You may if you want to. In my opening remarks on this Estimate I drew attention to the fact that this year—so far as I know, for the first time—the practice which has hitherto obtained was departed from. The practice of giving to the Government or to the Ceann Comhairle some indication of the general topics on wide Government policy which it was intended to debate on this Estimate was departed from. I mentioned yesterday in my opening remarks that I had no idea what topics were to be considered or debated. The results of the departure from tradition and practice have been evident by the disorderly course which the debate has taken and the wide range of topics which has been discussed by Deputies. They have ranged from cabbages by Deputy V. de Valera to cheese by Deputy Corry and from republics to inflation. It appears to me, going over in retrospect the speeches that were made, that I would need to be a Ministerial Pooh-Bah—I would need to be Minister for Finance, Minister for Industry and Commerce, Minister for Agriculture, Minister for Local Government, Minister for Education, as well as Taoiseach—to be in a position fully to answer the various detailed points that were raised in the course of this discussion. This debate was opened by Deputy Lemass and he set the tone of it. I have rarely listened during my period as a Deputy in this House to a debate that was conducted on such a low level and with such utter disregard for the general interest and welfare of the people as a whole. I hope that, in the course of the remarks that I have to make, I will be able to curb the natural indignation which I feel at some of the things that were said during the course of this debate and that I will speak with such dignity and restraint as our Parliamentary institutions demand.
Deputy Lemass made a speech which appeared to me, at all events, to have been made extempore. It was a speech more on the lines of what one would hear from a platform at a street corner during election time than a speech of a serious character that you would expect to hear from a responsible Deputy in this House on a debate which is exclusively reserved for the discussion of the highest branches of general Government policy. He started off by referring to this new inter-Party Government as "this setup." He wanted to know how long "this set-up" is going to last. He purported to tell the House of the public opinion that he gathered from day to day in reference to Government activities and of the likelihood of this Government lasting or of being a stable Government. He spoke of this Government as being an "experiment" and asserted that it was suffering from lack of leadership and lack of direction. I deal with these matters at the outset of my remarks not, I hope, in a political way—not for the purpose of gaining any political Party capital for any group that supports this inter-Party Government—but because an effort was deliberately made by Deputy Lemass to sabotage this so called "experiment" which has now become an institution of this State— the inter-Party Government. He tried to undermine public confidence in the Government in order that he might be able to run the length and breadth of this country to the Fianna Fáil supporters and flog their failing support for his Party. There was little thought in the whole course of the speech made by him for the general public interest nor was there any attempt to make any constructive proposals. He stated that this was an "experiment." I assert that it has become no longer an "experiment" but an institution. Deputy Lemass may possibly have heard of what the late Mr. Gladstone on one occasion stated. He stated his belief in what he called "the power of confident assertion." Deputy Lemass, apparently, adapts that phrase to his political philosophy.
Deputy Lemass believes in the power of truculent assertion. That was the tone he used and the level he fixed for a debate in this House. That tone was followed and that level was kept by Opposition Deputies throughout the whole course of this debate. He made a vulgar taunt that we in this inter-Party Government were going, as he said, to hang on to office as long as we could. Neither I nor any one of my colleagues in this Government has any interest in place, power or patronage. We do not want office or the fruits of office. Nobody can conscientiously assert that any single one of us entered into this inter-Party Government for the purpose of Party politics—for the purpose of securing Party patronage, or office, or profit, or power, and I throw back that vulgar taunt of Deputy Lemass. We came together in the public interest because 750,000 of the Irish people, as represented in an Irish Parliament, required that we should do so. It will ever be a source of pride to me that I was selected by a group such as is represented in this Government to be the Leader of the Government which was then formed.
Whatever may be the results of our efforts, we have at least achieved this: we are a Government co-operating for one purpose and one purpose only; we are a Government with a united policy and a united purpose, and that policy and that purpose is to do the best that we can by every available means in our power for the general good of all sections of the Irish people without thought for our political Parties and, I think I am safe in saying, without thought for our own personal interests. That is our strength. That is our pride. That is our guarantee to the Irish people that we are here in this Government only so long as they require us to be here. No vulgar taunt from Deputy Lemass, no sneers from his lips will divert us from the task that we have undertaken until we have done what we promised to do and, having done that, we will submit ourselves to the verdict of the people and we will be content to be judged upon our results. Our strength to us at all times will be the strength that is the unifying force in this Government. I asserted some weeks ago in Cork that this was a stable Government; that all its members were united by a common policy and a common purpose. I pledge my faith again to the Irish people and to those who are supporting us that that is the position. We will hang on, as Deputy Lemass so vulgarly said yesterday, as a Government until we have achieved what we have set out to do. It will not be the public opinion, as expressed here by Deputy Lemass or by any other Deputy, that will judge us. It will be the public opinion of the people expressed in a democratic way. We have no doubt as to what the verdict will be.
Deputy Lemass purports to tell the House—and, through the House, the people believing, of course, that he is doing something in the public interest —that he is astonished at the number of people who come and tell him that they have lost confidence in this Government. He says he gave advice at the start of this Government to somebody or other that we should get a chance. I have looked through Deputy Lemass's speeches and his public utterances and nowhere do I find any public statement of that character, and nowhere do I find in his actions any constructive effort to give this Government a chance. Deputy Lemass has referred to my broadcast over Radio Éireann shortly after I was appointed to my present position. At that time, I said to the people that we were no political mendicants looking for a chance or begging for a chance. We are a Government elected by the majority of the representatives of the Irish people in this House. Those are our title deeds to act as a Government and, until our authority is withdrawn, we shall continue to be so. If Deputy Lemass and his colleagues do not give us their co-operation in the interests, not of our political or several political Parties forming this Government but in the interests of the people, then they will answer not to us, not to this Dáil, but to the people when the time comes. We have again the faith that Deputy Lemass has in truculent assertion when he says that the people are telling him in increasing numbers that they have withdrawn support from this Government.
In the last few months, we have had discussions on the Estimates for the Public Service—Estimates prepared by the last Government, the Deputies now in opposition. They were discussing their own Estimates. In every single case, with two exceptions—Health and Lands—motions were put down to refer back the Estimate for reconsideration. Those Estimates in the particular circumstances of this year furnished an opportunity that is not normally furnished to Deputies in this House of learning and debating every aspect of Government policy. Those Estimates were fully discussed—more fully discussed during the last few months than Estimates have ever been in this House since the establishment of our State. Every single one of those motions to refer back was withdrawn except the Estimates for the Department of Defence and the Department of Agriculture. The Estimate for Wireless Broadcasting was put to a division. On that range of Estimates, covering every aspect of Government policy, there were only three divisions—Defence, Agriculture and a motion on Wireless Broadcasting. Yet Deputy Lemass, with his usual brazen defiance of fact, purports to say that there is a complete absence of consistent policy in any sphere on the part of this Government. They had not the courage to go into the Division Lobby on any of these Estimates except three, Defence and Agriculture and a motion on Wireless Broadcasting confined to one item really, broadcasting on the proposed short-wave station. Are all those Deputies who voted for the Government on these three divisions all irresponsive to public opinion? Do they know less than Deputy Lemass sitting here in his Dublin office knows about what people are thinking?
Is there any inference to be drawn from the fact—the undoubted fact— that every Deputy in every Party in this House, except Fianna Fáil, every Independent Deputy in this House, except on two occasions when Deputy Cowan voted against the Government, have all voted for this Government on every single item. Is there no inference to be drawn from that that this Government has and retains the confidence of the representatives of the people here in this House? On the merits of the proposals put forward, not as Deputy Lemass would say, a machined majority, but on the merits of the proposals themselves, those people with divers interests, scattered throughout the country in close touch with their constituents from week to week, see fit to support this Government. The only instrument in Deputy Lemass's hands is the instrument of the Irish Press and the instrument of his confident and truculent assertions that we are losing the confidence of the people. Deputy Lemass stated that he was anxious that we should—to use that phrase to which I object—get a chance and he so advised, apparently privately, because I cannot trace it either in his public utterances or his public actions, that we should get that chance.
We went over to London recently to negotiate a trade agreement on behalf of this country. During our negotiations we were entitled to expect that we would get at least, if not co-operation, that co-operation which Deputy Lemass says he was privately giving to his supporters. We were entitled to expect that we would get a charitable silence while we were negotiating on behalf of all sections of the people. I do not intend to occupy the time of the House to-day with exposing in detail the manner in which the Party opposite and their political newspaper endeavoured to sabotage the efforts of an Irish Government on behalf of the Irish nation over in London when we were trying to do our best for all sections of the Irish people. I will have an opportunity, I hope, before this Parliamentary session is over, to expose some of the lies for which somebody called "a Dáil Reporter" is responsible.
The point I want to make is this, that when Deputy Lemass asks us to get out, he is doing something which he wants from the point of view of his failing political Party and he is not expressing the views of the Irish people. We have, for the first time in the history of this State, a Government formed in the way in which many people thought it should have been formed from the inception of this State. We have here a Government, for the first time in history, representative of all sections of organised labour. We have, for the first time in the history of this State, the working men and the working women given a chance, through their representatives, of taking part in the councils of the nation. We have here, for the first time after many anxious years, representatives of the Republican Party, and it is a great joy and a great pleasure to me to be the head of a Government in which that Party is represented by my friend and colleague Deputy Seán MacBride. We have the farmers represented, all sections of the farmers, and we have the much maligned representatives of Fine Gael.
The Government is a cross-section of the Irish people. That is the Government that the leader of the Opposition said could not be formed and, if formed, could not last for six months. The six months are nearly up. I have not so far prophesied anything, either as to the duration or the stability of this Government, although I have my own strong opinions on that; but I do venture to prophesy that this Government will last more than the six months that the people opposite said it would last. I also want to assert this, that it is an intellectual joy to me to preside over a Cabinet in which there are such people as Deputy Seán MacBride, Deputy Everett, Deputy Norton, Deputy Blowick, Deputy Dr. Browne and my own colleagues with whom I have worked for over a quarter of a century.
That is a Cabinet that is going to produce results for the Irish people. That is a Cabinet with a policy. I say here, realising that I must speak with restraint and a sense of responsibility, that, for the first time since 1922, this Cabinet will, by its policy and its actions, give some hope of bringing back to this country the six north-eastern counties of Ulster. I must speak on that subject, as I say, with restraint and responsibility, but I do make that assertion with all the confidence that I have in me. Anything that might be said over and above that might possibly damage the advances that have been made and I will, therefore, ask my friend, Deputy Con Lehane, to bear with me for that reason and for that reason alone if I do not answer one of the questions that he has put to me, with reference to making it clear that so long as the six north-eastern counties are occupied by British troops, we will not take part in any war.
Deputy Con Lehane, I think, knows my views on that. I can say this much without, I think, impairing the national interest, that if, as Deputy de Valera says, there is an impending war, the interests of this country,—the interests of the six north-eastern counties in particular—the interests of Great Britain, the interests of the United States of America, the interests of Western Europe and the interests and maintenance of Christian principles, require and demand that there should be a united Ireland to face the menacing situation which may possibly develop in the next few years.
We have, as I have indicated, a consistent, clear policy enunciated on every branch of social, financial, agricultural and industrial questions. Deputy Lemass said yesterday on my Estimate that we have no consistent policy on anything. He spoke yesterday also on the Estimate for Industry and Commerce as if he were in the most complete agreement with the policy we have. How does he square that with decency or honesty in debate? How does he square that with the tone he adopted yesterday on my Estimate? How does he reconcile that with the conduct which ought to be extracted from every Deputy in this House, to conform to dignified, decent standards of debate?
When speaking of the proposal of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, or the Government if you like, to set up a committee to inquire into the necessity for a food subsidy, a subsidy on flour and bread, he sneered at one of the ablest men in this State, the Attorney-General, Mr. Cecil Lavery. There was a sneer on his face when he referred to the Attorney-General, as he said, being the chairman of this committee. The Attorney-General, Mr. Lavery, was deliberately put upon that committee for the purpose of commanding, as it will command, the confidence of the people in the justice and impartiality and the searching nature of the inquiry which, it is hoped, will be made into the food subsidy.
Deputy Lemass asked why did we not tell the people that we were going to withdraw the food subsidy. We did not tell the people that we were going to withdraw the food subsidy because we are not going to do it until we see that we can do it. What we are going to do, if and when we can, is to take away some of the £10,000,000 subsidy put there by the last Government if the position emerges that some of the people engaged in these industries, the flour and milling industries, are getting too much profit at the expense of the consumer. Then we will take it back, and that is what we want this committee for, to take that £10,000,000, all of it if we can, most of it if possible, some of it at all events, and still leave the people getting the same amount of bread at the same cheap price and utilising what we will save on that for the constructive proposals that this Government have in view.
That is our policy on that matter and that is the policy we are going to be judged on by the people. No sneers by Deputy Lemass, no truculence, of which he is such a past master, will get over that when the facts are elicited and when we come to be judged by the verdict of the people.
Deputy Lemass and Deputy Major de Valera spoke about war. Deputy Lemass asked was there any effort being made to minimise the dangers of the international situation, as and when they develop. Deputy Con Lehane gave complete expression to my view this morning when he appealed to us in the Dáil and to public men generally not to foster or create a war phobia or a war psychosis, not to aggravate the natural fears of the people.
So far as we are concerned we are going to plan on a hypothesis of peace. We intend to keep, and are keeping, a very wary eye on the war clouds that are hanging over Europe and most of the world, but we are not going to stultify our efforts or to atrophy our energies by doing what the people opposite want us to do, to dissipate our resources and energies in thinking about war, to add as Deputy de Valera, Junior, would have us, a match to the collection of turf mould up in the Phoenix Park collected by the last Government. We believe that we must plan for peace, otherwise our energies will be atrophied and our results stultified, but we are doing everything possible to see that every resource in the world is tapped so that for peace, as well as for war, we shall have adequate supplies.
We have not, as Deputy Lemass hinted or sneered at, taken the ration off bread even though the British have done so. The British took the ration off bread, not because they were in any better supply position than we, but because the taking of the ration off bread in England would not result in any appreciable increase in demand. We have sufficient supplies here which would enable us to take the ration off bread were it not for certain other factors, unconnected with the supply of flour or bread.
No doubt Deputy Lemass is fully aware of these factors. No doubt he is aware of the practice that would obtain if bread were taken off the ration, that flour, instead of being used for human consumption, would be used for feeding greyhounds and other animals that might be more useful than greyhounds are. That situation is being carefully watched by the Minister for Industry and Commerce and when the position is clarified the ration will be taken off. Deputy Lemass said nothing about the rationing in England of other essential foodstuffs, but he seems to think that, because we did not take the ration off bread, we were doing something that was reprehensible.
Deputy Lemass took a flight into financial and economic spheres. He and others have charged us with niggardly economies and an austerity régime. We have made it clear, or it should be clear to any person who will care to listen, that our economies are made for two purposes. They are made, not merely for the sake of indulging in pettifogging, parsimonious frugalities, not for the purpose of indulging in economy for economy's sake, but in order to rescue this country from the hopeless position into which it was drifting as a result of the hopeless spendthrift policy of the last Government,—a matter that will form the subject of interesting reading in the course of a few months when we shall have an opportunity of presenting to the people the full history of the grandiose plans for building and other schemes prepared by the people opposite in a time of stringency and financial stress. We effected economies for the purpose also of bringing down the cost of living, and to curb inflation. I hope that Deputy Lemass has cleared his mind at last as to whether we are in an inflationary period, a disinflationary period or a deflationary period though in his assumption of economic knowledge, he appears to have ignored the real issues involved in these matters.
The policy of this Government was two-fold. We set ourselves a short-term task, the task of curbing the cost of living and of dealing with inflation. We set ourselves the long-term task of increasing the wealth of the State by increasing production and assisting the productivity of our agriculture and manufacturing industries. For our short-term policy to deal with inflation and the cost of living, we took the line—and we took it confidently and we were right—that excessive Government expenditure such as was indulged in by the last Government was one of the contributory factors in inflation and keeping inflationary pressure going. We should like to have all these grand schemes at our disposal for the benefit of the country if we had the money and the circumstances were different. We should like to erect a new Parliament House, somewhere perhaps in the Phoenix Park or some place else. We should like to have a broadcasting house, though not at the price which it is proposed to pay for it at the other side. We should like to have a short-wave broadcasting station and a transatlantic air service plying between this country and America, but first things come first.
I assert again that one of the great contributory factors in keeping up the cost of living and in maintaining inflationary pressure is excessive Government expenditure and overtaxation. We brought down taxation. We decreased Government expenditure to the minimum. In order to stop inflationary pressure, we postponed every bit of expenditure on buildings of a certain type and other Government services that we could. We asked the people to save for the same reason. We asked for their co-operation by not buying goods at the present high prices, in order to curb inflation, to arrest the rise in the cost of living, and to check that which Deputy Lemass so sneeringly referred to yesterday when he was talking of workers—a third round for increased wages. We could not avoid that inflationary spiral if Deputy Lemass's policy were to be pursued.
Deputy Lemass referred in his speech yesterday to the mid-Victorian economic principles which were being implemented by the banks and which, he said, were expressed here as Government policy by the Minister for Finance. Deputy Lemass referred to the late Lord Keynes as having revolutionised economic thought by his writings. Deputy Lemass should have checked and verified his statement before he made it. Lord Keynes, when he was writing of the matters referred to by Deputy Lemass, was dealing with a time when what he called "a spendthrift economy" was the proper kind of policy according to his economic theories, a time of depression, a time when Government expenditure was essential to encourage production and create employment. That was what he called "spendthrift economy". He was referring to the conditions which existed in 1932 when he wrote his book on the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.
Deputy Lemass forgot that Lord Keynes one of the greatest of economists, knew that his economic theories had to be adjusted and, if necessary, altered to fit new facts, altered and fitted to new situations. Deputy Lemass told the House, whether deliberately or through ignorance, that the policy which Lord Keynes advocated for a time of depression and deflation in 1932 was the policy that we were saying was the proper policy in present circumstances. Lord Keynes in 1940 adjusted his theories to the facts as they then existed in consequence of the war and he produced that new programme to deal with the new situation which he referred to in his book on How to Pay for the War as a policy of “deferred savings”.
There is the contrast to the mid-Victorian policy which Deputy Lemass told the House, either through ignorance or with deliberate intention to mislead, is the policy of our Minister for Finance. The Minister's policy is not the policy that Lord Keynes stated was the policy for times of depression when it was necessary for a Government to spend money in order to increase employment. Lord Keynes changed that when the times of inflationary pressure and inflation came. These, he said, were times for saving —for a policy of deferred savings and a policy of deferred spending.
That is our policy. That policy seemed perhaps a bit extreme when first enunciated. It was a policy which was referred to by one Labour Cabinet Minister at the time, as a policy which impelled him to say that "he would have no mucking about with the pennies of the poor", but that policy was put into operation subsequently during the war and during the so-called peace—a policy of deferred saving and deferred spending in Great Britain by the British Government. That is our policy, a policy of deferred spending by the Government on everything but essentials until times improve and inflationary conditions cease to obtain. I suggest that Deputy Lemass should rid his mind of the confusion that obviously exists there and learn that what our policy is, is not a policy of deflation but a policy of disinflation. The Deputy asked a rhetorical question yesterday to the effect: "How can you reconcile a policy of monetary deflation linked with a programme of full employment?" Deputy Lemass is confused in his ideas. He does not apparently know the difference between disinflation and deflation. The policy of the Minister for Finance, and the policy of the Government, is a policy of disinflation, and that policy of disinflation is the policy that exists in England under the guidance of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps.
Everybody knows the very drastic steps that were taken last year in Great Britain to control inflation. Capital expenditure was cut by the British Budget on a vast scale last year, and it is admitted by many that the British Chancellor has succeeded, to a very large extent, in checking inflation as a result of the measures taken. What has been the result? It is that employment has not been affected as a result of the policy of disinflation carried out in England, a policy which we are endeavouring to carry out and the policy which Deputy Lemass said that it of necessity results in increased unemployment. Here is a quotation from The Economist in its issue of July 17th. Dealing with disinflation and its results, it says:—
"There could be no clearer demonstration of this than the quite astonishing figures of unemployment for June. On June 14th the total number of persons registered as unemployed was no more than 274,000 —actually 16,000 less than the number shown by the returns for May."
There is the answer to Deputy Lemass and to his rhetorical question yesterday.
