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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 2 Jul 1947

Vol. 107 No. 6

Committee on Finance. - Vote 3—Department of the Taoiseach (Resumed).

Last night I was asking for a declaration of Government policy with regard to the inclusion of rural water supplies in the farm improvements scheme. In my opinion, the inclusion of such water supplies in that scheme would tend to greater and better production on the holdings and would have a very good effect on our output of agricultural produce. It is well known that in many rural areas such water supplies are very limited. The matter has been raised very often in this House.

It was raised extensively on another Vote. These are details rather than a matter of principle.

I only just want to refer to the matter for the information of the Taoiseach.

The Taoiseach can hardly deal with items like that. He can hardly be expected to know every item of every Department. Perhaps the Deputy would confine himself to broad outlines of policy.

I just wanted to bring it to the notice of the Taoiseach. As I said before, the farm improvements scheme, the rural improvements scheme and other such schemes are very much availed of throughout rural Ireland. For that reason, I thought I would mention it during the debate on the Taoiseach's Estimate so that he can give it consideration as head of the Government. I hope he will take the matter into consideration, because the provision of such water supplies is very essential to the better production of agricultural produce. We are depending on our exports to keep our industrial machinery in motion at home, and the greater amount of agricultural produce we have for export the more industries we can establish and keep working.

I should also like to have a declaration of Government policy with regard to the future of the agricultural exports of the marketing board. I think we should concentrate and keep our eyes well on the British market. Everyone will agree that it is the best and most secure market for our produce, in spite of the fact that we may have tried, because of differences between the two countries, to get alternative markets. The British market, in my opinion, and in the opinion of others, is the most suitable one for the Irish farmer to sell his produce. The Government should avail of every opportunity to have representatives of the Department of Agriculture at any talks which may take place with a view to securing a better and more important position in the British market, because other countries will be only too happy to avail of every opportunity to establish themselves in that market. For that reason, I think every opportunity that presents itself should be availed of in order to ensure that any agricultural produce we have a surplus of can be sold in the British market.

In dealing with the position of young farmers throughout the country, the Taoiseach stated about four years ago that it was his intention to provide a housing scheme for farmers' sons. I hope the Taoiseach will recall that. He understands that it is very hard for any farmer's son to settle down while his parents or sisters or brothers are living at home. I think the Taoiseach had in mind at that time making provision for the building of a house on the farm either for the parents or for a son who may be inclined to get married.

During the course of discussions at meetings of local authorities public representatives have suggested time and again that a scheme should be introduced whereby small farmers would be in a position to get loan accommodation for the building of a house. We all realise that every public body throughout the country is doing its utmost to carry out a housing scheme for the workers in rural Ireland. When you take into consideration the cost of providing a cottage and of procuring an acre of land for the ordinary rural workers, I think you are actually making a valuable gift of something in the region of £1,000 to the selected allottee. There are small farmers, however, who are not in a position to get loan accommodation to build a house, and I think that some such scheme should be made available to these people. The only means they have at their disposal at the moment is the Agricultural Credit Corporation. When you take into consideration the value of the land of such farmers, the money available to them would not be 50 per cent. of the cost of such a building.

These are the points I wish to bring to the notice of the Taoiseach. I think they are points that are well worthy of consideration. It must be admitted that the smaller farmers are the backbone of production. In my opinion they are the people who should be favourably considered, because they are not in a position to provide sufficient financial accommodation for themselves. I hope the Taoiseach will give this matter his favourable consideration.

The Taoiseach and some of his Ministers recently commented that they cannot understand why people emigrate and they tell us that there is ample work here to be done if those people will only stay at home and do it. Occasionally, they quote figures and compare the prices of foodstuffs in this country and in England and express astonishment that, with an ample supply of food here, or a far greater supply than is available in England, people deem it preferable to work there than here.

I have before me the latest cost-of-living figures and it may be of interest to quote some of them and compare them with the figures for 1939. In 1947 food was 113 points or 72 per cent. over the figures for 1939; clothing was 203 points or 90 per cent.; fuel and light were 118 points or 66 per cent., and sundries were 130 points or 67 per cent. The figure for February, 1947, relating to all items in the cost of living was 295, and since the February figure was published, more recent information shows that it has risen to 305, the main increases being 5½ points for food, 3½ for sundries and one point for clothing.

If the Taoiseach, or any member of the Government, examines these cost-of-living figures and at the same time the rise in emigrants' remittances from 1938 or 1939 and compares them with the figures published in the paper on incomes in 1944, or more recent figures, he will find that the income from emigrants' remittances has risen from £3,000,000 per annum to £13,000,000 per annum. It is significant that while people who go to England are faced with difficult circumstances, such as severely rationed foods, and are faced with long hours of work, difficulties of transport and all the other difficulties that people working in England have, they are able, over and above what they spend on food for themselves, on necessary commodities in England, to send home a substantial sum, a sum which has risen by approximately £10,000,000 since 1939. That is one important factor in our economy here that we must realise when we consider this question of emigration.

I think it is a fact that most people would prefer to work here for a smaller wage and that conditions here are generally not merely better, but more pleasant than in England. Emigrants are obliged to leave their families and friends and the bulk of them have to maintain two homes. They have to keep themselves in England and to keep the members of their family or dependent relatives at home. Despite these difficulties, and the fact that they are obliged to suffer the inconveniences and disabilities attendant on life in England, some of our people still prefer to make money there and save it up for the future rather than work here at lower wages and with a cost of living which has risen by over 70 per cent. The latest figure shows it is 72 per cent. higher than in 1939. At the same time, the maximum wage increases granted by the Labour Court amount to 50 per cent. People are thus expected to bridge a gap of 22 per cent. It is impossible to expect them to maintain the same standard of living for themselves and their families, not to think of saving money.

I think these figures show clearly that at the root of the emigration question is the one factor, that the cost of living here has now outstripped the incomes of the average wage-earners and the recent increases are in no way commensurate with the substantial rise in the cost of living, a rise which shows no sign of being arrested. When the next figures come to be published there will be, on top of that, the increase of 1/2 a lb. on tea. Tea forms quite a considerable portion of the average citizen's budget. The increase in the price of tea will affect particularly the budget of workers who are engaged in agriculture or turf production. These people use tea at two or three meals each day. Turf workers, agricultural workers and all those engaged in work which obliges them to take a meal away from home, will feel the impact of the rise in the price of tea.

It is a question which, apparently, the Government propose to leave alone. The Minister for Industry and Commerce said yesterday that he did not intend to subsidise the price of tea. In normal circumstances subsidies are not desirable, but when we find the cost of living now going beyond all bounds, beyond what most people regard as a stabilised high level of 70 per cent.— and the most recent figure shows that the general tendency is upward—we are entitled to have a recasting of Government policy. The prices shown in the latest publication of the Irish Trade Journal and Statistical Bulletin give no sign of a reduction. The tendency is the other way. If the Government examine the position, compare the figures, and consider the fact that people are expected to live with a gap of 22 per cent. between their incomes and the cost of living, it will be a simple matter to decide why so many people emigrate. It is all due to economic circumstances and not to the wicked propaganda of opponents of the Government.

I shall now refer to the large numbers of aliens who have come into this country since 1939. It is an astonishing fact that more and more aliens appear to be able to get work here, to start business here and compete in a limited market and with the limited number of opportunities afforded our own people. It is significant that a large number of these people have found their way into the courts. Some of them are from Britain and some from different parts of Europe, but no matter where they come from, large numbers of them have an entirely different code of morality from what we have in this country. They find ways and means which, apparently, numbers of people in this country and this city have not yet discovered, to engage in profitable commercial undertakings. A number of them, as a result of their engaging in commercial undertakings, have, as we know, sailed rather close to the wind. Some of them have run right into it and found themselves in court. Whatever their resources or whatever the methods which these people have adopted may be, it is a fact that an ever-increasing number of them have been able to get into business here and have been able to start up either in a new way of business, or in a line of business, which enables them to compete with their own people.

I think there is nothing which has outraged the public conscience, or the conscience of the commercial community in this country more than the fact that an ever-increasing number of these gentlemen from Europe have come in here and, as I say, the bulk of those who appeared before the courts seem to have an entirely different code of commercial honour from our own people. In one way or another they have found it possible to engage in trade and some of them have succeeded. One of these people who was before the court recently managed to take away £38,000 in a bag. Whether that is an exceptional case or not I do not know, but it is a fact that one of these people made off with £38,000.

I think it is time, if it is not long past the time, when we see so many of our own citizens being obliged to emigrate through economic reasons, that the credentials of every individual entering this country and engaging in competition with our own people should be closely examined. I think we should examine the credentials of every person who joins in this influx from abroad and is permitted to join in it. Not merely are these people engaged in trade; they are also undertaking building and acquiring building sites. It is a matter of common knowledge that their activities in this direction have gone on for the last few years and that they have been buying the most suitable sites available for building in close proximity to the city. Most of these people find that the land which, in normal circumstances, would be regarded as suitable has been purchased, possibly more than once, by many of these land speculators, people who have come into the country from abroad. The time has come when Dublin should be secured as a place for the Irish people and when all these people who come from abroad or who speculate in land or in commodities in short supply should be restricted. I believe that the House and the country would be prepared to commend any measure in order to prevent the type of exploitation that is going on, a type of exploitation which is seriously injuring and impeding national development and preventing our people being afforded a living at the moment, in circumstances suitable to their own financial position.

It is a strange commentary on our position that so many people have been forced to leave the country or at any rate have left, whatever the cause, and I believe that the Dáil should devote serious attention to this matter. If we question the people who have left and examine the cost-of-living figure in an effort to come to a conclusion on the matter, we shall find that it is obvious that they have left because of the economic position. It is, indeed, a strange commentary on our economic position that our people are obliged to go abroad while large numbers of immigrants, many of a most undesirable kind, can come into this country and live on the fat of the land.

I asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce on a couple of occasions when a new prices commission would be set up. I was told that legislation was under consideration. I wonder if the Government have lost touch with reality. The only solution they have, apparently, is to bring in Bills to increase salaries and allowances. No consideration has been given to the prices problem so far as we can see and if any has been given, no tangible effect is noticeable and we hear nothing of any policy or programme to control the cost of living.

If there is one thing affecting our people at the moment, it is the number of commodities which have risen in price in the last six months—not merely in the early years of the emergency. I think if any real attempt is to be made—any attempt which will give the public some confidence for the future—it is the immediate establishment of a prices commission, with full power to control and examine every proposed additional increase in price.

Apparently we are on the eve of the summer adjournment and no legislative proposals are likely to be presented. It is possible that the Government proposes to leave it over until autumn, until we are faced with all the difficulties the winter is likely to bring before we have any machinery to control prices or to bring prices within the capacity of the average wage-earner.

It is an astonishing commentary on the whole outlook of the Government and on the whole Government programme that we have not as yet any prices commission with wide powers of examination and review and wide powers to control any increase in prices. I would be anxious to hear from the Government their views on the matter. Certainly, it is significant that the Department of Industry and Commerce have not seen fit to draft legislation. The problem should not require extensive or drastic legislation of a protracted kind. The legislation could establish a prices commission before which manufacturers or producers would be required to justify proposed price increases. When they justified these increases only then would they be sanctioned.

Certainly, previous experience does not give any ground for optimism that there is any new prices commission in contemplation, or machinery which would enable the people of this country to have any confidence in it, but it is to be hoped that there will be wide appreciation of the fact that strong legislative measures and more rigorous control must be adopted to keep the cost of living within bounds.

The policy of the Government has so operated that we now have 31,000 civil servants for 2,953,000 people. Our population has decreased in the last ten years but the number of civil servants has gone up by 10,000. It is an astonishing fact that we have more people in offices, regulating the life of the community, than ever before and, at the same time, our people have to put up with a lower standard of living.

I cannot help recalling an article in the form of an interview by the present Taoiseach and published in an American paper called The Sun in 1930. That article referred to the fact that this country still produces men and women for export and stated that he was confident that if he had control and if a proper policy were adopted, we could prevent that, that there was work and opportunities for all in Ireland. We now come after 15 years of Fianna Fáil Government and find that that article could be rewritten by the Taoiseach. In fact, he would not need to write it; all he would need to do would be to add a postscript that after 15 years of Fianna Fáil Government, 13 of them in which they had an over-all majority, more people have to leave than ever before while the people who remain at home are finding it more expensive to live with the fewer opportunities that there are. It is a strange irony of fate that, after 15 years under Fianna Fáil, the same article is not merely true but that conditions have worsened.

I should like to refer to a matter which Deputy Norton raised yesterday and in which he was supported by some other Deputies. That is the fact that a number of actors and writers in this country, who add lustre to our State and who have achieved distinction, not merely by reason of their meritorious performances before our own people but by their performances before numbers of people who came from abroad who were impressed by their ability and their capacity, have as a result of remaining in this country and devoting themselves exclusively to work on the Irish stage, found themselves at the end of their careers in very poor circumstances. In certain cases where such actors died their families were left in very poor circumstances. I think it desirable that some provision should be made for these people or their dependents. We give a number of grants for theatrical and other purposes, in particular a grant to the Abbey Theatre. I, at this time, would be reluctant to advocate any increase in public expenditure but I think in a matter of this kind only a small increase would be necessary. We subscribe to a number of different forms of institutions for a variety of purposes. Some of these purposes do not commend themselves to the majority of our people but I think that is one which would certainly commend itself to them in order to demonstrate our recognition of the services which these people have rendered and the fact that we appreciate that many of them to their own personal financial detriment and to the financial detriment of their families, elected to work in Ireland rather than accept remunerative positions abroad open to actors of their capacity. These positions were readily available had they decided to go abroad. A large number of them refused to accept offers of an attractive nature. Their refusal meant that they had to remain here in comparatively poor circumstances. They and their families have suffered in consequence and I think it would be a satisfactory form of recognition if the grant to the Abbey Theatre or to some of the other cultural associations, which the Dáil has made from time to time, were increased in order to enable the directors of these theatres or those who are charged with the responsibility of expending the money to provide for these actors. If a satisfactory and sufficient grant were made it would enable these people to ensure that those who add distinction to this country and who bring lustre, not merely to themselves but to our reputation for producing men of genius and to our cultural capacity, might not find themselves in poor circumstances or might not find those dependent upon them obliged to have recourse to charity. I think the suggestions made by Deputy Norton and supported by other Deputies are worthy of consideration. Certainly, I should be glad to hear that some provision was made for these people and their dependents so that they might not be thrown on charity or some form of a national collection in order to discharge their responsibilities.

This debate gives Deputies an opportunity of calling the attention of the head of the Government to the more urgent social and economic problems that confront our community. Among those are, first of all, the high cost of living, the scarcity of some of the essentials of life, emigration, production and taxation. The last speaker, Deputy Cosgrave, has applied himself to the problem of the cost of living and suggested that there was no control so far as the cost-of-living figure was concerned. He pointed out that, because of that lack of control, the cost of living here is outrageously high. When we compare the cost of living here with the cost of living in Britain, it seems strange that our cost of living is substantially higher than that in Britain. We must appreciate that the State contribution to the lowering of the cost of living in Britain is considerably higher than here. Relatively speaking, the State contribution here is very small. The taxation of this country will be increased this year by £5,500,000; in other words, the Minister for Finance hopes to rake in from the taxpayers £5,500,000 more than last year. Little or none of that will be devoted to easing the cost of living.

I suggest that in our present difficulties a substantial portion of that money should have been earmarked to ease the problem for the masses of our poor people. The last census shows clearly that, so far as the national income and its distribution are concerned, the tendency is to permit a limited number of people in this country to grow richer. The number of people with incomes over £10,000 has increased substantially while the number of people who are forced to live on very low incomes has also increased. The White Paper on National Income and Expenditure shows that in 1944 only 190,000 people in this community had each an income of over £3 a week. The vast majority of the people in this country have to exist on incomes of £3 a week each and under that figure. Taking the present cost of living and the tendency for that figure to increase, it is utterly impossible for a family to be maintained—from a nutritional point of view they cannot be maintained at a proper level—on such a low income. There are at least two or three factors contributing to the high cost of living here which have been ignored by the Government. The main contributory factor, in my opinion, is the high level of taxation. Taxation is outrageous. It is out of all proportion to the capacity of the people to pay. Let us take, as an example, a few items.

Take, for instance, tobacco. It is estimated that the Government of this country will collect a sum of £14,000,000 in taxation for that commodity this year. It may be argued by the Taoiseach that tobacco is a luxury commodity. I say that as our people have so few luxuries the man in the field is entitled to a free smoke. Yet the policy of the Government is to collect from the smoker of this country a sum of £14,000,000. We have something like 2,000,000 adults. If you allow, say, 50 per cent. of the females and 80 per cent. of the males as smokers you will get a figure of something like 1,250,000 smokers. The incidence of tax is, therefore, over £11 per individual. In the case of a heavy smoker you will find that he contributes at least £20 in tobacco tax alone to the Revenue Commissioners. Because of the indirect nature of much of our taxation the average man in the street does not appreciate the substantial contribution that taxation makes to the high cost of living.

Take, again, customs duties. According to the financial statement, the Minister for Finance hopes to collect from essential commodities coming into this country a sum of £19,500,000. Before that £19,500,000 reaches the consumer the wholesalers' and retailers' margins are added and the sum is, therefore, enlarged to at least £25,000,000 or £26,000,000. This country, for many years after the Treaty, was run for a sum of £21,000,000. Now, out of one item of taxation, this Government is going to collect, from a smaller community with lower production, a sum, so far as the community is concerned, of £25,000,000 or £26,000,000.

If, however, the curve of production were rising there would be some justification for the ever-growing burden of taxation but, as a matter of fact, the most alarming feature of this whole problem is a fallen and stagnant production while taxation is being piled on. Take income-tax at £12,000,000. A worker with small wages feels that he does not have to carry any of the burdens of income-tax. The £12,000,000 come mainly from the commercial classes. The man in the street ought to appreciate that the vast majority of that taxation is passed on to the consumer and that income-tax contributes to the cost of living. All those big items of taxation in my opinion substantially contribute to the high cost of living. If we examine some of the distributing firms we will be able to appreciate that they too are permitted to make enormous profits as compared with pre-war. They are handling less goods. Industrial undertakings in this country have much lower output, yet when their balance sheets are examined it will be found that their margins of profit are substantially higher than pre-war, and they were very well off then. At the same time, nothing is done to ensure that they are permitted to make only reasonable margins of profit and in that way to protect the consumer. Of course the Minister for Finance has a financial interest in the matter. The higher the profits the higher his rake-off is going to be, so far as income-tax and corporation profits tax are concerned. We are deeply concerned in raking into the Exchequer huge sums which, because of our extravagance in administration, must be done.

That is all piled on to the unfortunate man with a big family and a low income. In these circumstances can we not very well understand the low marriage rate, the late marriage rate and the incidence of disease due to lack of a proper nutritional diet which is essential to good health and due, sometimes, to the fact that that essential diet cannot always be afforded. As a matter of fact in some cases the food is not available to provide that diet. The people have to go without it and their resistance to disease is lessened because of the lack of that food. The incidence of disease has increased to an alarming extent in this country, particularly the incidence of tuberculosis.

So far as carrying this huge burden of taxation is concerned, I want to put this to the Taoiseach. We all live out of the pool of production. We can only take out of it what we put into it. The people who produce the food, according to the last census, are the people that are engaged in real production. According to the last census, 1,250,000 of our population are engaged in profitable employment and only 800,000 are engaged in real production. I submit that in the last analysis the total taxation of this country, either directly or indirectly, must come out of the pool of production. Other people give services; for instance, a professional man gives his services to the community and he gets paid for it. The distributing organisation in the country gives and is paid but, in the last analysis, it all comes out of the pool which is maintained by the sweat and toil of the 800,000. We should relate the figure of 800,000 people to the present taxation. According to the Minister for Finance, £69,000,000 is our taxation bill for this year. We can add £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 more by way of supplementaries to that figure. If we put local taxation at £9,000,000 on top of that we get an aggregate sum of £82,000,000, which means that the taxation rate in this country is over £100 per real worker. That money has to be found by the fellow working in the field. Cannot we, therefore, readily understand why he has to sweat and toil for a very low real income? Measured in terms of money it is low enough, but it is much lower still when measured in terms of real income.

We have this situation, too, so far as our people in rural Ireland are concerned. Every day rural Ireland is being stripped of its population and of its manpower. The first essential to production, whether in the field or in the factory, is man-power. We are parting with the most precious asset we have. The most precious asset any country has is its man-power. The rearing and the education of a young fellow is an expense on the community. When he grows to manhood he ought then to become an asset to the community. There is some responsibility on the State to provide an opportunity for that individual to become an asset to his people. Instead of that we maintain him while he is a liability and we part with him when he should be an asset. We make a present of him to some other country so that he can produce assets for that country. Our peculiar circumstances are that we have exported substantial numbers of the pride of our people to Great Britain—190,000 since the emergency started. Unskilled men can earn in that country £7, £8, £9 and £10 a week. They are permitted to send back into our small economy here with our limited supplies that inflated money to purchase goods in competition with our people who are earning low incomes, to purchase in competition with the people who have opted to remain at home to produce assets at home and to carve their niche in life at home. I submit that that is terribly unfair to the people at home.

We talk a lot about emigration but it will continue so long as we allow the attraction of money which has, in my opinion, a very doubtful value, to influence our people, and so long as we allow people to go out and earn inflated money that may never be honoured so far as the country is concerned or for which we may have to wait a long time before it is honoured in goods. Emigration will continue so long as we allow our people to leave this country, when convenient, to earn that money at an inflated level and allow that money to be sent back into our economy here and have its full face value in our little restricted economy here in competition against the people who are doing the same sort of work at home and getting money incomes substantially less. Take the agricultural worker who is getting 50/- a week here. One man remains at home and the other man goes to Great Britain and gets at least £5 per week. He can use that to its full face value here at home by sending back the bulk of it to his wife and family, as against the man who has opted to remain at home.

I suggest to the Taoiseach that the time has come when we have to face up to this problem. Great Britain has a man-power problem. If her population is going to fall and if she has to make a tremendous effort to recover her economy, we are in terrible danger. We will be stripped of our man-power if we do not face up to the realities of the position and face up to the very big difficulties that are there, if we continue to be attached to a monetary unit for which there is free exchange between the two countries and which has the same purchasing power in the two countries. That is a problem that the Taoiseach has to face up to and the sooner we face up to that problem the better. We are creating more and more purchasing power and a greater demand for the limited amount of goods available. We are allowing people to arm themselves with that purchasing power in a country where they cannot get the goods against the money, but we allow them full freedom to purchase here in our restricted economy. I think it is grossly unfair to the man, especially the married man with a family, who opts to remain at home, who is patriotic enough to try to remain in his own country and to do his best for himself and for the community here.

While that continues, we will have emigration. We will not only have emigration abroad, but people migrating from the rural districts into the urban districts while life is more attractive financially in the urban areas than in the rural areas. The White Paper on National Income and Expenditure shows clearly that it is much more attractive to live in an urban area from the point of view of income, even leaving out the other amenities of life. The monotonous conditions in rural Ireland, the lack of entertainments, etc., have often been stressed, but these are not the reasons. The reason is shown very clearly in the White Paper on National Income and Expenditure, namely, that the income is more attractive in the urban areas; that the people in the distributive trades are getting paid more for their services than the people who are producing the first essential thing, namely, food. The drain from the land will continue while we behave like the ostrich and stick our heads in the sand and ignore that.

There are schools in this country where you had 70, 80 or 100 children on the rolls 30 or 40 years ago and where the number on the rolls has fallen by 50 per cent. and over. That is an indication of what is happening. It is a very serious matter. While that rot continues in agriculture, the drain will continue and the problem is being accentuated by those things to which I have referred. The proportion of people engaged in rural production in this country is too small in relation to the number of people who have to be carried.

Deputy Cosgrave referred to the bloated Civil Service, which is a tremendous burden on the rural producers. The Netherlands Government recently published a White Paper for a long-term plan of development in their economy, notwithstanding the terrific problem they had to face when we remember what the Germans did to their dykes. Some of the best parts of the Netherlands were inundated with water. Yet they have very courageously faced up to that big problem, the slow and tedious work of building dykes and getting the water off their lands. In the White Paper they say that in 12 months they will have their heavy industries reorganised and back almost to pre-war production, and that in three years they will have agriculture functioning in an efficient way. They go on to say that they are taking civil servants and putting them into the industrial life of the country. Here we are going to spend over £2,000,000 on erecting a magnificent building to house more civil servants.

The present Government has an extraordinary capacity to spend money on anything and everything except what is essential to the community. They should put capital into real production so as to ensure that production will be stepped up. That is the first step to better standards and more favourable conditions for the community. If we keep building up an immense Civil Service and an immense unnecessary Army and impose a tax burden on our people to maintain those things, then we will have depressed production and will drive people off the land and out of the country.

We are sending a delegation to the Food and Agriculture Organisation meeting at Paris. The Taoiseach did not think that there was any primary producer in this country fit to speak for our primary industry when we were sending a delegation to an international organisation engaged in one of the most vital tasks. This country has a capacity to produce substantially more than its own requirements and is, therefore, vitally interested in an export trade. One would expect that we would have some indication from the Government as to our future plans for economic development; what our long-term plans are; what security or stability is to be held out to the primary producer to stimulate him to produce more.

Will the Taoiseach tell the House what policy our delegation of one or two Ministers with a band of civil servants will advocate at the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Paris in the next few days? Are we still going to commit ourselves to a restrictionist and isolationist policy, or do we propose to reintegrate ourselves in a world food economy? Do we believe in an expansionist policy? Do we believe in expanding our primary products, in stepping up the expansion of them, so that we can secure those things which are essential to decent standards in the community which we cannot produce at home? Are we still going to pursue the Taoiseach's ideal of isolation for our people and high protective walls for industrial development with all the racketeering which is going on in some directions in that industrial development? I will give the Taoiseach one example.

The greatest racket in this country at the present moment is in the assembling of motor cars. There are few people here who buy motor cars merely for pleasure. The vast majority of them buy them for business purposes. Yet, we are in a position where we allow a small number of business magnates to operate this assembling of motor cars here and to charge what they like for their services. As a result of that the average motor car is costing here about £150 more than if it was assembled in the ordinary way at the other side. Anyone who has any idea as to how a motor car is assembled under modern conditions can appreciate how absurd it is that at a certain point on the assembly lines a chassis should be taken off, the body panel packed carefully into cases and transported over here for re-assembly under far less efficient conditions. All that contributes to the high cost of living because the motor car and the motor vehicle are used in the distribution and transportation of those goods in which the consumer is so vitally interested.

If the Taoiseach has studied, as I am sure he has, the White Paper on National Income and Expenditure he must appreciate that the cost of distributing food here is out of all proportion to the cost of production. It costs £8,000,000 to distribute £13,000,000 worth of food. That is an outrageous cost. We have no organisation of any sórt to ensure that distribution is efficiently and properly done or to control distribution or the charges made for distributing goods. There is no efficient organisation of any sort whose work redounds to the advantage of the consumer as well as to the advantage of the producer because both have to pay for inefficient distribution

The late Kevin O'Higgins said on one occasion that we gave all our attention to production and none to marketing. That was a good many years ago. It is now over 20 years since he was assassinated. It was shortly before that that he expressed that view. We have done nothing in the meantime to bring about greater efficiency in distribution. We have no marketing organisation such as has been built up in other countries. In these other countries magnificent work has been done by these marketing organisations and one can appreciate, when making comparisons, how little has been done by this Government in that respect.

I do not want to discuss in any detail the question of production but I do want to say that this is a problem which is crying out for attention and which requires a Government determined to apply the most modern conditions to Irish agriculture. We have been in a state of stagnation for a great many years. We have all the advantages of climate, soil conditions, ability and intelligence. Our people are an intelligent people and that intelligence should be harnessed to the capital equipment so essential but so lacking at the present time. We are not applying modern technique and modern equipment, both of which have been applied so effectively in other countries. The application of modern technique and equipment is the first step that must be taken. That is the key to prosperity, and prosperity, in turn, is the key to keeping our own people at home. We must start with agriculture. If we have a prosperous agriculture industrial development will follow as a natural corollary because agriculture, being the primary industry, will demand secondary services. History has demonstrated that forcibly in other countries. History has demonstrated that in the Scandinavian countries. While the Taoiseach continues to put the cart before the horse by paying more attention to industrial development, while ignoring conditions in the primary industry, we are not going to make any progress.

I will give the Taoiseach one example again in relation to the rural community. When the local authorities, according to the regulations emanating from the Department of Local Government and the Minister for Local Government, are selecting tenants for cottages in the rural districts the economic conditions are completely ignored. In other words if a cottage is situated on a farm which is urgently in need of an agricultural worker the tenant for that cottage is selected on any other ground except his efficiency as an agricultural worker. He is selected if there is tuberculosis in his family, or if he is overcrowded or badly housed. All these factors are taken into consideration. Is the question ever asked, or does the regulation make any provision for the housing of the agricultural labourer merely because he is an agricultural labourer and one of the first essentials in production? That is completely ignored. Our policy to-day is to make a sanatorium of every cottage in the country and to ignore the urgent requirements of our primary industry in providing man-power for that industry. We look around us and we see what Great Britain is doing in that respect. At the present moment she is taking every step to ensure that the man-power will be there for production on the land. Special schemes for the housing of the agricultural workers are being put into operation. In our future housing schemes we should have one definite category apart from all other classes; that is, the housing of the people in rural Ireland so that agricultural workers will be available on the land. The agricultural worker should get preference in rural Ireland. If we do not do that quickly our man-power will disappear completely and it will then be too late to do anything.

That is the disease which to-day is sapping the very core of our economy. I think it is outrageous that that policy should have been operated in such a way and for so many years by the Minister for Local Government. I do not want to suggest that the family with tuberculosis in it should be ignored. I do not want the Taoiseach to misunderstand me. Those people must be looked after, too, and we must ensure that any member of a family suffering from tuberculosis must get the best chance. That does not get away from the fact that, in the last analysis, before we can treat the disease and before we can provide better conditions for our people we must give more attention to production because it is out of our capacity to produce that we will eventually succeed in dealing with the other subsidiary problems. That is the first essential in order to produce wealth for the community. Having done that we can solve our other problems comparatively easily. We shall then be able to provide institutions for the treatment of disease and cottages for those affected by disease. But I say that in rural Ireland the agricultural worker must get the preference because he is the man who is going to be a real asset to the community.

I have just touched on a few of the problems that confront us. I am not a pessimist. I am an optimist, and I maintain that there are opportunities for the country and for our people as primary producers that never presented themselves to us before. Are we now going to grasp those opportunities which have come about because of the fundamental change in British economy? Britain has dollar difficulties and she is going to be forced to buy more and more in the sterling area. If we expand our production here Britain will be able to take whatever surpluses we have and there will then exist no dollar difficulties while we shall have a free exchange.

When the Taoiseach is replying, I think he should give the House some information on future policy in that respect. In the last couple of years the world has been attempting to reshape itself to normal conditions. It may take a considerable time before we experience normal conditions but countries all over the world are striving to get back to normal and they are shaping their economy for the normal life of the community by entering into long-term trade agreements with other countries. The result is that the primary producer will know exactly where he stands over a long term. He will have a long-term goal at which to aim and he will have security and stability which are so important to him and which in the past were so lacking. In the past expanded production inevitably meant lower prices for the primary producer. In the past, price was a regulating factor so far as production was concerned.

It is to be hoped that, in the future, organisations such as the United Nations Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation and world statesmen and economists will appreciate that happiness and peace for the world can only be secured by ensuring that the people are well fed. Feeding the world is the right policy towards securing peace and happiness. Human requirements ought to be, and must in future be, the regulating factor if we are to approach this problem in a Christian-like manner. We pay a fee to join the Food and Agriculture Organisation and we send a Minister or two Ministers. That is quite all right. We also send civil servants, but I think civil servants ought to appear there only in an advisory capacity. The primary industry ought to be represented by people drawn from that industry. The only people qualified to speak for the main industry are those who make a living out of it and who have had the hard experience of doing so.

What policy will our people in Paris pursue? Will they advocate that we should reintegrate ourselves in a world economy, or continue to pursue an isolationist policy? This House is entitled to know what instructions the delegation have got. No farmers' organisation has been consulted in relation to policy and what they feel would be in the best interests of the community. All that is done behind closed doors in a Department. The people living by the industry are not fit to be consulted, apparently. Compare our delegation with the delegations from other countries. The British delegation will be led by Mr. James Turner, President of the British Farmers' Union, a man fully qualified to speak for British agriculture. Why should we not have our delegation composed of men quite competent to deal with this matter? Why should we rely on civil servants to speak for our primary industry? I do not want to reflect on our civil servants; they are able men, out they are not the people to speak for our primary industry. I do not think the country will stand for that. The Taoiseach should not approve of bureaucratic representation. If he believes in democracy, he ought to believe in the capacity of the people in the primary industry to speak for themselves. Those are matters of vital importance.

The world is slowly re-establishing itself. In the new situation there are opportunities now presented to this country. It is a new experience for this country to have representatives over from the British Ministry of Food to see what we can do to raise production here and to integrate our agricultural economy with theirs, because they are thrown back on their own resources and are forced to rely more on themselves. The policy of producing manufactured goods in exchange for cheap food is past history for Great Britain. There are opportunities there now that must be availed of. I submit that if those opportunities are grasped and implemented by a proper trade deal, they will pay handsome dividends. I trust the Taoiseach will be prepared to give the House some information on those matters.

I would like to comment on the remarks of the last speaker before I go into the points I had intended to raise. I differ entirely from him when he says that there is less efficiency in the motor assembling industry in this country than in any other place. I believe that is an unintentional reflection on the workers engaged in that industry.

I said it was a great racket.

I have been in some of the motor assembling places and I saw there the finest type of men, men as skilled as you will find in any part of the world, earning good wages. Proof of their work can be seen each day in the main thoroughfares of Dublin. There you can see some of the motor cars assembled by those men, who earn good wages here. When he was talking about emigration, the Deputy asked why should we allow men and women out of the country?

I did not say any such thing.

You used those words—I wrote them down.

Will the Deputy permit me to say definitely that I did not say any such thing? I said why allow them to send in money?

I accept that statement and I am very glad the Deputy has made it. I and every other Deputy have been asked by our constituents— fine young men who could not get employment here, or girls who had good offers to go to hospitals or some other employment in England—to facilitate them and we have asked the British authorities to speed up their passports and allow them to go. I agree with Deputy Hughes when he says that the cause ought not to be there. If we could provide work at decent wages for our people here, I would join with any Deputy in saying that our people should not be allowed to emigrate.

I would be one of the first to appeal to the Government not to allow our people to leave the country if we could find employment for them at home, but when I find men and women in almost every house in the working-class areas in my constituency going away to Britain and able to send a little money home, I feel they are doing good work. I hope the day may not be far distant when the Taoiseach will be able to bring these people back to their own country and give them opportunities of earning a decent living here. Until that day comes, we have no right to interfere with the freedom of movement of our people in so far as it is permitted by the laws of this and other countries.

Yesterday much was said about the housing problem in the whole country, and I join all my other colleagues in asking the Government to speed up the housing programme and enter into any agreement that is possible to get priority in materials for the building of houses for our people. The conditions in Dublin to-day are alarming. I do not want to be accused of being an alarmist but the conditions in Dublin to-day, so far as housing is concerned, are really alarming. There are high rents on our tenements—six, eight or ten families living in one house in single rooms—and it is most regrettable to see that the conditions recently have shown no improvement.

I do not want anyone to think, from what I am saying, that Dublin is different from any other city, or that this country is different from any other country. Recently, because of the rush from our rural areas to the urban areas, I find that great numbers of our young people are getting married and have nowhere to go. In some cases where the house is privately owned the man who gets married has to go to live with the girl's parents or the girl who gets married has to go and live with her young man's parents, in the parents' house.

Following the birth of the first or second baby, there is usually a notice to quit because children are not wanted. And I must say here that our corporation are no different from anybody else. They feel that sub-letting should not be allowed. I have an agenda which five of my colleagues on the housing committee received this morning for private consideration and there is one important line in it: Item No. 6, allocation of tenancies in Corporation Place. That line covers a multitude. Corporation Place is a building of self-contained flats, with families whose bread winners are among the most lowly paid of all the workers in the City of Dublin.

I do not say "lowly paid" in any sense that they are lowly because they number some of the best of our people, but they have to live on home assistance or on some other form of relief— a whole family in one room. What happens in these places? The girl meets the boy and there are only four feet between them, or the young man meets the girl and eventually they get married. I have a case of a girl with a baby in her arms and another expected, where they are sleeping in one room 12 feet by 12 feet with her grown-up brothers, and my own corporation has told the mother that they will not allow the girl into the next room. I have said: "Please give the girl or the boy the next room"——

The Deputy does not suggest that the Taoiseach has the giving of that room.

I do not say that. I am only citing a case typical of what is happening in the city to-day, and the corporation official says that these rooms are not for families, although for the past 45 years people have been living in single rooms in Dublin. The corporation official tells him to go else-where—tells this little girl, this young wife—and Deputy Butler knows the circumstances of these people as well as I do—to look for another place, but there is no place to be got and the people will tell the corporation official: "You are not building for the like of us." What do the people say? They say: "We have nowhere to go."

I am mentioning that only to emphasise the need for a huge building and housing programme. We have got coal from America at a high price. If we can get building materials at a higher price, we should get them and pay it if necessary, because this housing problem is very serious.

I will also ask the Taoiseach if he will give the House some hope of encouragement that a food prices council will be in operation soon. The cost of living to-day is appalling. Every day you read in the papers that something or other is going up in price. For many years we have not read one item of news that something has fallen— fuel, flour or clothes. We see children in the City of Dublin going around badly clothed and, I am afraid, in many cases, badly fed, getting only the bare necessities of life. There is something wrong with that in a prosperous city like Dublin. We ought to do something to improve the position that visitors see in our main thoroughfares every day. There are not very many of them, but those who are out are out in hail, rain or snow, getting wet in their bad clothes and becoming patients for sanatoria.

What happens then? Their parents make application and they are told that there is no hope of getting treatment for three months—three months from to-day. The sanatoria have a waiting list of 150 names from Dublin alone, the names of people who are entitled to treatment quickly, but who cannot get it. I do put it to the Taoiseach that our first duty should be housing. Next to that we must bring down the cost of living. I am not a magician and I may say that I would not like to be in the position of the Government to-day trying to grapple with the problem which many Deputies have outlined, of our people having to seek employment and a living in other countries.

Deputy Dillon yesterday, and he was listened to eagerly, spoke for an hour on Communism. Those who listened to Deputy Dillon were keenly interested, as I was, earnestly hoping and praying that what was happening in other countries abroad would never touch this country. I say that the greatest encouragement to that doctrine is the conditions that are allowed to prevail. People will not drift away from their present ways of living, and there will be no fear of Communism or any other "ism" if we can find a proper solution to our problems.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle took the Chair.

I ask the Taoiseach to see, therefore, that our people will get the necessities of life and decent wages, and if that is done, neither he nor anybody else need ever fear the possibility of Communism growing to any extent, if it grows at all, in this country. Personally, I do not think that it is on its way here to any degree like that which Deputy Dillon has mentioned in regard to other countries but I think the warning given by Deputy Dillon is timely. The remedy is to provide good wages, good housing, good clothing and good food for our people.

Some time ago I asked the Minister if something could not be done to arrest inflation. Inflation is here. People with money can get whatever they like and those without money or those with small means have to go without, because they cannot compete in the market with those who have large incomes. If anything could be done to prevent inflation, it would be appreciated, but something will have to be done quickly. To give the House an idea of how rapidly it is growing, I might point out that in the course of a day or two, we will be giving people in receipt of national health benefits, old age pensioners, and those in receipt of widows' and orphans' pensions, a cash allowance in lieu of the food vouchers which they formerly received. Do not ask me to confine myself definitely to the amount of that cash allowance but I think it would be 2/6 in one case. You decided a month ago to give a cash allowance of 2/6 instead of a food voucher but the amount of food which could be obtained a month ago on that voucher would cost at least 3/2 to-day. That means that these people are going to get 8d. or 9d. worth of food less for the cash you are going to give them than they would have got if they were left with the food vouchers. I know the answer will be that we cannot have it both ways, that you cannot ask for a cash allowance instead of a food voucher and at the same time provide that these people should get the same amount of food as they formerly got. The fact remains that the cash which you are going to give them in lieu of the food vouchers will buy 8d. worth of food less than the food voucher did. I take it that the Departments responsible for the issue of food vouchers in the first instance intended that these food vouchers should be the means of providing these people with a certain minimum quantity of food—say a quarter of a pound of butter, two loaves, two ounces of tea and a pound of sugar, and I think that the cash allowance should be sufficient to enable them to buy the same quantity of food under the new arrangement.

Before concluding, I should like also to draw attention to the circumstances of civil servants and other public servants who retired many years ago and who are now trying to live on inadequate pensions. One lady who writes to me says: "I was retired owing to illness when the cost of living was as low as 60. I have not received the smallest increase in my pension, notwithstanding the fact that the cost of living is now over 300. I feel that the Government cannot realise that such injustices are being imposed upon us, owing to unjust laws." I appeal to the Government to see that those who retired on pensions, which at the time were thought to be adequate, will receive such an addition to their pensions as will enable them to eke out an existence in the latter days of their lives in at least frugal comfort. There are some pensioners who retired on pensions as low as 12/- or £1 per week some years ago. The £ to-day is worth only 10/- so that their plight can be imagined.

I join with other Deputies in appealing to the Government to see that the dependents of those who have rendered service to the country in art and literature will be provided for in an adequate way. A Government such as ours should be grateful to those people for having put Ireland on the map so far as culture is concerned. Finally, I would appeal to the Taoiseach to see that something is done quickly to enable us to get a high priority in supplies of all kinds of building materials. I believe we have plenty of money and, if we offer sufficient wages, building trade workers who have emigrated will be very glad to return to the country. There is no use in asking them to come back if we have not the materials and if we cannot offer them decent wages. Not alone would we be providing a decent livelihood for such people at home by taking the necessary steps in this direction, but we would be providing homes for those who are eagerly looking for them—the sons and daughters of those who are already living in overcrowded conditions. The people living in such overcrowded conditions are anxious to see that their sons and daughters when they get married will be provided with a better chance than their parents had and that they will not have to start life in a single room in a tenement under the conditions which I have described.

A good deal has already been said on the subject of emigration. I hold that it is one of the greatest evils confronting the country to-day. Here some weeks ago the Minister for Finance informed us that since 1939 alone 120,000 of our young people have left the country. It is presumed that most of them will not return; they are gone, and gone for good. That is the outward sign that something is radically wrong in Government policy, stretching back over quite a number of years. Every young man and woman who leaves this country represents a huge loss to the country; firstly, by reason of the fact that it costs quite a sum of money to raise a boy or girl to the age of manhood or womanhood. At the very lowest that cost could be put down at £1,000 each and then you would have a very conservative figure. But the biggest loss in my opinion is not represented by that huge sum. The biggest loss is represented by the fact that these boys and girls would be producers and consumers in this country if they could be kept at home by any means.

When we consider the constant depopulation of rural Ireland both under the present Government and the last Government, we can only conclude that some serious disease is eating away at our vitals. In the last ten years, from 1936 to 1946, the population of County Mayo has decreased by 13,000. That is only one county; in other counties we see decreases running from 6,000, 7,000, 3,000 and so on. What in the name of goodness is wrong when after 25 years of self-government we cannot do something to stem the tide of emigration?

I remember when I was a schoolboy eagerly looking forward to the day when we should have some form of Home Rule as a result of which we could stop emigration and get down to the work of laying the foundation of a nation. That has not been done and no attempt has been made to do it. I wish to recall, and recall with some bitterness, the promises made by the Taoiseach before his Party took over the reins of Government, promises which most people thought were genuine and real. Not one of these promises has been fulfilled. If they were promises which it was impossible to fulfil there would be some excuse for their non-fulfilment but some of them at any rate were promises which could have been fulfilled and no attempt has been made to fulfil them. The attitude taken of late by members of the Government and by the Taoiseach himself was that there was plenty of work at home for the youngsters of this country but that they will not stay. That kind of talk is purely ridiculous.

I would like to see where I said it.

I qualified my statement by saying that I thought——

"Thought".

The Taoiseach will not deny that Ministers of his Cabinet and that the Minister for Finance on the 8th of last May in this House——

I am sure the Minister for Finance did not.

I am sure the Taoiseach sees it is a very shabby attitude to take up, particularly by men occupying Ministerial positions. These Ministers must have had experience of young men in their own constituencies seeking employment and leaving this country because there is no gainful employment at home.

The fact of their saying it is a thing I would like to know. Who said it?

The Minister for Finance said so in this House on the 8th of last May.

Would the Deputy give us the quotation? I am perfectly certain the Minister for Finance did not make that statement.

I cannot possibly understand the Taoiseach taking up that attitude. It is not a fair attitude to take up. More than one Minister has said it. I will furnish the Taoiseach with particulars if he doubts my word, because such statements must not have slipped his notice, either in the newspapers or in the Dáil Reports. The Minister for Finance, inside the last 12 months, stated, on one occasion in this House, that a spirit of adventure, or something to that effect, was the cause of emigration. We must indeed be a very adventurous people if 120,000 of our girls and boys in the last eight years wished to see what the world was like and chanced the low standard of living and the meagre food rations available, particularly in Britain, to see the world. That is absolutely ridiculous talk and I may say that nobody believes it. The opinion down the country is that the Government have their heads away up in the clouds and that they have no contact at all with the ordinary people, particularly the younger generation of to-day. It must be a fact because, if they had contact, they would make some attempt to stop emigration. A few solutions were put forward in this House several times from the members of this Party and from myself.

At the present time there are two burning problems in this country. One of them is the drainage problem. A few years ago the Government faced up to the problem of drainage and introduced a very wide and a very good Bill. It was passed and it became an Act of this House, but not the slightest attempt has been made to operate it since. I do not intend to go into the matter in any great detail, but I would like to say, first, that the work concerned with that Act would be a wonderful boon to many thousands of farmers. It would release a lot of good land. It would provide honest employment and it would pay a quick dividend. Drainage which would be carried out in March would pay a dividend in the month of June, that is three months later. No other money invested could make a return in such a short space of time. I do not understand the attitude of the Government in bringing in such a Bill into this House and leaving it on the shelf to moulder away. The argument put up is that machinery is not available and that there is no man-power and so forth. I hold that no machinery is needed for most of the drainage of this country.

Another scheme that would go a long way towards using up the population and saving them from going across the water would be a broad national scheme of afforestation which, in my opinion, is essential. We have seen what happened in the last six, seven and eight years when we had no contact with the outside world and had to rely on our supplies of timber. It must have brought home to the Taoiseach and his Government very forcibly the need for an adequate supply of timber in our own country. Apart altogether from the question of employment, we need the timber. I have studied the matter and I will quote a figure. There should be at least a goal of 2,000,000 acres of the waste land of this country put under forests as soon as possible.

These are two broad schemes which would stop the tide of emigration and in the meantime pay a decent wage. Both of the schemes will be productive schemes. It will not be the case of burying money in a dead scheme which will bring in no return and the sooner we get down to it the better.

On the question of emigration, I would say to the Taoiseach, as I said on other occasions in this House, that many young men cannot find employment or will not find employment here because they are not equipped or because they have not the training or skill to take up the only alternative which the Government seems to have to offer them, namely, turf production. I would point out to him that not all of our young men are able to stand up to the rigours of turf work. On several occasions the Minister for Social Welfare denied the right to young men to go across to England to make use of their time there — men who are definitely unsuited, for health reasons, for turf work and who could not stand up to ordinary turf work in the bogs. It is possible that while living in the comfort of their own homes and being fed in their own homes they could do some turf work locally but there are quite a number of young men who would not be able to stand up to the rigours of camp life, such as it is at the present time down the country and it is not fair to keep these men at home. It is not fair to make a broad, easy Order, with one sweep of the hand, apply it to the whole community, cover the total population of the country, telling them that there is alternative employment for them under Bord na Móna. Even in a rural district where most of the young men are of a hardy nature or disposition, they are not all fit to stand up to this work. In cases where the Minister for Social Welfare is satisfied that they are not suited for turf work they should be released and allowed to go to England, that is if the Government has no suitable employment to offer to that class of person. It is not fair to ask them to stay here and spend perhaps the best years of their lives on a small holding where there are already five or six others besides themselves to look after the little bit of work that would require to be done.

Coupled with the fact that we are sending away each year a lot of young men out of the country we have what I might describe as a "silent invasion" going on in this country and which has been referred to by other speakers. This invasion in some cases consists of undesirable aliens who are coming in here and getting control of certain commodities. They are getting control of land which in my opinion the Land Commission should purchase in the open market. I think that when it comes to the time that the land is being offered for sale in the open market under the auctioneer's hammer, so to speak, and when it is a choice of perhaps an undesirable alien purchasing that land or the Irish Land Commission purchasing it for the relief of congestion the Minister for Lands should not have the slightest hesitation in going in to purchase the land unless, of course, the price is absolutely prohibitive. Aliens are getting control of essential commodities which are in short supply at the present time. I think the Taoiseach, as Minister for External Affairs, is in charge of the Department that deals both with the giving of permission to Irish nationals to leave this country and the giving of permission to foreigners or aliens to enter this country. I would like to direct the Taoiseach's attention to this matter. Perhaps the question could be examined without going into details because it is possible that that might not be too wise at this stage.

During the year the Taoiseach saw fit to give us a different Minister for Agriculture. I wonder is he satisfied with his choice? What were his reasons for appointing Deputy Dr. Ryan as Minister for Social Welfare and Deputy Smith as Minister for Agriculture? He has taken a very roundabout way to make the change. In other European countries, if a Minister has fallen down on his job in a particular Department, the head of the Government asks him to resign. The Taoiseach went about the matter in a different way. He sets up two new Departments; in other words, makes a suitable position for a Minister who definitely did not cover himself with glory in the discharge of his duties as Minister for Agriculture.

We had a speech in the House from the new Minister for Agriculture and I definitely was appalled at the attitude he took up. Is the Taoiseach satisfied with that? Are we to take it from the Minister's recent speech that the future Fianna Fáil policy towards agriculture is to be a policy of the mailed fist and threats? On no less than four occasions, during the course of a speech lasting two hours and 40 minutes, the Minister used threats. Against whom? Against an absolutely negligible percentage of people who failed to comply with the tillage regulations. It was a nice exposition of what the Government think of the farming community who came to their rescue both as regards food and fuel during the emergency and saved the country from what otherwise would have to be an act of participation in the war on some side in order to get both food and fuel. We know now where we stand, at least, the air has been cleared. We know what we are up against. We know we are up against an absolute dictatorship. There was a distinct challenge on four occasions during the Minister's speech. The farmers know exactly what they are faced with after the magnificent way in which they answered the call made upon them.

Did not the Deputy say that it was only a negligible minority against whom the Minister spoke?

I am speaking of the very small handful to whom the Minister was directing most of his attention; a very few people, 110 or thereabouts, out of 383,000 farmers who failed during six or seven years to comply with the tillage regulations. The Minister devoted most of his speech to hammering at those people. I am not standing up for the people who disobeyed a statutory Order when a national call was made on them. Nevertheless, I think there were broader aspects of the administration of agriculture which could have occupied the Minister's attention with more profit to himself and to the country than hammering at one small insignificant point like that. It was probably the one flaw he could find, and certainly he made a mountain out of a molehill when he got hold of it.

Since I came into this House four years ago one thing which has struck me as very strange is that in a country like this, which is predominantly agricultural, the Department of Agriculture, with all its branches, is housed in the city. I hold that the Department should be somewhere as near the geographic centre of the country as possible and that there should be, at the very least, a 1,000-acre farm attached to it for the purpose of demonstration, research into diseases and pests in stock and crops and the development of a good strain of stock and crops. I think we should move the Department out of the city, because it seems very strange to the average farmer who comes to Dublin for the first time to visit the Department in order to get some vital information concerning himself or the working of his holding that he has to wade through crowded streets to that Department. The thing is a pure joke.

Since the Estimate for the Department of Industry and Commerce was passed in this House, indications go to show that we are faced with a shortage of fuel in this city and in certain towns as well during the coming winter. I therefore take this opportunity to point out to the Taoiseach that we are faced with at least as bad a fuel famine in the city as last year, because turf production does not seem to be going on with the same swing as in other years. We will scarcely have as severe a winter this year so far as cold and snow are concerned, but there definitely will not be sufficient fuel for this city during the coming winter unless active steps are taken now.

In conclusion, I should like to ask the Taoiseach what takes place when a Bill has been passed by both Houses and is presented to the President for signature so that it can become law. Under the Constitution, there is a time limit laid down, and I take it all Bills are signed by the President within that specified time. Recently I read of a certain Bill which was signed by the President being declared unconstitutional. If that be the case, what machinery is available so that we will have an effective check on what may otherwise be faulty legislation emerging from the Dáil and Seanad? I understood that the President seeks advice before signing any Bill. Does he seek advice as to whether it is constitutional or, like King John when the famous Magna Carta was put before him, does he just sign it whether he likes it or not? I always thought that the Seanad was a check on the legislation passed by this House. I thought that one of the functions of the President was to be a final and very exacting check on the legislation as it emerged from the Seanad. A lot of people have begun to ask themselves lately what kind of legislation have we. What proof have we that legislation which has not been tested before the courts is either constitutional or unconstitutional? We have had one glaring example recently where legislation passed by this House was declared to be unconstitutional.

Is the Deputy now actually referring to a case which is before the courts at the present moment?

That is the reason why I do not want to touch upon that aspect. The aspect upon which I do want to touch is the fact that we have a President of this country and he in his office is supposed to be an official check on legislation which emerges from this House. I am not dealing with this particular Act at all. I am wondering if other Bills which might become law in the future might be unconstitutional and upon which there would obviously be no check. It is a pretty serious situation in my opinion. Many people are asking themselves if the possibility has now arisen where unconstitutional Bills can actually become law without any check or effective scrutiny.

I do not think the Taoiseach has a controlling voice in that matter. It is not a matter for him.

If the Taoiseach has not a controlling voice, I would be very glad to know what particular Minister of the Government can deal with it.

Surely it is a matter for the Taoiseach? I am not raising this in any contentious spirit. I am merely drawing the attention of the Taoiseach to a very obvious flaw in the machinery of legislation in this country. If I cannot raise it on the Taoiseach's Vote under what Vote is it possible to examine the matter? I am sure it does not come within the province of the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Justice, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, the Minister for Lands, the Minister for Agriculture or the Minister for Defence. I think the Taoiseach, as head of the Government, should be the particular channel through which complaints raised in this House would be conveyed to the President. I am sure it would not be in order for any Deputy to pen his views on a sheet of paper and send it to him.

That is not a matter with which we can deal now.

I am drawing that particular aspect of it properly and rightly to the Taoiseach's notice and I will leave it to his judgment to take it up with the proper authority because it is a pretty serious matter in my opinion.

You had better leave it at that then.

As one of the Dáil Deputies from the West, I would like to draw attention to the seriousness of emigration which concerns us so much in the west of Ireland. It is hardly necessary for me to point out to the Taoiseach that emigration is causing a very serious loss of man-power and a terrible drain on the country. I think that it was due, during the war years, to the high percentage of emigration that the food situation was so acute. I think that in many cases emigration was responsible for the shortage of foodstuffs. In the coming winter we are faced with a fuel famine. That, too, I think, is due to emigration. It is no use the Taoiseach or his Government saying that these people have gone for adventure or anything else. They went solely because they could not get a living in their own country. That and that alone is the reason why they left. They went because the wages which they might have got in this country would not have enabled them to live on a reasonable standard. They went in many cases in order to be in a position to help their younger brothers and sisters or their parents.

What is the cure for this emigration and what hope have we in the future of keeping these people at home? In the west of Ireland the problem is a very serious one. In the west of Ireland we believe that one of the few ways in which we may keep our young people at home is by dividing up those lands now in the hands of the Land Commission so that the parents will be in a position to maintain their children on a fair holding of land at home, producing essential foodstuffs for the upkeep of their own families and for the nation. The first thing that should be done is to see that all lands in the hands of the Land Commission are divided up and all untenanted lands are taken over and that all uneconomic holders are given additional land or new holdings. I believe in that way we would solve the food shortage and the problem of emigration as it exists at the moment.

There is hardly a week when I do not have to go to the Department of External Affairs and the United Kingdom Permit Office to get visas for young boys and girls trying to get away to England. I often wonder if what I am doing is right. I honestly believe it is not but the necessity is there and, when you represent people, you must do these things for them because it is necessary for them that they should be done. All untenanted land should be taken over immediately. The owners should be compensated and the land should be divided amongst uneconomic holders.

There is another burning question at the moment which appears to cause Deputy Dillon considerable anxiety. I refer to the danger of Communism. I believe that Communism will never take root in this country. Certain of our people who emigrated in the past are now in certain movements abroad for the purpose of putting an end to the terrible scourge of Partition in our country. Those people have been dubbed Communists. They have no interest in anything except the abolition of Partition. The greatest movements of our own people in times gone by were written down as dangerous. I would appeal to the Taoiseach not to be led astray in this matter. I believe there is no danger of Communism. Those of our kith and kin abroad behind certain movements for the breaking down of the barrier that separates the north-east corner from the rest of Ireland have no interest in Communism and their only ambition is to see the evil of Partition remedied.

I believe there is a danger in that, to a certain extent, we are not doing our part in the Twenty-Six Counties, where we have our full freedom, to undo that evil. We should unite more solidly with those of our people in that portion of our country who wish to have that barrier removed. The Taoiseach and every Deputy must well remember that, when the fight for freedom was on, some of our people who are at the moment on the far side of that barrier, made as great a sacrifice as any people in this portion of our country. There is one piece of advice which I would give, but I do not believe it is necessary. Whatever happens, we here can make it plain that we will never barter any of the freedom that we have got, though advice may be given that by going into this or that or the other Commonwealth we would be advancing our case to have Partition removed. You will hear these promises. Generations before us heard these promises. Eventually we will be told we cannot coerce Ulster. There is no such thing as Ulster. There are just a few counties in the North, but they are not Ulster. It is only a small corner where there are some people who have their grievances against national Ireland and against 90 per cent. of the Irish people. They are only a small minority.

There should be greater unity between the people in this portion of our country, those who have been gerrymandered in the north east corner, and those of our kith and kin in foreign lands. I believe a unity move of all those people will eventually compel the British Government, who are responsible for the Border being there, to do away with it.

I think I have said on a couple of occasions on this Vote that it could be made an occasion of real value to the country if there was agreement to discuss some particular aspect, either of Government policy or of national affairs. Instead of that, Deputies frequently use the Vote— and, indeed, it has been used to some extent on this occasion—to go again over the whole field of the Estimates, speaking about every single Department just as they spoke when that Department's particular Estimate was being discussed. I think it must be clear to everybody that that is of very little value. If, for instance, we had decided on this occasion to deal, let us say, with the question of emigration alone, or any question immediately related to it, it would be possible for me to come here with the facts, and it would be possible for all those who are interested in it to get the facts, as far as they can be got. I could come here armed with the facts dealing with that particular matter and we could have an intelligent discussion based on those facts, and the practicability of any suggestions that might be made could be examined in the light of those facts. But, unfortunately, instead of that we have had put up here, for me to reply to, questions from a needle to an anchor, so to speak, on which I would require the presence of the whole statistical Department before I could indicate to the House what the facts are, why certain things that have been suggested are impracticable, and why certain statements that have been made are completely wide of the mark.

Now let us take what is, I think most people will agree, the most important question to which we could devote our attention—that is, the question of emigration. In the period covering my connection with politics it has always been an important question for us. We know that our nation at one time had a very much bigger population than in recent times, a population almost double the population which it has held in the last 30 or 40 years. Many of us, I am sure, have asked ourselves is that something which must continue; must our nation face the possibility of its numbers being reduced until it again is cut into a further one-half? It was the conviction that that need not be so that impelled us to engage in industrial development. We believed that it would inevitably be so if we were to continue the policy which has been suggested in some of the speeches to which I listened here, a policy by which we would merely supply food again for the British market and get in return from Britain the manufactured goods which we needed.

I think that was the policy which, in the past, was tried over a long period of years and it was definitely proved that it could not maintain our population. In fact, the whole trend, obviously, if you are to compete in a foreign market—and if that is your prime purpose—must be to try to produce as economically as you possibly can, to have farms so large that they could be conveniently worked by machinery; that the normal-size farm should be the 200-acre farm, as, I remember, was suggested at one particular time as a sort of ideal farm for modern conditions. This would mean that if a farm of that size became the regular farm, so far as this part of Ireland is concerned, we would have about 50,000 holdings.

Deputy Norton told us that we have 12,500,000 acres of arable land here. I think that was a guess.

What is your guess?

I have tried to get the most accurate figure I could. Eleven million acres has been mentioned, but it has been regarded by the Department of Agriculture as a complete over-estimate, and the figure given to me as the figure on which we could rely best in making calculations was 10,000,000 acres. Deputy Norton's figure is a very substantial increase— an increase of 25 per cent.

Mr. Morrissey

By whom was the Taoiseach given that figure?

By the Department of Agriculture—10,000,000 acres. I have asked and have been told that there has been no survey of the kind that would give us the exact figure.

So that the 10,000,000 is a guess as well?

No, they have examined it and considered the proportion of crops and pasture. That is not really a proper basis because you might have a great deal of land classed as pasture which might be only mountainside, but the best and most reliable figure I could get—the best estimate given to me—is that our arable land is about 10,000,000 acres. Now, 10,000,000 acres is all the land we have available in this country and the first question of vital importance is——

Would the Taoiseach say that is a guess too? What is the total acreage?

About 17,000,000 acres.

Is all the 10,000,000 acres of arable standard, or would the whole figure not be brought in?

One of the troubles in comparing statistics with other countries is that they have different standards and that what would be regarded by our Department of Agriculture as arable land—cultivable land——

That is the difference.

Let us say that there are 10,000,000 acres of arable land. If anybody wants to add a few per cent. to it, they can. The most important thing in national policy from my point of view is—what is the use to be made of that land? The first thing, I would say, is: the preservation of this nation and the people upon that land—as many families as can economically exist upon it.

In other words, cut it up into farms of an economic size in the sense that the people who live upon them will be farmers—that they will produce the things they want for themselves, and will have a surplus either to sell to other sections of the community or export outside the country in order to buy the things we have to get.

What size is that?

That is one of the questions, of course. That is a question I have put many a time, and the answers have varied according to the circumstances of the district and the neighbourhood surrounding the farm. It is not the same figure in the neighbourhood of Dublin, or Cork, or a large country town, as it is in a place miles away from any big centre. But, from the point of view of land division, we have taken it on the basis of the £25 to £30 valuation for 25 acres of reasonably good land. The method of working would be different in different places. If you were near a city, you could work it intensively, but if you were far away from it the size of the farm might be too small. Suppose 50 acres was the average, you would have only 200,000 holdings, considerably less than you have at the present time. When you take the average, and nobody is to take it that I think that all farms should be the same size, because big farms and small farms all play their part, it is only possible on the land of this country— taking the average as 25 acres—to provide for 400,000 families. We have to make up our minds that so far as the people who can be established on the land are concerned, it will amount to something between 200,000 and 400,000 families in conditions anything like the present. If we became more industrialised, as they are in Belgium, where the size of the farms is much smaller than here——

Mr. Morrissey

And they have many resources we have not got.

Some, and we have some they have not got. If I attempt to answer every question like that we will get nowhere.

If I talk in general terms, I hope it will stimulate thought and encourage Deputies to examine the question for themselves, but approaching it from a fundamental point of view, we may expect to see during the next 25 years on the land only between 200,000 and 400,000 families—that is on the land. What population does that correspond to? The average family might be taken as five. Let us take it that it is six—I would say it would probably be higher in some parts of the country—but let us put it up to six. Therefore, we have to think of the rural population, leaving out the towns, as between 1,200,000 and double that figure. There is a definite limit, unless you increase industrialisation, and that seems to me to be the best way of doing it. The best way of doing it is to increase industrialisation.

Definitely.

Therefore, the idea of talking about a flight from the land as if it were something extraordinary is wrong. It is happening in every country. Our people are gradually being attracted, for one reason or another, to living in large towns and cities. Let us suppose that you had all economic holdings saturated with families. Take a family as six as the average. We know that only two of the children can remain on the land and, therefore, two more must be provided for in the towns and cities, or else they will have to emigrate. First of all, this fact is self evident: that we cannot increase our population settled upon the land beyond a certain level. When we have done that, we have done the very best we can and there will continue to be a drift from the land to the cities and towns or to emigration. There is no other way for it.

We set out, as part of our policy, to put upon the land as many families as the land could economically maintain and we have proceeded as rapidly as it could be done with anything like efficiency. It has been suggested that in many cases we have gone too rapidly and that people have got land who did not make proper use of it. Now we have reached a period—I am talking all the time of the steps taken with the ultimate view of checking emigration —at which I am told there is only between 500,000 and 1,000,000 acres more available for distribution. That is all the land that is reasonably available for distribution and I am told that that land is practically required for two purposes. It will not be sufficient for even one of them. First of all, there is the purpose—and I think everybody will agree that it is the best use to which it could be put—of bringing the holdings in the vicinity of the lands which are to be distributed up to an economic level. I think that everybody will admit that that is the best use that can be made of it. If there are holdings which are so uneconomic that the occupants of them are compelled to work on the roads and compete with rural labourers for work on the roads, it is much better that these holdings should be brought up to a size which will enable the occupants to produce sufficient for themselves and their families and to provide the means of purchasing things that are produced by other sections of the community which they may need. Such lands as are available for distribution are therefore required first of all to bring the farms in the neighbourhood which are not up to an economic level up to that level.

The second thing for which land is required is to deal with the problem of congestion in certain parts of the country, particularly in the West. The work of dealing with congestion in the West is a very slow process. I am told —I am not myself directly in charge of this work and I have no information except what I get from the responsible Department—that in the West there are problems over and above those to be found elsewhere. I am told that the cream of the land that was available for distribution, the part that could be distributed rapidly with big results, has been already divided and that henceforward it will be a slower process because of the fact that it is necessary, first of all, to get agreement amongst people themselves in regard to migration so as to leave behind sufficient land to create economic holdings. I think that process is going to be a very much slower process, if we count the number of acres to be distributed, than the operations of which we had experience previously. So far as it is possible to get it done we are, however, pushing ahead.

There have been difficulties during the war period. During the war period it was necessary to have inspection of land to ensure that the necessary tillage would be carried out. All sorts of difficulties would arise if we were to recruit a large number of temporary officials for that purpose and the existing staff in the Civil Service, the people best fitted for that purpose, who had been in the Land Commission, were taken over to do the work. For that reason, we took away from the Land Commission a considerable portion of its staff and, therefore, weakened its power to go ahead with the distribution of land. Land distribution, therefore, has been on a smaller scale during the war period than it was in the earlier period. We brought in, in order to expedite distribution, a very large number of extra inspectors, but this is a thing which cannot be done quickly. It takes a certain amount of time to train these men but there has been a great increase in the number of inspectors in order to expedite this work.

The fundamental purpose is to put as quickly as possible on the land as many people as the land can carry economically. I should point out that, even if we succeeded to the full, we would have only a relatively small number on the land. It might be possible to double the figure of 1,200,000. That was one part of our programme, and we proceeded as rapidly as we could with it.

The next part is to try to give those who live on the land as much security as we possibly can—to see that they have here a home market to the biggest extent that we can make available. We set about that by giving them the home market almost entirely for agricultural produce. We saw a great deal of wheat coming in, and not merely wheat but flour, and we said our farmers ought to get an opportunity of growing that wheat and that our millers and their workers ought to get an opportunity of grinding the wheat into flour.

Did you say "our millers"?

Since when did Mr. Rank become a citizen of this country?

If the Deputy wants to make any point in respect of these things, he can do so. I am saying that the policy was that our millers should get this work and, mind you, if it were not our millers who were going to do it, there would be a different position. There is no doubt that we are keeping in production a large number of mills throughout the country. The result of keeping them in production has been to cause a good deal of difficulty in other quarters. The policy was to give the farmers an opportunity of growing wheat and to give our millers an opportunity of grinding it, instead of bringing it in as it was being brought in formerly, as flour, to give our people an opportunity of providing butter, milk and eggs to the extent that they could be consumed here at home. Any surplus over and above that would have to be sent on the foreign competitive market. That foreign competitive market was a very poor market in many respects when we came into office. I remember one of our first acts was to pass the Dairy Produce (Price Stabilisation) Act to try to bring up, by way of subsidy, the price of butter to something like an economic level. At one period the farmer was getting for his butter twice as much, on account of the system of giving him protection here, as he would have been able to secure for that butter in the foreign market. Our aim was to give the farmer a home market, which was a market which could be controlled, as a matter of national policy. The external market to the extent to which we would have to avail ourselves of it was a market we could not control. Our people had to go out into that market and face competition from every country in the world, practically.

We were well able to.

The fact that we had to double the price of our butter, by subsidy, would not seem to indicate so.

The result——

The result was that the dairying industry at the time was on the point of destruction. It had to be subsidised or it would have gone. Coming as I do from a dairying locality, I have some idea of the conditions in that area. I was satisfied that if the dairying industry went, then the whole agricultural industry would be attacked at its foundation. That was our policy then, and still is. If there is anything wrong in the policy, let it be attacked as such. If there is anything wrong with the implementation of the policy, let it be attacked, but let it not be said that that is not the policy because it is and it can be proved to have been the consistent policy of the Government from the beginning.

Mr. Morrissey

The results do not say much for it.

That was our policy and we strove to give to those who were working on the land as assured a market as we could. We have tried to give them an opportunity of growing wheat. We have tried to give them an opportunity of growing beet. Later, we have tried to give people on the land or associated with the land the opportunity of providing fuel.

What effect has it had on production?

If the Deputy will let me proceed, we shall see. I have suggested on many an occasion that if some particular aspect of Government policy were put up here for debate, we would have an opportunity of examining all these points.

I would be delighted.

We would be able to examine how far our policy was successful, and we would be doing very much better work than we were doing here last night when we listened to a lot of rant for an hour or so without any constructive idea being put forward, but a whole lot of repetition. It was, as the Ceann Comhairle said, "an endless belt" practically of abuse and nothing else. I want to make clear what the policy was and what the policy remains. I am just as convinced now as I was before that if this nation is to be rebuilt economically, then, that is the way we will have to go about it. We have recently passed through a war, and I will deal later with certain aspects of it so far as it affected our plans. Nevertheless, no Party in this country, I believe, will try to put our economy on any other foundation than that which I have indicated. I do not believe the people would agree that an attempt should be made to put it on a foundation other than the foundation I have indicated.

Go bhfoiridh Dia orainn.

We have tried it at six different elections, and I believe that whoever will carry on our policy will, if there were six more general elections, be supported.

You have heard, no doubt, the saying that you can bring the jug to the well once too often.

The question then arises—what are we to do with those for whom there is no room on the land and who have to leave the farms. What is to be done in their case? If there is the ordinary fertility in the population one half of it will have to go off the land and find work in industry. We had, therefore, to decide either that our people should emigrate once the land was properly filled, so to speak, with economic farms or to provide industrial employment for them. Once the farms were filled, then one half of the children raised on these farms would either have to emigrate or to find work in industry. It was essential from the farmer's point of view. It is ridiculous for farmers to come and pretend that there was any conflict between their interests and the interests of manufacturing industry in that regard. The building up of manufacturing industry meant that employment was going to be provided for those who were going off the land. We set out to build our industries. Until the war, these industries were being built up apace. We started with the industries, naturally, that served the farmer by the processing of his agricultural produce. We tried, first of all, to get beet factories. We could have got a single beet factory in a single area to supply all the sugar that was required. By putting it in one single area in the country, it would have supplied all the sugar and probably at a much cheaper price.

Mr. Morrissey

That is very doubtful.

That is very doubtful.

Well, it was the expert opinion that was given to us when we came into office.

That was not the first report.

The report we got was a report indicating that the most economical way of producing sugar for this community was to take a certain area — round about New Ross I think——

What about transport?

From the point of view of economics and from the point of view of producing sugar at the cheapest price, it was indicated that a single factory would be best. If we were going to be affected solely by narrow economic considerations, we would have chosen that course. We did not, because we believed that behind all economics is the social objective. To us, it seemed that the social objective would be better secured by providing more factories—one in Thurles, one in Mallow, one in Tuam.

Why was it put there?

It was put there as being the best centre in Connaught and because we believed that the farmers in Connaught should get an opportunity of growing beet.

They have not done so.

They have, indeed.

It is not the fault of the Government. They were given the opportunity, anyhow, and, if they want to have the advantages that accrue from it, then they will have to grow the beet. In doing that we gave to the farmers the opportunity of producing a crop for the home market with fairly fixed prices and fairly definite conditions, and we provided for the agricultural community near these towns substantial employment, during the whole year round and particularly during the season. As I have said, we set out, first of all, to try to put as many families as possible on the land, then to try to get an opportunity of livelihood for those who were on the land and an opportunity for those who, in the natural way, have to go from it to try to get employment in industry in the towns. Again, in the case of our industries, we started with the industries that best served the agricultural community. For that reason, let nobody suggest that the foundation of our policy had not regard for the rural community, because it was the foundation of all our thought on the whole matter. The building up of industry in the towns was, as far as we were concerned, regarded as the necessary means in order to stabilise the position of the farms in the country.

Besides the beet factories and the employment that they gave, the value that they were in providing a necessary food, and the safeguard they afforded in times of emergency, we went on to consider other industries. It was not easy to deal with the bacon industry; in fact, a real solution for it has not yet been found. I do not know that anybody will give us a really satisfactory solution for it. The bacon industry should give to the farmer an opportunity of providing for the rest of the community a food which they will buy and give him a reasonable return for his exertions and his labour. Surely it ought to be the aim of the farmers to try to do that if they get a fair return for it. During the war, of course, they could not get sufficient cereals from outside. Even in the case of the production of commodities like bacon and the feeding of animals, we have always urged as a good national policy, and we try to support it to the fullest extent possible, the feeding of animals by producing the food for them on the farms to the extent that that is possible.

Mr. Morrissey

It is a long time since the late Mr. Hogan said that in this House.

He was right. We never said it was wrong.

Mr. Morrissey

Indeed you did.

You have to think of a number of things in connection with the economy of a farm. You have to think of rotation and the various ways in which a farm has to be used in order that it may be used to the best advantage. But, if a farmer can produce food on his own farm for his animals, that is generally the most profitable way for him. Of course, there is a limit. If you cannot supply the community with all the bacon they require because you have not food enough for the pigs, then the obvious thing is to see whether it would pay to import. If it pays to import, and you have done your best in the way of producing at home, naturally you will import.

Mr. Morrissey

Is that why you prohibited the importation of food?

We did not prohibit the importation of food in that sense.

What about maize meal?

As the Deputy knows well, the point about that is that we wanted to make sure, to the extent to which the farmers would produce at home, that the home production would get preference.

Are we to have the maize meal mixture?

The Taoiseach must be heard.

With regard to maize meal, as was suggested from the benches opposite yesterday, there will be, naturally, the problem of seeing how you can import the maize—if it is economic to do it—without injuring or interfering with the other objective, namely, to get the farmers to produce off their own farms as much of the feeding as possible. But, if the production is not enough to give the community the bacon, then we will have to import feeding stuffs from outside. The moment the Minister for Agriculture is satisfied that the necessary food cannot be produced at home and that it is available from outside, naturally everything will be done to try to get in the necessary feeding stuffs, so that our people will have bacon to the extent to which they require it, and to the extent to which they are prepared to pay a reasonable price to the farmers who produce it.

Mr. Morrissey

Fifteen years too late! It is a pity you were not as wise as that two years ago.

The speech I am making now is similar to the speeches I made at practically every cross-roads in the country for years.

And the people said you were right.

The people believe it still.

Does the Taoiseach believe in the maize meal mixture?

What I have said is that, to the extent to which we can grow on our own farms food for man and beast, we should do it. There is a limit, I admit. If our population went up beyond a certain limit, it would not be possible to do it. I do not think we have reached that limit yet.

We had a falling output before the war.

The Taoiseach must be heard. The Deputy must not interrupt.

I am trying to explain to those who want to criticise it reasonably what are the foundations of Government policy for the future, as they have been in the past.

Unchanged.

Unchanged, yes. The policy is a good policy. I am certain it is the only policy which will do the things some people on the Opposition Benches say they would like to see done in this country. We started, then, to build up industries other than those that immediately subserved the farming industry. We want boots, clothes, and shelter, as well as food. When we were on the benches opposite, I remember a Minister for Industry and Commerce on these benches telling us that we could not produce our boots and shoes; that we had not the operatives, and that we had not the managers. I do not know what other things we had not. I remember that my answer was that I had been to the United States and I had seen our people who had gone there make excellent operatives and excellent managers and I did not think the brains had come to them in crossing the Atlantic. I felt certain that it could be done. We set about doing it, and the result is that we built up a boot and shoe industry here which produces our own requirements.

In the same way, we went in other directions. We set out to produce here with Irish labour commodities which formerly we paid strangers, so to speak, to produce for us. If anybody wants to provide employment in this country there is no other way of doing it. We set out consistently to do that. We built up our industries. When the war came, of course, through lack of raw materials and other things, there was a stop to the development over a period. But, even so, when people talk of unemployment, if they look at the numbers in insurable occupations, they will find that there are some 25,000 more people employed at present than there were employed a year ago.

What could we have done with the 190,000 who went away?

I will come to talk about that in a moment. I shall be telling the Deputy all about it very shortly if he will just wait. We have had now practically two days of criticism. Surely it will be permitted to me now to deal with the debate as a whole rather than with odds and ends of it.

I have here figures showing the volume of employment based on the net contribution income of the National Health Insurance Fund. I have only taken out a few figures to show the general trend. In 1931 there were 342,000 people employed on that basis. In 1938 it had reached 416,000. In 1939 it was 417,000. Then came the war, and it dropped to 406,000, 402,000, 399,000 and 397,000. From the beginning of the war up to 1943 you had a drop to 397,000. Surely, Deputy Norton knows why it was that we had that drop in employment. He knows perfectly well that the raw materials necessary were no longer available, and that the people who were employed in industry could no longer be kept in employment; and that these people, when they saw an opportunity of employment open to them near at hand, went to that employment. That is how that drop is explained. The figure was constantly increasing up to 1939. The moment war broke out there was a drop in the first year from 417,000 to 406,000—that is, a drop of 11,000 straight off. Then, in the next year, there was a drop of 4,000, in the following year a drop of a further 3,000, and then a further 2,000, until in 1943 it had dropped to 397,000. The tendency then began to change again. In 1944 there was a change in the trend. In 1944 the figure increased back to what it was in 1940—that is, back to 406,000. In the next year it went up to 417,000. There you find the 11,000 who went away in the first year of the war; I do not say those were the same people who came back again into industry, but they were other people coming along in the meantime to replace those who had gone away. In 1945 there were 417,000 in industry. In 1946 the figure was 443,000. That is 26,000 over and above those employed in industry in 1945. I have not, of course, got the figure for 1947. Surely, from those figures it is obvious that there is a rapid trend towards increasing employment in industry and surely that is a definite proof that the position of unemployment and the diminution of the number employed in industry was purely a war phenomenon. You have now a definite upward trend. The moment that raw materials become available, there will be a rapid increase, because we are still very far from saturation point so far as the development of industry is concerned in this country.

Give us the figures for agriculture.

I am talking about the volume of employment generally as shown by the net contribution income of the National Health Insurance Fund.

I come now to industrial employment. What I have represented to you in those figures is, so to speak, the volume of employment as a whole. I have now the figures for industrial employment as shown by the censuses of industrial production. We have not the figures for the war years for industrial employment. The reason for that is that, for the years 1939 to 1942 inclusive, the censuses covered transportable goods only, and, for that reason there is a gap in the figures for total industrial employment. In 1931 there were 110,000 in industrial employment. In 1936 it had increased to 153,000. In 1937 it had increased to 161,000. In 1938 it had increased to 166,000. Then came the war. I am sorry that we have not got comparable figures for the years 1939 to 1942, because I am certain that they would show once more that the diminution during the war period was purely a phenomenon of war and the result of war. Between 1931 and 1938 you had an increase in industrial employment from 110,000 to 166,000, showing that the policy was bearing fruit as far as employment in industry was concerned.

Let me look now at employment in protected industries. In 1931 the employment in protected industries was 21,000. In 1938 it had increased to 79,000. In 1939 it went up to 80,000 and it went up even further in 1940, when it reached 82,528. You had then the war, and you have a drop. It dropped from 82,000 to 78,000, then to 73,000 and finally in 1943, which was the last year of the decline, it went down to 70,000. In 1944 it began to recover and the figure went up to 71,000, then to 72,000 in 1945 and in 1946 it had reached 80,000. There, again, as a result of our policy, there is a constant increase in employment in industry. There again you have a drop due to the war years, the reason for which is obvious to everybody. In 1944 that downward trend is stopped and there is a rapid upward trend to 1946. It was anticipated that that rapid trend would continue. That was the Minister's hope, but the raw materials unfortunately are not coming in as rapidly as one would wish and, therefore, the upward slope of the graph from 1946 to 1947 may not prove to be as rapid as we would wish it to be. However, even that may be a somewhat pessimistic prophecy because we have not yet reached the end of 1947.

Very properly, I was asked about agricultural employment. Agricultural employment is an important part of the picture. Undoubtedly there has been a constant downward trend in the number employed in agriculture and that downward trend has gone on steadily. Starting in 1931 it was 562,000 odd. In 1936 it had gone down to 560,000. In 1937 it was 555,000. It continued to decline during the next two years but in 1940 and 1941 there was an upward trend and then it went down once more to 541,000 in 1942, 536,000 in 1943 and 526,000 in 1944. There has, then, been a steady decline in agricultural employment over that particular period.

By how much?

From 1931 to 1946 the decline was approximately 43,000.

Would the reduction in the number employed in agriculture balance the other?

A few thousand in the difference?

There would be a substantial difference; I will go into it later. The question we must all ask ourselves is, if we want to do the thing we all hope to do and we all want to do, is there anyway in which we can stop that reduction in employment on the land? If anybody can give us the solution, we will be very happy to consider it. My own belief was that, inevitably almost, you would have that reduction. In my opinion, it would have come probably very much more rapidly during that period if you did not have the employment which was given by the policy of feeding our own people instead of competing in the foreign market. I believe the other policy of having this country turned into a ranch—which seems to be the other policy—to supply food on a competitive foreign market, would give less employment.

You would get a higher volume of production.

Will the Deputy tell us how we are to go into every farm and get every farmer to assist? All of those who are farmers, by their organisations, one with the other, ought to try to induce the people to produce the greatest possible amount off the land.

Tell us why the volume of production fell before the war?

I will deal with volumes later. I cannot do everything at once. I am dealing with employment at the moment, and the Deputy wants to jump all over the place. If he lets me develop the argument I am developing, it would be better. I am developing it simply from the point of asking every Deputy seriously to get down to this question and see if there is a solution, and if the position can be improved. There is diminution of employment on the land.

I believe there is a solution for it.

What is it?

With increased tillage there is a reduction.

If there ever was a Government that tried to get increased tillage it is this Government.

With the increased tillage there is a reduction in employment.

It is a long time since I went into that matter, but my recollection is—and it amazed me— that in Limerick, which is a dairying county, there were more people employed per acre than in Wexford.

Get bell, book and candle.

To excommunicate yourself for your departure from the orthodox.

For the observation you made, that ranchers provide more employment than tillage.

Cows are not ranchers.

Do they grow on bushes?

The Deputy is talking nonsense. The bullocks are the ranchers, not the cows.

The cows drink tea, I suppose?

They require people to milk them, to feed them and to look after them.

Personal attention for the animal—that is the solution.

What is all the interruption about? I do not know what point is in it. I say that there is a diminution in agricultural employment. Let us try to find the cause of it and, if we can get it cured, well and good, but I have heard no cure from the opposite benches yet.

We have a good cure.

You have not, and you know well you have not.

I beg the Taoiseach's pardon, we have.

Tell me and I will sit down.

Raise the standard of living of the labourers, of course.

We want to raise the standard of living, but immediately you raise that standard, what about the farmer? He has to produce more. There is only one cure for it, and that is greater production.

And it can be done.

That is the only solution for the farming community—better production, harder work, more earnest work, more efficient work, more intelligent work by everybody.

And a greater output per acre.

There is the problem: it is only on the land that we have any evidence of a decrease in employment; there is an increase of employment elsewhere except for the period of the war years. There is on the land a diminution which passed through the war years and which indicates a certain trend. Is it a natural trend that we cannot stop? Is it a trend that we can stop?

I am told that one of the difficulties with the dairying industry is that workers cannot be got to milk the cows—that they will not come in, for instance, on Sunday to milk the cows. Then, when we ask why can they not be got to milk the cows, we are told they want to go off to a game; they see other people off every Sunday, and they do not see why they should not be off every Sunday. You ask, if you paid them sufficiently, will they do it —if you give reasonable remuneration, will they do it? The farmer says: "If I do that, it adds considerably to my costs, and I cannot produce the milk economically." This is a good example of the whole economic circle. The farmer says: "I cannot produce milk economically at the price I am getting." You say: "All right, suppose we increase the price of milk and butter for you, what then?" Then, of course, we have the people in the towns complaining that the cost of living has gone up. These are things that will necessarily follow in train. The worker will not milk the cow unless he gets a higher wage, and the farmer is not able to produce the milk economically and pay the worker unless he gets a greater price for his milk. If he gets a greater price, the price of butter goes up. Then the workers in the towns will have to pay a higher price for their butter. The cost of living goes up in the towns and, of course, the things that the people in the towns supply to the farmers go up in price, too. That is the circle.

Somebody suggested that you can break that circle by subsidising. Where is the subsidisation to come from? It comes from taxation. Therefore, if you subsidise you will have increased taxation. There is only one other way in which you can break the circle— apart from putting up with a lower standard of life—and that is by increased production.

It was suggested in a lot of the talk here on this Estimate that we have an unduly low standard of life in this country. I deny that. It is said our people are leaving the country because they cannot get a living here. Many of them could, but they imagine they will get a higher standard of living elsewhere, and, because of that, they will not milk cows for the farmer who wants to produce the milk. They are attracted by what they think is a higher standard of living, and off they go. Is there anybody here so foolish as not to know that there are tens of thousands of people who would come into this country to take up occupations at the standard of living which some of our people apparently do not regard as satisfactory?

Surely that is not a fair test?

It is only a proof of what I say, that our standard of living is not the abnormally low standard that some people pretend it is. I have seen hundreds of visitors to this country who had no reason to tell me anything but the truth, and the universal comment from all those people was that our standard of living, as compared with other countries in the world, is a high one.

That came from the people with plenty of money.

I have lived with the people; I know all sections of the people fairly well, and I know their difficulties. I am talking only about things in general. I know there are in this country a number of people who are very badly off; I know there are a number of people who are engaged in occupations in which they do not get enough to give them a proper livelihood. I am not such a fool as not to know that it is a false general statement to make that the standard of living in this country is low. It is nothing of the kind. The whole question is, whether in the country we will work hard enough and produce enough to maintain the existing standard? That is the thing we have to see to.

There is, then, a steady diminution in the numbers of those employed in the country on the land. I ask how it can be changed. I know of no way further than trying to give to the farmer, who is the employer of the rural labourer, an assured market and to give him a fair price for what he produces. I see no other way. Our whole policy is based upon that, and if anybody wants to say to us that, in this or that respect, it is not being implemented, well and good. I am quite prepared to listen to that, but I am not prepared to listen to statements pretending that our policy is based on something other than the good of the community.

Will you take the taxes off the raw materials of the agricultural industry?

Again, that is a question of the nice balance. If we are going to provide industries necessary as supplementary to agriculture, so that farmer's sons and daughters who, anyway, must go off the land, may obtain employment, there must be proper planning, so to speak. If they are going to get employment in this country when they go off the land, they must get it in industry, and these industries must sometimes be a burden on the State until they establish themselves. If the Deputy means that we ought to have efficiency in these industries, I am all with him, and let us see that they get no protection over and above that which will enable them to compete, so to speak, fairly and give an output comparable to that which is obtained in other countries.

Does that apply to Pye Radio?

It is a nice balance, and the question must be examined carefully to see to what extent you can apply it. But you must see what industries can be associated with agriculture. Take the case of Wexford. We have there in Wexford the manufacture of agricultural implements. Surely we ought to aim at getting from the Wexford factories products as cheap as from anywhere else——

And of modern design.

And of modern design, the best in every way. The way to get that is not to say "let them be destroyed".

But, suppose we do not get that, what are we to do?

Suppose that we do not; we must then look into the whole matter and see if there is anything we can do to remedy the position.

Tá an cheart agat.

I have never said anything to industrialists whenever I was speaking to them that I have not said to farmers when I was speaking to them. I have said that if industrialists hope to get protective laws which may be necessary for them in their early stages, they will only get them if they show in every respect that they are doing their duty, which is to produce for the community at the most economic price possible. We are protecting the farmers and we are protecting the industries. The industries needed special protection for the period in which they were being built up, but some people may think that that period ought to have already elapsed so far as particular industries are concerned.

I was going to ask the Taoiseach how long does he think a new industry should be protected?

I can only give an outline of the general policy of the Government in that respect, and if the Deputy says at a particular time that we should do so-and-so, then he can come forward here and say it. I have been asked what is our policy. I have been asked to deal with general Government policy, and I am trying to do it as completely as I can in the time I have available. In the case of industries, we have tried to build up those most essential to our community—first of all articles of apparel which are obviously the most necessary things after food. The next thing we set out to provide was houses for people. Somebody was talking about timber as if they were trying to tell us something new. We could go back and they could go back and see what we said many years ago about these things.

Hear, hear!

But you did not put it into effect.

We are willing to have a debate on afforestation any time the Deputy wants it, and the Deputy knows full well that we could have plenty more afforestation if we could get the land.

If you pay enough for it —£6 an acre.

It is like the people who say that the Land Commission should go out in competition with those who are buying property in the open market when the prices are rocketing, and these are the people who will be the very first to protest afterwards that there was an unfair rent put upon the occupier. You will not get all these things done in a day. You have to start——

And start as soon as you can.

The Deputy in his speech looked merely at one side of the picture. We hear a lot of this advocacy from Deputies who seem to speak without any idea of the consequences. We are the only people— we here on the Government Benches— who are compelled to think consecutively, completely and wholly. Any Deputy can come along and make any proposal he likes when some bright idea strikes him, but he is never asked to follow it home and examine the consequences of his proposal. We have to do that on this side of the House.

All the brains are on that side.

One man has a brain-wave and off he goes and tries to impress everyone. But thanks be to God, our people are fairly intelligent——

Does that apply to the 190,000 who left the country?

The Government did not cause the war.

Were you not thinking of the war?

The Taoiseach must be heard. Deputies are not obliged to sit here and listen. If they do, they must give the Taoiseach a hearing without interruptions.

These are the sort of remarks we have heard so much of during the debate.

If Deputies do not wish to hear the Taoiseach they can retire. He did not interrupt Deputies.

Coming back to the question of rural depopulation, it is unfortunate that there has been a steady downward trend since the Famine. That has been going on, and the best thing we can do for the nation is to stop it. As I have said, I have indicated that we have tried to the fullest extent we can, but perhaps it is a tendency that we cannot stop. In other countries, according as the standard of living has increased, people are generally inclined to get away from the country. There is some attraction in the towns. Let us see how we can help it. The first way, the fundamental way, is to see that the rural worker gets fair play from the town worker and from the town community, and that he gets for his labour a sum which will be roughly commensurate with the services he renders.

You have, of course, social developments and general economic developments. You have different standards of costs as well as different standards of wages in the country and in the town. What you have got to do finally is to ascertain what is the net result so far as the standard of living which is given to both is concerned. In so far as it is economic, I see no other way of helping except by providing that workers in the country who earn their livelihood from the land should have a fair return for their labour— and by "fair" I mean in comparison with the wages given in town. I, for one, am glad of what has happened during the war from the point of view of levelling things up a bit. The farmers, the producers, have been the one section that seem to have got full compensation for the rise in prices.

What about meat?

Am I not to be allowed to do some consecutive thinking and to complete my train of thought? I am glad that the result of the war so far—of course there is a dangerous period ahead; there was a slump after the Great War, but it did not begin for some years—has been to compensate the farmers for the rise in prices. For other sections of the community, notably those on fixed incomes and fixed salaries, the result of the war has been that the real value of their incomes fell. The producer on the land is, I think, the one individual in the community who has got compensation for the increase in the cost of living. Others have not, and because he has and others have not, that has raised the relative level of the farmer's income. I for one am glad that that readjustment has taken place, because I believe it was in the interest of the country as a whole that it should take place.

Naturally those in other sections of the community are trying to restore the former level. Nobody can tell exactly at what particular point above the pre-war figure prices will remain. At any rate, no section of any community whose standard of living has fallen is going to be satisfied unless they can some time, by hook or by crook, get back to the standard to which they have been accustomed. I say that whether they are going to do that depends on whether they produce enough or not. If there is not sufficient production, they cannot do it. If they are to achieve a higher standard of living, it is necessary that they should produce to the fullest extent of their capacity. There is no other way in which they can do it. We can raise wages, but if you do that without increasing production, then ultimately you are going to raise prices all round. It is a case of the dog chasing his tail.

Industrial prices have gone far higher than agricultural prices.

Does the Deputy not know quite well that our price structure is based on certain fundamental things—on the cost of imported materials, which has gone far and away above the pre-war figure——

That affects the farmer's relative position.

I am talking of the internal position, and here is an illustration of the effects of the war. For goodness' sake, do not talk about the war position as if it were the normal situation. Deputies talk about unemployment, about restrictions, about not having enough of this or enough of that, in such a way that one would imagine that they were living after a quarter of a century of peace instead of after one of the most disastrous wars the world has ever known—when there is a whole Continent with at least 100,000,000 people who, instead of producing not alone sufficient for themselves, but a large surplus for export, have to be fed from outside, and when all the raw materials, that in normal times they produced for themselves, have to be given to them. That is not a normal situation.

The increase in prices is due to three main factors. There is, first of all, the fundamental factor of the cost of raw materials. I have not got the index figures with me, but prices have gone up in some cases to two or three times what they were. If the cost of raw materials goes up, surely the cost of the finished product will have to go up. If, for instance, the farmer gets an increased price for his butter, somebody has to pay that increased price. The increased cost of production has to be met either by subsidy, that is by way of taxation, or else by an increased price to the consumer. Because of the bad winter we have just had, and the lack of winter feeding, stock did not come on the market this year at the ordinary time, with the result that the price of beef went up by 4d. per lb. In the same way, increases in the price of mutton, potatoes, etc., added to the cost of living. The cost of living is based on the cost of raw materials, on the price we have to pay the farmer for his produce, etc. Each one of these factors, in so far as it enters into consideration, is reflected in the price of the product.

Does that apply to clothes?

It applies to everything. The price of the raw material, in so far as it goes up for the manufacturer, must be reflected in the price at which he sells to the public; so must wages. All these things add to the cost of the finished product.

Coming back again to the fundamental question, as to how you are going to increase employment in the countryside, I can only give you one way of doing it, and that is by inducing those in the country to produce as much as possible and by trying to give them as secure a market as possible and to give them a fair price on that market.

And to reduce their cost of production.

To the extent that you can do it. I am not saying that you can do any one of these things without their having reactions in other directions. You have to see the balance, to see what the result of pursuing a policy in one direction will be in another direction. It very rarely happens that you can embark on any policy that you think is right without its having reactions in some other way.

You could always substitute a subsidy for tariffs.

Subsidies and tariffs have been used in various directions. In some cases one is useful, sometimes the other. When you try them out and examine them you have to pick and choose. At any rate, I cannot see, and nobody has told me, how we can give greater economic inducements to people to settle on the land than those I have mentioned.

It will be said that there are other considerations than the merely narrow economic considerations. I agree there again. I agree that we ought to do our best to make country life as attractive as we can and to provide for the countryside as much as we possibly can of the amenities which are generally provided for people who live in large communities and towns—I realise that we cannot provide them all. It was that consideration which suggested the idea of rural electrification and the desirability of carrying it out to the greatest extent possible as soon as possible.

The sooner the better.

I wish the Deputy would give us that magic wand of his.

He has apparently only to say a thing and it is done without any question of time, supplies, engineers, or anything else that is necessary. I wish to Heaven I had his magic wand, or a four-leafed shamrock, or something of the kind.

Damn it all, if it is going to take 21 years——

The atomic bomb would settle it all.

The Taoiseach——

The Deputy must not interrupt.

I was just going to ask the Taoiseach——

The Deputy must stop interrupting.

I am very anxious that anybody in this House, whether he opposes us or not, who has a satisfactory solution to the problem of maintaining our rural community on the land should make it known. I have said all I can say in relation to the question of the economic inducements. Over and above the economic inducements there is an inducement of communal amenities in the country. The first is light. Anybody who ever had to clean a paraffin lamp or to go out to an outhouse with a paraffin lamp smoking in his hand knows perfectly well how important it is for the farmer to have electric light. Therefore, we set out to provide it. Unfortunately, like everything else, it cannot be done overnight. There has to be construction work, and only a certain number of people will be available for it unless, of course, you want to have a feast and a famine, and, even in that way, it could not be done properly. But nobody who has not got the Deputy's magic wand can produce rural electrification in a year or two.

It will take 21 years.

It may take less; I hope it will. Of course, if other people were to take the Deputy at his own measure it would be well worth our while to sit back and listen to him. One does not get things done by shouting. The only way to get them done is by planning and by work.

Hear, hear!

For this project, engineers, material and a large number of other things are required, before it can be done. It is like drainage, to which I shall, perhaps, refer later. These are matters that take time.

The Taoiseach proposes to cover a very wide field and indeed he has been challenged to do so. He has been sitting in the House since 3 o'clock. I am sure, if it will suit the Taoiseach's convenience to have an adjournment, we could have one. We could then all have our tea together.

I do not want to keep the House a minute longer than I possibly can.

I back up Deputy Dillon's suggestion.

Could we continue with other business in the meantime?

Would it not be possible to take other business?

I suggest that if the income-tax amendments are taken the Deputies will be brought back from their tea very quickly.

Then we can suspend business.

Business suspended at 7 o'clock and resumed at 7.30 p.m.

I was saying that, besides making it economically possible for people to live on the land and in the rural areas, there was another consideration, and that was to bring to the rural community, as far as possible, some of the amenities of the towns and cities. I mentioned that electric light was obviously one of them. I pointed out, of course, that any project of that kind cannot be carried out overnight; that you cannot suddenly turn on the whole population, so to speak, to doing work of that kind and that time is necessary for the carrying out of such projects.

I do not want to be taken as giving these things in the order of their importance, but just as they occur to me. The next thing obviously that one should do is to try, so far as we can, to make the telephone service available for farmers. It would save the farmer and his wife journeys to town. Again, there is a limit to which we can go. In the case of electricity, it might not be too difficult to supply some isolated farmhouses. In the same way, isolated areas will have to be considered in connection with supplying them with the telephone, if it can be done in a reasonably economic way. To the extent to which it is possible to do it without being economically foolish, we ought to endeavour to make the telephone service available to those in the country.

The next thing that occurs to one is that we ought to improve the roads, in so far as we can do it. There are about 50,000 miles of main and county roads and about 20,000 miles of private accommodation roads. That is a very large road - communication mileage. Although it is very advantageous to have roads convenient to people, their upkeep is very costly. We ought, however, to endeavour to make available for the farmer roads with decent surfaces, so that when he is taking his produce along there will not be undue wear and tear on the transport vehicles, that his horses, cattle and produce will be able to reach the market quickly and in good condition, and that there shall be a decent approach, in so far as it can be done, to within a reasonable distance of his house. If it were possible to provide pathways so that the farmer could keep his boots just as clean as the townsman, I would like it. These are things that we must approach slowly.

The most important matter is that of housing; that the rural community should have decent houses and sufficient houses. This Government, at any rate, cannot be blamed for their efforts in that direction. The moment we got into office we set out with such speed that, at times, it had certain reactions in regard to the undue cost of houses and so on. We went ahead at full speed. I think we had about 110,000 houses built or reconstructed up to the middle years of the war. We are setting out to build more houses now just as rapidly as before, but, just as we have no magic wand by which to bring electricity to the rural community, we have no magic wand to wave now and say: "Let it be done", so far as housing is concerned. So, in the same way, we cannot provide immediately as many houses as we should like to, nor can we produce some of the commodities which are required in their construction. Timber is one of the vital essentials in house-building. We have not sufficient native timber. Why? Certainly, in so far as we are concerned, we are not to blame for that position. It is not that we had not foreseen the necessity of providing native timber. If anybody wishes to go back to the speeches we made in 1932 and on many occasions since then, they will find that I pointed out, on several occasions, that the production of timber in our own country, for our own use, was one of the vital necessities to which attention would have to be given. We set out to do that. Whereas there was a maximum of plantation of 3,000 acres before we came into office, we brought that up to 8,000 acres and it is estimated that some 10,000 acres, if planted every year, would give us the amount required for our own domestic use.

2,500 acres last year.

Will the Deputy please not try to fool us or the people by endeavouring to forget the war?

It is in the list.

The Deputy wants everybody to forget that there has been a war. I am not talking of the war period. I am talking of the amount we reached in normal times. We stepped that 3,000 up to 8,000 acres, and it is estimated that 10,000 acres planted every year would give us all our requirements. Naturally, these plantations will not mature for a number of years. Until they do mature, we are dependent, to a large extent, upon imports. In the present condition of the world, we cannot get our full supplies of timber, but the position is easing. We are getting more and more as time goes on, and we are getting more and more of the other essentials necessary for the construction of houses. When the position goes back to normal, we have a full programme ready to put into operation, and that programme includes the construction of houses. As a matter of fact, we have put the building of houses foremost in importance on our programme, and housing is given the largest proportion of the allocation of available materials. As far as imported materials are available, we will see to it that there is a fair distribution between the cities and the towns. The estimate of the total number of houses required for our working people is 61,000. If you take the four county boroughs and the Borough of Dún Laoghaire, on the one hand, and the rest of the country, on the other, the figure of 61,000 is roughly divided 50-50 between the two areas. Now, I believe in houses in the rural areas. I believe in houses being made available at all times and to the greatest possible extent for the farm labourer.

That brings me to another important point which was raised by Deputy Cogan; it is an old idea of mine, and I was very glad to find there was even one Deputy who supported me. I wish I could get the same support from larger numbers in this House, because, whenever I put this particular idea forward for examination by the Departments concerned, it is flatly turned down as being neither wise nor feasible. I believe that one of the things which is helping to keep down our rural population at the moment is the lateness of our marriages in the rural areas. I think that is bad from every point of view, and I think that anything the Government could do to change that tendency would be greatly in the country's interest. There is one obvious difficulty in relation to this problem. It often happens in the country that you have an old couple reasonably vigorous with grown-up sons and daughters. There is one son who will get the farm. Very often that son is 30, 35, 40 or 45 before his father is, so to speak, out of business and before he himself falls in for the farm. He is handicapped to that extent. Rural living has the result that the people achieve a vigorous old age. That is one thing to be said in its favour, at any rate. You live to a ripe and vigorous old age. We will take the case of a man of 76 who got married at 30. His son is now 45. It is only at the age of 45 that the son can hope to come into the farm and found a family of his own. Is it not quite obvious to everybody that that is radically wrong and that the change should take place ten or 15 years earlier?

Is there anything we can do about that problem? The difficulty is that no young woman will be prepared to live with her mother-in-law and the mother-in-law usually does not want the young woman with her. That is the fact. Everybody knows it to be a fact. It is one of the things which militates against marriage in this country. I can see only one way out of the difficulty, and that is by providing a second house near the original house. It need not be much better than a labourer's cottage, but it must be a place to where the old pair can retire at any time. If they are vigorous enough, it must be a place where they can do some work for themselves. It is only natural that they are rather slow to give up, but that at least would be an inducement to them.

What about incomes?

I know all the difficulties. I shall point out the difficulties. The question arises: is there any way in which we can do what I suggest? Every scheme I have put up has hitherto been turned down by everybody, but at least Deputy Cogan is now prepared to support me. If I were a dictator, I would implement my idea irrespective of the objections and the difficulties.

There is, perhaps, one way in which one might cope with this situation. Suppose, for example, that the son was 30 years of age and he wanted to get married. His father is 60. The father might say to that young man: "I will give you the place when I am 70 years of age. I am only 60 now, and I am a vigorous man still and I intend to remain boss in this farm. You will get it after me. I will make sure of that. I will give you any guarantees you want. When I am 70, the farm is yours. There is a house over there and you and your wife can go and live in it. There is a half-acre or acre of land attached to it, and you can work that in any way you like. Your wife can keep hens or do anything she wants with it. You can grow vegetables. Meantime, you can work for me on the farm and I will pay you a reasonable sum for your work. I will treat you better than I would treat an ordinary agricultural worker. You work that land just the same as if you were still living in our house with me. You can have the produce of the farm just as you could have it if you were still living with me. We will make arrangements to supply you with milk and vegetables if you do not produce them yourself. We will maintain that partnership for ten years, because I have other children to look after as well as you, and they must get a fair share. But, after that, when I am 70, we will swop. You can come in then with your family and I will take over your house and I will work for you on the farm in the self-same way as I would work for you if I was living in the house with you. I will go out and do the herding, if there is herding to be done that I can do. If there is driving or any question of taking milk to the creamery or any other thing that, at any age, I would be capable of doing, I will do it for you and we will swop around." The trouble is that that will not work out nicely. If it did work out on all occasions, everything would be fine, but in some cases there will be a lapse, and then you are faced with the question who will fill the house? A whole lot of things might happen, but I do not say that the scheme should be thrown aside because there are certain difficulties in the way. I can see, if these houses were built by the local authority, it might be arranged so that the farmer's son would get the first call on them; the local authority would see that the scheme worked out so that it would go to the father or to the son and, if it were vacant, it would be available for a local tenant on the understanding that it would be given back for its main purpose.

Deputy Hughes points to a difficulty that will occur to everybody. The difference between the idea I have suggested and living in the one house is that under my scheme you have to keep two families. Is it not worth while? Is it not worth doing in order to see two families accommodated? Do we not see that the second family would be a producing family and that it would help to build up the nation? Why should we shirk it because there are difficulties? Remember that you would have two families where now there is only one. I may be a fool in the matter. I first mentioned this 20 years ago at a convention in Cork, and I was laughed at. I have been laughed at practically every time I mentioned it ever since. Nevertheless, despite all the laughing, I believe it would be a good thing for the countryside. There may be details to be worked out as to what arrangements might be made between the local authority and the farmer.

It is a problem that must be tackled.

I wish I got the necessary support in this House to do it. If I did, it would be done. But I want the support. I am taking advantage of this opportunity because it was raised from the other benches.

It is mainly on the good land it is happening.

I do not say that you can do it in the smaller areas. I would begin at once, if it were necessary in any particular case, to split a farm; that is, if the farm is big enough to divide and make two homes. I would begin in that way. Not that I believe it would lead to the undue division of farms—I do not believe it would. If it led to that, there are obvious objections. If I had my way and got enough support, I would go for that scheme to make it possible to have reasonably early marriages. I am told by critics that one of the difficulties is not so much that the people could not get married, but that the girls do not want any longer to marry the farmers. I doubt that. I would like to see it tried, anyhow. I would like to see a young, eligible farmer getting a good farm and a nice house and I would like to see that put up as an attraction in the countryside and then see whether the young man would get a girl or not.

They do not marry for materialistic motives.

Quite right. At any rate, housing accommodation of the type I mention for the farmer's son would provide on the farm the best type of labour, the labour of the man who knows he will later see the fruits of his work, the man who will have an interest in the land. We want to improve conditions in that way.

I believe we ought to set up, in the villages and other centres of population, village halls. I believe in them, and the only thing that stopped our progress was the war and the shortage of supplies. That is a scheme that should be put into operation. There is no reason if you do that why the people cannot have, with such a community centre in a village, anything that may be good in the attractions of a city.

All these things cannot be done overnight. The plans take time to work out. You have to convert a lot of people. These things have to be done with local effort. You cannot simply dragoon people from the top; you have to induce them to see the value of these things. I was brought up in the country, and, I suppose, when you are brought up that way until you are 15 or 16 years of age, you might say you are in the country all your life, because you understand fully what country life means. Every member of the Government has the idea of improving rural conditions, making life in the country attractive and keeping the people, in so far as we can, from crowding into the cities.

Next to keeping the people in the country is the idea of building up the smaller cities. One of the things nobody likes to see is the whole population going into one big city. The whole island seems unbalanced. From the point of view of building up industries, it is easier and socially better to attach industries that have to be established to some of the smaller cities rather than to country areas. One of the troubles you have is something like this: If you establish a factory in a country village, the daughter in the working man's house goes to the mill and her brother works with a farmer. They may not be prepared to employ him in the mill. On account of the efficiency of the machinery in the mill, the daughter may get a bigger wage than her brother who works with the farmer, and that has a disturbing effect. It is remedied to a certain extent by having the industries developed in the neighbourhood of our smaller cities.

I would like to see Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Sligo and other large towns and cities built up by having more factories established in them, so that they would attract some of the people now coming to Dublin. In Dublin we have 500,000 people, and I do not believe in bringing all the people to the one centre. If our wishes could make things happen, then I would not wish that Dublin should go on increasing in size and attracting more and more; I would prefer to see other cities being built up.

I merely want to let the House know what are the fundamental aims so far as the Government are concerned. I almost hesitated to do it for the reason that I have been doing it for some 20 years or more, but remarks I hear made occasionally now would seem to suggest that the people have forgotten. I see a new Party indicating that they want afforestation. You would imagine we did not try it and advance in it. We are asked why we have not gone further in afforestation. The reason is the difficulty of getting the land. There are people on the hillsides who are making a living by grazing. I would prefer to see people with property, and I think it is a very good thing for this or any community that a large section of people should be able, by their own efforts and on their own property, to produce a living. I would rather that than to see them simply getting wages and being subject to other people.

But the national interest has to come first and, just as in other cases we would have to appropriate property if it was clear that it was in the national interest to do so, so in the case of land fit for afforestation and which is not economically valuable otherwise, I think the State ought to have the right, as it has, to take that land over and give fair compensation.

Has the Land Commission been doing that?

The Land Commission has to proceed cautiously. For instance, I know Cahir, and there was an area there where thousands of yards of fencing were pulled down and destroyed. The same happened elsewhere. You will have to get the local people, the people involved, to appreciate the fact that this is being done for national purposes and to appreciate the fact that when the property is being taken from them they will get fair compensation one way or another. It is not by simply wishing to do a thing that you can do it. You have to take local interests into consideration. You will hear people say that they have afforestation on their programme. We have had it in our programme and we brought the area planted up to 8,000 acres a year.

During the war, of course, we could not get the wire fencing, and so on, and operations were stopped to that extent, but there is nothing to stop us getting on to the 10,000-acre figure that is required, except the difficulty of getting the right land; if we get the land, the forests will be planted. Deputies talked about a number of other parts of our programme. Afforestation was only one part of it. Our programme was a complete policy taking in all aspects of the nation's life. I could keep on talking about this for a considerable length of time, but the big problem, the fundamental problem, is that of trying to keep up rural employment.

There is nothing desperate about it as far as the figures show, but there is a definite downward trend the whole time. There was, during the war, an abnormal situation. Deputy Davin or Deputy Norton said we only did about 3,000 acres in afforestation during the war. That is all we did, because we did not have the fencing or the wire. We could have done more if we had it.

Had you not got it up to 1939?

We had increased the area planted to 8,000 acres a year, and 10,000 acres was the area we estimated to be necessary—that is, we had gone four-fifths of the whole distance required. We went up from 3,000 acres, but the war has created difficulties in all directions.

Our industries could not get the raw materials, so that our people had to look for work elsewhere. It is not, for instance, enough to say "we will give you work on the roads". If you have printers educated to that particular trade, they are not the sort of people you send out on the roads; you want work for them of a similar character. If there is work of a similar character in the offing for them abroad, they go away. Similarly in regard to our rural population, high wages were offered— higher wages than what in ordinary times could be paid by the farming community, bearing in mind the standards we have to keep, so that the produce could be made available to the producers at reasonable prices or at prices which the ordinary wage-earners could pay.

My answer was that, although these high wages were paid abroad, there were high expenses too, and, when all sides were taken into account, those who went did not have much out of it. Even if they were prepared to work overtime at hard work, when you balance the outgoings and incomings, they would be as well off at home at the end. They say: "Look at the money that is being sent home". If I go away and I have to support my own family, surely I have to send money home. That is only a natural thing to do. If all the factors were taken into consideration, I do not think we would have many people leaving the country, but we know that the money is coming home and that it is to maintain the families left at home.

That has had, as was pointed out, a number of reactions on our economy, but it is one of these things we could not help. As the Minister for Finance pointed out, there are many trades and sources of employment for skilled and unskilled workers in which the wages here are as good as those beyond, and all that we want to do is to make sure that employment is available at home and that it should be steady.

At the moment in Britain there are many people engaged in the building trade. There is no reason why anyone employed in the building trade should remain out of the country. His wages here would be as high, and he would be here in his own country, and he would be sure of continued employment, because there is a housing and construction programme here which will keep us hard at work for 20 years. There is no reason why people engaged in building construction should remain abroad. I am glad to hear they are coming home, slowly it is true, but they are coming home one by one, and when the news spreads that there is work here and a prospect of continuous work, I believe our people will come back, and certainly we will welcome them back.

On this question of building construction, somebody said in the course of the debate that all we could do was to build a home in the Castle for civil servants at a cost of £2,000,000. Before the war we were pressed by all sides of the House to produce plans of work —work ahead. Housing for the people is the first necessity, and next follows constructional work which will give employment to those who are going to produce the articles we want. Constructional work for recreation is very far down the list and accounts for relatively little of our building programme. Of course, we have a programme ahead. Why should we have our people in the Civil Service occupying a number of houses in the city when housing accommodation in the city is so badly needed? Why should we have them scattered all over the city in a number of offices when we should have a central place for them? Of course, it is good policy, but those who want to be blaming the Government all the time say that we are going off with this extravagant scheme of building houses for the Civil Service. It is untrue completely and fundamentally, and those who make the allegation know that it is untrue, but those who do not know are going to be deceived by it. We have a very big programme of building ahead. We have a very large programme of industrial development prepared for. Everything is set to resume the work which was interrupted when the war began.

One would imagine the way some people talk that we were responsible for the war and all its consequences, or that we could somehow create here the raw materials necessary for industry. We had done our best to see that there was produced here everything this country could reasonably produce. As a matter of fact, the people who are criticising us for not being able suddenly to create the raw materials here were the very people who tried to prevent us from attempting to produce here all the things we could produce. But the war did come and the war has had its effects on us as it had on every country in the world. States that are much bigger than ours, States that were powerful States, have been reduced by the war to a position to which they never dreamed they would be reduced. I do not know that there is a single State in the world that is producing to-day to the same extent as it was producing before the war. In the vast centre of Europe there was a strong, powerful community producing all sorts of industrial goods, not merely for themselves but for export to other parts of the world. They are no longer in a position to produce these things for themselves. They are completely disorganised. You have 100,000,000 people disorganised, producing not one-tenth part of what they would have been able to produce under organised conditions. A gap exists there and has to be filled.

We are asked why we have not all the flour and bread that we require. The flour-producing countries are trying to feed these people who are not able to produce for themselves. There is a starving community which has first claim on these goods, and the people who have the power of diverting supplies from one place to another are naturally in the first instance, if they are humane at all, diverting supplies to where there is need. We are in a very happy position in this country if we compare conditions here with the conditions in which other countries find themselves. People say: "Oh, the war is two years over". We pointed out at the very beginning that the conditions which the war created were not going to pass away immediately the war ended. We pointed out that for years after the war there were going to be certain results from the war, what is commonly called the aftermath of the war. After the war of 1914-18, owing to the scarcity of materials and the great demand there was, prices up to 1920 increased by a far higher proportion than they have gone up after this war—because the various Governments did not know then how to regulate matters. Prices are, no doubt, going up still and the trouble will be to hold them down. In fact, there is only one way to hold them down and that is to get extra supplies of goods. The moment supplies of goods become available in larger quantities, then and only then, will prices come down. We are not responsible for the war and there is nothing we can do which could make goods, at the disposal of people who have control over them, more plentiful here. There is nothing this Government could have done to procure materials that it has not done.

Just as we were not responsible for the war, neither were we responsible for the extraordinary season we had last harvest and winter. Within human memory there was not such a season. We barely escaped by saving all the crops we could last harvest. It might have been a disaster, but we escaped it. Then we had an abnormal winter, and, because we had a scarcity of feeding and cattle did not come on the market, up went the prices of beef, mutton, butter and potatoes. That was mainly the cause of the scarcity, created by the conditions prevailing last year. Surely the Government cannot be blamed for the war and its consequences and it cannot reasonably be blamed for an abnormal season such as never occurred within 50 years before. The world has not gone back to normal, and we are not getting supplies and, not having an adequate supply of goods, we will not have the most effective way of keeping down prices.

Is the producer getting increased prices?

The Deputy talks as if we were a totalitarian State. Whether it is in talking about labour, the moving of labour or the distribution of goods, Deputies want us to do things as they would be done under a dictatorial régime and to do them with the freedom of a democracy. That cannot be done. You have to make up your mind, if you are going to have freedom here, that you will have to give as much individual liberty in economic matters as in others.

Coming to what may be described as fundamental views—and I believe they are the views of the Government — I say that we believe in private enterprise. We believe in private ownership and in private enterprise, but we do know that private enterprise, particularly in conditions such as our conditions here where the country is undeveloped, in very many respects, needs help. Our purpose was to supply that necessary help, but we are not going to have a dictatorial régime in which every member of the community will be regimented. Some people tell you there is unemployment. On the one hand farmers tell you that in some places they cannot get workers for their farms. People who are anxious to get labour to produce turf, county surveyors and others, tell me that they cannot get workers to produce turf. I have been told by some people that it is possible for a turf worker to earn as much as £6 per week, but they say that they have not sufficient workers available. On the other hand, we know that in places like Dublin there are people unemployed. If this were a dictatorial régime, I would say: "Look here, there is work to be done down there, and you have got to go down and do it." You know you cannot do that in our country. There are places in which there are workers who are idle not very far apart from other places in which you have work which these workers could do if they were on the spot.

There is the question, however, of what is called the immobility of labour. A man has his house and some local attachments. It means something more to him if he can get work where he is than to get it some distance away. What can we do? You cannot lift a bog and bring it up to where a worker resides, nor can you bring the man's house to the district where the bog is situate. All you can do is to provide housing accommodation for certain workers. That has been attempted and when it is attempted in all good-will and in a public-spirited way, we have people who try to create all the difficulties and the discontent they can. In the case of labour, you have the difficulty, in a democratic country, where there is freedom for the individual, of bringing the labourer to the particular type of work for which he is suited.

Here again in the city, there are sections of industry in which we have not enough workers. I do not know to what extent the difficulty about skilled workers in the building industry is being solved, but I think they are getting over it. In the case of the printing industry I know that there could be three times the volume of printing done that is being done at present, but you cannot suddenly create the machines or the workers and you cannot get long-established organisations such as trade unions to reconsider their position in the light of the present labour shortages. These are problems that require good-will on the part of a free people, because it is as a free people we have got to get these things done. I have given my views in regard to what the main elements of our programme are.

I should like to refer to some figures with regard to employment, which subject has been the basis of my talk. The volume of employment for 1946, as indicated by the net contribution income of the National Health Insurance Fund, was 443,000. The volume in 1945 was 417,000. The 1946 figure is the largest figure we have ever had, and it is 26,000 higher than the previous peak. In 1939 also the figure was 417,000. The volume of employment in 1939 and in 1945 was the same. To-day the figure is 26,000 higher. To contrast that with the figure for the year 1931, the figures indicate that about 101,000 more are employed now than were employed in 1931; I am referring to the total volume of employment. If I look at the peak year in industrial employment, I find we had reached about 166,000 in 1938 —from about 110,000 in 1931; that is, an increase of about 56,000 from 1931 to 1938. The figure I am most anxious about is that of agricultural employment. That figure has fallen from 562,000 in 1931 down to 519,000 in 1946, which is a considerable drop.

Can the Taoiseach tell us if that figure includes both farmers and agricultural labourers?

The figure is in respect of the number of males engaged in farm work. When all these figures are viewed together, we can arrive at the conclusion that our increase in industrial employment has somewhat been set off by our decrease in agricultural employment. The only question I ask myself is: would that decrease have taken place anyhow? Would the world trend from the land, as is the case in every other country, have affected us? That is something about which I can have my views and about which those on the opposite benches can have their views, too. My honest belief is that the trend would have taken place even if we had not this particular programme at all.

I would like to point out, in connection with the work we are doing by providing secure markets, subsidies, and so on for the farmers here, that we have been trying to provide materials for employment in the country. There is a flour subsidy, and other subsidies. There is a subsidy of about £2,000,000 for flour and, altogether, a total of over £4,500,000 by way of subsidy for foodstuffs, etc. It would be very strange indeed if, notwithstanding these efforts, the trend was worse than it had been before. I believe that the policy has justified itself.

What about trade agreements?

What does the Deputy say?

I asked what about trade agreements.

I do not know exactly what the Deputy means. The Deputy knows that we have been in negotiation but that there has been no completion. The Deputy must realise that the British, for instance, cannot adopt any particular final policy until they see what the general world policy will be. They are involved with the United States, etc., and the ultimate adoption of their policy will be a big question. In connection with that general policy, they may fix their policy, so far as we are concerned. As I have said, many a time, we are anxious to avoid in any way limiting production. We are anxious that we shall get the best from all the foreign markets we can get, provided that we look after ourselves first, and that we do not get ourselves into a position which would be harmful to our industry. For instance, I think it would be disastrous if we were now to cultivate only 21,000 acres of wheat in this country. I consider that it would be disastrous for the country not to continue the tillage policy, especially when we consider the terrible difficulty we had in building it up. We may not have to till to the extent we have had to till up to the present, but most people will agree with me that we ought to try to provide a market for the farmer's wheat. I think we should continue to till a considerable proportion—say, 300,000 or 250,000 acres. Therefore, we still continue our policy of trying to give the farmer a secure home market and then of helping him, so far as we can by any arrangements outside, to get as profitable an export market as possible. That, in my opinion, is commonsense.

The Deputy wants to know why we would not send someone from the agricultural community to the international food conferences in which we participate. Will Deputies please remember that the Minister for Agriculture is and has been in contact with groups of farmers of various kinds? We have agricultural councils, advisory bodies, etc., for the Minister. He is in constant touch with the farming community, and when he goes abroad he is fortified with that knowledge.

The advisory council has not been summoned for many months.

I feel quite certain that any advice the Minister feels is necessary is available. As I say, he is in constant touch. He is a practical farmer. His whole life has been spent farming. He knows the farming industry.

I wish to point out, in connection with the suggestion about civil servants, that civil servants go to these conferences, in 99 cases out of 100, when they accompany a Minister, as advisers to the Minister. That is precisely the capacity in which Deputy Hughes wants members of the agricultural community to go. Civil servants do not take it upon themselves to determine policy. The members of the Government decide policy. These civil servants are experts in their own line, and they are taken as expert advisers. As a rule, the Minister will listen carefully to the expert advice given, but he is not bound to follow it. For instance, if I had the opportunity of providing houses for the young married couples I was talking about earlier this evening, it would take a lot of civil servants' advice to dissuade me from it. The same applies to every member of the Government. If they are convinced that a particular thing should be done in the interests of the community, it would take a good deal of advice and demonstration to dissuade them. They must, however, be people with a balanced judgment. They ought not blind themselves to advice. If an expert shows me that something which is not a matter of mere opinion is so and so, I would be a fool if I were not to heed his advice.

We have these officers in the Civil Service, and they are excellent. We in this country have been blessed with an excellent Civil Service; I want to say that. Our Civil Service was not originally built up by us, but, were it my last day in office, I would like to pay this tribute to them: that I have found civil servants—every one of them, no matter what I might think of some of them for their original political views—always willing to give the best advice possible, and if that advice was not accepted, I have always found them willing to go on and carry out the policy indicated.

Hear, hear!

That is their fundamental duty. In my opinion, we have been blessed with them in this country. If I were wishing one good thing for our country in the future, I would wish them to be blessed with good civil servants—that the Government here might continue to be blessed with the same type of civil servants as we have. I could not wish any better thing for the welfare of our country.

I do not wish to worry the House much longer, but I had intended to deal with one or two separate points which I was questioned about. I hope I may be pardoned for moving off into details. Deputy Norton made an appeal that we should establish in this country something like the British civil list. Deputy McCann, Deputy Cosgrave and, I think, Deputies from all sides supported the idea. I may tell you that we have considered that more than once. We have always been satisfied that there is a need for something of that kind; but we have been very doubtful as to the way we can do anything which would be really effective. Everybody will admit that the provision which would be made in cases like that could not be very large. I think Deputy Norton will agree with that—that we cannot make any big, extravagant provision, and that even when we made what we might regard as a fair provision, it would be found to be inadequate ultimately for the needs.

In countries with big populations, writers, actors, painters and artists generally, those who devote themselves to the arts or to cultural subjects, have a bigger market for their wares, if I may put it that way. They have a much easier opportunity of earning a livelihood and making provision for the rainy day. In small countries like ours that is not easy, as a rule. One of the evil results is that we find people who are willing to do that terrible thing—sell their pen abroad. In order to reach a wider market, they are prepared to do things which I feel certain they would not do if economic necessity, or something of that sort, did not drive them to do it. That is a tremendous evil for a small country.

We want all the prestige that we can get from our writers and artists generally. We want them to uphold in every way the national prestige and not do things which would lower that prestige. That being so, in this small country the provision which would have to be made would have to be far greater in proportion than it would be in big States. Big States have only to make provision for an occasional case. In our case, I am afraid that, if we attempted to do that only, it would be found to be altogether insufficient. If we attempt to do it on a scale which might be adequate, it would be beyond what reasonable people think would be right.

I would be very glad to put it before the Government for reconsideration or final consideration if the House wants it and if we could get a little group which would be willing to help us in working out a scheme. We have long ago envisaged a type of scheme, and I would be very much in favour of it if we could get a right one. I am afraid that I myself have been a bit of a block in getting a scheme adopted, because I felt that the best we can do would seem to be inadequate.

Take the theatre. The first thing that I think ought to be done in that case is that provision should be made by giving reasonable salaries. The first thing is to see that those actually engaged will get proper salaries. We have wonderful artistes. Strangers from every part of the world who have come here have admired our actors particularly. As was pointed out here, our actors are so much above what is to be found in other countries that there is a constant attraction for them to go in for film work. Those who have resisted that and worked for the nation deserve well of the nation. I certainly would like to do something in the matter. The only thing is to try to provide a satisfactory definite scheme. Perhaps Deputy Norton would give me some idea as to what he has in mind, if he has thought it out.

I have not thought it out in any detail. I am acquainted with the circumstances of one brilliant actor who literally thrilled our people and people in every portion of the civilised world who were permitted to witness a display of his talents. That is what brought the matter forcibly to my mind. I would be satisfied if the matter got sympathetic consideration. I am sure the members of the Government are aware of the circumstances of that case and that they are sympathetic in the matter. I would be satisfied if the Taoiseach or the Minister for Finance would take into consideration the assembling of a small committee to examine the possibilities and the feasibility of a scheme of that kind.

I do not know how the other side of the House feels in regard to that. It is a matter upon which one would like to have complete agreement, so far as that is possible. I know it is a non-political matter, but there is the question of the funds to be provided. It has been suggested that it might be built up on the basis that about £250 would be the amount which could be made available, limiting the total amount in any one year to a definite sum, and limiting the total amount to be paid out at any one time to another fixed sum. I should like to examine it, but, again, my fear about any scheme is that the best we could do would be inadequate to meet the needs. I do not want to hold to that. I would be very glad if we could get some representative members to take an interest in the matter and go into it and the Minister for Finance could be deputed from our side to go into it.

Does the Taoiseach not agree that any scheme, even if inadequate, would be better than no scheme?

If that is the view, I am in the hands of the House in regard to the matter.

Before I sit down, I should like to deal with the question of production generally. It has been suggested that there has been a terrible drop in production. I do not think the figures indicate that. Of course, during the war there was a considerable drop in production in industry. Figures have been given to me, and I shall give them as I got them. For instance, in the case of agriculture, the gross output for 1938 was £50.8 million—I am giving the current prices; for 1944, £96.8 million; for 1945, £105.0 million. There is only an estimated figure for 1946, and the estimated figure is a fraction less than £105,000,000. Those are the figures for the gross output. The net output, which, I think, will be admitted is the one that matters most, has gone up. The net output is estimated by relating the figures I have just given to 1938 prices. The net output went up from £41.1 million in 1938 to £89.6 million in 1944 and £99.8 million in 1945——

That is not correct. That is the volume.

I beg your pardon, it is the next one on the list. The gross agricultural output, I shall repeat it again, was £50.8 million in 1938. If we relate the gross output in subsequent years to 1938 prices, the figure is £47.0 million for 1944 and £50.7 million for 1945. There is a slight decrease estimated for 1946, but from 1938 to 1945 the figure is practically the same. There is no significant diminution.

The Taoiseach must remember that turf is thrown into that figure and there has been an increase in turf production. Turf is not agricultural produce.

If you take people who are living in a congested area and turn them over to turf production, that is the natural thing to do. For agriculture the net output in 1938 was £41.1 million. At 1938 prices, the figure in 1944 was £42.9 million, and in 1945 it was £46.1 million. The figure for 1946 is not yet available. These figures are for the net volume.

That proves nothing.

I think these figures would not justify anybody in saying there was a fall.

If you take the turf out of it it will show a fall.

All I have got here is the figures for agriculture as a whole.

Turf should not be included in agriculture.

Quite clearly agricultural produce as such has fallen. That is made up for by turf.

What about it?

If you do not know the difference between turf and dairy produce that is quite enough.

People cannot produce two things at once, and if you have people turned over from the production of food to the production of fuel, surely in estimating the output it would not be proper to omit either of them.

No other country does that statistically.

The point is that we here are a country by ourselves with all our own peculiarities and so on.

In glorious isolation.

We are humans not apes.

Do you tell me that now?

In the case of industry, production in value at current prices rose from £35.5 million in 1938, to £42.1 million in 1944, and to £46.0 million in 1945. That is, in value. In volume, industrial production declined from £35.5 million in 1938 to £27.5 million in 1944—due, of course, to the war. It is rapidly recovering now, as raw materials become available, and it is estimated that it reached £30.5 million in 1945.

If you take the output of agriculture and industry together, the net value at current prices went up from £76.6 million in 1938 to £145.8 million in 1945. At 1938 prices, the net volume fell, as a result of war, from £76.6 million in 1938 to £70.4 million in 1944. In 1945, however, it had come back to the 1938 figure—that is, the combined net volume of the output of agriculture and industry. I do not think there is anything in that to make us despondent or to make us feel that things have reached a pretty bad pass. I think the reaction should be quite the contrary. That is the position however.

A number of separate points were raised which could more appropriately be raised by Parliamentary question addressed either to myself or to the appropriate Minister. I do not think it is right that I should waste time answering points which might more properly be directed to a specific Minister. Deputies must realise that we are organised as Departments and that each Department does its own planning. That planning is then synthesised or integrated at Government meetings, where the Departments are, so to speak, represented.

I suppose that is what happened about Santry Court.

Co-ordination.

There was integration there, all right.

I should point out that there is no loss in the case of Santry Court. All the work that has been done there will be utilised to the full in the public interest. There is no cause for complaint, because the place will be available to the public and the work done will be utilised to the full.

I was explaining that Deputies should understand that, in our constitutional theory here, every Minister is directly responsible to the House for his own Department. He has an individual responsibility, and he cannot cover himself in his responsibility by saying that something is Government policy. He is the representative of the Government, if you like, in regard to his particular Department. The Government must take responsibility for what he does, and he must take responsibility on behalf of the Government and on his own behalf when he comes to answer in the House for the administration of his Department. He is in a position to answer in detail all questions relating to administration in his own particular Department. It is not the best use of the debate on my Estimate that I should be asked to answer for details of administration in regard to other Departments. I am mainly responsible for the integration of the work of all Departments.

Deputy Blowick raised an extraordinary point. He said there was some danger of Bills being passed by us which might subsequently prove to be unconstitutional. I cannot understand how there could be any way in which we could provide against that. The President, if he suspects, or if he is of opinion that something is unconstitutional, can summon the Council of State and get their opinion on the matter. If he so decides, he can then refer it to the Supreme Court for decision. It may be that at some time or other something might be done which would be unconstitutional, but there is no way of providing against that.

Hear, hear!

It seems to be suggested by Deputy Blowick that there is some machinery which we could set up to provide against that contingency. I do not see any way of providing against it further than we have done. In every other country where there is a written Constitution and where a question of constitutionality arises, the matter is referred to the Supreme Court. In some cases they have an ad hoc body made up of various branches of the Legislature and the judiciary—something in the nature of our Council of State here.

You are not getting any bad thoughts in your head now, are you?

No. I was merely telling the Deputy that this matter was fully considered at the time when the Constitution was going through. We finally decided to leave it to the Supreme Court, as is done in the United States. There is no way of preventing the Legislature from passing an unconstitutional Act. I take it that, if that ever did occur, it would be done by inadvertence. It would not be well to proceed on any other assumption but, whether by inadvertence or otherwise, there is no way in which we can provide against it. The President is an intermediate check. He can consult with the Council of State and have a Bill referred to the Supreme Court.

I think I have dealt with all the points raised. Any points with which I have not dealt can be raised more appropriately by means of Parliamentary questions.

In the course of the debate I raised some substantial questions as to the imminence of the possibility of the international Communist Party pursuing an assault upon this country and its neighbour. Does the Taoiseach think it expedient to say what his view is as to the attitude that might profitably be adopted so that the Communist Party in this country can best be dealt with by those who desire to resist them?

Does the Taoiseach propose to take any steps to safeguard the copyright of the Minister for Local Government?

Deputy Norton and Deputy Davin are both uneasy.

There is no doubt we are in an extraordinary position in the world at the present time. Notwithstanding the position that the world was in before this last war broke out, I do not think that, even then, the world was in such a precarious situation as it appears to be now. What will be the remedy? I am not going to suggest what my view as to the remedy would be.

Why not?

I do not think it would be of any use whatsoever. I think it would be very foolish. I think we had better keep our eyes open, look carefully ahead, do our best to look beyond the hill and see what is coming and what is there. I do not think the time has come when I would be performing any useful public duty—I take it that is what the Deputy wants——

——by dealing with it. Undoubtedly, the situation to which the Deputy refers has happened in other countries, and we would be foolish to eliminate the possibility of such a thing happening in this country. We know there are people in the country who have always been active in that particular way, but I do not think there is anything happening at the moment that should make us unduly anxious. Naturally, all of us who have responsibility will have to keep our eyes open.

There has been circulated in this country, mainly to the members of this House, tendentious literature of a lying character which, I believe, was issued by the Communist Party in New York as part of a general programme to discredit the Government of this country by alleging against them bestial injustice to prisoners in their custody.

The Deputy covered that matter in his speech.

Does the Taoiseach consider he serves the public interest best by remaining silent or by stating to the young people of this country that it is necessary for them to scan carefully appeals made to their natural enthusiasm before accepting the leadership of all and sundry who speak in terms of pseudo patriotic fervour?

Will the Taoiseach say, as head of the Government, whether the Government has authorised the directors of Córas Iompair Éireann to refuse to reopen the branch lines closed down temporarily——

That is not a matter for the Taoiseach's Department.

But it is an important matter.

It is a very good red herring.

May I also ask the Taoiseach whether the Government have authorised the closing down of 70 per cent. of the stations on the main lines?

That is a matter for the Minister for Industry and Commerce.

It is a matter of Government policy.

The Chair rules that it is a matter for the Minister for Industry and Commerce and it does not arise now as an alleged small question.

The Taoiseach knows nothing about it, apparently.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce gave a full answer to the question about the closing of the branch lines.

The red herring is being chased.

The red herring will not succeed.

The Taoiseach indicated that the Government are anxious to secure for the farmers the best markets possible. Has his attention been drawn to a statement by Mr. Strachey, the British Minister for Food, in the House of Commons yesterday? The report I have of the statement indicates that, in connection with trade dealings with other countries, he said with regard to this country:—

"With Éire again irksome political difficulties had stood in the way of obvious mutual economic benefits. The report of the two agricultural economists who went to Ireland is being studied and he hoped negotiations with the Éire Government would soon begin."

Is the Taoiseach aware of the irksome political difficulties and, if he is, will he say what they are?

I am not aware of them on this side. There are two sides always, and people talk generally about the side they know best. I am talking only about the side I know best, and I know of no irksome political difficulties —there are none which I am aware of —which would prevent anything of the kind. That does not mean to say that there may not have been some from the other side. It has been the policy of this Government—in so far as it would be possible for us to do it, and in the interests of our people, which are our natural responsibility and our natural first duty—to keep in mind the possibility of making our work here useful from their point of view. It is natural that that which is useful to them is the thing in which they would be interested, and we have been most anxious to co-operate in these things. I am not aware at the moment of any political differences which would prevent that. If that is what the Deputy wants, I am not aware of any.

Mr. Morrissey

Can we take it, then, from the Taoiseach, that in relation to any discussions which took place between our representatives and the representatives of the British Government in relation to economic matters or trade matters, there were not political matters introduced on this side in any way?

Mr. Morrissey

The Taoiseach will appreciate why I want to get that information?

I understand. As the Deputy knows, the outstanding political question is Partition. That did not happen to arise directly. It has repercussions in various ways across the Border; various things happen across our frontier that would naturally be kept in mind if we were making arrangements, because some of the arrangements may be completely negatived by the fact of the Border being there. I am not aware, however, of any single case of anything political being introduced by our side into purely trade negotiations with the British authorities.

The business being done on a purely commercial basis?

Mr. Morrissey

The suggestion contained in the British Food Minister's speech which Deputy Hughes has quoted, if the British Minister is correctly reported—that we were prepared to trade with them only on certain political conditions—is not true?

I do not think that is contained in it.

Mr. Morrissey

It is implied in it.

I am not so sure that it is. I can talk only for one side. There may be political difficulties on both sides. This is the first time I have heard of it, and I am only taking it as it has been given to me across the House. All I can say is that I am not aware of any political difficulties that interfered in that particular matter.

That is satisfactory. I am satisfied.

Does the Taoiseach propose, at a later date, to consult with the representatives of the different Parties in order to ascertain their views on the formation of a committee to advise him as to the lines of any proposed pension scheme?

I will ask them, certainly.

Will the Taoiseach say whether he thinks it desirable, in view of the literature that has been circulated, to direct the attention of young people to the necessity of carefully scanning exhortations couched in the customary language of patriotic exhortation before blindly following others? I believe the circulars are published with an ulterior motive, not to serve the cause of this country, but to serve that of international Communism.

Well, with regard to that, I am sure that the people of this country ought to be wiser than most as to the desire that certain people would have to use them in their own interests. That ought to be clear to everybody. It is the natural thing, as long as there is discontent of any kind in this country, for those who want to exploit it. But I think that our people are wise enough to see what is being done.

With regard to the circular spoken of, I did not know of its existence until the Deputy mentioned it. I did not get a copy of it when most of the Deputies apparently got copies of it. I did get a copy of it two days afterwards, and I looked through it and, without studying it, I saw in this copy that there was a most unjust and unfair attack upon the Government. I can say that there have been lots of unfair attacks upon the Government, but this one was particularly vicious —not because it would affect anybody in this country who would know the facts but because it might deceive people outside.

While it might be exploited in this country, I do not think people would be able to stand up on any public platform and get away with it. The private circulation of it may affect certain individuals. I do not know whether it is designed to do damage in this country, but it is certainly designed to do damage in the United States of America among the friends of this country who were friends of those striving to get independence here. The effect it is probably designed to achieve there is to try to bring these people away from giving any support to us and to make it appear that this Government has turned out to be tyrannical— that it has become anti-national.

Who is at the back of it?

I am afraid I do not recollect——

Michael Quill.

I do not think anybody will think I have anything to say in favour of Mr. Quill. As far as I know, he has been engaged in a vicious attack on myself, personally. I do not know what his ulterior purposes may be.

And you do not know his associates?

I am told he is associated with Communism, but I do not know.

It took a lot to dig that out of you.

And with the Irish Labour Party.

When I say a thing I always try to make sure of my ground.

Very good.

I am told he is associated with the Communist Party.

There is a nice gentleman on your left—sorry, ex-gentleman.

Ask the ex-Socialist from Belfast beside you.

Is the Deputy pressing the motion to refer back?

Question—"That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration"—put.
The Committee divided:—Tá: 31; Níl: 58.

  • Beirne, John.
  • Bennett, George C.
  • Blowick, Joseph.
  • Cafferky, Dominick.
  • Cogan, Patrick.
  • Coogan, Eamonn.
  • Corish, Brendan.
  • Costello, John A.
  • Davin, William.
  • Dillon, James M.
  • Dockrell, Henry M.
  • Dockrell, Maurice E.
  • Norton, William.
  • O'Higgins, Thomas F.
  • O'Reilly, Patrick.
  • O'Reilly, Thomas.
  • Fagan, Charles.
  • Flanagan, Oliver J.
  • Giles, Patrick.
  • Halliden, Patrick J.
  • Heskin, Denis.
  • Hughes, James.
  • Keating, John.
  • McAuliffe, Patrick.
  • McMenamin, Daniel.
  • Morrissey, Daniel.
  • Mulcahy, Richard.
  • Murphy, Timothy, J.
  • O'Sullivan, Martin.
  • Redmond, Bridget M.
  • Sheldon, William A. W.

Níl

  • Aiken, Frank.
  • Allen, Denis.
  • Bartley, Gerald.
  • Beegan, Patrick.
  • Blaney, Neal.
  • Boland, Gerald.
  • Bourke, Dan.
  • Brady, Brian.
  • Breathnach, Cormac.
  • Brennan, Thomas.
  • Breslin, Cormac.
  • Briscoe, Robert.
  • Buckley, Seán.
  • Burke, Patrick (Co. Dublin).
  • Butler, Bernard.
  • Colley, Harry.
  • Corry, Martin J.
  • Crowley, Honor Mary.
  • Daly, Francis J.
  • Derrig, Thomas.
  • De Valera, Eamon.
  • De Valera, Vivion.
  • Flynn, Stephen.
  • Fogarty, Andrew.
  • Gorry, Patrick J.
  • Harris, Thomas.
  • Hilliard, Michael.
  • Humphreys, Francis.
  • Kennedy, Michael J.
  • Killilea, Mark.
  • Kilroy, James.
  • Kissane, Eamon.
  • Lemass, Seán F.
  • Little, Patrick J.
  • Loughman, Frank.
  • Lydon, Michael F.
  • McCann, John.
  • McCarthy, Seán.
  • MacEntee, Seán.
  • Moylan, Seán.
  • O Briain, Donnchadh.
  • O'Connor, John S.
  • O'Grady, Seán.
  • O'Reilly, Matthew.
  • O'Rourke, Daniel.
  • O'Sullivan, Ted.
  • Rice, Bridget M.
  • Ruttledge, Patrick J.
  • Ryan, James.
  • Ryan, Mary B.
  • Ryan, Robert.
  • Shanahan, Patrick.
  • Sheridan, Michael.
  • Skinner, Leo B.
  • Traynor, Oscar.
  • Ua Donnchadha, Dómhnall.
  • Walsh, Laurence.
  • Walsh, Richard.
Tellers:— Tá: Deputies M. O'Sullivan and Corish; Níl: Deputies Kissane and Kennedy.
Question declared lost.
Vote put and declared carried.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
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