Ever since the grass meal project was instituted as a result of an enactment of the Oireachtas, I have taken a certain active interest in it. I went to the trouble of collecting all the relevant data at my disposal in my study of the development of blanket bog and I personally was satisfied at all times that the ultimate limited nature of the proposals at Glenamoy were such as would not warrant Government expenditure thereon. The Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Finance have both very clearly enunciated the principles governing the decision of this Government to abandon the project as a grass meal producing project and to further the principles which forced them to the economic conclusion that reclamation and afforestation of an experimental character would have a more lasting effect.
If it is any satisfaction to the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Finance to know that the people of the areas concerned have complete confidence in their decision, then I can assure them of that confidence here to-day because in the last week, and indeed for some time before that, I have spoken with the people in the areas most intimately associated with what was the grass meal project and they are satisfied, having had fully explained to them the proposed objectives of both the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Lands, that this scheme will be the one which will have the best results for them.
Permit me to say on this particular aspect of this Vote, the grass meal project, that I, representing those people, am perfectly satisfied that the scheme contemplated and being put into operation at this very moment by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Lands is the scheme which will have the best and most lasting benefits for the people I represent.
Reference has been made here and various views have been expressed as to the desirability of a Ministry or Department approximating to a Ministry to regulate the affairs of the Gaeltacht. Within the last year, in conjunction with other Deputies, I have been interviewed by people who are interested in the setting-up of a board and who gave some reasons in a rather comprehensive survey as to why a board was preferable to a Ministry. I could not accept any of the reasons given as to why a board such as was contemplated by them was the ideal solution. Among other things, it was suggested to us by Muintir na Gaeltachta that they were seeking only to manage the affairs of what they had comprehensively surveyed as ten and a half parishes. I made the specific inquiry as to what was to happen in that half of the parish where Irish obviously was not spoken. I was told that the people living in the same economic conditions in the other half of the parish, where Irish was not spoken, were to be penalised to the extent that advantages would be given only to those in the half in which Irish was spoken. On that alone I would reject the idea of a board.
I do not know what the views of the Government are in regard to this particular matter. I do not know how far they have engaged in or directed their minds to this question of western affairs and congested areas generally and the Gaeltacht areas particularly, but my own view is that a different situation obtains along the seaboard from West Donegal to West Cork and that situation, being different, demands different treatment from the remainder of the country.
In advocating a Ministry or Department relating to that particular area it would, of course, be necessary to muscle in on all the other Departments that are at the moment actively engaged in their own particular respects in these areas, and it would be absolutely essential that such a Department or Ministry would take to itself the complete organising of all affairs that concern the people from the State point of view. I am not prepared to go as far as other Deputies who have suggested that there should be decentralisation to the extent that the Department or the head of that Department should be in the City of Galway. Neither do I subscribe to the view that, so long as the people in Dublin continue to talk about the Gaeltacht, the Gaeltacht will not survive. The Gaeltacht, as I understand it, is a term meaning the area where Irish is the spoken language of the people.
In my view — and I speak with some experience — so long as those areas are subject to migration and emigration, that is when people as soon as possible after reaching school-leaving age have to emigrate seasonally, or emigrate and return only on holidays, you might as well be throwing money down the drain as spending it in an effort to keep Irish as the spoken language of the people in those areas. It is only when the people are in a position to survive, grow up, and finish their schooling, engage in local activities of a commercial nature, and of a nature that will provide a living for them, and afterwards marry and settle down in those areas and bring up families as their fathers did before them, that we will get the continuity of language that is so necessary in order to preserve it.
I do not for a moment think that can be achieved either this year or next year or even in five years but I think it is high time — if not long past it — that a definite, realistic approach was made to this subject and that, instead of talking about it once or twice a year in this House, a large-scale attack was made on it and that the best possible advice, both technical advice and local advice from the area concerned, should be be sought and acted upon if regarded as good.
In listening to Deputy Lynch, the former Parliamentary Secretary charged with the responsibility for the areas such as we speak about now. I heard him refer to various centres but there was no single word about that vast area of North Mayo reaching right around the coast from the town of Westport to Ballina which includes both Clew Bay and Blacksod Bay. In my experience — and I visited every single village wherever there was or still is a currach, a boat, a pier, a slip or a harbour — very little, if anything, has been done in those areas over a long number of years. I am afraid that the principal objective which this House must have in front of it, in its efforts to save these areas and the Gaeltacht generally, is to devote itself to the uplifting of the civic spirit of the people there and to direct its energies towards protecting those people from the results of the despondency in which they now find themselves.
I find it, and I have always found it, a rather regrettable state of affairs that people in this country almost automatically identify the visit of an inspector from the Board of Works or from the Land Commission or any other Government Department to examine any project then under consideration, with the advent of an election. The people have got it into their heads that any examination by such an inspector always seems to coincide with the advent of an election. It is with that in mind that I advocate, as strongly as I possibly can, the uplifting of our people and the protecting of them from that particular type of administration.
Roads have been mentioned and roads are important. When it comes to the allocation by this Department of sums of money for roads I abhor the practice of referring to individuals, however well intentioned they may be, in any kind of organisations, be they economic organisations or organisations set up to preserve the language, because, human nature being what it is, these persons are bound to give information that is best calculated to bring a State allocation into the areas most intimately associated with themselves. I do not know how we are to counteract that except by leaving it entirely to the inspectors' responsibility or by listening to the views of Deputies, irrespective of their politics, from any constituency, but the practice of allowing a private individual to be able to say whether an area is a Gaeltacht or not, and whether as such it would merit an allocation or grant is a practice to be regretted and one that should be discontinued forthwith.
If there is any ruling to be had as to whether an area is Gaeltacht or as to whether Irish is spoken in that area to any extent or not, such a ruling should come from the Department of Education and if the Department of Education is not sufficiently conversant with the matter at issue, reference should be made to the local parish priest or to the principal teacher of the school, where the road for which it is contemplated to give a grant is situated. Roads are absolutely necessary, both from their tourist value and for the benefits which they are bound to confer on the people who live in the districts where these roads are situated.
I have said before, on another Estimate in this House in connection with tourism, that not alone will these roads that are improved by State grant provide the incentive for tourists to visit the beautiful places in this country — much more beautiful than places advertised from other countries — but they will make the lot of the people who are living in remote areas an infinitely better lot and an infinitely happier one and, in my opinion, will make some contribution towards keeping the people at home because one's desire to stay in any particular place depends in the last analysis, on one's happiness in that place.
Forestry is something that has not at all developed on the lines on which it should develop. In my short experience here and from the experience I had before coming here, I find that the Forestry Division of the Department of Lands is too hide-bound by stereotyped schemes. For instance, a proposal was sent from the Island of Achill some time ago to have a belt of forestry carried on along the side of Slievemore mountain immediately at the back of the tillage land, thereby keeping a very necessary barrier between that tillage land and the sheep and cattle that graze the mountain higher up. The reply was that such things were not envisaged by the Forestry Department.
When I hear the phrase "such matters and such projects are not envisaged by any particular Department" it comes into my mind that this is the Department and this is the Vote that should remedy these things. For instance, there may be an Irish-speaking family living on the side of a mountain, across a stream, away from the national school which the children of the area attend with great difficulty to themselves and their parents, not to speak of the fear which must be ever present in the minds of parents whose children have to undertake such hazardous journeys, particularly in the winter time, to the local school. An application might be made in those circumstances to the Board of Works for the provision of a little footbridge and the reply comes back, that as it would benefit only one family, it is not contemplated to proceed with the project and that it is regretted that nothing can be done.
These are circumstances and these are the types of instances in which I would like this Department to interest itself — the provision of little footbridges of that kind and the provision of amenities for people who cannot get these benefits because they are precluded from getting them as a result of this particular phrase used by various Departments of State that such type of work is not envisaged by the Department, without reference to the reason why.
A belt for sandbanks along the coast is something to which the Land Commission is giving attention in a limited way. This again is the Department which could give its attention to that and thereby not merely preserve the land, which is searce enough in such areas, but prevent a situation from occurring that a large amount of money would be spent on repairing the roads damaged by sand blowing over them.
Deputy Glynn has made a plea for University College, Galway. I do not know that this is the Vote on which that plea may properly be made and perhaps, later, on the Estimate for the Department of Education, it could be made with greater force and greater advantage.
Fishing, of course, along the coast, is the thing — fishing combined with small farming. I am afraid the fisheries branch regards the fishing industry from the large centre point of view and is forgetting entirely about the little slips and the little piers where the bravest of our people have to pull up their currachs or carry them down, as the case may be. Fishing of that type, with the currachs or even a somewhat larger boat, has declined because the necessary facilities do not exist for the people. I am of opinion that any money spent in the smaller places in the provision of piers and slips and harbours — this would apply not only to the coast of North Mayo but to the coast of the whole of Ireland—would restore to these areas the character of the fishing villages which they had, and would restore the tradition and would give them back the spirit of courage that they had in former years. It would reduce the cost of living, for instance, by putting more fish at the disposal of the people locally and it would give back the situation wherein small farmer-fishermen were able at one time to bring up their families without migration and without emigration and where they were able to marry off their daughters with what were then substantial dowries, without reference to savings sent from England, America or anywhere else.
Let us then, in dealing with a Vote of this kind, not make it merely an annual affair. As far as I am personally concerned, I do not intend it to be at all an annual affair. I intend to keep the matter up and at all times to give whatever constructive views that I can marshal, either on my own or by collecting them, to the people concerned. I have sufficient faith in the administration of this Office by the people in charge of it, I have sufficient faith in the knowledge and experience of the Minister who is at the moment regulating it, upon which to base the hope that this problem of congested districts and Gaeltacht areas will be approached realistically and will be approached in such a manner from today, from now, from the moment this Vote is passed, that we can look forward to a situation wherein, next year, when we are discussing the Vote for this office, the Minister will be able to give a very substantial review of the amount of work that shall have been done and that we shall leave the talking aside and get down to the realism that the situation demands.
