In the course of his speech last evening the Taoiseach told the House and the country that the Government's policy is not only a wise policy but is, in his view, the only policy which the Government could adopt in present circumstances. If we take that premise of the Taoiseach that the Government's policy is not only the wisest policy but is the only policy capable of operation in present circumstances, I think it is not unfair to apply to that policy a test of the results which it is showing so far as the people of this country are concerned. What are the results of the Government's policy to-day? We can refer to those in a few minutes. It must be clear to everybody—to the distressed housewife, to the unemployed man or woman, to the emigrant who is driven overseas — that this Government's policy is having a catastrophic effect on the domestic life of tens of thousands of our people.
The speeches which have been made in this debate from the Government side of the House, the speeches which have preceded this debate, the speeches which have been made by the Government in the past few months all help to create still more gloom and despair and bring in their wake the same deterioration in our economic position as is to be witnessed on all sides to-day. I charge the Government with being responsible for the deteriorating economic situation as a result of the gloomy and miserable speeches which they have been making for the past 18 months or so. Whether or not the purpose of these speeches was to stimulate the economic deterioration, I cannot say, but, accompanying all the gloomy and despairing speeches, there has been a policy of restriction of credit—though the Taoiseach is the one man in the country who is not aware of it—and there has been a policy of dear money. In addition, a general feeling of instability has been created by the Government's attack on the veryeconomic fabric of the State and on the financial foundation of the State.
Shortly after the last general election the Government made a declaration of its policy in regard to prices. We were told then that it was the policy of the Government to maintain the food subsidies, to control the prices of essential foodstuffs and to operate an efficient system of price regulation for all necessary and scarce commodities. That was the covenant of the Government to the people. That was the assurance they gave to the country. That was the promise they made in return for political support from Deputies outside their own Party. Yet, in the first Budget for which they were responsible, not only did they tear that promise to shreds but, by slashing the food subsidies, the Government crippled the purchasing power of the people. As a result, the Government have created a situation in which the people are so driven to find the wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life that they have virtually no money left to buy other articles, the purchase of which helps to sustain trade and industry in many fields.
Look at the situation into which we have been driven as a result of the Government's high prices policy. When they assumed office about 20 months ago tea was 2/8 a lb.: when they had finished manipulating tea prices, it had increased to 5/2 per lb. They found that the cost of the 2-lb. loaf was 6½d. and they increased it to 9¼d. They found butter at 2/10 per lb. and they increased it to 4/2 per lb. They found flour at 2/8 a stone and they increased the price to 4/6. Sugar cost 4½d. per lb. and they increased it to 6½d. The effect of these colossal increases in prices—particularly in the homes of persons who are unable to buy the bare necessaries of life at the best of times—has been so crushing as to cause a serious deterioration in their standard of living.
There is one economic wizard in all this business—Deputy Cogan. Although the prices of tea, bread, sugar, butter and flour have increased substantially in the past 12 months, he has discovered that the agricultural worker—a member of our depressed classes, in the economic sense—is much better off to-day than he was when he could buy tea at 2/8 a lb. instead of the present price of 5/2, and butter at 2/10 a lb. instead of the present price of 4/2. According to Deputy Cogan, the solution for the agricultural worker's economic ills is to drive up the prices of the main articles of foodstuffs on which he lives. If that happens, then it will not be long—according to Deputy Cogan's concepts—until we shall arrive at a kind of economic El Dorado.
Bad and all as were the effects of these increases, a worse feature is the fact that workers have not secured increases in their wages, or any other form of compensation, adequate to meet that substantial rise in prices. To judge by the movement of prices every day in the week, and by the recent notorious increase in the price of butter, we are by no means at the end of the high price policy pursued by this Government. Lowly-paid civil servants are seriously affected by the rise in prices. Although virtually every other class of worker in the community has received increases in wages to compensate in some measure for the rise in prices, the Government have steadfastly refused to grant any increase whatever to lowly-paid civil servants who are feeling very seriously indeed the critical impact on their domestic economy of the substantial rise in prices.
I addressed a question to the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to-day asking him to give me a statement of the wages of the manipulative grades in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs whose wages vary from under £2 a week to a figure not exceeding £10 a week. I got this illuminating information from the Minister. It shows that, of 6,220 full-time officers in these particular grades in the Post Office, no less than 4,857 have less than £6 a week to-day. Six pound a week in 1953! To get a pre-war assessment of that, let us remember that our pre-war pound is now down from 20/- to 8/- in terms of 1939 purchasing power. The Minister furnished information showing that there were 4,298 part-time officers, andthat of that number 3,495 have less than £3 a week on which they have to sustain themselves to-day.
We see in the newspapers day after day awards by the Labour Court granting increases in wages to workers with higher remunerations than those which I have quoted. Nobody begrudges these increases to such workers because they realise that an increase in the cost of living has made these increases imperative. Nobody begrudges the increases in wages which have been granted to C.I.E. workers, to Aer Lingus workers, Bord na Móna and E.S.B. workers, or to any other class of workers, but what can the Government say in justification of its attitude and its action in refusing to give any increase in pay whatever to thousands of lowly paid workers whose remuneration does not exceed, as to 3,500 of them, £3 a week and whose remuneration in respect of 4,800 is below £6 a week to-day? The Government has an easy, indeed an elastic conscience, if it imagines that it can find any justification on moral grounds for its hard hearted attitude in declining to grant an increase in wages to these underpaid State employees to whom an increase in wages is long overdue.
The Minister for Finance and the Government were, freely, partners to the establishment of the arbitration court. They agreed that the claim for an increase in wages presented by the lower paid civil servants should be heard by the court. They sent their heaviest artillery into the court to argue against the claim for an increase in pay. The Government appointed the chairman of the court, and, notwithstanding the heavy artillery which was used by the Government to try and persuade the chairman to give no increase or to make the increase a very modest one, the chairman made an award granting the lower paid civil servants an increase which is comparable only with the increases which have been granted in private employment and in semi-State undertakings. Yet, the Government refuses to honour the moral obligation which rests upon it to grant an increase in wages to those for whose remuneration the Government is morally responsible.
After the last election, or, rather, during the last election, we had a declaration from the present Tánaiste that the Fianna Fáil Party accepted the principle of arbitration as a method of adjusting disputes between Civil Service organisations on the one hand and the Government of the day on the other hand. The only doubt the Tánaiste then expressed was whether the machinery would work quickly enough for his satisfaction, and he went on to add that, in so far as Civil Service organisations wanted arbitration machinery, they could have it and could use it. His only doubt was that it would not give results quickly enough, but if they were prepared to have it they could have it and the Fianna Fáil Government would accept the awards made by the arbitration court.
That was the promise then made by the Tánaiste: that, in brief, Fianna Fáil would accept the principle of arbitration, and that Fianna Fáil would accept the award of the arbitration board. Although the Minister for Finance and the Government have had the report of the arbitration board now for four months, there is no indication from them that they will honour its report, or that they will fulfil the promise which the Tánaiste made on behalf of the Government to civil servants and the people generally.
I want to ask the Minister for Finance, when replying to this debate, to state on what grounds does he purport to justify his action in withholding these small increases from the grossly underpaid staffs of the Post Office, from the thousands of people who are earning less than £6 a week and from the thousands who are earning even less than £3 a week? We are entitled to know what set of circumstances in this country justify the Minister in withholding such modest awards from persons who serve the public faithfully in a round-the-clock service, and yet who are not able to meet their liabilities on the miserably low rate of pay which they receive from the State as their employer.
The Government in this matter is responsible to those whom it employs.It cannot ride away from that responsibility, having taken part in the arbitration proceedings and having agreed to refer the claim for an increase in pay to the arbitration board. There is one course, and one course only, that an honourable Government can adopt and that is to declare that it will accept the award of the arbitration board by which it is morally bound. If there never was an arbitration board, and if there never had been a formal hearing by the board to decide the claim, the Government is still, surely, bound to adjust the wages of those it employs to meet the impact of increased prices, especially here, when the Government is deliberately responsible for raising prices.
Recently, the Minister for Industry and Commerce declared that the Government accepted the position that when prices rise there should be an adjustment of pay to meet the impact of higher prices, and he congratulated the commercial community on the ease and smoothness with which adjustments in pay had been made, realising, as he did, that such an adjustment was inevitable once the cost of living had been increased so steeply and so positively by Government action.
Is it unfair to ask the Tánaiste to take steps to ensure that the promise he made to the people and to the civil servants will be implemented by his Government with the ease and smoothness which was a source of admiration to him when the adjustment took place in respect of the employees in private industry?
The Minister for Finance knows that there is no moral justification for the present attitude of the Government in withholding an increase from underpaid State servants, and in all decency the Minister ought even now indicate that the Government will accept the award and pay the award, modest as it is, in full.
I said earlier that the Taoiseach said the Government's policy was not only a wise policy but the best policy in present circumstances. Let us put that wise and best policy against the background of unemployment. On the last Saturday of February, 1951, there were 63,000 unemployed persons. InFebruary, 1952, that figure had increased by 10,000, bringing it to 73,000. By February, 1953, it had increased to 89,000. In other words, the figure has increased by 26,000 since February, 1951, a jump of 10,000 in the first year of Fianna Fáil's period of office and a jump of 16,000 in the last 12 months. Yet, we are told by the Taoiseach that the Government's policy is not only a wise policy but the best policy in all the circumstances. Is it not a good job that we have not an unwise policy seeing that this Fianna Fáil wisdom has given us an increase of 26,000 in the number of unemployed over the past two years?
These are ghastly figures. No member of this House, no matter what his political view may be, would attempt to play down the human tragedy and suffering that is wrapped up in this figure of 89,000 unemployed men and women. Bad as the figures are, the worst aspect of them is that they are increasing from week to week and there is no indication that we have yet reached the high watermark of unemployment.
I have here a trade union publication for March, 1953. It takes four classes of building trade workers: carpenters, bricklayers, plasterers, painters. It gives the figure of unemployed in each of these crafts in Dublin at 1st July, 1951, 6th July, 1952 and 4th January, 1953. Here are the totals: Among these four groups of craftsmen there were 221 unemployed workers in July, 1951. By July, 1952, the number had increased to 351. Between July, 1952 and January 1953, the number had increased to 1,112.
Commenting on what it describes as the serious position in the building trade, this trade union publication says:—
"It is safe to state that if to-day there are five craftsmen idle for each one who was idle in 1951, there are at least ten labourers out of work at present for each one without a job two years ago and, because of the general fall in employment, especially in factories and along the docks, they have less chance of picking up a job outside the building trade to-day."
In other words, in these four occupations,carpenters, bricklayers, plasterers and painters, there are five times more workers unemployed in the City of Dublin to-day than there were on 1st July, 1951. That only provides supporting evidence for a document which has been issued as from a current date by the Central Statistics Office. This document shows in its opening page an analysis of the live register of unemployed at mid-February, 1953, and it declares that between 17th January and 14th February, 1953, the live register increased by 3,485 to 88,095; that there was an increase of 3,296 in the male and 189 in the female register. It goes on to add:—
"Compared with February, 1952, the live register showed an increase of 13,250."
On page two there is a breakdown of the industrial classification of the additional 13,000 unemployed. It shows that there were 4,745 more unemployed in agriculture; 4,444 in building and constructional work; 1,452 in the distributive trades; 1,408 in transport and communications; 1,116 in food production; 960 in personal services and almost 1,000 in metal manufacturing, engineering and the construction of vehicles.
There is a notion of unemployment which is growing rapidly, notwithstanding the fact that, according to the Taoiseach, the Government has a wise policy and the best policy in the circumstances. All this comes from the Taoiseach who some years ago told us that he had the easiest solution in the world for the problem of unemployment. He declared in this House as follows:—
"I have time after time said that in my belief the solution of unemployment is easier to find in this country at this moment than in any other country facing that problem. If we make up our minds to apply the remedy, we have the remedy. It is a question of organisation and of a proper lead from the Government."
We have had two speeches from the Taoiseach, one on his own Estimate about a month ago, another on the Vote on Account last night, and the surprising thing is that, so far, we have had no indication from theTaoiseach as to how he proposes to solve the unemployment problem, the solution of which appeared so easy to him in his salad days. We have had no declaration from the Taoiseach as to the steps which the Government propose to take to deal with the problem represented by 89,000 unemployed men and women; no plans, no proposals, although we were told on previous occasions by the Taoiseach that the remedy was a proper lead from the Government. When will we get that lead? Who will give it? When will it start? What does it promise? When will the 89,000 be provided with some relief from the morass of poverty and privation in which they are being steeped to-day as a result of the implementation of the wisest and best policy this Government can find?
Let us pass from unemployment to emigration, again to test the wisdom of the Government's policy. The Taoiseach was asked recently to give us figures as to the number of persons who are emigrating. The Taoiseach has discovered that there are no reliable figures available. That does not conceal the fact that tens of thousands of our people are emigrating, some of them forever, some of them settling down overseas, never to return to this country. I think it was Deputy Briscoe who said that a goodly number of them were coming back. The Parliamentary Secretary, Mr. Kennedy, could have told him that that is grossly untrue. I addressed a question to the Minister for Social Welfare recently in order to ascertain how many persons claiming unemployment insurance benefit at a current date were showing their last place of employment as Great Britain. That is the test of whether they are coming back or not because, when they come back now, there are certain credits, 26 stamps, transferred by the British Government to our administration, and they draw benefit on those stamps. When they go to the employment exchange, they are asked where they last worked and they say: "In Great Britain."
If you take those figures for this year and compare them with any other year you get a fair indication of the numbercoming back and the number in one year as compared with another. The figures furnished by the Parliamentary Secretary on that occasion show that there are fewer and fewer people stating that their last place of employment was Britain, which means that there are fewer and fewer people coming back from Britain to claim unemployment benefit here.
The reply to a further question which I addressed to him shows that of the number coming back half of them are regular western and north-western migrant workers who follow a pattern of life in which they go across the Channel for a few months and then come back and claim benefit if there is no work available for them.
In any event, we do not need figures in order to know the serious migration problem which confronts the nation. It is a problem which represents a haemorrhage of the best blood of the nation. We are exporting young men and women on a scale that would be alarming for any country and is particularly alarming for a country with an ageing population such as we have. We do not need figures to know that emigration is serious. Every port in this country and the land frontier show the number of people who are leaving the country every week in order to get employment in Britain because, with 89,000 persons unemployed here, there is no employment available for them. We could not but have emigration with so much employment available close to our shores and such a bleak outlook in the economic field revealed before the eyes of those of our people who are searching for work.
Recently a census was published by the British Government which contained some of the most striking and revealing figures so far as this country is concerned. It shows that there are living in Britain to-day, in British cities named in the report, more Irish-born persons than at any time since Britain first started to take a census. The Irish-born population in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Coventry and Bristol is greater to-day than it has ever been in the memory of the oldest man or woman living. Could it beotherwise when we remember that over the past 21 years we have exported no less than 500,000 of our people overseas? Then we are told that we have a policy which is not only a wise one but the best policy available to our people.
The Taoiseach some months ago delivered a speech in the West of Ireland in which he deplored the mass emigration to Britain and sympathised with the conditions in which they lived there and said our task must be to keep them at home by providing them with work at home. Are we not entitled to ask what has been done in that field and what is being done to provide our people with employment? What is being done to keep our people from living under the intolerable conditions which excited so much lip-sympathy from the Taoiseach, but, apparently, without any effective remedy so far as the unemployed are concerned, because they continue to grow from week to week?
If we test it against the background of three vital factors, unemployment, emigration and prices higher than at any time in living memory, we can see the results of the Taoiseach's wise and best policy. If these three factors are taken as an indication of the prosperity and the stability of the nation, we find a rapidly deteriorating situation, a situation which would call for emergency measures even if the problem were not as serious as it is to-day. But we get no proposals from the Government. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance gaze in the crystal to see what the future of the country will be like. Meantime the unemployed queue at the employment exchanges and their only relief from that is the emigrant ship to find the employment overseas which the Taoiseach was to provide them with here when he discovered that we had an easier solution than any other country.
If I am any judge of the speech of the Minister for Finance on this Vote on Account, I venture to prophesy that we will see pursued during the next 12 months a policy of restriction, a policy of curtailment and a policy which will cut back development to the very bone. What we need to-day is not a policy offinancial restriction, a policy of contraction of development, a policy of dear money, but an expansion in every single field of national endeavour. It is only by pursuing a bold and courageous policy of expansion that we can hope to take up the serious lag in employment and, at the same time, stop the emigration of our people to other lands.
There is scope for development in almost every field of national activity. In the industrial field it is a matter for gratification that over the last 30 years a great deal has been done to give us a healthy secondary arm, to give our people opportunities for employment in the production of goods formerly imported. Nobody concerned with the well-being of the country can fail to applaud the remarkable strides made in that particular field. But, although much has been done, much more still remains to be done if we are to provide ourselves here with a really healthy industrial arm. We still import far too much goods, many of which ought to be manufactured here.
I agree that we suffer from certain limitations in the matter of developing a heavy metal industry. But, in the light metal and other alloy industries, I believe there is still scope for substantial development and, if it does not come through the medium of private enterprise, I see no reason why it should not come through the activities of a State organisation which would do in the field of the light metal industry what the E.S.B. has been able to do in the electrical field and Bord na Móna has been able to do in the turf field. But, unless we are satisfied with the present stage of our industrial development, steps must be taken to provide for the manufacture here of as many as possible of the commodities which we import to-day.
If we were to attempt the solution of that problem in a comprehensive and courageous way, I believe we would find in that new activity a wealth of employment for many of those who are forced to-day to leave this country to manufacture abroad the things we import when our own policy ought to be to keep these people at home producingthe commodities we are at present compelled to import. In my view the opportunities for employment in the industrial field will best be attained by manufacturing here as much as possible of the commodities we are now importing. It is along that road the greatest opportunity for expansion of our industrial activities lies. I fear the opportunities for industrial exports are not good, having regard to the field in which we must compete, having regard to the highly capitalised countries we must meet in the foreign market and having regard to the long tradition of technical know-how with which these countries are served in the industrial sphere.
A large number of our industries here are in the nature of assembly industries. They depend on imported raw materials and in many cases they depend on the importation of the fabricated article which is ultimately assembled and sold here. I think that there is a market for exports of that kind in no other country having regard to the cost of assembly and to the ultimate price of the finished product. I think, therefore, that our industrial expansion will come more by producing goods for our own requirements rather than from any effort, no matter how great or heroic it may be, to find a market overseas in saturated industrial fields.
When I hear people say that the remedy for this country's economic difficulties is more work and harder work and contrast that statement with the hard fact that there are almost 90,000 people craving for an opportunity to work and yet denied it in their own land it always seems to me that there is a somewhat hollow ring about the exhortation to produce more and work harder when so many thousands are deprived of that opportunity at home.
Our agricultural potentialities—and to this extent I share very substantially in the views expressed by Deputy McQuillan—provide the best opportunity available to us for an expansion of our national wealth. Our whole agricultural policy is a vicious contradiction. No matter what side of theHouse we may sit on, no matter what political parties we embrace, no matter what political causes we espouse, let us be clear that our agricultural policy is to-day a very unsatisfactory one and is giving us appallingly unsatisfactory results.
We have here a fertile soil. We have a climate and a soil which are the envy of many other countries in Europe. Despite a fertile land, a suitable climate and excellent soil we nevertheless find that this is the most sparsely cultivated land in Western Europe to-day. Notwithstanding the fertility of the soil and the obvious advantages of our climate we have an appallingly low rate of agricultural production. We have a low standard of living associated with that agricultural production. We have reached the position in which our agricultural production has been stagnant, not for two years or five years but for the past 50 years. It may be that there is more of one crop grown to-day than there was 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago but, if there is, there is less of another crop grown.
We are producing to-day in relation to the productivity of other countries less than any other country in Western Europe. Out of 12,000,000 acres of arable land we do not cultivate even 3,000,000 acres. That is an appallingly low standard of productivity for a country so advantageously placed as we are in the matter of agricultural production. Not only has our agricultural production been stagnant for the past 50 years but agriculture is starved for want of capital. An examination of European textbooks will show that there is less money per acre in the land here than there is in any other country in Europe.
We have beside us a very valuable market which would take from us an enormously greater quantity of our agricultural and dairy produce. We have still available to us markets on the Continent of Europe but we cannot secure a substantial foothold in any of these markets although these countries are clamouring for agricultural produce and for dairy produce and although the indications are that there will be a sustained demand for agricultural anddairy produce for the next quarter of a century. We do not seem to be doing anything here which indicates a sensible recognition of the markets available to us and the wealth that can be created at home by producing for export to these markets.
We have now reached a situation which caps in a rather comic way our indifference to our agricultural productivity. Thanks to her majesty, the 300-gallon cow, we are now not only unable to provide ourselves with butter all the year round but we will find ourselves in future pressed out of the export market in relation to butter production. Can anybody pretend to be satisfied with that situation? Can anybody pretend to believe we have a healthy agricultural economy when we advert to the facts surrounding that economy?
Can anybody presume to say that there is not room to-day for a substantial reorganisation and a complete reorientation of the agricultural policy we have pursued over the last thirty years, a policy that has given us such appalling results? We have a low standard of living. We have a low standard of production. We have mass emigration from the rural areas and there is no indication whatever that we appreciate the valuable markets virtually on our doorstep if we would only gear up our agricultural production in an effort to collar those markets. To-day we have open access to these markets if only we are prepared to alter our agricultural methods and our agricultural economy.
Consider what agriculture means to us. Out of every person employed in Great Britain, five per cent. are employed on agriculture. In the United States the figure is 12½ per cent. Here we employ in agriculture 45 per cent. out of the total number of persons employed, showing clearly the possibilities for employment that agriculture holds. Unfortunately, while agricultural employment in Britain and the United States is of a highly rationalised and mechanised character, our agriculture is, to a great extent, merely subsistence agriculture, providing a low standard of living for thoseengaged in it and not giving the nation the agricultural wealth it should be possible to create.
We carry on that policy year after year. If Wilkins Micawber had drafted our agricultural policy, he could not have framed a more leisurely one or an easier one. We are satisfied to import commodities that we could easily grow at home. We continue to follow a policy which makes that necessary. No other country in Europe in our circumstances would tolerate a situation in which fertile land was going a-begging while at the same time trying to borrow money and borrow hard currency in order to buy in a foreign market the commodities we could and should produce at home.
If we are going to create here the wealth which agriculture is capable of giving and which probably agriculture is capable of giving more than any other facet of our national activities, then there must be an entirely new approach to the whole question of our agricultural production. I agree with Deputy McQuillan that we must have some stable agricultural policy, an agricultural policy with which all parties will in the main agree, so that the country will know to what agricultural policy it will be committed for the next five, ten or 20 years. The farmer is entitled to know what is the line of our agricultural policy, to what level our agricultural policy is to be geared and on what crops he may rely for a remunerative market with all the assistance that whatever Government is in power will give him from time to time.
In the past this House has been torn in dissension between the question as to whether a live-stock policy or a tillage policy was the best for the country. A great deal of the acrimony has gone out of the old-time discussion on that question. There is now a sensible recognition of the fact that tillage is complementary to live stock and live stock is complementary to tillage. In the face of what we have gone through during the last war there is now recognition of the fact that grass, instead of being an enemy of the Irish people, can be a very valuable crop for them, if we will only produce first-class grassfor our live stock. What we ought to agree upon as a nation, irrespective of the political complexion of the Government that is in power, is that it is the aim of our people to produce a balanced agricultural economy, engaging in tillage, producing live stock, intensifying grass production, because grass is a valuable crop and could be the basis of some agricultural industries which could be started on a policy of rich grass.
Not only must we decide upon the agricultural policy to be pursued but we must also insist on remedying the appalling consequences which flow from under capitalised land. That can be done by making loans available to credit-worthy farmers at the lowest possible rate of interest, giving them loans to stock their land, to fertilise it and to modernise their methods of production and cultivation. What we have to do, probably more than anything else—and it is a psychological approach to the problem—is to teach the farmer that the best place for whatever money he has is not in a bank, not even in an industry but in his own land and in the stomachs of his own stock. If he can do that I think we will show some signs of bringing to agriculture a prosperity which it has not had up to now. In that way we will embark on a policy which will lead to an ever-increasing output of agricultural and dairy produce and an ever-rising standard of living for those engaged in agriculture.
It is by beaming our propaganda on new methods, new forms of assistance, a recognition of the potentialities that are in agriculture and of the markets that are available, that we can increase our national wealth and therefore spread the burden of taxation more evenly and more equitably over the entire community. If we bring prosperity to agriculture, happily we need not contain it there. If you bring prosperity into the rural areas where the farmer lives and works, where his employees live and work, then not only do you confer a benefit on those engaged in agriculture but immediately you set up a demand by those living in the rural areas for the goods andservices which are provided by industries and through other agencies in the cities and towns. If you have got stagnation and recession in agriculture then that inevitably leads to inadequate industrial development. There will be a poor demand for goods and an inadequate return to the farmer, to the industrialist, and to the agricultural and industrial workers for their labour in their respective occupations.
In the course of this debate both the Minister for Finance and the Taoiseach made reference to our balance of payments and our sterling position. When we discuss our sterling assets we must remember that we practice a financial policy which has no parallel in any other country in the world to-day with the exception perhaps of the United States. The mammoth size of that country prevents a reasonable comparison between our policy and the policy pursued by the United States Government.
We have overseas and in London very substantial sterling assets which have been built up in two ways, firstly, by short fall in imports as compared with our exports, which happened during two world wars; and secondly, by the conservative policy of our banks in pursuing to almost insane limits this passion for what they call liquidity. The banks here are beset with the ever-present fear created only by themselves and in their own minds that some morning the depositors will all arrive and ask for their money back and the banks' view is that they must have the money on tap so that they can be paid out immediately.
That is a short-sighted policy but the degree to which the banks followed the notion that liquidity is essential has again no parallel in any other country in Europe. It is completely unnecessary in the light of the facts. Because of the conservative policy pursued by the banks they continue to invest substantial sums in Britain in the belief that they can get liquidity there and only there. As a result of that policy plus our accumulated assets we have reached the situation in which hundreds of millions of pounds of ourmoney are invested now in what is described as sterling assets in Britain.
We are a generation behind the rest of Europe—notwithstanding the fact that they have gone through two devastating wars—in the matter of industrial and agricultural development and in the matter of improving the entire national economy by large-scale schemes of public works. We cannot afford as a nation to continue the policy of immobilising substantial assets in Britain while our own country is starved of the necessary capital to carry out industrial and agricultural development and a public works programme. Sheer good national house-keeping—putting it no higher than that—and sound economics demand that there should be, as speedily and as prudently as possible, a repatriation of our sterling assets for the purpose of national development.
I am prepared to agree—and I do not think it is a matter for argument —that it is far more desirable that our sterling assets should be repatriated in the form of capital goods. Nobody challenges that. If at times of crisis such as the Korean war you have to import consumer goods which you would need after the war took place, I see nothing wrong with importing them in order to sustain our people during a war. But, generally speaking, everyone would prefer to see sterling assets repatriated in the form of capital goods or goods which will be used for capital development here.
It seems to be nothing short of folly that we should lend money to another country at 1½ per cent. interest while, at home, the farmer borrows money for agricultural purposes at 6 per cent. and the industrialist finds that he cannot get it even when he offers to pay 6 per cent. There is, of course, a mentality in this country which has its headquarters in Foster Place which believes it is the destiny of the Irish people to continue to invest their money and their savings in London. The exponents of that mentality continue to give that advice to our people, notwithstanding the fact that they know that Irish money invested in London is at the mercy of every economic wind and blizzard that blows in Britain and is exposed to every risk to which Britainwith her far-flung Empire may be exposed. Notwithstanding the fact that the £ has depreciated from 20/- to 8/-in terms of 1939 purchasing power, nothing seems to chill the hearts of these people to prevent them from tendering that advice to our people. The actual fact to-day is that we can repatriate in crowns, the pounds which we originally invested in Britain. In that way, we get back only a fraction of the capital sum invested in the first instance. In face of that fact, and of the under-development of this country, we still find the Central Bank telling the Government and the people to keep up the merry policy of giving to Britain at 1½ per cent. interest the money that we need for development at home while we cheerfully pay 6 per cent. interest for essential loans ourselves.
What we have got to do is to decide on a policy, accepted by all Parties, deliberately to repatriate our sterling assets for the purpose of capital development at home—in the field of agriculture, in the field of industry, or through the medium of large-scale public works.
We have got to beam our propaganda on our people to convince them that that is the best policy for this country to pursue. After all, in an uneasy world with an uneasy peace running, the safest place for Irish money is, not in the Bank of England to be used for the development of Britain's Colonial Empire but in Irish land and in Irish industry. Nobody concerned with the well-being of the country can seriously challenge an assertion of that kind.
As I have stated, the Central Bank, in its last report, advised the continuance of a policy of investment in sterling in Britain. Let us look at what has accompanied that policy of investment in sterling in Britain for the use of the British Government and the British people. It has given us 90,000 unemployed people, mass emigration, money-starved land, a low standard of living generally, endemic poverty in certain rural areas, inadequate industrial development and a relatively undeveloped country. I know of no more suicidal policy thanone which requires us, as a matter of financial prudence, to invest our hard-earned moneys overseas when there is so much valuable work to be done at home, which could spell, if we undertook it, a new standard of living for our people. If we want to end unemployment, to develop industries, to expand agriculture, to provide houses and hospitals for our people, to develop our turf resources, to afforest the country, to undertake valuable schemes of national reconstruction, we can do all that, not by taxing our people to raise money to do it in one, two or three years, but by repatriating our sterling assets and using the nation's credit and whatever savings may be available from the people, to embark on a bold and vigorous policy of national development, particularly in the agricultural field, as offering the best prospect at present before us of increasing the national wealth, stopping the haemorrhage of emigration and providing employment for the tens of thousands of our people who are idle to-day.
You have a choice to-day. You can do these things or you need not do them, but assuredly as we decline to do them, 20 years hence in this House we shall be still talking about unemployment, emigration and a low standard of living as we are talking about these social evils and abscesses to-day. If we make up our mind to learn from the mistakes of the past, to recognise that the policy we have been pursuing is not giving satisfactory results and determine to bring that policy to an end in favour of a policy of large-scale development, I believe that, slow though the process might be, the adoption of such a policy would nevertheless offer substantial prospects of a complete transformation in the whole Irish economy with a better standard of living for tens of thousands of people who are forced to exist on an appallingly low standard of living to-day.
