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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 4 Mar 1943

Vol. 89 No. 8

Private Deputies' Business. - Increase of Unemployment Benefits and Allowances—Motion (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:—
That, in view of the increased cost of living and the inadequacy of the benefits payable at present to unemployed persons, Dáil Eireann is of opinion that the Government should at once introduce proposals for increasing substantially the rates of benefit under (a) the Unemployment Insurance Acts, and (b) the Unemployment Assistance Acts.—Deputies Davin, Hickey and Everett.

There were a few matters raised in the course of the discussion on this motion yesterday with which I did not deal last night and concerning which I am anxious to enlighten Deputy Davin and his colleagues, because they appear to require enlightenment. I am glad Deputy Davin approves of this process of education to which he is being subjected. A willing pupil is always much easier to teach than an unwilling one like Deputy Hannigan. The motion asks that because of the increase in the cost of living we should increase the unemployment assistance rates and provide for an increase in unemployment insurance benefits. So far as the unemployment assistance rates are concerned, I pointed out last evening that we have increased them on more than one occasion since the war started; that in fact, if one takes the average family of a man with a wife and five children, the percentage increase in the rates of assistance payable to these people now is greater than the percentage increase in the cost-of-living index figure. I pointed out that the cost-of-living index figure is no longer a reliable guide to the cost of living of the average family, because it is based upon assumptions which are no longer correct. Even if it were taken as a reliable guide, the percentage increase shown by that index figure is less than the percentage increase in the value of unemployment assistance given to a family of the description I have mentioned residing in any town in the country.

What is the percentage increase?

As I explained to the Deputy, the percentage increase varies from town to town, because one must make allowance for the actual cost of foodstuffs supplied upon the food vouchers. The percentage increase in Dublin is 62, but it rises in other towns to 100 and 106.

Do you mean in the benefits given?

The cash given to unemployment assistance applicants, plus the value of the food vouchers. In some towns it is as much as 100 per cent. in the case of a family consisting of a man with a wife and five children. As the increased allowances were given mainly in the form of additional benefits in respect of children, naturally the percentage increase is higher in the case of larger families than smaller families. That is a fact. Unemployment insurance was also mentioned. Deputy Davin read out a list of figures. I do not know where he got them.

I got them from your returns.

The Deputy did not get them from my returns. If he got them from Mr. Luke Duffy, the sooner he gives them the air the better, because he has got his lines crossed. The figures read out for the income and expenditure of the Unemployment Insurance Fund may have been the number of heifers and calves in County Laoighis, or the number of votes the Labour Party hope to get in the next election, but they have nothing to do with the income and expenditure of the Unemployment Insurance Fund. I do not know if the Deputy is interested in these statistics. I can give him all the statistics he wants. The Department of Industry and Commerce never run short of statistics.

You say they are wrong.

Deputy Davin's statistics are wrong.

You said I cooked them.

That is one explanation, but overnight I thought it was a defective information service in the organisation of the Labour Party.

Look up what was published by the Department.

They were not published by the Department, and I take no responsibility for the figures quoted by Deputy Davin. He asked a question some time ago requesting information of that kind, and I gave him the information he asked for. That certainly was not the information he used yesterday.

I quoted the page from which the figures were taken.

I do not know what the Deputy was quoting. They looked very much like "Notes for Speakers," provided by Mr. Luke Duffy.

You do not read your own stuff.

The contributions from employers and workers to the Unemployment Insurance Fund has shown practically no change since 1937.

The Minister is reading his stuff.

Keep the apprentice quiet. For the year 1937-38 the contributions totalled £975,688 and for 1941-42, £934,888. The State grant remained unchanged, and the only item showing any substantial difference was that in respect of interest on the assets of the fund. The payments from the Unemployment Insurance Fund showed, of course, a substantial increase in the year 1941-42, not because the number of persons drawing unmployment insurance benefit had increased proportionately, but because the rates of benefit had been enlarged. The Appropriation-in-Aid of administration showed a reduction. Deputy Davin asked me why there had been such an increase in the expenditure upon administration. The actual fact is that in 1937-8 the Appropriation-in-Aid of administration was £188,000, but in 1941-2 it was £180,000. There was a contribution from the Unemployment Insurance Fund to the cost of unemployment assistance of £300,000. Deputy Davin said that that came as a shock to him. I was astonished to hear him say that, because it is provided for in the Unemployment Assistance Act passed in 1934, when he was a member of the Dáil. Although he spoke a lot during the discussions upon that Act, he may not have read that Act or understood what was contained in it. That was contained in it, but apparently it slipped his memory, so that when he came across it in Mr. Luke Duffy's statistics it gave him a shock. If the Deputy sticks to Mr. Luke Duffy's statistics he will get many a shock. There is the situation. That fund has been accumulating a surplus for some time past, but because of the increase in the benefits which have been already brought into operation that surplus has disappeared. During the past two years for which complete statistics are available there was an excess of payments over revenue, and it is anticipated that the accumulated surplus will have disappeared this year and that the fund will possibly close on the 31st of this months with a small deficit.

Deputy Davin, of course, wanted to give increased unemployment benefit without increasing the contributions. That is typical of the Labour Party: give everybody more at nobody's expense. How it is to be done they will not tell us. The Unemployment Insurance Fund is composed of contributions from workers, their employers and the State, and the benefits paid out of the fund relate to the number of contributions credited to each worker. We can increase substantially the benefits paid to insured persons if there is a corresponding increase in the contributions. I think the contributions are at present high. I am not at all sure that the workers of the country would regard it as beneficial to them that there should be an increase in the rates of benefit involving a substantial increase in the rates of contributions.

Deputies, perhaps, have a wrong idea about our unemployment problem. In respect of 65 per cent. of the total number of persons in this country who work for wages there is no unemployment at all. Sixty-five out of every 100 workers never experience unemployment. The balance experience periods of unemployment of varying duration, but I want Deputies to remember that the 65 per cent. who experience no unemployment are the people who contribute the revenue of the Unemployment Insurance Fund which is expended for the benefit of those who experience unemployment. In present circumstances it is necessary to bear in mind the interests of those workers as well as the interests of those who are from time to time in the position of having to draw upon the Unemployment Insurance Fund. We can increase the amount they will get only by decreasing the amount the others get and, in the last resource, it is a matter of balancing interests in order to ensure that the welfare of those who are in employment will be taken into account as well as the welfare of those who are temporarily out of it.

One of the matters raised in the discussion yesterday was the Construction Corps, and statements were made by Labour Deputies and by Deputy Byrne that it is wrong for the Government to deprive young men who declined to join the Construction Corps of their unemployment assistance. I was told that was conscription. Some Deputies called it conscription; others referred to it as a mild form of conscription. I am anxious to know what the attitude of the Labour Party is in this matter. The obligation which they say rests upon the Government is to provide unemployed people with work or with maintenance. Surely, in the case of a single man without dependents, whose home circumstance involve no barrier to his leaving home, who is not in employment, not apprenticed to a trade, not a skilled worker, with no immediate prospect of employment, the offer of enrolment in the Construction Corps, involving as it does the opportunity of useful, healthy work, good clothing, good food and reasonable remuneration, must properly be regarded as an offer of work. Or, is the attitude of the Labour Party this: that we must give to each worker not merely an offer of work, but an offer of the kind of work which he is willing to accept? If they are going to adopt that policy, if they ever get into the position of forming a Labour Government, they are in for a lot of trouble. I advise them to reconsider it, because, immediately, they will be in conflict with the Trade Unions.

I think one of the weaknesses of the position that has arisen in relation to the Construction Corps is that although we have been able to give those who joined it healthy occupation, good food, good clothing, and the opportunity of——

Getting married?

——adapting themselves to hard work, we cannot give them training; we cannot give them an opportunity of acquiring skill which will increase their value in the labour market when they leave the corps. There is no use in doing so. If we train a member of the Construction Corps to be a bricklayer, a baker, or a butcher, it will be of no value to him, because, although any member of the Construction Corps can hope to become President of this State or a Cardinal, or even a member of the Labour Party, he cannot become either a butcher, a bricklayer, or a baker, because there are rigid trade union rules which confine entry into these trades to persons whose fathers or grandfathers were bricklayers, butchers or bakers.

If we are to tackle this problem of unemployment properly it will involve training people in occupations of one kind or another. That cannot be done without the co-operation of the trade union movement, without some evidence of a willingness amongst those who direct the activities of trade unions to modify their rigid rules in order to ensure that those who get the training will subsequently have an opportunity of using it for the purpose of getting employment.

In fairness, is it not a fact that the trade unions and the Labour Party have co-operated with the Government in getting volunteers for the Construction Corps?

I am not disputing that at all. I am dealing now with the problem of unemployment.

Conscription is another matter.

I disagree entirely with the suggestion made here that it is wrong for the Government to withhold unemployment assistance from a young man who refuses to join the Construction Corps. Once the State has given to such a person the opportunity of employment in the Construction Corps, I think it has released itself from any obligation to provide maintenance. I get a number of letters from parents who tell me that they dislike the idea of their sons leaving parental control for the purpose of going into the corps, or from parents who think their sons are not tough enough to mix with their fellows in the corps, and who urge that, therefore, they should be allowed to refuse the opportunity of enrolment and to continue to draw unemployment assistance. I think that while a parent is undoubtedly entitled to exercise the choice of not allowing his son to enrol in the Construction Corps, it is not reasonable to expect that the State will, nevertheless, continue to provide maintenance for that young man when he has decided upon that refusal. He has the option of refusing, but refusal does involve releasing the State from any further obligation, for the time being at least, to provide maintenance for the individual.

The statement was made that any person who refused to join the Construction Corps was refused unemployment assistance. That is wrong. The position is that a person between 17 and 25—these are the present ages for enrolment in the Construction Corps——

18 and 25.

——who declines the offer of enrolment in that body is, nevertheless, entitled to draw unemployment assistance if he is a skilled worker or apprenticed to a trade, if he has a good industrial record and has not been long unemployed or can show that he has a reasonable prospect of obtaining employment in the near future.

Deputy Byrne, of course, mentioned the case of the young man who was the sole companion of his aged grandmother and said how cruel it was to require that young man to leave the aged grandmother alone in order that he might join the Construction Corps. That never happened. Any applicant for unemployment assistance, within these age limits, who declines to join the Construction Corps but who can show that his family circumstances are such as to make it unreasonable to expect him to leave home, or whose absence from home would cause undue hardship to members of his family who have to rely upon him for care and attention, is entitled to receive and is getting unemployment assistance.

Who decides these cases?

The unemployment assistance officer in the first instance, subject to appeal to the Court of Referees. Out of some 8,000 people who declined the invitation to join the Construction Corps since that body was set up, 2,274 were, nevertheless, permitted to continue to draw unemployment assistance on one or other of the grounds I have mentioned. These figures and the other facts I have mentioned do, I think, answer the case that the Government have acted harshly or unreasonably in dealing with this class of unemployed persons.

I think I can say that the Government have never acted harshly or unreasonably in dealing with any section of the community that has to apply, in times of temporary need, for assistance. The expansion of the social services which the Government have initiated since they came into office, their record since the outbreak of the emergency alone, is proof of the sympathy with which they judge the problems of those persons and their endeavour to secure that the resources of the community will be made available to assist them in their dire need. We are not taking on obligations to give out money for nothing, or without due examination of the need for it. It is a very easy matter for Deputies opposite to propose that we give out more and more money to anybody who cares to apply for it and take no responsibility for raising the money. That would be an irresponsible approach to our national problems.

I think the keynote of the whole discussion, so far as it concerned the Labour Party, was fixed by Deputy Hannigan when he warned Deputies on this side to vote for the motion or face political extinction. I do not wonder that Deputy Hannigan is perturbed over the possibility of political extinction, and I do not blame him in the least for thinking that other people apply the same test as he does to considerations of public policy. I know he cannot understand that there are people who would decide questions of public policy on their merits and not from the point of view of the effect on their political interests. So far as we are concerned, we are quite capable of looking after our own political interests. We have done fairly well up to the present. Deputy Davin, no doubt, hopes that we have lost some support. I admit that we have lost Deputy Hannigan, but whether that is a gain to the Labour Party, time alone will tell.

Another statement that was repeated here yesterday is that the Government's only solution for unemployment is emigration. We had the usual rhetorical embellishments about exporting human beings and trading in the lifeblood of the country. What is the attitude of the Labour Party to emigration? Have they ever expressed it? I do not believe they have. They have never attempted to formulate any proposals or give any idea of their policy in relation to that particular matter.

The Government have imposed barriers on the emigration of people from this country. Nobody can emigrate who is in employment or for whom there is employment immediately available. No one is allowed to emigrate whose services might be required in agriculture or in turf production. These are the classes who are denied emigration. Others are allowed to emigrate, provided they are not subject to the age ban or have not left their previous employment voluntarily or lost it through their own fault. Do Deputies opposite suggest that those for whom there is no work, those who are not in employment and whose services are not likely to be required for agriculture or for turf production, should be prevented from emigrating?

The Minister would do well to preserve a discreet silence about Irish emigrants, having regard to the fact that at one time he promised to comb the cities and towns of America and other countries in order to bring back the emigrants, there would be so much work to be done in this country.

That is the type of propaganda that is going to be poured out from Labour platforms all over the country in substitution for a useful, constructive policy. This interruption has been made merely to dodge my question. Do the Labour Party approve of the Government allowing the emigration of persons of the type I have mentioned—persons not in work, for whom there is no work, and who are not likely to be required for work in this country in the immediate future? Do they or do they not want these people to be allowed to emigrate?

What has the Minister done to bring back the emigrants from America, the people for whom there was to be so much work?

We will get a good deal of rhetoric from the Labour Benches, and probably Deputy Norton will thump his chest, as he usually does, and talk about the export of human beings. But the Labour Party will not attempt to formulate a policy or bring forward a constructive idea. For the 20 years of their existence as a Party here, Labour Deputies never thought of a constructive idea. I am asking them one question.

I answered that question last night when I was moving the motion.

I am asking the question now and Deputy Davin will have an opportunity of answering it later. We decided we could not justly stop these people from emigrating. We have power to stop them, but we had to consider what was best in the interests of the people, what was the just thing to do. We desire to stop emigration and to be able, if possible, to provide work for those who now have to emigrate; but, under the present circumstances, the only type of work we can provide, having regard to the limitations upon the supplies of material and implements and fuel is, in the main, unskilled work. Does Deputy Davin regard it as adequate compensation for a man who was employed as a motor-driver, a metal worker or a printer, that he should be offered a job on some construction scheme? Does he want that man, because of the Government's ability or intention to offer him a job on a construction scheme, to be prevented from emigrating to a job where he can retain his skill while at the same time providing for his family on the standard to which they have been accustomed? The Deputy will not answer that question, because he knows that the Government's policy is the only intelligent policy in the circumstances; but he does not want to admit that.

These skilled workers, who are temporarily disemployed because of certain conditions arising out of the emergency, have been allowed to emigrate by the Government. We have endeavoured to protect their interests in emigrating. We have made arrangements with the authorities in Great Britain and elsewhere that will ensure that their interests will be safeguarded while they are away, and we hope it will be possible for them to come back here speedily when the resumption of the inflow of raw materials and fuel results in the revival of activities in their normal occupations.

Is it not a fact that the majority of the men who are residing in the rural areas are unskilled?

That is true.

And yet there is no work for them?

I do not say there is no work for them. In fact, there is a likelihood in many parts of the country that there will be a scarcity of workers to meet the requirements of agriculture this season and, because of that, we had to make special provision in order to compensate the workers who wanted to emigrate, but whom we would not allow to emigrate, during the period in which they had to wait until agriculture needed their services.

Why ask these men to remain here? Why not allow them their liberty?

There is another point of view. I think the Government have a right to ensure that the number of workers required to handle the harvest, and to produce the country's requirements of fuel, are kept within the country. Once we decided that we ought to restrict their right of movement there devolved on us an obligation to make provision for them during periods of unemployment over and above that made for ordinary workers. That provision is not merely the payment of additional cash allowances. It includes also a preference for employment upon work financed by the Government and exemption from the usual Employment Period Orders.

Is it a fact that men who have no hope of employment here are prevented from going to England for the simple reason that they live in congested districts?

I do not think that is quite true.

We are up against that question every day. I do not want to make any capital out of it.

It is true to say that a substantial proportion of those who emigrate do so because they want to go. In fact, one of the functions of the Department of Industry and Commerce at the moment is to check up on statements made by applicants, that they lost their employment through no fault of their own or because their employment was terminated, and it is not infrequently the case that workers who were in employment left with the connivance of their previous employers, who signed the necessary documents on their behalf, in order to get the opportunity of employment elsewhere, having been influenced by stories that they heard of the higher wages prevailing and other conditions operating temporarily outside the country.

If we are going to deal with the problem of emigration, or with the associated problem of unemployment, by providing work, then we must make an effort to ensure that skilled workers, accustomed to remuneration at the rate of skilled workers, are provided with the opportunity of getting some corresponding type of employment. It is no solution for them to be offered employment on relief schemes. There you are up against the same trade union rules to which I referred already, because the biggest barrier to the employment of skilled workers, who are surplus to one employment, is the conservatism of trade unions which do not like to see any expansion in that direction.

How many workers are covered by the restrictions to which you have referred? A few thousand.

I admit that, in present circumstances, there are very few occupations affected but it happened in cases of which the Deputy knows. In fact, there was a period during which the whole building industry was held up because of a scarcity of skilled workers in certain classes. These classes were not by any means the most important numerically, but they were sufficiently organised to hold up the whole building industry and to upset its rate of progress, and did so rather than permit an extension of their numbers. I appreciate fully—and I am sure the Deputy does—the motive that inspired that conservatism, but we must have a more generous approach to the problem of unemployment on behalf of the trade unions if we are to tackle it in the way that Deputies have always advocated—by providing workers who are surplus to the occupations in which they are trained with employment in other occupations.

How many are registered on the special register that entitles them to the 5/- extra?

The number that applied for registration is substantially larger than the number accepted. Only those were accepted for registration who were regarded as fully qualified to perform the work for which persons on the special register are to be retained. I think about 3,500 have been accepted for the special register. A very much larger number applied for the special register, but their applications were not accepted, or are still under consideration.

Who is going to be the judge of the qualifications?

The employment officers.

Some civil servants in Dublin?

Somebody must do it. I did not know that the Deputy was so prejudiced against civil servants.

How would they judge?

If they saw a man coming in with one arm or with one leg, they would know that he would be no use for turf cutting.

I accept that. They would be able to see that.

The motion asks for increased rates of unemployment and insurance payments because of the increased cost of living. The answer is that we have already given the increase. The answer to the second part is that we will do it again if circumstances should further require it, and if the resources of the Government permit it.

"If the resources of the Government permit it." That is a wide qualification.

We listened for the greater part of this evening, and for some time yesterday, to the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and most of his statement was devoted to a lecture to the Labour Party. It was quite amusing to see Mr. Lemass adopting the rôle of lecturer to the Labour Party on questions of taxation and commerce.

The Deputy must understand that, in referring to the Minister, he must refer to him in that capacity.

I beg pardon. I do not know anybody better qualified to lecture on that subject than the Minister for Industry and Commerce. He talks of the Labour Party's irresponsibility in asking for everything without caring where any of the money to secure it comes from. I remember when the Minister was in Opposition, and I do not know anybody who asked for more than he did then. I do not know anybody who paid less regard to where money was to come from than he did. I remember him and his colleagues, when on the Front Opposition Benches, telling us on different occasions that they could solve all the problems that were confronting the Government of that day and, at the same time, reduce taxation. Now, we see whether these promises have been put into operation or not.

I notice that, in recent months, the Minister told us that, so far as this election is concerned, he is not going to make any promises. If he is to be judged on the promises he made at the last election, I do not think he will get very far.

When referring to taxation, he said that the Labour Party has always voted against taxation. That is not true. The Minister knows it is not true. The Labour Party has refused to vote for the taxation of tobacco and tea, when, in the same Budget, there was contained a proposal which permitted greater profits to be given to industry. I defy the Minister for Industry and Commerce to indicate any occasion on which the Labour Party refused to vote for taxation in order to provide social services for the people. We are confronted with a situation now when the people on whose behalf we speak find that they cannot live in anything like the same degree of comfort—or should I say discomfort—as they did pre-war. The Minister stated that the increases given since the beginning of the emergency would be as much as 100 per cent. I differ seriously with him in that respect. He was very careful not to give the actual figures.

I did. I gave figures yesterday.

The Minister was careful to keep away from the actual figures. He asked us to face realities. We are in touch with people who have to face realities in matters of this kind, people who are trying to get the wherewithal to live on the meagre allowances paid as unemployment assistance by the Government. The Minister stated that the statistics published in his own Journal were all wrong and not to be relied upon. When Deputy Davin quoted from it, he said that the cost of living had increased 58 per cent. That was in November last. I am perfectly satisfied that the cost of living has increased since then. I venture to suggest that the necessaries of life, which have to be bought from day to day by the poor, have increased considerably more than 58 per cent; that foodstuffs —bacon, of which the poor get very little, and butter, of which they also get very little—have increased in price by well over 100 per cent. Deputy Davin quoted the price of rabbits, and as far as I remember the price has increased by over 300 per cent.

The position at the moment is that up to last August—I have not made any calculations since then—the £ had depreciated to 11/1, so that a person would now require 31/7 to buy the amount of goods that a £ would have purchased in 1939. I suggest to the Minister that any increase that has been given by his Department is not at all commensurate with the state of affairs there revealed. The Minister told us that vouchers had been given to the people, but only, of course, to those in the urban areas. I will have something to say about the rural areas later. Would the Minister be surprised to hear that in some urban areas people have been unable to get the particular goods for which they have vouchers, and that in many cases because of the scarcity of butter—this has happened in my constituency—they had to get other goods and pay extra for them because the goods for which the vouchers were intended were not available? Deputy Davin reminds me that has been general. As regards fuel, in a great many places there is no firewood available so that people have had to take turf and pay more for it because the firewood is not there. These may appear small matters to the Minister. I am inclined to think that he spoke rather flippantly on this matter, but it is a serious one for the people concerned.

The Minister asked us what was our policy on emigration; were we against emigration? Strictly on principle we are, but, at the same time, we do not see anything but emigration facing the people, firstly, because of the small amounts of unemployment assistance and of unemployment benefits that are being paid; and secondly, because of the fact that the Minister, under Order 83, has prevented people from getting decent wages. He may say what he likes about examinations by his departmental inspectors to prevent people from going away, but I think it can be proved that people have had to leave their employment because they could not live on the wages that he has stipulated they should get. In consequence they have had to go to the other side. The reason why we speak so much about emigration is this: because of the statements made by the Minister and his Party prior to the election of 1932, when they told us very definitely that they would have to bring the people back. Fianna Fáil members, of course, are now beginning to say that is a very hackneyed phrase, and should not be mentioned, but, nevertheless, it was mentioned by two members of the Fianna Fáil Party who are prominent Ministers now. In the light of what was said at that particular time, one could never visualise a Fianna Fáil Ministry providing facilities for an English officer in order to facilitate emigration from this country. In our wildest imagination we never thought that Fianna Fáil would come to that.

We never thought that France would be the way she is either.

Let France look after herself. The men who were going to be placed in charge of the affairs in this country in 1932 were supermen compared with Frenchmen, Germans or any others. The rural workers have been mentioned. I suggest to the Minister that it is just as necessary to provide food and fuel vouchers for them as it is for urban workers, and especially for rural workers living on the outskirts of towns who have always worked in a town and who know nothing about agricultural work. I think the time has arrived when that matter ought to be examined with a view to seeing that those people get vouchers as well as the urban workers.

They have increased cash benefits instead. They got them last November.

They got a sort of sop to prevent them going to England and nothing else.

The fact is that they have got them.

I want to say something about the means test. The other day I came across one of the meanest means test cases that I ever heard of. It was that of a young man in a rural area. There was nothing coming into the house but a widow's pension of 5/- a week which his mother was in receipt of. He was signing on at the employment exchange for a period of six weeks, and at the end of it was told that he was to get 2/- per week. The widow's pension that his mother was in receipt of was taken into consideration when a calculation was being made as to the means coming into that house.

I do not believe it happened.

I can tell the Minister that it did happen. I wrote to the Department some weeks ago about it, but have not got an answer yet.

He must balance the Budget.

When dealing with the figures submitted by Deputy Davin which the Minister suggested were in turn supplied by Mr. Duffy—may I say that any figures Mr. Duffy has ever supplied us with were always reliable, no matter what the Minister thinks— the Minister told us something about the income of the pool. Of course, he made it as low as possible. Deputies will remember that whenever we talk about unemployment here the Minister for Industry and Commerce always seeks to show that the income is very high. He tells us about the number of stamps purchased during the previous year and all the rest of it, but when it suits his book he has other figures to prove something else.

On the contrary, I said that the figures have not declined, and are very high.

I do not know what purpose or object the Minister had to serve by bringing these figures in at all except it was to counteract the figures submitted by Deputy Davin, which he disputed. On this whole matter the position, in so far as the people are concerned, has depreciated. When the Unemployment Assistance Act was first brought in there must have been some standard in the minds of the Ministry before they introduced it, some basis on which they set the value of unemployment assistance that they would give. I suggest that if an examination were made on the same basis now, and if one were to take into consideration the cost of the actual necessities of life which have to be procured by those unfortunate people who find themselves looking for unemployment assistance outside the employment exchanges it would be necessary to give more than double the amount they were receiving pre-war.

There is very little use in the Minister jibing at the Labour Party. The Labour Party are well able to look after themselves, and the Minister for Industry and Commerce will know that before many months are at an end. We do not require any lectures from him. He has assumed different rôles in this House. In his rôle as lecturer on taxation, we know the promises that he has made. The people of the country can now assess them at their real value when they consider the reputation of the man who made those promises and who had no concern whatever, especially before he got into office, as to where the money was to come from to fulfil those promises.

Deputy O'Higgins and Deputy Keyes rose.

This debate must conclude in less than half an hour from now. I do not know how long Deputy Davin would require to wind up.

Ten minutes will do me.

I understand that Deputy O'Higgins also desires to speak.

It is all right.

Unlike Deputy Corish, I do not write down the value of the Minister's lectures, but I disagree with the Minister on one point. He stated that this motion by the Labour Party was quite unnecessary owing to the generous action of the Government in taking the necessary steps to look after the welfare of the unemployed. According to the Minister, apparently, there is no need for a Labour Party in this House, but the test will come in the very near future. The Minister gave us a very fine lecture last night, showing his wonderful fatherly interest in the future of the Labour Party. He is particularly concerned that the Party should be in such truncated numbers, and hopes for a big increase in its present limited ranks. He attributed those limited numbers to wild and exaggerated statements and little regard for facts.

I think every member of the Labour Party ought to be grateful to the Minister for the patriarchal interest he has taken in our future. He stated that the motion was unnecessary, but I think it was necessary, if for, no other purpose than to receive that fatherly advice from the father of promises, who tells us now: "Be careful of your future; if you are not more cautious, your statements will be used in evidence against you at a later time." As a matter of fact, this motion is on the Order Paper purely because of the promises of the then Deputy Lemass, now Minister for Industry and Commerce, as to what was going to happen in the halcyon days when his Party would be in office. The Minister was quite eloquent last night about the basis of this Act. I think we ought to go back a little. It was asked for by the Labour Party—they were the first people to ask for it—when the changeover took place and when the Fianna Fáil Party looked for the Labour Party's votes to make them a government. Without the Labour Party's votes they would not have been a government, and they got them in response to a definite promise that they would reverse the dictum of the previous Government who said that they had no responsibility for the employment or disemployment of the people of this country.

We gave no undertaking of any kind whatsoever.

The Minister was not present when the agreement was made.

I am stating what I know to be true, and the Minister probably knows it as well as I do. When the Minister starts to record the history of this Act, as he did last night, it is as well to have the whole history of it. At that time, the Labour Party did not ask the Fianna Fáil Party, which was then coming into office, to give a continuous pension in the way of unemployment assistance. What we asked for was work for the workers. That is what we are asking for now. The incoming Fianna Fáil Government said: "Yes; we are prepared to admit that the taking of responsibility for the employment of our people should be the first function of a native Government, and we have plans ready that will absorb our people into employment. Obviously, we cannot give effect to those schemes at once. Some time must elapse before we can put those men to work under the schemes which we have prepared. So many arrears have been left here by an alien Government that it will probably take a quarter of a century to clear them up." That was, I think, the statement of the leader of the Party. But the Minister for Industry and Commerce was always a bit in front of the chief. It was he who said that, from a check up of the number of unemployed people in the country and of the fine schemes of work which had been prepared, he thought the unemployed could be absorbed within a reasonable time. It was then he made the historic statement that they would have to send to America for the exiles to come home.

It is a complete fabrication.

They did not come back anyway. It is a good job they did not come back. The Act was brought in, in redemption of that promise. It was definitely stated then that those were not full maintenance allowances, but were intended only for the brief periods between one employment scheme and another. They were not intended as a wage to maintain a man and his wife and family, but merely to bridge over the period between one scheme of work and another. It was contemplated then that there would be a reasonable scale of wages, out of which a man could put a little bit aside. In 11 years, those schemes have not materialised, and the Unemployment Assistance Act has become the principal industry for a lot of our people. Seeing the drain there was going to be upon the national funds, the Minister took steps almost immediately, following 1934, to counteract an Act of this Legislature by filching with the left hand what he gave with the right. He did that by means of Employment Period Orders from February to October for men with holdings of £4 valuation and from June to October even for men without holdings. At a stroke of the Minister's pen they were struck completely out of the Act of Parliament passed by this Legislature. But they were only the unemployed.

That sort of legislation does not operate for other sections of the community. Then he went further; he went the distance of violating even the sacred Constitution by giving us conscription. I have no hesitation in denouncing as conscription their latest regulation with regard to the Construction Corps. It is nothing short of conscription. The only omission is that the press gang has not been got into operation to force men into the Construction Corps. But they have been told: "You can join it or starve." If that is not conscription, I do not know what it is. Young men in the cities and towns throughout the country—single men admittedly, but sons of widows with no other means— who were getting the few shillings available to them at the labour exchanges, on failing to find employment were told: "You must join the Construction Corps." I know of many cases where they have been rejected when they offered themselves to the Army, but rejection by the Army is not good enough to satisfy the Minister for Industry and Commerce; they must again be rejected by the Construction Corps. I challenge contradiction on that. Although they have been rejected by the Army, they must offer themselves again for the Construction Corps before they are qualified for their few shillings benefit. We are told that that is not conscription. I say it is a definite violation of every promise that was held out to the young men of this country; it is a definite violation of their freedom and democratic rights.

The Minister was very eloquent last night in speaking of the increases that have been given during the emergency, and in regard to which the Labour Party were silent. But he did not speak of the average at all. He spoke of the exceptionally high sum which a man might possibly receive, but other Deputies have cited cases of women in receipt of 8/- in the City of Dublin, who have to maintain their mothers. I know that in the City of Limerick the maximum allowance for an unmarried man is 10/-. He cannot get the vouchers. They do not operate in the case of single men in the cities, and they do not operate outside the cities even for married men. The whole thing is a network of lines and barriers, as if we had not enough barriers in this country. The Minister has failed to provide the employment which was so solemnly promised to the people. As I have said, he has adopted various devices to rob us of the benefit of the Unemployment Assistance Act, and he has driven hundreds of thousands of our people to work in another country because they could not find employment at home. He spoke last night about the barrow of marks —the old worn-out argument about the German workman going around with a barrow full of marks trying to buy his dinner. It is suggested that the most shocking inflation will result here if the unemployed men get an extra couple of shillings to provide them with a bare subsistence, which they have not got to-day. The definite fact is that a standard has been laid down by the Government for the unemployed, in addition to other types of people on fixed incomes. At a time when the £ is worth 8/6, the widow has her 5/-, the old age pensioner has his 10/- and the man on unemployment assistance has whatever is given to him under the various schemes plus 5/- as a retainer if he remains on the bogs until he is wanted there or until the agriculturists want him to do a job for a couple of days.

The net result of all this is that you have been economising and attempting to economise at the expense of the health and virility of the Irish people. The money sent home by the 100,000 people who have gone across Channel to earn something to maintain their parents and their families is derided as paper money. That paper money we are told by the Minister is of no use, but I am just wondering what would have happened if this war had not come as a kind of blessing to these people, to allow them to escape from starvation here and to work amidst a rain of bombs in places where they can earn £5 and £6 a week at a time when there was no work for them in this country. That money has not the effect, which the Taoiseach suggested, of creating vicious spirals, and of exercising an unfair purchasing power in a diminishing pool of commodities. The moral is clear: you can work for England and send home all the money that you can earn, but you must not work for Ireland because the Fianna Fáil Party has fallen down on the job. They are bankrupt in any policy which could secure work for the people at home. The Government which has failed to find work for people and to develop the potential wealth of the country—and in speaking of wealth I am not thinking of German marks or American dollars; I am thinking of the untapped Irish wealth that is there for exploitation —must be written down as a failure. The one thing they can do, however, is to provide an adequate subsistence allowance for the unfortunate people for whom employment cannot be found. The Irish people will not object to that and certainly the Labour Party will not object to it. The Labour Party has never objected to any expenditure for national or patriotic purposes in this House.

I say to Ministers that they have a solemn duty to preserve the health of the people and to arrest the malnutrition now so rampant amongst unemployed workers who are unable to obtain sufficient of the necessaries of life with these paltry allowances. I charge the Minister that he carries a solemn responsibility in this matter, and that he should not have waited for this motion to be reminded of that responsibility. It should never have been necessary to introduce this motion, and in bringing it forward we are animated, not by any political motives, but by the solemn belief that the Minister and his Party are leading the people down the road which is going to lead to a rapid deterioration in the health of our people and to lower our standards to those of a C. 3 nation, unless the election in June brings about a change.

Thanks to the courtesy of Deputy Davin, I am enabled to say a few words in this debate. We are discussing a motion as to the adequacy or inadequacy of the bare maintenance allowance for the unemployed. We are discussing that motion in a time of intense difficulty and grave emergency, and I do not think that anybody inside or outside this House could be impressed by the Minister's behaviour here this evening in meeting a motion such as that by quips and jibes at the Labour Party, or at the past record of the Labour Party.

One would not mind if the question which the Minister was asked to face up to was what the Labour Party or the Fianna Fáil Party did or did not do in the past but we are asked in a serious way to consider whether a given sum is sufficient for the bare subsistence of a human being at a time when every one of us knows that the cost of living has risen acutely and that it has risen most acutely in the case of the bare necessaries of life. It is known to every Deputy here that households which enjoy an income of £500, £800 or even £1,000 a year, in which there are families, are seriously disturbed as to the cost of maintaining the members of that household in just the bare ordinary supplies. When there is a question asked in Parliament as to whether a few shillings a week are or are not sufficient to maintain a human being in bare health, one would expect a more serious approach to the question than we got from the Ministerial bench this evening.

This emergency situation is no new situation. No Government in this country ever operated with such immense staffs. Coming on to the fifth year of that emergency situation, when most extraordinary powers have been taken to keep down wages so as to keep down prices and when every effort in that direction has been defied by soaring prices, we would expect a clear statement from the Government as to what, in the Government's opinion, is the bare minimum necessary in terms of cash to keep a human being in health.

It would be unreasonable to ask for such a figure in the first year of the war. It is not unreasonable at this stage, and whatever that figure is, it does not get over the difficulty to say that there would have to be a contribution from the workers or that the pool could not afford it. Whatever that figure is, it will have to be afforded and will have to be found if we are to continue to pretend that we are a Christian Parliament, doing our work in a Christian way. Irrespective of whose back is bent, whatever figure is necessary will have to be found, and where it can be found best is where most of it will have to be got. The Minister's approach to the question is merely playing politics, and very cheap politics. This cornering and sparring as to whether emigration is or is not to be allowed, whether the Labour Party stand for or against emigration is merely cheap political sparring entirely unworthy of a Government spokesman in approaching a question of this kind. As I have stated, comparatively wealthy people are concerned about the steeply rising cost of the bare necessaries of life for their households. The cost of living has gone up in spite of the strong Orders of the Minister. He had to depart to a certain extent from his Wage Orders. He had to allow wages to go up in order that they might keep even far behind the acutely bounding cost of living. On the face of it, it is reasonable to suggest that the ratio between what was at one time described as a maintenance allowance and actual maintenance must be kept up whether in peace or in war.

Does the Deputy know by how much the rates have been increased?

I venture to say to the Minister that if the cost of living has gone up by 56 points, the cost of bare maintenance has gone up by 200 per cent. I find, and the Minster finds, that the picture of the increased cost is not made up of the increased cost of luxuries, but of the increased cost of the plainest commodities. I think that the problem before the inhabitants of this country is the problem of trying to keep even a small family on what would be considered, in other circumstances, high wages. There is every reason, every justice and every soundness in the motion unless the Minister is in a position to meet it by saying that the present rate is higher than the bare cost of subsistence for a human being.

Question put.
The Dáil divided. Tá: 22; Níl: 53.

Tá.

  • Bennett, George C.
  • Brodrick, Seán.
  • Byrne, Alfred.
  • Byrne, Alfred (Junior).
  • Coburn, James.
  • Corish, Richard.
  • Costello, John A.
  • Linehan, Timothy.
  • Lynch, Finian.
  • Mongan, Joseph W.
  • Mulcahy, Richard.
  • Daly, Patrick.
  • Davin, William.
  • Everett, James.
  • Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
  • Hannigan, Joseph.
  • Hughes, James.
  • Keyes, Michael.
  • Murphy, Timothy J.
  • Norton, William.
  • O'Higgins, Thomas F.
  • Pattison, James P.

Níl.

  • Allen, Denis.
  • Bartley, Gerald.
  • Beegan, Patrick.
  • Boland, Gerald.
  • Bourke, Dan.
  • Brady, Brian.
  • Breathnach, Cormac.
  • Brennan, Martin.
  • Breslin, Cormac.
  • Briscoe, Robert.
  • Buckley, Seán.
  • Corry, Martin J.
  • Crowley, Tadhg.
  • De Valera, Eamon.
  • Flynn, John.
  • Flynn, Stephen.
  • Fogarty, Andrew.
  • Friel, John.
  • Gorry, Patrick J.
  • Harris, Thomas.
  • Hogan, Daniel.
  • Humphreys, Francis.
  • Keane, John J.
  • Killilea, Mark.
  • Kissane, Eamon.
  • Lemass, Seán F.
  • Loughman, Francis.
  • Lynch, James B.
  • McCann, John.
  • McEllistrim, Thomas.
  • MacEntee, Seán.
  • Meaney, Cornelius.
  • Moran, Michael.
  • Morrissey, Michael.
  • Moylan, Seán.
  • O Briain, Donnchadh.
  • O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
  • O'Grady, Seán.
  • O'Loghlen, Peter J.
  • O'Reilly, Matthew.
  • O'Rourke, Daniel.
  • O'Sullivan, Ted.
  • Rice, Brigid M.
  • Ruttledge, Patrick J.
  • Ryan, James.
  • Ryan, Martin.
  • Ryan, Robert.
  • Sheridan, Michael.
  • Smith, Patrick.
  • Traynor, Oscar.
  • Victory, James.
  • Walsh, Richard.
  • Ward, Conn.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Keyes and Everett; Níl: Deputies Smith and O'Rourke.
Motion declared lost.
The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. to Wednesday, 10th March, 1943, at 3 p.m.
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