When the Dáil adjourned on Wednesday afternoon last, I was dealing with the affairs and administration generally of that section of the Department of the Gaeltacht known in this country and in other countries as Gaeltarra Éireann. For the benefit of the House, I might state briefly that Gaeltarra Éireann activities include the production of knitwear, tweeds, toys, certain types of school bags and linen, mainly embroidered. This industry, as I have already stated, had its beginnings in the days of the old Congested Districts Board. The centres of the knitwear and crocheting industries have largely been the same ever since. There have been cases where new centres have been set up and where the labour content in certain of them has increased from time to time.
There have also been cases, particularly recently, where the labour content, especially in the knitwear industry, has declined with a fall in production. In the course of the Minister's opening statement, he used a rather queer statement, having regard to replies given to parliamentary questions put down by me in relation to the labour content of the knitwear industry and in relation to production. On page 3 of his opening statement, the Minister said:—
"The position is not quite so satisfactory in the cases of the knitting industry and the toy industry and special consideration will have to be given in these industries in order to gear production to market requirements."
It is true, of course, that the Minister did not use the expression "gear up" or "gear down". He was content to say "gear production to market requirements".
One of the first essentials in the gearing of production to market requirements—I take it the objective would be to increase production and to seek bigger, better and wider markets for that production—is the appointment at once of a production manager. The last Gaeltarra Éireann production manager died in or around 1953. He has not been replaced, except in the queer way of giving an already fully occupied official of that Department—the tweed designer—something like £300 a year extra as acting production manager. Such a state of affairs in relation to production is not, in my opinion, calculated to improve production in any way, particularly where the management, control and inspiration for higher production is in the hands of a man who must already be over-occupied at his own job of designing.
Perhaps the Minister will tell the House what exactly he means by gearing production to market requirements. Does he mean a continuation of what is in operation at the moment in these centres where production has been decreased by reason of the fact, as stated by the Minister in reply to several parliamentary questions to me, that the sales of this material were not as great as the amount produced?
In the main, the girls who work in these centres work hard. The manageresses in charge of them work equally hard. Many of these centres in the remote Gaeltacht districts are devoid of the amenities to which the manageresses were accustomed before going there. In my opinion, their work there is to a very large extent vocational, having regard to the small amount of money they earn. Of course, the girls who work in these industries enjoy the advantage of having them near their homes and it meets with the overall desire not alone of this Parliament but of the whole of the country to keep as many as possible of these girls at home.
I understand that within the past couple of months in centres of which I have personal knowledge certain of these girls have been allowed to go. Some have left of their own accord, but, significantly enough, their places have not been filed. Where did they go? Did they seek employment in other types of work? They did not. They emigrated. All of it is due to the fact that what they produce, according to the official replies given to me and information at my disposal, is not being sold as widely and in as large quantities as it might be. When I was in charge of this Department, it was, as I think it could reasonably be said now, in its infancy. Long before the Department was set up and long before I ever knew that I would be put in charge of it, there were certain happenings in relation to Gaeltarra Éireann, its management and control that merited, to say the least of it, inquiry.
The system of sales for Gaeltarra Éireann is conducted partly by established civil servants and partly through agents who are not civil servants, but who are employed on a commission basis and who are allocated certain areas. In addition, they are sometimes, as I hope to point out in detail, confined to certain articles. For instance, in the City of Dublin, there is one agent for tweed alone. There is another agent for linen and knitwear. There are two other agents. The City of Dublin agent for linen and knitwear has the Counties Dublin, Louth, Meath and Wicklow. The remaining 22 counties are divided—I speak from recollection now—almost equally between the other agents—one for the south-west and one for the north-west and west.
It will, I am sure, be a matter of some interest for Deputies to know the wages paid in these centres. I do not propose to go into them in any great detail. I just want to give the House and the country an idea of how this industry that is so long on its feet is now in a position to let workers go and at the same time try to keep them working. I am satisfied that the rates of pay are not adequate to meet living costs imposed upon these people. They are certainly not the wages that would entice our people to stay at home.
In the knitting centres, the rates of pay of the workers, excluding those in respect of whom the details will be found in the Book of Estimates, are as follows. Those who work machines get 1/5½ per hour, if they are of average standard. Those who work circular machines get 1/7 an hour. The same standard is applied. Hand-knitting is paid at the rate of 6d. per hour; crochet work, 5½d. an hour; winding, a penny, 1¼d., or 1¾d. for two ounces of yarn, according to the kind of yarn. In the finishing centre at Tourmakeady in County Mayo, the rates are based on age and the service of the worker rising to a maximum rate of £3 15s. per week to each worker on reaching 21 years of age.
In the crochet centre at Bruckless, the position is something better. The assistant supervisor in charge of the crochet work gets £4 10s. per week. In regard to the linen and embroidery centres, girls work at piece-rates based on 6d. an hour. For finishing, washing, pressing, and so on, again girls are employed and, again, for time rates based on age and service the wage rises to £3 15s. per week for all workers on reaching the age of 21. For the purpose of the criticism which I propose to offer of the administration and management of this section of the Department, I should like Deputies to bear in the mind the princely figures earned by our girls whom we exhort week-in and week-out to stay at home in their own country. Everybody knows, on looking at the Book of Estimates, what is earned by the Civil Service section of this industry. Salaries generally are not very high except for those holding superior executive positions and then, even with bonuses, I think you will not find any of them reaching £1,700 a year or so— all of which is known and subject to whatever inroads can be made upon it by the Revenue Commissioners in each year.
Let us move, then, from the wages paid to the workers and the salaries paid to the civil servants on to the commission earned by the agents. There is one agent for the whole of the country and for Great Britain for toys. Admittedly he probably employs subagents or travellers. However, I will take the years 1952 to 1956 and give the House and the country the total commission paid to these agents for work which I shall submit and, I hope, prove, is very inadequately done—and it is no wonder it is inadequately done because when a man reaches a certain figure by reason of income-tax, surtax, and all the rest of it, there is very little incentive to go any further.
In the year 1952, the agent for toys received £2,710 in commission. In 1953 he received £5,042. In 1954 he received £5,948. Who would be Taoiseach of this country when there are vacancies for agents as profitable as that? In 1955 he received £5,137. In 1956 he received £3,874. Deputies might do well now to look at the series of questions I have been directing to the Minister for the Gaeltacht in English for the very special reason that this is a matter that affects the nation as a whole, affects our export trade and affects various facets of the lives of our people The questions were answered in Irish. The Minister is perfectly entitled to do that. However, as this section of the Department would like, the import of the answers given in Irish would not be felt so widely.
The sales agent for linen and knitwear in the City of Dublin and the Counties of Dublin, Louth, Meath and Wicklow for the year 1952 drew as commission £4,016. In the year 1953 that same agent drew £1,766. In 1954 he drew £2,125. In 1955 he drew £3,200 and in 1956 he drew £2,766. The agent for the southern counties in the same years earned £2,329 in 1952; £2,006 in 1953; £2,607 in 1954; £3,036 in 1955 and £3,436 in 1956. The western agent was not there in 1952. He started in 1953 and earned £2,101. In 1954 he earned £2,415. In 1955 he earned £2,775 and in 1956 he earned £1,994.
The tweed agent for the City of Dublin does not do the work. He is ill. He does not employ anybody to do the work for him. There is no necessity for him to do it because he is supplied with a member of the existing staff of Gaeltarra Éireann, a warehouseman, who draws his salary from Gaeltarra Éireann as a ware houseman and gets a certain percentage of the commission. How can a warehouseman do the job of the other man and draw commission in respect of it and probably be told he is part-time and, at the same time, draw his full salary for the job at Westland Row? That is something that may interest Deputy J. Murphy, particularly, having regard to the questions on the Order Paper to-day about people in certain established jobs getting part-time work elsewhere. That is something which I am sure will interest fair-minded Deputies on the Government side of the House.
In 1952 this tweed agent for the City of Dublin earned £655. In 1953 he earned £1,908. In 1954 he earned £4,242. You will find people in this country who will tell you that Deputies are too well paid. In 1955 the figure for this agent's earnings was £3,306 and in 1956, it was £2,239. He did not do a bat in that year; he did not employ anyone in the strict sense of the word. Admittedly, a little of his commission was taken away, but these commissions are very high.
I know agents travelling for tweed firms and linen firms whose commission is barely over one-fifth of what the agents of Gaeltarra Éireann are paid. I know one particular man, travelling for a most reputable firm in this country, who gets 1 per cent. commission. Gaeltarra Éireann agents get 5 —at least 5. There was one case where it was 6¼ until it was reduced recently, in the words of the Minister, to bring it into line with the others— but only when attention was drawn to it.
We have an agent in Germany for Gaeltarra Éireann and in 1952 he drew £856; in 1953, £4,581; in 1954, £4,047; in 1955, £6,326; and in 1956, he is down to £1,387. We have an agent in America. In 1952, he earned £1,721; in 1953, £2,453; in 1954, he is down to £909; in 1955, he is up again to £1,769; and in 1956, he received £4,902. People who say that they are losing faith in this country should take heart. There are great jobs here—great jobs.