Committee on Finance. - Vote on Account, 1941-42 (Resumed). – Dáil Éireann (10th Dáil) – Thursday, 13 Mar 1941

Committee on Finance. - Vote on Account, 1941-42 (Resumed).

Mr. D. Morrissey

When the House adjourned last night, I was dealing with this Vote on Account and with the question of supplies and the report of the speech made by the Minister for Supplies. The Minister, as I said last night, began his speech by telling us that he wanted to make a calm approach to the matter and to discuss it in a serious way. It must be said, of course, that, for the greater part of his speech he did discuss the matter in what was for him a calm way, with occasional lapses from calmness, but it was doubtful if at any time during the course of that long speech he discussed the matter seriously. We had from him lessons directed to this side of the House on our sense of responsibility. We were told that we should not make speeches that might imperil the State. We were told that it was a serious matter and was worthy of serious consideration by every member of this House. I agree. But let me suggest this to the House, that the speeches which were made by the Minister for Supplies and the Minister for Industry and Commerce in this House on Tuesday last were of a type much more likely to imperil the State than any of the speeches which were made from this side of the House. The Minister need not have the slightest fear that any speech or any statement will be made from here that is likely to impair in the slightest this State.

Of course, one knows why that sort of statement is made. One also knows why we read this morning in the leading article of the Government organ the statement that there is a campaign to shake the people's confidence in the Government. If there is, then the people who are conducting that campaign are the members of the Government themselves. As a matter of fact, as a result of the activities— and in many cases the want of activity —of the Government over the last 18 months, the people have not only been shaken, they have on a few occasions been stunned. Surely the Government's record with regard to the handling of the petrol situation was enough to shake the people. The fact that we could be told by the Minister for Supplies in this House that we need have no anxiety and that nobody in the country need have any anxiety about supplies of tea, that there was no reason why every person in the country could not get 100 per cent. of his requirements, and that that statement had to be denied three days afterwards by the Taoiseach himself does not help to build up confidence in the Government. The fact that, in an agricultural country such as this, people cannot get enough butter—in many cases cannot get any at all— over a fairly long period; the fact that it is difficult to get coal or fuel of any sort, and so far as coal is concerned only coal of a very inferior quality at a very high price; the fact that there was such a lack of foresight in the Government and in the Department of Supplies that, according to the Minister himself, there was no storage and means of unloading the wheat that did come into the country in July and in December last; the fact that we are faced with the prospect of having tens of thousands of unemployed in this country because the Government did not take steps that might have been taken to ensure reserves of raw materials for our factories—these are the matters, I suggest, that go to shake the confidence of the people in the Government, not only in the Government but even in Parliamentary institutions. These facts are responsible, not what is alleged by the Minister and by the organ of the Government.

Another reason why the people are losing confidence in the Government and in Parliamentary institutions is that they are not being and have not been told the truth by the Government. There is no doubt about it that the people of this country for the last two years have been fed by the Government of this country on half-truths and, on many occasions, on barefaced lies, completely misrepresenting the situation. We had the Minister for Supplies stating, no later than last week, in the Seanad, that the Department of Supplies was to be congratulated on the fact that, owing to their foresight, after 18 months of war, no serious consequences had developed in this country. The fact of the matter is that the members of the Government are apparently sticking their heads in the sand; they are refusing to see the position as it really is and, if confidence in the Government and in this Parliament has been shaken in the country, it has been shaken, not because of speeches that have been made, but because of the fact that many speeches which should have been made over the last 18 months were not made and because on many occasions that this House should have been meeting it was not meeting.

We are not making speeches here merely for the pleasure of making them. We have to go home to our constituencies when the Dáil closes down after meetings and we are living at home in our constituencies when the Dáil is not meeting. We are meeting the ordinary people every day in the week and they are telling us what we should do and what we should say. That is our duty here. That is what we were sent here for by the people but, according to the Minister for Supplies, we only begin co-operating with and helping the Government when we decide to remain, as I said last night, dumb or else to say "ditto" to everything the Government does or fails to do. That is not our conception of our duty, and some of us honestly believe that we are doing a good service for our constituents and for the country and, perhaps, for the Government, by putting the position as we see it and pointing out to the Ministers the mistakes which we believe they have made. You are not going to gain the confidence of the people of this country and you are not going to have 100 per cent. following for Parliamentary institutions and for Parliamentary government while you are trying to delude the people.

Let us take the Book of Estimates that is before us. Let us take this Vote on Account. What is that but a dishonest estimate for the services for this coming year? It was stated in the House yesterday that the Minister for Finance made a very brief statement introducing the Vote on Account. I am not surprised that his statement was very brief. Taking the Book of Estimates and going through it from cover to cover, with the exception of one service, would one believe from it that we were living in 1941, in the midst of a world war, and not in 1934 or 1935?

In one service only is there any attempt to meet the situation which has arisen out of the war, and that is for the Army. There are two outstanding sets of figures in the Book of Estimates, those for the Defence Forces and those dealing with unemployment. So far as the figures for the Defence Forces are concerned I have no complaint to make. I believe the Government is entitled to get, and that it will get, from this House and the country whatever money is necessary to maintain efficient Defence Forces. Let me now come to what I consider to be absolute dishonesty. Every member of the House knows, and members of the Government have admitted, that we are facing a year in which we are going to have tens of thousands added to the numbers unemployed. I doubt if any Minister would question any figure that I would attempt to mention about the additional numbers of unemployed that we may expect within the next twelve months. Certainly, I would not be putting it too high if I said that there would be 50,000 additional. What are the people told? When the Bill to deal with the unemployed is examined, a service to which we look in the main for the relief of unemployment, the Government proposes to meet the situation by reducing the Estimate by £400,000. The provision for the Estimate last year was £1,400,000, and this year £1,000,000. It is the same with forestry and other services that might be looked to for useful employment.

Is the Government afraid to trust the people? Is it afraid that the people will not stand up to the shock when they see what they have to pay? Do we not know that the Book of Estimates no more represents the expenditure that is certain to be required for the coming 12 months than this Vote on Account represents it? Do we not know that these Estimates will be followed by Supplementary Estimates, and that many of these Supplementary Estimates will be for huge amounts? Why not tell the people the truth? They are not going to blame the Government for everything, and neither are the members of this House going to do so. It would not be right. But we blame them for not having had ordinary foresight and for not preventing—as they easily could have prevented—the shortage of materials that exists to-day. The position is serious enough to look back on what has happened for the last two years. I had hoped that, in the course of his one-and-a-half hours' speech last night, the Minister for Supplies might have given the country some reason why he did not use the powers he had from September 1938 to September 1939, to build up reserves, or why he did not use the other period—which was comparatively not as easy—from September 1939 to the end of June, when France fell, to do so. During the whole course of that speech he did not give one sound reason for his attitude. He told us that there was no use in talking about the last two years now, and in answer to points raised by Deputies said that they could talk about them when the war is over.

Even the Government is not taking the matter seriously. The Minister told us yesterday that rationing was not required at present. If the Government continue to pursue the policy it has pursued, it will only bring in a half-baked scheme to ration commodities that are no longer there. I noticed that the Minister for Education, speaking in the other House yesterday, stated that the Government did not consider it necessary to have a national register. He said that we might have to have a national register in the future, but that the Government had reached no decision upon it yet. I am sorry that the Minister for Supplies or the Minister for Industry and Commerce is not in the House. I should like either of them to tell us whether the question of having a national register has been examined, so as to put them in a position to state how long it would take to compile that register. What I want to know is this. If to-morrow morning it was clear to the Government that a national register was essential, how long would it take to secure that national register? I must confess that after listening to the Minister, he has shaken whatever little confidence I had in the Government—not only shaken it but completely removed it.

If that is the sort of blundering we are to have in a period of peace, I absolutely shudder at what the position would be if by any ill-fortune we became involved in this war. There would be indescribable chaos, indescribable misery and indescribable panic. There is no proper co-ordination of any services that I am aware of. There is no planning from the top and no proper precautions; nobody that could put a finger on a button which, on being pressed, would start the whole machine working.

We have been talking here for a considerable time about the unfortunate position we are in in relation to supplies of manures, seeds and other essentials. I cannot understand why 12 months ago, when the war had been six months in progress, the Minister for Agriculture could not have taken the necessary steps to ensure that this Spring we would have adequate supplies of root seeds and of vegetables. The position is far worse when we realise that whatever limited imports were available to us for this year's sowing will not be available next year. So far as I can see, no really determined effort was made by his or any of the other Departments to see that in this month, which is the critical month, farmers are taking the necessary steps to provide seeds of their own for next Spring. I make full allowance for the fact that, owing to the unfortunate outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, the Department of Agriculture is carrying a very heavy load at present. I make full allowance for that, but I suggest that the provision of seeds is so vital that some branch of the Department should give its full time to seeing that whatever seeds are necessary are obtained without any delay. There are many other things that one could, if one wished, deal with, but I say very definitely, that members of the Opposition Parties sitting in this House have, for the last 18 months, refrained from criticising many matters which it seems to me now they should have criticised.

They have refrained to the extent that they have brought on their heads blame and condemnation from their constituents and from the people of the country generally. People have come to the conclusion, so far as one can hear, that we are all in the same boat, that we are all responsible for every muddle that has taken place and most people will say to you "If you fellows were on your toes, saw that things were done properly and insisted on their being done properly, many of the things that have happened would not have happened."

When the Minister talks about speeches and criticism offered in this House as being likely to endanger the State, I think he is quite wrong. I think the thing that is most likely to endanger this State or to bring this House into the contempt of the people is that we on our part should refrain from criticising the Government or that the Government on their part should refuse to give us the right to express the views of our constituents in this House as we gather them ourselves down the country. I do not think that Ministers should fly off the handle in the way some of them do when criticism is offered in this House. I think that Ministers will have to admit that the Opposition Parties have gone very far to meet them in every way that was reasonable, to meet them in some things even that were not so reasonable and that we have shown every desire to help them in this time of crisis. Personally I should be sorry to see that effort dissipated or frustrated in any way, but I am satisfied the Government will have to wake up for one thing and that they will have to give the people their confidence if they expect confidence from the people. They will have to tell the people the truth no matter how bitter it is.

There are very few people in this country so foolish as to imagine that they are going to come out of the present emergency without getting hard knocks or without having to make sacrifices. You are not going to make these sacrifices easier by pretending that the necessity is not there or that losses have not to be borne. There is a danger that we might make the big mistake made by some countries, particularly by one country in Europe, of lulling our people into a false sense of security, so false that when the first shock of events came upon them, they collapsed completely. It is better that people should know what they have to face, that we should inform them not merely of what is probable but what is possible. It is better that people should know these things. I suggest seriously to the Minister for Finance that there is no use in bringing in a Book of Estimates for £35,000,000 or £36,000,000 and pretending to the people that that is the full bill they will have to meet when he knows better than anybody else that it is not, that the bill will be far greater than that. If you trust the people, I believe the people will trust you, but if you continue to hide the truth from them I believe you cannot blame them if they lose confidence in you.

Mr. Norton

We are being asked for this Vote an Account, but I suppose in considering it, we must have regard to the Estimates for the Public Services for the entire year. The one thing that strikes me, in connection with the Estimates for the year ending March, 1942, is the fact that they represent a very substantial increase on the Estimates of the previous year, even when you allow for the fact that we have before us the Estimates of the previous year, plus Supplementary Estimates, whereas in the Book of Estimates just furnished to us we have only the initial Estimates for this year. We do not know to what extent the bill will be increased by the time we reach March, 1942. If we glance at the Estimates, however, there is one thing more than another that seems pre-eminent. It is that, notwithstanding the very substantial increase in expenditure, the struggle for life in this country, the struggle of the working man and the small farmer is more acute to-day than ever it was. Our expenditure in the financial year 1932-33 was £24,000,000. Our expenditure for the year 1940-41 was £34,600,000, and at the outset of this year we are being asked to vote a sum of £35,300,000. We do not yet know how many Supplementary Estimates we shall be asked to pass during the year. I would not mind so much the expenditure of this sum of money if I could only be assured that it was making the lot of the masses of the people happier, that it was helping to bring some sunshine and contentment, some sense of economic security into the homes of the masses of our people. Notwithstanding the fact that the Estimates have increased from £24,000,000 in 1932-33 to a minimum of £35,300,000 at the outset of this year, the lot of the ordinary unemployed man in this country is harder to-day than ever. The lot of the small farmer and of the lowly-paid worker is harder than ever and, generally speaking, the struggle for life is keener than ever it has been during the past ten years. That seems to me to indicate clearly that we are spending these very large sums of money in a manner that is not giving the very best possible return, that we are neglecting to take a very obvious precaution, namely, to harness the waste brain-power and man-power of our people in intensified national production and so put our idle people into employment.

We have to-day well over 100,000 persons unemployed. They must be fed and clothed in some fashion, and because of the fact that they do not work, they can only draw on the pool of productivity without adding anything to it. Out of that pool they can unfortunately get only a fragment of both food and clothing, but the collective fragments represent a substantial sum in our circumstances and entail a lowering of the standard of life generally. Their participation in the pool of productivity means that their colleagues who are better off only to the extent that they have a week's wages are inevitably being dragged down by being asked to carry this mass of unemployed people who should be put to work, adding to the national wealth and raising the abnormally low standard of productivity in this country. It is because we can see these painful results that there are complaints about the extent of our expenditure and the direction of our expenditure. A wise Government ought to take notice that the volume of complaints has now probably reached its highest level. It ought to realise that there is a necessity for a review and a revision of the methods which have been relied upon in the past.

We had a speech last night from the Minister for Supplies and we had another speech from him on Tuesday night. The House usually sees the Minister only in one rôle. For the last few days the House has been privileged to see him in two rôles. On Tuesday he was very irritable, extremely peevish, and indulged in quite irresponsible statements. Last night the Minister opened his speech like a lamb. Generally speaking, for the best portion of it he maintained a lamb-like disposition with occasional streaks of the peevishness and irritability that we had on Tuesday night. But, so far as the Minister did speak last night on the problems of supplies, his speech was a revelation in many respects. I do not think that even the most ardent admirer of the Minister's policy, reading the speech he made last night, could fail to recognise in that speech a confession that, so far as his Department and the Government were concerned, they failed to appreciate sufficiently the circumstances in which an island country, in our geographical position and in our circumstances, would find itself placed as a result of the military conflict in Europe and the aerial combats in the vicinity of this island.

Surely the Minister knew in September, 1939, that there had been a formal declaration of war? Surely the Minister knew that the most powerful nations in Europe were then at war? Surely he knew that, so far as one of these nations was concerned, it was a nation from which we, in the past, drew a considerable proportion of our raw materials and supplies, if not directly at least on an agency basis? Yet in face of the fact that he knew the great Powers of Europe had gone to war in September, 1939, that this country would have to rely on its own resources, that it was ill-equipped to transport raw materials or manufactured materials to its shores because of the absence of a mercantile marine, the Minister took ineffective, puny steps to enable the nation to withstand the very obvious blockade which would be waged around those islands in the course of that war.

The Minister ought to have known perfectly well that in the main, our prosperity comes from agriculture; that agriculture has been and always will remain the main source of our prosperity; and that any intensification of tillage in this country would bring with it a greater demand for fertilisers and a greater demand for those ingredients which help to make tillage a successful operation. But the war was only on about twelve months when we discovered a very considerable shortage of fertilisers. For the best part of that twelve months, the war in fact was in a relatively undeveloped stage. But before we had three months of intensive warfare this country was face to face with the fact that it could not get sufficient fertilisers. To-day it is extremely difficult to get fertilisers even on the 50 per cent. basis which the Minister for Agriculture indicated would be available throughout the country. Next year we will probably get no fertilisers from any place overseas and such limited quantities as we can produce ourselves will go a very short distance in aiding the farmers in their efforts to secure the best productivity from the land.

The Minister asked the other evening, when discussing the petrol shortage, whether an economic council could possibly have foreseen that shortage and have made other plans for dealing with the situation. The Minister was apparently satisfied up to December last to take from overseas shipping companies assurances of certain deliveries of petrol. Suddenly he found himself in December last face to face with an ultimatum that we were not to get petrol on the scale upon which we had previously imported it. Then we had the sudden panicky stoppage of petrol supplies, with jerky alterations in the scheme of distribution since then, culminating in a statement from the Minister last night that we would be lucky if the present petrol ration could continue, and that, if we were unlucky, there would be no petrol for anybody. Can anybody imagine the petrol situation being left in a more indefinite way? If we are lucky this month's ration will continue; if we are unlucky there will not be any petrol for anybody.

The Department of Supplies was established in 1938. The war did not break out until 1939, and it did not develop its intensified phase until about May, 1940. Up to that time we had an opportunity of building storage tanks here; up to that time we had an opportunity of storing petrol here. Why did we not take adequate steps in that direction? Apparently, in case we would have too much petrol, we disposed of the few tankers we had, and they are now sailing the seas bringing the petrol to other countries when they might be available for bringing petrol to this country.

Then we had the tea situation. If there has been a strong complaint about the shortage of tea, that complaint has been due to the Minister's handling of the situation. Last night, in explanation of the shortage, he said that he got certain assurances from the Tea Control Board in Great Britain that supplies would continue to be made available and that suddenly that position altered. A mere alteration in the mind of a person, a national of another country, was able to precipitate a very serious crisis here in respect to tea. If we had been taking a long-distance view of the matter and had realised our inherent weakness in respect to the import of commodities, it would surely have been wise for the Government to have bought tea when tea could be bought and to have utilised our now frozen assets in London for the purpose of purchasing that tea. But, instead, we were apparently content to rely on an assurance from the British that tea would come in and also to rely on a scheme for the joint chartering of neutral ships until we found it was to our disadvantage, and between relying on the joint chartering of neutral ships and assurances from the British that tea supplies would come here, we are now in the position of being face to face with a very serious tea shortage.

When the Minister was speaking in this House in January last, as the context of his speech will show, he definitely left the House under the impression that there was no reason to fear a tea shortage, that the only difficulty which has arisen up to that was due to the eccentricity of one particular tea importer in harbouring supplies and feeling that he could not continue to distribute them in the same way as his fellow-members in the Tea Importers' Association. But the Minister assured the House that the difficulty had been removed by his Department's contact with the Tea Importers' Association and that we could look forward to a reasonable distribution of tea and that there was then no indication that a shortage was in sight.

But, of course, the position has got steadily worse. It has been extremely difficult for poor people to get supplies of tea, and particularly difficult for those sections of the poor who have to rely on weekly accounts. So serious has the position become that the Minister, although opposed to rationing, has felt compelled by the force of circumstances to introduce a tea rationing scheme so as to prevent a further deterioration of the position.

The Minister, last night, was questioned about the price of tea. He got extremely irritable. I suggest to him that the calculation which Deputy Mulcahy made—I made a similar one myself on the same lines—was a fair example to bring before the Minister and the House. If imports show that a certain quantity of tea costs a certain amount of money, it surely is a legitimate calculation knowing the quantity and value of the tea imported, to say that the tea cost so much on importation, and to compare that with the price at which tea is now selling in the country. A calculation of that kind will show that tea imported into this country in 1940 was costing 1/7¾d. a lb. as against 1/6 a lb. in 1939. Would anyone dare go into a shopkeeper to-day and ask for a lb. of tea at 1/7¾d., even allowing him a profit of 25 or 33 per cent. on that price? The tea that was imported at 1/7¾d. per lb. was "all grade" tea. The import price of tea between 1939 and 1940 went up by 1¾d. per lb. Everyone who has made inquiries realises that the retail price, of even the poorest quality tea, went up very substantially between 1939 and 1940, and it is probable that the stocks now in hand will be sold at a still higher price during this year. Surely, Deputies should not be described as being mischievous when they ask the Minister to explain why such a small increase in the price of tea on import should show itself in such a substantial rise in price to the ordinary consumers, and particularly the poorer consumers throughout the country.

The Minister likewise got annoyed when questioned about the price of coal. His colleague, the Minister for

Industry and Commerce, in reply to a question in the House yesterday gave an indication of the price of coal on importation, a price much lower than that which householders and bellmen are obliged to pay for coal to-day. It was a fair question to ask a Minister, why, if coal is being imported at 45/- per ton bellmen are being charged 63/- per ton. The Minister said last night that the bellmen's coal was being subsidised, the ordinary consumer apparently paying more for his coal in order to permit bellmen to get coal at a cheaper price. When a protest was made against the price which is being charged for coal, the Minister again got indignant. I suggest to him that if he were to go down to the coalyards, have a look at the heaps of coal there for bellmen, and exercise his judgment as a citizen instead of as a Minister, he would have no hesitation in saying that, instead of being heaps of coal, these are heaps of rubbish, and that the proportion of slack in them is appalling.

We have seen now that without any increase in wages at all, or with only a negligible percentage increase in wages, there has been a very substantial increase in the price of commodities. Instead of trying in equity to adjust the standard of living of the masses of the people to the new price levels, the Government appears to be satisfied with the policy of allowing the manufacturers to get their ransom out of the emergency situation, while depressing the standard of living of the working-class section of the community. I think the Government should by now realise that so long as they permit an upward price movement to continue, and to continue apparently uncontrolled—because one cannot imagine that there was any serious control in respect of the prices of many commodities—it is grossly unfair to peg the standard of living down to the level in operation in September, 1939. The Minister may, for the time being, get away with such a policy, but if he sows a wind of that kind he will reap a whirlwind at a later stage. The Government ought to realise that prudence and good economics demand that, just as we are going to fight to protect the independence of this nation during the emergency, we ought also to fight to protect the standard of living of the masses of the people in this country. We have permitted their standard of living to be depressed. We have made no pretence whatever of protecting them from the worst evils that have flown from the emergency situation.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce has apparently tried to draw some consolation from the position of employment in the building trade, but his endeavours appear to have been quite unrelated to the information which he furnished to this House. Replying to a question in the House on the 5th of this month the Minister furnished information showing the number of persons unemployed in the building trade. I must exclude the first period, because during that period there was a strike in the trade which gave us abnormal numbers of unemployed, but if we take the building trade unemployment at June, 1940, we find that there were registered in the country as unemployed 6,285 building trade workers. In October, 1940, that figure had fallen to 6,193, but by 5th January, 1941, the figure had risen to 8,708. There were 2,500 more building trade workers unemployed on 5th January, 1941, than there were on 6th October, 1940. We had that position, notwithstanding the fact that, during that period, quite a number of building trade workers joined the Army and others got visas to enable them to get employment in Belfast or Britain. That is the position in respect to the industry as a whole. It reflects to some extent the position in Dublin. In October, 1939, we had 3,100 building trade workers idle in Dublin. In June, 1940, the figure was 2,900, but in January, 1941, the figure was 3,500, again notwithstanding the fact that a number meanwhile had joined the Army while others had become emigrants.

How can the Minister hope to draw consolation from such disturbing figures? How can any Minister feel complacent about a situation represented by figures of that kind? I can only imagine that the Minister for Industry and Commerce is completely out of touch with what is happening in industry, particularly in the house-building industry. If he cares to check up on the matter, let him pick out half-a-dozen builders, large or small, in Dublin, and ask them what the position is. Speculative building in the city has practically ceased; large-scale building is stopped because of the emergency situation, the shortage of supplies and the high cost of materials. The building trade is in a very serious position at the moment, but I venture to say, and I think it is an obvious prophecy, that the position will be very much worse as the months pass. Instead of trying to stimulate house-building activities, to get house building going again, the Minister is apparently quite complacent about the situation; he does not feel there is any necessity for him to move, and he seems to regard the present position as something on which he ought to preen himself in debates in this House.

We were told by the Minister for Supplies last evening that his best and, in fact, his only method of effecting price control is to make all the retailers register and then he will try to create such an army of inspectors that they will be able to visit these retailers, from time to time, discover cases of over-charging and remove offenders from the register. If that is the last word in the detection of profiteering, it seems to me that the Minister is bankrupt of plans for dealing with a situation of that kind. Whoever heard of a scheme of price control operated solely by methods of that kind? The Minister told us his aim would be to try to have a system of equitable distribution and that persons who charge high prices will be punished. He knows perfectly well that even with existing powers very few people have been prosecuted, although the evidence was in the Department's hands, and very little action has been taken by the Department to ensure the creation of a fair price level and to prevent profiteering.

I was interested to hear the Minister's scheme of distribution—how, if only 50 per cent. of supplies was available, the wholesaler would ration the retailer to the extent of 50 per cent and the retailer would ration consumers in the same proportion. That scheme is supposed to be in operation in respect of tea and butter. I can give one example of how it is working in respect of butter. I have here a letter, dated 12th March, from a person in the city who runs a small shop. This letter points out that during 1940 the cash purchases of butter from a certain company in the city averaged 144 lbs. per month. In January this small shopkeeper received only 45 lbs., approximately one-third of the normal supply; in February, she got 12 lbs., one-twelfth of the normal supply, and so far in this month she received only five lbs., or approximately one-thirtieth of the normal supply.

This is the kind of shop that sells butter to poor people living in built-up, working-class areas. This lady used to get 144 lbs. a month in 1940 and one can imagine the position of her customers if she can now only get 12 lbs. to supply them. They will have to take one-twelfth of what they previously got. In such a situation as we are now passing through, no retailer would dare take on a new customer for butter. If a retailer did, it would mean lessening the quantity available for regular customers. That is what is happening under the Minister's system of rationing the wholesaler and retailer. It would be far better, from a national point of view, if there was a rigid scheme of rationing in operation rather than have results of such an inequitable character as I have described.

It has been stated that the Estimates for this year show a substantial reduction in respect to unemployment relief schemes and certain Governmental activities associated with the provision of work for the unemployed in rural areas. The Land Commission are going to cut down expenditure on the improvement of estates by £100,000. That means that there will be £100,000 less in the pockets of the people in rural areas during the present financial year. If you go through all the Departments that spend money in the employment of labour, a similar picture will be presented in the Book of Estimates. When you reach a situation in which the Government deliberately set the pace to curtail expenditure, one can easily appreciate how speedily it will be possible to bring about a serious economic position.

The Government have completely somersaulted from their declarations at the outbreak of the war. We then had statements from the Taoiseach and the Minister for Supplies urging employers to keep on as many employees as possible, not to displace them. There was an appeal by the then Minister for Industry and Commerce to people to keep up normal spending, not to contract expenditure, because of its reactions on employment. These were the declarations we had on the outbreak of the war. Now, there is a new policy in operation. The policy now is to cut, and cut and cut as much as you can.

Mr. Lemass

The very reverse is the case.

Mr. Norton

It is quite obvious that although the Minister has been supplied with a Book of Estimates, he has not studied it. I advise him to turn to the spending Departments in the Book of Estimates and see what is happening. Look at the Unemployment Insurance and the Unemployment Relief Votes and see what is taking place. Perhaps it is not necessary to waste time doing that, because we are proving just the obvious. Taking a recent declaration, we have 105,000 persons registered as unemployed in the labour exchanges to-day. Then we had the speech of the Minister for Supplies to a Fianna Fáil cumann recently, when he stated that we are facing a crisis of the first magnitude. We had, shortly before that, a statement by the chairman of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce to the effect that, in eight months, one-third of the population of Eire would be unemployed and, in face of a crisis of the first magnitude, with such a bleak, despairing prophecy as that indulged in by the chairman of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, we find the Government issuing an Employment Period Order, the effect of which will be to wipe 60,000 people off the unemployment assistance list between 5th March and 28th October.

I dare any Deputy, even on the Government Benches and particularly Deputies from undeveloped areas, to say that they know that these 60,000 people can get work during the next six months. If they could get work, they would not go to the employment exchanges. It is because there is no work available that they go to the employment exchanges. Who wants to go to an employment exchange for the miserable pittances available there, with the odious means test and the other inquisitions carried on there? It is the fact that there is no work available, and that the squeeze of hunger forces them to go there, that makes them go. They would very much sooner do a decent day's work for fair remuneration than be compelled to endure the odious conditions associated with the administration of that relief.

I wish we had the courage, the vision and the energy to organise our economic life in such a way that we would not compel people to go to these exchanges for relief of that kind. I would sooner see them working and creating wealth in maintaining themselves and enriching the nation than to see them compelled to subsist on these standards, which are less than subsistence standards. That is the only policy the Government now have —instead of keeping men on and spending at a normal rate, to cut, tear and pinch, and to do it more vigorously when dealing with a mass of people who, in the economic sense, are helpless. That is the only policy the Government now have to offer the people, facing as we are, according to the Minister, a crisis of the first magnitude. How they imagine that an action of that kind, wiping 60,000 people off unemployment assistance, is calculated to promote national unity and national discipline, I cannot hope to understand.

Very large numbers of unemployed people have joined the Local Defence Force, Local Security Force and A.R.P. Services and fire fighting services. Notwithstanding the fact that they were being squeezed by hunger, they recognised that their country had a claim on their services, and they gladly joined, and gave of their best in the organisation of these forces and in the development and extension of their influence. Is this to be the reward which the unemployed members of the L.D.F. and the L.S.F. are to get from the Government? We have built up an expensive army of approximately 160,000 men in the L.D.F. and the L.S.F. It is the cheapest army in the world—cheaper than any conscript army. We built it up to a considerable extent out of the unemployed men in the rural areas, men who do not know on Monday where the money for Tuesday's food will come, men who are separated from the workhouse only by their ability to earn an occasional week's wages, and, in this time of national danger, with all the mouthing about national discipline and national unity, the best reward we can offer to that inexpensive army is to wipe 60,000 people off unemployment assistance, many of whom at considerable sacrifice have helped to build up these two excellent organisations.

I put it to the Minister that it is money very badly saved, that it will create disunity and disruption, and will create in the minds of many of the people in these organisations, the belief that the Government, behind the cry of patriotism, are merely using them, are unconcerned with their sufferings and will cast them aside when the emergency they were recruited to meet has passed away. I hope that, even now, the Government will realise the foolishness of that action and will take steps to mend its hand. No Ministerial starchiness ought to be allowed to stand in the way of the Government's adjusting its decision on the matter, so as to obviate the discontent which is rife and which will grow as a result of the Government's action in respect of the Employment Period Order.

With other Deputies who have spoken, I want to say that if we have had bitter complaints in the Dáil in the past week, it is because the public, having been kept so long in the dark, are now treated to shock after shock in respect of the shortage of commodities. The Government's policy appears to be: "Do not tell the people anything. Keep them in the dark as long as possible, and if they have to be shocked, give them the shocks quickly and successively, but do not tell them over any long period what the supply position is. Let them have long periods of sleep, long periods of economic twilight, during which they can muse and allow the Government to think, but, then, if they have to be told something, shock them and, before they recover, give them another shock." That appears to be the whole Government policy. Is it any wonder that Deputies and people outside are inundated with all kinds of wild rumours and stories about this, that and the other thing happening? Is it any wonder that we have a position in which somebody takes you into a corner and asks if you have heard so and so, because he got it from somebody, who got it from somebody else, who got it from somebody to whom the Minister was talking? Can you wonder that stories of that type get about when the whole policy has been to treat the public as ignoramuses, as people who are not capable of understanding and appreciating anything, as people who are not Irish but enemies, to be kept in the dark and informed as little as possible on any matter, irrespective of how vitally it concerns them?

The Government's policy in this connection is a mistaken policy. I think we ought to tell the public candidly what the position is in respect of every staple commodity. Tell the public definitely what the position is, what our expectations are, how long our resources will last and tell them in respect of other commodities, if we cannot get them, that we cannot get them and that they need not be sighing and pining for them. Tell them they cannot be got and that is that. Tell them in respect of staple commodities how they stand and what the future position is likely to be. Tell them, too, what further shortages may be expected, and what they are to do when faced, as they will be faced, with these inevitable shortages. Instead of ignoring the public and keeping them in the dark, the Government ought to develop a new policy, ought to cultivate the viewpoint that it is good business to tell the public, to trust them, to remember that they are Irish and want to help to the utmost of their ability in overcoming whatever crisis besets us at present; but if you fool and mislead the public, you do a grave disservice to the nation for which, in the long run, you will pay bitterly.

The Government has thrown overboard any idea of having an economic council to survey and plan our development. The Dáil has spoken on that matter and, for the time being, it is not possible to induce the Government to reconsider it, but if the Government will not create a body to think and plan there is a still greater obligation on the Government themselves to do the thinking and the planning. So far, we have had very little evidence of thinking—we have plenty evidence of tinkering, but no evidence of thinking—and very little evidence of planning. In this crisis, I say to the Government that what they ought to do now is to think. They ought not to be doing things in 1941 just because they did them in 1939. The things we regarded as being right in 1939 have long since, in many respects, been discarded by every other intelligent people as improper things to do in 1941. Ministers might well remember the position of military strategists of certain countries in Europe who held certain beliefs in 1938 and 1939 and who would have been horrified had any suggestion that their point of view then was wrong, but who are now rolling in the dust, their one-time military eminence notwithstanding.

Doing things in 1941 merely because we did them in 1939 is a mistakenly slavish practice. What we have got to do is to think in terms of 1941, in terms of the new situations and the new crises which will require to be met. We must safeguard ourselves against these by every possible means. Everybody will realise that, in circumstances such as these, Ministers will make mistakes. Let them make mistakes. I would sooner see them attempting to do things, even though they make mistakes, than not attempting to do things at all. If the Government will not have an economic council or the co-operation envisaged by an economic council, if it will not agree to an organisation of that kind to think and plan, then it should do the thinking and planning itself. In so far as members of the Government do that and give us results, they will have the goodwill and co-operation of this House in every direction. But if Ministers simply carry on a policy of keeping the public in the dark and concealing information from the House, then they can only expect to receive the legitimate criticism directed against them in this House for the past three days.

Mr. Dillon

The Vote on Account calls for a general review of Government policy and a wide field has been travelled thus far. Nevertheless, I suggest to the House that every Deputy in it should remember that our debates are proceeding in a world which is burning down around us. We are not meeting the difficulties begotten of normal times. We are meeting the difficulties of a world situation which is really the greatest issue that could be joined in this House. It is an issue, however, that, for the present in any event, I do not think can be materially clarified by public discussion here. Though we forbear from discussion of that great issue, let us not dismiss its existence from our mind when we dwell on its ancillary problems. This is a time above all others when those responsible for the welfare of our country and our people should take precautions against developing cold feet and hot heads because our problems demand cool heads and hot extremities to solve them.

I noticed with regret that a motion proposed in another place yesterday for the establishment of a national register was rejected. A national register is a proper preliminary for the rigid general rationing of essential commodities. Surely, we have had enough during this crisis of hoping for the best and being disappointed. I can make every allowance for a man responsible for so difficult a problem as supply being unduly optimistic in the initial stages of our difficulties. He would not be the only man in the world who had deceived himself by wishful thinking. But when that lesson has been learned, is it not time to cut the loss occasioned by imprudence of that character and say: "Whatever error has been made in the past, we shall take precautions that its like will not be made again"? Yesterday, the Minister said to us very frankly, if a little late in the day:—

"Many things I have done, I would not have done if I had foreseen how things would develop. I did not see how things were going to develop and, judged by the criterion of the event, much of my action is open to question."

Very well, let it go. But, surely, if we realise that the event has proved so much less satisfactory than our early hopes, we ought to make sure that, however we may be disappointed in the future, we shall have taken all the precautions it was physically possible to take against the worst that could happen, cheerfully saying to ourselves that, if we waste money now in providing against the worst, it is a loss we will rejoice in if the worst never overtakes us. That is an insurance which any prudent man with the experience we have would unhesitatingly pay.

There is a danger that, in the future, the poor will find themselves not only short of but without essential commodities unless we take precautions now to ensure that, so long as there is one individual in this State able to command half a pint of milk, the poorest individual will be able to command the same. That is a principle which now, thank God, is admitted in every Christian State the world over. Let us give effect to it now. Let us say now: "Whatever the cost, we are going to establish a national register so as to secure that money in the pocket will constitute no claim to food if an hour of real shortage comes upon us. The test of distribution in an hour of universal shortage will be the need of the individual and the nursing mother in Gloucester street will get more than the wealthiest woman in the land, while the invalid millionaire may be entitled to consideration that the labouring man in possession of his health may have to forego." That is to say, the test of need will apply without regard to social standing or any other qualification. I cannot see how that can be effectively carried through, if scarcity over a wide range of articles manifests itself in the future, without the preliminary precaution of establishing a national register on which to found such a system of distribution.

A lot of people are inclined to overstate the dangers. I agree with certain spokesmen who have said that, if we manage our affairs rightly, nobody can put us in danger of starvation. If people starve in this country the responsibility must rest fairly and squarely on the Ministers who failed to take the precautions that they should have taken to prevent the possibility of such an event. The food is in the country and the duty that rests upon us is to ensure its equitable distribution. The food is here, and I do not believe starvation is our real danger in this matter. A danger just as great and just as vital to the nation can arise from bad distribution of that food—that is, a shattering of the people's morale.

It is astonishing to realise the things our people have done. Nothing can ever expunge from my mind the impression made upon it by the Local Security Force and the Local Defence Force—that 200,000 fellows should come forward voluntarily, day after day, to do tedious and arduous work simply because they believe that we, who knew the facts, had honestly warned them of impending danger. Into the gap of that danger, without waiting to examine its nature and without recoiling from its possible dangers, 200,000 volunteers went, for nothing. Is that a spirit that we are afraid to depend upon to meet the other difficulties that may arise? Are we going to shatter that spirit because we are too pusillanimous to use it? I say that, if the people get it into their heads once that the Executive of the State is losing its head and floundering about from error to error and has lost its capacity to think clearly and quite calmly, then indeed the enemies of this country have a golden opportunity to spread panic and disorganisation throughout the people from top to bottom, and the fault will be ours for having failed them.

We ought to ask the people for help to surmount the difficulties. May I remind Deputies of this House that, looking across Europe at the totalitarian systems in Russia and Germany and Italy, what arrests one's attention is that, at least in their initial stages, what won them the support of the young was that the young were given something to do. Democracy fell before the dictators because the democracies had forgotten that what the people complained of most was that the whole care and organisation of the State was being gathered into the bureaucracy at the top and the people were held afar off and told there was nothing for them to do but to get on with their little every-day jobs. Then came the totalitarian regime and they were told that the smallest and most insignificant individual in the community had great work to do, that there was no reward but the feeling that they were giving service to the country, and they rose like one man. I believe that that appeal alone very largely misled millions of young people into throwing away liberty in the name of service. We are in danger of falling into that same trap.

The attitude of the Minister for Supplies is: "Do not ask me any questions: simply do what you are told to do and it will come out all right." But it is not quite all right and—it does not matter who the Minister for Supplies may be—he could not make it come out all right on that basis. If he would say to the people: "Here is my difficulty and I cannot solve it unless I get the help of every individual in the State, and I am asking every individual in the State to give me their aid and together we can pull the country through," he will get, in his turn, exactly the same measure of support that the combined forces of this House got when they asked the Local Security Force to do that special work.

Mr. Lemass

Is not that precisely what I said yesterday?

Mr. Dillon

I do not know what the Minister says, because he says a different thing every time he opens his mouth. All I know is what the Minister does and I have painful evidence of that, and so has the country. I do not believe that there is any useful purpose to be served by tearing the Minister to flitters in this House. I think the situation is too grave for that. All I am trying to get the Minister to do is to take some kind of action adequate to meet the situation and I am not saying that something will have to be done: I am suggesting things that he might, with advantage, do. When it occurs to me that we should ask the people to help us, I think it is only reasonable to say that there is no use asking the Minister for Supplies to give petrol to this man, that man, or the other man, if the Minister for Supplies has not any petrol to give.

I do not think it serves any useful purpose at this stage to re-hash the fact that it was his failure to foresee his difficulties that leaves him in the position that he has no petrol to give. He said that; he has admitted that. Very well, let it go; but, on the other hand, I want to say to the Minister this: Will he consider the difficulties of people all through the country who are not sitting in the Department of Supplies all day and who are not familiar with the whole background of this situation and the day to day complexities of it? Will he try to sympathise with the dispensary doctor, with the traveller, with the masseuse who has to carry appliances to people suffering acute pain? These on their daily round see the lorry driver, the breadvan driver and the hackney driver functioning as they think in superlative services. Take the dispensary doctor—the Minister knows his circumstances as well as I do—who cycles out in the night because he has no petrol in his car and is scarcely home again when he is called out again and must cycle a further long distance, and who awakens the following morning to find three breadvans, each having travelled 20 miles, competing against one another to sell bread in the town whence he has cycled the night before. People would say: "Abolish the bread vans." There is every sympathy with that, but let me paint the other side of the picture.

There are three little households and three little families, each of which sent out the wage earner to travel the route that he has built up by hard work. These three bread-van drivers have built up a clientele, and if they lose their route they will lose their clientele, and instead of having skilled work earning good wages they may be thrown on the ash-heap of the unemployed, with the only hope of getting off as a common labourer when this crisis is over. If I were the Minister for Supplies and faced with that dilemma I do not know what answer I would give. I would count the baker put out of his job behind the van driver, and I would say that I have sympathy with the sick waiting for the doctor and with the doctor labouring to get to them, but I am also sympathetic in regard to the families which are going to be broken up if I take from them the petrol that will put that doctor on the road. I believe we ought to face both sides of the question. I believe it is good to rebuke the Minister for his shortcomings, but I do not want to force him into doing a hardship to one in order to cover up fierce criticism directed against him in respect of another. But let him not forget that it is not just captious, carping criticism that makes the doctors, the commercial travellers and the masseuses besiege his office and Deputies of this House with their very real grievance. Let him try a little to understand that other people have problems as well as he has.

Mr. Lemass

Surely, I never said anything to the contrary.

Mr. Dillon

Let him face the fact that the weighing of these respective claims is a very difficult one, and nobody denies it. Let him try, if he will, instead of delivering philippics against anyone who criticises his Department, to come into the open and say to the people: "This is my problem and here is the way I have reasoned it out and reached my conclusion", because, when he tells us the grounds on which he founds his conclusion, then we may be able to be helpful to him in pointing out flaws that have grown up, perhaps, unknown to him. How shall I defend, to the doctor who is struggling out to his patients through the night on a bicycle, the fact that the county surveyor next door has 60 gallons of petrol a month to the doctor's eight, and that the assistant surveyor has 20 gallons a month to the doctor's eight?

A Deputy

Pure nonsense! You know perfectly well it is nonsense.

Mr. Dillon

Let the people decide whether it is nonsense or not. I do not pretend that it is easy to keep your patience when you feel that great errors of judgment are being committed or that cruel wrongs are being tolerated, knowingly. I do not profess to have that phlegmatic character which enables one to do so. I freely confess that that kind of spectacle just makes me mad, and I am not ashamed of confessing it. There are other problems that bewilder our people. Why is it that I sold my barley at 20/- a barrel last October and when I went to buy the same barley back for seed in February it cost me 45/-? I cannot imagine any reason for that, but if there is one, would somebody tell it to us? Do Ministers blame the people down the country for feeling aggrieved and neglected when the very barley that they sold for 20/- is sold back to them for 45/-, and when they are told that, although 45/- is being charged for it now, in a fortnight or three weeks it will be 50/- or 52/-? Is that unreasonable — is that carping criticism?

I suggested, in long memoranda to the Minister, a system whereunder tea might be rationed forthwith, and I incorporated in my plan the proposal that instead of taking our people by the throat, we should try to take them by the hand. Our problem at present is not a scarcity of tea. There is not any scarcity of tea in this country, but there is a very acute scarcity of cheap tea in this country, and the people who are suffering are the people who cannot afford to buy dear tea. Now, oddly, and paradoxically enough, I do not think that dear tea is a necessity to anyone, but cheap tea very frequently is. If the amenities of your home are very few, then a cup of tea is as necessary almost as the breath of life—certainly, as the pipe of tobacco. I suggested to the Minister that he should call in all the tea wholesalers in this country and say to them: "Now, here is a rationing scheme that I should like to work with your help, but if you will not work with me, I am going to work without your help." I think the tea wholesalers would be glad to help him. I would then print tea coupons, just like the petrol rationing coupons, allowing each person two or three ounces a week, whatever the supplies would permit. I would then put a notice in the paper and I would say: "Our purpose is to ensure supplies of tea for the poor. Anyone who comes to the Department of Supplies and asks for his quota of these coupons will get them without any means test or inquiry, but if a person who can afford to pay more than 2/6 a lb. for tea asks for these coupons he does it with the knowledge that he is taking tea out of the teapot of the poor and with every cup he drinks he will have to remember that fact."

That there would be certain abuses I do not doubt but I am perfectly certain if the Minister took all the tea below 2/6 a lb. and mixed it up and made a coupon tea and made it clear to our people that the only people who were to ask for coupons were the poor, nobody who could afford to pay more than 2/6 would ask for these coupons and we would find that with these coupons in the hands of the poor there would be ample supplies of tea, for the present in any case, to meet the coupon supply that the Department made available to them.

It may be that that is not the best scheme but I think it is a scheme that has the advantage of avoiding expense on the Central Exchequer. At the same time, I suggest the Minister should go to the people and say: "This will not work if you will not help us in the spirit that you helped us in the Local Defence Force but if you share the task of making this thing work in order to get this food for our poor, we will get it to them as surely as we get protection to every acre of the land of this country, not through the Army because we had not got the men to cover the whole country, but through the volunteer effort of those who said: ‘We will fill the gap between the units of the Army, extended as they at present are by the emergency that has come upon us.'" I think that very opportunity to everybody to lend a hand would be welcomed by 90 per cent. of our people and the microscopic minority who would attempt to abuse it would find growing up around them that most powerful instrument of social coercion, the instinctive boycott of our people for anyone who would betray this nation in its time of need.

Now we are told there is a shortage of wheat. We are told the Minister is begging everybody to eat less bread, and we are told he is thinking of approaching the restaurants to restrict their consumption. Surely something more concrete might be suggested to our people as their contribution. Would it not be possible for the Minister to say: "I ask every household of goodwill in this country to cut bread out of one meal every day where they used to eat it? I am not asking something that is easy. I am not asking something that is not going to cause everybody a bit of inconvenience, but I am deliberately saying to everybody: ‘Let there be a Lent of abstinence for the nation on all our people till the harvest comes in and let that abstinence be one meal a day in which it is a point of honour that where you used to eat bread you will eat it no more.'" Do you not think you would get an immense response to such a proposal? Do you not think you would give to every individual who abstained from bread at one meal every day the feeling that he was doing something positive to help the Government and the country out of the difficulties that have come upon them? Does the Minister think we are unreasonable if we say to him: "Coal has gone up 15/- a ton and you are telling us there is no coal coming into the country. If there is no coal coming into the country why is coal 15/- dearer than it was three months ago?" I have heard no explanation of that. The only explanation the Minister was prepared to give yesterday was to say:—

The Minister has been questioned on the subject of coal again and again and let me tell him that the impression he managed to create on the House was that he did not want to tell us, that all he would say was: "I fixed the price of coal and I did it after sufficient inquiry. If you do not like that you can lump it." It was just as easy to come in with a sheet of paper and to say: "Here was my position. There was a stock of coal in the country; there was more coal coming in; the freight charges went up by so much; the cost of the coal went up by so much, and the difficulties were so and so. In the light of that, I allowed the price to be increased, but I did not allow the coal merchants to get that increased price for the coal that was stored in the country before these new difficulties arose." If he had said that, if he had explained to the people his difficulty, outlined his problem and said: "There was my conclusion. Do you agree with it or do you disagree with it?" then there would be no ground for complaint and no one would have any right to say they were being deceived or misled. The impression the Minister has created on the country is that he would not or did not tell us the full truth, and people are still believing we are getting bad coal at high prices and that the Minister does not give a damn about it.

That is the kind of thing the Minister is doing. The impression people get is he is trying to put Deputy Dillon off his step because he does not like what he is saying. It may be, if the Minister waits for me, he will find that what I am going to say is not so distasteful to him at all, understanding it is vitally important at this time. The problems we have to get over will have to be got over together. Divided, we are going to collapse in front of them. I say that, threatened with the problems that confront us, we ought seriously to consider whether we should not make available to the poorest person in the city and every other part of the country, at least a basic supply of fish, milk, oatmeal and potatoes. Mind you, I say fish, and I say fish for this reason that the sea is swarming with good herrings and the fishermen are standing idle. If there are no herrings, there is mackerel, and if neither herrings nor mackerel are available, there is flat fish for the inshore fishermen to bring in. There is no administrative difficulty in distribution. I would call in the fish-women in Dublin, most of whom are unemployed at the present time, and I would say to them: "There are four herrings for a penny; go out and sell them in the streets at two a penny. You will make 100 per cent. profit while doing a public service, and the more fish you can sell at 100 per cent. profit the better pleased we will be."

A good deal of fish not disposed of in that way would have to be converted into fishmeal for animal feeding or manure. The fish is there but it is necessary to take it out of the water. The disposal of herring has been one of the chronic problems of the Fishery Department. Crans and crans of herring have been thrown back into the sea, because the men could get nobody to buy it. Boatload after boatload of fish has been thrown back into the sea because the fishermen could get no one to buy it from them. I do not want to go into the economic difficulties that created that situation, but I think there is something to be said for bringing that fish to Dublin and other cities, and selling it to the poor at a low price. If this State comes to the aid of a certain section of the community, and says to them "We cannot give you everything we would like to give, but we want to give you what will keep your health perfect until this crisis is over," and if these people came to me then and said they did not like fish, I would tell them to go and starve. This is no time for people to say that they do not like fish. It may be that a time might come before this crisis is over when they would be glad to get even a hen's tail.

Mr. Everett

I do not think the Deputy knows much about fishing.

Mr. Dillon

Does the Deputy, representing as he does a seaboard constituency, suggest that fish of some species is not available at some period of the year? In this country, if you advocate milking a cow, somebody will get up and tell you how difficult it was to milk a cow. There is difficulty in milking a cow, but would you let her under burst for want of learning how to do it? The fish is in the sea. The people want it. Why cannot we go and catch the fish and get it to the people? The milk is also in the country. We are subsidising the dairy industry to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds, in order to try to sell it in Great Britain in the form of cheap butter, while children and nursing mothers in this country are blue and hungry for the want of milk, and we cannot bring it to them. I would bring that milk to them, and I would sell it in glass bottles as pasteurised milk in the City of Dublin for a penny a pint to anybody who would bring a glass bottle for it.

It would be money well spent. There is oats in this country, an abundance of it. The man who had oatmeal stirabout for his breakfast, with milk, and who had fish for his dinner and potatoes, need never go hungry. If we could not say that we had fed them on Lucullan banquets, we could at least say that no individual during the crisis would be hungry. We promised ourselves no more. Then and not until then would we have discharged our duties as trustees to bring our people through the crisis. For God's sake do not let us wait to consider that proposal until the people begin to die.

Mr. Belton

Now is the time to sow the crops for them and not in a couple of months' time.

Mr. Dillon

Now is the time to make up our minds. Are we going to do it? If we are going to do it, let us get together to work out measures considering our revenue and our resources. Deputies who expect to find everything in the Book of Estimates, cheap milk, cheap oatmeal, free fish and more potatoes for the poor are just daft. It cannot be done. If you have to meet this emergency and protect the poor you cannot have it all jam. If we are short of bread we cannot have our fill of cake. We have to forgo some of the cake and learn the bitter lesson that little nations all over Europe have been learning for the last 15 years, that you cannot have guns and butter. If the circumstances surrounding us impose upon us the necessity of having guns in our hands, we cannot have all the butter we would like. Let us take the butter off the boys with the £480 a year, until we are sure that those who have got to do with less have oatmeal, fish and potatoes.

I want the House to envisage as calmly as it can another formidable problem that is before us. Our standard of living and our mode of life have continued, largely owing to the fact that we have great external assets invested outside this country. If we lost these external assets overnight we would be a poor people. Our desire to soften the rigours and hardships of the least fortunate section of our community would be defeated by inability to find the ways and means of doing so. These external assets are invested in Great Britain and we cannot get them out. There is no means of getting them out now.

All I want to say is that Deputies should consider well what it will mean to Ireland if events should develop which destroyed that country and swept our treasure away. I am not going to dwell on that now. It is just one question that I want every Deputy to ask himself and then to consider, idealistically and materially, where Ireland's interests lie. Lastly, I want to put this question to the House. We have been debating supplies for the last few days, and we have dealt so long on the tangible goods that money could buy, that supplies have begun to mean to us coal, tea, butter, eggs and milk, things that cannot be exchanged for capital. I wonder are we wise to dwell exclusively on these? I have spoken of our external assets and what they mean. I wonder at this time is it wise to add to our risks in that form. Is it wise to store up our riches and our savings in this period of distress to create either gold or sterling, or would it be wiser if we tried to purchase new and durable assets which we would have for the use of our own people, no matter what happens to currency in this or any other country after the war?

Have we ever asked ourselves that question? If we have asked it, have we ever answered it, because until we answer it no intelligent financial policy can be determined for this State? Is it wiser now to take our savings and invest them in paper of one kind or another, or would we be well advised to invest them in cement and iron, or to open the report of the Transport Tribunal about which the Minister for Industry and Commerce is so shy, to see if we would not find something in which we might profitably employ our time and our wealth in the building of great motor roads to carry the traffic of post-war trade?

Would it be unreasonable deliberately to set out, not on a Barrow drainage scheme or works of that kind, but on the task of going into fields where there are rushes and "flaggers" and digging drains to make of bad land good land, that we would have to cultivate in the time to come? Is it stretching the meaning of words to say that making bad land into good land is one of the securest possible methods of ensuring our food supplies? Would it be unreasonable, furnished as we are with the monumental works of Professor Abercrombie and his associates, to search these town-planning schemes and see if there are any parts of them that might not be put in hand right now, so that the money which might have been invested abroad would be invested in wide open spaces, systems of roads and drainage which could be carried through with materials which our money could buy and which might be profitably used with the labour that must otherwise stand idle? I am not unconscious of the fact that the securing of sewer pipes would present formidable difficulties. Cement we have; certain other things we have, and if the scrap iron at present being despatched in ship loads to England were used here, dear as the product might be, it could possibly be used——

Mr. Lemass

There is no scrap iron being shipped to England.

Mr. Dillon

Ask Deputy Corry about that. He knows all about it. Do not ask me. There are other things which might be considered. These are new times but we should not be afraid to face the future, a new future, and prepare for it. I have seen our people robbed and plundered by the most shameless and blood-thirsty monopoly that was ever fastened upon the necks of a long-suffering people. I refer to the flour-milling industry.

Mr. Hickey

There are others.

Mr. Dillon

I am thinking of that one because it was the father and the mother of the lot. May not we use the time we have and the savings that are there to make that monopoly a blessing in its old age? If we could take the flour-milling industry and the baking industry of this country and coordinate them under a body analogous to the Electricity Supply Board, we could then turn the monopoly into the hands of the Irish people. I told the exploiters that two years ago. I tell them again now that if they build their monopolies, they are building something that will crumble in their hands. The people of this country will take the parasites off their back and work the monopolies for themselves. If individual competition will not be allowed to function, then the exploiters will not be allowed to plunder our people indefinitely. Is not this the time when we might consider whether the necessary co-ordination could not be carried through?

We have got at present in the baking industry in this country an immense amount of bakeries annexed to mills. I understand that if some of these institutions were to be brought up to the maximum efficiency it would be necessary to start reconstructing them from the ground up. If we cannot get the machinery—and I believe we could get a good deal of it—could not we start at least preparing the plan into which the machinery could go? Could not we make a plan and could not we say to these men as we ought to say to the tea wholesalers of the country: "We should like to do this with your help. We should give you fair compensation for your property. There is no question of seizure, foreclosure or deprival of your rights as citizens of the State. We shall give you all your rights under the law, in justice and in equity. We should like to do this with your help but if we cannot do it with your help we shall do it in spite of you." I should like the Minister to turn over in his mind whether these things might not profitably be investigated now.

Has it ever occurred to Deputies that the real picture presented by the confusion that has obtained in Government circles in the last six weeks or two months is one of men attempting to bear a burden far in excess of their capacity? Mind you, I do not think that they are a very exciting lot; I never did but, no matter how good they were, I do not think any body of men carrying on the detailed administration of several Departments could find time to sit down and envisage the problems that confront us in their true perspective. There is no use in saying at this stage that they are a great bargain. They are not, but the Irish people were induced to buy them. Let us not forget that they bought that lot in the freest election that was ever held in this country, in one of the freest Parliamentary elections that was ever held on the Continent of Europe or the United States of America. Every man was free to poll his vote what way he liked at the last election. Every man was free to speak his mind without let or hindrance from anybody and for that the credit is largely due to the Blueshirts who won that liberty for us. It may be said that the people blundered in choosing that lot there, but it behoves no one inside this country or outside it to assert that they have any obligation to vacate their office. I say the people chose them. They have a clear majority in this House and they have a perfect right to function as the Executive Council of this country. No one ever had a better right.

Now, when you get a bent tool the best thing you can do is to try to straighten it as best you can and put a few rivets in it to hold it together. That is our bent instrument over there; we have got to do the best we can with it. May I suggest that one of the first things we should do is to take five of the best of them—and that is not saying much—and make a war cabinet of them? Relieve each of those five Ministers—the chairman of whom would be naturally the Taoiseach—to the maximum amount possible of the routine duties of his Department. That may entail the appointment of one, or even two Parliamentary Secretaries to each Minister but get them into a room where they will not be worried with every detail, the perpetual ringing of the telephone and incessant knocking on their doors for directions over every detail of departmental administration. Get them together to determine the main lines of the policy this country is going to pursue. Get them to correlate the activity of every Department of State with the policy which they have decided to pursue and the conclusions which they see at the end of it. I am convinced that a great deal of the confusion that at present exists could be eliminated if that were once done. I would not stop there because I think that these Ministers need consultation with at least one expert on whose judgment and experience they can rely.

All of us know that if you go to the permanent head of a Department of State in this country, ordinarily called the secretary of the Department, his time, his patience, and his energy are taxed from early morning until late at night to the very limit that he can possibly stretch. As to consulting with his Minister, as to spending time in calm debate of problems that they have jointly to face, and on which it becomes a Minister's duty ultimately to advise the Government, the thing is out of the question. Therefore, I should like to say for this Party, in any case, that the Ministers of this Cabinet of five should be relieved of the detailed Departmental work by Parliamentary Secretaries, and that the secretaries of the Departments should be relieved of the routine work by assistant secretaries appointed for that purpose, so that in this time of uncertainty we would have the greatest desideratum, and that is to assure the absence of wobbling.

I do not hold that with that body of men as the Government of this country we will have any brilliant leadership or any successful solutions of our problems introduced; but, at least, we would not feel we were all running round in circles after men who did not themselves know where they wanted to go. We might even feel that the road they were taking was not the best road; we might urge them to change the tack upon which they had determined; but at least we would feel that, whatever road they were on, they were going somewhere and that they knew where that where was.

Ninety per cent. of our people at present believe that the Government do not know where it is going, and that one member of it does not know what the other is doing. I want to say with full deliberation and with the sense of responsibility which attaches to my words, that I do not believe that the Government knows where it is going. I do not believe that one member of it has the faintest notion what the next member of it is doing. I believe that it is that fatal inability to pull together or to determine any common purpose in the face of the crisis which is upon us that is responsible for a great deal of the upset which at present afflicts the country.

We have given the Government, so far as I know, what help we could give them since this crisis came upon us and we are prepared to give it to them right to the end. But I want to make this perfectly clear. We are human like the rest of men, and we are not prepared to go on indefinitely getting all the kicks and none of the ha'pence. It is not money we want, but merely recognition that in a time of crisis it is help we gave and not obstruction.

Let me illustrate that. On a recent occasion there was forecast a debate in this House on the acute problem of foot-and-mouth disease and we felt that it was hard on the Minister for Agriculture to bring him in here, put him through his paces, and cross-question him about every detail of several outbreaks, and possibly create in the public mind an impression of inefficiency, confusion, and so on. If we wanted to discredit the Minister, we had plenty of material with which to bamboozle him.

Mr. Allen

You have done that for the last ten years.

Mr. Dillon

In order to protect him from that danger, I went to the Minister's study on the morning before the debate——

Mr. Allen

You did your best.

Mr. Dillon

I went to the Minister's study on the morning of the debate and I said to him:—

"There is going to be a debate this afternoon on your Estimate on which the question of foot-and-mouth disease must arise. Now, I want to tell you that this point will arise and that point will arise; this allegation will be made and that allegation will be made. They are all being made in good faith, and there may be an explanation of them. If there is, I want you to have it ready and prepared so as to restore public confidence the moment they are raised in public. I want to say this to you further: maybe you made a mistake in the early stages and as a result of that mistake some outbreaks may have occurred that otherwise would not have occurred. In your opening statement say there was an error of judgment and that to catch up on its consequences you have redoubled your efforts, and I will get up and say that, if I were in your position, I would probably have done the same thing, and let us all lend a hand in making this redoubled effort effective to control the outbreak. Whatever Draconian step you have to announce, do not worry about being in any sense politically embarrassed, because we will endorse it, no matter what it is, if you can say that the veterinary inspectors tell you it is necessary."

The Minister said to me:—

"Well, there is a good deal of matter to be examined. Could you give me six or seven hours to consult my experts so as to prepare myself for the debate?"

I said:—

"Certainly, I will see that the business is so arranged that your Estimate will be taken late."

So it was done. He had six hours in his office with his experts to prepare himself to meet every allegation that could possibly be made against his administration.

Now I never said a word to him when I made my speech in the debate and my colleagues never mentioned the fact that we had prepared him beforehand so that he would meet every situation—not to deceive the people, but so that every allegation that we brought forward in good faith could be explained or corrected and that the public confidence could be restored. What was the result of it? At the end of the debate, the Minister said he was satisfied in his mind that the debate had been started for the purpose of dirty political bluff. I will stand for a lot, but I will not be double-crossed. If any man thinks he can double-cross me in this House or outside it, he never made a greater mistake, because I will trot him out before the public and let the public judge between us. Maybe that man lost his temper. But, whatever he did, he tried to double-cross us, and he will not get away with it.

We are prepared to help the Government in every way we can and, so far as I know, we have done it generously since this business began. I can understand that it is a human reaction for men struggling with difficulties to feel under a political sense of obligation if somebody to whom they do not ordinarily look for help gives them a helping hand to get over difficulties which have upset them. That is a human thing. Voltaire once said: "We sometimes forgive our enemies, but we never forgive our friends." It is very true to say that Ministers, being human, may feel a little resentment that help was necessary and was so freely forthcoming. But, in the situation in which we find ourselves, that is not the greatest hardship public men may have to endure. That Ministry wants all the help it can get now and it is going to get it so far as we are concerned, and that in generous measure. But, we are human too, and there is a limit beyond which we cannot bring our own people, and that is the limit at which our people think the Government are making fools of us. We know quite well what we are doing; we know its political cost to us and we intend to do it. But Ministers must not try to double-cross us. We are prepared to give them any help that they want now or hereafter, to make any suggestions that we think may be helpful, and to justify any act, however unpopular, that they may have to do, if they can satisfy us it was in the public interest to do it. I solemnly say to this House that if every section of it is not prepared to combine in that spirit to meet the common dangers that beset us we will go down.

It is not one section of this House that will go down, because, if one section sinks, we will all sink together. We have two interests in this business. We have our own persons and properties, and none of us is hypocrite enough to say that these mean nothing to us. They mean a lot to me. But we have something more. Willingly, and with our eyes open, we accepted posts as trustees of the poor in this country. The material loss that we might suffer through imprudence or irresponsibility would be hard to bear, but the sacrifice of our honour, and the betrayal of our trust, if we allowed the poor to suffer unnecessarily because we had not the moral courage to do our duty, would be unforgivable. Every individual Deputy has that trust upon him, and the next few months will tell how good the trusteeship was.

Mr. Hickey

Some of the speeches that I have listened to in this House during the last couple of days have convinced me of this, that one of the first things we have to learn in life is to face facts, not merely to believe things as we should like them to be, but to see them as they really are. It may be far harder to do that than some of us think. Our personal interests, our class prejudices, our education and our sense of patriotism all tend, so at any rate it appears to me, to colour our outlook on life. I know, of course, that most people see only what they want to see. The first aim of social study should be to teach us to look at social and economic facts as they really are. Last evening, we had a lecture from the Minister for Supplies on our duties as citizens and as members of the House. I realise that it is our duty to examine the facts of a situation to see what steps must be taken to remedy any defects that may be in it. I realise, also, that it is our duty, as members of this House, to see in what way we can strengthen a Government to put an end to all unnecessary misery and injustice—evils that such large sections of our people are suffering from to-day. A high sense of patriotism is called for in order to right those social wrongs. It would be much better that it should be called forth than that, in our national pride, we should shut our eyes to the evils that exist and allow them to continue unchecked and unsolved.

What do those facts reveal to me? That there is a mass of poverty among a very large section of our people. I do not propose to intrude my own personal views on those facts to the House, but instead will quote the views of some very eminent people in our public life. In the first place, I should like the Minister for Finance and the members of the Government to take up and examine the last report prepared by the medical officer of health in Cork. They will find there that out of 2,000 or more families in Cork City, there are thousands of men, women and children who, after making provision for rent, have to try and provide themselves with food, clothing and other necessaries on incomes ranging from 2/- to 4/- a week. Recently a report prepared and published by Professor Fearon, a medical man, and Dr. Dockeray stated that an examination of a group of 50 wives of unemployed men attending the ante-natal clinic at the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, showed that they were only getting half the food necessary for full maintenance and less than half the necessary protective proteins. They were all anaemic and under-nourished, and, therefore, likely to produce babies suffering from various deficiencies. This investigation took place in 1938. I suggest to the Government that the condition of those people is far worse to-day than it was in 1938. They have not since been put into a position to get more food or nourishment, and so far as any assistance they get from the State is concerned, it is, due to the high cost of living, of much less value to them to-day than it was in 1938.

Less than six weeks ago an appeal, signed by the Chairman and Secretary of the Welfare Department of the St. John Ambulance Brigade, was published in the newspapers asking for clothes, such as old coats and shoes, for expectant mothers, numbering 250. It was stated that this number of expectant mothers was attending their dining rooms, each day for a meal, that no matter how bitter or wet the day was those women, badly clothed, came there to have a meal. The brigade invited people to visit the dining rooms to witness the courage and cheerful endurance of those women. A report appeared in the newspapers a short time ago about a woman in Galway who had only 3d. a week to live on. Her case came before the Galway Corporation on two occasions. The Department of Local Government refused to reduce her rent from 5/9d. to 3/3d. a week, on the ground that the reduction was allowed only to those whose livelihood was derived solely from fishing. The meaning of that is that quite a large number of decent families in Galway are in a similar position to that unfortunate woman.

I now come to a more definite statement, one made by the Minister for Education when speaking on the second reading of the Children Bill a week or so ago. The Minister stated that the number of children in industrial schools in recent years was 6,200, 1,000 being admitted annually, and that fully 90 per cent. represented dire poverty. We find from particulars given in the public Press that the number on public assistance in December last was 111,231, being 9,037 more than on the corresponding day last year. The number in receipt of home assistance was 92,940, being 8,587 more than on the corresponding day last year. We find from published reports in the newspapers that the cost of home assistance in Kerry was more than doubled in 1940 as compared with 1939.

The number of appeals made from Radio Eireann during the last six or eight months on behalf of different charitable institutions in the country forms a sad commentary on our social system here—appeals made on behalf of the needy and the poor in Dublin and elsewhere. I want to say here—it has been rightly and truthfully said before—that our laws grind the poor, and the rich rule the law, because, like Deputy Dillon, I feel that this country is suffering increasingly from speculators and monopolists. It is no exaggeration to say that, when we find that a group of people can take from the community in excess profits over £300,000 within a couple of years. When we find that a group of people who had a monopoly in this country could float a new company and get from the investing public £350,000, probably more than they paid for the whole concern a year or two before, and, notwithstanding that, that the people who got that money from the investing public still hold 88 per cent. of the control of that industry, outside this country; when we find that another firm which got a monopoly to produce a certain article in this country, and got a special licence under the Control of Manufactures Act, started a factory in a building which was valued at £10,000, floated a new company and lifted up the value of that building to £60,000, and in the course of three years sold their interest in that factory to another combine for £90,000, £30,000 of which was for goodwill, I think it is no exaggeration to say that our laws grind the poor, and the rich rule the law.

We find that a poor unemployed man here who drew two days' benefit, and did not report that he was working on the evening on which he drew it, was fined 20/- and 21/- costs. We have here something like 86,000 unemployed, who are compelled to idleness through no fault of their own. Not only that, but when they become unemployed they have to sign on for six days during which they get nothing to maintain their wives and children. It is a disgrace to any self-respecting State that a man in a country village should receive only 14/- to maintain himself and his wife and children. That is something which we should really be ashamed of. Like Deputy Dillon, I am asking myself whether we, as Deputies in this House, are doing our duty to the people who sent us here. I honestly and definitely think that we are not. Are we facing the facts? Are we fulfilling our responsibility to those people? I say very definitely: "No." A few weeks ago, when I proposed a motion here that an unemployed man who is put into employment should at least be guaranteed a full week's work, every member on the Fianna Fáil Benches walked into the Lobby to say: "No; the unemployed man has not the right to get a full week's work when he is so employed," notwithstanding the fact that on that very evening we, here, got three weeks' holidays and drew our full salary for that three weeks. We should come down to a sense of our responsibility in those matters. I am sorry that Deputy O'Reilly is not here. He was trying to console us yesterday by telling us that there is no unpleasantness or bad feeling or resentment in regard to Parliamentary institutions. I should like to tell the Fianna Fáil Deputies that I am afraid they are not passing the information that they have to the Front Benches occupied by the Cabinet. What is the feeling in the country? Very definitely there is a growing disregard for this House because we do not seem to realise our responsibilities. Let there be no mistake about it. I am not making that statement in any kind of bitterness. I do not want to follow up any of the debating points made in this House in the past couple of days. One side of the House is, perhaps, as anxious to do the right thing as the other. Everybody has good intentions; of course life is full of good intentions, but it is a question of the will to carry out those intentions.

I want to say to the Government that they are not doing all that the people of this country expect them to do. Deputy Mulcahy yesterday referred to Easter Week and to our august destiny. The one thing which strikes me more than anything else is that we, as a people, challenged the greatest empire in the world, and did not count the difficulties or obstacles to be surmounted. Here we are with a Government elected three times in succession with a majority over all Parties, the most law-abiding nation in the world, in a country that is 90 per cent. Christian, but we have thousands of persons struggling with poverty and economic difficulties, while, on the other hand, we have people surrounded by every conceivable luxury and comfort, yet we seem incapable of tackling the problem, and merely carry on as if we were doing everything it is possible for us to do. I want to tell the Minister for Finance—he is a very important Minister of State — that things are not as happy as I would wish them to be through the country. It is true to say that we do not see people starving on the streets, but nobody can deny that there are men, women and children dying as a result of malnutrition.

Will the Minister for Finance tell me what is the justification for asking a man to live on 23/- a week to-day? The Minister for Industry and Commerce told us that he did not think he was under any moral obligation to increase the unemployed man's benefit by 1/- a week because of the increased cost of living. The ironic thing about it is this, that the Minister for Education tells us that 90 per cent. of the children in industrial schools are there because of dire poverty, and if those children commit a minor crime and are sent into an industrial school the State will pay 13/- a week to keep them there. If the crisis should come upon us, and those children are evacuated to the country, the State will pay 10/- a week for their maintenance. I should like to hear the Minister for Finance or some other Minister giving some explanation of that position. All of us remember what happened in 1916, and years afterwards, when railwaymen and other workers, although threatened with guns and revolvers, refused to move engines on the railway lines because there were English soldiers or Black and Tans on the train. These men to-day are suffering from privation and poverty; they are being disillusioned. They did these things, believing that when foreign domination was removed they would be better treated under a native administration.

Deputy Dillon referred to our standard of living and he endeavoured to tell us where the interests of Ireland lie. He said that if a neighbouring country failed in this war—and he ended at that. The implication was obvious. I think the interests of Ireland lie in Ireland, and if other nations can spend money in work of destruction, not only small amounts, but as much as £12,000,000 a day, we here should also be prepared to spend millions, not in destruction, but in feeding our people and producing the goods that we require while this war lasts. There is no reason why we should not spend millions putting the unemployed to useful work.

The Minister for Supplies told us last night that we were producing far in excess of what we require. I look upon that as a most exaggerated statement. So long as we have any man hungry, so long as we have ill-clad, poorly-nourished men, women and children, the Minister cannot afford to make such a statement. If we had all the gold reserves that the United States have in their vaults, it would avail us nothing if we have not the goods and the services to satisfy the needs of our people. If anyone can draw a lesson from this war we can, and that lesson is that money is purely a secondary consideration to labour and to the goods and services which labour can produce. It is time our Government learned that lesson and made the necessary changes in their policy.

In an increasing way this country is suffering from speculators and monopolists. The Minister for Supplies told us last night that everything that could possibly be done with regard to the supply of wheat for this country was being done. He seemed to place his whole reliance on those who are known as Grain Importers, Ltd. He was in consultation with them and with others. I am old enough to realise this, that living as we are in a changing world, you can no more reconcile private profits with public well-being than you can reconcile fire with water, because one extinguishes the other. So long as the Government rely on those people to look after the interests of the community here, so sure are they going to fail, and so sure are we going to suffer. Until you change your present economic system, you will never succeed in doing what the Irish people want you to do—to look after them and feed and clothe them. The Minister told us that so far as coal is concerned everything possible is being done. We have another group responsible for supplying us with coal.

When the war started, the members of the Labour Party realised that it would be a long and a lasting conflict and we realised that one of the first things to affect this country would be shipping. We sent a deputation to the Government and advised them to buy, not as was stated recently, 30 or 40 ships, but 12 or 15, with the object of keeping up supplies to this country. There were all sorts of statements, and sneers if you like, to the effect that we did not realise the difficulties and that we talked in a kind of irresponsible way. It was not since the war started that I got some insight into efforts being made by people in this country to start a shipping service which would be owned and controlled by Irishmen. I am aware that, since 1923 or 1924, honest attempts were made by certain patriotic interests to start an Irish mercantile marine, but on every occasion they were crushed or bought out, perhaps I should say suppressed, by vested interests outside this country.

I am accusing the Government that they did not call into conference, when they were discussing the question of shipping, people who are prepared to make sacrifices in order that we should have our own fleet. Rather did they call in people who have interests outside this country and it was their advice the Government accepted, thereby leaving us in the position we are in to-day, without any ships.

In the import list for 1938 I observe certain classes of commodities which vitally affect the country—grain and cereals, timber, fruit, iron and steel. In that year the imports of grain and cereals, timber, fruit, iron and steel amounted to 1,101,000 tons. Allowing the same freightage as in the preceding year, the freight on that cargo was £4,416,000. In 1940 there were ships for sale in the United States. The Government were told about those ships and were requested to purchase some of them. These ships were bought after a while at £50,000 a ship. In that year the freight on 550,500 tons of cargo was about £2,208,000. The cost of 18 ships at £50,000 a ship would be £900,000. The operating costs of those ships for one year would be £864,000. The freight would be £1,764,000 and that represents a net profit of £444,000. I can speak for Cork port and I may say that for the nine months from January to September, 1939, we imported grain and cereals and we paid in freight something over £900,000. On one ship alone, a ship holding grain, we had to pay £34,000. Even if we lost half those ships at sea, would it not be a better investment than to be in the position we are in to-day?

The Minister for Supplies told us last night that he thought everything was right because we were chartering ships from Greece and we had for a time some Norwegian ships. These countries can develop their trade and do without shipping. In this country we depend largely on ships; indeed, without ships we could not carry on much of our trade. At the commencement of the war we had 60,000 tons of shipping, while Greece had 2,000,000 tons and Norway over 4,000,000. The Government cannot free themselves of blame in respect of this country not being provided with the necessary supplies during the war, or before the war started. I was talking to some people interested in the building industry in Cork during the early stages of the war. We discussed how long the war was likely to last and everybody felt it would be a long war. I asked one man: "How are the supplies?" and he said: "We do not know where we are because if we bring in big supplies and the war ends in six or eight months, we do not know what kind of of slump will take place. There was no provision made for keeping us in a position in which we could continue to carry out our normal operations."

With regard to some of the activities of the Prices Commission, I want to say very deliberately and very honestly that I have not, and cannot have, any confidence in that body in regard to prices. Last year, I bought a certain article in O'Connell Street here. I took two samples to Cork with me in order to get similar articles in Cork. In Cork, I sent for three dozen of the articles and, to my surprise, found that, while I paid 7½d. each for them in Dublin, I was charged 1/3 each in Cork. It was the same article, of the same quality and made by the same manufacturer. I sent them back, thinking it was a mistake, and asked for more. I also asked for a receipt and I got a receipt for 1/3 each.

I immediately wrote to the Department of Supplies and sent to them the articles for which I was charged 100 per cent. more. The Department wrote to me in the course of a fortnight saying that my letter had been received, but that the articles had not reached the office. I replied that it was strange that my letter arrived while the articles did not arrive, when the two were posted in the same box. I gave the facts of the case and, after another fortnight, I got a reply saying that the seller was anxious to know the buyer and stating that if I went back to where I got the articles, my money would be refunded. I wrote again to the Department saying that it was not so much a question of my being refunded the money, but rather a matter of saving the community from this class of profiteering, and asking if I was to take the matter as closed. I got another reply in the course of four or five weeks telling me that nothing further could be done, that a genuine mistake had been made and that they were prepared to refund my money.

I come now to the question of coal. Coal was stocked by certain firms in particular places in Cork last August. Since then, 9/- has gone on to the price of coal and I am inclined to think that there was a further 2/- put on. That coal lay in the open since last August until 22nd January of this year and anybody who knows how coal can absorb water knows what weight was added to that coal. When the last increase of 5/- came on, they started to sell this coal. I immediately wrote to the Department asking whether merchants who had coal in stock since last August were entitled to sell that coal at the then prevailing price. I got a card saying that the matter was having attention and I waited rather patiently for two weeks, and got no further reply. I wrote again asking if it were possible that it could take so long to tell me whether merchants were entitled to sell coal which they had in stock since last August at the price prevailing in February. I got a letter after a while telling me that, having gone into all the figures, they were satisfied that the merchants were making no profit and were so entitled to sell it. Who will tell me that I should have confidence in a Department that treats such matters in this fashion? People came to me last Monday and told me that they had paid 4/9 per bag, not for coal but for slack which had been heaped in the stores for some months which was sold formerly at 1/6 a bag less. It was being sold to poor people last Monday at the coal price.

These are matters which are causing widespread discontent and resentment among the poorer sections and the sooner we wake up and do what is necessary, the better. The Minister told us last night also that bread was going to be scarce, that tea was going to be rationed, but that there were other things in abundance which could be used, like milk, bacon, potatoes and vegetables. If we are going to ration anything, whether butter, tea or bread, it is not going to help the poor. Purchasing power must also be rationed if the poor are to get their share. There is no good in rationing a man with a wife and six or seven children if he has not got the purchasing power to buy the goods, and what I want to point out is the need for spending money and giving purchasing power to these people, enabling them to produce goods and give service, rather than to keep them standing idle.

Deputy Belton said: "Go and produce the goods." I am wondering whether the Government have taken sufficient steps to ensure that we will have enough food in the country next year. I am satisfied that they have not. We, in Cork, have 1,838 applicants for plots and we are short 22 acres for these unemployed people who are anxious to help in the production of food. We have, within four miles of Cork City, 300 acres of land owned by the Government. Is there any reason why that land, formerly Ballincollig barracks, should not be devoted to the production of food for the people for the coming year and the year after? We are not taking sufficient steps to ensure that we will have food in the country in the future. The first evil we have to attack is poverty itself. Undoubtedly, those people who are unemployed for so long are the poorest sections of our people. They are living or, should I say, existing, in deadening poverty. The second evil I should like to see attacked is the great inequality of wealth among our people. Economic inequality to me has many aspects which are obnoxious. I am not now referring to unavoidable poverty due to the fact that incomes of the community are limited, but I have in mind the avoidable poverty due to the uneven distribution of available goods.

Let me not be misunderstood in saying that I want equality. Inequality of income there must be, and it will do no harm if a decent standard of life, a standard of frugal comfort, is attainable by all. I do not want to be understood as preaching equality, but I think the economic inequality existing in this country to-day is unworthy of this or any other Government. I happened to be in West Cork last Sunday and I kept my eyes open regarding the conditions of the people coming out of Mass and in the several towns down to Dunmanway. The position is most depressing. We have 2,500 persons for the past number of years receiving an annual net income of over £8,500,000 and we have old age pensioners trying to exist on 10/- a week, widows trying to exist on 7/6 of a non-contributory pension, and unemployed men trying to maintain a boy or girl on 1/- a week until he or she is 14 years of age. When they come to 14 years, the 1/- is cut off and, unless they obtain home assistance, nobody considers that they are worthy of existence. I say that that is unworthy of a Christian country. No matter what Deputy O'Reilly may say and no matter what criticism may come from any other quarter of the House, that is not going to last. There is resentment amongst the unemployed.

We had an Order recently cutting off benefit a number of men who are told to look for work but for whom the State cannot find work. If the Minister for Industry and Commerce or the Minister for Finance could only meet some of these people, their outlook on life would be somewhat different from what it is. A man came into me last Sunday and told me that he was cut off the labour exchange. He wanted a note to the home assistance officer. This man lives a short distance outside the city and has eight children. He had ten children but two died, one recently. The death of these children requires no comment from me. The eldest child was 12 years of age and the youngest a year and a month. I said to this man: "Surely you were getting more than 14/- a week." He replied: "That is all, and I am paying a rent of 4/2 per week." I asked him how he existed and he said he got "three pairs of bread" from the St. Vincent de Paul Society and a pint of milk under the free milk scheme.

That man had hardly gone when another man came to me and said: "I am cut off, too." He had worked as a shop assistant. Then, he was employed at Ford's for five years. After that, he looked for travelling agencies and he had been out of employment since the war started. He was receiving 10/6 per week and was living with his married sister whose husband was unemployed and who had four children. He paid her 9/- and kept 1/6 for himself. He said to me: "I can tell you that there are two or three days of the week when we have no fire because we cannot afford it. I have often a weary time trying to keep myself warm." Here is a highly educated man, who saw good days, now on the scrap heap. Will Deputy O'Reilly tell me that this man will take things as easily as he says he will? His case is typical of thousands.

I want to see a social change of an orderly nature. I do not want a change in a manner which none of us would like to see. The sooner the Government make up their minds to do the necessary things, the better for the country as a whole. To do these things, the Minister for Finance and his Government must be masters in their own house. Those who exercise control over finance to-day have far more power than our Minister for Finance or any other Minister of the Government. In any well regulated or well governed country, trade and finance go together. Until you take control of banking and credit systems, we can talk until our tongues fall out and the evils we complain about will not be solved. I can speak for members of my Party and I can say that we are giving and will give every assistance to the Government in solving the social evils that confront us.

We are to give £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 more for Army purposes. There is no murmur about that. Yet, what do we find on the other side of the picture? In the distressing period that this country is going through, we find that there is a reduction of £400,000 in respect of relief work, £143,000 in respect of unemployment assistance and insurance, £43,000 in respect of forestry and £115,000 in respect of land activities. There are reductions in respect of the very things on which expenditure should be increasing with a view to helping the poor. We can get millions for war purposes. Why? I suggest, with all seriousness, that vested interests are at stake and have got to be protected. Hence, there is no murmur about providing this money. Why not draw a line—a poverty line, if you like—and say that anybody below the amount represented by that line has too little. A line could then be drawn for the wealthy classes and anybody having more than the amount represented by this line could be said to have too much. To me, luxury and excessive wealth are as obnoxious as is the sight of distressing poverty.

I want to say this to the Fine Gael Party and the Fianna Fáil Party, that it is a farce to say that anybody has a monopoly of virtue regarding the poor or how they should be treated. I am satisfied as to the good intentions of all parties but we are afraid to deal with the essential things. None of us can avoid the consequence of dodging our responsibilities. I say to the Government in all sincerity that the sooner they tackle the banking system and the credit system and spend money—even millions—on the necessary things, the better. When destitution and privation are removed from the people, then only can we say that we have solved the problems of this country.

Mr. Esmonde

I wonder if the Government realise exactly what the people are thinking about them at the present time? It may be that they have not been told the truth by those who should tell them the truth. As a member of the House, I have had on occasion to go out of my way— strange as it may seem—to defend individual members of the Government and the Government as a whole in respect of certain action taken by them from time to time. I felt that, unless the central authority was supported and unless the Government was kept in good repute, the institutions of the State would depart from our lives. I do not refer now to people who are always going around grumbling or looking for cause to grumble. I refer to people who can be described as citizens in every sense of the word.

They are all saying the same thing —that, unless something is done and done at once, there will be riots, chaos and revolution in this land. That may sound a strange thing to say, possibly it may sound a silly thing to say, to those who do not appreciate it, but I deem it my duty here as a representative in this House—independent of the Party to which I belong, but hearing things and with sources of information in my own private life—to mention these matters here in public debate. If government is brought into disrepute in this country—I do not care whether it is the government of the Fianna Fáil Party or the government of any other Party—the institutions of the State on which government is based and modelled are bound to go down. There is no doubt about it whatsoever, and I ask the members of the Government to make inquiries on this score from members of their own Party from different parts of the country and I am perfectly certain, if they tell the truth, they will bear out what I am saying— that, day after day, hour after hour, and minute after minute, the Government as a Government and as the Government of this country, is getting into greater disrepute.

In the debate here yesterday the Minister for Supplies suggested, because a similar note to that which I have sounded now was sounded by other speakers on this side of the House, that we were anxious for some political party reason to create the impression that there would be disorder and trouble in the country: that we desired disorder and trouble. Does anyone in this House think that I or the Deputies who sit round me here on these benches would be anxious in the slightest way to contribute to the disorganisation of our social life or of our social activities by any thought, word or deed on our part? Since this crisis started in the country, we have been lenient in our criticism of the Government, as we thought that it was in the national interest to be so. We have been silent on numerous occasions when the urge of Party gain might have caused us to raise our voices and denounce; we have been silent, not only here but in our conversation outside, but there arises a stage when the leniency which we have exercised goes beyond the bounds of discretion and reaches a realm of negligence so far as we as Deputies are concerned. I submit that it would be negligence on the part of any Deputy here if he seriously believed, as I believe and as I know numbers of Deputies in this House believe, that we are facing a fearful crisis in this country at the present time, and sitting absolutely on the verge of a volcano and remained silent.

The Government have met the criticism in this debate, so far as I can make out from the speech of the Minister for Supplies yesterday, with this defence and with this plea: what right have you to criticise us? We are not responsible for the world war; we are not responsible for the situation that has arisen in the country as a result of the world war. We are not responsible for the cutting off of supplies by reason of the sinking of ships and so forth. That is only confusing the issue. The issue is not and should not be what caused this war or what caused the present situation here, but what is going to be done and what should be done at the present time. I say it is not fair to this House or to this country that the Government should make up their defence by clouding the issue and by saying that it is all right for the people who have not got the responsibility of government to charge them with things for which they say they are not responsible.

I am not charging them with that; I am not charging the Government with the present state of affairs, but what I am charging them with is their failure to do anything at the present time. That is the thing that really matters and that is the issue that is in the minds of every man and woman in the country. The Government can accept my words or reject them but, if something is not done at once, the state of affairs here will be one that no Government can clear up. What has contributed to that is the failure of the Government to trust the people. I indict the Government for not having told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There is a form of legal fraud known to the law: it is either the suggesting of what is false or the suppression of that which is true. I say that the Government have deliberately suppressed facts which the public should know and which they are entitled to know. Surely to goodness, we are strong enough and capable enough as a race and as a group of individuals to bear the truth. Why tell us in the month of February half the truth, so that we may be better prepared for the whole truth in the month of March? Why not tell us the whole truth in February? Why does the Government not take the country fully into its confidence?

The Minister for Supplies mentioned here yesterday the question of petrol. I was very glad when I heard him state that there would be no favouritism —and that is one of the things that affects good government anywhere—in the supply of petrol, that the persons entitled to the receipt of petrol coupons are to be those who belong to certain well-defined categories, and that nothing that anybody can do will give to any person other than a person in such a category a particular quantity of petrol to which he or she is not entitled. There is no doubt about it, the public know what those categories are, and there is no doubt about the fact that you see going through the streets of Dublin and through the streets of country towns, and around the country generally, an extraordinarily large number of motor cars, motor cars which could not possibly be driven by persons in the categories which were mentioned by the Minister yesterday.

I suggest that, in order that he should carry out his scheme properly, in order that he should allay public suspicion, and in order that he should prevent the illicit sale of petrol, each owner of a motor vehicle who is driving his vehicle as a legitimate person belonging to one of the categories entitled to get petrol, should have some outward mark, similar to the road tax sign, on the car showing that he is a legitimate holder of coupons entitled to petrol, because no statement in this House or no statement anywhere else will disabuse the people's minds of the belief that persons other than those who are entitled to get petrol are getting it through favouritism or by paying an extraordinarily high price to some profiteer in Dublin or some other part of the country. Then, again, while agreeing that every effort should be made to maintain the defence of this country on a high level, it was only to-day that I counted six Army lorries driving through the streets of this city, and in each of them were about 20 soldiers. The only equipment these soldiers were carrying —and I noted it very carefully—was a tin mug strapped to their shoulders. I assume that they were infantry soldiers and capable of walking and that their journey was from one portion of the city to another, and I think it did not look well, and it does not look well, that men who are not equipped and who are obviously not travelling on a long journey but just being moved, possibly, from one barracks to another, should travel in these lorries through the city. I think that is a matter which the Minister for Defence should look into, and if that were attended to it would make available more petrol for other services.

Now, the present position in regard to agriculture is that the Government have called upon the members of the farming community to produce as much food as possible. That portion of the community is entitled to feel that it is getting the support of the Government. It is all very well to say: "There is a guaranteed price for wheat and a guaranteed price for beet, you must grow so much and you are bound to have a profit at the end, and it is a national duty for you to do so." That is all very well, but people will not feel that they have the support of the Government unless you place them in such a position that they feel themselves safe in carrying out their ordinary work on the farm. Within the last 48 hours I was visited by a farmer who has a substantial farm. He had been trying to get in touch with me on the telephone for the last three days, and he wanted to get in touch with me because the matter was urgent. Three days before, he had been decreed by a bank for a debt of £100 which was due since 1921. The bank, legally and under the present administration, decreed that man at a time when his horses, stock, and so on, were most urgently needed for use on his farm. I am not saying that the bank were not perfectly and legally entitled to do so. Probably, they obtained that decree for the purpose of keeping alive the Statute of Limitations or something like that, but it is not right that a situation should exist under which, at the present moment, that can happen. As the law stands at the present time, that man's horses and plough may be seized from him just at the time when he needs them to put in his crop. That is why that man came to see me, hoping to ensure that the seizure would not take place at least until his crop was sown. That is a state of affairs that should not exist. Everybody in that man's neighbourhood knows that, and while other portions of the community may be getting a little assistance from the Government they should be able to appreciate that the Government is behind agriculture, lock, stock and barrel, in the endeavour to increase production.

The Government have had every opportunity. They have had a free hand, with an absence of criticism, they have had willing co-operation from this side of the House, they have had the benefit of the censorship— they have had all these things, and unless they do something, and do something at once, it would be better for them to get out and get out at once, because any problems they may have to face now will be increased and multiplied within the next six or seven weeks or, perhaps, two months, and then it will be too late. It is all very well, taking the advice of experts here and of experts there. Something has to be done and done at once, and the first thing is to let the people know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That is the least that is expected from the Government, and that is the least they are entitled to expect from them.

Mr. Childers

I have been listening for two days to a post-mortem examination of the position generally which, in my opinion, reflects neither dignity nor commonsense as far as the Dáil is concerned. Having heard all the speakers reproaching the Minister for Supplies for what he had done or what he had not done, and telling him what he should do or should not do, it occurred to me to look back over the proceedings that have taken place in this Dáil from time to time, and inquire as to whether any of the members of either Party foresaw properly the danger that has come to us, foresaw the shortening of supplies, or foresaw the degree of the shortening of our supplies. I wanted to find out whether any single member of the Opposition is in the position to get up here and tell the Minister for Supplies what he should have done or what he should not have done. Having taken the trouble to go through the Dáil Debates, and having read the debate on the Emergency Act, which took place at the commencement of the war, having read the debate on the continuance of the Emergency Act later on in the war, having read the first Estimate for the Department of Supplies, I cannot find any evidence that the Opposition ever expressed any grave anxiety as to the action being taken by the Department of Supplies. Nor did they ever suggest that the Department of Supplies should be reorganised in the only way in which it could be reorganised under the then existing circumstances, from the point of view of getting more supplies, namely, that it should actually take control of the industry and commerce of the country.

I think Deputy McGilligan used the phrase "socialisation of industry." At any rate, all I can find is the fear that the Government, perhaps, might interfere too much with individual commerce, and the worry, when the Act was passed, that these powers were far too drastic, and the suggestion that private commerce would do more than any Government could do for supplies in this country. I suggest that it was not until France was defeated and when £8,000,000 worth of imports were cut off from this country, not until it was quite evident that the submarine sinkings were going to be on a far bigger scale than anybody had anticipated, and not until we realised that American ships carrying supplies in American bottoms, under neutral auspices and flying a neutral flag, would not be able to bring goods here, and that other neutrals in the European area would not be able to bring goods here—it was not until these things took place that we really knew that we were going to be in a serious position. I do not think that anybody, even any member of the Opposition, unless he had the divine gift of prophecy or inspiration, which is possessed by some people, would have been able to say, before these things happened, that things were going to be very serious and to say: "Let us extend the whole business of the Department of Supplies, and let them go into business for themselves on a very big and wide scale."

I think it is just as well that the people of this country should be made aware of the actual position. I am not arguing that the Department of Supplies could not have done more, or that they were a perfect Department. But I am saying that, in relation to the average democracy in Europe and the average way in which other democracies behave, the actions of the Department, with certain exceptions and with certain errors here and there, were proper so far as their general attitude towards trade and commerce was concerned. Just as the English Government—possibly, almost too late—began to interfere more and more with private trade and commerce and went into business more and more on its own account, so, in our own case, just as in the case of the English Government and other Governments, our Government delayed taking what might have been more drastic action, because we could not foresee the circumstances and because we, like any other democracy, were wishful-thinking to this extent that we did not lie awake at night thinking of all the things that might happen to us but which we hoped would not happen.

That is the actual position and the people of this country would be far better able to face the future if we ceased making post mortems into the question of what the Department of Supplies or the Government did or did not do. It would be far easier for them to face the grim future that awaits this country almost certainly, so far as our industries and general life are concerned. In actual fact the Government of this country and the Opposition, by their speeches and by their acts, up to about July, 1940, followed faithfully the opinions of the average person in the country. In some ways the Department went far beyond what the average person in the country would consider necessary interference in order to maintain supplies, but in most ways we behaved very much like any other country which rightly glories in its democracy and wishes to preserve its democracy but knows the instrument is bound to creak at the beginning of a crisis.

That is the actual position. Many members of the Opposition, as the Minister said yesterday, have contributed useful suggestions to the Government; many others have spoken of the present only; have not spoken of the past. But in order, perhaps, to discourage members of the Opposition from making any further post mortems I am just going to quote a few of their statements, made at the beginning of this war, during the period when, if we had wished, we could have taken, perhaps, more drastic action to get supplies. The first quotation is from Deputy Costello, at column 53, Dáil Debates, 2nd September, 1939. Speaking of the sections in the Emergency Powers Bill dealing with the powers of the Government in relation to trade, he said:—

"I sincerely believe that the more you interfere by regulations of the type envisaged in this Bill with the normal progress of commercial undertakings, the more unemployment and the greater distress there will be, and the more distress there will be, the more starvation there will be, and the greater likelihood there will be of internal disturbances in this State which we all want to avoid."

That is Deputy Costello.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Did the Deputy mention the number of the volume?

Mr. Childers

Volume 77. Then Deputy Linehan, at column 79, volume 77, Dáil Debates 2nd September, 1939, said:—

"People may feel that there has been sufficient interference by legislation, and by bureaucrats established by legislation, with the commercial activities of the country without any additional interferences that might possibly happen under such a drastic Bill as this."

I will not quote any more references, but there are at least ten other references of the same kind. Feeling perhaps that was a little bit too early, that the war had not actually started, I also read the remarks of the Opposition at the times when they had an opportunity to criticise the Department up to the period of about June, 1940, and although I could find individual criticism, chiefly on the ground of price, or else on the ground that the Minister had made an error in estimating, as they thought, the amount of any particular article and had to quickly amend his statement with regard to it—in their opinion they thought he had not shown proper judgment—I cannot find any suggestion of all the drastic things that would have been required.

I think the House should recall the general activities of the Department. The Department, roughly speaking, did the following things: In the case of certain products they formed or caused to be formed buying associations and controlled their activities and these buying associations eliminated the factor of competition within this country and, in certain cases, competition with buying associations in Great Britain. That was in respect of articles which we import in bulk. They took approximate censuses of supplies of materials by consulting various commercial organisations and they stimulated those commercial organisations to purchase materials as much as they could, to avoid competition with each other, to buy in common, to distribute in common all the raw materials they could obtain and in that way help us to secure supplies.

Mr. D. Morrissey

When was that?

Mr. Childers

Since the beginning of the war.

Mr. Morrissey

Since the beginning of the war.

Mr. Childers

Developing at different times. For example, if five firms used a certain article, say a certain kind of oil, the Department of Supplies would encourage the trade association to buy the oil en bloc and distribute it in certain proportions to individual members using that oil. It also quite definitely, as far as I am aware, encouraged the banks to issue credits to credit-worthy firms to enable them to secure extra supplies of raw material and they gave a general encouragement to everyone to purchase raw materials. That was what they did, generally speaking. The only thing they could have done more than that was that, if they had foreseen the disaster that overtook Europe, they could, at a very early stage of the war, have actually gone into business themselves. They could have appointed trade controllers over every industry. They could have actually started buying goods. To do that they would have had to make very definite efforts to get dollar credits which might have been very difficult to procure. They could at that time have bought or leased ships. They would have had to involve the whole credit of the State to enable us to get all the raw materials we could have got under those circumstances. No one can tell how far they would have been successful, but, quite certainly, there was no mandate in this House, there was no mandate in the country, for the vast expense, the thousands of officials and the tremendous amount of organisation that would have been required to carry out that work. No one in the Opposition suggested that the Government should actually follow almost faithfully the line taken by Great Britain, a nation actually at war. There are a whole lot of question marks as to whether that would have been practicable, whether the dollars would have been obtained, whether the money could have been obtained, whether the credits were there or not, whether we, who are a very individualist nation, could in so short a time be entirely altered to a nation in which everyone bought and sold in common, in which types and varieties of products would be standardised, in which a great deal of the individual brands and marks of goods would suddenly disappear, with certain consequent unemployment. Many of these things would be entirely speculative. It is true certain organisations recommended to the Government that they should take steps to do that as far as possible but the point I am making is that it is really hypocritical on the part of the Opposition to condemn the Government, generally speaking, for the fact that they did not do more to bring in supplies. I cannot find any trace of their wishing the Government to take the very extreme powers that would be required for that purpose.

We have heard a great deal in this House this evening in regard to poverty. While we all deplore poverty, while we all wish there was no such thing as poverty, I think at the present time, having regard to what is going to happen to this country if the war gets more fierce, if our supplies get more difficult to obtain, the members of the Labour Party, who stress in public the question of poverty, should tell the people the actual truth, that at this moment we are probably the richest nation in Europe, by far the richest nation in Europe in respect of the average purchasing power of the average individual, in respect of the actual supplies available for industry and agriculture to-day; that there is almost no country in Europe where there is at this moment, in spite of declining supplies, such plenty. It is just as well to prepare the people for the fact that that cannot continue. It is no good questioning our social system, whether we might have done this or that or have adopted all those radical measures suggested by Deputy Hickey. We have got to tell the people that, for reasons that perhaps have very little to do with our own Government, because of our position, because of the general strategic character of this war, at this moment we probably are the richest nation in Europe in respect of the average life of the average person in the community. The people in the community who have begun to suffer first undoubtedly are those with fixed unemployment assistance whose value is greatly decreased in terms of purchasing. These are the people who have begun to suffer, but, as far as the rest of the community is concerned, we are extremely lucky to be where we are, and the Deputies of this House ought to be warning the people that things are going to get infinitely worse unless a miracle happens.

I come now to the question of our food supplies. I have no doubt that we may have to face a crisis between June and September. When speaking on this question Deputies should recall the fact that Irish farmers in districts where there is sufficient land —not in the congested districts—are amongst the highest consumers of their own foodstuffs. I mention that because there is no reason for adopting a panic-stricken attitude concerning a food shortage between July and September. In actual fact, according to the figures, our farmers on middle-class holdings are amongst the highest consumers of their own foodstuffs in the civilised world. There is a definite margin by which we should be able, without enormous difficulty, to survive that period between June and September, when supplies are running low and before the new harvest comes in. I mention that fact because I want to recommend Deputies to read a report that was prepared by the last Administration dealing with the consumption of foodstuffs in Irish farming households. They will be amazed at the high figures disclosed there. The only conclusion is, that with a little more rationing, and by means of public appeals and suggestions from the Minister, we should be able to get food during that period without abnormal difficulty. There may be a scarcity here and there and there may be difficulties, but I do not think we should become panic-stricken.

The next question concerns the suggestion made by the Labour Party, that in the middle of this war we could suddenly abolish unemployment and poverty. We have to consider the fact that the Army is costing £6,000,000 more this year than previously. To a certain degree it is giving employment and replacing unemployment. Unemployment schemes have to be considered in the nature of the unusual expenditure of the Government on the Army and otherwise. The decline of unemployment in England has to be considered in connection with the employment afforded by the armaments industries and in the Army. The actual fact is that the only way we can tax our people is by taxing trade profits, which are slowly diminishing because of lack of supplies. If we cannot do that we shall have deliberately to lower consumption. When there is talk of ending poverty, the position is this, that we may have to prevent people spending money or giving employment in certain directions in order to retain sufficient money for the Army. It occurs to me that the Labour Party are giving the impression to the people that the money spent on the army in foreign countries in some way justifies their policy.

I should like to point out that the last fragments of the social credit policy, and everything in connection with inflation, has been completely destroyed by the operations of the two principal Powers now at war. So far as finances are concerned, there could be nothing more rigidly orthodox than the manner in which this war has been financed by both sides. Governments control purchasing and selling in order to make money available for armament. It is absolutely true to say that we could do what other nations are doing and thus create a certain amount of employment. We could spend more than £10,000,000 a year on building by reducing the consumption of other commodities and by letting people tighten their belts so that houses could be built. That is what the two principal nations in Europe, now at war, are doing, but let no one imagine that that is some kind of ideal cure for social evils, based on credit or inflation. In actual fact we are learning more than we ever learned before, and how right 19th century economists were. But they could not conceive of the power of a Government to control money.

As to making suggestions for the future, I can see approaching this winter a very serious situation so far as unemployment is concerned. It is quite obvious to Deputies that, if the cost of living rises very much further, unemployment assistance by itself will be actually insufficient to enable people to keep body and soul together. I submit to the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and to the Minister for Supplies, that if it is deemed inadvisable from the point of view of public finance to increase the main unemployment benefit, the State in some way will either have to organise charitable enterprises in the same way as they were organised in the United States during the period of crisis there, or it will have to provide certain classes of unemployed persons with foodstuffs at reduced prices. That was done in certain areas in America during the crisis by a very simple procedure, as a result of which people of a certain class were supplied with food in packets on a very large scale. In other countries that were very much hit by war, there was a system of rationing by which the unemployed obtained goods at fixed prices in certain quantities.

I am quite sure that Ministers have had that in mind. I am certain that unless things are more favourable than we can imagine there will be something of that kind needed during the winter. If Ministers do not consider it advisable to raise the rates it is essential to provide some kind of State aid to charitable enterprise to provide food on a much larger scale than it is provided by these organisations for certain classes of the unemployed with large families. That has also probably occurred to the Minister. I urge upon the Minister for Supplies to hasten work that is necessary to secure the best use of the existing raw materials left in the country for industries where they are not being replenished, such as the metal and other industries requiring raw materials. Obviously in the near future there will have to be some kind of priority production for the use of agriculture and other industries, as well as production for essential use by consumers, which might cease. As an example I might mention the making of ornamental iron gates. If they are being made, that should be stopped, if by doing so material could be provided for other industries. I trust the Minister will accelerate that work. It will be urgent soon.

In connection with timber using industries, the Department should accelerate that work by finding out what native timber is available to keep industries using timber going. For instance, there are very few timber drying plants in this country, and I am afraid that no one is going to start timber drying plants, unless the Government assists and encourages people to do so. One thing which would facilitate the use of our native timber would be the establishment of a greater number of drying plants in order to make the timber useful for certain purposes. There are many other essentials for our industries concerning which I think the Department should have taken more immediate action than they have taken.

I fully appreciate the views of the Minister for Supplies in regard to the rationing of commodities. I fully agree with him that what has been said by those who have returned from England shows that rationing is not perfect and does not work properly. So far as rationing from wholesaler to retailer is concerned, that is all very well but when it comes to distributing commodities from the retailer to the consumer, the position in many cases of the cash buyer, particularly of the poorer class person, has been adversely affected. Although I understand completely that rationing of articles like paraffin would be scarcely an advantage, I honestly believe that if supplies of commodities such as paraffin and soap are to run short something will have to be done to effect a more equitable distribution from the retail trade to the consumer, even if actual rationing is not adopted.

I think the Minister should be aware of the fact that a considerable amount of hoarding has been going on, in connection with articles where supplies were available, where the amount issued to retailers has been cut down, but where the retailer has still some voluntary discrimination in his sales. There is no question of that. I know a person who was offered a cwt. of soap by a retailer. I do not know whether there was any law in existence which forbade that, but if there was such a law, it was not being obeyed. It is quite possible that censuses taken by the Department of Supplies have been inaccurate because of the fact that certain people have resorted to hoarding. When people hear that there is likely to be a scarcity of certain commodities, they naturally rush to purchase such quantities of these commodities as they can. I quite agree also that undue publicity in this House or elsewhere as to a likely shortage of certain articles of common consumption will have that effect. I think something more should be done to discourage hoarding of commodities of which supplies are running low.

Another point which I should like to put to the Minister is that it would seem to me that there is no question that the owners of cars who also are in charge of commercial vehicles, are using some of the petrol issued to them for these commercial vehicles in running their private cars. I could not find any explanation for the increase in the number of private cars one sees at public functions and travelling round the streets in Dublin recently other than that a basic allowance had been issued for commercial vehicles and that, somehow or other, the owners of these lorries, or the managers of factories to which these lorries are attached, were taking a few odd pints of the petrol and using them for their private cars. If the Minister thinks we can afford to permit the use of petrol in that way, that is one thing, but if he thinks that we cannot afford it, I think he should make use of the Gárda Síochána and threaten to cut off the commercial basic allowance so as to make it quite impossible for the owner of a commercial vehicle to use the petrol issued for that vehicle in driving his private car, even though the amount used might be very small.

Mr. Bennett

In ordinary circumstances this Vote on Account would be severely criticised because of its magnitude. It provides for a sum that a few short years ago would have astounded the House and the people of the country, but we are living in peculiar times, and I dare say the House and the country are not so much concerned with the magnitude of the bill that is presented as with the use that is being made of it. If the common people of this country have certain facts put up to them, they will face them courageously, I believe. As Deputy Dillon pointed out, the mere fact that 200,000 young men rallied to the call when danger threatened proves that the people of this country are ready to face actualities. What they rather fear is the indefinite or I might say the anticipation of unknown hardships. That is the difficulty that presents itself to the majority of the people. The people resent the undue censorship that is placed over the ordinary happenings of life, things that it would appear to the common mind might have been explained to them without any possible danger to the security of the country.

I made reference on another occasion to the desirability of frankness amongst Ministers in revealing the position as to our general policy to the people of the country. Huge as this bill is, the major portion of it is concerned with defence, and the people are satisfied to leave the expenditure of that money intended for defence in the hands of the Government without any very severe criticism as to the extent of it. The common or garden citizen is not well versed in modern military expenditure, and he is willing to repose trust in the Government as far as that is concerned. The people would have been quite willing to place the same trust in the Government in regard to other things if there had been a more frank disposition on the part of Ministers in dealing with affairs generally. We had a long debate in the last few days on the question of supplies. I am not myself much more educated as to our actual position on this, the third day on which we have been dealing with that matter, than I was on the first day. I am not quite sure what amount of supplies are within the State, what use has been made of them or what supplies we may expect in the future. If we could get somewhere nearer an explanation of these facts, much of the criticism that is forced on Deputies by their constituents would be eliminated. If there is a shortage of supplies in many ways and if excessive prices are being charged for what supplies there are, the Ministry are not without blame.

Let us take four or five essential commodities. I suppose every Deputy in this House is interested in providing for the plain people. Mind you I have not heard the expression "plain people" used many times in this debate. We used to hear a lot in this House about the plain people. What I want, and what I think every Deputy wants, is to secure for the plain people sufficient plain food or, if not sufficient, as great a proportion as possible of the plain food that we have in the country and a fair share of what little we may expect to import from other countries.

We will just run over what might have been. It is rather futile to recall things which have happened, but it is sometimes necessary in the course of an argument. At present, many foods which are being sold to the people would be cheaper if the Government had taken a different line of action. Wheat might not be cheaper, but it would be available in greater quantities if a different policy had been pursued; at least, the prospects of greater quantities of wheat in the near future might have been better if a different policy had been pursued. The inducement that was offered for the production of wheat which, to some minds, was very generous, was not sufficient, and the whole matter was badly handled. Reference has been made to the period at which the appeal was made to grow wheat. I am not going to criticise the Government or the Minister for Agriculture for that. But, I do say that the farmers were misled and were left in the hands of profiteers.

Take the case of wheat. Last year farmers had to till one-eighth of their holdings and the farmers, in answer to the call of the Government, kept a certain proportion of seed in order to grow the same acreage this year. Later on a new order was made requiring an extra acreage and it became necessary for small farmers to buy a further quantity of seed. Meantime, there was a scarcity of wheat and the consequence was that the wheat which farmers sold at the price fixed by the Government of 35/- or 37/6 they had to re-buy to sow their land at from 60/- to 80/-. Ministers were responsible for the profiteering in that case. If they had given due notice to the farmers, the position might have been better. Farmers would have retained sufficient seed for their own needs and there would not have been an inducement for certain people to profiteer.

In the case of oats the position was much more grave. Many farmers sold oats last September or October at about 12/- per barrel. Within a few months oats was very much dearer and eventually it went up to about 37/6 a barrel, and even more in some places. Farmers and other people are now paying 37/6 a barrel for oats which was bought for 12/- or 13/- a barrel; in no place did the price go beyond 14/- a barrel. It has been stated here that the day may come when it will be necessary for us to have one meal of porridge and milk or something like that and we want to see that the meal will be available at a fair price. By permission of the Minister the price of flake meal was recently raised 1/- per stone. In other words, the millers were allowed to profiteer further at the expense of the people to the extent of 1/- per stone when they were already charging 4/- and 4/3 per stone for flaked oats which they purchased at about 13/- or 14/- per barrel or 10d. or 11d. per stone. The responsibility for that rests on the Government. In any case, I venture to say that the majority of the millers of flake meal were wise enough to purchase stocks of oats at the lower price, and I think that the increase of 1/- per stone should not have been permitted.

Twelve months ago I put down a question to the Minister for Agriculture asking him if, having regard to the fact that the previous year farmers sold oats at from 6d. to 9d. per stone and afterwards had perhaps to pay three times that price for it, he would, in view of the increased acreage of oats grown last year, take some precautions so that that would not happen the following harvest. That was six months before the harvest, but after the harvest the position was worse. I intend to put the same question to the Minister this year, but I do not know what the results will be.

One is rather venturesome in suggesting guaranteed prices in order to secure a sufficiency of home-grown products and, at the same time, ensure possibly lower prices for the purchasers. That may appear to be a paradox, but a good many people think that if you guarantee a fixed price it will mean a lower price for the purchaser. Other people argue the contrary, namely, that it would raise the price to the purchaser. If we had guaranteed the farmers a price of 20/- per barrel for oats last year, which would have been about one-and-a-half times what they got or a little more, it would have meant that oats, either in the raw state or in the manufactured state as flake meal, would have been sold at a great reduction on the price eventually paid, because if there was a fixed price of, say, 1/6 a stone, or 20/- a barrel for oats, everybody would know what oats was worth and millers could not have demanded 5/- per stone for flaked meal. Even if they did, there was machinery in the hands of the Minister to prevent such a thing happening. If you had a guaranteed price of 20/- per barrel for oats, with the machinery that the Minister has now, since he assumed the functions of the Prices Commission, he could have prevented the price of flaked meal rising to its present figure.

I think it is almost certain after the next harvest that we will be in the position that the supply of wheat will be even less than it is now, because the prospects are that the acreage of wheat grown this year will not be near what the Minister desires and the country hopes for, and I for one will be sorry for that. Unfortunately, since January we have had a period of wet weather such as we have not had for very many years, and very few farmers were able to sow wheat from the 15th January to the 1st March. A great quantity of the winter wheat which would have been sown has not been sown. I am afraid, therefore, that in the coming harvest the production of wheat will be short. The danger is that farmers who put in wheat in the conditions prevailing during the last few months will not have any crop.

What is going to happen if there is a shortage after the harvest and we can get no imports? It will mean that we will have to fall back on other home-produced foods. I have mentioned oats, and I hope the Minister will take the hint given to him early last year from many sides of the House. What I suggest is that a price should be fixed now for oats so that the farmer will know how he will stand at the end of the season and the public what oats will be worth. That would prevent both the farmer and the public from being fleeced as they were in the last two years. Potatoes should be grown extensively this year. The potato is a very desirable food. My own opinion is that every farmer will put in some extra potatoes this year, but, apart from that, encouragement should be given by the Government to people to grow more potatoes. They should offer a fair price to the farmer and let the public know what they will have to pay for potatoes when buying them retail. Barley is not much use as a human food, but last season you had much the same position in regard to barley that you had in the case of oats. Farmers sold their barley for 20/- a barrel, and afterwards saw it bought back by other farmers at over £2 a barrel. There was a great deal of mismanagement last year with regard to our cereal crops. I simply refer to these matters so that nothing of the kind will occur again. Mistakes were made, and it may be that all of us were in a way responsible for them. But, if so let us learn from experience and not repeat them. Let us, at any rate see that as much food as can be produced will be produced, and that prices will be arranged and fixed in time. I believe that a fixed guaranteed price is going to ensure possibly— I would say probably—a cheaper price eventually to the consumer.

A number of Deputies have referred to the position with regard to coal, especially in Dublin. References were made to the way in which the poorer people in this city were exploited. In all the manipulations that take place with the necessaries of life, the poor and the plain people are the chief victims. It was said that the bellmen on the quays of Dublin had to pay 16/- a ton, or 25 per cent. more than the coal cost, and that because of that extra charge it was necessary to subsidise the bellmen. The statements to that effect were not contradicted by any Minister. One would have thought that the 16/- a ton, over and above the original cost, would have allowed a sufficient profit to the coal importers to enable the fuel to be provided at a reasonable price to the unfortunate bellmen. Possibly, the coal position will get worse. I am glad the Government are making provision for an increased production of turf this year. Every Deputy should encourage that effort. There are other reserves of fuel that we may be able to fall back upon, if all goes to all. The Taoiseach said yesterday, by way of interruption, that it is not a wise policy to use up all your reserves. Possibly, it is not. The unfortunate thing is that we have so few reserves to fall back upon. We have, of course, certain reserves in the soil, but we have not reserves of the essential commodities that we have to import. If the Government had pursued a different policy we might have larger reserves of these.

Reference has been made to what has been called the tea scandal. I do not say the Government created it, but the scandal was there. In merchants' houses in Limerick and in other places they had sufficient supplies of tea for those who had sufficient money to buy in pounds but not for those with slighter purses. Complaint was also made about the butter shortage. I do not think that will occur again. If we profit by the experience of last season we should not have any shortage of butter next winter. In fact, I am certain we will not have it. In connection with all these matters I would feel glad if a motion that was introduced in another House yesterday had been passed.

An Ceann Comhairle

The business of another House is not discussed here.

Mr. Bennett

May I put my point in another way: I would have liked to see a register set up with a view to rationing all essential food supplies for the people. Until that is done I do not think we will ever get a fair distribution of them.

An Ceann Comhairle

I misunderstood Deputy Bennett a few moments ago, being under the impression that he was about to introduce a different subject.

Mr. Bennett

The practice of expecting retailers to operate a rationing system of their own has not been a success in town or country. The rationing of tea, for example, was not fairly done. As I said a moment ago, tea was available for some people but not for others in the same shops. It is unfair to expect shopkeepers to carry out such a system. My main interests are naturally centred in agricultural produce—butter, milk, wheat, oats, barley, potatoes. It may be that the people of this State will, in future, have to depend almost entirely on the amount of these commodities that will be available. Therefore, every inducement that this House can offer should be offered for their production, and arrangements made for an equitable distribution of them at a fair price amongst all our people. A movement of that kind should have the support of every member of the House. I myself believe, and I offer to the Government this solution of one of our difficulties, that the policy of guaranteeing a price for most of those commodities, in fact for all of them, would result in greater production. Mind you, it would also result eventually in preventing profiteering, because everybody would know what price was paid for the articles, and it would result in the public getting a greater quantity of home-grown food at a cheaper price possibly than that at which they have been getting it. We have only to see the results of the position in regard to the sale of cereals during the last year to recognise that if the price to the farmer had been fixed last year it would have resulted in a cheaper price to the consumer generally and a fairer crack of the whip for everybody.

Mr. Everett

If this debate has done nothing else it must have brought home to the Government the serious position that exists in the country. On all sides of the House the alarming state of affairs has been mentioned. Deputy Childers visualises what will take place, and warns the Ministry of the serious consequences that may arise in the winter time. He pointed out that it should be the duty of the Labour members at least to go around in their constituencies and tell the people, the hungry men and the unemployed men, that we are the richest country in Europe. That is no consolation to men who, by one stroke of the Minister's pen, are deprived of unemployment assistance, and can see no hope of obtaining employment. The only prospect they have now is to look for 5/- a week home assistance to maintain themselves and their families. Those are the men to whom the Government is appealing for co-operation. Those are the men to whom members of both Parties appealed, on grounds of patriotism, to do voluntary work. Is the Ireland in which they are offered 5/- a week home assistance the Ireland that is worth sacrificing their lives for? That is not the Ireland which Connolly or even the present Minister for Finance visualised from 1916 onwards. Is it right to appeal to those men in 1941, and say: "It is necessary for you to come in and remain 12 hours in a Civic Guard barracks protecting the guns. You will get tea, and we will give you boots; you will be sitting beside a man who is getting £4 10s. Od. a week, but you will get only 5/- home assistance?" That is the prospect which is facing the men in the rural areas. I am satisfied that there is no invasion threatening; I am satisfied that the Government knows the position in the country, and are getting those men organised in order to stop the progress of the unemployed. Deputy Hickey asks us to talk facts. What is the use in talking political truths when the Government hurls back the bricks by appealing for co-operation?

Read the speeches of the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Supplies, and examine their actions. Every attack made in the past nine months has been an attack upon the social services and upon the unemployed. Has any section of the people in the Twenty-Six Counties been attacked by the Government other than the county council workers, the road workers and the unemployed? To-day we have the Construction Corps, which some members agreed was a wonderful thing to have even in Dublin, being used as an excuse for depriving people of unemployment assistance. The referees have pointed out: "Work is available; go and join the Construction Corps. If you do not, you are not entitled to any assistance from the Government." That is a form of conscription. This is happening at a time when the Government are appealing for unity, and when Deputy Childers tells us we are the richest country in Europe. The Minister for Finance, in moving this Vote on Account yesterday, said that only for the Army we would have a lower Estimate. He omitted to tell the House that he has taken £44,000 away from the provision for forestry workers. He forgot to inform the House that he has taken £400,000 away from the provision for employment schemes in the Twenty-Six Counties. That means that there is going to be less employment on Government schemes, less employment in forestry and less employment on road work. Other countries are spending millions and millions on the destruction of life. We are not engaged in war, but notwithstanding the fact that we are the richest country in Europe according to Deputy Childers—and I agree with him—the present Government are unable to meet the situation. By their every action they are encouraging certain movements to take place in the country, and they expect the Labour Party not to criticise them, but, on grounds of patriotism, to remain silent, or to go out and tell the unemployed and hungry men that, according to Deputy Childers, we are the richest country in Europe.

The serious position which is going to exist next winter has been referred to. What about our serious position at the present time, when we have 105,000 unemployed, 60,000 of whom, by one stroke of the Minister's pen, are left to the charity of the public bodies? What interest can those men take in defending a country which offers them 5/- home assistance? Can they be blamed for saying: "Why should I, while in receipt of 5/- home assistance, go out and try to keep the Ministers and Deputies in their jobs"? I would not ask the men in the rural areas to do something which I myself would not be prepared to do, but I am prepared to organise them in a different direction, to change the present system and change the present Government if it will improve the lot of the people.

Mr. L.J. Walsh

That would be some job.

Mr. Everett

I have always had the courage to say what I think, and I have never asked anybody to do something which I would not do myself. Instead of having the additional cost of officials and inspectors, why should we not do what was done here on another occasion; why should we not give statutory powers to public bodies under the Emergency Powers Order? You have there representatives of shop keepers, workers, and all parties; you have your town clerks and county secretaries. Why not give them power to act as a prices commission, and give them power to prosecute if necessary? The main effect of giving public bodies statutory powers would be to prevent profiteering in a particular area. I am offering that as a solution.

I will now offer a suggestion with regard to petrol. I know the inconvenience that has been caused, through the shortage of petrol, to clergymen and doctors in rural areas. The doctors living in the cities have no dispensary patients to attend and their work is mainly concerned with the hospitals. I suggest that they could very well do without petrol. They have buses, trams, and other facilities. I suggest you should give more petrol to the doctor in the country district who has to cover a radius of 20 or 30 miles. He should be given sufficient petrol to enable him to attend his patients. The same applies to country clergymen. In the cities there are clergymen who are professors in the University and who have no parochial work to do. I would not give them any petrol, but I would give a bigger supply to clergymen in rural areas who frequently have to travel a journey of 30 miles across the hills. Possibly the Minister might not regard that as a solution.

Deputy Dillon referred to engineers. I appreciate the difficulty in regard to most engineers, but I know of one who got 150 gallons of petrol for January. He has about £2,000 a year. He holds two or three jobs under public bodies and he got 50 or 60 gallons for each job. That case was reported to the Minister and things were changed in February, but some persons are still getting 50 gallons a month. In my constituency that allowance is considered too great. There is a great deal of discontent because some men get 50 gallons while others are put out of work because they cannot get petrol. I would give as much petrol as possible to the dispensary doctors and let the engineers do without it. Many of them could go back to the methods of their predecessors, who went around on bicycles to carry out inspections.

Coal-mining has been mentioned. There is a serious position in regard to coal. I must give credit where credit is due. I communicated with the Minister for Supplies with regard to the position in Wicklow, and certain arrangements were made for distributing coal in that area. So far as the representations. I made on the subject are concerned, they had the desired effect. Coal was brought a distance of 20 miles and the people were able to get it at a cheaper rate than what was previously charged by private suppliers. If it is necessary, I will make further representations.

Taking the situation generally, I think the Government are tired of office; they do not want to be in office; they want somebody else to take their place. I do not agree with other Deputies that the Government are not aware of the serious position in the country. They do not appear to want co-operation. Watching events here for the last nine months, and having a little knowledge of politics, I am satisfied that the Government merely want to have some excuse to leave responsibility on the Labour Party or the Fine Gael Party. Both Parties are repre sented in regard to national defence. The time has come for those Parties to examine their consciences. What are they receiving in return for their co-operation with the Government? Are they to be treated as they have been in this House recently? They have been attacked by the Minister and individual members of the Party on the grounds that they are not giving adequate co-operation.

The attitude that is being adopted by the Government in this crisis will not go down with the people. Although there are many men joining the Army, that has not helped to solve the unemployment problem. It is very significant to note that, although so many have joined the Army, there are still 105,000 unemployed. The Government should try to meet the wishes of the Parties represented here. They should consider what is taking place in the country. This year above any other year they should have hesitated about bringing in an unemployment period order. Members of the Fianna Fáil Party have suggested that there never should have been any unemployment assistance. They did not say that some years ago when they were seeking the votes of the people. Will any of them be prepared to tell that to the people now? They may say it here, but I doubt if they would face their constituents and tell them so.

I am satisfied that the Government are tired of office. They want to get out. They do not want any co-operation and they mention co-operation merely as an excuse when it suits themselves. I will not spare them when I go back to the country. I will tell the unemployed something different to what Deputy Childers stated. He told us that everything is nice. I will tell the unemployed where they have been misled and misguided in the past and what they should do now. The Minister will know before long, and so will other Deputies, what will take place at the first warning. The Security Force and the Defence Forces will have very little effect. The Minister may regard these as threats. He knows very well what is taking place. He knows, when the unemployed people are aroused, when they see no hope from this Government, nothing unless hardship, what may happen. At the moment people in business are persecuted and men who have been in employment for years are now losing that employment.

No useful purpose is served by Deputies trying to pretend that things are different from what I am stating. It is because Deputies have kept the truce up to the present that things are as quiet as they are. After to-night, after this action on the part of the Government in treating the unemployed in the rural areas so badly, will the members of this Party remain silent throughout the country or even in Dublin? I say they will not. They love their country just as much as members of the Government Party, but they are not going to advise the hungry man to continue supporting people who tell him that after the war is over probably something better will turn up. In the last war the people were promised a land fit for heroes to live in by another politician, but they know very well that the politicians do not mean what they say.

The Minister for Supplies told us that we will have a new social order. Is that new social order going to mean that the people will still be hungry, and that they will be unable to get even the black bread that is being offered them? The Government offer no plan for the relief of unemployment in the rural areas. The unfortunate people in many parts of the country are told to go to the local relieving officer. Representatives on public boards admit that already they are faced with a big problem trying to maintain the sick poor and the aged and infirm.

I am afraid that what Deputy Childers visualised will take place much sooner than he expects. Instead of saving £43,000, meaning fewer men employed on forestry work, and saving £400,000, meaning fewer men employed on public works, they should devise some schemes that will give the widest possible employment. Why not put men on public works—at road making and producing from the land the food that we shall require next winter? There are many ways in which men who are available for work in rural areas can be absorbed, and it would be money well spent, instead of curtailing expenditure on the excuse that we require millions for the Army, an Army for which, we are told, we have no guns. We have sent a man to America to look for guns, instead of looking for food. Other things may happen, and the people now realise that it is not merely in order to get guns and ammunition that he has gone to America, but that, before he comes back, those things will probably be required here, not by reason of any invasion, but by reason of trouble inside our country. And who will be responsible? Nobody but the Government and their back benchers, who are trying to deceive the people, who have told the people: "You can remain hungry; we will do nothing for you" by their refusal to give the assistance we ask them to give.

Then the Minister for Supplies attacked the Labour Party because they had criticised his Department. They will criticise him more, not alone in this House but in the country, because they have taken up the challenge of the Government. They have no alternative now but to point out to the people that if they agreed to a political truce up to the present, the Government neither appreciated nor wanted it, and to tell them that it is-only by organisation through the country that the Government will be made to realise their duty to the people. Until this is done, all the talk here will have no effect. Organisation in the country is the only thing that will bring the Government and the Civil Service to a realisation of their duties.

Captain Giles

I believe that the more or less heated debate which we have had for the last two days will be a very good tonic for the people. For the last few months, the people were beginning to think that all Parties were united and were tending to sleep on their jobs, but we on this side are satisfied that the Government have slept on their jobs and that it is our duty to wake them up. One of the most hateful things we have found in the last few days was the irritated way in which Ministers answered questions honestly put to them, and it would set anyone wild to see a Minister jump up with such a face on him that one would not know whether he was a man or a monkey.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy should try to conform to ordinary Parliamentary usage as regards language.

Captain Giles

One of the most honest questions was that put by Deputy Mulcahy, in connection with coal, and the reply flung at him was: "If you want to raise the red flag in this country, you can do so, and you can start your revolution." The Minister for Supplies is the last man who should say such a thing, because the first man in this country to snatch the red flag from the people's hands was Deputy Mulcahy. Food for the country, we are told, is a prime essential. I agree, but, like my colleague on the Labour benches, I believe that the tackling of the unemployment problem is far more essential at present, because I do believe that in this fertile country, we can and will produce the food and will not see any of our people die from hunger. There are different types of food in the country which will keep our people alive, such as meat, wheat, barley and oats, and if they are all utilised in the proper way, we shall be able to stave off starvation. One thing, however, which we cannot stave off is the rising cry of the people outside who need their daily bread, and cannot get it. We have rising prices for food and fuel for people who have a standard unemployment dole for the past few years, a dole which is incapable of keeping them and their families, not alone in decent comfort but from beggary.

We have united our people, and we have built up a huge Army at a huge cost to watch, as we are told, our shores, and to see that no invader comes in. I am not very much afraid of any invader coming in, but I am afraid of internal commotion. When you train and arm a nation, you raise their minds, and if you do not give them the things they need, they will try to take them for themselves. The Government seem to me to be like the ostrich. They put their heads into the sand when the storm begins to rage around them, but it is time for them to take their heads out and to look to their front. For the last 20 years, they have shouted all over the country that this was a great country and that great patriots died to make it a great country. We know that great men did die, and did make sacrifices, and we are also told that this year sees the 25th anniversary of the great rebellion of 1916, but is it right that we should try to honour the men associated with these things in the circumstances in which our country is to-day? We cannot say that the aggressor or the foreigner is responsible for the pitiable plight in which our country is to-day, because we have Irishmen leading our country, an Irish Government and an Irish Parliament, and what is the position? Is it not a fact that patriots like Pearse and others would turn in their graves if men mention their names to-day, when we see all over the country hunger, destitution, poverty and unrest, and none of the ideals for which these men died given effect to?

It is sad to see such a state of affairs. After 20 years of Irish government we have destitution, hundreds of thousands of unemployed, and people doing everything in their power to get out of the country, to try to go to the foreigner and one-time enemy to beg a living, while the Government and its Deputies stand up here and declare that we are the most wealthy little country on the face of God's earth. Such hypocrisy and such humbug! If we have all this wealth and power, why not turn it to work for our people who are idle? I say that it is the bounden duty of this Government and this country to give our people work, and plenty of work, and not to worry where the money comes from. The money must, and can, come from somewhere. Let us not worry about the country going bankrupt. Scarcely any country goes bankrupt. It always finds a way out of its difficulties in the end. We were told by Deputy Dillon that we have £300,000,000 of foreign assets. Why not utilise some of these assets for the immediate benefit of our people?

We have problems of drainage, forestry and production of food to tackle. Why not tackle these problems now and keep our people easy and comfortable in mind and body? It can, and must, be done, and if the present Government will not tackle it, let them get out of the way and let somebody else tackle it, because there are men who will tackle these problems with vision and with patriotic spirit, who will not "funk" the job, but who will get down to it, who will cut through red tape or anything else in their way, if not with a scissors, then with a sword, and get to work. Too long we have waited in this country to see this little island for which men have died come to full development. Year after year we see, not the resurrection of our people, but hordes of unemployed crying at the labour exchanges while others fly to foreign lands. It is about time we got our resources to work in an effort to make this nation a nation worth living in. Does freedom mean anything to this country? For the last 20 years we have been crying out that we are the freest little country on God's earth. But from what are we free? We may be free from the Saxon, but we certainly are not free from the bailiff and the sheriff, from the poverty and the destitution which should not be our lot if an Irish Government did their duty, and did it well.

Year after year, we have taxation piling up. For what purpose? Not to help an increasing population but to try to keep huge armies of officials at big salaries. What are they ruling? A fast-dwindling Irish nation. Year after year, the population is going down. Year after year, more and more officials are flung into positions, not for the purpose of adding to the comfort of our people but for the purpose of keeping our people in subjection. There are almost as many people drawing State salaries and pensions as would constitute an Irish army. What service are half of them giving to this little nation? They are doing no more than trying to put in their time. They do two hours' work for £10 or £12 a week. We have tillage inspectors going around to see that farmers plough their land to the last perch and, if they fail to do that, they are summoned. Why not send these inspectors around to find out if the people want horses or ploughs or a few pounds to buy their seeds? It would be better to have them doing that than enforcing more and more laws on a suffering people.

The Minister for Supplies was criticised here, and rightly so. I am glad that the debate, more or less, centred around supplies, because that is the pivot of the irritation which one finds in the country. Our people are upset and disturbed. They do not know where they stand. One day they are told that there is nothing to worry about regarding supplies. The next day the Taoiseach tells them that a crisis is imminent and that they must tighten their belts. One Minister contradicts another and, while this is going on, we have people with money rushing helter-skelter to buy in what they can get, while the people without money have to put their finger in their mouth and wonder what will happen to them, since nobody is looking after them. There is a reduction in the Estimates in respect of provision for unemployment and in respect of forestry—the only two items which would help to relieve the unemployed. That occurs at a time when tens of thousands of our people are being put off the dole. These are grave and serious problems and will have to be tackled.

As regards the petrol shortage, I blame the Government for the manner in which they handled the situation. The tendency in the last ten or 15 years was to run this country on rubber wheels. If that represented modern progress, it was all right but it was the duty of a far-seeing Minister to secure that a country which did not produce its own oils would have, at least, one year's supply in stock. When John Bull said that he could not send a tanker for a few months, our Minister had to stand up and admit that he had no petrol. That was a pitiable failure in regard to this planning scheme. Where was the plan? After the planning, the flag had to go up. The Government allowed this country to be mechanised and every man was moving about on either a motor car or a lorry. The grand old horse trade was jeopardised. At one time every farmer had a horse which he used to get to fair and market. The horse was forced off the roads. Now, the farmer has his lorry lying idle and his car, taxed and insured, rusting in his shed while, on his farm, he has not an available horse. It is our duty to blame the Government for not having at least a year's supply of petrol in stock. There is no reason why they should not have had it. Neither is there any reason why they should not have granaries in which two years' supply of wheat could have been stored.

We hear a lot about the great wheat scheme. I know as much about wheat as any other Deputy. I grew wheat before the present Government came into office and my father grew it before me. The "great scheme" of the present Government was not so great, after all. In my county, the occupants of the little, divided farms were begged and beseeched to grow wheat. They grew wheat for three or four years in the same land and now you have on that land only weeds, scutch and dirt. You could not feed snipe on it. Is that the way to conserve the resources of the nation? Would it not have been better to buy wheat when it was 12/- or 15/- a barrel and have a couple of years' supply in store? Then, you could ask the people to grow wheat and they could do so without fertilisers. No fertilisers were required when this scheme was started seven or eight years ago.

But ignorance was allowed to predominate. Farmers, who were not farmers the day before, went out and scattered wheat all over the place because there was a hope of getting 35/- a barrel. They got it but they will spend 20 years trying to bring the land back to the pitch in which it was previously. I am not decrying wheat-growing, but I hate irresponsible talk and irresponsible methods. What is the use of tilling an acre of the best land in Ireland and, after 12 months, getting from it from four to six barrels of rubbishy wheat? Most of these people are producing a crop which pigs would hardly eat. If we had conserved this land in the proper way, the Government could have said to the people: "There is a crisis now. We have got two years' supply of wheat and our unemployed men are turning it over and keeping it in condition. There is very little hope that, in the coming year, we shall be able to replenish these supplies from abroad. Therefore, we ask you to till your land and produce all the food you can." If the Government had done that, the people would have responded—not the so-called patriots of yesterday, who are not worrying about the growing of wheat, but the people whom you were attacking during the last few years. They are really the patriotic people. They are the people who stepped into the breach when you wanted a Security Force, and who brought about unity, and these are the people whom you spat upon in years gone by. These are the people whom you did your best to destroy and drive out of their farms. These are the people who were always patriots and who believe in doing the right thing at the right time and not in listening to clap-trap from platforms from insincere speakers.

The Government should get out, rather than sleep on their job, and let somebody take their place. We here, as an Opposition, should not be expected to throw our arms around the Government. We have to voice the feelings of the people, and the voice of the people will be heard whether the Government like it or not. We have given the Government a chance to afford a lead to the people. What have you done? Every month we see or hear a solemn pronouncement and every pronouncement is worse than the other—"Our position is still worse." Why is it worse? It is because the Government does not understand how to put business methods into an Irish Parliament. Patriotism—or that so-called patriotism which we have had for the last ten years—is of no use to-day. Hunger and privation have drowned the patriotic outlook, and I ask the Government to keep silent on the 25th anniversary of the death of Pearse and his brave men. If they have flag-waving nonsense in the present year, then I say that this nation deserves to go down, and down for ever. Let them not honour these men until they are fit to honour them, until they can put their shoulders to the work which those men started, to make this nation rise, to make it grand and glorious, to give work to our own people.

I say here that there are tens of thousands of locusts battening on the backs of the Irish agriculturists. Those great men who have died realised that the land of Ireland was the soul of Ireland and the heart of Ireland. The Government has set up its tin-pot factories spotted here and there throughout the city and the country, they have brought in the monopolies into the cities of Ireland. That is where they have failed and where they will fail. Where to-day are the tin-pot factories? I am one of those who stand for decent factories, built by Irish money and enterprise. But what have you to-day? Tin-pot factories in Dublin and elsewhere closing their doors and throwing out tens of thousands of people, who have to cry out and crawl to get the assistance of the farmers—men who have been trying to produce and to get a return for their produce. That is what the Government has done. That is the great industrial revival of the last ten years. That is the way the Irish agriculturists have been bludgeoned and beaten down. The farmer was a man who was always there and who will be there to the end. Although he has been beaten down to-day, he will rise to-morrow in spite of the Government. I say to the Minister for Finance that, whether his purse is big or small to-day, he should open it and see that those people worthy of work will get it. If he does not do that, he should get out.

Mr. O'Donovan

The Minister in his speech, yesterday, spoke of the crisis facing this country. Every speaker since has referred to the crisis. To my mind, it is not one crisis that the country is facing, but a series of crises, each one as serious and as important as the other. We have met the petrol crisis and the fuel crisis. The petrol crisis is one that will be with us for the duration of the war, and the fuel crisis is equally serious. We also have the crisis regarding food for the people and for animals, the crisis regarding seeds and manures, the crisis regarding labour on the land and the crisis regarding unemployment.

With regard to the petrol crisis, so much has been said about it that I cannot add anything. The only thing I would like to ask the Minister for Supplies to do would be that which other Deputies have asked him to do. I would make an appeal on behalf of doctors and clergymen in remote parts of the country, far removed from towns and cities. At the moment, the distribution of petrol is inequitable and it is unfair that a country doctor or clergyman will get only the same amount of petrol as one in the heart of the City of Dublin or in some town where they have other modes of conveyance. As I say, this petrol crisis will be with us for the duration of the war and the other crises I mentioned in the country will be with us also for the duration of the war. Doctors' services and the services of clergymen and nurses will be wanted always, and it would be well if the Minister for Supplies would tackle that question. He must have a sufficient and efficient staff to tackle it now. If it is to continue for the duration of the war, he must see that there is a better and more equitable distribution of petrol all over the country.

In regard to coal, I understood from the Minister for Supplies, when he was speaking on that matter, yesterday, that bellmen in Dublin are getting 100 per cent. coal supplies. In small towns and villages of the country, where the people are as poor as they are in Dublin, all we can get is 25 per cent. of our supplies. If there is coal in the country, there should be an equitable distribution, and the poorer people in West Cork, Connemara and Donegal should get a reasonable share. Coal is not important in areas where there is a supply of turf, but that does not apply all over the country, and the cost of turf transport from areas where it is available is very high. Coal should be more equitably distributed, and I suggest to the Minister for Supplies that he should have regard to that.

The next point is in regard to food for the people. Though I do not like to be a pessimist, I am afraid that there is a very serious crisis facing us in that connection. I wonder if the Government realise that, as they are so complacent about it. I believe there will be a scarcity of food before the next harvest comes in. The wheat supplies amongst the wheat-growers are low. Normally, you have in the wheat areas, amongst farmers holding wheat supplies, a supply held for their own use. This year, owing to the scarcity of food for animals, for fowl and pigs, and so forth, I am afraid—although I think it is hard to blame them for using it— that, if they hear the pigs squealing and see the hens following them around, they will make use of the wheat supplies they have. I do not think the stock of wheat is as large as the Department of Supplies estimate. I am afraid the position will be very serious before the next harvest comes in and that it will be infinitely more so as a result of the season through which we have just gone. Normally, the early potatoes would have been in, particularly along the southern seaboard, in the month of February. It was impossible to put a potato into the ground in February, with the result that it is not making the progress in the ground that it would have made had it been put in. I realise that the early potato industry will be a month later this year than it was in any of the past eight or nine years. Potatoes put in at the end of February would be coming out of the ground on the 10th or 12th June, but I am afraid it will be the 10th or 12th July this year before that happens.

Last week I questioned the Minister for Agriculture across the House regarding this, and regarding seeds, and said that it would be a good thing, if the turnip and mangold seed were not available, that potatoes should be sown extensively; and, also, that the early potato, which would certainly replace flour to a great extent and replace other foodstuffs for animal consumption, should be put in; and this should be advised by broadcast, so that it may be done wherever possible all over the country. In order to meet the situation that I visualise is going to happen, that thing should be done. You could get thousands of tons of potatoes started up and produced here along the greater part of the eastern coast, from Dublin to Drogheda, and along the greater part of the southern coast, and you could produce enough to meet our requirements before the harvest comes in. While we have Ministers broadcasting on many things, they have not been on the air on this particular matter which is of great importance. On the other hand, with regard to mangold seeds, turnip seeds, kale, and so on, I understand, going around Dublin to-day, that there is not a pound of mangold seed available in the country. Whether there is any possibility of its coming in or not, the Minister for Supplies cannot tell us. I fear that very little will come in, if any at all, and that is another reason why there should be, from the Department of Agriculture, which is responsible in the matter, strong and urgent advice to the people of the country to hold stocks of potatoes for seed and also to get them to replace the mangold and turnip crop for animal feeding.

I am not as pessimistic as other Deputies are with regard to the area sown under wheat. Perhaps I do not know the country too well, but I can say that in my own area there is a good deal more wheat sown than was the case last year. It has been got in in good condition—that is, winter wheat— and there is sufficient time for spring wheat yet if the seed is available. I think we will not want there, because between wheat, oats and barley we should have sufficient cereals to go on with, but we want to provide other items of food. I think there will be a crisis with regard to bacon in this country in a very short time. There is no food for pigs. As a result of the increased percentage of wheat in flour —90 or 95 per cent., or whatever it is— you have no bran and pollard and there is no food available for cattle, pigs or fowl. Sows are being sold by the dozen every day of the week. People are getting out of pigs, because anybody who knows what a farmer's place is like will realise that if you have a lot of pigs and they are hungry they will draw the whole parish around you. They will create such a scene and make such a show of you that you would wish them drowned or shot because you cannot listen to the hubbub and noise. That is the position in regard to pigs and bacon, and before the next harvest comes in there will be a scarcity of bacon.

There is another item that is equally important—more important, in fact, I think, because it is one on which the poor person in the country can realise every hour in the day—and that is egg production. There is no food for fowl in the country. Some may have a little, but there is nothing to feed the fowl and, in fact, hundreds upon hundreds of hens are being taken into the market and sold within the past month because their owners have not a supply of food to feed them with. That is the most important item that the small holder in the country had, the egg. As I have said, the small farmer could realise on eggs every time he had a dozen of them. He could go to the nearest shop and buy what he needed, a pound of bread, an ounce of tea, or whatever it was. These people could realise on their eggs every hour in the day. They did not have to wait three or four or five or six months before being able to realise, as in the case of the pig or as in the case of the beast. You could realise on the hen every hour of the day that you had the eggs to take to the market. The egg will disappear off our tables within the next few months, in my opinion, and the situation is going to be very serious. I suppose we could do without chickens—you might be very glad to have other things— but the chicken is also going to disappear. To replace these will be the difficulty when the time comes. There is no supply of food at the moment to keep them going, and I believe that the hens will die of starvation, and the pigs also.

Take our cattle. At the moment there is no feeding for cattle. Concentrated foods, maize, Paratta, and all the various feeding stuffs for cattle are not available. I heard a story recently about a place down in, I think, the West of Ireland, where they have no scarcity of feeding stuffs at the moment and are fairly well supplied. In this particular town, the story goes, there is a merchant who also has a saw-mill. The saw-mill is always closed and he has men drawing from the saw-mill to the store, which is next door, where the feeding stuffs are. Of course, there is no scarcity there! What the feeding stuffs are, I am not going to say, but you can draw your own conclusions, and that is a bad case.

We have had a scarcity of butter and milk—butter particularly—in the past season, owing to the drought and the late summer and autumn. The cattle have not got over that. They were on a starvation diet for three or four months and they have not got over it this winter, and I can visualise that for this coming summer also they are not going to have the feeding because the feeding was not there for the winter, and you are not going to have any surplus of butter for the coming summer.

With regard to manures, again, the Government recommended increased tillage and the people responded well to the call. Ploughs and tractors have been working day and night in parts of the country and big areas have been turned up. I know of land that has been turned up, and people who intended sowing spring wheat were hoping against hope that some artificial manures, superphosphate particularly, would be available. Superphosphate has come in and been distributed or delivered from the manufacturers to the merchants in small quantities all over the country, and there was a pious suggestion from the Government to those merchants to give to each of their customers, as far as possible, a certain percentage of what they got last year, but to give them their share—25 per cent., or whatever it was, of the supply they got last year—according to the supply the merchant himself received. The position is that the first consignment of manure was sent out to the merchants, I think, some time in November. The price was probably £6 a ton. I am not sure of the figures as I have not got them before me, but I think it was about £6 a ton, and the well-off men who had money in their pockets were able to go in and buy that at £6 a ton. The next consignment of manure, as far as I know, came some time towards the end of January, and that was delivered to the merchants at £8 per ton.

The Minister for Supplies has been questioned in this House as to when the consignments of rock phosphate came into this country, and he refused to answer the question and said that it would be contrary to reason, or something of that sort, to answer it. We have been pretty reliably informed that no rock phosphate came into this country for some months, perhaps, since October. A man who is now paying £2 a ton, or 2/- a cwt. more for his superphosphate than his neighbour got it last December is wondering why that is the case. The poor man, who, in response to the Government's plea for increased tillage, buys superphosphates to-day and has to pay at the rate of £8 a ton for it, is wondering whether the increased tillage drive is for him or for the manure manufacturer. Personally, I think it is the manure manufacturer who is going to derive all the advantages and all the profits of the tillage drive, if there are going to be any profits out of it. I think it is most unfair. I think it is a system that should be stopped. I think if the Minister for Agriculture or the Minister for Supplies knew their job they would have adopted a system of rationing when the first lot of manure was consigned to the merchants all over the country, so that everybody would get a reasonable share. Farmers who have responded to the call to plough more ground and to put in more crops are left to-day without manures. It is the poor people, it is the people who really want the manure, who are deprived of it, while the man who is well off has full and plenty of it. Of course, it is hard to blame the man who is well off.

That has happened in regard to more than one article. We had Ministers on the radio, Minister after Minister, advising the people, for the past six or eight months, to buy more tea. "Hoard, hoard, hoard," that was their cry, with the result that hoarding has taken place with regard to tea and other items. If you go into some houses you will find stores, rooms full of stuff, while their neighbours have not a thing laid by.

Mention has been made of rationing. It was suggested that rationing should have taken place, that rationing should have been the order of the day. In regard to manure, I put a question to the Minister for Agriculture in the House with regard to the manufacture of kelp for potash and his reply was that the cost would be too great. During the last war seaweed was gathered along the Western seaboard. I have this from Deputy Mongan who is an authority on this matter. It was gathered and paid for at the rate of £10 a ton, and was able to be sold at a reasonable price to the consumer afterwards. It saved a situation that otherwise would have been serious. We are facing the situation here that possibly we will have no phosphates next year, possibly no nitrogenous manures of any sort, and no possibility of getting them. We have one manure along our coast, millions of tons of it. We have it from the extreme northern point of Donegal, all along the coast, until you get to Mizzen Head. There are millions of tons there to be gathered. There are congested areas along that seaboard. There are little hamlets of people who would be able to gather it if they got any encouragement. When there is no possibility that I can see of getting any artificial manures for years to come, the Government should spend whatever is necessary on getting the seaweed collected and part of it kiln-dried, burned and ground for kelp, and the remainder sent through the country as manure, because it is a complete manure. It contains both nitrogen, phosphates, and potash. Whatever the cost, the Government should take it up and see that it is developed. The manure is there for the taking and would absorb the unemployed along the seaboard. If that were done it would help the people who are trying to provide the needs of man and beast in this country.

I see in the Estimate here the provision for the purchase of kelp and seaweeds is £6,050. Last year it was £2,772. The Estimate shows a slight improvement, but it is not going to buy very much kelp or seaweed, after providing for transport, grinding, etc. That is going to absorb most of the money. I think that is bad. I think it would be better for the Department of Agriculture to leave the question of kelp to individuals, as was done in the last war, when there was one man in County Galway who paid £10 a ton for it, ground it and paid the men—and they were paid a decent wage—and took responsibility for the subsequent storage, handling, drying, and grinding, etc. In that way, all this money would be saved for the gathering of the seaweed.

Another crisis we are facing—and this is not a crisis of to-day or yesterday; we have been facing it for some years—is in regard to labour on the land. The advent of machinery, to a certain extent, has helped, but still there are many farmers that I know who could usefully employ one man or two men, or three men extra, but who are unable to pay them. They have not the money. Deputy Everett and other Deputies mentioned the withdrawal of the dole at the present time and throwing so many thousands, 30,000 or 40,000, on home assistance. I know a number of those men. No farmer could be expected to pay them, even if he could afford to. They could not expect to be paid for at least the first three months, men who have not been on the land, who do not know the land, because land work is highly technical. Even men who have been on the land but who have been idle, who have been in the cities for years, are not going to give 20 per cent. return the first three months. In fact, they will be more of a loss. At any rate they would not be much advantage. I believe that anybody who would be worth his salt, at the end of six months' training, would be worth a decent wage on the land. The farmer, who at the moment is unable to pay, would have to feed him for six months but the Government should step in. I think a plan could and should be evolved for the absorption of the unemployed by which the Government would subsidise labour, would give some help, or dole, until such time as the men would become efficient land workers. At present farmers cannot afford to pay the wages of one of these unemployed men. If they could be trained for farm work at the end of the harvest they should be useful citizens and claim to be efficient workers. Farmers should be helped to do that by the Government. Eventually it would help to absorb some of the unemployed and the difficulty about labour on the land would not be so serious. The unemployment question is very serious, especially at the present time, when rates are so high, and when farmers find that everything they have to buy has increased by 100 and even by 200 per cent., while they are selling their produce below the cost of production. In fact, they are not now able to sell it at all in some places, owing to the stoppage of fairs. It is a pity that money paid to those who are unable to find work could not be diverted in the way I suggest. It is the duty of the Government to see if that could be done by providing the money, because the ratepayers are already overtaxed.

Another matter that the Government should tackle concerns some of the big items in the Estimates. I am not clear that we are getting adequate service for the money spent on them. It is inequitably distributed. Many Deputies say that they are satisfied with the amount that is being spent on the Army. I am not in a position to judge, but my opinion is that too much is being spent on the Army, and that the Government is thinking of nothing but war. I would prefer if they thought more about peace, and about producing more food for the people, instead of Ministers, including the Taoiseach, telling us that we are prepared for war.

The Taoiseach

I spoke about peace, too.

Mr. O'Donovan

It seems to be a question of who will tread on the tail of my coat. That does not appeal to me at all. I think it would be much better if money were spent on services that would be of more benefit to the country. I have no objection to an army to give us the status that we should have, but I think there is too much about it and too little about other things. Another matter that the Government seems to have forgotten is the working of the Electricity Supply Board, especially at a time like this, when there is a shortage of oil. In the country districts only people with extensive holdings can afford to instal electric light from the Shannon scheme. The majority of small farmers are not able to avail of that service. This matter will not be serious during the summer months, but if there is no possibility of getting paraffin oil, which is largely used in rural Ireland, the Government should consider the question of extending electric lighting facilities. It could be done if the Government tried to do it. They try to do impossible things sometimes. I suggest that they should try to give the country people some of the amenities that those living in the towns enjoy. Deputy Bennett referred to the production of wheat, oats, barley, potatoes and other cash crops. The price of wheat and beet is guaranteed, but there is no guaranteed price for other commodities, after farmers have put their labour and money into them. It would be an incentive to them to produce more of these crops if prices for what farmers produce were guaranteed all round. When there are guaranteed prices on the industrial front, the same should hold good with regard to farm produce. I ask the Minister for Supplies to try to work out a scheme whereby dispensary doctors in remote areas would be facilitated in the discharge of their duties. As we cannot get mangold and turnip seeds the sowing of potatoes should, as far as possible, replace these crops. We cannot remedy the mistakes of the past, but we can look to the future and save the country by doing the right thing at the right time. If steps were taken now we could have a heavy crop of potatoes like Aran Banner to replace root crops. Beet, which I hope will be extensively grown, is valuable, because farmers have the crown and the pulp in addition to the cash realised for the crop. There is no hope, of course, of tiding over the period from now until the harvest so as to save the hens, the eggs, chickens and pigs. I noticed that an advertisement was recently issued by the millers. Whilst we were told that there was no meal available in any quantities, the millers, through the Department of Agriculture, offered a ton of maize or meal for a ton of barley, or 16 cwts. of maize meal for a ton of oats. That is where unfair distribution comes in. Farmers who were in the happy position of having one, two or three tons of barley were able to exchange it for meal, and farmers who had three or four tons of oats could also exchange for meal, but their poorer neighbours were not in a position to do that. The Government should have insisted on the meal being rationed to the various stores and merchants dealing in it, instead of giving a monopoly to a few who are well off and allowing the majority to suffer.

The Taoiseach

While listening to some of the speeches that were made here it has been rather difficult to be patient. The fate of this country depends upon the people in this House. If we approached our discussions, and they are no light ones, with a consciousness of the gravity of the situation, we would not have speeches such as some of those I have listened to. As I repeated more than once, from the moment war broke out this country has been in danger. It has been in danger, not because any of the belligerents wanted directly and immediately to injure us, but because our country happened to be placed in such a position that there was a temptation to either of the belligerents to try to seize our territory in order to gain a military advantage over the other. That is the fundamental danger that is ours, and any man who tells the people of this country that that is not so, is acting against the best interests of our people.

General Mulcahy

Does the Taoiseach suggest that that danger comes from both belligerents?

The Taoiseach

I do.

General Mulcahy

Will the Taoiseach ——

The Taoiseach

Will the Deputy allow me to make my speech and ask me any question he wants afterwards? I said the position of our country is such that it faces a danger which is going to increase as the crisis of this war gets more acute. Any of us who have any regard for the liberties of our people will not try to lull them into any foolish feeling that we are not in danger. It is for that reason that we have had to pay particular attention to our defences. Would to heaven, that we had a quarter of a million fully equipped and fully armed men in the country at the present time; our situation would be far safer than it is. We have, thank God, a number of people in the country with a certain amount of equipment now, which will at least make anybody who is thinking of invading this country count the cost.

Yes, it is enough; and any of us, no matter on what side he has been, does not want to see another if we can help it. There is another thing we must look to, and that is the economic position which is going to face this country as the result of the war. When this war started I pointed out, as anybody who knew anything about wars would know, that you could not have a war on the magnitude of the present war without every country feeling it economically. We are going to feel it, particularly economically, because our country is an island, and because we had not arrived fully at the position in which we were self-supporting. If we had, we would be in a very different position from the position in which we find ourselves, to face the dangers that are ahead. A number of the raw materials on which some of the industries, which have been built up, depend, are going to be short. The people who are in these industries provided first of all means for their own requirements. The money which they got in return for their services enabled them to buy the products of others in the country. They are not going to have that money if they are going to be out of employment, and the community is not going to have the goods which they were producing. We shall have either to get substitutes for these goods or go without. It is fortunate for us that we had arrived even at the stage of self-sufficiency at which we had arrived—very fortunate for us.

Let us examine what are likely to be the needs of this community, and try to put them in some order of priority. This is no new speech for me to make, because I have often referred to this matter before. Very often when we were in opposition it was said that I had but one speech. The fundamental material requirements of any community are first of all food. Next you would have shelter, next, probably, fuel, and next clothing. Certainly that is the order of priority as regards the crisis through which we are passing. The first thing we have to ask ourselves is how we stand in regard to the food supplies of the country. We have fertile land. We have not a big population for that land. In fact, we have a small population. If we set to it, and make that our primary objective in the use of our land, nobody in this country should starve. The food which we would have might not be quite the food we have been accustomed to, and every dislocation which prevents any particular person from getting the food to which he has been accustomed may appear to be a hardship. We must be prepared to face these hardships if we can only see that life-sustaining food is available. A fundamental food is wheat, flour. It is the most universal food; it is the most important to have, particularly for the poor. I, at any rate, and every member of the Government equally, are just as anxious about every citizen of the country as is any member of the Labour Party or any other Party.

Mr. Hickey

I have not suggested otherwise.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

These interruptions must cease.

The Taoiseach

Bread is used more by the poor than by the rich. It is precisely because it is the food of the poor, a food that cannot well be rationed, that we were anxious that we should have our own supplies of wheat. Heaven knows we cannot be accused now of failure to try to get the people on the land to produce the wheat that is needed for our own requirements.

Year in, year out, by every device of propaganda, by every inducement that it was reasonable to give the farmers, we have tried to get them to grow that fundamental necessity of life, wheat. Considerable progress was made. A considerable quantity of wheat, as compared with what was grown in the past, was grown, but it has been pointed out from the start that we had not got one half of our requirements, and that if we were to have bread as usual we would have to get from outside a considerable quantity unless the farmers increased the amount they grew.

We tried to lay in certain stocks in advance, but because our home production was far from sufficient, these stocks, of necessity, are being eaten into. We pointed out that there was going to be a critical situation facing us between now and the next harvest, and if the harvest was not good, and if the farmers did not respond to our appeals, then, so far as bread was concerned, we were likely to be in a very serious position after that. Who can say that we have not stated that, time in and time out, to the people?

There have been suggestions that we were not alive to the wheat situation. That is not true. The moment it became known that the chartering of ships to bring in the wheat was not going on for this year as it had gone on in the past, we went out on a campaign to the farmers; we made an emergency order specifying the increased amount of land that should be put into tillage, and we went on increasing that amount according as it became more and more evident that we could not get in from outside the supplies that we required or had reason formerly to expect.

What more could we do than we have done in trying to get those who have land to till it and to put it under wheat? There was a price fixed which every person will admit was a reasonable price at the time. Most of our farmers sow their winter wheat after Christmas, at least a very large section do. Everything that could be done by the Minister for Agriculture, through the agricultural committees and by every method of publicity that was available to him was done to urge them to grow winter wheat, and the Department was satisfied that, so far as propaganda could do it, it was done. We believed that a considerable quantity of the extra land that was being broken up would be put under wheat, winter wheat particularly. But again we cannot be held responsible for the weather, and the amount of winter wheat which has been sown is not up to our expectations. Now, what is to be done? As much spring wheat as possible should be sown, and any land that was intended for winter wheat and which is not made use of for spring wheat should be sown with crops for human food, other cereals and potatoes.

If anybody suggests to our people that there is not a serious situation, he is not doing his duty as a citizen, and certainly not doing his duty as a representative. Every one of us in our contacts with the farmers must tell them that the safety of the country depends on their growing sufficient food. In this House and over the radio, and every time I have spoken in public, I have tried to impress that upon them and so has every Minister. What is the use of telling us, as I will be told in a week's time, that we are doing nothing to get the people to do these things? The best way to get these crops grown is by appeal to the farmers themselves, and in present conditions there is no fear that farmers will not get a reasonable price for their produce. Is the position then in reference to wheat known? Will the people who can safeguard the country do it? There is a compulsory tillage order in force, and there are some people who think so lightly of that that they consider a nominal fine is sufficient to deal with a breach of it. Those who can till and fail to till are not doing their duty to the community.

Now, private property is guaranteed by our Constitution. But it is also indicated in that Constitution that the State has the right to regulate the use of that, particularly in a time of crisis like the present. We are not anxious, because we do not think it would make for efficiency, in dealing with our present problems, to turn things topsy-turvy. We are trying to get the people to evolve from the position in which they have been in peace time into a position in which they can best deal with the situation that faces them now in a war and in a real crisis. Food, then, is the first essential, and first in the items of food is wheat.

I say that the Government cannot be blamed for any failure to get the community to appreciate the position in regard to wheat. I shall come to shipping later, and I will show that in that matter also the Government have done everything that they reasonably could. We are not prophets. We are not omniscient or omnipotent. We cannot create out of nothing. We cannot do things as if there were no war on. We cannot at one time push aside Germany and at another time push aside Britain. We can do none of these things. We cannot compel people, even neutrals, to give us the materials we want. They have the right to control those materials and to give them to whom they please. The one thing that we can do and ought to do is to utilise our own resources in order to meet the present situation.

Now that we are talking about food, I have urged the farmers, if they have land which they intended for winter wheat and have not been able to sow that winter wheat, and if they think it is now too late to do so, and that it would be unwise to take the risk at this stage and they cannot sow spring wheat, that they should use the land that was so intended, and even add to it, by breaking up more in growing other cereals, oats and barley, which can be used for human food, and, best of all, from the point of view of the food produced per acre—potatoes.

I have told the House what my information is, and we are just as anxious about this as the Deputy. Does the Deputy think that I would be talking in the terms that I have been talking here, trying to get people to realise the importance of food, if, at the same time, we were letting it unnecessarily out of the country? I certainly would not, and no member of the Government would do it. If Deputies on the Opposition side would only say to themselves "if we see something happening which is most unlikely," would it not be well for them to inquire, instead of helping to spread rumours and misunderstandings of that sort?

It is only right, I think, that I should say that.

The Taoiseach

A moment ago I said that the British did not want potatoes. In December last, in the course of the interview to which I have already referred, I said that there was the curious position that Britain did not want the things we could supply her with: that cream, lard, and potatoes were not allowed into Britain from this country, that Britain had definitely limited the amounts of bacon which she would take from us, and had drastically cut down the number of fat cattle and sheep normally sent from here. Perhaps it would be as well that I should deal with some of these matters now. I hope that, so far as the potato question is concerned, we are finished with it. Take butter. Everyone knows that there is a shortage of butter. The Government are blamed for carelessness in regard to butter, and there is the same suggestion in regard to it that there was in the case of potatoes, namely, that we allowed the butter which was needed by our own people to be exported.

Now there is as little foundation for that suggestion as there was for the other. It is true that there is a shortage, and I am going to show how it occurred. It has been explained by the Minister, but it will bear repetition if only to try to get people not to be repeating, time after time, these untruths which are damaging to the people, because it is bad enough to be short of something when it cannot be got, but, naturally, it is still more exasperating to be short of it when you think it could have been got. Now, with regard to butter: in the year ending on the 31st March, 1940, the production of butter—creamery butter, I take it—was 714,000 cwts. This year, our production was only 655,000 cwts., so that, in round figures, it was 60,000 cwts. short of last year's production. When did that shortage occur? That shortage occurred on account of the dry weather in the months of August, September, October and November last. The production for the months of April, May, June and July was roughly the same as it had been in the previous year. The first intimation that those who were watching the situation had that there was going to be a shortage came at the end of August, and immediately, on, I think it was, the 31st August, export was forbidden. No more butter was exported except 1,000 cwts. which were due to fulfil a contract. There was then a shortage of 59,000 or 60,000 cwts. altogether in production. Of that 59,000 cwts., 55,000 occurred in the months of August, September, October and November, and immediately that report was received an order was made forbidding the export of butter.

The position at the beginning of the year was that we came in with a much bigger carry-over than ordinarily. Ordinarily, the carry-over from the previous year is about 8,000 cwts. We came in with a carry-over of 22,000 cwts., but nevertheless the shortage during the period put us in such a situation that we had to ask the people to go short in the use of butter, and urged as far as possible that any alternatives which were available should be used. The export of butter for the year 1939-40 was 240,000 cwts., and for 1940-41, was 227,000 cwts., that is, there was a reduced amount of butter actually exported. Now, again in regard to butter, may I do what I have done in regard to potatoes, and ask Deputies who may have believed that we were exporting larger quantities than usual, and running our own people short, not to repeat that untruth? From the moment that the shortage became apparent, export was stopped, except for 1,000 cwts. which were absolutely due on a contract that we felt should not be broken. There is another item that I might have added, and that is butter fat in the form of condensed milk, dried milk and cheese; the butter fat exported in 1939-40, was 54,000 cwts., whereas it was only 38,000 cwts. in 1940-41. I hope I have killed, in regard to potatoes and butter, those statements which, if they were true, would naturally be exasperating to our people, who are already beginning to suffer severely from the economic situation which is upon us.

——will, at a critical time, try to use it against him and against his mission. What he said was that "ships in the present situation might be an ease to us"—that shows his mind—"but we can get out of the situation without ships." That last conclusion summarises his whole speech. But that was put out to the world by those who wanted to fasten on to it and misrepresent the whole tenor of the speech in quite a different aspect and a different character.

Let us deal now with the question of ships. It is estimated that to supply our requirements we would require 40 to 45 vessels of an average of 7,000 tons. Taking the figure at which ships might have been bought some time ago, it would require at least £5,000,000 to buy them. Now, £5,000,000 is a considerable sum, but if we could utilise our sterling assets, our savings in the past, or pledge ourselves in what we could produce in the future in order to pay for the ships, I do not say that it would be a sum we should hesitate to spend if it would, even to a considerable extent, relieve us in the situation that is facing us. I want Deputies to remember that there is fierce competition for these ships, and that there has been considerable competition from the very beginning.

I am told just now that, on the latest information, we would require £7,000,000, but even at £7,000,000, we should not hesitate, if we were able to exchange some of our savings, or, with our assets abroad, pledge ourselves and mortgage the future, to get the ships. If we have to buy these ships, we have to buy them against intense competition, competition which is so intense that you could hardly buy them at any price, and the only place where they are available at present is a country in which it is the policy that all their resources, or any resources that they have to spare, will be made available to one of the belligerents. It is practically impossible to buy now the number of ships that would relieve us of our difficulties.

If we had not the competition, and if we did not worry about the cost, we have to remember that we have no guarantee, even if we have these ships, of getting the supplies, because supplies, too, would have to come either from one of the belligerents or from those whose association one way or the other with the belligerents would be such that a belligerent would get priority and an option. Even if we had the supplies on the ships, we have no guarantee, either, that we would get them here. It is true that we are a neutral country; it is true that we are doing nothing that we can help to injure either of the contestants. Nevertheless, in their struggle, one against the other, it might not be possible for our ships, even under our flag, to get here.

I will give you examples from the last war which will indicate to you what happened. Each of the belligerents would say: "All right. We will respect your neutrality, but you will have to fulfil certain conditions." In these days, where you have navicerts and ships' warrants, and where you may be asked by both sides to give prior information as to the ship, and engage to follow the routes that each belligerent marks out for you, it is quite obvious to anybody that it is a very difficult thing indeed to get neutral ships across the water in safety at present. If you accept the conditions which would be imposed by one belligerent, the other belligerent will say: "You have sacrificed your right to immunity" and will claim the right to sink you. Again, if you say: "We will go without protection; we will go unarmed," your crews will say: "What about us? We will only operate these ships for you if you go in convoy," and the moment you go in convoy, the other belligerent will say: "You have sacrificed your immunity thereby and we have the right to sink you."

To illustrate that position, I refer to the position of Norway in the last war and to Sweden in the present war. At the beginning of the last war, in 1914, Norway had 1,600 ships, of a gross tonnage of about 2,000,000. During the war, by torpedoes and mines, she quickly lost 929 ships of a tonnage of 1,250,000, or 62 per cent., and the shortage of essential supplies caused thereby was such that, by 1916, meat, sugar, coffee, tea, wheat and other cereals had to be rationed, and she had not got coal for her industries and ships. They reached such a position that the people of Norway, despite their desire to remain neutral, were practically forced into the war.

That was the position of Norway. Norway, as we know, wanted to be neutral in the last war. She had a right to have her ships sail the seas, as we would expect we would have a right to have our ships do so, but that is what happened. Into the reasons for that I need not go. At the beginning of this war, Sweden had 1,200 ships of a tonnage of about 1,500,000. By 19th October, she had lost 75, with 401 seamen, and the shortage, although it did not appear to be very large, was such that her cattle stock, about 2,000,000 head, to which I have referred already, had to be slaughtered to the extent of about 150,000 cattle and 100,000 calves, and there had to be rationing of milk in consequence.

Will Deputies who blame us for not getting and operating ships please bear these facts in mind, and, if they do, will they not come pretty much to the same conclusion as the Minister for the Co-Ordination of Defensive Measures, that, in the main, we shall have to forget about them, that we shall have to do our best to get them and to operate them, but not to count or to depend upon them, but to depend rather upon that upon which we can place reliance, if we do our work, and if we get the co-operation of the people, that is, the production of essentials at home, and particularly the essentials of food.

It has been suggested that there has been no planning. That is fundamentally as false and untrue as the suggestion that we were exporting potatoes and butter, while leaving our own people to do without. As I have said, if you remember that we can only look ahead as ordinary people, getting all the expert information we can, using all the experience we have ourselves and can get from others, that we are not omniscient and not omnipotent, I think I can prove to you that it is just as false to say that we have not planned as to say that we have exported, or are exporting, potatoes and butter, when our own people want them.

It will take a little time to deal with that question of planning, and, incidentally, if I may, in dealing with it, I shall refer to the proposal that planning could be better done if we had an economic council. I do not think I can do that in the couple of minutes left, and it is scarcely worth while at this stage to begin to deal with it, but, as I suppose it would not be in order for me to move to report progress, I had better go ahead. I will deal with the matter of coal if I may.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Friday, 14th March.

Dáil Éireann debate - Thursday, 13 Mar 1941