I ask for leave to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to apply certain sums out of the Central Fund to the service of the years ending on the 31st day of March, 1940 and 1941.
Committee on Finance. - Central Fund Bill, 1940—First and Second Stages.
Leave granted.
Bill read the First Time.
Agreed to take the Second Stage now.
I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. It is usually, I think, the practice to treat this as a routine matter. The Bill is required to implement the Ways and Means Resolutions which have just been passed, and to enable us to get the total amount of the items set out in the Vote on Account; also for the purpose of implementing the Resolutions providing for the Supplementary Estimate, which have already been agreed to. It also gives power to borrow any sum that may be required during the period that this Bill will run.
Has the Minister fixed the price of the borrowing?
Fixed the price of the borrowing? No.
How much do you intend to borrow, or do you know?
I do not know.
I think that the House should not agree to pass this measure until we get a little more evidence from the Minister and his colleagues that they appreciate the position put before them on the Vote on Account and until they show that they have a clearer realisation of the present situation than they seem to have had. The Minister said that much of the discussion on the Vote on Account centred round some figures I made use of, and he characterised my figures as being rigged and arranged and put in a way that suited myself; that they were figures selected to suit my argument, and a number of remarks of that kind. The following report of Friday's proceedings is given in the Irish Press:—
"Mr. Dillon said these figures were inescapable.
The Minister for Finance (Mr. O Ceallaigh) said they were lies.
Mr. Dillon said the figures were taken from the official returns.
Mr. O Ceallaigh said they were faked statistics."
That is the report in the Irish Press, but substantially the same report was given in the other Dublin papers. I am glad that, for some reason or another, the statements made on that occasion have been modified in the Official Report. It is as follows:—
"Mr. Dillon: I invite them to do that. I urge them to do it.
Mr. O Ceallaigh: They will do it. I have the figures here.
Mr. Dillon: I hope the Minister has. He cannot rebut them.
Mr. O Ceallaigh: I can.
Mr. Dillon: They are absolutely true, and nothing that the Minister can say and no wangling of figures can controvert them. They are taken from the official returns of the Minister's Department, and he will have ample time to answer them.
Mr. O Ceallaigh: I wish to say this——
Mr. Dillon: I do not want the Minister to interrupt. These figures are taken from his official returns.
Mr. O Ceallaigh: They are not.
Mr. Dillon: The Minister can wangle them what way he wishes; they stand, and will be repeated and proved——
Mr. O Ceallaigh: They will not.
Mr. Dillon: ——against this foolish and incompetent Government that we have at present.
Mr. O Ceallaigh: This is a mare's nest."
I hope, therefore, that having made that progress from Friday last, we will make a little more progress in understanding one another and in realising what is being done here. When speaking on the Vote on Account I stated that the remarks I was making and the presentation I was making were not related in any way to Fianna Fáil promises or plans or anything else like that. I said that I wanted to establish the facts of the present situation both as regards what had happened and the trend of these facts, so that we would understand what I believe is a fact, that in taking the enormous amount of money that the Government are taking for spending by the Government and the local authorities, over what was taken from the people in 1931, they are taking away the life-blood of the ordinary production machinery in the country, both agricultural and industrial. If the Minister would get it into his head that we here want simply to establish the fact so that both here in the House and elsewhere these facts may be seen and may be realised to be facts unchallenged either by people on this side of the House or on the other side of the House, we would have gone some distance. I admit we will have to go further.
I would ask the Minister not to accept it, at this stage at any rate, that we are asking him or anybody else to hold their heads in shame because of the facts that we bring out. We are only asking that when these facts are established and that when the trend arising from these facts is proved, the people who do not develop policies that are going to improve and ameliorate things would hold their heads in shame. What we seek is to establish facts so that proper policies may be pursued. I ask the Minister not to use again the suggestion that we are twisting figures, that we are arranging them to suit our own arguments, that our figures are lies or that they are faked. I ask him not to do that or to say such things as these: "That if they show a tale which is not creditable, so much the worse for us", that is, for the Government. It is not a question of whether it is going to be good or bad for the Government. It is not a question of anything that will come out of our arguments here. It is a question that this House, if it is allowed to direct the policy of the country according to its best intelligence, will know what the facts are and knowing what they are and whence they have arisen, will know what they ought to do and what they are doing to try to aim by any change to improve production in this country so that the country will not have a larger number of people depending upon the Government to employ them and a smaller number of people able to be employed by the people from whom the Government are taking the money.
Now, on the question whether these figures are rigged or arranged to suit particular purposes, I want to state what fundamentally the figures are. I maintain that the official figures show that between the years 1926 and 1931, 57,000 additional persons in full-time employment was the increase in employment in the country as shown by the National Health Fund, and that the average annual increment was 11,400 a year. The Minister accepts that figure. These five years may be taken together as grouped. We are taking the years 1931 and 1939, covering the eight years that the Minister and his Party have been in office. He says that during these eight years: "There has been an increase from 342,000 persons in 1931 to 417,000 persons in 1939, an increase of 75,000 persons employed in eight years, or 9,375 of an average annual increase." The Minister gives us these figures to-day. He says that we ought not to take these figures I have given; that we are taking the figures from 1931 or 1932 to 1937. We now take the years from 1931 to 1939 and, if we take these years, we will see that the average annual increase in these years, taking the figures the Minister has given, is less than the average annual increment in the years 1926 to 1931. The position is that for every 1,000 of an increase in the average number in the years 1926 to 1931, there was an increase of only 832 in the years 1931 to 1939. These are the Minister's figures. I do not want to follow up the argument as to why we selected 1931 to 1937. From one point of view I will go back to that again. I simply want to reiterate my own figures and I put his figures that way. I say even that increase of 9,375 given by the Minister is fictitious for this reason. Perhaps I should not say fictitious but the figure is inflated in a fictitious way by reason of the fact that a very large number of persons who have not full-time employment are paying National Health Insurance as if they were in full-time employment. They inflate the number by the figure I have already quoted—6,247. So that my argument is based upon the fact that the full-time employment in 1939 was not 417,000 but 410,753, giving the average annual increment of 8,495 or 754 for every thousand that was added to employment annually in our time. The Minister says that I am rigging the figures. He says that I am making deductions in respect of employment schemes that might equally well be made in respect of dockers. He said that dockers do not work six days a week no more than persons on employment schemes. A docker, however, gets 14/- for one day's work while the man working on a relief scheme gets no more than 13/7 for three days' work. We talk of employment and these are the handiest figures in that connection. But we mean by "employment" occupation in such a way that those concerned earn sufficient to maintain themselves and their families. The figure which the Minister is accepting and relying on for his own achievement between 1931 and 1939 shows an increase of 822 persons for every 1,000 persons additional who went into employment yearly between 1926 and 1931. The Minister's figure is inflated by a very special class of operation—the employment of a very large number of men continuously over the whole year on relief schemes. I do not say that that should be wiped out nor do I say that additional employment on housing should be wiped out. I said previously that, when the inflationary figures in respect of relief-employment are taken away, the average annual increment of 754, for every 1,000 in our time, would be reduced to 658 and that, if additional housing were taken away, the figure would be reduced to 554. I said that, outside the special type of relief work which did not exist in 1931 or 1926 and outside the increase in housing for the year 1931 and including increased production in industrial employment, additional work on the Land Commission schemes, of which the Minister spoke, and additional work by the local authorities on public health schemes and drainage schemes, the annual increase in employment as against that increase of 1,000 in our time was only 554.
The Minister has quoted certain figures regarding housing. There is only one figure that, on examination of the Minister's figures, I might be prepared to modify. That is the reduction that should be made in respect of increased employment on housing. I should like the Minister to bear in mind that there was no special relief and no special circumstance arising out of the expenditure of Government or local government money in 1931 that did not exist in 1926. That is why I am taking the increase of 11,400 persons every year at that time as the natural employment-increase through the country carrying on its work in an ordinary and orderly way. Not only was Government expenditure £10,000,000 less then but the moneys expended by Government and local authorities were decreasing. I pointed out that while that increase in employment was proceeding the amount of money that came out of the people's pocket to the Government and local authorities went down by £334,000. The Minister does not challenge that.
While there has been a 50 per cent. fall in this increased employment as compared with that for 1926-31, if some of the special things are left out, an additional £4,701,000 is coming out of the taxpayers' pockets and an additional £1,607,000 out of the ratepayers' pockets; a sum of £1,850,000, land annuities, is being taken by the Government and spent as revenue and they have the use of £2,000,000 that, pre-1931, was spent on local loans and pensions—debts to the British Government. That is being spent by this Government and, in addition, there was all the expenditure of the money borrowed by the Government and local authorities for all kinds of schemes. The argument is that the Government are taking the life-blood out of ordinary production in the country and that they cannot by Government machinery or local government machinery do for the country what the country can do by the expenditure of its own money.
I do hope that the Minister and his colleagues will get out of their minds that these figures are faked or arranged in any special way. I appeal to them to examine them and to see calmly and quietly the lessons they can learn from them. One figure I want to correct. At the end of my statement the other day, I pointed to page 28 of the "Trend of Employment and Unemployment in Saorstát Eireann," page 1,852, published in December, 1935. I said there was a special class of people, as indicated there, employed in agriculture, private domestic service and other occupations not included in the unemployment insurance scheme. I said that, between 1926 and 1931, 30,000 full-time employed persons was the measure of the increased employment in the country for persons outside the unemployment insurance scheme who paid national health insurance, that the annual rate of increase was 6,000 and—erroneously—that there was a fall of 1,000 between 1931 and 1939. The Minister has pointed out the error. The Minister is correct. What happened between 1931 and 1939 was an increase from 154 to 161. There was an increase of 7,000 in eight years—an average annual increase of 875 as against an increase of 6,000 a year in our time. No allowance is made for the inflationary effect of the rotational scheme of employment in that figure of 875. If the effect of that scheme were taken into account, the increase in that period would be only 550 as against 6,000 in the period 1926-1931.
Deputies who have spoken on the Vote on Account have indicated the way in which in different lines of occupation an individual here and an individual there and a couple of individuals here and a couple of individuals there have been pushed out of employment. That has accumulated in such a way that it gives the results that are there.
The Minister for Supplies, speaking on Friday, at column 488 of the Official Reports, said:—
"Deputy Cogan said here that the burden of taxation is too heavy and that it had become more than the country could bear. That is a point of view which can be seriously put forward and one which, naturally, the Government must take very seriously into account. It is a question which the Government is continuously asking itself—whether the burden of taxation is beyond the resources of the country and, if so, whether it is essential that we should reduce that burden, even though it means lopping off services which, in the ordinary course, would be regarded by the people as essential. It is a question which the Government is continuously asking itself."
We have not been told what kind of an answer the Government has given itself. We are putting this matter before the Government so that they will be helped and spurred and stirred to give the Parliament some inkling of what kind of answer it has given itself to that question which the Minister for Supplies says the Government is continuously asking itself. At column 492, the Minister said:—
"If, therefore, our tax burden is becoming unduly heavy—and nobody can deny that it is becoming heavy— we have got to try and make it easier, not by the reckless abandonment of essential services or the unscientific elimination of expenditures which are deemed necessary, but by endeavouring to make it possible for the people to bear the burden by increasing their productive activity, by adding to the national income, by getting an expansion in activity in industry and agriculture. We are all agreed about that but, of course. we disagree as to the methods most suitable, the methods most likely to be productive of that result."
If taxation were becoming too heavy for the people to bear, they should not be so unscientific as to reduce expenditure. They would not do the scientific thing; they would set about "endeavouring to make it possible for the people to bear the burden by increasing their productive activity, by adding to the national income, by getting an expansion in activity, in industry and agriculture." We will keep that in mind for the moment. At column 494 he said:—
"If our tax burden had reached the stage at which it could be said that it was drying up the ordinary sources of employment, then I would agree that we had passed the danger mark."
He goes on to say:
"Here and there danger signals appear but, generally speaking, it can be said that the number of persons in employment is increasing, has increased year after year, and is still increasing."
It is because we see that the tax burden has reached such a stage that it is drying up the ordinary sources of employment and because we see that the number of persons in employment is not increasing for the last couple of years that we thought it our duty to go into the facts, to take the most prominent and most important facts in the situation out, to put them before the House and to ask the House to ponder them and to take them as facts offered to an Irish Parliament by Irish representatives concerned only for the well-being of the people. It is not a fact that the situation can be treated so lightly as the Minister for Supplies treats it when he says:
"Here and there danger signals appear, but, generally speaking, it can be said that the number of persons in employment is increasing, has increased year after year, and is still increasing."
We welcome anything which the Minister for Finance thinks is an important figure to put before the House and which he puts in the House records, but, confusing, in my opinion, and unnecessary, he referred to some figures in connection with the Census of Production. Our point is that in spite of the increase in 1931 and 1939 in the employment review covered by the Census of Production, if you eliminate the increased employment on State-aided housing and on relief schemes, the annual increase in employment for the last nine years has been only about 50 per cent. of what it was in the five years previously, that is, 554 for every 1,000. The Minister, however, does speak of the Census of Production as providing information that indicates the trend of things. I ask Deputies to refer to the Irish Trade Journal and Statistical Bulletin of March, 1939. In the first column of page 3, the average number of persons engaged in all the various industries covered by the Census in 1936 is given as 153,888, and for the year 1937, 161,212, an increase of 7,324 in those years. But page 5 shows the particular classes of employment in which this increase took place, and we find that there was an increase of 7,315 under local authorities and Government Departments, leaving an increase of nine persons between 1936 and 1937 in the whole gamut of industries covered by the Census of Production.
The year 1937 was the first year in which the employment scheme plan began to operate and on page 10 of "The Trend of Employment and Unemployment" for the years 1936 and 1937, we see that for the year 1936, there was an average of 7,378 persons employed all the year round on employment schemes and, in 1937, an average of 22,971. A Parliamentary question on 8th February, 1939, disclosed that, in 1938, the monthly employment on relief schemes was 19,190, and a Parliamentary question on 21st February, 1940, disclosed that, for the year 1939, the number of persons employed on employment schemes every month was 18,112.
In 1937-38-39 the employment position, as I say, was forced up by an enormous expenditure and enormous employment, every month for the whole year round, on employment schemes, but between 1936 and 1937, over the whole gamut of industrial life covered by the Census of Production, there was an increase in employment of nine persons. We have not yet got the increase between 1937 and 1938, but I think the Minister ought to have a look at it soon and let us know what the position is.
The Minister told us on several occasions that we should take the year 1932 as a starting point. I would ask any of the Deputies on the opposite benches to take any of the four publications that have been issued for the last four years dealing with the trend of employment, and in so far as any information with regard to the National Health Insurance Fund and the equivalent employment for National Health Insurance or the Unemployment Insurance Fund are concerned, they will find that a complete veil is drawn over the year 1932. Nobody, unless he wants to undertake special research or to ask special questions, knows what the year 1932 is, because these figures work from the year 1926 to the year 1931, but skip deliberately the year 1932, and then go on and give the position for 1933-34-35-36. Evidently 1932 is a bad year. At any rate, what we have to measure things from is the employment in the country at the present time or last year as against the year 1931 before a new policy or new policies were introduced, a substantial part of which was the increasing of taxation by £4,000,000 and the expenditure of a lot of additional moneys that were received and held in other ways. So that I do not know why the Minister should introduce 1932; but let us take him on the figures he quotes for 1937. He says that it is unfair to talk of comparing 1931 with 1939 and that we should talk about the improvement that took place between 1931 and 1937. He has told us that he accepts it that there was an average annual increase in employment between 1931 and 1937 of 12,166, as against 11,400 from 1926 to 1931. That is, on the figures he gives us—the figures that have been presented to us already, and that I accept—he says that the average annual increase in employment between 1931 and 1937 was 12,166, as against 11,400. That was the great change. It means that there was an increase of 6.7 per cent. In other words, for every 1,000 of an increase that there was in the years 1926 to 1931, there was, in these boasted years from 1931 to 1937, an increase of 1,067, and the Minister thinks that he ought to get credit for that. Well, we do not challenge these figures. That is so. It was brought about by an enormous increase in expenditure and by an enormous forced development of industrial life here.
If however, the Minister wants to stop at 1937, he stops really at a point which is the point that drives us to make this presentation to the House, because, after six years of enormous expenditure, of an enormous alleged development of industrial life here, and with the forced development of employment on employment schemes, which I have quoted from these official returns, what do we find that the employment position is, as founded on the National Health Insurance Fund from 1937 to 1939? We find that, instead of an increase of 11,400 from 1926 to 1931, and of 12,166 a year from 1931 to 1937, there was an increase of 1,000 from 1937 to 1938, and an increase of 1,000 from 1938 to 1939. The Minister for Finance is shocked at the idea that the Leader of the Opposition should say that there had been no increase in employment in the last couple of years. He is shocked. We have the astounding fact that the increase was only 1,000, inflated, remember, by the fictitious exaggeration of these figures by the rotational schemes of the Office of Public Works—inflated over the year 1937 and the year 1938 and the year 1939. Taking the superficial picture, however, and not making any allowances for it, there was an increase of 1,000 from 1937 to 1938, and of 1,000 from 1938 to 1939, as against, as I say, 11,400 per year from 1926 to 1931, and of 12,166 between 1931 and 1937, the period that the Minister for Finance asked to be judged upon.
I think there is actually a fall of 1,000 in the number of persons that were employed in 1939, as against 1938, under the persons who pay unemployment insurance; so that it is not unreasonable to argue that, with the figures shown there in the Census of Industrial Production, between 1936 and 1937, nine additional persons were put into employment over the whole gamut of censussed industry in the country, and the increase of 7,000 odd that was due to increased employment, in 1937, by the Government and by the local authorities—I think it is not unreasonable to say that since 1937, the normal increase in this country—its power to add to its own employment— has been wiped out. We say that it has been wiped out because the very life-blood that would keep it going, and that did keep it going in the past to the extent of £10,000 in various kinds of ways, has been taken out of the pool available to the ordinary people who carried on ordinary work in this country and the agricultural industry in this country.
The Minister for Supplies says that, if they saw that taxation was too high, if they saw that it was injuring the situation in the country, they would have to take steps to make it possible for the producing machinery in the country to produce more so that the people could bear the cost. This year already more than £600,000 above the figures that we quoted here have been taken out of the taxpayers' pocket. £150,000 additional is going to be taken out of the ratepayers' pocket, and a Bill is now being presented to the House which shows the present policy is going to be pursued, and that it is going to be pursued with increasing conviction and determination, under the cover of the necessities brought about here by the fact that a war situation exists in Europe. The policy that will kill the country's production in peace will kill the country's production in war.
We ask the Government to take the situation seriously, not to get the feeling that no doubt they deserve to have, that they are in the dock, that, in the words of the Minister for Finance, we are throwing bricks at them, that if our argument goes against them it will be worse for them, that he is certain they will come well out of the discussion. These things do not matter and, so far as we are concerned here, our argument is not that they should matter; our argument is that the eyes of every Deputy in this House and the eyes of responsible people and of everybody in the country should be opened to what the facts of the situation are, and to what has brought about those facts. One fact is outstanding; the Government have shown no indication of changing in any way the manner in which they are addressing themselves to the situation. Glibly, if his eyes are opened, and blindly, if his eyes are not opened, the Minister for Supplies says that the danger signals are not apparent, that employment is increasing.
For the purposes of the present day, I will allow the Minister to take his stand, as he offers to do, on the year 1937; I will allow him to take every blessed credit that he can manufacture or develop to himself or to anybody else connected with him for anything that went from 1931 to 1937. He may take all the credit that he wishes to for that. I am concerned with what has manifested itself from 1937 to 1939, and I ask him if he will show anything in the statistics or the figures or the facts in regard to 1937-38-39 which would justify the complacency that the Minister for Supplies showed in the debate on the Vote on Account, saying that the danger signals are not very marked, that employment is increasing and that the time has not yet come when they should sit down seriously and see how they can reduce the demands they are making on the people.
There is nothing in the Minister's statement there on Friday that squares in any way with his picture of the situation that I have shown was painted by him at the University on the previous night. We are prepared to take it for the moment that there may be something in what he says. We are asking the Minister for Finance to come, as is his duty, to the aid of this House here, and put before the House the facts with regard to the years 1937-38-39 that warrant the optimism or the complacency that the Minister for Supplies showed on Friday last.
I should just like to make one final remark. When we look back and see all the boasted achievement—boasted in the Parliament here, boasted in the Press and in the country—for the years, let us say, 1931 to 1937, and take the achievement that the Minister claims of an annual increment of 12,166 persons added to employment, and look back at the 11,400 added annually between the years 1926 and 1931, and remember what was said, we would just like to ask, without distracting them too much from the facts of to-day and their responsibilities and duties of to-day, that Ministers would throw their minds back a little bit now and then. In an odd moment they should consider how much there reasonably was to complain of in the lines on which complaint has been made, when 11,400 were added to those employed every year, when there was a tax bill of £21,000,000 and a rates bill of £4,500,000 and a reducing volume of taxation generally; they should compare that with the increase in taxation that has taken place for the last eight years, and the enormous sum it is at the present time. I do not want to ask them to go back and think over this in order to strengthen the feeling that the Minister for Finance insists that they must have, that we are trying to make it worse for them, throwing bricks at them, and all that. No; I am only asking them to do it in order to help them to look with clearer and saner eyes at the facts that exist here to-day, and therefore that they may see plainly and more clearly the dangers sticking out of the facts of to-day.
Like Deputy Mulcahy, I was very interested to find out how the Minister for Finance was going to justify his words on Friday that the figures carefully and in detail worked out by Deputy Mulcahy were lying figures, that they were faked and false. I find that he has withdrawn from the stand which he took then in an interjection and that he now complains only in regard to the figures. It is well we should have this particular matter on record. The only complaint he has about the figures is, I understand, in two respects. He complains regarding the deduction made in respect of housing and employment schemes and, secondly, that it is not fair to make a comparison over eight years. He wants it stopped short at 1937. Deputy Mulcahy has gone into details regarding this particular matter and I only want to add this: the present Government came into office on an argument put across the country that the Government then going out of office had paid no attention to the fostering of either trade, industry or agriculture. They promised they would do so, and they swung into power and started a system of high protection for industrial purposes, a system of subsidies, credit arrangements, everything that could be devised in order to help agriculture. Later they got going on factories, the boosting of housing, they fostered certain industries which it was clear to anybody were not worth fostering, the only excuse being that it was better for people to be employed in some sort of industry, even if it were only in relief work, than for them to be on the dole. Finally, they developed the whole system of relief schemes—an expensive system at that. According to our opponents we had nothing: our doing nothing resulted, as the figures show, in an annual increment of 11,400 in the number employed for the five-year period. They came in with their subsidies, high protection, credits, relief schemes and the boom in housing and, giving them everything the Minister for Finance has asked to-night and stopping short the calculation with the year 1937, the best they can say is that whereas the people who did nothing secured the employment of 57,000 people in five years they had secured the employment of 72,000 people in six years. Stopping at their best year, the one they want, there is the result of all the activity—that they really are boasting that they did not completely stop the annual rhythm of employment that had been started in our time. We gave them a rhythm of employment at the rate of 11,400 a year. With subsidies, tariffs, credits, boosting in every way, they got 12,000 a year over six years and at the sixth year their efforts are exhausted; they then began to go back. There is the net result of the whole scheme, of all the moneys that have been spent, of the tremendous efforts, the diminishing of our assets abroad and everything else, even giving the Minister for Finance this point that he wants to stop in the year 1937. We do not make any deduction in that 12,000 per annum. We make no deduction whatever for the increased employment by way of increased house building. We make no deduction for the increased moneys spent on relief schemes and the increased employment that resulted in that way and we give him his year that he asked for—1937.
It is proper surely at that point to ask, why stop at 1937? Are Government efforts exhausted? Are all these plans that were to reconstruct this country only to be tried out over six years? Are they turning something over in their minds and will we have another jump forward? What is the lag about? What is the reason for this period of two years' waiting? What has happened that the years 1938 and 1939 should not be counted? If we do count these in we get the amazing result that Deputy Mulcahy's figures show. Even allowing the artificially created employment by reason of relief schemes and increased house building you have got a rhythm of employment that is less than the one established in our time. However, it comes to this, apparently, that giving the Minister for Finance all he wants and stopping two years ago, in 1937, the most the Minister can boast is that he had not stopped the progress by way of increased employment year by year which had been established in our time.
I think it is proper to make these deductions by reason of these conflicting factors I spoke of early this evening, if for no other reason than that two copies of reports issued by the Department of Industry and Commerce call attention to these things. In the report for the years 1936 and 1937 (P. No. 3142) the summary that is given, as set out on page 19, is as follows:—
"As regards employment, the volume of employment as indicated by the net contribution incomes of both the National Health Insurance and Unemployment Funds was considerably greater in 1937 than in 1936. The increase was due, mainly, but not entirely, to increased employment on employment schemes."
The pamphlet itself claims that the increase as between 1937 and 1936 was due almost entirely to relief schemes. And the pamphlet issued a year later (P. No. 3572) in its concluding remarks says this:—
"As regards employment, the volume of employment as indicated by the net contribution incomes of both the National Health Insurance and Unemployment Funds was somewhat greater in 1938 than in 1937. The increase was due mainly to increased employment in the building industry."
Their own two pamphlets call attention to the fact that in the last two years, whatever increased employment was effected was due in one of these years mainly to relief schemes, and in the second mainly to building activity. Are we not entitled to find out how much of this building activity was artificially fostered, and should not be counted as a recurring advantage to the State and, similarly, with regard to these relief schemes, are we not entitled, in order to get a comparison based upon the five year period 1926-31 and any other period that was taken, to remove from the second period the increase that had been brought about by the expenditure of public money first of all on relief schemes, and secondly on housing? If these things are brought into consideration and if we take the years which we are entitled to take—1938 and 1939—we get the situation depicted by Deputy Mulcahy this evening.
It is scarcely necessary——
Is the Minister winding up?
No. I give way to the Deputy.
No. I will listen to the clear-headed Minister with the muddle-headed policy.
It is scarcely necessary to go over the ground that the Minister for Finance has already traversed. Those Deputies on the opposite side who have spoken on this question of unemployment statistics and increased employment have had special opportunities during their own term of office to understand the significance of these figures. I think it has never been claimed by the present Government, and certainly it has not been claimed by the Minister for Supplies, when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce, that the figures which have been quoted from time to time in connection with the number of persons in employment, in so far as they can be estimated from the yearly total of insurance contributions, are in themselves exact figures denoting the actual amount of employment in a particular year. What had been claimed, and I think what can be claimed with reason, is that these figures showing the amount of insurable contributions year after year indicate a certain trend in the amount of employment. The Deputy who first raised this question, Deputy Mulcahy, assumed that the figures which he quoted for the period from 1926 to 1931 represent whole-time employment. I do not know on what basis he makes that claim. Certainly it has never been claimed from this side of the House, I think, that the figures in themselves can be construed as meaning full-time employment. There are, of course, certain persons undoubtedly paying contributions who are not employed for the whole time over the whole period of the year. The breaks may be great or small but, in any case, the total as shown for each year would certainly seem to indicate a certain trend. The Minister for Finance has gone into the figures and has shown that at any rate, so far as that legitimate conclusion can be drawn from the figures, during the period 1931 to 1937 the amount of employment given was very substantially greater than during the five preceding years referred to by Deputy Mulcahy.
It increased by 6.7 and then stopped.
Has the Minister got the figures?
It is scarcely necessary to go into the figures again.
Will the Minister say how they compare from 1937 to 1939?
He wants to get the early years.
The second point made by the Deputy is that the figures for building and for public relief schemes ought to be taken away.
No.
Three arbitrary assumptions are made by Deputy Mulcahy in his role of scientific statistician: first, that we are to assume that in the particular year which he chooses to make the best case he can for his own period of office, there was no casual employment, but that during the succeeding period, when this Government was in office apparently, he can take any arbitrary figure he may choose as representing casual employment on relief schemes or otherwise, and subtract it, and not alone that, but he can go further, and take out relief schemes and housing. Whatever figures may show, everyone knows that there was a considerable amount of employment, fairly regular employment, on housing given throughout the country over that period, but, apparently, because housing has been given special assistance by the Government, that is a reason for deducting it from the figures relating to employment during these years.
The only deduction is in respect of the increase.
I certainly cannot understand on what theory these deductions are made. On that basis, one can advance any set of figures and make any arbitrary deduction one likes. Why not add two or three other trades or industries? Why cannot Deputy McGilligan say: "Oh, this is an industry where the Government gave a tariff of 60 per cent. That must have cost the community a great deal, so why not exclude the persons who are employed in that industry." Why not continue eliminating other categories of employed persons, until nothing is left and then you are presented with a minus figure? Obviously, it would be much more satisfactory for the Opposition to carry this thing a few stages further and—instead of having to admit now that there was a clear surplus and an increase of thousands in the number given employment yearly under the present Government—had they carried these theories further, they might be able to show that there was an actual decrease in employment during the period of office of the present Government.
The net unemployment insurance contribution income in 1926 was 161,000. In 1931 it was 188,000, according to the figures supplied by the responsible branch of the Department of Industry and Commerce. That is, it had increased by 27,000. In the year 1932 there was a fall from 188,000 to 136,000. During the period since there has been a practically continuous improvement, except in 1939 when the figure was lower by 1,000 than in 1938. If you take the figures from 1932 to 1937 there is an increase from 136,000 to 253,000, or an increase of 117,000, as compared with an increase of 27,000 from the period 1926 to 1931.
In the national health contributions the income figure in 1926 was 285,000, while the figure in 1931 was 342,000. In 1932 it was 349,000 and in 1937, 415,000.
And for 1938?
416,000.
And for 1939?
I think the Minister for Finance showed clearly——
He gave us the 1939 figures.
The Deputy will have an opportunity of making his own speech.
You are the official man.
Am I to be allowed to continue my speech? I am not in the habit of interrupting the Deputy. If the Deputy would prefer not to hear me——
The Minister.
The figures for the period 1931 to 1937 indicate an increase of 73,000, that is 12,166 per year, or, if you take the figures from 1933 to 1937, there is an increase of 15,000 per year. The Deputy may laugh but surely these statistics as quoted by Deputy Mulcahy, with qualifications and deductions, mean very little, whereas, as sensible men, we all know that in the last six months of the year 1937 the building industry in Dublin and outside was held up completely. I think the Minister for Finance has made a very big concession in giving them the year 1937. A great point with Deputy McGilligan is that the official statement of the trend of unemployment reveals that there was an improvement in employment in the building industry in 1938. The Deputy has completely forgotten that we had this strike, which inflicted very heavy losses on the building industry and during which all the building operatives and workers in Dublin were out for months and months. He has completely forgotten that. Surely it is not very extraordinary that during the succeeding period the official publication should call attention to the improvement in the trend of employment in the building industry.
Let Deputy Cosgrave, when I have finished, make whatever points he wishes about the fact that there has been a certain trend in the 1938 period or in the 1939 period as compared with the years immediately preceding them. The House is surely not likely to forget that during the year 1938 there was a considerable period of international tension. In the latter part of the year, at any rate, it was expected that war would break out in Europe. It was not a period when people were inclined to embark upon new enterprises. They were rather more inclined to economise and to reduce their commitments as far as possible. There was a general belief that war was about to break out. You had the occupation of Austria and of CzechoSlovakia. Of course these things, according to Deputies opposite, would mean nothing to business men. Business men would still go on in the old way, feeling that the future was going to be blessed with peaceful progress. We should have regard, at any rate, to the facts of the situation. I challenge any Deputy on the opposite side to disprove the contention that during that period there was undoubtedly keen anxiety amongst business people. It would not be unfair to describe it as a year when there was general insecurity, a general fall in the value of stocks for example, and general tension in international trade. Then, in the 1939 period, the position became worse, culminating in the outbreak of war. So far as the years 1938 and 1939 are concerned, let Deputies make what play they wish with statistics, but they certainly cannot contend that these two years are in the same position as the years preceding them, because the international situation affected us in ways we have often pointed out and which we cannot escape no matter how much we may try.
Another noticeable lack in the speeches of Deputies has been their failure to refer to agriculture. For years we have been listening to long wails about the condition of our agriculture, to claims that agricultural production was decreasing, and that, in fact, the amount of employment on farms was getting smaller. It is extraordinary that in the present debate, the Opposition at this particular juncture should see fit to change their case from a consideration of the agricultural position to a consideration of the industrial position—not even the present industrial situation, not even the war situation in industry, but the industrial position of some years ago. They entirely neglected the agricultural industry. One would have expected that some references at any rate were due to the industry, which we have so often heard was the most valuable from the point of view of creating wealth.
Surely the Opposition, if they are really interested in employment, ought to have something to say with regard to agriculture? Is it because they no longer can claim that agriculture is suffering from some policy which the Government had imposed upon it, that farmers are not now able to take advantage of their opportunities? At any rate, they cannot claim that the farmers have not this market that we heard so much about. Not alone have they got the free market, but they have got it under conditions that would seem to be rather favourable. We have a war scarcity and a great increase in prices. Surely the time ought to be ripe for examining the question whether additional employment cannot be given in agriculture? Perhaps the Opposition Deputies may come along later, say next year, and show us that there has been an actual reduction in some figure or other in relation to the amount of employment on the land. What we do know is that a certain amount of machinery is being introduced, that there is a shortage of labour on the land in many districts, but that, nevertheless, if the signs up to the present mean anything, there will be a tremendous increase in agricultural production during the coming season. I think examining ways and means in which production, either in agriculture or industry, can be increased during the present period, would be rather more useful work for the National Assembly at the moment than putting forward divers views as to the meaning of the statistics of employment from 1926 to 1937.
Deputy Mulcahy, in his closing remarks, said that during the concluding years of office of our predecessors the position was that you had an increase in whole-time employment, with all the attendant benefits that that meant to the country and that, at the same time, you had a reducing volume of taxation generally. I seem to recollect that at the end of that year we had a Supplementary Budget. Is it not true that from the period 1929 to 1933, if not up to 1935, there was a general world-wide depression from which this country suffered as well as every other country? Was it not largely as a result of that circumstance, between 1929 and 1931, that the Minister for Agriculture in the previous Administration went down to Limerick and told the farmers at Hospital that the trend of dairying prices, which were then very low, would be still lower? We had it stated from every platform in the country that conditions were bad everywhere. That continued over a period of years and I think the fact that our predecessors had to bring in a Supplementary Budget when things were all so rosy, as Deputy Mulcahy would now claim, is a fairly good proof that we in this country cannot escape these international movements.
We do not claim that the international situation which has existed since 1937—certainly since 1938-39—will not have its effects upon this country and, perhaps, they will not be very easy to overcome. They have already manifested themselves in reduced revenue and in certain additional items of expenditure. It was for that reason that we, in precisely the same way as our predecessors, had to introduce a Supplementary Budget and had to come here and ask the Dáil to assist us in making up the gap which existed. It seems to me that for a Party that claim to represent rural as well as urban opinion in this country, the Opposition seem to have very little to give in the way of constructive suggestions and very little to show in the way of telling us how, in the present difficult situation, we can ensure that the amount of employment given in the country will increase. We know that no matter what policy the Government may put into operation, no matter what efforts they may make to maintain the level of employment, if employers have difficulties, because of rising prices, because of increasing costs and higher wages and also higher taxation, inevitably that will affect them in the amount of employment they give. I think the Minister for Finance showed clearly that, at any rate, the position which the figures revealed as obtaining in 1937 showed that very steady and substantial progress had been achieved up to that period and I think it is a matter for congratulation that the figures for the following two years show that the position that obtained in 1937 has not only been maintained, but has been somewhat improved.
It might have been just as well, from the point of view of the Government, that the Minister for Lands had not spoken at all. If we want to find out here what the circumstances are, we are entitled to get a direct answer from a Minister to a direct question. The Minister knows the answer to the question that I put to him. Notwithstanding any possible stupidity that he might affect, it is before him in the document that he has what the number is of persons who are calculated to have been registered in National Health Insurance. Why does he refuse to give it? He would like to picture himself in his own constituency as intelligent, honest, candid. Does he reserve his honesty and candour for his own constituency and refuse it here in the Parliament? There is a very simple answer to the question as to why he would not give the figure. It would explode his whole case.
We are not particularly interested in whether the policy adopted by the Ministers was a fake policy or a plan, or merely a theoretical assumption on the part of somebody that they were going to do something. But we knew it was not any use. We are not concerned now with politics; we are concerned with the country. It ought to be everybody's business to see how far it is possible to gain every additional person in the list of those employed in gainful occupations throughout the country.
Deputy Mulcahy gave figures in connection with the numbers of persons registered in National Health Insurance. Nobody suggests for a moment that there is an exact figure for that, but there is a figure upon which there is general agreement that it cannot be improved upon for finding out how many persons are registered year after year. The numbers increased annually by 11,400 for the years 1926 down to 1931. An advertisement appeared in the Press here in the end of 1931 and the beginning of 1932 promising employment for 85,000 persons or 86,000— there was an odd number in it.
Was that an honest advertisement, or was it merely a political statement? It it were honest, and if it were well-thought out, then we had the fallacy of it exposed here this evening from the Ministerial benches. The Government succeeded in getting an average of 12,166 persons into employment annually for over six years. That beat their predecessors' figure by 766. If you multiply 766 by six you get over 4,000. That is the sum and substance of the entire contribution of Ministerial activity in connection with employment in industry and agriculture throughout this country. What has been the cost? Within the last four years we have had three unbalanced Budgets. I ask Deputies to look at the Estimates, and in particular at the cost in respect to the debt for housing. It is up by £100,000 this year. The Government have spent money on housing. Yes, they have spent money that the children and grandchildren of those in this House this evening will be paying for the next 35 or 40 years. I refer to the housing loans. Their predecessors left no debts in respect of housing, except for what the houses were worth. If those houses were sold on the public market they would have brought their price. The houses built by the Ministry, since they came into office, represent a dead-weight debt, and that is going to remain for the next 35 or 40 years.
These are facts: not arguments or political fulminations. It would give us all pleasure to see that test come true with regard to the number employed, but we were satisfied from the first day that advertisement appeared in connection with this faked political plan that it was not going to succeed. It has not succeeded in any country, and never will succeed. It is basically wrong. Now the Government have to admit that the best that could be done over the six years since they came into office was to beat their predecessors' figure in the matter of employment by 766. What has happened in the last two years? A full stop—1,000 in one year, and 1,000 in the next; 10,000 down in one year and 10,000 down in the next. Mind you, we all regret that because we have to live here. We are rooted here, and it is regrettable that in a country like this, a country capable of some industrial and agricultural expansion that we have not got it.
There never was a more gigantic failure of an economic policy than that which we have had presented to us this evening—never: a rising debt, a rising cost of living, a rising cost of production, a lower number of persons in employment than we have been accustomed to, lower than it has ever been since this State was established.
The Minister who has just sat down is concerned about agriculture and wonders why we do not speak about it. What are the facts in connection with the Estimates before us? It is quite true that, taking this year as compared with last, we are £250,000 up. There is, however, a correction to be made in that figure, because the agricultural grant of £370,000 is included in this year's figure and was not in last year's. Consequently, we have to face a reduction, as compared with last year, of something like £100,000 odd. But this year's Book of Estimates shows two remarkable figures—I mean from the point of view of a Deputy who represents an agricultural constituency. First of all, I find that the Vote for Agriculture is £279,000 less than last year, when we were very much concerned with working up winter dairying. This year, apparently, we are not so ambitious, because there is only a token Vote. Last year we provided a very considerable sum of money for subsidies and for agricultural exports. This year the sum of money made available is £260,000 short of what was provided last year. That is the sum and substance of the interest of the Minister for Lands in agriculture. The Minister, having been transferred from the Department of Education to the Department of Lands, is presumably getting more in touch with the people of the country, but the sum and substance of his work is represented by a fall of over £500,000 in the provision that is being made this year for agriculture as compared with last.
Here are some of the larger items in respect of which less money is being provided this year than last. Unemployment schemes are down by £100,000; unemployment assistance is down by £70,000; Public Works and Buildings, if we include the price of sites, is down by £166,000; the Land Commission is down by £208,000; the Department of Local Government and Public Health notwithstanding the £100,000 that has to be provided for the service of debt on uneconomic houses, is down by £138,000, so that taking all these items together we get a total of in or about £780,000. Bearing that figure in mind, one can measure, to some extent, what is happening in regard to the remaining services. At any rate, Deputies can see in the figures I have quoted a shortage of £780,000 in respect of potential employment or social services as they are so elegantly described by Deputies on the benches opposite. The agricultural estimate is down by well over £1,250,000. Notwithstanding that remarkable subtraction, the cost of administration is being kept up to what it was last year.
What is the complaint that we make against the Ministry? That ever since they came into office they have been squandering public money. Their policy of squandermania reached its peak point during the last few years, a policy which is eating into and sapping employment activity throughout this State. The Minister for Finance, during my absence this evening, referred, I understand, to what I had to say about the Estimates. I believe he described as nonsense the proposal I put up that these Estimates could be reduced by £4,000,000. I will give the Minister one figure. I say that the cost of the Army could be reduced by £2,000,000. According to this Book of Estimates, the Army is going to cost this year £3,350,000. If the Estimate for the year 1932-33 is looked up, it will be found when we had an Army that was able to hold its ammunition, that was well disciplined, and in respect of which there had not to be an enquiry lasting over weeks or months, it was costing the country only £1,318,000.
Is there not £2,000,000 that could be saved there? Not at all. They must have a big Army. One country on the Continent had a big army and made a very short fight. We have not got the money for that sort of experimental militarism, for swelling the number of persons under arms, and then not being able to supply them with ammunition. Last year the Prime Minister came here and said that he wanted £1,000,000 for aeroplanes and £1,000,000 for guns. We bought neither, but we have spent the money on a swollen Army. That £2,000,000 that could have been saved is one item on the list. Is it not possible to save another £2,000,000? I believe it is. It will not be done while Ministers have the views they have, while we have the ex-Minister for Education speaking as he did this evening. He would not give the figure for last year. Why? Because it was against him. Will he go before the people in Kilkenny and tell them that is not the reason? Will he tell them that owing to the political decrepitude of the Opposition he is wasting his time in this House? The Minister should have a little sense.
So far as the deductions mentioned by Deputy Mulcahy are concerned, I think he was perfectly entitled to give them in respect of the swollen numbers claimed in respect of these years. There was no policy before this Government, for example giving men two or three days' employment in the week, and charging a stamp for that particular week. We have £1,500,000 voted annually for unemployment schemes for the past couple of years. The figure is a simple one to calculate. It would give employment to 15,000 people, paying them £100 per year for a whole year. These men were not employed the whole year, or anything like it. If they got four months' employment in the year it would be the most they got, and 45,000 men could be added on for these particular years on that basis. These four months would be just one-third of the yearly subscription that had to be provided. Assuming you gave 5,000 that kind of employment—everyone knows that they did not get it—the number could be varied up and down according to the employment given. Is the Deputy not entitled to draw attention to the fact that you cannot calculate men who got three or four days' work as getting full employment for a week? I make the Government a present of the point. The country has to pay the extra cost, which is anything from £4,000,000 to £9,000,000.
So far as housing is concerned, the Minister is scarcely justified in claiming credit for what the children and grand-children of to-day will have to pay. It is very nice to be generous with other people's money, but that money will have to be paid for the next 30 years, long after most of us have passed over, and there will not be any advantage derived by those who have to pay. The advantages are in our time. We have the advantage that people were employed in our time. Let us hope the houses are well built, and that they will not cost much to keep in repair during that period. So far as the first item is concerned it is, in my opinion, beyond the capacity of the people with present income and resources to meet the bill. It is rising and has been rising ever since this Government came into office. That is demonstrated by the increased taxation year after year, on the figures I have given and on the savings made. It is nonsense to be talking about increased responsibilities and social services. The social services are not responsible for half the additional taxation. The additional cost, with the savings, amounts to £9,000,000 and on the social services, £4,000,000. Where is the rest going? On going through the Estimates I find that the person who succeeded to my office has 24 officials where I had 16, and the Department is costing £3,000 more. That is one indication of the extravagance and squandermania characteristic of this Ministry, and until we get rid of it it is not likely that we are going to improve employment in this country.
We were always given to understand that the increased annual expenditure—the amount of which it would be exceedingly difficult to calculate with any exactitude, varying from £4,000,000 acknowledged to £10,000,000 if we include real taxes of all kinds—was to be justified under three heads, a more extensive and a higher degree of social services, the starting of industries which would grow naturally and give employment of a productive kind, and thirdly the excuse of the Minister for Finance, which was repeated, I understand, last Friday by another member of the Government, that money that was raised by taxation, was not being taken out of the country, that it was really being kept here; that by taxes and rates the Government was merely redistributing wealth and that that in itself was a good thing. On several occasions Deputy Cosgrave dealt with the question of social services, behind which the supporters of the Government always tried to hide their extravagant expenditure. He has shown that to practise big economies it is not necessary to curtail these social services. As that has been adequately dealt with I do not intend to go into it now.
Coming to what is the main subject of controversy between the two Front Benches to-day and last week, namely, the question of unemployment, let us ask ourselves what did Deputy Mulcahy's figures set out to prove, and what lesson should they teach the country and Deputies? We have greatly increased taxation under ordinary heads, whether in the nature of tariffs or ordinary taxation to raise revenues, and definitely put on for that particular purpose. There is private taxation in favour of certain industries so as to enable them to make profits and keep going. That meant considerable cost to the public, a cost that is not set out in the ordinary Budget accounts. What has been the result of all the immense heaping on of taxation? Surely, what Deputy Mulcahy set out to prove by his figures has been proved, so far as the employment given by productive industries is concerned. Take the number of tariffed industries; take what they are costing the country; take the boasts made about the number of people that these industries would put into employment, and what is the result? Surely the figures of Deputy Mulcahy prove that when the Cumann na nGaedheal Government kept taxation, tariffs and local expenditure down to a reasonable figure, the increase was something like 11,500 per year, and that under Fianna Fáil the immense expenditure of money has led to only a very slight increase on this figure. Actually, where there was increased employment, it was brought about in two particular directions, building and relief works. Better housing is useful, even necessary, but not productive, and does not itself ensure that there would be further employment in that particular direction —it is not economically productive in the ordinary sense. It is not a factory which is set going and can keep going, producing new wealth. It is a thing which can be done once and for all, or, with increased public expenditure, for a long time. Housing may be necessary; it may be highly desirable that the people should be properly housed; but I put it to the House that it is not a productive industry. It does not produce wealth; it is costly; it means a certain amount of wealth going out of the country—an argument which ought to appeal to the Government, who continually use the opposite argument about the desirability of keeping wealth in the country. At most it distributes wealth in the way of giving employment, but it does not make wealth.
In these circumstances, Deputy Mulcahy was perfectly justified in withdrawing from his calculation these two particular figures, the figures for unemployment relief schemes and the figures for housing. He did not conceal what the total increase in employment was; he made that perfectly clear. When trying to estimate the increase in employment in productive industries there are cogent reasons why these two figures should be deducted. The result of high expenditure in the shape of new industries has been undoubtedly to put a certain number into employment in some industries, but obviously to drive people out of employment in other industries and avocations. We are therefore justified in taking out housing and Government relief schemes. The Minister for Lands wondered why we fixed on these. We did so because these are not industries in the ordinary sense of the word. The Government's much advertised policy was by means of real industries to put people into employment. If that was their policy, how far have they succeeded in that policy?
It is only after a number of years, such as the years through which we have passed, that you are in a position to make up your mind on the value of a policy, and it is a constructive suggestion, in the face of the figures which have been put before the Government in the last couple of days and once more this evening, that the Government should submit their whole policy to a thorough re-examination. I can understand their refusing to do it in the first year or the second or third year, and saying: "We shall have to give the thing a chance." But what is the excuse, with the figures that we have before us now, for their not seriously examining the effects of their policy? In industry, in the ordinary sense, what have they to show for the enormous expenditure which they have put upon the country? What is the result even of the policy of distribution of money on diminishing our unemployment? Is the Ministry satisfied? I gather that the Minister for Lands is not altogether satisfied, because he wants to lead us back again to the high hopes of 1932. He asks us not to look at what has occurred, not to be guided in our conduct by the light of our experience, but to hope that once more, and not for the first time, a new day is dawning. If a new day is dawning, I am sorry to say that the dawn has not yet become visible to the ordinary man in the country.
The Minister for Lands was gravely exercised about the fact that no mention was made by our speakers of agricultural employment. I wonder how he reached that conclusion. Was it merely because the word "agriculture, agriculture" did not ring in his ears— as it so often does—through every speech made by us? Did he not grasp that in the figures supplied to this House agricultural employment is included—they were the figures of National Health Insurance? He ignored that. He ignored that we were dealing with figures of employment in agriculture as well as in industry. What then was his grievance?
If he does want figures for agricultural employment, we have only one set to give him—the official figures for those engaged in domestic service and agriculture. What is the comparison to be made there? We are now answering a question put up by the Minister for Lands who was not satisfied, apparently, because he thought, though we gave the total figures including those in agriculture, we were neglecting agriculture. Taking those figures for agricultural and domestic employment, what were the facts? In the five typical years of our Government brought forth by Deputy Mulcahy for which the figures were given, there was an increase of employment in domestic service and agriculture of 30,000. That was an annual increase of 6,000. Take the next eight years, the eight years of Fianna Fáil policy which are under discussion, and what are the figures? Seven thousand for the eight years. Whereas, therefore, there was an annual increase in our case of 6,000 per annum, there was an increase under the vast expenditure of Fianna Fáil, notwithstanding all the gifts of millions they say that they have made to agriculture, of 875 per year in domestic service and agriculture. These are the only official figures available to me. I give the Minister for Lands these particular figures because he asked for them. I wonder whether he will find them more satisfactory than those which were given this evening by Deputy Mulcahy; but they are the figures.
I could not quite follow, I will confess, what he was driving at in his opening statement, when he said that the figures are not absolute, that they do not give the absolute numbers for employment. Who said they were? The trend is what we are dealing with. I ask the Deputies and Ministers to look at the trend of employment, the rate of employment, and its cost during those last four years of our Administration, when what you might call an orthodox system of finance was pursued and the trend in the last seven or eight years of Fianna Fáil Administration when an unorthodox system of economy and wild schemes of all kinds were adopted.
Compare the trends. Do they suggest that you have got anything like value for the immense expenditure of money in which the Government has indulged? Deputy Mulcahy's figures are brought forward to show one thing, and they have shown that— that all your expenditure of money and your taxation can have only one affect, and that is to dry up the ordinary private sources of employment. You may have put people into employment in certain subsidised industries. You may have put people into employment by subsidising housing, at an immense cost, in both cases, to the ordinary taxpayer. But if there is anything in the figures provided by the Fianna Fáil Government themselves, the only lesson to be drawn from them is that you have driven large numbers out of employment elsewhere, people who would have got employment under ordinary financial workings. You have grievously upset the ordinary man's employment.
You have destroyed the private funds which provided employment for him. What have you to show for it? I do not care whether you add in to your figures the relief workers or the house-building workers; what have you to show for it? What have you to show for the upsetting of the whole system of finance, and for putting the country where it is at the present moment? Again and again I have invited the Government to consult their followers and try to draw from them not pleasant answers but the truth. Let them ask them: "If you go to the country generally, what is the position as regards increasing employment there at the moment?" What is the improvement in the trade in the towns? It is practically nil. I have asked, why is that so? I got two answers from my local friends— (1) that the farmers generally have no money; they do not come into the towns because they have no money to spend; there was an increase in prices about last September, but since last September there has been a collapse in cattle prices generally. That is the obvious explanation. There is another explanation, namely that the farmers may have scraped together a few pounds, but those who have are so uncertain of their position as a result of the jumping up and down of prices in the last few months that they are afraid to go in and spend the few pounds that they may have got together. But the fact is there. There is no distribution of money in the ordinary way of business. There may be distribution of money by the Government, but if there is, that is largely confined to the Government as an employer, a collector and a spender of money. That is the unfortunate situation.
The Minister for Lands asked us to leave out of our calculations the last couple of years, because of the world crisis—because of the international crisis. It was only towards the end of his speech that it dawned on him that there was a similar crisis during our term of office, much more serious indeed, as affecting business. What was the situation over a number of years? We are speaking of the international situation as a fact affecting us here. Let us get down to realities. The world situation may affect us, but we know perfectly well, so far as we are affected by the trend of trade outside this country, particularly so far as selling our goods is concerned, it is principally the business curve in Great Britain that affects us. What was the situation there? There was nothing in that particular situation in the last couple of years—1938-39—that will explain the Government's system of putting people into employment being practically brought to a stop. There was nothing of the kind. The year 1929 is the one in which the crisis occurred regarding the difficulty of trade. Taking 100 as the then figure, trade fell rapidly in the couple of years afterwards until by 1931 it came down to 80. But by 1935 trade was better than in 1929 before the crisis started. Everything in those years was in favour of the Fianna Fáil Government. There was the rising trade curve in the case of our principal customer. Did we take advantage of that? If so, it is not shown in the employment figures that were before the House to-night and last week. In 1936 the figure stood at 110; therefore much better than in 1931 and even than in 1929; in 1937 it was 113, but by the end of that year it fell to 110, in 1938 it was down to 100, but in 1939 the curve again went up to 110. In fact you have this situation that the two years which the Minister for Lands and his colleague the Minister for Finance, want to exclude from their calculations the figures were much higher in the matter of British trade than in 1929, to say nothing of what they were in 1930 and 1931.
The main question we ought to ask ourselves is—is it wise to continue the policy of reckless expenditure that the Government has sponsored in order to "redistribute" money? Social services are one thing. It is useless for the Government to pretend that we are asking for economies and that we want economies in the social services. As we have pointed out here several times in the last couple of months, the Government could save not merely useless but harmful expenditure.
The leader of the Opposition quoted the Army expenditure, and pointed out that it was actually over £3,500,000, a sad comparison with what it was in our time. But he was actually a trifle too modest, because when you look at the expenditure for the Army you do not find it all under the head of the Army. There is other expenditure for the Army by different departments under other Votes. We find that the total money to be spent one way and another on the Army for the present year is not £3,355,000, but adding all these things together, £4,400,000. Yet we have a Government which says, "It is rubbish to talk of economy". We believe that this is not merely extravagance but really harmful expenditure. Judging by the way in which the money has been spent it is helping to deteriorate the Army and to make it a less efficient instrument for the main purpose for which we want it. Yet we have this big Estimate presented to us as if this country were passing not through an era of trial but through an era of undoubted prosperity.
As shown by the figures produced here last week and to-night there is undoubtedly a grave interference with ordinary employment. You have only to consult the employers through the country to find that that conclusion is unfortunately borne out by what they will tell you. The figures were playfully dealt with by the Minister for Lands until he began to find them awkward. Then he adopted an excellent expedient. When he came to a figure that was awkward he hesitated, he simply baulked and did not give the figure. Other Ministers do not do that sort of thing. They see the awkward figure afar off, and when a question is asked they reply: "I will not tell you". When the Minister for Lands came to the jump he did not take it.
It is a serious thing for the country which has had to face the dislocation of business in order that the policy which is now being tried for a number of years should be given another trial in order that the Minister for Finance could, perhaps, in the course of the next few years do penance for his "spend and do not stop spending" policy. That policy is leading nowhere except to a situation that everybody in the country except the Government knows. I think there are members of the Government who know it. If there are such members their voice is not effectively heard in the Executive Council because it is quite obvious from the Book of Estimates that that same policy is being still pursued. Where there is a saving, it is a saving in those Departments that might be helpful to agriculture and so on. It is a saving only in those items that give employment, but there is no evidence of a dawning sense of reality about Ministers so far as this financial policy is concerned.
Deputy Mulcahy's figures are absolutely conclusive even if you refuse to regard them as figures giving absolute numbers of employed and take them as figures showing the trend of employment. Taking them as showing the latter, then the trend disclosed by these figures is the greatest condemnation you could bring forward of the financial policy of the Government over a number of years. We do not expect the Government to put on sack-cloth and ashes but we do hope that, without making public confession of their faults, they will change their policy. If there were any evidence in this Book of Estimates of their determination to change their policy we might have some hope. It is because there is no such evidence that we are bound to guide ourselves not by our hopes but by our experience. A sufficient number of years has now elapsed to enable us to judge the value of the Government's policy for producing employment and increasing wealth in the normal way, even by subsidising industries. By whichever of these standards you judge Government policy, it is clear that, from the national point of view, it has completely failed and ought to be radically changed.
One of the excuses made by the Government for the increase in expenditure over the last eight years was that it was mainly due to circumstances beyond their control. Deputy Kissane repeated that excuse in a speech this afternoon. May I suggest that many of the difficulties we labour under are due not to circumstances beyond the Government's control but to the fact that they tried to control things which rapidly got beyond their control. I do not intend to go very extensively into statistics or figures. Perhaps, I would not have got up at all but for the repeated challenges thrown out by the Minister for Lands to the farming Deputies of this side because they did not get up and speak on this occasion. He hinted that they were afraid to speak. I should like, however, to make reference to the figure of 120,000 as representing the unemployed. If Ministers and members of the Government Party had not very short memories, they would recall that eight or nine years ago they declared in no uncertain language that unemployment, which was then much lower than it is now, could be abolished and rapidly abolished and, at the same time, that taxation could be reduced by £2,000,000.
We have gone on for eight years since then and, instead of a reduction of taxation, we have taxation increased by £11,000,000. If we give the Government credit for the amount they collected in respect of the remission of annuities and local loans, they have, probably, £14,000,000 or £15,000,000 more to spend annually than the previous Government had to spend. If something useful had been done for that money there would not be the grumble in this House that there is. Is the average Deputy aware that this huge sum would have sufficed to put every single unemployed man in this State at work at £2 per week? It would have sufficed to put agriculture into such a condition that this would probably be the most prosperous agricultural country in the world. Instead of that we have a policy pursued which, notwithstanding the expenditure of £15,000,000 additional per year, has left us with a substantial addition to our unemployed and a largely impoverished agricultural community.
The Minister for Lands tried to refute the figures put forward so ably by Deputy Mulcahy. When he became confused in the mass of figures, his only refuge was agriculture and he told us the Deputies on this side had made no reference to agriculture in this debate. Possibly, for the Minister, it was a case of "out of the frying pan into the fire" because, if Deputies on the Labour Benches and on other benches are interested in the countless people without work, there is no less dissatisfaction amongst 90 per cent. of the agriculturists regarding their present condition. The main cause of the trouble in regard to unemployment and expenditure on social services is the Ministry's policy in regard to agriculture. It is not so long since the economic war, and may I remind Deputies opposite that that war, which we won, or are supposed to have won, was a costly war. It cost the agricultural community and, through the agricultural community, every other individual in this country, including the workless, many of the sacrifices which they have had to endure in the last four or five years. How much the agricultural community lost by that war, which was won, has been variously computed.
It was lost by your antics.
Deputies cannot, however, dispute the figures furnished by the British customs authorities. The duties collected by the British customs authorities on our cattle amounted to £26,396,077. The Minister cannot deny that that money came out of the farmers' pockets. That takes no account of the cattle exported which paid no duty. Some thousands of cattle went across the Border into Northern Ireland and escaped duty but the farmer lost on these cattle as well as on the others. It does not include the cattle sold at home, which are stated to be almost equal in number to those exported. No Minister can say that the farmer did not lose on these cattle as he lost on the exported cattle because the home price was governed by the export price. There were millions lost in that way. Any estimate short of £50,000,000 or £60,000,000—if I were to make an estimate I would put it much higher—would be a false estimate of the losses of the farmers during the economic war. You cannot take £50,000,000 or £60,000,000 out of the chief industry of our country in a limited number of years and expect that industry or other industries depending upon it to prosper. That is still the crux in regard to the activities of the Ministry now in office.
If the Ministry had attempted to assist agriculture in a manner similar to that adopted in regard to industry, the position might be different. If, instead of setting up countless new industries with every sort of protection it was possible to give them, and with every calculation made in respect of them before they were set up, they had devoted their energies to assisting agriculture, everything might have been different here. I think a wise suggestion came from Deputy Childers. It is a suggestion which I myself made at another period, that the farmers' position should be that his production costs should be assured and a certain small interest on his capital investment also assured. I think Deputy Childers made reference to that point, but if he did not, I apologise for attributing it to him. I heard, on the wireless last night, the British Minister of Agriculture saying that the British agriculturists must definitely be assured their costs of production and an amount necessary to pay their workers a reasonable wage, with some small profit for themselves. That is all we have ever demanded, and that is what we now demand and which failure to grant will leave this country in possibly a worse position than that in which it has been for the last five or six years.
What is the position with regard to the attempts which the Government have made to bolster up every little artificial industry that could be bolstered up? Every investigation was made as to their prospects and if there was one chance in a million of success, an industry was started. The capital of the people proposing to set it up was investigated and, if they had not enough capital, capital was placed at their disposal. Costings were made out as to the probable expenditure necessary to put an industry on a proper footing, and arrangements were made eventually for protection to such an extent that there would be a reasonable profit given on the money invested and provision made to pay a fair wage to all workers employed, and also that if the investors happened to be directors, they also would get a reasonable salary. What is the position with regard to agriculture? Did the Government ever take any pains to investigate whether the farmer got anything near his cost of production, whether he got enough to pay his labourers a reasonable wage, or whether he got any profit on his capital investment? I make bold to say that there is not a Deputy even on the Fianna Fáil benches who will say that even if, in the luckiest event, a farmer was able to pay a reasonable wage to a fair number of workers, he ever got anything at all as interest on his capital investment. Ministers will argue that there was no room for such an investigation in this country.
The Deputy should remember that this Central Fund Bill deals with expenditure and that the discussion should not be such as might arise on the Estimate for the Minister for Agriculture.
I did not intend to take part in the debate at all, but the agriculturists of this Party were challenged by the Minister who was on the Front Bench on his own for a time. He spoke for over half an hour and when he could not find any other argument to refute certain suggestions made on this side, he fell back on the lame argument that there should have been an attempt by the agricultural Deputies on this side to make a case.
That challenge does not put the matter in order.
If you rule that I am not allowed to make a case from the agricultural point of view as to why this Estimate should be voted against, I shall abide by your ruling, Sir.
This is not an Estimate. The Estimates were first discussed and then the itemised Vote on Account. This is the Central Fund Bill which contains no items. Neither on the Vote on Account nor the Central Fund Bill should details or matters which might be discussed on a particular Estimate be raised.
It certainly appears to me that this is a Vote which gives the Minister power to dispose of millions of pounds of the taxpayers' money. However, if the Minister wishes that I should not make any further references——
The Minister's wishes are not considered in this matter.
If the Chair wishes that I should make no further reference to agriculture, I shall not do so. I am always ready to obey the rulings of the Chair. With regard to unemployment, Deputy Mulcahy gave certain figures to show the effect of Fianna Fáil policy in reducing employment as compared with the effect of the policy of the previous Government. I think he proved his case to the satisfaction of every Deputy and of all the Ministers. There was an attempt by the Minister for Lands to challenge me to speak of agriculture when he was trying to refute Deputy Mulcahy's figures. He began by reading statistics and when he found them beyond him, he dropped them, and it was then that he flung his challenge to me and to other Deputies here. One interesting reference he did make was to Deputy Mulcahy's argument that the number employed should be reduced by the number engaged in housing as the housing figures would be non-recurrent. I think that argument was sound and I do not think any Deputy can refute it. The Minister put forward the argument, however, that if Deputy Mulcahy deducted the figure for housing, he might just as well have deducted the figure for building industries. I hope the Minister has not so poor an opinion of the eventual success of the industries which have been started under huge tariffs and of the employment they will give that he thinks that that employment is going to be of as temporary a character as employment in the building of a house. I hope the Minister for Finance has a better opinion of the ultimate prospects of some of these industries than the Minister for Lands. I move the adjournment of the debate.
Debate adjourned until Wednesday.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. Wednesday, 13th March, 1940.