We indicated this morning that, in order to facilitate the House in adjourning to-day, the general matters that we intended to discuss would be raised on the Estimate for the Taoiseach's Department. The position already disclosed here, in regard to certain sections of the population who are suffering very much as a result of present circumstances, only drives home the necessity for a clear view of our present position and a clear outlook on what we are going to do with the country and its resources for the benefit of all our people in the immediate future. At this stage of the last war we, in this country, were all united in an effective way with a clear out look on both our political and economic needs. At that time we were making it very clear to the world as a whole that we stood for certain things in the matter of life and civilisation, and that for the purpose of working these out in our own way we required to be completely free and sovereign in our own country, no longer dominated by any Power from outside. We fully understood one another from one end of the country to the other. While we had some difficult times in front of us, following the last war, nevertheless, the outlook of the country generally, and the way in which its spiritual and material strength was braced by a realisation of what it was trying to do and what its national objective was, brought us safely through all our difficulties. When we look back over the position in which we were at, shall I say, the present phase of the last war, we must indeed marvel at the extent to which we have advanced since then.
We now find ourselves, with the exception of the Partition of this country, complete masters of all our resources and destinies, so that internally we can be masters of these things. We find that we have fully developed Parliamentary institutions which are completely fitted to the wishes and desires of our people. We have an Army, a police force and a Civil Service: we have all the machinery that a people could possibly wish to have to enable them to develop the resources of their country, to make use of their advantages and opportunities, to see that the people had reasonably decent and effective lives, and to show that the spirit of the people was being developed through a civilisation that was reflected in their lives. We have all these things now, and yet I do not think that our people were ever more dissipated or confused as to what they are expected to do, either individually or collectively, with their lives. We are adjourning to-day. One may say, that, when we meet again in a couple of months' time, we will be not only at the threshold, but will have gone across the threshold, of a new period in our own history and in world history. We are crossing that threshold not only without plans of any kind, but without any principles established in our minds to guide us in the development of the matters I speak of.
We were asked by the Minister for Industry and Commerce the other day to get and read the recent British statement on "Employment Policy" which brings to focus a lot of the thought, memoranda and planning that in Great Britain they have been thinking and writing about for the last two or three years of the war. That has been described in Great Britain as a revolutionary approach to economic policy. It is really the first authoritative document dealing with that subject. The Minister, while calling our attention to it, also called our attention to the enormous amount of work and study that has been done in a systematic way by other countries, even in the stress of war, in that way, with the object of laying down the solid ground along which the efforts of their people can be organised, and of seeing that the resources of their countries are made available for every class and group in their communities so that there may be a worthy and dignified civilisation in their countries, and so that they may make use of the resources which the Lord has given them to enable them to live decent and pretty comfortable lives. We see the headings to which thought has been given in such a systematic way in Great Britain. I take Great Britain particularly, because we have more information about it and it is easier to get information about it. The document that we have been invited by the Minister for Industry and Commerce and Supplies to read is a British document, which is certainly in advance of anything prepared in other countries and perhaps, more realistic than anything we have been able to lay our hands on so far.
We see the ground covered in Great Britain by work and thought and it is brought home to us that the first thing they are realising is that the future of the people rests on education. In this document on "Employment Policy" it is made clear that, not only is production in the future to be the safeguard of their people and provide them with employment, but that, in order to be continuous and stable, it must be efficient production. Not only business people, educationists and trade unionists, but every section of the people in Great Britain has been concentrated on thinking of what is required in education, so that their people may be effective producers on the one hand and good citizens on the other hand. In every direction, it is accepted that the basis of their economic, their spiritual and their defensive strength in the future is to be education.
There are many publications of one kind or another that indicate how far they are prepared to go. The recent legislation that has been passed in Great Britain shows that they intend to increase the number of their teachers by one-third, to raise the school-leaving age and to raise the status of the teacher; so that, by increasing the number and status of teachers and by co-ordinating the various branches of education in every possible way, their citizens will be prepared for to-morrow. At no point in the education of the young will a stop be allowed in the educational process which might cause waste of intelligence or waste of human material?
Before the recent legislative proposals were brought in, a document was issued from the Nuffield College, signed by some 40 prominent people, from all walks of life, including a very considerable number of industrialists. There are some points I wish to quote, to indicate how thoroughly the matter has been approached. Paragraph 11 of the recommendations says:—
"That all normal children who are expected to leave school at the statutory age should follow up to that age a broadly non-vocational course, and that the learning of any specific trade should be postponed until a satisfactory groundwork of general education has been laid."
Paragraph 14 says:—
"That a system of compulsory part-time education between the school-leaving age and 18 should be introduced immediately after the war and should be extended as rapidly as possible to the point at which the working time of young persons will be divided with approximate equality between education and employment."
Paragraph 17 says:—
"That, in general, it is undesirable for trade apprenticeships to begin before 16 or for those entering upon them to leave school before that age, and that accordingly scholarships and maintenance allowances should be made available for this purpose, pending a general raising of the leaving age to 16."
Paragraph 19 says:—
"That apprenticeship should rest on a foundation of all-round workshop training combined with specialized trade education, and that all employers taking apprentices should arrange for half their work-time up to 18 to be devoted to education, including vocational education, and should give every possible facility for those over 18 to attend higher courses and prepare for vocational examinations."
In various ways, it has been brought home to all the people there that the Government bases its hopes and plans, for industrial and other development, on thoroughly sound education, and that nothing has been left undone by the Government, even under present difficulties, to lay secure and effective foundations for that purpose.
According to our national tradition, we, too, put education as the basis of our material prosperity and the safeguard of our spiritual outlook in the world of to-day. It has been the tradition of our people in the past to glorify and idealise education in its broadest possible way, and to fix it with a spiritual as well as a material ideal, so as to link our education with our daily work. No one will say that our people as a whole are inspired with any kind of educational idea that is developed or propagated from on top. Over the greater part of the country, children are leaving school at 14—in the City of Dublin, five or six thousand boys leave the primary schools every year—with very little hope of getting employment. The period between the time the young person leaves school and the time that young person finds employment is really destructive of any kind of discipline or education obtained during the school period. In such circumstances we are trying to restore, particularly through our schools, the Irish language—a work which, in the first place, is difficult, and secondly is without any kind of helpful gesture from on top.
That is one way in which, unfortunately, we are facing the future. We cannot walk into the new world and the new period before our country in that state of affairs. The Government must, in the immediate future, do something to give the country a lead, by a White Paper, or a general statement of our educational position, and of the educational plan and programme before our people, with some idea as to the destinies we want to work out for ourselves in the new world.
The population in our schools in the rural areas is going down. The schools here in the city are so crowded that, in certain parts—as I have complained before—there are infant classes of 80, 90 and 100 children, all under one teacher, in circumstances in which there can be no real disciplining of the children, not to speak of any education for them. Our training colleges are being shut down, and, generally, there is a most chaotic state of mind and fact at the head of our whole educational system.
I draw attention to that as a state of affairs that cannot continue, and that we must all brace ourselves to put into proper perspective. It is not sufficient for the Government to say that they are waiting for ideas on the subject. Individual groups see an aspect of the problem from one point of view or another, but individual Deputies are cut away from any opportunity of reviewing our whole educational requirements in a systematic way. The whole machinery of the Department of Education and of the Government should be taking the lead in presenting such facts and ideas as they have so that these might be added to by criticism of a constructive or destructive kind, either by the publication of Government plans on one hand and the criticism of Parliament on the other hand, so that a national mind could be formed and a national decision taken on our problems. That is one of the outstanding ways in which, at a very critical moment in our history, both materially and spiritually, the Government has failed.
The next aspect of questions that have been thoroughly examined in Great Britain concerns health, as related to the well-being of their people and their capacity for doing national work. We had a discussion here recently on the incidence of T.B. and the Minister for Local Government indicated that he was doing an enormous amount about it. Not only is there the urgent requirement of dealing with people who have, unfortunately in increasing numbers, been stricken with tuberculosis, but there is the whole preventive side of the disease to be dealt with. Any medical practitioner, whether he is dealing with the eyes, the nose, the throat, or any other specialised side of disease, will say that the foundation and root of many diseases, and of the physical weaknesses of our people, arise from malnutrition. We have come to the stage now in which we should thoroughly face up to the question of what is a proper standard of nutrition for our people. When I was Minister for Local Government I endeavoured to have that question faced up to by the Department. At that time it was possible to get a leaflet which had been issued by the Department of Agriculture telling how a pig should be fed when it was three or four weeks old. If one Department thought it worth while to issue such a leaflet the Department of Public Health ought to be able to get out a leaflet about the health of human beings. I was given information as to where the responsibility lay but there were other things to be dealt with then and the matter was left aside. From what we have had an opportunity of learning of the position I think we require a serious and systematic examination of the nutritional requirements of ordinary people, so that when we have to deal with public assistance, poverty, and the sustenance of people in a proper way, whether by relief or by wages, we will have a national standard of what nutritional requirements should be. Not only would the nation avoid the serious loss that results from illnesses and physical weakness, but it would be one way of keeping in our people a progressive and healthy outlook, both on their own work and on the national public work.
On the question of treating tuberculosis in time, we will, please God, soon reach a time when we can say that none of the emergency services that we have organised are likely to be required. We have organised in various places in some of the larger residential houses temporary hospitals for use as emergency depots for A.R.P. and other purposes. They are being kept idle for the reception of casualties resulting from military and other operations. I think in September next we shall be able to say that these places are no longer required for such purposes, and that if there is an urgent tuberculosis problem to be dealt with some of the arrangements made for dealing with casualties arising from feared military contingencies might be turned over to a problem that is just as urgent as any military problem. We have the education problem, the general problem of health, as well as the employment of our people, to face. If we only look at the first two pages of the statement on the unemployment problem that the Minister asked us to look at, we find that many questions arise. We find them discussed systematically and decisions taken on them. I know of no way in which,in our position, systematic discussion could be originated and be most effectively kept to the point other than by the Government addressing themselves to these questions and making an official statement of some kind, preferably in a White Paper, as to the general lines upon which they consider they should be tackled.
Under the heading, "The International and Industrial Background", the British pamphlet on employment policy states:—
"A country dependent on exports —and relying largely, as we do, on the export of manufactured goods of high quality—needs prosperity in its overseas markets. This cannot be achieved without effective collaboration among the nations. It is therefore an essential part of the Government's employment policy to co-operate actively with other nations in the first place for the reestablishment of general economic stability after the shocks of the war, and next for the progressive expansion of trade."
On the Vote for External Affairs the Taoiseach's statement to-day that this country was prepared to collaborate in every possible way with every other country in discussions, and in taking decisions on matters of mutual international interest, is quite satisfactory, but it is also one upon which we require a certain amount of information.
Paragraph 4 of the pamphlet says:—
"The Government are considering, with the Governments of others of the United Nations, how these general agreements regarding the common ends of international economic policy can best be carried out in practice. For this purpose they are working in close consultation with the Governments of the Dominions and of India. The early renewal of the economic strength of the British Commonwealth of Nations and the economic development of our Colonial dependencies are among the substantial contributions we can make to stability in the world's economic order. The Government will also collaborate with other Governments in considering how effect may be given to the principles and recommendations recently put forward by the International Labour Organisation. Further reports on all these matters will be made to Parliament in due course."
We are free of the impact of the war. We are connected with Great Britain, United States, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the other countries of the British Commonwealth. We are members of the League of Nations and the International Labour Office, and we all know that a considerable amount of thought and discussion has been proceeding for the past couple of years on matters vitally affecting the improvement of the standard of living of people throughout the world, all leading up to the main idea enshrined in this British document regarding full employment. The time is coming when we should have some information about what our part has been in connection with these discussions. When we read in these documents how important international trade is to the policy of full employment, and when we read that "early renewal of the economic strength of the British Commonwealth of Nations is amongst the substantial contributions we can make to stability in the world's economic order," our minds naturally go back to the opportunities we had and that we lost for improving our international trade in the past.
From the point of view of our future, it is most desirable that we should know what is being done at present to increase our economic strength by increasing our trade with the other members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. After the Ottawa Conference in 1932, there was a considerable increase in the trade between Great Britain and the other members of the Commonwealth of Nations. Taking the value of the exports of the various Dominions to Great Britain between 1931 and 1937, we find that Australia increased the value of its exports to Great Britain by £26,000,000, or 57 per cent.; that Canada increased its exports by £55,000,000, or 169 per cent.; that South Africa increased its exports by £4,800,000, or 37 per cent.; that New Zealand increased its exports by £12,000,000, or 32 per cent., and India by £28,000,000, or 77 per cent. At a number of Imperial Conferences up to 1931, having fixed in an unequivocal way the absolute sovereignty and independence of this country while a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations, we wanted at Ottawa to improve our economic position as a result of membership of the Commonwealth. The figures I have quoted give some idea of how other members of the Commonwealth were able to improve their economic strength as a result of their discussions there. We have not taken advantage of that, but the future is before us with all its possibilities, and we can learn from the past. We do know that there were discussions during the past year between other members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and that they dealt with their future economic relations as between one another, and with the possibilities of improving their position by joint action. We do not want to probe into what the Government did or omitted to do in connection with these things. We want to face the future. In doing that, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the Governments of Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand look forward to increasing their strength by mutual co-operative action. In fact, in recent months, they have been making agreements for the future. We cannot step forward into the new era that will open up in September next, both for this Parliament and our people, without getting some idea of our plans for improving our economic strength by systematic trade relationships with those people with whom we were most associated in the past.
Just as the writer on economic policy in Great Britain has pointed out that a country that is dependent on exports needs not only prosperity in its markets but also collaboration we, who are largely dependent for our prosperity on exports, must take account of the position. That is not to say that we have not an internal economic problem of our own that could not be dealt with as a separate entity. When we say that we want exports, that does not necessarily mean that we want exports because we require imports. The economist may say that a country requires exports in order to pay for its imports but, just like other countries, we want exports for another purpose. We want exports so as to give employment here. There are tremendous potentialities for the increase of agricultural production here. We want export markets in order that we may have increased agricultural production. It would follow from that that the cost of agricultural produce here would be cheapened for us. If our farmers are organised to produce greater quantities of goods, by reason of the fact that they will have to sell them in a highly competitive market, such as Britain, their efficiency will be increased and they will aim at higher quality. We never ran short of eggs, bacon or butter until we had none of these things to export. We are particularly concerned with the future of our agricultural trade. It will not do to face blindly into the new world without any consideration or any discussion in Parliament or amongst our people. One thing the various countries are insistent upon—that speed in taking advantage of opportunities is necessary if those opportunities are not to be lost to other claimants.
In page 26 of this document it is stated that the British Government—
"intend to establish on a permanent basis a small central staff qualified to measure and analyse economic trends and submit appreciations of them to the Ministers concerned."
It particularly emphasises that speed is necessary. Here is a further quotation:—
"The success of the Government's policy will thus depend on the skill which is shown in putting general ideas into day-to-day practice. It is therefore vital for them to obtain, more fully and much more quickly than they have in the past, exact quantitative information about current economic movements."
When we ran into this emergency in 1939, we put it to the Government that the economic circumstances were going to be serious for us and we asked the Government to do as the Australian Government was doing. In Australia they set up Professor Copeland as an economic expert. We asked them to set up a group of three people, such as those on the Banking Commission, to watch developments in this country and outside it, so that we might be in a position to take advantage here of the trend of events. The Government's line was that they were watching all that. If they have been watching all that, they have not helped us by statements in the House or by publications; they have not helped the people to understand the trend of things in the world which are of importance to our people and their economic life, nor have they shown in the policy they have put before us that they are clearly conscious that there are particular trends of vital economic importance to this country. These are considerations which must be faced straight away. We read in paragraph 5, page 5:—
"While the Government will spare no effort to create, in collaboration with other Governments, conditions favourable to the expansion of our export trade, it is with industry that the responsibility and initiative must rest for making the most of their opportunities to recover their export markets and to find fresh outlets for their products."
What the British Government say with regard to industry applies definitely here with regard to agriculture. Unless our farmers, on their own responsibility and their own initiative, organise and produce increased agricultural products, the Government will not do it. The Government may create a set of circumstances that may off-set and obstruct the satisfactory doing of the farmer's work or the satisfactory sale of his products, but the Government cannot produce and cannot market, and what the farmers want immediately is assistance from the Government, an indication of their opportunities, and an assurance that the obstacles that may lie in their path in the immediate future in external markets will be brushed away as far as they can be, and that the greatest possible co-operation and goodwill will be established in these markets for our farmers or their representatives when they find their way there with goods to offer.
And just as it applies to our agriculturists, it applies also to our industrialists. The idea seems either to have been created among the industrialists here, or definitely conveyed to them by the Government, that any trade agreements between industrialists here and the suppliers of the raw material outside has to be looked after by the Government. You have the British Government, on the contrary, putting it up to industrialists that it requires their own developed sense of initiative and responsibility to face the future. It seems to me the Government here have put obstructions in the way of industrialists planning for their future. At any rate, the Government are not opening out any vision to our industrialists as to the opportunities which lie in front of them, or as to the things they are prepared to do to help them, or the things that are expected of our industrialists in the future. We want a very considerable development and an increase in our industry here if we are to provide our people with anything like full employment.
I do not think we can face the future without clear ideas about the general use of money. Some two years ago, on the 25th March, 1942, dealing with the subject of world trade after the war, a writer in the London Times referred to certain matters. This is what he says:—
"There is a growing body of opinion in this country which holds that what is required is not merely a new financial technique but a drastic revision of all our old ideas of finance and economics. According to this view mass and power production, vastly improved transport facilities, the establishment of great monopolistic combinations, and amalgamations have already destroyed the foundations of the old economic system. These developments have made our economic thinking and our financial practice as much out of date as tanks and aeroplanes had made our military thinking, training and equipment. The economic problems of peace can be tackled with any hope of success only if we revise our economic notions and our ways of doing and financing business as thoroughly as our early disasters in the war are forcing us to revise our military conceptions and practices.
In war-time the only limits on production are those set by the available man-power and raw materials. It is financed by credits which, although they are issued by the banks in the form of loans, are really national credit owing their value not to any stocks of bullion held by the banks, but to the capacity of the country to provide the goods and services for which its currency constitutes a claim."
It goes on to quote a paragraph from the writings of Mr. Churchill in his book World Crisis. This is what it says:—
"In his World Crisis Mr. Churchill has described the situation at the end of the last war and the sudden change which occurred at 11 o'clock on November 11th, 1918:
‘A requisition, for instance, for 500,000 houses would not have seemed more difficult to comply with than those we were already in process of executing for 100,000 aeroplanes, or 20,000 guns, or the medium artillery of the American Army, or 2,000,000 tons of projectiles. But a new set of conditions began to rule from 11 o'clock onwards. The money cost, which had never been considered by us to be a factor capable of limiting the supply of the armies, asserted a claim to priority from the moment the fighting stopped.'"
That is the quotation, but then the article goes on:—
"This reversion to the traditional money criterion as a limit on production and employment for which the real resources of organisation, labour, and capital equipment were available in plenty was possibly the master blunder, from which have flown inevitable sequence all the frustrations and miseries of the past 20 years."
We are to-day in the position that, unless we review our approach to finances, we are likely, in addition to other blunders of ignorance or negligence, to hang a terrible load of misery around our people through failing to use money in the way in which money ought to be used. We could have men and women and material ready and food and clothing and houses and the other things that may be required. The Government have shown no indication, in some of our discussions on finance, that their minds are travelling in any way with the minds of progressive thinkers in the world with relation to the proper handling of money.
They must know that money has been used in a particular way in the war, and that confessions such as are made in the London Times as long ago as two years, can never be gone back on, and that unless we make up our minds that we are going to use money in a useful and effective way, we are going to be left with very great problems. I have repeated the challenge to that type of thinking that we find amongst some of the old Irish speakers, when they say: “Fuilingeann fuil fuil do'n ghorta, ach ní fhuilingeann fuil fuil á dhortadh,” that is, that people are outraged when they see blood spilt, but they tolerate in the strangest possible way the wastage of life and the destruction of life that goes on where there is poverty, starvation and neglect of one kind or another. The problems that we have to deal with here for to-day, and the problems and misery that we have to avoid for to-morrow demand of us the exercise of the same energy, intelligence, vigour and co-operation with one another as other peoples have shown they are able to give in order to meet the disasters of war. If we, looking back on the past, comparing our position at this phase of this war with our position at a similar phase in the last war, do not thank Providence for the advance we have made, for the dangers we have escaped and the opportunities that lie ahead, then we are going to have no position worth while in the new world, and our country which stood for something during and after the last war is going to stand for nothing in this war when we could be the one country in the world, I might say, that would be holding out a beacon light of hope, faith and courage to unfortunate people in other parts of the world.
In addressing myself to these matters on the Taoiseach's Estimate, I do so in order to emphasise that we are adjourning to-day for a couple of months, and that we will be facing a new world and a new era in our history and in world history when we return in September. We must face it with the determination that we are going clearly to see the principles upon which our national life will be guided in future, and that we are going to put our plans down in black and white so that we will have a common thought and a common base-line of thought to which we can direct our discussions and our debates and so that our people in the country will have a chance of developing a common mind from the discussions that go on in Parliament, and having a common mind, that their energies will be stimulated and that they will be encouraged to go ahead with the work that does lie before us. The Government must take up their responsibility in that matter in a clear and effective way. They must take each one of these aspects of our national life and they must document them with State papers that will clearly show out the facts of our national life and the lines upon which they consider progress should be made so that parliamentary discussions will be informed by clear statements of fact, and that there will be a clear indication of line of policy from the Government. If we get that, then I do not think we need be afraid of any difficulties that may lie ahead.
At the end of the last war, bigger difficulties confronted us than we dreamt that we might be able to surmount. Providentially, we got through them, and providentially we find ourselves to-day completely untouched by war, with full power over our own business, with a Parliament where nothing from outside can interfere with our discussions. In the circumstances we should be the last people in the world that would show not only lack of faith or lack of hope, but lack of activity. If there is one thing that is absent to-day, disastrously so, it is activity on the part of the Government in doing the work that it should do if there were to be informed and successful discussions in Parliament and if there were to be information given, and, therefore, successful co-operation by our people throughout the country in dealing with those aspects and problems of national life the solution of which will provide full employment.
