May I ask which Minister is presiding over this debate? Is the Minister for Finance taking this? He is not here.
Committee on Finance. - Vote 69—National Development Fund (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following:—
That a sum not exceeding £3,000,000 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1956, for the National Development Fund.— (Minister for Finance.)
That does not prevent the Deputy speaking.
It does, because I want to get some answers. If it is convenient for the Minister we can take another Estimate first.
Carry on. The Minister will be here.
I moved the Adjournment on last Thursday on the note that I hoped that the Minister for Local Government would be here but I understand he is occupied at the moment in the Seanad. Consequently, the points I wished to make to him need not necessarily be made now; in any event I have already communicated with him about the points I had in mind and I understand they will be satisfactorily dealt with. I am sorry the Taoiseach has left because I wanted to remind him that when the National Development Fund was first introduced, the Taoiseach, in addition to the other comments to which I referred last week, pointed out to this House with a certain amount of contempt the type of work that the special works department of the Dublin Corporation were carrying out with the money supplied from this fund. In particular, he made reference to the work being carried out on the River Dodder. I wonder is the Taoiseach of the same opinion to-day as he was when he gave expression to that contemptuous remark originally? I understand the Minister for Local Government himself inspected the works and the improvements done on the River Dodder and found himself in complete accord with the type of work that is being done. He expressed satisfaction at the great improvements from every point of view that have taken place there and said that this money is well spent.
Is this from Rathfarnham Bridge?
This is from Ballsbridge right down to Rathfarnham Bridge. Has Deputy O'Donovan examined it?
Yes, I have looked at it.
Has he any fault to find with it?
It looked a bit expensive to me.
Does the financial expert know how much was spent on it?
I have eyes to see.
The financial wizard has such eyes to see that if he goes for a walk from Ballsbridge to Rathfarnham he can tell how much money was spent on this work.
If the Dublin Corporation is responsible for it, I know how much was spent on it.
Does he not know that every scheme under this National Development Fund has to be sent in detail to the Department of Local Government for "vetting" and, in conjunction with the special relief works department, it is examined from the point of view not only of the work to be done, the value to the community, but also the labour content in the expenditure of this money?
What about the baths?
Would the Deputy go and take a bath? These are just cheap interjections from people who do not even know what is being discussed. Deputy O'Donovan does not even know the expenditure on what he is complaining about. Every single pound that is spent must be approved and sanctioned by two Departments. On one occasion one of our plans was held up because the Department of Finance was not satisfied that the labour content was high enough and they figured out that there was only something like a 20 per cent. labour content. When it was re-examined, as in accordance with all the operations under this scheme, it was found that the average labour content from the point of view of the money spent was somewhere around 50 per cent. In some cases it is as high as 70 per cent. The purpose of the National Development Fund is to give employment to as many as possible of our unemployed people. We heard in answer to a question to-day that there are on the live register in the City of Dublin 30,000 unemployed at the moment.
About half the number that were on the unemployed register when the fund was set up.
I am beginning to understand the extent of the wizardry of the economic expert. He is putting on record that there were 60,000 unemployed this time two years ago.
At the end of 1953.
The Parliamentary Secretary says there were 60,000. I think in the case of Dublin—and I challenge the Parliamentary Secretary to contradict me—he will find, if he looks it up, that there are more on the live register to-day than there were at the time he is referring to.
That is nonsense and the Deputy knows it is nonsense.
The Parliamentary Secretary apparently has everything off the cuff.
I have that off the cuff anyway.
Deputy Briscoe must be allowed to speak without interruption.
As I pointed out with reference to the Dodder, the Parliamentary Secretary did not know what he was talking about. He could see what the expenditure was in an afternoon's walk. He is not able to tell us what is the employment content of that expenditure nor has he stood up here to say that he has found fault with the work other than that he thinks it cost too much. We are dealing with a Vote here that was originally introduced for the purpose of bringing relief to the unemployed people, to give them work so that they would have a week's wages coming in for a number of weeks of the year. We have employed that money to the extent that it is being made available. As I said last Thursday to the Minister, as far as Dublin Corporation is concerned, in connection with the administration from his Department's point of view in the giving of certain money, we have no grievance. We have been treated fairly. Our schemes have been examined with promptness and have been sanctioned without delay. Money has been made available to us in advance of our requiring it.
What I did say on last Thursday, and what I wish to repeat with emphasis, is that the Minister might recognise that we are on the eve of additional unemployment in greater numbers and, while we have a Department now in operation, dealing with a programme of work for 350 men per week under the scheme, we could easily employ 1,200 men. I have asked the Minister to keep in mind the advisability of making available larger sums of money in the near future when this unemployment crisis which I see coming will be upon us, so that we will not be faced with an outcry from the people as a result of this not being available.
This slush fund, as it was called when first introduced, has now become——
A Father Christmas fund.
It was called a Father Christmas fund and I take it the Parliamentary Secretary wants to grow a beard and become Father Christmas now. This fund is being continued. If it was as bad as it was suggested it was, why is it being continued? It is more necessary to-day than when it was introduced. It was introduced because people saw in advance what was coming.
When I addressed the Minister, through the Chair, on Thursday last, I asked him to recognise that we are reaching in our operation of this particular section of the Dublin Corporation the planning of long-term schemes, schemes which require more technical examination and design than some of the preliminary smaller operations with which we began. We want to have in the pigeon-holes of the office of that Department schemes already designed and, possibly approved, to be put into operation without delay when it is felt that that has become necessary.
Deputies who do not take a serious view of this matter, who hold in ridicule the operations of the local authority concerned and the granting of this money, should try to find out more about it. I invite the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government to a tour, either in his own car or in one of our engineers' cars, to examine all the work we have done under the scheme. It may take him a few afternoons. We will have with us particulars of the cost of each particular operation. When he has done that, let him come back here and tell us that it is a wilful waste of State money. Does not he know very well that there is a fine comb put through all these things in the Department of Finance and in the Department of Local Government? Does not he know that our engineers have to submit their suggestions to scrutiny by departmental engineers and that our finance officers have to submit their estimates to scrutiny and examination by the officers or representatives of the Department of Finance? Judging by the way the Parliamentary Secretary looks on this, one would imagine that the Minister for Finance blandly throws us £500,000 and says, "Have a go", and, like Wilfred Pickles, says, "Give him the money". The Minister for Finance does not operate in that way. No Minister for Finance operates in that way. The financial wizard thinks he does.
I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to get up here, examine the economics of this matter, relate it to the humanitarian aspect and tell us where this is wasteful expenditure. We are not taking the smell out of the river Dodder. We have made a very substantial improvement. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will get up in this debate and give us the benefit of this secret knowledge which he has so successfully withheld from us since he came into this House.
The Deputy was not too quick to propose the rate in Dublin last year, which it was his duty to propose. He was chairman of the Finance Committee at the time.
I got up every time I had the responsibility, for five years, and I took all the odium attaching to it.
Did you, last year?
I was carrying 40 other members on my back and was one of a minority group. If the rates had to go up last year, the Deputy's colleagues there could have stopped it.
Discussion on the rates is out of order on this Estimate.
I shall not be accused of running away from any interjection by the Parliamentary Secretary. Whatever he raises I shall answer.
The Parliamentary Secretary is out of order in interrupting.
I do not mind interruptions. In fact, I think they help me. I might have finished long ago if the Parliamentary Secretary had not given me all this encouragement, advice and inspiration.
Inspiration?
It is inspiration. Will the Parliamentary Secretary vote against this Estimate?
Did Deputy Briscoe propose the rate in Dublin last year?
That has nothing to do with the Estimate.
I did, of course, but I am not proposing it this year.
The Deputy did not.
The Parliamentary Secretary should not interrupt in this fashion. It has nothing to do with the Estimate.
Is it not a tragedy that we should be denied an opportunity of hearing the wisdom which flows so rapidly from the Parliamentary Secretary? If he would come down to a meeting of the Dublin Corporation and go through our accounts and help us to do better, I would extend an open invitation to him.
Will the Deputy try to do better and come back to the Estimate?
Dublin Corporation is my second home. I have a great deal of affection for Dublin Corporation. Dublin Corporation is very much involved in this particular matter. Dublin Corporation contributes part of the cost of the administration of this scheme. I want the Parliamentary Secretary to intervene in this debate and either approve of this Estimate or vote against it on any particular item in respect of which he can mention a reason for voting against it. The Parliamentary Secretary cannot get away with cross-road speeches that cannot be easily dealt with.
I want the Minister to consider this matter seriously. I want him to say that, now that this National Development Fund has come to stay, so long as we have uncertainty in the matter of constant and full employment, the fund can and will be added to as occasion arises. I want him also to say that, from the information made available to him as to how the money was expended, he is satisfied it was spent in the best possible way under all the circumstances. I believe the Minister would be the first to refuse to give sanction to any scheme if he thought it was not in the best interests. In view of the interjections and interruptions by Deputy O'Donovan and, possibly, subsequent to a speech that Deputy O'Donovan may make——
The Parliamentary Secretary.
I am sorry, Sir. I happen to be on speaking terms with the Parliamentary Secretary outside this House and we happen to know each other by our first names and I am sure he will not take offence if I call him Deputy O'Donovan by mistake. I invite the Parliamentary Secretary to intervene in this debate and to give us—I will not say a lecture such as he is accustomed to giving elsewhere— but to give us one of these high level talks into which he can bring so much of this secret knowledge on economics generally which he has so successfully withheld from us. I want to learn. If we are making mistakes in the administration of this fund, I want to be told it because, if we made fewer mistakes —if we are making mistakes at all—the easier it will be to get more money from his colleague, the Minister for Finance. Therefore, I will sit down and await, with great expectations, what the Parliamentary Secretary can tell us.
I want to speak only for a moment. In answer to Deputy Briscoe, I want to say that there is a scheme which I think should have been included in the work which was done by the Dublin Corporation. There is a road in Sandymount leading to Guildford Terrace in which there is a large number of houses. The appearance and condition of that road are a disgrace to Dublin Corporation. I understand that was excluded from this scheme and other scheme——
By whom?
By members of the Party opposite on the Dublin Corporation. Accordingly, I believe it would be better to do this than some of the schemes that have been done by the corporation. That is my contribution to the debate.
That is very, very helpful.
Before the Minister concludes, I should like to say that I was very interested in the discussion that took place between the Parliamentary Secretary and Deputy Briscoe. It indicates clearly to me, as a Deputy from a remote part of this country, that the bulk of the money in the National Development Fund is expended in or around Dublin. That is well borne out by the fact that we are witnessing this struggle between the Parliamentary Secretary and Deputy Briscoe as to the amount of money that was thrown around. Into the bargain, Deputy Briscoe was able to tell us that both the Departments of Finance and Local Government have no obstacles at all to put in the way of any of the schemes which Dublin Corporation submits to the Department. So we are told by Deputy Briscoe.
That was about as accurate as the rest of his observations.
Well, that was the impression that I got—that this money is very flúirseach and that it is thrown around in a flathamhaileach manner so far as Dublin Corporation is concerned. The only thing I should like to say about the National Development Fund is that I think we should remove the word "national", because it is not operating on a national basis. I would like the present Minister for Finance to bear that fact in mind and to administer this fund on a national basis in accordance with its title.
Each of us knows that Dublin is the capital of Ireland, a big city and entitled, if you like, to special treatment from the Government, but Dublin is a part of Ireland where we all claim there is too much centralisation and, as compared with the rest of the country, it is top heavy. We have factories of all descriptions, giving employment particularly in the industrial field and, I think, taking everything into account, the position so far as the rest of the country is concerned, could be said to be comparatively good. Here, on the 29th February, we got a statement as to how some of this money has been expended and I am making the case that so far as the constituency I represent—West Cork—is concerned, none of the money ever finds its way down there. I want to make it clear to the Minister that we have to live just as the people in Dublin City have to live, and I claim, as a representative of that area, that we are not getting the share of public funds to which we are entitled.
Deputy Briscoe made many references to unemployed people in and around Dublin. We have unemployed people down in Cork, particularly in the western portion of that county, and, unfortunately, over all the years we have substantial pockets of unemployment. I thought one of the aims of this National Development Fund was to give grants for suitable works in any area where a definite pocket of unemployment existed. I want to know from the Minister when he is replying if I, or any other Deputy representing a rural constituency, submit facts and figures to him as to the number of unemployed in that particular district coupled with suitable schemes that could be put into operation, will not these submissions be examined under the National Development Fund? Is there a likelihood of getting money from this fund to carry out these works and give much-needed employment?
I do not want to delay this House and my main purpose in intervening in this debate was to protest strongly at the manner in which the fund is being administered. To my mind the expenditure out of this fund is mainly confined to populous centres in the country—Limerick, Cork, Waterford and Dublin City. I feel quite sure that the areas around the west coast would be in the same position as West Cork. All these places are forgotten. I want to tell the Minister and the Government that we, as rural Deputies, are not going to come to Dublin a couple of hundred miles and sit silently in these benches while we believe, and can support our contentions, that these areas are not getting fair play.
In conclusion, I appeal to the Minister to reconsider the whole question of the distribution of the National Development Fund. Let him forget Dublin; the Dublin people are very close to his Department and can be in and out every day of the week with their submissions and grievances, imaginary or otherwise. The people who are more than 200 miles removed from Dublin cannot walk into the Department and seldom or ever do they come to Dublin. They expect their representatives to do the job for them, and one of these jobs that I have to do is to see that we will get a fair share of that money. I, therefore, ask that this whole question be re-examined and I hope that when this measure comes before the House again in 12 months' time I will not have to make the same submission as I, unfortunately, had to make to-day.
I believe it is most essential that this fund should be subsidised even more than it is because, at the moment, we have quite a number of people unemployed and, as far as my information goes, more people are losing their employment. In all countries of the world when unemployment becomes bad from time to time, the first step is to try to give employment through a department of public works. I am led to believe that, during the past year, the provision of moneys through the National Development Fund, which I and other Deputies here interested in the welfare of all sections welcomed at that period, was very skimpy. I believe there is still a lot to be done in the administration of that fund. I have been trying to get some works carried out in my own constituency, some in Dublin Corporation area and some in Dublin County Council area, and there is a slowing up in making available money for these necessary works. I feel this slowing down is a retrograde step and that at least this very necessary work should be carried on through the National Development Fund.
There is no use saying here or elsewhere that the spending of a certain amount of money on such works is a loss of public money. I hold that while there are thousands unemployed in the country such expenditure is not a loss, if it helps to relieve unemployment to a certain extent and if it assists a man to keep his wife and family in a reasonable degree of comfort. Sometimes we hear people saying we should tighten up and not spend money in the way we intended to spend it out of this fund. That may be so. I believe in economy to a degree but I say that the purpose of this fund was to try and relieve unemployment and for that purpose I believe the fund should be more highly subsidised.
Our circumstances here cause more and more emigration as time goes on and I think that, to the utmost of our ability, we should try to use funds of this kind to stem that emigration. This is a national necessity. No words of mine could adequately illustrate how serious this tide of emigration is. What is going to be the end of this country? Surely we should try to adopt the methods employed in other countries to eradicate unemployment and accordingly to stem emigration. In other countries, a considerable amount of work was undertaken through public work departments in order to relieve unemployment. Of course we have the Board of Works here and I should like to see its activities more and more highly extended. I do not want to repeat myself but I would urge on the Minister to bring this fund to his assistance in his efforts to relieve unemployment and emigration. From a small portion of my own constituency there is growing emigration; people are going from there by the score and their numbers have increased considerably in recent months. Because of all these considerations, I ask the Minister to see that this is a substantially endowed fund to relieve this state of affairs.
This debate seems to give an opportunity to the Deputies opposite to shed crocodile tears over unemployment and emigration. It is a well-known fact that, at the present time, there is less unemployment and less emigration than there has been for some years past; in fact, I cannot see at all how the questions of emigration and unemployment should be connected with this Vote. Deputy Briscoe when speaking referred to this National Development Fund as something set up for a real national purpose. The setting up of the National Development Fund was really a humbug and a hoax; it was set up after the introduction of the 1952 Budget, the provisions of which caused a considerable increase in unemployment in this country.
The fund was set up in order to give the Fianna Fáil Government of the time something to show that they were doing something for the people. In fact, I believe there was never any money in this fund at all because after all the money is voted to the various Departments for certain purposes. This fund is supposed to be controlled by the Minister for Finance and, I suppose, by the Minister for Local Government. But the works carried out through it could really be undertaken by the Office of Public Works, by the Department of Local Government, by the Department of Lands and so on.
Deputy Briscoe challenged the Minister to repeal this Act but I think if he did so it would make no difference at all because money could still be made available by the Government for the different purposes for which it can be allocated under this fund. While Deputy Briscoe seemed to insinuate that the money should be principally devoted to Dublin, I agree with Deputy M.P. Murphy that there is an inclination, perhaps, to forget there is such a thing as the undeveloped areas and the Gaeltacht, districts far distant from Dublin.
In 1954 when the present Minister came into office he allocated to my constituency the sum of £10,000 for the improvement of a road in regard to which we had been agitating for a very long time. I ask him again, if there is still money in the fund, to take note of the fact that we still have some roads in the Gaeltacht that have been submitted either to his Department or to the Department of Local Government for improvement by way of steam-rolling and so on, and I hope that, when money is allocated in the near future, he will remember South Kerry and our requirements there. In fact, that is really what I stood up to speak about. I know full well that the Minister will be sympathetic and practical and, through his sympathy, I hope to see South Kerry and other such areas getting their fair shares of the moneys allocated out of the fund.
I do not know which voice of the Fianna Fail Party is their official voice. I suppose one may take it, from the order in which speeches were made, that it must be the voice expressed in the speeches made by deputies Walsh and Derrig rather than that heard in the speech made by Deputy Briscoe. Deputies Walsh and Derrig attacked me because I did not utilise this fund more for production and because I allocated too much of the moneys from the fund towards projects that were going to give employment. As the members of the House listening to him heard, Deputy Briscoe said that the sole purpose of the fund was to ensure there would be employment. I think quite frankly that none of the Deputies concerned can have heard what I said when opening the debate.
I said then, and I want to repeat now, that as far as the allocations I will make from this fund are concerned, the first test that will be made is that of assisting production. We are in a situation in which our anxiety must be directed to ensuring that production is permanently increased and any project that will aim at a real increase in production will have very sympathetic consideration from me when it comes before me, but it must be in circumstances in which it is clear that there is a real productive appeal, if I may use the word, in respect of the project. This — when our balance of payments is adverse — is not the time to utilise this fund for expansion in directions other than those which our balance of payments circumstances permit.
I was taken to task a couple of times during the course of the debate because I was continuing the fund at all. When speaking on this Estimate last year, I said two courses were open to me— that I could either have thrown the whole idea overboard or taken the weapon, so to speak, as forged by the previous Government even though I did not think it was the most likely way. I chose the second course. I do not think it is desirable that immediately there is a change in administration there should at once be the wiping out of all the arrangements made by the previous Administration. While, if I had the handling of this matter in the beginning, I might have moved in a different way, I felt last year and I still feel that I should implement this Act to the best of my ability.
Deputies used this debate to advocate schemes in their different constituencies on an individual and detailed basis rather than to deal with the handling of the money in the fund as a whole. It would be difficult for me to follow each Deputy down his own particular lane in his own particular constituency, but I would like to refer to a few of the projects mentioned.
Deputy Allen, Deputy James Tully and others referred to the question of coast erosion and they spoke of what was done in Bray with regard to coast erosion. In Bray there was a specific bit of storm damage in respect of property which was already subject to maintenance. Every Deputy in the House will agree with me in that the real essential thing in any approach to the question of coast erosion is to provide adequate arrangements for maintenance.
There never have been any arrangements about maintenance in regard to coast erosion before and there have not been any arrangements to ensure that work done to prevent coast erosion will be maintained. I will be producing proposals to this House at an early date to indicate, for the first time, the measures the Government proposes to take to assist local authorities to avoid the damage that coast erosion causes. I would ask the Deputies concerned to await that time.
Deputy Lemass opened by a reference to a provision of £200,000 for the building of roads for the hand-won turf stations. The history of those stations is not a very happy one, I am afraid. I do not know whether this is the right Estimate in which to go into that question but when the day does come fully to discuss the matter Deputy Lemass, I think, will find that his part in that transaction does not do him any credit. I understood his remarks to mean that there ought to be a special provision made for the production of turf for these stations. If I correctly understood him, I want to make it clear that that statement is in direct contradiction to the instructions he gave the E.S.B. in relation to this matter. The position in respect of these small hand-won turf stations is that two will be completed this year and two more next year. Whether there will be any turf for them is another matter.
Deputy O'Hara referred to the unpleasant experiences some of his constituents are having at Lacken Strand, Ballina. He suggested that this fund might provide an appropriate method of dealing with the problem. The Deputy has been very persistent in bringing this matter to the notice of various Ministers and Departments in the interests of his constituents but I would be less than frank if I did not make it quite clear that this is not a productive scheme of the kind I have in mind.
Other Deputies referred to the Gaeltacht allocation. The expenditure to date is £111,000. There are other projects at present under examination for allocation. That £111,000 is part of the total of £250,000 that is referred to in the reply to the question put down by Deputy Aiken last week in which I gave full details of the amounts allocated prior to the 2nd June, 1954 and the amounts allocated since.
Deputy Walsh, in the course of a fairly long speech, made reference to many items and plans which, he said, were there and could be dealt with at once. I do not propose to go into the long list he read out, but I would, perhaps, test his accuracy on one item alone. When he was speaking he gave us a long dissertation on the wonderful plans and projects which he had left behind him for providing interest free money and money at reduced interest rates for farmers, for fertilisers in particular.
Deputy Walsh must think that everybody else, his colleagues as well as the people on this side of the House who have recourse to Government files, are complete fools. Deputy Walsh, when Minister for Agriculture, did bring a project like that to the Government of the day in December, 1953, but the Deputy should not have the audacity to speak of plans he left behind him without telling the House also that those plans, submitted to the Government on the 5th and 18th January, 1954, were rejected by the Government of which he was a member. Far from being accepted by the previous Government what that Government did in fact decide to do on the 26th January, 1954, was to charge 5 per cent. interest. I find it quite impossible to regard Deputy Walsh's contribution to this debate with any sincerity when I know what occurred in respect of that particular item of which I happened to have some knowledge before.
The actual reference by the Deputy was this: "For that scheme it was suggested that interest-free loans should be issued to farmers or loans at 2 per cent. interest at the most." That is a quotation from Deputy Walsh at the beginning of last Thursday's debate. The Deputy was Minister for Agriculture in a Government which decided that that proposal was to be thrown overboard and that the advances were to bear interest at 5 per cent.
Is it possible to have any regard for the speech of an ex-Minister who deliberately distorts, for political parposes, the actions of the Government of which he was a member? I could go down the various lists of allocations and show the House how they were made. Let me just content myself with saying that since June, 1954, the test that I have applied to the new allocations that came before me was the test of whether they would bring productive results.
In certain cases there were already existing commitments which I felt it my duty to carry on. One of those was an allocation to the Road Fund. Deputy Childers speaking this time last year praised allocations from the National Development Fund to the Road Fund. Deputy Derrig took a different line the other day. Now I agree with the line taken by Deputy Derrig, not with that taken by Deputy Childers, because I want the allocations from this fund to show really productive results and not the results that mere road works would produce. I must consider allocations from the fund in a general way and not by reference to any particular part of the country.
It is grossly untrue for Deputy Briscoe, or anyone else, to suggest that the allocations are made solely, or mainly, to Dublin or in the Dublin area. That is certainly not true. A look at the list of the various projects should, I think, satisfy anybody in that respect. I think Deputy Briscoe was only trying to emphasise the importance of the committee to which he referred; but I warn Deputies that national economic circumstances in which expansionist programmes from the National Development Fund can be undertaken in respect of schemes that will not be fully self-financing and schemes that will not be fully productive are entirely different now when, remember, the balance of payments is running adversely against us than they would be when we have a satisfactory external trade position.
Vote put and agreed to.