I understand that Deputy Corry was in possession yesterday evening.
Local Government Bill, 1945—Committee Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed: That Section 29, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
The House is in Committee, so it does not matter.
On the question of wages, a lot has been said about road workers' wages in many counties. In some they are as high as 40/-, but in my county they are only 38/-, which is still lower. I want to bring home to the Minister and to the House in general the ridiculously low level of workers' wages. Those wages are paid at a time of the year when there is a good deal of broken time, with the result that the average scarcely reaches 37/-. Another feature in regard to road workers' wages in my county, and which I understand has come into operation only since Christmas last, is that the men are compelled to work only four days per week. A few years ago, the workers, in order to have a half-day on Saturday, worked three-quarters of an hour extra per day, or entered into some such arrangement in order to put in the full 48-hour week. That meant five full days and a half day on Saturday, and it worked out roughly at 9½d. per hour, or 6/4 per day. Immediately before Christmas, they were cut down to four days a week, at the same wages, 6/4 a day. At first glance, it would appear to be all right, but if we make up the number of hours, we find that they worked for 8½d. an hour, or else did the extra three-quarters of an hour per day for nothing, in order to make up the half day on Saturday. When I first heard of this and glanced at the figures, I thought the workers were getting 6/4d. a day anyhow, but when I summed up the total number of hours worked, I found that the change represented a cheap, nasty trick, put across the workers in order to reduce their rate of wages from 9½d. to 8½d.
A good deal has been said about diseases, but if the Minister asked any doctor in the country, or any of his county medical officers of health, he would find that disease definitely is started by a low standard of living, by insufficient clothing, insufficient heating, and so on. All these things make for dirt first, then under-nourishment, and certainly disease. We had a Bill going through this House lately, which got the warm approval of every Deputy, to combat tuberculosis. However, if tuberculosis were wiped out in Ireland in the morning, the present rate of workers' wages and the present conditions amongst the lower classes would have tuberculosis established on a firm footing again inside three years, and then we would have to start the vicious circle all over again in trying to eradicate it. If better wages were paid, we would not be up against such a heavy bill for social services in various directions. It is a scandal that workers should be compelled, even if the weather were fine and they could draw the full amount, to work for such a low wage as 38/- a week. Here we have a cheap method of trying to save a penny an hour on workers' wages, by cutting down the work to four days a week.
In this section also we have just one other example of what has been happening for the last five or six months, or perhaps longer, and that is the embodiment of Emergency Powers Orders in permanent legislation. I think this House will never again give emergency powers to any Government because of the way the Fianna Fáil Government has used these powers, has clung on to them when they definitely gave a promise that they would be surrendered. I was not a member of this House when the emergency powers were given to the Government, but I feel sure there was a distinct understanding that such extraordinary powers would be surrendered and that all matters affecting the welfare of the country would be brought before the House in the ordinary way just as if legislation was being enacted. No Government, for the next 40 or 50 years or longer, will be trusted with such powers, no matter what the emergency.
Deputies in the future will be chary of granting emergency powers to this or any other Government if an emergency arises. They cannot do it after what has happened within recent years here. Emergency powers have been embodied in legislation. It is not so long since the Taoiseach introduced an amendment to an Act—I forget what the Act was—to restrict the movement of workers inside and outside the country. I am sure, when the emergency powers were given to the Government, that was not the intention or the spirit behind the giving of them. It boils down to this, that I am afraid Ministers, in particular, are getting farther and farther away from the people; they are moving towards one idea, and that is dictatorship. When we find emergency powers are to be embodied in this section, I declare that we are definitely moving towards the day, and we have almost reached it, when we shall have a dictatorship here along the lines of the German dictatorship which crashed in Europe a short time ago.
You ought to say that to Deputy Donnellan, who used to be an admirer of that dictatorship.
You used to be in the habit of accusing him of that.
He read Mein Kampf oftener than he read his prayer book.
Or the "Life of Eamon de Valera."
This has been a rather discursive sort of debate. The issue involved in the section is not a standstill Order, not an Emergency Powers Order, but whether the Minister for Local Government will have the same power of control over the remuneration payable to all employees of a local authority as he has over some. Under the Act of 1941, as under preceding Acts, he has power to fix the rates of remuneration payable in respect of all offices under local authorities. Since 1942 he has power to control, but does not fix the rates of remuneration. He has a controlling power to ensure that these rates do not become excessive and do not get out of step with the wages which the ordinary industries of the country can afford to pay to their workers.
There are substantial reasons for that, reasons which are stronger in the case of manual workers and road workers than they are, perhaps, in the case of officers. As a rule, officers, whether individually or in combination, have little political power. The contrary is the case here. We have a large body of men susceptible to organisation and influenced by propaganda and being organised on behalf of political groups able to bring a considerable volume of pressure to bear upon local representatives and others to give them much more favourable treatment than can be given to those who are the mainstay, the whole economy, of this State and to those who have to find the money which is necessary to afford this exceptional treatment.
That was the position, as it existed in this country, between the agricultural worker, on the one hand, and the county council employee, on the other. For work which might be semi-skilled, or which some people might regard as skilled work, the employee of the county council was being paid at much higher rates than were being paid by the farmers of this country, than, in the ultimate analysis, the community could afford to pay to the food producers upon whom we all depend, and the work of these food producers was no less skilled and certainly no less arduous than the work of the road workers. The futility and the criminal folly of proceeding on these lines became quite clear to everyone of us when we had to turn in our extremity in 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1944 to the farmers and the agricultural workers and ask them, by intensive labour, to provide the food which was necessary to keep this community going.
Quite clearly, in those circumstances, we could not afford to allow a privileged class of employee to grow up in the rural community and we could not afford to allow public authorities to attract from the essential work of food production the men who were required for that by permitting these local authorities to offer and to pay higher rates of remuneration than the basic agricultural industry could afford to pay. Therefore, the Government decided that as a matter of fundamental policy the rates payable to manual workers under public authorities in rural districts would be brought into line with what the agricultural industry could afford to pay.
Now, the Government does not fix the wage payable in the agricultural industry. That wage is fixed by negotiation, by the Agricultural Wages Board, set up, I am proud to say, by this Government, a wages board which has resulted in substantial improvement in the conditions of the agricultural worker. This wages board is representative of all the interests involved. On the one side we have the interests of the farmers, for whom Deputy Hughes and Deputy Blowick are supposed to speak. On the other we have the representatives of the agricultural workers themselves and we have a small number of selected persons who might be described as representing the country as a whole.
This board has met year after year since it was instituted, and it has agreed as to what the minimum wage that could be paid to an agricultural worker working in the country should be in exactly the same conditions as apply to the road worker, with perhaps this exception, that the road worker's job is often the more secure. In considering the position of the road worker we were anxious that we should do him no injustice. The agricultural wage rate is fixed on the basis of a 54-hour week. It is described as a minimum wage rate. In order to allow for the possibility—perhaps I may say the probability—that many agricultural workers get more than the minimum wage rate, and in order, too, to provide for the element of broken time in the road worker's pay, we said that the maximum which might be paid by local authorities, and which is being paid by most local authorities, should be the agricultural worker's weekly wage, but payable in respect of a 48-hour week, so that in fact the road worker's wage, taken in real rates, is about 10 per cent. higher than that of the agricultural labourer.
The reason for that is, as I have said, that it is recognised that a number of agricultural labourers—how many there may be I cannot say, but I gather they are reasonably numerous —are paid more than the minimum agricultural wage rate, and that perhaps the element of broken time may enter to a larger extent into the road worker's wage packet than it does in the case of the agricultural labourer. These assumptions may not be well founded, but we have no way of proving for ourselves whether they are well founded or not, and, so far as they operate at all, some people might hold that they give more favoured treatment to the road worker than he should get if he is to be paid on exactly the same plane as the agricultural worker.
That might be so, but we had also this to bear in mind, that a position had been created here in which one section, that section of the rural community which were in a position to bring political pressure to bear on the elected representatives of the people, had secured for themselves a favoured position by comparison with the agricultural worker, and we had to say: "We are going to try to even things up, but we cannot go too far in one direction, having regard to the established position," and, if we have erred at all, I think we have erred in favour of the road worker.
We hear a great deal of talk here about the conditions of the workers, a great deal of talk about men not being able to live on 40/- a week, a great deal of talk about people having to fly abroad, a great deal of talk about the standards we are endeavouring to fix being, in relation to the cost of living, inequitable and unjust. I have shown that, in fact, so far as the wages of workers in rural areas are concerned, they are fixed by a board representative of all the interests concerned in the primary industry of the country, the industry upon which our whole economy is based, and therefore we must assume that, when coming to an agreement in regard to this vital matter, that board took into consideration the present cost of living and tried to ensure that not only would they have regard to what the community as a whole could pay for its food but also to what would be necessary to allow the agricultural labourer to live, admittedly in frugal conditions, but to live in the country in a cottage, the rent of which has been heavily subsidised, a cottage provided by the local authority with generous assistance from this Government, with all the other local services available to him, and with all the produce he might be expected to procure for himself out of the thrifty use of the plot surrounding his cottage.
We must assume that these men tried to do justice to everybody and that they certainly did not fix for the agricultural labourer, perhaps the essential element in the industry in which they are all interested, a starvation wage. They put that minimum wage at 40/- The minimum agricultural wage rate stands at 40/- to-day when the price index stands at about 295. In 1925, the cost-of-living index stood at 195, but the average earnings of the agricultural labourer over the whole country in that year was 26/- a week—the average, not the minimum of the highest earnings a man could make ranging from 37/6 in Dublin to 21/6 in Leitrim, and 21/9 in Mayo. A rough calculation will show that the cost of living now is about 50 per cent. higher than it was in 1925. On the basis of the rates which were paid, and presumably approved by Deputy Blowick, in County Mayo in 1925. On the agricultural labourer, instead of being entitled to demand and to get as the absolute minimum 40/- a week, would be entitled to ask and to get only something like 32/- a week, if we had in power here a Government with the same programme and the same social philosophy as was in power in 1925.
On a point of order. I have been reluctant to interrupt the Minister, but may I draw your attention, Sir, to the fact that the Minister has now been speaking for almost half an hour and that he has devoted practically the whole of his speech not to the section before the House but to a matter which is not covered by the section at all?
We have to finish to-day before 12 o'clock, and we know the object of the Minister's tirade, but I submit that we are not engaged in discussing the question of agricultural labourers' wages. There will be another time and place for that. I suggest that the Minister is deliberately and with malice aforethought out of order on this particular section.
It would be very desirable, from the point of view of the Chair, if everyone kept strictly within the limits of whatever section or amendment was before the House. So far I have not heard the Minister refer to any point that was not raised. He has, perhaps, spoken at some length—I will admit that—but he is certainly replying to points that were raised, even this morning, in my hearing. How far he should go on those lines is another matter.
I submit again that it is because I did not want to be unfair to the Minister that I allowed the matter to be developed so far without bringing it to the attention of the Chair, but I do suggest that the whole burden of the Minister's speech is to prevent anyone from following him.
There is no limit to this discussion. The whole burden of Deputy Morrissey's speech last night, of Deputy Mulcahy's speech and Deputy Costello's speech was that this control was being exercised in an inequitable, unjust and anti-social manner by the Minister, and references were made to the conditions which existed here prior to this Government coming into office, the conditions which have existed all during the emergency and the conditions which Deputy Morrissey alleges are going to exist in the future.
I was dealing with the position in the County Mayo. I will deal with the position which existed, not under a county council, but the condition of affairs which existed under the Government of this country in the year 1925, when by agreement the standard rate of wages for unskilled labourers was fixed by the Government of our predecessors. Now, the whole gravamen of the case against this Government is that we have fixed a standard which, by reference to the cost of living, is an unreasonable and an unjust one.
I have pointed out that, in the year 1925, the cost-of-living index was 195. In that year an agreement was made by the Government of the State that the rate of wages to be paid to the labourers on a great public work was to be 15/- a week. If we were to adopt that standard and apply it to the present cost-of-living figure, instead of fixing the road workers' wages at slightly more than the agricultural rate per hour, we would prescribe that the rate of wages to be paid on public works in this country should not be more than 50 per cent. greater than 15/- a week: that is to say 22/6.
Mr. Morrissey
Will the Minister give the name of the scheme on which that rate was fixed?
The Deputy knows well that that standard was embodied in the contract for the Shannon scheme.
Mr. Morrissey
That is untrue and the Minister knows it is untrue. I know more about the Shannon scheme wages than the Minister does, and I was more concerned with them at the time than the Minister was.
That is the figure which was mentioned in the contract——
Mr. Morrissey
That is untrue.
——and that is the assumption on which the estimates were based, and the figure which was chosen by our predecessors.
Mr. Morrissey
The figure was 32/- a week. The figure of 15/- is incorrect, inaccurate and untrue.
It is the one which was most frequently used by Labour Party propagandists at that time.
Mr. Morrissey
That shows what his word is worth.
It seems to me that if the Deputy questions it he must be denying the veracity of his own friends. I am not concerned with what he or his colleagues said.
Mr. Morrissey
I want to draw the attention of the Chair to this fact and ask for a direction on it. The Minister has stated explicitly that an agreement, not Labour Party propaganda, but an agreement, had been entered into by the previous Government, in respect to a great State scheme, with the contractors of that scheme to pay a wage of no higher than 15/-. I have challenged the Minister on that and he is running away from it. Am I not entitled to ask the Minister to quote from any agreement or any document to justify the statement which he has made, that there was an agreement entered into by the Government of this country with a firm of contractors?
I have no document at my disposal.
Mr. Morrissey
Of course you have not.
It is a matter of common knowledge.
In answer to the Deputy, the Chair cannot decide on the question of fact between the Minister and the Deputy, but if a document is given as the basis for a statement the document should be quoted.
Mr. Morrissey
That is the very point that I am putting. The Minister conveyed to the House that there was a State document, an agreement entered into between the Government of this country and a firm of contractors to pay a certain rate of wages. The Minister is now running away from that.
The Minister says that he is not quoting from a document.
I am quoting a matter of common public knowledge sedulously spread by the friends of the Deputy and the Party of the Deputy.
Mr. Morrissey
The Minister was badly briefed.
If the Deputy is suggesting to me that, having left the Labour Party, you cannot believe anything that appears in a statement issued by the Labour Party, well that is a matter for himself and his former colleagues, but at that time the Deputy was an active member of the organisation which was most carefully and most sedulously propagating that statement:
Mr. Morrissey
The Minister is starting something now that he will not forget for some time. He has been badly briefed. Deputy Corry was to handle that this morning.
It seems to be too unpleasant for Deputy Morrissey. Perhaps he will bear with me——
Mr. Morrissey
Perhaps he will, if you agree to apologise to the House.
Perhaps he will bear with me——
Mr. Morrissey
For trying to misrepresent me deliberately.
——while I give him some other figures.
Mr. Morrissey
I was thinking you would like to get away from it.
Deputies who were members of the House in 1931 will remember that Deputy Morrissey was in that year an ardent supporter of our predecessors in office.
Mr. Morrissey
That is not so.
Well, shall we say that I do not know whether you were on the road to Damascus or the road to Canossa, but there is one thing that is certain, and it is that in the year 1930 your migration from the Labour Benches to your left began, and you are now translated from the position of honourable opposition to the one which you now occupy; but in the year 1931——
Mr. Morrissey
That is about your limit.
I will say efficient opposition. I want to make this quite clear. I do not want to be offensive, and if the Deputy thinks that I had intended something which I can see now was in that statement, I want to withdraw it.
Mr. Morrissey
I do not want you to withdraw.
That is all right. Let it stand then, and smile at it.
Mr. Morrissey
Not likely. That is an old trick. You are not getting away with it.
All right then. At any rate, I was saying that in 1930 the Deputy became, and I suppose in the circumstances, quite justifiably, a steady supporter, an ardent supporter, of the Cosgrave Government. He did that because he thought they were right.
Mr. Morrissey
I am sure of it now.
But the fervour with which he held that belief was such that, as I say, he removed himself from the ranks of the Labour Party and ultimately, I think——
On a point of order. May I ask what relation has Deputy Morrissey's Party affiliations to the section?
None.
Mr. Morrissey
It is because the Minister does not want to talk about this section.
Oh yes, it has, because Deputy Morrissey has accused me of acting in an inhuman and unjust way and the position in that regard is this: that in the year 1931 when, as I have pointed out, Deputy Morrissey upheld the policies of the then Government, the average rate payable to an agricultural labourer in this country was 24/- a week, and the rate payable in Mayo was 21/9. These are the people who are accusing us of being unjust and inhuman. Let me say, further, that when we came in we found that the rate of wages payable on many Government schemes, payable directly by the Exchequer and not through any contractor, was 21/- and 22/- a week, and the Deputy, who had been supporting the previous Government whose policy that was, immediately switched round, of course, as he has switched round since, and began to attack us because in the pit of the depression we again endeavoured to relate the rate of wages payable upon schemes carried out in rural areas, under Government auspices, to the rate which could be paid to the agricultural labourer. But the fact remains that, as I have said, when we took office we found that the rates payable by the Government upon Government works was, in a considerable number of places, one might nearly say, in general, about 21/- or 22/- a week.
Compare the position as it existed then with the position as it exists to-day. At that time the agricultural worker was completely at the mercy of his employer. I am not suggesting that these employers were harsh or inhuman.
Mr. Morrissey
On a point of order. May I submit again, Sir, that within 35 minutes even the Minister for Local Government ought to be able to bring himself into some relation with the section before the House? I admitted, Sir, that the Minister was entitled to be given reasonable latitude. He has been taking absolutely unreasonable latitude. The Minister is deliberately using up the time of the House for the purpose of getting away and keeping away from that section and preventing anybody else from replying to it. It is deliberate obstruction.
I saw some of the scripts of the speeches made yesterday, and I must say that at least two-thirds, in my view, dealt with wages and the insufficient wages paid.
Mr. Morrissey
Yes, Sir.
That would mean— and it would be an acceptable ruling to the House—that wages as such are under discussion?
They were yesterday.
And are to-day, quite clearly.
I am answering a point raised by Deputy Morrissey that the Minister is out of order. He is replying to points made.
Mr. Morrissey
May I submit to you, Sir, that the wages that were discussed yesterday were the wages that are going to be covered and are at present covered by what is in the section, not agricultural wages, which are not covered or affected by this at all.
I have an idea they were raised to-day.
It is quite clear that the subject of wages generally would be allowed to be raised on this section?
I am not giving any decision in advance.
May I take it that your ruling is that as two-thirds of the discussion yesterday dealt with the subject of wages, not the special wages covered by this section, two-thirds of all future discussion on this subject will be in order?
I did not say so. I said that from looking up the scripts of yesterday's debate, in my view two-thirds dealt with the subject of wages.
I understood you were giving that ruling in answer to Deputy Morrissey's point that there are special wages dealt with in the section. I take it that replies will be given the same latitude?
As it arises, I may so decide.
It is obvious that Deputies have forgotten what they were saying yesterday. They were challenging the grant of this power to the Minister on the ground that it had been exercised in a harsh and inhuman way and without reference at all to the general conditions in the country. In that connection it seems to me they were quite entitled—I am not saying this for the guidance of the Chair; I am only saying it for the guidance of Deputy Morrissey—and I did not intervene on a point of order when this ground was being traversed because it seemed to me that it was quite relevant to show that the wages were, if you like, unjustifiable by one standard or another. I told the House at the opening of my speech the principle upon which we had proceeded. I told the House how, in my view at any rate, the remuneration paid to road workers and other manual workers under public authorities in rural areas had got out of step with the wages which were paid to agricultural labourers generally through the country. I described how the minimum agricultural wage rate was fixed. I was going on to point out how much better the agricultural labourer was under the present system than he had been under the system of our predecessors, and I think that is relevant because I must show that the machinery which has been devised for fixing the minimum agricultural wages is one which is not unfair to the worker and to the labourer and I can only, I think, prove that by comparing it with the conditions which existed prior to the establishment of the Agricultural Wages Board. I was saying that at that time the agricultural worker had nobody to look after his interest. We, at any rate, have put him in the position in which his interests and all his circumstances are carefully considered by a board, a conciliation board, if you like, representative of all the interests in the industry and representative also of the general community. I say, therefore, that the minimum wage fixed by such a body is a fair standard to which to relate the wages paid to other manual workers living in comparable circumstances. I say, further, that if in rural areas the remuneration paid for one class of employment tends to get out of step with the remuneration which our basic industry can pay, then indeed the conditions in our agricultural industry are bound to deteriorate and are bound to deteriorate to the disadvantage of everybody in that industry, to the disadvantage of the agricultural labourer and to the disadvantage of the farmer, because the best men will be drawn out of the employment of farmers and would not they be fools if they were not? If they could draw more money every week for working 48 hours than they could get from the farmer for working 54, would not they be fools to remain in the employment of the farmer?
If the best men go, what is going to happen to the farmers, and what is going to happen to the efficiency of our agricultural production? Surely those politicians who pretend that the agricultural industry, and those engaged in it, are their first concern, ought to be concerned to see that in rural areas no other manual occupation will be half so attractive as agricultural labour. Instead of trying to depress agricultural labour, as Deputy Blowick did, when making a comparison——
On a point of order, I never mentioned agricultural labour, good, bad, or indifferent. I mentioned a dirty trick played on road workers in Mayo, and I have not yet heard the Minister offering an explanation.
And he will not.
The Deputy's speech was obviously directed against the section, and those who oppose the section want to restore the economic chaos that existed in our predecessors' time in rural areas. To ascribe that as the deliberate intention might be too strong, but quite obviously it is going to act in such a way as will be detrimental to the interests of the agricultural industry and the agricultural community as a whole. It may be that Deputy Blowick does not see the full implications of the attitude, but I am endeavouring to point them out to him. I am saying that it will be a lamentable day for this country if we ever again allow wages in rural areas to be out of step with the wages that could be paid by the agricultural industry. Let me remind you that the Government does not fix the wages of agricultural labourers. The wages of agricultural labourers are fixed by the Agricultural Wages Board, a board which, I repeat, is representative of all interests in the industry and of the community's interests as well. There could be no fairer way to determine this important fact than that which has been constituted under the Agricultural Wages Act.
I pointed out to the House that in the year 1931 the wage paid to the agricultural labourer in Mayo was of the order of 21/9. In the year 1928 it was 22/9. I give the year 1928 because I have comparable figures for the wages paid to road workers in that area in 1928. They were not so out of step in Mayo as in other parts, but, nevertheless, for a 48-hour week road workers in Mayo were being paid 24/- a week, whereas agricultural labourers were paid only 21/9. The position, of course, was much worse in other parts of the country. In Carlow the agricultural labourer was being paid 22/9 in 1928, and the road worker was being paid 30/-. Of course at that time a politician was chairman of Carlow County Council——
Will the Minister state from what document he is quoting?
——and the ratepayers' money——
On a point of order. It is the only way to get the Minister to stop. I was endeavouring to ask the Minister to follow the usual practice of giving the name of the document from which he was quoting.
An encyclopaedia.
I am quoting from a document, the veracity of which can scarcely be challenged by the supporters of Fine Gael. I am quoting from the Third Report of the Department of Local Government and Public Health for the year 1927-1928.
Is it permissible to allow a reflection on an individual who is not here? The Minister is attacking a chairman of a county council.
I do not think it is a grievous offence to call him a politician. I think it is an honourable occupation.
I do not think it was intended in that sense.
It should be an honourable term.
What it should be and what the Minister thinks are completely different.
I have been engaged in politics for nearly thirty years and I do not think that it has been a dishonourable occupation.
The Minister suggested that for political reasons the then chairman of Carlow County Council permitted higher wages for road workers than for agricultural labourers.
And I am going to suggest that this section is being opposed for political reasons. Does Deputy Hughes think there is anything dishonourable in that?
I think the Minister ought to deal with the section.
In Tipperary, about which Deputy Mulcahy talked yesterday, the average wage of agricultural labourers was 25/6 per week in the year 1928. In the same year road workers' wages in Tipperary were 35/- a week. Is it any wonder that in the years 1932, 1933 and 1934 the farmers of Tipperary found some difficulty in paying rates, when you had a margin of 10/- a week between what was paid by the county council out of the money extracted from farmers' pockets and the rate of wages which farmers were able to pay to their own employees?
Is it any wonder that the dregs of the labour market tended to be left to the farmers, when men who could get jobs on roads were forsaking the fields for the roads? We often heard the saying: "The fields for the bullocks and the land for the people". Here was a case where by deliberate policy, apparently, the lands were being left to the bullocks and the men who ought to be tilling them were to be attracted to employment on roads. That is the problem with which we have to deal, and that is the state of affairs which, so far as this Government can influence or control local authorities, is not going to arise again. We have to bring rates payable in rural areas for manual labour, for semi-skilled or for skilled manual labour, into fair and adequate relation with rates which our basic industry can pay to workers in it.
We have done that. We succeeded in doing it despite all the arguments and all the misrepresentations which were used against it. This very question was made an issue in two general elections—the election of 1943 and the election of 1944. Because it was clear to our intelligent people that this was an evil which would have to be remedied and that we were proceeding upon a just and sound principle, the criticisms which were urged against the policy pursued by the Minister for Local Government and Public Health were brushed aside. Everybody realises that the condition of affairs, as existing prior to the introduction of this standstill Order, was unjustifiable and, not only unjustifiable, but highly detrimental to the welfare of the country.
We have heard, in the course of this debate, eloquent speeches about the rates of wages which are being paid elsewhere. I remember when there was scarcely a grocer's shop in this country without its picture of a magnificent liner breasting the ocean waves. Tickets were being offered and every pictorial inducement was being held out to the people to forsake their own land and go abroad. Deputies will remember at the country fair show, gaily decorated outside with fanciful pictures of the attractions to be enjoyed inside, if you only paid your money and stepped into the tent, a gentleman with a long string of pattern designed to attract clients. That gentleman was called the "blower". We had an exhibition of that art here yesterday, when our people were told about the attractions that awaited them on the other side of the water. We had Deputy Mulcahy fulfilling exactly the same function which used to be fulfilled by the country grocer who had the advertisements of the steamship lines in his shop. We had him telling one side of the story only. We had him proclaiming—it is in all the papers this morning—that a man leaving this country can get 77/- a week abroad in one occupation and, if he joins another, may get more. This occupation, which the Deputy so boosted yesterday, had the added attraction that he would be able to send back 35/- to his wife or other dependents here. If Deputy Mulcahy did not want to be an emigrating agent or a recruiting sergeant for another country, why did he not tell the whole story? Why did he not let our people know what the real conditions are on the other side of the water?
Why did he not tell them that there they have everything in the form of paper that Deputy Flanagan and members of the Labour Party have been promising? Why did he not tell them that they have got high wages, social security, that they are to get children's allowances, but that the only things they have not got are a sufficiency of food, a sufficiency of clothes, and a sufficiency of houses.
We have those here.
They have money to burn, and that is all they can do with it—or give it to the tax-gatherer. The things which they can buy with it are very strictly rationed. I am not saying that because I take any pride in the situation.
They do not look too badly when they come back here.
I am not saying that because I wish that situation to continue. On the contrary, I believe that restoration of the British economy is necessary if we are to be able to develop as we ought. I am saying it because it is time our people realised that money is not everything. What is the use of having a cost-of-living index artificially depressed if you cannot buy in sufficient quantity the commodities upon the price of which that index has been calculated? If people here have less in wages, arithmetically computed, than people have on the other side, they have at least this advantage: they can buy plenty of food with their wages, and there is no person hungry.
Question.
There are people in Great Britain—I do not say it because I glory in it, because I do not—who are wealthy by our standards and who come over here hungry. There is no point in dallying before the eyes of our people the apparently attractive conditions, so far as wages are concerned, which they can enjoy if they emigrate, unless, in justice to the people whom you are trying to induce to leave the country, you also tell them what they will have to endure there; unless you also tell them that they will have to work very hard; that they will be strictly rationed in respect of a number of foods which we regard as essential; that they will find it difficult to provide themselves with clothes or boots—it is difficult enough here, but it is much more difficult there; that they will have to live under conditions compared with which some of our slums are not overcrowded. These are things which should be stated if our people are not to be misled. Yet, all the speeches in this debate were calculated to make our people dissatisfied with the conditions here, and, because we cannot do any better for them, to induce them to leave this country. I repeat: this is one of the most important sections in this Bill.
That is the first time you said it.
It is a section designed, as I have said, to ensure that the farmers will get the best men for their needs and that no competing interest in a rural area will be able to attract from the land men who are required for work on the land.
In my neighbouring county, an agricultural labourer could get employment in every second house but they cannot be got. They are not there.
That is a condition brought about in a very desirable way —one which is quite advantageous to this country. Prior to the making of the Emergency Powers Order, there was a condition under which farmers could not get labourers because they would not work for them at 10/- less than they could get on the roads.
What about the labour exchanges, with thousands signing up?
They will not work on the farms, in any event.
The Minister must be allowed to speak without interruption.
Deputy Blowick referred to the conditions which existed in Mayo. He told us that the rate payable to road workers in Mayo is 38/- a week. I have no responsibility for that. The Deputy is a member of the county council. The Deputy was a member of the county council in the year 1944.
That is not true. I was not a member of the county council in 1944.
You were a member in 1945.
Would it not be much better if you were to stick to the truth?
He would have been finished an hour ago if he had done that.
The Minister would have nothing to say if he were to stick to the truth.
I gathered from the Deputy that he is now a member of the county council.
You did not gather any such thing. I made no such statement.
Is the Deputy not a member of the county council?
You did not gather that from me. I never mentioned whether I was a member of the county council or not. I suggest that, in future, Ministers taking up the time of the House should stick to the truth.
There has been a fairly free discussion from all sides of the House on this section, and the Minister should be allowed the same freedom as other speakers
It is not freedom; it is licence.
This is very extraordinary. I do not know where I am with Deputy Blowick.
That is quite clear.
The Deputy spoke as if he were carrying the full burden of local affairs on his shoulders. If he is not a member of Mayo County Council, he spoke with an unwarranted and unjustifiable air of authority. He, certainly, left me under the impression that he was a member of Mayo County Council.
I did not.
Is the Deputy a member of Mayo County Council?
That is not the point. I did not leave you under that impression. I never mentioned whether I was or not.
Even though Deputy Blowick may pontificate about the matter and be very personal, I think we are entitled to ask one simple question. Since he spoke about conditions in Mayo, can he tell the House whether or not he is a member of the county council? Is there anything dishonourable or discreditable in being a member of the Mayo County Council? Apparently Deputy Blowick thinks there is, because he is keeping that precious information to himself. He certainly did raise the position in Mayo and he told this House that the rate payable in Mayo to road workers is 38/- a week. I do not know whether that is or is not the case because I apparently am unable to apprehend accurately what Deputy Blowick is trying to convey to the House. As I say, I thought that he spoke not only as a Deputy but as a member of the county council. He told us the rate payable was 38/- per week. If the rate is 38/- a week I have no responsibility for it. If the Deputy is a member of the county council perhaps he may have. I am not keeping him from paying a higher wage if the manager and the members of the county council decide that the ratepayers can pay a higher wage in Mayo.
The Deputy also made another point. He said that certain workers were compelled to work four days a week.
That is right.
He implied that these were regular employees of the county council, people whom he might describe as the regular road-making staff. I do not know whether they are or not. I should like to know if these are regular employees of the county council, whether they are members of the more or less permanent staff. Perhaps the Deputy would be good enough to let us have that information now.
Is the Minister running short of ammunition?
No. Apparently, Sir, I am in the position in which I am not going to get the essential information which is necessary to enable me to answer this question.
You will get it; do not worry.
I do not know that there are relief works of one sort or another carried out in Mayo during the winter months. Considerable sums have been provided by the Government for the improvement of roads and the general amelioration of conditions in Mayo. I do know that from time to time the amount of work which can be given to one individual has to be adjusted to the demand for employment in the locality as a whole and that sometimes in some localities where work has to be done it may be possible to give five days of work per week. On the other hand if the number of people looking for work becomes larger, since the amount of money provided for the execution of the work is limited, the amount of employment which may be given to an individual in one particular week may have to be decreased.
Why not give them a full week's work every second week?
Now, we have it. It is quite clear that Deputy Blowick was not dealing with the regular staff at all.
I was dealing with the dirty trick your Department played on the workmen.
I suggest, if there is any degree of filth in this, it surely is a dirty trick to try to mislead the House as to the actual conditions and the actual circumstances involved in this matter. It is all very well to resort to tactics of that kind as a debating trick, but Deputy Blowick pretends to be a plain blunt man who tells the truth and wants to shame the devil on every occasion. If he wants to shame the devil now, he should tell the whole truth and he should tell us whether the people to whom he referred, were people engaged in relief works or were regular employees of the county council. I have explained that where work is to be done in the neighbourhood under a fixed grant, if by any chance the number of people seeking employment in the neighbourhood should increase, all the new-applicants are entitled to get their share, but the share available for everybody else must be diminished accordingly. It may not be the best system—it is a system that, as a matter of fact, is under review—but the alternative that is suggested by the Deputy here is one which will not leave the people in any better condition because the Deputy proposes to give them one full week's work followed by one full week's idleness, whereas the practice has been to employ them for four days a week and perhaps five days the following week. I do not think they would be afforded any better treatment under the alternative suggested by the Deputy. There may be a case for abolishing this system altogether and trying to substitute something else but I do not think that one would be entitled to say that you would be guilty of anything discreditable or dishonourable if circumstances compelled you to reduce the amount of employment given on any particular scheme.
The Deputy has left the House under the impression that the position of road workers in Mayo has not improved even since the emergency. Road workers' wages have gone up almost step by step with the wages of agricultural workers. In 1939 road workers in Mayo were being paid 30/-. To-day they are being paid, on the basis of proposals put forward by the county council, 38/- a week. There is a small margin which is available to them if the county council desire to increase the wages but whether they would be justified in giving that increase or not is a matter for the county council. If Deputy Blowick thinks that the ratepayers in County Mayo can stand the heavier impost, which is going to mean increased rates all over the county, if he thinks that notwithstanding the amount of additional money which may have to be provided for the county services in County Mayo, and the increase in rates which will indubitably and inevitably follow—if he thinks that the ratepayers of County Mayo can afford a little more, then let him get up in the Mayo County Council and, before the people of Mayo, have the courage of his convictions and say that remuneration will have to be increased all round. Because, remember that there is this other aspect of the problem: when you increase remuneration at the bottom you have to increase it throughout the whole hierarchy: your gangers, your foremen, and the people who supervise them will have to be paid more, because they are carrying greater responsibilities; at least, I suppose so, if they are worth their money. Accordingly, as I say, if you increase the basic strata, the increase must be carried correspondingly through all the other classes, and remember that that is going to mean something very, much larger than the mere cost of increasing the wage of the manual workers, the labourers at the bottom; but within certain limits the decision rests with Deputy Blowick and people like him, and I am pointing out to them that if they wish to give the road workers a little more and increase remuneration in all other grades by something more, then they have the remedy: they must go down and do it in County Mayo before the people of that county, but they cannot come up here and ask me to face the angry ratepayers of County Mayo in their defence.
We now have it clear at last that this is no longer an emergency policy.
That was clear before.
For the future, all wages in this country must be kept at such a level that no occupation can be at a greater level than that of the agricultural labourer.
In a rural area.
Certain statistics have been quoted, the accuracy of which I doubt. It was stated that in 1928 the road workers were getting a figure which the Minister described as 30/- and a bit. That is, of course, 10/- in advance of the real wage which the agricultural worker is getting at this moment. He is getting 20/- at this moment, so that in 18 years the status of the agricultural labourer has declined by the amount the Minister has spoken of. Now, the first great answer that I always feel Fianna Fáil Ministers should be able to give is the answer to one question. We have here, according to them, a marvellous economy, a country brought out of chaos, with conditions far better here than ever they were in the history of this country before, and far better than they are in England. When history comes to be written, two things to be noted will be put in a strange contrast: that emigration originally was started in this country by the Famine, and that the second great stream of emigration was started by the Taoiseach, Deputy de Valera. It will be noted that the Famine and Fianna Fáil were the two great causes of the emigration of our people from this country.
Let us think of the circumstances under which our people are now pouring out from here. The Minister says that we should not be acting as recruiting sergeants. We are not. There was no necessity for any such thing when bombs were dropping over there, bombs being dropped across the seas, aerial torpedoes, and all the rest of it, and yet in those five years 250,000 people fled from our shores— fleeing from the overflowing milk and honey of this country. We were told about the ration of 12 dried eggs a year over there, and yet 250,000 of our people would rather go to 12 dried eggs in the year than stay here. Now why is that? The Minister knows well that it is because there is a decent policy on the other side. He knows well that whatever there is in the way of austerity imposed on the people going there, the British, through the interlocking of their currency with ours, and by means of loans and other sources that can be tapped, can send their money over here and buy goods.
It was announced in the papers recently that the British Permit Office people are not content to have one office in Dublin, and that they are opening offices in Cork and Limerick—so many are the customers for the 12 dried eggs per year. We had a calculation of the working population of this country some years ago. Take the case of people who, according to the 1936 census, are of what is called occupational age—leaving out the very young and the very old—and take the three counties of Ulster left to us, there are 135,000 people there of the age at which they might be occupied —I am not omitting those who are not able to find occupation in this country, despite all the emigration—and we have emigrated from this country the equivalent of the whole of the working population of those three Ulster counties.
Did the Deputy ever calculate how many people he emigrated from this country when he was in power?
I did, and I can tell the Deputy that as a result of our efforts we brought the stream of emigration to a close.
Did the Deputy not arrange with the American authorities for an increase in the number emigrating from this country?
The Deputy should be answered on that. There was a quota put on by the American authorities, and actually we did not fill that quota. There was no quota in the case of England, but the people did not go to England in the way they are going now.
But there was emigration?
There was, and we stopped it. Deputy O'Connor's leader, however, has started it again, and in five years the leader of the Deputy, who has got certain facilities from his leader as a landlord in this country, has emigrated from this country a quarter of a million a year for 12 dried eggs.
I move to report progress.
Until what time— 1.30?
No, we are not taking Government business at 1.30.
The Minister is not in the Chair.
There will be no Government business taken at 1.30.
That was the order of the House.
Mr. Morrissey
It was not. There was no order made to interfere with the ordinary sitting hours of this House.
There was no order made.
There was.
It is not the intention to take Government business after 1.30.
Who moved that no Government business would be taken after 1.30?
I was not here.
I understand it was not moved.
My understanding of the suggestion was that a second Private Deputies' motion would not be taken after 1.30.
Therefore Government business can be taken after 1.30.
We should be able to get the name of the person who moved it, if there was such a motion.
Private Deputies' time is taken at 12 o'clock and, under ordinary conditions, goes on to 2 o'clock. The Private Deputies' motion in progress is to conclude at 1.30 and the time between 1.30 and 2 o'clock is for Private Deputies' business, but it is not worth taking another motion then.
It was stated that it had been moved. I understand that is not the case.
I want to know where we stand. Are we to take it that the Minister delivered a nauseating speech and is now running away from anyone replying to him?
Might I remind the House that from 12 o'clock until 2 o'clock is devoted to Private Deputies' Business and, if we desired to take any part of that time for Government business, it would be necessary to put that from the Chair?
The Minister is not to rule in regard to this matter. It is a matter for the Chair.
The question of assigning Government business is a matter for the Government.
We know what the Government business is.
On a point of order. May I submit to you, Sir, that the Standing Orders require that this House shall sit to 2 o'clock.
If it has business.
It has business.
Mr. Morrissey
The Minister cannot be like Boyle Roche's bird, in his own seat and in the Chair at the same time. This House may sit until 2 o'clock. If the Government are not prepared to take Government business, we will take Private Deputies' Business.
The House need not necessarily sit until 2 o'clock, but it cannot sit after 2 o'clock.
Mr. Morrissey
We will take up the matter again at 1.30.
Deputy Norton on Motion No. 2, which has one-and-a-half hours to go.