenue is going to come from, and if they can, I will support the motion.
I just want to explain——
On a point of order?
——to the last Deputy that we are not asking that work be given for six days of the week continuously. All we are asking is that they get work for six days when they are so employed.
What will they do for the rest of the year?
The proposer of this motion, or at any rate, Deputy Moran in one of his arguments for the Parliamentary Secretary, has made the entire case for this motion. Deputy Moran's argument was that it was better to give people three days' work in a week so that they can come back and work for the other three days on small farms. There is really no objection to people doing work on the small farms and earning a subsistence thereby and at the same time earning something in three days' work a week on relief schemes. There was never any objection to that. But that cannot be used as an excuse for giving any other unfortunate man, who may have a wife and four or five children to support only three days' work in the week.
The entire idea behind this motion is that when people are employed in minor relief schemes—and these are really only tinkering with the unemployment problem—when they are working in that way, they should be given the opportunity of earning at least something worth while, that the case should not be that they would get only three days a week work and earn 14/6d., less national health insurance, which would leave them only 12/- to support a wife and four or five children. I was amazed at the Deputy because he read into this motion a motion to give every unemployed person six days' work on relief schemes continuously.
In endeavouring to elucidate this question, would the Deputy tell us what percentage of the workers employed in these relief schemes are the married men he talks about?
I say that it is entirely unfair to discriminate in matters of this kind,—where a man has no other means of livelihood, to give him only 3 days' a week work just because it helps somebody else. Are you going to keep a man who has no other means of livelihood idle because Deputy Moran says he is—
The Deputy is abandoning the argument he has just used.
The whole view in favour of this motion, taken by Deputy Moran, is that in his constituency there are small farmers who are getting three days' work a week on these schemes as it is. He is going to condemn other men to three days' employment on this work and to four days idleness because he says there are small farmers in his area whom it suits. The fact that this suits one section of the community is no excuse for using it against another section of the community, those who have no other means of livelihood and who could not be worse off than they are. The Minister, the Parliamentary Secretary and Deputy Moran may give any interpretation they like, but that is the point he made.
I was very much surprised when he came to the point that they are going to tell the people that those who support this motion are looking for a continuous six days a week work for these men in these schemes all the year round and for all the unemployed. He said that, though they could produce a scheme for the provision of this work, they could find the revenue. I may say that I was surprised at him, for I think in the long, dim and misty past the Parliamentary Secretary had that plan. He was going to put all the people at work for 24 hours a day for 365 days a year; but that must have been some time before Deputy Moran's entry into the Fianna Fáil Party here.
Where will the revenue be obtained for this scheme? If Deputy Moran wants to hear about that, we can tell him. There are dozens of ways. He need not increase taxation. If he would just look at the little items of extra expenditure incurred recently, those which are not giving very much employment, he may find room to give a lot of people six days a week continuous work, in fact to give it to more than are doing three days' work a week now. The real point behind this motion is that if you are going to have minor relief schemes in order to take people and give them three days' work a week, letting them get a chance of earning a small rate of wages, to support the family without any other means than by this miserable rate you should try to make a success of carrying out these minor relief schemes and give the men working on them a chance of earning something decent for the period they are working. Do not have this problem being tinkered with at any time, in order to bolster up the Government in its boasts regarding the relief of unemployment.
I do not believe for a moment that there is very much use in talking in support of this motion. We got the Parliamentary Secretary's opinions about it last February and I do not believe the Parliamentary Secretary has changed his mind since then. I do not believe that the extra stress of economic circumstances that this country is wilting under at present will soften the Parliamentary Secretary's heart. I believe his attitude in the future will be as it was last February, when this motion was introduced, and that in his reply to it he will talk against it in the grandiloquent manner in which he is accustomed to talk. He has no idea of the position of the unfortunate men, women and children, and he does not care a lot how much they lose.
Nor does the Deputy.
If nobody rises to conclude, I must put the question.
Mr. Corish rose.
Is the Deputy rising to conclude?
I thought the Minister for Industry and Commerce was anxious to intervene. As has been pointed out by various speakers the position now in so far as unemployment is concerned is, unfortunately, worse than it was when this motion was tabled in February last. We heard on that occasion the opinion of the Government, as expressed, I presume, through the medium of the Parliamen tary Secretary, Deputy Flinn, and I do not think we can expect very much change in so far as that attitude is concerned, but I think it right to suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that the appeal of the unemployed cannot be dismissed in the callous way in which he tried to dismiss it—with what I consider subtle debating points—on that occasion. I think that we are entitled to assume that the real reason that we have three days' work instead of six for unemployment relief is that it brings extra revenue to the Government. It means a very definite amount in the sense that they get two stamps for each week's work, making a double complement of stamps each week. I think that is the principal reason the Government are only giving three days' work instead of six.
One would infer from the Parliamentary Secretary's statement that the rotational method of employment was the normal policy of the Government so far as looking after the unemployed was concerned, that there was no prospect of any change for the better, in the near future at any rate. This comes badly I think from the Fianna Fáil Party. It shows, in my opinion, that their policy in so far as dealing with unemployment is concerned, is barren and bankrupt. From the promises made in 1932 and in subsequent elections, one would expect to hear that there were better prospects for the unemployed. During this whole debate four days have been mentioned continuously, but so far as I know, in a great many places, they are only working three days at the rate of 27/- a week, which means that a man who would be entitled to draw 14/- a week on the labour exchange gets the gross amount of 13/6 for three days. When his insurance money is taken off that he has a good deal less than what he would get if he were not called upon to work at all.
Can the Deputy give a case of that?
I can.
I should very much like to hear it.
In the County Wexford men were working for three days. I am not deliberately stating a lie.
I assure the Deputy that I have searched throughout the country. We have employed probably 100,000 people at least on these schemes and I have not got a single case in which a man has got less.
If a man is working only three days per week, and is paid at the rate of 27/- per week, he gets 13/6 for three days, and the amount he would be entitled to draw at the labour exchange would be 14/-.
Will the Deputy give me one case out of the whole country in all the years? I have not been able to get by name a single case, and I have tried everywhere.
I believe I shall be able to get it.
I should be very glad to have it so that I may look into it and see what is happening in that case.
Apart altogether from that, I suggest also that these men are called upon to work longer hours than the ordinary workers employed by a county council, because the county council day is laid out in such a manner that they are called on to work only about four hours on the Saturday, so that they work longer hours in each of the other five days of the week in order to get a half-day on Saturday. On that basis, I suggest that the rotational workers are called on to work longer hours than the ordinary county council worker. Some years ago, when we raised the question here of rotational workers not being paid the same wage as county council workers, I distinctly remember the Parliamentary Secretary pointing out that the work they were doing was not analogous to the work done by county council workers. He indicated at that time that he considered that these men were not called on to break stones, or to do work of that kind, but merely to do surface work, such as drainage and bog work. That may have been so at that time, but I know very definitely now that men employed on minor relief work have been sent into a quarry to break stones, beside men who are drawing at least 30/- a week, at 3/- a week less than the rate paid by the county council for the same kind of work. I submit that that is very unfair and gives rise to discontent amongst the workers so engaged. I submit very definitely that the work they are called on to do at this particular juncture is not work analogous to the work done by agricultural labourers. In the course of the Parliamentary Secretary's statement in February last, he went so far as to say:
"Our experience, when we were paying 24/- a week on minor relief schemes, was that the agricultural labourers did in fact desert their ordinary employment."
The Parliamentary Secretary ought to know that that is not possible, that the first people called on for work on minor relief schemes are people taken from the labour exchanges, that they are given that work because they are on the labour exchange and are drawing certain moneys week after week, and that the people first taken off the labour exchanges are those drawing the highest amount. The Parliamentary Secretary ought to know that, and I am surprised that he made such a statement.
I make it again.
It is absolutely impossible, so far as I know the regulations, for people to leave agricultural work and go on rotational schemes, because the regulations lay down very specifically that the men must be recruited from the labour exchanges and those drawing the highest amount of benefit must be given first employment. Deputy Moran read into this motion something which is not in it. He suggested that, in putting down this motion, the Labour Party were asking that every unemployed man in the country should be given six days' work at the county council rate prevailing in each of the areas.
That is the meaning of the motion.
The motion asks no such thing. If the Deputy had been listening to the discussion on the motion, he would know very well that that is not the meaning of it. What the motion aims at is to secure that when men are put on minor relief schemes they will be given at least six days in the weeks in which they are working. The answer of the Government to that will be that, if it were adopted, it would not be possible to give everybody work, but, under present conditions, it is not possible to give everybody work because if a job starts in February and finishes in March, and if a new job starts in April, the Government do not start to recruit the men where the list was left off, but go back to the beginning and put on the highest paid men, so that so far as the Government is concerned, even under the three days' rotational scheme, they cannot hope to absorb anything like all the unemployed. So far as that part of Deputy Moran's statement is concerned, I think we have proved that we have not in mind what he suggests we have.
As I have indicated, and as other speakers have indicated, what we want is that where there is an unemployment relief scheme on the rotational principle in operation in any district, the men who have the greatest number of dependents should be employed for six days in each of the weeks during which the work is being carried on, and that the work should be paid for at the county council rate in the district, which, with the exception of two or three places, averages 30/- per week all over the country. Surely that is not too much to ask when we know that the men employed on rotational schemes are doing work which is absolutely analogous to the work done by county council workers in the district?
On some occasions, I have heard it suggested by some county council members that because the Government are paying only 27/- a week on what they consider to be analogous work, the county councils should revert also to that figure, so that the Government themselves, who should be model employers, are showing a bad example to local authorities. The work being done by men on rotational schemes is absolutely analogous to the work done by county council workers. The Parliamentary Secretary some years ago pointed out—and I think that at that time there was some justification for what he said—that the work being done was analogous to farm labourers' work, but it certainly is not now because county surveyors have no compunction and no hesitancy about placing men engaged on rotational relief schemes in quarries to do the same work as county council workers who are paid 30/- a week. There is nothing unreasonable in what we ask when they are doing work the same as others are doing and for which these other men are being paid at a higher rate. There is nothing unreasonable in suggesting that the Government, who should be model employers, should at least pay the same rate of wages as that paid by county councils.
I move the adjournment of the debate.