I will accept anything the Chair says. I wish to make the point that I definitely feel glad, as an upholder of order in this House, that Deputy James Dillon, speaking on matters with which I thoroughly disagree, maintained his position. I do not know what limitations of space I could impose on the difference between myself and, say, Deputy O'Loghlen, who suggested that Deputy Dillon should be put in jail because of his temerity to think differently from Deputy O'Loghlen on certain matters, and to express his view here. I feel that the House gave, in one point this evening, a very definite example of freedom in debate. It was quite clear and easy to recognise, as Deputy Dillon spoke, that his views did not command the assent and support of anybody at all in the House; nevertheless, the House was able, up to a certain point, to tolerate what he was saying. It is a good thing that that was the situation, and it was a shocking thing that there should be any breakaway from that situation in later stages of the debate.
I feel that I cannot emphasise too strongly my most complete disagreement with what the Deputy said, in so far as it tended to sway policy on an important matter. As a private individual, I have given myself the luxury of reading, studying and trying to investigate the attitude of the main belligerents in the war, and as a private citizen I may have views which might coincide with those which Deputy Dillon has in certain aspects of the war; but, as a representative of a huddled, densely-populated part of this almost defenceless city, I would have to pause before I began to consider that, as a Deputy, I might announce here in public some of the views which, as a private citizen. I might be bold enough to hold. The Deputy has said to-night, as before that in this matter he would probably agree that he is in a minority of one. If he is, it should be stated here in the House, in contradistinction to Deputy O'Loghlen's view, that he is not in any minority of one on an issue positively put before the House in respect of neutrality. Deputy O'Loghlen is of the opinion that, on the 3rd September, 1939, this House voted on such a resolution. I do not think that any such resolution was passed. I do not remember it. I have asked my colleagues about it, but none of them remembers that the matter ever was decided by resolution. However, that is a merely formal point. If Deputy O'Loghlen had avoided this matter of a resolution having been passed by an almost unanimous vote, he would have been on secure and possibly on good grounds in saying that the policy commands almost universal support in the House and in the country at the moment.
I would like to turn away from that matter of our relation to this great struggle, and fix our eyes on the country itself, to find out whether the Taoiseach, as Head of the Government, is satisfied, either with the Ministers whom he has under his control, in relation to the work associated with their particular Departments, or whether he can pretend even to be satisfied with himself, as the controller of that particular Governmental team. It is one of the difficulties of Government, particularly in a time of emergency, that events crowd so thickly in that people at the seat of Government have not much time to go outside their offices, to meet people and to hear the casual conversation of the folk they are governing. I do not know what contacts the Ministers maintain or the Taoiseach himself maintains at the moment with the outside world. One knows that they are living a very definitely cloistered life, and that, in the main, their advice comes from members of the Civil Service, who have been living an equally cloistered life since the emergency started, and a somewhat cloistered life for 20 years before that.
That is borne in upon Deputies like myself, who come to this House and see the complacency with which members of the Government regard the situation, and who contrast that with the criticism that any Deputy can hear outside. People have various feelings over this matter. There is a sense of anger that certain things are allowed to occur, there is a definite sense of irritation at the way the Government behaves, in face of a certain situation, which they themselves have allowed to develop. There is a feeling among the people that not alone is there not so much ability with regard to many things, but that there is not even energy now. There does not seem to be anybody left capable of grappling with the situation or able to think ahead of what is likely to develop, even from the present position, or even a short time ahead. Nobody seems to have the initiative to plot or to plan, even a few months ahead of the situation in which we find ourselves. There is definitely a feeling in the country that fatigue and lethargy have overcome the members of the Government. Even if the policy were not exactly right, there could be energy in the promotion of whatever policy they had. We have seen examples in this House very often in the last two or three months of the welter of inconsistencies in the past in regard to policy, when members of the Government began to speak. Above all, there is a feeling in the country of not merely disillusionment but something approaching despair.
I read a comment recently by a member of one of the belligerent nations—a person who had migrated from his own country because he did not believe in the institutions set up there at a particular time. He said that, looking back on those institutions now, when he sees how heroically that country is now fighting for those institutions, he has to confess that he made mistakes when he thought that he was leaving behind a people cowed into submission and without leadership enough to face their fears and seek a way out of the situation. It seemed then that there was no ability, no scheme of planning, and that the people would not be behind those rulers when the strain came. He now writes a very definite recantation, and says he has to confess that there must be, and must have been all along, a very high degree of preparedness and leadership; and that there was in the people, arising from these two things, a very high degree of discipline and the deepest possible loyalty. I wonder how our people would fare if we applied that test. Would we, by examination of the leadership of this country find a reason there for the condition the people are in?
A matter that has been commented upon over and over again is that we are losing our population faster and faster as the months go by. Statements were made from Government Benches, with which one must have some sort of sympathetic view, to the effect that it is hard to retain people in this country and prevent them from going to another country, where they can earn their livelihood, if an opportunity for work cannot be provided for them here, and yet, at the back of all that, there is also this to be thought of. Our people have been loyal, generally, to our own country and to whatever institutions we have, but suppose that there is here the same loyalty to our country and to whatever institutions: we have that exists in other countries that are now fighting for their own countries and their own institutions: would our young people be so ready to leave us simply because of the bait that is offered to them of a certain amount of moneys to be earned, moneys which they cannot get the chance of spending and the greater part of which has to be sent back to this country? I think there is no great loyalty to the particular institutions that this country has, because there is no great belief in the institutions that we have, and there is certainly no belief that the people who are in control of these institutions are showing a high degree of preparedness or leadership of the kind that would induce both discipline in the people and a deep sense of loyalty.
There are two Departments of Government upon which public attention has been focussed more and more. The people's gaze is fixed definitely upon the two production Departments in the country, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Industry and Commerce. When they would look at the Department of Industry and Commerce they would also have to view the situation with regard to supplies, and who could ask the people of this country to stay here if they had only what the Ministers in charge of those two Departments have to offer as a bait to keep these young people of ours in the country? The Minister for Supplies speaks here of a worsening situation. Apparently, he believes his duty is done when he paints as gloomy a picture as he can. It certainly never occurs to him that, from time to time, he ought to have given the public some indication of what he did to prevent the situation becoming as bad as it is and how his efforts were frustrated. As far as industry is concerned, there is a definite recognition that there is no possibility of development, and all the talk about self-sufficiency is only used now and again in an attempt to bolster up a political system or a politically-biassed system of economics, which broke down the moment the war made its first impact on us.
The Minister for Agriculture, in recent speeches, one made in Cork and the other made here in the outskirts of Dublin, has told us that the dairying industry is done and finished. We have got very nearly the same comment with regard to bacon in recent weeks, and, no doubt, instructed by the Minister for Agriculture, the Minister for Local Government announced to the people that after the war was over he could not see any possibility that the live-stock trade in this country would continue. That is what we are faced with, according to these two people who are in control of the production and development situation here in this country. One of them tells us that two of our mainstays, as far as agriculture is concerned, are done and finished that they are gone. The other attempts to boast now and again, and I think that if there was any good psychology about the Government or the Taoiseach himself in announcing what had been done in connection with post war development, they would not have allowed a statement to be made. such as the one that was made by the Minister for Supplies. Speaking here, on the 7th July, that Minister said:
"Deputy Mulcahy also spoke about post-war planning. The Dáil can assume that the matter of planning for the post-war situation has received very careful and continuous consideration from the Government. It is difficult to visualise the international situation in which this country will find itself when the war is over, and, consequently, in matters relating to the development of trade and economic conditions generally, it is not easy to embark on any programme of planning for that period with any confidence that the work done now will be of value when the time comes."
But all that starts with the preamble that the matter of planning for the post-war situation had received very careful and continuous consideration from the Government. Immediately, then, he discussed the question of organisation and said, with regard to that, that of course the Government had to depend on the report of the Vocational Commission which, he said, "must be taken into account in that relationship and is about to appear". The moment those words were read in the Press the next day, members of the Vocational Commission jumped into print to say that the report would probably not be ready for a year. Of course, when the Minister for Supplies talks about careful consideration being given to post-war planning, he reminds people of his own statement with regard to how his work was interrupted, pre-war, in order to get ready plans against an emergency. I have referred to it often before, and it is made very relevant at the moment when the Minister, on 7th July, boasted in almost the same way about post-war development. In September of 1938 he announced:
"Both myself and the officials of our Departments have been compelled during the last few weeks to neglect our ordinary activities, and, instead of exploring the new industrial possibilities and the necessary legislation, we have been hastily devising plans to meet the possible emergency of a European war, including the rationing of petrol, the provision of necessary supplies, and the control of distribution. It is an unfortunate thing that so much energy, which should be available for the promotion of the prosperity of this country, has to be devoted now to work of that kind. I sincerely hope that the fruit of the work we have been doing for the past month or two will never see the light of day and that these plans will lie in their pigeon holes in the Department and accumulate the dust with the years."
That was in September, 1938, a year before the war broke out, and the Minister had been hastily devising plans against the emergency; the whole programme was there mapped out—rationing, the provision of necessary supplies, and the control of distribution. The plans were there and pigeon-holed; they were to accumulate dust with the years. When the war broke out, on the 27th September, a question was asked of the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, who was Deputy MacEntee, and he referred to that time. He said:—
"With regard to the general work of the trade and industries branch and, in particular, in relation to the maintenance and extension of normal employment in industry, I would say that a survey of our industrial activities undertaken so far back as the summer of 1938, by the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, disclosed that such unemployment as would be occasioned here by a major war in Europe would be mainly due to interruption in the overseas supply of raw and partly-finished materials, fuel, machinery, and mechanical replacements and stores."
He went on to say:—
"Since that time, the Department of Industry and Commerce—in consultation with the representatives of our principal industries—has endeavoured by every means in its power to ensure that the largest practicable stocks of material and machinery would be built up here so as to be available in such a situation as we are now facing."
The comment on that, first of all, is that the great apostle of self-sufficiency, having surveyed the situation here in the summer of 1938, had come to the conclusion that the only repercussion of a major war in Europe on this country would be in the interruption of the following things: raw and partly-finished materials, fuel, machinery, and mechanical replacements and stores. That was not much of a tribute to the self-sufficiency policy as carried out up to date.
When the interruption of the war was going to mean a dislocation of our supplies in all these things, the Minister had foreseen that that was going to be met and made arrangements with the representatives of the principal industries to build up the largest possible stocks of machinery and so on. That is what we are told, but it is the memory of that sort of nonsense which has been revived by the Minister's latest statement that he is giving post-war planning the most careful and continuous consideration. As I have expressed it here before, that Department is a joke amongst the community. On various occasions here we have asked the Minister to do this much for the people: that, of all the commodities which this country finds itself in need of, he would select one and tell us how his Department aided the community by getting in stocks of it, that he would tell us what the imports of it used to be year by year, and show us that there was extensive importing of it in the year that he had at his disposal from September, 1938, until the outbreak of war or, indeed, until April, 1940. We have asked him from time to time to do that with regard to one or a number of commodities, and, having shown us that there were great importations of those things on which we had to depend from outside, to relate them to his own endeavours and show how he helped firms, whether it was by bank credit, Government loan, Government guarantee or mere suggestion, to get in those commodities. We have asked him if he could even tell us in respect of one commodity how, by mere suggestion, he had got stocks of it built up in the country. If he were able to do that he would remove from himself some of the public ridicule and derision that is day by day being poured upon him and his whole Department.
Deputy Hannigan touched upon a nervous point here this evening. It is one of the kind of things that stupefies the community. People have from time to time offered their ideas as to what this country has. To start off with, you have the gentleman who says that it is richly endowed by nature, and has got everything, down to the individual who says that it has certain supplies of certain commodities, and that they should be used. But if there is one thing that the people have been assured the country has it is all the turf that we need. Yet, in spite of that, this city went through a bad time last winter and is promised a worse time ahead according to the Parliamentary Secretary. When you inquire why this overpowering sufficiency of turf cannot be made available here in the city, the chief reason given is the lack of transport. Of course, transport was also thought out. The present Minister for Local Government, speaking when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce, said that "despite the difficulty of the problem it had been thought out, and it was a relatively easy matter to get turf brought into Dublin." The Minister for Education said that "it was not necessary to wait until some newspapers told the Government to prepare plans; they had already been prepared"—that was apropos of getting turf into the city. Deputy Hannigan said that the turf situation at the moment is confounded by the fact that the railways cannot haul turf here, and the railways cannot do that because they have not enough fuel.
I remember that the Minister for Industry and Commerce set up a special sub-section of his Department about the summer of 1938 to consider the possible emergence of a European war. At that time a tribunal was sitting to consider the matter of transport. It was considered to be so urgent that the ordinary procedure of taking evidence before the commission was abandoned. The commission's labours were rushed. The report of that tribunal was released to the public before the war broke out—about the last week of August, 1939. The Government had the report in their hands from the early summer of 1939. There were members of the Civil Service on the commission, and they no doubt made reports from time to time as to the type of evidence that was coming before them. One of the surprising things that emerged from the report when it was published was the statement that the Great Southern Railways Company, because of financial stringency, had found it necessary to abandon their old habit of carrying a three weeks' supply of coal, and were driven to satisfy themselves with having one week's supply of coal in advance. That report, as I have said, was in the hands of the Government, and was released to the public before the war broke out.
The position, therefore, was that the Government were fully apprised of the situation in regard to the main railway system of the country, a situation in which, owing to financial stringency, it could only carry one week's supply of coal in advance. That is a single thing that the Minister for Supplies might attack. What did he do about that situation? Did he think it necessary to approach the directors of the railway to see whether they could finance further supplies of coal? It was easy to get coal at that time and for months afterwards. In fact, up to about the early spring of the following year coal was on offer in abundance. The Minister has never told the public what he did in the emergency which that report revealed. Of course, later on, when the question of the transport of turf into the city was under discussion, the present Minister for Local Government was able to say that it was an easy enough matter, that the whole thing had been thought out and that plans had been arranged. We know now that there were no plans. We know that the main railway system of the country was allowed to go lumbering along with only one week's supply of coal, with no suggestion from the Government as to how the company might be financed to get coal, no suggestion to the banks as to whether the situation could be eased for the railways company, and no suggestion even from the Government to buy coal for the railway. We do not even know if the Government had any touch with the Great Southern Railways Company on that matter. What we do know is that the situation was not eased, and that we ran into the height of the war without any extra coal being procured. We now find ourselves in this position, that while we have an amazing sufficiency of turf in the country it cannot be transported to Dublin for relief of the poor people in this city.
What we suggest is that if the Government want to get any loyalty from the people they must do something to induce the belief that there is activity and ability in control. If the Government have a case to make on supplies why cannot they adopt the suggestion so often put forward here: that the Minister would take a single commodity, or a range of commodities, and let us see what was done during the period when supplies were available? Instead of doing that, the Government adopt the device of handing out confidential reports to Deputies dealing with imports and exports, making them so confidential that they cannot be discussed in the Dáil. The Minister for Supplies, in desperation one day, did say that if the import returns for eight months in the year 1939 were examined they would show the work done by his Department in the way of building up as large stocks as was practicable of certain essentials. Without revealing the contents of these reports, it is possible to say that if you take six or seven of the commodities the Minister mentioned on that occasion, an examination of the eight months' report will not bear out his statement that any great stocks of these materials were built up. They do show that about a month's or six weeks' supplies were brought in in the eight months, and these over a range of six commodities.
There is the situation in which the Government find themselves. They ask for co-operation. It is difficult to find an occasion on which a Minister steps on a platform that he does not ask for the co-operation of people in defence matters. The Government agree that they have got the fullest co-operation from Parties in this House and, so far as we have been able to affect people who adhere to us politically, they have got the fullest support of those people through the country on defence. They ask for co-operation in every other way. Do they not think that there is something due from them, that they must induce that co-operation, that they must show they are worthy of having that co-operation granted? The only way they can show that is by showing that they did their work effectively or, if they have not done it, that they will make such a change as will secure that some new mind, some new energy, some new initiative will be brought to bear on the problems which face us.
In connection with that co-operation, again the public are puzzled. Possibly without knowing it, possibly because each man is simply living at the head of his own Department, is not in communion with his own colleagues, or certainly with the people outside, things apparent to the public may be escaping the vision of the Government. But there is one thing which will not escape anyone and that is, while the Government ask for co-operation, they refuse co-operation themselves. One has only to think of the different Ministers who have appeared here discussing Estimates this Session to realise that on every occasion an Estimate was discussed it has been found possible to bring forward something in connection with the Department that has been mooted by people, some way in which people have been touched by the Department, something that has caused immediate contact to be looked for between the Department and some section of the community, and on each occasion one finds that the Government attitude to criticism is that it is insulting. The Government know well—they have only to look back over the last two or three months—that they refused co-operation to the clothing trade when the question of rationing came on, and they refused it for a reason which was definitely insulting to the people in that business. They said they could not consult them beforehand because there would be a leakage of information. But they themselves adopted a plan which ensured that there would be a leakage, as there was. They failed to get any support from the people who could give them help and the leakage was there all the time.
When we were discussing the Vote for the Department of Education, the question was raised in this House of a very ably written pamphlet, the result of certain questions sent out to certain teachers with regard to the teaching of various subjects through the medium of Irish. It was a well-done piece of work. A great deal of labour had gone to the preparation of it, a great deal of thought had gone to the setting out of the questions, and a variety of teachers throughout the country had responded. There was no compulsion on them to do that, but they thought they were doing some good; that they were getting together a body of information which possibly would lead to a change of policy, or might further the policy which was being developed at the moment. The attitude of the Minister for Education in regard to that was that he was definitely insulted by what these teachers had done. He reprimanded them for their activity. Of course, it was easy in the end, when there was no other argument to be used against what these teachers had done, to accuse them of being unnational, to say that all the answers they had given were simply founded upon the detestation of the language and an attempt to reverse a policy that the State had adopted 20 years ago, and had followed ever since.
One could go through every Department of Government and say that the Government are at loggerheads with that section of the community with which that Department ought to be in most intimate contact. Yet the Minister for Local Government, at war with pretty nearly every local authority which exists, could take to the boards on some platform about recruiting, and ask for the co-operation of the people. The Minister for Supplies, who refuses to co-operate with anybody on any of the things he does, also asks for help. The Minister for Defence finally, in connection with this matter about which there is general agreement that there was co-operation, laments that the young people of the country are not doing their duty, that they are not coming into the Defence Forces as rapidly as one would expect.
I suggest that the background to all that is that you will not get the people to help, at some hardship to themselves, nor will you get the same enthusiasm about people going into the Defence Forces to fight for the country unless they are satisfied that there is something worth fighting for and that whatever little resources we have are being handled with the best possible ability and with the greatest possible application and energy. I suggest that what is lacking in this community at present is that there is no belief in the Government, and if the Government want to induce that belief in themselves and want to rehabilitate themselves to any degree in the eyes of the people, they will have to give some explanation of their conduct in relation to the different Departments.
There are two matters about which the people are anxious. One is the question of how far whatever resources we have will be handled to enable us to get through the war period more or less unscathed, certainly not bearing any more in the way of suffering than ought to be imposed upon us. Outside that, people's minds are turning to the post-war period and they are asking themselves: is it possible that the people who have so mishandled the recent past and the present are capable of providing the ability and the effort required, even to sketch out in a skeleton way any policy for the post-war period for this country? Whatever belief they might have had that the Government, by the incidence of events, would be roused to think of a post-war policy, whatever little hope they might have had of that will be dissipated by the fact that the person allowed to announce in this House the Government attitude post-war is the man who was capable of boasting in 1938, when facing the emergency of a European war, and even in the early stages of the war, about the great stocks of supplies built up in the country.
We are neutral in this struggle; we are isolated from the events of the war. But we cannot isolate ourselves from the ideas that the war is creating. There are new policies being thought out all over the world. Certain moorings to which people were tied have been definitely destroyed. They will never have these attachments again. Wealth has been destroyed to such an extent that the post-war economics of certain of the belligerents must undergo remarkable change. A mere reading of the daily newspapers will show that all over the world these things are being spoken of and thought of. Even though the post-war organisation is not perfected and the end of the war is not yet and it is not possible to fashion a new policy to fit into new circumstances, minds are alert to what is required, and people are thinking and trying to plan out, even in a fumbling way, for what is ahead. Their thoughts range very widely; housing, education, systems of work, the interlocking of one national economy with another, the question of how exchange control is to be got rid of or maintained, the question of whether in the post-war world it is to be individual activity and enterprise or whether it is to be the State intervening with some sort of public utility corporation. All these problems are being discussed, but not here. So far, we have had no hint that any thought is being given to any of these things beyond what was stated on the 7th July, which was of a kind to cause a chill of disappointment to everybody: "The Dáil can assume that the matter of planning for the post-war situation is receiving very careful and continuous consideration from the Government." Relating that to the activities of the individual who spoke it, and testing him by what he previously boasted he was doing in 1938, and facing 1939, testing him by the accuracy of that, there could be nothing but disappointment about the first Government contribution to this idea of post-war planning, and that he was the person put up to speak about it.
We have been discussing, and we will discuss almost immediately, the question of credit in connection with this State. There may be many views, conservative and forward, with regard to credit, but I doubt if there is any parliamentary assembly in the world in which so much in the way of conservatism in connection with public credit has been spoken as in this House within the last couple of months. Every country has taken at least a modern view of the banking system. There are divergencies here and there as to what amount of public control is to be associated with such an institution as a central bank, and there are divergencies here and there as to how the control should be exercised. There is no country which set out to shape such an institution in the year 1942, and laid the plan of it along such conservative lines as we have laid it. Why the Government moved in this matter along such lines, I do not know. But they have shown their hand; they have presented this as something they did make some shaping of. It cannot be anything but a disappointment to find that views that are regarded as out-dated by at least 25 years are still regarded by the Government as good and as proper to project into the immediate future in respect of credit conditions in this country.
I suggest to the Government that they cannot hope to survive, nor can the institutions of the State survive, unless the people can be made believe in the necessity of government as such. I suggest that there must be leadership, and around the individual leader there must be people who will recognise the problems that the future is bringing, and who will show some talent in their approach to these problems, and some way of handling them. Anything we have had from the Government so far has shown them as helpless in facing up to problems, unable to attend to anything, their main effort being to excuse themselves for the omissions of the past. The Government cannot get along without the co-operation of the community and that co-operation, no matter how much they plead for it, will not be given unless they show they deserve it. Their activities so far do not show they deserve it.
