Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 13 Mar 1951

Vol. 124 No. 11

Committee on Finance. - Vote 50—Industry and Commerce.

Dr. O'Higgins (Minister for Industry and Commerce)

I move:—

That a supplementary sum not exceeding £53,125 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending 31st March, 1951, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Industry and Commerce including certain services administered by that Office, and for payment of certain subsidies and sundry Grants-in-Aid.

The gross total of the Supplementary Estimate is £205,000. The savings on other sub-heads amount to £151,945. The sum required is £53,125.

The savings are made up as follows: Sub-head A—Salaries, Wages and Allowances, £7,000; sub-head E— Advertising and Publicity, £1,500; sub-head HH—Chicago International Trade Fair, 1950, £1,445; Food Subsidies, £140,000; sub-head S (1)—Grant for Remuneration and Expenses, Members of the Industrial Development Authority, £200,000, making a total of £151,945.

Savings set out above are explained as follows:—sub-head A—unfilled staff vacancies; sub-head E—the amount of £2,500 was provided for expenditure on a "buy Irish campaign" but was not proceeded with; sub-head HH— the number of Irish firms which participated in the Chicago Fair was less than anticipated; J. (1)—sales of unrationed tea were greater than was anticipated with consequent relief to the subsidy to the amount indicated; sub-head S (1)—one post for members of the Industrial Development Authority for which provision was made has not-been filled; sub-head K —the original Estimate was £5 and the revised Estimate £500, as money was required in connection with the supply of 300 tons of turf to the Aran Islands in November of last year in consequence of a shortage of turf there. I can give the details of that to the Deputies if they require them, but I will not take up their time by reading the whole particulars.

Sub-head L—Turf Production Schemes, the original Estimate there was for £5. The revised estimate is £1,785, leaving a sum of £1,780 additional sum required. Supplies of turf, produced by local authorities, were disposed of to Fuel Importers Limited, Government departments and local institutions, and were sold at the full cost of production, and no losses were incurred by the producing authorities on such sales. Supplies of turf disposed of to merchants for distribution in the area had, however, to be sold at a price which would enable the merchants to retail the turf at the controlled price, losses on such sales being the difference between the cost of production and the actual sale price as certified by the Department of Local Government. These will be recouped to the local authorities from the provision under this sub-head. It was expected at the time of the Estimate that all losses incurred by local authorities would have been recouped before the close of the financial year 1949-50. The Department of Local Government did not however, find it possible to complete the audit of all local authority accounts in time to enable the recoupment to be made in the year 1949-50. Losses amounting to £1,782 1s. 2d. have now been certified by the Department of Local Government for recoupment to the local authorities mentioned hereunder: Tipperary South County Council, £33 15s. 3d.; Limerick County Council, £1,748 5s. 11d., making a total of £1,782 1s. 2d.

Sub-head LL—Recoupment to county councils of losses on turf produced. Provision was made in the Department of Industry and Commerce Vote under Miscellaneous Schemes sub-head for the recoupment of losses incurred by local authorities in the sale of turf otherwise than by Fuel Importers, Limited, Government Departments and local in situtions, that is to fuel merchants, for distribution in the turf areas. It was not possible to recover the full cost of production of the turf by fuel merchants to meet the requirements of residents in the turf area. Such sales were made at the prices decided by the local authorities in consultation with the Bord na Móna representative in the district. The general aim was that, having due regard to the prevailing local prices, the prices fixed should cover the production cost, but in many counties prices below production cost had to be fixed in order to avoid any incentive to seek higher prices for their turf. The revised estimate in this case is £5,960.

Sub-head N (2)—Payment to Mianrai Teoranta for prospecting. The original Estimate was for £70,000. The extra amount required was £10,000. Deputies will recall that it was pointed out under the Minerals Act, 1947, Mianrai Teoranta had no authority to expend money on the purchase of land and mineral rights. It was necessary to amend sub-section (2) of Section 5 to permit the payment of money to the company for this purpose. It was decided that the company should have secure title to the minerals in Avoca in order that any benefits resulting from their prospecting operations might accrue to the company and not to private interests. The company were, accordingly, authorised under Section 3 of the Minerals Company (Amendment) Act, 1950, to purchase mineral rights in East Avoca. The purchase was made for the sum of £10,000 although provision was made for this expenditure in the original amount of £70,000 under the sub-head. It is unlikely that any balance will be available out of the amount to cover this expenditure by the 31st March, 1951. Therefore, I am moving a Supplementary Estimate for this £70,000.

We come now to sub-head O (2), the cost of turf production schemes hitherto undertaken by county councils. The original Estimate was for £5. The revised Estimate is for £140,000. This scheme was formerly operated by county councils; it was designed to meet the fuel shortage in the eastern counties during the emergency. From the 1st January, 1948, the operation of this scheme was taken over by Bord na Móna. It is quite distinct from the permanent operations of the board under the Turf Development Act, 1946-1950. The programme approved for the 1950 season provided for the production of 40,000 tons of machine turf at an estimated cost of £94,000. The actual production during the season amounted to 29,000 tons. Expenditure on the 1950 operations is estimated at £70,000. At 1st April, 1950, Bord na Móna had on hands approximately 38,000 tons of turf produced during the previous year. Receipts during 1950-51 in respect of the sale of turf are expected to amount to £120,000. In view of the serious deterioration in the coal supply position it is proposed to expand the scheme in the 1951 season to provide for the production of 110,000 tons of machine turf; expenditure on operations in respect of that season covering development works, production, equipment, spare parts for machines, etc., is estimated at £341,000. Of this sum it is estimated that £70,000 will be required in the present financial year to meet expenditure on preparatory work which will be necessary in connection with the 1951 operations.

The next sub-head is O (3). In the original Estimate no provision was made under this sub-head which deals with publicity in connection with turf marketing. The revised Estimate now is for £5,000 for expenditure on publicity in connection with the turf production drive. The next item is sub-head S (2), salaries and wages of the Industrial Development Authority. When the Estimate for 1950-51 was being prepared it was clear that the Industrial Development Authority would need additional staff to deal with the greater volume of work arising out of its activities and a sum of £5,500 was provided for that purpose. Additional staff was made available in 1950 in connection with the administration of cotton quota Orders and to deal with an expansion of the work on the industries side. This staff was provided by retrenchment of posts in other branches of the Department. The cost of the staff up to the end of a current financial year will amount to £7,000; that is an increase of £1,500 on the original provision for additional staff.

The authority has been expanding its activities for the development of industries, etc., in accordance with its functions. This has necessitated further increases in staff. The cost of this further additional staff during the current financial year is £4,675. There will, therefore, be a total excess of £6,175, that is £1,500 plus £4,675, on the Vote for the current financial year.

In addition to all that, we have the Prices Advisory Body, sub-head U (1), salaries, wages and allowances. This body was set up and commenced to function in January, 1951. In order to discharge its functions under the Prices and Wages (Standstill) Order, 1951, the body requires an indoor and an outdoor staff. The services of the former staff of the Prices Branch of the Department, together with some additions thereto, have been put at the disposal of that body. In addition, provision has been made for the employment of not less than 50 officers on out-door duties; 25 of these officers have already been recruited and the remainder will take up duty shortly. In the meantime, assistance in enforcement is also being given by the staff of the general inspectorate, of whom there are 21 employed at present. Furthermore, any officer of customs and excise or any member of the Gardaí is an authorised officer for the purpose of the enforcement of the Order. The cost of the personnel of the body and of the new staff for the current financial year is estimated at £6,365.

Major de Valera

I think there has been some slight mistake in the Minister taking this Estimate now. My information is that it was not down for discussion. However, as it is a Supplementary Estimate and the Minister has opened it, I take it we can proceed with it.

There are a number of items in the Estimate which call for some comment. The first is that the £53,125, which is the net amount of the Estimate, is quite a substantial sum and, coupled with the Minister's next Estimate, represents a very real increase on the original Estimate for 1950-51. The Minister has dealt with a number of sub-heads. The first that I would like to comment on is that of mineral development. If this money is to be spent on actual mineral development there can be no quarrel with it. Perhaps the Minister would expand when he is replying on the question of compensation. Are we to understand that that sum of money represents the acquisition of titles in the Avoca area only or did I misunderstand the Minister in that regard? Are the lands so acquired to be operated by Mianraí Teoranta or will they be reserved for any other purpose?

The operations of Bord na Móna are to be anticipated. I note under sub-head O (2) this money is stated to be grants to Bord na Móna for the general administration of the scheme, the purchase of machines and equipment and other expenses incidental to the production, transport and storage of turf. I wonder would the Minister take this opportunity to tell us what additional machinery can be acquired or is being acquired. It is perfectly obvious now that turf production must loom large in our economy from this time out. In fact, it is a regrettable thing that the production of turf was so little encouraged during the past three years. I shall not take this opportunity to go back on the story, but certainly I am not exaggerating it when I say that during the past three years neither were our producers encouraged to produce turf nor were our consumers encouraged to burn it. In fact, the Party to which the Minister belongs have been noted in the past for their efforts to decry the use and the potentialities of the native fuel. Nevertheless, necessity now compels us and, even at this hour, a change that will mean the encouragement of our people both to produce and to consume our own fuel and generally to develop this particular resource which we have will be welcome.

The grant under O (3), to Bord na Móna, for publicity in connection with private production of turf and for the marketing of turf seems to me to require a little elucidation by the Minister. By ordinary advertising standards, the sum of £5,000, unfortunately, is not a large one. It could not buy a very large amount of publicity. I note that under this head also is included provision for the marketing of such privately produced turf. It is difficult to see how much can be achieved with that sum and, at this stage, I would simply content myself with asking the Minister could he give us some information as to what is envisaged under this particular head.

We have to face this unfortunate fact—who is to blame or who is not to blame is a relatively secondary thing—that three years ago and before it, the Fine Gael Party, in particular, spent their time largely on a dual campaign. That campaign was, on the one hand, aimed at disrupting and discouraging the production of turf and, on the other hand, was aimed at discouraging the consumer from burning turf.

In spite of all that was tried during the emergency and the success attained in producing native fuel and having it burned—there were defects and there were the inevitable troubles that arose from emergency production and all the problems of an emergency—no opportunity was lost by the Minister and his Party to shout "wet turf", to decry turf in the towns and the cities and to demoralise the consumer as they demoralised, or tried to demoralise, the producer. The result is that, in face of the fact of the almost complete failure of the supplies of coal on which they pinned all their faith, and getting such supplies of coal as they do get at a very dear price, the Minister has the unhappy task of trying to undo the damage which was so irresponsibly done, with such little forethought, some years ago. That will not be an easy task. It will be necessary—and we must all co-operate in this task— to try to encourage in every possible way both the private producers and the public concern to develop our bogs, to produce the turf we need, not only to meet short-term shortages, that is, the shortages, say, of this year, but also to leave us relatively independent, as independent as we can possibly be, of foreign supplies of fuel, for domestic purposes at any time. That is a task which, as I say, will require considerable energy and the co-operation of the whole community.

It would be expanding this debate too far to go into the details of that matter. It is to be hoped that Bord na Móna and the small producers will get all the intelligent support and encouragement, both from the Government and from all other public persons, that they require for the prosecution of this important national task. In addition to that, the damage which was done to the morale of the consumer must be repaired. The problems, for instance, of the burner of domestic fuel in our towns and cities must be considered. We knew from the last emergency that there were problems that, when things were easier, would have to be reconsidered and readjusted. In the city, for instance, there is the problem of storage in flats; there is the problem of the delivery of turf in good condition; there is the problem of inducing the consumer to use the fuel to the best advantage, and so forth. All that will require attention.

Then there will be the question of relieving the load on the central bodies by encouraging the private production of turf. I take it that is what is involved in this heading O (3). During the emergency, not only were the local authorities, Bord na Móna itself and all these other bodies, encouraged to develop the bogs and supply the turf, but the private producer, wherever he could produce turf, was encouraged. It even went to the lengths of encouraging people in the City of Dublin to take turf banks and to cut them, and so forth, all these things contributing to relieving the strain on the distribution machine. All these things will have to be examined again. All these things will have to be co-ordinated in the light of the latest information, with realistic relation to the facts as they are and with a view to a real economy in our resources.

That all means governmental drive, governmental lead, and governmental co-ordination. I must say, frankly, that the balance in this Estimate does not indicate, so far, a comprehensive approach to that matter. On the other hand, I freely concede to the Minister that, as I take it, this is merely to carry us to the end of this financial year and that provisions will be made in the next financial year. Perhaps I have overstrained the inference to be drawn from the sum, as I see it here. Now, so much for the production of turf. It is urgent, with the price of coal as it is, apart from its scarcity. From the point of view of building up coal stocks from such coal as we can get in, it is urgent. These are all matters that, I am sure, the Department will be quite capable of handling with credit, as the Minister's Department handled it in the past, given an effective lead and with a drive behind it.

Passing on to the Industrial Development Authority, I see there is an additional sum required for salaries, wages and allowances. Perhaps I was a bit slow on the uptake when I was listening to the Minister, but I was not clear whether that represents additional staff or an increase in allowances.

Dr. O'Higgins

Additional staff.

Major de Valera

Is this additional staff taken from another Department or from other branches of the Department?

Dr. O'Higgins

Portion of it.

Major de Valera

Later perhaps the Minister might tell me how much of this is new staff. The point is that this authority is expanding, but we have very meagre information as to what it is actually achieving. I do not want to go outside the debate, but there is one rather important matter which I have tried to press on the Minister's predecessor. It is the importance of filling before it is too late to make the effort, a very important gap in our industrial structure, our national supply structure. I have in mind the making of certain basically chemical substances here, substances for which we are completely dependent on outsiders. If the supplies of such chemicals were cut off, it would mean a serious embarrassment and dislocation in time of isolation or partial isolation.

I have been told for at least a year that that is a matter that the Industrial Development Authority was considering. The Minister's predecessor, more than a year ago, assured me they were considering it, and doing so sympathetically. I know that certain reports, certain technical reports, were furnished before that authority was set up, and much of the technical aspect of this problem was examined. I renewed the question last Christmas, and was told that they were still considering it. I regret to say the Parliamentary Secretary interjected a remark, at the end of the supplementary questions, which was rather disquieting. He said he did not expect such a project could be continued during a time of emergency, but I take it his remark had no deeper significance than merely his own opinion. I renewed the question recently, and the matter apparently is still under consideration.

The point is that if this authority is in any way to justify itself—many of us believed it was not the type of body suitable for the purpose for which it was designed—it is important that it should be in a position quickly to decide on various matters. Speedy decision is paramount in the present circumstances, when there is a growing shortage of plant and material for every purpose. It will be very little use to have a relatively perfect system and find that you cannot get the steel, the structural materials, the particular type of plant you require when you are ready to go ahead. There is that emergency element in our problem even at the moment, and this body should be alive to it. It would be better to do something and get a partial result rather than risk a total failure in performance at a later date.

We have had our lesson from the past. A somewhat similar project was considered before the 1939 war. In fact, the Minister's Department and the Department of Agriculture were involved—I am not quite sure about the Department of Agriculture—and they had got to the stage of placing a contract on the Continent when there was still time to get the plant purchased and erected here. The crisis of 1938, followed by events in 1939, completely nullified this project and we had to weather through the emergency with that very serious gap. The Minister must know how fortunate we were in the matter of supplies during the last emergency. He must be aware of the respite we got and how it would be really tempting Providence to hope for the same performance again if those circumstances were to repeat themselves even in the face of a threatened shortage and apart from the situation degenerating into hostilities. That is the lesson we should take to heart.

The Minister can also consult the Bureau of Standards and Research; he can communicate with the officers and other personnel associated with it and he will learn the story of the desperate efforts made to meet shortages along the line of country I am following.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Is the Deputy not travelling a bit?

Major de Valera

I am afraid I am. The point is that we are voting an additional sum for the Industrial Development Authority. I can say without bias, prejudice or malice, and in perfect fairness, that we have not had from any Minister information which will constitute an incontrovertible justification of this authority to-day. There is this particular field, apart from others, in which there are possibilities. In voting this sum for this authority, I must ask the Minister to use all his power and energy to spur it on and to make the urgency of the matter clear. The Government should be alert to see that practical results are achieved as speedily as possible. Passing a Bill here, setting up bodies, carrying on inquiries, arranging organisations and doing a lot of paper work, even the doing of preliminary experimental work, is relatively of no account unless there is some physical project there that will deliver the goods when they are required.

I will pass now to salaries, wages and allowances for the Prices Advisory Body. The office is going to cost us £6,365. This covers salaries, wages and allowances and it does not cover any other expenses which are provided for under sub-head U (2), where we have travelling and incidental expenses. This figure, I should imagine, will not cover completely all the expense that this body will be to the State. As I understand it, this body will have to carry out inquiries and will make certain demands on the Minister's and other Departments which, when translated into the language of the Minister for Finance, do not appear in this Estimate and, therefore, it is quite obvious that on the face of this Estimate this new Prices Body is going to cost practically £9,000. I think it would be a very conservative estimate, when you take these other matters which are hidden or concealed, if I say that this Prices Body will take £10,000. Lest the Minister will dispute that figure, let me say that the one in the Estimate is £8,665, or practically £9,000, up to the end of this financial year—that is, up to the 31st March. It is very impertinent to inquire what we are going to do with this body.

Mr. S. Collins

Very impertinent?

Major de Valera

It is very pertinent, Deputy.

Mr. S. Collins

The Deputy said definitely that it is impertinent.

Major de Valera

I thank Deputy Collins for the correction. I know Deputies who would say that it is indeed impertinent of the Government, in all the circumstances, to impose this body on the public, because here is its history. Let us be quite clear as to what we are going to pay before the end of the financial year. We are going to pay £8,600 odd for this body with the promise of further costs in the year to come. That is a fairly big sum for a Supplementary Estimate and it is relevant to inquire what we are paying that sum for. We are paying it for a body with this history. For the moment I am dealing with it completely impersonally, without the slightest reflection on its personnel. A Supplies and Services Bill was introduced into this Dáil. It was a continuation Act and there was nothing said about it. Quite quickly, just before the Bill was due to come before the House, the first Bill was withdrawn and a new Bill was introduced with this clause setting up the body. It was pointed out at the time that it would not be effective. It was obviously one of those sops to the Labour Party, one of those concessions by Fine Gael to the Labour Party, which have become so commonplace now as to pass without remark.

During the debate on that Bill the Government panicked on the question of prices and declared a price freeze, as from an unspecified date at that time. Later, a price freeze was declared as from the 2nd December. We were given to understand that all prices would be frozen as from 2nd December and that this body would deal with the matter. What has this body functioned as so far? So far as we can see, this body can be characterised as the prices defreezing body, because we have had a succession of exemptions from the price freeze. We have had, during the last week, a list of a considerable number of commodities which were exempted from the price freeze. We had another list some days ago. I think it included woollen goods, footwear, and so forth. There was then an increase in prices. Now I take it these various increases, which run completely counter to the Tánaiste's statement, were done under and by the authority of this body. At least I hope that no Government would come in and appoint a body which is doing nothing. Since this defreezing of prices appears to be their proper function, I take it that I am doing them no injustice in attributing to them the exemption of various commodities from the original standstill that was declared for 2nd December last. That is what we are voting this money for.

The cost-of-living index has been recently issued for February. One would have expected, in the normal course of events, that February would have been one of the good months. Look at the series in the Trade Journal and you will find that February should be a relatively good month. One would not have been surprised, therefore, if the figure for February had been the same as the figure for November, notwithstanding the increase in prices since. However, we do find that the February figure is up. It is 103, I understand, now, and the clothing index is very much up. This being all related to the appointment of this Prices Body, leads one very much to ask whether this body is worth nearly £9,000. As I said, I would be willing to hazard the guess that it is really costing more than £10,000. Why are we paying this money for this body when the Department itself, during the emergency years, could exercise more effective control without the help of any such extraneous body? Why is it necessary to vote this sum of money for this advisory body, as it is called, when, during the period of the emergency, from November, 1943, until February, 1946, the Department itself, with its efficient officers and its efficient staff, were capable of keeping prices relatively steady? I do not want to enlarge this debate into one on the question of the cost of living but, as we know, there is a very serious and difficult problem involved in this whole matter. It is not a problem that any Government can solve by the toss of a coin. It is a problem which, as many Deputies on the opposite side are beginning to realise, nowadays is conditioned to a great extent by matters outside the control of the Government of this country. I am warranted in saying that this body does not seem likely to do anything effective to counteract that trend and that it is very questionable, indeed, whether the spending of this sum of money is justified in this way.

Mr. S. Collins

That is the twelfth time you said that.

Major de Valera

I could not say it too often, Deputy. There is another matter related to this which I think it my duty to say. I think it is within the right of Deputies to say it, provided it is said in a responsible and restrained manner. It is that it is not proper for a Government to ask a judge of the Supreme Court to undertake duties of this nature. My reason for saying that——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Would that not arise on the main Estimate for the Minister?

Major de Valera

There is a motor car allowance referred to, with all respect.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The appointment of chairman would surely be a matter of policy.

Major de Valera

There is an item for a motor car allowance here and I can certainly make it relevant. My objection is this in a nutshell: the Supreme Court has constitutional functions——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I cannot allow the Deputy to go on that line. That, surely, would be a matter of policy as to who would be chairman. It is a matter that could be raised on the Vote for the Minister's salary. The Minister's salary is not on this Supplementary Estimate.

Major de Valera

With respect, the motor car allowance payable to the chairman is on this Estimate, and if a motor car allowance payable to this chairman is on this Estimate I, surely, am entitled to comment on whether that is a proper thing. The reason for the comment on this is, that, I think, it is wrong to ask a Supreme Court judge to come into such controversial matters, because inevitably the effect of the thing is this—and this is what I want to avoid here—that any criticism of this body in the method of how it is going to do its work, or anything else, could very easily relate itself to the chairman——

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

That is what you are trying to do.

Major de Valera

It is not what I am trying to do——

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

You should be ashamed.

Major de Valera

——and I think the Government should not ask a judge of the Supreme Court to act on such a tribunal.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy cannot discuss the appointment of the chairman.

Major de Valera

In any event, in regard to this body, it does seem, as I think I made it perfectly clear in the beginning—I am not making any point about the method in which this body is functioning—that it is not a solution for the cost of living problem as it was propounded to be: that it has, in fact, been only able to act as a body for controlling exemptions, so far anyway, from the general Order relating to the 2nd December, that that same function could equally well be carried out by the Department, and that the expenditure of this sum of money on this particular body is hardly justified in all the circumstances.

Mr. Kissane

Like Deputy Vivion de Valera, I do not think that the sum provided in these Supplementary Estimates for the financing of the Industrial Development Authority and the Prices Advisory Body are justified. When the Minister for Industry and Commerce came before this House with a proposal to set up this Industrial Development Authority I, with many others, pointed out that it was just another attempt to try and persuade the people that something spectacular was being done to promote the establishment of industries here. I think that since that Industrial Development Authority was set up we have not got any indication from the Minister concerned as to what activities they have been engaged in. I, like the speaker who has preceded me, believe that the Minister for Industry and Commerce would get better advice from the experienced officials of his Department. That has already been touched upon by Deputy Vivion de Valera, and I do not want to traverse the same ground.

Now, as regards the Prices Advisory Body, unfortunately that, too, has been a disappointment so far. If we are to take what has happened within the past few weeks as an indication of the usefulness of that body, I am afraid it will serve no useful purpose whatever, because we have seen that over 60 articles have been removed from price control within the past couple of weeks. Now, where is the Prices Advisory Body? In other words, it appears to me that the force of economic circumstances will drive up prices here and that the Minister, or his Prices Advisory Body, can do nothing about it. I, too, cannot understand why a judge of the Supreme Court was appointed chairman.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy heard the ruling that was given by the Chair. I am not going to allow the appointment of the chairman to be discussed on this Estimate. It is purely a matter of policy, and can be raised on the Vote on which the Minister's salary appears.

Mr. Kissane

I was just going to put this one point.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I cannot allow that. If I did, there is no reason why I should not allow two.

Mr. Kissane

In connection with the expense that is to be incurred——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

If the expense is incurred because the chairman is a judge of the Supreme Court it is not relevant and cannot be discussed.

Mr. Kissane

I was about to point out that the £6,365 does not represent the total expenditure involved in the setting up of this Prices Advisory Body, and at that I will leave it. I have to come back to turf. I am glad to see that the members of the present Government are becoming turf-minded at last, but again it is the force of circumstances which has driven them to take up that attitude. We on this side of the House—just as we did when we were on the other side of the House—have always advocated the production of as much of our own turf as possible, and if our advice and our deeds had been accepted by the people opposite, the position would not be as bad as it is to-day.

I wonder did I hear the Minister correctly when he said that 38,000 tons of turf were sold for £20,000. I should like to know if that figure is correct. That would seem to have been an extraordinary deal. In other words, turf was sold for something like 11/- per ton, while the price that turf is fetching to-day is something approaching £4 a ton. I do not think that the Minister for Industry and Commerce made a very good move when he ordered that turf to be sold at 11/- per ton. Perhaps I did not get the figure properly from the Minister. I have always been trying to advocate the use of turf in our public institutions. From time to time, I have put down questions inquiring of the appropriate Minister how many institutions in the country were using native fuel.

Dr. O'Higgins

The Deputy did not hear the "one hundred" that was in front of the 20,000—120,000.

Mr. Kissane

I was surprised, but the Minister spoke in a very low tone and it was difficult for us on this side to hear him.

Dr. O'Higgins

You heard a lot of other things apparently.

Mr. Kissane

There is an item in the Supplementary Estimate of £5,000 for publicity. I do not know exactly what kind of publicity the Minister and his Department intend to carry on. Are they going to put up posters all over the country telling people to produce turf for their own requirements and more? I think the best way to push the production of hand-won turf is to get the parish councils working to as great an extent as possible, and, where parish councils have not been functioning up to the present, it should be possible to establish such councils for the specific purpose of getting them to contact the farmers who have turbary and of making sure that the maximum amount of turf is produced in every parish. That would be much better and much more effective than ordinary publicity. It is a matter which the Minister and his Department should consider very carefully. I should like to know from the Minister to what extent machines will be used on the bogs this year. I know that several machines were working on the bogs of Kerry and that they were taken away—where, I do not know. It is wrong, in places where turf abounds, to take away the machinery and to expect the workers engaged in turf production in these areas to go to places like Kildare to do the same work.

There is also the question of a guaranteed price for turf. The Government have been asked to fix a guaranteed price for turf and I understand that they have said that they do not propose to do so. I think they would be well advised to reconsider the matter, because there are many people who would not be prepared to face the uncertainty of the turf market, having regard to the disappointment which some of them suffered over the past few years. A good many people who had lorries had to sell them because there was not a remunerative price, after the change of Government, for their turf, and I suggest that the Minister should reconsider the question of fixing a guaranteed price now.

Mr. Briscoe

I want to avail of the opportunity to deal specifically with one of the items in this Supplementary Estimate. This is really the first time we have had any opportunity of discussing it, with any degree of experience of its working. I refer to the Prices Advisory Body. The setting up of that body is the logical outcome of outpourings by all the members of all the different groups who have welded themselves into the Coalition Government. These had to be translated into something, but it at least has proved to the community, to every section of the community, that all these outpourings were purely political outpourings in the shape of attacks on industrialists without any foundation whatever.

Mr. Hickey

That is not true.

Mr. Briscoe

Deputy Hickey can speak when I have finished, and correct me where I make a misstatement or an incorrect statement. It has proved to the public conclusively that these people used the situation, without any regard to the facts, purely for the purpose of getting themselves into office and have now translated their combined lack of wisdom on the matter into the setting up of this body.

One would have imagined when the Tánaiste made the announcement in this House that this body was to be set up in order to protect the public and check racketeers, that he at least would have had some evidence to go on and that the Government would have considered it in a proper way, instead of which the public are now satisfied that it was an attempt again to confuse them. Unfortunately for the Government, the bomb exploded before it reached the target and the splinters are affecting the members of all the Coalition groups.

Mr. Hickey

The bomb has been a long time exploded.

Mr. Briscoe

The date was set as December 2nd—a great date that would be remembered in the history of this country and quoted some 1,000 years from now by some Minister for Agriculture who probably had forgotten about Brian Boru—for the coming into effect of the price freeze Order and the saving of the community from the racketeers of the business world. What happened? Practically every commodity was put on the price freeze list and to-day practically every commodity which is not in fact controlled by a maximum price Order has been unfrozen and in respect of the few commodities which came before this body for consideration, price increases were permitted.

We have a figure here in this Supplementary Estimate which is not a true figure, and I want to say to the Minister that, while the figure shown here covers salaries, wages and, certain incidental expenses, it does not cover the cost, which I estimate to be at least £6,000, of the setting up and furnishing of the offices into which this body has been put. It will probably appear in the Board of Works Estimate, but people who have been up there know that a whole section of Griffith Barracks was placed at the disposal of this body, that alterations were made and furniture brought in, and that the names of the various members of the court were painted on the doors, and, so far as I can judge, a figure of some £6,000 will have to be added to this amount to get the exact picture.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

That would be overcharging, anyhow.

Mr. Briscoe

The Deputy can say whether it is or not. It will be a figure decided on by the Board of Works and not an outside body or firm which might be making a few shillings on the work. The life of this body has been very short up to the present. If the remaining few items that are still frozen are dealt with in the course of the next few months, or are unfrozen within the next few months, are we to take it that this body will continue or are we to take it that it will cease to exist? Some people who expected relief in prices and other people who were interfered with in their ordinary business activities now say that this is so much political smoke and window-dressing and that bears no relation to the facts. But the damage has been done. We are not now worrying about the prices of articles: we are worrying about the materials and essential goods which are needed by the people of this country. By the creation of this Prices Advisory Body, business concerns, who had the responsibility of having a continuous supply of essential raw materials coming into this country, had to stop buying. Why? They had to stop buying because the world situation was such that raw material prices were continually on the increase and because they would have to pay more for raw materials than they would be allowed to charge for these materials on the basis of the price list of 2nd December last. In all my experience in commercial and in political life, I have never seen such an exhibition and proof of irresponsibility and such complete disregard for the welfare of the community.

At Question Time to-day we heard the Minister for Health, in reply to a question, say that he is seeking certain essential supplies for all public institutions. How many of these materials can be obtained at any price? Like Deputy Major de Valera, I am not casting any reflection on the personnel of this body which is called the Prices Advisory Body. That body has been established to do a job and the personnel of that body are not responsible for all the pronouncements and announcements that have been made. When Deputy A. Byrne asked the Tánaiste how many articles were going to be frozen the Tánaiste replied that he could sit up all night to count them. It appears to me that the personnel of the Prices Advisory Body sat up all night to count the items that were unfrozen. I do not know what to make of all this. I do not know that very many individuals who occupy the Government Benches know the first thing about trade, industry, manufacturing industries or their requirements. I see in this House now a number of professional men, a number of farmers and some labour representatives. Where are the commercial men? Where are the industrialists who can give some advice on this matter?

There is, in the Department of Industry and Commerce, an important section composed of very experienced officers who exert a control on prices of all goods manufactured or sold in this country. Most of the people who have been affected by this price control which is based on a margin of profit find, because of the very effective control, that whereas a certain working capital was previously sufficient to keep the wheels of their business turning, their capital in relation to their business is becoming quite inadequate because the cost of materials has increased, in many cases, by three and four times their pre-emergency prices. An item which previously cost 1/6 a pound or an ounce, or whatever it might be, now costs four times that price. Anybody who has the slightest conception of what business people have to contend with will recognise, particularly in these days of advance buying and of commitments, that either their turnover must be four times as quick as it was previously or else that four times as much capital as was previously required is necessary. Side by side with that full and effective control by the Department we have this new Prices Advisory Body.

Any business man who wants to continue producing a particular article, the raw material for which he is dependent upon an outside source of supply, must use his own judgment, when there is an availability of merchandise, as to whether the price is likely to fall or to rise. Notwithstanding that, in addition to price control we had this control of actual purchase.

Every time a business man bought a new supply of raw material which had increased in price he had to go to the Prices Section and submit for inspection his costings and his invoices of the new prices and get permission to raise his prices accordingly. Further, every time he was faced with a demand for higher wages he had to go to the Prices Section and give particulars of the increase in wages which he had given to his workers— and which, in turn, had increased his costs of production—and ask for permission to increase his prices. On top of all that, we had in this House a hounding of industrialists who were trying to serve the community and to manufacture goods which were sold not at prices fixed by themselves or at prices which secretly showed an exorbitant profit but at prices which were rigidly controlled by the Department of Industry and Commerce.

These business people were referred to in this House as "racketeers". In one case I think it was Deputy MacEntee who asked in this House regarding a statement made by the Tánaiste about some balance sheet he had seen of certain industrialists whether it had been shown to him in breach of what was called the secrecy preserved by the Revenue Commissioners; it was used by him in an effort to prove to the public that they were being robbed and eaten alive by the manufacturers.

To-day our industry has stood many shocks in the shape of these attacks, but the greatest shock it has withstood and the greatest damage that has been done to industry generally in this country has been the setting up of the Prices Advisory Body because the ordinary individual cannot conceive or believe that a sensible body of men forming the Cabinet of the Government charged with running the affairs of the country could have gone to the expense of setting up this body if they had not had adequate and sufficient evidence that such a body was necessary over and above the existing controls. Now we have the spectacle of this body, having had a Prices Freeze Order, allowed now to let out of their control practically every item, at least two-thirds of them. I said before, and do not want to repeat, that the balance which are frozen are already controlled by a Maximum Prices Order of a different nature.

I do not know whether the members of this House appreciate that they have a certain responsibility not only for the welfare of certain sections of the community but of every section, and a Government, in particular, must act in an even-handed manner. To have such a part, a certain section of the community, as a fair target for destruction, for annihilation, for atomic bombing, may satisfy Deputy Hickey, but I can tell Deputy Hickey: until you have a Government in this country of such a totalitarian nature that it can employ all our people in exchange for the unemployment that will follow the destruction of private enterprise, do not take the line that has been taken.

Mr. Rooney

We had a totalitarian Government already.

Mr. MacEntee

It made you pay your rates.

Mr. Briscoe

The comic-cuts gentleman has appeared, the gentleman who is interested in dual-purpose hens and who wants comic cuts to be written in larger type so that he can enjoy them.

An Ceann Comhairle

This matter is not relevant.

Mr. Briscoe

It was in his question to-day.

An Ceann Comhairle

It is not in this Estimate.

Mr. Briscoe

Deputy Rooney will have to speak more loudly. With this muttering under his breath I can easily misunderstand him.

Mr. Rooney

You had a dictatorship already.

Mr. MacEntee

A Blueshirt one?

Mr. Briscoe

When the history of this country comes to be written the dictators will be recorded, but there will be no names from this side of the House for that record.

Mr. Rooney

There will be no names from that side right enough.

Mr. Briscoe

I do not know why Deputy Hickey gets annoyed if somebody gets up here to speak truth about facts.

Mr. Hickey

When I do not hear truth spoken then I get annoyed.

Mr. Briscoe

The Deputy might tell me where I have not spoken the truth. I have said that I regard the setting up of the Prices Advisory Body as an insult to the industrial and commercial community; I have said that it has been futile because it is on its way out as nothing will be left for it to deal with.

Mr. A.P. Byrne

They did not let the coal merchants get away with it.

Mr. Briscoe

They gave them an increase on the December 2nd price.

Mr. MacEntee

Was Deputy Sheehan disappointed that he did not get away with more?

Mr. Briscoe

They gave an increase.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Deputy Sheehan was not concerned; it was the Dublin merchants who were concerned as Deputy MacEntee probably knows.

Mr. MacEntee

I know that.

Mr. Briscoe

It is an extraordinary thing that certain gentlemen in certain professions always seem to be envious of the fact that somebody in another occupation may be making a living. Lawyers were not brought under the prices freeze Order. I am not complaining about the lawyers getting fees. If I have to employ a lawyer as I often do I am delighted to get a good man and pleased to pay a good man good fees but I do not go out to the street hoardings shouting that the lawyers are crooks and racketeers because they charge for their service and advice.

Mr. Timoney

Because they are not.

Mr. Briscoe

I have not said they are, but I wonder does the Deputy from Tipperary suggest that a businessman who makes profits as a result of his enterprise, his judgement, his ability to choose the right type of person to work for him——

Dr. O'Higgins

Could we get this related to the Estimate?

Mr. Briscoe

I am relating it to this: The Government at the behest of the Tánaiste——

Dr. O'Higgins

He cannot say anything about lawyers.

Mr. Briscoe

I did not say anything about medical men either; I was coming to that.

Dr. O'Higgins

You will not on this Estimate.

Mr. Briscoe

Everybody who renders a service to his fellow-men, whether by the labour of his hands or by his brain, is entitled to his reward.

Mr. Hickey

Hear, hear!

Mr. Briscoe

I am defending the person who is being attacked because he has probably greater ability, greater energy, greater foresight than some others who in their envy of him call him a racketeer and a crook.

Mr. Rooney

Would you agree to a just reward?

Mr. Briscoe

Deputy Rooney is in the insurance business.

An Ceann Comhairle

That has nothing to do with this.

Mr. Briscoe

We are talking of a just reward. If I were an insurance broker——

An Ceann Comhairle

The avocation the Deputy or any other pursues has nothing to do with the Estimate.

Mr. Briscoe

I am talking of the right of people to a just reward for their labour. The Prices Advisory Body was set up to deal with a certain section of our community, business people, and has excluded all else. I was going to say if I were an insurance broker would it be right to bring me before that body and tell me that my commission was obviously unfair, that it was robbery if I had insured somebody by getting him to take a life policy and if forever after I got a commission on his premiums? I do not think it is fair to single out the business and commercial people and industrialists and attack them in this House to the extent of saying that they are fit to be let loose on the community only under the control of a Prices Advisory Body. They set up this body and then found that it had to remove from control two-thirds of the articles that the Government, at the behest of the Tánaiste, froze as from December 2nd. I want to know whether this body is to continue or not. Is it to be the position that business people will have three courts —outside the courts of law, of course —to which they have to go with all their papers, all their books and all their affairs, and from day to day spend their time visiting the Prices Advisory Body, the Prices Control Section of Industry and Commerce and the new Industrial Development Authority, before they can turn in to do their day's work? That is what is happening.

If this Government and that happily wedded group of people over there want to see goods in circulation, essential goods available for our people, they must either take over themselves the purchase of all raw materials and let them out to the manufacturers at prices which they can demand in relation to their actual cost or at a subsidised rate, or they must allow the business community to carry on its own business under the existing control, which I say is sufficient.

What is wrong is this. Some individual gets an idea—like I had recently, to start a little business called Industrial Chemicals. I will admit that I am starting with a friend in a very small way and I admit that I am putting in limited capital, as I am not a millionaire. If this business is fortunate enough, in the course of five or ten years, to assume big proportions and have a reasonably big turnover of articles which on merit have succeeded and I as a result make a bit of money, am I to take it that I am now one of these outstanding racketeers of which this country should beware?

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

You are cutting your advertising costs, anyhow.

Mr. Briscoe

Well, I am giving an example of myself, because I do not want to talk of other industries. I say that the setting up of new industries is being stopped by the present attitude. On the one hand, the Government sets up—and it is in this Estimate—a new industrial body which Deputy Hickey applauded when it was brought into being. It was to get new industries started so rapidly, and such big ones, that all the industrial development of the 16 years' administration of Fianna Fáil would sink into insignificance and nothingness. Side by side with that, you set up the Advisory Body to stop industrialists getting into business at all, as you say they must not make any money.

Mr. Hickey

That is not so.

Mr. Briscoe

I am telling the House what the business reaction is.

Mr. Timoney

Why did the Deputy choose now to start his business rather than some years ago?

Mr. Briscoe

I have such faith in this country that I know when the next election comes round Fianna Fáil will again resume office. I have not lost faith in the people.(Interruptions.) Now, one at a time. The Deputy from Kildare said——

An Ceann Comhairle

I want to hear one of the Dublin Deputies.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

My question was: "What did you expect to get out of that?"

Mr. Briscoe

Have you all finished? The Deputies over there behave like those at a public auction sometimes. They are so excited about certain articles that they cannot wait until one fellow makes a bid, but all want to bid together. What price were we at just now?

An Ceann Comhairle

Industrial development.

Mr. Briscoe

Yes, Sir. The Minister has taken over this Department in these last few days, and I want him to approach this matter with reason and with open mind—if he can—and to recognise that this political agitation, this talk of racketeering in industry, is only a logical outcome of outpourings on the hustings on the eve of the last general election and the promises still unfulfilled of all those gentlemen—"We will reduce the cost of living by 30 per cent."

An Ceann Comhairle

We had all that on the Vote on Account.

Mr. Briscoe

That is what this Prices Advisory Body was set up for. When everything else had failed, this was going to do it—and this body has thrown in its hand. Now that the Government has come to the conclusion that the prices control section of Industry and Commerce has failed, and now that we know the Prices Advisory Body has failed, as it has thrown out all the commodities from control, I want a promise from the Minister to this House that the Government will not come in again to create another body to deal with a problem which cannot be dealt with in this way.

I do not know whether this will be a growing office or not, but I see that a great number of persons are attached to it. Amongst the personnel we have 53 clerical officers. I see that 50 of them are given an increased allowance of £60, temporary and non-pensionable, so I take it that they are not new clerical officers but have been taken over from other Departments.

To my mind, all this is more than stupid. The public are not fools. They realise this thing has had a very short life. I ask the Minister to let us know whether he has had even an interim report from this body as to the advisability of their continuing in their activity. Has the Minister had any opportunity of seeing how this has affected industry generally, to what extent it has slowed up the procuring of raw materials for ordinary industry? I agree there should be price control and the fact is that there was a system of price control.

Mr. Hickey

Not an effective one.

Mr. Briscoe

I hope Deputy Hickey will speak and give us one single instance where this particular body has improved the situation for the community, on one item. I have yet to be told of it. We read yesterday in the papers that the licensed trade are putting up the price of whiskey, brandy and such items. They have given all the reasons and it was not brought under price control.

Mr. MacEntee

No, there was £30,000 involved there.

Mr. Briscoe

This Party when it was in office put an increase on the price of liquor and drink, in order to get money to subsidise essentials, where we saw costs were bound to rise, and then the gentlemen over there accused us and abused us for it; and when they became the Government they remitted that particular taxation. What have we now? We have an increase in the cost of living; we have exploded what were then stated as being the reasons for the causes and we have an increase in the price of liquor.

Mr. Corry

I only wish, as a representative of the greatest industry in this country to-day, that we had some prices advisory body before whom we could bring the Minister for Agriculture and get a proper price for our milk.

An Ceann Comhairle

You cannot bring him under this Vote.

Mr. Corry

There are a couple of matters I wish to deal with. They come under sub-head S (2)—Industrial Development Authority. In November, 1947, the former Minister for Industry and Commerce went down to Haulbowline and was there shown blue prints for the conversion of the furnaces to oil burning ones. He was also shown the preparations that were made for putting up a sheet mill for the production of corrugated iron which is at present being imported into this country. He then guaranteed that, as soon as machinery became available, the money would be placed at their disposal to carry out these works. I remained silent on that matter for 12 months. Then I raised it and I was told that it was being considered by the Government; that it was a very grave and important matter and that a decision on it could not be come to lightly. A short time afterwards this Industrial Development Authority was set up and, when I put down a question six months afterwards to know whether this grave matter was still being considered, I was told it had been handed over to the Industrial Development Authority. I then waited for six months more, as a matter of fact until last month, three years after this Government took office. I put down a question and I was told that the Industrial Development Authority had recommended that an expert should be brought in to deal with this matter and that the expert had advanced very far in his investigations. I asked the Parliamentary Secretary who answered my question whether that expert had yet arrived in Haulbowline and I was told he had not.

Now that we have a new Minister for Industry and Commerce, a large number of whose constituents are finding decent employment in that industry, I hope that he will speed up that authority, find out from them if the expert has yet been employed, when he is going to visit Haulbowline and when we are going to get some decision. We hear of people looking for new industries all over the country and yet we are waiting for the machinery to start the second portion of that industry which was started in 1939 and we have an Industrial Development Authority, costing £51,000, thinking over it for over 12 months. The second matter I should like to deal with is the question of an oil tank in Haulbowline and the bunkering of ships there.

An Ceann Comhairle

Will the Deputy say under what heading it arises?

Mr. Corry

Under the Industrial Development Authority.

An Ceann Comhairle

I do not know.

Mr. Corry

If the Ceann Comhairle will look at the question I asked, he will find that I was told that this matter had been turned over to the Industrial Development Authority. The Minister must have been aware in the capacity in which he served this House for the past three years that if the Irish Navy wish to go to sea they must come to Dublin first to bunker up with oil and then go back to their base.

Mr. S. Collins

We do not go back to our base.

Mr. Corry

I am not speaking to Deputy Collins, but to the angel in the background who is dealing with this matter.

Mr. Sweetman

Will the Deputy repeat what he said?

An Ceann Comhairle

He will not.

Mr. Corry

In critical times like these that is a very serious matter. There is also the fact that other ships cannot be bunkered in a port which was the principal port in this country, even counting Dublin, and that is a very serious condition of affairs. I do not know what particular branch of the Minister's present Department is responsible.

An Ceann Comhairle

Then it is not on this Vote.

Mr. Corry

My reason for bringing it up on this Vote is that a deputation which I had the misfortune to have charge of were referred last week to the Industrial Development Authority. We went over there and interviewed one of these gentlemen for half an hour after an appointment had been made for us by the Department of Industry and Commerce. After interviewing us for half an hour, he said: "I am afraid I know nothing about this; it has not got anything to do with me." I want to know from the Minister to what particular branch of his Department I am to take this deputation from my constituency in order to have this matter investigated, so that if a war does come there will be a couple of gallons of oil at our base in Cobh to supply the Irish Navy before they go out to protect our shores. The Minister should have sufficient knowledge of that situation previously to have it dealt with by now. I have a very definite suspicion that for this Government, as for other Governments, Eire means starting at Inchicore and finishing at the other end of Dublin, and that a deliberate attempt is being made to bring business and trade to Dublin to the detriment of the principal port in this island, namely, the Port of Cork. Now that the Minister for Industry and Commerce represents the constituency of Cork, I hope that he will see that this tendency is stopped.

Mr. Little

I am anxious to know whether the Department have plans to supply non-turf counties with turf. In my constituency of Waterford we had considerable trouble previously because we had to get turf from very great distances. I should like to know whether the Department are planning this time and, if so, whether they will plan in such a way that the turf will be brought from as near a locality as possible into the County Waterford.

Mr. MacEntee

I am afraid there are a few aspects of this Estimate which would require a little more exposure to the public than, I under stand, was vouchsafed to them by the Minister when introducing the Vote. In fact, I have heard that the Minister's justification for this Estimate was almost inaudible in the House. Although I do not assume that I have missed very much by not hearing the Minister giving an explanation of this relatively enormous increase in the Estimate for an already inflated Department, I would, nevertheless, out of my native inspiration, like to explain to the public some of the things the cost of which it is intended to defray under this Estimate. Most of us remember that, in the early stages of this Government, inspectors, particularly industrial inspectors, were referred to by the predecessor of the present Minister in the Coalition Government as "pip-squeaks". "Pip-squeaks" is, of course, a term of contempt. I assume it is not intended by those who use it to enhance the public prestige of those to whom that term is applied. We should have thought that a Minister in a Government, which had proclaimed as its object the abolition of the pip-squeaks from our public life, would have long hesitated before it attempted to increase them very considerably, but one of the purposes of this Supplementary Estimate, which we have before us, is to pay for no less than 50 additional pip-squeaks—a pip-squeak ministry which is almost as prolific of pip-squeaks as rabbits are of progeny. Fifty additional pip-squeaks appointed at an additional cost to the Exchequer, every one of them at £60 per year. I do not wish to be taken as reflecting on the unfortunate civil servant who is called upon to hold himself out as one of the Minister's people in order to discharge the obligations which the Minister has imposed upon him. Far from it. I have a great deal of experience, naturally, in the work of the Civil Service. I know that they do many things which are unpleasant to themselves personally. I know that they are zealous in giving effect to whatever should happen to be the policy of the Government of the day. I have no doubt that these 50 pip-squeaks will be as zealous under the present Minister for Industry and Commerce as they would have been under his immediate predecessor and as they would have been, indeed, under any Government that chose to employ them. Pip-squeaks in order to harass. That was really the implication which was embodied in the use of the term— pip-squeaks to harass suffering shopkeepers, industrialists and suffering manufacturers. But the 50 additional pip-squeaks are comparatively unimportant elements in the set-up for which we are asked to provide £6,365 in respect of two months' operation only.

Much more important is the tribunal, the Prices Advisory Body, as it is called in the Estimate, and that, I presume, is its correct official title. You will note, first of all, in passing, that we no longer have the august tribunal of which the Tánaiste spoke on the 6th December. We are no longer to have the omniscient, all-powerful and universally venerated tribunal which the Tánaiste visualised when he came in to save the Parliamentary Secretary from the consequences of the indiscreet speech which he delivered here on the 4th December of last year. However, whether they call it a tribunal or a body, it is not of any very great importance. What is important is the personnel and the constitution of that body. In order that we may realise how important the personnel and the constitution of that body is, I would like to refer Deputies to the Official Reports and to some of the statements which were made by the Tánaiste on that notable occasion, the 6th December last. At column 1818, Volume 123 of the Official Dáil Debates, dated the 6th December, 1950, the Tánaiste said:

"We propose in this Bill to set up not an inconsequential advisory committee..."

It will be noted that the body for which we are asked to vote £6,000 odd is called a Prices Advisory Body,

"which can ponder over a problem sent to it for a period of months, but a Price Tribunal..."

But a Price Tribunal now. Whatever may have been the Tánaiste's ambitious intention, when he made that announcement on the 6th December, 1950, his grandiose scheme seems to have been somewhat diminished when it came to actual realisation; and whether, as a result of a difference of opinion between the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, the present Minister for Industry and Commerce and other members of the Cabinet, this Prices Advisory Body has speedily been diminished until it has become an advisory committee, or an advisory body, of which the Tánaiste spoke so contemptuously on December 6th last.

I have had occasion to refer to the patent divergence of view in relation to important public questions which exists amongst members of the present Government. I think nothing will more adequately illustrate that divergence than the difference in tone and phraseology in the speech which the Tánaiste delivered when the present Minister for Justice, then Minister for Industry and Commerce, was unfortunately—and I say that quite sincerely—unable to discharge his functions as Minister for Industry and Commerce because of illness. I think there is one thing that would not have happened if the then Minister for Industry and Commerce had been in control of the Department of Industry and Commerce instead of having Mr. Norton butting in, as I said on another occasion, like a cuckoo into the Minister for Industry and Commerce's nest. It was quite clear, from the first public speech which Mr. Morrissey made—I am referring to him by name in order that the personality may be quite clear in the minds of members—from the first public speech which the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Mr. Morrissey, made that he differed quite radically from the views which had been expressed by the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Welfare in relation to this question of price control and profit-fixing. Having heard the Minister for Industry and Commerce on the occasion which I have in mind, I should say that he regarded the statements which had been made by the Tánaiste, and the admissions which the Government had made, to avoid publicly disowning the Tánaiste and his utterances, were nothing short of disastrous from the point of view of their effect upon the economic progress and even upon the economic and social future of the people.

Let me get back now to the devil in the drum or, shall I say, the nigger in the woodpile: let me get back to the Tánaiste and his famous speech.

"We propose in this Bill to set up not an inconsequential advisory committee which can ponder over a problem sent to it for a period of months but a price tribunal."

Now, just listen to the terms in which the Tánaiste described his contemplated prices tribunal:—

"But a price tribunal, a virile, vibrant, representative body of three or five citizens selected on the basis of their competence and on the basis that they are citizens of standing."

I am quoting from Volume 123, column 1818. A virile, vibrant, representative body of three or five citizens. Vibrant is a word largely used by fraudulent persons who deal in spiritualism, hypnotism, auto-suggestion, Couéism, black magic and the like. Therefore, it does not come at all strangely from the Tánaiste. It comes as a matter of fact, if one might say so, trippingly on the tongue so far as the Tánaiste is concerned. He is full of vibrations. When we see him here "tearing a passion to tatters" the air is vibrant with his gaseous emanations. Then we have the word "virile." That is a word largely used in advertisements designed to appeal to those suffering from inferiority complexes, the physically unfit and the mentally subnormal. Virility is often illustrated by he-man pictures showing hairy torsos, muscular overdevelopment and strong stern visages, from out the mouth of which stern words erupt as they erupt from the Tánaiste on occasions.

Let us consider the virile and vibrant personalities of the vibrant and virile personnel of this tribunal. First of all, we have the chairman. The chairman, according to a note which I have here, is a judge of the Supreme Court whose salary is borne on the Central Fund. For that gentleman's competence as a lawyer, for his skill as an advocate no one has more admiration than I; no one, indeed, in the latter capacity has perhaps more reason to be grateful to him than I have. But I would scarcely describe him in this context—I might elsewhere, if he were in the prize-ring or running a prize race—as virile.

In his capacity as a judge of the Supreme Court and as chairman of the Prices Advisory Body, I think the use of the adjectives "virile" and "vibrant" would be completey out of place. In his capacity as chairman presiding over the proceedings of this body before which, according to the Tánaiste, the shopkeepers, the manufacturers, and those engaged in commerce might be hailed at will, surely it was rather an air of judicial impartiality we would like to see characterising his conduct. We would prefer to think that he would sit back and listen instead of sending out vibrations and manifesting virility, as the Tánaiste told us he and each and every one of the members of this Prices Advisory Body would do.

Mr. Sweetman

Is there no limit to the Deputy's bad taste?

Mr. MacEntee

I am not responsible for proclaiming to the public that the Prices Advisory Body would be composed of virile and vibrant citizens. It was the Tánaiste who applied those adjectives. I am merely saying that he misapplied them. I am merely saying that they are the last qualities the public would wish to see manifested by the members of this Prices Advisory Body.

Again, according to another note in the Estimate, the vice-chairman is a Special Commissioner for Income-tax, whose salary is borne on Vote 7. In passing, I may say here that notwithstanding the fact that we are asked to vote £6,365 for this body we have not got from the Minister a comprehensive statement as to what in fact the body is costing the taxpayers. Because, it has been noted that while the vice-chairman is being paid a temporary non-pensionable allowance of £500 a year, his main salary as Special Commissioner for Income-tax is borne on Vote 7.

I do not happen to have a volume of the Estimates handy. If I had, I would like to turn to Vote 7, to see whether the amount of the salary of this Special Commissioner of Income-tax is disclosed in the volume of Estimates for the coming year. I do not think it is, because one of the matters which I have complained of in regard to that volume of Estimates is that this vital information, this information which is essential if we are going to consider these Estimates intelligently, has been withheld from us, so that here we are discussing an Estimate for the Prices Advisory Body and none of us—at least I am not—is in a position to say what exactly in toto do the salary and allowances of the vice-chairman of this body amount to. I am sure, of course, that, judged perhaps by ordinary commercial standards, they would not be exorbitant but that is not the point. The point is that, as I have said, vital information is being concealed from the House, which makes it difficult for us really to criticise this allowance adequately.

However, let me get back again to consider the person, the highly competent public officer, who has been appointed as vice-chairman of this Prices Advisory Body. I have known that officer over a great many years. I knew him when he was a member of the Special Investigation Branch of the Revenue Commissioners. I know him to be very zealous, very competent and highly efficient but I should not describe him as being virile or vibrant. Far from it, and I should think that persons who were compelled to have resort to the Special Commissioners of Income-tax in order that they might secure some redress against the exorbitant demands of the income-tax inspectors and the income-tax assessors would not want to see a person who was very virile or vibrant in front of them when they were asking for justice at his hands. On the contrary, they would like to see a person who might perhaps have the characteristics of a good ordinary general practitioner, say, the family doctor, who would listen patiently, who would calmly assess the facts and come to a conclusion instead of, with all his virility and all his vibrancy, try to impress his point of view upon the unfortunate individual who was coming before him to seek justice, and it is justice that those who come before this Prices Advisory Body come to seek.

Of course, that does not happen to be the Tánaiste's conception of the functions of the Prices Advisory Body. On the contrary, judging by some passages which I will quote in due course from his speech, he would appear to have visualised this Prices Advisory Body as a replica, a reproduction, of the fabulous Spanish Inquisition, one which would sit in forbidding surroundings, the principal feature of which was a gridiron upon which the unfortunate industrialists would be turned and turned, if they were not put on a spit and turned, for the delectation of some members of the Prices Advisory Body and, of course, of gentlemen like the Tánaiste, Deputy Davin, Deputy Seán Dunne and the rest of them, who think that the only thing that should be done, the only fate that should be meted out, to manufacturers, industrialists and successful businessmen is that of drawing and quartering or perhaps flaying, even before they are dead.

We can pass from this question of virility and vibrancy. We know what the Tánaiste thought the Prices Tribunal ought to be. Then he goes on to tell us what it ought not to be. I am quoting this time from column 1819:

"I would like to make it clear here and now on behalf of the Government that that Price Tribunal will not be an automatic machine for registering price increases."

Let us see how that was fulfilled. I think that the Prices Advisory Body had not been two days or three days in existence before an Order was made automatically increasing the price of coal to the citizens of Dublin by—I am speaking entirely from recollection and I am by no means a housekeeper—at least 30 per cent.

A Deputy

That is not right.

Mr. MacEntee

A Deputy says that is not right. If the Deputy, in order that we may be effectually correct, will tell me by how much the price of coal was increased immediately after this Prices Advisory Body was set up, I and the other members of the House will be very grateful to him.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

It would be £11 a ton to-day if there was no body set up.

Mr. MacEntee

Now, Deputy O'Higgins, I am not the Minister for Justice.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

If you fellows were in power, it would be £11 per ton.

Mr. Little

"If ifs and ans were pots and pans."

Mr. MacEntee

If ifs and ans were pots and pans, there would not be an O'Higgins in this House.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

There would be some donkeys knocking around the place, though.

Mr. MacEntee

However, Sir, I was asking some Deputy who, apparently, knows all about this business, to tell me by how much the price of coal was increased immediately after the Prices Advisory Body was set up.

Mr. Davin

You are supposed to know.

Mr. MacEntee

Very well then, I will make a guess at it. My recollection is that it rose from somewhere in the neighbourhood of £6 10s. 0d. a ton, I think it was, to nearly £9.

Mr. Davin

£8 5s. 0d.

Mr. MacEntee

Very well, £6 10s. 0d. to £8 5s. 0d.—a jump overnight, sanctioned without, apparently, any application from anybody. We did not have any public display on that particular occasion of the coal merchants being hailed before this tribunal and asked to justify an increase in price. We did not hear anything about profiteering because, of course, the big profiteer in this matter was the Government. It was the Government that was responsible for the jump in price from £6 10s. 0d. to £8 5s. 0d., as Deputy Davin has been good enough to disclose to the House. But what became, then, of the Tánaiste's solemn undertaking to the public when he said:—

"I would like to make it clear here and now on behalf of the Government that that Price Tribunal will not be an automatic machine for registering price increases."

What was it in that case except an automatic machine? The Minister for Industry and Commerce, and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce and, perhaps, for all I know, even the Tánaiste himself, pressed the button and at once the machine needle jumped up and registered an automatic price increase. Of course, there were many more price increases of the same sort which I have not time to expose to the House.

Before I leave this question of the Prices Advisory Body, I think there is a feature of it which should be commented upon. I do not wish to be taken as implying anything or reflecting in any way upon the integrity or the competence of the gentlemen who compose this body, but I think it is unfortunate that the Government should have chosen as the chairman of the body a judge of the Supreme Court. I say that for this reason, that I understand there is considerable doubt among lawyers as to the validity of this body, as to the validity of the Prices Freeze Order itself, and it may not be, perhaps, unconnected with that, that some of the developments that have been criticised in relation to the enforcement of this Prices Freeze Order may have some relationship to the fact that the Government are so very doubtful as to whether the Prices Freeze Order is legal or not, that they anticipate, perhaps, it might be challenged in court, and that they are now, as delicately and as tactfully as they can, so as not to embarrass the Tánaiste or Deputy Davin or other members of the Labour Party, endeavouring to thaw out this prices freeze before something worse befalls them.

If there is any doubt whatever, and I think there is and I am assured there is, about the legality of this Order— and I think before the Order was made that this very point, this very issue of its legality, must have been put before the Government—surely it was an improper thing, from the point of view of future possible developments, to have put as chairman of this body a judge of the Supreme Court, who might ultimately, if he would sit—I do not think he would, but if he would— have to decide a point of the greatest constitutional importance in relation to a body of which he had been chairman and in which he had functioned?

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

What about the approach of the last Government to the Chief Justice arising out of the case about the Sinn Fein funds?

Mr. MacEntee

The less said about that the better.

Donnchadh Ó Briain

Mind the Post Office; the pickings are good there.

Mr. MacEntee

It stinks.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

The Deputy has a very short memory.

Mr. MacEntee

Deputy Tom O'Higgins is a prolific breeder of red herrings.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

I have read the handbook on the Rebellion of 1916.

Mr. MacEntee

I am sure you read all about Tim Healy, too.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order, order!

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

I did.

Mr. MacEntee

And Parnell, and a few others.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order, order!

Mr. MacEntee

This martial Deputy, who was not in the Army during the emergency——

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

Indeed I was.

Mr. MacEntee

One of the rubber ducks.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

Indeed I was, but the Deputy was not in any army— he missed the train.

Donnchadh Ó Briain

He will not have to go to any O'Higgins for a character.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order, order!

Mr. G. Boland

We remember the events of 1922.

Donnchadh Ó Briain

Your uncle wanted to bring across the King.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy MacEntee must be allowed to speak, and deliberate interruptions of that character will not prevent him.

Mr. MacEntee

I shall now finish with the chairman of this Prices Advisory Committee. I think it was very unfortunate and very ill-advised, and it creates a bad precedent, that the Government should have chosen as chairman of this body a judge of the Supreme Court. I have no doubt they could have got another person who would act as chairman, I am not going to say with greater distinction or with greater ability, but I want to emphasise, and I think a great many others believe with me, that it was a wrong thing to have done.

What I have said with regard to the chairman of this body applies with almost as great force to the vice-chairman. The vice-chairman, as the note in the Estimate informs us, is a special commissioner for income-tax. I do not think he has ceased to function as a special commissioner for income-tax. Income-tax payers have to go before him. They have to establish a case there. They have to show their books and accounts and these accounts are subject to scrutiny by him and the other commissioner who sits with him generally, and the person concerned has to explain all the implications of every figure in his accounts and to justify the appeal which he makes to the special commissioner.

I think it is exceedingly difficult for a person functioning in that particular capacity, with all the knowledge he must acquire about people's businesses, to drop his rôle as special commissioner and sit as vice-chairman of this Prices Advisory Body. I do not think it is possible for him, or any other man, no matter how determined he may be to do justice, no matter how determined he may be to be impersonal, to blot out of his mind knowledge which he may have gained in his capacity as special commissioner for income-tax and to approach the person who comes before him, any body which comes before him, appealing to be permitted to make a reasonable increase in the prices of the things which he or they make or sell. I do not think it is possible for him to approach a person in that capacity in the same impersonal way as he would be able, I hope, to do if he did not hold the post of special commissioner for income-tax.

I know a great many people are very disturbed about this development because hitherto the proceedings of the Revenue Commissioners, particularly in relation to income-tax, where there are special and general commissioners, have always been regarded as highly confidential. Not even in my time, and I am perfectly certain not even in the time of my predecessor, Mr. Blythe and not even in the time of my immediate successors, the President, or Deputy Aiken when he was Minister for Finance, and not even a Minister for Finance during the whole period 1922 to 1948, could one secure from the Revenue Commissioners any information relating to the business of any individual or any concern in this country.

Now the people feel because of this appointment that that position no longer obtains, and they are fortified in that belief by a speech which was made by the Tánaiste himself in January, 1949, when he suggested that he had seen the balance sheets of some of these companies. You remember that famous speech: "If you saw," he said, "the balance sheets of some of these companies, these boys have certainly got away with murder since 1939." Then he went on to say that there was a small group of unscrupulous people who lined their pockets thicker and thicker with the money raked out of the pockets of the consuming public. "I think," he said, "in a well-governed country gentlemen of that kind should be the guests of the Government in power in the thickest-walled jails we have." That was in January, 1949, and he followed that up with this statement on the 6th December last—I am quoting from column 1809——

Mr. Corish

For the purpose of the records, would the Deputy give the reference of his previous quotation?

Mr. MacEntee

I was quoting from the Independent of the 21st January, 1949. I have not quoted it in extenso.

Mr. Corish

I remember it.

Mr. MacEntee

A lot of people remember it, and I think the Tánaiste would like a lot of people to forget it, as I hope to show before I have finished, when I have dealt with his speech dealing with the Prices Advisory Body. The Tánaiste, in the course of his speech on the 6th December last said, as reported in column 1809:

"Is it not as plain as a pikestaff that during that period"——

he was referring to the period between 1939 and 1946—

——"so far as the workers were concerned, they endured economic crucifixion at the hands of the Fianna Fáil Government because their wages were kept low while, on the other hand, we had created a new hierarchy of wealthy people, arrogant in their wealth, arrogant in their opulence, challenging anybody who dared to question their right to make extortionate profits."

The word "arrogant" comes well from the mouth of the Tanáiste. Is there anybody whose public conduct in relation to the citizens, in relation to the taxpayers who groan under him, who adopts a more arrogant attitude than the Tanáiste, whether he is addressing this House or addressing a public meeting outside?

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

Or dealing with Deputy MacEntee.

Mr. MacEntee

He cannot afford to be arrogant with me. I have too great a contempt for him.

Mr. Sweetman

The Deputy might finish the quotation.

Mr. MacEntee

I am saying that the Tanáiste on the 6th December manifested precisely the same attitude towards the commercial community of the State as he did on the 1st January, 1949, when he declared that they should be the guests of the Government in power in the thickest walled jails we have. On the 6th December, 1950, he declared that "they were arrogant in their wealth, arrogant in their opulence, challenging anybody who dared to question their right to make extortionate profits."

Mr. Sweetman

The Deputy has not given the correct quotation. That is not the correct quotation.

Donnchadh Ó Briain

Are you making this speech? Dún do bhéal.

Mr. MacEntee

I do not propose to read the Tanáiste's whole speech. I would hate to tire the House with his demagogy, the rattle-raising ramping of the Tanáiste. I do not mind exposing him, but I do not want to torture the House unduly in doing so.

Mr. Sweetman

You did not refer to his reference to the cheque book at election time in that quotation.

Mr. MacEntee

I am sure the Deputy never received a cheque for his election expenses.

Donnchadh Ó Briain

What about the publicans of Dublin and their £8,000?

Mr. MacEntee

We shall talk about cheque books when I have finished. There is one matter about this mysterious office that calls for some explanation—one mysterious omission. We shall talk about cheque books later on. I have not forgotten it and I shall come to it when it appears to me to be relevant to do so. I was referring to the Tánaiste's statement about arrogance but I shall leave the question of the Tánaiste's arrogance for a moment because I want to come back again to the Prices Tribunal. I was saying that the Tánaiste had stated as reported in column 1819, that the Prices Tribunal would not be an automatic machine for registering price increases. "We want this examination," he went on to say later, "carried out in the full light of day and we want to make sure that the public Press will be available to report the applications for increases and to read the examination of the witnesses before that Tribunal." How many members of the public Press were invited to attend at the tribunal when it was hearing the Government's request to be permitted to increase the price of coal from £6 10s. 0d. a ton to £8 5s. 0d? Why should the Government be selected and singled out for special treatment and the ordinary citizen, the taxpayer who supports this Government and supports this House, be subjected to the full rigour of the price freeze Order? Why was the Minister for Industry and Commerce not asked to come before the Prices Advisory Body and to undergo public examination in order to explain why it was necessary to import this coal from overseas or across the Atlantic, why it was we had not available turf supplies to make good any deficiency there might be in the British supplies; why it was that the British, whom we had allowed to put a strangle-hold on our cattle export trade, were not fulfilling the great bargain of 1948? Why was the Government allowed to get away with that? Why was the Minister for Agriculture who was responsible, very largely, for that agreement, whose deficiencies have been responsible for the fact that we had to import, and have had to continue to import, coal at an exorbitant price, a price which has made this mineral merit the name of black diamonds, because it will be soon as rare in the houses of the ordinary people of this country—the middle class and the workers—as diamonds are, not called before the board?

Why was not the Tánaiste's principle applied in relation to this increase which was permitted in the price of coal? Why was not the examination in that case carried out in the full light of day, and why were not the Press representatives invited to be present? It seems to me that the Dáil is being led up the garden path in relation to this. The public were told that we were going to get an omnipotent, an omniscient, a merciless and pitiless tribunal and yet in the first case which goes before them, the cause is heard in secret, and the public are mulcted by the members of the Advisory Tribunal permitting the Government to increase the price of coal.

What else was this Prices Tribunal to do? I have, Sir, to ask the House to be patient while I read from a somewhat lengthy statement made by the Tánaiste in regard to this further activity of the Prices Tribunal, and what it was to lead to eventually. I am quoting from column 1821:—

"We must ask ourselves frankly"—said the Tánaiste—"how many people will we keep on the basis of paying them profits between the time the article is manufactured and the point at which it ultimately reaches the hands of the consumer. We could, if we liked, put in half a dozen more classes and let them all get a little and let the consumer pay in the long run. But prudent people may think that we have now reached the stage and the consumer has reached the stage where he no longer thinks he ought to be asked to carry so many at such an expensive price as he is paying to-day. However, that is a matter which will be subject to examination by this tribunal."

Now, mark what was to be a subject for examination by this tribunal—one may describe it as the rationalisation of distribution. I know that that will appeal to the former leaders and members of The Vanguard, because, under their programme, the small shopkeeper, the middleman, was to be crushed out: in fact, his business was to be expropriated.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Vanguard does not arise on this Estimate.

Mr. MacEntee

It does, the vanguard which I see has now become a rearguard position. The Tánaiste is in the vanguard in trying to put over the policy of The Vanguard. Let me remind the House of what the Tánaiste was talking about. “We could, if we liked,” he said, “put in half a dozen more classes ... but prudent people may think that we have now reached the stage and the consumer has reached the stage where he no longer thinks he ought to be asked to carry so many at such an expensive price as he is paying to-day. However,” the Tánaiste went on—and this is what makes what I am going to say relevant —“that is a matter which will be subject to examination by this tribunal.”

I would like the Minister for Industry and Commerce, when he is replying to tell the House whether this tribunal has yet addressed itself to this problem, the problem as to how many people we will "keep on the basis of paying them profits between the time the article is manufactured and the point at which it ultimately reaches the hands of the consumer." That seems an innocuous statement until you begin to think what it means. If it means anything, it means that the Tánaiste wants the tribunal to examine how many people, shopkeepers and others, can be put out of employment in order to bring down the price of goods to the consumer. Now, there may be too many people engaged in the distribution trade, but, if they are engaged in the distribution trade, they are engaged in it because they have to earn a livelihood, and there is no other means of earning a livelihood open to them. You can crush out the small shopkeeper. It has been done in Poland and in Czechoslovakia: it has been done in every country behind the Iron Curtain. It was the first thing Lenin tried to do in Russia—to rationalise the system of distribution, to which this tribunal under the direction of the Tánaiste is to address itself as an urgent problem. You can do all this. It has been done elsewhere, and Deputy Cowan who is sneering and sniggering wants to have it done here; but, if you do that, what are you going to do with the people whom you put out of business, and with the men and women, the boys and the girls, whom they employ?

The Tánaiste set up a commission to consider the problem of emigration. If you put these people out of employment, if you reduce the number of stages between the manufacturer and the consumer, somebody is going to lose, somebody is going to be put out of a job and somebody is probably going to be driven out of the country. Yet, this question of the rationalisation of distribution is one of the tasks which the Tánaiste indicated, on behalf of the Government, the tribunal would be asked to examine.

I do not think that proposal figured among the pledges which the Fine Gael Party gave to the electorate when they went before them in the year 1948. But, if you rationalise the system of distribution, a problem which the Tánaiste would like to see the tribunal examine, what is to prevent the rationalisation of agriculture as well? It is true, and perhaps to this extent I may be irrelevant, that agriculture is one activity which is excluded altogether from the Price Freeze Order, but once let this question of rationalisation, in regard to production and distribution, creep in on the industrial side of our economy and what is to stop it being applied to the agricultural industry as well? We ought to watch where we are going.

Captain Cowan

We might miss the train if we did not.

Mr. MacEntee

The Coalition—as somebody said, this Gretna Green marriage of the politicians—ought to watch where it is being led by the Tánaiste.

Captain Cowan

It is being led in the right direction, anyway.

Mr. MacEntee

It ought to watch where it is being brought by Deputy Cowan, Deputy Larkin, Deputy Connolly—yes, and Deputy Seán Dunne.

Mr. Corish

I thought he was going to forget you, Seán.

Captain Cowan

The power we have is amazing.

Mr. MacEntee

You will have to bear with me for a little while, Sir, because I am trying to control my temper. What was this tribunal to do? What is to be the ultimate result of the tribunal's activities and of the Order under which it was to be set up? "There may be a case," said the Tánaiste, at column 1821, "for a price freeze, though there are difficulties in the administration of any such freeze, but at least there will be a price freeze, the most extensive and practical price freeze we can devise." Deputy Alfred Byrne, Senior, asked: "Will it be a general one?" and the Tánaiste replied: "It will be a general one and the Deputy will be tired counting the commodities that will be affected by it." I think Deputy Byrne would have been very fatigued indeed.

Mr. A. Byrne

We were talking about blankets at the time, blankets which were doubled in price overnight on the working-class people.

Mr. MacEntee

I am not denying that prices are rising and the Government does not deny that prices are rising. What the Government does is to try to excuse itself by passing the blame on to others—the war in Korea, the fact that people are stockpiling and a dozen other things, all outside the Government's control; but the point about it is that every one of these factors was operating in the year 1947 and the beginning of 1948, and there was not a single speaker on the then Opposition platform who was prepared to have the moral courage to admit that prices might rise, because, so far as the Government was concerned, they were uncontrollable.

What I object to in relation to this whole set up is that it was an attempt to deceive the people, an attempt to mislead the people, an attempt to undo the harm that had been done by the injudiciously phrased speech of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I do not say that that speech of his was deliberately designed to try to deny the facts of the situation, because they were undeniable. Everybody outside this House, everybody who has had to engage in any commercial transaction, knows that prices are rising, that the cost of living is going up and is bound to go up even much more; but what people did complain about was that the Parliamentary Secretary and the Government for whom he spoke should have had so little regard for their intelligence as to attempt to persuade them that, because the cost-of-living index did not show any change, there were no changes in the facts of the situation.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

He did no such thing.

Mr. Rooney

It is your own index figure.

Mr. MacEntee

Let me get back. I was saying that the Tánaiste said that the price freeze would be a general one and that Deputy Byrne would be tired counting the commodities that would be affected by it. Of course, the price freeze was a general one. Irrespective of what the facts of the situation were and irrespective of the fact that wool had gone up in price, not by 100 per cent. overnight, as Deputy Byrne has told us blankets rose, but by 300 per cent.——

Mr. Rooney

Not overnight.

Mr. MacEntee

Inside a very short period, and, for all practical manufacturing purposes, overnight. Disregarding the fact that copper was soaring, that aluminium was soaring, that rubber was still soaring and that, as a matter of fact, most of these things were almost unprocurable, the Government, disregarding all the facts of the situation, imposed this price freeze Order. What was the immediate effect of it—that everybody who was engaged in industry, everybody who had to buy ahead, expecting that, in due time, he would be compensated for any increase in the cost of his raw materials and any increase in the other charges to which his industry might be subject, immediately stopped buying. They could not afford to buy wool, if they were not to be allowed to increase the price of the blankets; they could not afford to buy cotton, if they were not to be allowed to increase the price of the garments to be made from that cotton; they could not afford to buy rubber, if they were not to be allowed to increase the price of the commodities in the manufacture of which rubber is a substantial factor; they could not afford to buy steel or any other of these things which they had to get from outside, and, therefore, they stopped buying.

In this period, when all the world is buying in order to safeguard itself against an ultimate shortage we in this country, who are more vulnerable to blockade than any other country in Europe, whose people had a very tight time during the last war, allowed these priceless days and weeks and months to slip by because the Government had done a foolish thing which prevented every wise man, every farseeing business man from taking the normal precautions he would have taken to maintain his stocks of raw materials. Without these stocks of imported raw materials, we cannot keep industry in this country going; we cannot meet the needs of our people, and we cannot keep our workers in employment. It is a longstanding tale that you cannot make bricks, without straw, but that is what the Government demanded that the Irish manufacturer should do—make bricks without straw, produce commodities and give employment without being able to procure for himself the raw materials essential to the maintenance of industry. That is where the criminality of this Price Freeze Order came in. I am not against price control.

Undoubtedly, in times of shortage and scarcity, there will be some people —not all—who will be prepared to exploit that situation, but this was not price control. This was rank, staring madness. This was a deliberate paralysis of industry by the Government in order to secure a petty political end, in order to get the Parliamentary Secretary and the Government for whom he spoke out of the mess in which his ill-judged speech had precipitated them.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.