asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he will state when the annual report on the trend of employment and unemployment for the years 1950-51, 1951-1952 and 1952-1953 will be published.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Trend of Employment and Unemployment.
asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he will state the reasons, if any, for the non-publication of the annual report on the trend of employment and unemployment for the years 1950-51, 1951-1952 and 1952-1953 and if he will state what steps will be taken to ensure that in future these reports will be published annually and without unreasonable delay.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 24 and 25 together. A report on the trend of employment and unemployment for the years 1950 and 1951 was submitted to the previous Government in June, 1953. The Taoiseach's Department questioned the advisability of publishing the report at that stage on the grounds that the more important information in it had already been published elsewhere, that the employment position had changed so much that it would not be suitable to issue such out-of-date figures in an official publication, and that it was undesirable to include in the report passenger movement and travel document statistics which had been discarded as reliable measures of emigration. The Government decided that the report should not be published and that an inter-departmental committee comprising representatives of the Departments of Social Welfare and Industry and Commerce and of the Central Statistics Office should be established to prepare an annual report on employment and unemployment and that it should at once undertake the preparation of a report in respect of the years 1950, 1951 and 1952.
A committee was set up accordingly and prepared a report covering the years 1950, 1951, 1952 and most of 1953. This report was submitted to the Government by the Minister for Social Welfare on 12th April, 1954. On the 7th May last the Department was informed that it had been arranged at a meeting of the Government that the Minister would refer, for examination, to the inter-departmental committee a number of points which were raised in regard to the text of the report. These points were not specified and the Minister did not refer them to the committee before he left office.
I now propose to submit the report to the Government immediately for permission to present it to the Oireachtas and to publish it. I will see what I can do to ensure that these reports are published in future as soon as possible after the end of the calendar year to which they refer.
I should mention that, as the present report covers most of the year 1953, it is not proposed to publish a separate report for that year.
May I take it from that reply that, when his predecessor informed me on 21st November, 1953 in this House that the report would be published before the end of the year, he was giving a reply which he must have known to be untrue?
I am afraid I cannot answer that question.
It does not arise out of the question.