Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 14 Mar 1944

Vol. 92 No. 17

Committee on Finance. - Vote on Account, 1944-45.

An Ceann Comhairle

On this Vote on Account, the question of getting some order into the discussion on Votes of this nature was before the Committee on Procedure and Privileges, who have not come to a final conclusion. It is suggested that notice be submitted, as used to be the custom, to the Chair, in due time of matters to be raised. I have got notice directly or indirectly that the subjects for discussion now will be: (a) From the main Opposition, the cost of living; (b) from the Labour Party, on the right, fuel; and (c) from the Farmers' Party, food production. It strikes me as rather difficult to discuss fuel, without going into details of administration, which will not be permissible in this debate, being a matter for the relevant Estimate.

Mr. McGilligan

I also gave notice of another matter, directly to yourself, in connection with a question which I hold I was precluded from putting on the Order Paper to-day, regarding an official of the Department of Supplies who was concerned in court proceedings. I do not know whether I can raise it here. I would much rather discuss the cost of living; but, on the Central Fund Bill, I assume I would be quite in order in raising the question of this official, which I intended to raise by way of question, but which I would not put down in the form which was suggested to me.

An Ceann Comhairle

That is a matter which will be considered later— as to whether individual members of Parties might raise questions outside those which have been suggested by their Parties.

Mr. McGilligan

I would propose, in accordance with the decision of the Party, to discuss the cost of living on the Vote on Account; but I certainly intend to raise the question of this officer of the Department of Supplies, and the general situation as between State officers and citizens before the courts, on the Central Fund Bill.

Mr. Connolly

I think you, Sir, referred to the Labour Party on the right.

An Ceann Comhairle

On my right.

Mr. Connolly

We may be on the left.

Mr. L. Cosgrave

I take it that an individual Deputy may raise any matter which comes within the province of the Estimates mentioned during the course of the discussion. I do not wish in any way to extend the discussion over a wide field, but I take it that we have full rights to deal with such matters as that which Deputy McGilligan mentioned.

An Ceann Comhairle

It is a matter for the House. The endeavour of the Committee on Procedure and Privileges is to select some subjects for debate and it was suggested that three —and never more than four—would be a reasonable number. This would make for order in discussion. There was one recent occasion when up to 20 subjects were discussed and no conclusion was reached on any of them.

Mr. A. Byrne

Under the heading of cost of living, can one draw attention to the scarcity of clothing and footwear for the poorer people, on account of the increased cost of those materials?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Chair will decide that when the time comes. I cannot answer in advance.

Mr. Hughes

Does that mean that any Deputy can speak on the subject matter submitted by any Party?

An Ceann Comhairle

Certainly.

Mr. McGilligan

It is clear that matters not raised during the discussion on the Vote on Account may be raised on the debate on the Central Fund Bill?

An Ceann Comhairle

The debates on which a direction was sought from the Committee on Procedure and Privileges include the Central Fund Bill. The matter to which the Deputy referred might be raised by question.

Mr. McGilligan

I tried to raise it by question, but I was not allowed to.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy's question was not in conformity with Standing Orders.

Mr. McGilligan

That is another matter. It is a question of interference by the office with the form of questions by Deputies.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Chair is responsible for seeing that questions are in conformity with the procedure prescribed.

Mr. McGilligan

I would submit that it is possible to discuss here matters which could not have been raised by way of question to see how far they are in conflict with the rulings of the Committee on Procedure and Privileges.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Standing Orders of the House have laid down that the Ceann Comhairle shall examine every question to see if it is in order, in certain respects. That judgment is left to the Ceann Comhairle and it is not open to question in debate.

Mr. A. Byrne

Can I give notice now of raising a matter?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy may raise it in the debate at the proper time, if it is in order.

Mr. A. Byrne

I may be ruled out of order if I do not give notice.

An Ceann Comhairle

One subject before the House is the question of the cost of living.

Mr. A. Byrne

There is also the matter of clothing and footwear for the people who are on small wages.

An tAire Airgeadais (Seán T. O Ceallaigh)

Tairgim:

Go ndeontar suim nach mó ná £14,888,000 i gcuntas chun no mar chabhair chun íoctha na Muirear a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1945, i gcóir seirbhísí áirithe puiblí, eadhon:—

That a sum not exceeding £14,888,000 be granted on account for or towards defraying the Charges that will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1945, for certain public services, namely:—

		£			£
1	Teaghlachas an Uachtaráin	1,300	1	President's Establishment	1,300
2	Tithe an Oireachtais	42,300	2	House of the Oireachtas	42,300
3	Roinn an Taoisigh	5,200	3	Department of the Taoiseach	5,200
4	An tArd-Reachtaire Cunntas agus Ciste	6,970	4	Comptroller and AuditorGeneral	6,970
5	Oifig an Aire Airgeadais	26,800	5	Office of the Minister for Finance	26,800
6	Oifig na gCoimisinéirí Ioncuim	330,000	6	Office of the Revenue Commissioners	330,000
7	Pinsin Sean-Aoise	1,275,000	7	Old Age Pensions	1,275,000
8	Bainistí Stoc Riaghaltais	22,600	8	Management of Government Stocks	22,600
9	Oifig na nOibreacha Poiblidhe	47,000	9	Office of Public Works	47,000
10	Oibreacha agus Foirgintí Poiblidhe	437,000	10	Public Works and Buildings	437,000
11	Longlann Inis Sionnach	1,000	11	Haulbowline Dockyard	1,000
12	Saotharlann Stáit	3,500	12	State Laboratory	3,500
13	Coimisiún na Stát-Sheirbhíse	8,400	13	Civil Service Commission	8,400
14	Bord Cuartaíochta na hEireann	5,500	14	Irish Tourist Board	5,500
15	Coimisiúin agus Fiosrúcháin Speisialta	2,000	15	Commission and Special Inquiries	2,000
16	Aoisliúntais agus Liúntais Fágála	193,000	16	Superannuation and Retired Allowances	193,000
17	Rátaí ar Mhaoin Riaghaltais	50,000	17	Rates on Government Property	50,000
18	An tSeirbhís Seicréideach	6,700	18	Secret Service	6,700
19	Costaisí fén Acht Timpeal Toghachán, agus fé Acht na nGiúirithe	Nil	19	Expenses under the Electoral Act and the Juries Act	Nil
20	Costaisí Ilghnéitheacha	2,500	20	Miscellaneous Expenses	2,500
21	Páipéarachas agus Clódóireacht	77,000	21	Stationery and Printing	77,000
22	Measadóireacht agus Suirbhéireacht Teorann	11,650	22	Valuation and Boundary Survey	11,650
23	Suirbhéireacht an Ordonáis	8,700	23	Ordnance Survey	8,700
24	Deontaisí Breise Talmhaíochta	450,000	24	Supplementary Agricultural Grants	450,000
25	Dlí-Mhuirearacha	23,500	25	Law Charges	23,500
26	Ollscoileanna agus Coláistí	77,700	26	Universities and Colleges	77,700
27	Pinsin do Bhaintreacha agus do Dhílleachtaithe	150,000	27	Widows' and Orphans' Pensions	150,000
28	Oifig Thaighde Eolaíochta Ré na Práinne	6,500	28	Emergency Scientific Research Bureau	6,500
29	Talmhaidheacht	422,000	29	Agriculture	422,000
30	Conganta Airgid alos Tortha Talmhaíochta	290,000	30	Agricultural Produce Subsidies	290,000
31	Iascach	5,000	31	Fisheries	5,000
32	Oifig an Aire Dlighidh agus Cirt	15,750	32	Office of the Minister for Justice	15,750
33	An Gárda Síochána	777,000	33	Gárda Síochána	777,000
34	Priosúin	40,000	34	Prisons	40,000
35	An Chúirt Dúithche	15,650	35	District Court	15,650
36	An Chúirt Chuarda	19,900	36	Circuit Court	19,900
37	An Chúirt Uachtarach agus an Ard-Chúirt Bhreithiúnais	18,500	37	Supreme Court and High Court of Justice	18,500
38	Clárlann na Talmhan agus Clárlann na nDintiúirí	16,800	38	Land Registry and Registry of Deeds	16,800
39	Oifig na nAnnálacha Puiblí	2,150	39	Public Record Office	2,150
40	Tabhartaisí agus Tiomanta Déirciúla	1,170	40	Charitable Donations and Bequests	1,170
41	Riaghaltas Aiteamhail agus Sláinte Phoiblidhe	624,000	41	Local Government and Public Health	624,000
42	Oifig an Ard-Chlárathóra	4,550	42	General Register Office	4,550
43	Gealtlann Dúndroma	7,500	43	Dundrum Asylum	7,500
44	Arachas Sláinte Náisiúnta	177,500	44	National Health Insurance	177,500
45	Oifig an Aire Oideachais	67,600	45	Office of the Minister for Education	67,600
46	Bun-Oideachas	1,500,000	46	Primary Education	1,500,000
47	Meadhon-Oideachas	180,000	47	Secondary Education	180,000
48	Ceárd-Oideachas	110,000	48	Technical Instruction	110,000
49	Eolaíocht agus Ealadha	18,300	49	Science and Art	18,300
50	Scoileanna Ceartúcháin agus Saothair	65,000	50	Reformatory and Industrial Schools	65,000
51	An Gaileirí Náisiúnta	2,270	51	National Gallery	2,270
52	Tailte	588,000	52	Lands	588,000
53	Foraoiseacht	11,000	53	Forestry	11,000
54	Seirbhísí na Gaeltachta	10,000	54	Gaeltacht Services	10,000
55	Tionnscal agus Tráchtáil	106,000	55	Industry and Commerce	106,000
56	Seirbhísí Iompair agus Meteoraíochta	50,250	56	Transport and Meteorological Services	50,250
57	An Bínse Bóthair Iarainn	990	57	Railway Tribunal	990
58	Muir-Sheirbhís	12,100	58	Marine Service	12,100
59	Arachas Díomhaointis agus Congnamh Díomhaointis	345,300	59	Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Assistance	345,300
60	Oifig Chlárathachta Mhaoine Tionnscail agus Tráchtála	4,400	60	Industrial and Commercial Property Registration Office	4,400
61	Puist agus Telegrafa	1,017,000	61	Posts and Telegraphs	1,017,000
62	Fóirleatha Nea-shrangach	26,900	62	Wireless Broadcasting	26,900
63	An tArm	2,873,000	63	Army	2,873,000
64	Arm-Phinsin	188,700	64	Army Pensions	188,700
65	Gnóthaí Eachtracha	35,000	65	External Affairs	35,000
66	Cumann na Náisiún	Nil	66	League of Nations	Nil
67	Scéimeanna Fostaíochta agus Scéimeanna Práinne	430,000	67	Employment and Emergency Schemes	430,000
68	Liúntaisí Leanbhaí	20,000	68	Children's Allowances	20,000
69	Soláthairtí	1,312,000	69	Supplies	1,312,000
70	Institúid Ard-Léighinn Bhaile Atha Cliath	6,100	70	Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies	6,100
71	Liúntaisí Bídh	190,000	71	Food Allowances	190,000
72	Cúiteamh i nDíobháil do Mhaoin (Neodracht)	7,000	72	Damage to Property (Neutrality) Compensation	7,000
73	Cúiteamh alos Díobhála Pearsanta (Síbhialtaigh)	1,800	73	Personal Injuries (Civilians) Compensation	1,800
	An TIOMLÁN	£14,888,000		TOTAL	£14,888,000

Mar is eol do na Teachtaí cheana, is dócha, isé an cuspóir atá leis an Vóta i gCuntas seo ná airgead a chur ar fáil chun na seirbhísí puiblí a choimeád ar siúl sa bhliain airgeadais seo romhainn fhaid is a bhéas na meastacháin do na seirbhísí ar leith á bplé go mion ag an Dáil. De ghnáth tógann sé furmhór an chéad cheithre mí den bhliain airgeadais chun na díospóireachtaí ar na meastacháin a chríochnú agus an tAcht Leithreasa a rith. Mar sin sé an nós dóthain airgid a sholáthar tríd an Vóta i gCuntas chun íoc as na seirbhísí puiblí ar feadh na míosa Abrán, Bealtaine, Meitheamh agus Iúl

Isé an méid atá ag teastáil ná £14,888,000, agus tá sé curtha le chéile mar atá leagtha amach ar an bPáipéar Bán a chuireas timpeall agus ar Chlár na hOibre. Go generálta isí an tsuim a hiarrtar do gach Vóta ar leith ná timpeall trian den mheastachán iomlán gian in aghaidh na bliana.

Isé an méid iomlán atá uainn le haghaidh seirbhísí soláthair na bliana airgeadais seo chugainn ná £44,982,644, suim atá £2,978,677 níos mó ná an soláthar iomlán a deineadh don bhliain seo, agus na meastacháin bhreise agus nua d'áireamh; isé méid an tsoláthair sin ná £42,003,967.

Isiad na príomh-chúiseanna atá leis an méadú seo ar chostas na seirbhísí puiblí ná gur gá soláthar de níos mó ná £1,500,000 do liúntaisí leanbhaí, agus soláthar breise de beagnach £800,000 do Sholáthairtí; ar chonganta airgid chun luach bídh agus tein-ábhair a choimeád gan árdú is mó a caithfear an soláthar breise sin do Sholáthairtí.

As Deputies are aware, a Vote on Account is necessary to enable the various Public Services to be carried on during the period which must elapse in the coming financial year before the individual Estimates for the Supply Services can be discussed in detail. As a rule, it takes the greater part of the first four months of each financial year to complete the consideration of the Estimates and the enactment of the Appropriation Act. The Vote on Account, therefore, provides sufficient moneys to enable the various Public Services to be carried on up to the 31st July next.

The various items comprising the Vote on Account of £14,888,000 are set out on the Order Paper and in the White Paper which has been circulated. In most cases approximately one-third of the total net Estimate for the year is required. The total net sum required for the Supply Services for the coming financial year is £44,982,644, representing an increase of £2,978,677 on the net provision of £42,003,967 for the current year. This latter sum includes, of course, all the Supplementary and Additional Estimates passed during 1943-44. The original net provision for the current financial year was £40,696,211 and, as compared with this figure, the 1944-45 provision is up by £4,286,433.

The main factors that have contributed to the £4,250,000 increase over the original Estimates for 1943-44 are the provision of over £1,500,000 for children's allowances and the increase of nearly £1,400,000 in the Estimate for Supplies, due chiefly to increased subsidies to prevent rises in the price of food and fuel. Food subsidies have also caused the increase in the Vote for Agricultural Produce Subsidies, which is up by no less than £170,000, due to the higher guaranteed price for milk. The food allowances services will cost an additional £50,000, and the new supplementary payments to certain recipients of old age, blind and widows' and orphans' pensions and national health insurance benefit £365,000. The extra cost of the increased emergency bonus which the Government have granted to civil servants, teachers and Gárdaí will be £316,200. In addition we propose to spend over £500,000 this year on development works at Foynes and Rineanna, and the provision for the Army, which is up by £113,000, stands at a new record figure of £8,620,467. The usual explanatory details of the Army Estimate have again been omitted from the Estimates Volume, as it would not be in the public interest to publish them.

Taking round figures for the items I have mentioned, defence and emergency services account for an increase of £2,400,000, children's allowances for £1,500,000 and airport development for £500,000, which gives a total of £4,400,000. It will be apparent that there is a decrease in the amount needed for the other Supply Services, taken as a whole, notwithstanding the substantial rise in the cost of materials reflected throughout many of the normal services. As compared with the current year's provision, including Supplementary and Additional Estimates, there are increases on 45 Estimates, decreases on 25, while three show no change. The Estimates for Compensation Bounties and Alleviation of Distress have disappeared. The total of the increases on the various Votes amounts to £3,840,010, while the total of the decreases is £861,333.

Mr. McGilligan

We of this Party have given notice that on this Vote on Account we intend to raise the general policy of the cost of living and the consequential hardship that that uncontrolled cost of living has caused to certain of the citizens of this country. We believe that something in the way of a better plan could have been made to curb the cost of living in the earlier stages. We believe that even yet it is possible, to do something. We believe that funds out of which subsidies could be found are available and that newspapers have indicated the sources from which, to a great extent, these funds could be found. In going over these matters, I feel personally that I am walking well-trodden ground, because this matter has been before this Dáil at least on three important occasions. We have never got anything in the way of an explanation from the Government as to the policy into which they have drifted. We never got anything to indicate their appreciation of the difficulties under which certain citizens are labouring as a result of this devastation they have brought about. We have not got any indication from them that they have, to any degree, explored the sources where we say funds could be obtained to bring about a policy of subsidy in connection with necessaries of life such as is followed in almost all the countries in the world.

It is, however, becoming more and more appreciated outside the ranks of the Government that what they are doing is causing considerable hardship. The last person from whom I expected to find any appreciation of that was one of those who could be called very rigid orthodox economists who has gone to England to do some work over there. I refer to Professor Duncan. According to the Irish Times of March 9th, in a quotation given in the London Letter, Professor Duncan had written an article in The Banker, and this is given as a quotation from that article:—

"The most unhappy thing about the way in which the price and scarcity pattern has developed in the Twenty-Six Counties has been its differential incidence on the poor. A casual visitor from the United Kingdom may leave with the impression that the country is not too badly off—the visitor who can pay for them can get his bacon, eggs, butter, meat, wine, etc.; but there is no cheap food, fuel or clothing for the general population; nor has the money income of the wage-earner expanded in the same way as in the United Kingdom."

The London Letter drops the quotation there and goes on to say:

"Referring to the increase during 1943 of 35 points in the cost of living, he emphasises that this index cannot show the whole picture, as it cannot take into account the complete disappearance of cheap foodstuffs, such as margarine, and the almost complete disappearance of paraffin and candles, which are relatively of much greater importance to the poor."

That comes from one of the rigid orthodox economists in this country. He had, certainly up to the time he left this country, supported in toto, I think, the financial policy that had been carried out here.

Another of the economists who writes from this country wrote an article in The Economist of December 11th, 1943, and, after examining the situation as he found it, he at least marked these as facts: that the cost of living had risen by 64 per cent. since 1939—that, of course, was written in December and that was an old cost of living, but it has gone up much higher since—that the monetary circulation has increased from £18,000,000 to £32,000,000 and bank deposits from £119,000,000 to £162,000,000. The monetary circulation had gone up by £14,000,000 and bank deposits had gone up by £43,000,000. He found also that the purchasing power of the Irish £ has unquestionably been reduced, and that the amount of money has been increased. At the end of the article he says:—

"The upward impulses have been on the side of things rather than on the side of money. If the war were at an end, agricultural prices and import prices would begin to move down and the cost of living would be automatically reduced. If wages were allowed to rise, their reduction would not be automatic and might give rise to considerable difficulty. It is, therefore, very important that the policy of holding down wage rates should be consistently pursued."

That is the only pat on the back that the Government have got from anybody in connection with that particular policy—

"It is, therefore, very important that the policy of holding down wage rates should be consistently pursued."

The situation, as it is disclosed in the Trade Journal for December, 1943, is, not that the cost of living has gone up by 64 per cent. spoken of in that article, but that it has gone up by 70 per cent. as from August, 1939. I quote from the Trade Journal of December, 1943, page 172:—

"As regards comparison with pre-war, the index figure for all items at mid-August, 1943, is 121 points or 70 per cent. above that for mid-August, 1939, and the increases in the indexes for the various groups are as follows: Food, 103 points or 65 per cent.; clothing, 214 points or 95 per cent; fuel and light, 158 points or 88 per cent., and sundries, 133 points or 69 per cent."

I want to get that put into the framework of the discussion on these Estimates. The Estimates amount to £44,000,000, as I understand, and to that we have to add the other amounts which will have to be found when the Budget is introduced. According to a calculation which has been made in one newspaper—a correct calculation, I think—the taxpayers will be called upon to provide about £52,000,000. The Minister has got us to the point where we want £1,000,000 per week. He wants that £1,000,000 a week off a population whose wage rates have been consistently kept down and held down and off the middle classes who have not had any increase in the income they have been allowed to enjoy. I think that when this House met to consider various emergency measures in September, 1939, if we had been asked to agree to a policy whereby wages would be halved, there would be general disagreement in the House with regard to it. But that is pretty nearly what has happened. That 70 per cent. increase, which is spoken of in the quotation I have given, means that the shilling is now worth something between 7d. and 7½d. Under the recently introduced scheme of family allowances at the rate of 2/6 per week, we are now actually giving two and a half seven-pences, so far as purchasing power is concerned. For the old purchasing power of one shilling, that means that they are to get the equivalent of 7d. Out of the purchasing power of the community added together, of these sevenpences instead of shillings, the Minister wants £1,000,000 per week for the running of this State.

During the summer, the Irish Times ran a series of articles on inflation, trying to educate the population as to what inflation really was and to let them know how far inflation had taken place in this country. One of the comments made by the author of these articles was that a desperate result of inflation always was that the middle-class element in the community was annihilated, wiped out; that people who had fixed incomes, people who could not by any pressure get their incomes increased, people who depended, say, upon investments, simply disappeared. It is well known that that was the result of the inflation period in Germany. When the movement had come to an end, the situation, as it is disclosed in a book written to glorify the person who was called the financial wizard at that time, was as follows:—

"Inflation created a basis for profits on the one hand——

that is for people who were profiteering and who were able to get on to the profiteering lines—

"and on the other hand it expropriated the German middle classes and robbed the small man of his savings."

The author of the articles in the Irish Times said that that was an inevitable result of inflation.

I suggest that is what is happening here at the moment. There are a very large number of people who are affected in this way—first of all, civil servants. Civil servants were defamed for years by members of the present Government on account of what was called the bonus system. When the present Government went into office, the Leader of the Government told the civil servants of that time that he had been very much against the bonus system because he had misunderstood it, that he had not realised the effect of it, that while it did protect these people when the cost of living rose, it helped the general community when the cost of living went down. He advised them to hold on to the cost-of-living bonus system, that it was a great security but then, on the first occasion on which it was going to be of any security to them, he stopped the bonus payments. In addition, we got the standstill Order throughout the country, all wages stabilised at a particular point, the result being that virtually all incomes are halved. It is not quite as bad as that, but it is very near it.

We are told by certain spokesmen of the Government from time to time that the increase in new money in this country is required because, (1) of imports coming into the country, and (2) because of increased production. Again, in this Trade Journal of last year, we get the figures with regard to production. On page 150, the increased figure with regard to the volume of agricultural output shows that there has been a lessening in the volume of agricultural output as between 1929-1930, and the last year for which figures are available, 1942-43. Taking 100 as representing the volume of agricultural production in the year 1929-30, it had fallen in the last year to 89.3. In page 173 of the same journal one gets a return of employment, wages and earnings in certain industries producing transportable goods. Taking the index of the earnings for all wage earners, the number again being taken as 100 in September, 1939, the figure stood at 96 at the date this was written, which covers probably the period somewhere up to the end of the year 1943. Production, therefore, has not really caused any necessity for this increase in the money in circulation in the country, and although wage earners may be getting some small increases, the fact that a big number of them have gone out of employment during these years, means that the workers all told received less money than they had been receiving when the war broke out, and the smaller amount of money which they receive buys only half what it used to. Again, according to Professor Duncan's article, this index cannot show the whole picture as it does not take into account “the complete disappearance of cheap foodstuffs, such as margarine and the almost complete disappearance of paraffin and candles”. Had this House seriously contemplated a cut in wages amounting to 50 per cent. at the start of the war, any such proposal would have been received with horror. Yet that is the situation which the Government has brought about.

I have spoken of civil servants but one can think of numerous other classes. There are the members of the police forces, people in banks, clerks in different employments. One might say that all these were listed in the ordinary returns as people gainfully occupied. While the cost of living has been allowed to soar, their wages have been kept down through the Wages Standstill Order. At the same time, the Minister told us that he was certainly going to set his face against any increase in profits arising out of the war. He promised that he would take every measure that lay in his power to stop profits increasing during the war. One would have imagined that would have been the policy of any Minister setting out to keep incomes stabilised during the war period and the Minister promised us that that would be done. He issued at the same time an Order with regard to company profits. What has happened there is that, whereas in other countries not as seriously affected by the war as we are, industrial profits are mulcted by an excess profits tax of 100 per cent., we here limited what we take from these people to 75 per cent. by a variety of means. If the industrialist, by overcharging the people, by raising costs on them, can increase his profits, although he has to pay a big percentage of that in excess profits tax, he can retain 25 per cent. of his excess profit for himself. Day by day one sees in the newspapers statements of companies, people who boast of higher profits than they ever had. We have had the case of one company which boasts that the highest returns it ever had in its history occurred in the fourth year of the war. Another company boasted that it had made an increase in last year's trading of 46½ per cent.

In the early part of this year, the Irish Times made an examination of one group of trades, the drapery trade, and they set out the profits which some of the companies had indicated they had made. Five companies were set out and the years that were taken for examination were those from 1939 to 1943, inclusive. The first of these companies had earned no ordinary dividend in the year 1939. Its earnings for the years 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943 were in the following order:—13 per cent., 12 per cent., 20 per cent., 27 per cent.

The second company in 1939 had earned 11½ per cent. on its ordinary capital, and that was increased in the succeeding years, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943, to 18 per cent., 25 per cent., 30 per cent. and 34 per cent. The third company earned no dividend in 1939, nor in 1940 or 1941. The sun began to shine on it in 1942, when it earned 6 per cent. or nearly 7 per cent., and in 1943, the profit was raised to 16 per cent. The fourth company during 1939 had earned about 5 per cent. or 5½ per cent. In the succeeding years the profits were raised to 7 per cent., 9 per cent., 10 per cent. and 13 per cent. Finally, we have another company which had no dividend earnings in the year 1939. In the year 1940 its dividend was 5 per cent. That was raised to 10 per cent. in 1941, which was maintained in 1942. In 1943 the dividend was raised to 18 per cent. That is only one section of trading. Of course, incidentally, these people were not allowed to distribute these dividends. The company which earned 22½ per cent. was allowed only to pay in dividends 7½ per cent. The second company, which earned 34 per cent., was allowed to pay only 10 per cent. If you look at the papers you will see what happens in the case of any of these companies. A common feature one discovers is that the directors announce that they have had a most successful trading year notwithstanding the fact that stocks were running short; notwithstanding the fact that every possible impediment was put in their way they had a very good trading year.

Then they announce the dividend. They are tied to the dividend they had earned in the trading years as fixed by the Order to which I have referred. The ordinary practice nowadays in companies is: so-called promotion expenses, if any remain, are paid off in lumps, buildings are heavily depreciated and enormous sums are carried to reserve. In the case to which I referred, in which 34 per cent. was earned and a 10 per cent. dividend was paid, the shareholders know that that company has packed away in reserves money that would pay that dividend three or four times over if it were distributed. The Minister can, of course, regard it as distributed and take tax in respect of it but I do not know if he has done that.

Compare these businesses with the small man. Take the small family living in the suburbs of this city where the father is earning some money and some members of the family are also earning. Their wages have been frozen by these standstill Orders. At the end of the war they will not have carried money to reserve, they will not have paid off promotion expenses and they will not have liquidated a large number of debts which were on their shoulders when the war commenced. In the main, according to the stories told me in a number of piteous cases, these people have sacrificed life insurance policies; people who had projected a secondary school education for their children have stopped short at the primary stage; because there are good prices going now for furniture and carpets, some of those people have cleared out rooms and sold their effects. They will face the end of the war with much-depleted resources, with their insurance policies run out, with their children's education neglected and with the health of their children, possibly, neglected, also. while companies are allowed to earn these enormous sums and pack away what they cannot distribute in dividend into reserves for different purposes. That policy has been brought about by the Government and it is a policy that no other country has followed.

One of the countries with which I might make a comparison is Canada. An article in The Economist, of September 25th, indicates the position there. The cost of living in Canada rose almost 18 per cent. in four years. In that country, they have weighted indexes of wage-rates and these wage-rates rose by 19 per cent.—from 39 to 41—at a time when the cost of living showed an increase of only 17.2 per cent. They allowed their wages to follow the increase in the cost of living but they tried to keep the cost of living within reasonable bounds, as almost every other country has attempted to do and has succeeded in doing. Here we have an increase in the cost of living of 70 per cent. and an increase of 95 per cent. in such an article as clothing. There was an article in one of those journals about Denmark. It dealt with the incidence of what is called “full employment” in Denmark. It was written to criticise the attitude of the occupying German forces there. It indicated that the Germans had “looted” a fair amount of the ordinary produce of Denmark and paid the citizens with what this journal would describe as “worthless marks.” One of the things noted is that, inasmuch as their wage increases have lagged far behind the rise in prices, the conclusion must be that there has been a considerable decline in the standard of living of the workers.

We have no German occupying force. There is nobody to extract forcibly from us the goods we produce and hand over to us paper credits of that country. But we have a Minister who goes to a university audience within the past week and boasts that we are sending out twice as much to England as we get back. For the difference we are getting an accumulation of claims on future British production. What is called "loot" by the occupying forces in respect of Denmark in passing off paper credits, we accept as our policy here, and the Minister says that, in fact, what we are doing is not half enough appreciated.

One of the results of this proceeding is easy enough to see. I have spoken of the devastation caused in households because incomes have not been sufficient to meet the increased cost of living even when people effected economies. In the case of small family budgets, it is not possible to effect considerable economies. I have spoken of the disadvantages which occur when life insurance policies have to be thrown in, when people have to default in respect of plans for the education and promotion of their children, but there are worse effects than those.

The problem of malnutrition has been attracting attention from practically every medical centre that has met in this country for the past year or two years. In a paper read before the Statistical Society in Dublin, an examination was made, and the results of that examination disclosed, of family budgets belonging to a relatively high-wage group of the working classes of this city. A series of families in which all the heads were in regular employment was taken and the statement made in the paper was that, if the conditions found to exist in this sample—it was a sample of 100 working-class families containing 684 persons in all—were unsatisfactory, the conditions of the working-class population, generally, must be even more so. The paper was very detailed. It took a basic figure for what were called essential needs—food, fuel, light, clothes, cleaning, shelter, compulsory insurance and transport to work. It took the minimum diet—not the optimum diet—laid down by the British Medical Association. The prices were then examined and the family incomes divided out over them. The net incomes of the families were examined. The cost of transport to work and of compulsory insurance was included in the calculation. Everything the family earned or received in the way of assistance—unemployment money and every other form of income—was taken into the calculation. That was examined from the point of view of ascertaining how far the families, and more particularly the children, were being provided for in connection with the simple test of nutrition.

The conclusion, at the end, is that out of 348 children amongst those one hundred families, 336 were below the level of the minimum standard that the British Medical Association had prescribed. These are the families of a high grade type of worker in and around the city where the heads of families are in regular employment. It is, therefore, quite clear that the conclusion that I previously referred to is a just one: that, if this is an unsatisfactory conclusion, the test over the whole of the working class families in Dublin must be much worse.

The paper examined expenditure on various things. One was milk. It said that the expenditure on milk was hopelessly inadequate: that it was far less than the amount spent by public assistance authorities. The comment of this journal is that "this appalling picture under-states the malnutrition of the Dublin poor." It spoke of the addition recently made of half-a-crown for children, and observed that this addition "is obviously insignificant in relation to the needs of the community." The criticism by the author of the paper—a doctor—was that children were being adversely affected during the most critical phase of their lives with regard to their health and physique.

We are asked to be complacent when, as I have said, we see these companies earning 27 per cent. incomes, and when they are being allowed to pack away for post-war purposes what they cannot pay out to their shareholders in dividends. We also see the out-croppings of the Government's policy in such a picture as that presented in the medical paper with regard to malnutrition. Apart from general malnutrition, one of the things that has been steadily engaging the attention of medical men in this city in recent years is the question of tuberculosis rates. These had been downwards for a period. Then there came a turn which went against us. At first it was slow, but now the rates are soaring. In England, during the war, the tuberculosis rates have been going down. In Northern Ireland, which is affected by war conditions, the tuberculosis rates have been going down, but here with us they are not merely going up, but they are going up rapidly.

They are going up to such a point that one of the medical men interested in the matter recently made the observation that if he could avoid it he would enter no bus, no tram or train in Dublin because what he called the infective pool is so large now that one runs considerable danger in mixing with the general community in these public conveyances. All who have examined the question of tuberculosis are agreed that, among the causes of it are: bad housing, bad food, insufficiency of food, and, in addition, there is at the moment the strain that life entails. All that working on weakened constitutions, and particularly on a people who are predisposed to tuberculosis, and with infection all around, means, of course, that you have a larger number of citizens yearly becoming infected. Owing to the difficulty of transport, medical men who used to be able to keep in touch with the contacts, with children either in their homes or in class-rooms, are no longer able to do that, so that the spread of the infection is becoming much more serious.

Recently, in the Lenten Pastorals which the Hierarchy in this country addressed to the faithful there was a common complaint in them as to the increase in crime in the country and of juvenile delinquency in particular. It was one of the matters that they referred to and said that every form of dishonesty was rampant: that people whose standard of training should have kept them to the path of honesty had swerved from it. A definite emphasis was laid in the Pastorals on dishonesty and on the prevalence of crime in the country. As far as Dublin is concerned, I think that three district justices used to be found sufficient to cope with the petty criminal work in the city. There are now five district justices working in the city. We have got used to the system of having two Circuit Court judges devoting their time to the criminal work that comes before those courts. The higher criminal court is working faster and is more heavily engaged in investigating crime than ever it was before, and, at the same time, there is the special criminal court which is now ordinarily in session dealing with crime. Therefore, the position is this: we have five district justices sitting in Dublin—an increase of two; one extra Circuit Court judge, and the Special Criminal Court sitting almost as long as the ordinary courts of the land to deal with some special type of crime.

It has been remarked by a number of people who have come to the country that the one thing that seems to be flourishing here is crime. Of course, it is quite clear that if things get scarce and families are no longer provided with the means that they used to have for the honest, ordinary purchase of things there is greater temptation put before young people in particular.

When the war ends, it will be all right for big businesses and for companies. They will be able to get steadily on their feet again. Those concerns have been making enormous profits, and while they collect and pay over an extra bit of money for the Government, they are able to get an extra 25 per cent. for themselves. But the middle-class family is suffering the fate that always falls on middle-class families in any country where inflation is allowed to grow. The middle-class family is being steadily wiped out. It will come out of this war not merely with the disadvantages with regard to insurance that I have referred to and with its children deprived of the education that they ought to have, but with this further impairment—with their children seriously maimed by disease, and in some cases with the children seriously affected by crime. It is not so easy to get a cure for T.B. or for any sort of disease, but it is particularly difficult to get a cure for crime once it has become established in the younger members of a family.

I have stressed the plight of the middle-class family and, in particular, that of the wage earner who is seriously affected by the standstill Orders. These two classes, with their small incomes, are being severely hit. But, if you happen to be the owner of a big business, the situation is not so bad. There may be a considerable amount of lamentation at the general meetings of companies as regards the sums of money they have to collect and to pay over to the Government, but they are still able to put by huge amounts for the after-the-war period. The only other people who are able to stand up against the hardships of these times are those who have been forced, by necessity, to send a member or members of a family to England where big moneys are being earned, a certain amount of which is sent back to the folk at home. But the family that is not lucky enough to have anyone earning for it in England, the family that has to stay at home and do the best it can on whatever it can earn at home, must make a choice, and the choice for it is that it must go below the level which it had previously tried to avoid.

Once it gets to the level where it can avail itself of the sort of soup kitchens there are around the city certain of the hardships are wiped out. As I say, during the week, one of the members of the Government decided that it was time we should boast and pride ourselves still more on what we are doing in connection with our resources. We are sending out at least twice as much in comparison with what we are getting in. The full quotation is:

"For more than half the goods we now are exporting we are getting only claims on future British production. Our exports to the United Kingdom are more than double the value of our imports from that country. The fact is not fully appreciated here and it is certainly not sufficiently realised in many quarters in Great Britain."

We are sending out twice as much as what we get back and the difference is then represented by what the Minister calls "claims on future British production". Having said that—and, as I say, he set out to boast about it—the Minister said that when the war was over we would be in the market as a big purchaser for goods, and he said further that we will be able to buy for cash:

"The need of many other countries will be greater than ours, but it could not be transformed into effective demand unless long-term and large-scale credit facilities were available for them. We, however, can buy for cash."

Having said that, he said, a little bit later, that he did not think there was any probability of Britain freezing these credits that we had abroad; certainly there was no prospect of Britain not honouring these debts that we have with her. In that he may be more sure than some other people are.

I have seen this calculation made in one of the professional journals, that when the war is over Great Britain's debts to what are called Commonwealth countries or Empire countries will be in the neighbourhood of £1,000,000,000. The individual who wrote the article that I am referring to frankly admitted that Britain could not pay £1,000,000,000 after the war and said the only thing, of course, that would have to be done would be some sort of funding operation as a result of which these moneys would be repaid over a number of years and be repaid by the only feasible means, that is excess of exports to the creditor country over imports from that country.

That is what the Minister who used to be so strong on self-sufficiency has now turned to. We are sending out to Great Britain much more goods than we are getting goods for in return. According to this economist's calculation, on March 4th, 1943, we had £121,000,000 in England on deposit and we have been adding to that since. And then he made the calculation that they could not pay except over a long term of years and by some sort of funding arrangement, and the only possible way in which they could pay even then would be by sending goods. Apparently what the Minister for Industry and Commerce in this country regards as an admirable situation is that in which we are building up sterling claims against England which England will afterwards liquidate by sending us goods—more goods than we will be sending to her. That Minister used to tell us that every time you considered goods coming from outside the country it meant labour being employed in another country and labour being disemployed here, but he now prides himself on the situation that he has brought this country to in which you have all these moneys outside and, if Britain does not freeze or dishonour these obligations, you will get them paid over a long term of years by excess of imports from England to this country.

Other people are not so clear about these funding operations and there are a great many people who, not wanting at all to decry Britain's good faith, have not the same security that our Minister for Industry and Commerce has in the speech of the 7th March as to Britain's capacity to repay these moneys. I have seen calculations from any number of British economists who confess that they can see no way in which these debts will be payable for many years after the war is over. There are schemes afoot, two plans in particular, for trying to get a certain amount of liquid assets or money made available in liquid form to get trade restarted after the war, but that is starting a fresh with new trade after the war. I have seen nowhere any statement that in these arrangements that are being made Britain intends to start off on a big debt repayment scheme.

We decide to weaken our own country by sending out our people. We decide to weaken those who are left at home by admitting the moneys that these people send home, to have its effect upon the dwindling stocks of goods we have here. We build up our claims on the other side and we hope for the best. I mentioned already the comparison that has been made as between Denmark and this country, Denmark under German rule and this country operating under Fianna Fáil rule. One of the things that the Germans were accused of in any country that they occupied is the forced labour scheme whereby they take people out to work at their industries and pay them in their currency and that currency is then sent back, or part of it is allowed to go back, to swell the price of goods being produced in diminished quantities in the countries from which these people came. Norway in particular was one of the countries where the Germans were supposed to have acted in an outrageous fashion, bringing Norwegians off in forced labour gangs and then seriously affecting the currency situation in Norway by paying these people in money which again had to be transferred home to their families who were left behind. That is done by a German Gauleiter or some such official in Norway but, as far as this country is concerned, it is done by a Fianna Fáil Minister sending our people away. We have reproduced here freely, through our own independent Government, the situation that other countries are complaining of as having been brought about in these countries by German oppression and, when it is all finished and the picture is nicely framed, the Minister for Industry and Commerce goes to boast to a university audience that it is the best possible situation we could have. Then, on that weakened structure, the Minister for Finance comes to demand £1,000,000 a week to help run the State which has been denuded of a lot of its citizens and where commodities are at the moment priced at an extravagantly high rate. The cost of living line has been broken, and I suggest that it would cost an enormous sum of money now to stabilise a cost of living line at the point at which it was in September, 1939, but 1943 saw a rise of over 40 points as between that and the year before. Are these rises going to continue or what has been done with regard to them?

If these rises continue, is there to be no thought at all of the people who are being forced to pay enormously increased prices with the old moneys, such as they had either at the end of 1939 or the early part of 1940? I suggest to the Minister that if he inquired into the circumstances of, say, a dozen typical Dublin families, of different types of workers' families, different types of middle-class families, and add a few examples of families depending on fixed incomes derived from their investments, and tried to work out for himself how these people can manage to make the old moneys cover their ordinary necessities, he will become much more human in this matter and will not be so complacent about the increases taking place every quarter in the cost-of-living figure.

I suggest that the time has come for a better policy in relation to subsidies. On this question of subsidies, we have increases of £500,000 this year as compared with last year. I suggest that the amount should be increased even still further in an effort to help those who are kept at this particular point or, alternatively, the Minister should realise that ordinary justice demands that what has happened in other countries should happen here and wages should bear some relationship to the increased costs families have to bear. It is inhuman and unjust to allow the present situation to continue any longer.

The Minister will probably tell me that it will require a vast sum to do what I suggest. I should like to have his calculation of what the sum is. I have seen calculations with regard to odd groups; I have seen calculations with regard to certain members of the Civil Service, and it was estimated that to give them an increase would cost £300,000 or £400,000. The Minister must have some calculation—it may be in the nature of an estimate —as to what it would cost to try to keep commodities at the 1940 level. Will he give us some figure? That figure to me will represent the loot the Minister has got from the wage-earning classes in this country. Whatever it takes by way of subsidy represents the amount of money which the community is being forced to pay to the Minister in this underhand way.

I suggest no Deputy here could contemplate voting for any proposal which would have the effect of reducing the wages of the community by half. But that is what we have done; at least, that is what we now see the Government have done, and I suggest that this situation should be taken in hand and some real effort made to bring the cost-of-living figure at least down to the 1939 figure.

Mr. A. Byrne

My remarks will be brief, because most of the things I wanted to say have been said by Deputy McGilligan. Like the Deputy, I was provided with a copy of The Economist of February 26, 1944, which discloses some amazing facts as a result of an inquiry covering 100 working-class families on a new housing estate. The 100 families consist of 684 persons, an average of about seven persons per family. The paragraph in The Economist is as follows:—

"The minimum, not the optimum, diet laid down by the British Medical Association was adopted as the basis of the investigation. The diet understates needs. It does not provide enough milk, especially for children, no extra allowance is made for lactating or pregnant women or for invalids, and it assumes that all housewives obtain their supplies at the lowest possible price."

The paragraph goes on to say:

"A comparison of needs with net incomes clearly proves that the standard of living mainly depends on the size of the family. The total number of persons above these needs is 170, of whom 72 are children. The number on the border line is 55, of whom 28 are children. The number below the minimum standard is 459 persons, of whom 248 are children. Thus, out of a total of 348 children, 21 per cent. are above, 8 per cent. are on the margin, and 71 per cent. are below the standard——"

that is, below the standard of the minimum diet provided by the British Medical Association. It goes on further to say:

"This appalling picture understates the malnutrition of the Dublin poor, since it refers to a group of well-paid workers in full employment."

I wish to impress upon the House, following what Deputy McGilligan has said, that the malnutrition in the poorer parts in the City of Dublin, so far as children are concerned, is responsible for very many deaths of infants, and these could be saved if something extra were done by the Government for their parents. Malnutrition is providing prospective patients for the sanatoria in and around the city. I can go back some 50 or 60 years, and I can truthfully say that I see more barefooted children, and more children badly clad and ill-fed in the city to-day than I ever saw before. I have seen women in the poorer parts of Dublin barely covered. I have been brought to homes and I have entered rooms where there were no beds and where there was no bed clothing. I have seen children sleeping on sacks in the corner of a room. All these things can be seen within 100 yards of the principal street in this city.

Inadequate allowances from the public authority could be blamed for some of these hardships. I have seen a small allowance of half a crown or four shillings, and sometimes five shillings, given by the authorities, when the allowance should be at least a pound note. Only to-day people approached me to interview the landlord in order to stop evictions. On the corporation housing estates we have people living on very moderate allowances. They have to pay high bus fares in order to get to their homes on the outskirts of the city. These people have received very meagre increases in pay to meet the higher cost of living. The result is that the children are suffering and the women are paying the price. I have seen women in various parts of Dublin depriving themselves of the food supply that they should keep for themselves, so that their children might be fed. If any proof is required I ask the Minister immediately to start a poverty survey of the city. The splendid people who are responsible for carrying out these investigations—the voluntary organisations—have drawn our attention to malnutrition in Dublin. and they finish up their article by saying that the appalling picture even understates the conditions, particularly in regard to the malnutrition of Dublin's poor.

I think the time has arrived for the Government themselves to appoint a commission to inquire into and examine the conditions that exist in the City of Dublin. Let them take any part of the city and examine the conditions that exist. Children, to-day, in many cases, are going to school barefooted. If they do not go to school, the school attendance officer comes along. These officers are very sympathetic; they see that the children concerned are barefooted, and, where it is possible, they try to get boots or shoes for them. Only a month ago, the Minister for Local Government and Public Health stated in this House, in reply to Deputies—and I was one of them—that a local authority has power to provide boots and clothing for needy children. I tested that out, and got people to apply to the local authority, in cases where I saw that their children were barefooted, cold, and very poorly clad, and the reply they got from the local authority was: "We have no boots or shoes." Yet, one can go through the streets of Dublin—such streets, for instance, as Camden Street, Aungier Street or George's Street— and see hundreds of pairs of boots displayed in the shop windows—at a price, I admit.

What I want to know is, why the Minister for Local Government should tell us in this House that there is no need for children to go barefooted, as the local authority can supply them with boots or shoes, and yet, when the local authority is approached, the reply is: "We have no boots or shoes"? Every day we can see children's boots and shoes for sale in the shop windows, and I wonder why it is that the local authority have no boots or shoes in their own institution.

Why cannot they give the parents of these children an order for boots and shoes, and let the parents get the boots or shoes somewhere themselves, instead of giving the excuse that they cannot give boots or shoes because they have not got them in their own institution? The boots and shoes are to be seen in the shop windows, as I have said, although at a price, I agree.

It will be admitted that the cost of living is rapidly increasing, even in the case of those who are in receipt of poor law assistance. As the cost of living goes up, one would expect that the amount of relief in such cases would go up also, but that is not so. If the price of the loaf goes up by a halfpenny, or if the price of sugar goes up a halfpenny, that means a halfpenny less for the tables of the families concerned. Only a few days ago I saw a boy's suit—a suit for a boy of ten—and the price was 64/-. In pre-war days the price of such a suit would be 24/-, and in the case of the suit to which I refer it was machine-made and of very shoddy material; it had the appearance that after the first shower of rain it would be completely destroyed.

I rise to press the Government to undertake immediately their own survey of the conditions of our unemployed, our casually employed, those employed at small wages, and those on moderate wages, with very large families. I have already joined in the tribute to the Government for introducing family allowances, and I agree that these allowances will relieve to a certain extent the hardships on the people concerned, but it is true, nevertheless—and I am not blaming the Government—that the people who have investigated family conditions in Dublin are not satisfied and say that these allowances are a mere nothing to the people concerned. As I have already told the House, I have seen people badly clothed, badly fed, and suffering from ill-health, and yet they have to pay the same rent. As well as suffering from ill-health, these people are living in constant fear of the rent day, because the rent has to be paid, no matter what happens. As one woman said to me to-day, when I asked her why she had got into arrears with her rent: "Well, Mr. Byrne, I have eight children and I have to buy boots for them, and every time that I buy boots for them it means that the rent cannot be paid." In the case of that woman it meant owing a week's rent in order to buy boots for one of her eight children.

These are things that I hope and believe will have the attention of the Government. I say that the time has arrived for the Government to determine the minimum standard at which a human being can live: that that minimum standard should be fixed by the Government and that it should be guaranteed from somewhere. If the people concerned cannot earn it, or if they cannot achieve that minimum standard through unemployment benefits or employment schemes, then it should be provided from some source so that the children or women concerned will not suffer from lack of foodstuffs because they have not the money with which to buy them at the prices that exist to-day. Such a survey as I have suggested with regard to the City of Dublin is long overdue, and I say that that minimum standard ought to be fixed without delay, so as not to have the people continuing to bear the hardships, suffering and ill-health that most of us in this House know they are suffering, not alone in the City of Dublin but in all parts of the country. I know that the Minister is sympathetic and that he would do all he could, if the money could be found. I am aware that he knows Dublin, I shall not say better than myself, but at least equally as well as I, and I am sure that he knows that what I have said is true. Therefore I suggest that something must be done without delay.

Mr. Cogan

The Farmers' Party have given notice that they desire in this debate to deal with the question of food production. We welcome the proposal of the chief Opposition Party that the question of the rising cost of living should also be debated. There is, inevitably, a very close connection between those two propositions. It is obviously impossible to deal with the cost of living unless a real effort is made, and made now, to deal with the problem of ensuring for our people adequate supplies of food. This crisis that we are passing through at the moment is one of very grave import for our people. If it should happen that supplies of essential foodstuffs from outside sources were to fail completely, then our people would be called upon to face a task bigger than anything they have been called upon to face in the past, but I have no doubt whatever that the people of Ireland are capable of solving the problem of providing themselves with all essentials in food, clothing and fuel, provided that they secure from their Government the proper leadership and direction.

The nation proudly supports the stand which our Government has taken in regard to the preservation of our neutrality. The nation is prepared to rally behind the Government in making that policy effective, and one of the surest methods of making that policy effective, apart from what defensive preparations can be made, is to ensure that we can provide ourselves with the basic requirements of essential food and fuel.

Deputy McGilligan, in a very able speech, upon which I congratulate him—it is scarcely necessary for me to do so because, when the Deputy comes to speak on economic problems, he usually delivers a speech which is thoughtful and well-considered—has shown clearly the failures of governmental policy during the present emergency, failures which have resulted in a falling agricultural output and in the driving of a large section of our working population to another country where they can give their services, so urgently required here, in the up-building and defence of that country. He has also shown the profiteering which exists and which is being carried on by a comparatively small section, while a large and ever increasing section of our people are suffering dire hardship as a result of shortages of food supplies and the rising cost of living. There is only one effective solution of the rising cost of living, that is, to ensure that the output of the land is increased and that the produce of the land is delivered to the consumer at a reasonable price.

Deputy McGilligan made what would appear to anybody who has followed the policy of his Party to be an extraordinary statement. He said that subsidies should be enormously increased. He evidently was not listening here when the Leader of his Party fiercely denounced me for advocating subsidies for agricultural production. Deputy McGilligan, having studied the question carefully, is convinced that the present policy of subsidising production in another country is wrong, that the policy of building up credit assets in another country, which it will be very difficult to realise, is wrong. He has come to the conclusion that it is better to subsidise production here at home and to ensure that the produce is delivered to the consumer at a reasonable price, and it seems to me to be the only intelligent solution of our problems.

When, on the Vote for the Taoiseach's Department, I advocated that the Government should be prepared in regard to agricultural production to guarantee the farmer an economic price for his produce over a long term of years, and when I advocated that even if it were necessary for the Government to stand behind that guarantee with the assurance that they would not allow agricultural prices to be thrown down to the level of export prices, I was denounced by the leader of the chief Opposition Party. I make no apology for having continued to advocate that policy since I came into the House nearly six years ago. I hold that you can never get increased agricultural production and never get increased efficiency in the agricultural industry, unless you assure the producer that, come what may, he will get a reasonable return for his labour, his enterprise and the capital which he invests in his industry.

Those people who have denounced me for advocating assistance for the primary producer are the very people who advocated and supported subsidies for our secondary industries. How have new industries been built up over the past ten years except as a result of subsidisation by the community? How has the vast housing scheme, carried out mainly through the activities of the present Minister for Finance, been carried out but through the subsidising of housing? Again, what are all our social services but subsidies to enable people to live upon incomes which are inadequate? We have that policy of subsidisation of secondary industries, subsidisation of housing and subsidisation of unemployment, for that is what most of our social services amount to, and we have fierce denunciation of any suggestion of subsidisation of our primary industry.

Deputy McGilligan pointed out that it would be necessary, in order to keep the cost-of-living at a reasonable level, to subsidise food and other essentials, but he forgot that only a few weeks ago his Party, the Government Party and the two Labour Parties marched into the division lobbies together in opposition to a proposal of mine to subsdise food through the payment of the direct subsidy to the producer. What would have been the effect of the payment of a subsidy on tillage but to reduce the cost of food to the consumer?

If we agree that the farmer is entitled to a fair price for his produce, a price that will cover cost of production, must we not admit that anything which would reduce the cost of production, such as a subsidy for tillage, would reduce the prices which consumers are asked to pay for food requirements? That was the proposition which Parties in this House, with the exception of this Party, opposed, and which no Deputy in these Parties had the courage or the ability to defend.

Having regard to the gravity of the position in which this nation is placed, and as we may be called upon to provide our entire requirements in all essential goods, it would be well if we were to take stock of the position and to make serious plans for expanding our agricultural output, as well as the output of our bogs and other sources of essential needs. The first essential in any real expansion in agriculture is to give farmers confidence that their industry is a sound one. Twenty years of mismanagement have broken the spirit of independence and of confidence amongst farmers and farm workers. Young men reared on the land for ten years prior to the present emergency could see no future on it. Their eyes always turned towards what they considered to be a sheltered occupation, a salaried position or one that carried a weekly wage, or they were seeking to get away to find employment elsewhere. As long as our young men have such ideas there could be no hope of a sound agricultural industry. In Great Britain farmers are, at present, seriously agitated in regard to the prospect of their industry when the emergency ends. They have demanded from their Government a long-term agricultural policy, that would guarantee them an economic return for their work. They have succeeded in exacting from the Government a promise that for at least four years prices of agricultural produce will be guaranteed. We have not yet succeeded in exacting any such guarantee from our Government, notwithstanding the fact that this is an agricultural country, and that our very existence depends upon the prosperity of the industry. While any decline in agriculture must bring ruin upon every section of our community, our Government continues to plod along with a day-to-day policy, by endeavouring to stop gaps as they arise.

If we could get our Government to take a long-term view of the position, and to assure the agricultural industry of reasonable prices, then we could get down to the needs of the present and the immediate future. The coming six months will be of serious importance in the life of this State. Many big problems await solution.

I raised a question to-day regarding our supplies of seed wheat. Apparently there was some serious miscalculation there on the part of the Government, as a result of which we had to import spring seed wheat this year. Is it not desirable that such miscalculations should be avoided in future? Is it not desirable that we should plan now to ensure that for the coming year, at least, we shall have sufficient reserves of seed for our bread cereal so that we shall have sufficient to satisfy the nation's need? Mistakes which have been persistently made over the past four years in regard to agriculture must be rectified before it is too late. We have been fortunate by being given so much time to make mistakes and in being able to attempt to rectify them. But there may not be any further opportunities for the Government to muddle through in regard to supplies of essential needs. It is necessary that for the harvesting of our grain crops next year provision should be made to meet such an eventuality as the complete cutting off of supplies of tractor fuel and other things. Arrangements should be made to meet that problem by drawing on our manpower, which is really the only way to deal with it. We must be prepared collectively to organise all available workers so that they will be at hand to safeguard the harvest, if mechanical aids cannot be procured. All the problems that face us in regard to supplying our needs can, I believe, be solved if we put our minds down to them. Even if we were in a desperate position, and were completely isolated, I believe that we could for some years carry on the economy of the State, provided always that we have wise and prudent leadership on the part of our Government, and that all sections of the community actively co-operate in making that leadership effective.

Much has been said in regard to the condition of poverty which exists amongst large sections of our people in the towns, in the cities and in the rural areas. There is no reason why that poverty should not be alleviated. There is no reason why the capital assets which we are piling up outside this nation should not be utilised to alleviate that destitution and poverty. I want to appeal to the Minister to take a serious view of the present economic position. As Minister for Finance, he more than any other Minister can help in making an agricultural policy a success or, on the other hand, defeat any attempt to put agriculture on a sound basis. If he is prepared to block every proposal for assisting the expansion of agriculture—such as the proposal put forward by this Party for the subsidisation of tillage—he must take the major share of the responsibility for any failure of our agriculture to maintain our population.

Attempts have been made persistently to put the farmer in the wrong. Ministers have gone round the country denouncing the farmer as making extravagant demands on the rest of the community. The farmer is not doing that nor has he any intention to do that: all that he asks is an economic price for his produce. If the Government is not prepared to accept the farmer's viewpoint regarding an economic price, we are prepared to tell the Government to take farms in every county and work them directly, in order to find out exactly what it costs to produce various items; and we will accept their findings.

Having agreed, therefore, that a farmer is entitled to nothing more than an economic price for his produce, it will be agreed that when we ask for subsidies for tillage, we are not asking for something in addition, but rather for something which will adjust our present unbalanced economic structure and which will make for more intensive farming. Nature has directed agricultural operations in this country, over a long period of years, in the direction of permanent pasture. If we try to direct those operations in the opposite direction, we must be prepared to tilt the scale against nature—and that is the case for the subsidisation of tillage.

If the farmer is guaranteed a decent living, security of price for his produce and security of tenure in the possession of his home, he will accept it as his duty to provide the community with the utmost output possible and will ensure the maximum amount of employment on his land. He will also ensure, as far as lies in his power, that the fertility of his land will be preserved and its productive capacity improved. He is prepared to do his duty to the nation, but he expects the nation to do its duty to him.

If we approach agricultural problems on those lines, we will not have those bitter conflicts such as occur in regard to agricultural prices, the price of milk and other essential commodities. The farmer is prepared to accept a fair estimate of costs of production prepared on an impartial basis and also to accept a price based on those costs. If subsidies are necessary in order to ensure supplies of dairy produce to the consumer at reasonable prices, those subsidies cannot be regarded as subsidies to the farmer, but rather as subsidies to the consumer—and they can be justified as such. I ask the Minister to accept the basis which I have outlined and, if he does, he can rest assured that, if this nation is in economic danger, the whole people will rally as one man to the support of the Government, in resisting any economic forces which tend to destroy our State. There is no doubt whatever that, while a small nation may be overrun by military force, that destruction is not permanent; but a small nation which fails to overcome internal economic problems which are capable of solution is doomed never to rise again. Denmark was faced with such a problem in the middle of the last century, but the spirit of the Danish people, the spirit of Danish nationalism, rose supreme over that economic problem. They found a solution of their economic difficulties in the intensive development of their agriculture and, finding such a solution, they made their nation permanently great.

Dr. O'Higgins

I am under the impression that Deputy Cogan is slightly muddled in his views on certain matters to which he referred. He seemed to be rather confused as to the distinction between a palliative and a policy, as to the distinction between a temporary expedient and a plan, as to the distinction between criticism of a proposal and denunciation of a plan or a proposal. This question of subsidisation was from time to time discussed, considered and approved by this Assembly, long before this Assembly ever heard of Deputy Cogan. On a previous occasion, when the Party the Deputy speaks for outlined a policy for agriculture—a policy for that great industry out of which the whole of this country is living, has lived and must live in the future—the only thing we got from the Deputy was a parrot-like cry of "subsidisation".

At the end of his speech to-day, the Deputy seemed to be getting somewhere near the facts, namely, that subsidisation was not an agricultural policy but a subsidy for the consumer, an expedient to assist the consumer. We had that parrot-like cry of "subsidy" thrown into a debate when everything from scientifice farming to the proper marketing of the farmer's produce was under discussion, and that was the only contribution we had from the intellectual representatives of the farmers' community in this country. It was that kind of nonsense that was criticised, and the Deputy pleases to use the word "denounced". I think any sensible Deputy sitting behind him, or beside him, will agree that subsidisation is not an agricultural policy. It may be a palliative, it may be an aid to agriculture, but it certainly is not an agricultural policy. I do not propose to follow the Deputy into the field of international affairs or take any kind of pessimistic view as to what may be the outcome of a slight disturbance in international affairs. I do not think it is wise or helpful to be unduly pessimistic about matters of that kind. Let us agree that there is sufficient statesmanship, outside and inside this country, to ensure that minor little disturbances of the atmosphere do not grow into a storm.

We have under discussion to-day the advance demand for as staggering a sum as any of us could dream we would ever be asked for in a small community like this. We have an advance request for an instalment on a sum of £50,000,000 which has to be found by the taxpayer of this country during the next 12 months, and we would be failing in our duty as representatives of the people and the taxpayers, if we did not, by searching criticism and by due examination, see whether the country could not be competently and efficiently managed for any less sum, and whether value was being given for the sum asked for. Everyone has to approach that question with consciousness that the times are not normal, and that normal standards cannot be applied in abnormal times, and also in the light of the knowledge that from time to time, in the course of the coming months, we will get an opportunity to discuss in detail all the various Estimates that go to make up this immense sum.

In relation to that, I would like to take this opportunity to call the attention of the Government to one matter that I consider is of importance. Unless this Parliament is in a position to consider fully and adequately the subjects that are to be discussed here during debates, our discussions must be futile and academic. I would urge very strongly on the Government and I think, in this respect, I would be speaking on behalf of all Parties in opposition, as well as Independent Deputies, that some effort should be made to arrange a time table in this Parliament in advance of meeting day. None of us sitting on these benches, to-day, nor on any ordinary Dáil day, knows what will be taken to-morrow or the Order of Business to be taken to-morrow. At 10 o'clock, when the Dáil Order Paper is circulated, no member of the House can get any clear indication as to what items can be discussed, or what the order of discussion will be. In a Parliament controlling a quarter of the world, in the days when this country had representatives in it, an Irish M.P. would know exactly what would be discussed on the 16th, and he would go over for a debate in which he intended to participate and could lend his knowledge to that Parliament. Here, when we adjourn on a Thursday night, we have no idea what the business will be when we reassemble the following week.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

That does not apply to this debate to-day.

Dr. O'Higgins

I excluded that from my remarks. I said that on an ordinary Wednesday we did not know the business we would consider on Thursday. The Minister is aware of the fact that when he was in these benches he knew the subjects which would be discussed.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

But, Deputy, we never knew until we came into the House what was going to be discussed.

Dr. O'Higgins

The Minister is a greater man than I thought. When the Minister's Party was here, they knew what the House was going to discuss. My recollection was that a time-table was made and adhered to.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

My recollection may be wrong, but I do not think that we were ever told what would be discussed on any one day. We did not know it until we came to the House.

Dr. O'Higgins

I will give the Minister the benefit of the argument.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

I think the Deputy is quite right in that. Deputies ought to know what is to come on in the future.

Dr. O'Higgins

There are very few Deputies who are able to give their whole time to considering the business of the House.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

I quite agree.

Dr. O'Higgins

They should get some information in advance as to what the programme would be for the following week. I am raising the point without trying to start an argument, with a view to making the work of this House more helpful to the Government and more easily undertaken by Deputies. Some attention should be given to that problem and an effort made to arrive at a solution of it. We have a demand here in this book for an instalment on £45,000,000, and we are in the fifth year of an abnormal period. We find that every year since the emergency started the demands on the public purse have gone up by leaps and bounds, although our position is unaltered from year to year, and I would go back farther to the years before the period of the emergency. Every year, before the emergency, in which the present Government were responsible for the affairs of this country, the demands of one year exceeded the demands of the year before that, in spite of the fact that the amount the taxpayer was asked for was far below the present Estimates. The Minister for Finance and his colleagues were then describing the Estimates of that period as an utterly unreasonable extortion from the poor taxpayers of this country. That particular charge was not levelled in ignorance. That charge was made by people who had been functioning in this Parliament for a considerable number of years, examining the Estimates, sitting on the Public Accounts Committee, and getting all the information they desired relating to the expenditure of public money.

The main strength of that particular charge was based on the fact that there was extravagance; that there were too many people doing the same job of work; that every Department was overstaffed. There was an increase every year since. To a great extent that increase was attributable to the progressive trend of the whole world with regard to social legislation; but to an extent it was not; to an extent it was merely in order to put five men to do a job that had been done heretofore by four.

I mention these things to show that, when people in responsible positions criticise and attack, they should have at least somewhere at the back of their minds the consciousness that at any particular time they may be called upon to do a bit better and, if the only way they can better the things they denounced is by magnifying and intensifying them, then the denunciation is shown up as either based on ignorance or roguery or a mixture of both. We can take it that having reached this point all these denunciations of the past were so much nonsense. But we must face up to the fact that we have reached the point that the demands that are being made on the average person in this country are being acutely felt. When we have these demands in association with prices that are bounding upwards day after day and month after month, we reach a situation in which it is impossible for the person of modest means to live. When I say "modest means," I am referring to the person, say, up to a standard of £700 or £800 a year; because, in my opinion, a person with a fixed income between what you might call the level of destitution and the figure I mentioned has been hit more adversely within the last four years than anybody below that line or anybody above that line. Below the particular line that we used to regard as the line of destitution, this Parliament and this Government have done their utmost to ensure at least that the lot of that class of the community is not worsened.

We have endeavoured at least to keep them on the level of bare subsistence. But, take the tradesman, the regular wage earner, the steady worker, the clerk, the civil servant, the person with a regular and a fixed income—they are above the level of getting any of the artificial aids through the development of the social services. They are facing, week after week and month after month, increased rates, increased cost for one little service after another, increased taxes, increased demands from below, crushing demands from on top; the Government policy all the time being that their income must remain fixed, that no matter how much is the soakage from below, how much the pressure from above, their income must remain fixed.

The Minister has sufficient experience to know that persons falling into that qualification, people with a steady fixed wage, people with fixed incomes, have a habit of laying out on a monthly or weekly basis their monthly or weekly income—so much for rent, so much for rates, so much for life insurance, so much for the cost of running the home, and, perhaps, in the upper classes, so much for education, and that the margin left over in such a home is not appreciably larger than the margin left over, say, in the home of a labourer. With the increased draws below, the increased taxes above, the bounding, galloping prices of commodities, what is happening in all such homes? Life insurance policies are cashed in first and then an unessential article of furniture is sold month after month. The policy adopted by the Government is that that class of salary earner must not increase his income as long as the emergency lasts. That was a reasonably sound policy at the time it was first enunciated in this House, when it was enunciated as the be-all and the end-all of a policy to keep down prices: that the first step necessary to keep down prices was to fix income and wages and that, if those powers were given to the Government, then prices would be effectively and ruthlessly controlled. One cannot recollect these statements without either a tear or a smile. Wages were pegged down and effectively pegged down. No sooner were the pegs driven in than you would imagine that some of the pegs were cutting the strings of the balloon of prices that went soaring immediately.

Bonuses were fixed and stabilised. The general headline laid down through the country was: "No increased wage, no increased salary, no allowance to enable anybody on a fixed income to grapple with galloping, bounding prices." At the same time, so far as the purchaser or the consumer could see, no effective or no adequate steps were taken to control prices.

If it were possible to apply the same rule all round, to see that everybody's income was stabilised, no matter how prices rose, then I would say that that was a perfectly defensible policy. But to pick out one section of the community, whether that section is 10 per cent. or 20 per cent. of the whole population, and to say that that particular 10 or 20 per cent. must bear all the knocks but can get no compensation or no assistance, that in regard to the other 80 per cent. to an extent some of them will get some compensation and some assistance, but for others the sky is the limit—that is a policy for which there can be no defence or no justification.

Take the bigger contractors. When this war broke out and they had entered into legally binding bonds to carry out large contracts at a certain figure, and the cost of raw materials went up so that the profits they estimated to make on the contract would shrink because of the rise in the price of raw material, what was the action of the Government? That no matter how legally binding the contract was, such contracts could no longer hold and that new terms could be given. That was a perfectly sound and realistic approach to the question, but that meant that the contractor was to have his margin of profit guaranteed, war or peace. What was the policy of fixation of prices with him to the retailer? That if an article cost so much before, 20 per cent. would be the all-in profit, so that if an article cost £1 he was entitled to charge 24/-, and if the same article costs £2 now he is entitled to charge 48/-. Thus the consumer is paying twice the price of the original article and twice the profit on the original article. We have that fantastic absence of control of prices. An article is on the market for 12 months and the public is muleted before any attempt is made to fix the price. After the damage has continued for 12 months, we have the price fixed at an absurdly high figure.

We are not without certain knowledge of how prices were fixed on the other side by a nation fighting the greatest war in history and, for some years of that war, fighting it alone. Still, with all that, the prices of commodities that go into the middle-class home were absolutely controlled over there and compensation was given to the trader for that ruthless control by giving him a right to charge any price he liked for luxury articles. That price control applies not only to the necessities of life but to the ordinary articles that go into the modest or humble home—carpets, linoleum, furniture, crockery, etc. The person who wants an exceptional article, exceptional in design or in quality, pays about 50 prices for that article. Here we have a cost of living which reached the appalling figure last month of practically 300 points. When we reckon that only essentials or what might be regarded as the essentials of life go to make up the cost-of-living figure, and when we consider that non-essentials, or what might be called non-luxuries, as apart from luxuries, have gone up far more steeply in price than the articles reckoned in the cost-of-living index figure, it would be safe, I think, to say that the cost of running an ordinary home in this country has quadrupled in the last four years.

With the cost of running a home multiplied four times, with taxation increased, we have the futility of laying down in the income-tax code that the cost of maintaining a dependent child is the same as it was in the good old days before the war. That is the official recognition that is given to the cost of maintaining and rearing children in this country. Surely there should be some relation between the cost-of-living, which is the cost of maintaining a human being, and the income-tax allowance for the cost of maintaining a human being, whether that human being be a dependent child, a dependent relative or a wife. If the assertion is made that the Government has been highly successful in controlling prices and that the present prices are the measure of their success—I do not mind what way it is taken—that the measure of their success is to increase the cost of living 200 fold, surely they ought to recognise their own success by adjusting the allowance given for the maintenance of an ordinary human being to the figure shown by their own calculations as the increase in costs?

What applies to the classes I refer to applies with equal force to people who have to subsist on a fixed income by way of pension or superannuation. These pensions were fixed before the emergency, before the cost of living went up. We have the Order Paper littered with demands for this, that or the other class of pension. I think it was previously indicated that this Party set its face against that kind of piece-meal approach to the question, that the whole field of the adequacy of subsistence allowances would have to be surveyed and that then justice would have to be done, within the capacity of the public, to pay with a certain degree of equality all round, rather than legislating for one class, and then another class. We were told by the Minister for Supplies some years ago, when he was pegging down wages, that if he did not do that prices would bound upwards, and that the only defence for pegging down wages was the control of prices, that if prices were not controlled we would have inflation. Inflation was held up as the terrible bogey. I would ask the Minister for Finance if the pegging down of wages, the stabilisation of bonuses or the fixation of salaries affected the rising prices to any extent whatsoever? Even if they did limit them to a very slight extent, in view of the appalling increases of prices, is it still reasonable to stand over a policy which, no matter how justified it was at its inception, has definitely failed to achieve the end in view? I have occasion to visit a number of humble homes and, in the course of those visits, I have to go into the question of the income of the families and how the income is laid out. I am perfectly convinced that, through failure effectively to control prices, the cost of living has reached a point where the objects of greatest sympathy—people who never required at any time assistance or aid from any outside source— are actually living under circumstances in which the body is not getting sufficient nourishment owing to the fact that prices have galloped far ahead of their income. The whole policy, as enunciated at the beginning of the war, has so failed in its object that the Government will have to devote its attention in a serious way to the position of the average consumer.

We heard Deputy Cogan advocating subsidies for agriculture. On a particular occasion, he said, I denounced subsidies. What I did denounce was subsidisation as a policy. It is not a policy; it is merely an expedient. I pointed out, in the same statement, that one of the major evils was that the producer was not getting quarter enough for what he was producing and that the consumer was paying far and away too much for what he was buying. That slack between the price to the consumer and the price paid to the producer is absolutely fantastic. We are only a little island. People down in Limerick and Tipperary are shrieking for 1/- a gallon for milk and, in Dublin, we have people paying 3/4 a gallon for milk. If milk had to be transported across two continents, it would not account for the difference between 9d. or 10d. a gallon and 3/4 a gallon. Who gets the in-between cost? It is not the producer; it is the number of handlers in between. We see apples worthless and rotting in the country and we see apples in the shops in Dublin selling at 6d. each. We see potatoes unsaleable in counties as near as Longford and we see a famine price for potatoes in the City of Dublin. We see turnips at such a price in the country that, if a few stones of them were to fall off a cart, it would hardly be worth while to stop the horse to pick them up, and we have turnips selling in the city as dear as bread. These are the absurdities in our economic life. These are the extraordinary differences in price over 30 or 40 or 50 miles of road. Whether it is the fault of the transport companies or the middlemen, there is something definitely bad in the whole economic make-up as between producer and consumer. The producer has a grievance; the consumer has a grievance. The jubilation is somewhere in between.

If we are to take seriously some of the pessimistic forebodings of Deputy Cogan, if we are even to approach the continuation of the world war in a spirit of realism, we cannot face up to the price problem in this country by further demands upon the taxpayer. We cannot go on with this policy of feeding the dog with a bit of his own tail. If we were to subsidise everything produced here, the bulk of the subsidies would be coming out of the pockets of the farmers and we should be only whirling round in a giddy, asinine circle. The producer is entitled to get more. One has not to sit on those benches to have a certain knowledge of and affiliation with agriculture. If the producer is to get a sufficient profit to keep him producing, then he must get more of the price which is paid for his product by the consumer. The leakages and the grabbing which go on between the producer and the consumer have got to be ironed out. They cannot be completely eradicated.

We had a discussion last week on turf. Like the Minister, I am paying 64/- for indifferent turf and I work every day of my life in an area where I could buy the very best of turf for 22/- or 23/- a load. I could nearly sling a stone from a catapult from here to there. There is something wrong with the whole business when the producer does not receive sufficient and when the consumer has to pay a fantastic price. I think that the Government would be well employed in trying to pull in some of that slack, so as to lighten the load at each end. They should not be diverted from the serious task of seeing that production is economical, that the produce is economically distributed and that it will be brought within reasonable reach of the consumer.

Mr. Corry

Deputy O'Higgins told us, when referring to Deputy Cogan, that subsidies were expedients and not a matter of policy. If prices are to be kept down and if the farmer is to get a better price, where is the difference to come from?

I admit that the Party opposite had a grand policy for agriculture. They had a home market for the farmer if he produced bacon at a less price than the Chinaman could produce it. If he could produce eggs at a less price than the Egyptians and the Australians he could produce them and sell them. If he could produce butter at a lower price than the subsidised Australian butter he could produce it and sell it here. That was the policy of that Party as regards agriculture, and one could follow it along the line as far as wheat and bread are concerned. I do not agree with what Deputy Cogan has said, that if the farmer gets a better price for this, that and the other, everything in the garden will be lovely, and that the farmer will then do his duty. I want to tell the Deputy that since the war started, and before it, the farmers have been doing their duty. They have produced food for the people. All that the farmer asks is that he should get a fair price for what he produces. He is entitled to that. The agricultural community saw how half a dozen cooks could hold up an industry for nearly two months of this year. When they see that a thing like that can happen, they are surely entitled to ask: "Is that industry well run?" They are also entitled to ask what would happen if half a dozen cooks got sick and had to remain away for six months? In such an event, would the produce of 80,000 or 90,000 acres of beet be allowed to rot in the factory? The farmers are entitled to see, when the produce of their land is delivered to the factories, that the latter will be in a position to take it in and turn out the finished commodity economically and not have big wide margins as between producer's costs and what the consumer pays.

I do not for one moment agree with Deputy Cogan that the farmers have not done their duty, or that if there was a price for beet the farmer would do his duty. I want to say to this Government, and to any Government that may succeed it in the future, that when there is a labour dispute of any kind you have officials jumping from one Department to another trying to settle it. Instead of doing that, why will not the Government set up a tribunal to deal with the question of costings so far as the agricultural community is concerned? Let the tribunal, on the evidence put before it, fix prices. I would advise that such a tribunal should be composed of people who know something about agriculture, and not of people who would talk the kind of trash that we had to listen to from Deputy O'Higgins this evening. The Deputy's speech proved that he knows nothing about agriculture. Let us have a stop to the senseless fighting that is going on between two of the Parties we have in the Dáil as to which is to be the chief Opposition in the next Dáil. One of these Parties has already been tried by the farmers. The farmers have kicked it out and finished with it. The vast majority of farmers voted Fianna Fáil, the diehards Clann na Talmhan.

It is amusing to recall some of the things that have been said in this House. A few years ago we used to listen to men who were supposed to carry great weight. They came in here in the evening from the law courts and told us how they were going to give us back our markets. We had Deputy Cogan falling into the same mistake to-day. He is all out for permanent pasture. I wonder where did he find that policy. Is that how he would give us back our markets—to have more cattle? Deputy McGilligan, at least half a dozen times in the course of his speech this evening, said his complaint against the Government was that there were too many cattle going to England and that she had nothing to send us back in return for them. Is Deputy McGilligan prepared to say that cattle should not go to England? Is that his remedy, or what is his remedy? In previous years we were able to get machinery, building materials and many other things from England in return for the cattle that went over. In fact, we got a lot of things back that were luxuries, and that we need not be sorry we have to do without to-day.

The position is that we still have an exportable surplus of cattle, and they must go somewhere. Live stock, as we know, constitute the bulk of our exports to Britain at present. Does Deputy McGilligan suggest that we should stop those exports? I imagine that the Party opposite will find it hard to explain what its policy is when we have Deputy McGilligan saying one thing and Deputy O'Higgins an entirely different thing.

Anybody who has travelled through the country must admit that there are many people suffering not only hardships but grave hardships. Yet, in spite of the poverty that one meets with here and there, the revenue from the entertainments tax for the year 1938-39 as compared with 1942-43 shows an increase for the latter year of £131,000, the respective figures being £342,000 and £473,000. These figures indicate an increase of over 33 per cent., and show that the people, despite all that has been said, were able to spend that amount of money on pictures and amusements.

Deputy McGilligan to-day pleaded for one particular class of the community, the man who, he said, has a fixed income, is tied down and cannot go any higher. I am pleading for a class that always seems to get the rough end of it, especially from those professional gentlemen who hold up their hands in holy horror and say: "Oh! the farmers are making money." Their suggestion is that something unheard of has happened. I do not remember meeting any farmer who had too much fat on him when this Government took over in 1932. In the case of some of them you could still nearly see their ribs in 1939. Supposing the Government did think that the farmers were making enormous profits, then I suggest an easy way out is to set up the costings tribunal that I have spoken of, and give the farmers an opportunity of making their case before it for the cost of growing beet and wheat and of producing milk and everything else. Let the tribunal, after giving careful consideration to all the evidence say: "Very well, this is a fair price for the production of that article." If that is done there will be no need to look for the profits that Deputy O'Higgins enumerated.

From 1923 until 1932 Deputy McGilligan was Minister for Industry and Commerce. He should have been known as the Minister who did away with industry because a large number of industries were knocked out during that period. I do not know whether they were knocked out by the deliberate effort of the Government or as a result of their stupid ignorance, but for one reason or another they disappeared. I have given to the House an instance where the tariff on the raw materials for one industry was 40 per cent. The tariff on the manufactured article coming in was only 25 per cent. The profits that these companies have earned, amounting, as Deputy McGilligan has alleged, in some cases to 10 per cent., 11½ per cent. and 27 per cent., are enormous. Surely there should not be any great difficulty in checking these figures with a view to ending that state of affairs. Unfortunately, in this country the idea seems to be that it is the agricultural community who are the offenders when prices go up. The day is gone, and thank God for it, when a farm labourer in this country would have to work for 7/- a week and his food. That was the position here in 1929 and up to 1932. That day will not return. If the professional classes want food produced they will have to pay for it. The ordinary agricultural labourer and the ordinary farmer in this country are as much entitled to £3 or £3 10s. 0d. a week as the clerk with his pen behind his ear that Deputy McGilligan speaks for here, or the professional classes. There has been a great deal of discussion by Deputy McGilligan about the courts and the incidence of crime. So much time is taken up in the courts at the present time because there are too many lawyers.

Captain Giles

Or liars.

Mr. Corry

Lawyers and liars. There are too many fellows looking for money for nothing. Deputy O'Higgins referred to the fact that it was unfair that we should not have the order of business earlier. I say there are other injustices also that should be remedied here. The business of the House should be arranged so as to suit the rural community. Deputies who have to come from the country lose a day coming up and a day going back yet the House will not be asked to sit before 3 o'clock in order that the lawyers may attend after the courts have closed.

I do not wish to take up the time of the House but I honestly believe that if we are to have a fair adjustment here we must do something to lessen the gap between what the producer gets and what the consumer has to pay. I admit that there is that much in what Deputy O'Higgins has said, that there is too wide a gap. There are too many middlemen in this country, too many of the middle class for whom Deputy McGilligan is pleading. There are too many drones and we workers cannot afford to keep them. That is putting it very simply. The producers of food in this country cannot afford to produce food for all the drones, each one of whom demands his share. Last year I instanced the difference in the cost of small seeds and indicated that the amount allowed as between the wholesaler and the retailer was greater than the entire cost of the seeds pre-war. These are matters that, in my opinion, should be investigated and remedied. There are simple ways of remedying them. If we paid less for the seeds we could afford to sell the crop at a cheaper price and thus keep down the cost of living to some extent at any rate.

The implication in Deputy McGilligan's speech to-day was that the farmer was getting too much. He did not say it; he did not mention the farmer; he was too cute; but we know. We have long enough experience—I have, at any rate—of what is going on in the minds of the Deputies opposite. Some of us have very good memories. When we hear Deputy Bennett shouting about the 1/- a gallon for milk to-day, we remember that Deputy Bennett's Party, not so many years ago, voted against paying the farmer more than 3d. a gallon for milk and against the Butter (Stabilisation of Prices) Bill. I admit that Deputy Bennett broke away from them on that occasion. He was one of the few who did. The agricultural community in this country know what to expect. I hope what I have said to-day will end the rivalry that seems to exist between Clann na Talmhan and the Party opposite, who have been tried by the farmers and found wanting.

An Ceann Comhairle

If no Deputy offers, I shall call on the Minister to conclude.

Mr. Corish

The debate initiated by Deputy McGilligan was a very timely one. It dealt principally with the cost of living in this country and the effect it has had on people with fixed salaries; the effect, in fact, that it has had on wage-earners as a whole. It will be remembered that soon after the war broke out a standstill wages Order was made by the Government. Perhaps a standstill Order would not be the correct title because an employer would be entitled under that Order to reduce wages and salaries. It will be remembered that soon after the outbreak of war that standstill Order was made. It was in existence for a considerable time and inflicted a great deal of hardship on the working people. Eventually the Minister, through pressure brought to bear on him by trade unions and by the members of this Party, agreed to set up a tribunal to consider applications that might be made by trade unions on behalf of their members for the purpose of procuring bonuses. It must be remembered also that 77 points of an increase in the cost of food was disregarded by the Minister and by the tribunal he set up when it came to consider the bonus applications.

Deputy McGilligan talked about subsidies. He suggested that food prices should be subsidised so that the people would be able to live decently. In Britain food of all kinds, and clothing and other things of that nature are subsidised. During the last war I understand that the cost of living in England went well over 100 per cent. In the present war the cost of living has increased by only 20 per cent. not withstanding the fact that wages and salaries there have been increased in some cases by 400 per cent. Something will have to be done in this regard so far as the plain people of Éire are concerned.

The cost of living in this country has increased by 65 per cent. Wages have not increased to anything like that figure. Apart from the wage earners and the people with fixed incomes—and the hardships inflicted on them through the policy of the Government—there are certain people in this country, such as teachers, who were granted pensions some years ago and who now find themselves very badly hit in consequence of the increased cost of living. Recently in Britain the Government agreed to increase pensions so as to enable people, like teachers and others, to meet the increased cost of living, which, in England, is not nearly so high as is the cost of living here. Surely people like teachers and others who have given their services in the interests of the community deserve better treatment from the Government.

Not alone has the Minister, through the medium of his standstill Order, prevented working people from getting adequate wages, but even within the scope of that Order, with its many variations since it was initiated, some Ministers, and especially the Minister for Local Government, have interfered with county councils when they agreed to give their workers increases in wages. Quite recently the Wexford County Council agreed to concede an increase of 4/- a week to road workers, gangers and machinery workers in their employment. The county council and the county manager thought, because of an Order issued by the Minister comparatively recently, that when farm labourers received an increase in wages it almost automatically came about that some increase should be conceded to the road workers. The county manager in Wexford read the Order in that way and, in consequence of the interpretation placed upon it and the inference drawn from it, the county council agreed to concede 4/- a week to the workers. The county manager agreed with the recommendation, which was then sent to the Minister. He agreed to concede the 4/- increase for the ordinary road workers, but refused to grant the 4/- increase either to the machinery attendants or to the gangers. In their cases he agreed to give 2/- per week.

The county council agreed to the increase just about the time they were considering their estimates for the year and, knowing they had to face this extra expenditure, they estimated a sum which would cover the proposed increase for the ensuing 12 months. Some time ago I submitted a question to the Minister for Local Government on the subject of wages, and I was informed that that was a matter for the county council. Now, when the county council, which is composed of Farmer, Labour, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael representatives, unanimously decided to give an increase in wages, the Minister for Local Government, for what reason I do not know, prevents their resolution from being carried into operation. I suggest the Minister should not interfere to that extent.

The workers in question have only £2 4s. a week. Are we to take it from the Minister's action that he considers £2 4s. a week sufficient to enable a man to live? So far as the gangers are concerned, at the present moment, in consequence of the fact that there is a scarcity of petrol, the surveyors are not able to give the same attention to road work as they did in the past, and the duty falls on the gangers to undertake more work and greater responsibility. The county council, of which I am a member, recognises that, but the Minister apparently does not.

During the time Deputy Cogan was speaking, I found it very hard to follow his argument. He complained that all the Parties in the House, except his own, refused to vote for the motion which he moved here quite recently and which sought, so far as I can remember, a subsidy of £3 per acre on land.

Mr. Cogan

On tillage.

Mr. Corish

The Deputy said that would bring about a decrease in the cost of foodstuffs. That might be, but he certainly did not bring forward any argument which would enable me, at any rate, to make up my mind as to how that decrease in the cost of foodstuffs would follow. Are we to understand that along with the £3, they were still to get a subsidy on wheat? I imagine from the statement I heard Deputy Cogan making to-day, and the statement he made at the time he introduced that other motion, that the money he sought was necessary in order to enable the farmers to exist. I am not one who begrudges the farmer a decent existence, but I am not convinced that the method proposed by Deputy Cogan either to-day or on the last occasion would place the farmers in any better position. It is not clear to my mind that as a result of the subsidy the Deputy sought the cost of foodstuffs would be reduced.

Deputy McGilligan said that no serious effort has been made by the Government to control the cost of living. Everybody here knows that dealings in the black market are still proceeding. If a person has money, he or she can buy tea or sugar at a fabulous price any day in the week. I believe if the Minister would pay proper attention to this matter he would very easily find out the culprits. There are some things which are necessary in the lives of our people and which are not procurable so far as the ordinary individual is concerned. people with money can always obtain these things. I heard of a man who went to purchase a collar stud and it cost him 1/6. Some attempt should be made to stop that type of profiteering. A collar stud that cost a halfpenny or a penny in pre-war days now costs 1/6. That is most unfair.

I accuse the Government very definitely of not taking earnest or serious steps to deal with the question of profiteering, and again I say that I agree with Deputy McGilligan when he said that the Government should subsidise some of the necessary foodstuffs. It is being done in Britain, although wages have been increased there, as I said in the beginning, by almost 400 per cent. If the Government are serious when they profess their anxiety for the poor people of this country they would adopt an attitude of that kind. People to-day in this country are suffering from malnutrition because of the cost of living and because of the fact that the Government interfered to prevent them from getting a decent wage. As I have pointed out already, a tribunal has been set up now to deal with this matter because the Government began to see that something would have to be done in order to deal with the situation that confronted them, but even the machinery that is provided by that tribunal, under which you can apply for a bonus, is not sufficient to deal with the situation with which we are confronted.

Take the case of a trade union that makes application for a bonus. Unless the employer agrees to join in that application, it may never be heard of, and the Minister has to be written to repeatedly before he takes any action in the matter. In the meantime, the man concerned is living on a wage which is incapable of providing him with proper foodstuffs, proper clothing, and all the things that go to make for a healthy life. I suggest that the Minister should take more powers so far as that matter is concerned. I have known of cases where an application was made by a trade union and where the employer concerned refused to join in the application—it is laid down that the employer concerned must sign the application along with the trade union—and, as a result, the hearing of these claims was held up for 12 months and the people concerned had to suffer during all that time. Accordingly, I would ask the Minister to take further powers in that regard.

I think it is patent to everybody that even some unscrupulous employers recognise that their workers are not being treated properly, and some such employers have agreed to sign the application along with the workers in their employ. There are also some very good employers in this country who, on the amending of Order No. 83, and the coming into operation of Order No. 166, were prepared immediately to sign the application along with their workers. Other employers, however, refused to sign the application until, I suppose, the Minister eventually had to bring pressure on them and they at last agreed to sign it, but the procrastination went on for months and months, with the result that the workers concerned were suffering during all that time. I hope that the Minister will bear in mind the matters that were mentioned here from the Fine Gael and Labour Benches and that he will do something to prevent a state of affairs being brought about here that would turn us into a C.3 nation.

Mr. Bennett

I was struck with one particular phrase in Deputy Corry's speech, when he said: "When you think of the things that have been said in this country." I was particularly struck by that sentence of his when I took up this Book of Estimates. I remember, ten or 11 years ago, when Deputy Corry's Party were in opposition, listening to Deputy Corry lamenting on the amount involved in the Estimates presented to us in those days, when they were not much more than half, or perhaps actually half, the amount of the present Estimates. So, like Deputy Corry, I marvel at the things that have been said. Perhaps it was that the Government Party were willing in spirit but that the flesh was weak but, in any case, the policy and the promises that were then presented to us failed to materialise, and in the space of 11 years we have had an Estimate, that at that time was £24,000,000 or £26,000,000—I forget the exact amount at the moment—swollen to the present figure of £45,000,000.

Much of this expenditure, of course, would have been inevitable in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, but if we eliminate altogether the emergency period of the last three or four years, and if Deputies cast their minds back, it will be found that year by year there was a growing addition to the Budgetary Estimates of the various Ministers for Finance, and one is at a loss to indicate clearly where the cause lay. I myself have no hesitation in saying that it has been due to the policy pursued by the present Government. They set out with the glorious intention of making every class of the community in this country more prosperous. That was an ideal policy if it could have been implemented, and, possibly, with a set policy, somewhat different from the policy pursued by the Government, an attempt might have been made to achieve that ideal, in part at least. Year by year, however, instead of the general position of the country being improved, we had the experience of finding that it was rather the reverse.

Take the position of the agriculturists of this country for very many years, up to the present year or so. Everybody knows the condition in which agriculture was. The position of the workers in this country was almost as deplorable, and we have had unemployment to a greater extent than anybody would have conceived to be possible eight or ten years ago, with the coming into office of a Government whose main plank was the abolition altogether of unemployment in this country. The policy of Government in regard to employment and the resuscitation of agriculture has led to the inflation of the Budget Estimates with which we are confronted to-day. It has led to a tremendous extension of the social services, expenditure on which has increased enormously in the last ten years.

I am not suggesting that some of the moneys expended on these services might not have been necessary, and perhaps inevitable, but a great deal of it would have been altogether unnecessary if a different policy had been pursued. The need for many of the social services which have probably become permanent services would have been avoided with a different policy in operation. Nobody suggests that a temporary expenditure to mitigate difficulties of any particular year might not be necessary, or that even a very heavy expenditure in one particular year of adversity might not be necessary, but we have, in my opinion, extended our social services to such a degree that they are altogether too great for a country of this size whose income is as low as it is.

Many of these social services, I am sorry to say, look like becoming permanent features of our economy and the policy of Governments which succeed this Government will, I think, not be to wipe them out. The agitation will probably be directed to having them maintained or increased. Practically every section of the community shares in one way or another in the expenditure of public money, and, in fact, there is not a soul, from the manufacturer down to the humblest labourer, who does not get a share of the generous expenditure by the Minister for Finance. We are all on the dole, and if any Deputy can suggest somebody who is not, I will be prepared to eat my words.

Looking over the services generally, one realises that every section is on the dole in the shape of a subsidy, a tariff, relief of one kind or another, or otherwise. We are all of us on the dole and the tendency has been for every class, from the humblest worker to the largest manufacturer to depend to some extent on Government aid. We have arrived at the position in which the incentive to real work is absent. I propose to speak pretty strong words and not "to put a tooth in it." I do not believe the return in work by the bulk of the classes in this country is as great as it ought to be, and, from my own experience of working in various countries, I am sorry to say that that return is not as great as it is in other countries, and, until we get away from that standard, we will not achieve great prosperity.

I am not advocating a system of low wages. I think it monstrous that the wage-earner in this, as in every country, should not be paid a proper sum for competent work, that he should not be paid the highest sum which industry can afford to pay him for his work, but I do say that there should be a return in work commensurate with the expenditure. It is not there, and it is not there mainly because of the policy we pursued of refusing to find proper work for people and substituting some social service for it. This has resulted in some sections of the public preferring to live on the generosity of the taxpayer than to engage in honest and decent work. We have seen for years and years that money was available so easily from one service or another that workers and others preferred to get money from idleness rather than to earn a little more by the sweat of their brows. That is entirely the result of the policy pursued. We have gone as far in this direction as it is possible for a country the size of this country to go. This House recently passed a measure which will cost the country £2,500,000, and it is not open to us to blame the Minister for that part of the taxation necessitated by that measure because we all of us, with our eyes open, agreed to pass it.

This Children's Allowances Act will cost £2,500,000. I do not know, and no other Deputy can say, what it will cost in five years' time or whether this Government or the next Government will not say that twice the amount now payable is necessary. No one can say whether conditions will be such that it will be necessary to provide family allowances twice, and perhaps three times, as great. I hope it will not be necessary and, although I voted for the measure, and would do so again, I would prefer that in an emergency we should expend treble the amount, if necessary, to tide the people over the difficulties of a particular year than to pass a permanent measure which will probably involve an increasing cost. We have done the same in other directions. We have led the people to expect the State to provide for their interests without any effort on their part to provide for themselves.

Much of this discussion will necessarily deal with agriculture, and the prosperity or otherwise of that industry will loom large in the discussion on the Budget. Deputy Corry said what I believe ought to have been done long ago when he pressed the Minister to set up a costings tribunal or some such body which would make a definite inquiry into the whole position of agricultural production. I have pleaded time and again in this House for practically the same thing. I have suggested that we will never ascertain the real position of agriculture until some competent body —I appealed on one occasion for even a committee of the House—sits down to make a thorough examination of the position of agriculture, an examination similar to that made in previous years when it was sought to establish an industry. The Government should do what was done when a manufacturing industry was being started, that is, consult with the people concerned and inquire into the general costs of production, the cost of raw materials, what the manufacturer should get, what a fair wage should be, what would be a fair return on the capital invested, as well as a fair allowance for the two or three men directing it. Having allowed for all that expenditure they would arrive at a certain figure which would give a reasonable profit of 5, 6 or 7 per cent.

In reference to Deputy Corry's remarks, I want to say that I can answer for the people of Limerick, and say that that is all they ask and all they hope for. Some Deputy mentioned subsidies. I consider that subsidies are only a temporary solution. They are part and parcel of a dole. I do not see why farmers or any other section of the community should have to depend on the State, if it is possible for them to make a living otherwise. All I ask is that farmers should get fair play like every other section of our people. The position of agriculture should be examined, taking into account what it costs to buy a farm, its current market value if transferred into cash, and what it costs to produce. Having gone into the expenditure involved, in order to pay a liberal wage that will induce workers to give of their best, and so that they will not have to look for social or any other help let there be some return for the owner, perhaps not to the same extent as in some manufacturing industries. I believe that solution is not impossible of achievement. I do not see any danger in it. If the Government does not make the necessary inquiry, let it be done by some committee that everybody will have confidence in, one that will not be suspected of favouring one side or the other. It will be argued that if anything like that was done, the cost of living would go up and that prices might be beyond the reach of consumers. That may not be so. There might be a reduction in prices if the same examination were made into industries analogous to agriculture. One Deputy stated that much of the difficulty about the agricultural position was due to the considerable margin that exists between producers and consumer costs. There is a great margin in respect of many articles produced on the land. Everybody knows what happens in connection with vegetables, the margin being a big one, because so many people share the profit. In the case of agriculture the margin that exists could be reduced. In the dairying industry the cost of milk vessels and other articles has trebled in the last ten years. If the same examination were made in regard to agriculture as is made with manufactures the prices charged agriculturists for some of the raw materials they need would not be allowed. On one side the margin of profit is too great, and on the other side no allowance is made for a margin. If all the items were determined fairly, profit would be levelled all round, and there would not be profiteering on one side and poverty on the other.

On examining the Estimates one is struck by their magnitude in a small country like this, with a population of about 3,000,000. As Deputy McGilligan pointed out, the demand represents £1,000,000 a week or taxation of 7/- a head of the population for every man, woman and child. The sum involved is one that nobody could contemplate with any degree of satisfaction. It should be the desire of every Deputy, if possible, to lessen the demand. The only way that I can see of bringing about a reduction is by a thorough examination into the position of the industry that rightly governs the whole of our economic position—agriculture. No matter what other industry is dealt with, the prosperity or the adversity of this country eventually depends on agriculture. Until that industry is established on a sound profit-bearing basis, we will have demands year after year for an extension of social services and as a result a big Budget. While these views commend themselves to me they may not be popular in this House or outside. In this small country I believe that we have gone too far with our social services, and that the amount spent on them is beyond our capacity to bear. We should find some other way out of our difficulties besides pandering to the demands of every section of the community. We have got to get away from the attitude that the generosity of the Government and the taxpayer is unbounded. The sooner we make the change the better prospect there will be for economic expansion, and the more desire there will be amongst all sections to put every effort into their work and to bring about better returns. Possibly the policy that was pursued in the past has driven away the most ambitious and ardent workers to seek better prospects elsewhere.

Perhaps that is one explanation of the statement that few of those left— old, infirm and delicate women—can be expected to give the same return as the able-bodied men and women who have been forced to go out of this country to seek a living. Whatever the reason, anybody who does not shut his eyes to the facts knows that the return for the expenditure of wages and salaries in this country is not as great as it is elsewhere. I think I am justified in saying that much of that is due to the policy pursued by the Government in the last eight or ten years.

Mr. Davin

The many problems confronting the country to-day will not be solved merely by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Deputies reminding each other of the promises which they made to the people during the past 20 years. The time has arrived when the members of this House, irrespective of Party, should face up to the situation which we see around us to-day and try to help the Government, if they are sincerely anxious—as I believe they are—to find a solution for these growing problems.

If what we read in the papers during the past few days is anything like correct, we will have to face a new situation; and that can be done. In the first instance, those who have been unable to see eye to eye with each other in the past should forget—for their own sakes—the promises which they made in the past and which have no relation to the situation as we see it to-day. We are threatened by some of our neighbours with isolation from the outside world and, if that occurs, we must face that situation and not start crying or cringing. We must shoulder our responsibilities, and that can be done by this Dáil inside the powers conferred on it by the Constitution. Within the terms of the Constitution, we can frame a financial policy which will enable us to give to the people of the State what they are promised in the Constitution—that is, the right to food, clothing and shelter, even if we have to live on our own resources.

Many discussions of this kind have taken place in the House during the past 12 months and, on every occasion, a demand has been made, from the Opposition Parties particularly, for the production of a considered plan for the solution of the many problems confronting the country. Replying to the last debate of this kind, the Taoiseach stated that it was impossible for the Government to produce a considered plan, unless they were in a position to forecast the result of the present world conflict. However, something can be done to meet the existing situation, no matter how serious it may be or may grow, from the internal or external angle.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce and Supplies spoke to the citizens of the State over the radio on last Friday night, and it was quite evident to those who listened to him that he had some new line-up on the fuel position. I regard the fuel position, apart from international reactions of any kind, as very serious at present and likely to be very serious during the coming winter, unless the Government, the local authorities all Parties in this House and everybody who can help, will help to increase turf production. The Government can help, if they would realise that it is their duty to pay the producers of turf something more than they have been getting since the emergency arose. Figures were quoted by the Minister for Industry and Commerce during a recent debate on a Supplementary Estimate, to show that those engaged in the distribution of turf are getting about twice as much out of it as those engaged in its production. There is something radically wrong with a system that allows that to go on.

The most recent statement made in regard to this matter was made last week by the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, when he wrote to one of the local authorities, indicating that he was prepared to pay a minimum hourly rate of 10½d. to those engaged in producing turf for local authorities. Surely to goodness, with the money we have at our disposal to-day, with the statement made so often inside and outside the House by the Minister for Finance that there is plenty of money available for every credit-worthy scheme, with the cost of living as it is to-day, with the responsibilities that are on married workers in turf-cutting areas, 10½d. per hour is nothing like a living wage?

I am appealing from these benches to the Government to face the situation they know exists in the turf-cutting areas. Men who were willing to be hired by local farmers for turf cutting last year were in a position to get at least 10/- per day, with one or two meals thrown in. Is it right that they should be asked to accept work on turf production schemes for local authorities this year at 10½d. per hour?

The Government is facing a serious situation, in which there will be a shortage of fuel during the coming winter, unless everyone does his bit. I appeal to them to agree to pay a minimum wage of at least £3 per week to all workers employed by local authorities on turf production schemes. Someone may wish to make a joke about this and say it is a Labour Party joke. If the private producer, engaged in turf production last year for profit-making purposes, could pay a minimum daily rate of 10/- they have been getting it in many parts of my constituency—surely the local authorities should be encouraged, if not compelled, to pay the same minimum rate?

If that is done, more men will be secured for work for the local authorities, and more and better turf will be saved and the shortage of fuel, which we all feel is a danger in the coming winter, will probably disappear. The reduction in the output of turf by the local authorities last year was due to the fact that they could not get workers at the miserable rate of wages sanctioned by the Government for men engaged in that necessary national activity. If the men employed by the local authorities are to be asked to produce more, they will have to be given all the facilities, and facilities other than a decent living wage. Is it right or proper that men should be compelled by the local labour exchange to travel four or five miles and, in one case that I came across last year, up to seven miles, to and from their work and, at the same time, be expected to give a decent return on a bit of bread and butter and tea, if they are lucky enough to get butter with the bread, or tea?

I think the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Government as a whole, who are anxious, as I am sure they are, to increase turf production, should see that workers get reasonable facilities to travel to and from their work. If they cannot give them preference in the distribution of cycle tyres to allow them to travel to their work and home again, the local authority should be compelled to provide road transport for large groups of workers who have to travel long distances from villages and towns to the nearest bogs on which they are working. If the Government will face the necessities of the future by giving the workers decent rates of wages and reasonable facilities to get to and from their work on the bogs, then, I think, that turf production in the turf-cutting counties can be greatly increased.

I want also to suggest to the Minister concerned, and the Government as a whole, that they should consider the widespread complaints—justifiable complaints—in connection with the bad quality of turf delivered to Dublin and Cork and the other principal centres which are a long distance from the turf-cutting areas. Was it ever suggested by the Minister responsible, or by the Turf Development Board or the Turf Controller, that it would be advisable to have a classification of the bogs in the turf-cutting counties? Why, in the name of goodness, should county surveyors, who are merely agents for the Government in producing turf, be allowed to cut turf to be sent long distances from the worst type of bog, when much better bogs, capable of producing first quality turf, are available near at hand? From the point of view of cost to the consumer in the cities and towns, it is ridiculous.

I have been in my constituency on a number of occasions having a look around in the Clonsast area. I have the honour to represent a turf-cutting county where considerable quantities of turf have been saved and sent to Dublin since the emergency arose. Prior to the emergency, Clonsast produced a quantity of first-class turf at a maximum cost of 22/- per ton, on a bog where workers were employed under trade union conditions. I was at Portarlington Station on one occasion with a colleague of the Minister, and members of the Turf Development Board, and I saw some of the worst type of turf being unloaded. I asked the stationmaster what was the weight of turf on the lorry? Sometimes it was 1 ton, 19 cwts. and two or three quarters—less than two tons.

Mr. Larkin

And on a three-ton lorry, if not a six-ton lorry.

Mr. Davin

This was being loaded into six and eight-ton wagons. The reason for that was that the very worst type of turf, the surface of the bog, was being transported to Dublin over a long distance and you could not get an economic load into a railway wagon. That is adding to the cost to the consumer in the city, for turf of the worst type which should not be sent over long distances into the city because it would absorb all the water falling from the sky if left out in the open. The poor people who live in the tenements of the city have not sufficient storage capacity for that type of turf, and that is another reason why the bogs in the turf cutting counties should be classified so that the county surveyors will send only to the cities turf which has been cut in first-class bogs.

It would be far better and cheaper for the Government, and the taxpayers, who will have to pay a big bill in the long run, if quality were pursued, and it would certainly be far better for the consumers in the city who should get a better quality, of turf for the high price of 64/- per ton, plus subsidy, which has to be paid by the taxpayers. I have often thought, when I see this kind of muddling going on, that it would be far better if some of the civil servants at the head of the Turf Development Board were replaced by gangers—working men—in the counties, who know something more than civil servants who never saw a bog until the Turf Development Board was established. The county surveyors, if they tell you their minds, as some of them have told me, believe that a road ganger living in a turf cutting county knows much more about turf cutting than the civil servant who has received his degree in the National University, and who was never trained to get the best results from the bogs in circumstances of to-day.

If some of the heads of the Turf Development Board and the Minister responsible would consult these men, or, even go so far as to set up a consultative council of road gangers or others with experience of turf-cutting operations, they would learn something which would enable them to get turf at a much cheaper price to the consumer and with corresponding advantage to the consumer. In his speech this evening Deputy Dr. O'Higgins said that in the area where he works turf is being sold at 23/- per load. "Per load" to me does not mean very much. You could have a load of what is called brown turf which would not weigh five cwts., or a load of good black turf, two to one to coal, which might weigh 15 cwts. It is very hard to judge a load of turf such as Deputy Tom O'Higgins referred to. I am not raising this for political purposes, but the value of the turf brought into the city during the past couple of years could have been considerably improved if there was commonsense planning by people at the head of affairs. I have a sort of idea that the final bill to be met for this whole muddling campaign for which the Minister is responsible, will be a terrible bill, when we come to tot up the figures on the day of reckoning.

I know of a siding in the North Wall, in Deputy Larkin's constituency, which has been leased to a certain coal owner now engaged, of course, in the sale of turf, where one wagon in three has been condemned over a long period. The wagons have been under load for a week, and, in some cases, two weeks, whereas, in the ordinary course of events, if best results were to be got out of transport, these wagons should do two journeys a week to and from the turf area. One wagon in every three was rejected. Where was the turf sent to? Down to the turf dump, down to the pool, never to be seen again and, in the long run, we will have to pay for that turf which has been rejected, and the final bill will be presented to the taxpayers. If the Minister wants the name of the siding where that occurred, I will give it to him.

I know of one case in my own home area, Dun Laoghaire, where the same kind of thing has been going on for a long time. Who is responsible, at the starting point, for the turf which has to be condemned here in Dublin?

Is there not something radically wrong there? Somebody who knows something about the value of turf should be charged with the responsibility of inspecting that turf before it leaves the point where it is produced. If that were done, you would not have this terrible muddle which will have to be paid for very dearly in the long run by the consumers and taxpayers jointly. I could not use language sufficiently impressive to remind the Minister how serious this situation is and how it can be remedied if all those who have responsibility will play their part in trying to remedy it. I say seriously that the Government must face up to the situation. Now is the time to do it rather than to wait until there are strikes on the bogs at the beginning of the turf-cutting season. They should take their courage in their hands and face boldly up to the matter and, with all the money that the Minister knows is lying in the banks, give the workers who are to provide fuel during the coming winter a living wage to enable them to do so.

Some of us are often blamed for making comparison with our British neighbours. About 100,000 coal miners have been on strike in Wales and other mining areas in Great Britain during the past week, although their pre-war wages have been more than doubled since the commencement of the war. What is the position with regard to those engaged in turf production here? You would rather give them, as you have been giving them, a permit to go to England to produce coal or something else for the British people, than pay them a decent wage and keep them at home to produce the fuel which is so badly needed for our own citizens. You will have to keep them at home now. It is a damn good job that you will, because if you let any more go out of the country you will not be able to get the labour to produce sufficient fuel and food for our citizens. I say that because I know that there has been a shortage of labour in many areas in my constituency during the last season.

I want to refer to one or two other matters. In the amount for which this House is asked to make provision is included a sum of, roughly, £250,000 in the Estimate of the Department of Local Government to provide for the payment of supplementary allowances to old age pensioners, widows and orphans, and those who have to look for national health insurance benefits. I welcome the gesture, if it can be called a gesture, on the part of the Government in providing supplementary allowances for those people whose allowances, both pre-war and since the emergency, are certainly not based on the level of a decent existence.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is aware that he must not raise the question of administration of any Department on this Vote?

Mr. Davin

Of course I am. I am aware that I can criticise the action of the Government in making it a condition for such people to get a supplementary allowance that they must go to the local home assistance officer and prove they are destitute. I think it is a damned disgrace that people who are entitled to a supplementary allowance to meet the increased cost of living must, under the terms of the emergency powers Order, go to the local home assistance officer and prove to the officer that they are paupers or are in a destitute state before they can get that small supplementary allowance.

I also want to object, and I will continue to object on occasions of this kind, as long as I am a Deputy, to the miserable means test which prevents many old age pensioners and widows and orphans from getting the miserable maximum pension laid down for them under the regulations. If the Government are right—and I agree that they are right—in doing away with the means test in connection with the payment of children's allowances, it is time that they did away with the same miserable means test in connection with those who are entitled, by reason of their age and service to their country, to get this small sum when they reach the age of 70 years. I hope that the Minister, who has so much money at his disposal for every praiseworthy object, will remove this miserable means test from the regulations laid down for the receipt of old age pensions, or widows' and orphans' pensions.

He will be doing something—I am sure he is anxious to do it—to comply with the terms of the Constitution which members of the Fianna Fáil Party boast so much about. I do not want to say anything in connection with this discussion which would drag in the usual political Party phrases that have been so common in discussions of this kind in the past, because I feel that, in the situation that I see around this country, it is up to every Deputy of every Party to make any suggestions which he thinks would help to improve the position of our citizens, and to protect them during the critical period which lies ahead.

Mr. O'Donnell

The question of food is certainly a very important one. Punch on one occasion offered a prize for a suggestion as to the best way in which a wife could hold the affections of her husband, and the prize was awarded to the person who said: “Feed the brute”. Napoleon put it in another way; he said an army marches on its stomach. I suppose that food is a matter of primary importance in this country. The last rôle in which a farmer would like to appear is as a suppliant, a cadger or a beggar. We are not made on these lines. A very interesting thing appeared in the papers this morning when we were told that a weekly ration of six ounces of butter will get us through this year. That is a terrible indictment. As a result of a meeting in Limerick on Saturday last arrangements were made to approach the Government with a view to getting 1/- per gallon for milk throughout the year. That would, perhaps, provide a solution for this butter problem. There is only one way to manage with six ounces of butter in the week and that is to melt it and put it on with a camel hair brush.

About a month ago Deputy Corry asked a question as to the price for beet, and it was also discussed on the motion for the adjournment, when Deputy Corry spoke on the matter. I was very anxious to speak too, but I got a hint from a certain Deputy that the Minister was very tired. Perhaps any Minister might be tired after all the oratory in this House. I have great sympathy with the Minister. He is doing his job and making a very good hand of it. I have the honour of knowing him for 25 years and I can say that every job he has undertaken he has done it well. I was very interested in his reply on the question of the price of beet. He stood up for the sugar company very well. Shortly afterwards I saw that the price of sugar was increased by 1d. per lb. I think the Minister mentioned in or about that time that if it were not for that increase the company would not pay. What about the poor producer? I should like to put a little problem before the Minister

Beet at the present moment is paid for at the rate of £4 per ton and then we have to pay for carriage. Thereby hangs a tale. The remote growers and the adjacent growers are treated very differently. A man living adjacent to the factory at Mallow, Thurles, Carlow or Tuam can get his beet carried say a distance of about half a mile at about half a dollar a ton while I, living practically half way between Thurles and Mallow, have to pay 9/10 carriage per ton for washed beet. On that I received a rebate of 1/10 leaving the net carriage 8/- per ton. I would suggest that a flat rate be fixed for carriage of all beet, no matter where it comes from. Possibly I may lose votes as a result of that suggestion but as I say, I live myself mid-way between two factories and the carriage of the beet costs me 9/10. We are supposed to get £4 per ton for the beet but you may reduce that to an average of about £3 10s. 0d. per ton. The £4 is paid only for beet with a sugar content of 17.5 and our beet may only have a sugar content of 15 or 16. I would say that the average price the farmer receives would be about £3 5s. 0d.

Again, I say that the farmer living in the vicinity of the factory should not get preferential treatment in the matter of price. Assuming that the average price received by farmers at the moment is about £3 5s. 0d. per ton, I would suggest that that be increased by about one-fourth, or, say, increase the nominal price of £4 to £5 and then increase the price of sugar to the consumer also by one-fourth, from 6d. to 7½d. per lb. I would say that if we could get sugar at the moment on the top of Galteemore, the McGillycuddy Reeks or in the Bog of Allen at 1/- per lb., you would have the halt, the lame and the blind rushing to buy it at that price. I recognise, of course, that the company has to look for their share of the profits.

These people did not put money into it for the good of their health. Neither is the grower in the business for the good of his health. If anyone at the moment could suggest to me where I could get sugar, beyond the ration allowance, at 1/6 per lb., I would get 40 buyers for it in a moment. That is what is happening in the black market. With sugar at 1/- per lb. we would have a very large quantity to barter for artificial manures, petrol, paraffin and other commodities which we so badly need.

Deputy Davin suggests that it is a very good thing that young men can no longer leave the country. I remember that the late P.D. Moran, in The Leader, and Arthur Griffith, in Sinn Féin, often dealt with the question of the loss occasioned to the country by the emigration of young men between 18 and 19. They pointed out that up to that age young men were non-productive. Some of these young fellows went to America or Australia in former years but recently they have gone almost exclusively to England. For a year or two they perhaps sent back some money but, after that, their remittances generally ceased. At the period of which I speak, it was estimated that the country lost £200 by the emigration of each of these young men.

By how much has that figure increased in recent years? I would suggest that it might fairly be put at £300 now. That is what we lose by the emigration of every boy and girl. Just consider the wealth we are losing in that way. Percy French once said that Ireland's principal exports, the export of a country of 4,000,000 inhabitants —or of 3,000,000 inhabitants since the Free State was set up—were bullocks and emigrants. At the present time a young man from the country will take a job for six months with a townsman but he will refuse to work with a farmer. He sees the stigma, or rather the penalty, that is associated with agricultural work. If you are a tinker or a tailor you can get a pass to England but an agricultural labourer cannot. Of course the object of that is to keep our boys on the land at home. My friends on the right here have alluded to the fact that while certain workers are paid 10½d. per hour, the farm labourer gets only 9d. per hour. He gets £2 per week, which is approximately 9d. per hour. I think the turf cutter is also getting his board and lodging, or, at least, there is an allowance for that.

Mr. Davin

What about the man on county council work?

Mr. O'Donnell

The agricultural labourer gets 9d. per hour or £2 per week.

Mr. Larkin

Where does he get £2 per week? He gets it in one county only.

Mr. O'Donnell

We pay £2 per week all over the Twenty-Six Counties. It is higher in some counties.

Mr. Larkin

The last figures published on the 16th February show that there was only one county, County Dublin, in which there was a higher wage paid. The wage in County Dublin is £2 4s. Outside that, there is not another county but one that pays £2 per week.

Mr. O'Donnell

We in Tipperary pay £2 per week.

Mr. Larkin

You were always generous.

Mr. O'Donnell

Absolutely, and it does not even stop at that.

Mr. Larkin

Is he not worth £3 per week?

Mr. O'Donnell

Yes, provided you give us the price for our produce that would enable us to pay him £3 per week. He is worth £3 a week. The farmer's son, the agricultural labourer, is the prince of the labour world. I am sure the House remembers the figures given by Professor Murphy in the famous work which has been so often quoted in this House as representing income of farmers themselves — 21/10 on farms up to 20 acres and a few pence higher on farms over that acreage. That pamphlet created a great sensation. Yet when we asked for a subsidy of £3 per acre for tillage here a few weeks ago, how was the motion received by the House? Deputy Cogan proposed the motion and I seconded it. A Deputy on the other side of the House on that occasion said that neither he nor anybody else could understand what I had said. All I can say in that regard is that my articulation compares very favourably with that of the Deputy. I think that from the pit to the gallery everybody can hear the Tipperary blas of Deputy O'Donnell, but whenever that Deputy speaks he reminds me of a bottle filled with water. There is a struggle for supremacy between the water and the air with the result that all one hears is a sound like "bubble-bubble-bubble." I am sorry the Deputy is not listening to me now. Although the House would not agree to our proposal for a subsidy of £3 per acre for tillage, I might point out that the English, Scotch and Welsh farmers are getting a subsidy of that amount. We had the extraordinary spectacle of the two big Parties walking into the same Lobby on the Níl side to defeat that motion. We had the whole House with the exception of 12 Deputies voting against the proposal.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy is aware that motions decided may not be re-debated for six months. Not one month has elapsed since that motion in question was decided.

Mr. O'Donnell

I have practically finished.

An Ceann Comhairle

I was anxious to know which of the three topics the Deputy wished to discuss.

Mr. O'Donnell

I shall finish in about 100 words more. As I say, only 12 Deputies voted for that motion. As Deputies filed into the division lobbies, I was reminded of a certain incident recorded in the Old Testament in which we are told Lott's wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt. We had 12 just men to support us, including two converts; I shall not mention any names. We had the sorry spectacle of a whole mass of other members of the House voting against it on that question of providing a subsidy for tillage. Yet the keystone of that motion to provide a subsidy was to feed the people. I think that Deputies generally should feel ashamed of themselves because of the attitude they adopted on that occasion. The division was supposed to be political; it was the old Party hack system. I am a member of the Farmers' Party but I would not be bound by any Party pledge on an important question of that kind; I would be an Irishman first and a farmer afterwards. There is £300,000,000 of our money invested in foreign securities. I wonder is there any chance of getting that back? There was a certain little incident when the Irish Party was in its heyday in the House of Commons which is apropos to this discussion. The Congested Districts Board was seeking £1,000,000 for improvements along the western seaboard. The Conservatives were against the claim. The Irish Party were on their toes — fine brave fellows. Tim Healy—I am sorry Deputy O'Higgins is not here at present—was then sitting as independent member for North Louth. Some of the older members here may have heard the famous Tim. I heard him on political platforms and I knew him personally. One did not often see him smile when speaking —

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy's reminiscences are not relevant.

Mr. O'Donnell

They have a bearing on this matter.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Chair fails to see it.

Mr. O'Donnell

Tim Healy said: "I object to these Irish peasants getting this money; my constituents in Uganda might run short." A sum of £10,000,000 had been voted to Uganda a short time before. The motion to make the grant to the congested districts was beaten at that time but, three months afterwards, the money was voted by the House of Commons, mainly because of Tim Healy's remark. Can we collar any of that sum of £300,000,000, invested in England, to get the food we want? I was in Clonmel one day this week and I could not get a wrench. A neighbour was there looking for links for a reaper and binder and could not get them. The Massey-Harris reaper and binder and the McCormick-Deering are American made. The only two British binders are the Hornsby and the Albion. I can see that there will be a great shortage of labour if we cannot get fittings for these reapers and binders. We want the people of the towns and cities to give up thoughts of holidays and to help our sons and boys in the bogs and in the fields who will be working from dawn to dark so as to save the country from famine.

Mr. F. Lynch

It was very difficult to understand what Deputy O'Donnell was driving at, but one might gather a few points from his speech. One was that he would increase the cost of living, so far as sugar is concerned at any rate, and that he would have the sugar price increased to 1/- or 1/6.

Mr. O'Donnell

No, 7½d.

Mr. Lynch

If I heard the Deputy aright, he said that, if he had sugar at the top of the Galtees or in the middle of the Bog of Allen, or at the top of the McGillycuddy Reeks, and if it were offered at 1/- and 1/6, it would find several buyers.

Mr. O'Donnell

7½d. would be my price. You could coupon it at 3d. if you liked.

Mr. Lynch

What the Deputy said was that if we had sugar at the top of the McGillycuddy Reeks or the Galtees, or in the Bog of Allen, at 1/- or 1/6 per lb. there would be plenty of buyers.

Mr. O'Donnell

Quite correct.

Mr. Lynch

The only conclusion one could draw from that was that he was advocating that price for sugar.

Mr. O'Donnell

On a point of order, my suggestion was that a quarter be added to the £4 a ton, which would make it £5. That would add a quarter to the 6d., which would make it 7½d. If that were too dear for the poor, you could coupon it at 3d. or 4d.

An Ceann Comhairle

That is not a point of order.

Mr. Lynch

The Deputy should have said that he was advocating 7½d. as the price. What he said was that he could sell it at 1/- or 1/6 if he had it in the places he mentioned.

Mr. O'Donnell

7½d. is my price.

An Ceann Comhairle

There was no running comment when the Deputy was speaking. He must allow Deputy Lynch to proceed without interruption.

Mr. Lynch

It was hard to gather what Deputy O'Donnell was driving at when dealing with the question of labour. In his winding-up speech, he appeared to lament the lack of labour for farm work. Prior to that, if I understood him aright, he was expressing regret that every type of worker could get a travel permit except the agricultural labourer and the turf worker. When he made that statement, I was rather surprised because I thought he was urging that things should be made easier for those with experience of agricultural work and work on the bogs to get away to England. Between the two statements, it is very hard to know where Deputy O'Donnell stands. Naturally, those men with experience of agricultural work are anxious to get across to England when they see their relations and neighbours coming home on holidays with plenty of money in their pockets. The town worker has occupied a different position. I am afraid that the agricultural worker will have to put up with the present position of affairs by which he is kept here owing to his services being essential. If the work of food production is to proceed, these men cannot be allowed to leave. It may be hard lines on them but the interests of the country demand that that be done.

To come back to the question of the cost of living, which Deputy O'Donnell would increase so far as sugar is concerned in order further to subsidise tillage, and particularly beet, I think that the limit has already been reached so far as the lowly-paid worker and the man on a fixed salary are concerned. One can safely say that there is no commodity in the ordinary family budget which has not increased substantially in price during the past three or four years. Even where controlled prices have been fixed and are effective, to some extent, they represent a considerable increase on the price which prevailed in 1939 or 1940, before the repercussions of the war were felt here. In 1940 the worker in Dublin paid about 2/2 per lb. for his tea and it was quite as good as the pool tea which is now controlled at 4/- per lb. I shall not deal with the prices being paid in the black market. I think it was Deputy Corish who said that everybody knew one could get plenty of tea at 15/- or 20/- per lb. if one had plenty of money in one's pocket. The controlled price of tea at 4/- a lb. is practically 100 per cent. increase on the 1940 price. The increase in the case of sugar has not been so great, but from being 4½d. per lb. in 1940 it is now 6d. I do not agree with Deputy O'Donnell that the ordinary person in the country could afford to pay another 1½d. a pound on sugar. Take the agricultural labourer with a wage of £2 a week, where he can get it. In that connection Deputy O'Donnell says that agricultural labourers all over are getting that wage, while Deputy Larkin says they are not.

Mr. Larkin

I was speaking about the wage fixed by the Agricultural Wages Board.

Mr. Lynch

I understood that the board had raised it to £2. I may be wrong in that. But even supposing that the agricultural labourer is getting £2 a week, I do not think that he would be too well pleased with Deputy O'Donnell's suggestion to pay another 1½d. per lb. on the sugar needed for his family. I think that he finds that he is faced with a sufficiently dear commodity already in having to pay 6d. a lb. for sugar, and on top of that, 4/- a lb. for tea when he can get it. I have not the 1940 price for flour, but in 1941 a stone of flour cost 3/- and to-day it is 3/8. Butter has gone up from 1/8 in 1940 to the controlled price of 2/4 to-day. That is a very serious matter for the agricultural labourer, the city worker and the lower-paid civil servant with a fixed salary and no way of getting any addition to his family budget except from his wages. Deputies will remember that round about the 1939 period, when butter was 1/8 per lb., the man with the low wage was not confined to butter. There were substitutes available at the time, especially for cooking purposes. Good qualities of margarine were to be had, and dripping and other fats which are now practically unprocurable.

The price of potatoes has gone up from 10d. a stone to 1/10 this year. Last year they were dearer, being about 20/- per cwt. All other commodities used in the household have similarly increased in price. In 1940, in the Dublin shops, a leg of mutton could be bought at 1/2 per lb.; it is now 2/-. Loin chops which were to be had at that time at 1/8 are now 3/- per lb. Steak, which was then 1/4 per lb., is now 1/10 to 2/- a lb. These are all necessities of life for the working-class family and the lower-paid civil servant. Cornflour, currants and raisins, which may not be necessities, have gone up so much in price that they are quite beyond the capacity of the persons I speak of to purchase them. The working-class family in 1940 could have a little treat provided for the children now and again in the way of a currant-cake because currants at that time were to be had at 7d. per lb. They are now controlled at 4/- per lb. Those of us who live in Dublin are aware that at one time the shop windows were flooded with currants, marked at 7/6 per lb. Then came the Order controlling the price at 4/-, and suddenly the currants disappeared from the window. The people to whom I refer could not afford to pay 4/- a lb. for them.

In 1940 centre back rashers could be bought at 1/8 and 2/- a lb. Now they are 3/2 per lb. when you can get them. In those days milk was sold in Dublin at 5d. or 6d. per quart, and if one took delivery of it at the shop the price was something less. Nowadays the price of milk delivered at the house is 9d. per quart, which is nearly a 100 per cent. increase. That, again, is a very serious matter for the worker's family, and especially for the employed worker who does not benefit from the free milk scheme. The fact that he is in constant employment means that he has to pay this increased price. One can see from all this how hard hit that type of person must be by these increases. It is really difficult to know what could be done about them. One can conceive that the milk producer could not possibly supply Dublin with milk at the price that he was paid in those days. I do not know if his costs have gone up to the same extent as the retail price has gone up, which is practically 100 per cent. But certainly if those prices have to go up something should be done to meet the case of the persons who have to foot the bill.

Where families are concerned, the cost of clothes and boots has gone up by well over 100 per cent. and, in many cases, by 200, 300 and 400 per cent. In those days a serviceable waterproof coat for the small boys in a family could be bought for about 10/- or, as the shops like to have it, 10/11. If you could get such a coat to-day it would cost between £3 and £4. Men's waterproof coats, of the same quality, could at that time be bought for £1, 18/11, 21/11 and 22/11d. For the same coat to-day you would pay anything up to £5.

The position is the same in regard to other wearing apparel. Sports coats —popular wear for young people, especially in the summer—which cost about 25/- in 1940, are now £5, £5 10s. or £6. The flannel trousers that are worn with them were then available at about 10/-; the price to-day is from about 50/- to 60/- or 70/-. Shirts and pyjamas have quadrupled in price. Sheets, etc., and all the commodities in common use in the ordinary household have increased in price out of all recognition. Whether it is that the attempted control of prices has completely failed, I do not know, but at any rate, when we are faced with the fact that we have so failed to keep the price of the ordinary commodities within the purchasing capacity of the worker and the small wage earner, I think we should then see to it that wages are raised to come at least some way towards meeting the increase in price.

An Ceann Comhairle

Shall I call on the Minister to conclude?

Mr. O Ceallaigh

I do not wish to rush the debate.

Mr. O'Leary

I have listened to Deputies from four Parties, and I wondered were these Deputies in earnest, were they honest in what they said. I am an ordinary individual, a worker with no income but my salary from the Dáil. On both sides of the House there are farmers, businessmen, professional men and men in positions. I do not believe that a man can be honest when he talks about the relief of unemployment while at the same time holding two or three positions.

It has been stated that there are no unemployed men in this country. Are the 71,924 who sign the register at the labour exchanges in Éire girls? Are there no men included in that figure? We are told that the agricultural labourer or the turf worker should not be allowed to leave the country, yet the agricultural labourers, young men who travel from my county every day, on their way to join the Air Force, are not debarred; they can go ahead, whether they are agricultural workers or turf workers. I wonder why the Government shut their eyes to that?

At the present time the rate of wages for an agricultural labourer is £2 a week. In my part of the country certain farmers released some of their employees when that wage came into force. Others have taken on a boy and, probably, disemployed his father simply because he would have to be paid £2 a week. The price of flour in the rural areas is 4/- a stone. Butter is rationed to six ounces per person. There are hundreds of people going without butter; they cannot even get the six ounces; sometimes they are offered a pot of jam instead of their butter. I do not believe for one moment that the majority of Deputies in this House understand the ordinary plain people outside the House. Judging by the way they talk, they are not sincere. If there were a motion put down to-morrow asking that the wages of the agricultural labourer be increased to £3 a week I have no doubt that three Parties would vote solidly against it. At the same time Deputies are getting up here and saying that the agricultural labourer has not enough.

We have numerous inspectors of the Agricultural Wages Board going around and on Saturday nights I have callers asking where the inspector might be. When I ask them what their trouble is they tell me that they are not getting the wages. Farmers are taken to court for not paying the wages. If the labourers are required to stay at home, they must be paid the wages.

Reference was made to the fact that 6-ton wagons on the railway were carrying only 2½ tons of turf. The wagons that bring turf to Wexford are carrying a lot of water in addition to the turf. Even in my home the turf often has to be put on top of the range to dry. With regard to the wages of turf workers, the Wexford County Manager told me, no later than yesterday, at the Wexford County Council that, in respect of turf produced last year on Mount Leinster, there is a loss of over £500 and that this year the production of turf would be done by contractors, but the wages would be less. I do not think there will be much turf produced if the wages are to be any less than they were last year. I had to fight on behalf of these turf workers on one occasion to secure travelling allowances for them. They had to walk to the top of Mount Leinster from Kiltealy, Newtownbarry and Ballindaggin, and those who refused to go—some of the men were old and could not ride a bicycle if they had one—were cut off the dole. No shelters were provided. Two county council vans were sent up. On one fairly fine day I went up there and they had a few shelters of stone and some firing. The young girls were there carrying the turf in baskets and the men were carrying it in bags on their backs to put it in heaps for the lorries to take away. Those are the conditions the turf workers in my area have to put up with. They had 36/- a week at that time and the County Manager wanted to reduce that amount. If the Minister will investigate this matter he will come to the conclusion that the best thing to do is to give a fair wage.

Let me take as an example a man on the dole in a rural area. He gets 14/- a week, together with so many ounces of butter, so many loaves of bread and so many pints of milk. Out of the 14/- he has to pay 4/- rent for his new house.

We hear a lot about the new housing schemes. The fact is that people were taken out of houses where they were paying 1/6 to 2/- a week and put into houses where they are compelled to pay 4/-. After paying the rent a man is left with 10/-. I am an ordinary working man and I knock around with workmen in both town and country. What I have stated cannot be contradicted. There are certain relief schemes in operation and in some cases a man will get four days a week on those schemes, while others get five days. These men are liable to lose their vouchers by being employed. Previous to this there was a system in operation where a man could work for three days and sign for three days. Then the new scheme came along, and a man was employed for four days and his other claims were broken. It would be far better for the workers if they could get a full week's work or got back to the old system of working three days and signing three days. Under the present system some labourers are liable to lose their dole privileges.

The Minister, I am sure, knows County Wexford, the best agricultural county of the 26. The majority of the farmers have given up cattle breeding and have taken up the breeding of greyhounds, because that pays them a lot better. In some cases they are able to get £400 or £500 for a greyhound. They have gone to the dogs instead of to the cattle, and you cannot blame them. We hear a lot about bacon and we have a bacon factory in Enniscorthy. It was opened by the Minister for Agriculture. That factory is working only three days a week. Pigs are passing by that factory twice a week to another factory 14 miles away. They are taken there in a petrol-driven lorry. The men in the factory opened by the Minister have been working only three days a week for the past 12 months.

I have often been anxious to find out who Fuel Importers are. They are now the owners of the timber as well as the turf. There are thousands of tons of timber packed away as an iron ration for emergency purposes. I am not one bit astonished at the huge amounts mentioned here to-day. If a great emergency were to arise there will be a lot more money spent. Britain is spending £15,000,000 a day. If the position becomes graver here, if we were faced with an invasion, there would be money lashed all over the place. There would be no scarcity of money and the capitalist people would not growl. They would spend all the money they have in the banks to save themselves.

Something should be done to improve the position of the agricultural labourer. If you want to keep the labourers at home, to keep them on the land, treat them the same as you have treated the industrial workers. They should not be used as cogs in the machine, working from daylight to dark without a half day and without holidays. Treat them the same as the industrial workers; give them holidays and a half day. If the agricultural labourers get the same conditions as the workers in the towns and cities, they will not go away from the land. Those men prefer to be in their own country. I see that our people who are in Great Britain will not be allowed to return to their own country. The situation we are threatened with is very serious and is going to cause great uneasiness.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy is entering on ground that might, I suggest, be avoided just now.

Mr. O'Leary

It is very important for us to consider how our people are circumstanced on the far side of the Channel. There are 71,948 people drawing unemployment assistance — that is the figure that was given in the local Press. You can see some of the finest men in the country going to the home assistance officers on Friday and Saturday. They are debarred from getting the dole and they have to go to the relieving officer. I have had to certify for some of them so that they might get relief. We hear it said that there is not much unemployment, but the man who says that is not speaking earnestly. In my county we have hundreds of men signing at the labour exchanges.

I believe that in every area you will find men are idle. They are quite willing to work but they cannot get work. At the present time in Enniscorthy we have 60 married men, irrespective of single men, working on a relief scheme. In many rural areas men sign in the police barracks.

The Minister should take these matters into consideration. He should not mind what some Deputies say here; they are not in earnest. My belief is that the social services have improved and are in a better position under the present Government than under the previous Administration. The last Government said that unemployment was no business of theirs. I move to report progress.

Progress reported; the Committee to sit again to-morrow.

An Ceann Comhairle

Questions will not be taken at 10.30 to-morrow morning; they will be taken at some later hour.

Mr. Norton

Could we fix any definite time—say the normal time?

Mr. O Ceallaigh

At 3 o'clock.

An Ceann Comhairle

Or earlier, if the other business is completed — 3 o'clock might be fixed as the hour.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

It might be better to fix a definite hour. Whatever business is under consideration, it could be interrupted, say, at 3 o'clock.

The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, March 15th.