Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 5 Mar 1942

Vol. 85 No. 16

Committee on Finance. - Vote on Account—1942-43.

Minister for Finance (Mr. O Ceallaigh)

I move:—

That a sum not exceeding £13,445,000 be granted on account for or towards defraying the Charges that will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1943, for certain public services, namely:—

		£
1	President's Establishment	1,300
2	Houses of the Oireachtas	41,700
3	Department of the Taoiseach	5,000
4	Comptroller and Auditor-General	6,813
5	Office of the Minister for Finance	25,200
6	Office of the Revenue Commissioners	308,000
7	Old Age Pensions	1,228,000
8	Compensation Bounties	9,000
9	Office of Public Works	47,000
10	Public Works and Buildings	362,000
11	Haulbowline Dockyard	1,100
12	State Laboratory	3,400
13	Civil Service Commission	7,700
14	Irish Tourist Board	2,500
15	Commissions and Special Inquiries	2,900
16	Superannuation and Retired Allowances	173,800
17	Rates on Government Property	48,600
18	Secret Service	6,700
19	Expenses under the Electoral Act, and the Juries Act	Nil
20	Miscellaneous Expenses	2,500
21	Stationery and Printing	60,000
22	Valuation and Boundary Survey	11,000
23	Ordnance Survey	8,700
24	Supplementary Agricultural Grants	450,000
25	Law Charges	23,000
26	Universities and Colleges	77,700
27	Widows' and Orphans' Pensions	150,000
28	Quit Rent Office	900
29	Management of Government Stocks	20,600
30	Agriculture	222,000
31	Fisheries	5,500
32	Office of the Minister for Justice	15,100
33	Gárda Síochána	714,700
34	Prisons	30,000
35	District Court	13,600
36	Supreme Court and High Court of Justice	18,400
37	Land Registry and Registry of Deeds	15,700
38	Circuit Court	17,000
39	Public Record Office	1,752
40	Charitable Donations and Bequests	1,100
41	Local Government and Public Health	482,000
42	General Register Office	4,476
43	Dundrum Asylum	6,750
44	National Health Insurance	100,000
45	Office of the Minister for Education	63,000
46	Primary Education	1,450,000
47	Secondary Education	160,000
48	Technical Instruction	100,000
49	Science and Art	16,000
50	Reformatory and Industrial Schools	60,000
51	National Gallery	2,122
52	Lands	573,894
53	Forestry	80,000
54	Gaeltacht Services	35,000
55	Industry and Commerce	87,650
56	Transport and Meteorological Services	31,850
57	Railway Tribunal	975
58	Marine Service	16,700
59	Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Assistance	308,786
60	Industrial and Commercial Property Registration Office	4,560
61	Posts and Telegraphs	884,000
62	Wireless Broadcasting	22,000
63	Army	2,981,000
64	Army Pensions	198,031
65	External Affairs	33,906
66	League of Nations	Nil
67	Employment Schemes	200,000
68	Agricultural Produce Subsidies	166,000
69	Supplies	585,792
70	Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies	5,500
71	Repayment of Trade Loans Advances	6,980
72	Emergency Scientific Research Bureau	6,400
73	Special Emergency Schemes	400,000
74	Food Allowances	133,330
75	Damage to Property (Neutrality) Compensation	90,000
76	Personal Injuries (Civilians) Compensation	8,333
	TOTAL	£13,445,000

Séard tá sa Vóta so ná an chéad chuid den bhille mhór a bheidh orm a thabhairt isteach sa Dáil i mbliana. Isé cuspóir atá leis ná comhacht do thabhairt chun airgead do chur ar fáil chun seirbhísí do choimeád ar siúil san eatramh a bhíonn ann gach bliain airgeadais sara mbíonn caoi ag an Dáil ar gach Meastachán Soláthair do phlé go mion. Is gnáthach dóthain airgid do sholáthar sa Vóta chun íoc as obair na Ranna agus na seirbhísí uile agus fé seach i rith na tréimhse ón ladh Abrán go dtí an 31adh Iúl. Isé méid is gá de ghnáth ná an tríú cuid de gach Meastachán fé leith don bhliain.

As Deputies are aware, the purpose of the Vote on Account is to enable moneys to be made available for the carrying on of the various Supply Services during the interval which must elapse in every financial year before the Dáil has had an opportunity for discussing each Supply Service Estimate in detail. Normally the greater part of the first four months of the financial year has elapsed before all the Estimates have been considered by the Dáil and the Appropriation Act passed into law. It is, therefore, customary to provide in the Vote on Account sufficient moneys to cover the working of the various Departments and Services for the period from the 1st April to the 31st July. The amount necessary in most cases approximates to one-third of the total net Estimate for the year, but in some instances a departure from that proportion is necessary.

The various items comprising the Vote on Account of £13,445,000 are set out on the Order Paper and in the White Paper which has been circulated. As Deputies will have observed from the Volume of Estimates, the total net provision for the Supply Services in respect of the year 1942-43 is £39,112,301. This represents an increase of £789,534 on the net provision of £38,322,767, including Supplementary and Additional Estimates, in respect of 1941-42.

The original net provision for the current financial year was £35,312,604 and, as compared with this figure, the 1942-3 provision is up by £3,799,697. The increase is attributable to the inclusion in the 1942-3 Estimate volume of a number of costly emergency services which did not appear originally in the Estimate volume for 1941-2, but which came before the Dáil during the course of the year. I refer particularly to the Votes for Special Emergency Schemes, Food Allowances, Damages to Property (Neutrality) Compensation and Personal Injuries (Civilians) Compensation which account for £1,935,000. In addition, the flour and bread subsidies provided for under the Estimate for Supplies are calculated to amount to £1,645,000. Furthermore, the cost of food allowances provided for in the Estimate for Local Government and Public Health amounts to £200,000, while an additional £628,714 is needed for the Army. All these extra items, which result directly from the emergency, amount to £4,408,714. It will be apparent, therefore, that, were it not essential to the life of the community to provide these new services, there would be a reduction of £619,017 over the whole supply services, notwithstanding the rising cost of materials reflected throughout many of the existing services and the expansion of governmental activity necessitated by present conditions. Deputies will, probably, have noticed that, as was the case last year, the usual explanatory details of the Army Estimate for the coming year have been omitted, as the Government have decided that, so long as the present emergency continues, it would not be in the public interest to publish such information.

As compared with the current year's Estimates, including Supplementaries, there are increases on 37 of the 1941-2 Estimates, decreases on 35, while four show no change. The total of the increases on the various Votes amounts to £2,376,726, while the total of the decreases amounts to £1,587,192. The total sum I am asking for this year as a Vote on Account is £13,445,000— a very respectable figure. The sum of the Estimates is not the complete figure that will appear in the Budget. Central Fund expenses will have to be taken into account and the total is, certainly, a very respectable sum for a small State of not over-rich people like ourselves. It is an enormous sum to ask from a population of less than 3,000,000, but I can find no way out.

There is a constant demand for increased services and increased governmental activity is rendered necessary by present circumstances. I have, therefore, found it necessary to accede to demands from different Departments for largely increased expenses. Other expenses arise out of the increased cost of all sorts of commodities. It is not a pleasant thing to have to ask the House and the country to accept so heavy a burden, but I move that the Vote on Account be granted.

Mr. Cosgrave

The first thing which strikes anybody looking at this Vote on Account is its size. It seems that, whether we are at war or at peace, the expense of running the country is getting greater and greater year after year. We got this Vote on Account paper on Saturday morning, and we have to thank the Minister for giving us the Book of Estimates on Monday morning. These Estimates require a considerable amount of study and, from Monday morning to yesterday, was scarcely a sufficient period to allow of a study of sums of such magnitude and of the policy carried out year after year in connection with public expenditure. One was inclined, on getting the paper which we got on Saturday morning, to examine the purposes for which the money was required. These Estimates provide for the cost of the administration of the State, maintenance of order, the courts, education, defence, collection and distribution of taxation, social services and, to a very minor extent, the development of industry, including, of course, agriculture. The most important thing for this country, so far as material prosperity is concerned, is the expansion of profitable production. One searches in vain through these enormous sums to find anything approaching a reasonable contribution to the improvement of agriculture or the secondary industries.

The Estimates this year are swollen very considerably by reason of the emergency. In that connection, even the Minister can scarcely complain if we examine the services rendered during the emergency from the point of view of the events of the past ten days in Dublin. They are no credit to the manner in which one Department of State, at any rate, is administered. We were informed at 11 o'clock on Wednesday morning that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance would make a statement on the turf situation. Already, the Ministry had been asked to afford an opportunity for discussion of the difficulties and interruptions that arose as a result of the restriction on bread and flour supplies.

It would not require the exercise of any great genius to decide which was the more important statement—the statement by the Parliamentary Secretary as to what turf would be produced during the next 12 months and a reasonable explanation of the steps taken to remedy the crisis which had occurred, particularly in the cities and towns, owing to the reduction in the distribution of bread. The amount provided in respect of Supplies is very big and it would appear, from our experience of the past two or three years, that the activities of the Department are more directed to the distribution of what we have got than to the getting of extra supplies. The newspapers occasionally report the making of trade treaties between different countries. Amongst the treaties mentioned was a treaty between Turkey and Germany and another between Great Britain and Portugal. We are entitled to ask if there is no possibility of making a trade treaty between, say, Great Britain and this country. We should like to be informed what Government policy, generally, is on supply—the supply of raw materials for industries and other essential commodities which so many people in the country have been asking for, which agriculture and industry require and which are essential to the maintenance of any degree of comfort in these difficult times. We should like to know if there have been any negotiations or proposals for the manufacture of goods in our factories here which would be needed across the water, or across the ocean, to replace goods formerly produced by factories which have now gone into the production of munitions. It is scarcely possible that there are not some industrial goods which it would be to the benefit of this country to supply and to the benefit of those dealing with us to receive—granted, of course, that we were to get the necessary materials to enable us to produce them.

The reduction of the supplies of bread and flour has caused, perhaps, the greatest inconvenience occasioned in this country since the emergency. It will be remembered that, when it was obvious that there was a shortage of wheat some time ago, a number of medical practitioners, whether entirely on their own initiative or through Government agency, expressed the view that the increased extraction would make for the benefit of the people's health. There are alternative foods to bread and flour. Deputy O'Higgins referred yesterday to potatoes. The price to farmers for potatoes at present is low. Has the Department of Supplies considered the production of oaten bread and oaten biscuits? The more widespread use of oatmeal porridge would also ease the present bread situation. Would it not be advisable to get medical opinion upon those matters so as to relieve the strain upon the stocks of flour and wheat in the country? Even if there are difficulties, owing to the shortage of fuel and the very uncertain supply of gas, in cooking in the tenements of Dublin, could not arrangements be made for the cooking of potatoes? If found suitable—of that I have no doubt —why not address the people on the necessity for alternative foods to bread and flour? Surely it would be better to do that than to go out—as the Minister for Supplies went out a short time ago—and frighten the people. It is very wrong at a time like this, when people are not getting the necessary supply of fuel and when the cost of foodstuffs is going up day after day, to say anything calculated to give rise to uneasiness or uncertainty.

During the discussions which have taken place recently here in connection with bread and other commodities we have heard many condemnations of rich people. I have never heard that term "rich people" properly defined. What is the line above which a person is rich and below which a person is poor? I do not think that any Party in this House has as many well-off people as the Government Party. It has, I think, a monopoly of the rich people of the Dáil. What efforts have been made by the Ministry to reduce the demands upon the present stocks of flour? Have those who are described as "rich people" been asked to limit the quantity of bread and flour they use? Some of them of whom I have heard have made that effort already and my acquaintance with people who are supposed to be rich is very small —much smaller than that of members of the Ministry or their friends on the other side. It would be more sensible to give a lead in the right direction than to pour out abuse. Would it not be wise to ask confectionery establishments to turn their attention to the production of oaten biscuits, and confectionery not requiring the use of flour?

Complaint was made here yesterday that we did not give notice of the points to be raised in connection with this motion. It seems to me that the matters to be raised stood out on the Paper itself—the amount of the Vote, whether we were getting value for the expenditure, whether the cost of government was not getting beyond the capacity of the people, whether the results were not incommensurate with the cost.

It was implied that we were discourteous to the Ministry in that respect. On two recent occasions, the Minister for Supplies had an opportunity of informing the Dáil of what his intentions were regarding control of the Great Southern railroad. It was through the Press we learned, gradually, of what he proposed to do. It was as if some powerful engine were humming and as if a little more information were let out day after day. For the first time, we learned from the Press of the appointment of a new chairman of the board. I do not know the chairman. From what I have heard of him I believe the appointment is a good one, and I hope it will be successful, but I see no reason whatever why this House could not have been informed by the Minister that such an appointment was being made. Within the past fortnight, the Minister went on the radio, even while the House was sitting, and frightened the people in connection with the shortage of bread and flour. It scarcely lies in the mouth of the Minister to complain of any discourtesy on our part having regard to the manner in which he treats this House. If we were to pass any remark on the changes made in connection with the control of the Great Southern railroad, it would be that the proposal, probably, arose out of a report furnished three and a half years ago. Certainly a sufficiently long period has elapsed since to allow even the Minister to make up his mind on that point.

Yesterday we were very courteously addressed by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance on the question of the fuel supply for the past 12 months. Two important points appear to me to stand out in connection with that whole statement which lasted a little over an hour. One was price and the other was quality. On the question of price, he referred us to the Minister for Supplies. It is occasionally a matter of very considerable annoyance to the public, when they write to one Department of State in respect of any matter, that they get back the letter with an intimation that it should be addressed to another Department, but when a Parliamentary Secretary, who is described as Fuel Controller, gives us a fairly extensive account of what his programme is for the coming year, and is not only reticent, but speechless in connection with the question of price, one wonders what the world is coming to. Price is the most important question in connection with the production of fuel at the present moment. Quality is perhaps next in importance. The purchase of four lots of turf by three individuals came under my special notice during the past year, the sum of money involved being £80. Of the four lots, only one could be described as approaching a satisfactory standard, and that is not taking the standard of which we had a physical example in this House. It was not good turf. The price charged in one case was the top price prior to its being increased to 64/-. I do not know what the price of the other three lots was, but the sum involved in the four transactions was £80. I would say that of that £80, £60 was lost money, and that is a conservative estimate. The Parliamentary Secretary yesterday said that there should be no discussion on what he said, and I suppose that was reasonable. May we ask, is there no redress for persons who purchase turf unless the turf is purchased from coal merchants or is what the Parliamentary Secretary describes as national turf? The matter is of some importance. The people should know whether they have certain rights and whether they are entitled to assert these rights in connection with a matter on which so much public and private money is expended.

There is one item of £493,000 in the Book of Estimates for which an appropriation is being taken in this Vote on Account. A new Estimate, No. 73, appears in the Book for the first time this year in connection with that. Subhead F, under which the sum of £493,000 appears, states that the money is required for the production of turf for use in non-turf areas; provision for and acquisition and development of bogs and camp sites; the erection, equipment, general administration and running expenses of camps; the payment of wages and other expenses incidental to the production, transport and storage of turf for use in non-turf areas. There does not appear to be any Appropriation-in-Aid in respect of that Vote. I think the Minister, even though it is a question that might more properly arise on the Vote itself, might inform the House before the conclusion of the discussion on the Vote on Account, whether it is intended simply to apply that money towards the relief of the national scheme for turf production. The moneys that are being provided this year, in respect of the production of turf, are very considerable. The Turf Board is getting in all a sum of £75,000 in the form of what is called grants. Are these moneys—in all a sum of about £560,000 —being given so as to ease the price of turf to the consumer, or is there any scheme to reduce the price below that fixed by the Minister last year, namely, 64/- per ton? A price of 64/- for turf to any consumer, except a rich person, is unreasonable.

It is no great consolation to us to see the cost of administration in this country rising year after year. There is one very big item in connection with the Army this year. So far as I know —the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—the Army Estimates have not been before the Defence Conference this year. The sum that is involved is very considerable. If the sum that was voted last year was considered sufficient for our Defence Forces, surely the Defence Conference should be informed of the reason why it has been considered necessary to increase the sum this year by so much? Presumably, the Minister does not wish that particular Estimate to be considered in detail, but may I say that certain cases have come before the courts during the last 12 months which have given rise to a very considerable amount of uneasiness? I think we would be entitled to get from the Minister for Finance or the Minister for Defence some assurance that steps have been taken to tighten up administration in that direction. Everybody knows that during a war period, when there is a big expenditure of money, certain looseness inevitably creeps in. The greater the disciplinary grip in those cases from the commencement the better. I disagree entirely with those who think that we have got to allow things to run a little bit and then tighten up. We owe it to those who in a time of emergency came to serve the State to see that every effort is made to ensure that no undue temptation is placed in their way. Very often leakages of that sort arise from some looseness in the administration.

Finally, I would say that I have seldom listened in this House to a less impressive explanation of what has transpired during the last week than we heard last night from the Minister for Supplies. It gave me the impression that he was more desirous to urge upon us the excellence of the voluntary system of rationing than he was to deal with the main problem—the prevention of the repetition of such scenes as occurred last week. If we are faced with a shortage of bread and flour the business of the Minister is to ease the drawbacks or the inconveniences to those least able to bear them.

The best way of doing that, in my opinion, is to induce those who can take other foods to use them in greater abundance and to leave as much flour as possible for consumption by the people who are badly off and unable to buy better foods and to give them at least enough of that.

It appeared from the statement that there was a lack of initiative and that the Minister and the Ministry generally are getting stale. I mentioned that last year and said that it appeared to me to be time for them to recruit to the Ministry some of the younger members of the Party. They would require to be pretty bad if they did not make some improvement in what we have seen in certain directions during the last 12 months. It is a time, we are told by everybody, for co-operation. Yes, it is, and we would invite the Government to co-operate with the people in meeting the difficulties of the present situation and to turn their attention to some of the matters I have mentioned—trying to lessen the impact of the shortage of flour on the people who cannot afford to buy other foods; trying to get in the raw materials necessary to keep our industries going; and reducing expenditure, which has risen to a point at which it is almost beyond the people's capacity to bear. They will get co-operation, and much more than they think, if they do so, and it would be in the best interests of the country if they gave us an earnest of their determination to improve the present position.

Mr. Dillon

I always think, when the Leader of the Opposition is speaking, that he has a strain of optimism in him which I could never share. He is always hoping that this Government will some day do a good job in this country. I never hope for that. I do not hope for it now, and, so long as the Government consists of its present personnel, I shall not hope for it in the future. All I hope is that they will not wreck the country irretrievably and, if I could be sure of that, nothing else they could possibly do would disappoint me. This Government took over the country ten years ago when it was one of the richest countries in Europe, and they have cheerfully spent the first ten years of office purchasing votes with the accumulated savings of our people. It would not have mattered so much if they confined themselves to robbing the Treasury, but, in addition to robbing the Treasury and borrowing right, left and centre, wherever they could, to finance the various "cod" schemes which they produced out of the hat from time to time whenever a general election was threatening, they have done their very best to destroy the productive capacity of our people, and it is largely as a result of that that the difficulties we have to contend with at present are so acute and so grievous.

If we were in a position now to raise the credits that were raised during the last ten years, and dissipated, a very considerable number of the young men and of the young women, too, of this country who are flying to England and to Northern Ireland to get a living could be profitably employed at home, and we could be building up in this country fixed assets that would be of value to us, no matter what happened to the currencies of the world postwar; but, as it is, the unfortunate Minister for Finance is obliged to say to us repeatedly: "I should like to do this and I should like to do that, but I cannot, as we have no money." The money has gone down the drain because he and his colleagues sent it down the drain trying to purchase political victories during the past ten years, and there is no use closing our eyes to the fact that they did purchase political victories, and resounding political victories. If they had confined themselves to that, I should not have minded so much, but one of the greatest crimes that ever was perpetrated against this country was the "Grow more wheat" policy, and we are reaping the whirlwind now.

Ten years ago, when men started sowing wheat on the land of Ireland, at a time when wheat was cheaper than it had ever been since Cleopatra sat upon the throne of Egypt, the land of Ireland would yield eight barrels of wheat to the statute acre, and it yielded that because it had in it the accumulated fertility of good husbandry practised during the previous 40 years. At the end of ten years of Fianna Fáil, 500,000 acres of Irish land under wheat produced not the 500,000 tons of wheat that it would have produced ten years ago, but 210,000 tons which it, in fact, did deliver to the millers in the last cereal year. I ask Deputies to answer this question: if 500,000 acres of Irish land would produce 500,000 tons of wheat ten years ago, why will they not produce it now? They will not produce it now because, like the Treasury and like every other institution of this State, the land has been impoverished by the Fianna Fáil Party, and bad as the yield was last year, with the assistance of such artificial manures as we had, does any farmer in this House dare to prophesy what the yield will be this year without any artificial fertilisers, and does any Deputy care to contemplate what it might be if the "kill more calves" policy of the Minister for Agriculture had been allowed to continue?

We spent the accumulated fertility of the soil of this country on a "cod" wheat scheme in the peace years, instead of saving that fertility for the rainy day. The rainy day is now upon us, and we have no reserves wherewith to meet it, and the acres of land belonging to those farmers who never yielded to the monetary bribes of the Government during the past ten years are now the only acres which will stand to the community in a time of stress. Every prudent farmer will sow as much wheat as he can this year, and those of us who have kept our land in good heart will return to the community eight barrels or more per statute acre, and the Fianna Fáil farmers who practised the "grow more wheat" policy for the past ten years will be lucky if they are in a position to deliver four barrels to the miller. It would be idle to dwell unduly on that fact to-day if recognition of that fact did not urgently call for energetic measures which are practical and which must be taken now, if the incredible folly of Fianna Fáil is to be remedied.

The "grow more wheat" policy is going to leave our people short of food this year. The Minister told us last night that for 100 days we are going to be in danger of having no bread for the people. It would be criminal if this Dáil consented to a situation developing in which, next year, we would be confronted with 150 days without bread for the people; and if we content ourselves by raising the price of wheat to 50/- a barrel and imagine that that alone is going to provide bread for our people, we are mad, because it will not. If an increase in price were to secure the sowing of 600,000 acres of wheat, and I would be very glad to get that done, even so we will have a scarcity of wheat. I reiterate that the growing of wheat in this country in peace time is "cod", and pernicious "cod", for which we are paying in this hour of crisis. The growing of wheat in war time, as we grew it during the last war, is common sense, and if the land were not exhausted would meet the emergency that transport difficulties have brought upon us. But the land is exhausted, and no matter what area of land you get under wheat now it will not meet the national requirements because, in addition to having exhausted the wheat land, you are going farther and farther into the marginal land. The only means whereby you can secure an adequate supply of food for our people in the form of bread and bread substitutes is by stimulating the production of oats and barley.

Now, let us take oats first. The fixed price for oats in this country at the present time is 10/8 per cwt. That is Fianna Fáil policy. And what is the result? There is an abundant supply of oats at the present time wherewith to feed pigs and calves, but there is not a stone of oatmeal wherewith to feed human beings because oatmeal is distributed by licensed oat buyers who purchase oats and get it milled into oatmeal for human consumption. They are restricted by order from paying more than 10/8 per cwt. and are afraid to trade in the "black market" lest their licence as oat buyers be taken from them. The man who wants to buy oats to feed it to pigs, calves or bullocks is buying it in the markets of this country at prices ranging from 18/- to 23/- per cwt., with the result that, at a time when the people are hungry for a real food and when some cannot get it, the calves and the pigs and the bullocks can get all they want because those who are feeding animals pay the requisite price to get oats while those who should be feeding human beings will not be permitted by the Government to buy it. When you direct the attention of the Minister for Agriculture, who is supposed to be responsible, to these things, he flaps his fins like the walrus and does not know what to do; he claps on his hat and runs away home, or he floats around the country and addresses meetings at interminable length. He asks for questions, and when the questions are asked he says he does not know the answers, but will try and find out when he gets back to Dublin. In the meantime the pigs and the cattle are eating the oats and the human beings cannot get oatmeal and cannot get flour.

Last week a shopkeeper told me— and I know it to be true—that a woman came into his shop and asked for flour. She was not a customer of his. He told her he could not give her the flour. In about ten minutes he saw the woman sitting in a corner of the shop. He went over and found that she was crying. He said to her: "What is on you, ma-am?" Her reply was that she had eight children and that that was her fourth trip to town looking for flour. She mentioned the vanman who used to pass by her door with a lorry and leave her a cwt. of flour whenever she wanted it. She said that he had stopped coming since the petrol got short, with the result that when she went into town she could not get flour in any shop. She said that her children had been living on potatoes three times a day for a week, and had to take potatoes to school with them for their lunch. She concluded by saying that she was ashamed to go home without either bread or flour. This was a reasonable man and he gave her a couple of stone of flour. That woman, who could not get either flour or oatmeal, had not only the distress of seeing her children living on a very dreary diet but the added humiliation of their having to go to school every day with two or three cold potatoes wrapped up in a cloth instead of the bread and butter that they would ordinarily bring with them.

The only conceivable way in which we can get an adequate supply of oats in the coming harvest is by seeing that our farmers will get a price that will induce them to sow the crop, and the only way in which you can ensure that is by taking the control off the price of oats so that honourable men who sow oats will be able to get the prices that are at present being got on the "black market" without turning themselves into law breakers. If that is done we will get into the oatmeal mills of this country an adequate supply of oats in good time and every house in rural Ireland will have its 10-stone bag of meal on the chair. So long as that is there, we can consider the conditions in rural Ireland with a much easier conscience than if our people had neither oatmeal nor Indian meal in their houses.

Furthermore, over and above the incalculable value of oatmeal as a substitute for bread throughout rural Ireland, oaten straw is an invaluable live stock food as well as being an indispensable constituent of the manure that we must have if there are going to be any cereal crops at all in the harvest of 1943. If the price that is fixed for oats this year is allowed to continue in operation until after the oat-sowing season has passed, then 80 per cent. of our farmers will simply grow so much oats as they can use themselves and not another grain. If that happens, we will have a famine of oatmeal next year, and that famine of oatmeal, on top of a famine of flour, will create an absolutely insoluble proposition for whatever Government happens to be in office, national or otherwise.

What I am always afraid of is that people are going to sit back here and say: "We will give 50/- a barrel for wheat and everything will be lovely. We will have plenty next year." You cannot do anything next July to remedy the situation. You cannot do anything next June or May to remedy the situation. If you are not prepared to face the situation now and deal effectively with it, it will be too late. There is a reasonable hope if you take all control off the price of oats and barley now that we will get such crops of oats and barley that there will be a surplus, in which event there is no serious danger of the price of oats becoming utterly prohibitive. You have this additional safety that, supposing we were threatened with a slump in the price of oats, it is always possible to find out what the export price of oats is and either export the oats, if we want to do so, in exchange for something else, or else let the Government buy the oats at the export price and store them. That is the most effective way of all, fixing a minimum price below which you will not let oats fall. The thing is to hold out to the farmers of this country the prospect that if they grow sufficient oats they will be allowed to get the market price for it.

While that is true of oats, it is doubly true of barley. Can I bring home to the Deputies of this House what happened this year? Our Government, elected by our people to govern this country in the interests of our people, fixed the price of malting barley in Ireland at 37/- per barrel.

Mr. Hughes

Thirty shillings.

Mr. Dillon

Malting barley?

Mr. Hughes

Yes; 28/- for feeding.

Mr. Dillon

Does the House know what that barley fetched in Great Britain? From 140/- to 170/- per barrel; from 280/- to 340/- per quarter of four cwt. Can the House believe that? Is it not hard to believe? Is not that figure hard to believe? It is almost incredible. It means that we, by statute, compel the farmers of this country to make a present of £1,000,000 sterlng to the brewers. I am 100 per cent. for the promotion of industry in this country. I would like to see barley grown in this country sufficient to keep Guinness's brewery and Jameson's distillery working overtime. I would like to see sufficient barley grown to enable them to export all the porter and whiskey that the foreign markets could absorb, but I do not see why the farmers of this country should be required to subsidise either one or other of these prosperous industries. If our Government imagine that it is conceivably possible that our farmers will continue to grow barley at 30/- a barrel when those who are selling it in Great Britain are getting from 120/- to 170/- a barrel for it, they are daft, stark, staring, mad.

What does barley mean to us? Barley means to us straw wherewith to feed cattle and live stock; straw with which to make manure; the raw material of two of our greatest industries, whiskey and porter; the ideal feeding stuff for pigs; the adequate feeding stuff for any other live stock, and, before all and above all, the alternative to flour in the millers' grist. We can put into the millers' grist tomorrow 20 per cent., 70 per cent. or 65 per cent. extraction barley flour and get a better flour than we are at present compelling our people to consume. In the face of all these facts, the inducement held out by the Government of this country to our people to grow barley is to tell them that they will not be let accept more than 30/- a barrel, though across the water the lowest price at present being paid for malting barley is 120/- a barrel. I confess that when I saw these figures I told the person who gave me them that he must be out of his mind. He got the current trade paper and said: "Read it yourself first and then I will read it to you." Having read it over to me, he said: "I met a man that paid it not 48 hours ago."

Just imagine, the Government that tells us that its mind was obsessed with the problem of supply for the last few years contributes to that problem the announcement that any farmer who grows barley in Ireland will not be allowed to accept more than 30/- for it, although in Great Britain they are getting 120/- to 170/- a barrel. I cannot imagine that the meanest piece of mistletoe growing on the Fianna Fáil tree can stand for that kind of "codology", that kind of iniquitous folly. That sort of folly derives from the fact that you have a whole gang of Ministers there who have no more corporative existence than rooks in a tree. The Taoiseach makes up his mind and does what he wants to do and, as the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs most admirably says: "Whatever he does, we all do. We never say anything in public," says the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. "We always wait for the Taoiseach. He does all the propaganda for us." On that they are all agreed. They are all like dummies until the Taoiseach has said his say, but as between themselves, of consultation, collaboration, co-ordination, there is none whatever. The Minister for Supplies is clamouring to get cereals from the four corners of the earth. The Minister for Agriculture is holding a club over the head of any man who dares to grow an oat or an ear of barley in this country and they profess to constitute an Executive Council together. As I say, rooks in a tree would have more sense of collaboration or co-ordination than these men.

While I am all in favour of conciliation in periods of national stress and so forth, I do not think it does any good to be telling these men that they are paragons of virtue and that we are sure they will reform their ways in the early future and that we are going to do our best to prevail on them to be better boys than they have been in the past. They do not understand that kind of talk. They think when you talk to them in that way that you have got the wind up; that all they are required to do is to get tough and the incident will pass and that all the rest will be forgotten. You will hear them, as they leave the House, saying: "We got out of that splendidly after all. I thought we would get the hide torn off us. Luckily enough, the Opposition were not too tough to-night." For their own sake, it is better to chasten them while there is still time to reform. They are an incompetent lot. Let them make up their minds to that and, recognising their own limitations, keep their jobs— nobody wants them—but go around and get a bit of advice from sensible men and act on that advice. They can swagger about at parties and even at their grow more food meetings and get all the kudos for doing the right thing, albeit they are instructed by other men how best to do it.

I want to advert again in that connection, Sir, because, after all, Independent and Opposition Deputies in this House have a public duty to discharge. It is an entirely new technique for responsible Ministers to get up and say: "We are ruined and the country is destroyed, but it is not our fault." Recently, I have noticed again and again that when this country is about to fall into some disaster which results directly from the activities of Fianna Fáil Ministers, somebody is put up, either the Taoiseach or the Minister for Supplies, to say: "Disaster is upon us; we are going to have no bread, no food, no petrol, no tyres, but it is not our fault." They pray to God they will find somebody in the Opposition who will get up and say: "Nobody will blame the Minister. Of course, it is a very difficult situation. We must do all we can to get him out of it." The truth of it is the Minister ought to be made reolise it is his fault, and that, if he continues to act in the future in the same way as he has acted in the past, as soon as we get out of one difficulty we will be plunging into another one. It is for that reason that I want to direct the attention of Ministers and of this House to the fact that the intensity and acuteness of our present problems are the fault of the members of the present Executive Council and that much of our present trouble is the whirlwind we are reaping from their policy during the last ten years.

I want again to direct the attention of this House to the fact that when the Taoiseach gets up at Ennis and says: "We are going to have no bread, and I am sorry the people have no flour, but it is not my fault," the Taoiseach's Government refused categorically 12 months ago to hear of the preparation of a national register on the grounds that it was not necessary. Nine months ago the Minister for Supplies laughed to scorn the proposal that preparation should be made for the rationing of bread because, he said, it was not necessary.

He gets up last night, with characteristic effrontery, to explain that the reason he did not adopt a national register 15 months ago was because, if he had, it would be out of date by now. The British established a national register three and a half years ago and they are operating on it at this instant moment. Of course, it has to be kept up to date. So, too, has every national record. The next excuse is that one of the reasons why he did not ration bread is because it was impossible to ration bread. Every country in Europe is rationing bread, except Great Britain. Of course, it is not an ideal scheme. Of course, we would not ration bread if we had not to ration bread. The defenders of Derry City would not have eaten rats if they could have got out of Derry City during the siege. The defenders of the City of Paris, in the war of 1870, would not have eaten horses and old dogs if they could have got out of the City of Paris. But they could not. They were damn glad to get a horse before that seige was over. We are in exactly the same position. Nobody wants to ration bread just for the fun of rationing bread. You require to ration bread because you cannot ensure that everybody will get a share of bread unless you ration it. It is all "cod" to pretend that rationing will react most unfavourably on the poor. At the present time the poor are not getting any bread at all, and I am not thinking of the poor of the city as much as of the poor of the country.

Bread in the country largely means flour. I know dozens of families in rural Ireland at the present time who do not get any flour at all and they have no place to which they can go and demand as a right a minimum quantity of flour. I want to give every such family—a man, his wife and four children—the right to go in and bespeak 30 lbs. of flour every week from the merchant with whom they are registered. When we have got everybody on that common basis of 5 lbs. of flour a week, or whatever we may be able to provide them with, then it will be time to superimpose upon that a voluntary rationing scheme. I think it would be quite reasonable to invite all responsible parties, including the leaders of the Church and public life and every other branch of the community, to combine in an appeal to the well-to-do not to take their 5 lbs. of flour; to combine in an appeal to those who could do with less flour to take less flour and to leave the surplus on the hands of the distributors to allocate amongst those for whom 5 lbs. of flour a week is not enough, whether that is left on the distributors' hands in the form of bread or in the form of flour. Shopkeepers do not keep museums. They want to turn their goods over. They do not like looking at the flour lying in their bins or at the loaves of bread sitting on their shelves. If Mrs. Murphy comes in and says: "I am entitled to 30 lbs. of flour; I only want to take 20 lbs," he does not want to put the remaining 10 lbs. in a frame and look at it. He wants to find a customer who will take it. If all the well-to-do people can be prevailed upon to say together: "Not only do we not want any extra flour, but we want less than our coupons will entitle us to," to whom else will he sell it but to the poor? If the poor are there, anxious, willing and eager to buy it, unless the shopkeepers of this country are diabolical—and I do not think any member of this House has any reason to believe they are—the poor will get the bread. That is not an ideal plan but it is a plan that will work, and that is a very much better thing than an unworkable ideal plan.

In speaking to-day on this Vote on Account, I have dwelt exclusively on the question of supply and I have dwelt on that question because I think it is one of supreme importance. It would be a ghastly thing if the thought entered the minds of our people that they would do for their stomachs that which they would not do for conscience sake. The accepted policy of this country is one of neutrality and the people profess to have adopted this policy on the highest moral grounds. God forbid that, having taken up that position before the world, they would ever submit themselves to being starved into abandoning it. One would wish— I would wish—that, facing whatever risks the future might carry, they had rejected that policy on the ground that there were still moral issues in the world; that a nation had a moral sense as much as any man; that they would see the right thing to do and, without counting the cost, do it. But if they make up their minds that right lies along paths other than those which appear appropriate to me, God forbid that want or hunger or scarcity should induce them to change their mind. That would be the last degradation of a once proud people. I feel, therefore, that a Government solicitous for the honour and dignity of our people has a very special obligation in the immensely difficult times in which we find ourselves to show a due sense of responsibility and to lighten in so far as they can the burden of material hardship that our people will in any case have to bear. Poverty and inconvenience may constitute a heavy enough burden yet, but we can protect our people from hunger, and, if we fail in that, we fail in our first duty. If we wait too long to take the requisite steps, we fail. I have spoken quite frankly to the Government about my views as to their capacity and their past record. I think one is worse than the other. I have no hope whatever that any practical proposals of the slightest value may be expected from the present Government, but I do not despair that the unanimous voice of this House may succeed in coercing them into following the right path in the present situation. I appeal to Deputies in this House to consider the problem of supply in particular relation to bread in the months and years that may lie ahead, and to join with me in pressing on the Government the vital necessity to secure, in addition to whatever wheat acreage we can get, the very maximum output of oats and barley as well.

I want to say one last word on pigs. We were all told by the Government to grow more potatoes, and people in many parts of the country grew a substantially increased acreage of potatoes. Much of those potatoes have been left on the farmers' hands. The only means of disposing of them was by feeding them to pigs. Just at the time when feeding them to the pigs could have saved the farmers who grew them, the Minister for Agriculture, at the request of the bacon curers, announced that he was going to reduce the price of pigs. Bear this in mind, because this is as certain as that we are here in this House: the price of pigs was reduced with the consent of the Minister for Agriculture in order to ensure that the bacon curers of this country would maintain the margin of profit which they considered equitable on their investment in the several factories established in this country. Six shillings a cwt. was taken off pigs overnight in order to finance the bacon curers of this country, and in that hour the pig population of this country was potentially reduced by 50 per cent. I believe that in nine months' time you will not have one-half of the pigs in this country that you had last September. That is the kind of contribution which individual members of that Government have made to the task of persuading and enabling our people to produce more food in order to keep the community at large alive. I urge Deputies in the Fine Gael Party and in the Fianna Fáil Party and in the Labour Party to join with me in pressing the Government to do what must be done now so that we will not be hungry this time 12 months. I beg all Deputies to appreciate that, unless effective and energetic measures are taken now, it will be too late, and the catastrophe will be upon us. Supply is the essential key to our whole problem in the future. Financial and monetary problems may seriously embarrass us, but supply is the rock upon which we may all perish. I draw the Minister's attention to the fact that, no matter what he does by Order 83 or otherwise, we are caught in the middle of an inflationary spiral, and I ask the Minister to consider the position of those in our community who have fixed incomes, and who are confronted with the rising prices resulting from that spiral.

I gave the Minister yesterday facts drawn from my own experience in my own shop, showing the increased prices that poor people and working people are required to pay for the commodities without which they cannot cover their bodies. I may mention the fact that rice, which cost 4d. before the war, now costs 1/4. I could go through a long series of other commodities which poor people must have if they are to be fed and clothed, and the prices of which have risen out of all conscience, because in our own despite we are caught in an inflationary spiral which we are no more able to control than we can control the waves of the sea. Mind you, we who sit in this House may be deceived by the fact that the numbers of people who are poor have, in my opinion, been substantially reduced. An influx of money from Great Britain has brought to places like Crumlin and Kimmage and to many a country town in Ireland a monetary prosperity which was not there last year, but the persons I am concerned with are the old woman who has 10/- a week; the old man who has 10/- a week, and no family to help in his maintenance; the elderly widow who has a small annuity, who is living in lodgings here in the City of Dublin, who has nobody on earth to speak for her, and who is being slowly but inevitably driven to the union as her only hope of survival, because naturally the people with whom she is lodging simply cannot afford to keep her when her income is not expanding in proportion to the expansion in costs.

I was listening to Deputy Mulcahy speaking yesterday on the obvious inadequacy of 57/6 for a man and his wife and four children if the wage-earner were incapacitated. As he spoke, I thought of the agricultural labourer who came to my shop counter with 33/- a week, and who had a wife and five children, and I thought of the prices he was asked to pay to-day for the wherewithal to cover his children and to feed them. I simply do not know—I have not the faintest notion— how that man subsists. He does not earn to-day, in a 54-hour week, sufficient money to buy himself one pair of boots.

The boots to cover his own feet in the field where he works cost more than he gets in wages in a whole week. If that man wants to buy himself a shirt to-day, he must work two days of 9½ hours to get the cost of that common working shirt, with the back unlined because there is no calico wherewith to line it. Nine shillings is the price of a common working shirt to-day. If he wants a cotton singlet, which he used to get for 2/6, it will cost him 5/-, almost a day's wages. It will cost him that money for a thin cotton singlet, and he will be lucky if he can get it at that figure. If that man wants a suit of clothes to put on a little eight or nine year old boy to make his first Holy Communion or for his Confirmation he would want to be able to put his hand on 30/- at the very least for a suit which he would have got for 18/11 two years ago. Let us not blame the Government for those increases. They did their level best to keep prices down. It is not the Government's fault that prices are going up; they are going up all over the world, and they will go up far higher.

What I am trying to bring home to the House is that we should not sit back in self-satisfied contentment. We have restricted an increase in wages, but yet we see a great many people whom we expected to be poor, not poor. That is because their sons and daughters are sending them money from England. Our job is to think of those on whom the burden of the inflation is now bearing heavily. Though they are not organised, they are entitled to expect that we, who are trustees for them, will treat them with reasonable consideration. It is not that we have any desire to be generous at our neighbour's expense, and it is not that we are anxious to dole out the resources of the Treasury, but we have an obligation as trustees to do those people justice, and justice demands that they will be protected from intolerable hardships, the incidence of which we have done our best to prevent, but which have come upon them, and we are left with no remedy but to intervene and to come between them, with the resources of the State, and the hardships that our best efforts have failed to prevent hitting them.

I am speaking for the old who have no families and who have a small fixed income. I am speaking for the man who is earning a fixed wage and has large family commitments. That man cannot get away to England and we ought to do something for him now. We ought to face this problem just as readily as we would face a problem presented to us by riots in the streets of Dublin. We must be prepared to do what is right and just and fair without being intimidated into doing it.

I challenge the Minister or anybody else to contravene the case that I make in regard to these people. I apportion no blame for the hardships that have come upon them as a result of world events which we are not in a position to control, but unless we do our part to help these people to bear that burden, then we will have a very serious measure of blame. I invite the Minister to say, first, whether he agrees with me that a problem exists in a peculiarly acute form and, secondly, whether, by an increase of food, old age pensions and similar allowances and the institution of some form of family allowance, albeit restricted for the time being in its sphere of operation, he is prepared to attempt at least such mitigation of these people's problems as he is in a position to make.

Mr. Davin

If the Government, in asking the House to agree to the provision of the increased sum now demanded, could produce any evidence that there is an increasing number of our citizens in a more prosperous position than last year, or, indeed, than at any time during the last ten years, I would be prepared to give them that increased sum. I feel certain, however, that the Minister for Finance cannot, in fact, produce any evidence to prove that the people are more prosperous now, or that there has been any increase in the amount of employment provided for those who are anxious and willing to take advantage of that position.

The latest figures available, regarding the registered unemployed, show that we have between 90,000 and 100,000 able-bodied citizens lining up at the labour exchanges, and during the last 15 months young men and women, with Government permits, have left the country at the rate of 1,000 per week. That is the position obtaining at a time when our people are being called upon to produce more food. There is a noticeable decrease in the population of the rural areas at a time when the Government are asking that the land should be tilled to a greater extent. The real reason people are leaving the country in such large numbers is that they cannot get at home anything approaching the working conditions they are able to secure in another country under war conditions.

While young people are leaving the country in such large numbers, there is a demand from all sections of the citizens for more work to be done in the way of housing, afforestation, land division, peat development and an increase in the acreage of land under tillage. I noticed during the last few months that there has been a complete stoppage of house-building in rural areas. Will the Minister say whether the hold-up in connection with the provision of better houses is due to a shortage of material or money, or both? I have made representations to the Minister for Local Government on more than one occasion, seeking information why housing schemes submitted to the Department over 12 months ago are still awaiting the Minister's sanction. No doubt the Minister who, I admit, has taken a deep interest in the solution of the housing problem, will be able to give us information on that point. The Minister for Finance informed the House on several occasions that any money required for useful or necessary national purposes will be made available.

I noticed, when running through the Estimates of several Departments, that some of them have been reduced by considerable sums. The Estimate for the carrying out of improvement work by the Land Commission, which gave considerable employment during the last eight or nine years, has been reduced by £128,600. The Estimate for the provision of new works under the Board of Works is being reduced by £38,500. The Estimate for carrying out arterial drainage is being reduced by £6,400. The provision of money for the payment of unemployment assistance for the 90,000 people who are unable to get work is being reduced by £215,000. It is a very strange thing, and it is difficult for me to understand, why the Land Commission should suspend practically all its operations in connection with the acquisition and division of estates and the improvement of these estates just when the Government and all Parties in the House are calling upon the people to till more land. I am perfectly satisfied that if the Land Commission carried on their operations in that respect in the usual way that they had been carrying on in pre-emergency days, and if they had taken this land from large landowners or landlords and handed it over to people who were in a position to work it, much more land would be under tillage to-day than is under tillage at the present moment. I know of cases, and I have reported them to the Department of Agriculture, of several landowners or landlords in my constituency who are, I believe, refusing to comply with the requirements of the Government in regard to the tillage of 25 per cent. of their arable land. If the Land Commission had carried on in the usual way and acquired and divided these estates, there would be no necessity to make these complaints and more food would have been produced last year and would be produced this year, and more work, I assume, would be given by the Land Commission in the carrying out of improvement works on the estates that should be acquired and divided. There is no good reason that I know of why arterial drainage work should be completely suspended.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy is aware that we are not now considering the Estimates.

Mr. Davin

I know, Sir, but this is a matter of policy.

An Ceann Comhairle

Arterial drainage, of particular areas, by the Land Commission would seem to be a matter more appropriate to the Estimate.

Mr. Davin

The question of providing sufficient money to give employment to our unemployed people is a question of financial policy, and I am only enumerating very briefly the items on which that money could be very usefully spent. We had a long statement from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance yesterday evening in the Dáil, a very informative statement, giving particulars of what was proposed to be done during the coming year in connection with the peat development side of his activities: in other words, the provision of more native fuel for our own people during the current year. I associate that work, as it must be associated if efficiently carried out, with the carrying out of bog road repair schemes and the drainage of our bogs. We had a sum voted for that purpose here last year, but it is quite evident to Deputies in the turf-cutting counties that that sum is not sufficient to enable the necessary work to be carried out. I have made representations to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister in connection with schemes of that kind that are urgently required to be carried out, and here, to my amazement, is the kind of reply I got:

"The proposal could not be considered...."

that is, a proposal for the carrying out of bog road repairs and drainage schemes, and there are many, and this is a typical case,

"...in connection with the 1941-42 programme, as the unemployment position in the electoral division of Clonkeen did not warrant a grant. The proposal has also been specially examined as a development work to facilitate the production of turf during the emergency, and it will be considered under this head at the close of the 1942 turf-cutting season."

If we are to get the turf that is required for our own people these kinds of schemes will have to be carried out and the necessary money will have to be made available. I appeal to the Minister to see that sufficient money is made available for that purpose; if not, the people in the areas to which this kind of policy is being applied cannot get turf for themselves, much less for the rest of the community.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

The Parliamentary Secretary did not say that money was not available.

Mr. Davin

He said, first of all, in regard to persons registering at the local labour exchanges, that there is not a sufficient number to justify the carrying out of this work, and then he went on to say that it will be considered at the end of the 1942 season. If we are to get the turf that the people of this country will need here, that kind of bog road repair and bog drainage work must be carried out. Even if only the people of the localities which are concerned with replies of this kind are to get turf for themselves, the bog roads must be repaired so as to enable these people to bring out the turf from the bogs. Is this type of scheme not to be considered merely because there is not a sufficient number of men, in the opinion of the Parliamentary Secretary, available at a particular period in the district? As a matter of fact, most of the people who would be concerned in the carrying out of that scheme are not registered in the local labour exchange.

They are people who cut turf at a particular period of the year, road workers who get leave for the purpose or urban dwellers who cut turf after their day's work is done. They have cut the turf but could not get it out afterwards. That has happened this year, and I say that that is a very serious state of affairs. I can say definitely, and challenge contradiction, that there is turf lying on the bogs in many parts of my constituency which could not be got out last year simply because the bog roads have not been repaired so as to enable the persons concerned to get out the turf which has been cut and reared on the bogs. I put that point of view to the Minister in the hope that he will review the position. Those schemes, although they may be called minor relief schemes, can give employment to at least a limited number of people.

Now, a very limited amount of money—not much more than what was provided in previous years—is being provided for afforestation. We heard a lot of the necessity for carrying out forestry work, but if the land will not be acquired, and if the money will not be provided for the carrying out of the schemes, than I suppose that the people who cannot find work in the areas where such schemes could be carried out must go and look for work elsewhere, in England or somewhere else. I am of the opinion that the mismanagement by the Minister for Supplies has made a greater contribution to our existing unemployment problem than any other Ministry of this State. I daresay very little can be done in connection with the mismanagement now, because we are up against a situation where the raw materials that could have been secured some years ago cannot now be secured. I think that one of the most glaring cases of that kind is the collapse, practically the total collapse, of the railways of this country. I put a question to the Minister for Finance the week before last in this House, in which I asked him to furnish particulars of the amount guaranteed by him, as Minister for Finance, to the industrialists of this country for the purpose of enabling industrial concerns to purchase raw materials. In his reply, he stated that he intended to make a statement on that subject at a later date. I do not know whether he is now in a position to make that statement when he is replying to this discussion, but if he has the figures at his disposal I hope he will furnish them to the House.

The collapse of the railways of this country is due solely to the refusal of the Minister for Supplies and, perhaps, the Minister for Finance, to give the necessary State guarantees to our principal railway company to enable them to purchase coal and other necessary materials at the outbreak of the war. There is no use in coming along and saying that we were not aware that the railway was suffering from shortage of coal or of other necessary materials. Evidence was given by the railway company to the Railway Transport Tribunal in 1939, and figures were given to show the reserve supplies of coal and other materials that they had in their possession. Evidence, I presume on oath, was given that they had not the necessary money to enable them to purchase coal or other materials. Nothing, however, was done either by the railway management at the time or the Government to enable the railways to get the coal that they could have got then at about one-third of the price that it is to-day and at a time when ships were available. In dealing with this matter generally, I should like the Minister to furnish the House with the information which he promised me he would furnish on this matter when the Dáil met two weeks ago.

I read a statement, made by the ex-President of the Federation of Irish Industries, dealing with this matter at the recent annual meeting of the Federation of Irish Manufacturers. The gentleman concerned, who was a Minister under the last Government, stated that the Minister for Supplies refused to meet a deputation of the Federation of Irish Manufacturers to discuss this very important matter; that he would not even meet him for the purpose of discussing the question. Therefore, I must assume that the Minister was not prepared to help the industrialists of the country by way of State guarantees to enable them to secure the necessary supply of raw materials and to enable them to keep their factories going and their workers in employment.

If there is one thing more than another which has caused considerable confusion and agitation during the past six or eight months, it is the policy enshrined in the infamous Wages Standstill Order, No. 83, or Starvation Order, as some people have described it. The Minister for Finance is responsible—I do not know whether he is fully responsible personally or not—for bringing in this order in his Budget of 1941. In endeavouring to justify the acceptance of the order, he said it was brought in for the purpose of stabilising wages and prices. He has succeeded, to some extent, in stabilising wages—especially the wages of lowly-paid workers—but no effective attempt has been made to stabilise prices. That order has been amended on six or seven occasions and the amendments made have not, I assume, brought the State any nearer to bankruptcy. I know of no piece of legislation introduced by this Government which has caused greater agitation than Standstill Order No. 83. The experience which the Government have gained in that respect—the Minister must be well aware of its political reactions—ought to make them review that part of their policy. On almost every occasion the Dáil met since the order was introduced, the Minister was pressed to sanction increased rates of wages to lowly-paid workers to enable them to meet the increased cost of living. Will the Minister for Finance stand up, either as Minister or as Deputy Seán T. O Ceallaigh, supposed to be standing for the policy of social justice, and defend the payment of a wage of 27/- a week to human beings who are up to their hips in water carrying out bog-drainage schemes? A considerable number of workers have been employed in my constituency at that scandalously low rate of wages and, worse still, they are not given a full week's work.

We had the Minister for Local Government declining yesterday, in spite of the unanimous request of the local authorities, to sanction the payment of small increases of wages paid to lowly-paid wage earners working for local authorities. The majority of local authorities have recommended small increases to workers engaged on the roads, on peat development and bog drainage schemes, carried out by these authorities. Notwithstanding that Order No. 83 does not prevent him from giving his approval to these claims for increased wages, the Minister still declines to accept the recommendations of the local authorities. In spite of the assurance given by the Minister for Finance when bringing in this infamous order, we have the banks getting special privileges which I am sure the Minister did not intend to give them when attempting to justify the policy enshrined in Order No. 83. We had a certain section of railway shareholders getting the equivalent of 12 per cent, dividend on their shares at the time that the railways were collapsing. When the Minister was introducing Order No. 83, he indicated that public companies that had not previously paid 6 per cent. to their shareholders would be permitted to pay up to 6 per cent. but nothing more. Is he aware that the guaranteed preference shareholders of the Great Southern Railways Company recently secured three years' arrears of dividends—equivalent to 12 per cent. Is that in keeping with the letter and spirit of Order No. 83? I assume that the Minister knows something about this matter. The management of the Great Southern Railways went before the National Railway Wages Board and, in effect, told them that they would be bankrupt if they had to give another 2/6 per week to the workers employed by them. The increase would have involved a sum of about £80,000 a year. Notwithstanding that evidence, given about two months ago by the acting general manager, the same management comes along and, in spite of what was intended by Order No. 83, pays out over £230,000 to the guaranteed preference shareholders of the same company. Is that social justice or is it in accordance with Emergency Order No. 83?

The banks, which have been fortunate enough to be able to pay an average dividend of 14 per cent. to their shareholders, have also been given power to increase the charges to their customers. I do not know how the Minister for Finance can justify that treatment of the banks, railway shareholders and speculators on the Stock Exchange, while refusing to sanction increases to men working on bog drainage schemes at 27/- a week. That is not in accordance with the policy of social justice so well understood by the Minister for Finance. There is something radically wrong with people who give such preferential treatment to banks, railway shareholders and speculators while, at the same time, keeping the wages of lowly-paid wage earners at the low figure at which they stood before September 30th, 1939.

There is a matter of policy to which I should like to refer. That is the refusal of the Minister for Local Government—I take it to be a policy decision of the Government—to sanction the recommendation of the Dublin Corporation regarding the provision of hot mid-day meals for school-children. I understand that the corporation submitted a unanimous recommendation to the Department of Local Government in favour of the provision of hot mid-day meals for school-children. I do not know any reason why the Minister for Local Government or his colleagues should refuse to sanction that request. I am not sure that it is a matter which concerns the Department of Finance directly. It is the ratepayers' money which is involved. It has been collected for that purpose. If a state of emergency has not actually developed, there is no doubt that the children of this city are living under emergency conditions.

The rationing of gas should be an additional reason for reconsidering that decision and, if the Minister for Finance is not as a Minister directly concerned in this particular proposal, I hope he will use his powerful influence as a Deputy for the City of Dublin to get his colleague, the Minister for Local Government, to change his attitude on this matter.

The present deplorable position of the unemployed and those who have to leave the country to get work under war conditions elsewhere is due mainly to the failure of the Government to produce any considered plan for the carrying out of works of a national development nature. If the Government can find £9,000,000, as they are doing this year at the taxpayers' expense, for building up an efficient national defence force, surely they can find all the money necessary for carrying out and completing a national housing scheme, for afforestation schemes, for land drainage, for bog road repair work and drainage work, and all those other schemes which are waiting to be carried out if the Government will provide the necessary money for the purpose.

The suggestion has been put forward here on several occasions that, if the Government or their Civil Service advisers are incapable of devising a plan for carrying out schemes to provide all our able-bodied citizens with work, something in the shape of an economic council should be set up for the purpose of advising or helping them to prepare and put such a plan into operation. In dealing with that matter in the House recently, the Taoiseach, although he advocated the setting up of an economic council when sitting on this side of the House, seemed to think that such a body would only cause more confusion.

If the Government are unable to do the work which the people elected them to do, surely it is advisable that they should call in somebody else to give them the necessary advice and assistance to do their job. The cry of the Government at the last general election was: "Give us a clear majority to enable us to carry out a considered plan and put that plan into operation." Having got a clear majority, we find that they have no plan and, having no plan and being unable to produce a plan that will solve our existing problems, they refuse to seek assistance from those who probably would be able to give them valuable assistance.

Generally speaking, the Government have got in this House and outside this House every reasonable assistance from the Opposition Parties, especially in connection with the building up of a national defence force. I do not know, and I suppose nobody except the Lord Almighty Himself knows, when the war will end. I should like to think that it will end before the conclusion of this year. Supposing the war is ended before the conclusion of this year, what is to happen to the tens of thousands of young men who have joined the national Defence Forces for the duration of the emergency, apart altogether from the 90,000 registered unemployed who are looking for work to-day and the other section of our people who are leaving this country with Government permits at the rate of 1,000 per week? Is there any plan for dealing with the situation that will arise at the end of the emergency period?

I would appeal in particular to the Minister, when replying to this discussion, to deal with the policy enshrined in Emergency Powers Order No. 83 and to say if he can defend it now as a result of seven or eight months' experience of its working? When dealing with this I should like him to attempt to justify the attitude adopted by his colleague who is now sitting beside him, the Minister for Local Government, who refuses to sanction a small increase in the wages of workers employed by or under the supervision of local authorities, while at the same time giving the banks of this country the right to increase their charges to their customers, and giving the right to the late management— Lord have mercy on them—of the G.S. Railway to pay out in one year an equivalent of 12 per cent. to their guaranteed preference shareholders. I say sincerely to the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Local Government that, in the light of the experience of the working of Emergency Powers Order No. 83, the whole policy of the Government in that respect requires to be favourably reviewed.

Professor O'Sullivan

I feel a bit uneasy between the piety with which Deputy Davin finished up and the piety which we are accustomed to get from the Minister for Finance, and I presume we will have a lot of it when he is concluding this debate. There were a number of points raised by Deputy Davin which I need not stress further. He said: "If a state of emergency has been declared." Of course it has, but it is very one-sided. It has been declared for the purpose of getting increased power for the Government, for greater irresponsibility on their part to the House, for justifying inaction and muddling on their part, for a demand truculently put forward by some of the Ministers that they be free from criticism or suggestion or advice of any kind. It has been declared for the purpose of cloaking over some of the worst mistakes the Government have made, but it has not been declared for the purpose of bringing any benefit to the people and, consequently, I can understand Deputy Davin's doubt as to whether any such declaration of an emergency has taken place.

Deputy Davin also referred to the failure of the Government seriously to tackle a number of questions which would solve, or help to solve, particularly questions of unemployment that are acute at the present moment and that ought also to help forward the alleged policy of the Government and the Minister for Agriculture—for instance, arterial drainage and matters of that kind. But, surely, Deputy Davin knows that however much there is in the way of demand for co-operation from the Government, the last place you expect to find any co-operation is between members of the present Government. We had a rather striking illustration of it yesterday, as the Deputy will remember. Apparently, it was the business of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance to provide turf and bring it to Dublin, but he had not the slightest interest in what was to happen to the turf afterwards; that was not his business. Therefore, whether his scheme was that his turf went up more metaphorically in smoke than in reality was no business of his. It was no business of his either, so far as the present turf at his disposal is concerned, or his future plans for getting a better supply of turf next season, to know, for the information of the House, the price he was going to pay the producers of the turf or the price charged for that turf. Similarly, the Minister for Agriculture when dealing with wood said all he had to do was to bring the wood from his national forests to the station.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

The Minister for Lands.

Professor O'Sullivan

Yes, the Minister for Lands in his capacity as head of the Forestry Department. All he had to do was to bring the wood to the station. What happened it after that he washed his hands of. He was not responsible for what happened, and he was doing nothing about it. He shrank from the idea that he should be expected to know what happened, and yet there is supposed to be collective responsibility. It is a great deal of collective irresponsibility in so far as this Ministry is concerned. Deputy Davin also said that it was too late now, and that little could be done about the mismanagement of his Department by the Minister for Supplies. I am afraid the Deputy is altogether too optimistic. A great deal can be done by the Minister for Supplies, and I am afraid a great deal will be done by that Minister to show increased mismanagement, if possible, in a bigger crisis than we have yet faced. There was nothing in the statement made recently by the Minister to suggest that his conduct of that Department is not going to run along the same lines that it has run on for the last three and a half years, since 1938, when a separate section was set up in the Department of Industry and Commerce under his control. I shall return later on to the Minister for Supplies because, undoubtedly, it is the most serious question that this country has to face at the present moment. It will continue to be even a more serious question, growing in gravity, I am afraid, as the months go on, and I can see no real hope in anything said or done by the Minister to allow us to look forward not merely with any optimism, but to any ease to the situation that will be produced here largely owing to the incompetence he has shown in that Department.

It has been pointed out by the Leader of the Opposition that there is a growing tendency to increase in Budgets of demands and supplies, and the emergency is not by any means the only explanation. I must say that since the present Government came into power there has always been an emergency. I should like to know from the Minister whether he can mention a whole period of 12 months in which we were not in an emergency or going to get into an emergency. That has been always offered as a partial excuse— other excuses were given too—for mounting Budgets. How long the country will be able to bear that policy I am not going to discuss now. I should like to point out that at a time when the cost of living is going up seriously, as was acknowledged last night by the Minister's Parliamentary Secretary, given of course as an excuse, when he was asked to give some indication of what was likely to be the price in connection with turf in the coming season. He said that he could not be expected to do that considering the universal tendency of a rise in prices. Apparently that is a situation to which the Government has deliberately shut its eyes. As Deputy Davin pointed out, they still operate the celebrated order for a non-increase in wages.

Nobody can say that the Government has taken adequate measures to see that there is a proper supply of food and other necessaries for the people at reasonable prices. It is an entirely one-sided imposition by the Government on the people. It is not necessary to call attention to that—we have done it before—and the Minister rather shamefacedly acknowledged it to-day in his address—if the Minister be ashamed of anything—that the actual figures before us now, or before us last year were, of course, not necessarily final figures.

The figures that appeared on the cover of the Book of Estimates last year were £35,222,000 but they had risen at the close of the financial year to £38,322,000 and the same thing happened even to a greater extent in the previous year. I think the Minister will probably be the first to acknowledge that he certainly cannot prophesy what this £39,000,000 will ultimately be at the end of the year. The Minister nods his head. I merely call attention to this position, that we must face the likelihood not of any diminution in taxation or any diminution of the sum the Government demands for its alleged purposes, but, on the contrary, must look forward with confidence— and it is one of the few things to which we can look forward with confidence in connection with this Government—to a continual increase.

What I am anxious about is not the actual sum involved, but the question put to the Minister before: Can he pretend that there is value given by the Government for the sum of money now demanded? Can he say that there is increased value for the increased sum demanded by the Government at a time when other burdens have to be borne by the people as a result of the policy of the Government; at a time when the price of everything has gone up, inevitably as a result of the tariff policy, be that policy sound or not? Taxation and the demands of the Government have, with one exception, increased every year. This is an enormous sum, and I do not think that anyone who looks at the conduct of the Government, particularly since the outbreak of war, can pretend that value is given for it. It is rather to the question of the value given by the Government, by the different Departments of Government, and by different Ministers who preside over these Departments, that I direct the attention of the House. Can anyone pretend that as a result of this increased expenditure on the part of the Government the lot of the ordinary citizen has been improved? Can anyone pretend that the tendency has not been on the whole in the opposite direction?

I ask Deputies: are they convinced that they are getting better service on the whole from the Departments ruled over by present Ministers than they got when a less sum of money was demanded from the taxpayers? I do not think they are. There has been a steady deterioration in the services rendered the nation by the Government and by the different Departments for which Ministers are responsible. We certainly do not get anything like efficiency. It is becoming more and more impossible to get even answers from Government Departments. It has certainly become more difficult to get effective work out of them, and the responsibility for that lies on the shoulders of Ministers, and must ultimately fall on the shoulders of the head of the Government.

It is no use for people down the country to say: "Ah, the head of the Government is all right; it is the Ministers who are all wrong, and who are no good." The Fianna Fáil defenders of the Government cannot get away with that. The Taoiseach is responsible for appointing those Ministers and he may have led them astray as much as any one of them leads his Department astray, yet the suggestion is: "The Taoiseach is all right, but what can we expect from him surrounded by such Ministers?" That is no valid exculpation of the Taoiseach. He is the head of the Government and he is responsible for the inefficiency and the muddling of the Government. Sometimes one hears the criticism made by employers that labourers do not give a decent return for their wages. That, in many cases, is completely untrue, but there is one class of men who do not give a decent return—I mean so far as productive output is concerned, and this is particularly true of the last couple of years—and that is those responsible for the government of the country.

Take, for instance, the increases in the staffs of Departments. Take the Ministry—I was going to say which was once ruled but, shall I put it, that was once presided over, by the present Minister for Finance?— namely, the Department of Local Government. As far as I can hear through the country, there is no indication that there has been a marked improvement there, notwithstanding the fact that there has been steadily increasing expenditure. As to who would have a good word to say for the Department of Supplies, except he is driven to utter such a good word by a sense of Party loyalty, I should like to find him. Not that the House has been niggardly in supplying money for that Department and the Department of Industry and Commerce. This year there are 49 more persons employed in the Department of Industry and Commerce than there were last year. But take the Department of Supplies, mismanaged by the same Minister. Last year the number that was budgeted for in the Book of Estimates was 157. At the end of the year that number was put down at 455. Such was the foresight of the Minister that, in budgeting in the beginning of the year, he was under the impression, apparently, that 157 civil servants were sufficient for that Department. He had treble that number by the end of the year. Even in seeing the needs of his own Department he had no foresight. This year the number has risen to 548. There is a peculiar note inserted, an indication of the number of people employed there. Last year's Book of Estimates bore a note to the effect that of the 157, all but 56 were on loan from other Departments. That may be some explanation of the growing inefficiency of some of the other Departments. It certainly is not a tribute to the Minister for Supplies. This year the note has changed somewhat. A greater number are now taken in freshly than are taken from other Departments. Consequently we are told that 245 out of the 548 have been taken from other Departments. Last year all, except a certain number, were taken in on loan.

What I object to is that, notwithstanding the way in which this House has voted money and in which the taxation of the people has increased, we have got continually worse service as a result of the mismanagement of Ministers. I have spoken of the excuse that you often hear on people's lips for the Taoiseach—to my mind the biggest condemnation that could be uttered of the Taoiseach, when we come to think of it—but another thing we continually hear is that what this country wants, seeing the muddle that is being made of it, is a dictator. The people from whom I sometimes hear that statement amuse me. Their idea is a very simple one. They are anxious to get a dictator so that he will be able to deal drastically with labour. I have often felt that if you had a real dictator in this country the first people he would deal with would be the people who are crying out for a dictator, and he would deal drastically with them too. But, although we may not have a dictator here, we have a Government with dictatorial powers. It is not Parliamentary institutions that are failing at the present moment; it is the dictatorial institutions that are failing. In what way has this Parliament hampered the Government in carrying out any item of their policy in the last two or three years? Not in the slightest. The members of this House have given valuable help, which has not always been accepted. Last night we saw the way in which that valuable help was simply scorned and trampled on by the Minister for Supplies, him above all other people! What we are suffering from is the fact that there is supreme power in the Government, and the Government is not able to exercise it for the advantage of the country. If there is any system that is being shown up, and badly shown up at the present moment, it is precisely the dictatorial system. This Government has supreme powers to do practically what it likes with the policy of this country, and we see the result. It is not because Ministers have not been given a free hand; they have been given a free hand, even over the lives of the citizens of this country, if the State requires it.

They have been given a free hand in practically everything else and yet it has not worked. It is the bankruptcy of power, not the absence of power, that is at fault at the present moment —the fact that the power is there but that the Government and the Ministers are not able to use it. That is what is wrong.

What help are they giving? Is it not a typical contribution of the Government at the present moment to the solution of the problems of this country to indulge in propagandist speeches? I do not mean now Party propaganda speeches—though we get enough of them. That is not what I am referring to but that they consider they have done their duty, so far as the supplies of the country are concerned, when they make a few speeches against the farmers on a couple of platforms in the country. I cannot see that the problem of supplies is settled or that its solution is greatly advanced by anybody, be he Taoiseach or Minister, going down the country and threatening the farmers with jail. If Ministers did something to restore the confidence of the farmers in the Government they would be, in their speeches, performing a much more valuable service than threatening them with jail. That type of conduct does not help.

I know that at present, as a result of their experience in the last season, a number of agricultural producers feel, rightly or wrongly, that they have been let down by the Government, and amongst those of us who are interested in the production of an adequate supply of food by the farmers for the coming season, there is a fear that that feeling on the part of the farmers may militate against the work which everybody is anxious to forward. What is wanted, therefore, is an effort to persuade the farmers that that feeling of deception, that feeling of lack of confidence, is not well-founded. That can be done in various ways: firstly, by the Government's conducting itself a little better and, secondly, by finding out what are the real grievances of these producers.

Do not tell me that it is the business of Deputies to show them to the Government. That was one of the excuses made here yesterday. Deputies cannot find out the real extent to which these complaints are well-founded, but if there is anything of which we have a large crop in the country, it is inspectors. Do not tell me that there is any county with an insufficiency of inspectors who could not find out what the real situation is. We might not have enough wheat and it might not be of the proper quality, but we certainly have enough inspectors and they ought to be of the proper quality. I hope they are; I hope they are of a better quality than the Ministers. When an effort has been made by the great bulk of the people, and when every Party is urging and urging strongly that the effort be made, as we urge it now and have continued to urge it, it is the business of the Government to contribute their share, at all events. What I have had to complain of in the Government before now—and I must say that nothing I have heard in the recent speeches of the Taoiseach or of members of the Government makes my mind any easier on the subject—is the lack of co-operation on the part of the Government with the people who are doing the work, the ordinary farmers and workers of the country. Propagandist speeches, even in favour of growing more food, are not enough and that is all the Minister for Supplies seems to be able to do, and not to do very effectively.

We may have rationing, we are told by the Minister, but what preparation has been made for it? A separate department, or sub-department, of the Department of Industry and Commerce was set up 12 months before the war. The war has now been on for two and a half years. What advance has been made to meet what, once the war started, was an exceedingly likely contingency, namely, rationing? When we put this matter before the Minister for Supplies about thirteen months ago or more, in the middle of January, 1941, in a special debate that took place here on the matter of essential supplies, it was quite obvious from a couple of unhappy interruptions by the Minister that he had no intention whatever of taking the problem, or what might in future become the grave problem of rationing seriously. He was asked whether he was taking any steps to prepare a national register. His answer to me was "No", and when I spoke of rationing, the only thing he could think of was: "Rationing of what?" It did not dawn upon the Minister that he was bound to make the provision.

A little time afterwards, in the Seanad, he acknowledged that the whole question of rationing was exceedingly difficult. And it is, because a system of rationing bread alone may work out most unfairly. It may work out so that the people who depend most on bread will not get a sufficient ration, and the people who, by reason of the money in their possession, could easily substitute other articles for bread will get more than what, in the circumstances, ought to be their fair share. It is a complicated problem, but the fact that it is complicated and difficult is all the more reason for that Minister having attended to his business and having prepared the way for the rationing scheme which he might have to introduce.

Can any comfort be got out of the Minister's statement of yesterday? We are told that we may have rationing in the month of May. Why? Because the supplies of wheat may have vanished by the middle of June. I gathered from the Minister's statement yesterday that if we do not get any more importations of wheat, even with the substitution of the 80 per cent. for the 100 per cent. supply which prevailed up to some days ago, the supply cannot go beyond the middle of June. What are the chances of our being able to get wheat in? He says we cannot get it in any longer through Lisbon from North America, owing to the entry of North America into the war, but that we may be able to get it from South America to Lisbon, and then here. Can anybody tell me what South American States are in the war or out of the war, and how long they are likely to be out of the war? Do they think that supplies are likely to come from certain South American States in a couple of months' time? They may. Have arrangements been made and will these supplies be here before that critical period in the middle of June, when, according to the Minister, we are going to have no supplies of wheat whatever, unless we get supplies in from outside? When we may have no supplies of wheat whatever, we are going to have a rationing system.

He is optimistic; he hopes he will get them in; but in another portion of his speech, feeling that he has committed himself too far, or possibly in order that he can quote two different opinions from his speech, he proceeds to say: "That is one of the problems that must arise. They might be able to avoid the necessity of rationing, if they had some lucky break in the matter of supplies from abroad, although he did not think there was much likelihood of that." Therefore, we are depending on a lucky break to avoid rationing. May I suggest that we are depending on a lucky break to get any wheat into the country? How we are to ration it then is not quite clear, but the Minister, going on quite calmly, pretends—there is a great deal of pretence about the Minister—that the reason he postponed rationing so long was that he preferred what he called the voluntary system, a system which has produced nothing but confusion and very often unfair treatment of a number of people. He pretends that is the reason. He prefers really that other people should do the Government's business. He prefers that the bakers, the shopkeepers and others should do the rationing which should be done by the Government, leading to the situation we had last week here in Dublin. In reality, if the House will think it worth while to read some of his previous statements, it will find an explanation other than that.

I spoke of his attitude 12 months ago when, apparently, he did not seriously consider the necessity of rationing, or at least thought that rationing was a reasonable contingency in the future. He did not bother his head about it, but a few months later he changed a bit, and when discussing his own Estimate last June he told the House quite seriously—apparently he did not see the implications of what he was saying in reference to his own competency, that one of the difficulties in introducing a comprehensive rationing system at the time was that he had not a proper supply of suitable paper. Coming to the end of the second year of the war, that Minister who had been specially appointed to control supplies told the House, in June, 1941, that he had not even got the paper to supply rationing books. Yesterday he said that they are now coming in at the rate of 80,000 a day, and therefore he can introduce a rationing system by the end of May when there will be just enough wheat at the 80 per cent. rate —that is provided we do not get more in—to bring us to the middle of June. That Minister who has got every help as regards supplies from every Party in the House gets up and, because a few criticisms are levelled at him by Deputies and by newspapers, resents that and quotes the example of another country. He contrasts the grand and patriotic behaviour of the people of that country with that of the people of this country, but, surely, it is in the knowledge of everybody here that that Government which is at war, which is fighting for its very existence over in England, has got very much more criticism than this Government here.

If there is anything wrong with this House, with the Opposition—the Labour Party, the Independents and Fine Gael—it is this: that because of the crisis they have not given enough detailed criticism of the mismanagement of the present Government. We have given the Government every help on the main matters so far as policy is concerned.

The Army, for example, has been taken out altogether from criticism in this House. As far as we could we induced a great number of the young people to answer the call of the Government. We, again and again, urged the farmers to grow as much crops as they possibly could, and because we feel bound occasionally to point out the extreme slackness with which the Minister manages his Department, we are apparently guilty almost of high treason. That is what I referred to: the possession of absolute power and the bankruptcy of absolute power in the hands of this Government. But rationing may come! When did the Government think it might come? Here is the opinion of the Minister for Supplies on that. It appears in to-day's issue of the Irish Independent.“They”—that is the Government—“they decided in October last that circumstances might arise in which a formal rationing scheme might become necessary in respect to a number of commodities, said Mr. Lemass in the Dáil.” More than two years after the start of the war the Government decided that there might be a necessity for a rationing system! Is that proper foresight and proper care on the part of the Head of the Government and the Ministers. Last October they decided that rationing might be necessary! It is to be presumed that up to then no preparatory steps were taken. I want to avoid being controversial, but may I say this: I wonder whether, when a rationing system is introduced by the Minister and when it does come, it will not be a bigger muddle than anything that has taken place up to the present, because not from the start of this whole crisis, starting 12 months before the war, has there been an element of foresight on the part of that most important Department at any time.

The Minister spoke of all the work he did 12 months previous to the outbreak of war, when he had a subdepartment under him. As well as I remember, the only result of all that great effort was to put up a reserve supply of wheat, but what did it amount to? 60,000 tons, and that was called a reserve to meet a war crisis! Why, if it were not so tragic the thing would be ludicrous.

Now rationing may be necessary. It is, as I say, an extremely complicated operation, and like everything else it is going to come down on top of us without warning or without any preparation on the part of the people bringing it in. We saw the results last week in the Minister's conduct as regards bread in the City of Dublin. I do not know how far he was responsible or whether he had any responsibility for what happened as regards the gas. It was said in one statement which appeared in the newspapers that the Minister's Department was kept informed, but the rationing came on suddenly and without warning on the people of Dublin, many of whom have to depend altogether for their cooking on gas. In practice they were given no notice of what was going to occur. I do not know what the explanation was. One of the explanations was that there had been a breakdown in the machinery.

Minister for Local Government and Public Health (Mr. MacEntee)

If the Deputy wants to know what was responsible for the breakdown in the gas supply I can tell him. It was announced by the Gas Company this evening that it was due to a breakdown in their plant.

Professor O'Sullivan

Whatever it was due to I saw it stated by the Gas Company or by someone on their behalf that that breakdown was in some way connected with the quality of the coal that the company was getting. Surely in that event the contingency of a breakdown could have been foreseen both by the Gas Company and by the Minister instead of cutting off the supply without giving any warning to the people. Many people only got warning on the morning that the gas supply was cut short due to the fact that the notice sent out by the Gas Company was badly printed in some of the editions of the evening newspaper.

Mr. Corry

The Minister should have dreamed that the machinery was going to break down.

Professor O'Sullivan

He is doing such a lot of dreaming otherwise that I should not like to overweight his dreaming capacity any further. He was told, I understand, by the Gas Company week by week.

Mr. Corry

The Deputy is doing a fair share of it, too.

Professor O'Sullivan

I am glad to see that the Deputy approves thoroughly of what has been done by the Department in this matter. I am glad to know that there is at least one man in the country who is prepared to stand up manfully for the Department. The Department was told what the situation was. Machinery on the railways had broken down again and again owing to the coal trouble. This was a contingency that could reasonably have been foreseen and a warning should have been given to prepare the people for it. It was a thing that was likely to occur at any moment.

May I point out that all the Minister has done up to the present is to administer shock after shock to the people, shocks that did no good and produced no good effect? Can anybody say that since the beginning of the war he has given any reasonable warning of what was likely to occur? Here is a man who gets up and makes panic speeches and then objects because people get frightened. Is not that the technique of the Minister, the technique that he pursues month after month?

He paints the most gloomy picture and then because people take him seriously he is surprised, and so am I. But there is still a number of people who take a Minister of the Fianna Fáil Government seriously when he paints a gloomy picture. The Minister is surprised when the people then get frightened and when there are stampedes for supplies. If anything of that kind happened, the Minister and his talk are mainly responsible. The question of prices has been mentioned by Deputy Davin. Who ever expects the Government to control prices? All they control is wages. They do not make any attempt—certainly no successful attempt—to do what is bound up with wages control, namely, the control of prices.

There is to be a Press bureau and a Press director. He may give some useful information to the public, but I doubt it very much. The people never get useful information. I understand that recently there was a consultation between Ministers or Departments and that it was decided that an explanation should be made to the public on what each Department was doing, and it was suggested in all seriousness to me— possibly cynically—that all the Ministers turned to the Department of Supplies and said: "That is your job; you are the only people who can tell the public you are doing anything." There is a certain amount of truth in that, at least so far as the underlying facts are concerned. You will not get any information. You have got no information that is of any use, and having a Government information bureau can only be for the purpose of misleading the country. No information that is of any use to the country can be got across to the people at the present moment.

That is one portion of the absolute and dictatorial power the Government has. Democracy—parliamentary or otherwise—is completely impossible unless a great deal of freedom is allowed to the Press. For a variety of reasons, that does not obtain in this country at the present moment. I have even heard the criticism, levelled in another country much stronger and more powerful than this, that they might adopt as their motto: "Too late, too late." Had they looked at such a sign in the sense of an attempt to avoid being too late, they would have saved themselves much trouble. The motto is fitted for the Minister for Supplies who reprehended the conduct of the citizens of the country last night for not showing sufficient public spirit. He might adopt that motto for the manner in which he has dealt with this matter affecting the lives of the people. "Too late, too late"—and then completely inefficient action.

Mr. Cogan

In introducing the Vote on Account, the Minister referred to it as a very respectable one. If respectability is to be judged by size, this Vote is certainly a respectable Vote, but if we are to judge the return given by the Government for that Vote by the same standard, it is anything but respectable. What return have the people got during the past year for the enormous impost that has been placed upon their shoulders? During to-day I noticed all over the city posters which, I thought, with a slight alteration, would be appropriate to this Vote. Those posters were describing some incident of the war as "Red raid on German pockets." In the Estimates for which this Vote is required, we have a red raid on Irish pockets, and a red raid made for the purpose of carrying on a Government which has proved itself incapable of discharging the elementary functions of government.

At the moment, the most important consideration for the Irish people, apart from maintaining their neutrality and freedom from external attack, is the preservation of their existence. The essentials for the nation's existence are the supply of food, clothing, fuel and shelter. What attempt has been made by the Government to provide those essentials? Can anyone say that there has been any attempt to handle the food situation with any degree of confidence or efficiency? Here we have a nation with a fairly extensive territory and a very meagre population. With any foresight, planning or organisation on the part of the Government, it should be possible to provide ample supplies of food for the people and live stock, without having to rely upon imports of any kind during this emergency. Yet we have the position that our essential requirements of bread are likely, in the opinion of the Minister for Supplies, to become short in June.

Surely a Government which claims the right to extract such an enormous amount of money from the taxpayers should be able to ensure that bread, of some quality, at any rate, would be available to our people for the 12 months of the year. Yet, because we are afflicted with Ministers who are incapable of planning intelligently and who have no sense of responsibility, or who have not the courage to accept full responsibility for the management of the country's affairs, we are faced with the fact that the people of Ireland may be short of bread for at least two months, or perhaps three. During the last month or two, our Ministers and high officials have been touring the country, making eloquent and urgent appeals to farmers to produce more food. Why that campaign should be undertaken in January rather than in September, which is the beginning of the wheat-sowing season, is difficult to understand. What useful purpose is expected to be served by such a campaign is even more difficult to understand. The Government has a definite responsibility to the people to provide food. There is sufficient land to provide the food and sufficient labour to do the necessary work, and there is also sufficient seed to ensure that the necessary acreage of crops can be provided. There has been failure somewhere, and that failure must be fixed where it should be fixed—upon the shoulders of those who are responsible for the government of the country, on the shoulders of the members of the Government, and on the Head of the Government in particular.

Last week, in Ennis, the Taoiseach, in his usual pleading, plaintive and plausible manner, attempted to place all the responsibility for any failure of food supplies upon the shoulders of our farmers. He said they were entirely responsible for this failure, and he threatened dire and drastic penalties on any farmers found not complying with the various tillage regulations. He forgot, however, that no real attempt was made, in the first place, to hold out any proper inducement to farmers to grow a sufficient acreage of wheat. First, we had an offer of 1/- increase on last year, then an offer of an additional 4/-, and later an additional 5/-. That method of haggling over shillings and pence in connection with our essential wheat supplies cannot be regarded as anything but contemptible and unworthy of a Government purporting to carry the country through a grave national emergency. If we had a real attempt to face up to the difficulties of the situation, it is likely that a much greater acreage of wheat would have been grown.

Every member of the Irish Hierarchy who has spoken in connection with the production of food has solemnly advocated decent remuneration for those engaged in the production of our essential supplies. Yet, that remuneration has not been forthcoming, and, therefore, there has been a deficiency in those essential supplies. I have mentioned wheat. What applies to wheat also applies to oats and barley. The prices fixed were altogether inadequate. I do not agree with Deputy Dillon when he says we should have free trade in oats and barley. I think it is the duty of a Government in an emergency to regulate prices of all essential supplies, so as to ensure justice between all sections of the community. It is their bounden duty to ensure that all those engaged in production will get a price to cover the cost of production and leave a narrow margin of profit. Here we have inefficiency and incompetence.

Our Department of Agriculture has not the remotest idea as to the cost of production in any essential agricultural requirement, although that Department has been in existence for years. No machinery has ever been set up to ascertain the costs of production in agriculture and of various essential agricultural products, so we have these ignoble and indecent squabbles in regard to price year after year, haggling in regard to shillings and pence. Then we have Ministers and high officials going out through the country, like a band of travelling tinkers, abusing, threatening, and exhorting farmers to produce greater supplies than they have been able to produce at the inadequate prices offered so far.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Chair deprecates the comparison of Ministers to travelling tinkers.

Mr. Cogan

I am sorry if I used an unparliamentary expression.

Mr. Brennan

Some of the tinkers are very decent men.

Mr. MacEntee

I am afraid Deputy Cogan does not regard them as decent men.

Mr. Cogan

We all know that one of the characteristics of tinkers is that they whine and crave, and that when that fails they threaten and abuse.

Mr. MacEntee

The Deputy must be gazing into a mirror.

Mr. Cogan

It is time the Government adopted a more responsible, more resolute and more courageous attitude in dealing with the provision of essential supplies. In his recent speech, the Taoiseach said he felt that the acreage which would be provided by the Compulsory Tillage Order would be inadequate. It is hard to understand why that situation should arise, why we have not an intelligent estimate of our needs and of what acreage will be provided by this Compulsory Order. As far as I know, neither the Minister for Agriculture nor the Department of Agriculture has the remotest idea as to the acreage of arable land in this country. We have had various estimates— 12,000,000 acres, 11,000,000 acres and 10,000,000 acres—but I believe the total acreage of arable land is far less. When the Taoiseach says that, in order to maintain our live stock and human population, it is necessary to have a tillage area of 3,000,000 acres, I think he has not made any reasonable attempt to estimate what the tillage of one-fourth of our arable land would amount to. Here we have complete failure to appreciate the potentialities and the needs of our nation. We have, at the same time, a complete failure to ensure that those engaged in the production of our essential supplies will be adequately repaid.

In various appeals to farmers, we have been requested not only to increase our acreage of wheat, barley and oats but also to increase our acreage of potatoes. That was done to a very great extent last year, but what return did the unfortunate farmers in the poorer districts—whose land is suitable only to the production of potatoes—get for their increased production of this very essential crop? The market price of potatoes is low, but, as most farmers rely on the feeding of pigs to give them a return for the production of potatoes, it is upon that industry they must rely for a remunerative price for their potato crop. Yet, at the very moment when farmers would be taking their finished pigs to the market to obtain a return for their labour in producing potatoes and feeding those pigs, the price of pigs is drastically reduced. The effect of that reduction has been to rob the unfortunate producers—both farmers, agricultural workers, and smallholders—of a decent return for their labour in producing the crops necessary to feed those pigs.

Another effect of the order reducing the price of pigs will be to reduce the stock of pigs, with the result that, in the very near future, it will be necessary to ration bacon to the same extent as it is now necessary to ration bread. There seems to be no attempt to face up to the future. There is simply a crude method of avoiding difficulties, and then they become too great to be surmounted. An intelligent planning of our future would ensure that the price of pigs would be retained at a remunerative level, so that at least we would be sure of always having a sufficient supply of home-produced bacon. Yet, we have a policy being adopted by the Government now which will make bacon unprocurable after the lapse of a few short months.

I have said that, after the provision of food, one of the main functions of a Government which is costing the community so much should be to ensure that the people, rich and poor, are given supplies of fuel. Here again there has been hopeless failure. We have had an ill-considered and ill-directed drive for the production of turf, which has resulted in huge supplies of unburnable turf being stored all over the country, and which is resulting also in the population of this country being forced to rely almost entirely on timber as a substitute for coal, thereby denuding the country to a very large extent of our timber supplies. If any reasonable attempt had been made to ensure that the turf would be properly saved and properly stored, this situation would not have developed. I would not refer to it now, but there seems to be no indication, either from the Parliamentary Secretary's speech last night or from any other source, of any likelihood of the Government mending its hand in the future. If it is a crime to sell milk which contains an excessive supply of water, and if there are drastic penalties for such an offence, surely some steps should be taken to ensure that turf containing, as the Parliamentary Secretary mentioned last night, as much as 99.4 per cent. of water, is not supplied to the poor and to the community generally. There seems to be no attempt on the part of the Government to protect the people from this injustice.

There is one last matter to which I should like to refer, and that is our clothing supplies. We must face the fact that imports of cotton goods and other clothing materials are likely to be seriously curtailed, if they do not become altogether unobtainable, and a serious effort should be made to ensure that our home supplies of wool and other materials are turned to the best advantage. Can anyone here claim that farmers who are engaged in the production of wool get a decent return for the commodity which they put on the market? Can anyone contend that our home supplies of wool are being used to the best advantage in providing clothing for our people? The question of housing has been mentioned. It may be contended that, owing to lack of imported materials, it would be impossible to provide housing of the type that was usual in pre-war days, but we have within our own country ample supplies of suitable material for the production of houses, and in the production of those houses employment could be given to our workers.

Tens of thousands of our best and most skilled workers who are emigrating could be given remunerative employment on that work within the country, and an asset would be created for our people which would endure even when the emergency has passed. I cannot compliment the Government upon any feature of their activity in attempting to provide the people with their essential requirements. The Government may claim that, within the limits of our financial system, it is impossible for them to find the necessary money to embark upon schemes which would extend production, which would give employment to workers, and which would create, as I say, real national assets within our country, but, in a time of grave emergency, when old-established institutions are being flung aside and new ideas are being adopted in every nation, there is no reason why the Government should be tied down to an obsolete financial system which restricts production, restricts credit, and restricts national development in almost every field of activity.

Mr. Linehan

The real trouble about the discussion on this Vote on Account is the fact that the Government, as practically every speaker has already adverted to, has very little to show for it, and particularly that the one Department which everybody is concerned with at the moment, the Department of Supplies, has nothing to show for it. It has nothing to show for the money which was spent on that Department in the past two years, and, if that Department and the Minister in charge of it keep on going at the rate at which they have been going, there will be nothing to show for the money that is being voted for that Department this year. The position is that we are asked to vote the largest sum that has ever been asked for in the history of this House, and surely when the House is faced with this Vote on Account some indication might have been given as to what are the future plans of the Government, or the plans of the Ministry of Supplies at any rate, to deal with the emergency?

Last night we got a very fair idea of what the Minister's future plans are likely to be. The Minister will ration when there is nothing left to ration. The Minister attacks any kind of rationing scheme now because he says it is impossible. The only reason why a rationing scheme is impossible now is because the Minister did not prepare for it or attempt to put it into force when he should have done so. The Government, at the beginning of the emergency, appealed for and got the co-operation of every section of this House as far as supplies were concerned. There has scarcely been any criticism. The new Ministry, the Ministry of Supplies, was left to carry on in its own way for two years with scarcely any criticism. The first really serious criticism of that Department took place yesterday on the debate on the bread situation. The thanks that this House got and the thanks that every individual member of this House got from the Minister was the fact that he lost his temper and lost it violently. He suggested that any panic that was caused or any resentment that was in the country or any breakdown in the distribution of bread supplies was the fault of individual members of this House who went around and looked for and picked out petty annoyances and magnified them in the eyes of the public. As a matter of fact, I do not think that any individual member of this House, either acting for himself or for his Party, had commented publicly —either verbally or in writing to a newspaper or anything else—on the bread situation until we came into the House here yesterday.

The position is this: that the Government have got so used to obtaining from the House every power they ask for, they resent any criticism, mild or otherwise. Deputies have said, and it is absolutely true, that the one thing the House has been lacking in is criticism. It is obviously too late in some respects, when the Minister for Supplies admits that there may be bread rationing in May and that it is possible the entire wheat supply will last only into the middle of June. There is a very large expenditure provided in the present Estimates for a coupon system to carry out that rationing. Will it not be money wasted if the rationing will extend only for a month? If the rationing system is going to be enforced only for a month, it might as well not be introduced at all.

The Minister's objection to rationing is that it may prevent the people who most need bread getting a fair supply of it. Does he suggest that having no system of rationing is going to improve the position? The Minister appeals to every section of the community to act in such a way that rationing will not be necessary. He has threatened dire penalties upon traders who do not act in what he considers a fit manner towards their customers. It is beautiful when the Minister announces that shopkeepers will lose their licences if they do not distribute their goods fairly. The public will thank the Minister for the attitude he is taking up and his statement that he will penalise shopkeepers who do not act fairly in the matter of distribution. Whose function is it to distribute the goods properly? Surely it is not the function of shopkeepers. There is a Department of Supplies in which officials are paid to do that job.

It is not good enough for the Minister to tell us that voluntary rationing is better than compulsory rationing, or to suggest that it lies with the shopkeepers to improve the situation. If there is no necessity for rationing, and if the distribution is going to be done by individual traders, then there is no necessity for a Department of Supplies or a Minister for Supplies. The Department of Supplies is only necessary for two reasons, one for bringing supplies into the country—and there the Minister has failed miserably —and the other in order to see that there is a proper system of rationing and distribution carried out. Apparently, until the Minister is forced to do so, he will not adopt any system of rationing. A rationing system adopted early in the emergency with regard to several commodities would, in my opinion, have considerably improved the position.

As regards the one commodity that they did ration—tea—the rationing scheme was not properly prepared or carried out. A situation was permitted under that system whereby the allocation of tea for traders was arranged in accordance with the supplies they were getting in a particular period, and not in accordance with the number of ration cards they held. For instance, a shopkeeper whose quota was, let us say, 40 lbs. of tea per month, and who took ration cards for only 20 lbs. is still getting his 40 lbs. allowance, while a man who was getting 20 lbs. a month and who took ration cards for 40 lbs. is still getting only the 20 lbs. and his customers cannot get their proper supplies. That state of affairs is evident in every town throughout the country.

Shopkeepers took ration cards from everyone who approached them. They were advised by public officials to do so and in some instances by the Civic Guards. At the time everybody thought the system would be such that the most simple-minded person would understand that every ration card would be returned by the retailer to the Department of Supplies and he would be receive the exact quota of tea to cover all the cards he held. It is ludicrous, nonsensical and childish in the extreme to permit one trader to get twice the quantity of tea necessary to supply his customers, while another trader gets only half the quantity he requires. The ingenuity of a Department that goes half way with a rationing scheme and then forgets all about it is really extraordinary. That type of thing has happened all over the country.

We hear violent talk about "black market" activities, and yet every encouragement is being given for "black market" activities. If people are put in possession of a quantity of tea and they are not bound to give it to anybody, they are in the position that they can sell it to particular customers. That is one of the most serious drawbacks in this mismanaged Department of Supplies. Every Minister warns racketeers and people dealing in the "black market" that they will be dealt with if they are caught. Advertisements have appeared in the papers offering white flour, brandy, tyres and various other commodities that are so scarce that they can only be got from special quarters.

Is it not ludicrous to suggest that there is anything like a "black market"? People are quite entitled to advertise these things when ordinary individuals or traders cannot possibly get them. It is extraordinary, in the case of a Government that have got absolute powers over life and death, over supply and demand, over credit and wages and other things, that they should allow things to reach such a stage. It is extraordinary that a situation can arise in any Christian country, especially in a so-called democratic country, whereby there is a shortage of bread of 100 per cent. wheat extraction and still white flour can be advertised for sale. Can anybody justify the voting of even one penny to a Department that will allow that type of thing to occur?

What has the Department of Supplies to show for the money expended on it last year, the previous year and even the year before that? I shudder to think of what the position will be this time 12 months. So far as supplies are concerned, the Department seems to have no policy. So far as distribution is concerned, the mess is still shocking. Take the position of transport. There is a terrific scare as regards tyres. People interested in the motoring business got into the habit of doing the best they could with what they were able to get, but now a situation has arisen where there is a collapse in regard to rubber and tyres and we cannot get a Government announcement as to what the position is likely to be. We do not know whether tyres are going to be rationed or who will get them when they are available.

People who sent tyres to be rethreaded will not be allowed to get them rethreaded. The factories informed them that it will be necessary to get Government permission to rethread them. An announcement is to be made in the near future, but I dare say the same position will arise in this connection as in the case of other commodities. The honest person will have to wait his turn or probably do without tyres altogether, but there are others who will be more favourably placed, who will be able to advertise articles for sale and who will get away with the cream of everything.

There was no attempt made to do things properly, so far as the restriction of the use of petrol was concerned. There was plenty of petrol available for certain things. The greatest trouble I ever knew people to have was when they tried to get petrol to take turf from Kerry to a point just below Cork City.

Now, the Department did not approve of the issue of petrol for such purposes, but after a while they gave in. As a matter of fact, however, if anybody knew where that turf was coming from, and visualised how much petrol would be wasted in the various operations involved in bringing it from the mountainy district it came from, the changes and reloadings and so on, they would realise that the petrol wasted in each of these various operations would have covered the whole journey entirely. Mind you, nobody in this country is convinced that the petrol system has been properly handled either, because, just like the flour situation and just like the present situation as regards tyres, everybody knows that there is still a large number of loose coupons floating around the country that are at least as valuable as legal tender notes. That is a rather interesting situation because the Ministry must know that it is happening, and they cannot say that they cannot get information to that effect because I am quite sure that they have the information. But here is the difficulty. Nobody will expect the ordinary individual who buys a coupon to come up and tell an official of the Department of Supplies that he bought it, because what will happen? He will be prosecuted, and the fellow who sold the coupon will probably get away with it. That has happened already. We had an instance of that, and of how such things are happening, in County Cork recently. In the Midleton district in County Cork 19 prosecutions were brought in the district against farmers who were so short of feeding stuffs for their pigs that they went down to the Youghal and Midleton areas and paid from 34/- to 36/- a barrel for barley, whereas the fixed price was about 28/-.

Mr. MacEntee

I suggest, Sir, that this is a matter for the Department of Supplies.

Mr. Linehan

I might suggest to the Minister that I have now gone on to the Ministry of Agriculture, as far as that is concerned.

Mr. MacEntee

The Deputy was citing these prosecutions to illustrate cases that he was arguing against the Department of Supplies.

Mr. Linehan

But I have gone from the Department of Supplies to the Department of Agriculture now. It was the Department of Agriculture that instituted these prosecutions.

Mr. MacEntee

It was in the administration of the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. Linehan

Of course, there we have it again—collective responsibility of the Government: get one Department out of the trouble by blaming the other Department. What does it matter which Department caused the muddle? I see all that as an indication of how this matter has been muddled by the Government, and it does not matter whether it is the Department of Agriculture or the Department of Supplies. The fact is that these people, according to their sworn evidence in court, paid more than the fixed price for barely with which to feed the pigs that they were getting ready for market, because there was no other cereal available, and they were prosecuted. Thirty or 40 farmers from East Cork marched into the witness-box and gave evidence that, in fact, they had received more than the fixed price for the cereals and, of course, made themselves the good boys in the eyes of the Government. They made themselves good boys in the eyes of the Government by giving evidence that they had received more than the fixed price, but I notice that none of them, either in the witness-box or outside it, offered to give back to the men who were prosecuted the extra 3/- or 4/- per barrel that they had got.

Mr. Corry

What a hope!

Mr. Linehan

Yes, what a hope, as Deputy Corry says, but the serious thing is that not a single one of those who sold that barley, who gave evidence against the men who had bought it, and who retained the money they had got over and above the fixed price, was prosecuted.

An Ceann Comhairle

That seems to be a particular case in County Cork rather than general policy.

Mr. Linehan

Very well, Sir, I shall not press it farther, except to go this distance, at any rate: that there is very little hope in the Department getting evidence from people of illegal activities or "black market" activities if the people who are mostly concerned in the commission of the offence, the persons who sell the article, are to get away with the swag and to be patted on the back as good little boys because they turn up and give evidence for the prosecution. Actually, add all the little peccadilloes up and they make nearly as nice a little sum as the nice little sum we are voting here to-day.

Now, there is a suggestion that there is a slight air of prosperity at the moment in various parts of the country. So there is, in the sense that numbers of people in poor circumstances are handling more money than they were handling two years ago. That is very simply explained by two reasons. One is that in certain districts large numbers of young people have gone to work in England and are sending home money, and the other is the extraordinary development—and no thanks to the Government—of a particular industry, the rabbit industry. There is no thanks to the Government for the fact that there is more loose money knocking around in parts of this country at the present moment. The fact is that more rabbits were caught and exported last year than were ever exported, and more money was earned in that way than was ever earned. The price of rabbits went to 2/- apiece, and it was quite common to see boys arriving at school every morning with five or six rabbits slung across their shoulders or across the handlebars of their bicycles. As a result, there is more money in these districts than was ever got as a result of anything the Government ever did for them.

I heard people, Government supporters, down the country, thanking God that the last Christmas—the business Christmas to put it that way— was one of the best that they ever had. In the small country towns they had plenty of money to spend, but there were not enough articles to buy, and of course "it was the Government that provided the money", but they completely forgot where the money came from. They were wondering that, with all the bad times, there should be so much money.

Mr. MacEntee

That must have been gall and wormwood to the Deputy.

Mr. Linehan

There was plenty of money but there were no supplies. The Minister talks of these things being gall and wormwood to the Deputy, but these things do not affect the Deputy. I do not think the Minister or some more of his colleagues would like to hear what their own boys are saying about them around the country—who is to blame for everything that happened; who is to blame for the misdeeds of the Minister for Supplies or of the Minister for Agriculture; who is to blame for everything? It is all because of the fact that the Government made an awful mistake at the beginning of the war when they asked for unity and, of course, having got Fine Gael in with them and on the Defence Conference they must bow to their wishes occasionally and, hang it all, they have to give in sometimes! And then, of course, no matter what happens, neither the Fianna Fáil Deputies nor Fianna Fáil Ministers are to be blamed. Everything is explained by the fact that they have members of the Fine Gael and Labour Parties sitting at the Defence Conference with them. It is not as funny as the Minister seems to think.

Mr. MacEntee

I was only thinking that it is not the first time that Deputy Linehan had to be thankful for the policy of the Fianna Fáil Government.

Mr. Linehan

I remember only one really honest statement made by a Fianna Fáil Deputy outside this House about Government activities, and that was when a Fianna Fáil Deputy suggested at a meeting in Cork City that a plaque should be put on a certain building there, with the inscription: "Erected to the incompetence of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health."

Mr. M. Brennan

Was it Deputy Corry?

Mr. Linehan

Yes, of course it was Deputy Corry, the only man in the Government who speaks his mind occasionally.

A Deputy

Both the Deputies are from Cork.

Mr. Linehan

Yes, and I might say, and Cork Deputies will bear me out, that Cork City and County together are fairly large, and large enough to give a very useful cross-section of the conditions of life of the people of this country. Coming back to the question of supplies, last night the Minister for Supplies made the extraordinary statement that flour supplies were being equitably distributed. I have since been told by people who are interested in the milling industry that all the shopkeepers and so on got their full quota of flour last year. The quota last year was supposed to be 80 per cent. of the 1940 quota. Everybody knows what the position was then; there was no scarcity then, and 80 per cent. of the 1940 quota would not have been bad. If that were so and if it were distributed to all the shopkeepers and co-operative creameries who sell that commodity, how is it that there were districts throughout the country in November of last year where people were without flour for weeks? I know of places where people had to travel 20 miles for flour and who were left completely without it for some time.

Mr. Corry

Why?

Mr. Linehan

The panic did not apply altogether to Dublin. Within three days of the Minister's broadcast a fortnight ago there were towns and villages without bread or flour for a couple of days. What was the reason for that?

Mr. Corry

The reason was that the quota was made into white flour which was supposed to have come from across the Border.

Mr. Hickey

That is not true.

Mr. Corry

It is.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Chair is prepared to hear one Cork Deputy at a time.

Mr. Linehan

If that most serious allegation is true, and I take it the allegation was that the flour was there to be distributed and that, instead of being distributed through the normal channels of distribution in this country, it was retained by people and turned into white flour and sold as flour which had been smuggled across the Border, there could be no greater indictment of the Minister for Supplies or the Government. As a matter of fact, having heard that from a Fianna Fáil Deputy, I am satisfied that nothing more could be said, and I will say no more.

Minister for Local Government and Public Health (Mr. MacEntee)

This is a very interesting, though not a very illuminating, debate. Interesting because of the fact that Opposition Deputies in particular, though ready to make wild charges against the Government, have not, apparently, taken the trouble before getting up to speak here of fortifying themselves by going through the Book of Estimates, or even, I should think, by referring to the Vote on Account. We have been asked by Deputy O'Sullivan, for instance, to say whether anybody can pretend that as a result of the increased expenditure which has to be provided for this year any better value will be given. The very fact that a Deputy like Deputy O'Sullivan would make himself responsible for such an utterance immediately indicates to me that he, at any rate, does not consider that this debate is a very serious occasion, or that he should weigh his words and utter them with some sense of responsibility to the nation and the people as a whole in the grave circumstances in which we find ourselves. What Deputy O'Sullivan has said was re-echoed by Deputy Cogan and also by Deputy Linehan. Everyone of them tried to convey to the people the impression that there was no real justification for the fact that in the year 1942, in the third year of the greatest war that, as yet, has devastated the world, the Estimates of expenditure for the coming financial year in this State have risen from about £29,000,000 for the year 1938-39 to £39,112,000 for this year.

Now, let us see how this increase arises. If we proceed to examine the separate Estimates which make up the aggregate of £39,000,000, we find that the most remarkable increase is the increase which has taken place in the Vote for the Army. This year for the Army the Dáil is asked to provide £8,942,000, but in the year 1938-39 the amount which was provided for that service was only £1,771,000. So that for the year 1942-43 the Vote for the Army alone shows an increase of £7,171,000 as compared with the actual expenditure for the year 1938-39. Deputy O'Sullivan has told us about the praiseworthy and laudable way in which all sections of the House cooperated with the Government in expanding the standing Army of this country from a total strength of about 5,000 men to eight times that figure or over 40,000 men, and further cooperated in establishing the subsidiary and secondary defence services like the Local Security Force, the Local Defence Force, the Air Raid Precautions service, and the rest. I am sure that when Deputies participated with the Government in urging the young men of this country to enroll in their country's defence they were well aware of the fact—even Deputy Cogan might have been aware of the fact—that this action on their part would have as one of its consequences the imposition of a very heavy burden of expenditure upon the Exchequer. They did not think that these 40,000 young men who were forsaking their ordinary avocations in order to join the Army would not have to be maintained out of the public purse. They did not think that their bread and butter would be provided for them like manna from Heaven, or that the expensive clothing and equipment which are necessary to outfit the Army were to be received by us from some outside source free of charge as a gift to this nation.

One would imagine from the sort of speeches which have been made here to-night by Deputy O'Sullivan, Deputy Cogan, and Deputy Linehan that these Deputies, though they were urging the Government to expand the Army, and though they were urging our young people to join the Army, thought that all this could be done without the expenditure of an additional penny piece over and above what was spent on the Army in 1938-39. I have pointed out that the Estimates now provide for an expenditure of all of £8,942,000 upon the Army, and we are asked by Deputy O'Sullivan if there is anyone who believes that, as a result of the increased provision which the Dáil is being asked to make this year for Government services as a whole, there is going to be any better value given to this nation. Are we to understand from Deputy O'Sullivan, and those who talk like him, that it is a waste of money to spend this £9,000,000, in round figures, on the Army; that it is a waste of time for these men to be in the Army, and that it was a waste of effort to ask these men to join the Army?

Mr. M. Brennan

Did any Deputy take up that attitude?

Mr. MacEntee

No, because no Deputy was straightforward enough to deal with the matter in that way. The question asked was: was there going to be any better value given for this money? That question carries with it the implication that the man who asked it believes that the money is being wasted.

Mr. M. Brennan

The Minister knows that is not correct.

Mr. MacEntee

That is the only implication that any man of intelligence could draw when a person of the intelligence, the ingenuity and the astuteness of Deputy O'Sullivan asks what better value are we going to get for the money we propose to spend in 1942-43, than the money spent in 1938-39? Naturally, the largest single increase in the Book of Estimates is that of £7,171,000, to be spent on the Army.

Mr. M. Brennan

Will the Minister permit me to ask him a question?

Mr. MacEntee

I must be permitted to continue.

Mr. M. Brennan

As far as the Army is concerned, the Minister knows that the Government got an absolutely free hand.

Mr. MacEntee

Very well, then rule the Army out, and what do we find? The Army alone is costing £9,000,000 this year and, of course, the absurdity of the statement made by Deputy O'Sullivan is demonstrated the moment we consider that one single Vote for the Army. Deputy Brennan in an endeavour, no doubt, to save the face of his colleague and to whitewash the whole Opposition——

Mr. M. Brennan

In defence of truth.

Mr. MacEntee

——for the shameful attitude they took up in regard to it, asks me to leave the Army out.

Mr. M. Brennan

Asking the Minister to quote the Deputy fairly.

Mr. MacEntee

Very well, I will leave the Army out. From £39,112,000 we will leave out £9,000,000 for the Army, and reduce the sum to be considered in round figures to £30,000,000. Before we turn to the year 1938-39, the last year before the war broke out, a year which might be regarded as a normal year, may I say that one would think from some of the speeches which were made this evening, such as the speech of Deputy Davin, that Deputies were unaware of the change since, that they believed they were living in another planet, and were unaware that there is a world war being waged around us. Let us get back to 1938-39, the year before the outbreak of the war and, therefore, the last normal year which this country has enjoyed.

Dr. Hannigan

Get on to the flour and tea.

Mr. M. Brennan

The Minister will avoid that as it was avoided last night.

Mr. MacEntee

If Deputy Hannigan exercised the intelligence that I believe he has, he would know very well that we are not entitled to discuss the detailed administration of a Department on the Vote on Account, and that the question of flour and tea is one which would arise properly on the Estimate for the Department of Supplies. I am dealing with the Book of Estimates as a whole, and dealing with the £39,000,000.

Dr. Hannigan

There is a big difference between guns and drums.

Mr. MacEntee

I will deal with that too. The Deputy is a sorry figure at the moment. The last normal year we had was 1938-39, when the total expenditure was £28,248,000, leaving the Army out.

Mr. M. Brennan

The Minister should do so.

Mr. MacEntee

In any event £28,248,000 was spent in the year 1938-39, and leaving the Army out, we propose to spend this year £30,112,000.

Mr. M. Brennan

Will you not allow any expenditure at all for the Army even in a normal year?

Mr. MacEntee

I was making the Deputy a present of that, because I was not going to consider that amount for 1938-39. It cost £1,700,000. Leaving the Army out of account in 1938-39, we find that the total increase in the expenditure proposed for 1942-43 as compared with actual expenditure in 1938-39, is of the order of £3,500,000. We have to try to account for that £3,500,000. We have got to justify it in one way or another.

Mr. M. Brennan

Now the Minister is talking.

Mr. MacEntee

I am glad the Deputy appreciates the approach I am making to the problem. I am endeavouring to show what value the people are going to get for the increased expenditure and, in order to do that, I must try to drive home this point. I do not think it will penetrate the minds of the Deputy's colleagues; no doubt we will hear from them the same sort of speeches as we listened to this evening. We will hear again speeches which might be uttered if this were an assembly in cloudcuckoo land, an Utopia, some world of peace where there is nothing to disturb the even tenor of one's way, where ships sail the seas without danger, where there is no shortage of tea, flour or rubber, and where everything we desire comes freely to us from the four ends of the globe. I have no doubt the Government will be attacked to-morrow as if everything was peaceful, and as if in the best of all possible worlds universal peace reigns.

I want to bring the Deputy and his colleagues down to the sad reality that that condition of affairs does not exist; that we are not living in 1938-39, that we are living in a world in which things which are not native to our soil, which we have to import, which are necessary to keep our productive economy going, have to be brought to our shores at great risk, at great expense, and in circumstances over which we have absolutely no control. The vicissitudes they undergo and the expenditure we incur, naturally find themselves reflected in the condition of our people, in the condition of our public finances, and in the figures in this Book of Estimates. Having made it clear that we are living in a world which is at war, and not in a world that is comparatively at peace, as it was in 1938-39, I should like to show what has been responsible for the estimated increase in the cost of the public services.

The Department of Supplies is one of the Departments which has come in for a great deal of criticism during the course of this debate, and, of course, on other occasions. The Department of Supplies did not exist in the year 1938-39 because there was no need for it then. I do not think anybody, even those who criticised that Department most severely, denies the need for it now. I have not heard any Deputy saying: "We do not want a Department of Supplies." Some Deputies might have stated that they wanted a better Department of Supplies, but every Deputy agreed that we must have a Department of Supplies. There was no Department of Supplies in 1938-39 and, therefore, there was no figure in the Book of Estimates for that Department. There has to be provided for the services administered by the Department of Supplies for the coming year £1,757,000, or, let us say, £1,750,000. We have been told by Deputy Linehan that the Department is not worth that, that we ought to scrap it, and that we should not spend a penny on it. When I heard Deputy Linehan say that we should not spend a penny on the Department of Supplies. I knew that the Deputy had not taken the trouble even to open the Book of Estimates to see what £1,757,000 is required for.

I do not think I am doing an injustice to any other Deputies who spoke in this debate if I say that they are in the same position as Deputy Linehan. I do not believe any one of them has turned to page 336 in the Book of Estimates to ascertain for themselves what £1,757,000 is required for. It is true that £65,591 is required for salaries, wages and allowances, and one might say that that sum is large. On the other hand, judging by the criticisms which have been offered here, the general belief would seem to be that the amount is too small, and that we should have a larger staff in the Department to deal more expeditiously with all the problems with which it is concerned from time to time. If so, the natural corollary is that these people would ask that the Vote for the Department of Supplies should be increased, and that the total amount to be provided in the Estimates should be correspondingly increased. Deputy Linehan speaks from the Front Bench of the Opposition Party and, therefore, may be presumed to express the general opinion of the Front Bench of the Party in regard to £1,757,000 to be provided for the Department of Supplies. Therefore, I suppose we may take it that Deputy Brennan, Deputy Mulcahy and Deputy O'Sullivan agree with Deputy Linehan that not one penny of the £1,750,000 should be voted by the Dáil. In view of the serious criticism that sometimes emanates from the Labour Benches, I suppose, we may take it that they take the same view as Deputy Linehan takes, and would not spend any of the money that it is proposed to spend on the Department. I take it that those who say that the money should not be provided, really mean that the money should not be spent in that way.

Mr. Hickey

Come down to realities.

Mr. MacEntee

Am I to take it that that is Deputy Hickey's view?

Mr. Hickey

His view is as to how the amount is spent.

Mr. MacEntee

Precisely. Deputy Hickey objects more to the way the money is spent than to the amount of money being spent. Let us see how the money for the Department is spent. A sum of £65,000 is to be spent on salaries, wages and allowances; £17,000 for the completion and issue of ration books. Deputy Linehan can always be inconsequent and inconsistent. He was clamouring for rationing, but he does not want any money to be spent on ration books. How we are to have a scheme of rationing without ration books, perhaps Deputy Linehan will, on a future occasion, inform the Dáil. There is a comparatively small sum, £3,500 for travelling expenses; £60 for incidental expenses; £2,000 on telegrams and telephones; £24,000 on advertising and publicity. It will be noted that these only make up between them about £110,000, and the balance of the £1,757,000 has yet to be accounted for.

Deputy Hickey objects more to the manner in which that £1,757,000 is going to be spent than on the amount. Deputy Linehan would not spend one penny piece of it, therefore, we must take it, Deputy Hickey and Deputy Linehan and the other Deputies who have spoken in the debate like them do not want £1,475,000 to be provided for flour and bread subsidies. What they want now is a withdrawal of the subsidies on flour and bread and an increase in the price of flour and bread. In any event, people who have been influenced by some of the wild speeches we have heard to-night should ask themselves: do they think, when providing £1,645,000 as a subsidy for flour and bread, in order to enable that staple of life to be kept at as low a price as possible for the poor, that socially and morally we are getting value for that money or not? That is what Deputy O'Sullivan questioned when he took the view that we were not justified in proposing to spend this £1,645,000 in subsidising flour and bread. Moreover, he doubted whether there was any person in this country who felt that we were getting any value out of the increased expenditure. There is £1,645,000 which those Deputies who propose to speak in this debate and who challenge the justification for this increased expenditure will have, at any rate, to deal with.

Dr. Hannigan

And we have to pay £150 a ton for white flour.

Mr. MacEntee

I want to try to deal seriously with this problem. The House will not expect me to stop to crush a horse-fly. Next in order of magnitude, is Vote 73—Special Emergency Schemes—for which £1,250,000 has to be provided. Again I doubt whether any of the Deputies who have spoken in opposition have troubled to turn up this Vote to see what these special emergency schemes are. Apart altogether from the amounts which are provided for the preliminary development of bogs, for which £25,000 is asked, and other items providing for the further development of bogs already in production, there is an item of £493,500 in respect of the production of turf for use in non-turf areas. The interest of the public in this problem was manifested yesterday when, at the desire of the House, the Parliamentary Secretary had to make a special statement setting out the whole position, detailing our prospects of being able to secure a supply of native fuel to meet our needs during the coming winter. Here, as I say, is an item of £493,500 for the production of turf for use in non-turf areas. Then we have an item of £125,000 for developing works in bogs acquired by local authorities; £50,000 for the reconditioning or repair of public roads subject to heavy turf transport; £81,800 for development works in bogs used by land holders and other private producers, and £19,000 for miscellaneous fuel production schemes.

Is there anyone in this House, whether he be a representative of a turf or a non-turf area, who wants these works to be closed down? Is there anyone who believes that this House can afford to delete from the Estimates sums which are to be provided for these special works, do they ask that we should close down these works and face the next winter bereft of fire and fuel, leaving us not only without the means of heating our houses, but the means of cooking our very food? Does Deputy John Marcus O'Sullivan think that these are purposes for which public money should be provided?

Again, there is the sum of £250,000 to be provided for farm improvement schemes, £50,000 for a seed distribution scheme, £20,000 for a lime distribution scheme, and £44,650 for miscellaneous schemes, making in all £1,250,000 of special expenditure devoted to one object and one object only—to get food and fuel for our people in the coming year. Do Deputies really ask that they are to be taken seriously when they get up and express doubts as to whether an Estimate like that is justified, and when they ask people to believe that the country is not going to get value for the heavy increase in expenditure which these items involve?

Taking the items again in the order of magnitude, a sum of £400,000 is being provided as an allowance to supplement the cash which is already being provided under the Unemployment Assistance Acts for those who happen to be in need. Do Deputies want that item to be deleted from the Book of Estimates also? If they do, we can go some way towards reducing expenditure to the level at which it stood in 1938-39, but if they think that these allowances should be continued, as we think they should be continued during the coming year, they should at least refrain from trying to make people believe that they are not getting value for the additional expenditure which is proposed for the coming year.

The next item is £260,000, to be provided under Vote 75—Damage to Property (Neutrality) Compensation. I have listened to some parts of the debate in this House on this question, and the one noteworthy and significant thing about them has been that the Minister for Finance could not possibly satisfy all the demands which were coming from those benches, largely because, I suppose, there was some political capital to be made out of the utterance of such demands to pay compensation upon a very high scale to those whose property happened to be damaged as a result of the bombing incidents of last year. Do Deputies, who are asking that increased compensation should be paid to the victims of these incidents, want the people to believe that the community is not going to get value for the £260,000 which the Government is asking the House to provide under that Vote?

The last item which I shall mention is one which appears in the Vote under the Department of Local Government and Public Health. The Vote in that Department is up by £138,000 as compared with the year 1938-39, but if it is up by £138,000 as compared with that year, it is because of the fact that we are asking the House to provide a sum of £200,000 as a subvention to the home assistance authorities to enable them to carry out a scheme of supplementary allowances in kind similar to the food allowances scheme which is now associated and linked up with the Unemployment Assistance Acts. If it had not been for the fact that we have to ask the House to make that special provision in the particular circumstances of this year, the Vote for the Department of Local Government and Public Health would have shown a substantial reduction on the figure for the year 1938-39. These are the items which are responsible for the increase in the Estimates and I think there is not one single Deputy who would have the hardihood to face a public audience outside this House and repeat in regard to these items the sort of speeches we have been listening to for the whole of this evening.

I move to report progress.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.