Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 4 Dec 1952

Vol. 135 No. 5

Adoption Bill, 1952—From Seanad. - Supplies and Services (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1946 (Continuance) Bill, 1952—Second Stage (Resumed).

Mr. Dillon

When I moved the adjournment I was making the case that the wide powers envisaged in this Bill should not be committed to the hands of a Government which had lost the confidence of the electors and, secondly, to a Government which by the improvidence of its general conduct suggested that it was not worthy of the confidence implied in the granting of these powers.

I think I have established beyond cavil that a Government which has received at the electorate's hands the heaviest electoral reverse that any Government in office has ever received since the State was founded, manifestly is under the obligation of going to the country at the earliest possible moment to ascertain whether the views of the electors of North-West Dublin are reflected by the electors of the other constituencies, and I believe they are. In these circumstances, it is manifestly absurd for the Government to seek the wide powers contained in this Bill when they will proceed to use them without the confidence of the people, and with this astonishing record behind them which I now propose to detail.

We had the most recent manifestation of their folly and irresponsibility in the demeanour and conduct of the Minister for Finance to-day. He procured that two questions should be put to him about the rate of interest payable on the Marshall Aid funds and he then sought to establish that it was highly improvident of an Irish Government to borrow these funds at 2½ per cent., payable to a foreign Government, when they might borrow money at 5 per cent. on the open market. The case he made was on the face of it grotesque. But let us suppose that the case he made were true and that is the representation he made to Dáil Éireann. But the fact is that when he came into office there was a sum of £24,000,000 in cash on his desk. He said to-day that to borrow that money and to use it for the capital purposes for which we intended to use it was egregious folly and a gross misuse of the discretion vested in the Government.

If that is the criterion which he set for himself, why did he use in six short months £24,000,000 of that money? In the previous three years we had gradually appropriated for capital purposes £16,000,000 of the counterpart moneys derived from the Marshall Aid loans. We left £24,000,000 in hard cash at the disposition of the incoming Minister for Finance. He says that he looks back to-day with horror at the improvidence and folly of borrowing that money at 2½ per cent. Nevertheless, within six months he borrowed and spent more than we had appropriated in the previous three years. That is his own declaration.

He answered two questions to-day and when I asked a supplementary question he said: "Will the Deputy wait until I come to my considered answer to the question which Deputy Cogan has put down?" He made the case that to borrow this money at 2½ per cent. payable to the American Government was the equivalent of paying 12½ per cent. on a National Loan. He is a stupid man but we must give him the credit that he has persuaded his own limited intellect of the truth of that proposition. Having done so he says himself that he borrowed and spent £24,000,000 on terms which he now regards as improvidence to the point of recklessness. We should remember that when he came in here to speak on the token Estimate for the Department of Finance a week or a fortnight ago he told us that he admitted that when he was bringing his financial proposals before the Government he was met by his colleagues with reluctance. They did not want to be associated with this but he felt it his duty to remind them that the Government had collective responsibility. He said: "I told them that either they adhered to my proposals or my duty was to resign!" He went on: "The Taoiseach and every one of my colleagues came round to my point of view and authorised me to approach Dáil Eireann as the representative of a united Government sharing responsibility for every item of the policy I put forward." He has hung round the neck of every one of them full responsibility and warns them: "If you attempt to throw me overboard I will drag you all with me and the four satellites to boot."

A week later he comes in and tells us: "Never was money borrowed in so improvident a way as the Marshall Aid funds." But he did not add: "When I had a chance of repaying £24,000,000 of that money I did not take it. I spent it in six months, albeit that I believe it to be borrowed on a basis more improvident than ever characterised a financial transaction of this country in the past." That is the Government which asks us now to give it these powers in this Bill. They are all joined in that. It astonishes me that they have the audacity to propose that this House should give them the wide discretionary powers involved.

I remember frequent debates when we were in office on the subject of unemployment. I remember my colleagues saying repeatedly, "Let our policies be judged by how far they achieve our aim of enabling people who want to earn their living in this country to find jobs at wages which will enable them to maintain a family in decent comfort." I remember Deputy Davin saying shortly after our Government left office, "The plain fact is that three months ago there was virtually full employment in rural Ireland." That was a proud boast. We sought to provide the means to put capital works in progress because we felt that where you had men and materials and capital and could bring them together for the creation of wealth-producing projects and for the creation of projects which raised our people out of the slum dwellings and condemned houses to put them in decent homes, or where we were able to provide accommodation which permitted our people to turn their backs forever on the county home and to have decent standards of treatment and comfort in hospitals where they could be cured of their ills, it was the duty of the Government, if no other agency was available, to bring money, men and goods together and boldly to use them for the joint purpose of enabling our people to work in their own country for the benefit of their neighbours and, secondly, for creating the wealth potential of our society in the years that lay ahead.

What is the position to-day? I say that this Government has deliberately and expressly accepted the proposition that our people were eating too much and living too well and that it was the duty of the Government to see that they would not eat as much in the future and that their standard of living would be brought down to a level which the Minister for Finance considered good enough for the people of this country. And they have done it. I challenge anyone in this House to deny that there is less bread being eaten in Ireland to-day than there was 12 months ago.

Mr. Lemass

As a matter of fact, there is more.

Mr. Dillon

I deal with practical bakers of whom I am one myself.

Mr. Lemass

I will give the Deputy the figures.

Mr. Dillon

I know what I am speaking of. There is less bread being consumed in this country at the present moment than there was 12 months ago. The Minister may be bewildered with statistical calculations which are furnished to him by civil servants in Kildare Street, in the Department of Finance or elsewhere. I am talking of what I know from my own neighbours and what my colleagues know from their neighbours, and that is, there is less bread being consumed in Ireland because the bread costs too much. Many people may imagine that the dramatic decline in the consumption of stout and beer is due to the increased tax on stout and beer. I thought that too, but it is not true. The decline in the consumption of stout and beer is due to the fact that a great many working people in this country, when they come to Saturday night have to hand over so much of their earnings to the woman of the house in order to keep the household going that they cannot keep back the 5/- or 10/- they used to keep back for going to the local. I am not saying that that is good or bad, but I make no apology for saying quite openly and frankly, before temperance reformers and everyone else, that it is not part of an Irish Government's job to reduce our people to a level of poverty which denies them the discretion to regulate their own drinking habits. If you are a temperance reformer, go out and argue with people about temperance. That is a good thing to do. But it is not part of the duty of an Irish Government to leave the working man in this country so poor on Saturday night that there is no discretion left to him. He must either leave the children hungry or go dry himself.

I say this is the position which is obtaining in an ever-widening area in this country at the present time. I have never felt that in connection with the decline in consumption of spirits. The consumption of spirits fluctuates pretty closely in relation to the excise duty levelled upon it but when you see the consumption of beer and stout slumping away down under the impact of an excise duty and not coming back but continuing to drop slowly away, you can be perfectly certain that it is indicative of a quite different condition than that which you readily expect from an increase on the excise duty on beer. It means—and we all know it means—that those who are responsible for families in this country have imposed upon them an obligatory temperance. It is an obligation imposed on them by the alternative of leaving their children hungry or naked.

It seems to me to be an utterly shocking thing that we in our own country should do to our own people what we would be prepared to take up arms in our hands to prevent a foreign government doing. Does any Deputy doubt that if the British Government were in power here and openly announced a policy in which they were going to make our people hungry and poor, the mildest among us would not have felt there was justification in resorting to any weapon to prevent them from doing it? Was it not the famine that drove the people in '48, ill-equipped to bear arms as they were, to bear them rather than lie down and die of hunger in their own country, because they said no Government but a British government would do that here? Rather than submit to famine they would sooner risk being shot or hanged for bearing arms.

Nobody is going to die of famine in this country, but we are going to have hardship and see the standard of living reduced. The astonishing thing is it is our own Government that is doing it, and doing it, they say, for the benefit of the people. Who is benefiting? What is the purpose of government if it is not to provide people in their own country with a decent living? What merit is there in taking from the people the modest standard of decency they enjoyed 18 months ago and telling them: "We hope some day you will get part of it back, but in the meantime get down where you belong. Get down to the standards of peasants and the proletariat, and let no one presume in this country to make the case that our people are entitled to a standard of living superior to that"?

If I believed that I would advise the people of Ireland to get out and go somewhere else. I would not ask anyone to stay in the country in the belief that he looked forward for himself, his children and his children's children to a lid being clamped down forever upon him and being told that he was never to rise from the low standard of living appropriate to peasants and proletarians. It is because I am convinced this country can provide for her people a higher standard of living than that of many other agricultural countries in the world that I consider it a privilege to live here and a proud duty to participate in the public life of this country.

Just imagine what kind of mentality brings a man into the public life of this country to see that our people are impoverished. This is the Government controlled and directed by the Minister for Finance, coerced by his threat of resignation into sponsoring this measure which asks us to give them wide powers in connection with supplies and services. Not unless we are daft. I look at the four satellite Deputies of this House who are now supporting Fianna Fáil. There is not one of them but pleaded in their constituencies that the cost of living was one of the issues which forced them into supporting Fianna Fáil and deserting the inter-Party Government. After three years administration in this country, in the course of which the inter-Party Government had to contend with the devaluation of the £ and the impact of the Korean war, the cost of living had gone up by two points when this Bill came to be debated in 1950. Between then and the subsequent June I think it went up a further four or five points.

Since this Government came into office the cost of living has gone up by at least 12 per cent. Why has it gone up? Because this Government set out their policy to make it go up. It was they who took the subsidy off the bread in part, off tea, off butter and off the other foodstuffs the increase in which has produced the increase in the cost of living under which we are struggling at the present time. They told us their hearts were moved by the prospect of unemployment at the very time when those best qualified to judge were stating that in rural Ireland there was virtual full employment. Let me read from an official publication which reached me in the course of the last ten days. These are the figures. The total number of unemployed has gone up in the last 12 months by 10,000. I refer now to the industrial analysis life register, mid-October, 1952. It referred to an increase in the number of unemployed persons in certain groups of employment. General building construction and repair, an increase of 596 unemployed persons. What is the reason? Slackness in building and allied trades. Is it suggested by any side of this House that the housing problem is solved? Is that the reason that we have shipped timber to Belfast? Docks, harbours, piers and lighthouses, 201—slump in dockside employment. Our policy was to increase production so that the exports of our agricultural industry would be adequate to pay for whatever imports were required. This Government came in and announced that their object was to cut down imports. While they warned of bankruptcy awaiting us, inevitably there was no prospect of our agricultural industry providing the additional exports in the foreseeable future in time to save the nation from the collapse that they threatened.

The only way, they said, to cut the balance of payments was to make the people eat less and spend less and they have done it. It is no mean achievement in 12 months to have turned this country into a country exporting building timber to Belfast. Remember that all this was done by a procedure envisaged under this Bill of quasi ordinance and by their own confession they have decided to stop house building. They came forward with proposals three months ago intended to raise the interest rate on people who were seeking house-building loans under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts. Representations were made from every side of the House detailing the hardships which those proposals would bring to everyone who under the Acts had building projects already in hand. The Government changed its mind and said: "We agree that would be an unbearable hardship on those having plans on hands to put this extra levy on them and therefore we will change our programme and give the money at a lower rate of interest to everybody with commitments already made." What did that imply? If they themselves admit that unless they make the money available at a lower rate of interest those already building would suffer intolerable hardship, does it not follow from that that they concede that from October, 23rd, nobody is, in fact, going to avail of the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts to build a house? They admit that under the new rate of interest it would be unreasonable for anybody to persist with an existing contract for building a house. How much more unreasonable it would be then to ask any young fellow contemplating matrimony to set out de novo on the erection of a house under the terms now available. Signs on, the builders' suppliers of this country having noted that, properly applied to the Minister: “Let us ship this building timber now for we will not want it.”

The Minister says, of course, that they could buy cheaper timber elsewhere. But they have never tried to explain how, if it is possible to buy cheaper elsewhere, the people in Belfast do not try to buy it. The truth is that we had accumulated a stock of timber but the present Minister said to the builders' suppliers: "This timber will not be required now because the consumption of the people is about to disappear, and timber from Riga or wherever they get it will be here long before the prospective demand for timber will make any serious inroads on your present stocks."

The inter-Party Government is held up to odium because we encouraged builders' suppliers to lay in timber in anticipation of a demand so vigorous and strong by the people that the timber would be turned over to the contractors as quickly as the shippers' orders could be filled. Fianna Fáil's answer is: "Ship the stuff to Belfast and get it off your hands as quickly as you can."

Mr. Lemass

Explain about the setting up of the timber importing organisation.

Mr. Dillon

You cannot have it both ways.

Mr. Lemass

Why did you do it?

Mr. Dillon

The Minister for Finance said last week that his judgment was that we aimed to turn the country into a vast timber yard. You all heard him. So much timber was coming in, he said, that it looked like the inter-Party Government wanted to turn the whole country into a timber yard. We had no such plan. Our problem was that the development in the building and allied trades might put too great and too urgent a strain on the suppliers.

Mr. Lemass

You proposed to get your hands on the fund that the timber importers had for their purposes and you did not get it. You asked to reform the organisation.

Mr. Dillon

No smart Alec crosstalk will alter the facts. When we were in office the quantities of timber were coming in on such a scale that, according to the present Minister for Finance, there was danger of turning the whole country into a timber yard. We went out of office and the next moment the timber we brought in for dollars—we deliberately insisted on getting dollars and spending the dollars on timber for our own people —was loaded in flat cars and shipped to Belfast. Those are the facts.

Mr. Lemass

Indeed they are not. Go and look at the trade statistics.

Mr. Dillon

The case I am making is this: the Government are undeserving of the confidence necessary for the passing of this Bill. The position we have had ever since Fianna Fáil came into office is that everything the Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, says, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Lemass, contradicts, and then the Irish Press comes out the following morning and sings a third and different tune—and “you pays your money and takes your choice.” Whatever suits the boys is always there for them. There is the Party line a lá Lemass, there is the Party line a lá MacEntee and there is the Party line a lá Pravda, and you can quote them with equal authority in the certainty that the others will always contradict them. The facts are that Deputy MacEntee says he made the Government and everyone else toe the line and I challenge them to throw him overboard. The Tánaiste may talk very bold and may vow his intention to do this and that but when the facts come to be read the Tánaiste is trotting along after the Minister for Finance like any “penny-boy” but as he is trotting he is still protesting that he is really going in the opposite direction.

The facts are that timber is going to Belfast. The facts are that our people cannot build houses. That may rend the tender heart of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, but the Minister for Finance does not give a fiddle-de-dee. He warns the Tánaiste that if there is any departure from that course of policy he will resign, and he will bring the whole rotten edifice down around his ears. He sees himself like Hitler in the Chancellery in Berlin; if he cannot rule Ireland he will ruin it, and if he cannot rule Fianna Fáil he will ruin it and bring it down around his head.

Mark you, facts speak louder than words. Fianna Fáil are making a great effort to keep the building standing, and the Minister for Finance is strutting about like a cock in a barnyard and when anyone crosses his path he warns them: "We will rule you or ruin you; one rude word to me and you are out facing North-West Dublin." There is not a Fianna Fáil Deputy who does not turn up the collar on his coat when he hears those words and the four satellites put on a "Parker" or a fur coat, tip their hats and say: "All right, sir; we would sooner stay where we are."

Acting-Chairman (Mr. M. O'Reilly)

The Deputy might come to the Bill now.

Mr. Dillon

I want further to fortify the case. We were told, the House will remember, 18 months ago, that the representations that we had stockpiled were fraudulent and untrue. The Minister will himself remember interrupting me and saying: "Sure, you did not stockpile anything."

Mr. Lemass

Mouse traps.

Mr. Dillon

Now, it was not mouse traps that were on the flat cars going to Northern Ireland. The Minister's heart was stirred by no Pied Piper of Hamelin sentiments when he shipped timber to Northern Ireland. It was not to catch rats or mice that he sent that. If he had sent mouse traps we would probably have had no complaint about them. I heard no complaint about mouse traps going up to Northern Ireland. Only the photographer went out and took the photograph we would have known nothing about it and we might have been told that it was mouse traps that were going out, but they were blooming big mouse traps— 14 x 3 x 3—big enough to catch ferrets or badgers. It was not mouse traps. It was building timber, but we were told there had been no stockpiling of timber. At least that confusion has gone.

Mr. Lemass

There was no stockpiling by your Government and they abolished the organisation that was there for that purpose.

Mr. Dillon

Now, we are apparently to assume that the timber walked in, or flew in, or floated in. How it came in, we may not be able to be told with precision, but at least we all know how it went out. The difference is that we believed in bringing it in and the Minister believes in putting it out. Facts, simple facts, speak more eloquently than back-chat however smart it sounds.

Mr. Lemass

The Deputy should stick to what he knows. He is embarrassing Deputy Morrissey.

Mr. Dillon

Wool tops. The Minister made a most elaborate case here to demonstrate that the most unwieldy system of quotas and restrictions were necessary for at least 12 months in order to liquidate the excessive stockpiling of wool tops which would seriously embarrass the finances of a considerable company here which, he said, had brought in this excessive stock of wool tops at the instance of the Government. Is that true? It is true.

Mr. Lemass

One private firm took the loss.

Mr. Dillon

Was there or was there not a stockpile? The Minister says there was a stockpile but he grieves that the loss involved therein threatened an individual firm. I reply that our Government told that firm, and every other firm, that if any loss ensued as a result of their public-spirited co-operation with the Government in bringing in stocks when we told them to bring in stocks we would stand by them and help them out. I am glad the Minister is doing that though I think he is doing it in the wrong way.

Tea. We were told there is so large a stock of tea now in the country it will take at least 12 months to liquidate it before a new purchasing departure can be contemplated. There is no doubt that the Minister for Finance succeeded in persuading our people that during the last year of office of our Government we had improvidently dissipated their property purchasing consumer goods for which there was no justification whatsoever. We replied there was no such improvident purchase. There was stockpiling. We sent for the editors of the four national newspapers in the autumn of 1950. We warned them that we were going to stockpile and that we had asked the people to stockpile and——

Mr. Lemass

One million pairs of nylon stockings also came in.

Mr. Dillon

——that would appear in the trade returns.

Mr. Lemass

A special licence for 1,000,000 pairs of nylon stockings—an emergency preparation.

Mr. Dillon

We said we were going to stockpile and we were asked would we buy Dutch chocolate. We said "no." Trading in 1947 in so far as Dutch chocolate is concerned was perhaps a feu de joie for which we will not now bring the Government to task because they are not very strong and in the exuberance of post-war buying they have done a lot of peculiar things. But they brought in Dutch chocolate in 1947 until the blooming stuff went mouldy on the shelves.

Mr. Lemass

I did not bring it in.

Mr. Dillon

Stockpiling was done at the request of our Government. We quite fairly told the four newspaper editors that it would throw our balance of payments out of equilibrium and we asked them to keep silence about that lest their revealing our intention in the autumn of 1950 might make the task of our buying mission more difficult than it was.

Mr. Lemass

There was no buying mission.

Mr. Dillon

We forecast that in due time the results of our policy would evoke a volume of agricultural export which would bring our balance of payments once more into equilibrium. Fianna Fáil says that was not so but facts speak more eloquently than the falsifications of the Minister for Finance. Here we are in the year 1952, a year in which the Minister for Finance—he is the big shot—informs the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis that we are faced with an adverse trade balance of £50,000,000 sterling on our exports and imports, visible and invisible. The Tánaiste, with more resource, says £50,000,000, £25,000,000, £10,000,000, may be nothing at all. He is backing his horses both ways, first, second and third. The Minister for Finance was at least more precise. But we are facing a year in which it is quite likely that there will be no adverse trade balance at all. Whose prophecy was right?

Mr. Lemass

The year is not over yet. Nobody can tell.

Mr. Dillon

The year is not over yet and there are some good exporting weeks to go. Pigs and turkeys are going out now on a scale they never reached for quite a while because of the agreements we made before we left office. Millions of pounds' worth of pigs went out in the last two months under an agrement that we signed.

Mr. Lemass

When you had no pigs.

Mr. Dillon

In June, 1951, we signed an agreement. One million pounds' worth of pigs went out in the past few months. This is the Government that asks now for wide discretion under the powers of this Bill—a Government which, in November, 1951, managed to be out £10,000,000 on the adverse trade balance in the calendar year 1951. In November, 1951, the Minister for Finance, speaking in this House, said that he looked again on the forecast of an adverse trade balance of £70,000,000 and that he saw no rational reason for amending the forecast—and there were then only six weeks of the calendar year to run. This year, he tells us: "Prepare for emergency, for there will be an adverse trade balance of £50,000,000 to be met out of our savings accumulated abroad. His colleagues say £50,000,000, perhaps £25,000,000, maybe £10,000,000—maybe nothing at all. We arrive at the end of the year with the prospect of a very trivial one. Bear in mind that a mistaken prophecy would be a very trivial offence, but it is on the strength of those prophecies that they taxed bread, tea, butter, sugar and every commodity which our people have to purchase. It is on the strength of those prophecies that they told our people the time had come to recognise that they were eating too much and living too well. They quoted those figures as evidence of the fact that our people were eating too much and living too well and must be made eat less and live at a lower standard so as to bring the adverse trade balance back into equilibrium, and they said that there was no other way.

The Government are asking to get powers under the Supplies and Services Bill. I would as soon give it to a very foolish person. Let me look for a moment at the uses to which they have put the powers that they have enjoyed in the past 12 months. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has made a series of Orders controlling the disposal of hides in this country by virtue of the powers enjoyed under that Act. Do you know what the position to-day is? If a beast is slaughtered in a slaughter-house anywhere in Ireland for consumption by our people the price payable by the tanners for the hide of that beast is 4d. per lb. If the beast is slaughtered for consumption by the British people the price payable for that hide is 1/7 per lb. f.o.b. a ship in Dublin. That is 1/3 per lb. of the hide. There is an average of 60 lb. in a hide. That means that £3 15s. is levied on every carcase of meat slaughtered in this country for consumption by our people—and who pays it? The man who buys the meat pays it; it is put on the price of the meat. The canner will not pay it. It is time to say out plain and frank that the canners of this country—and I wish them well—have been making profits on a scale that no other industry in Ireland has been making. Some of the canners of this country have been making profits of a character that would stagger you. They were very enterprising men and so long as they were making those profits out of the British or the United States my general reaction was more power to their elbow.

Mr. Lemass

Why did you give them the guaranteed minimum of 2/6 a hide, which has caused this debt of £500,000?

Mr. Dillon

Because the British Ministry of Food said to us: "We are prepared to pay 1¼d. more for carcase beef than for beef on the hoof. If that does not meet the expenses of the canners or the slaughter-house proprietors' expenses in Ireland it is your own fault because you are levying on hides." I wanted to build up the carcase meat export industry and to make it pay. We all came to the conclusion that it was reasonable so long as the British Ministry of Food said: "Let the fellow in Dublin who slaughters a beast for consumption in London get the same price for his hide as the man in Birkenhead who slaughters a beast for consumption in London and then make up whatever differential remains." I said that we could not resist that case, that we could not go to the British and ask them to subsidise the hide tanners and factors in this country but that we must see that the fellow who slaughters a beast in Dublin for consumption in London gets the same as a man in Birkenhead who slaughters a beast for consumption in London.

Mr. Lemass

A minimum price.

Mr. Dillon

The same price. What actually happened was that they got the same price. The British made up the differential that made it possible for us to export carcase meat. The facts will tell us the result of that.

Mr. Lemass

You left a debt of £500,000.

Mr. Dillon

I have here the figures for the export of canned and dead meat that took place over those years. The result of that policy was that we provided for our people a growing market for these commodities. We created a situation in the abattoir in Dublin that they could not kill any more cattle in it. We built factories all over the country to the point that my successor in office, when he was introducing his Estimate said:—

"Build no more factories for dead-meat because there is a sufficiency of them in this country for that purpose."

Mr. Lemass

You imposed the 10 per cent. limitation.

Mr. Dillon

There is no limitation.

Mr. Lemass

There was not until you imposed it.

Mr. Dillon

No, no, no. The Trade Agreement of 1948 provided that there would be a 10 per cent. limitation on the export of live stock from this country to other countries—10 per cent. of our total exports. Throughout the whole period of our Administration there was never any limitation on the export of live stock to any other destination in the world. Under those conditions of free export it was never possible to get shipping to fulfil that——

Mr. Lemass

You interpreted the agreement unnecessarily as applying also to dressed meat and that interpretation was not changed until there was a change of Government.

Mr. McGilligan

Never, never.

Mr. Dillon

I warned our people in connection with catering for the prime carcase meat trade in the United States because past history taught us that, while you might get a nice profit out of it for the time being, as soon as the Americans could get their demands in America and in Canada they would squeeze us out. The price to-day does not make it worth selling a pound of prime beef in America.

Mr. Lemass

You interpreted the agreement in Britain's interest.

Mr. Dillon

The British market will be there. We have a grip of it under the trade agreement, guaranteeing to our farmers every day, month and year every penny that is made by the British farmer. Our carcase meat trade will be built up——

Mr. Lemass

You stopped it from growing. Even the Americans noticed it.

Mr. Dillon

When the Americans were coming in here they were told not to put their noses into agriculture. Is that not so?

Mr. Lemass

Did you tell them that?

Mr. Dillon

Yes. They were told to go in and examine industry.

Mr. Lemass

They found that out.

Mr. Dillon

They examined, in particular, industrial conditions, and their views on the agricultural industry in this country are not worth the ink they are written with. I happen to know that they met some of the cute boys in the dead-meat trade——

Mr. Lemass

Who told them about this limitation you had imposed?

Mr. Dillon

——who thought they were not making enough out of canning carcase beef and that they ought to be given a wider scope not to skin cattle, but to skin the farmers of this country.

Mr. Lemass

Nonsense.

Mr. Dillon

Those cute boys always found, so long as I was in office, that their schemes for skinning the farmers of this country were brought to nought before they even got under way.

We are now entertaining them with the high hope that under the new departure that was recently created, when Fianna Fáil got into office that they would get a softer deal if they could create a good American alibi for the new departure. So we had talk of a levy on live-stock exports to stimulate the dead-meat trade and talk of the necessity for doing something to encourage the export of American beef. Who were the people who gave that counsel to the American team? Does the Minister know?

Mr. Lemass

Deal with facts. Did you impose that restriction?

Mr. Dillon

No, but I advised—and I stand over that policy without hesitation or cavil; it is facts and results that prove policy—that where our future lay was in markets that we could retain and control. That policy is the policy that built up every slaughter-house in Ireland to-day. It is that policy which has maximised exports and it is not the policy that was proposed to the American team by the cute boys who had access to them, and put their side of the case to them and took damned good care that they would hear no other side. Some day perhaps the Minister will tell us who were the individuals with whom the American team discussed the dead-meat industry in this country.

Mr. Lemass

There was no reason why you should impose that restriction.

Mr. Dillon

Perhaps now the Minister will give us that interesting information. I want to know does this House approve of the arrangement whereunder the carcases would be consumed by our people and the hides would sell at 4d. per lb. whereas they got 1/7 per lb. for every hide off carcases that go to Britain? I urge on the Minister now, that the time has come to break up the dirty ring which dabbles in hides and simply say: "Let there be free trade in hides so that we can pay the best price to the farmer who produces the beast from which they are taken." So far as the canners are concerned, if the Minister is worrying about their financial resources, I suggest that he should ask them to submit their true accounts to him and then consider if there was not an ample margin in the profits earned by them during the last two or three years to meet any charge that came in course of payment and then go to the tanners, who distributed a 100 per cent. share bonus to their shareholders, and ask them if a little of that might not be appropriated to pay a proper price for Irish hides at a time when they were paying 50 per cent. more for hides brought from the Argentine. They were paying 2/6 per lb. for Irish hides at the time that they were paying 3/6 to 3/9 for Argentine hides. They paid for the Argentine hides on the dot but because the 2/6 hides were Irish hides, they could not pay that. Somebody else paid that. If they were able to pay 3/9 for the Argentine hides they were damned well able to pay our people the 2/6 that they were asked to pay. Let the House decide who is right and if they think that our attitude is right let them decide whether the Minister should have the power he is given under this Bill.

The Minister for Agriculture has power under the Supplies and Services Bill to deal by way of licence with turkey exports. These are rather humble everyday matters which I suppose are beneath the exalted attention of so great a man as the Tánaiste but I happen to have seen some of my neighbours trying to sell turkeys in Ballaghaderreen and I have seen them robbed. I asked the Minister for Agriculture to take steps to see that the officials in his Department would go down there and stop that and what does he tell me? That they are there for the purpose of advising women who have turkeys to sell whether their turkeys are fat or thin.

Now, in the name of Providence, how does a woman who is selling a turkey want to be told by a poultry instructress whether her turkey is fat or thin? Let him tell his instructresses to tell the chancers who are offering 2/6 per lb. that they must pay the fixed price and see that the woman selling the turkey gets that price. Under the arrangements at present existing, if the poor woman does not accept the price she is offered by the dealer, he will call her names and she will accept anything she is offered and run like a red shank rather than have herself exposed to such abuse before the whole market. It is not possible for her to establish her rights without assistance.

Mr. Lemass

There is no Order under this Act relating to turkeys.

Mr. Dillon

Is it not a scandal that there is not? When I was Minister for Agriculture I lost no time in taking measures to ensure that the producers were paid the proper price, and the minute I detected a couple of chancers robbing the people of a proper price for turkeys I made them deal in rabbits or some other line of that kind.

Mr. Lemass

There was no Order made under this Act relating to turkeys——

Mr. Dillon

Somewhere, somehow, there was a licence to export fowl——

Mr. Lemass

Live pigeons.

Mr. Dillon

It was not live pigeons. I do not blame the Tánaiste for not knowing the difference between pigeons and turkeys. I was dealing with turkey cocks and hens, and my purpose was to stop the fowl-buyer from giving people for turkey cocks the price of live pigeons, and I succeeded. I succeeded very simply by going to a couple of chancers, whom I caught at the job, and putting them out of that business, and by telling them to go and deal in rabbits, pigeons and things of that kind. When I cleared them out, the rest of them were going out the road offering to pay the people 4/- per lb.

I suppose the Minister for Finance thinks that if the people got a proper price for turkeys they would be living too well and they might be eating too much. If you cut down the receipts of a woman for her turkeys, it means that she will eat less. She will consume less and she will live at a lower standard than she would live if she were given a proper price. I was walking up Kildare Street recently and I was ashamed of my life when I met a respectable woman coming down the street with two small boys, one of whom was about five years and the other about seven. They were apparently pointing out to their mother, children's coats in a shop window and I heard her say to them: "Next year we shall be able to buy two nice coats." The two kids were going about in their figure with mufflers wrapped around them instead of coats. There was the woman walking past and she did not know how to console them further than by saying: "Next year we will buy them." I was ashamed of my life as I walked past her wearing my own coat. She was making no moans but was trying to encourage them by telling them that by next year she would buy them two nice coats. Have we all gone daft? What Deputy in this House wants to see a poor woman—and not such a poor woman—walking the streets of the town, not being able to buy a coat for the child walking beside her on a cold day? I do not believe that any Deputy wants that. Yet we have this fantastic little man, the Minister for Finance, telling us that he went into the Government and said to the Government: "I shall take the coats off them and I shall take the food from them and if they do not accept that policy I shall resign and they will have to face another North-West Dublin." He said, and he emphasised it, that the Tánaiste and every one of his colleagues were prevailed upon and authorised him to say to the House on their behalf, there being joint responsibility, that they accepted that position. I think that when I put it that way to the Tánaiste he is shocked.

Mr. Lemass

I am shocked at anyone talking such nonsense.

Mr. Dillon

Am I being unjust? Take the ordinary working man or artisan who is bringing in £6 or £7 a week on a Saturday and plans to get overcoats for his two children. They will cost maybe £5 or £6 for the pair of them. Since he finds that the household bills have imposed on him the obligation to give up drinking stout and cut down on his tobacco, he says to his wife: "If the children want coats I will give up smoking altogether." His wife says: "I think the children will be able to get through this winter without the coats; we can wrap them up warm when they are going out; we will do with what they have and get the new coats next year." Is that a fantastic picture? I do not think it is.

Mark you, I give the Minister credit for this, and I think when it is put to him in that crude familiar form, he is himself a little shocked and he says: "Do you really suggest that I and my colleagues agreed with the Minister for Finance to take the coats off either child?" I honestly do. I do not think that the Minister himself foresaw the full consequences of the policy to which he was being betrayed by the Minister for Finance. I do say quite deliberately, and I challenge effective repudiation of this, that the policy of the Budget, for which every member of that Government was made responsible, was to take the coats off the children of working people in this country. The charge against us was that our policy was to put coats on too many, that we were bringing in too much material to make coats, and that we were bringing in too much wool to weave into cloth to make coats.

Mr. Lemass

It is the cloth that you brought in—4,000,000 square yards of it.

Mr. Dillon

Was not the charge against us that we brought in too much consumer goods, that we brought in too much goods which the people were buying and wearing out? Was not that the cloth out of which the coats were to be made and which those two children would have worn if we had remained in office?

Mr. Lemass

The increased children's allowances will help to buy them coats.

Mr. Dillon

The Minister for Finance has said that the total measure of his exertions was to contribute 1/6 a week to the family household to offset the burden which that family has to carry. Now, if you tried to pay £5 for two children's coats at the rate of 1/6 a week you would get a very dusty answer from any trader in Talbot Street to whom you went to make that proposition. The Minister and myself have some familiarity with the drapery trade.

Mr. Lemass

The Deputy has very little familiarity with the children's allowances.

Mr. Dillon

My recollection is that 1/6 per week extra was the measure of the relief which it was designed to provide to offset the burden which the ordinary family has to carry under the Budget. I think the Minister himself is shocked at the simple story I have told him. I think he would have been as uncomfortable as I was when told that story and I give him credit for that. If he went into any draper's shop in Talbot Street, Earl Street, Camden Street or in Ballaghaderreen and put that proposition to a draper, that he should give two children's coats on credit and pay £5 for them at the rate of 1/6 a week, he would, I think, get a very dusty answer. I put it to the Minister that that is what he has been walked into. I say to him that if he has suffered himself and his colleagues to be walked into that kind of position at the hands of such a vain little peacock as the Minister for Finance he is not fit to have the power which he seeks to have under the Bill that we are discussing.

I want to conclude. I am not without hope that the suggestion which I am going to make may fall on a more receptive Minister than the one I was addressing when I began. I am not asking anyone on the Government side of the House to accept what I say as the truth. All that I am asking is this: On the grounds set out by me, go to the country. In the last analysis I had never accepted the de Valera dictum that our people have no right to do wrong. It is true that nobody has the right to do what is morally wrong, but a sovereign democracy, such as our people are, have dearly won the right to perpetrate political folly on themselves whenever they like, and in that sense the people have the sovereign right to do wrong. Give them that chance to vote—to do right or do wrong. Is it not fair to suggest that the last time you went to them you were buried alive in the votes of the people of North-West Dublin, and you were buried alive there for your actions, even though you put forward the best candidate you had. That is what happened to the poor man, your candidate, with all the glory of the Lord Mayoralty about him. You tarnished every brass button on him by exposing him to the people of North-West Dublin. You got a good decent man to stand as your candidate, but Deputy Tom Byrne walked on him and did not leave the colour on him on the ground.

By the criteria I have put forward, and by your own dismay at the consequences of your own policy, as related by that respectable woman in Kildare Street, do you yourselves not feel that the time has come to test the sense of our people and get their verdict on you? Give the four poor satellites some compensating consideration. If you make the proposition that the price of your going to the country now would be to put the four tulips in the Seanad, we will go a long way to try and meet you. We would park them anywhere and almost on any terms to persuade you to go to the country.

I do not agree with the flatulent humbugs who sometimes suggest that Parliaments and Governments and a vigorous Opposition are inimical to the welfare of this country. I am proud of this Parliament and jealous of its rights and reputation. I am certain that it is the greatest citadel of liberty that our people could have. I am delighted to do my part either as a member of the Opposition or as a member of the Government, and I consider it an honour to work in either capacity. I think a general election is a good thing when the Government's authority is rendered weak by a legitimate doubt as to the validity of the warrant that it holds from the people to govern the country. The Fianna Fáil Government of to-day is the legitimate Government of this country and every member of it is entitled to the respect which that position entitles him to, though some persons, lay and clerical, have overlooked that fact in the recent past. I do not. I think it is bad for a Government in this country or any other country to be clinging to office long after the people believe that they no longer have a valid warrant of authority. Every Fianna Fáil Deputy knows well that he would not stand a chance of a snowball in hell if he went to the country to-morrow. I do not think it would be fair to tell them that they have the obligation to go to-morrow, if they think that this is a disadvantageous time. Will you go in February or will you go in June? Will you go at any reasonably early date so that your policy can be tested and so that we can find out whether our people want the Government to continue on the assumption that the people are eating too much and living too well?

Mr. Lemass

Resign and test it.

Mr. Dillon

I do not need to test it. We have tested one constituency and look at the result: two to one against the Lord Mayor. If it were anybody else the devil a vote at all he would get. If there was another election of that character I do not think that you would get a candidate to stand. If there were another by-election in North-West Dublin would you get a candidate to stand? To whom would you turn? If Andy Clarkin, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, gets beaten two to one, who else would you put up? He will find it hard to save his deposit. In that situation does not the Tánaiste agree that this whole doubt can be settled in a constitutional and proper way by going to the country in February or, at the latest, in June?

I think you ought to go in February. It is bad weather for campaigning, but it will be worth it. Then, if you do your job on this side of the House half as well as we did it for 16 years before we took office and for 18 months since we left office, this country will have much more reason to be grateful to you than they have now after the 18 months' depredation you have done since that unhappy hour when the "busted flush" on my right eased you into office, consequent on the various bargains and arrangements you made with them.

Mr. Hession

It is not my practice to contribute to or to intervene in these debates, primarily, I suppose, because there are so many Deputies on this side of the House who are able to put the Opposition point of view with so much more clarity, information and effect. In this matter, however, I feel it is my bounden duty to enter a brief but most emphatic protest against the manner in which this country has been governed, and is being governed, by the present Administration since it resumed office 18 months ago. There is absolutely no doubt but that the last one and a half years have witnessed a remarkable change for the worse in the economic life of our nation.

During the period of the inter-Party Government, a measure of progress, of amelioration, of advance, of improvement, of peace was achieved and maintained which was never before experienced or known in our country. A degree of national development was introduced and also maintained which far exceeded the most optimistic anticipations or the most sanguine expectations of all but the very few. This remarkable work was effected, not with the encouragement or assistance of the Fianna Fáil Party, but in the very teeth of their bitterest and unremitting opposition.

When, due to circumstances too well known to be further described, the present Government assumed office, they found a country that was prosperous, secure and happy. Trade was thriving, unemployment had reduced or dwindled to a trickle. Emigration had almost ceased and money was freely in circulation. Men found a pleasurable security in their work. That, naturally, was not a state of affairs that Fianna Fáil could hope to stomach.

It was a condition of things fit to stimulate their bile and, as we know to our cost, they embarked on their infamous counter-offensive. Almost at once, clouds were made to appear on our economic horizon, artificially created, conjured up out of ersatz or phoney material.

To me, at any rate, the Tánaiste and the Minister for Finance became the Rogers and Hammerstein of the Fianna Fáil Party, except that their theme song was that "ruin was bustin' out all over" and they invited the country to join them in a dance macabre to the verge of economic dislocation and bankruptcy. Due to Deputy J.A. Costello's famous speeches, the Tánaiste had the intelligence and, may I say, the guts to put a stop to his own frantic gallop and he steadied down to a more respectable trot. Not so with the Minister for Finance, who was immediately joined by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, and they, like twin Cassandras, continued the horrific jeremiads, the woeful dirges to a nation now thoroughly upset and disturbed. If these gentlemen considered themselves to be the latter-day Paul Reveres deanta in Éireann, sounding a clarion warning to the Irish nation, it was due to an ad hoc schizophrenia consciously and deliberately introduced. So that their moanings and ululations might appear to have some validity, the now ill-fated White Paper was introduced and it was quoted by the Minister for Finance with almost unholy glee. He gloated in the fact that that discarded document supported and justified in some way his own gloomy prognostications, his own summing up or analysis of the economic position. It seemed to me, on the other hand, to be a particularly sordid performance. Naturally, there was the inevitable reaction. A trade recession immediately began to develop. Banks began to restrict credit. Unemployment began to surge and assume the proportions of a tidal wave. Emigration was once more resumed, as we know, on an almost vast scale.

The building industry, which had been encouraged to such a remarkable degree by the inter-Party Government, creaked and grinded to a stop and all over, as we and the people in the country know, there was dislocation, there was worry and there was anxiety. All that time the Minister for Finance continued to spur his own apocalyptic horsemen with the threat of economic disaster, the threat of bankruptcy, the threat of financial chaos and dislocation. His pièce de résistance was, as we know, his Budget of this year, which I, with so many other people, regard as being lunatic, irresponsible and without justification. He appeared to level his sights at the pockets of the most vulnerable sections of our community and to have fired point blank. What queer urge impelled this action I cannot say. What reason or what motives he had for doing so I cannot even imagine. There may be these reasons. It may be that the Fianna Fáil Party were so outraged, or may be enraged, by the decisions of the electorate to put them out of office some three years previously, that they found it impossible to forgive them and sought this the first opportunity to wreak revenge upon them.

However, I find such an explanation so reprehensible, so callous, that I disregard it right away. There is another reason which has at least the merit of an historical justification. Since Fianna Fáil was first given power it has had the strange, unreasonable point of view that the Irishman and Irishwoman should be made to adopt the Spartan way of life. The hair shirt complex has ever been inherent in their political philosophy and they have neglected no opportunity whereby we, the Irish people, might be hedged in with restraint, inhibition and control of all sorts. It is apparently their policy to say: "What was good enough for our great grandfathers is good enough for us," and down the years they have, consciously or unconsciously, attempted to depress, and they have sometimes succeeded in depressing our standard of living.

While they might have been trying to induce asceticism, they certainly succeeded in bringing about deprivation. Now we are being urged to eat less, to spend less and to save more. We are being told that we live beyond our means. I imagine that statement must strike a bitter chord in the ears of the unemployed, the underemployed, the widow, the orphan, those forced to emigrate, those with fixed salaries and those whose incomes are comparatively static.

If there are people living beyond their means in this country it is not the working, honourable sections who are doing so, but those of the spiv mentality who could not care less. One of the outcomes of the present Government measures has been that the price of sugar has increased for the ordinary customer so that the jam manufacturer and the large-scale confectioner may be able to sell their goods at a more acceptable price. The price of flour and bread has been increased, but that of biscuits and fancy goods has been reduced. "If they have not butter, let them eat jam. If they have not bread, let them eat cake." With such a slogan, the Minister might easily join the company of the immortals. One can almost visualise the late Marie Antoinette emerging from some spectral salon to backslap the Minister and to say: "That's my boy."

Now that the infernal machine which the Fianna Fáil Party gleefully invented for the destruction of the inter-Party bloc has become a Frankenstein in their hands, incapable of being disciplined, apparently, no longer subject to control, and poised and ready to plunge this country into possible bankruptcy, what defensive measures does the Minister for Industry and Commerce suggest to us when introducing this Bill? I heard most of his introductory speech and the rest I have read. It seems to me his speech dealt almost exclusively with the reasons behind the bread-price increase, a matter which was dealt with, in my opinion, very brilliantly and effectively by Deputy Crotty.

The Minister made no reference to the rise in the unemployment figures. He did not at any time pass any comment on the increasing tide of emigration. No reference was made to the fact that a trade recession is unfortunately in full operation in this country. He suggested no curatives nor palliatives whereby the present unfortunate economic conditions might be remedied in some way. No nostrums were mentioned; no panaceas were introduced. As far as the Minister was concerned, the present economic ills now besetting this country might as well not exist or have existed.

I can assure the Minister that all over the country a wave of outrage, of resentment, of bewilderment, almost of shock, has spread, and continues to spread. Whether they be in support of the Government or not, the one question agitating everybody's mind is: what does the Government intend to do and when is the Government going to do it? If the Government have no policy, no programme, no suggestion as to the manner in which the present critical situation may be relieved, then I think that, in all fairness, not only to the people of this country to whom they owe their paramount and primary duty, but also to themselves, they should pack up and get out while, in their view, the going is good. If the country is to be allowed to flounder in its present morass there will inevitably be a recrudescence of the depression and want which last found full flower during the economic war.

May I join with the other Deputies on this side of the House in urging upon the Minister to bring his policy, or his lack of it, before the bar of public opinion by going to the country and seeking the views of the electorate? It might have the effect of clearing away some of the obfuscation, some of the virtuous hypocrisy, which at the present moment enshrouds the attitude of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the Minister for Finance and their immediate supporters. It would also afford the Minister for Finance, that financial Picasso, the opportunity of explaining to the people his surrealistic efforts in the fiscal field and of discovering whether they appreciate the bizarre and iconoclastic flourishes as much as he does himself.

I was interested to discover how the Independent Deputies currently in support of the Government, would justify their continued allegiance and fealty. I wondered how these gentlemen, the virtuous, righteous, preux chevaliers of the House, would react to the manner in which this country has indubitably gone to hell in the last 18 months. I would have thought that they would have risen in their wrath and denounced the Fianna Fáil Party for all its works and pomps. I have had the experience of hearing Deputy Cogan, Deputy Cowan and Deputy Dr. Browne. Deputy Cogan was so outraged by an alleged social peccadillo on the part of Deputy Giles that he felt constrained to intervene in the debate. Were it not for this purported faux pas, he would probably have kept his peace.

The rising tide of emigration, the growth of unemployment, the increase in the cost of living, all those unfortunate and regrettable matters apparently would have passed unnoticed; but he chided the Opposition with having been so indelicate as to mention these rude matters at all. It is apparently Deputy Cogan's attitude that we should not disturb Nero's fiddling by even the slightest reference to the fact that Rome was beginning to singe a trifle.

Deputy Cowan was surprised to discover that this grave and important debate was still in progress, when he arrived some time at night in the House last week. It would seem that he, too, regarded such a debate as this as being of such little import as to merit only the most casual and perfunctory reference. He then proceeded to launch a gratuitous attack on one of the most decent and honest Deputies in the House. I refer, of course, to Deputy Dr. Esmonde, and he ascribed to him statements he did not make. He appeared to be ready to forgive the Government for its many sins in recognition of its genius and valour in having introduced the Legal Adoption Bill. I certainly do not wish to appear offensive and Deputy Cogan, who is now in the House at the moment, will, I trust, accept that assurance but I cannot help feeling that those four Independent Deputies currently supporting the Government, have come to regard the Fianna Fáil Party as their political "Tuts" and they are prepared to remain avidly affixed to its hind teat, irrespective of whether or not the nourishment doled out to them is curdled or sour or just plain unpleasant. I have no doubt the Fianna Fáil Party, particularly the Cabinet, have come to look with a fond affection on those legislative orphans. I have no doubt that in their secret hearts they refer to them with particular nicknames—maybe Eeenie, Meenie, Minie and Moe. Very few in the country would be prepared to refer to any of them as "Tóstal".

Before closing, I would like to urge on the Minister to come down to the realities of the present situation. He, in my view, is an intelligent, hardworking, resourceful Minister. I believe he has the right spirit. For the life of me, I cannot understand why it is that he continues to allow the ship of State to drift in the aimless manner in which it has done for the last year and a half. I, as a newcomer to the House and essentially a back-bencher, make so bold as to urge on him that if he has a policy whereby the present unfortunate state of affairs may be brought to a close, and he is being prevented by anyone in his Cabinet—be he an egg-head, are-actionary or a radical—if he is, I say, being prevented by anybody in the Party or the Cabinet from putting his policy into effective operation, then I would suggest that he jettison such a destructive element and go ahead.

We have been charged with not having suggested any way whereby the present crisis might in some way be relieved. I think myself-and I put forward my own view with all proper humility—that one good way to do that would be to restore the confidence that was in the country when the inter-Party Government was in office. If that feeling of confidence, of security, of happiness that there was in this country then—I say it quite honestly—if that spirit were to be reintroduced and re-established, if all this gloom, depression and the destructive elements who have been in full flight and operation were dispelled and banished, I imagine one considerable step on the way back would have been taken. Deputy Dr. Browne, speaking to-day, complained that we on this side of the House had made no practical suggestion. That may be so; that may be Deputy Dr. Browne's point of view, but may I point out—and I listened carefully to his speech—that he certainly made no reference to the unemployment situation or to the emigration position, except to say that they must always be with us. That is a point of view that I have never heard before in this House or outside it.

Mr. Cogan

It is not what he said.

Mr. Hession

That is the purport of his speech.

Mr. Cogan

He said under the present system.

Mr. Hession

He said that emigration at about 20,000 a year roughly and unemployment at 60,000 to 70,000 a year roughly were inevitable and must be accepted.

Mr. Cogan

Inevitable under the present financial system.

Mr. Hession

I was not aware of that parenthesis. He did pay a somewhat left-handed compliment to Deputy Costello's point of view. He did suggest that one way of getting out of the present difficulty—I hope I am not misquoting him—was to stamp out any industries which were uneconomic or running at a loss. I suppose that might be rightly regarded as being a rather totalitarian or dictatorial point of view and I imagine there would be some controversy as to who was to decide whether or not an industry was economic. However, that is a matter for the Deputy's further cogitation and I shall leave it to him. I urge the Government to get wise to the present situation without delay and, if they cannot do anything about it, let them have the good grace, at least, to allow some other person or persons to have a go.

General MacEoin

It is quite clear to any observant Deputy sitting here for the last hour or so that the Minister for Industry and Commerce did not fully realise the seriousness of the situation which the programme and policy of his Government have brought about. When Deputy Dillon forced upon him the homely view of the situation that exists in the country I am satisfied that the Minister was really impressed and that he realised for the first time what the situation is and was. I am perfectly satisfied that he has heard this story from the back-benchers of his own Party time after time in the last six months. The story that Deputy Dillon told him this evening is the story that has been recounted at the Party meetings on many occasions but for some reason the Government persists in its attitude that it cannot now reverse engines.

This Bill is one of very far-reaching effect. The Minister, in introducing the Bill, explained that it is a yearly Bill, which gives the Government and the Minister power to legislate practically by Order. There is scareely any type or phase of our economic or administrative activities that it cannot control. Under this Bill the Minister for Finance exercises exchange control. That control is still in operation. There are many aspects of exchange control, and one wonders exactly what control is meant and what control is effected. There is certainly one control that he does not exercise or that he cannot operate, and that is control over the infiltration here of sterling in all sorts of ways, sterling which is never returned by any bank or business firm except when the notes come into the possession of the bank or are put into circulation through the bank.

The exchange control that he does operate is to prevent our citizens from spending their own money outside the country. I presume that is all to the good, but it constitutes a grave interference with the rights of the individual. The Minister does not control the easy money sent from the United States and other parts of the world through the gap in the North. When a British £5, £10, £20 or £100 note gets into circulation here it automatically becomes a sterling security and our Central Bank can issue its equivalent value against it. The operation of this Act at the moment, therefore, by the Minister for Finance is in the interests of sterling, and only in the interests of sterling.

Last night the Minister for Industry and Commerce grew very indignant with Deputy Costello, the former Taoiseach, when he stated—I shall quote now from the Irish Press and I presume the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs will not challenge the accuracy of that—that we were not told the result of the conversations between the Irish Government and the British Government last year. Deputy Costello went on to say that:—

"They"—that is, the inter-Party Government—"secured from Sir Stafford Cripps the right to withdraw from the sterling pool as a customer would withdraw from his banker. They had not been concerned with the interests of the sterling area."

For some reason the Minister flew off the handle and said:—

"The Deputy knows that what he has been saying is a falsehood."

The Ceann Comhairle then intervened and said the word "falsehood" must be withdrawn but the Minister persisted and said:—

"that he would not say that the Deputy knew that what he was saying was a falsehood. No Minister of the Government, or any Government, would accept the dictation of the British Government."

Now the former Taoiseach, Deputy Costello, had not at any stage made any such assertion and it is somewhat peculiar that the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who has a really thick skin, should become so sensitive and jump almost as if the cap fitted. Deputy Costello merely asserted that we got the right to withdraw from the sterling pool.

The way in which history repeats itself is rather significant. I now assert that the present Fianna Fáil Government is trying to justify their conduct in 1947 by doing the same thing in 1952. In 1947 Fianna Fáil introduced a Supplementary Budget. That was followed by the trade agreement and speaking on that agreement the then Taoiseach is reported at columns 1822 to 1823 of Volume 108 of the Official Report as follows:—

"We realised that it was a matter of concern to us that confidence should be preserved in sterling and that it was desirable that the remaining dollar resources should be utilised to the best possible advantage."

Then, continuing at column 1829, the Taoiseach announced:—

"It was agreed that the Irish Government, with a view to conserving the dollar resources of the sterling area, would effect substantial reductions in their drawings of dollars from the dollar pool for the period 1st October, 1947, to 30th June, 1948 . . ."

The Taoiseach then asserted that they were interested in sterling and in the sterling area. As will be seen from the Official Report, they agreed in that financial agreement to restrict the purchasing power of our people. The reason they brought in the Budget of 1947 was to restrict and lower the then purchasing power of the people. They attempted to justify that Supplementary Budget by saying that it was essential to have that Budget to reduce the cost of living, to maintain subsidies, and so forth. But, as a matter of fact, it was for the purpose of restraining the purchasing power of the people because there were people in the Central Bank and there were bankers at that particular time who were asserting that an inflationary period had arisen and that the people must be compelled to restrict their purchases and to effect savings. When they were not effecting the savings voluntarily the Government decided to compel them to do so. We challenged that. We said that if we were given office we would remove these penal taxes which were imposed in 1947—and we did. When the inter-Party Government went into office they removed these taxes forthwith. Fianna Fáil has never forgiven us for that. Fianna Fáil, in an effort to justify what they did at that time, proceeded to do identically the same thing again in 1952. Speaking down the country recently, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs declared that the prosperity during the inter-Party term of office was a fake prosperity. Is it not a good thing that he admits that there was prosperity of any description?

Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (Mr. Childers)

I said that in 1951 there was a false boom.

General MacEoin

The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs declared that we had a faked prosperity. It is something, at any rate, that he admits that we had prosperity, faked or otherwise. What I want to know is what was faked about it. I assert that there was no fake about it, but that, on the contrary, for the first time, we had an opportunity to do what should have been done 25 or 30 years ago.

To-day we have been examining cause and effect. While I have no intention whatever of traversing the hardships of the past, I want to say that what Collins asserted is as true to-day as it was when he first said it-that the ejection of the British forces from this country was not our greatest hardship and our greatest difficulty. He said that there was a British cult in the country that had grown into our people and that that cult would have to be ejected, and that it was more difficult to eject that cult than to eject the armed forces. That cult includes our financial system. Owing to circumstances over which I think neither of the Governments had any control, they were unable to change it. Surely the time has come when an effort should be made in this connection. When the inter-Party Government proceeded on the line of capital development, the building up of our resources, trying to get the banks to have confidence in our Irish stocks and shares and property, they were doing, for the first time, what should have been done many years ago.

I heard Deputy Briscoe to-day talk about liquidity. He said that one of the chief reasons why the commercial banks invest money abroad is that they can get it back at short notice. He asked: "What is wrong with a man who has £100 or £500 putting that money into the bank one day and drawing it out the next day?" I said there was nothing wrong with it. Deputy Briscoe was flogging a dead horse in that connection. When a man put £500 in the bank in 1912 and went back to take it out he was going to take out 500 gold sovereigns for the £500 which he had lodged in the bank. If he put in that £500 in 1912 and left it there ever since, would he get the 500 sovereigns now?

Not likely. He would get 500 £ notes, the purchasing power of which, as compared with the 1914 level, is approximately 5/9 per £1 note—if it is as much as that. A run on the bank at the time when it had to produce the sterling—and sterling then meant gold—was a serious matter and the bank that would not have the gold would have to put up the shutters. That is not the position now. As I said to Deputy Briscoe, John Bradbury finished that in 1914 when he made the postal order legal tender. The Central Bank is to-day charged with the responsibility of seeing that no situation like that can arise. Even if it did arise and if the people went into the banks to withdraw all their money what would they get? They would get paper. When they would get the paper what could they do with it except to go back the next day and say: "The paper is all right. I think I will leave it with you." Therefore, there is no reason in the world why, as Deputy J.A. Costello said, a stock exchange and a money market should not be established here. Even in the short time that we were in office, what would have happened if the banks had refused to lend to the Dublin Corporation the £5,000,000 which was required? I will leave it at that. However, it was a situation in which the then Government of this country was determined on the development of our country for housing, agriculture, and so forth, and that the money must be made available for those purposes. This country has been harshly treated, unwittingly, perhaps, by Fianna Fáil. At a time when development could take place they started to play down everything.

Reference was made here by the Deputy who spoke a moment ago to the hair-shirt policy. Fianna Fáil had this advantage. When they first talked of the hair-shirt policy they applied it to themselves also. They reduced the Ministers' salaries to £1,000 a year. They said that it would be a hair-shirt policy for all. They found that it did not work. The hair-shirt policy is no longer for the Ministers but unfortunately it is still in operation against the ordinary people of the country.

That situation should not obtain. Under this Bill the Minister for Finance has power to deal with exchange control, the money and the whole finances of the country. The Minister for Social Welfare has power under this Bill to do all sorts of things which are in the interests of the country and yet, for some reason, these things are not carried out but are put on the long finger. As Deputy Dillon pointed out, the Minister for Agriculture has the power under this Bill to make regulations relating to dairying. He can regulate the prices of cereals and feeding stuffs and, as was pointed out a moment ago, the price of turkeys.

Now 1/6, 1/- or 4d. per lb. on the price of a turkey may be of no great import to the Minister for Industry and Commerce or the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs but it is a very important factor in the life of the Irish housewife, the wife of an Irish farmer because to her the turkey has ever been one of the great sources of income for the Christmas festival. Any reduction in the value of that market is a very serious matter for her.

The cost of living has soared but the Minister for Industry and Commerce has not adverted to that in his opening remarks. I think it is right that he should not advert to it. If he thinks of the decision that he got in North-West Dublin, I think he was wise not to advert to it. Deputy Cowan said something to the effect that it was the candidate that won North-West Dublin. He went a little bit further and said that the Irish people were very charitable and that they liked to vote for the relatives of deceased Deputies. That may be as good a defence as anything else but Deputies will remember that when a Deputy, a very decent man—I do not deny it—died in Donegal and when his son was elected in his place, Fianna Fáil had no hesitation or doubt as to what that decision meant so far as they were concerned. They were very loud in their boasts.

A Deputy

You were beaten there.

General MacEoin

We were beaten but you cannot have it both ways. When you lose it means just the same thing. There was, of course, no comparison between the two elections because in North-West Dublin there was a two to one decision against the Government. A two to one beating is a very serious thing. I therefore agree with the point of view which has been put forward here that the Government to-day have not a mandate from the people to continue with their policy. They have gone to the country before for much less reason, within a much shorter period and when there was no evidence to sustain the point of view that they no longer represented the majority of the people.

It was under this Act that the Minister for Industry and Commerce increased the price of bread and flour without any consultation with the Prices Advisory Body. He did it automatically under this Act. When you consider the profits made by some of the large bakeries in the city here, I cannot for the life of me see how the Minister could be justified in taking such a step. I, therefore, agree with the assertion that the Government are so misusing the powers given them under this Act and that they have so abused these powers, that they should not get a renewal of this Act.

I believe that under this Act a direction was also given to our commercial banks to restrict credit to the people of the country. If such a direction was not actually issued, the threat was held over the heads of the bankers that if they did not restrict credit voluntarily they would be made to restrict it positively under this Act. That restriction of credit has had its effects as every Deputy on the Fianna Fáil back benches knows, on every activity in the agricultural, industrial and commercial life of the country. I am not going into details but I mentioned a case here before where a bank closed down on solvent people and refused them credit for the legitimate business of buying and selling seed potatoes and for the purchase of farms. That is bad enough but worse still is the restriction of credit for the building of houses in the country. I heard Deputy Briscoe say to-day that in five years' time the housing problem of the City of Dublin will be solved. More power to their elbow if that is so, but in 25 years' time the problem of housing the people of the country will not be solved because to-day more than two-thirds of the total number of houses in rural Ireland are as obsolete and as backward as they were 100 years ago.

There is a problem there to be tackled and if any Government thinks that the people of the country will continue to reside in houses that are obsolete and out-of-date, while their brothers and sisters live in the fine houses built by the corporation and by private enterprise in Dublin, they are making a great mistake. The influx of people will still continue to the city, if this matter is not attended to, and the result will be that you will have large barren tracts in the country because of the lack of proper housing. Money, therefore, must be made available at a cheap rate to replace practically two-thirds of the houses of the Irish farmer and his worker. Why should the Irish farmer and his worker not have the same amenities of life as their brothers and sisters in the city? If you go to any part of Ireland and take a survey of the modern conveniences in farm houses, you will find that they are practically infinitesimal. There is a huge problem there and it can only be solved by cheap money, and by building at the fastest possible rate. It breaks my heart when I know that good Canadian timber brought in here, which could have been used in the building of good houses, has been sold. We get two stories about that. One is that it has not been sold at higher than present-day prices, and in the next breath we are told that a good profit was made on it. That does not make sense. Every country Deputy knows that good seasoned timber is of the first importance in the building of a house. It has been sold, and raw unseasoned timber is brought in, bad soft timber not much better than white poplar. That is the kind of stuff that is considered good enough for our houses for the future.

Mr. Childers

The whole of the exports of timber from the country is negligible.

General MacEoin

I agree, when compared with the exports of timber from Norway and Sweden, but what we brought in was not a small quantity. We went all out to get good timber. I am asking, why sell the good stuff and bring in tripe? Is it because that is considered good enough for the people —that they are eating too much and living too well, and that you want to lower their standard of living? Is that what we have coming from an Irish Government? If the British Government attempted to do that there would be skin and hair flying. If we, when we were in the inter-Party Government, attempted to do what the present Government are doing, we would not get ten Deputies to stand behind us. Certainly, Deputy Cogan would not. If the rate of interest on loans to farmers were to be raised to 6 per cent. by the Agricultural Credit Corporation, does any Deputy think that Deputy Cogan would stand behind Deputy Dillon for a moment if, as Minister for Agriculture, he was responsible for that? I know well he would not. Why does he do it behind Fianna Fáil? The dear only knows. He knows that, after the next election, unless he changes his mind in the meantime——

Mr. Everett

It will then be too late.

General MacEoin

No. "Mercy craved and mercy found, mid the stirrup and the ground."

Mr. Everett

"In my Father's house there are many mansions."

General MacEoin

That could happen, too.

Mr. Cogan

We showed mercy to Deputy Everett at the last election.

General MacEoin

I know that if I, as Minister for Justice, did not show mercy to a number of people in my time, including some of the Deputy's friends, another story would have to be written. I think that when I start to write a book on Baltinglass there may be a different hang to it.

Mr. Cogan

We will all be looking out for it.

General MacEoin

Ask your friends whether I am at liberty to write all I could write. I like Deputy Cogan. I find that in season and out of season he defends the interests of the farmers in this House.

Mr. Everett

He does not represent them now.

General MacEoin

He defends them, anyway. I do not care whatever else he does, he defends the interests of the farmers in this House. Any Deputy who does that is to me a fine fellow. Therefore I would like to see him remaining in the House if I could get him on the right foot so that he would continue to advocate the interests of the farmers. But when he votes for a 6 per cent. interest charge on the farmers by the Agricultural Credit Corporation, then I say he is not the Deputy Cogan that I knew. He knows quite well that an Irish farmer, when he has to pay 6 per cent. on his capital, is not working for himself but rather for the Agricultural Credit Corporation. The profit that the farmer has for himself is nil. If the best industry that the Minister for Industry and Commerce could put up was able to earn a gross 6 per cent. in its first year it would be considered to be doing well, but if it had to pay 6 per cent. out of its profits before it was able to put anything aside for itself and its shareholders it would be working for the bank and not for the shareholders. That is what the Irish farmer is expected to do. He is now told that the reason why that happens is because of the faked prosperity which was brought into the country by the inter-Party Government. He is told, too, that the people must now suffer for that before Fianna Fáil will right the situation.

As I have said, lack of capital is holding up all the activities of the nation. The Minister for Finance is now beginning to realise that the step he took when he introduced his Budget this year is going to have dire effects on the country. He is now worried about the situation. I do not know what excuse he is going to make to the Government of which he is a member when the situation is fully clarified and he sees the results of his policy. When that day comes his colleagues may say to him: "Well, it was a pity we did not let you resign when you were going to before you brought in this Budget; if we had let you resign we would not have this difficulty now."

I am not going to go back over the question of dear money for housing. The Government have changed their step on that, and have agreed to reduce the rate of interest charged to those who had signed agreements and started building before the 5th or 6th of October. I submit that any person who had a contract signed could have enforced it in law. They could bring mandamus proceedings against a local authority to compel it to give them the money at the old rate as set out in the contract. In giving the money now at the old rate, the Government cannot claim that they are giving any gift to those people. Instead they ran away from lawsuits which they were likely to have to face in connection with that matter. They now gild the pill by saying that they are sympathetic to those who had contracts signed.

The whole thing shows that the Government did reverse their position. They did that because of the force of public opinion, as expressed by Deputies of all Parties. But the thing above all which led the Government to reverse their decision was the pending election in North-West Dublin. It was the result of that election, more than anything else which secured the cheap money for the people who had signed contracts. Therefore, instead of thanking the Government for reversing their decision, it is the electors in North-West Dublin who are to be thanked. It was they who secured a restoration of their rights from the Government for those people who had signed contracts.

In conclusion, the Government should not, in my opinion, get a continuation of this measure. I think they have abused it in some respects and failed to use it properly in others. Their activities since they came into office have created such a slump and such a depression in trade and inflicted such hardship upon our people that even Deputy Cogan, Deputy Dr. Browne, Deputy Dr. ffrench-O'Carroll and the Deputies whom Deputy Cowan called the charitable Deputies should not vote for this measure in order to put it through the House.

The back-benchers of Fianna Fáil know as well as I do that the taxation in the Budget was unjust and unreasonable and should not have been imposed. The inter-Party Government proved conclusively that that taxation was not necessary. Notwithstanding all the protestations by Fianna Fáil in 1947 that the taxation then imposed was necessary, we proved conclusively that it was not and the inter-Party Government relieved the people of approximately £5,000,000 of taxation in their first year in office and £5,000,000 a year in each succeeding year. Any Government which, to prove that they were right in the beginning, are guilty of the same offence again are not worthy of support. Any measure which gives them the power to do most of the things they are doing and impose such a hardship on the people should not be given to them. I appeal to Deputies to reject this measure and let the people of the country decide between us, just as the people of North-West Dublin decided at the by-election. We know what the result will be.

Mr. Finan

In my view, any citizen who wishes to assess the qualities of a Government can do so by examining their activities from three points of view. First of all, he will consider the purchasing power of the pound note. If the activities of the Government are directed towards increasing the purchasing power of that pound note, he can safely assume that they are going in the right direction. Secondly, he will consider the employment situation. If unemployment is on the decrease he can then assume that the policy which is being pursued by the Government is the correct one. He can also look at it from the point of view of emigration. If the emigration figure shows a decline, combined with the other two factors I have mentioned, it is logical for him to conclude that it is a good Government.

Examined from these three angles can anybody in this House, irrespective of where he may sit, claim that this Government have achieved any one of these, much less the three of them? The situation is so serious to-day that it should not be viewed from a political angle. The economic situation which has developed in this country over the past 12 months calls for immediate action regardless of political affiliations. Much valuable time has been wasted in this House by Deputies on both sides who have hurled at one another: "What did you do and what did we do?" It is not what is done by either side that counts now but what will be done to remedy the situation which is appalling every honest-minded citizen. The purchasing power of the pound is dwindling to such an extent that the ordinary wage earner, the ordinary fixed salary man, is at his wits' end to provide the bare necessaries of life.

How did it come about that a former Government, which did many things with which I disagreed, could bring about a period of prosperity, when unemployment was at its lowest, when emigration was decreasing, and when prices, although tending to rise, were kept at a reasonable level—were kept at such a level that the pay packet was able to provide for what a family needed? Then, under a new Government with a completely different policy, the people have been brought to the condition in which they are to-day. Is it not time that the Tánaiste should examine the situation and admit honestly to the House and to the people: "Our policy has been a mistake but now we are prepared to change it." Anybody can make a mistake but I think the most honest and the most manly thing he can do is to admit his mistake. He has been entitled to try any remedies which he tried in the past but let him be man enough to say that his remedies and his policy have been a failure and that even at this late hour he is prepared to alter his course. It may happen, owing to Government policy, that one section of the community may be prospering while another section is being depressed. But under the existing policy the people, whether they belong to an urban or a rural population, or no matter how they may live, are all feeling the pinch to-day.

North-West Dublin has been referred to. I do not want to rub salt into the wounds caused by the North-West Dublin by-election, but I am sure that in every constituency in the Twenty-Six Counties an answer similar to that given by the electors of North-West Dublin would be given if the opportunity were afforded to the people. I recognise quite well that there are difficulties confronting the Government. There are difficulties that will confront whatever Government takes their place. I have not the slightest doubt that the day the Minister for Finance decided that the policy set out in the Central Bank Report was a proper policy for the Government to pursue was the day on which the mistake was made. I said in connection with that report that, in my opinion, it was the duty of the directors of the Central Bank to present the situation which they saw. It was their duty to suggest a certain course of action; but there it finished. They should not dictate, nor should anybody be in a position to dictate, a policy for a Government, which has the support of the majority of the people.

It is evident, however, that the Minister for Finance decided that question and I have no doubt whatever in my mind that the Tánaiste, many of his colleagues in the Cabinet and the vast number of those who sit behind them know the error that was made. It is no joy to me, or indeed to anybody here, I am sure, to have to make complaints like this. None of us would glory in the failure of any Government in this country. We would like to see them all doing well because when a Government is pursuing a right policy the people of the country are becoming prosperous and everybody is better off. Unemployment is rising. Emigration is rising. The purchasing power of money is going down. That, I think is an indictment of any Government.

I suggest that one of the big failures of this Government, besides the adoption of the Central Bank Report, is that the present Government, neither from 1932 to 1948, nor since it came back into office, ever could be made realise that we are an agricultural country, that that is our only industry. It is our basic industry and if you want to make this country prosperous you must begin by making agriculture prosperous, and on a properous agriculture base your whole economic development.

Our manufacturing industries should be based on a prosperous agriculture. They should absorb our agricultural output and in that way you could hope for prosperous factories in this country. Those industries which are not based on the raw material produced here cannot succeed and promise no future. At some time or other the raw material from outside will not be available and then you may put up the shutters on your factories. Those which you can maintain from the raw material produced in this country must and will develop; others will fail.

Great hopes were entertained here on the introduction of the Undeveloped Areas Bill. Deputies from the West of Ireland were particularly interested in that piece of legislation. Some of them had great hopes of its possible achievement. I do not think there is any praise in any part of the West of Ireland of any new development under that measure. I would like to know how many draws were made on the fund put at the disposal of Foras Tionscal. At any rate, I have seen nothing in the way of industrial development in the undeveloped areas in the West. I will not blame the Minister for that nor will I blame the Government. I recognise that what the Minister has said so often is true; private, individual initiative must provide the answer. Nevertheless, I think it must be a sorry disappointment to the Minister as much as to the people of the West of Ireland when they are told that the new assistance to be given to the western areas is for better highways to bring foreign visitors to view the country and better highways for the native to travel on leaving the country.

It must be a bitter disappointment to people who 30 years ago thought a great deal of what it would mean to see an independent Ireland governed by our own people. But they are still emigrating because they cannot find employment at home. Over vast areas of the country there is a shortage of workers because the form of employment available is not remunerative enough to keep themselves and their family. There must be something wrong with the agricultural policy— and I believe it is wrong and has been wrong for a long time—being pursued by native Government.

Before I conclude I want to refer to one particular aspect that is worrying the people in turf-producing areas. Many people were advised by the Government to embark on the private production of turf. They were guaranteed a market for it. Practically adjacent to those people in the same areas Bord na Móna produced quite a lot of turf, but neither private producers nor Bord na Móna can dispose of their stocks to-day. As a matter of fact, I think it is correct to say that Bord na Móna has no definite plans for 1953 in many of those areas. It would appear now that they are not going into production in 1953 in many of those areas. The present stocks are left on their hands and British coal is coming in freely. High as the emigration figures have been I have no doubt they will be very substantially increased with the discontinuance of turf production as seems likely at the present time.

In all sincerity, I would ask the Minister to sift the speeches whether made on his own side or on the Opposition, to admit the truth of the charge that the policy being pursued is not the correct one and to outline what he considers—and I think everybody has conceded that he is a man who has given serious and intelligent thought to the whole problem—to be the proper economic policy of this country, to break away from the crippling hand of finance and bring some cheer to the people of this country for Christmas.

Mr. Everett

I was expecting that I would hear from the back-benchers of Fianna Fáil or from the Independent Deputies some excuse for the serious position the country is in to-day. Our minds go back to 1947 when the then Government threatened the trade unions with a standstill Order if they sought further increases in their wages to meet the then cost of living. In 1948 the new Government came in, the standstill Orders were removed, and wages were allowed to increase to meet the then cost of living. But the Government to-day is going back; they are not issuing standstill Orders but they have removed the food subsidies and placed the workers in a worse position than they were in 1947.

We were assured here by the various Ministers that there would be no demand for increased wages but look at the serious position with which the country is faced to-day, especially in Dublin City where all trade unions are demanding increases. They are accepting something less than they demand in many cases but even their full demands will not give them sufficient money to purchase the same goods for their families that they could purchase two years ago.

We know it is due to the Central Bank. We have had experience—in fact it is published now—that the Central Bank's whole platform was to create unemployment. It is in their report that it is better to pay unemployment assistance because then the unemployed will have less money to purchase goods that might require to be imported and the men who are lucky enough to be in employment will remain quiet and will not seek what is considered a just wage. Was not that the Central Bank's report?

At the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis the plain man of the country realised the seriousness of that report and the Tánaiste got up and said he did not agree with it but the excuse was given that it was necessary to conserve our money that was invested in a foreign country because we might require it at very short call. I will give you some little history. I was placed in a very important position in the years 1920-21 when I had to carry out the whole administration of a county, to maintain the claims of hospitals and keep the services there.

Had I money? Had I thousands of pounds at call? No, I had not, but we carried on the administration knowing very well that the shopkeepers or the people who had accounts with us would not demand all in one call in the one day or week. The assistance of public bodies and of public men did as much as the I.R.A. to defeat the powers in authority at that time. We returned on paper much more money than we received. I returned several thousands of pounds although there were many weeks when I had not £100 in my possession to pay the officials and to carry on the various services that were my responsibility. Therefore there is no need for any man to say that any emergency would require on short call the entire amount that we have invested abroad. Foreign countries themselves are using our money for the very work that we require to do here with it.

The public bodies are anxious to know before they proceed with further big building schemes what interest they will be charged for new loans from the Local Loans Fund. We have been told the new rate of interest under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts but we have not been informed about the rates of charges on loans for new housing schemes. I am sure members of the Fianna Fáil Party, like myself, are on public boards; they must know of the demands being made on those local bodies because in my 30 years' experience of public boards I have never known so much hardship, so much misery, so many unemployed, so many appeals to public bodies for relief work at Christmas. But even with the high rates and the prospect of further increases in them public bodies are still not in a position to meet a quarter of the demands made on them at the present time. Years ago they could have raised £5,000 or £10,000 on the following year's estimate in order to provide work at this time of the year. But they are in no such position to-day because the prices of commodities have increased and unemployment has risen and the people are taxed out of existence through local taxation, and no matter whom the members of local bodies represent they are not there to throw further burdens on to the people.

It is not so long ago that the position in the building trade was that we had men coming back here from England to work in this country. To-day, you have over 580 skilled craftsmen unemployed. They will go over and find employment in the erection of houses on the other side, employment provided by the money invested by Irish people at 1½ per cent. We are told we are building hospitals. That is a very admirable thing but will our hospitals be large enough to meet the requirements of our people in a few years if we continue in the same manner as we have over the last year and a half?

To-day, less bread is being consumed. Less milk and less butter are being used by the poorer classes, for there is not sufficient money to purchase the necessities of life. What is going to be the position of the children of the rising generation who are being deprived of essential food at the present time? The hospitals erected now will not be large enough to accommodate the number of patients we will have.

If Deputy Cogan believes he represents the people, will he come to a public meeting at any place he wishes to select and justify his action? The Government believe they have the confidence of the people. Is there not an easy way to test it? I speak for my own constituency and I challenge the two Deputies to test the feelings of the people in County Wicklow for they no longer represent their views. I have issued that challenge before and the number the Deputies had then will be much less the next time. Why is there such a change? Because all sections of the community have suffered as a result of the Government's action. The Government knows it too. They have lost heart and they know they have lost the confidence of the people. They have only one honourable duty to perform and that is to let the people elect a Government—let it be good or bad, if it is elected by the majority nobody will have any complaint.

As I have pointed out, never has there been such unemployment as at the present time. Years ago in this House special grants would be allocated at this time for the relief of the men unemployed throughout the country but there will be no such grants to-day. Public bodies' funds are exhausted. They have received all the grants the Government are prepared to give but the money is not enough.

It is not sufficient to provide employment only for a small number of men. What will become of the others? Will they be left without any aid and must they depend solely on unemployment assistance from this until Christmas? We appeal to the Government to change its policy. If up to now the Government has obeyed the authority of the Central Bank, now is the time to make a change.

I am surprised that some of the trade unionists are so very silent to-day as compared with some years ago. We have been told that Córas Iompair Éireann will have to dismiss thousands of its men on the grounds of economy. We are told that the Irish people must pay more in taxes in order to provide foreigners with a transatlantic air service. Simultaneously with that we propose to reduce our bus traffic, increase our fares and dismiss thousands of our transport workers on the grounds of economy. Now is the time for the trade unionist leaders in Dublin to speak out.

It is not right that the people should be treated as serfs and slaves. Trade union leaders should realise that they have shot their bolt. They have failed to represent the rank and file, the plain people of Ireland. Take care that the rank and file does not take matters out of the hands of their leaders and do what they should have done three months ago.

The people are dissatisfied with the present set-up. Why? Because the Government has attempted to serve only one section of the community and has forgotten the other 75 per cent. The Government wants to take revenge on the plain people for their action in 1947. They are crucifying the people. They will not even let them have enough money to purchase the essential food they need and they are permitting food to soar in price. Food is to-day almost beyond the reach even of those who are in employment.

I warn the Government and I appeal to Deputy Cogan to take an honourable course and resign if he believes he represents the people, or else put the Government in such a position that they will be forced to hold a general election thereby giving the people an opportunity of putting in a Government that will restore hope and confidence in place of the despair that exists at the present time. We know the serious position that exists in our factories. We know the numbers who are in temporary employment living from week to week. Those who are keeping the Government in power know full well that the ship is sinking but they are afraid to disembark and save their own lives before the ship goes down. The people in County Wicklow know that some of the members of that crew will sink because they will never again be given an opportunity of misrepresenting here the people who gave them their confidence in the last election.

Mr. Cogan

On a point of order. Deputy Everett has made a personal challenge to me to meet him on any platform in Wicklow to defend my policy. I accept that challenge.

An Ceann Comhairle

That is not a point of order and it is not relevant.

Mr. Cogan

Baltinglass town hall.

Mr. Everett

I will come to Baltinglass and you can have your Major Dennis to support you and I will not be afraid of him. Resign. In doing so you will confer a great benefit on the people.

Mr. Belton

The four main problems under discussion on this Bill are unemployment, emigration, the trade recession and the cost of living. It is rather remarkable that the Minister in opening the debate on this Bill never once adverted to any one of these four items. Two years ago when the inter-Party Government was in power the Opposition was led by Deputy Lemass for a period of three weeks and during that three weeks the inter-Party Government got a very thorough lacing from practically every Deputy sitting on the Opposition Benches. I am quite certain that the Minister when he was leading the Opposition would have been far more vehement in his criticism of the Government of the day had the position been only half as bad as it is now.

I hope that the Minister when he is replying will deal with the cost of living first of all, the trade recession and the serious unemployment position that has been created over the past 18 months. The cost of living is at present at a higher level than it has ever been in the history of this State. There is not a single commodity ordinarily used by the working classes and by the poorer sections of the community which has not increased in price. Since we were discussing this Bill 12 months ago bread, flour, butter, tea and sugar have increased to a level they never reached before. The only people who can afford to purchase these commodities to-day are the well-to-do.

I was reading through the debate that took place here in 1949 and my attention was taken by a speech made by Deputy Lynch, now Parliamentary Secretary, at that time. It is indeed typical of the speeches made by the Fianna Fáil Party when in opposition. At column 1750 of Volume 118 of the Official Report Deputy Lynch said:—

"One does not need to have much knowledge of the ordinary working classes in this country to realise that bread, tea and sugar are used in greater quantities by the poorer classes than by the better off classes. Bread is used particularly by people who are in poor circumstances and who are rearing families. I have received from all over my own constituency and outside it, complaints from people who are forced to buy bread, tea and sugar at these increased prices."

That was in 1949. I wonder what his constituents have to say at the present time, and the constituents of the other Fianna Fáil Deputies, now that the cost of living has increased by 25 per cent. over that period. Unemployment has increased during the last 18 months by approximately 11,000. Apart from increased unemployment, there are numbers of people who are still lucky enough to be working short time.

Unemployment has grown considerably during the régime of the present Government. It has grown considerably since the Fianna Fáil Party took office. It is with regret that I express the opinion that unemployment will grow still further during the next three, four or five months. The building trade and the building industry is the principal industry in the City of Dublin and in the urban areas throughout the country. In that trade alone, serious unemployment has occurred during the past six months. Any Deputy who thinks it worth his while to make inquiries about the unemployment created in the building industry can contact any of the secretaries of the building trade unions in Dublin City and what I have said will be confirmed. There is serious and very serious unemployment in the building trade in the city and throughout the urban areas. The recent loan certainly put the last nail in the coffin of the private building industry. It has helped to add to the unemployment list. The loan at 5 per cent. which is made available to local authorities throughout the country means that the local authorities have to pay far greater interest for this loan and they, in their turn, have to hand on that extra rate of interest to borrowers under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts. Young married people and families desirous of securing their own homes have to find from 10/- to 15/-a week extra to repay the money which they borrow. Next March we will be faced with a very serious problem when every local authority throughout the country will have to consider the striking of the rate for the year ahead. Every conscientious member of a county council or local authority throughout the country realises that the rents paid at the moment for labourers' and working-class cottages have reached their limit. If the county council have to pay a higher rate of interest for the money which they borrow to enable them to build these cottages they must charge a higher rent for the cottages and if they do not do that they must increase the subsidy off the rates.

I suggest that next March, when the local authorities are striking a new rate, they will have to strike a far heavier rate to provide for the housing needs of their counties. I suggest that Deputy Cogan, when he is voting on this Bill, should seriously consider this matter, as he represents himself here to be a member of a ratepayers' association. I wonder if he will be able to reconcile his attitude when he is voting on this Bill with the requirements of the association to which he belongs.

During this debate Deputy Briscoe accused the members on the Opposition side of the House of misleading the people in relation to the cost of living. I would ask all the Deputies on the Government side of the House to remember the promises they made when they were seeking election in June, 1951. They criticised the inter-Party Government and all the groups that made up that Government on the cost of living during the three and a half years when the inter-Party Government held office. I wonder what they have to say to-day when they realise the heights to which the cost of living has soared.

One night last week Deputy Cowan came in here and made a very quiet and lame speech. Yet, two years ago, speaking on the same Bill, he strongly criticised the then Government in the most emphatic fashion on the cost of living which then obtained. Can Deputy Cowan answer his constituents to-day when his vote and the votes of the other three Independent Deputies will be responsible for maintaining the present position in this country?

I ask the Dáil to reject this Bill and to let the country decide whether or not they approve of the policy of the Government.

Mr. M.E. Dockrell

I wish to add my voice to that of those other Deputies on this side of the House and on the Labour benches who have referred to the trade recession and to the present cost of living. The trade recession has come about very largely as a result of the financial policy of this Government. Under the inter-Party Government, trade was booming and employment reached a height which it had never reached before in this country. Unfortunately, when the present Government came into office a financial policy was inaugurated which could have only one effect: it would throw large numbers of our fellow-citizens out of work and it would be bound to have its effect on the cost of living and on trade generally. I was talking to a draper to-day who called my attention to the fact that a drapery house in Dublin is advertising a sale at the present moment. That is practically unknown at this time of the year. It is very unusual, coming up to Christmas, for a drapery house to have to resort to a sale in order to sell its goods.

I can endorse entirely what Deputy Belton has said with regard to the building trade. The recession in that trade is extremely serious and has been brought about by the stringent financial conditions in which all businesses find themselves at the present moment and, above all, as a result of the increased price which money can command and the effect that that has had on the building trade.

I do not propose to go into the question of the rate at which the Government can borrow. Certainly I think the Government should have been able to borrow at a lower rate than 5 per cent., but even with a rate of 5 per cent. the Government should have made special arrangements for those engaged in private building, for those borrowing through societies and for the building trade generally. Other countries have recognised that the housing of their citizens is something which is highly desirable in the national interest. In fact, we here in Ireland have recognised that too but we have not gone to the length of providing cheap money at a cost to the Exchequer. It is looked upon as being something which is inevitably tied up with the cost of borrowing money—that is to say, the rate at which the Government can lend it to private individuals and to local authorities for building. I maintain, and have already maintained in articles, that there is not necessarily any connection between the rate at which the Government can borrow and the rate at which it can lend to any individual or group of individuals. It would be very much to the benefit of this country and of employment in general if cheap money were made available to the building trade. In fact, the very slight difference that the Government would have to pay would be amply repaid by the increased volume of business which would result from the building trade being in a boom condition. I can tell the House from my personal knowledge that the building trade is in a very stagnant position at the present moment—in a more stagnant position than the conditions in the month of December would warrant.

I should like to refer very briefly to the economic survey which was made by a group of Americans. Their report was received by the Government here in August, 1952 and it has not yet been made available to Deputies. I understand from what I have read that there were something like 50 copies available. Surely it would have been possible to order more copies and to have them readily available, in fact, to circulate them to Deputies. I think it is a very wrong system that when a report like that is made it should be issued to the newspapers and to members of the Diplomatic Corps here in Dublin and not to the members of the Dáil and Seanad. I think if necessary the report could have been held up for a few weeks until additional copies were available. I think it is very wrong that the only copy that any Deputy can see is that in the Library of this House.

There are many things I should like to mention in connection with that report because it has a bearing on the present situation here. I think it shows the trend in certain ways. It shows that the policy of the Government in relation to industry has not been as sure as we would like, and that the uncertainty, which resulted from the lack of a direct policy on the part of the Government has had its bad effect on industry and, in turn, has had its effect on employment in the country. I think it would be a good thing if, at the earliest opportunity, this report were circulated to the House and if, at some later date, the House had an opportunity to debate it, not indeed as a political matter but as something which is of vital importance to the people.

In conclusion, I would say that this Government, very greatly to the regret of the country in general, has proved itself by its financial policy to be unduly harsh on the community. In its industrial policy and in its handling of the economic situation it has proved itself to be entirely unfitted to deal with the difficulties of the present day. I think the only thing left to the Government is to resign, to hand over the reins of Government to those who are more fitted to deal with the difficulties of the situation to-day and the difficulties which we can see looming ahead so long as this policy is followed.

Mr. Lemass

The last sentence of Deputy Dockrell's speech expressed a theme which ran through all the speeches delivered from the benches opposite during the whole of the debate, the theme that all our national problems—economic, social and financial—rising prices, higher taxation, emigration and unemployment—have developed only since the Coalition Government left office and will all disappear again if only the Coalition Government gets back. Put that way it sounds nonsense. Put any way it is nonsense and I hope in the time available to me to demonstrate that that description of it is precisely accurate. Many Deputies talked about the damage which was alleged to have been done by the gloomy speeches delivered by members of the Government. If gloomy speeches can do damage, we heard enough in the last week to wreck an empire. I do not think that the speeches delivered by Ministers merit that adjective. They were designed to draw public attention to serious national problems, to define these problems and to define also, in as precise terms as possible, the action that was needed to reduce and to remove these problems.

There are in every community people who, when brought face to face with the reality of difficulties and told that they must do something about them and exert themselves to remove them, go off to whinge in corners, to deplore their fate and to plead for sympathy. There are others who, in the same circumstances, respond in the right way by taking off their coats and getting down to work. The Opposition seem to me in the course of this debate to have made up their minds that the majority of the Irish people are whingers when real national problems have to be dealt with, that they are lily-fingered softies who cannot be expected to face realities and who must be "jollied" along by fancy promises. We believe that the majority of the Irish people are now, as they always were, a fighting people and that when they are asked to respond to the national need they will give the right response. If we are wrong in that you will win the next election; if we are right you have not a chance.

Mr. Morrissey

When are we going to get the chance?

Mr. Lemass

There is no doubt that we have got here serious economic and social problems. Deputies have defined them, in a manner which I do not dispute, as high prices, high taxation and persistent unemployment and emigration. We have had, during the course of the debate, grotesque exaggeration of the dimensions of these problems. I do not think exaggeration does any good. I am certainly not going to minimise them. I hope that I will be able to get the Dáil to see these problems as they really are, and to realise that they are within our strength to deal with. It does not help us in getting the right national response, in the face of these problems, to represent this country as being in the last stages of decay.

Mr. Morrissey

Hear, hear!

Mr. Lemass

That has been done during the last couple of days by the Deputies on the benches opposite.

Mr. Morrissey

By the Minister for Finance.

Mr. Lemass

It is not true, and I am glad that one member of the Fine Gael Party will agree in asserting that it is not true.

Mr. Morrissey

It never was, and was not true last year either.

Mr. Lemass

The problems of this country are no greater than, and not much different from those of other countries. I think it is possible to demonstrate that we here are making more successful efforts to cope with them than many other European nations. That effort will succeed, in the course of time, if the Deputies opposite will stop peddling discontent. We have got to get our people to realise that there is a job to be done and to get them to understand that they have the strength to do it. We have got to urge them to do it instead of hawking grievances around the place so that they will be discouraged from even making an attempt.

Before going on to deal in a precise statistical way with these problems of ours, there are a few general remarks that I want to make. When this Government took office, it knew well that the measures it would have to adopt to remedy the deplorable state of the national finances, to restore the national economy and to get productive activity going in the right direction, would not be pleasant. We were fully aware that, in adopting these measures, we would be prejudicing our political future. We knew that whatever steps we took could not produce the results we expected from them, the beneficial results for the people of this country, for some time, and that the people would not realise in the immediate present how necessary or how beneficial they were until the results we anticipated from them were visible. We intend to see, so far as it is in our power to do it, that they will get the time, and that is the answer to Deputy Morrissey's question.

Mr. Morrissey

I knew it before you told me.

Mr. Lemass

The policy of this Government——

Mr. Cosgrave

Is to cling on to office at all costs.

Mr. Lemass

——is clear, definite and positive. We think that the circumstances of this country require a Government with a policy of that kind. We did not make our decision for the purpose of hanging on to office. We made it for the purpose of ensuring that there will not get into office a Government that would represent nothing more than a collection of diversified grievances, with no policy and no clear objectives, a Government which would be formed from a coalition of the Parties sitting opposite, and which would come in hamstrung with promises impossible of fulfilment. We are going, if we can, to save the country from that fate.

The Coalition Government which, we are told, brought all these benefits to the country, left office in 1951 voluntarily. Why did they do it? Deputy Bartley, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, asked that question, and it is a very pertinent question: Why did that Government in 1951, without being defeated in the Dáil, nevertheless dissolve the Dáil and go to the country?

Mr. O'Leary

Do you want to know? To get out of Deputy Dr. Browne and Deputy Peadar Cowan. That is why.

Mr. Lemass

I repeat that the Government had not been defeated in the Dáil. There was no compulsion on it because of a Dáil situation to dissolve and go to the country at that time. What was the situation in which they did it? May I remind Deputy O'Leary and the Deputies opposite of the situation? The Minister for Finance in the Coalition Government, Deputy McGilligan, brought here the Budget statement of 1951. In accordance with the normal practice of the Dáil the debate on that Budget statement was adjourned until the next day on which the Dáil would sit. The Dáil never got a chance of sitting again. Without warning it was dissolved that night.

Mr. O'Leary

You dissolved it one time in the middle of the night.

Mr. Lemass

For what reason was that done? For this reason, that the Coalition Government, and their Minister for Finance, knew quite well that their Budget was a fake, and they dared not allow it to be examined in detail by the Dáil.

Mr. O'Leary

That will not go down with the people.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister must be allowed to speak without interruption.

Mr. Lemass

They knew that they had so presented the national accounts to the House that they were concealing their failure to make adequate provision for revenue in the financial year to meet the outgoings to which they were committed. We discovered that for ourselves within a week after becoming the Government in June of that year. We found then that the maximum revenue anticipated from the taxes that they imposed fell short of the minimum commitments in respect of expenditure which that Government had undertaken by several million pounds. We knew that the job, the unpleasant job, of proposing new taxes to the Dáil to close that gap was going to be ours.

We are told that these new taxes are harsh and impose a burden on the people. In so far as I can, I am going to ensure that the responsibility for that situation will rest where it belongs—upon that cowardly Government which, rather than face their responsibilities in that year, tricked the Dáil with a faked Budget that was followed immediately by a dissolution. They knew more than that. They knew that the very exceptional facilities which they had given for the import of manufactured goods in the previous month were bound to produce a trade slump in a number of important Irish industries. They must have realised, when they gave special licences for the import of 4,000,000 square yards of woven cloth, that, in the course of time, orders to the Irish woollen mills would dry up. When they gave their special licence for 1,000,000 nylon stockings—stockpiling against an emergency we are told— they must have realised that in due course the orders to Irish hosiery factories would be curtailed. They realised that the trade slump which they are now blaming on the present Government was bound to come following upon the measures they took, and they tried to dodge responsibility for that also.

They knew another thing. They knew that, in the last three months of their term of office, the cost of living was going up at an unprecedented rate. Deputy Norton, in the course of this debate, said that the last published index number for the cost of living while his Government was in power was 102. That was the index number for February of that year, but they did not leave office until June, and there was another index number for mid-May. They took good care, however, to go to the country before it appeared, because in that last quarter, without any withdrawal of subsidies and with the Government then in office doing nothing but sitting back and looking on, the cost of living, measured by the index number, went up by the same number of points as it went up consequent on the withdrawal of subsidies in this year—by seven points.

Mr. O'Leary

You promised to bring it down.

Mr. Lemass

We took over a situation, as I have said, in which we knew that we had to make a choice between straightforward action to protect the national interests and our own Party advantage. We made that choice and we do not regret it. It has been suggested in the course of this debate that this Government should resign because their candidate was defeated in a recent by-election. It is ridiculous to suggest that this Government or any Government should resign if they do not win every by-election during their term of office. We know that in by-elections, particularly one caused by a vacancy on the Opposition Benches, where it is obvious that the fate of the Government is not involved, ballyhoo sometimes counts more than logical argument. You had the advantage of that situation in the recent by-election. We regret the result.

May I say that, following on the introduction of the Budget this year and the initiation of these measures to rectify the situation on which we had decided and which we knew would not pay off in benefits to our people for some time, we did not expect to win the by-elections in June last either? We were gratified to find that in two important constituencies it was possible for us so to explain the position to the voters as to secure the return of our candidates.

Mr. Morrissey

You would not win them now.

Mr. Lemass

I am confident that if in any constituency, not excluding North-West Dublin, the electors have to make a choice, not between two candidates at a by-election, but between a Government of the Fianna Fáil type and a Government of the Coalition type, there will be a different result. I want the House to understand our position. We have set the ship of Government on its course and have lashed the wheel. We are concentrating on the tasks immediately to hand. If that ship gets torpedoed on its voyage, we will do the conventional thing and go down with it. We hope it will get to its ultimate destination because, when it gets there, the people will realise that the course has been well set and that the destination is one worth reaching.

Let me turn now to deal with those specific and grave economic and social problems which have been in debate here and with which this Dáil and the country are faced. The cost of living has gone up substantially, and that rise in the cost of living has imposed burdens on the people, burdens which it must be the aim of Government policy to mitigate. Can we get agreement in the Dáil that the cost of living must not be allowed to rise further, that nothing must be allowed to happen which will force it up further, that no cost will be allowed to be increased which will have the effect of making prices go higher? If Deputies are as perturbed as they declare about the rise in the cost of living, it should be possible to get agreement on that proposal. If we cannot get agreement on that proposal, a lot of their talk about the cost of living must be classed as hypocritical.

Mr. O'Leary

Is not that your job?

Mr. Lemass

If this issue of the cost of living is so grave, and I do not deny its gravity, can we get agreement at least on the principle that the policy of the Government must be to prevent its going further no matter what that involves?

Mr. Morrissey

Fish, for example, went up by 50 per cent. yesterday.

Mr. Lemass

I will put more specific questions to the Deputies. They come in here tearing their hair about the rise in the cost of living. When they have gone through that process, they go out into the passage to titivate themselves and then come in to demand a higher price for milk delivered to creameries, a higher price for butter, a higher price for beet involving a higher price for sugar, a higher price for wheat involving a higher price for flour and bread.

Mr. Cosgrave

Deputy Cogan has a motion looking for an increased price for milk.

Mr. Lemass

There is no hypocrisy about Deputy Cogan. The hypocrisy is over there. The hypocrisy comes from people who are professing to be alarmed about the rise in the cost of living and then come in here demanding that the Government should take measures which will increase it further. Can we get agreement that these measures must not be taken? Will Deputies opposite undertake to withdraw any proposal of that kind that they have made or may intend to make?

Mr. Morrissey

Deputy Corry and Deputy Cogan?

Mr. Lemass

Those Deputies are logical. I am trying to get similar logic from the Deputies opposite.

Mr. Cosgrave

The motion will not be pressed.

Mr. Lemass

I say to any group of Deputies who come here on alternate days to deplore the rise in the cost of living and to urge measures which will cause it to go higher still that they are either incapable of putting forward a logical policy or they are allowing hypocrisy to determine the character of their speeches here.

We decided upon a reduction in subsidies. Subsidies for food prices were initiated as a temporary device in the post-war period and it was always the aim that they should disappear eventually. Does any Deputy seriously believe that we should maintain food prices subsidies in perpetuity? Do they think it would be wise to do so? Is it not better that we should get reality into our price structure? We realised that the withdrawal of the food subsidies and the rise in the price of certain foodstuffs would cause hardship. In so far as it was in our power to mitigate that hardship we took the appropriate measures. For every class of the community who are depending in any way upon Government subventions under any of the social welfare schemes the amount paid to them was increased by at least the amount that the cost of living had been raised, and in some cases by more. We said that where, over and above those measures, the rise in the price of foodstuffs required adjustment in remuneration, that adjustment should be made.

Deputy MacBride in the course of the debate endeavoured to represent me or some other Minister as saying that there should be no increases in wages. I said the contrary. I said that it was far better that we should get our price level on a basis of reality and adjust wages in relation to that price level rather than that we should maintain the policy of subsidisation.

It was also stated that the current demands for higher wages result solely from the adjustment in food subsidies made in the Budget. That is not true. Every Deputy connected with the labour movement knows it is not true. Long before the Budget was introduced, I personally became involved in discussions between the executive committees of the Congress of Irish Unions and of the Employers' Federation, discussions which ultimately led to a general agreement to regulate the increases in wages. These discussions had their origin in the rise in prices which had taken place in the previous year, and I felt I was in duty bound to tell those who participated in them that when they were engaged in their negotiations they should know that the Government contemplated changes in respect of food subsidies. I did not feel at liberty to tell them more than that but I felt that it was my duty to let them know that they might have a problem of wage adjustment to solve greater than that which was indicated by the cost-of-living index number at that time.

What is the position now and what is the position likely to be in the future? I think it is true to say that only internal factors are causing prices to go up now. The import price index number has fallen fairly consistently since the first quarter of this year. The cost of goods imported into this country and used for industrial and agricultural purposes is tending downwards but the effect of that fall in material costs on our price level is being offset by rising internal costs. There is a fair prospect that when these adjustments in internal costs are completed a position of price stability will be realised.

The Deputies opposite have, however, given to the House and to the country a completely false picture of our price situation. Even Deputy Costello who promised to be scrupulously fair and meticulously accurate on facts said that there had been a rise in the cost of every commodity. Other Deputies read out lists of commodities which had risen in price. Deputy Hickey, I think, chose a number of selected commodities and said that any given quantity of them would cost so much more now than they cost a year ago. I can select commodities which have fallen in price as numerous as those selected by Deputy Hickey and perhaps it is no harm to remind the House that within the overall situation in which the cost-of-living index number has risen, many prices, including prices of important commodities, have come down during the course of this year. The price of coal fell by a pound a ton in Dublin and by varying amounts in other counties.

Mr. Norton

After going up by £3.

Mr. Lemass

But it is moving downward now. I am controverting a statement made that in the course of this year the price of every commodity rose.

Mr. Hickey

I gave 26 items.

Mr. Lemass

The price of margarine fell by 5d. a pound, from 1/11 to 1/6; soap has fallen in price; the price of jams has fallen; the price of biscuits and oatmeal has fallen. The price of all classes of fertilisers used by farmers has fallen; motor-cars, tyres and tubes, and cycle tyres and tubes have fallen in price; paints have fallen; clothing of all kinds has fallen.

Mr. MacBride

The cost of living is getting cheaper?

Mr. Lemass

The clothing price index shows that. Does anybody in the House deny that the price of clothing has come down this year?

Mr. Norton

By what? Quote the official figures.

Mr. Lemass

The index number proves that the price of clothing shows a decline.

Mr. Norton

Tell us what it was in the beginning of the year and what it is now.

Mr. Lemass

I cannot find the figures now for the Deputy. There are a number of other commodities but they are mostly industrial commodities that do not enter into ordinary household use.

Mr. Hickey

I gave only food items.

Mr. Lemass

I am not denying the cost of living has gone up. I am denying the statement that every commodity has gone up and any Deputy who comes here as the leader of his Party and says he is going to give a picture of the situation which is scrupulously fair and meticulously accurate and does not refer to that fact has failed to achieve the very high standard he set himself.

Mr. MacBride

Quote the figures for us now.

Mr. Lemass

I did not say the cost of living is going down and I will not be misrepresented by Deputy MacBride's tricks. Keep them for the cross-roads. You will not get away with them here. What I have said is— and these are facts any Deputy can check—that the cost of imported materials is coming down, the import prices index shows that, but the effect of that fall in material costs is being offset by higher wages and higher costs at home; the net result is that a position of price stability may be realised when and only when the effects of the present wage adjustments are finally and fully reflected in retail prices.

We are told that all these rises in the cost of living occurred since the Fianna Fáil Government came into office. Deputy Blowick, a former Minister, actually made a statement that during the three and a half years in which the Coalition were in office only one price went up, that of butter, by 2d. a lb. I asked my Department to produce a list of the commodities that increased in price during the Coalition term of office—those that were the subject of official Government Orders sanctioning increases and those that took place with the consent of the Government without formal Orders. It would take me an hour to read over list after list of the commodities that went up in price at that time. Does Deputy Blowick seriously think that anybody will believe his assertion that during their three and a half years in office no price went up except one?

Mr. Morrissey

The index went up two points in three years.

Mr. Lemass

It went up 11 points.

Mr. Morrissey

It went up only two points in three years.

Mr. Lemass

In the period the Coalition were in office it went up 11 points.

Mr. Morrissey

I am still correct in saying that it went up only two points in three years.

Mr. Lemass

Does the cost of living index not show that what I am saying is correct?

Mr. Morrissey

What I am saying is that from February, 1948, to February, 1951, there was a rise of only two points in the index.

Mr. Lemass

And the Coalition Government were still in office in May, 1951. In the last three months of the Coalition's term of office the cost of living began to shoot up at an accelerating pace and that is one reason why they dissolved the Dáil at that time.

Deputy Costello also said that the cost of living has gone up here more than it went up in Britain. I contradict that statement. The cost-of-living index number in Britain shows that during the period between 1948 and August, 1951, the British index went up from 100 to 126. Here the index went up from 100 to 122. Whatever influences were at work here in causing the cost of living to rise were equally at work in Britain and were producing a still more definite increase in prices in Britain. Nor was that true of Britain only. In every country in Europe prices were fluctuating during the same period. It is true that in Belgium and in Germany there were no increases, whatever local circumstances operated there, but as against the increase here there was an increase in Austria of 36 per cent., in Iceland, 36 per cent., in France, 22 per cent., in Norway, 12 per cent., in Sweden, 12 per cent., in Denmark and Italy there was also an increase. In Switzerland there was a fall.

It is quite obvious, therefore, that the contention made by Deputies opposite that all these misfortunes fell on this country just because the Fianna Fáil Party came into office is not capable of statistical proof. I will put it clearer than that. It is a falsehood.

We are told that taxation is too high. I will agree that taxation is very high, that it is dangerously high having regard to the present level of national production. Could we get agreement in this House that it must not go higher? Will the Parties opposite consent to a proposition that no matter what proposal is made here for increased Government spending, no matter how desirable the objective of that spending, no matter how justifiable the claim leading to it, we will not agree to it; that, in order to keep taxation from going higher we will stop all spending from going up.

Captain Cowan

Nobody will agree to that.

Mr. Lemass

Of course, nobody will agree to it. Deputies who deplore the present level of taxation and then stud the Order Paper with motions demanding still higher Government spending upon particular projects in which they are interested are again, I submit, leaving themselves open to the charge of hypocrisy. Deputy Costello, it is true, admitted that, if taxation was to be reduced, Government spending would also have to be reduced, but he took very good care to give not the slightest indication of the direction in which he would achieve that reduction of spending.

We have had a number of speeches about unemployment, and the persistence of unemployment is a most serious feature of the national economy; but I again want to say that no Deputy gave a fair picture of the position, and least of all Deputy Costello, despite his aim of being scrupulously fair and meticulously accurate, when he said that the unemployment register figures gave the whole of the picture in relation to unemployment.

Mr. Morrissey

It does not—it is much worse.

Mr. Lemass

Deputy Morrissey says it is worse. I am going to give another side of the picture. The factors which influence registrations on the live register are numerous. The increase in the number on the live register, in the course of the past 18 months, took place despite the fact that there were more people in employment during that period. According to statistics from the Department of Social Welfare, the average weekly number of people employed in occupations insurable under the Unemployment Insurance Acts, calculated from the number of contributions paid in respect of them, in 1951, was 369,700 as compared with 353,600 in 1950, an increase of 14,000. I endeavoured to get from the Department later figures than those for 1951, but they told me that no later figures are available, but that sample inquiries had been made and that these inquiries suggest that, in the first six months of this year, there was a further improvement in respect of the number of people employed, as compared with the first six months last year.

Whether these statistics, when available, will show that or not, I will content myself with asserting that there was no falling off in the number of people in employment in insurable occupations during that period. That can happen, as we know, while, at the same time, the number of people seeking work in insurable occupations and registering at the employment exchanges for that kind of work can increase also. I am not going to minimise in any way the magnitude of that problem. We know that the live register is not an indication of the number of people available for the type of work that could be offered on Government works schemes. Probably not more than one-third of those on the register are capable of manual work of that kind. At any rate, that was the position as we found it when we analysed it some years ago and I am sure it has not changed fundamentally since.

The over-all situation in regard to employment, as distinct from unemployment, is not nearly as discouraging as Deputies suggested. So far as building is concerned, it is not true that there has been any curtailment of the activities of local authorities. Deputy Cosgrave, I think, agreed with that, but he did say, and probably rightly, that there has been some falling off in activity by private people. The extent to which it is possible for the Government to influence the building orders placed by private people is very problematical——

Mr. Cosgrave

The rate of interest on small dwellings loans.

Mr. Lemass

——but I am quite certain of this, that the rise in the cost of building has led to a falling off, and I will suggest to Deputy Cosgrave and Deputy Dockrell that the rise in the cost of building has had a far more detrimental effect upon the volume of building orders by private people than the increase in the interest rate on loans. If we could get back the cost of the materials used in the building of houses to the level at which it stood a year ago or two years ago, we would do much more than offset the effect of higher capital costs. I am going to make some shot in that direction by breaking up the builders' providers' rings under the Restrictive Trade Practices Bill, but I suggest that both Deputy Dockrell and Deputy Belton could lend their influence in getting some improvement in that direction also.

May I, as a matter of interest, mention that, in all the distributive trades in this country, in the year 1951, the average net profit on turnover taken was 4 per cent., but the builders' providers secured 6.2 per cent. and earned 14.3 per cent. on capital invested? Perhaps, if there is a falling off in the volume of private building, the builders' providers may be able to make a contribution to its restoration by being satisfied with the same net profit on turnover as other persons engaged in distributive trades.

Mr. Cosgrave

Will the Government make a contribution by reducing the rate of interest on loans?

Mr. Lemass

The rate at which the Government can borrow is determined by a variety of circumstances. Is there a suggestion that the Government here can borrow money at lower rates of interest than other European Governments are paying? We know that there was for a time in Great Britain a cheap money policy, when Mr. Dalton was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and we were able to benefit by that policy, but just as there has been a change of policy in that regard in Britain, so also has there been a change of policy in America and all over the world. Because of changing circumstances, the cost of money, of long-term money, has risen.

Why do Deputies expect that it should rise everywhere else and not rise here? We could undoubtedly force people to lend us money at a low rate of interest, but it would mean imposing a restriction on the movement of funds between this country and Britain, and we do not think it would be worth it. We think that the cost we would pay in unemployment would be far too high for the advantages we would secure.

Mr. MacCarthy

And it was the same rate of interest in 1929, 5¾ per cent., under Cumann na nGaedheal.

Mr. MacBride

And lending it at 1? per cent.

Mr. Sweetman

Why is our rate higher than the British rate?

Mr. Lemass

We have been concentrating upon the effort to get new industrial activities under way and to overcome the effect of the trade slump in existing industry. So far as that is concerned, we have succeeded. Deputies who have spoken here about the trade recession are talking about something which has, in the main, passed.

Mr. Morrissey

What?

Mr. Lemass

In some trades, there is still less activity than there was in 1950, but I say that in the trades that were prejudiced by the abnormal imports under licence permitted in 1951 of manufactured goods, normal working has been restored. All our woollen factories are back in full production and some are on overtime. The same is true of our leather tanneries. In most of the textile industries, normal conditions are back again. We had to take drastic measures in order to get that situation but it has been secured. During the past year we got 79 new factories into production, 12 of them being major undertakings.

Mr. McGrath

Dunlops are working 24 hours a day.

Mr. Lemass

I have said already that the special steps which were initiated by legislation to promote industrial development in the West of Ireland were slow in producing the results anticipated. I thought they might produce results more expeditiously but I am now quite satisfied that these measures will produce significant results in industrial activity in these areas. The seed has been sown, the crop will be reaped and the Deputies opposite need not be despondent about the prospects.

Mr. O'Leary

There are 8,000 more unemployed.

Mr. Lemass

We will not get industrial activity on the scale required if Deputies opposite go around spreading this atmosphere of gloom and it is they who are at it.

Mr. Cosgrave

Read the statement of the Minister for Finance.

Mr. Lemass

If the people of this country got the opportunity of reading half the speeches which were delivered from the benches opposite during the course of the present week I would not blame them, no more than Deputy Dillon, for being gloomy.

Mr. Cosgrave

They read the statement of the Minister for Finance.

Mr. Lemass

We were told that the export of timber was an indication that building activity was falling off. Let me tell the House the story. There was set up by me during the war for the purpose of securing adequate supplies of timber during the emergency an organisation called Timber Importers, Ltd. That organisation was dissolved by Order of the Coalition Government in 1950 and its funds confiscated for the Exchequer.

Mr. Morrissey

It should have been left to them.

Mr. Lemass

Within a few weeks, they wanted to restore it and those concerned agreed to bring it back into existence provided they got their money back again, but that was asking too much.

Mr. Morrissey

It was not their money.

Mr. Lemass

And so the responsibility of bringing in stocks of timber in the circumstances of that year was not given to any organisation set up for that purpose but left to individual firms. Some of these individual firms brought in substantial stocks. I have no doubt they were thinking of their own interest as much as the interest of the country. After the stocks came, timber prices fell, and fell heavily and are still falling. I met the representatives of Timber Importers and they told me that they were facing such serious losses that some of them would not be able to continue in business. They endeavoured to put on me an obligation to help them out of a situation which was brought about by the request of the previous Government. I declined to agree that there was any such obligation on me. I did say that to the extent that they were carrying abnormal stocks on which they were likely to make a loss I was prepared to relieve them by giving them export licences. They have not been able to effect exports to any extent worth while.

All the experience I have had recently, in relation to timber, wool tops and other goods, convinces me of one thing, which I am going to put on the record for the benefit of any Minister who follows, that if the danger of war should arise again, it would not be fair to put the obligation of stockpiling, for safety purposes in an emergency, on private firms. We will not get it done anyway. Everybody knows that those who responded to the requests made to them in 1950 to carry abnormal stocks suffered losses in consequence and none of them will burn their fingers a second time. If we are going to have a policy of stockpiling at any time in the future then the Government in office will have to take the responsibility for setting up organisations for the purposes of financing the stocks and covering the losses in the event of a loss arising.

Mr. Dillon

But there was stockpiling.

Mr. Lemass

Of nylon stockings, worsted yarns and mouse traps. There was a special import licence for mouse traps.

Mr. Sweetman

There was not. The Minister was proved to be telling an untruth in that before.

Mr. Dillon

The mouse traps were 14 feet 3 by 3 mouse traps that were shipped from Belfast!

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister should be allowed to speak without interruption.

Captain Cowan

Is Deputy Sweetman in the House? I do not think Deputy Sweetman should be permitted to interrupt from the passage.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Or from any other place.

Mr. Hession

There is no road back.

Mr. Lemass

I would like to deal with some of the more serious contributions that were made in the course of the debate than those to which I have replied so far. Deputy Costello delivered what was obviously a carefully prepared speech conveying what he described as suggestions for the improvement of the financial organisations of the State. I think it is true that the financial institutions of this State were not specifically designed to foster the economic development of a free Ireland.

Mr. MacBride

Hear, hear!

Mr. Lemass

I am convinced also that their reform must come gradually and, if possible, voluntarily. State action to press that reform if it should have the effect of creating, mistakenly or otherwise, fears that the private savings of our people were going to be seized to relieve the financial difficulties of Government, or if it aroused fears abroad that payments made in Ireland for goods sold to Ireland could not be freely transferred into sterling, would cause widespread unemployment and bring trade to a standstill. That is a risk we should not take, at least until the need has been demonstrated.

Mr. Norton

The Minister is now stealing the gloom of the Minister for Finance.

Mr. Lemass

There has been no evidence so far that either public or private investment here has been found impracticable. We had during the years before the war and the years since the war a substantial volume of investment both in public undertakings and in private business enterprises. There has been no real evidence produced anywhere that the defects of our financial organisation have impeded seriously worth-while developments of that kind. Deputy Costello appears to be still under the delusion that the Government he led started a policy of productive capital investment.

Mr. Rooney

Quite right.

Mr. Lemass

And other Deputies opposite seem to share his illusion. I would ask the Deputies who share that illusion to apply this practical test. Let them read Deputy McGilligan's Budget statement of 1950 and the list of items which was then described for the first time as the Coalition's capital investment programme. They will find in that list of items only one that was not based on a Fianna Fáil Act. Every single item in that list was made possible by the legislation passed by the previous Fianna Fáil Government——

A Deputy

Did you not denounce it?

Mr. Lemass

——with the exception of the land improvement scheme with which Deputy Dillon was associated. On referring to Deputy McGilligan's Budget statement of 1950, Deputies will find that there was appropriated for that scheme in that year £3,000,000 but if they turn up the finance accounts for the whole of the year they will find that of the £3,000,000 only half a million pounds were spent. That was a queer sort of capital development programme. What is the position this year? The position this year is that so vigorously has our Minister for Agriculture gone ahead with the land improvement programme that already the full amount voted for the year has been expended and he is coming here next week for a supplementary sum to enable the activities under that scheme to be continued and extended in the rest of the financial year. Compare that accomplishment with the large promise and poor performance of Deputy Dillon.

Mr. Dillon

We would like to wait and see what the Supplementary Estimate is for. Do you see the Minister for Finance blushing? Look at him blushing.

Mr. Lemass

When they have carried out these practical tests that I suggest to them, there is one further test that they should apply. I ask them to find out how much of the total amount provided for capital services in that year was actually spent. They will find that Deputy McGilligan had £10,000,000 unspent at the end of the financial year.

Mr. Dillon

What? A £10,000,000 surplus?

Mr. Lemass

£10,000,000 capital investment funds neither secured or spent.

Mr. Dillon

The poor Minister for Finance will cut his throat.

Mr. Lemass

That was a queer sort of capital investment policy. It was one pushed with very little vigour or, if pushed at all, pushed the wrong way. Of course we know the policy of the Coalition in this matter changed during their term of office. They did not come in with a programme of capital investment. They came in with a programme of retrenchment and in their first year of office took pleasure in coming here and announcing that various capital schemes initiated by their predecessors had been dropped. Do not Deputies opposite remember that? Was not the whole mineral development project dropped? Did not they leave 70 workers down there in Avoca, County Wicklow, getting their pay but under orders to do no work for 15 months?

Mr. Dillon

You are crazy. There was more prospecting done in those three years than in the previous 20.

Mr. Lemass

It was one of the first economies announced by the Coalition.

Mr. Cosgrave

Not a man lost his employment. The work continued.

Mr. Lemass

They did not lose their pay. They were paid but they were told not to work.

Mr. Cosgrave

Do not try to insinuate something that is not true.

Mr. Lemass

Do you remember the harbour development schemes—all these proposals for the investment of money in harbour improvement works? Were not they dropped? Was not every single one of them put in the wastepaper basket and only revived in September, 1949, when political pressure made it expedient to revive them? I could enumerate here for half an hour worth-while capital investment projects which, in their first enthusiasm for retrenchment and economy, they decided to drop. But then there came a change of policy. Why there was a change of policy I do not know. Instead of retrenchment and economy and cutting down upon capital expenditure this so-called capital investment programme was initiated. I say that it was phoney from the start; it was a phrase designed to conceal the fact that they were going to borrow for ordinary Budget purposes and thus avoid the political unpleasantness of imposing necessary increases in taxation.

Mr. O'Leary

There are 10,000 unemployed.

Mr. Lemass

Deputy Costello said that increased taxation discourages investment. Let us take the record of this year against any of the Coalition Government's years. There was more money raised by public loan and more money expended through public organisations for investment purposes in this year than in any other previous year in the history of this country.

Mr. Morrissey

And we have 10,000 more unemployed.

Mr. Lemass

That was done in a year in which the amount of money raised by private business enterprise for development purposes was also an all-time record. There has been a larger volume of money made available for investment this year than in any previous year, despite the increased taxation, and done entirely out of our own resources, because that is the significance of the disappearance of the adverse trade balance. We can forget about that now. That problem is solved.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear!

Mr. Lemass

We are told that the solution of our economic difficulties is to set up an active capital market. That is Deputy Costello's proposal for ending all our difficulties. A market, as I understand it, is an institution, a place where buyers and sellers make contact, to do business. If there is a need to attract the savings of individual citizens to investment in Irish industry—and I have not seen evidence of serious difficulty on the part of Irish industry in getting new capital as required up to this—but if there is such a need, then it will be met, not by tinkering with machinery but by creating conditions in which our citizens will desire to make investments of that kind and, if that desire is to develop amongst our citizens, then there must be first of all a cessation of these attacks upon Irish industrialists as racketeers.

It was, I thought, preposterous for Deputy Costello to come here urging more voluntary investment in Irish industry, the creation of some organisation which would enable Irish citizens to invest in Irish industry—as if they had not the means already—when his first lieutenant or second lieutenant, or sergeant-major or whatever he is, spends his time in this Dáil denouncing Irish industries as criminal offences against the community and those who engage in them, those who seek the investment of Irish resources in them, as crooks and racketeers.

There must also be some effort to repair the false impression that has been created that, for political reasons, Governments may come into office here which will prevent Irish industries from earning profits commensurate with those that industries in Britain can earn. If we are to have investment in Irish industry made possible in competition with investment in English industry, then there must be the same prospect of return, the same prospect of security here as in Britain. The alternative is to impose restrictions, to have something akin to a capital levy, a conscription of capital resources, but we cannot make that effective except by imposing general restrictions upon the movement of funds between this country and Britain, and that would have such serious consequences upon our trade and employment that it is a measure we should not take until we are driven to it.

We can develop an active capital market here in the course of time provided we get rid of the mentality which regards a successful and profitable Irish industry as a public enemy. I have said that I have no evidence that industrial development by private enterprise has been unduly held up by lack of access to investment funds. If more is to be done, it is far less a matter of changing the methods by which industrialists can have access to the savings of investors than of changing the mentality which has operated in that matter heretofore.

I have been asked for a declaration of the Government's policy. It is difficult to condense a statement of policy in a few sentences but I have no hesitation in again explaining to the Dáil what the Government is trying to do, what every single Minister in the Government is trying to do. I emphasise that this is a united Government, that every member of it has the same policy and is striving to the same objectives. We argue amongst ourselves. We can afford to argue amongst ourselves because we know that, no matter how heated the argument may become——

Mr. Dillon

The Minister for Finance always wins.

Mr. Lemass

——in the end, when there is a majority vote, that decision will be accepted by all members of the Government. I have always contended and I know now from examination of the records that the Coalition Government could never afford to push any question upon which there was disagreement to the point of decision and they never did. The Coalition Government whenever they came to that position adopted one of two devices: either they postponed consideration of the question indefinitely or set up a committee that never met.

With regard to the Independent Deputies who have supported this Government, I want to refute one suggestion that was made repeatedly from the benches opposite. There was no contact between the Government and any of these Deputies, much less a bargain, before the vote was taken in the Dáil that put this Government into office. There has been no understanding of any kind with them that the Government will or will not dissolve the Dáil or have an election. There is no agreement expressed or implied which binds them to support this Government one day longer than they decide in their judgment to do.

Mr. O'Leary

You gave a guarantee.

Mr. Lemass

It is despicable that suggestions to the contrary should come from Deputies opposite, some of whom know the efforts that were made by their leaders to suborn those Deputies from their decision and to induce them, for material reasons, to vote otherwise. It is the aim of the Government by every device in its power, to utilise every instrument of legislation and administration to assist fuller and more efficient production in every branch of the national economy. I believe, unless we can get greater production of wealth from Irish farms and Irish factories, we cannot afford to sustain the present level of State services or the present standard of living of the people. We can for a time postpone the day of reckoning by living on our reserves but inevitably that day will come, unless the efforts being made to expand production and increase efficiency are successful. I think already we have made substantial progress. Whatever criticism the Opposition can make of the Government they cannot say that we have been idle. In every Departments things have already been done which they failed to undertake. Is that not so? We have come in here with legislative proposals and other measures representing the accomplishment of things which the Coalition talked of but did nothing about. The new industries established are now making an important contribution to the nation's capacity to produce more wealth. In industry also things are being done now that should have been done years ago. The extension of cement factories is a case in point and so is the extension of sugar factories and the extension of the merchant marine service. All these things could have been done much more cheaply and easily in 1948-49 but nothing was done about them.

Mr. O'Leary

They could have been done 16 years ago.

Mr. McGrath

And what about the social welfare services?

Mr. Lemass

Plans for the development of the natural resources of this country which were held up or delayed or scrapped by the Coalition Government are now in progress again. That applies to the mineral development proposals and to the exploitation of our peat and our water power for electricity purposes. Again, let me remind the Dáil that plans for only two electricity stations were approved by the Coalition; one was in Dublin and the other in Cork, and both were designed to use either imported coal or imported oil. Look at the picture now. From Donegal to Kerry new power stations are being planned or are being built, designed to use native resources only. The people in North Mayo have no illusions of the significance of the return of Fianna Fáil to office. The peat bogs of Bangor-Erris are being developed to feed two power stations which between them will have a greater capacity than the Shannon scheme.

Mr. Morrissey

Milled peat did that.

Mr. Lemass

The people of Donegal have the Clady River scheme, and the people of Kerry the Comeragh scheme. The development of turf bogs throughout all the midlands represents a solid achievement which should have been started during the Coalition's three years but was neglected.

Mr. Dillon

And unemployment has increased by 10,000.

Mr. Lemass

Many Deputies from the West have expressed doubts about the Undeveloped Areas Act in relation to the establishment of industries in the Fíor Gaeltacht and similar areas. I do not think any inducements held out by the Government will get private enterprise to go into industry in those areas. That Act represented only one part of the Government's plan for the revival of those areas. That part was intended to encourage industrial development by private enterprise. It is going to have that effect but inevitably it will be confined to the towns and other centres of population where the ordinary amenities necessary for industrial development, such as transport facilities and water supply, are available. If more is needed to be done in these areas, in the rural hinterland of these towns, it must be and will be done by State enterprise. For that reason we set up the office of which Deputy Jack Lynch, the Parliamentary Secretary, is in charge and the proposals he has been working on during the year are now coming one by one before the Dáil.

Deputies have spoken satirically about the plan to expend £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 on the construction of roads in these areas. Do they not want it done? Which one of them will say it should not be proceeded with? The building of these roads, apart from the immediate employment they will provide, will in time tend to increase the wealth of those areas in the years ahead. The tourist trade was at one time a matter of controversy here but I understood it had long ceased to be such and that now it is recognised that the substantial net income it produces is a major prop of our national prosperity and that we were now agreed that all efforts must be made to expand it. This is one of the measures designed to that end and it will be of direct benefit to the people in all these counties.

I do not want to deal at any length with the measures which the Minister for Agriculture has taken or is planning in order to secure the expansion in production and the improvement in the technique of production in agriculture, which we require. The Government, in fact, has been devoting most of its time at recent meetings to the consideration of these measures and when they are complete in detail they will be announced to the country and to the Dáil. But I want the House to appreciate that few of these measures can be made effective without the necessary funds. If funds are to be expended, then somebody has to provide them. There may be particular projects which could be fairly described as of a capital nature to be met out of borrowed money but in most cases the necessary resources to vitalise these schemes must be secured out of normal revenue either by an expansion of the tax yield or a diversion to these purposes of money now being spent otherwise.

We do not expect Deputies opposite to agree with everything the Government does. It would be a bad thing for the House if there were a lack of debate or criticism. But we are asking for fair criticism. If there are Government plans and projects which appear in the view of Deputies capable of improvement, we will welcome their views. But the type of balderdash with which Deputies opposite have deluged the House in the past few days is doing nobody any good—not even themselves. I am quite certain that, even though there comes a time in the life of every nation when, for a very short period, ballyhoo will outweigh serious argument, inevitably serious argument will come into its own again. For the 25 years of the Fianna Fáil's Party's existence we have planned our political campaign on that assumption, and we were rarely proved wrong. I would recommend Deputies opposite to study the record of Fianna Fáil. It was able to go back again and again to the people and get a vote of confidence from them, because on each occasion it could detail the work done or proposed to be done in the most specific way.

We never relied upon vague promises. If ever we were tempted to do so, we knew that it would lead to electoral defeat, and I suggest to Deputies opposite that if they want to get the confidence of the people and create a situation in which the Irish people at an election will deliberately vote them back into office— remember, they never deliberately voted them there yet—they also must come down to specific detail on the measures and plans they propose to implement, if they have any such plans, and they must make it clear that these proposals are not merely bargaining counters in some new coalition arrangement, but matters to which all those who may support that Government are committed. No evidence of any such positive thinking, much less constructive planning, has been forthcoming in this debate, and that is why, so far as I am concerned, I do not mind when we have a general election.

Mr. Dillon

February.

Mr. Morrissey

May I ask the Minister a question? The Minister in the course of his speech made a statement, and I am just wondering whether he wants it to go or whether he wants it to remain on the record. The statement was that a sum of approximately £100,000—I am speaking now from recollection —which was in the possession of Timber Importers, Limited, was their money.

Mr. Lemass

Oh, no.

Mr. Morrissey

The Minister said that. I want to give him an opportunity of correcting it.

Mr. Lemass

It represented the reserves of Timber Importers, Limited.

Mr. Morrissey

That is not the point I am making. The Minister, in the course of his statement—and this is important, because it involves a sum of £100,000—did say that that money was their money, referring to Timber Importers, Limited. He stated that £100,000 was "their" money.

Mr. Lemass

In my recollection it was a fund used by the organisation to maintain timber prices stable, to offset variations in price, and the claim made by the organisation was that, when it was being wound up, this money should have been used to reduce timber prices. Instead of that, it was taken into the Exchequer.

Mr. Morrissey

I do not think the Minister understands. This is important. It will come up again in an acute form. I take it the Minister agrees with me that the money did not belong to Timber Importers, Limited.

Mr. Lemass

The organisation was not a group of private persons. It was a non-profit-making organisation. These funds could not be used for any personal benefit, but they could have been used to reduce the price of timber.

Mr. Rooney

What personal loss was suffered then?

Mr. Lemass

No personal loss, and there were no personal profits either.

Mr. Norton

If it is true that so much work has been done by the Government over the last 12 months, how does the Minister now explain the fact that there are 11,000 more unemployed?

Mr. Cosgrave

And more emigration.

Mr. Lemass

There are 14,000 more in employment to-day than there were two years ago.

Mr. Cosgrave

And more emigration.

Question put.

The Dáil divided: Tá, 68; Níl, 59.

Tá

• Aiken, Frank.
• Allen, Denis.
• Bartley, Gerald.
• Beegan, Patrick.
• Blaney, Neil T.
• Boland, Gerald.
• Brady, Philip A.
• Brady, Seán.
• Breen, Dan.
• Brennan, Joseph.
• Brennan, Thomas.
• Breslin, Cormac.
• Briscoe, Robert.
• Browne, Noel C.
• Buckley, Seán.
• Burke, Patrick.
• Callery, Phelim A.
• Carter, Frank.
• Childers, Erskine.
• Cogan, Patrick.
• Colley, Harry.
• Collins, James J.
• Corry, Martin J.
• Cowan, Peadar.
• Crowley, Honor Mary.
• Crowley, Tadhg.
• Cunningham, Liam.
• Davern, Michael J.
• Derrig, Thomas.
• de Valera, Vivion.
• Duignan, Peadar.
• Fanning, John.
• ffrench-O'Carroll, Michael.
• Flanagan, Seán.
• Flynn, John.
• Flynn, Stephen.
• Gallagher, Colm.
• Gilbride, Eugene.
• Harris, Thomas.
• Hillery, Patrick J.
• Hilliard Michael.
• Humphreys, Francis.
• Kenneally, William.
• Kennedy, Michael J.
• Lemass, Seán.
• Little, Patrick J.
• Lynch, Jack (Cork Borough).
• McCann, John.
• MacCarthy, Seán.
• McEllistrim, Thomas.
• MacEntee, Seán.
• McGrath, Patrick.
• Maguire, Patrick J.
• Maher, Peadar.
• Moylan, Seán.
• Ó Briain, Donnchadh.
• O'Reilly, Matthew.
• Ormonde, John.
• O'Sullivan, Ted.
• Rice, Bridget M.
• Ryan, James.
• Ryan, Mary B.
• Sheldon, William A. W.
• Sheridan, Michael.
• Smith, Patrick.
• Traynor, Oscar.
• Walsh, Laurence J.
• Walsh, Thomas.

Níl

• Beirne, John.
• Belton, John.
• Blowick, Joseph.
• Byrne, Alfred.
• Byrne, Thomas N. J.
• Cafferky, Dominick.
• Carew, John.
• Cawley, Patrick.
• Collins, Seán.
• Corish, Brendan.
• Cosgrave, Liam.
• Costello, Declan.
• Costello, John A.
• Crotty, Patrick J.
• Crowe, Patrick.
• Davin, William.
• Desmond, Daniel.
• Dillon, James M.
• Dockrell, Henry P.
• Dockrell, Maurice E.
• Donnellan, Michael.
• Doyle, Peadar S.
• Dunne, Seán.
• Esmonde, Anthony C.
• Everett, James.
• Fagan, Charles.
• Finan, John.
• Flanagan, Oliver J.
• Giles, Patrick.
• Hession, James M.
• Hickey, James.
• Hughes, Joseph.
• Keyes, Michael.
• Kyne, Thomas A.
• Larkin, James.
• Lynch, John (North Kerry).
• MacBride, Seán.
• MacEoin, Seán.
• McGilligan, Patrick.
• McMenamin, Daniel.
• Madden, David J.
• Mannion, John.
• Morrissey, Daniel.
• Mulcahy, Richard.
• Murphy, Michael P.
• Murphy, William.
• Norton, William.
• O'Donnell, Patrick.
• O'Gorman, Patrick J.
• O'Higgins, Thomas F. (Jun.).
• O'Leary, Johnny.
• O'Reilly, Patrick.
• O'Sullivan, Denis.
• Palmer, Patrick W.
• Reidy, James.
• Roddy, Joseph.
• Rooney, Eamon.
• Sweetman, Gerard.
• Tully, John.

Tellers:— Tá: Deputies Ó Briain and Hilliard; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Breanndán Mac Fheórais.

Motion declared carried.

An Ceann Comhairle

Is it agreed to take the remaining stages now?

Mr. Sweetman

The annulment motions first and the Committee Stage after that.

Question—"That the Bread (Prices) Order, 1952 (Amendment) Order, 1952 (S.I. No. 268 of 1952) be and is hereby annulled"—put.

The Dáil divided: Tá, 59; Níl, 68.

Tá

• Beirne, John.
• Belton, John.
• Blowick, Joseph.
• Byrne, Alfred.
• Byrne, Thomas N. J.
• Cafferky, Dominick.
• Carew, John.
• Cawley, Patrick.
• Collins, Seán.
• Corish, Brendan.
• Cosgrave, Liam.
• Costello, Declan.
• Costello, John A.
• Crotty, Patrick J.
• Crowe, Patrick.
• Davin, William.
• Desmond, Daniel.
• Dillon, James M.
• Dockrell, Henry P.
• Dockrell, Maurice E.
• Donnellan, Michael.
• Doyle, Peadar S.
• Dunne, Seán.
• Esmonde, Anthony C.
• O'Gorman, Patrick.
• O'Higgins, Thomas F. (Jun.).
• O'Leary, Johnny.
• O'Reilly, Patrick.
• O'Sullivan, Denis.
• Palmer, Patrick W.
• Everett, James.
• Fagan, Charles.
• Finan, John.
• Flanagan, Oliver J.
• Giles, Patrick.
• Hession, James M.
• Hickey, James.
• Hughes, Joseph.
• Keyes, Michael.
• Kyne, Thomas A.
• Larkin, James.
• Lynch, John (North Kerry).
• MacBride, Seán.
• MacEoin, Seán.
• McGilligan, Patrick.
• McMenamin, Daniel.
• Madden, David J.
• Mannion, John.
• Morrissey, Daniel.
• Mulcahy, Richard.
• Murphy, Michael P.
• Murphy, William.
• Norton, William.
• O'Donnell, Patrick.
• Reidy, James.
• Roddy, Joseph.
• Rooney, Eamon.
• Sweetman, Gerard.
• Tully, John.

Níl

• Aiken, Frank.
• Allen, Denis.
• Bartley, Gerald.
• Beegan, Patrick.
• Blaney, Neil T.
• Boland, Gerald.
• Brady, Philip A.
• Brady, Seán.
• Breen, Dan.
• Brennan, Joseph.
• Brennan, Thomas.
• Breslin, Cormac.
• Briscoe, Robert.
• Browne, Noel C.
• Buckley, Seán.
• Burke, Patrick.
• Calleary, Phelim A.
• Carter, Frank.
• Childers, Erskine.
• Cogan, Patrick.
• Colley, Harry.
• Collins, James J.
• Corry, Martin J.
• Cowan, Peadar.
• Crowley, Honor Mary.
• Crowley, Tadhg.
• Cunningham, Liam.
• Davern, Michael J.
• Derrig, Thomas.
• de Valera, Vivion.
• Duignan, Peadar.
• Fanning, John.
• ffrench-O'Carroll, Michael.
• Flanagan, Seán.
• Flynn, John.
• Flynn, Stephen.
• Gallagher, Colm.
• Gilbride, Eugene.
• Harris, Thomas.
• Hillery, Patrick J.
• Hilliard, Michael.
• Humphreys, Francis.
• Kenneally, William.
• Kennedy, Michael J.
• Lemass, Seán.
• Little, Patrick J.
• Lynch, Jack (Cork Borough).
• McCann, John.
• MacCarthy, Seán.
• McEllistrim, Thomas.
• MacEntee, Seán.
• McGrath, Patrick.
• Maguire, Patrick J.
• Maher, Peadar.
• Moylan, Seán.
• Ó Briain, Donnchadh.
• O'Reilly, Matthew.
• Ormonde, John.
• O'Sullivan, Ted.
• Rice, Bridget M.
• Ryan, James.
• Ryan, Mary B.
• Sheldon, William A.W.
• Sheridan, Michael.
• Smith, Patrick.
• Traynor, Oscar.
• Walsh, Laurence J.
• Walsh, Thomas.

Tellers:— Tá: Deputies Tully and Breanndán Mac Fheórais; Níl: Deputies Ó Briain and Hilliard.

Question declared lost.

Motion accordingly declared defeated.

An Ceann Comhairle

That decision governs also motions Nos. 24 and 25.

Question—"That the Flour and Wheatenmeal (Maximum Retail Prices) (No. 2) Order, 1952 (S.I. No. 269 of 1952) be and is hereby annulled"—put and negatived.

Question—"That the Flour and Wheatenmeal Order, 1952 (Amendment) Order, 1952 (S.I. No. 270 of 1952) be and is hereby annulled"—put and negatived.