Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 24 Jun 1942

Vol. 87 No. 14

Committee on Finance. - Vote 69—Office of the Minister for Supplies.

Minister for Supplies (Mr. Lemass)

I move:—

Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £1,171,359 chun slánuithe na suime is gá chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1943, chun Tuarastail agus Costaisí Oifig an Aire Soláthairtí ar a n-áirmhítear Conganta Airgid áirithe díoc.

That a sum not exceeding £1,171,359 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1943, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Minister for Supplies including payment of certain subsidies.

I assume that Deputies will not require any detailed review of the organisation of the Department of Supplies, and would prefer that I should deal rather with the problems with which the Department is dealing and the matters of policy which are receiving its attention. The Department of Supplies was established to discharge two main functions, firstly, to assist and, if necessary, to organise the importation of essential supplies from abroad in the difficult circumstances created by the world war, and, secondly, to regulate the internal distribution of necessary commodities, whether imported or home-produced, which were, or became, in short supply. At the beginning of the emergency, the Government decided on the creation of a special Department for those purposes, not with the expectation that by such means a shortage of necessary goods could be prevented and this community protected from all the consequences of the international upheaval, but in the belief that, in the matter of procuring supplies from overseas unassisted and unco-ordinated, private enterprise would be ineffective, and that in the course of a long universal war a shortage of all classes of commodities formerly imported or produced here by means of imported materials, imported machinery or imported fuel, was inevitable.

I think it is necessary to restate the functions of the Department of Supplies because, during the three years of its existence, many false conceptions of them have been voiced both in this House and outside it. Apparently some foolish people consider that by the mere declaratoin of neutrality in the conflict this nation secured for itself immunity from all the hardships and even the minor irritations which a universal war might reasonably have been expected to create. It is held to be the fault of the Department of Supplies that, despite the disorganisation of international trade, the destruction of means of communication, the complete cutting off in many instances of sources of supply, and the general conscription of labour and material for war purposes in belligerent countries, many classes of goods are not procurable or are only available to us in very restricted quantities.

From the very outset of the conflict the members of the Government have by every means open to them endeavoured to tell the people what world war must involve for them. But they have found it extraordinarily difficult to get many people to appreciate it. Those who most stubbornly refused to listen were loudest in their complaints when the Government's warnings came true and difficulties began to take shape. The complacent attitude of members of the public was supported by the fact that for the first 18 months of the war the efforts of the Department of Supplies were able to prevent any real shortage appearing and also by the speeches of members of this House who reiterated for Party purposes or their own glorification that all our difficulties were due solely to the Government and would not have existed had they charge of the nation's affairs.

The difficulties which have emerged during the course of the war and which now confront us are in many respects greater than those anticipated when the war was only beginning. The area of the world over which the war has spread is larger than appeared at first to be likely. Many nations which at the beginning were neutral, and no doubt like ourselves hoped to remain neutral, have since become involved. The general course of the war has developed in a manner which could not have been foreseen and has affected our ability to secure supplies concerning which difficulties were not anticipated and against which no provision could have been made. On previous occasions I have given the Dáil an outline of the many supply difficulties which have emerged from time to time, told it of the efforts made by the Department of Supplies to cope with these difficulties, and of the success or failure of these efforts. With the prolongation and extension of the war, these difficulties have grown enormously and efforts to secure supplies of an ever-growing list of goods are meeting with diminishing success. The range of commodities in the importation of which my Department is directly involved, or the distribution of which has had to be controlled, has widened and it would not be possible to give in any reasonable time even a bare outline of the position in respect of each of them. I propose, therefore, in the course of this introductory statement to deal only in general terms with the activities of the Department during the past year and to refer to specific commodities only if they are of such general interest as to require reference or for purposes of illustration.

The various activities of the Department of Supplies can be classified under four main heads. The first of these in order of importance is the procuring of supplies from abroad; secondly, the transportation of goods from abroad and the various problems that affect transport and communications both external and internal; thirdly, the control of the internal distribution of commodities in short supply; and, fourthly, the regulation of prices and the measures adopted generally for the enforcement of various controls considered necessary. In the matter of supplies from overseas, the outstanding development of the past year which directly and immediately affected our position in respect of a number of very important commodities was the extension of the war into the western Pacific area. That extension of the area of the war had direct and immediate repercussions upon our ability to procure additional supplies of rubber, of tea, of jute, and many other industrial materials. The full consequence of the stoppage of supplies of these goods is as yet only partially appreciated by most people and it is perhaps desirable to give in respect of them a brief outline of the present position and future prospects.

Most Deputies are, I think, familiar already with the problems that have arisen in consequence of the stoppage of supplies of raw rubber. It can be taken that our supplies are completely stopped. Possibly, by various methods, small additional quantities may be procured from time to time, but I think that wisdom obviously suggests that we should proceed upon the assumption that for the duration of the war, and perhaps for many years after the termination of the war, no fresh supplies of raw rubber will be available to us. The stocks which were available in the country when the sources of supply were cut off cannot be supplemented and they must therefore be conserved and controlled so as to make them serve as best they can the essential needs of the country for many years. I think most Deputies will agree that the sound policy is to reserve the major portion of these stocks for the manufacture of tyres for commercial vehicles so that essential transport can be maintained as long as possible.

By drastically restricting the use of rubber for all other purposes, and only by drastically restricting such use, it will be possible to meet these minimum essential needs to the end of 1943, but, after that, there will be none. If we should decide to utilise stocks for any other purposes less essential, however desirable some Deputies may think them to be, then the date will have to be brought forward and the complete exhaustion of our stocks of rubber will take place earlier. By the measures now in force we can, however, see our way to maintain a supply of rubber tyres for commercial vehicles engaged in essential services until the end of next year. The problem that will arise after that will be obvious, unless by some means additional supplies can be procured.

In the case of tea, the House is, I think, aware that, in order to supplement supplies coming to us from the United Kingdom, an organisation was set up by the Government—Tea Importers, Ltd.—to purchase in India additional supplies for transportation here. That organisation did, in fact, succeed in purchasing a very substantial quantity of tea, a quantity which, if it had been possible to transport it to this country in time, would have eased our position considerably. Unfortunately, however, the development of the war effectively prevented the transportation of the great majority of the stocks purchased by Tea Importers, Ltd., which were held in store in Calcutta. Some proportion of those stocks has been moved and is either in transit to this country or has already reached it, but that proportion is substantially less than half the total quantity of tea which had been purchased. I think we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that the balance of the tea purchased by Tea Importers, Ltd., and stored in Calcutta, will not reach us.

In order to supplement our tea supplies, and in face of the possibility of a complete cessation of these supplies, arrangements were made with the coffee importers of the country to establish an organisation to purchase coffee. That organisation has purchased a substantial quantity of coffee. The quantity purchased represents very nearly 20 years' supply on the basis of normal consumption. Whether it will be possible to transport all the coffee purchased to this country has yet to be seen, but in view of the magnitude of the commitments which have been entered into, and the desirability of ensuring that coffee importers in this country do not compete against each other in the markets where coffee is available, it will be necessary to place various controls on the importation of coffee. Arrangements to that end are being made. We hope that the coffee purchased by the organisation to which I have referred will reach this country safely. If so, it will help to augment our tea supplies, although to what extent it will do so cannot be stated definitely, because our people are not a coffee-drinking people and coffee as a beverage is much less economical than tea. The quantity of beverage that can be produced from any given amount of coffee is not much more than half the quantity which can be produced from the same amount of tea.

I referred to the difficulties created in respect of supplies of many industrial materials by the development of the war in the western Pacific. I made specific reference to jute. There is available in the country at present a small stock of jute, which, however, we cannot supplement by any efforts of ours. The United Kingdom authorities are making certain monthly allocations of jute to us for the purpose of providing the wrappers required for certain classes of exports. Our normal requirements of sacks and bags made of jute and cotton are 15 millions per year. On another occasion I told the Dáil that one of the major difficulties which I saw facing this country which might disorganise in considerable degree the existing methods of distributing commodities was a possible shortage of containers, such as sacks and bags. That problem is now becoming acute.

I think most Deputies will be able to visualise at once the tremendous problems that will arise to be solved in the distribution of flour and sugar and similar goods in the absence of an adequate supply of suitable containers. We cannot now be certain that an adequate supply of suitable containers will be available. In fact, it seems likely a substantial scarcity will shortly be apparent, and that fact makes it all the more urgent that there should be no wastage of any kind of containers now existing in the country. We have imposed various controls on the distribution and use of the available sacks and bags, and it is of vital importance to the whole community that these controls are made effective and that the regulations which are in force are obeyed by everybody so that no unnecessary damage will be done to any sacks or bags and that they will be returned with the utmost expedition to the place where they are required for immediate utilisation.

I might mention in that connection also that similar difficulties are arising in the matter of procuring supplies of materials required for the manufacture of ropes and cords. It has not been possible to import any manila and there is only a very small supply of sisal. The most important aspect of that shortage is its effect upon the supply of binder twine, which is manufactured from sisal. Our requirements in the current year are estimated to be 2,500 tons. Our pre-war consumption was only 900 tons but there has been, as Deputies know, a very substantial increase in the area under tillage with consequent increase in the demand for binder twine. During last year we were, fortunately, able to meet in full the demand for binder twine. This year, against our requirements of 2,500 tons, there are available only 1,650 tons. We can spread that out by various means. The strength of the twine has been reduced and regulations have been made designed to ensure that binder twine will not be used for any other purpose except that for which it is most urgently required. Experiments are proceeding into the possibility of manufacturing a substitute for binder twine from green flax and other possibilities are also being examined, but it will be obvious from the facts which I have given to the House that, even if we can manage to meet the problem of binder twine in the current year, the problem next year will be almost insuperable.

In addition to the Far Eastern war to which I have referred, the entry of the United States of America into active belligerency has also caused new problems for us. Before the United States of America entered the war no great difficulty was experienced in obtaining from the appropriate American authorities export licences for the goods required here. Now, however, the British blockade control has been merged with the United States control of export and it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain export licences in America for certain types of goods, particularly for metals and for textiles. That position is likely to deteriorate still further. Recently, imports by parcel post from the United States of America, which many firms in this country were availing of to get limited quantities of the goods they require, have been restricted.

It would be impossible to give in the time available even a brief outline of the many developments which took place during the course of the past year in respect of imports from Great Britain. The most noteworthy of these developments was the drastic reduction of coal imports, a reduction which has necessitated here a serious curtailment of rail transport, the rationing of gas supplies and the complete elimination of coal from the domestic fuel ration. It has been frequently suggested by some members of the Dáil that the problem of diminishing supplies of goods previously imported from Great Britain could be removed if some Ministers would go to London to discuss these matters with British Ministers. The implication of those statements is that the curtailment of deliveries to us is due, not to practical difficulties arising in Great Britain, but to British Ministerial decisions prompted by political considerations or, at least, considerations other than the exigencies of their own supply problem. The contacts between my Department and the various Departments of the British Government are numerous, and it has never been suggested by the officers of the British Government with whom we have had contact that any difficulty prevented the maintenance of deliveries to us except shortage of the goods concerning which representations were being made. Nor has it ever been suggested that Ministerial conversations could affect that position. If, by going to London to discuss matters of trade, and assuming that discussions in London could be confined to matters of trade, supplies from Great Britain could be improved, then some indication of that fact would have been given during the many official contacts with the administrative heads of British Departments. No such indication has been given.

It has also been suggested from time to time by members of this House in various debates that we should bargain with Great Britain on the basis of getting increased supplies of British products in return for continued exports of Irish agricultural goods. Those who make that suggestion must be not merely very innocent themselves but they must also assume that the British are very innocent also. There is no point in disguising the fact that in present circumstances our bargaining power is practically nil; our production of bacon and butter has fallen to the point where there is no export surplus, where in fact it is inadequate to supply even the whole of our own requirements. Our main trade with the United Kingdom at present is in live animals and to the extent that we have a surplus of them we have the alternative of selling them in Great Britain or of not selling them at all. Having regard to the reported scarcity of coal in Great Britain and their war requirements of metals and textiles and other goods which are required here, an attempt to put the British Government in the position of having to give us more of these commodities or to do without our cattle would of a certainty lead to a decision to do without our cattle. I do not know how that would improve our circumstances.

Amongst the most serious of the problems with which we have had to deal during the year is that of maintaining transport communications between this country and the possible sources of supply of the goods we require. Deputies are, I think, familiar with the shipping problem which became acute in the winter of 1940 and which led to the decision to form a State shipping company. The attempt to organise an adequate Irish mercantile marine in the middle of a world war was beset with immense difficulties. I do not think members of this House have yet paid sufficient tribute to the men who made that effort and who have succeeded well in bringing into existence a mercantile marine service which, if inadequate to serve our needs, is, nevertheless, of vital importance to this country at the present time. The directors of Irish Shipping, Limited, and the officers of that company have, I think, deserved well of this community. They persisted in their efforts despite the fact that the attempts they were making to create a mercantile marine service to meet our difficulties were often the subject of criticism and often the subject of derision here in this House. Yet, it is upon the success of their efforts that the whole economic life of this nation depends.

No foreign vessel has come to this country since April of last year, except the s.s. "Vicia", a Finnish vessel which came here more or less accidentally, and has since been purchased by Irish Shipping, Limited, three small ships bringing fishmeal from Iceland and quite recently, arising out of a special arrangement, three ships bringing wheat. There were, of course, some neutral vessels chartered to bring cargoes from Lisbon but, apart from these fortuitous arrivals the shipment of cargoes to this country was dependent entirely on ships now in the service of Irish Shipping, Limited. It has purchased 13 ships of which eight are in service. These ships have been operating, despite all the difficulties of bunkering and supplies, and the general conduct of shipping operations through the area of active belligerency, with considerable efficiency and as a result, our position is much easier than it might otherwise have been. There have been mishaps to these ships but so far we have been fortunate in that none of them has been lost through sinking. As Deputies are aware these ships are at the present time engaged almost exclusively on the transportation of wheat. On various occasions members of the House have pleaded for the provision of shipping space for industrial commodities of one kind or another. The most recent was for shipping space for newsprint. The importance of these commodities to the industries using them, and the importance of an adequate supply of newsprint for the maintenance of our newspapers, is fully appreciated, but I want Deputies who, in the course of the discussion on the Estimate, intend to press for the provision of shipping space for these commodities to bear in mind that, if their appeals are listened to, it means a curtailment of the supply of bread and the introduction of bread rationing. The total quantity of cargo which can be imported between this and September next is known and fixed, and we cannot displace any wheat for the purpose of carrying other commodities without leaving ourselves short of wheat.

Deputies, therefore, realising the urgent need for many of these industrial commodities, desiring to urge that shipping space should be provided for them must, at the same time, indicate their willingness to contemplate the reintroduction of restrictions upon bread supplies with the inconvenience and hardship which recent experience told us it will cause. In addition to cargoes brought from the United States and Canada by Irish Shipping Limited, the service established under the auspices of the Department of Supplies for the transportation of goods via Lisbon has been maintained during the year. As the House is aware that service was originally organised as a means of securing supplies from the United States but, on the entry of the United States into the war, the service of American ships to Lisbon was prohibited by the American Government. Since then, however, new sources of supply of one kind or another have been opened up and, at the present time, there are substantial quantities of wheat from South America in transit to or consigned to Lisbon which we hope to have transhipped to this country by the smaller ships owned by Irish shipping companies on that service. To date we have imported 46,000 tons of commodities via Lisbon.

Mr. Norton

Not all wheat?

Mr. Lemass

Including wheat. Recently there appeared to be a possibility of obtaining from Sweden via Lisbon supplies of commodities which are required here, with particular reference to newsprint and wood pulp. The possibilities of procuring supplies of Swedish goods in that way are being examined. Whether they will materialise or not I cannot say. It appears possible that a new source of supplies can be opened up from Sweden, although these supplies will have to come through our own shipping service from the port of Lisbon. I think all members of the House have good reason to be familiar with the problems that have arisen in connection with internal transport. The shortage of coal and its effect upon our railways services, the shortage of petrol and rubber and the effect upon our road services, constitute the gravest threat to our ability to prevent a major economic crisis arising here. Because of these shortages it has been necessary to impose many drastic restrictions on the use of rail and road transport, and further restrictions are inevitable. I know that many members of the public are frequently irritated and inconvenienced by these restrictions, but I want them to know that they are necessary in order to ensure that essential transport services, without which the whole economic machinery of the country will be in danger of stopping, will be kept going. We may not be able to keep it going, but we must endeavour, as best we can, to ensure that it does not stop for any reason within our control. I ask the public to accept these restrictions in good grace, and I ask members of the Dáil to impress on the public the need for them, because that has not been done sufficiently, and they are necessary in order that the nation may be able to overcome many of the problems now facing it.

I have found it always extraordinarily difficult to get proper public appreciation of the seriousness of the difficulty that will be created by the curtailment of our transport services. Pleas for petrol for one purpose or another have been advanced in the Dáil by people who did not fully realise how difficult it would be to gather the harvest, to move into districts requiring it the turf which has been purchased, and the wood fuel which has been made available, and that is needed in other parts of the country, the transportation of which is going to be a matter of very great difficulty, having regard to the serious curtailment in our imports of coal and petrol. It is in respect of the control of internal distribution that criticism of the Department of Supplies is most prevalent because that is the aspect of the Department's work which comes most immediately under public notice, and because some people appear to believe that by control of distribution the effect of a shortage of supplies can be eliminated. In this House I have frequently expressed the opinion that there cannot be a perfect system of rationing. No country in the world has evolved it. When goods are in short supply no method of controlling their distribution and no system of rationing will give everybody enough. In general, it can be said that when the commodity to be rationed is one which is used within the country by a large number of comparatively small producers an effective system of rationing is almost impossible.

That will be the difficulty in bringing into operation formal rationing of bread, should it become necessary. The same difficulty will arise in the case of butter, if butter rationing has to be faced. It is also very difficult to apply a satisfactory rationing system where the control of wholesale supplies is not in our own hands. That is our position concerning tea. To make any system work well a degree of co-operation from traders is necessary and acceptance of restrictions by consumers to an extent not yet forthcoming here is essential. Fortunately, we have been able to postpone and, possibly, to avoid the need for rationing bread. The success of the efforts made to procure additional supplies of imported wheat made it possible for me some days ago to remove the restrictions previously in force upon bread consumption. The deliveries of flour from the flour mills have been increased from 42,000 sacks to 53,000 sacks per week. On that basis, the supplies of wheat available in the country at present will last us until the 15th August. The shipping programme which has been arranged appears capable of providing the balance that will be required. If our luck holds and if we do not depart from the programme planned before the beginning of the next cereal year, we should be able to enter that new cereal year with a minute balance in hands.

General Mulcahy

When does the cereal year begin?

Mr. Lemass

I am reckoning it as beginning on 1st October. There is, therefore, need—and serious need—for continued economy in the use of bread and flour. Deputies should not assume that, because restrictions have been removed from the consumption of bread, our supply position is safe. It is by no means safe. We can reckon only as certain the wheat within the country and, on the basis of present consumption, that will last until the middle of August. It may be that, utilising in full our shipping resources for the importation of wheat only, we can continue on that basis until the next harvest is available but there will be nothing to spare—not one grain. Consequently, anybody who wastes either bread or flour is endangering the whole position. People who can afford to do with less bread or flour should continue to economise in its use. The danger of removing the restrictions last week was that people would assume that there was no longer any need for economy in respect of wheaten products. The need is as urgent as ever it was—in fact, it is more urgent now than it was since we have decided on more liberal distribution. For that reason, the various restrictions on the use of wheaten flour at social and similar functions have been maintained.

Everything in the future depends upon getting in early from the next harvest the full quantity of wheat required for the ensuing year. If we cannot succeed in doing that, it may become necessary to re-impose the restrictions on bread and flour consumption. Arrangements for wheat collection next year have been improved, and other measures of control have been established which will ensure less likelihood of leakage than was the case last year. Last year, the leakage of wheat, if I may use that term, was considerable. Taking the known acreage sown and the average yield per acre, it is clear that some 50,000 to 60,000 tons of wheat remain unaccounted for—wheat that did not reach the flour millers and that was not consumed by farmers or required by them for seed purposes this year. The only possible conclusion is that the missing wheat was used as animal feeding stuffs, contrary to the law.

Mr. Brennan

The estimate was too high.

Mr. Lemass

I do not agree at all that the estimate of yield was too high. On the contrary, there are various indications that the estimate was particularly conservative. Making due allowance for every possible explanation of the deficiency, there still remain some 50,000 or 60,000 tons to be accounted for.

Mr. Cosgrave

One million cwts.

Mr. Lemass

It was that shortage which occasioned all the difficulties which arose in the early part of this year. If we can secure from the next harvest the full quantity available for human consumption—the total quantity of wheat grown, less what is required for seed and what the farming community may reasonably retain for their own consumption—we can face the future knowing that bread-rationing will be unnecessary and that the total shipping facilities available to us can be utilised for the importation of industrial materials and other goods, on the assumption that these materials and goods can, in fact, be procured.

General Mulcahy

What would our total wheat requirements be?

Mr. Lemass

Our total wheat requirements would be from 360,000 to 370,000 tons. In the case of tea, the system of controlling distribution, at present in force, is in many respects unsatisfactory. The reasons for that are, I think, known to members of the Dáil. It is almost impossible to devise a satisfactory system of distribution when the control of the wholesale supplies is not in our own hands. As Deputies are aware, the supplies of tea coming from the United Kingdom are allocated to us, not upon a national basis, but upon the basis of giving to each wholesaler who formerly supplied this country a proportionate quantity of his sales here during the year preceding the outbreak of the war. Each wholesaler supplying this country receives his quota.

The wholesaler may, or may not, be located in our territory and subject to our jurisdiction. These wholesalers distribute that tea to the customers they formerly supplied in the same proportion. That system clearly makes it impossible for us to adjust supplies to any trader in relation to the number of his customers. We have to endeavour to do the much more difficult thing of adjusting the number of customers in relation to the supply. There is no possibility of changing that system, but I think we can improve it. At any rate, we can make the registration of customers more effective by the utilisation of the ration books for that purpose. It is intended to do that. An announcement of the date of the coming into operation of the new system of registration will be made shortly.

In the case of sugar, which we previously controlled in relation to tea, we are now about to introduce a new system of rationing altogether, involving the use of the ration book and the surrender of coupons against the supplies of sugar. I hope that that system may be brought into operation at a fairly early date. It will involve considerable administrative difficulties, but it will, I think, improve the position of individual consumers, as it will no longer be necessary to tie them to particular retailers. However, it would be desirable, obviously, that consumers should continue to draw their sugar supplies from the same retailer each week, otherwise frequent adjustments in traders' quotas would be called for, involving many problems of administration. The position in respect of sugar supplies is not as good as it might be. It is unlikely that we will obtain from the current season's beet harvest sufficient sugar to meet our full requirements next year. Because of the introduction of rationing there will be a carry-over from this year into next year, which will ease the position; but, looking far ahead, as we must, and bearing in mind the difficulties that will undoubtedly arise in the future, both in respect of the growing of beet and the manufacture of sugar from beet, it will be necessary to impose fresh restrictions upon the use of sugar for non-essential purposes. At a later date a curtailment in the individual domestic ration may also be necessary. It is desirable that we should base our plans for controlling sugar distribution on a long-term policy because, should the war continue, the difficulties of maintaining sugar supplies will increase considerably. Some quantities of sugar have been purchased abroad, but have not yet been transported here, and the possibility of obtaining any considerable supplies and importing them into this country is not very good.

As the House is aware, the rationing of clothing was introduced recently. The circumstances which necessitated and attended the introduction of clothes rationing are probably too recent to require reiteration. As the Dáil was informed, it is anticipated that our supplies of clothing and of materials for the manufacture of clothing in the future will be very drastically curtailed. In the case of wool and woollen products, yarns and cloths the total supply which will be available both from external and internal sources will be less than half our normal consumption. In the case of cotton, it will be less than 20 per cent. of our normal consumption. In the case of linen and silk, there will be no supplies at all. In the case of rayon goods, that is to say, goods of artificial silk, although supplies have been available freely up to the present, it is anticipated that in the future they will be curtailed by approximately 50 per cent. In those circumstances, it was decided that the introduction of clothes rationing should not be further delayed.

In making that decision, I decided that intimation of the intention to ration clothing to the manufacturing and trading interests concerned was not in the public interest. That decision has been challenged, but I do not anticipate any difficulty in defending it. It did happen that information of the intention to introduce rationing leaked out amongst the public some days before the rationing began. If we had attempted to take into consultation the interests directly affected, before announcing the rationing scheme, I think that, no matter how honourable the intentions of those whom we consulted or how strongly they might have endeavoured to preserve the confidence placed in them, information would have become available to the public very much earlier, with consequences which will be obvious to everybody. I decided that it was a wiser policy, before consultation with the affected interests was undertaken, that a provisional control of sales should be instituted. I decided also that the provisional control should be more restrictive than it was essential to maintain during the earlier stages of rationing, as it is obvious that, should the consultation with the traders concerned indicate that changes in the scheme were desirable, such changes could be made more easily by way of easement than the reverse.

In announcing the introduction of clothes rationing, I invited the trading interests affected by it to make the representations which, after consideration, they deemed necessary; and I undertook to consider those representations. My intention at the time—an intention which has since been fulfilled—was to set up advisory committees for the various branches of the trade. I never expected, and I am sure nobody would have expected, that the rationing of clothing would be cheerfully welcomed by the clothing trades. It is not in the nature of things that traders should welcome the formal intimation of impending restrictions of their supplies or of the limitation of their freedom to dispose of existing stocks as and how they liked. However, the drapery distributing trades decided at first on agitation in preference to consultation and their agitation was directed towards the withdrawal of the rationing scheme in toto. In view of the situation which arose in consequence, I decided to introduce forthwith the modifications of the scheme which, before announcing it, I had contemplated as possible. I did so in the hope that the result would be a calmer atmosphere in which the details of the plan could be discussed usefully with the various trade organisations. Many Deputies in this House and many people outside it have criticised the wisdom of appearing to make concessions to agitation, particularly an agitation which involved a general stoppage of work for one day. I realised the risk of doing so, but I felt that the whole agitation was so unnecessary and so foolish that the fact would soon become obvious and that a policy of non-belligerency in relation to it might prove to be the wiser in the long run.

General Mulcahy

Is the Minister trying to be funny?

Mr. Lemass

No. In the event, the agitation, directed at first to the withdrawal of rationing, ended with a demand for a few minutes' preliminary interview with myself before the commencement of the detailed discussions with the officers of the Department. As considerations of prestige weighed much less with me than a desire to get on with the job I had no objection to helping men who had worked themselves into a false position to get out of it, and I met a deputation from the bodies concerned, but the stoppage of work was, nevertheless, proceeded with, for some reason not yet clear to me. After that, however, the agitation ended and useful discussions began. From these discussions it is clear that the main difficulties contemplated by the distributive, and to some extent by the manufacturing, trades concerned, are twofold. Firstly, it was represented that during some months past supplies of artificial silk goods have been freely available and many firms have bought these goods heavily. Although we have been officially informed that future supplies will be curtailed—and on that account there would appear to be good reason for conserving existing stocks, heavy as they are—many of the firms which bought them, it appears, involved themselves financially to such an extent that inability to liquidate rapidly a substantial part of these stocks of artificial silk goods would have serious consequences for them and might also affect their ability to purchase new stocks as they became available. That case is one which, I think, should be met.

It is true that wisdom suggests that the time to introduce rationing is when the stocks are there, not when the stocks are exhausted. It is true, also, that we must contemplate a protracted period of scarcity, one which will last certainly as long as the war and may last considerably longer. I have, however, taken into account the representations of these firms involved in the purchase of these stocks and decided to meet them by temporarily reducing the coupon value of various classes of artificial silk goods. That policy is in the interests of the firms concerned, no doubt, but whether everybody will agree this time twelvemonths that it is in the general interests of the community is another matter.

The second most serious point made by the interests affected concerned goods which had been ordered prior to the introduction of rationing and not yet delivered—particularly men's suits and ladies' costumes. I am not prepared to agree that equity requires that these goods should now be delivered without the surrender of coupons. The sole purpose of rationing is to ensure that each citizen will have an equal opportunity of obtaining a proportionate share of the limited stocks available. Those who ordered goods before the introduction of rationing, but have not yet received delivery of them, have no claim in equity to get these goods plus their proportionate share of the remaining supplies. It has been stated, however, that inability to complete transactions rapidly in respect of these goods—and some firms had substantial quantities ordered and not yet delivered—might have other adverse consequences of a serious nature for the firms concerned. I think we can meet that position, and consultations are proceeding with the interests concerned as to how best it can be done. I cannot agree that it will be done by permitting the delivery of these supplies without the surrender of coupons.

It has been stated that the introduction of clothes rationing is going to have an adverse effect on employment. That statement is misleading in essence. It is undoubtedly true that the shortage of supplies which necessitated the introduction of rationing will affect employment in the clothing manufacturing trade. I must confess a certain dislike of the tactics adopted by some manufacturers who induced their workers to parade and agitate on the argument that the introduction of rationing was going to affect their employment, when they knew quite well that the problem was one of supply, one that arose solely out of their inability to renew their stocks. It may be that these manufacturers were mainly concerned with providing themselves with an alibi when they wished to dismiss their workers and so to ensure that the blame would devolve on the Government. I was surprised that some trade union leaders lent themselves to such tactics. No doubt they were misled or did not wish to face realities. The realities of the situation are as I have stated—50 per cent. or less of the normal supplies of woollen cloth, 20 per cent. or less of the normal supplies of cotton cloth, no linen whatever and a future reduction in the deliveries of artificial silk, amounting probably to 50 per cent. of our normal supplies. That drastic contraction in the total supply available will no doubt affect employment in the manufacturing trades but by rationing we can utilise these stocks to the best advantage. We can preserve employment for a longer period and we can secure a more equitable distribution amongst the public of the quantities of clothing that will be available.

The rationing of clothing is of course only part of a wider plan which includes restrictions on the importation of cloth to ensure that the restricted quotas available to us will be utilised by importers to bring in cheap utility cloths such as would be purchased by the mass of the people in preference to luxury goods that can be sold at high prices and high profits. It includes also restrictions on the activities of our own manufacturers to confine their activities to the production of utility cloths of a similar kind.

Mr. Byrne

What about summer goods already made?

Mr. Lemass

The rationing scheme in force with the modifications announced in respect of art silk goods should permit of disposal of stocks of summer goods but I think Deputies will agree with me that it would be unwise to arrange a rationing system on the principle that all available stocks should be utilised quickly. We have got to consider the problems that will arise next year when new supplies will certainly be no greater than they are to-day, when probably they will be much less and when the accumulated stocks will have been dissipated. We must keep in mind the fact that it is unlikely that the emergency will have ended in 12 months.

Mr. Byrne

What about the financial commitments?

Mr. Lemass

I have already referred to that, and I do not want to refer to it again.

Mr. Byrne

To financial commitments?

Mr. Lemass

Yes. I do not know if the Deputy was here. One other matter concerning the activities of the Department must be referred to, and that is the problem of price control. I have on previous occasions at some length disclosed to the Dáil the principles of price control which the Department is endeavouring to operate. It is, of course, true that the problem of price in our circumstances is much wider than the functions of the Department of supplies. It affects Government policy as a whole, the prices paid to primary producers, the relationship between purchasing power and supplies, as well as the control of profit margins. It may be said that the activities of the Department of Supplies are confined to control of profit margins. They cannot of their own accord prevent a rise in price due to causes outside the control of the Department, such as the increased cost of materials imported from abroad or a decision to pay increased prices to primary producers within the country. I think I can say that, within the limits in which the Department is working, its efforts at price control have been effective. I think Deputies who remember the last war, and the extraordinary limits to which prices rose during the third year of that war, will agree that, whatever defects our system of control may have disclosed, it is a hundred times more effective than the control exercised in 1917 and 1918, and judged in comparison with the systems of control in other countries where they exist, I think I can claim that ours is as efficient as any.

During the course of the past year the information available indicated that the profits of industrial concerns were diminishing. That will, in course of time, have its effect upon employment in those concerns, and a similar tendency is to be noted in the accounts of trading concerns, many of which, I was surprised to notice from an examination of their accounts, showed a loss on their trading in recent months. I do not think that has been the general experience, but a sufficient number of the firms examined were shown to be working at a loss to indicate a situation of some gravity, which may have a serious effect upon the future economy of the country. There is, of course, in this country, as in all countries where man-made laws try to operate against the economic forces in operation, some development of what is described as black-marketing, that is to say, the sale of goods outside the controls imposed by the Government or at prices in excess of those fixed by Order. Some substantial number of persons who engaged in those illegal activities have been brought to trial and punished in the courts. The system of enforcement which the Department is operating is growing in efficiency, and I think most Deputies will agree that, during the past three or four months, it has proved to be much more effective than it was previously.

There is one other thing which I should like to say before concluding, and that is that no matter how great we may think our difficulties are, or how severe the hardships our people have to endure, a comparison between our conditions and the conditions in other countries shows how lightly we have been lét off from the consequences of the war up to the present. I have here available to me a table showing the rations fixed in a number of European countries for various commodities for common consumption. Even in the neutral countries, Sweden, Switzerland and Spain, the prevailing rations of most of those commodities are substantially less than the quantities available to our people. We may not be always able to keep in that position, but I think we have good reason to be thankful that up to the present we have got off more easily than other European countries, even the neutral countries. Our situation is, of course, infinitely better than that of countries which have been involved in the conflict, in some of which famine conditions, or conditions very like them, have already appeared. It is not to be expected that our comparatively favourable circumstances will continue. The longer the war lasts, and the wider the area over which it spreads, the greater will be the difficulties it will cause for us; and in the future, no matter how we may plan or what efforts we may make to procure supplies from abroad, or to control distribution internally, it is certain that our circumstances will be less favourable than they are now. We can only hope to maintain them upon a tolerable basis, until the emergency has passed and normal conditions are restored.

Mr. Norton

I move:—

That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration.

At a time like this everybody will concede that the Department of Supplies is or rather should be the most important Department within the State, and it seems to me nothing short of extraordinary that, in present circumstances, we should have one Minister in charge of the Department of Supplies and at the same time in charge of the Department of Industry and Commerce. In 1938 the present Minister was relieved of his office as Minister for Industry and Commerce in order that he might devote his whole time to the duties of the Department of Supplies. Although the position has since got worse, and the developments since then have become more complex, we nevertheless find the Minister now not merely in charge of the Department of Supplies but in charge of the Department of Industry and Commerce. I suggest to the Minister, for his own sake and for the nation's sake, that he might very well put to the Government the consideration that those two posts ought to be separated and a Minister put in charge of each Department, because a Minister in charge of two large, busy Departments, such as Industry and Commerce and Supplies, cannot, in present circumstances, hope to give attention to the more important matters of policy affecting those Departments.

The Minister has told us in the course of his speech of the various difficulties which have confronted his Department during the year, and I am not unaware or unappreciative of the fact that the Minister has been compelled to face up to many difficult situations. We might, of course, have avoided many of those difficulties if he had only planned in 1938 and 1939. While the Minister was paying tribute to those responsible for the establishment of Irish Shipping, Limited, he might have remembered that if those people had been encouraged to start Irish Shipping, Limited, in 1938 or 1939 a very much healthier economic position would exist in this country to-day, because we would have more ships to transport to this country the goods which we need, and which even to-day are available in different parts of the world if we only had the ships to bring them here. The Minister will remember that, in 1939, when urged to take the line of purchasing shipping, his only worry was what we would do with the ships when the war was over. That is a very easy problem for us now; whatever value there is in the ships at the moment, they will probably be even more valuable when the war is over. An investment in shipping in 1938 or 1939 would have been a sound national investment from the point of view of ability to dispose of the ships at an enhanced price after the war, if that problem should ever present itself.

The Minister has made reference to the existence of a black market caused by persons desirous of evading man-made laws. While the Minister seems to derive some satisfaction from the activities of his Department in respect of the black market, I do not think the public are at all satisfied that the Minister's Department is taking sufficiently vigorous measures to stamp out those black market activities. There is no use in the Minister's Department blaming consumers of goods which are purchasable in the black market. The real villain of the black market is the unscrupulous person who exploits the community's needs and extracts from the community in the black market the highest possible price for commodities of which those people stand in urgent need. Of course, the whole tendency has been for the ramifications of the black market to extend.

We find a situation in which a Prices Order is made and then goods are withheld from the market. We find another situation in which goods become scarce and are then withheld from the market, and one can get these goods which are scarce, or which are subject to a Price Order, only if one is prepared to pay any price one can in the black market.

Everybody knows and concedes that the black market is an organisation for exploiting shamelessly the needs of the people, and the Minister's Department has not, so far, taken sufficiently drastic action against those who, with such impunity and with no sense of shame, exploited the public as they have been exploited in the black market up to the present. One hears occasionally of small traders overcharging for goods. There is a prosecution in these cases which is properly given publicity, but, while the Department's activities in bringing to justice those responsible for overcharging are commendable, I feel that in the background there are large-scale black market organisations in operation, and while the Department have been able to get after the small trader in isolated cases of overcharging, the activities of the large-scale organisations, which are responsible for promoting the black market and which have effective machinery at their disposal to ensure the sale of their goods, are not getting the attention which they ought to get from the Department.

The Minister ought to have given the House some assurance that the activities of his Department in respect of the black market will be intensified. Probably the only way in which the Minister's Department can deal with the black market is by getting into the black market itself and by trying to burst the organisation from within; but merely to wait for reports from individuals who have been exploited in the black market is not sufficient and will never produce a satisfactory remedy. If the Minister, through the agency of his inspectors, were to get into the black market and find out those responsible for manipulating it, I think he would in a short time help to break up that market much more effectively than will be the case by the methods upon which the Minister has so far relied.

The Minister made reference to rationing, and I get the feeling every time the Minister makes a reference to rationing that he is doing almost his best to kill any enthusiasm in the people for rationing in the present circumstances. The Minister all the time seems to throw doubt on the wisdom of rationing and on the effectiveness of rationing, but, living as we are, with goods in short supply, no matter what administrative difficulties may exist or what other difficulties have to be overcome, rationing is obviously the only equitable way of distributing the goods in short supply. So far, the Department, in the main has put on traders the responsibility of an unofficial rationing scheme. Traders are not equipped to administer a scheme of that kind, and a rationing scheme based on the type of unofficial rationing which has been implemented by traders, and particularly small traders, is inevitably an unsatisfactory scheme, so far as the consuming public are concerned.

Everybody in the House and outside it has had the experience of being at the mercy of the whim and caprice of any small trader in respect of articles which have been rationed by these traders and not rationed by the State. A person can get certain classes of goods in a shop where he is on good terms with the trader, but other people cannot get these goods in that shop, although both obviously have the same claim to a share of the goods in short supply. The only way in which they can be given title deeds to a share of the goods is by an official rationing scheme operated by the Department. I think the Minister will have the goodwill of everybody if he extends the rationing scheme to other commodities as being the most equitable and the only way of ensuring a fair distribution of the goods available.

The Minister referred to the difficulty of importing commodities and told us in particular of the difficulty of getting certain commodities even in Britain. He appeared to throw some doubt on the wisdom of a visit by him, or some other Minister, to London with a view to discussing the position with the British people. I do not think it is at all necessary for the Minister to have an assurance from the British people that a visit by him would automatically bring about a change in their attitude in respect of the export of goods.

The Minister knows he has a good case to make to the British. That case is that we are sending out to Britain meat, eggs, cattle and other commodities which the British need. They are buying those goods from us because they need them, but they are not giving us goods in return adequate to cover our export of goods to them. The British are taking from us, say, £3,000,000 worth of goods and giving us back £2,000,000 worth of goods, and giving us, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance said yesterday, paper money, the value of which may be very questionable when the war is over. There does not seem to me to be any loss of prestige to the Minister or any loss of national dignity involved if the Minister were to say to the British people that we cannot continue to give them goods in such a lopsided basis as that in operation to-day, and it would be very legitimate for the Minister to put to the British, because they have put it to other people themselves and have got away with it, that he desires our trading relations with Britain to be put on a barter basis. Britain understands trade on a barter basis, and Britain has worked a scheme of trade on a barter basis with other countries.

Our demand for trade on such a basis is an equitable demand. There is no answer to it. Britain cannot even make the answer that some of the goods we want are in short supply with her. I suggested on a previous occasion that the Minister should go to London. He need make no apology to the British for going there. He has a right to ask the British people to put their trading relations with us on an equitable basis. They are not on an equitable basis at the moment. In any case, I feel sure that in present circumstances the Minister owes it to the country to go to the British and say that they are not treating us fairly in the matter of the export of goods to this country, that they are taking from us more goods than they are giving us, and that it is not unreasonable to ask that that lopsided basis of trade should be altered and a system of trade on a barter basis arranged.

The Minister told us of the difficulties in respect of the importation of certain classes of goods from countries other than Britain. I should like to ascertain from the Minister what his expectations are in respect of the tea ration. The present ration is inordinately small. It has, however, been possible for people to manage on the present small ration because they had some stocks in before rationing was introduced, but these domestic stocks are now becoming exhausted, and the present ration is inadequate. The British are not short of tea because their ration to their own people is a generous ration. The British are not short of tea, so far as I can gather, and I think it is not unreasonable for the Minister to say to them that in respect of tea, which happens to be a very important article of food to our people, there should be some release by the British of some of their tea supplies in exchange for some of the goods which we are giving to Britain in present circumstances.

The Minister made reference to the flour and bread position, and he intimated that, with present stocks, it was possible to maintain the present supply of flour and bread until 15th August, and that after that time we would have to rely on the possibility of importing wheat between now and then to carry us on until the new cereal year. It seems to me rather extraordinary that a country with 14,000,000 acres of arable land, and good pasture land at that, should have to be importing wheat in present circumstances. Well, we probably now have got to make the best of our misfortunes and to import wheat for this year, but I should like to ascertain from the Minister whether he is satisfied that the quantity of wheat grown this year will be sufficient to ensure a full supply of bread and flour for the cereal year commencing in September or October. The Minister made some reference to the future position in respect of wheat for next year, but it is an issue on which we should have some assurance from him, and if we are to have the same misfortune next year, the people should be told about it now, so that they may be prepared for whatever difficulty has to be met, instead of being shocked into economy by the issue of some Ministerial statement at a later date.

The Minister also made reference to the position in respect of the importation of clothing, and told us of the necessity for economy in the use of clothing and of particular types of cloth. I wonder when the Department became aware of the necessity for this economy in the use of drapery goods. For the last two years, with its eyes wide open, the Department has been permitting the export of goods to the Six Counties.

Mr. Lemass

It has been prohibited.

Mr. Norton

Did the Minister ever see the trains coming in from Belfast?

Mr. Lemass

I do not wish to be misunderstood. So far as the law is concerned, it has been made illegal. I have no doubt that the Deputy is right in saying that a number of people succeeded in evading the law but that is another matter.

Mr. Norton

The Minister only has to look at the trains coming into Dublin from Belfast to see the number of people who are coming here and stocking their cases and their persons with goods that they purchase here. Everybody in the country was aware that that was happening, and the fact that train after train continued to leave Belfast packed with people coming into Dublin or Dundalk, and that these people returned to Belfast loaded with goods that they had purchased in Dublin or Dundalk, is all evidence of the fact that these visits were worth while to the excursionists, and the trains would not continue running and bringing these people if they were going to be disappointed. Notwithstanding that fact, however, the Department took no action whatever, even though that inordinate demand was being made on our limited stocks of goods. Of course, the Minister cannot but be aware that some drapery houses had accommodation addresses along the Border, from which they were supplying goods to people who came from across the Border, or from which they were exporting goods to people in the Six Counties. Yet, no action was taken, and I am prepared to bet that no action is now being taken, although the Department cannot but be aware of the truth of what I am saying in that connection. After permitting such a large quantity of goods to be exported to the Six Counties during the past two years, it is rather interesting to be told now by the Department that there is a shortage of drapery goods, and that there will have to be an exercise of the strictest economy by our people in the consumption of goods which are in short supply with us.

On the question of rationing of clothing, I think the Minister was right when he decided to ration it, but the manner in which he did it, of course, was open to a good deal of question. I think there is nothing essentially wrong in consulting people in an industry when you are going to introduce legislation or to make operative an Order affecting that industry, and I think the Minister would have been very wise if he had previously consulted the drapery trade in respect of his rationing of clothes. I think he would be wise if, on every occasion in the future, he were to consult the employers and workers in a trade or industry in order to ascertain what is the best way of achieving the object which he has in mind, but the Minister seems to have some ingrained dislike of consultation with persons. He appears to prefer to issue an Order, to shock the people by the rapidity of its issue, and then, having done that, the Minister spends a considerable time trying to justify his Order when he is not forced to retreat from it.

If the Minister wanted to destroy public confidence in rationing, he could not have chosen a more effective way of doing it than the way in which he rationed drapery goods. After saying that he would not see the drapers, he then decided that he would see them, and did see them. After deciding that 52 coupons was an adequate supply, in a couple of days he made it 78. Now, surely, the Minister who issues an Order making 52 coupons available, who makes that Order after being satisfied, apparently, that it is an adequate number, and who then, a few days after, retreats from that and issues 78 coupons, cannot possibly say that the issue of these coupons for drapery goods got the mature consideration that it ought to have got. If it did, then the Minister ought to have stuck to his 52 coupons, but the fact that he altered the number from 52 to 78 shows perfectly clearly that he did not know whether 52 was adequate or not and that the matter got very little consideration, as a result of which the Minister was forced to jump away from 52 coupons to 78 coupons.

I think the Minister was wise to increase the number of coupons to 78, but he ought to have done that in the first instance, and he ought to have had sufficient consultation in the first instance, so as to ascertain on what equitable basis drapery goods could be rationed. I think that if the Minister would consult with the organisations which are affected by these Orders, and if he would take the Dáil into his confidence, he probably would get a lot of helpful criticism which might avert difficulties such as were experienced in the rationing of drapery goods. The Minister, however, dislikes consultations; he dislikes the Dáil, and will not give it in advance any information calculated to help the Dáil to inform him of the public view of his proposal. Instead, he will go to a Fianna Fáil cumann and make a speech there, and the members of the Dáil have to thank God that there is a Fianna Fáil cumann to which he will make speeches, because he will not make them in the Dáil; or the Minister may make a radio announcement, and that is the first that the members of the Dáil will hear of the subject matter of the announcement.

In a democratic country, and at a time when doubt is being thrown on the wisdom of democratic institutions, the Minister should at least do the House the honour of informing it from time to time of the subject matter of proposals he intends to bring forward concerning his Department. If he were to adopt a policy of that kind, it would be more calculated to beget the goodwill of the Dáil than his present method of dealing with such matters, but the one outstanding characteristic which the Minister's Department has developed has been that it does not trust the people, and in consequence of that mentality on the part of the Department, and in consequence of the way in which many matters have been mishandled by the Department, the public have now developed a feeling of no confidence in the Department. That is a very unhealthy position, a position which ought not be allowed to continue, and every possible step ought to be taken by the Minister to try to restore public confidence in the Department of Supplies. Methods such as those which were adopted in connection with the rationing of drapery goods are not calculated to inspire public confidence or to allay the uneasy feeling which the public have in connection with matters which are handled by the Minister for Supplies. I think the Minister would be well advised to take the public into his confidence. The Department should endeavour to inspire confidence and should act with strength and wisdom so as to impart that confidence to the public.

The Minister to-day gave us a lengthy review of the whole supply position. I think that it discloses at once that our difficulties during the ensuing year will be greater than the difficulties which confronted the people during the past 12 months. The Minister has a very special obligation placed on him to mitigate the difficulties of the people in every possible way, and no punctilio ought to be allowed to stand in the way of getting for our people the goods which they require. I suggested before, and want to close by saying, that I think in present circumstances the Minister ought to go to the British and insist on the British putting their trading relations with us on a satisfactory basis. If the Minister goes and fails, everybody will understand that it was not his fault, but, so long as the Minister shrinks from discharging that portion of his duty, I think the public are entitled to say that he is not exercising his powers to the fullest.

Dr. Hannigan

I formally second the motion.

Mr. Dockrell

It is with a certain amount of diffidence that I rise to make a few remarks about the Department of Supplies, because I really do not know the reason why it was ever separated from the Department of Industry and Commerce. One seems to have a difficulty in finding out where one Department begins and the other ends. The difficulty arises not only as regards officials on loan. Last year when I made some remarks on the Vote for one of these Departments, I was told that they were out of order. I made them later on the Vote for the other Department, but by that time some of the duties that I wanted to refer to had been shifted, and it was only through the indulgence of the Chair that I was enabled to continue my speech. However, that is a small point. Undoubtedly, there is a big problem in the matter of supplies to be faced in this country, and one has to look a little back beyond the present war period. The Fianna Fáil Government undoubtedly were right in trying to promote industries. We can all subscribe to that idea. Some of the details of that policy have had their effects and we are now reaping the benefit of some of them. I would like to call attention to one difficulty because I think it may possibly continue even after the present crisis. I suppose the Government are not responsible for the difficulties that have been created by the present war. The Minister has told us that this Department was formed to co-ordinate and control all supplies. That is very good up to a point because, undoubtedly, a Government Department can do far more than an individual in that matter. But, unfortunately, that also carries with it its responsibilities, because if the Government fail to do anything or do the wrong thing, they can go to the bad far more quickly than if the effort were made up of the sum of individuals trying to do their best in a given situation.

Some question has cropped up with the Minister about consultation with responsible bodies. I suggest to him that that would seem to go back even beyond the present crisis. Before the war, when the Prices Commission was negotiating with Irish manufacturers, there were practically two people to the bargain: the manufacturer, who had to say what range of goods he was going to manufacture, and the Prices Commission, who took up the cudgels on behalf of the public. The distributor was left out of the consultations, with the result that, in an effort to give as favourable prices as possible to the general public, the distributing margins were cut very fine. The consequence was that the holding of wholesale stocks in a lot of industries was practically done away with. I suggest to the Minister that, while that would not have solved the present problem of supplies, it did contribute, very largely, to the evils that have occurred.

The Minister, in his speech this evening, lamented that the difficulties of the wholesale distributing trade were not located in this country. I have already spoken about that difficulty, which I am sure will have its effects in the post-war period if it is not looked into. It is very difficult to get from the Government any description of their policy over a period. When the war situation was getting more critical, the Government in many cases had protective duties imposed in the interests of Irish manufacturers who were only geared up to supply the country at a peace-time rate. There was a period in which supplies were available on the other side. I suggest to the Minister that a number of people here hesitated to get in supplies because they were in doubt as to whether the existing duties would have to be paid or whether they were going to be abolished, so that the opportunity of obtaining supplies was lost to the country.

The Minister has prided himself, and complimented the country, on the fact that it has gone through an extended period without feeling the utmost effects of the present world conflict. I want to suggest to him that there is one reason which has contributed very largely to that, namely, that the British, in the earlier stages of the war, treated this market as an export market, and supplies were obtainable, and it was only when they began really to tighten up the supplies that the situation became acute. The position for many manufacturers and distributors is that the duties have more or less been suspended. They are fold: "You can get in goods duty free if you can find them anywhere," but I am afraid that is not sufficient. Some people want to look ahead a little bit further. At present we have only England and America from which to get these goods. It is very difficult to get supplies from either of these countries, in fact it is almost only by chance that they can be got. The situation is still further complicated by the fact that there is no advice from the Government as to what I call a long-term policy or anything that extends further than from day to day. Is it any wonder that many people in the industry are merely marking time?

There are, as I say, only two countries from which we can get supplies and I do not think the Minister has visited either of them. I think Deputy Norton suggested that he should take the cheaper ticket and go across and try his luck. It would be a very important matter from the point of view of this country. The Minister may protest that he is not on bad terms with either of the two countries but, if that is so, he does not appear to have kept up the connection by visiting them. We are told that we have a mercantile marine and we read about it from time to time. Apparently the ships are only employed in bringing goods from Lisbon, which is one of the halfway houses established when America could send goods to Europe but not into the war zone. Are we merely clearing out the Lisbon pocket at present and when that is exhausted will we be left with some ships that cannot make the trans-oceanic voyage? Will we be left in a position in which the longer journeys which require larger ships have not been adequately provided for?

The Minister asks us to accept the restrictions imposed upon us and to tell the people that they are imposed in their best interests, but I should like to suggest to the Minister that some of the suspicion and doubt in the minds of the ordinary public has been brought about by blowing hot and cold. It is not so long ago since I heard the Minister in this House talking about grocery goods. He reproved a wholesale grocer who had issued an advertisement advising people to lay in supplies and he said that the wholesale merchant panicked the market. Something similar seems to have happened in connection with the bread supply. We had sufficient bread at one time, but then it began to get short and restrictions were put on it. Now the restrictions on bread are removed, yet the restrictions are continued in connection with wheaten flour for fêtes. It seems to me that the Minister ought to have taken the two together. There is no good in nibbling at a problem. The latest instance of co-operation or rather non-co-operation is in connection with the drapery trade and the Minister. The Minister said that he did not believe he could trust the people in the trade to call them into consultation.

Mr. Lemass

I did not say that.

Mr. Dockrell

I suggest that the Minister's words inferred that. He said that the negotiations would leak out.

Mr. Lemass

I did not say I could not trust them. I said that, in the circumstances of the drapery trade, if consultations took place there would have to be discussions with a dozen different organisations and it would be impossible to prevent the fact that the discussions related to rationing from getting out.

Mr. Brennan

Is not that the same thing?

Mr. Cosgrave

Did it not get out from your Department?

Mr. Lemass

I do not agree that it got out from my Department.

Mr. Cosgrave

Was not everybody in Dublin talking about it?

Mr. Lemass

Two or three days before. That is a different matter from two or three months beforehand.

Mr. Cosgrave

Would it take two or three months to talk to them?

Mr. Lemass

Certainly it would take two or three weeks to have consultations with all the trades concerned. Does the Deputy know how many trades there are?

Mr. Cosgrave

It certainly matters.

Mr. Lemass

Of course it matters.

Mr. Cosgrave

It happened to be done in a place doing very much more business than the Minister, and nothing got out. The people are not as religiously inclined, and, I am sure, they would not claim to be as nationally-minded as the Minister, and yet it was done.

Mr. Dockrell

I do not want to put into the Minister's mouth that he said he could not trust the drapery trade, and so I withdraw that. But I suggest that the inference was that he was unable to bring them into consultation for fear they might get wind of what was going on. I suggest that that has happened in many other instances, and that it is very much to the detriment of the Minister's Department and of the country. Somebody used to talk about trusting the people. If you cannot trust the people, we have come to a pretty pass. As an illustration of that, the Minister within the last few days has made two alterations in the original Order issued. He has increased the number of the coupons for each person from 52 to 78. I think there can be no doubt that the drapery trade pointed out to him that it would be a great pity if perishable goods were left to deteriorate on the drapers' shelves, and the Minister was very wise in making the change in regard to them.

I have attempted in a very imperfect way to draw up what I consider are the irreducible minimum requirements of a working man in the way of clothes for a year. I am not talking about somebody who has a certain number of old suits and who can go around wearing old clothes or old overcoats. I am talking of a hard-working tradesman and I suggest that the following is the irreducible minimum of his 12 months' requirements: a dungaree suit, an ordinary suit, two shirts, two nightshirts, three pairs of socks, one tie, two handkerchiefs, one raincoat or top-coat—I have not given him both; I am assuming this is the year in which he has to buy one—two underpants for cold weather and two undervests. I suggest a man who starts out to do the 12 months on less than that— a working man——

Mr. Davin

Who has work and wages, of course?

Mr. Dockrell

Yes. He would be in rags if he has any less than that. On the first list these articles would tot up to 176½ coupons, and on the list as revised, to 140 coupons. That man gets 78 coupons in a year, so it would take 20 months to buy the minimum requirements, according to my point of view. I invite Deputies to correct me if I am wrong. What is the meaning of that? It can only mean one thing, either that the Minister has left the country too long without putting rationing into operation, or that this whole scheme is without any solid foundation. I do not suggest that the Minister has done anything without having very good reason for it. I do suggest that those are the minimum requirements for an ordinary individual and that shows that rationing, according to the Minister's own story, was not adopted soon enough. The Minister should tell us what he makes of that, because it is certainly very difficult to understand how the Minister can put his twice-amended scheme forward seriously in the face of those figures. The Minister told us that if he had consulted the interests concerned, the information would have got out earlier. But there were some very good tips going for the coupon race.

Mr. Davin

On the previous Thursday.

Mr. Dockrell

Even after the scheme was announced there were well-informed people who said: "Do not part with your coupons yet; they will be more valuable."

Mr. Cosgrave

That was the latest information.

Mr. Dockrell

Quite so. There is another matter along that line about trusting or not trusting the people. I read in the paper the other day some information about petrol for vans next month—the basic petrol allowance for vans and other vehicles. "Notwithstanding the drastic restrictions already made, an Irish Independent representative learned that the quantity of petrol still being issued exceeds the quantity arriving.” When I read that I thought that an extra intelligent and hard-working representative had issued from the Independent and had ferreted out that information. Looking at the two other daily papers, I discovered that enterprising representatives of those two papers had, on the same day, found out exactly the same information. Some of the punctuation might have been different, but it really amounted to the same thing. I suggest to the Minister that that was an official pronouncement issued by his Department. If that is so, he ought not to be afraid or ashamed of it and he might as well have shoved it out as an official announcement.

I suggest that although he has gone a long way, he has not gone the whole hog. What is to happen to the people not mentioned in this connection? Is their case still under review? It is stated here:

"Before the new restrictions operate, traders will have an opportunity of discussing their difficulties with the Department, and in this connection it is understood that arrangements for the pooling of deliveries which traders may themselves propose will receive favourable consideration, provided a substantial saving in petrol results."

There are a number of trades that are not mentioned here. For instance, I notice that painting contractors and plumbers and ironmongers are mentioned, but builders are not. Now, are builders essential and painters nonessential?

I would suggest to the Minister that there is a fallacy in the idea of pooling deliveries. Undoubtedly, if a trader sends out a vehicle from Dublin to Dalkey with a quarter of a load there is very substantial wastage of space and time, but nowadays I think most traders wait until there is a full load to be delivered in a fairly compact area and then send a lorry to deliver in that area. I cannot see any economy in sending to a central depot, unloading the goods there, packing them in another van and sending that van out to distribute over a fairly compact area. I would suggest to the Minister that, while theoretically there is a lot to be said for it, in practice it would be very difficult to work out. I doubt if the Minister will achieve very much economy by that scheme, especially when it is taken into account that the goods will have to travel to the central depot first.

Mr. Davin

There might be claims for pilferage.

Mr. Dockrell

I think that is only one of the difficulties. If a draper were sending out a pane of glass in a case it might be thrown out of the van carelessly because it was thought to be drapery goods. You might find also that the wrong sacks might be returned.

Mr. Davin

You would want a clearing house.

Mr. Dockrell

You would, and you would want a staff to settle the disputes in the clearing house. Another matter arising out of that scheme would be that if there is a very substantial curtailment of retail deliveries, a situation might arise where people would have to try to carry goods, such as panes of glass, big loads of groceries and so on on buses and trams which would throw additional burden on the already over-burdened public transport.

I would ask the Minister to give us some guidance as to the position when the war is over. Of course, the present situation will not last for ever. The situation at the moment is that an enormous number of people have been exported to the other side at very good wages. I think the Minister and the Government decided against doing any work over here, and the natural result was that the workers went over to do the work on the other side. I do not think that was very good for us industrially. It will probably set us back a couple of generations industrially, because there is no doubt that at the present time, a generation that is engaged in industrial production, geared up to a war-time setting, is going by in every three or four years. If any long-term policy is going to be adopted by the Government, we would like to get some light from the Minister. Is it the idea that those migrants who are at present on the other side, earning good wages, will come back the moment the situation improves and there is more employment here? It there is going to be more employment here, the Minister must give us a line as to what the future policy of his Department is going to be. I will give one item as an illustration of what I mean—structural steel. No building has been going on for some years in this country, and immediately the emergency is over there will be a demand for buildings of that class. Is the duty going to be imposed straight away here, and will we then find that, while a duty is imposed on steel imported here, the people in this country will not be able to get steel? That sort of thing has happened. In the post-war period we may find that a lot of our people cannot get raw materials for their business, whereas other people, more fortunately placed, in neighbouring countries, can get the fabricated article quicker than we can get the raw material here. Certainly, if industry is to be carried on in new buildings, we must get some idea as to what the policy of the Government is. A structural steel building cannot be ordered overnight. It requires certain calculations as to capital outlay and the needs of the industry.

The Minister mentioned that he had not yet come to a decision about suits ordered before coupons were introduced. The Minister suggests that, anyway, whatever he decides, the people will have to give up their coupons. I heard of a case—I do not think it is unique—where a person had ordered a suit and when he attended at the tailor's he was told he would have to surrender coupons for the suit. He said that he would have to get an overcoat this winter, that he needed an overcoat more than a suit, and he told the tailor he could keep the suit. I will not tell you what the tailor said about that. The Minister suggests— and theoretically he is quite right— that he wants to conserve supplies but a suit that has been cut for a small man cannot be handed over to a big man. The tailor will have to find a customer about the size and the shape of the original customer and who is wanting a suit at the same price. The Minister spoke of the distribution of tea being unsatisfactory, owing to wholesalers not being resident here. Earlier in my remarks I gave an instance of why there were so few wholesalers. I suggest to the Minister that wholesalers form a very valuable part of our business community and that they held stocks which served as a buffer when the market was rising or falling. If he does away with their margin the Minister need not be surprised if the wholesalers are residents of other countries.

Mr. Byrne

I advocated on previous occasions the appointment of food and fuel controllers, but the proposal was either not taken into consideration or was not thought advisable. After the Minister's statement this evening I think he will agree that the time has arrived for the appointment of a food controller, so as to separate the Department that is looking after food from the fuel and other problems that the Minister has to face in finding supplies for industries. The question of finding food for the people does not link up with the Minister's work of seeking supplies of the raw materials that are necessary to provide employment for our people. I earnestly hope that the Government will without delay consider the question of appointing a food controller. There was a food controller in Britain during the last war, and Lord Rhonda was fuel controller. It was thought necessary to have two controllers. Here we have one Minister, admittedly the hardest-worked Minister in the country, in charge of two Departments, Supplies and Industry and Commerce. I ask that some of the responsibility should be thrown on some other Department as I believe that the effort to provide all the requirements of this country in one Department will not work. The Minister has to deal with the rationing of clothes and at the same time to look after flour, tea and other necessaries. That is an impossible task for one Department. The Minister would be well advised to suggest to the Government that the work should be divided. While Deputies criticise the Department when they feel that they are justified in doing so, and find fault, it must be admitted from what they have seen that the Minister is the hardest-worked Minister in the House, and that he is up against problems that are almost impossible of solution. I do not think the country can stand that position any longer, by risking the danger of a shortage of food or fuel.

I advocated the appointment of a food controller recently, because I was in England twice this year, and from what I heard there I thought it advisable to ask the Government to enter into a system of barter of goods instead of paper money. Last evening the Parliamentary Secretary rather belittled the £3,000,000 of paper money that our workmen over in Great Britain are sending home. That money buys certain goods here, but I would prefer, instead of our goods being exported, that they should be paid for by an exchange of wheat, coal, tea, tyres or other things which we need. I believe that could be arranged. The British people are getting two ounces of tea per head weekly, while our people get only half an ounce. As the Irish people drink large quantities of tea, it is a great hardship on them to be without it. If the Minister visited England, with head erect, and told those in control there that more cattle and meat could be sent from Ireland in exchange for tea, something might result. The British people, even a few members of Parliament, told me that they were saving tea on the present allowance they were getting. They took the full ration of two ounces per head simply because they had coupons, but they were putting some of it away in their larders. If we could get more tea in exchange, our people might be given one ounce per head weekly.

Mr. Davin

There are 45,000,000 people in England against 3,000,000 here.

Mr. Byrne

I was told by people in England that they are saving on their ration. At the same time they are drinking larger quantities of tea than they ever drank, so that the coupons would be availed of. They told me that they are prepared to share with us and I think the Minister would be doing good work if he went over and asked those responsible to allot more tea to this country in exchange for beef and other fats which they urgently need. There is undoubtedly a great scarcity of meat in England. Any visitor notices that and while there is a plentiful supply of other things there is a scarcity of meats. If we could increase our consignments of meat we might be able to get more tea or coal. I was told that recently a train load of cattle intended for England arrived at its destination late owing to the bad coal supply. Would it be too much to expect that the railway companies could get supplies of good coal from England so that cattle might be got away in time? That is one argument that could be put up for getting coal. The people that I discussed this question with were not unfriendly. They included members of Parliament.

Is it not possible to increase our dead meat trade with England? Some years ago there was great talk of sending away dead meat instead of live animals, so that the hides could be kept here and give employment in our tanneries. These questions were discussed in Colwyn Bay two months ago and a desire was expressed for an exchange of goods instead of paper money. The Minister said that the report he got was the direct opposite. I have reason to believe that that is not so, and I mentioned it to very important people. Look at the position of the gas supply in Dublin at present. Morning and evening people do not know if they will get sufficient gas to cook a meal. The gas company is, I suppose, one of the best managed companies in the country. What can they do when they cannot get supplies? I think that the Minister should step in and try to get them coal in exchange for some of the goods leaving this country.

As regards food, I am told that some of the shops cannot supply bacon at present, while, if you want oatmeal, you have to pay three times the price it was. There is plenty of oats in the country but they are not finding their way to the tables of the poor people of the tenements in the City of Dublin or to the plates of the cottage dwellers. When oatmeal was available a couple of months ago, it was put up in packets and a higher price charged. It has now almost gone off the tables of those who used it most in days gone by.

As regards clothes rationing, the Minister has increased the value of the coupons, but anybody engaged in the drapery trade will tell him that last Thursday, Friday and Saturday were the three blackest days they ever experienced, that nothing was sold. Those with large stocks of rationed, perishable goods found that there was no sale for them. Costumes, uniforms and dungarees are not asked for now. I know a place in Rathgar area which gave orders for a big quantity of dungarees, and got them in, on the advice of the Government. That shop did a big trade in that line and now it cannot sell them. That shopkeeper has to make arrangements with his bank to cover him, while the dungarees are lying on his hands. I do not know what the position is as regards nurses' and other uniforms. I have not heard whether employees of the Tramways Company and other semi-public concerns who are provided with uniforms will have to yield up coupons from their private supply for these uniforms. I have been speaking to men who wear uniforms and they say that they will not part with their coupons for them. One man had the courage to tell me that his wife would not allow him to do so, that the coupons would be required for ordinary clothing. On the other hand, he is told that, for his new uniform, coupons will have to be surrendered.

Mr. Davin

They cannot wear the uniforms off duty.

Mr. Byrne

And they do not like to wear them on Sundays. If it is considered desirable that men should wear uniform, the necessary coupons should not be taken out of the book of the individual concerned. I appeal to the Minister to cross the water and meet the people there. They are suffering a lot. They are struggling hard, but they are willing to share anything they have with us and anything we have we ought to share with them. I do not suggest, of course, that there should be any curtailment of necessaries or articles of which we are short here. We should maintain the trade between the two countries and increase it, if possible. We should get paid in goods which our people want—tea, wheat, coal and tyres. When a large number of men go back to the mines in Britain, there will be some coal available and we ought to try to get a share of it for our people in exchange for the goods we are sending across.

General Mulcahy

The Minister has indicated that we are likely to have a protracted period of scarcity, particularly in connection with clothing fabrics. We are not likely, he told us, to get more than 15 per cent. of our woollen requirements or 20 per cent. of our cotton requirements. We shall get no linen, and artificial silk imports, which were last year substantially above anything we ever obtained before, will fall to about 50 per cent. of our normal requirements. The Minister asks the people to face these and other restrictions with a good grace. We, here, have also to face our problems. We have to try to inform Ministers, to extract information from them and see that they are kept in touch with, and appreciate, the position in the country. We have to try to get some kind of policy and we are anxious to face our problems and pursue our policy with a good grace. On the other hand, we wish the Minister to give a lead and a direction to his Department to carry on their work, however difficult it may be, with a good grace. He said to-day that he did not trouble very much about his prestige or about bowing one way or another to the drapers, if they were thinking of their prestige. I hope that that is so because if there is one thing more striking than another it is that the difficulties between the Department and the people and between the Ministry and ourselves are due, in large measure, to a kind of false prestige which is being defended by Ministers, heads of Departments and principal officials dealing with tasks that fall to them. They feel that there is some kind of prestige which they have to guard.

When one is up against a difficult job and does not know what ought to be done, one way of guarding one's prestige is to hide oneself from contact with anybody. Very often, the most effective screen you can put between your prestige and the danger of impact upon it is a kind of irritation and aggressiveness. But that creates all kinds of trouble, annoyance and loss.

The Minister has said that the drapers have now passed from a position of agitation to a position of consultation. When we look at the difficulties this country has passed through, and ask ourselves what supplies have been best maintained, must we not reply that they are the supplies with which the drapers had to do? Did they get assistance from anybody? A prelude to the recent difficulties created for the drapers by the Minister's Rationing Order was the way in which he prevented fabrics being imported by Orders issued in April and May, without any consultation of any kind. From the very beginning I do not know anybody who was more alive to the situation than the drapers were, nor anybody more effective in obtaining supplies to keep this country going. The Minister might have assisted the country generally in one way if, standing out of the drapers' way, he did something to try to control the unnecessary rise in the price of some of the clothing.

A contribution from the Department in that direction, added to the work of the drapers themselves, would have left this country very happy up to the present in the matter of clothing; and if they had been left alone, without the Minister's interference in April and May and the interference at the present time which flows from the Importation of Fabrics Order, we might in the next six months and next year, be in a better position than we are likely to be. Here is a quotation:—

"If the war was going to be prolonged, it was one of the primary functions of the Department of Supplies to see that all supplies of an essential nature were stored; and supplies of clothing were as essential as supplies of food."

Who said that? It was Mr. E.A. McGuire. When did he say it? On the 20th September, 1939. Why did he say it? Because he, with others representative of the drapery and allied trades, had been pushed out of the Department of Industry and Commerce, whither they had gone to give their view of the situation likely to arise as a result of the war, to ask for an understanding of their point of view in the Department of Industry and Commerce and to ask for the taking of certain action that would enable them to see that, in supplies of clothing, at any rate, we would not go short. Mr. McGuire then said that the officials would not let them talk at all and were "jumping down their throats all the time". If he had been there on his own behalf, he would have walked out. That is the report in the Evening Mail of the 20th September, 1939. The following day's Irish Times, Thursday, 21st September, 1939, says:—

"A resolution was proposed at the meeting by Mr. Deery of Dundalk, seconded by Mr. Colleton of Messrs. Lee, Dublin, expressing disappointment at the manner in which the organisation's representatives had been received and the virtually negative results obtained. The meeting, therefore, asked the Drapers' Chamber of Trade to request a personal interview with the Ministers concerned in order to point out to them the serious lack of supplies which would result in a large amount of unemployment in the drapery and allied trades. The resolution also pointed out that in the national interests it was essential that trade organisations be taken into the confidence of the Government and that control should be placed in the hands of competent individuals or boards of the trades concerned appointed by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. The meeting was convinced that each section of industry and commerce required expert and whole-time attention."

To-day, the Minister for Supplies tells us that "difficulties were greater than originally contemplated" and that one of the great difficulties they had in getting the people to understand these problems was the way in which the situation was being discussed by some people for Party purposes and for their own glorification, and who would try to suggest that, if they had been in charge of national affairs, this situation would not have arisen. From the very start of the emergency here we get, in the relationship of the Department to the drapers, in almost its most perfect form, a sample of the frame of mind in which the Government has approached so many of its problems.

That was September, 1939. In April, 1942, the Minister issued an Order stating that, for certain fabrics, it would be necessary for people to get a licence to import, and that after the 20th April no goods would be allowed in in respect of which a licence had not been issued. The Minister's Importation of Fabrics Order was issued on the 13th March and on the 20th March Circular I.F.1 was issued, indicating the various types of fabrics for which a licence would not be given unless they were of a particular price or under.

Mr. Lemass

That was not stated in the circular.

General Mulcahy

At any rate, the Minister's Circular I.F. 1 was issued indicating that—

"for the present licences will be issued on application for the classes of goods set out hereunder, provided the prices are within the limits shown."

Mr. Lemass

It did not say that licences would be refused for any other.

General Mulcahy

It said that for those stated goods licences would not be issued unless——

Mr. Lemass

It did not state the licences would not be issued.

General Mulcahy

Would the Minister listen to his own circular again?

"For the present, licences will be issued on application for the classes of goods set out hereunder, provided the prices are within the limits shown."

I am talking of those things for which the Minister fixed a maximum price, outside of which he would not allow the stuff in.

Mr. Lemass

I did not say that at all.

General Mulcahy

I am saying something that I want the House to hear.

Mr. Lemass

Would the Deputy permit me to explain that? What was explained to the trade was that licences would be issued on application, automatically and without question, for goods within a certain range of prices and quality; but in respect of goods outside that range, no undertaking would be given in advance of an examination.

General Mulcahy

What is the Minister contradicting?

Mr. Lemass

I am contradicting the Deputy's statement that I ever circularised the trade to the effect that I would not give licences for any particular class of fabric.

General Mulcahy

The Minister circularised the trade saying that for the present he would not allow calico, 40 inches and under, flannelette, sateens, linings, rubberised waterproof cloth, flannel, serge, blazer cloth, woollen or worsted tweeds, artificial silk or rayon piece goods, knitted fabrics, rayon locknit fabric, interlock or plain web fabric, cotton or cotton union knitted fabric, or woollen or worsted knitted fabric in, over the price given in the Order.

Mr. Lemass

That was not stated in the circular. If the Deputy will read it again and again, he might understand it. "On application" is the important point.

General Mulcahy

I will read this sentence:—

"For the present, licences will be issued on application for the classes of goods set out hereunder, provided the prices are within the limits shown."

He fixed prices on the 20th March. After his attention had been drawn to them by those who knew the trade and the business, he replaced them by increased maximum prices, with increases varying from 15 per cent. to 85 per cent., inside a month. That was the first position. Traders who had their buyers over and who, with their energy, knowledge, understanding and enterprise, were getting goods over, in order to help to clothe the people here during the emergency, had to cancel the orders for goods which they had secured. The Minister would not allow them to bring in these goods because they were over a particular price.

Mr. Lemass

That affected only one half of 1 per cent., as the Deputy well knows.

General Mulcahy

I am talking of what the trade had to face without consultation until the Department was driven into consultation after these people had hammered at the Minister's door to make their protest against this Order which injured the country generally in the matter of supplies. Then the Minister had to change again, when the facts were hammered at his doors——

Mr. Lemass

When the circumstances changed in Great Britain.

General Mulcahy

The Minister is perfectly capable of misrepresenting anything. No circumstances changed in Great Britain between the 28th April, when the Minister issued his circular I.F.5, and the 13th of May——

Mr. Lemass

That is true to this extent——

General Mulcahy

It is true.

Mr. Lemass

If the Deputy will allow me, the British had announced their intention of imposing certain restrictions and then they postponed them.

General Mulcahy

There was no difference.

Mr. Lemass

There was that difference.

General Mulcahy

The Minister who is interrupting me now is the Minister who told me that restrictions were imposed by the British Government on the export of artificial silk to this country—a thing that was absolutely untrue. There was no excuse for the Minister or anybody belonging to his Department making a statement of that kind. The Minister having left the House now, I am enabled to carry on with good grace, in the way I should like to carry on this debate. Before the rationing Order was issued, in terms that would shut down the tailoring trade of this country for six months, the drapers had their whole purchasing position thrown into utter confusion by the Minister's orders— first, by his Circular I.F.1. which was utterly nonsensical in regard to fixing prices, and then by Circular I.F.5 which was no more sensible. The Minister has not yet been able to tell the tailoring trade of the country where traders can get tailoring cloths under 6/- per yard capable of making a man's suit.

The industry that was treated in that way by the Orders of April and May, the industry that was unconsulted when the coupon provisions of the Minister's Order were issued, was the industry that in an organised way went to the Minister for Industry and Commerce as early as September, 1939, to point out that if the war was going to be prolonged, it was essential that the clothing requirements of the country should be safeguarded and to ask for a certain understanding between the Department of Industry and Commerce and the drapers who were going to carry on that important work of catering for the country's clothing supply. Now we are told that they have changed their attitude of agitation to an attitude of consultation. I wonder does the Minister really realise that the situation is serious, or has he any appreciation of the fact that one of the reasons why the public have difficulty in thinking that there is a serious situation which is likely to be prolonged and likely to inflict hardship on the people, is the attitude that Ministers adopt towards organisations which provide the machinery for securing supplies for the people?

Who is going to deal with the provision and the distribution of clothing except the drapers? We have evidence that from the very beginning of the emergency they realised their responsibility. We have evidence that from the beginning they have had a keen sense of the type the emergency is, and the probable duration of it. We all have had reason to realise in the years that have intervened since September, 1939, that they, at any rate, have done their job, and that the Department has been of no great assistance to them. If there is one thing that should emerge clearly from the whole of this discussion it is that the people cannot understand the nature of the situation, what requires to be done, or how to do it, if we are going to have the Department of Supplies and the Minister at daggers drawn with the only people in the country who can do the job, or the only people who can tell the Minister and the Department how they should be helped to do the job. As I say, the drapers have done fairly well, notwithstanding the antagonism of the Department. It is certainly time that that antagonism stopped. It is certainly time that we should bring about a situation in which the Minister's work would be done with good grace, and that the Minister should extend that type of co-operation to everybody in the country who looks to his Department for guidance, that people generally are prepared to give one another in the effort to solve common difficulties.

There is involved in this question not only the problem of getting sufficient clothing for our people but also the problem of keeping in employment the very large number of people who are engaged in providing that clothing here at home. If there have been antagonisms and little prestige battles of one kind or another, if there have been ignorances in the past, let us see that henceforward they are forgotten and that now when representatives of the drapers and representatives of the Department are sitting down to discuss the various questions that may arise in a calm way, there will develop from these discussions a spirit of understanding and co-operation so that the work in which the drapery trade is engaged can be more efficiently performed by reason of the thorough co-operation of the Department. We outside then can go on doing whatever work falls to us in the present emergency without the irritations, the confusion and the despair that are likely to afflict us if our work is managed by the Department in the way in which it has managed the drapers' work in the past.

The Minister tells us that we are going to have no linen. The Minister was approached several times, and the position with regard to our flax crops was pointed out to him. In the year 1937, we grew 4,200 acres of flax; in the year 1938, about 4,000 acres; in 1939, 4,000 acres; in 1940, 10,140 acres, and in 1941, 15,757. The whole crop of our 15,757 acres is sold in the North of Ireland. At 30 tons to the acre, the 1941 crop would produce 2,800 tons of flax. That would mean 2,108 tons of yarn. If we got returned to us here in yarn one-sixth of the flax crop from our 15,757 acres, we could keep going an important linen factory in the City of Dublin. In 1938, the consumption of linen yarn in that factory was 341 tons, and 350 tons would be one-sixth, in terms of yarn, of the amount of flax we sent to Northern Ireland. The Minister has been pressed time and time again to get that yarn, in order to keep working the highly efficient and highly skilled labourers in a most important industry in the City of Dublin. Nothing has happened.

Like Deputy Norton and his pressure for some means of having a better understanding and getting better results out of our exchange trade with Great Britain, I cannot help feeling that, if that job were properly tackled, we could get that amount of yarn, and could keep in production the important Dublin linen mill I spoke about; we could have some linen here, and we could hold our linen market abroad which it is very important should be held. I am all the more stimulated to think that that could be done by reason of the fact that we accept through our Department of Agriculture here a smaller price for our flax than is paid to the flax growers in Northern Ireland. A writer in the linen trade circular of December, 1941, points out that the difference in price for flax grown in Northern Ireland and for flax grown in Éire next season will be £60 a ton if the present arrangement exists. There was a substantial difference last year. I do not know whether that difference has been eased up in any way, but at any rate there is still a substantial difference. In spite of the fact that we are giving the whole of our crop— and we are giving it at a smaller price than the Northern Ireland men are getting—our linen mill here in Dublin has to be shut down because we cannot get back even the one-sixth which would be required to keep that mill going.

There are so many things which require to be discussed on this Estimate that one could go on for a long time, but I just want to confine myself to the spirit of the Department and the spirit of the Minister. When there was a bread shortage, or a restriction of bread consumption in the past weeks, and when people went through the most appalling hardships in an endeavour to get bread for their families, the only satisfaction we could get here from the Minister was that those people were looking for hot bread, and that those of us who were voicing the hardships of unfortunate mothers and unfortunate children in the City of Dublin were simply looking for notoriety for ourselves. In spite of the fact that the Minister must know— because if his Department was blind to it the police would have let him know —that people were queuing up at 6 o'clock or 6.30 in the morning and waiting until 9.30 when the shops opened, that mothers were going out at 6.30 in the morning, that they were being relieved by their children so that they could go home and get the breakfast, and that the mothers came back again to relieve the children to go to school, the only answer we could get was that they were looking for hot bread, an answer which was elaborated subsequently by Deputy Mullen, who so far forgot the power to use his eyes or his ears outside this House that he said that the children who were standing in those queues were children who were mitching from school. Were the children mitching from school at 20 minutes to 8 in the morning when they went to relieve their mothers in order to let them come home and get the breakfast?

If we are running on to a protracted period of scarcity, surely we ought to give everybody a chance of facing that situation calmly, doing their best in their own way, and co-operating in every possible manner. We ought to get a chance of facing our difficulties as a united nation. We ought to get a chance of thanking Providence that we are better off than other people. Our blessings—the fact that we are in less difficult circumstances here; the fact that we have not a military invasion here—should not be the thing to deprive us of feeling that we have a Government which is thoroughly facing its job, that we have Ministers who are doing their best and are able to give the confident and the kind and the strong answer to ignorant critics who did not realise what their difficulties were. It seems to me that our blessings here are being turned into curses, simply because there is some kind of petty ministerial prestige to be fought for and to be protected and to be exalted above everything else in this country.

Getting at the spirit of things and changing the spirit of things are so important that it is hardly worth while mentioning anything else. We were told by the Parliamentary Secretary last night that one of the effects of making an Order in November that the turf price in the City of Dublin would be 64/- per ton, as against the 45/- per ton that was fixed in June, was to increase the cost of producing turf in the country, and to increase in the country what was being charged for turf. That is the way business is done.

We had reason to discuss the shocking cost of turf at 85/- per ton, and the Parliamentary Secretary pointed out that that figure had to be reviewed because the person who estimated 4/6 as the overhead cost of Fuel Importers, Limited, should have estimated it at 1/- per ton, and that the cost of 12/6 for shrinkage, based on a shrinkage of 20 per cent. on a price of 72/-, should be only 3 per cent. The experts in these monopolistic institutions set up by the Government are capable of estimates like that, and it is possible to have a price fixed for the City of Dublin and certain non-coal areas in such a way as to raise the price of turf over the whole country. No wonder the Minister should be trying to hide himself from criticism and from natural contacts with persons who know something of the effects of these things on the people. But how long are we to go on in this way? How long are we to have administration carried on in the way in which it is carried on, without a realisation that the work cannot be properly done unless people who are experienced in these matters are consulted originally, unless some of the secret chamber work in administration is done away with, and unless, in an understanding and sympathetic way, facts brought forward by way of information, and criticisms made by way of trying to get the best things done, are listened to here?

We have had a sample this afternoon of how the Minister still approaches the matter, but that cannot last. There is nothing in the situation which can last, unless things are properly run. The Minister is in a very important position in relation to the future well-being of our people, and I am sorry that he cannot approach the situation here to-day in a different spirit from that in which he apparently is approaching it, because if the spirit which has characterised some of the most important activities of his Department up to the present lasts, due simply to our own responsible Government and some of its responsible Ministers, our people are going to suffer hardships which they need not otherwise suffer, and their entire spirit is going to be split up and divided, so that we shall have no national strength to face either the economic problems and social difficulties which face us, or any of the dangers arising out of the war or what may come after it.

Dr. Hannigan

There is a very steep increase in the estimated expenditure for the Department this year as compared with last year. The increase roughly represents expenditure of two and a half times the amount estimated for expenditure last year and is represented by a sum in the vicinity of £1,000,000. In addition, there has been a remarkable increase in the number of staff in that Department. The number has, in fact, increased by 103, and it has been truly said that officers in this Department are tripping over one another. While we have that situation—a big increase in expenditure and an increase in staff—we have the anomalous position of what I might term a part-time pensionable Minister for Supplies. That Minister must divide his official attention between the Department of Supplies and the Department of Industry and Commerce. That is an extraordinary situation, it being recognised that the most important Department of State at present is the Department of Supplies. It is very difficult to understand how such a position has come about, but perhaps it is not unrelated to the rather strange exit from Ministerial office of the former Minister for Local Government who took up a job at £3,000 a year because of the hard times that were in it, due, no doubt, to the emergency situation. Is this position brought about because the Government, when that defection from Ministerial ranks took place, were not alone bankrupt in policy but bankrupt in men, and forced to inflict the present Minister for Supplies on the two Departments?

It is painfully obvious to everybody that the Minister for Supplies is no longer treating this House seriously. His attitude is one of indifference. He resents being questioned about matters relating to his Department and he is impatient when anybody makes a suggestion which seems to controvert something which some officer in his Department has told him. We had an example of that no later than this evening when Deputy Mulcahy was speaking and pressing the Minister in relation to a particular subject. We saw the impatient, hasty, and ill-mannered fashion in which the Minister made his exit from the House. I suggest to the Minister that he might take the House a little more into his confidence in relation to his Department, and I will go so far as to say that had he adopted, in the past, the course of coming here with his plans and the policy which he intended should govern his Department, if he had taken the House into his confidence and had forgotten, for the time being, the fortunes of the political Party of which he is a member, he would have got much better results than by gathering around himself a few cronies in a Fianna Fáil clubroom or by resorting to the safe sanctum of the broadcasting station when he has an important statement to make.

Not only does the Minister seem to ignore the Dáil, but he seems to have the same utter contempt for public opinion generally. It is the most difficult thing on earth recently to get the Minister to receive or listen to the accredited representatives of business groups or other bodies. Had the Minister been a little more ready to lend his ear to what representative business groups and workers had to say, he might have avoided the terrible muddle of his original clothes rationing scheme. He refused, point blank, to hear what the trade had to say on that. Apparently, he seems to think that nobody knows anything about business except the Civil Service—people engaged in business know nothing at all about it; what the Civil Service say is right, and anybody who says anything in contradiction of what they say is wrong. As a matter of fact, the example of the muddle with regard to the clothing trade is so fresh in all our minds that I am not going to inflict the tedium of reiterating it in detail on this House, but I do want to express my dissatisfaction at the attitude adopted by the Minister towards the Trades Council, who recently drew his attention to a very important matter that had occurred with regard to the diversion of shipping from the Port of Dublin.

I addressed a Parliamentary Question to the Minister for Supplies, and in the course of supplementary questions and answers which arose on that, I drew the Minister's attention to the serious situation that had arisen in Dublin by the knocking out of employment of dockers and seamen because of the diversion by Irish Shipping, Limited, of ships from the Port of Dublin to other ports throughout the country. I pointed out to the Minister that this diversion of shipping had taken place after a trade dispute. I did so on the authority of, and on the strength of representations made by the Irish Seamen and Port Workers' Union and on information supplied to me by the Trade Union Council, but in any event it was very clearly indicated to the Minister that this diversion of shipping only took place after a dispute had occurred, and had been settled, between Irish Shipping, Limited, and members of the Irish Seamen and Port Workers' Union. It was pointed out to the Minister that, from February last, 11 cargoes, carried by five ships of this company, were diverted from the Port of Dublin to other ports throughout the country, but the Minister in his reply stated to me: "It is a fact that by far the greater part of the tonnage of goods carried into this country by Irish Shipping, Limited, has been carried into the Port of Dublin." I flatly contradict the accuracy of that statement. Not one single ship carrying goods across the Atlantic to this country for Irish Shipping, Limited, has been discharged at the Port of Dublin during the three months ending 15th May. I am reluctant to think that the Minister was purposely misrepresenting the situation in that reply, because it may well be that since the beginning of this company's operations the vast bulk of their cargoes have been discharged at Dublin, as compared with the amount of cargo discharged at Dublin during the three months ending 15th May, but that is a misrepresentation of which I, at least, hope that the Minister has not been guilty. I therefore urge the Minister, when he is replying, to reply specifically to the point I am raising here, and I shall expect him to do so. I would also urge the Minister to consult with the interests affected, the parties who have made repeated efforts to get in touch with him, and deputations from whom he has refused to see. I urge him to get in touch with those interests and find out for himself what the true position is in regard to the matter to which I have been referring.

The Ministerial attitude towards rationing is symptomatic of the defects of the Department in every sphere. The policy of the Department, practically all the time, has been to rely on a voluntary system of rationing. It has been proved conclusively that this system does not work, but up to the present, with the exception of a few commodities, the Government and the Minister for Supplies have been satisfied to leave the rationing of essential commodities to be done on a purely voluntary basis, and the Minister has left the community, generally, at the mercy of every whim and caprice of traders—traders, a good many of whom are prepared, I regret to say, to exploit the situation to the full, and whose whole attitude towards any such matters is governed entirely by the amount of profit they can make. From the very start of the emergency the Minister was urged from these benches to institute a rationing scheme in respect of every commodity in short supply, and in respect of every commodity which he contemplated might be in short supply. Now, there is a matter to which I should like to draw the Minister's attention. There is a great deal of confusion with regard to the question as to which is the responsible Department in relation to the distributioin of fuel. It is very difficult for any ordinary citizen to know whether matters relating to fuel are dealt with by the Department of Supplies or by a special department under the guidance of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance. I am not sure what the function of the Department of Supplies is in relation to fuel or its distribution, but we do know, at any rate, that the Department of Supplies is responsible for fixing the price of turf at 64/- a ton. I think an explanation is due to the House from the Minister as to why the price of turf, which has been produced at an average of 13/- a ton, has been fixed at 64/- a ton.

Several references have already been made to the activities in the black market. It is undeniably true that black marketing is still going on, almost uncurbed. The Department of Supplies never seems to pay any attention to the widespread abuses in this regard until the thing becomes almost a public scandal. For months and months before the Minister introduced his rationing scheme, or what we might now call his modified rationing scheme, for wearing apparel, he must have been aware that trainloads of people were coming to Dublin from the North of Ireland and going back with sackloads of clothing. Yet no attempt whatever was made by the Department to impede that traffic. A number of Deputies have already urged on the Minister to take a trip to London. His unwillingness, or reluctance, to do that has now almost become a perennial source of complaint in the House. The position with regard to our trade in general is that while cattle, meat, eggs and various other agricultural produce are being exported payment for it is being made in cash. One would think that, in our present circumstances, the various essential commodities of which we are in short supply could be exchanged for that produce instead of receiving cash payments, or as some people prefer to call it, paper money, for it. That situation is not going to be got over unless proper representations are made. Repeated efforts have been made in this House to get the Minister to face up to his responsibilities and duties in this matter, but so far he has displayed no willingness, certainly no evidence of a willingness on his part, to do so. I think the time has come for the Minister, owing to the manner in which he has failed in this Department, to retire from his part-time office of Minister for Supplies and to devote all his attention to the Department of Industry and Commerce. He can do so with the complacent feeling that, even when the time comes for him to resign from the Department of Industry and Commerce too, a handsome pension awaits him.

Dr. O'Higgins

For the third year since this emergency began I want to protest against the manner in which this Estimate has been presented to the House. It shows that in the Department of Supplies there are 548 officials, drawing between them, £65,000 odd. If one had time enough to spare to read the footnotes to the Estimate he would find that there are another 243 officials in it whose salaries are not stated. The footnotes explain that they have been loaned and belonged originally to other Government Departments, so that the total number of officials in this Department is 791. If there were no emergency, and if five or ten civil servants were transferred from one Department to another the cost of their salaries would be shown in the Vote for the Department in which they were actually engaged working when the Estimate for it came to be presented to the House. But at present it would take a man many days, whole-time, to ascertain the actual working cost of any Department, and particularly this one, because of the manner in which the Estimate is put before the House. The idea of having the Book of Estimates divided into subheads and sections is to present to the House and to the public who are interested, in a simple tabloid form, the actual personnel in each Department, with details of the cost. The present system of explaining the strength of personnel through the medium of a multiplicity of footnotes was legitimate enough during the first year of the transfers, but should not be continued indefinitely from year to year. The Department of Supplies is, at least, in line with every other Government Department in so far as it keeps abreast of the fashion by increasing in cost, to a very great extent, as one year follows another. As against last year, we have here an increase of approximately 33 per cent. in salaries and wages. I do not know that, in the interval that has elapsed, the country has grown any greater, that its population has grown any larger, or that the emergency has afflicted the country in a more oppressive way this year than heretofore.

I am aware of the fact, and the Minister agrees with me, that actually our position is that we have considerably less supplies to control this year than we had last year or the year before. Apparently the cost of control goes up as supplies decrease or the prospect of getting supplies from elsewhere decreases. I must protest against this fashion of one Minister after another walking into this House and introducing his Estimate in a free and easy way, all the time increasing the cost as if money and taxes did not matter, as if increasing the cost did not matter, particularly at a time when, as far as it lies in Government power to do it, we have to ensure that the incomes of those that can be controlled by the Government are fixed at the pre-war figure. In the face of that, to allow demands, withdrawals and taxes to go up rather gleefully without any explanation or, apparently, without any attempt to stabilise or keep down Government demands on the public, certainly is something against which every Deputy is entitled to protest.

Now, in moderation, let me say this, that from the time this war commenced, so far as the man in the street goes and so far as the average Deputy goes, there is no Government Department in this State that has blundered as frequently and as grossly as the Department of Supplies. It may be that the blundering is more apparent than real, and that the fault lies in the fact that the explanations are not given and that there is rather a liking for secrecy and furtiveness not only in advance but after the fact.

We have evidence of that in this first grand, spectacular and rather tragic adventure in the field of rationing. We had a Parliament sitting here day after day, in fact it was doing a kind of marathon session, and with deliberate intent the Minister responsible to this Parliament waits until that marathon is completed and then engages in his first spectacular adventure in rationing through coupons and then effects his surrender in anticipation and in advance of the reassembly of Parliament. Parliament should have been informed of the Minister's offensive and again of the Minister's rather disorderly retreat. Let me say clearly that from the outbreak of war, from the first speech made by the present Minister as Minister for Supplies, Deputies on this side of the House, and I think Deputies in most positions in this House, stood over and advocated a wholesale rationing system of goods in this country. We have never swerved from that position, and we urged the advisability, in fact the necessity, of a rationing system in order to conserve supplies, in order to prevent acute shortages, in order, as it were, to administer the output with the production and with the incoming supplies, so as to prevent, if possible, either a complete absence of a commodity occurring suddenly or such an acute shrinkage of the supply that it was equivalent to a complete absence.

The one real argument in defence of a rationing system is that it should anticipate shortage, should be designed to conserve what is there, should anticipate and forestall the running out of a particular commodity, and ensure the equitable distribution of the commodity between person and person. Now, a rationing system fails in one important aspect if it comes within public knowledge that the commodity is running out or about to run out and if free play is given to the long purse over a period of weeks or months. Then, what should be a tapering out of the commodity, becomes an acute shortage, because the wealthy have bought up, stored, and hoarded and there is little or nothing left for the poor and the less wealthy. To ration at that point is not giving a fair trial to rationing.

It was not outside the Minister's knowledge, or outside the knowledge of any observant person walking the streets and visiting shops, that in certain lines of soft goods there was as rampant an orgy of buying on for some months as was ever seen in this city. There is no doubt about that. Traders themselves were endeavouring to curtail the demand by, in a kind of rough-and-ready way, attempting across the counter to reduce the demands of the bigger buyers. That has been the position, not for weeks, but certainly for a considerable number of months. Without sitting over 750 civil servants and without costing the taxpayers £100,000 a year in salaries and wages, anybody would know that the demand itself would run the commodity short, aside from the external world conditions. Yet, with complacency the Department carries on until we reach a point when the Minister considers it imperative to ration every individual on a coupon basis that would not decently clothe an infant. Having done that, supported by the wisdom of the 750 officials, without consultation either with the trade or any representative body of the trade, and without the knowledge of Parliament, the Minister finds within 48 hours that the scheme of his Department is at least inaccurate and absurd to the extent of 50 per cent. in coupons and 50 per cent. in time. So that, within 48 hours of the documents being delivered to every household throughout the State, at great cost and in face of an acute paper shortage, the scheme is declared by the Minister to be valueless at least to the extent of 50 per cent. both in coupon value and time.

From any information I had from people engaged in the trade, I was convinced that a major blunder had been made and my sympathy was with the victims of the blunder. Then there was notice given of a big parade, a monster demonstration, and a one-day strike and, in spite of the fact that my sympathy is with those mentally immersed in the trade, knowing all about it, who had not been consulted, I think that harm will ultimately come out of the surrender and the kind of disorderly retreat that followed the demonstration of strength in the streets of Dublin, or the declared intention to make that demonstration; I think that headline can have very bad reactions. A great number of people are affected to a very great extent, but the big blunder of all was that brassy, intolerant refusal to take anybody into consultation prior to the decision.

We are supposed to be a democracy. We used to be. We were a country administered by a Government responsible to Parliament and responsible to the people. I doubt very much if that is the position now. I think we are in the position now of being a country governed by thousands of officials whose names, sizes, shapes, weights or ages are not known to any ordinary taxpayer. That appears to be the position, and the attitude of the Minister bolsters up the fear in the people's minds that we are being governed by hordes of persons whom we never hear and never see; that Ministers are merely so many performing apologists who come here to apologise for something done, or explain it away or brazen it out, but that those who constitute the actual governing body were never appointed or elected to any representative position. I fear that is the position and I can see evidence of that mentality.

In a neighbouring island, Great Britain, where the people are immersed almost up to the tops of their heads in the greatest war the world ever knew or probably ever will hear of, they found themselves in a position when the desirability of rationing on a coupon basis became apparent. They remembered the fact, however, that plain people, whether workers behind a counter or owners of businesses, did not cease to have rights because the country was the centre piece of that war. When they decided that the time for rationing had come, did they ration first, wait for the demonstrations, then alter their rationing and call in the trade to advise them and to rectify errors? They got representative delegates from the trades which would be affected. They got people who knew all about their trades from A to Z, people whose business in life it was to know their trades inside out. They bound them to secrecy in the same way as a member of the Executive Council is bound to secrecy, and they did not imply that those representatives of trade were any less honourable than Government Ministers. They went into the thing in private, and national necessity and expert advice were blended together so as to do the best possible for the people. And then the rationing system was published. We go the opposite way about it and we make a mess of it and, in the mess, we do irreparable harm, not only to the Government for the time being, but to government for a considerable number of years to come.

That is one reason why I say that in practice we have ceased to act as if we were a democracy. The fact that the Minister is still there is another reason. There are certain normal Parliamentary decencies in democratically-governed countries, and the one as old as the hills is that when a major blunder is made by a Department, even though the Minister may be in no way culpable, the Minister resigns the headship of that Department. In that way in the public mind you pin together the theory of Parliamentary government and Ministerial responsibility. If the Minister who has resigned is in no way culpable, if it is the machine underneath him that is running away, then that Minister is accommodated within a very short time in another Department. That is unquestionably the ordinary decent standard of Parliamentary government. It is a thing that gives confidence to people, gives confidence to Parliament, and gives alertness and vigilance to Ministers. That seems to be entirely despised or entirely forgotten here.

In the last eight or nine years in this country we had big things facing us, appalling things happening under Ministers, where nobody suggested the Minister was personally responsible. It is just the same system as applies to an army. The commander-in-chief may be in no way responsible for a defeat or a debâcle, but after the blunder, the defeat or the debâcle, in order to give new confidence and new hope both to the people and the troops, a new man is put in charge. The other man may, in the course of time, find himself in a higher position. That is the situation brought out in a rather big way in a periodical circulating in this country, a periodical which has been an unswerving supporter for some years past of the present Government and which was a fanatical disciple of the present Minister for Supplies as Minister for Industry and Commerce. When you find an organ like that still strong in its advocacy of the present Government, but saying that in the interests of the present Government and in order to save that Government, the Minister for Supplies should resign, then you get an opinion coming, not from in front, but from your shock troops behind. Undoubtedly, that is the opinion of the average person walking in the streets irrespective of Party and political divisions. A blunder was made (1) in not consulting the trade; (2) in the appearance of refusing to consult the trade; (3) in the 50 per cent. alteration in the coupon value straight away, and further evidence as late as this morning's paper that the whole scheme, or at any rate the sections which were challenged by the trade, were quite legitimately challenged in so far as they have been substantially altered.

That is the first attempt at rationing and it would not encourage anyone to remain an adherent or supporter of the principle of rationing. Nevertheless, in spite of the way this thing was handled, or mishandled, I think that rationing should be extended to a very considerable number of commodities but that in future rationing sensible and knowledgeable opinion should be sought. I would not presume to know a horse dealer's business better than a horse dealer. I would not presume to know any man's business better than he knows it himself. There is no divine right or divine ability injected into Ministers or civil servants that lays it down that they know another man's business better than he knows it himself, that they are better able to control it and to advise on it than he is himself. Let not the same blunder that was made in the last fortnight be made again. Let rationing be extended—and it will have to be extended—but let it be extended with a background of experience, expert and knowledgeable advice and consultation.

There is another thing about the Department: that it seems to be quite happy when it fixes a price for an article whether that price is too high or too low. Then they leave it to the public either to pay the price that is too high or to go without the commodity when the price is fixed too low. I will take two examples as an illustration of what I state. Cut logs were selling freely nine or ten months ago around the City of Dublin at 25/- and 30/- a ton and the men dealing in that particular business were quite pleased to get 25/- or 30/- for their logs. One morning the price was fixed at £3.

Mr. Belton

Would the Deputy name six merchants that sold logs at that time at 25/- a ton?

Dr. O'Higgins

When the Deputy is at the head of the Department of Supplies I will answer any questions addressed to me by the Deputy.

Mr. Belton

I know the business; the Deputy does not.

Dr. O'Higgins

The Deputy knows the business at the £3 rate. He was wise enough to keep away from it before that.

Mr. Belton

I was getting £3 5s. before the price was controlled.

Dr. O'Higgins

Little pickings do not appeal to the Deputy.

Mr. Belton

Honest pickings appeal to him.

Dr. O'Higgins

There were people in this city supplying logs ad lib at 30/-.

Mr. Belton

It is absolutely untrue.

Dr. O'Higgins

The price was doubled in 24 hours. That is an example of where the ordinary citizen had no option but to pay the price whether it was fixed too high or not. Take an example of the other side. Whether the price was fixed too low or not, I do not know, but a price was put on bicycle tyres by the Department of Supplies and I would like to find the man or woman who saw a bicycle tyre for sale since that day. I would salute the man or woman, who, through his or her own efforts, was able to buy a bicycle tyre in the whole of this State since that day. They can buy a bicycle tyre and the condition can be made that it will be attached to the wheel, and they can pay the greater part of £1 for the job.

Mr. Lemass

Not under the law.

Dr. O'Higgins

That is the second time I have had this interruption about what the law is or is not. I know the law as well as the Minister and I know the law of supply and demand as well as the Minister, and I know that if you fix by law the price of a horse as being ¾d. not a horse will be sold, and if you fix the price of a necessary article of food as being £1 a lb., that £1 must be paid. There is no good in sheltering behind the law. There is a responsibility on a Minister not only glibly to repeat parrot phrases about what the law is, but to see that the law is respected, to see that it is reasonable and, if it is unreasonable, to have it amended.

Mr. Lemass

Does the Deputy suggest that the price for bicycle tyres was fixed too low?

Dr. O'Higgins

I have already made the point clear that whether it is too low or not I do not know, but I do know that from the day it was fixed it has been impossible to get a tyre. Let the Minister ask his own Party. He prefers discussion at Fianna Fáil clubs to discussion in Parliament. Let him go to one of his clubs and put that question and he will get the answer. There is not a bicycle tyre that has been bought in the ordinary way of business since the day on which the Order fixing the price came out. The implication is that the price was too low. Whether that is a sound deduction or not, I do not know. It is merely a deduction. There are other commodities that have been subject to this kind of regulation control or make-believe control, such as bread and butter and sugar. The Minister, speaking here, with what knowledge I do not know, freely contradicted time and again any Deputy who asserted that there was any difficulty in procuring bread. It may be that the regular customer, who has been consistently buying, we will say, 16 loaves of bread from the same man for a number of years, found no difficulty, under the trade rationing system of giving 80 per cent. If the Minister asserts that is so, I am not in a position to contradict him, but what I do know is this, particularly in the city, where you have a floating population, where great numbers of people do not remain long in any particular district, with huge numbers of newly-weds every month, numbers of new families flitting and coming to the city every year, numbers of people who trade not with one shop but just with whatever shop they pass on the way from business and, in addition, those who use large quantities of flour for making their own bread, that right through that period and up to three weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of people found themselves in the humiliating position of going around the city trying to get bread, even with the money in their pockets.

At present there are hundreds of articles—perhaps not hundreds but dozens—that any of us could name, and it is humiliating to have to walk around the city to try to get them. We were told that 80 per cent. of supply requirements are going out. That may or may not be so. Ministerial responsibility does not begin and end merely with their issue. If the Minister is going to pretend that he is controlling supplies, there is no point in controlling them except to ensure that they reach plain John Citizen, not influential John Citizen, and not wealthy John Citizen, but the plainest, humblest and poorest John Citizen. I should like to see humble John Citizen in the course of the day's work able to go through the city and to go home with a package of "fags" in his pocket. I find the position humiliating when I require a smoke or a cigarette. Is that effective control? It may not be a necessity but it is one of the supplies controlled by the Minister and, up to the time that the Department butted in, I can say that at least the same difficulty was not there. It may be that the Minister's answer will be that supplies have to be conserved. I know that nobody is as likely to be as conservative with regard to commodities as the man who is dependent on that line of business for his livelihood. We had the clothes débâcle. It was not impressive. It was the first adventure in coupon rationing and it was nationally harmful, to the extent that it only required noise and a demonstration of strength for a big surrender. Before that we had the petrol rationing, the only thing that the Minister and his Department from the beginning of the war exercised control over on a coupon basis. The petrol supplies were such, apparently, that the Minister and his Department came to the conclusion that the coupon issue was a bit niggardly, so they introduced the over-stamp system of coupons, so that each coupon would have the value of 1½ gallons as long as the Minister's regulation in respect of over-stamping had effect, with power of drawback any time the store appeared to be in danger of running out. Every motorist, commercial, professional, business and pleasure, was allowed to go on until one morning down came the axe as the pool was empty. That is the other monument of efficiency, the other monument to the return the taxpayer is getting for the exorbitant demands being made here.

It strikes me, looking at the number of personnel, and at the huge number of thousands of pounds demanded, that the Department has got so big that it is in the same position as a drunken sentry, who has so many legs that each leg is tripping up the other. In our ordinary work as Deputies we experience in that Department nothing but absolute courtesy, and a desire to help towards a speedy solution of what is put up, but the extraordinary thing is that by the time we are pulled in, whether Deputies on the Right or on the Left, to interest ourselves in the matter, John Citizen has been trying through the post and through his efforts for months to get it rectified. We find that that can be done frequently in as short a time as ten minutes. That may be a compliment to a Deputy, but I should like to see a compliment paid to plain John Citizen, just a simple compliment to recognise that plain John has his rights as well as Minister Seán. There is a tendency completely to disregard the plain little fellow, not just by one Government Department but recently all Government Departments; that he does not matter; that it is the Government that matters or, in so far as it might not be the Government, it is the officials behind the Government that matter. Nothing is more disastrous and nothing more dangerous in a youthful, in fact, a juvenile State. Mention of petrol brings me to another point.

Mr. Lemass

I hope a more sensible one.

Dr. O'Higgins

I am sure the Minister does. He is occasionally very truthful. Mention of petrol brings me to another point. It may be said to be sound policy and sound administration, just the very same as if applied in the teaching and training of youth, that idleness is dangerous. It may be that having so many it is necessary to keep them employed but one absurdity is this: the number of letters going out asking people what business their cars had to be at such a place at such an hour on such a date and then, as frequently happens, these people losing their time, and depleting their stationery—which we are told is running out —to teach the Department a spot or two of its own business.

I know the case of a medical Senator who, in accordance with arrangements made in this House, was officially issued with coupons to attend meetings of the Seanad, who drove up and stopped his car at his hotel and went to the Seanad. The following month he got no coupons. He was a doctor in practice. When he found that all his neighbours got coupons he rang up the Department to ask why coupons had not been sent to him, and was told that it was because his car was reported to be at a certain place on a certain date. He reminded the Department that he was a Senator, and asked if Senators were not given coupons which were officially issued by the Department for the purpose of bringing a car to Dublin. Of course there were profuse apologies and the matter was rectified. If he did not happen to be a Senator, and did not happen to be in a position to ring up the Department, and know whom to ring up, that man might be for weeks without petrol. Still, we have these absurd letters going out to people, to doctors and others, that their cars were at such a place on such a date.

Mr. Lemass

What is absurd? I should like the Deputy to explain.

Dr. O'Higgins

The whole outfit.

Mr. Lemass

The Deputy thinks we should not inquire?

Dr. O'Higgins

If you want to inquire, the time to inquire is on the spot. If a car is seen outside the General Post Office, why not interrogate the man on the spot?

Mr. Lemass

The report may have come from a good citizen who was doing his duty.

Dr. O'Higgins

The good citizen does not appear to have had a lot of duty to do. If he had, he would have been engaged on his own business. Suppose that three weeks after the Minister's hectic motoring days—January, February and March of this year—a person wrote to the Minister asking him what he was doing at any particular point on any particular day, do you think he would be in a position to answer? I doubt it. I should like to know, as a result of all the queries sent out, in how many cases it was found that adverse action should be taken. If you are merely creating a field of activity for busybodies and a field of annoyance for busy men, that, in fact, there is nothing to the whole mass of correspondence but so much waste of time and stationery, would it not be high time to face up to the fact that any people who are in receipt of petrol allowances are in receipt of only one-fifth or one-sixth of their requirements?

With regard to the Minister's Department and the officials behind him, I have said that if ever we reached the point where the Minister rationed a commodity like eggs, they would not be content to give a coupon and ensure that the family get its appropriate number of eggs but would insist on the right of going into the house to lay down exactly how these eggs should be cooked and at what hour of the day they were to be eaten. That is the impression one gets from this kind of secret-service work going on in the Department. It is nationally objectionable and, speaking as a citizen, it is humiliating to be pandering to that appetite for doing injury to a neighbour. I have got letters—a number of them anonymous but some of them not anonymous—pointing out that such and such a person, my neighbour, was using a car without a disc and that the Guards were not doing their duty because they were pals of his, that the car was being driven out to a certain point and parked at a farmhouse. If I were to lose my time investigating the allegation in that letter, as I would feel bound to do before passing it on to the Minister's Department, the Minister would have to accept straight away that there was a huge wave of immorality right through the land and eating into the very cores of one of the most important Government services. When the Minister's Department does write back to the person referred to, you find the anonymous letter-writer quite jubilant because he has given a certain amount of annoyance to his neighbour.

We have £100,000 for wages and salaries in this Vote and we have 750 officers and officials provided for by the Vote. We have a police force mounting and mounting every year. We have inspectors and supervisors, and inspectors of inspectors, and supervisors of inspectors doubling and quadrupling themselves every year. We have customs officers multiplying. Surely there are enough State officers to do such work at present. The Minister used to be fond in the past, when there were about half as many State officials as there are now, and when the cost of running the State was exactly half what it is now, of frolicking around in the field of mathematical percentages and thrilling his audiences at cross-roads with the percentage of people in each parish who were in State uniform or, otherwise in the service of the State, deducing from that the support that Cumann na nGaedheal was bound to get. The number has been doubled all over. The cost has been doubled, too, but we want John Pimp and Annie Pimp to do the work of the officials now. There is no obligation on an official to stand up before the accused and make his charge. The charging and inspecting have to be done by anonymous people behind the scenes. Does the Department know what it is encouraging in that? Suppose that is applied to other things than the use, or misuse, of an article doled out? Suppose John Citizen wrote to somebody in authority to take action with regard to the Minister himself or any of his colleagues? Do you think that the Minister would say that he was the type of man who should be encouraged? We had, by implication, in the statement of the Minister, that one reason for the rationing of clothes was the amount of clothes being illegally exported from the country. Does he think that there is no obligation on him, with a small border patrolled as borders should be patrolled in time of war, to find any other method to deal with export smuggling than what started as an absurd and farcical system of rationing which, if it becomes more reasonable and sensible, will become so because of the amount of reason and sense which people who were consulted after the event are gradually driving into the mind and the minds of the Department?

Mr. J.P. Kelly

The Deputy who has just spoken gave it as his opinion that no cycle tyres were being made available to the public since the introduction of a fixed price by the Minister. My experience is that certain cycle traders, when they received their quota, proceeded to ration the tyres and tubes to their customers according to the measure of need, giving to those who required them and withholding from those who did not require them as urgently. From a casual observance of the situation, one would be inclined to imagine that the tyres did not reach the public. I have investigated some cases and am satisfied that the tyres from certain traders definitely have reached the public, but all customers could not be supplied as the quota was not sufficient to supply all needs. I am afraid a number of traders are not supplying their needy customers. I am aware that certain conditions attach to the obtaining of bicycle tyres. Some firms insist, in the first instance, that the bicycle must have been purchased from the particular firm. It is a general practice that only unserviceable tyres will be replaced. We can have no objection to that—it is a condition which should exist. When other conditions, such as having to produce proof of the purchase of a cycle from a trader, are introduced, the Minister should take action.

I know the Minister is not responsible for the quota that has been made available to the traders: manufacturers have undertaken that task of distributing the tyres available. The rubber position in the country as a result of war conditions is very unfavourable and it is quite unlikely those conditions will improve until the emergency is over, which may be some time after the end of the war. The distribution of tyres, generally speaking, in the country is most unsatisfactory. I would be glad if the Minister could introduce some system which would give preference to workers who are compelled to use cycles to carry them to and from their work, and to other people who are depending for their livelihood on the use of bicycles.

I have had instances of complaints, where workers travelling eight or ten miles to their work every morning and returning in the evening, were unable to get tyres. Some were engaged in bog work, others on road work, others in industry and in tillage operations. These different forms of employment are of great national worth. We hear complaints that there are not enough men available to cut turf and that there is a scarcity of labour in certain areas. I have come across a few instances where workers were available for bog work but could not reach the bog as they had not the means of transport. Although road-making may not be considered of such national importance now as the production of fuel, it is necessary to maintain the roads in proper condition, in order to transport fuel from the bogs to the consumers. Also, we must maintain our existing industries as far as lies in our power, and it is absolutely essential to provide them with the raw materials. In some industries where the raw materials are native, we find that workers are prevented from doing their share in the work of providing those raw materials as they are not able to get their tyres.

It has been suggested to me that black market operations prevail and that traders are overcharging for tyres. I have heard tales of as much as 25/- and 30/- being demanded—which I know is quite illegal. I tried to investigate certain cases, but have not been able to establish any case that I could bring to the notice of the Minister. Although statements have been made, they cannot be verified. I would be satisfied if the Minister could devise some means of distributing tyres and tubes to ensure that the most needy people would be able to procure them at the fixed price. A certificate from a competent authority, such as the Gárdaí, might be asked for; the trader might be compelled to keep a register of the tyres he would receive, the persons to whom he would sell them, the work being carried out by the purchasers and the number or make of the bicycle fitted with the tyres. Then an inspection could be made at any time of the sales by various traders. At the moment, I fear there is no check on the sales, and so there is the inducement to some dishonest traders—and they are in the minority—to outstep the market. It is very important that this question should receive attention immediately, as it affects the livelihood of a large number of people.

Another matter referred to by the last speaker was the supply of tobacco and cigarettes. He lamented the fact that he was unable to obtain cigarettes in the City of Dublin. This much can be said for the traders dealing in cigarettes and tobacco: they are doing their very utmost to distribute the small amount at their command to their customers. Even though they may keep the cigarettes under the counter, they are trying to provide their own customers with a certain amount. The Minister has not made any statement for some time past on the tobacco position in the country. People are anxious to know what the prospects are. We are aware that the restricted shipping accommodation was reserved for essential commodities such as wheat. The people are satisfied that the attitude the Minister adopted in securing wheat for our people was justified but they are anxious to know if, after our food supplies have been secured, there is any possibility of securing more tobacco. Smokers who experience difficulty in obtaining adequate supplies would be glad to know what the position is. Some people, of course, might be better off if they did not smoke so much; they smoke rather more than is good for them, but the fact remains that they are anxious to secure more tobacco and they are ready to pay for it. Of course they also realise that the Minister for Finance must be looking to this commodity which provides a valuable source of revenue for him. I should be glad if the Minister would make some statement to ease the public mind on this matter.

Notwithstanding the speeches delivered on this Vote this evening criticising the work of the Department, I think we may very well congratulate the Minister on the measure of success attending his efforts. We have one section here who frequently call out for rationing of various commodities. They criticise the Minister because he will not ration every commodity, but the very moment that a rationing system is introduced for any particular commodity, we have a howl of protest from the same people. When any regulations are made by the Department they are ready to oppose these regulations. We have almost completed the third year of war, but I do not think that anybody who listened to the doleful prophecies of some Deputies when the war started, anticipated that the position to-day would be as good as it is.

If any deduction could be drawn from the speeches which they then made, we can only conclude that these Deputies are very much disillusioned to-day. Certainly we have sufficient food in the country for some time to come, and when this harvest is gathered, please goodness, we shall have sufficient to carry us on for another year. With the help of Providence we shall be able to carry on from year to year until times become normal. If one were to believe the statements that have been made criticising the Minister and his Department, one would imagine that people generally were starving and they had no clothes to wear. The truth is that the fuel situation is better that anybody anticipated it would be 12 months ago, and it is likely to improve during the present year. The tales we were told about the position that would arise in Dublin and in the country last winter were not justified. There was plenty of fuel and plenty of food.

Despite the attempt that is being made to work up a case against the rationing of clothing, I think I can say that the sudden introduction of clothes rationing prevented people with means from purchasing clothes which will now be equally available for the poor. Certainly the rationing of clothes has given the poor an opportunity of purchasing their requirements. The Minister has been criticised because he changed the value of the coupons. He has told us he has been acting on information received and that any rationing scheme he has introduced has been introduced because of information he got from certain sources. Although he has been criticised to-day because he did not contact the trade in the case of clothing, he has told us that it was because of figures available to him in regard to clothing stocks in the country that he introduced the rationing scheme. I can tell him that the public appreciate his action, and they also appreciate the fact that he is prepared to modify the regulations should it be found necessary. Opposition Deputies to whom I have listened criticise him because, in the first place, he introduced a rationing system, and in the second place, because he finds it necessary to change it, but I can tell him that the public generally appreciate the manner in which he is carrying out his duties in this regard. Having regard to the amount of work which has to be carried out by the Minister's Department, I think we can justifiably say that he has carried out his duties with credit to himself and with advantage to the people.

Mr. A. Byrne (Junior)

I would ask the Minister, in concluding, to make some reference to the prospect of procuring some proportion of the increased quantity of coal which is now about to be produced under a new Order in Great Britain. It should be possible to get an increased allocation for this country as a result of this proposed increased production because, after all, we are not asking it as a gift. We are giving them goods in return. Mention of coal calls up thoughts of transport. The Minister is probably as fully aware as anybody that there have been rumours recently that travel permits will have to be secured for long distances in the near future. If there is any danger of that happening, I would ask the Minister to take an early opportunity of so informing the House in order that people who hope to snatch a week or a fortnight's holidays will be able to make the necessary adjustment in their plans and will not be put to the trouble of booking hotels in places to which they may not be able to travel afterwards.

We were all greatly relieved a few weeks ago when the rationing of bread suddenly ceased and it was gratifying to hear the Minister's more or less optimistic statement in connection with the imports of wheat to-day. He hopes, he says, to be able to get through the next cereal year without having to resort to the rationing of bread again. If by any chance his hopes are not realised—please God they will-and he should find it necessary to introduce rationing again, then for goodness' sake let there be some system in the distribution of the bread so as to avoid the chaos that existed for a couple of months this year and to avoid the necessity of people queuing up for hours, often in heavy showers. Two different methods were operated by the shopkeepers, some of whom had lists of regular customers to whom they gave whatever bread they had, while others gave it to whoever came along, with the result that no shopkeeper knew what customer of his might be getting bread around the corner in another shop. Consequently, there was chaos and injustice.

The Minister referred to the general question of the control of prices. He just glanced over it. I have often wondered whether or not that control is working at all, because every few days there is a new Order controlling prices. Nine times out of ten, it is an amending Order allowing a further increase in the price of a certain commodity. There is no proper control of prices at all. That is obvious from the fact that Orders are frequently made allowing still greater increases. What about the price of tea? Why was it allowed to be increased? I could go through a whole list of commodities the prices of which have been allowed to increase—in some cases several times over—since they were first controlled. Everybody here knows it would take a lot of time to follow the various Orders which are issued. Consequently, I cannot say, off-hand, whether or not there is supposed to be a controlled price for soap and kindred commodities, but there is very great dissatisfaction in the city in regard to the shortage of soap and the great difficulty in getting it at a fair price. The Minister also made some effort to control the price of flakemeal, when there was some of it available. As we all know, what he did was to control the price of loose flakemeal, but he fixed no maximum for meal made up in packets, with the result that after a while there was no loose flakemeal to be got at all. Any of it that could be got was made up in packets at fancy prices. Please God we may have some again next winter, and I hope the Minister will either fix a maximum price for the meal made up in packets or else that he will not allow it to be sold in packets at all, in order to give the people some chance of getting it at a fair price.

Mr. McGovern

When the Department of Supplies was set up we did not expect that they would be able at once to provide a sufficiency of the commodities of which there had been a shortage in this country, but we did expect that there would be a fair distribution of the existing supplies. As far as my experience goes, the very opposite has happened in many cases. Rationing is the only method by which you can equitably distribute whatever supplies are in the country, and rationing should begin at the most essential commodities. Surely, the people's food is the most important? The Minister does not realise what the people have suffered through shortage of flour in some parts of the country. To make matters worse, at the same time that they could not get flour they could not get oatmeal either. Very little consideration was given to those people. There are people going four miles to the bog at the present time, and they are getting only about 1 lb. of flour per person in the household, and little or no tea. Those people had to live on potatoes when they could not get bread, but when they are going long distances to the bogs they cannot bring potatoes with them. This matter has been brought to the attention of the Department again and again, and we were promised that there would be an improvement in the position. There was a certain improvement for a period of a few weeks, but it did not last. The position is no better now than it was 12 months ago, all through a lack of system in distribution.

We offered every possible co-operation to the Minister and his Department in the border districts where this flour shortage prevails. I wrote to the Minister and others wrote to the Minister or to his Department, and gave a proper explanation of what he knew to be the cause. There is no secret about it. It was due to the smuggling of flour in 1940, in the quota period, and the traders who were selling Irish flour there had no quota. They did not sell perhaps 40 per cent. of the flour that was necessary in those districts, and their quota in the rationing period commenced at 80 per cent. of 40 per cent. of the requirements of the district. At the present time I know numbers of families—I have letters and correspondence here, and if I were to deal with them all I could go on until to-morrow night, but I will give the Minister the details if he calls for them —who are not getting 1 lb. of flour per person per week. That is happening in a mountainous district similar to West Cork. A short time ago there was a question raised here with regard to conditions in West Cork, where it was stated that the people were getting only 3½ lbs. of flour per person per week. The Minister promised that, owing to the circumstances in that district, he would increase the quota— that he would give more than 3½ lbs. The district with which I am dealing now is exactly the same. It is a mountainous district, where there is no wheat grown, because the land is not suitable for wheat growing, and there is a general shortage of oatmeal as well as of flour. For that reason, it is very important that some proper provision should be made for those people.

I do not think there is a real shortage of flour at all. The apparent shortage is due to inequitable distribution. If the flour were equitably distributed, there would be sufficient for everybody. People would have no difficulty in managing with 3½ lbs. or 4 lbs. each; if they could get that quantity, nobody would complain. The same applies with regard to oatmeal; there would be enough for everybody if it were fairly distributed. There is no real shortage at all. I hope the Minister will start some system, whether of rationing or otherwise. If he objects to rationing in general, I ask him, as I asked the Department many times before, to operate a rationing system in these districts which have a special grievance. If he does not want to have a general rationing system, could he not ration flour in such districts? I even suggested that the parish councils as well as the flour traders would cooperate, which would have the effect of relieving the Department of the necessity of operating any particular rationing scheme for these districts. They could have co-operated and could have got a quota fixed between themselves. The Minister could have got the number of the population in the districts and could have settled matters without any difficulty.

Instead, there is an enormous staff in the Department at Ballsbridge which is overworked and can do nothing effective because they are all the time dealing with complaints, instead of removing the causes of the complaints. For want of a system, everything is topsy-turvy. It is like the temple of confusion. The foundations of confusion were laid at the Tower of Babel, but the dome will be completed at Ballsbridge, unless the Minister changes his methods. I hope that, even now, after 12 months, the Minister will see that flour is rationed in these districts, because I am very tired of dealing with the same trouble day after day and getting promises from the Department which are never carried out. We are tired of these broken promises.

The Minister told us in his statement to-day that there is great difficulty in distributing tea equitably. I do not see what difficulty there should be about the distribution of tea any more than anything else. I believe it is true that the importers who have been in the habit of importing tea from traders in other countries are getting a certain percentage of what they got in a specified period. Has the Minister no power —he issues plenty of Orders from his Department—to issue an Order requiring every importer to furnish to the Department particulars of the amount imported every month or every week, together with the names of the retailers to whom the tea is distributed? He can then issue a further Order requiring these retailers to make a return of the number of customers they have and will be able to settle things very quickly. It will obviate the necessity of writing in reply to complaints and promising to settle things which are never settled. When he has the amount of tea each retailer gets per week and the number of his registered customers whom he is bound to supply, he can see what retailer has too many customers and what retailer is prepared to take more.

There is a number of people about whose cases I have been in correspondence with the Department who can get no tea because the retailers with whom they are registered have no tea for them. There are other traders selling their tea in the black market and the Department does not know what supplies they are getting. It is the business of the Minister to know what tea each individual is getting. He has the power to do so, and why does he not exercise that power? Orders are sent out by the Department, most of which are never read and very few of which are ever put into practice, but that is one Order which he should make and which he should insist on being carried out which would simplify the whole business and which would relieve the Department, traders, consumers and Deputies of endless trouble. The same could be done with regard to everything else. All that is necessary is a better system and a fair distribution. There would be no reason to complain, and if there were no reason to complain and nothing to be got from complaining, the Department would be free of all unnecessary correspondence which is heaping up and which never can be dealt with. The Minister will get every possible cooperation if he starts a sound system and shows that he is disposed to do the best he can to distribute equitably whatever supplies are available.

There are a couple of instances I can give. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a man whose two children were registered in respect of tea as members of a friend's household. These children came home, but this man could not get an allowance of tea for them because the friend of the family was getting it. The retailer refused to change the registration and, with a view to getting a direction from the Department, the man wrote to the Department but got no reply. I wrote a couple of weeks ago and I got a reply to the effect that they were looking into it. What looking into that matter was necessary? I had asked them to give this man a direction as to what course he should take to get his children's registration changed and there ought to be no difficulty about it. It is not a matter which requires to be left over for three months until they forget all about it. The Department should be able to tell him at this time of day what simple means he should adopt and have the whole thing dealt with there and then.

I know a case of a woman who has a restaurant and a small shop. She gets a supply of tea in respect of the shop. She is the only restaurant keeper in the village, and a number of people call in there for tea or for refreshment, but she has no tea to give them unless she deprives her customers of their allowance. The firm from which she gets her tea—I think it is Messrs. Lyons—told her that they were prepared to supply her with tea if the Department gave the necessary authority. I wrote to the Department about that case and got the same reply —they were looking into it. Why not deal with such a case on the spot? Surely the Department has had time enough since rationing started to have looked into these little points which were bound to crop up and should know what is to be done about them?

The position with regard to oil and petrol is the worst of all. There is a co-operative dairy society in the Swanlinbar district where I live. I understand that there was to be an allowance of paraffin for all dairy societies. I am open to correction on that point, but I was so informed by the secretary of that society. Because he failed to notice at the time the regulations were sent out that certain forms had to be complied with, and because he did not comply with these forms last year, he got no paraffin last winter. He had to manage to find the necessary supply otherwise. He applied this year and wrote twice to the Department, but got no reply. I wrote, and got no reply to the first letter. I wrote again, and got a reply to the effect that they were looking into the matter. That is as far as I got after four months and after four letters had been written. Is that the system that the Minister has set up in that Department, or will he now set up some sort of a proper system? Is that dairy society entitled to get paraffin or is it not, and if not, why not say what are the regulations that must be complied with? This man is prepared to fill up whatever form may be necessary and to comply with whatever regulations there may be, to enable him to secure a supply this year. If he did not get it last year, surely he is entitled to get a supply this winter. He should be given an opportunity of complying with the regulations, and he should at least be able to get the same supply as other dairy societies. At any rate, the matter should not be left on the long finger and forgotten about, and I think there has been something very wrong in dealing with that matter.

Another thing is that I am very dissatisfied with the way in which petrol complaints have been dealt with. I have been out once at Ballsbridge, and I found the officials most courteous and competent, generally. However, I cannot say so much for the gentleman who deals with petrol for the County Cavan. I cannot say he has been very fair, as far as my judgement goes, and I should very much like to know whether the Minister would stand over what he believes is right. I am referring to a particular case, about which I think the Minister knows something. It is the case of a man who got into trouble in connection with his lorry in the Northern Counties. He broke the law, of course, and he paid a very heavy penalty, but then, for no offence at all, or for an alleged trifle, this man has been punished here, and the penalty he has paid here is almost equal to what he paid in the North. No offence has been proved against him at all, he has not even been charged, and yet he has been paying a severe penalty for several months now because he is deprived of petrol for his lorry. He bought a new lorry and paid the tax for it, but it is left lying there and he cannot use it. I never knew of anything like it. The whole offence, if it was an offence, was that he was expecting to get his lorry returned, from day to day, and he had reason to expect it because he had received a letter from the Northern Department to make an offer for the lorry before they decided finally. He did make an offer, a fair offer, but eventually they did not accept his offer and the lorry was confiscated.

Now, during that time, while he was in suspense and had been led to hope that his lorry would be returned, he did not notify the Department but continued to draw petrol and used it for a lorry that was lent to him. In other words, double double work was being done with the double amount of petrol because, of course, the man who lent the lorry was using it for his own work and using his own supply of petrol, and this unfortunate man was using the petrol to which he was entitled in respect of his own lorry, which he was expecting, from day to day, to get from the Northern authority. Because of that, the Minister has punished him and he has been kept for several months now without any petrol. At any rate, I went out to Ballsbridge and mentioned the matter to the gentleman in charge there. I asked him did he think it was right that that man should be penalised in that way, and that after suffering a very heavy penalty already, he should now be compelled to pay a penalty before he was even tried on an alleged offence, because the man himself did not believe that he had committed any offence at all, and in any case it was not proved. The answer of the gentleman at Ballsbridge was: "Yes"—that he had committed an offence in Northern Ireland and it had been proved. I asked: "Are you justified in punishing him again?""Yes," he replied, "he cannot be punished half-enough." I should like to ask the Minister if he stands over that. I do not think that the Minister, or any man who has a regard for justice, could stand over that. Yet that was the attitude of that gentleman with regard to it, and I think that when a man is treated in that way by such a gentleman, the Minister should step in and take into consideration what the man concerned has suffered. His work has been held up and he has been idle. He gets a lorry for hire now and again, when he can, but he has been left without petrol. The lorry concerned cost him, I think, about £600. His business has been held up, and this penalty has been imposed upon him because of an alleged offence. I myself do not regard it as an offence, and he does not believe it was an offence. He has already paid very heavily in connection with what happened in the North, and I think the Minister should look into the matter.

Mr. McMenamin

Did you succeed in getting him the petrol?

Mr. McGovern

No. That is what I am calling the Minister's attention to. There is another matter I should like to refer to. I do not know whether it comes under the Minister for Supplies or not, but I think it should, since it concerns supplies at any rate. I understand that bacon is becoming short now in the city, and I suppose in other places it will be short also. Who is responsible for that?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister for Agriculture, as the Deputy already suggested.

Mr. McGovern

Has the Minister for Supplies nothing to do with supplies? I thought that the matter of supplies of bacon would be under his Department, and at any rate I think he should have some say in the matter and advise the Minister for Agriculture. If the Minister for Agriculture is not having sufficent regard to the interests of the consumers, I think it should be the business of the Minister for Supplies to advise him. There are certain cases where different Departments more or less overlap, and I think this is a case where there is overlapping. Is there not a shortage of bacon in the city at the present time? I even heard certain talk about rationing. That is unnecessary, in my opinion. Whatever Minister is responsible for reducing the price of bacon is responsible for the shortage of bacon now.

General Mulcahy

It has increased the price of bacon in the city.

Mr. McGovern

The price of bacon pigs was reduced.

General Mulcahy

The rise in prices in the city has not settled the question of supplies in the city.

An Ceann Comhairle

There is a motion, No. 21, on the Order Paper dealing with that matter and fixing responsibility on the Minister for Agriculture.

Mr. McGovern

At any rate, I think that neither of the Ministers can withdraw themselves from blame with regard to the scarcity of bacon, because by fixing a flat price up to two cwts., all the pigs that are being smuggled out and all the pigs that are killed under weight could have been fed up, and there would have been a better supply of better bacon if they had been fed up to 14 stones or 16 stones. There is no harm in discussing that.

An Ceann Comhairle

It is a question not of harm, but of Order. That aspect concerns the Minister for Agriculture.

Mr. McGovern

At any rate, I think the Minister for Supplies might advise the Minister for Agriculture, and I think he needs advice.

General Mulcahy

If the bacon is going to be rationed who is going to supply the microscopes?

Mr. McGovern

There has been a lot of talk about the black market and as to who started it. I think it was the Minister for Supplies. I remember him coming to the House and telling the people to lay in stores, that things were going to get scarce. That was the time for him to introduce his rationing scheme when we had supplies of the different commodities. If he had done that he would know, later on, where the stores were hid. If he had authorised certain people who were carrying on trade in a big way to lay in stores he could have got them to furnish him with an account of their stocks. Had he done that he would have known when the scarcity came where, for instance, the big supplies of tea were. Some people got in tons of tea. They were able to sell 70 chests of it. That is what started the black market, the fact that certain people who were never in trade were able to buy in big stores. They speculated in tea and other things. The Minister made a serious mistake in not taking steps to prevent that at the beginning. Of course, he knows that now and cannot recall it. Another thing that helped to start the black market was that the Government did not fix a sufficient price for some commodities. The price fixed was too low, and that offered a temptation to certain people to start a black market. The tips always went out from the Minister or the Department about the things that were likely to get in short supply. The clever people, the big merchants, laid in supplies and could charge their own price in the black market. The Minister's large staff is spending too much time in dealing with complaints or in trying to deal with them or not dealing with them. What I suggest to him is that he should call in a few businessmen to advise him on putting into operation a systematic method for dealing with all commodities. That would relieve the staff from dealing with complaints because it would remove the cause of all complaints, and when freed from that work the Department might get going on sounder lines than at present.

Mr. Brodrick

I have a kind of sympathy for the Minister for Supplies——

Mr. Lemass

Thanks.

Mr. Brodrick

——in this way that he is the cock-shot of every other Minister, and of practically every Department of State. He has got to deal with supplies for the Minister for Agriculture and other Ministers. What I think is wrong is that there is not sufficient co-operation between the different Departments of State and the Minister. Take the Department of Agriculture as an example. We cannot dispose of the very heavy crop of potatoes that we had in the West of Ireland last year. The Minister for Agriculture tells us that it is the business of private enterprise to do that, and that he will not interfere. The potatoes are lying there and we cannot dispose of them. When we go to the Department of Supplies for petrol for the lorries to take them to Galway, Westport, Castlebar and Connemara where we could sell them we find that we cannot get it. That indicates that there is a lack of co-operation between the Departments and too much overlapping. The same happens in the case of the Department of Defence which may want petrol for the L.D.F. or some other organisation. The Department of Supplies says that it cannot get the petrol. That is another instance of want of co-operation. We have another example in the number of inspectors that we find going through the country. We see big groups of them from the Department of Supplies travelling in the trains to the West. One gets to know them after he has seen them once. They arrive, say, at Mullingar. One goes into a shop for two ounces of pepper on which there may be an overcharge of a halfpenny. Two or three more of them may go to another town. One goes into a shop and buys a pot of jam. There may be another overcharge on that. A few of them, when they go to the town of Galway, run around to the different shops. What I find is that they do not deal with heavy articles at all. They go buying things from the small traders who are being worried to death. I know several of them and they are being worried to death with all the Emergency Orders and Price Control Orders that are being issued. They do not know where they are.

Those inspectors are rushing about every other day, and it may be on the same day or the next day that you have another batch of inspectors from the Department of Agriculture in the same town making inquiries about eggs and butter. I believe that if you had co-operation between the different Departments things would be done much better. It is not a lot that the people expect, but they would like to know where they stand. The Government are getting plenty of co-operation from the Opposition and from the people generally. There is no use in saying that in this emergency the people wish to stir up trouble. On the contrary, they are anxious to help as far as possible, but the Government are making it practically impossible for them to do so.

With regard to trade plates or licences for lorries for the removal of turf, I have been informed—I am open to correction on this—that private lorries will not be allowed a supply of petrol to do this work if the Great Southern Railway lorries are available. I would not like to see that happen. The ordinary private lorry in the country is able to take, say, four and a half tons of turf. At present a train wagon is carrying only abut 5 tons. For some time it was only able to take three tons. Those private lorry owners are making their livelihood, or trying to do so, out of this business. What I find is that they get a trade plate or a licence to serve from Galway over three or four counties.

A number of these people if they take turf or potatoes from one county to another are prepared to bring back another load of stuff. That is where the great waste of petrol occurs even with the Great Southern Railway lorries. They bring a load to one place and come back empty. The private lorry owners are very anxious to do what I am suggesting because it means money for them and there should be some arrangement of that kind made instead of having them coming back empty. If the Minister when issuing licences inquired what they were prepared to do in connection with the double journey he would certainly save a good deal of petrol and people would be left in business. Another matter I should like to refer to is the turf which is used in the railway engines. I think that also comes under the Minister for Supplies although the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance has a good deal to do with it.

An Ceann Comhairle

All aspects of peat production were discussed for three days on the Parliamentary Secretary's Vote.

Mr. Brodrick

If a train starts from Galway at 11 o'clock in the morning and does not arrive in Dublin until 4.15 the following morning, there is someone at fault. The engine drivers say they are not at fault. If they were supplied with turf suitable for the engines they would be able to do much better. For some months past the trains have been held up in all kinds of places when coming to and going from Dublin. If you travel on one of these trains for a few months you could nearly drive the engine yourself, you get to know so much about it. The engine drivers say that the turf is the cause of the delays. The Minister should arrange with the railway company so that only the best turf will be used for that purpose. There are so few trains running at present they all have to carry heavy loads. Very often people are standing in the corridors from Westland Row to Athlone. The delays are really due to the quality of the fuel. They are now using briquettes, but I have been told that the briquettes are not suitable— that there is not sufficient pitch in them. If sufficient pitch were put in the briquettes they would be able to get on much better. I should like the Minister to take that matter into consideration. So far as I am concerned I am used to leaving Galway now at 11 or 12 o'clock in the morning and arriving in Dublin at 7.30 in the evening, but something should be done to convenience the ordinary travelling public.

The question of bacon supplies has also been raised. The Minister for Supplies may not be altogether responsible for the bacon shortage, but if supplies cannot be got there is no one to blame but the Minister for Supplies. The fact is that there is very little bacon to be had. In several shops in the West, which is a big pig-producing country, there is no bacon to be had at present. The Minister should look into the matter and see what can be done. There is also another matter which I should like to bring to the Minister's attention. In a few months time the harvest season will be round again and I hope we will not have the same muddle as we had last year in connection with oil for the threshing mills. We should try to make preparation in time. Last year some threshing mill owners were prosecuted for using oil for purposes other than threshing. The Minister should make some arrangement by which he can find out through the Civic Guards or otherwise the amount of work the threshing mills do with the oil that they get. The majority of them certainly did their work very well last year and used all the oil for threshing purposes, but there were a few about whom we were doubtful. Late in the season last year the Minister asked for a return from the mill owners of the names of their customers and the amount to be threshed. It is almost impossible to give these particulars as the mill owners do not always work for the same people every year. Provision should be made early this year so that the threshing mills will be able to deal with the increased amount of tillage. As to the milling of wheat, we have quite a number of small mills throughout the country.

An Ceann Comhairle

That would come under the Industry and Commerce Vote.

Mr. Brodrick

It has reference to the supply of wheat.

An Ceann Comhairle

All right. Milling as such would come under Vote 55. The Deputy may proceed if it is in connection with supplies, but the reference may be only incidental.

Mr. Brodrick

I hope that licences will be granted to these small mills for the milling of wheat. They have been very useful and if licences are not granted great inconvenience will be caused to the public. Last year some mill owners were fined for over milling. During the emergency I think we must drop a lot of that if we want to get flour distributed evenly throughout the country. It has been asserted that wheat has been fed freely to pigs and live stock generally. That has not been done to my knowledge in the West. Whether it has happened in other parts of the country I do not know. In conclusion, I suggest to the Minister that there should be greater co-operation between the different Departments of State.

Mr. Bartley

With reference to Deputy Brodrick's remarks about the supply of potatoes in County Galway, there is an erroneous impression that potatoes are in short supply in Connemara. Recently we were all circularised asking us to use our influence so that the Government might arrange for sending potatoes to Connemara. From my experience during the past few months I think there would not be very much respect for a scheme of that kind. Representations were made to get an extra supply of flour and the Department has increased the supply in certain districts. There were one or two districts in which the potato supply was short, but I think the shortage was made good by commercial enterprise. What I wish to direct the Minister's attention to is the shortage of fats, especially in the congested districts. It has been represented to me that something might be done to make a supply of beef dripping available there. If the supplies of beef dripping could be increased for next winter, I believe that our potatoes would have a much greater food value and that would consequently ease the pressure on the flour supply. I trust the Minister will be able to give us some information as to whether it will be possible to increase the supplies of beef dripping.

Mr. Brennan

If there is anything the Minister ought to be anxious about, in order that the law would be observed and that the law would have that respect which it ought to have, it is that what he would say in the House would carry weight. If there is anything that can be calculated to bring his Department and, indeed, the Government into disrepute, if there is anything that can be calculated to bring this House into disrepute, it is the making of statements here which the whole country knows are not correct. There is no point whatever in the Minister stating that there is price control and that the machinery for the enforcement of price control is effective. There is not a person from Cork to Derry who does not know that that is pure humbug, that there is no price control, and that prices have simply run riot all over the country. In every walk of life, in every business that I know of, there is no regard for price control, and the Minister knows that as well as I do. The Minister may say to me, as he has said to other people, "Where is the proof of that? Why do not the people who are charged prices outside controlled prices come forward and give evidence?"

Deputy Brodrick referred to the lack of co-operation between Government Departments. I have been informed on very good authority that Civic Guards in a certain town in the West of Ireland made reports to their chief with reference to over-charging. The chief reported to the Department of Justice for the purpose of carrying out prosecutions and he was informed that that was not the business of himself or his subordinates, that there were inspectors for that purpose. The fact of the matter is that all over the country there is over-charging. If that is the way the Government are pretending to tackle this question, if that is the way they are pretending to control prices, then I suggest they are going to arrive at a stage when neither they nor the institutions of the State will receive any respect.

I think it would be better for the Minister to admit that his Department is not able to control prices, or else he should devise some system whereby prices can be controlled. I submit that at the moment they are not being controlled. The traders in various parts of the country have put forward the case that their sales have dropped by 30, 40 and 50 per cent., and they declare that no matter what the Minister or the Government may say, they are going to charge what they like for whatever stock they have on hands. The Government ought either to tackle the whole question seriously, or else not interfere with it at all. There is no use in trying to blindfold the people, pretending that there is a control on prices when there is not.

Deputy Kelly said that we on this side of the House are criticising the Minister from two angles, one for rationing, and the other for altering the rationing conditions. That shows you how easily people can be misled and how misinterpretations may be put upon the actions of people. We have not found fault with the Minister for rationing. That is the only solution in the case of short supplies. We have found fault with him for rationing articles which we believe need not be rationed and which, it is evident from the Minister's latest alterations, should not have been rationed. Neither have we found fault with him for altering his decision as to the number of coupons necessary in connection with the rationing of clothes. We have found fault with him because it is evident the matter did not get that consideration it ought to have got before rationing was put into operation. If it did, there would be no need to alter it. Apparently Deputy Corry does not agree with that. If Deputy Corry or any other Deputy makes a decision to-day, after mature consideration, he will not have to alter it to-morrow; it will not be necessary for him to do so. That is the attitude we have taken up.

I am sure the Minister was surprised and, I hope, impressed when there was quoted for him here to-night out of a 1939 newspaper the report of a drapers' and allied trades meeting which was held in Dublin asking for the advice and assistance of the Department with regard to a shortage of supply. They did not get that advice or assistance; the Minister turned them down. That was three years ago. The trades at that time knew there were certain lines which would be in short supply, but they got no assistance. They put forward certain points for solution, but the Department offered them no advice or assistance. They asked for the right to import certain cloths, but that was not given them. That indicates very bad business on the part of the Department, and it shows that there was not at that time a proper appreciation of the situation.

With regard to tea supplies, the Minister informed us to-night that there was great difficulty in exercising control over tea supplies. That is probably quite right, and I must say that I feel very sympathetic towards the Minister because of his difficulties with regard to this and other commodities that are in short supply. It is a very difficult matter to handle and in so far as people can be helpful they should be helpful. But, if we find that certain things are happening with regard to supplies which we cannot stand over, if we find that the machinery is not working, there is no use in pretending that it is working or that the supply position is being met.

I do not know whether the Minister can get under his control the wholesale supply of tea to this country or whether it can be pooled in some national pool and properly rationed or not, but at the moment the situation is bad. As the Minister said in his opening speech here to-night, the tea supply, apparently, is controlled by wholesalers who are largely outside this country, or to some extent outside this country, and these people have arranged for a percentage to be supplied to the retailers. It was evident from the beginning that that scheme would not work equitably or satisfactorily. I do not know what steps the Minister has taken with a view to getting it under his control and forming a national pool, if necessary. The scheme operates down the country something like this: X has a shop in a town, an old established business; some years ago he had, possibly, 300 customers. The travelling shop then came along and two or three travelling shops went out to that district and sold tea and other commodities day in and day out. Many people who bought from the travelling shop had accounts in the shop which was owned by X and occasionally they would come in there and do certain business there. Possibly, they bought tea there, but for the 1 lb. they bought there they probably bought 2 lbs. from the travelling shop. That has happened all over the country.

Then there was a petrol shortage and the travelling shop ceased to operate. All the ration cards were brought to X who owned the shop but he only received tea on the basis of his 1939 purchases when he was in competition with the travelling shops and the travelling shops that had ceased to travel received tea on the basis of their 1939 purchases. The result was that the old established shop that had all the ration cards did not receive tea for one-third of the ration cards, while the travelling shop had tea to sell on the black market. That has happened and it is still happening. Everybody knows that. That is why various shops in the country have 150 ration cards or 300 ration cards but have tea only for 30 or 40 ration cards. The Minister and other people may ask why did they take the cards. What are they going to do if they do not? These people were their old customers. They had some obligation towards them. The travelling shop was not there any longer. The travelling shop went on the black market with the tea. I do not know whether the Minister has made any attempt to remedy that state of affairs but it is shouting for a remedy. There is no use in pretending that we have solved problems unless we have solved them, because, as I said in my opening remarks, by doing so we only bring odium on ourselves.

There is no price control and there is no enforcement of price control. Whatever enforcement there could be would be through the Civic Guards. If my information is correct, they are told to keep their hands off it. I do not think there is any other machinery whereby you can deal with it. If an inspector of a Department goes to any local town he is not five minutes there when the fact is known. He will not catch anybody or, if he does catch somebody, it will probably be in the matter of 1 lb. of breadsoda but, as Deputy Brodrick says, the big offenders are never caught.

The Minister referred in his opening remarks to newsprint. He said that it was possible a plea might be made for cargo space for newsprint. I will not make a plea for cargo space for newsprint, but I will make a plea for cargo space for artificial manures or the ingredients of artificial manures. They are absolutely essential and if space can be provided for anything, outside food itself, artificial manures come next.

Mr. Lemass

It is out of the question. The quantity of artificial manure that would make the slightest difference would be beyond our carrying capacity. The normal consumption of artificial manures was nearly 200,000 tons a year.

Mr. Brennan

The Minister said that a plea might be made for cargo space for newsprint.

Mr. Lemass

Five hundred tons or 1,000 tons of newsprint would be a big difference. That quantity of artificial manures would not make the slightest difference.

Mr. Brennan

Ten thousand tons of artificial manures might make a great difference in our wheat return. The time may come when the Minister may not be able to get in wheat and then he ought to concentrate, if possible, on the means of growing wheat.

Mr. Lemass

I would like to see how you would tackle the job of dividing 10,000 tons of artificial manures amongst 300,000 farmers.

Mr. Brennan

Possibly, the Minister may be in a better position to do it later on, but if cargo space is going to be provided for anything outside food, it ought to be provided for something of that nature, which will be helpful in producing food. The Minister referred to the fact that there was a disappointing return in the amount of wheat supplied for milling in this country. He said there were 60,000 tons unaccounted for. In other words, there were 60,000 tons which were not turned into human food, I take it?

Mr. Lemass

Or retained for seed.

Mr. Brennan

But retaining for seed is absolutely essential.

Mr. Lemass

Certainly, but I am allowing for that.

Mr. Brennan

It is absolutely essential and there ought not to be any question about it. There is no reason whatever for mentioning the fact that wheat is being retained for seed.

Mr. Lemass

Nevertheless, you must take it into account in your calculations.

Mr. Brennan

Agreed, but the Minister was not referring to it in that particular way.

Mr. Lemass

Oh, yes, I was.

Mr. Brennan

When I told the Minister that it was due to an exaggerated estimate he said, "No." The allegation has been made time and again— and it was made by the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Agriculture— that wheat was fed to animals in this country. I do not believe that was done to any extent worth talking about, and I was amazed when the Minister for Agriculture gave, as evidence that it was done, that wheat was found in the stomachs of pigs killed in the various factories in this country.

A farmer who would feed whole wheat to pigs should be in a mental home. He should not be feeding pigs at all, because anybody who understands these animals knows they are not ruminants. As they are unable to digest whole wheat it would not be any good to them. Deputy Hughes informed me that a very interesting but amusing experiment was carried out some years ago by a great supporter of the present Government, who fed pigs on whole barley, but from the point of view of fattening them it was a complete failure. Anybody who wanted to feed pigs on wheat or barley would not feed it to them in its pure state. Unless it was fed whole neither the Minister nor the inspector could be able to tell whether it was wheat or barley. I think the evidence that farmers were feeding wheat to pigs was very halting. I consider it a slander to suggest that farmers fed wheat intended for human beings to animals. I do not believe that. Then there was a shortage of oatmeal. On various occasions it was stated in this House that the price paid for oats did not warrant its purchase for oatmeal. As a matter of fact if there was a higher price there would be more oatmeal. I felt all along that what was happening was that although we had quite a large amount of oats the shortage of other feeding-stuffs for cows and pigs demanded some food and, to my knowledge, no matter what price was paid under certain conditions oats would not be got for milling purposes if farmers had to feed their stock. There were instances which showed that there was a black market for oats, and that while millers were prohibited from paying more than the fixed price of 18/8, up to 30/- was freely paid in the open market for oats sent from the west to the south of Ireland to feed horses.

The Minister made an interesting statement in his opening remarks. He referred to the fact that certain people advised him to go over to Britain and to talk to people there with a view to getting better terms as an exchange basis for goods. The Minister went so far as to say—and I agree with him— that because we have very little butter and no bacon we have nothing to bargain with. I agree with the Minister there. That ought to set the Minister and his colleagues thinking. I endeavoured to advocate that butter and bacon should be produced even if we had to subsidise production so that we would not lose the market.

Mr. Lemass

Does the Deputy not remember that when we went over to negotiate with the British they showed no anxiety to take either butter or bacon?

Mr. Brennan

I will not agree with that.

Mr. Lemass

I tell the Deputy that that is so. They were not prepared to pay an economic price.

Mr. Brennan

As the Minister stated, we had nothing to bargain with. We could not bargain because we had nothing to give. That ought to be a lesson to Ministers seeing that two of his colleagues went over and discarded both dairy products and pig products. It should be a lesson to the Government that if we are empty-handed at the end of this war and have nothing to bargain with we will be in a very poor position. I think the Minister was quite sound in making that statement.

Mr. Belton

We have not enough for our own people.

Mr. Brennan

We have not.

Mr. Belton

Then what have we to bargain with?

Mr. Brennan

I agree. The Minister has admitted that we have nothing to bargain with. The Government cannot bargain because they went out deliberately to kill pig feeding. The Minister for Agriculture did not deny that. Apparently the Department of Supplies was quite definite about it. That Department is responsible for securing supplies for our own people and it should have seen to it that a situation did not arise in which we would be short of a commodity that we can produce. I do not at all agree that reasonable steps were taken in regard to the conservation of human food. The allegation was that food which would be used by human beings was being fed to pigs, and that the only way to deal with that situation was to pull down the price of pigs, or to bring it so low that pigs to provide food required by human beings would not be fed. I do not think that, to any extent, food fit for human beings was fed to pigs. I sympathise with what Deputy Bartley said about shortages of fats and lard. I feel that a pig in the finished state, and that is, fit for the knife, provides concentrated human food and, to get the animal to that state, not 5 per cent. of any edible food that a human being would eat would be consumed. There was no need to worry about that position at all. Apparently once the Government get going they do not know where to stop. The price of pigs was pulled down and pig rearing fell. Now we have not sufficient supplies for our own use. The Minister used that as an excuse for saying that the British did not show any anxiety to get our produce. Of course they did not, when we have not got it.

Mr. Lemass

We had it at that time.

Mr. Brennan

If we had it I wonder what happened to the bacon. We have not enough for ourselves now. There is no use in blaming the British for not being anxious to take our produce seeing that supplies here are short. The bread situation appeared to me and to people through the country to be inexplicable. I do not think it was creditable that the Department had to amend its Order. I had occasion to walk through queues of people in Dublin who wanted bread. It was a very deplorable situation. On coming to this House subsequently I heard the Minister stoutly denying that there was any necessity for such queues. I saw poor women waiting outside shops when it was raining. I wonder why they waited if it was not necessary to do so. There is no use in that kind of pretence. So that we may have co-operation and assistance it is better to own up honestly to the situation as it is and not what we would like it to be. There is no use in pretending we are controlling prices. We are not. Deputy Kelly referred to the difficulty of securing bicycle tyres. I move to report progress.

Progress reported; the Committee to sit again.

The Dáil adjourned at 9.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, 25th June.