I move amendment No. 60:—
In sub-section (5) (g) (i), page 27, line 40, after the word "unemployed" to insert the words "or of members of a parish or other such local committee."
Section 50 applies, generally, to prohibitions on the issue of notes supposed to be money, but it makes certain distinctions and allows the circulation of bank notes, postal orders, etc. Sub-section (5) (g) provides for tallies. These may be issued, whether before or after the passing of the Act, when provided by a club or association the members of which consist wholly or mainly of persons who are, for the time being, unemployed, when they circulate only amongst the members of such club or association and "are so issued or provided and are used solely for the purpose of enabling goods produced or services rendered by members of such club or association to be exchanged between members of such club or association." The use of tallies will not, therefore, be permitted except to a club which consists wholly or mainly of persons unemployed.
I am proposing that that sub-section be extended so that it will be possible for the members of a parish or other such local committee to issue such tallies where they circulate only amongst the workers and residents in the parish or such other local area, and are issued to facilitate the production of goods or the rendering of services by members or residents of the parish or other such local areas, and also in cases in which the tallies so provided by a parish or other such local committee are issued for a particular seasonable purpose and are redeemable by the parish or other such local committee within a period of 11 months from the oirginal date of issue. In that connection I should like to draw the attention of the Minister to the work of one parish council in County Wexford which, last year, organised the cutting of turf in the neighbourhood by the people of the parish for the use of the parish. They wanted some preliminary funds in order to go ahead with the work. They collected small subscriptions, but they were not sufficient to start with. They went to the bank and could not get any accommodation without some people guaranteeing the amount of money that would be given on loan. They passed then from the bank to the local body and from the local body to, I think, the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, and from him to the Department of Supplies. They were passed from the Department of Supplies to the Department of Agriculture and from there to the Department of Finance, and they finally wound up with the Turf Development Board. Probably an official of the Department of Finance told them to go to the Turf Development Board. The board sent along an expert all right, but the board could only be interested where there were 800 acres of bog and the parish only wanted a couple of hundred tons of turf.
Having travelled the whole road from the bank to all the Government Departments, local bodies and the Turf Development Board, they found they had to fall back on their own resources. They got the idea of printing tally-cards; they issued a tally-card for a shilling and another for sixpence, franked it with the name of the reverend treasurer of the parish council and paid their workers during the period of work by those tally-cards. They made an arrangement that those tally-cards would be accepted by the local merchants as money until such time as the scheme was over and the turf was sold in the neighbourhood. They succeeded in that particular way in cutting and transporting a couple of hundred tons of turf, and they redeemed all their tallies and satisfied everybody without any expense to anybody except the printing of the tally-cards which, I suppose, is met by the original small subscriptions that were raised. If they had gone to the bank, with somebody standing in behind them, they would have had to pay probably more than the local body has to pay for an overdraft for turf, as they paid 4 per cent. on their venture. I do not know how much money is involved in it, but if you take a couple of hundred tons of turf on the price at which turf is being sold in the City of Dublin—that may be a bit too high, but it is what I might call the "world price" for turf at the present time—a very considerable amount of money would have gone unnecessarily out of the people's pockets in that way.
I quite understand that it could easily be misused, unless in the hands of a very responsible committee, but where there is so much appeal for work by parish councils and local committees to help people over their difficulties, where there is so much willingness on the part of every section of the people to throw themselves into every kind of local movement which is clear as to its objects and which is suitably organised, it is an awful pity that anything be done here that would stifle work of that particular kind. It is accepted, and I think everybody appreciates that it is being accepted, that the tally system will continue in such institutions as the Waterford Workmen's Club and the Mount Street Club and such places as those. This is almost a better extension of the principle—particularly in emergency times, but even in ordinary times—when it is extended to ordinary parishioners who want to come together in a co-operative and really constructive spirit to do something for everybody, without necessarily having the stigma that they are dealing with a sore or trying to help unemployed people by a little bit of machinery like that.
If the machinery that could help unemployed people can be used to help the people not yet reduced to the position of unemployment, by making their position easier, by making it easier to see how to use local resources, by making it easier for them to work together, I think it is a very valuable thing. While one likes giving credit to those institutions dealing with the unemployed, for showing how the system could be worked, we should be very grateful to people, such as these parish councils, who have adopted a line like this to show that they can take that idea and use it in circumstances where the system is not being worked under the shadow of a social blemish or where there is the difficulty of unemployment. Here, as it were, the seed is being sown in a suitable soil, out under the sun, where people, in a spirit of goodwill and hope, can co-operate to use their resources and develop a constructive local spirit. The very fact of bringing people together develops all kinds of other healthy tendencies in people's minds, and I would urge very much that the provisions made here under paragraph (g) should be extended to parish councils.
Some addition may be required to my amendment to have it employed, that is, that a permit would have to be obtained from some body, after it had been satisfied that the terms in the amendment were fulfilled, that is, that some body would have to be satisfied that this work was being done definitely by a local committee and that it was done principally by the workers and residents of the area, and that it was using the workers and residents of the area to produce goods or give services, and that it was for a seasonal purpose. I put a limit of 11 months, in order to make it definitely a seasonal thing, such as turf cutting or potato growing, as they have developed in other parts of the country. I am not asking that it be extended beyond that. It would be very useful in the emergency, but it may be very useful in some of the natural ways in which people work and co-operate together and which might be continued even after the emergency, and so the extension of these provisions under paragraph (g) would be worth while including in the Bill.