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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 15 Dec 1948

Vol. 113 No. 12

In Committee on Finance. - Adjournment for Christmas Recess.

I move that the Dáil at its rising to-day do adjourn until Wednesday, 16th February, 1949.

In accordance with the usual practice, notice has been given to the Ceann Comhairle and, I understand, to the Government Whips that Deputies on this side of the House——

Does the Deputy wish to have a motion to sit late or shall we let it go?

No. It is proposed to continue to-morrow. I was saying that notice had been given of the desire of Deputies on this side of the House to discuss on the motion for the adjournment of the Dáil for the Christmas recess certain matters of considerable importance and urgency. The principal of these matters, one which is giving Deputies here considerable concern—and which, we assume, is giving concern to the Government also—is the serious position which has persisted throughout the whole year in regard to unemployment and the still more threatening position which appears likely to develop in the coming year. It is our view that before the Dáil should adjourn for a period of two months, as is proposed, Deputies should endeavour to secure from the Government some classification of its attitude and its intentions with regard to this urgent and critical problem of unemployment. In fact, we propose to press upon the Dáil that if the Government do not see fit to make a statement of that kind—a statement which the House could accept as satisfactory— that it should refuse to adjourn. I am sorry that there appears at the present time to be no Labour Deputy in the House. I hope that they will see fit to attend and participate in this debate.

You could not have expected that they would have thought you would be talking about unemployment.

I understand notice was given to the Government Whips. I do not know what the working arrangement of the Coalition is, but I assume that notice to the Government Whips would reach all sections of the Govern ment Parties.

The position is very satisfactory.

I am glad. Then, presumably, the Labour Deputies did not know that unemployment would be discussed.

The Labour Deputies are quite capable of doing their business without any assistance from Deputy Lemass.

I am going to exercise my inalienable right to help them if I can. I do not want to start this debate on controversial lines. There is a problem that must be of concern to everybody. In relation to that problem the Government have got obvious responsibilities. It is by no means clear from the public statements made by Ministers what the Government proposes to do in order to discharge its responsibilities. I am hoping that the Government's intentions will be made clear before the House adjourns. If the Labour Deputies are sincere, as they profess to be, in their concern for the unemployed I propose to them that they should agree with us in refusing to adjourn the Dáil unless we get from the Government a clear statement of the manner in which they propose to discharge their responsibilities in this particular matter.

I know that many Deputies in the House are fully aware of the growing public anxiety about the position in regard to unemployment. I would like to urge upon the Government that they should not underestimate in the least the depth of public anxiety in this connection. Not merely is it growing, but it is becoming vocal, as is evident from discussions which have taken place at meetings of public authorities and organisations which have a special concern with the consequences of unemployment. That anxiety to which I have referred, that vocal and growing concern, is by no means confined to those who have the misfortune to be out of work or that other undefined number of people who are coming to feel that events are developing in a manner which will jeopardise their present livelihoods in the course of the coming year. That anxiety is felt by everybody who is interested in trade. It is true that in the pre-Christmas season there is no evidence of any trade depression at the moment; but persons engaged in commerce have spoken freely to me, and I know they have spoken to other Deputies, about the evidence of a lessening in the public demand for goods and the indications that in the near future something in the nature of a business slump may develop. That anxiety is also, of course, felt and felt acutely by people who are interested in the country's economic development.

There is one aspect of this problem that I want to bring particularly to the notice of the Government. Whether it is justified or not, a substantial part of that public anxiety to which I have referred arises from the belief that there are some members of the Government who are not as perturbed about the incidence of growth of unemployment as they might be; that they at least see in it the compensating factor that it does tend to discourage the upward movement of wage rates and, particularly, to dishearten efforts to reduce the output of workers in industry by proposals for the reduction of working hours, or other changes of that kind. That belief—the belief that some Ministers see as the silver lining to this dark cloud of unemployment and the possibility of these consequences ensuing—has been created by the interpretation put by members of the public upon some Ministerial statements. Possibly it is a misinterpretation.

If there is however no foundation for that interpretation, if the misunderstanding which has arisen from these statements can be removed, then it is obviously desirable that it should be removed during the course of this debate. May I say that public anxiety is also enhanced by the fact that other members of the Government and members of this House who support the Government, and I refer particularly to members of the Labour Party, have not shown in this matter the concern which might have been expected of them. It might be an exaggeration to describe their attitude as one of indifference but it does appear that anxiety not to embarrass the Government is at least weighing as heavily with them as any concern they may have about the persistence and growth of unemployment.

I feel certain that if the Labour Party were in opposition to a Government with a majority they would have been very vocal during the course of this session on this subject of unemployment and that their silence on it is to be attributed not to any lack of sincerity or to any lack of concern but to the purely political desire of avoiding creating complications for the Government. Every Deputy knows that this problem is there. I may anticipate the argument that it was there also last year. It was. But the indications are that unemployment is tending to increase. The official figures published during the course of the year seem to establish that fact. The belief is that unemployment is going to become much more severe next year by reason of causes which can be indicated now. It is probably true to say that the increase shown in the official figures was due this year more to developments in rural areas than to developments in urban areas. The changes which took place in rural areas this year, and particularly the abandonment of the hand-won turf scheme, undoubtedly accentuated rural unemployment.

Will the Deputy quote the latest figures of unemployment with the figures for the corresponding period last year.

The figures are published weekly. The figure for each week this year has varied from 1,000 to 10,000 above the corresponding figures of last year.

That is not so.

I can produce these figures from the Trade Journal but the Minister has them available to him.

I can quote the Deputy's own paper against him.

If I make any statement that is wrong the Minister can have the satisfaction of correcting me when he is answering.

I shall have to make a very long speech.

If it is a satisfactory speech nobody will object to the length of it. I say, however, that the indications are that next year the unemployment which developed in rural areas this year is likely to be reproduced in urban areas. I propose to give here the reasons I think that is likely to be so. May I say in advance that I propose to state also my views as to what the Government can do in order to arrest any such development. I am by no means anxious to appear merely as a destructive critic. I think I know what I would do if I had personal responsibility in the matter. I am sure I know what a Fianna Fáil Government would do in this matter. There are not such wide divergencies of policies between Parties that it is not possible for the Government to take advice from this side of the House and to act upon it.

I should like to say, however, as a preliminary that during the period of the war when various plans for economic development and particularly industrial development were impeded by the conditions created by the war, we all looked forward to the years when the war was over and when the difficulties affecting industry due to shortages of supplies of fuels and materials would be ended. We confidently hoped and expected that in that post-war period we would not merely resume our industrial progress but that we would resume it so effectively that we would make good a lot of the lost time of the war years. It was to this year we were looking. It is in this year that the more serious of the war-time shortages ended and that we could have expected to have begun that post-war industrial expansion to which, right through the whole of that war period, we looked forward.

It is unfortunate that we have to record that '48 instead of being a year of expansion and progress has been a year of stagnation, if not of retrogression. Certainly so far as unemployment statistics reveal the whole picture of employment, movement has been in the wrong direction. It is not merely however that we failed in this year to avail of the opportunities which this year gave but there appears at the present time no prospect that we are going to use these opportunities next year either.

The circumstances of this year were abnormal. A new Government of rather unusual composition came into office. Admittedly it had for a time to become accustomed to the machinery of administration and, so far as the members of it were concerned, accustomed to working with one another. I admit that they could not have been expected to have directed economic expansion or the industrial drive with the same precision and the same effectiveness as another Government might but at the end of this year they should have run in the bearings of their administrative machine. They should have become accustomed to working together sufficiently to enable them to give the House, now before we adjourn for Christmas, an indication that some more effective work, some more definite policy will be evident in 1949. I do not believe, and, refuse to accept the experience of this year as demonstrating, that the hopes we held during the war years of post-war industrial expansion and industrial recovery were unjustified.

I think that given different political conditions we could have used this year to make good in a large measure the losses of the war-time period. I still think that we could, despite unexpected and unforeseen difficulties in the international position, make in the immediate future the progress which in the past five years we thought would be possible now. It is going to require, however, a far more definite effort on behalf of the Government— and I am thinking of the combined efforts of all Ministers and not spasmodic efforts of individuals—than we have any indication of to-day.

I do not think that the Minister for Industry and Commerce or his Parliamentary Secretary will deny that in the industrial sphere there has been no significant development this year. I do not deny that many industrial projects that were initiated in the past, some perhaps considered for the first time before the war, came to maturity within the past twelve months but nothing of any significant size was started. In fact it is true to say that very few new industrial enterprises were even mooted.

The Deputy's information bureau must be slipping. It is not as accurate as it used to be in the beginning.

I do not pretend that I have any information whatever as to what is going on in the Department of Industry and Commerce. However, a large number of people interested in industry and the development of it come to me for advice. They come to tell me about their plans and what is happening to their plans. I suppose that is inevitable because of my long period of office as Minister for Industry and Commerce. As an individual, I have obviously no means of carrying out any investigations, or even checking the accuracy of the reports they make to me. I am going on the basis of what is public knowledge as revealed in the columns of the newspapers as to what has happened in industrial affairs during the past nine or ten months. Let me say at once that whatever has happened has not been due to any wrong policy pronounced by the Minister for Industry and Commerce or his Parliamentary Secretary or the Taoiseach. I think that all three Ministers whom I have named realised when they came to office that, because of past political controversies about free trade and protection, past opposition, if I might say so, to the industrial policy of Fianna Fáil, their position and general attitude in relation to industry might be misunderstood by the public and by those concerned directly and personally in industrial matters.

Very early in the life of the Government, if not in fact in the very first speech made by the Taoiseach after being nominated by the Dáil, it was asserted that the Government were concerned to convince the people that there was going to be no change in industrial policy. They knew that such an assertion was required and, knowing that, they made it. I think it was an effort on their part genuinely intended to remove any anxiety or fear that their attitude to industrial development would be one of discouragement, or even that they might carry into the administration of the Government any feeling of hostility or prejudice to industries which had been initiated during the Fianna Fáil régime and the establishment of which might have redounded to the credit of Fianna Fáil.

I admit at once that they set out to remove any such anxieties and fears and to create the idea amongst the public that, so far as industrial policy is concerned, they were going to take over the industrial policy of Fianna Fáil and carry it on. It was good that they did that. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the mere assertion of that attitude was insufficient to inspire confidence in the public, and that lack of confidence was apparently justified when these assertions made from time to time by the Taoiseach and the Minister for Industry and Commerce did not appear to be followed up by the necessary administrative action.

I have always held the view—I argued it as an opposition Deputy 20 years ago, I endeavoured to apply it as Minister for Industry and Commerce, and I will argue it now—that in the special circumstances of this country industrial development is possible only with Government stimulus and help. We may have the idea that it is better to develop our national economy through private enterprise. I certainly have argued in the past that, in our circumstances, private enterprise was likely to be much more efficient and much speedier in producing results than any system of State-directed or State-controlled industrial development. There are very special circumstances existing here, circumstances which have their origin in our history, which are directly attributable to the close economic conditions which existed in the past between this country and Great Britain, why it is necessary for the Government here to do more than was required from other Governments if the industrial drive is to be speeded up.

The whole trading organisation of this country, if I may so describe it, was built up to distribute British goods, and to turn it round to handle the products of Irish industry was a difficult task. Inevitably, it will slip back into its old method of working if the Government relax their viligance for a moment. That is why it is necessary now, and always will be necessary so long as this generation lasts, for the Government to take in relation to industrial development a positive attitude. It is not good enough to stand back and say: "We will not interfere", or merely to say: "We will give help, if the case for help is demonstrated to us." They must exercise the function of leadership or else they will get no results at all.

I have, therefore, to criticise the Government because all these speeches made by Ministers are themselves of no use and have in fact produced no results, because they have not been, in my opinion, supported by evidence of administrative goodwill and administrative activity which was likely to convince those whom we may expect to supply the private enterprise and individual initiative in getting industry going. It is a common complaint in business circles, whether justified or not, that it is difficult to get decisions out of the Department of Industry and Commerce. I know that even in my time, although the commonest accusation made against me was that I made decisions hastily, some people voiced that counter criticism as well.

I would ask the Deputy if he will be good enough to send me particulars.

I do not propose to refer here to any private information I have. I refer the Minister to statements made and published in the Press at various company meetings during the past month.

I should be very glad to get them.

I admit that company chairmen, when making formal statements to annual meetings of shareholders, couch their observations in very vague terms. I read, however, into the speech of the chairman of the Athlone Textile Company where he pressed for the Government to indicate one way or the other their attitude towards the development of the textile industry——

That is absolutely untrue.

The chairman said that.

I do not care who said it. I say it is entirely groundless.

The Minister can say that when replying to me. I refer also to the statement of the chairman of Seafield Fabrics, who described the difficulties of his concern and referred to the length of time over which he said negotiations were proceeding with the Department in regard to protection for that undertaking.

Is that the gentleman who sent the famous telegram that he never sought a tariff in his life?

I will not be drawn into side issues. I shall mention no more cases if they are to be met by that type of argument. I say that, arising out of these public statements and the general belief in business circles that there is difficulty in getting, at any rate upon matters of importance, clear and expeditious decisions from the Department of Industry and Commerce——

Is not the chairman of the Athlone Textile Company a prominent member of Fianna Fáil?

I do not think so.

In fact, I think that if the Deputy made that statement outside, the persons concerned would think it was libellous. Let me get back to the basis on which I started. I believe —perhaps some of my colleagues will not completely share this belief—that the Minister for Industry and Commerce desires to be helpful. I have certainly decided to take these public statements concerning his anxiety to help forward sound industrial undertakings at their face value. I think his difficulty is that all his Cabinet colleagues do not share his viewpoint. He was at one time, no doubt, an advocate of the more or less free trade policy of Fine Gael; but if the Minister says he was not, I shall accept his word. I am taking his statements at their face value. I am assuming that the difficulties business people are experiencing in getting decisions from him are due to the fact that he is finding difficulty in getting the assent of some of his colleagues to the proposals he is putting to them. May I say that the name of the Minister for Finance is frequently mentioned in that connection? It may be an injustice to the Minister for Finance but, if it is, it is one the Minister for Finance can remedy by his own effort.

The Minister for Finance, when he was formerly Minister for Industry and Commerce, was the first to introduce protection.

I would not say that is an argument against my point of view —what the present Minister for Finance did when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce. Let me stick to known published facts. The Minister for Agriculture did publicly propose, in a statement made at Washington, the establishment of what he called a customs union between Britain, Ireland and America, and he explained that as meaning an arrangement under which there would be unrestricted movement of goods and persons between these three countries over a period of ten years. I questioned the Taoiseach on that matter and the Taoiseach informed me and the Dáil that the Minister for Agriculture was expressing a personal viewpoint and not Government policy. I accepted that, but I urge the Minister for Industry and Commerce not to underestimate in the least the effect, upon the minds of persons who are thinking of engaging in industrial activity or expanding present industrial activities, of that statement by the Minister for Agriculture. He is a Minister, and whatever the present practice may be as regards collective responsibility, it is assumed that in making that proposal in Washington, if he was not indicating Government policy he was speaking the mind of the Government.

There is, at any rate, following from it, a reinforcement of the conviction which exists in many business circles, that underlying the pronouncements of the Minister for Industry and Commerce and similar pronouncements of the Taoiseach, there is a free trade opposition in the Government which is by its refusal to co-operate making these pronouncements meaningless.

Not all new industries need protection. I think that is true in present circumstances. It may not have been true before the war; in that period immediately before the war there was a trade slump in the world and many countries were endeavouring to export their unemployment by subsidising industrial exports and there was flowing into this country a stream of cheap goods, often highly subsidised and often carried free of charge in State subsidised ships. The effect of that abnormal international situation was to establish a false standard of values by which the efficiency of Irish industries was frequently judged and condemned.

The post-war situation has changed all that. There is now no real evidence of subsidised trading or even of a desire to maintain a market here against a possible trade slump in the future. There is a possibility of an international agreement which will eliminate unfair trading methods. So far as many new industries are concerned, the establishment of which here was proposed to me when I was Minister for Industry and Commerce, it was conceded that there was no present need for protection. But every industry will need not merely an assurance from the Government, but a conviction in the minds of its shareholders and directors that protection will be given if the occasion arises. It is the uncertainty as to the attitude of the Government, that feeling that, even though an industry can be established here now and maintained for a period in competition with the world, at some future stage an attack will be made upon it, some competing firm will dump goods to undersell, or some special advantages in another country will jeopardise its continuance and that it will need at that time protection and cannot be sure that it will get it, that will prevent an enterprise starting now because those who invest their savings in industrial development of that kind are planning to get a return upon their capital not in the immediate future, but over a considerable period of years.

The Minister for Agriculture may not have understood exactly the consequences that the announcement of his free trade plan may have upon the work of the Minister for Industry and Commerce and its immediate reaction upon the plans of many people who are contemplating entering into industrial activities or expanding existing activities, and how urgent it is that that reaction should be countered by some more authoritative and formal pronouncement of the policy of the Government as a whole.

We want more than a pronouncement, however, because, in view of developments during the course of the year, the previous pronouncements of the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Taoiseach, the apparent lack of relationship between these pronouncements and the administrative acts of the Department and the later statements of the Minister for Agriculture, no public reliance will be placed upon mere verbal assurances now. Public confidence in the intention and capacity of the Government to assist industrial development will not be restored unless verbal assurances are supported by evidence of action taken when required.

I am sure it is not necessary to tell the Minister for Industry and Commerce that the desirability of giving evidence of his capacity and intention to help industries in difficulty exists at the present time. There was published only in this morning's papers an announcement concerning the Swiftbrook Paper Mills. That is merely an indication. Similar things are happening in branches of the textile industry, the farm machinery industry and certain other industries of which the Minister probably knows more than I do, where assistance from the Government is required now if these industries are to be kept in production and if the workers are to be kept from emigrating.

So much for the position as regards industry. I said the unemployment that developed this year was, in the main, rural unemployment. It was, perhaps, inevitable that the ending of the emergency fuel position would have necessitated some revision of plans for turf production. I think that the Government might have been more concerned to have eased the shock in the areas where large numbers of men were employed in the production of hand-won turf and where over a number of years the prosperity of the areas concerned depended upon the existence of that industry.

Will the Deputy tell me what I would have done with the turf?

I know what is in the Minister's mind. I heard the Minister for Finance a few moments ago jibing at Deputies here when mention was made of the turf dumps.

I am not making any jibe about it.

I just want to say in that connection that the fuel scarcity developed in 1941 and ended in 1948. We tried to minimise the effect of that scarcity by a variety of devices. I certainly never contemplated that I could build up reserve stocks of turf and timber fuel and so taper them off that on the date when coal rationing was ended, nothing would be left in the dumps. Perhaps a genius, a wizard or a prophet could have done it. I do not purport to be anything of the kind. If I am going to be criticised now because there are stocks of timber fuel in the Park, I have sitting opposite me here as Ministers, two men, who, in this Dáil in 1947, urged on me—I want to confess that their urging had an effect on me— that in addition to the efforts which I was making to accumulate stocks of turf fuel against last winter, I should also accumulate stocks of timber. These Deputies are the present Minister for Industry and Commerce and the present Minister for Lands, and what they said is on record. It might have been that all these stocks' would be required last winter.

I have already told the Dáil that when I saw the British Minister for Fuel in 1947, despite all the pressure I could put on him, the earliest possible date he would fix for expansion of coal supplies was the 1st of April, 1948. In fact, coal came in here in December, 1947, when the stocks in the dumps had reached considerable proportions. Let us note that and pass away from it. It was an insurance premium we paid against the possibility of a repetition in 1947 of the experiences of the winter of 1946 and the financial cost is the least part of it.

However I want to assert that the Government cannot just treat the unemployment which developed in the rural areas by reason of the curtailment of hand-won turf production as a legacy of Fianna Fáil for which they have no responsibility. The people affected are human beings. They are men and women who were eating meals purchased out of their earnings on turf production. If they cannot be employed on turf production, if it is not Government policy to employ them on turf production, surely it ought to be the Government's policy to do something else to help them in their difficulties.

Every member of the House knows, whether the Government wants it or not, that there is developing now a movement back to grass. Perhaps I am not competent to discuss the Government's agricultural policy but in every part of the country, I am told, land is going back to grass. Where that happens, whether it is a good agricultural policy or good for the development of an export trade, it is going to mean more rural unemployment. Again, I say that the Government have a responsibility to the men and women who lose their livelihood as a result to do something that will provide alternative means of livelihood for them. If we get an accentuation of rural unemployment next year by reason of the diminution in turf production, by reason of the effect of the Government's agricultural policy, or the public understanding of what is Government policy, we can expect to face not merely depression in rural areas but depression creeping into areas but depression creeping into towns, the prosperity of which depends on flourishing rural conditions.

It is necessary to bear in mind also that the reduction in tillage, whether the Government wants a reduction or not, which is now taking place, is having a reaction on industrial activity. It is a fact that a substantial number of workers formerly employed in the production of farm machinery are now out of work. It is inevitable that the diminution in the area under tillage will mean a diminution in the numbers employed on the production of farm machinery and also a diminution in the demand for other tillage requirements which are produced here or processed here, and which give employment in one form or another. All that hesitation concerning industrial expansion due to lack of confidence in the Government's future intentions, all that slowing up of industrial activity this year, the decline in rural employment due to the stoppage of the turf scheme, and the decline in the acreage under tillage, adds up to unemployment and unemployment means emigration. I assume that every Deputy in this House is as concerned as I am to check emigration and will agree with me that whatever other causes may occasionally operate, the primary factor occasioning emigration is unemployment. If that is so, I forecast that unless something is done —and if it is to be done it must be planned soon—to provide employment in rural areas next year, we are going to have unprecedented emigration from many parts of the country. Only the Government can take measures that will stop that development and I am urging on the Government that they should inform the House what they are going to do. If they cannot tell the House now, then I think the House ought to remain in session until we extract that information from them.

Deputies opposite may argue that Fianna Fáil, despite its industrial drive, despite its encouragement of tillage, despite the number of people put into employment during its term of office, did not end unemployment. I concede that. It is quite true that, although in 1947 there were more people in employment than in any previous year in the history of this country for which there are statistics, there was still some unemployment. I concede that. I am not pleading in extenuation or justification for our inability to establish conditions of full employment, the difficulties of the economic war or of the world war, but one thing I say in justification of the whole policy of Fianna Fáil is that we agreed to make its effect on unemployment the test of their policy. From the very beginning we undertook to provide to the public and to the Dáil the fullest information concerning unemployment and to accept as a test of the effectiveness of our policy, the diminution of the number out of work. The Government which preceded us had discontinued the publication of weekly unemployment figures. We restored that and we did more than restore it. We urged by public advertisement that all the unemployed should register so that the register would be a real compilation of all the unemployed people in the country. Then we made a mistake. We decided that we would allocate unemployment relief grants upon the basis of the number of registered unemployed in particular areas. Some of the "bright boys" immediately realised that the more names they had on the register, the more money would come into the area and names went on the register in such a number as to make it an unreliable guide. That situation remedied itself in time.

Although I concede now to the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he questions the significance of the unemployment figures published this year, that the live register is not necessarily an accurate indication of the state of unemployment in the country. There are occasionally local factors which tend to inflate or deflate the number on the register without representing any real alteration in the unemployment situation. It is the only indication we have. Further than that, we initiated the publication of this official White Paper every year entitled "The Trend of Employment and Unemployment." A committee of officials was set up to examine all the available statistics relating to employment and unemployment and to analyse them and to publish the conclusions which they had reached. That White Paper has been published every year. I presume that the White Paper for 1947 is due for publication in the near future. I had hoped myself that it would have been found possible to have speeded up the publication of these reports. The report relating to 1947 is not very valuable when available at the end of 1948. I hope that it may be found practicable to make the report for 1948 available towards the middle of 1949. The publication of these figures, the setting up of that committee, and the periodic circulation of the White Paper on the trend of employment and unemployment were all designed to ensure that everybody would have the fullest information on the subject. I think that the Minister for Social Welfare, who has spoken on a few occasions in this connection, apparently with the intention of cloaking the position, is doing both the Government and the country a real disservice.

The Minister stated that there was an increase in the number of persons in insurable employment this year judging by the number of insurance stamps sold. I am not going to question the Minister's statement—I am assuming that it was correct. There could be different explanations for an increase in the number of stamps sold other than an increase in total employment —such as, for instance, transfer of turf workers from private employment to road work—but I shall not refer to these possible explanations. I say that if it is true that there has been an increase, on the scale which the Minister indicated, in the number of persons in employment insurable under the Unemployment Insurance Act and if, at the same time, there has been an increase in emigration and an increase in unemployment then a much more serious position is revealed. If all these three things have happened simultaneously there must have been an exodus from the non-insurable employment of agriculture of almost catastrophic dimensions. There can be no other possible explanation except that a number of people that we did not know about at all came into the country through a hole in the ground.

Surely the explanation must be the very explanation you gave me when you were quoting the same thing in exactly the same circumstances?

The only occasion I know of when that happened was in 1946—when there was an increase in the number of people in employment and unemployment at the same time— and that was due to the demobilisation of 40,000 soldiers in that year. It has happened again this year. Another 40,000 have come from somewhere and, so far as the statistical picture has revealed the explanation, the only place they can have come from was agricultural employment.

I do not know what the position is in regard to emigration. We are told that the number of exit permits given to people who are going abroad to obtain employment was substantially greater than last year. I was interested to hear the explanation advanced that not all of these travel permits were availed of. In the past, that explanation was rather discounted. We know the precise number of people who have emigrated to the United States. We know that this year the number was double that of last year. There may be the explanation that more ships were sailing this year than last year but whatever the explanation may be the fact of the matter is that the figure was double that of last year. With the evidence of the United States statistics, the evidence from travel permits and the common knowledge of Deputies, particularly those representing western counties, that emigration is proceeding upon a larger scale than ever; it is I think completely misleading for the Minister for Social Welfare to quote in a public speech the figures for the movement of passengers in and out of this country as on the 1st September this year. On that date there must have been 30,000 or 40,000 tourists in Ireland or visitors from abroad of one kind or another—mainly, no doubt, Irish workers in Great Britain coming home to see their relatives—and the inference to be drawn from these figures, affected by that inward movement of tourists from abroad which was then at its height, was that emigration was coming down. The Minister for Social Welfare cannot have misunderstood the significance of the figures.

For a member of the Commission on Emigration, which the Government set up to take these same figures and to write an article on the subject of emigration in the Sunday Independent to prove from these same figures that emigration was not a serious situation at all indicates a mentality I cannot understand. Surely it will be agreed that emigration this year is higher than it was last year. Last year every Deputy opposite urged upon the Government then in office, and upon the public, that emigration was one of the most serious, if not the most serious, of all our national problems. If that were so last year, and we do not deny it, it is doubly so this year and it is serving no purpose whatever to have Ministers or members of a Government commission quoting misleading figures in order to blind the public to the realities of the position. I think that these are wrong tactics. If the Government is anxious to carry into effect a policy which will reduce unemployment and end emigration they have got to get on their side, fully understanding the gravity and difficulty of the problems, not merely the members of the Dáil but also the members of trade unions, the members of employers' organisations and the public as a whole. It is only by letting it be known generally that there is here an emergency which justifies an emergency mentality and an emergency approach that we will be able to get acceptance in the House and in the country of measures adequate to deal with the situation.

What must these measures be? First of all, and I put it first because I think it is the most important, there must be a restoration of public confidence in the future economic development of the country. Every Deputy opposite has heard somebody talk about depressed conditions prevailing in industrial and agricultural circles— of the appearance of a dead hand over the country—and probably dismissed such talk as the propaganda of political opponents. They cannot be blind to the fact that there is a lack of confidence, perhaps due to uncertainty, perhaps due to lack of trust in the capacity of the Government, but a lack of confidence none the less in our future economic development. The confidence which the people one time had in the continuance of our industrial expansion, in the soundness of our economic plans, must be restored. It has been shaken—it may have been broken—but it must be restored. So long as the present political situation exists, only the Government can do that. It cannot be restored merely by a statement by the Minister for Industry and Commerce or merely by a statement by the Taoiseach. If there is to be a conviction carried to the public mind that the Government has a plan on which all members are agreed—in the fulfilment of which all members will co-operate—it must be stated to be a Government plan and an indication must be given that the various members of the Government— even the suspect members whom I have named—have accepted it and proposed to work for its fulfilment.

I admit that may be a matter of some difficulty for the Government but, until they have overcome that difficulty, they cannot hope to restore that confidence which is an essential condition of progress. Secondly, we must have it understood that full employment in the sense in which that term is ordinarily used is a primary aim of financial policy. I am not one of those who believe that the creation of full employment is solely or even primarily a financial matter. I think that whatever may be the circumstances in other countries, much more than the financial plans proposed by Sir William Beveridge, or Lord Keynes, or others, is required before we can have full employment here. If their theories are sound and if the Government is right in its belief that there are inflationary forces at work at the moment we should have full employment now. We know we have not. But even though it is not true, in the circumstances of this country, that full employment can be secured by financial arrangements alone, it is true that financial policy alone can stop it; and we must have it made clear that there is no financial aim worth having if it has to be secured at the cost of continuing in unemployment the 60,000 or 70,000 potential workers who are now upon the live register.

I do not care whether one has regard to the desirability of restoring the stability of money values—and I concede always the importance of that financial aim to the workers of the country, the workers who always lose, and lose most heavily in periods of monetary instability, or whether one has in mind the desirability of rehabilitating the value of our external assets —and I realise how much our future standard of living depends upon that. I say these things can be done otherwise; perhaps by a harder road and by harsher methods, but they can be done otherwise in a manner which will not necessitate any limitation in our efforts to expand employment now.

If industrial expansion is to proceed, and industrial expansion is essential to the ending of chronic unemployment in this country, there must be evidence that the Government is prepared to support it, evidence which will take the form of acts rather than words. The faith I have had—and it is a faith which was shared by my colleagues—is that, if we are to build up here a country with sufficient economic strength to preserve its freedom and protect the well-being of its people in all international circumstances, we must develop manufacturing industry. It is bad national policy to argue, much less to endeavour to get people to believe, that there is any inevitable conflict between a policy of industrial expansion and agricultural interests. That is not true.

The security of our agriculture and the prosperity of our industry are inter-linked and it is foolish to think that we can develop here a sound economy based entirely upon agriculture. We have not here all the conditions of other highly industrialised countries but we can get them in time. There is no reason why we cannot put into industry here all that other small countries in Europe have done—for instance, Holland, Belgium, Denmark and Switzerland. It only requires a concerted effort on behalf of all those who have responsibility for directing our national development and, in the course of time, the accumulation amongst our people of the knowledge of how to do it.

The Government must endeavour to prepare a definite programme for sustaining rural employment. I am not now going to discuss agricultural policy. It would not perhaps be relevant on this debate, and, in any event, we have had a rather long discussion on it during this session of the Dáil. But if we are to have a diminution in the unemployment now existing in the rural areas, if there is to be what is desirable and must be achieved at some time—an elimination of the seasonality of work in rural areas—we must endeavour to promote those forms of agriculture which mean employment for men on the land. We must do that by making these forms the most profitable for the farmer. That is going to take time.

Meanwhile we have this turf development issue. I was delighted to read in the Press that the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the Minister for Social Welfare and other members of the Government had visited the Turf Development Board's works at Clonsast. I take no exception whatever to anything they said when there. I hope they were impressed by what they saw. I believe they were. I do not think it is possible for any intelligent man to go there and see what the Turf Development Board is doing without being impressed. But what they are doing is only part of the programme that was planned for them and, realizing that they could complete that part of the programme earlier than was originally anticipated, a decision had been taken to expand the programme. That decision cannot be implemented without legislation. I would urge upon the Minister for Industry and Commerce that he should get ahead with that enlarged programme; that he should tell the Minister for Finance to go to the devil. This is a matter of men and women who want work, who are prepared to work and who can be given work in the production of wealth upon our bogs if they are organised and directed in accordance with the plans of the Turf Development Board.

I do not know what precisely is holding up the expansion of housing activities. I was rather astonished to hear the Minister for Local Government inform the Dáil that the number of houses completed in Dublin this year was slightly less than the number of houses completed last year. It is true that the number of additional houses started this year was somewhat larger than the number started last year but I cannot understand why there has not been a much greater expansion in housing activity. There is, so far as I know, no longer any real problem of scarcity of materials. No doubt some of the less important materials are still not in ample supply but, in the main, the difficulties about supplies of materials, which restricted housing activities during the war, have ended. Nevertheless, we have got all this machinery of control still in operation. It is still necessary to get your building licence and your authority from the Department of Industry and Commerce before you can start building.

Why is that necessary? If there is one limiting factor it must be scarcity of skilled workers. If that is that limiting factor what is the Government doing about it? Something must be done about it. It may be an awkward problem to face. It may be politically dangerous. But some day, sooner or later, some Government will have to face it and I for one refuse to believe that there are in charge of the building craft unions men who, for any selfish reason peculiar to their own members, will condemn tens of thousands of Irish families to live in slums for years longer than is necessary and for years after the full development and organisation of the building industry could have produced homes for them.

In any event that labour problem is by no means as acute in rural areas. We should have had evidence in the rural areas of that spread of housing activities over all the countryside which we saw in the years 1937 and 1938 when, after the guidance and inspiration of our present President, that great effort was made to wipe out the rural slums, an effort which admittedly left only a small part of the total task to be completed.

What about the contractors' prices?

If that is the problem, then tell us. I have no anxiety to create conditions under which contractors or anybody else can make undue profits. Let me say this, the evidence from all countries shows that the more houses that are built the higher the contractors' prices go up, and the fewer houses built the lower the prices fall. The present Minister for Education, Deputy General Mulcahy, when he was Minister for Local Government became obsessed with the idea of reducing the cost of houses built by local authorities. In order to get down the cost he decided to limit the number of contracts issued, and he reduced the cost of houses in an extraordinary fashion. Contractors began to slash their prices in order to get the available business, but few houses were built. As soon as the emphasis came on getting the houses built, of course, inevitably the element of competition became less and prices began to rise. That is an administrative problem which every Government will have to face. You can solve the problem of high prices by neglecting the job or you can go on with the job and tackle the problem of high prices otherwise. We look after these contractors' profits fairly well through taxation.

Six times the cost of pre-war, in some cases.

Deputy Davin and I will not disagree on that. If the Deputy has a practical plan by which we can get down the cost and at the same time get the house up I will be very glad to support it. The same applies to these various farm building and farm development schemes. It maybe that the Minister for Agriculture has 30,000 applications for farm development grants in his office. Well, during the war years when I was Minister for Supplies and we began to ration tea and sugar and other things we got not 30,000 but 300,000 applications for rations of one thing and another and we had to deal with them. We brought in staffs from the street. We employed the Hospitals' Trust Organisation in order to handle the problem. Let the Minister for Agriculture, instead of leaving these 30,000 applications lying in the cupboard, get in the additional staff to enable them to be tackled. The problem of unemployment is there in the rural areas and I hope he will not try to tackle it by humdrum administrative methods.

The 30,000 were in the cupboard when we came in.

And they were left there.

He withdrew that statement.

And you never made an effort to deal with them. Let me refer to one very urgent matter. I agree that any plan for the permanent easement of our unemployment problem, whether urban or rural, must necessarily be a long term one. We cannot, by the development of industry or the reorientation of agricultural production, solve unemployment in the towns or countryside overnight.

There is an immediate problem of men idle now, men who are this week out of work. There will be many thousands more out of work after Christmas. There always is a seasonal expansion in the number unemployed after the Christmas business is finished. Something has to be done about these. This year there were £1,225,000 voted for the financing of work schemes to provide periods of employment for those workers. The amount provided this year was the same as last year. Now, we were frequently told during the debates on the Estimates that they were our Estimates, that we had decided the amounts to be provided under the various heads. That is true and when we were deciding to provide a sum for employment schemes in 1948 equivalent to the amount provided in 1947 we did not foresee the special problem that would be caused in the turf production areas by the ending of the hand-won turf schemes. A large part of that sum has already been spent, I understand, on the operation of special employment schemes confined to former turf workers. Because of that, the amount available for winter work projects is less than ever although the problem is larger than ever. If that is so there is still time for this Dáil to pass a Supplementary Estimate providing £500,000 for the provision of work at some reasonable rate of wages to those who are unemployed. We can do it as rapidly as we passed £500,000 to increase the salaries of civil servants here to-day. I am not objecting to the civil servants getting what they are entitled to, but these people in the country who are unemployed and who are likely to continue to be unemployed have at least as strong a claim on public funds as the civil servants and as strong a claim on the sympathies of the Dáil.

There is the case in brief that the Government has to meet. It is possible to try to dispose of that case by wisecracks. It is possible to dispute the accuracy of some of the statements I have made but you will not convince the public that that is the answer to it. The unemployment problem is there. The Government has the responsibility for dealing with it and the Dáil is entitled to get from the Government a clear statement of what they are proposing to do. I am suggesting to the Dáil, to the Deputies of the Labour Party and the Clann na Poblachta Party and all those Deputies opposite who are concerned with this matter that they should agree with us to refuse to adjourn until we get that statement from the Government.

Deputy Lemass opened this debate by assuring the House that he was not going to deliver a destructive speech, that he would be constructive, that he did not want to be controversial and that he was not speaking from a Party political point of view. I want to say—and I have listened to Deputy Lemass in this House for over 20 years—that that speech is no credit to Deputy Lemass and it is no credit to the Party that sits behind him. I would like if the Deputy would listen to me for a moment. The Deputy dwelt at considerable length and became quite eloquent at times on his concern for the extension and development of industry in this country. He told us that there was a lack of confidence amongst industrialists, amongst traders generally and in commercial circles. He proceeded to tell us that it was essential if we were to make any advance in industry that that lack of confidence should be dispelled and that confidence should be built up in this country and that would-be promoters of industry should get the feeling that it was safe to invest their money and to give their time to build up an industry in this country. The man who gave expression to those sentiments has been for over an hour here doing his damnedest to tell the people that it is dangerous to invest money in this country, that it is dangerous to invest money in industry, doing his damnedest to break down the confidence that is there. The whole trend of the Deputy's speech, from beginning to end, was devoted to that purpose and, knowing Deputy Lemass as long as I know him and never having made the mistake of taking him for a fool, I can only come to the conclusion that the speech was deliberately made with that intent.

I invite Deputy Lemass to read the speech that he has just delivered here and to ask himself the question is that the sort of speech that would be made by a man who is concerned about the development of industry, about the development of agriculture and about the reduction of unemployment or the wiping out of unemployment in this country. Is that the sort of speech that would be delivered in this House by a man who was genuinely and gravely concerned about the matter.

Deputy Lemass knows as well as I do, perhaps even better, that since the change of Government there has not been one step backward so far as the encouragement of industry is concerned. There have been very material steps forward. When the Deputy talks about regression rather than advance or expansion, let me say that I had to take steps as Minister to undo the harm to Irish industry which the Deputy did by measures which he passed last year through this House, and I had to take measures to open factories that were closed down by Deputy Lemass's activities of last year. I had to take measures that put factories on full-time that were on half-time as a result of the Deputy's opening the flood-gates last year to let stuff in here and the Deputy knows that. The Deputy may have fooled some of his followers that his Party was the only Party concerned in building up industry in this country, but they are not.

The Deputy taunted me and the Government with the fact that no new venture or factories for which we could claim any credit have been opened already, while, at the same time, saying that any of the factories which have been opened since the change of Government were factories for which the initial steps were taken any time within the last five years. So that the factories which were initiated, or steps towards the opening of which were initiated five years ago under Fianna Fáil are now opening. But I am supposed to be able to get people interested, to get them started, to get the factories working and the men employed within ten months. I am very glad to be able to say that there are at least as many proposals for industry before the Department as there were during the Deputy's time. Let me go further and say that I honestly believe that most of them, and those certainly which are getting deep and detailed consideration, are sounder proposals than many of those which went before the Department during the Fianna Fáil Government's time.

I am not able to claim, I will not be able to claim, and I do not want to claim, as the Deputy claimed on more than one occasion, that I have opened in one year or five years 979 factories. I know the type of some of the factories which were included in the 979. I make the Deputy a present of this— that proposals for the opening of so-called industries were submitted to me and I turned them down. I am not concerned with opening factories to put exorbitant profits into the pockets of an individual or group of individuals. My test is: is the opening of the industry going to be to the benefit of the community.

I want to give all Parties in this House the assurance that any worthwhile, genuine proposal for the starting or development or expansion of an industry put before me or the Government will get the fullest possible consideration and if, in our opinion, it is a sound proposition it will get whatever measure of protection it needs and for as long as we feel it needs it. I want to make it clear, however, as I have stated outside—I think Deputy Lemass will subscribe to this if he has not already said it—that industries cannot expect that we are going to keep them in the nursery and on the feeding bottle in perpetuity.

Notwithstanding the speech which the Deputy has made here, I believe that he is concerned with the welfare of industry in this country. I have no hesitation in saying that the Deputy, during the time he was Minister, made a very big contribution to the building up of industries in this country. I am not going to suggest for a moment that the Deputy did not leave good industries behind him—he did—any more than I think he would claim himself that every industry to which he gave protection ultimately proved to have been worthy of the protection he gave it. I am not blaming the Deputy for that, because he could not know beforehand in every case. But I do say that he is not helping industry or helping the Government or helping to put more people into employment by making the type of speech he delivered this evening. I appeal to Deputy Lemass, either in his speeches here or in the articles, the very mischievous and damaging and untrue articles, which he is not only publishing, but writing in the Irish Press, to put an end to it.

I want to give this assurance to the House and, through the House, to the country, that there has been no undue or avoidable delay in dealing with any application for protection by way of tariff or quota which came before the Department since I became Minister. On the other hand, I am bound to say that, in the interests of the community, of the purchasing public and of the consumers, those proposals must be closely examined and, not only in the interests of the community as a whole or the purchasing public, but in the interests of Irish nationals, who will be asked to put their capital into these factories. The Deputy knows that in very many cases the initial steps are taken by non-nationals. I feel I have this duty to those people who are approached by non-nationals to form a company and comply with the Control of Manufactures Act, that before they put their capital into it, to sift the proposal and make the closest and the most minute inquiries as to the standing, status and antecedents of the people who propose to start here. For that I make no apology.

The Deputy may rest easy and have a perfectly easy mind so far as this Government is concerned, that industry will get more than a fair break and the policy of this Government will be weighted heavily in favour of the development of Irish industry, but we are not going to prop up inefficiency. We will have regard to the fact that they are in their infancy, and make full allowance for that, but we will not ignore the question of quality and price. So far as protection is concerned, so far as finance is concerned, there will be at least as much while this Government remains in office as there was before it came into office— probably more and probably it will be better and more intelligently directed. I do not want to go any further than that.

The Deputy really touched me with the sob in his voice when he came to deal with the unemployed and their rights and the fact that he was reminding us that they were men and women, flesh and blood, that they were entitled to a living in their own land and to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. The Deputy was sobbing over the miserable hovels that we have. Does the Deputy realise that his whole speech was the greatest condemnation of his 16 years in office that has ever been uttered inside or outside this House? If we have, immediately following on the heels of 16 years of a oneParty Government and, according to the Deputy, a one-minded Government —if the result of that 16 years is that we have, according to the Deputy, emigration on an unprecedented scale, that we have greater unemployment than we ever had before, that there is a flight from the land, what conclusions can we draw?

Then the Deputy got eloquent about rural unemployment and the effect of it and I began to wonder did the Deputy think of throwing his mind back and asking himself how many people were driven out of rural Ireland and off the land of Ireland during the 16 years his Party was in office. I am not confining my remarks in this regard to the war period, or the period since the war. The Deputy, of course, wants to hang all that on what he calls this Government's abandonment of the hand-won turf scheme. I wish we could get this matter dealt with once and for all. The Deputy himself, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, took the first step in putting an end to the hand-won turf scheme when he decided to discontinue hand-won turf in the camps in County Kildare. He was informed by the officials of his Department on 12th February that if they continued to produce hand-won turf as formerly produced by the county council, there would be no room for it in the dumps, that they could not find a place for it, and if it was produced it would have to be built along the sides of the public roads.

Why did he not take a decision to continue the production of county council turf? The Deputy did not do so. He was asked for a decision, but he refused to give it; he refused to say that the production of county council turf should proceed. The Deputy, mindful of the fact that within six days of that date there might me a change of Government, deferred a decision until after the fateful day. With the respect that I have for Deputy Lemass's intelligence, whatever about his political sagacity, I am as sure as I am standing here that if Deputy Lemass was straight and speaking truthfully, he would admit that if he were returned as Minister, at the next conference held after 12th February he would have taken a decision to discontinue the production of hand-won turf. He could have taken no other decision.

The Deputy tried to give the impression, when he talked about the scarcity of fuel from 1939 onwards that the immense stocks of fuel we now have in the dumps was built up over a period of six or seven years. That is not so. It was built up over a period of eight or nine months. When this country was struck with the most bitter and severe winter and spring that it has been our lot to experience—the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947—there was nothing in the park or in any dump at that time.

There was as much as there is now.

There was not, and that statement is absolutely and completely untrue. Deputy Lemass talked about timber. As a result of the experience we had in the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947, I urged the Minister, as he then was, to go out not only on turf but on timber. I certainly did not urge him, and neither did anybody else, seeing we had 1,500,000 tons of coal from the British, 500,000 tons from Africa and five to ten years' supply of firewood, to continue bringing in fuel at the rate of 10,000 tons a week as he was doing up to the date he left office.

What was the position as regards fuel on the 18th February? The Deputy on that date said that we had ten years supply at the then rate of consumption. Let us say we had five years' supply of firewood. I know something about firewood. I know it can deteriorate and shrink much more rapidly than turf, but let us assume we had five years' supply of firewood and three years' supply of turf, if we did not cut a single sod of turf in 1948.

Nonsense; we had not a ton per household per year.

We had three years' supply of it and we also had the coal. I do not want to make any capital out of that fact. It might have happened myself or anybody else in the Minister's position at the time. What I object to is the downright, dishonest campaign that was sought to be conducted all over the country and the feelings of the unemployed men played upon as to who was or was not responsible for stopping the hand-won turf scheme.

The dumps are there, and let me give this picture. There is a very valuable site at the North Wall, known as the refinery site. The Dublin Port and Docks Board are threatening to take this Government into court for possesion of it, because the oil companies want to build tanks for additional storage. I am asked to give them possession of that site and to shift the fuel to another site. Between coal and firewood there are 200,000 tons of fuel on that site alone. I have said I will not transfer it to another site. I cannot, because it would cost me more to transfer it than I could sell it for. We have over 1,000,000 tons of fuel between turf and timber, and, let me so put it, non-British coal.

Deputy Dr. Brennan has been making representations to me to get the park at Dun Laoghaire, which is being used as a dump, cleared. I cannot do it. There are large quantities of firewood there, and it would cost more to transfer it to another dump than I could sell it for. There are 330,000 tons of firewood— that is the quantity that was weighed in and paid for—but anybody who knows anything about firewood, and particularly anybody who adverts to the fact that in those immense heaps of firewood you have every conceivable quality and variety of tree, hard wood, soft wood, brushwood and everything else——

What would it weigh to-day?

Originally it weighed 330,000 tons. Deputy Lemass, when he was Minister, was trying to get £4 a ton for it. On the advice I got from every part of the House, I reduced the price. Acting on my own opinion of what would happen if we did not get rid of it, I reduced the price from £4 to 35/- a ton, and made it clear that we were prepared to sell it in ton lots. At the rate at which it is being sold, cut in blocks, at 35/- a ton, if it lasted it would not be gone in 20 years.

Are those prices supposed to be comparable—that is, 35/- and £4? Was one a delivery price and the other ex-dump?

It does not matter. I am not making any point out of the fact that I reduced the price to 35/-. I am only making the case that even at the reduced price we cannot sell it.

You can take the whole lot at 35/- a ton.

I can show the Minister dumps of firewood throughout the country that the Board of Works refused to sell.

That is a red herring —do not drag that across the trail. We have between 440,000 and 450,000 tons of American and African coal and, even for a very limited quantity of that huge total, the highest offer I have been able to get is less than half of what it cost.

Freight was more than half the total cost.

All I am concerned with is what it cost the taxpayer of the country and what it will be sold at. The losses are there and will have to be met. I do not want to flog that matter any further. I do not want to make any capital out of the dumps but I want to tell Deputy Lemass or any other Deputy of the Fianna Fáil Party, who goes around completely misrepresenting the situation and playing on the feelings of people who lost employment arising out of the stoppage of turf production, that every time they start a dishonest campaign of that kind I am going to put the facts before the people. I challenge Deputy Lemass now whether he can say conscientiously that if he had been returned as Minister, he would not have to stop, in the circumstances, the production of hand-won turf. I leave it at that. I shall try and get rid of it as quickly as I can. Maybe the price will have to be cut still further to get rid of it but the longer it is there the more ultimately it is going to cost.

So far as the turf scheme or Bord na Mona is concerned, I want to make this perfectly clear. There was a proposal by the previous Government that 200,000 tons of machine-won turf should be produced this year. Although we had these surplus stocks and did not really require the turf we went on with that scheme, and over 200,000 tons of machine-won turf is being produced and sold. I want to say that the machine-won turf that is being produced in this country is a first class fuel, and is good buying for anybody who wants it. I want to repeat also a statement that some gentleman opposite tried to twist and make capital out of before. I am going to repeat it again so that they can make more capital out of it— that the people of this country can make up their minds that to try to produce hand-won turf as a commercial proposition in this country is madness, and there is no Deputy over there who will not subscribe to that. Of course we produced hand-won turf for years long before Fianna Fáil came into office. The farmers and farm labourers will continue to produce it, as they always did for their own use, but do not get this question of turf production out of proportion.

Before ever Fianna Fáil ever sat over there, people in rural Ireland produced 3,500,000 tons for their own use. After all the incentives, after all the drive to produce more turf during the war, the highest peak that was ever reached was 5,000,000 tons. Remember that before ever Bord na Móna or before ever a county council produced one ton of hand-won turf, the ordinary people of the country produced, year in, year out, 3,500,000 tons for their own use.

The Deputy talks very loosely about a reduction in tillage. What reduction is he talking about?

It is coming.

The Deputy talked about it as if it had come.

There was a reduction this year.

The Deputy is hoping it will come.

There was a reduction in the acreage under tillage, but I think it is insignificant compared with the reduction next year, if the reports which are coming in from rural areas indicate what is going to happen or unless there is a change in Government policy.

Let me make this clear. So far as this Government is concerned, it is doing nothing that is going in any way to reduce tillage or to give any reason to any farmer to reduce tillage. Let me remind Deputies opposite that they announced three years ago that as from this year there would be no compulsory wheat growing. This Government has also announced that there will not be any compulsory wheat growing but it has further announced that there will be a guaranteed price of 62/6 for every barrel of millable wheat produced and it has guaranteed that price, not for one year, but for five years. That is 5/- a barrel more than was ever paid by the Fianna Fáil Government. That is one cereal.

So far as barley is concerned—and again let me say that I know something about this—I am perfectly satisfied that there will be a very considerable expansion in the production of barley next year. With additional superphosphates, additional supplies of lime, the development of ground limestone, a guaranteed market and guaranteed prices for live stock and poultry, I see no reason whatever why there should not be an expansion in tillage and an expansion in the production of live stock at the same time. There is nothing inconsistent in that at all.

So far as I am concerned, I want to see in this country good mixed farming, so far as our land is suitable for it. There is no reason why the Deputy should say that there is going to be a reduction in tillage. Instead of saying that, the Deputy ought to help us to see that it is not reduced. I want to say, and again I speak from some experience, that people were trying to grow wheat in counties in this country and on land in this country in the last seven or eight years that were never intended to grow, or never could grow, wheat. I do not think that anybody who is in favour of the production of the maximum amount of cereals and the maximum amount of tillage should be so foolish as to want anything other than that the best of our land, which is best suited for tillage and from which we will get the best return, is the land that should be tilled.

The Deputy said that we were going back to a grass policy. Surely the Deputy knows that agriculture could not survive unless we get back to grass to a very considerable extent and get better grass. Surely the Deputy knows that the dairying industry is the foundation of agriculture. What is the use of talking about expanding the production of milk, butter and cheese, and everything that flows from that, unless we have better grass, infinitely better grass than we have had heretofore? The Deputy ought to know or his colleagues ought to tell him that you cannot have successful tillage unless you have cattle.

I agree entirely with the Deputy that this country is not going to provide for its people by relying entirely on agricultural production. Neither will it do so by relying entirely on industrial production. There is unquestionably room here for a well-balanced economy. Unquestionably not only is there room for industrial production, but there is greater need for more up-to-date and modern methods in agricultural production as well as in industrial production. Let me mention Bord na Móna schemes for turf production in this country. These schemes, both the original plan and the amended scheme, are under very active consideration. Every aspect is being considered. I can assure the Deputy that there is no need for me to tell the Minister for Finance to go to blazes. The Minister for Finance is not interfering with me in any way. If I am satisfied—

That is an ideal Minister for Finance.

Judging by some of the schemes which were initiated by the Deputy when he was in office he did not meet with much opposition from his Minister for Finance, and it is a pity for the country that he did not.

Which of the schemes does the Minister object to?

If the Deputy wants me to read a litany I will oblige him.

How about it, so?

It will be millions for the Deputy.

Did the Deputy ever hear anything about aeroplanes?

You do not know Deputy Allen as well as I know him. This is an old trick of his. He will not put me off my stride by taking that line.

Nevertheless we should like to hear about the schemes to which the Minister objects. Why will he not justify what he is saying?

Deputy Allen thinks he knows——

Deputy Allen knows you too.

He will hear them. On this question of unemployed and unemployment I want to say to Deputy Lemass, and I probably know a little about it—the Deputy had to listen to me more often on that matter than I have had so far to listen to him—that I am not going to give the Deputy the answers he gave me every year for 16 years in the matter. I am not trying to minimise the number of unemployed in this country. I am not trying in any way to minimise what a social evil it is. I am not suggesting for one moment, and never did I suggest, that it was a problem easy of solution. However, I say to the Deputy that it is hardly fair of him to blame us for not being able to do in ten months what he was not able to do in 16 years.

I want to say to Deputy Lemass that when we take the week with the last published figures of unemployed, not-withstanding all we have heard about the great increase in unemployment in rural areas and the reduction in the number of houses being built, and the uneasiness caused in industry—if we take all these points made by him into consideration—I think it is something to be able to say that the position is not worse. The difference between the figures for, I think, the first week in December of this year as compared with the first week in December of last year, was less than 500-400 odd. The previous week — actually the second in this year—the figures were lower than the figures for the corresponding week of last year.

Will the Minister tell the House how many people, who were in gainful employment under Fianna Fáil, have been displaced under his regime?

Perhaps the Deputy will give me that information. He knows more about the people that got jobs because they were Fianna Fáil supporters than I do.

We were a national Party. We were concerned with the welfare of everybody.

There were 60 odd displaced over there as well.

I can tell the Deputy, due probably to the fact that he is sitting over there and not on this side of the House, that there were fewer unemployed in County Dublin this year than last year.

That is a complete misrepresentation of the facts.

I can tell Deputy Lemass that he is not helping towards relieving the unemployment position when we get written in the leading article of the Irish Press that there was an 80 per cent. increase in the number of unemployed in Donegal this year as against the same period of last year. That statement is entirely and absolutely and grossly untrue.

That statement was perfectly accurate on the basis of the figures available at that time.

Not at all, and nobody knows that better than the Deputy himself. Deputy Lemass knows that better than anybody else on his side of the House or on this side of the House knows it—or, at least, he ought to know it after 16 years' experience of these figures. I want to say that on the very day that that lying statement of an 80 per cent. increase in unemployment was published there were actually 219 fewer unemployed in the County Donegal than on the corresponding day of the previous year.

They had gone out of Donegal to work in Scotland and in England.

That was happening in Donegal before the Deputy was born.

Mr. Burke

Yes, but more than ever have gone since the Minister came into office.

All I can say, if Deputy Burke starts cross-questioning me about unemployment and emigration, is that it is quite obvious that his neck is not the weakest portion of his anatomy.

Mr. Burke

I can shake hands with the Minister on that.

I know as well as Deputy Lemass knows, perhaps even better, what the people of this country are thinking. I am, perhaps, in touch with as many people as the Deputy— and perhaps with a greater cross-section of the community. My acquaintances and the people amongst whom I move are not limited to any particular section. The Deputy can make his mind quite easy that they do not feel that there is a dead hand over the country. It is quite the very opposite. The people are aware of a feeling of freedom; they feel that the burden has been lifted and that the withering hand of Fianna Fáil has been removed.

Mr. Burke

What about the 180 workers in the paper mills—do they feel the hand of freedom?

Deputy Burke must allow the Minister to make his speech.

Deputy Burke can tell me who was responsible for choosing the Saturday before Christmas Eve to sack them. If the Deputy wants to draw me on some of those things and wants me to tell him who is responsible for some of the people who are unemployed and the campaign that is responsible I will tell him.

Mr. Burke

Well let us hear it.

Who was responsible? What is the suggestion?

The Deputy knows the suggestion—and the truth of it, too. I know it and I know considerably more now than I knew ten months ago.

Why keep it secret?

Mr. Burke

I am deeply concerned about my constituents——

Because I do not want to talk about the unfortunate people——

Is the Minister suggesting that I know anything about it?

The Deputy will sit down——

The Deputy ought not to be so tender——

I resent the implication. It is completely false.

It is not. I am saying that there are certain people in this country under Fianna Fáil influence who, for Fianna Fáil reasons, are dismissing men——

Mr. Burke

I object to that. There are constituents of mine in County Dublin about whom I am deeply concerned and——

I will go further——

Mr. Burke

I object——

The Deputy will sit down.

Mr. Burke

I object. The Minister is taking advantage of this House to make false charges.

I will go further and say this——

Mr. Lemass rose.

Every Deputy who desires to speak will have an opportunity of making a statement. Six hours are allotted for this debate. The Minister is entitled to speak without interruption.

I take it, Sir, that you can also exercise the function of the Chair by ensuring that the Minister will not make insinuations of a personal nature against other Deputies.

I have not noticed that the Minister made insinuations of a personal nature. The Chair would not have allowed it if it had been noticed.

I have made no insinuations against Deputy Lemass. If I ever want to make a personal statement against Deputy Lemass, or a personal accusation against him, I shall not do it by insinuation. It will be stated so bluntly, so frankly and so flatly that even Deputy Burke will recognise it.

I want to go further now and say that there are people who are telling the unemployed that the only reason why they are unemployed and the only reason why they are being dismissed from work is because of the change of Government. There is one high official in one semi-State company who no later than yesterday told an unemployed man who went to him for a job: "We have no job for you; we are letting men go; we are letting men go because this Government are doing a particular thing," and he named the particular thing. That was an utterly malicious lying statement. We have a job to do. It is a big job. If we have not got on as quickly and as rapidly with the constructive side of it about which Deputy Lemass is so concerned it is because there were so many barriers that we had to clear out of our way first. As far as I am concerned I regret the amount of time that I have had to devote in the last nine or ten months to trying to clear up something for which I was not responsible.

I want to assure the Deputy and the House, if the Deputy wants assurance and if my words can carry assurance or carry confidence, either to the people who are engaged in industry in this country or the people who proposed to engage in it, that they can carry on with perfect security and perfect safety. To those who are thinking of taking, or who may have taken, the initial steps to start in industry or to expand existing industry, I say to them that they can go ahead with absolute safety as far as this Government is concerned. I am as anxious as any member of this House—I do not care on which side he sits—to see the growth and development and expansion of industry. I know that that is sound national policy. I know it is good for the country. I know it is the only alternative to the emigrant ship for our people.

If I can state my policy, or the policy of the Government, more clearly or more plainly than that, perhaps somebody would give me the words I ought to use. That is as clearly as I can state it. The only qualification to that —if anyone thinks there is a qualification—is that we are not going to continue supporting for ever inefficiency. I believe—and I repeat now what I have said elsewhere—that Irish industrialists have done a good job taken by and large. I know they had serious difficulties with which to contend in the initial stages and in the earlier years of industrial development. I know that some of them have successfully overcome those difficulties and are to-day efficient. I know they are producing first-class articles. But I am not blind to the fact that there are still some of them who are inefficient; that they are producing goods that are not as high a quality as I would like to see this country produce either for home or foreign consumption. I know that there is great room for further improvement in management, in technical skill and in the proper direction of labour. I know that there is definitely room for improvement in output in the factory, on the land, on the bogs and on the roads.

In conclusion, I repeat once again what I have said on every occasion on which I have spoken in public since I took office as Minister. We cannot go on living in a fool's paradise. We cannot go on living beyond our income. We cannot go on spending far more than we are earning. We cannot go on in the belief that we cannot merely maintain a present standard of living but can improve it unless we are prepared to work harder and to give more output. The most important factor, whether we are talking about industrial produce, agricultural produce, the making of roads or the building of houses, in the cost of any article ultimately to the consumer or user is the amount of output that goes into its production.

We have been taunted that every member of this Government does not speak with one voice—the voice of a Government with no change or no inflection, good, bad or indifferent. This Government does not claim to be other than a Government representative of every section of the community. It is a Government fully representative of farmers, labourers, professional men, industrialists and so on. We are not concerned with giving privilege to any one class or section. We are concerned only with giving justice to everybody in the community. I have a serious responsibility. I make no secret of that fact. Nobody knows it better than Deputy Lemass. I have a heavy task. I do not claim to be a genius. I have never claimed that. But I do claim that I am doing my best and I am doing it in accordance with the principles I have stated here to-night. I am concerned with only one object; that is, that the policy laid down for my Department and for every other Department of State by this Government will be carried out in such a way that we shall leave the country and its people when we lay down the chains of office in a better condition than they were when we entered office.

I was very anxious that there should have been a debate in regard to the Adjournment of the Dáil for the Christmas Recess. I understand that we are adjourning until the 16th of February next. By the time we return to this House this Government will have been one year in office. I think it is reasonable that there should have been an opportunity on this Adjournment for a clear, specific and factual statement by the Government as to the actual progress they have made in the past 12 months and an indication of their plans for the coming 12 months.

What I want to say, and say quickly, is that I have been disappointed with the speech that has just been made by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I have listened to this turf, coal, timber in several debates in this House and I did not come into this House for the purpose of listening to this comparison month after month as to what could be done in ten months and what could be done in 16 years. I think that our constituents, the people who are unemployed, the people who are unable to make ends meet at home, the unfortunate people who are living in single rooms in insanitary basements expect more from this Parliament than this cross-talk from the front benches of the House. Let me say that the speech that was made by Deputy Lemass, in my view, was a very able one. It was the sort of speech one would expect from a Deputy of the experience of Deputy Lemass. Deputy Lemass put his finger on all the problems that are worrying the people of the country. That is as it should be.

There is no doubt whatsoever that as Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Deputy Lemass is anxious to make as much political capital as he can out of the situation. That is perfectly natural. It would be perfectly natural and right for the Government to make as much political capital as they could out of the reply to Deputy Lemass. But in my view that political capital could be made if there was a factual statement showing the work that had been done during the last ten months, the work that is planned and in preparation for the next 12 months. I say that would have been a statesmanlike reply, and would be calculated to appeal to the intelligent people of the country who are looking to us to do something to better the conditions that oppress them. Those matters that have been mentioned of employment, housing, industry and, if I might add, the cost of living, are serious matters. They are very serious in so far as Deputies like myself are concerned. There are many Deputies on these benches who generally support the Government, who generally vote for the Government. We have our reasons for that. We can explain them and justify our action in so doing, but we are not taken into the confidence of the Government.

We do not know what is proposed, what is planned or what we are to expect next. Even as far as the ordinary business of this House is concerned, we hear what it is on the day we arrive in the Dáil at 3 o'clock. Consequently, as one Deputy who has a responsibility to my constituents, who is bound in the peculiar circumstances of politics in this country at the moment to give reasonable and fair opportunity to the Government, it is my duty to express in public and in the Dáil my criticism of the Government's failure to do the things we set out to do on the 18th February last. I am afraid that, for reasons peculiar to the construction of the Government, the Ministers of the Government are not so much part of a team as individuals working in water-tight compartments, interfering not at all with the work of the other Departments or Ministers. To that extent each individual Minister has his own ideas as to how his own Department should be run and there is not that co-ordination of effort, co-ordination of policy, co-ordination of programme that is essential if we are to solve all those very serious problems which confront us. The problems that confront the Government are serious ones requiring every possible co-ordination between the Ministers, requiring long and arduous planning. I think that unless those problems are tackled in that way we are not going to see in any reasonable time the solution of the problems.

By the time we come back here this Government will have been a year in office. The normal lifetime of this Parliament is five years, and if the other four years go as quickly and in the same way as this present year has gone I am afraid that we will have very little to show for our efforts in the five years. When I approach the problem in that way I am approaching it with the intention of being helpful to the Government. I think I am more helpful to the Government by public criticism, and by expressing my own thoughts in public than I would be if I were to sit silent and pretend that everything the Government does is good, and that it is a hundred times better than anything the Fianna Fáil Party could do if they were in office. I want the Government and this House to accept my criticism in that spirit. I think it would be a good thing for our Parliamentary institutions if we would all face the problem in that way.

I am primarily concerned with the serious conditions of housing. I am one of the Deputies for the constituency of North-East Dublin in which housing conditions are appalling. Deputy A. Byrne, if he participates in this debate, as I am sure he will, will bear me out in that, that housing conditions are appalling in the constituency of North-East Dublin. Not only are they appalling in that constituency, but they are appalling in every other Dublin constituency.

I move the adjournment of the debate.

Debate adjourned.
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