Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 29 Oct 1958

Vol. 171 No. 2

Committee of Selection. - Unemployment and Emigration: Motion of No Confidence.

Mr. Norton

I move:—

That in view of the continued high level of unemployment and emigration and the failure of the Government to fulfil the promises made at the last general election that they would deal effectively with these problems, the Dáil has no confidence in the Government.

This motion is one which indicates that because of the Government's failure to fulfill the promises which they made at the last general election, the Dáil has no confidence in the Government. This motion provides an opportunity for reviewing the work of the Government over the past year and a half. The Government are now in office for approximately one year and eight months——

General Mulcahy

On a point of order, is it the intention of the Government that this motion should be moved without a Minister being in the House?

Donnchadh Ó Briain

The Minister's absence is only momentary.

Mr. O'Sullivan

They are not in the Mansion House?

Donnchadh Ó Briain

No.

General Mulcahy

It is a fact that there is not a Minister in the House?

Donnchadh Ó Briain

Yes.

Mr. Norton

Is a Minister going to sit in the House?

Donnchadh Ó Briain

The Minister for Health and the Taoiseach are absent only momentarily.

Mr. Norton

I will not move the motion until a Minister is available. I am not proceeding until some Minister presents his body here.

An Ceann Comhairle

That would be entirely irregular.

Mr. Sweetman

Is it not also entirely irregular that no Minister is present?

Mr. Norton

Look at the Fianna Fáil Benches—they are virtually empty.

An Ceann Comhairle

I am concerned only with the business of the House.

Mr. Norton

Ministers are paid by the State to do Government work, which includes parliamentary work, yet the Ministers are absent from the Front Benches. One gentleman is over in New York solving all the problems in the world except the problems at the Irish employment exchange. I do not intend to proceed with the motion because of the reprehensible attitude adopted by the Ministers in completely absenting themselves.

General Mulcahy

Would the Chair accept a motion from me that the House adjourn for half an hour?

An Ceann Comhairle

I do not think there is any justification for the House adjourning.

Mr. Norton

I understand why the Ministers do not want to be here. It is because they are ashamed.

Mr. Loughman

Might we conclude that if the Deputy does not move the motion, it is because he has not got a case?

Donnchadh Ó Briain

The Taoiseach and the Minister are actually present in the House. The Taoiseach was called away and he will be back in a short time.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputies will realise that there is no rule as to who is to sit on the Front Benches. Motions of importance have sometimes been moved when there was no Minister on the Front Benches. I do not think there is any reason for the Chair accepting a motion that the House should adjourn because of the momentary absence of a Minister.

Mr. Norton

The Ministers will not come to the Dáil at all when they abolish P.R.

Mr. Dillon

Surely it is a reasonable suggestion that, as no Minister is present when the motion is being moved, the House should adjourn for half an hour, until such time as Ministers may be available, particularly in view of what the Parliamentary Secretary has said.

An Ceann Comhairle

There is really no rule or regulation under which Ministers must be present——

Mr. Dillon

But would the Chair accept this motion to adjourn for half an hour?

An Ceann Comhairle

A Minister is now present.

Mr. Norton

I was saying that a motion of this kind provides an opportunity for reviewing the work of the Government during the past 20 months, reviewing their activities, if you like, but so far as this Government are concerned, the task is mainly reviewing their majestic inactivity during the past 20 months. Any review of what the Government have or have not done since the general election must be done against the background of the promises made by the Government during that election. One of the difficulties, of course, of criticising the Government today for their activity is the fact that they have virtually done nothing. Criticisms must, therefore, be directed more towards their inactivity, to the fact that they have done nothing and especially to the fact that they have done nothing to redeem the glib election promises which they made to the electorate in February, 1957.

The Government then promised that they would control prices. The Government advised women voters to come out and vote for Fianna Fáil so as to put their husbands to work. The Government deliberately gave the impression that the return of a Fianna Fáil Government on a policy of "get cracking" would so galvanise the country into industrial activity that emigration would cease to be a matter of serious concern either for the Government or for the electorate.

What has been the Government's record over the 20 months? What have the Government done to redeem the promises which they then made? Is there any evidence that the Government have any serious intention of honouring the promises which were their covenant with the electorate for the return of a Fianna Fáil Government to the Dáil?

I want to deal, in the main, with three aspects of the Government's activity, with three aspects of their failures—prices, unemployment and emigration. I think an examination of the Government's record under these three heads will disclose how dishonestly the people have been treated, in return for placing their simple faith in the Fianna Fáil Party in the last election.

When Fianna Fáil went before the electorate in 1957 they declared that they did not intend to abolish the remaining food subsidies, that they stood rock-like for the maintenance of the subsidies. They denied vehemently suggestions by their political opponents that they would in fact abolish the subsidies. Again, although they gave these positive assurances to maintain the subsidies and at the same time to maintain effective control of prices, the whole country knows how shamefully that promise was ignored. One of the first things that the Government did after their election in 1957 was to introduce a Budget the purpose of which was to abolish the remaining food subsidies with the result that the prices of subsidised commodities rocketed skywards and have now reached a level higher than at any time in living memory.

Not satisfied with their savage Budget of 1952, the Government cap that Budget by another of the same variety in 1957. The net result of the 1952 and 1957 Budgets has been to make the struggle of the people to live in this country sterner than it has ever been before. Not only have the Government abolished the remaining subsidies provided while they were in opposition, but they have virtually abandoned all attempts at price control. Price Control Orders have been revoked by the gross in the last 20 months and the result is that cost of living today is, as I said, an all-time high record. That is due to the deliberate policy of the Government in abolishing subsidies, in dispossessing themselves of their powers to control prices and in following an avowedly "no-price-control" policy which has been the cardinal feature of their activities during the past 20 months.

When Fianna Fáil was in opposition in 1955 the present Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Lemass, moved a "no confidence" motion because of what he alleged was the failure of the Government to control the cost of living. That motion was moved by Deputy Lemass in October, 1955. On that occasion he perspired here in this House telling the people how serious the situation was because at that time the cost of living index figures stood at 128. But today the cost of living figure is not 128 as it was at that time but, thanks to Fianna Fáil, it has risen to 146. The difference in the meantime has been brought about largely because of the deliberate policy of the Fianna Fáil Government in allowing prices to rise and, in fact, in abandoning any serious attempt at price control.

Let us just look at the index for a few moments. When this Government came into office the index figure in the early part of last year was 135. It has gone up to 138, to 143, to 144 and it stands now at 146. In other words in a period of 20 months, the cost of living index figure has risen by 11 points under Fianna Fáil. When you consider that with the fact that the index figure increased by only two points in 1956, and by five points in 1955, one is immediately presented with a clear contrast between the policy of the inter-Party Government in restricting price increases and the attitude of Fianna Fáil in permitting prices to rise, apparently without control and apparently without any concern on the part of the Government. In fact, I think the most obvious index to the Government's attitude in respect to price control is furnished by a statement which was made here by the present Minister for Industry and Commerce on the 23rd of October last. On that occasion the Minister said, in referring to the Control of Prices Bill:—

"When the Bill becomes an Act, it will be put upon a shelf and taken down from the shelf only when some set of circumstances arises which in the view of the Minister for Industry and Commerce or the Government requires its utilisation."

So, the Government's position is that, first, they have dishonoured their promises to maintain food subsidies; secondly, they have repudiated their policy on controlling prices and they have revoked scores of Price Control Orders. The Minister now says that the Government's policy is to put the Control of Prices Act on the shelf and to take it down only whenever he or the Government think that course necessary. When one contrasts that policy with the vigilance previously displayed by the former Government in endeavouring to limit price increases in every possible way, and when one sees the substantial rise in the index figure which has taken place under Fianna Fáil, the difference between this Government and the previous Government is all too painfully obvious.

Let us take the Government's record in respect of unemployment. Every member of the Fianna Fáil Party knows perfectly well that at the last general election the people were urged to vote for Fianna Fáil in the belief sedulously circulated among simple people that the return of a Fianna Fáil Government would act as a mesmeric wand for the unemployed people and that large numbers of them would be put back into employment. Women voters were asked to vote Fianna Fáil so as to put their husbands back into employment.

According to the Government's own return, the number of persons unemployed on 23rd October, 1958 was 51,803. That means that after 12 months of this "get cracking" policy of Fianna Fáil the number of unemployed on that date was 528 less than the corresponding date in 1957. Therefore, with all this "get cracking", and this dynamic policy referred to by Fianna Fáil speakers from time to time, the net result is that there are fewer unemployed today by 528 than there were 12 months ago. However, that carries its own explanation and I shall come to it later.

Let us look at the figures for 1956, a year of depression, a year in which special steps had to be taken to protect our balance of payments, the year in which, due to no circumstances within our control, cattle prices on the British market were depressed, in which exports ran into unfavourable commercial weather and in which there was in some respects an atmosphere of recession abroad. The number of unemployed today is 3,120 less than in 1956, but what must be emphasised is that these are puny and insignificant achievements by Fianna Fáil, having regard to the gravity of the problem with which they are faced. What should not be overlooked is that the number of unemployed today at 51,803 is 10,645 more than in 1955. Therefore, after 12 months Fianna Fáil knocked off the number of unemployed 528 persons, but they are still operating on a figure—and that figure still persists—of 10,645 more unemployed than in 1955.

If we are to judge the Government's future policy so far as unemployment is concerned on the meagre and sickly results of the past 12 months, it will be a long time before they get down to the low figure of unemployment which was recorded in the year 1955. At this rate of progress, they will not get back to the 1955 figure for another 20 years. These were the prognostications from the Party which gave the impression that if it was returned to power, it would be only a matter of time until the country was humming with industry and everybody was in full employment, or nearly so.

These figures, of course, surprise nobody who is in touch with the people throughout the country. These figures surprise nobody who knows the extent of unemployment in the cities, the towns, and the rural areas. One has only to travel through the country or to look at the official figures of employment to realise that the whole house building programme is virtually at a standstill. There are fewer people employed in building houses today than at any time for the past 20 years. There are fewer building trade workers in Ireland today than at any time for the past 20 years. There are fewer building trade workers employed here today than at any time for the past 20 years. Again, one has only to examine the papers to see the number of people formerly in the building line in the employer class who are going out of house building because they see little prospect of any continuance on a rewarding scale of house building activities under the Fianna Fáil Government.

Deputy Corish submitted a question to the Dáil for answer today as to the number of men employed by all local authorities on house building at the latest date for which information was available this year and at a similar date last year. The answer was: "The number of men employed on local authority housing schemes was 2,439 at 31st August, 1958, and 3,173 at 31st August, 1957." In other words, in one year, the number of people employed on local authority housing schemes has dropped by no fewer than 700 and is now down to an all-time low figure of 2,439.

When the inter-Party Government were in office, a substantial number of people got valuable employment, especially over the winter months when employment is normally scarce. Under grants which were generously made available by that Government under the Local Authorities (Works) Act, many farmers, particularly those living in the low-lying areas, had good reason to thank that Government for the generous grants which were then made available to improve land, to obviate flooding, to increase fertility and especially to provide a useful kind of employment at a time of the year when many families are in dire straits because of the inability of the bread winner to find continuous employment.

This Government, having got a majority at the last election, decided to make no more money available this year under the Local Authorities (Works) Act to thousands of people who in the winter of 1954, 1955, 1956, would look forward to employment under that Act but who are now denied any chance of getting a job because the Fianna Fáil Party decided to make no grants available for those schemes. The result is that the farmer is hit because of the withdrawal of the facilities for draining his land, and the worker who expects employment to sustain him over the winter period is still harder hit because that opportunity of employment is withdrawn from him. One would imagine the country was bursting with activity, agriculturally and industrially, when the Government take the step of withdrawing grants under that very valuable Act.

But when you have a situation in which over 51,000 persons are registered as unemployed, then to withdraw the grants under that Act and callously to permit more and more people to suffer over the winter period by deliberate action of the Government is something I find it hard to reconcile with any Christian approach to our responsibility towards our own community.

Forestry work to-day provides less employment than it did in former years because of the cut-back. Rural electrification work is not providing the same employment as previously. Road work this year especially is providing less employment than it did at any time in the past 20 years. I happened to be in a rural portion of my constituency last Sunday. I was approached there by a substantial deputation of road workers who had been laid off employment and who had been idle for seven weeks. There is no tillage in this area; there are no local authority schemes in the area; there are no relief schemes. These men, many of them with large families, are faced now with the prospect of living until next spring on what they get at the labour exchange. Previously they could hope to get employment under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. That employment is not available this year and the harrowing prospect for these unfortunate men, their wives and their children, is to rot in inactivity until next spring in the hope that they will then be re-employed on county council work on the roads or get employment on Bord na Móna turf-cutting operations.

The Government seem to be quite satisfied to send these people to the employment exchange. The Government seems to be quite satisfied that it is better to allow them to draw benefit there than to give them a full week's work at a full week's pay. The Government appear to be quite satisfied to give them a mere pittance at the employment exchange for doing nothing because they believe that that is cheaper than giving them a week's wages for doing really constructive work on the land, on the roads, in the forests or on drainage.

The Government's whole attitude towards employment and unemployment has been one of complete repudiation of all that they led the electorate to believe when they sought votes in February of last year. Many simple, decent people, misled by the charlatans who then solicited their votes, have since been compelled to emigrate to England to find there the work which they were promised by Fianna Fáil if they would only wait here for the return of a Fianna Fáil Government to power. Nothing more completely highlights the incompetence of the Government in the matter of providing employment for the people than the answer given earlier today to a parliamentary question. The Taoiseach was asked the number of people in insurable employment in each of the five years 1954-1958. The answer given by the Government—it is revealing—was that in March, 1954, there were 488,000 people in insurable employment; in the year ended March, 1955, there were 498,000; in the year ended March, 1956, there were 501,000; in the year ended March, 1957, there were 485,000. We come then to a full year of Fianna Fáil administration—the year ended March, 1958—and the number of people in insurable employment in that year was 464,000.

When one examines this Government's record for the 12 months ended March last, one finds that the number of persons employed was less than the number employed in each of the preceding four years. When one remembers, too, that the peak period for employment was in the year ended March, 1956, when there were 501,000 insurable persons in employment, the achievements of the Government of that day, despite many international difficulties, now stand out in bold relief and afford a most favourable comparison with the results of this Government's activities in the 12 months ended March last. Remember, too, that this Government have already admitted that that was a happier period from the point of view of both international relations and international terms of trade.

These figures I have quoted for the year ended March, 1958, are bad. They would be still worse, were it not for the fact that during that period the tidal wave of emigration from these shores has swelled and moved with even greater velocity than heretofore. One has only to take up the daily papers to find there the pronouncements of bishops and clergymen in relation to the manner in which our rural areas are being denuded of population. One has only to read the reports of rural organisations, particularly agricultural organisations, to realise the toll emigration is exacting in lives and in the economic and agricultural fabric of our people in these areas, hard smitten by emigration.

In many areas, whole families have emigrated. The key has been turned in the door. The farm has been left derelict and the entire family has fled to get elsewhere the standard of living, the regular employment and the regular income which have proved so elusive in their own country. Deputies from rural areas in particular can tell the same heart-breaking story. Parish priests up and down the country in the remote rural areas can tell the story of the way parishes are being denuded of their population and of the fear that the people will never come back again to face what they have had to endure there for so long.

Striking confirmation of what I have just said was furnished in the Registrar General's report for the June quarter of 1958. This is an official publication for which the Taoiseach's Office is responsible. The Registrar General estimated that our mid-year population in 1958 was 2,853,000 persons and he said that our estimated mid-year population in 1957 was 2,885,000 persons. In other words, there was a decrease of 32,000 in our mid-year population in 1958 as compared with 1957. These are official statistics. The natural increase in the population, that is, the excess of births over deaths, is approximately 28,000, so, if you allow for the fact that the natural increase in population should have brought 28,000 more persons into the community and add to that figure the decrease of 32,000 in our population between 1957 and 1958, you get the result that 60,000 people have left this country as emigrants during the past 12 months. These are indisputable figures. They are issued by the Taoiseach's Office, under the Taoiseach's authority, and I would ask the Taoiseach whether he would attempt to deny that these figures disclose that during the 12 months ended June last, 60,000 people have emigrated from our shores.

Sixty thousand people have left. What would be our unemployment situation if these people were to stay here, if they were to insist that they should get a living and a livelihood in the land that gave them birth? What would be the situation if they insisted on getting their birthright, a decent living in their own land? Sixty thousand persons drifted out and it is good for Fianna Fáil that they drifted out because the unemployment figures would speak still more grimly and still more strikingly, if these people had been permitted to enjoy their heritage, to work and create wealth in their own land.

During the past 20 months, one has looked in vain for any indication that the Government realise the seriousness of the unemployment situation and the appalling seriousness of the emigration problem, a problem which, if it is not solved and certainly if it is not tackled vigorously, will undermine our whole ability to exist as a nation, our whole ability to maintain ourselves, our whole ability to continue as a viable community.

We have now reached the stage in which we are the only white country in the world that is losing its population. We are losing our population to other lands——

Mr. Booth

Nonsense.

Mr. Norton

— in Europe and overseas, which are able to provide increased employment for their increasing millions of people. As one reflects on this situation, one cannot help coming to the conclusion that it is a far cry from 1932 when Fianna Fáil said that if they were elected to office, they would provide so much work that they were afraid they would have to comb the cities of America to bring back the emigrants to do that work here. Not only have we brought back no emigrants from America or anywhere else, but we have sat silently by while the best of our men and women have been cascaded out to Britain to find there the employment that it has not been possible to give them here.

I see no evidence whatever in the statements by the Government of their intention to deal seriously with these problems, except perhaps an announcement which was made yesterday at the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis. The Minister for Industry and Commerce announced that the Government has worked out a capital development programme for the five years 1959 to 1964 and he said that that capital development programme is estimated to cost £220,000,000. Judging by the way in which that statement was served up, it was obviously intended as chloroform for the delegates who attended the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis, just hitting the boys with a bundle of 220,000,000 pound notes, hoping that that will keep them quiet and that they will all go back feeling that it will not be long until these notes get from Merrion Street into their pockets and then they will be catapulted into a land flowing with milk and honey, in which the only danger will be that they will be half-drowned in a boghole full of honey and will stagger out of that into one filled with milk.

That is the kind of purpose this statement was intended to serve. You would not cod any person with even a modicum of intelligence with the statement which has just been issued by the Tánaiste. What they have done is that they have simply bulked the capital expenditure for five years together and say: "We are going to spend over five years the product of each of the five years." They are making one sum out of that. They are dressing up a figure of £220,000,000 and saying: "There is £220,000,000. If that does not make you happy, I do not know what will make you happy." That is the way it was served up.

I do not know why the Government stopped at a five years' figure. Why did not they take ten years, in which case they could have told the boys that they would provide £440,000,000. They could have doubled the £220,000,000 and they could have said: "That is £440,000,000 over the next ten years." They could have said it was a 20-year plan and have shown a figure of £880,000,000 and make the lads dizzy.

Mr. Dillon

Round it off and call it £1,000,000,000.

Mr. MacEntee

The Deputy spent millions of dollars a minute.

Mr. Corish

At least, the Minister for Industry and Commerce has his £100,000,000 plan.

Mr. MacEntee

At least, he did not spend it on maize.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order! Deputy Norton.

Mr. Norton

I am surprised that such a brilliant strategist as the Minister for Health has allowed this occasion to pass without seeing the electoral prospects in telling the lads there would be £880,000,000 in the next 20 years and that if they live another 20 years, they could hardly escape being millionaires at the end of that period, if they could get their hands on some of the £880,000,000. This, of course, is a confidence trick.

Mr. Corish

A conference trick.

Mr. Norton

A confidence trick worked off at a conference. It deceives no one who understands the facts. It is just intended to keep the boys chloroformed for 48 hours until the conference is over. They will have many a headache trying to work it out when they attempt to apply their intelligence to it when they get home.

Capital expenditure for the past five years, allowing for an adjustment in prices over that period, was approximately £200,000,000. We actually spent it; there was no question of estimating for it. Taking one year with another, we actually spent approximately so many million pounds on capital expenditure during that period. Our friends on the other side have now thought of a spectacular way of doing things. They have said: "Lump five years together; get a round total and in that way we will stagger the boys with the immensity of the sum." At the risk of being accused of a little inquisitiveness, I want to ask now what happened the £100,000,000 plan the Minister for Industry and Commerce had?

Mr. Dillon

It was £100,000,000 and now it is £200,000,000.

Mr. Norton

I think I draw an entirely different conclusion. The £100,000,000 was for the purpose of additional capital expenditure. The Minister was not satisfied that we were spending at the rate of £200,000,000 over five years. He had another scheme, another £100,000,000, which was to be over and above what was normally spent. When that was put up in the House, and I asked what happened it, the statistically-minded Minister for Lands was thrown into the bearna baoil to defend the £100,000,000 capital scheme. He said: "Look, you are all making a mistake; that was never intended as a serious scheme at all; that was intended for debating purposes. We never had the £100,000,000; it was just a kind of idea we threw out for debating purposes. You need not consider it as anything more serious than that." Since that plan made its appearance on the same stage as the present £220,000,000 plan, I assume it has been buried in that Fianna Fáil cemetery which holds so many red herrings, white elephants and pink rabbits.

Mr. MacEntee

You do not bury red herrings like that.

Mr. Norton

That plan, I repeat, was buried with all the red herrings, white elephants and rabbits that came out of the Taoiseach's hat over the past 20 years.

Mr. Booth

It must have been quite a funeral.

Mr. Norton

Let us be charitable; let the dead rest now with the rest of the noble notions which codded the electorate many a time on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party.

I think we should take notice of something that was said yesterday by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. He stated that some of this expenditure was to be devoted to the development of agriculture. As I read that part of his speech, I felt there must have been some fresh thinking about agriculture, or that the Minister for Health had undergone a transformation —perhaps I should say another transformation because he has undergone many in his time. I could not believe that the Government were preparing to spend money on the development of agriculture, and I was wondering where the agricultural products were to be disposed of, whenever they did.

It is obvious to everybody that agriculture has been our mainstay and has been very valuable in bringing about more than equilibrium in our balance of payments last year. It was capital agricultural exports generally that were responsible for bringing about a balance in our international payments last year. I wonder whether the Minister for Health agrees with this new proposal to help develop agriculture, because, on one famous occasion, he devoted his research talents to an appraisal of the possibilities of the British market, so far as exports from this country were concerned.

If I quote from the Irish Press, I am sure I will not be charged with quoting from a tainted source. The Minister for Health on one occasion went off to the Literary and Historical Society of University College, Dublin, to give the boys the benefit of his profound knowledge of agriculture, and of the British market, and his words on that occasion deserve to be put on record. I hope the Minister will do himself the service of reading them and I will permit him to laugh for a reasonable period at his youthful folly. Here is what the Minister said:—

"It was extremely doubtful whether in these circumstances we should get anything like the same prices for our products in post-war years as we were accustomed to do prior to the war. That might ultimately mean over a long period a diminution in our live-stock export trade and, perhaps, in the course of time, its virtual disappearance altogether, leaving a long period of readjustment during which the position of our agricultural population would be the cause of the gravest concern."

General Mulcahy

Thank you very much. I was looking for that quotation for a long time.

Mr. Norton

The Deputy will get it in the Irish Press of 21st March, 1942.

General Mulcahy

We will be able to get it more easily in reading to-day's debate.

Mr. Dillon

Was it the wiseacre over there said that?

Mr. Norton

Did anybody ever listen to such a charlatan attempt to appraise the cattle trade of this country? If any member of a Government in any other country made such a mistake, he would have to make amends to the people.

General Mulcahy

No wonder the Minister for Health did not want to stay in the House when the Deputy started to speak.

Mr. MacEntee

This is a sort of juvenile debating point. It is no use. It is very boring.

Mr. Norton

The Minister is a great draw with juveniles.

Mr. MacEntee

It is very boring.

Mr. Norton

The former Senator Cogan said he found the Minister for Health to be "a senile delinquent". Remembering that comment by the Minister's friend—or he might now be his former friend—and reading this appraisal of the British market——

Mr. Dillon

The Minister put him on the Hospitals Commission.

Mr. Norton

I think there is room there for somebody else.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

This does not arise on the motion.

Mr. Dillon

It would be a pity that we should lose sight of the former Senator Cogan.

Mr. Norton

The Taoiseach, as reported in the Dáil Debates, Volume 49, column 1610, stated: "So far as I can see the British market is gone for ever," and yet we are now about to develop our agricultural exports. Where will we send the stuff—to Monaco or to some of the Pacific islands, or to Britain where we were told the markets were gone for ever? Is it to the British market that we are to export our agricultural produce, after all the profound research of the Minister for Health, who stated that the British markets would be virtually extinct, and that there would be a long period of readjustment during which the agricultural population would suffer the gravest of hardship? The Taoiseach had another comment on this, saying: "The British market would never be the same as it was in the past. To restore the market was just like a child might say: "Give me the moon' ".

When we remember these statements, and remember how much we have depended on the British markets since they were made, and how valuable that market is today for our exports, and when we consider that we are now about to spend a considerable sum of money to preserve our place in that market and expand still further in it, the only conclusion we can come to is that the gentlemen who issued these allocutions from time to time have been very unreliable guides, so far as the Irish people are concerned.

This £220,000,000 plan is a confidence trick and has no better standing than that. It will not produce any cheers in the labour exchanges and anybody who read it today, while he was packing his bags to go to England for work, will not unpack his bags at the prospect of this £220,000,000 in the sky which will, in fact, impact very slightly on the ordinary lives of the people.

I searched in vain, over the past few months, for some evidence that the Government really realised the urgency of the task confronting them. The Order Paper consists of a few inconsequential Bills and gives no evidence that the Government are really alive to the dangers, economic and social, confronting us. They appear to have no plan for implementing any of the promises they made at the last election.

The two chief talking points in recent weeks—look at the Irish Press or at any of the other papers—by members of the Government who break their vow of silence is that an oil refinery is going up at Whitegate, County Cork—which was negotiated by me during the term of office of the inter-Party Government—and that the Avoca Copper and Lead Mines are now in operation and employing 540 people. Yet, when I inherited those mines in 1954, 80 people were employed in them: 60 were under notice and the other 20 were to keep the water out of the mines. That transformation was brought about, again, because the inter-Party Government dealt constructively with the problems of that period.

Now, thanks to the change of Government, these two achievements of the inter-Party Government become the chief talking points of Fianna Fáil Ministers whenever any of them does care to break the silence. These are the cheery items. If you look along the whole Front Bench, taking one Department after another as the Ministers sit there, you will see that nothing but gloom resigns in every other Department. All this tension is relieved only by occasional wailings by the Minister for Lands that a kind of economic renaissance could be brought about if somebody would eat more pike and perch and deliver us from this really stubborn Irish obstinacy about eating fish.

I am not unaware that our basic difficulties are associated with living in Ireland. We have the problem of a small country, an outpost of Western Europe, a small country with very limited natural resources and in which our main assets are 12,000,000 acres of arable land and 3,000,000 people to work these acres as best we can. Life here is what we can make it. I have said before, and I think it is worthy of repetition, that no other country owes us a living, that it is not the responsibility of anybody else to provide us with a standard of living or to see that it is a high standard of living. That is a task for ourselves. Whether we discharge the task or falter in the attempt or fail to face up to our responsibilities will, in one way or another, determine the standard of living which our people enjoy. I have seen other small countries with no natural resources—a small area of land not as good as ours—being able to lift themselves up, being able to provide a high standard of living for their people.

I know of no way in which we can lift our people up and provide them with a higher standard of living, except by harnessing the whole nation's enthusiasm to the task of exploiting to the fullest whatever resources and talents and tenacity we have in trying to keep, if we can, the help of friends who once populated this country and are now overseas. One could understand these difficulties if one could see that the Government were making any serious effort to deal with these tasks and endemic problems. I see no such efforts. My complaint about the Government in this motion is that they deceived the people at the last election, that they misled decent people into believing that a Fianna Fáil Government would and could solve all their domestic and economic problems.

This Government now have the largest majority any Government have held in this House in the past 25 years. They have the power to do things under legislation. They have a majority on those benches to enable them to put through any proposals necessary to do the things they promised to do. I want to ask whoever will reply for the Government why, with all the power they have and with the large majority they have, do they not come to the House with proposals to implement the promises on which they rode into office at the last election? If these promises were honest promises, nothing stands in the way of implementing them. It is because the Government, with all their power and with their comfortable majority, have failed to redeem the promises they then made—and made at a time when they were tricking the people into giving them a vote of confidence —that we consider that a motion in the terms in which our motion appears on the Order Paper is fully justified in the circumstances of today.

Mr. Desmond

I formally second the motion.

Mr. Dillon

I move the amendment on the Order Paper:—

After "emigration" in the first line, to insert "and the acute problems of those engaged in agriculture, business and industry, which have contributed to this situation".

I want to make this clear. We have never, from this side of the House, minimised the quality or the size of the problem confronting any Government in this country in respect of unemployment or emigration. One of the reasons why I think this Government are peculiarly deserving of censure is that they have engendered amongst our people a bitter sense of disillusionment which, in my judgment, is one very material contributing factor to the emigration of 60,000 of our young people in the past 12 months. I think that disillusionment has largely been in respect of what appeared to me to be the criminal conduct of the Fianna Fáil Party in their campaign in the country to suggest that the inter-Party Government viewed with callous indifference the problem of unemployment and that they were proceeding with their economic measures without consideration for those who felt, rightly or wrongly, they were suffering in consequence of it.

They followed that up with the detestable election poster—"Women of Ireland, Vote for Fianna Fáil and get Jobs for your Husbands". That poster had a dual purpose: to denigrate their opponents and fraudulently to mislead our people, those of them who were suffering under the great distress of unemployment, into the belief that it was possible by voting for Fianna Fáil to deliver themselves from the distress which at the time afflicted them. The people who accepted the truth of that proposition in good faith and sought to deliver themselves from their woe by voting Fianna Fáil have learned now that they gave their votes in exchange for a fraudulent undertaking and they ask themselves whether there is anybody in public life in Ireland who can be trusted now.

It is not in the nature of our people openly to admit that they have been fooled. There is a queer, perhaps, a perverted loyalty, in the nature of our people. Once they nail their flag to the mast, they are inclined to stick to it to the bitter end, but the net result is that because the people have discovered that that undertaking on the part of Fianna Fáil was a fraudulent falsehood, they have come not only to hate the standards of Fianna Fáil, but, wrongly in my judgment, to suspect the standards of every man in the public life of this country.

When parliamentary institutions cease to be respected in Ireland, there are a great many of our people who will feel the lure of going elsewhere where things are better managed and it will become stronger with the passage of years. I do not deny it is a shock for me to discover in many parts of the country a degree of contempt for the members of this House which, I think, constitutes a menace to the very foundation of this nation. If there is such contempt, where should the responsibility for it lie?

Is it with those of us who in the inter-Party Government took resolute action when action was necessary and paid the electoral price for it, suffering electoral defeat, or will it lie at the doors of those who got their votes by fraud and, having failed to perform, have raised doubts in the hearts of everyone in this country as to whether those engaged in public life can ever be trusted again?

I think that kind of thing is threatening parliamentary government in this country. The individual liberty of the humblest or of the greatest citizen of this country depends ultimately on the survival of parliamentary institutions. If people ever reach the stage of despising their own Parliament, then let us not be in the least astonished if the tide of emigration continues to flow.

The Leader of the Labour Party has spoken on certain aspects of this business. Deputy Cosgrave will deal with other aspects of the problem envisaged in the amendment we have put down but there are certain aspects of this intimately related with agriculture which I think require to be dealt with now. I often think that in this House people forget only too readily the small farmer on the small holding in rural Ireland. He has been called upon not only to bear his share of the increased cost of living—it fell on him just as heavily as upon anyone else—but through his rates and taxes, he is called upon, in addition, to bear his share of the compensation, adequate or inadequate, that was provided for everybody else to compensate them for the increase in the cost of living. On top of all that he has been informed that with these burdens on his back and with the ordinary hazards of the trade in which he engages, agriculture, which is so subject to the fluctuation of climate and temperature, as we have bitter reason to know this year, he must also take less for wheat, less for barley, less for milk and less for pigs. If we are to seek a cause for emigration from rural Ireland; if we are to seek the reason for spreading pessimism and disillusionment with life on the land, need we go further than those plain incontrovertible facts?

I often think that there is another section of the community that people forget about. If it is employment we are thinking about, it is a section of the community that gives more employment than any other, that is, the small shopkeepers in rural Ireland. If there were as many people employed by any other industry as are employed by the retail and wholesale distributors of rural Ireland, that industry could be raised upon a pedestal for the admiration of the whole country, but, quietly and without demonstration or excitement, thousands and thousands of small private businesses up and down this country are providing good employment at fair rates of wages for thousands and thousands of our fellow countrymen and women. It is one of the principal methods by which the younger children of the small farmers in Ireland enter commercial life and find a livelihood away from the land. All these are suffering acutely as a consequence of the atmosphere and circumstances created in the rural agricultural community by the policy of Fianna Fáil.

I understand—God knows it is nearly time—that the Government propose to give an all-round increase of 7/6 a barrel in the price of wheat to compensate the farmers who have lost so heavily in this year's wheat harvest. I do not know why the Minister should have been so coy to-day when answering Deputy Corry. He told Deputy Corry that there could be no possibility of a restoration of the levy. He might, if he wanted to keep this House truly informed, have gone on to say that the Government propose to meet the situation by giving a general all-round increase of 7/6 per barrel and that it was not infringing on the existing scheme.

It is all part of the general contempt that this strong Government with a big majority in the House have tended to show to Dáil Éireann in recent times. It is considered clever deliberately to mislead Dáil Éireann so as to demonstrate the fact that the Government do not have to take the legitimate views of the Opposition into consideration any longer because they are a strong Government and can do what they like.

Do not forget that Parliament is strong, Parliament is solid, only in so far as it is and effective arena for action by the Opposition. If Parliament ever becomes a machine for recording the decisions of a dragooned majority respect for Parliament will disappear very quickly in this country. Mark you, it has happened elsewhere.

I deprecate the method adopted by the Government of communicating to the public what I believe to be, on the whole, a reasonable proposal. But I think it would have been more proper if the Minister for Agriculture had faced the fact that in the existing circumstances he has no legal or moral authority for making the levy at all. If he felt there should be some supplementary relief granted, he might have in propriety said: "The levy will not be made and it is proposed to give a flat, all round increase of 1/9 per barrel for wheat." I think that it is contemptuous of Parliament to adopt the procedure he has done. I want to submit to the House that there is no justification in the law as enacted by this House for collecting the levy at all. The levy was expressly declared to be designed to provide a fund out of which losses on exports of millable wheat would be met. There will not be any exports of millable wheat this year. There is no surplus, actual or constructive, of millable wheat from the current crop.

I do not know by what authority the Minister proposes to distribute the levy this year; if he has no power to distribute it, then the most equitable thing he could have done was not to collect it and, where it had been collected by inadvertence, to return it with whatever supplemental payment he thought equitable to recommend to the Government. Indeed, I think common courtesy would have required any decent Government to inform Dáil Éireann of that proposal at the earliest possible moment or at least to go through the form of signifying the approval of Parliament for the remedial measures the Government anticipated. On the whole, if the Government does provide an all-round flat rate of 7/6. I think the substance of justice will be reasonably done, but I believe it would have been a more proper procedure to have refunded the levy and made such supplementary payment as the circumstances indicate.

I want to say a word, because I do not believe it is much use getting up in this House deploring the emigration of 60,000 persons last year and the presence of 51,000 people on the register without making some proposal for positive action designed to remedy that situation—not of the character "Vote Fianna Fáil, women of Ireland, and get jobs for your husbands", not dirty fraud of that kind, but concrete proposals that can be reasonably discussed on their merits here in the Parliament of Ireland. When we come to consider the very grave situation in which the small farmers find themselves at the present time—and the big farmers, too —I want to make a suggestion to the Minister for Agriculture which I think is practicable in the existing situation. I do not think there will be, in the light of the appalling hay harvest of this year, any substantial surplus of butter for export next year, because the peculiar fact is that a bad hay harvest in 1958 usually results in reduced exports in 1959, the year after the bad hay harvest.

It is certain—I think that it is agreed on all sides—that if any important contribution to the prosperity of the live-stock trade is to be made, bovine T.B. must be eliminated. This is the trade which the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health thought was going to disappear, and two and a half years ago Deputy Childers was telling me from this bench that the bottom had gone out of the cattle market, but they all discovered they were wrong. Fortunately we never fell into the folly of believing them, or we would have started cutting the throats of the calves in 1956 as they were doing in 1936. But we never fell into it and they have come around to our view. We are all agreed that if the continued prosperity of that invaluable trade is to be maintained, everything that can be done to expedite the elimination of T.B. ought to be done in this country.

I do not wish to minimise the problem of the Minister for Agriculture in dealing with T.B. eradication. I had enough experience of it myself to realise that it is formidable and calculated to tax the ingenuity of any Minister for Agriculture. I know that one of his great problems is that of facing what will ultimately have to be done in the creamery counties of Ireland—Tipperary, Limerick, North Cork, North Kerry and portion of Kilkenny. One of his great problems is to persuade the farmers in that country, where herd replacements and a variety of other considerations operate and where the rate of T.B. reaction is very high, to come in enthusiastically. It is extremely difficult to get farmers to come in enthusiastically.

The British had exactly the same experience. Their solution to the problem was to give a bonus on the milk of any farmer who eliminated T.B. from his herd. I think, having taken a penny a gallon off milk last year, what the Minister ought to do is to announce that in the creamery areas farmers who are prepared to eliminate T.B. from their herds will be paid back by the Treasury a supplement of at least that penny on the milk delivered by them to the creamery. I believe if you introduced a scheme of that kind you would get, very quickly, the farmers in the creamery areas themselves eradicating T.B. from their herds in order to earn the extra penny.

We shall have less exports of butter next year and less subsidies to pay. Already we have collected one penny per gallon off every creamery milk supplier in the country. Would it be unreasonable if that penny, or even twopence, bonus per gallon would now be offered to every farmer bringing milk to a creamery in Ireland whose herd was certified as being T.B. free and who is prepared to maintain it in that condition? I believe that would be a very material contribution to the eradication of bovine T.B. in this country and to the maintenance of the prosperity of the live-stock industry without which, as the Leader of the Labour Party has said, very little industry would survive in this country.

There is another suggestion I want to make to the Minister of a constructive kind which we can argue on its merits. I understand there is a shortage of meat in Great Britain at present. With great reluctance, while I was Minister for Agriculture, I was obliged to consent to the then British Minister for Agriculture extending the period during which our cattle had to remain in Great Britain in order to qualify for the bounty which they earn under the 1948 Trade Agreement and which is worth from about £10 to £15 per head. They used to have to stay only a month. The British asked us to extend it to three months and we had to agree.

If the British are at present short of meat, the fact is we have a very large number of forward store cattle in this country the price of which has tended to react pretty flexibly over the last six weeks or two months. Would it not be worth approaching the British Ministry of Agriculture and saying to them that, if they are short of beef, we have plenty of the kind of cattle that should come forward, and which are fit for butchering in less than three months, and if they would reduce the period during which they are required to sojourn in Great Britain to earn the bonus, we would be prepared to stimulate the export of such cattle from this country, as they are the kind of cattle we want to send out. Our aim should be to push out as many cattle over three years as we possibly can, and the more cattle in that category we can get rid of, the more room we have for young cattle who will make a quick turnover and result in better profits for the small farmers of this country.

I want to ask the Minister for Agriculture another question. We want to expand pig production in this country. I think the Minister will agree with me that nothing contributed more to the expansion of pig production than the guaranteeing of the price of grade A pigs for a period of six months ahead from each date of guarantee. Why? Because it created a sense of security in the mind of the producer. Here again, I do not underestimate the difficulties of this problem, but I think there is a new element of insecurity creeping into the whole business and that it comes in in relation to grading.

When I was Minister for Agriculture, I pointed out repeatedly that I thought that the precautions then in operation here ought to be sufficient to secure fair grading for all who brought their pigs to a factory. I am on the other side of the fence now, and I suppose I hear more of my neighbours talking than I did when I was Minister. Rightly or wrongly, I think there is creeping back into this trade an element of uncertainty that we ought to be able to eliminate. There are lots of fellows who will bring pigs to a factory and when they are graded B, C or F, they attribute it at once to bad grading—whereas, in fact, it is not due to that at all but to their own incompetence. On the other hand, I am obliged to confess that cases have come to my notice recently in which I do not think there can be much doubt that grading has been operated to the detriment of the producer.

It is quite possible, and it has happened particularly where one is dealing with small curers, that grading operates the other way. Small curers will sometimes upgrade some grade B to grade A because they want to maintain the loyalty and continuity of supply of some of their better suppliers and do not like them to get a lot of grade B, even if some of their pigs properly belong to that grade. That is something against which the Minister need take no precaution; because if a factory wants to pay more than they are bound to pay, it is the factory's own funeral and it is for them to make up the price by superior deligence in curing and so on. Where it operates the other way and leads to a feeling of insecurity in the minds of the people, I think the Minister should examine the question generally as to whether some check should be made in the grading at the factories up and down the country. It would reassure all reasonable people—one can never hope to reassure everyone, including the unreasonable—that in 99 per cent. of the cases, justice was being done to the producer. The only way to do that would be to install Government inspectors of grading.

At present, the veterinary surgeon operating on behalf of the Department of Agriculture in every factory is available to be called in, if the owner of the pigs questions the grading done by the factory grader; but, of course, in fact the owner, for a variety of reasons, very often is not there or is not in a position to challenge the grading when it is going on. He is not always able to identify his own pig with certainty when it is on the hoof. What he really wants is somebody who is expert to act on his behalf, so that he will not be codded and will get the value of whatever he sends in.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is getting away from the terms of the motion, which deal with unemployment and emigration.

Mr. Dillon

Wait a moment. Perhaps you have not looked at the amendment.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I have.

Mr. Dillon

It says: "and the acute problems of those engaged in agriculture..." If you have a grade A pig and it is graded as X, you have an acute problem in agriculture on your hands.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I fear it is not relevant to the original motion.

Mr. Dillon

If that is not an acute problem in agriculture, I do not know what is. When I get grade B for grade A, I think it is an acute problem for me, but when one gets grade X for grade A, that is a haymaker. Now, I am trying to make proposals. We want to restore and expand production and anything which undermines security operates against that expansion.

I want to make a fourth proposal. I introduced the Parish Plan here. I think the Minister for Agriculture, who was himself never much of an enthusiast for it, was recently obliged to concede that, at least in its function in the parish of Killeshandra in association with the co-operative creamery there, it has resulted in a very material improvement in the standards of agriculture in that congested area. I am convinced that there are many proposals well calculated to expand agricultural production in this country and create employment on the land, which are not being followed because the people on the land have not got the technical know-how.

I will give one case in point. I want to suggest that if there had been a parish agent available in every parish in this country this year, we need not have lost a ton of hay. Hundreds of thousands of tons of hay this year went to waste because the farmers who had it were not equipped to use the alternative proposal of ensilage. All that bad hay could have been made into good ensilage, if farmers had known how to do it. I do not see how they are going to know how to do it, if there is not somebody available to come and help them to do it for the first time in their own area. I do not know how they are to come to know of the availability of such a process and the fact that it involves virtually no cost, that the equipment simply consists of digging a hole in the ground or, if they do not want to do that, simply building it on the ground. I do not see where they are to get that information, if there is not available a parish agent to give it to them.

I will not go beyond the parish of Killeshandra. I think the conditions there are well known to the Minister. If he does not know the conditions obtaining in the other 20 parishes where parish groups or parish agents are working, I invite him to find them out and to familiarise himself with them. I think that in Leitrim, Longford, Cork and many other parts of the country, the benefits of the parish plan are manifest for all to see. If we want to increase production—and an increase in production on the land will give employment on the land—I believe that one of the most effective methods of getting it would be to make the parish agent available in every parish in Ireland.

I want to return to a subject which was commenced in this country on a previous occasion, that is, the double byre grant, as an added inducement for the expeditious completion of the T.B. eradication scheme. I would suggest to the Minister that, instead of misrepresenting proposals which I had under consideration before I left office, he should adopt them. I proposed to the Minister for Finance before I left office that there were certain areas in which it appeared to me that, if we did not apply some spur, the process of T.B. eradication would go on for ever and I said:—

"Would it not be a good thing to announce that, say, in County Galway, everybody had 12 months in which voluntarily to enter the T.B. scheme and if they did, they would be entitled to a double byre grant, but at the end of the 12 months, the double byre grant would be no longer available and those who did not enter it voluntarily within the 12 months would cut themselves out of the double byre grant and that thereafter, when compulsory measures came to be introduced, they would have to conform to them, whether they liked it or not."

Here was a time of opportunity in order to get voluntary co-operation from all. I suggest to the Minister that he should revive that plan. I think it was a good plan, certainly much better than to wipe the double byres out of the scheme and to have no other inducement to the people to cooperate in what is an urgent necessity for the agricultural industry.

Some people will say that what I said to-day is not couched in the trenchant form appropriate to a vote of no confidence. I do not want to traffic in the problems of unemployment. They are too grievous and too great a hardship to make them the subject of political shuttlecocks across the floor of this House. I do indict the Government on that they gave undertakings which they failed to perform. I do indict the Government because they promised to do what they knew they could not do. I do indict the Government because they charged their predecessors with indifference to the problems which they in their hearts knew were causing the inter-Party Government just as acute anxiety as they were causing to anybody in this country or elsewhere.

I have elected to-day to confine myself to concrete proposals which I believe would contribute to the reduction of unemployment and emigration. I do not believe the suggestions I have to make will eliminate either problem overnight but I believe they will help to reduce them and I have evidence for that. Many people bought the fraudulent proposition that agricultural output was stagnant for the ten years after the war. A lot of egg-heads going around the country, particularly economic advisers, God save the mark, were delivering orations, backed by sheets of statistics, to prove that there was stagnation in the agricultural industry.

Then they suddenly woke up one day to discover that in the ten years from 1947 to 1957 we had doubled the volume of our agricultural exports, trebled their value, and in the process of so doing, had increased the number of cattle on the land from 3,950,000 to 4,957,000. We had increased the number of young cattle of under two years from 1,697,000 to 2,160,000. We had increased the number of sheep from 2,094,000 to 4,177,000 and the number of pigs from 456,000 to 953,000. That was done during a period of stagnation, if you please, which some of the long-haired professors and statisticians persuaded the people to accept as a fact, in a period of dynamic expansion of that kind. There is no reason why we should not have a period of a similar kind if we put our backs into it as we did in the happy days from 1948 to 1951 and from 1954 to 1957.

I want to go a step further and deal with emigration and unemployment. I believe that if something is done on the line suggested here by me, for the further expansion of agricultural production, you will get a corresponding revival in the small towns of rural Ireland, when you come down to concrete proposals for giving more work outside agriculture and the distributive trades and services that wait upon the industry of agriculture. I want to repeat to-day a question which nobody has answered, although I have asked it twice before in this House. How are you going to break the vicious circle that if you want to develop export industries you must have markets in which to dispose of the exportable product and if you have not those markets how are you going to beget the industries?

So we get into the vicious circle. If you have no markets you cannot start industry and you cannot get the markets until you have the product with which to supply the market. There is no more fatal error that any export country can make than to go out and seek markets and then find itself unable to fill the demand it has created, because once bitten twice shy and those who have given the orders on the first journey, and found themselves let down in delivery, will give the same salesman a short answer when he comes back a year later and says: "I failed last year but we have supplies now". He will be told: "We do not want your supplies now".

I know of no way of breaking that vicious circle which confronts us other than to seek the establishment in this country of branch factories of existing industries in countries abroad which have adequate marketing organisations at their disposal, into which the output of their industrial activity can be poured for consumption in the markets they have created. There is no reason, in my opinion, why such a project cannot be embarked on and I can tell the Government that if they are too timorous, or too incompetent, to envisage such a project I will do what I can to see what can be done along those lines, but it is a shocking thing that the Government, with the resources they have, do not do something about it.

I am no enthusiast for bringing in foreigners from the far ends of the earth and advising them to speculate with their money. I welcome any foreign industrialist who comes here and having surveyed the project invests his own money. I think the Government have an obligation to say to such people: "If you are prepared to risk your own capital we will give you every facility which we can." I think we are going one step beyond what prudent solicitude would suggest if we extend the invitation: "Come on in here and speculate with our money." If there is any speculation of that kind to be done we have plenty of speculators here. We grow them as freely as mushrooms and we do not have to bring them in from abroad.

I should like to see the branches of well established firms brought in here, who have the know-how and existing marketing organisation in foreign markets. I want to repeat a warning which I gave here before. There is no use blinding ourselves to the magnitude of the problem of acquiring access to foreign markets by setting up a commission to inquire where those markets are. We all know where the markets are; the problem is to get into them and you cannot solve that by setting up a commission. I have often told this House that when I was Minister for Agriculture I knew of markets where we could dispose of ten times the quantity of dried milk we could produce, on the assumption that we had the maximum possible production. We made repeated efforts to get into those markets and we never got into them because although we knew the Dutch, the New Zealanders and others were there we had not got the production, or the volume, to enable us to establish ourselves.

That is only one item and there are many others of which that is also true. The stumbling block is the marketing organisation in the markets prepared to consume your goods. In dealing with this question of industry I think it right to invite foreign industry here because my primary concern is to get employment for people who want employment in their own country. But the Government ought to face the fact that in addition to the employment which can be provided by foreigners coming in here to establish industries, existing domestic industry and business could be considerably expanded if allowed to plough back part of their profits into an expansion of their own industry. With present taxation rates on business here, consisting of corporation profits tax, income-tax and other charges that fall upon it, there just is not anything left to expand the domestic industry. Mark you, we should watch our step because we are becoming so enthusiastic about foreign industrialists that a legitimate grievance will arise in the minds of many businessmen here who say: "We would gladly do all this if we were given half the tax concessions that are being handed around as it were on a silver salver to anybody who comes in from outside." Those are proposals which I think could make some contribution to the solution of our problems of unemployment and emigration.

I want to refer briefly to a matter dealt with by Deputy Norton when he spoke. I am glad Deputy Faulkner is here. Deputy Faulkner looks upon the Minister for Industry and Commerce as the source of all wisdom, all virtue and of all patriotism. I knew full well what it was designed to achieve, when Deputy Lemass, as he then was, published the £100,000,000 scheme in Clery's restaurant and had it printed as a supplement to the Irish Press that you could cut out and keep in the bureau drawer lest your faith should ever falter. I am happy to think that Deputy Faulkner cut it out, framed it and put it in the kitchen so that he could gaze up at it whenever he began to think that Fianna Fáil was not as hot as he thought it was. I knew it was a fraud at the time, designed to deceive people like Deputy Faulkner and I was sorry when he saw the author of that fraud exposed in this House because I do not like to be the witness of any man, whether he be young, old or middle-aged, losing his illusions.

Mr. Faulkner

The people of Dundalk and mid-Louth appreciate the work of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Lemass.

Mr. Dillon

I do not want to engage in any exchange with Deputy Faulkner over the misfortune of the poor fellows who have lost their jobs in Dundalk. I am not attributing blame for that, but there is no good in Deputy Faulkner bewailing their woes here——

Mr. Faulkner

For which the Coalition was responsible.

Mr. Corish

Not at all.

Mr. Dillon

I am thinking of this fact. There is now a £220,000,000 scheme and as Deputy Norton said, if you made it a ten-year scheme you could call it a £440,000,000 scheme. If you made the period 20 years you could call it an £880,000,000 scheme and when you got up into those empyrean figures, sure you would be justified in rounding it off and calling it a £1,000,000,000 scheme. But that is pie in the sky. That is fraud; that is clap-trap; that is the kind of thing that has been making young people in this country ask themselves: "Is everybody in Dáil Éireann a fraud? Have you to be a fraud to get into Dáil Éireann?"

Mark you, when Deputy Faulkner goes down to Louth and starts talking about the £100,000,000 scheme of Deputy Lemass that now has had twin pups and is liable to have quadruplets at the next Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis, many young people will shrug their shoulders and say: "He is either a fool or a knave, and, knowing his people, I do not believe he is a knave." Not every person in Dáil Éireann comes of a family so long and favourably known as Deputy Faulkner's and there is great danger—and I speak advisedly—that too many of our people will jump to the conclusion that to qualify for Dáil Éireann, to get in here at all, you must be a fraud and a knave.

If that time comes, Parliament will proceed to perish and the State will cease to be free. There was no use in all the sacrifice, in all the struggle and strain, if the end of it is to be that the best part of our population will leave the country and those who are left are constrained to operate our institutions under a system no longer free.

Here in this House the great and ultimate test will be made. How long will the people believe in us? They will go on believing in us if we are honest and tell them the truth and perform all our undertakings to the best of our ability and where we fail, explain to them the reason why, but they will lose faith in us and in the Parliament to which we belong if we tell them lies and purchase their votes by fraud. I think it is a cruel thing when men are unemployed to canvass their wives from every hoarding: "Give us your votes so that your husbands may get a job." I think it is a degrading fraud to proclaim in Clery's restaurant that there is something new and wonderful when £100,000,000 sterling is to be spent and, when that has grown old and disreputable, to return to the charge and pretend that there is something new and wonderful in maintaining existing capital programmes by jumping five years together and telling the people that there is a new dynamism to be expected from the outlay of £200,000,000 when in fact if you look back over the last ten years you will find that the average over those ten years of annual capital outlay was very close to that amount.

The time has come when we should put forward sensible, sane proposals which in the long run will operate to produce the kind of economy and life we want for our people. The time has come when we should tell our people plainly and frankly that those who will elect to live in Ireland will never be rich in the sense that people grow rich in the great industrial economies founded on unlimited natural resources such as obtain in Great Britain or the U.S.A., but that we can attain in this country to a better life than is available probably to any other predominantly agricultural community in the world. There may be those amongst us who wish to see the whole of Ireland turned into a black country and agriculture relegated to a second, third or fourth place. I am not amongst them. I believe our destiny is to be an agricultural community and on that foundation I believe we can build a decent industrial life, a decent professional life, and a decent farming life for all our people which will give us happiness and the conditions in which a decent Christian family can best be reared.

These are the things I want for our people. These are the things it is possible for us to get and these are the things with which Fianna Fáil did not concern themselves but preferred to delude the voters by promises which were false, and by allegations that they knew were slanderous. They are paying the penalty now, the penalty of distrust, and the tragedy is that the penalty of vanishing confidence is being visited not only upon them but upon every Deputy of this House. For that Fianna Fáil is eminently deserving of censure and for that I ask the House to carry this motion as amended by our amendment.

Minister for Health (Mr. MacEntee)

There is nothing surprising about Deputy Norton's speech, nothing surprising in the terms in which the Leader of the Labour Party moved the resolution which stands in his name. It was a sort of speech containing the same spurious arguments which I have heard from Deputy Norton since 1932. If he has been consistent in nothing else he has been consistent in the fact that when he talks he has very little regard to the facts. He is eloquent about the plight of those who are unemployed. He can weep crocodile tears for their misfortunes but he never adduces any solid support for the case which he makes.

In his speech to-day he had to make some reference to the lamentable condition in which this country was handed over to the present Government in March, 1957. He found an excuse for it, in the statement that adverse conditions had developed in Europe which had their natural reaction upon this country. Of course they had. It was undeniable that these conditions existed. We in opposition never pretended that they did not create difficulties for the Government of the day, but in our criticisms of the Government we did say that they were not the sole cause of the acute crisis which compelled the Government towards the end of 1956 to take such drastic measures as Deputy Dillon has claimed credit for in the speech to which we have just listened.

It would be more correct to say that our difficulties here in Ireland at that time were very largely difficulties of our own creation, difficulties for which the Coalition Government was mainly responsible. It is true that in 1955 there was some diminution in the unemployment figure, that the number on the live register had been somewhat reduced—we shall give them credit for that—but reduced at what a cost, at the cost of almost complete dislocation of the country's economy in the autumn of 1956. The money which was poured out then on schemes like the Local Authorities (Works) Act to create an appearance of prosperity, was money that was derived from the realisation of the external investments of the community. Those millions represented a waste of capital which might have been more reproductively employed. Of course, in due time nemesis overtook the Government. The Government which in 1954 had been handed over a country which was solvent, a Budget which was balanced, created a deficit on our balance of external trade of £35.5 million in 1955 and, despite the drastic measures which they had taken to curtail imports, left us still with a deficit in respect of the year 1956 of £14.4 million.

General Mulcahy

Deputy Loughman knows now why the Anner River drainage was stopped.

Mr. MacEntee

I did not interrupt either Deputy Norton or Deputy Dillon. The spurious prosperity which was created by the Government's policy of 1955 cost this country almost £50,000,000 of external assets and left us with a Budget in 1956 which failed to balance by almost £6,000,000. But they did worse than that. One of the consequences of the policy initiated by the Coalition Government after it took office in June, 1954, was that in February, 1957, the last month before they were swept from office, we found that the number of people on the live register amounted to 95,267.

This was the problem which was handed over to the Fianna Fáil administration in March, 1957. We had first a degree of unemployment which had not been experienced in this country for at least 20 years; we had a Budget which did not balance by almost £6,000,000 and we had on top of that an accumulated deficit on our balance of external payments in respect of the years 1955 and 1956 of, in round figures, £50,000,000. That was the problem which was handed over to us by our successors of 1954, by those who were responsible for defeating us in that year.

Mr. Sweetman

That is as mixed up as the figures the Minister gave.

Mr. MacEntee

I will put it in this way: by those who succeeded us in 1954. They were handed over in that year a very different position. There was no balance of payments problem. Unemployment was very much lower and we had, as I have said on another occasion, a Budget which would have balanced, were it not for the fact that our successors reintroduced in that year the subsidy on tea and increased the subsidy on butter. However, I do not want to go back at this stage to 1954. The position at that time may arise, perhaps, in relation to some other comments I shall have to make. The consequence, as I have said, of the policy which was pursued over the years 1955 and 1956 was that the country had been brought almost to the verge of economic disaster.

Now, the justification for the motion which stands in the name of the Labour Party is that, in view of the high level of unemployment and emigration, the Government have not the confidence of the Dáil. Let us see what, in fact, is the position in relation to unemployment. Deputy Norton quoted only one figure. He quoted a figure of 51,800, the total of men, women and juveniles on the live register on 18th October of this year. Let us see how that contrasts with the figures for earlier years. On the corresponding date in 1957, when we were in office, the figure was 52,331. On 20th October, 1956, when the Coalition Government were in office, the figure was 54,923. The position, therefore, is that, in 1957, the number of those unemployed, or seeking employment, on the live register was less by 2,600 than it was in October, 1956, when our predecessors were in office. This year, on 18th October, the figure had fallen still further to 51,803. That includes, let me repeat, not merely men but women, boys and girls as well; it includes not merely those who are in receipt of unemployment benefit but also those who are in receipt of unemployment assistance. It includes others.

Mr. Coogan

Emigrants.

Mr. MacEntee

The category of "other persons" consists mainly of those who, although they may be employed, are seeking employment elsewhere, that is seeking to change their jobs. We have, in fact, succeeded in substantially reducing unemployment, having due regard to the circumstances with which we were faced in the spring of 1957, and to the urgent and pressing problems with which we had immediately to contend.

Mr. Dillon

And the 60,000 who emigrated.

(Interruptions.)

An Ceann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. MacEntee

Let me remind the House of the circumstances and conditions which existed when we were called upon to deal with these problems. The Coalition Government had piled up an unproductive debt. The Coalition Government had depleted our external assets. By reason of the panic measures which they had taken in the autumn of 1956, they had thrown the whole of industry into a state of confusion. They had reduced public morale to its very lowest. There was despair throughout the country.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. MacEntee

It is quite true that people began to emigrate then, people who had never thought of emigrating before, and many of those who emigrated were persons in reasonably secure jobs.

Mr. O'Sullivan

Like the Taoiseach's relatives.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister must be allowed to speak.

Mr. MacEntee

People emigrated, people who had made up their minds that, if Coalition Governments continued to be the Governments of the day and Coalition policies continued to be pursued, there was no future in Ireland for them or for their children.

(Interruptions.)

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister must be heard without interruption.

Mr. Coogan

It is terrible to have to listen to it.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy has his remedy. The Minister is entitled to be heard without interruption, and I shall insist on his being heard.

Mr. MacEntee

With the despair prevailing throughout the country as to the future of this State, it is no wonder that emigration began to mount to a degree never experienced before. Now, once a trend of that sort sets in, it cannot be corrected overnight. One cannot control the flow by operating sluice gates. People have made their arrangements and they will continue to go until the economic position is retrieved and they can see some sort of development taking place along well-considered lines, some development which will offer them some assurance that what is being done will be continued and that when a project is initiated, it will be brought to successful fruition and completion. I have not described one-half of the difficulties with which we had to contend. Every departmental fund had been rifled by our predecessors.

Mr. Sweetman

That is not true.

Mr. MacEntee

It is true.

Mr. Sweetman

It is not true.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. Sweetman

The Minister has made a scurrilous misstatement.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy may correct it when he comes to speak.

Mr. Sweetman

It is a scurrilous misstatement to say anything was rifled, and the Minister knows that.

Mr. MacEntee

In order to keep the machinery of Government going, every asset that could be readily realised had been taken and spent.

Mr. Sweetman

I challenge the Minister for Health to produce any figures in support of that.,

Mr. Corish

What is the use? He says the first thing that comes into his head.

Mr. MacEntee

Everybody knows what the position was——

Mr. Sweetman

Produce the figures on the Table.

Mr. MacEntee

——of the Hospitals Trust Fund. In order to keep hospital construction going, the then Minister for Health had to borrow from a private concern. When I took over the Department of Health, my first problem was to prevent the collapse of the whole hospital building programme.

Mr. O'Sullivan

The white elephant at one time.

Mr. MacEntee

That was the position in which I found myself because of the improvident way in which public moneys had been handled by our predecessors.

Mr. Sweetman

I do not believe the Minister.

Mr. MacEntee

There is where the root cause of unemployment lay. That is what resulted in swelling the numbers on the unemployment register to 95,267 on 1st February, 1957.

Again, so far as private industry was concerned, everybody knows the conditions under which the ordinary shopkeeper, for whom Deputy Dillon was speaking this evening, and the ordinary manufacturer stood at that time in relation to the banks and their bankers. Everybody knows that the banks then were at the pin of their collar to meet the requirements of their customers, because the Government had compelled them to finance these unreproductive schemes—yes, had compelled them to finance them— under threat of nationalisation made to them by Deputies and members of the Labour Party.

Mr. Sweetman

Tripe.

Mr. MacEntee

That is the sort of coercion to which the financial institutions of this country were subjected when our predecessors were in office.

Mr. Sweetman

Who is responsible for finance? Who is responsible for financial policy?

Mr. MacEntee

Is it any wonder that——

Mr. Sweetman

Who wanted to have Irish sterling depreciated?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister is entitled to be heard without interruption.

Mr. Sweetman

He should be entitled to tell the truth.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Sweetman knows that he will have an opportunity of repudiating this, if he thinks it is wrong.

Mr. Sweetman

I thought the Minister for Health was an honest man. I am finding that he is not.

General Mulcahy

Everybody knows.

Mr. Davern

On a point of order, is it in order for a Deputy to attribute dishonesty to a Minister of State?

An Ceann Comhairle

I did not hear the remark.

Mr. Sweetman

I said that I had thought that the Minister for Health was an honest man. Now I know, after the speech he is making, that he is not.

Mr. Blaney

So he is a dishonest man? Is that the idea?

Mr. MacEntee

I am sorry that Deputy Sweetman should express that opinion of me, but, after all, I am speaking the truth as I see it. Even if he objects to that, I can do no other than describe the chaotic conditions which existed when we took over from the Government of which he was a member. Let me say, in justice to Deputy Sweetman, that I know that he struggled to prevent this situation from developing, but I also believe that he was overborne by many of his colleagues whose first concern was to secure themselves in office and, in order to do that, were quite prepared to spend public money unreproductively in order to secure public support.

General Mulcahy

Is that a reasonable parliamentary remark, Sir?

Mr. N. Egan

It is as reasonable as Deputy Sweetman's.

General Mulcahy

The Minister charges that a Party in this House were prepared to keep themselves in office by underhand methods.

Mr. Corish

Who takes much notice of what the Minister says?

Mr. Sweetman

The Minister knows very well that no money was spent unless I authorised it and it is no good trying to dissociate me from it.

General Mulcahy

May I ask if the line of argument is sound in a debate in which the Government expect to show what they are doing to relieve unemployment?

An Ceann Comhairle

I have nothing to do with the line of argument. The Minister for Health, on the motion and the amendment.

General Mulcahy

This is an admission of the implication in the resolution.

Mr. N. Egan

They cannot listen.

Mr. MacEntee

It is very difficult in the sort of atmosphere that is now being created in the House to be reasoned in speech. I was hoping that I might be permitted, having dealt with Deputy Norton, to come back and deal with the rather more reasonable speech of Deputy Dillon. I am dealing with Deputy Norton and I am pointing out that perhaps the prime architects of all the hardship and suffering which the people endured under the Coalition Governments, the consequences of which they are still suffering from, was Deputy Norton and those associated with him in his Party and in the Coalition Government.

Mr. Coogan

Hardship of bread and butter. Tell us about that.

Mr. Davern

Keep your hair on.

Mr. Coogan

Some of the Deputy's is coming off.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy should restrain himself. He is constantly interrupting.

Mr. Coogan

I want to keep him on the right road, Sir.

An Ceann Comhairle

I want to keep the Deputy on the right road.

Mr. MacEntee

I have shown that so far as the unemployment register is any criterion of the economic condition of this country, it is certainly much better in October, 1958, than it was in October, 1956. The situation is by no means what we should like it to be, but at least we can claim credit for this, that it is much better than it was when it was handed over to us.

There is another criterion. The output of electricity from the E.S.B. stations is a fair indication of industrial and other economic activity. I have here some figures for that. In January, 1956, before the real slump set in, the output from the E.S.B. stations for that month amounted to 169.66 million units. In 1957, it was 174.74 million units. Even the Coalition policy had not been able completely to stop the expansion in demand. But, in January of 1958, the output had increased to 191.15 million units. Those are the figures for the month of January for the three years 1956, 1957 and 1958 and we can see there that, between 1956 and 1958, the output from the E.S.B. generating stations increased by something like 12 or 13 per cent. In July, 1956, when the crisis was just beginning to build up, or, perhaps I should say, was coming fairly close to its climax, the output from the E.S.B. stations was 110.44 million units. In 1957, after we had taken over, it had increased to 117.12 million units, and in 1958, the last month of the current year for which figures are available, the output is up to 124.44 million units—another increase of about 13 per cent. over the 1956 figure.

Mr. Coogan

You called it a white elephant.

Mr. MacEntee

We can take the average monthly output over the years 1956 and 1957 as a whole and accept them as fair standards for comparison. In 1956, the average monthly output was 127.53 million units and in 1957, it was 142.66 million units. These figures indicate that since the Fianna Fáil Government took office in March, 1957, there has been a gradual improvement in industrial and economic conditions. We are not saying by any means that the improvement has been as rapid or as great as we would like, but, at any rate, it has been definite and it has been steady and it has been progressive and it gives every indication that at last we are beginning to get out of the wood.

There is one thing about Deputy Norton that always fills me with admiration and that is his audacity. He referred to two remarkable undertakings which are now under way— the Whitegate oil refinery which he said was entirely ascribable to him. I understand that the present Tánaiste and Minister for Industry and Commerce had opened up negotiations for the establishment of an oil refinery in this country before he left office in 1954, but, whether he did or did not, I do know this, that he had completed an agreement for the establishment of an oil refinery in the City of Dublin in the year 1936-37. Everyone knew that the actual construction of that refinery had been begun before the 1939 war. I also know that amongst those most strongly opposed to the project, who misrepresented to the voters of the country what the effects of it would be, were Deputy Norton and his colleagues. That is why his audacity fills me with amazement because, having torpedoed one oil refinery project and having had the good fortune to take office when the second—and, I hope, now successful—oil refinery project was in process of gestation, he claims the baby as his own.

Similarly, he referred to the St. Patrick's Copper Mines at Avoca. The history of that undertaking is a very long one.

Mr. O'Sullivan

And an interesting one.

Mr. MacEntee

We began to prospect that site, to clear out the old workings, to map them and survey them in order to prove, first of all, whether the deposits actually existed, to prove whether there was an economic body of ore existing there, and then, having regard to the sort of mining that had taken place there in the past, whether it was going to be a practical proposition to extract that ore. We spent something like £400,000, if my memory does not mislead me. It was a long process and an expensive one, but we carried it on in the face of opposition.

When the Coalition took office in 1948, the first thing they did was to stop all that exploration work. They held it up for one year and it was resumed in a sort of half-hearted, haphazard way before they left office. It was pushed ahead with vigour when the Fianna Fáil administration again took office in 1951 and it was as a result of that persevering work, carried out over a very great number of years, that we have St. Patrick's Copper Mines now at work in Avoca giving employment, as Deputy Norton says, to some hundreds of men. It might never have been there if it had not been for the work and enterprise of the Fianna Fáil Government which determined, with the authority of this House behind it, that it would explore the possibilities there.

It has been alleged that we rode into power upon some sort of false undertakings which were cynically given, and which we did not intend to fulfil in any way. The promise upon which we got into office was that we would restore public credit. We have done that and it now stands very much higher than it was when we took office in the spring of last year. We said we would redress the balance of payments and that has been done. We said we would put the public finances in order and that has been done. All these things we claimed we would do, and when these things were done, we said, as a natural consequence and sequel, people would come back into employment again, and wives would have the satisfaction of seeing their husbands, who had been idle for a long term, coming back into jobs.

Mr. Davern

Hear, hear!

Mr. MacEntee

There was no attempt to deceive the people as to the seriousness of the problem with which we were faced, and I quote the election address I issued to every elector in my constituency, and which was delivered to every household. The undertakings I gave were given by all our people, and were certainly given by the Taoiseach. He said the same thing in different words, and this is what I said:—

"We do not promise to perform miracles. We do not promise, as our opponents did last time, to increase expenditure and at the same time reduce taxation. We believe in straightforward dealing with the electorate. We are certain, however, that the return of a Fianna Fáil Government would restore the public morale, give confidence to investors, and encourage and help initiative and enterprise. It would reawaken that faith in ourselves and in our country, which is essential if the difficulties that now perplex us are to be overcome. It would give the people that clear-cut leadership which the present crisis demands.

With a full sense of responsibility to all our people, a Fianna Fáil Government will scrutinise every channel of public expenditure and cut out every item which can reasonably be dispensed with. The results should enable taxation... to be reduced. We would like to be more specific in regard to this most important matter—and we would be if we only knew the whole truth about the financial situation of the State. But Mr. Costello's Coalition has denied this knowledge to the people. He has dissolved the Dáil at the very period when the facts should be forthcoming. Therefore, we will not make blind promises. We ask you to vote for us as honourable men."

That was the election address I issued and I know many others were issued in similar terms. I know that the Taoiseach, the leader of our Party, addressed the people in the same terms during the whole election campaign.

Mr. Coogan

At Belmullet?

Mr. K. Boland

Everywhere.

Mr. MacEntee

Therefore, on that basis there is no foundation for this vote of no confidence as proposed by the Labour Party.

I turn now to Deputy Dillon. Naturally, I was wondering when I read it what was the purpose behind the Fine Gael amendment, and in that respect I think Deputy Dillon's speech was most revealing. Its very tone was commendable, but it certainly was not the tone of a person who was proposing a vote of no confidence. Certainly it did not come from a person who himself felt any lack of confidence in the policy which the Government were pursuing. On the contrary, he was making constructive suggestions to the Minister for Agriculture, and indirectly to the Minister for Industry and Commerce, about what might be done to improve the existing situation. He did not ask, in the speech which he made moving his amendment, the Fine Gael amendment, that Fianna Fáil policy should be reversed in any particular. This was a really significant thing about Deputy Dillon's speech. Naturally he is anxious to find himself in the Division Lobby with the Labour Party. He is anxious to give the Government a kick, and I suppose he is anxious to try and make some sort of a political score, but one thing which was clear beyond doubt from the Deputy's speech was that he did not want a reversion to the conditions which existed under the last Coalition Government.

I am glad that at least there is that much common ground between us and one of the leaders of the principal Opposition Party. If we can agree that, henceforward, it will be the concern of all the Parties in this House to ensure that the public finances are properly managed, that the public credit will be maintained, that in so far as we have to utilise our now very greatly depleted capital resources they will be spent only upon projects which will give an economic return——

Mr. O'Sullivan

Mr. Considine.

Mr. MacEntee

If we can get that sort of common ground between us then I think that, despite the prognostications of people outside about the decline of democracy in this country and about the decline in our economy, there will be very great hope for the future.

I do not want to introduce an acrimonious note at this stage but I could not help smiling when I heard Deputy Dillon bemoaning the type of placard publicity used during the last election campaign on the part, perhaps, of Fianna Fáil, in the same way as it was used on the part of opposing Parties. I could not help recalling the poster of 1954——

Mr. Sweetman

The three balls.

Mr. MacEntee

——with its implied undertaking that if only you put Fianna Fáil out then whoever would succeed them would reduce prices to the 1951 or 1952 level.

Mr. Sweetman

Tripe.

Mr. MacEntee

It is there. It was used. It was a very large factor, no doubt, in swaying the votes of the electorate on that occasion. When I heard Deputy Dillon talking in these terms I began to recall the saying about the pot calling the kettle black. However, that is over and done with. I hope that, from henceforward, we shall have from the principal opposition Party, if it is vain to expect it from Deputy Norton, at least a common appreciation of the difficulties with which the country is confronted.

So far as the Government are concerned, we have laid the foundations for progress. We now have that inside knowledge which was not available to us when in opposition. We now can see our way clear for the initiation of a policy for economic expansion. In the execution of that policy we shall have available to us the advice, co-operation and support of international agencies which were previously denied us. The enterprise to launch the programme, the effort to carry it through, the labour and sacrifice which will be entailed must be ours and all ours.

Mr. Sweetman

What are the international agencies? Would the Minister specify them?

Mr. MacEntee

The World Bank, for instance.

Mr. Sweetman

Why are we a member? It is because I sent the Secretary of the Department of Finance over to New York to make the arrangements.

Mr. MacEntee

We completed them. That is just the difference between the Coalition's disposition and the Fianna Fáil disposition in regard to public affairs.

Mr. Sweetman

You took the step I left there for you to take.

Mr. MacEntee

Having brought the fact out that he initiated the proposals——

Mr. Sweetman

I started it.

Mr. MacEntee

I am conceding that the Deputy initiated it but we carried it through to completion. After all, when we initiated the transatlantic air service in 1948 what did Fine Gael and the Coalition do?

Mr. Sweetman

Thanks be to God, what did they do?

Mr. MacEntee

When we were working on the Avoca copper deposits, what did Fine Gael do?

Mr. Sweetman

We made sure that the title was right to get the——

(Interruptions.)

Mr. MacEntee

When we projected and actually ordered and, I think, had begun the building for the plant and had received the equipment of the chassis factory at Inchicore——

Mr. Sweetman

"Chassis" is right.

Mr. O'Sullivan

We are in a state of chassis now.

Mr. MacEntee

When we had begun that work at Inchicore, who stopped it? Who torpedoed it? Who sabotaged that? Fine Gael and the Coalition. You have not found Fianna Fáil doing that in regard to any project initiated by their predecessors which gave any hope——

A Deputy

What about the Local Authorities (Works) Act?

Mr. MacEntee

That was a slush fund. You did not find Fianna Fáil dealing in that frame of mind with any worthwhile project that had been started or initiated by the Coalition Government. On the contrary, we took them over. We completed them. We brought them to fruition and now we are making them work. We are quite glad that the Minister for Finance of the day had the vision and the foresight to initiate the proposals for our joining the World Bank. We are grateful to him for it. He deserves credit for it. I hope he will not deny us the credit of at least——

Mr. Sweetman

——finishing the job I started, certainly.

Mr. MacEntee

Precisely—instead of doing as you had done in relation to a number of other very important enterprises in this country, sabotaging and torpedoing them.

Mr. Sweetman

Mine were too good to be stopped.

Mr. Corish

The significant thing about this week, as against the weeks and the months gone by, is that the Government have been induced to break what appeared to have been a vow of silence. I do not think it would be unfair criticism to say that since the Dáil adjourned on, I think, 16th July, there has not been any speech on policy from any member of the Fianna Fáil Government or indeed from the Fianna Fáil Party. As far as one can see, the only interests the Government seem to have or have had in the past three months are television, proportional representation and the Irish language. There is no evidence from them that there will be an improvement in what we must regard as the dangerous situation in unemployment and emigration.

I do not want to decry either television or the question of proportional representation or, indeed, the Irish language. It seems to me, however, that Fianna Fáil are deliberately trying to divert the minds of the people from the things that really matter—the things of major importance—by talking about television, as various Ministers have done in the past three or four months, or by talking of the merits or the demerits of proportional representation or about the revival of the Irish language.

I am one of those people, possibly in the minority, who want to see the Irish language revived. However, I think it goes a little too far when the Taoiseach says, as he did a month ago, as reported in the newspapers, that the most important task in the country at the present time is the revival of the Irish language. I think that is so much balderdash. I think it is nonsense for the Taoiseach to tell people who are unemployed or sick or suffering under various difficulties in the country that the most important and urgent problem is the revival of the Irish language. To give them their due, I do not believe the majority of the members of the Fianna Fáil Party believe it. I do not believe the bigger number of the members of the Government believe that the revival of the Irish language is the most important problem in the country at the present time. It is important and it is important that it should be revived. It is important that the right methods should be used but it is not more important than a job or good wages. It is not more important than good social services or employment on housing schemes.

The speech made by the Minister for Health is the type of speech that he accuses Deputy Norton of making. It is the type of buffoonery and playacting which has gone on in this House from the likes of the Minister for Health for the past 35 years. He does not intend to deal with the motion. We could talk for days, weeks and years about what the inter-Party Government did and what Fianna Fáil did, or what Fianna Fáil promised in 1932, but it would be no consolation to the odd 50,000 people who are unemployed or to the thousands of others who have to emigrate year after year. Reference to the past and to the arguments advanced by your opponents in the past is the type of thing which, more than anything else, makes the people cynical and causes them to say that Dáil Éireann is only a talking shop and that none of the Parties intend doing anything.

Incidentally, before a I forget it, the Minister for Health said that the main concern of the Labour Party during the last few months of the inter-Party Government's term of office, was to keep men employed in order to obtain votes. If we are to be accused of that, I plead guilty, but the Minister for Health never seems to have regard to the fact that Irishmen want to work in this country. They do not want to draw the dole. They want to work in this country for decent and reasonable wages.

We know that the record of the Minister for Health in respect of employment and wages ever since he became a member of this House is not one to be proud of. I single him out above any of the Ministers of the Government, and many of those who went before them. Some in the Fianna Fáil Benches have a good, decent outlook as far as employment and wages are concerned, but so long as Deputy MacEntee, as Minister for Finance and as a member of the Government, could balance his Budget in book form, he was satisfied. He did not care how much unemployment there was. He did not care what wage the people worked for or how much emigration there was. He merely wanted to balance the book and forget the men and women.

Mr. Loughman

That is very shallow thinking.

Mr. Corish

I would not accuse the Deputy of being able to think at all. Therefore, I disregard any interruption from him. Deputy MacEntee——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister for Health.

Mr. Corish

I am sorry; the Minister for Health referred to the Avoca Copper Mines and the Whitegate Refinery. If he thinks he is going to convince this House and the people of the country that Fianna Fáil were entirely responsible for the ultimate development of the Avoca Copper Mines, he is very much mistaken. Even the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who is in charge of such things, has never denied the credit that is rightfully due to a former Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Norton. Not by any stretch of the imagination could anybody give credit to the Fianna Fáil Party, nor could Fianna Fáil take any credit for the Whitegate Refinery. They never attempted to take it before. But because they are confronted with a motion of no confidence and because these are the only two most successful projects in the country, the Minister for Health believes it would be a good thing to try to tell the people that Fianna Fáil were responsible for the Whitegate Refinery and also merely because they contemplated the establishment of a refinery in the City of Dublin in 1936.

I was not in the House in 1936, but I do not believe that the Labour Party at that time opposed in the manner suggested by the Minister for Health the establishment of an oil refinery in the City of Dublin. I would be prepared to apologise to the Minister, if he could produce evidence by quoting from a speech by any member of the Labour Party in which it was stated that the Labour Party were opposed to the establishment of an oil refinery in Dublin City.

The most significant thing in the speech made by the Minister for Health is that he did not refer to the £230,000,000 plan of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. Indeed, he took Deputy Norton to task about various things. He took him up on practically every single point he mentioned. Deputy Norton lambasted the Minister for Industry and Commerce about the £230,000,000 plan, saying it was a fraud, a sham and a confidence trick. I suggest that if there is anything in the £230,000,000 plan, the Minister for Health had ample opportunity of taking Deputy Norton to task about the remarks Deputy Norton made about it. Both Deputy Norton and Deputy MacEntee are very old opponents in this House. They sometimes seem to take a delight in castigating each other. Here was an admirable opportunity to show up Deputy Norton for what he was, if he was what Deputy MacEntee believed he was, by referring to this £230,000,000 plan.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce had a £100,000,000 plan when he was out of office in 1955 or 1956. It did not materialise. We do not know whether he was serious or not. It got the approval of the Fianna Fáil Party, but when the Fianna Fáil Party became the Government, it seemingly did not get the approval of the Taoiseach or the members of the Government. But now he tries to dupe the unemployed by pretending that an extra £230,000,000 will be spent on industry and agriculture over a period of five years. He knows in his heart and soul that such is not the case and every member of the Fianna Fáil Party in the House at the present time knows that such is not the case. We know that it will not materialise. If the position is as suggested by Deputy Norton and if Deputy MacEntee knew differently, it was his duty, on a motion of no confidence, to give us some outline of the plan and give the workers some hope that there might be an improvement in the unemployment situation.

I think I said before—I do not like repeating speeches in this House—that a shabby trick has been played on the workers. Those who now seek work and the trade unions are told that the only type of work of any use in this country is productive work and that if money is to be spent by the Government, it will not be spent on capital works but must be spent on productive work, but the workers in this country just want to work.

I suppose they are concerned that the work they will do will be productive, but there is no productive work in the country yet. If the plan materialises in five years' time, there may be productive work for them. If Deputy Briscoe in his quest in America succeeds in having industries established in this country, there may be work for the odd 50,000 now unemployed. If the Minister for Industry and Commerce succeeds in inducing people to this country to establish industries in three, four, five or six years' time, then there may be productive work for the odd 50,000 people now unemployed, but what happens in the meantime?

I do not think it is sufficient for us to say that the only type of work you can engage in is productive work. Are we to advise the people who are unemployed at the present time to go across to England, get what employment they can there and that, in five or six years' time, we will have employment for them? I believe that many of the Ministers are secretly glad that so many of our people emigrate. To a large extent, it saves them the embarrassment of a bigger unemployed list.

I should like to ask this question frankly: What is wrong with relief schemes? I do not mean relief schemes in the sense that we should have our unemployed bottling water from the Liffey and pouring it back again. Whilst they may not be 100 per cent. productive, much good work could be done on relief schemes which would enrich the country in some way or another.

The Minister for Health talked about slush funds when Deputy Desmond referred to the Local Authorities (Works) Act. Was there ever a bigger slush fund than that proposed by the Minister for External Affairs, when, as acting Minister for Finance, he came into the House about ten years ago and suggested the establishment of a National Development Fund which was to provide an extra £5,000,000 every year for the relief of unemployment and nothing else? That was the stated object of the establishment of the National Development Fund. It was said at the time that this fund could be used at periods when the balance of payments was favourable and when unemployment was high. The Minister for Health told us to-night that the balance of payments position had been rectified by Fianna Fáil. That was one of the conditions for the utilisation of the fund. The second was when unemployment was high.

Unemployment is less than what it was last year, but it is still high at 51,803 in the month of October. In that situation, would the Minister for Finance and the Government not be justified in making available a sum of money, £5,000,000 or £10,000,000 to put men to work? People in this country, economists and bankers especially, and many of the top civil servants, believe it is in the nature of a serious sin to put men to work on roads or digging or cleaning drains. They have got some bug in their heads that work must be productive, that we must make things. Everybody knows that the facilities, the factories, are not there. The only type of work that can absorb these people is the type of work I have mentioned.

I would say that this Government or any Government, as a temporary measure, would be justified in the repatriation, if necessary, of Government moneys, invested in England to the tune of £5,000,000 per year, for the purpose of keeping Irish men and women in this country. Somebody might say: "Why did you not do that when you were in the inter-Party Government?" Frankly, I would say this. I would not get agreement on that in the inter-Party Government. A majority of my colleagues would object. Our foreign investments and external assets have varied over the years. They have been £350,000,000, £400,000,000, £450,000,000 and £500,000,000. The external assets under the control of the Government have varied as well. Would we upset them over a period of five years in the repatriation of £5,000,000 each year for putting men to work until we can get them productive work and not have them, as they are, going over to England? People might say: "They are only 100 miles away; they can come back if we have productive work for them." But, as Deputy Dillon and Deputy Norton said, they brought their wives and families over with them. Many of them have become anglicised; they have been over there since 1940, and they would be very reluctant to come back to Ballydehob, Crossbeg or any part of Cork or Tipperary. Some of them have become more English than the English themselves. They will not attempt to come back, even though we may have work for them.

The Minister for Health said, and rightly so, that the unemployment figures were not as bad as they were last year or the year before. That is correct. He quotes, I think, this document issued to members of the Dáil and Seanad giving the number on the register of the employment exchanges and branch offices of the Department of Social Welfare, but he omits to refer to the fact that in a short 12 months, from March, 1957, to March, 1958, there were 21,200 fewer people in insurable employment. We must assume that those people have emigrated. The Minister never referred to those figures.

One can do anything with these figures issued by the Central Statistics Office. It has been done here, Comparing the month of June with the month of December of this year, the month of October with March, when the same conditions of employment do not obtain. The fact is that, even though Fianna Fáil have been in office, even though they promised to get more employment and to get cracking, there are 21,200 fewer people insured than there were last year. That is a significant fact which even the Minister for Health cannot gloss over very lightly.

On top of that, we have it from reliable sources that, for the 12 months ended 30th June, 1958, 60,000 Irish men and women, boys and girls, emigrated to Britain and countries all over the world. If the Minister persists in saying that the situation is better than it was last year, he is completely off the mark. Any of us could win an argument here by relating all the promises made in 1932, 1948, 1951 and 1954, what Deputy Dillon said about wheat and what Deputy Corry said about beet. We could go on like that for days and days, but it would not get us away from the fact that we have a situation at present in which we have an abnormal number of unemployed and an abnormal number of emigrants from year to year.

The Minister for Health talked about the balance of payments and touched on agriculture and industry, but he was not convincing in his arguments, so far as this motion is concerned. We may say what we like about the agricultural industry. As far as agriculture is concerned, there have been good Ministers from both sides of the House; but they are all governed by one thing, that is, the demand from Britain for our cattle and the price our cattle can command. We may pat ourselves on the back for a good year or a bad year, but no pats on the back can get over the fact that the British market determines to a great extent what our balance of payments position will be from year to year.

I listened here to the Taoiseach, who is regarded by many people as being a pretty sincere politician. I reserve my views on him, but he is regarded by many people as a sincere politician. On 4th July, 1957, the Taoiseach said— and I suppose one could appreciate it —that Fianna Fáil had been in office for only a few months, the Dáil had been sitting since they assumed office and now that the Recess was coming on 5th July, 1957, they would draw up their plans and bend all their energies towards providing, in the first place, employment for those people who had been rendered unemployed by, as he said, the actions of the previous Government. I remember him pointing to the Minister for Local Government and saying something to this effect—I can get the quotation if anybody wants to challenges me—that Deputy Blaney, as Minister for Local Government, was busily engaged in making plans to revive the house building industry and generally to provide work under his Department. That was said during the debate on the Taoiseach's Estimate or possibly it was the Adjournment Debate. I do not make any personal attack on, or criticism of, the Minister for Local Government. I know that, in the main, the decisions that come from his Department are decisions made by the Government as a whole; but I think it would be right to examine the effects and results of the Minister's work over the past 12 months, especially when we remember what the Taoiseach said in July, 1957 —that Deputy Blaney was doing everything he could to revive the house-building industry.

I asked a question to-day. I asked the Minister for Local Government if he would state the number of men employed by all local authorities on house building at the last date available and at a similar date last year. I discovered that, compared with this time last year, there are 734 fewer people employed on local authority house building. There is no use in the Taoiseach and the Minister for Local Government coming here with the usual Fianna Fáil cry and saying: "We did not know what the situation was." They did know what the situation was in respect of house building. Figures were published from month to month and questions were put down from 1954 to 1957 showing exactly the number of houses built each year, the number still required and all that type of information about housing.

The Taoiseach, in July, 1957, in an effort, as he said, to promote more employment, said that the Minister for Local Government was going to revive the house building industry. Rather than revive it, he has succeeded in slowing down the machine that was fairly slow in 1956 and 1957. Therefore, we must conclude that the Fianna Fáil plans in respect of house building certainly have not materialised.

In another sphere, I do not think it can be said that the activities of the Minister for Local Government have been successful in respect of road work. I asked a question to-day of the Minister for Local Government, asking him to state the number of road workers employed by county councils at the latest date available and at a similar date last year. The reply was to the effect that there were 902 fewer men employed on road building or road work at the present time than there were this time last year. Now, I freely concede that that is a type of work which a lot of people regard as being non-productive.

Any Deputy from a rural area will appreciate particularly the situation that arises when the road workers are laid off or when there is less money provided by county councils or by Governments to engage in that type of work. Let us say there are 15 men in a small district—or ten, or even five— and they are rendered unemployed because the money is not available. The work is there, mark you; there is plenty of work there to be done, but the money is not available. What is the position of those men then? Are the farmers hollering for farm labourers? I do not know of many farmers who want to give a job to a man, even for nine months of the year at the present time, let alone for 12 months. Here are 15 men in a district, 15 men who have been employed on road construction for 25 years— all their lives. These unfortunates, through no fault of their own, regard themselves as road workers and believe they will end their days as road workers. They are 50, 55, or 60 years of age—and they are unemployed. Is it their only alternative to scrape up a few pounds and go to Dún Laoghaire or Rosslare and set sail to the other side, in the evening of their lives?

I do not think we ought allow that sort of situation to continue. I do not think we should say: "Well, boys, you must bear that sort of situation for five years, until the plans of the Minister for Industry and Commerce are going to show results." I think it is not right to say to Irishmen that they must emigrate, that we cannot provide employment for them until we get some industries from Belgium or Germany or America or somewhere else. I would suggest that we should make an effort to provide money for work and that we should not be prepared to concentrate exclusively on productive work—because there is no such thing as productive work in the country at the present time for the people who are registered as unemployed.

The Minister for Lands has been stumping the country lately and reports of his speeches are heard frequently— twice a day on Radio Éireann—but we have still to see the results of his activities as Minister for Lands. As far as I can gather, he does not seem to be making much progress. He has handed out a terrific lot of advice to those who want to plant trees, to those who want to catch fish, whether in the sea or in the rivers, and he has made speeches on various things connected with his Department. We do not see many results and I do not think there will be results, because the money in his Department for fisheries and forestry, and in Lands for employment, has been curtailed over the last two years. I do not know what he can achieve except the making of speeches to be reported on Radio Éireann. Therefore, if we have not a great affection for road work or house building or house repair, we should be prepared to devote money to something like forestry, which is regarded by the Government and by everybody as being productive.

This motion in the names of the members of the Labour Party was put down sincerely, in an effort to awaken the members of the Government from the sleep in which obviously they have been for the last three or four months or, shall we say, since they assumed office. I shall not say their intentions were bad, but they have fallen down on the job and there is no evidence that they have done anything that would go to promote more employment and to reduce emigration. On the contrary, they have succeeded in reducing employment and increasing emigration. I am not going to tell the members of this House that emigration and unemployment were of lesser proportions from 1954 to 1957.

The Labour Party want to deal with the present situation. The Labour Party want to know what the plans of the Government are in respect of these two particular problems. For that reason, the motion has been put down. We know it will be beaten by the majority which the Fianna Fáil Party have but, as I said at the beginning of my speech, it has served the purpose of getting the Minister for Health to his feet, even if he said very little; it has served the purpose of getting the Ministers of the Government to make at least some statement so that the unemployed people of the country and the people generally will be in a position to know whether or not this Government intends to do anything at all about unemployment and emigration.

Mr. Corry

If there is one thing about which I can feel happy here to-night, it is the fairly honest speech made by Deputy Corish and his frank admission that the reason there was more unemployment when those gentlemen were in office than there is now, is that agreement could not be found to give money to put them to work.

Mr. Corish

I did not say that.

Mr. Lindsay

Not at all.

Mr. Corry

What else did he say? Let us call a spade a spade.

Mr. Corish

I said I would not get agreement from other members of the Government to repatriate a certain amount of money from Britain—Government Funds.

Mr. Corry

We all know how it was. We all know that Deputy Sweetman had to go over to the Department of Local Government and order a hold-up in house building, because there was no money to pay the grants. We all know the position in regard to our own local authorities. We all know that £200,000 was due to unfortunate fellows who had the houses built and were waiting for grants and that there was no money to pay them. We all know there was that situation, that condition of affairs and that feeling of uncertainty that a man might be working in constant employment but did not know whether the money was there to pay him or not. That was the situation in which those gentlemen ran out. Let us be clear on it. I know, and we all know, that if Whitegate could be in Dublin, the refinery would be built there and we have only to thank God for giving us that location in East Cork and that they had no other place to go. We all know how the Dublin gang on both sides of the House wish to keep things here in Dublin.

Mr. O'Sullivan

On a point of order, is it permissible for a Deputy to describe the Minister for Defence as a member of "the Dublin gang"?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I was not aware that a Deputy described any Minister as a member of "the Dublin gang". If he did, it would not be in order.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

On a point of order, when the Deputy referred to "the Dublin gang", I took it that he was referring to me on this side as a member of the Dublin gang and to the Minister for Defence on the other side, as Dublin Deputies.

Mr. Corish

He will talk about anything except wheat.

Mr. Corry

I am talking about the Dublin team who are running this country and collaring every penny for Dublin, and who see only as far as Inchicore, on the one side, and Bray, on the other.

Mr. Corish

Is he not fighting hard for his seat?

Mr. Larkin

There is more unemployment in Dublin than anywhere else.

Mr. Corry

You have created the situation where a Dublin man of two generations is unemployable.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

This has no relation to the motion.

Mr. Corry

I have to answer questions put to me. I am talking quite frankly here and the Deputy will get his turn.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Corry must be allowed to make his speech without interruption.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

That is a definite ruling, Sir, that it is a speech?

Mr. Corry

I have seen men idle in my constituency and I can say quite frankly that I would rather see jobs provided in a decent industry for ten men in constant employment than for 100 on a temporary basis. That is my view, as far as employment is concerned. I have seen some £250,000 passed here in 1952 for Irish Steel, Limited. I wonder what happened it? It was provided for the purpose of finishing the erection of a sheet mill. What became of the money? What was it devoted to? Why was it not devoted to the purpose for which it was voted by this House? As a matter of fact, the week before Fianna Fáil left office on the last occasion, I was over there and I saw the raw material provided there in the shape of plenty of billets and good scrap for keeping people in employment. What happened to it? We saw the position where the general manager had to throw up his hands in disgust and walk out through the door and we were left with unemployed. The money voted by this House was shoved into some hole by the Minister for Finance. Those are the facts and that is the reason why we had unemployment in my constituency during that period. That is the reason why you have the change now as regards employment in that constituency.

To-day, thank God, we have no unemployment in the constituency. As a matter of fact, you would be afraid to stick your nose out on the road from Cork to Whitegate because of the number coming in from West Cork and Cork City to work in my constituency. We have that change in the situation and I am not claiming credit for it. I do not think anybody could claim credit for it, because the refinery could go nowhere else. If the refinery could go to Dublin, you might be sure it would be taken there by those on the two Front Benches and we are under no illusions on that score at all.

I do not agree with Deputy Corish in regard to relief schemes. I think they are bad on the face of it and that they are wrong. I think they convert a man who will not get a decent wage into the frame of mind in which he says: "This is about sufficient work for the pay I am getting."

Mr. Corish

The Deputy did not follow the argument at all.

Mr. Corry

I followed it quite well. I followed the argument where you stated the sole reason that you could not get agreement with the boys over there to spend money to relieve unemployment——

Mr. O'Sullivan

He did not say that.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Corry might be allowed to make his speech without interruption.

Mr. Corish

With all due respect to the Chair, he is telling lies.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy may not make a statement like that.

Mr. Corish

I withdraw it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Corry might address the Chair and we would have fewer of these interruptions.

Mr. Corry

I am sorry I was interrupted but those are the honest facts. I must admit, from the point of view of my constituency, that so far as employment is concerned, the Government are doing their job. There is no idle man there and there is no week in which I do not get a request from men in other constituencies to get them jobs at Whitegate. It is a very happy way to be. I never bother either, about the colour of their coats when they come in.

I agree with Deputy Corish on another point. I think the time has come when, if the Minister finds somebody in his Department holding up a job or endeavouring to obstruct progress he should be in a position to tell him to go——

Mr. Lindsay

Tell us more about that.

Mr. Corry

What is the Deputy jumping at now?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is aware that the Minister is responsible for the conduct of his officials.

Mr. Corry

I am, and I am saying it is about time that the Minister should say: "Chuck it up", and give the official "a toe out" if he would not do anything else. I make no bones about it. I am a member of a local authority and we have received the same letters as were ordered to be written by the previous Government before they left office. That was the fruits of Deputy Sweetman's efforts to hold up housing. These self-same things are still coming and are the cause of what Deputy Corish to-day described as the hold-up in housing. We all know that if a local authority seeks to build a house you get 15 different inspectors coming to look at the site to see if there is any twist or turn that can be put on the old building to keep it in repair but with their eyes closed to the main thing—who is going to do it. Who will repair the house?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

What has this to do with the motion?

Mr. Corry

I am referring to the hold-up in housing.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy should address himself seriously to the motion before the House. The Deputy is discussing the repair of houses which is not in the motion.

Mr. Corry

Certainly. I am showing the manner in which the housing programme of the South Cork Board has been held up and I think I am absolutely justified in doing so on this motion——

Mr. Lindsay

Held up by the present Government.

Mr. Corry

——because that is one of the things that has to do with unemployment. That is the picture as far as I can see it and as far as my constituents are concerned.

Personally, I am anxious to know what will be the condition of affairs in rural Ireland for the next 12 months. We have seen what has happened. I happen to be a member of the organisation which had to deal with malting barley. A month ago we met the directors of Messrs. Guinness who were seeking permission to import about 100,000 barrels of malting barley which the people of this country had failed to produce. Roughly on a 700,000-barrel crop the farmers had dropped something over £500,000. That is only one small item in the whole disastrous picture that one can draw. Then if one wants to go into a mad house, one can study the figures on one of the returns that the unfortunate farmer gets on wheat. I made two halves of my crop and sent it to two millers. One paid on the basis of 66/- a barrel and the other fellow came along—and he had got the same bushellings—and he said: "Screenings, £4 10s." He came down to the bottom and said 5/9 for levy of £17 14s. a ton.

Mr. Rooney

You voted for the cut.

Mr. Corry

On the very same stuff the other fellow paid 63/6 and he did not deduct any £4 10s. for screenings. When you made it up you found you got exactly the same price but made up in a different manner.

Mr. O'Sullivan

You voted for that.

Mr. Corry

The position is that the farmers are at present short of money. We hear about the amount of money made by live-stock exports but at present we know live stock are a drug on the market because people have nothing to feed live stock for the winter. We know that with merchants pressing for payment, live stock that should be kept on the land have to be sold. In those circumstances when I read of £230,000,000 hanging around somewhere to go to somebody, I say: "Now is the time to use it——"

Mr. Rooney

Hear, hear! Even £1,000,000.

Mr. Corry

"——and devote a portion of that money to the relief of the agricultural industry." Every year people are waiting to know in relation to prices how the cat will jump. If you get a bad season for beet, no matter how high you raise the price the following year the acreage will be down. The same conditions arose everywhere this year. Roughly you could write off 50 per cent. of the farmers' crop as gone and for the other 50 per cent. he got about 75 per cent. of the prices that he got the year before.

Mr. Lindsay

Indeed, he did not.

Mr. Rooney

£2 a barrel.

Mr. Corry

You stick to your tomatoes and the dual-purpose hen and you will be all right. We would want to know definitely at this stage the programme and the prices for next year and what is going to be done—what is going to become of the 5/9 a barrel that was to subsidise the export of surplus wheat?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Might I point out to the Deputy that the matters he has just mentioned are not relevant to the motion unless he can show their relevance so far as unemployment and emigration are concerned?

Mr. O'Sullivan

On a point of order, may I draw your attention to the amendment:—

"After ‘emigration' in the first line, to insert ‘and the acute problems of those engaged in agriculture, business and industry, which have contributed to this situation'"?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

"Contributed to this situation." That is just the point.

Mr. O'Sullivan

I submit that Deputy Corry is relevant.

Mr. Corry

The Deputy is saying I am relevant?

Mr. O'Sullivan

In regarding the conditions in agriculture as applicable to the main resolution.

A Deputy

He is surprised that Deputy O'Sullivan is supporting him.

Mr. Corry

I am amazed at that.

Mr. Rooney

Was it not settled at the Árd Fheis?

Mr. Corry

I am coming to the amendment and not to what was said at the Árd Fheis.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Despite Deputy O'Sullivan's statement, the Chair still must maintain that what Deputy Corry says on agriculture must be relevant to the motion and he must relate it to the motion.

Mr. Corry

I relate my remarks to the motion in this way. If the farmer has no money, the shopkeeper and the merchant must close the door. How many men will be unemployed in Gouldings during the coming year because the farmer will have no money to buy fertiliser? Those are the points that relate directly to unemployment. That is the condition of affairs to-day. I have explained that in my own constituency there is not a man idle. In fact, they are pulling them in from other constituencies to give them work. Thank God, they are in a position to do it.

Mr. Casey

The Deputy must not have called down to Cobh for a long time.

Mr. Corry

I am not worrying about Cobh. It is always O.K.

Mr. Casey

I thought the Deputy said there was nobody unemployed in his constituency. Was the Deputy in Cobh lately?

Mr. Corry

Yes.

Mr. Casey

Is the Deputy sure?

Mr. Corry

Yes.

Mr. Casey

I shall take the Deputy down there next week-end and show him the unemployed.

Mr. Corry

The Deputy cannot show me something that does not exist.

Mr. Casey

I shall take the Deputy down there and show him.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Casey will cease interrupting. He will have an opportunity of speaking later.

Mr. Corry

They have their own activity down in Cobh and the people can make more money at it than at any other job. Call them unemployed if you like. However, if Deputy Casey would take a ramble out on the lower road any evening about 5 o'clock, he need only stand outside his own old quarters at the Glanmire Station and he will realise the godsend my constituency is to his constituency in Cork City.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Corry has said that at least six times since he began his speech.

Mr. Corry

Deputy Casey was pointing out that there were some unemployed in my constituency, and I was saying that not only are we providing for our own but for others outside as well.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Corry has said that on at least six occasions.

Mr. Corry

To come back to the amendment, I should like to hear, No. 1, a definite programme as to what is needed for agriculture for the next season and, No. 2, will any definite provision be made towards meeting the losses of the agricultural community this harvest, and will any definite move be made towards providing that those unfortunate men will get the wherewithal to pay their merchants' bills and to provide for the coming season? Those are the things that are of importance to the ordinary rural community. Yet every Deputy here, every rag and bobtail of the country and every idle fellow who never worked an hour in his lifetime wails about the flight from the land. Let us get down to the business of trying to find a remedy. We have found a remedy as far as the ordinary worker is concerned. Let us find a remedy as regards the farmers. I know very well that if you travel through the various parishes in my constituency you will find a shortage of farm labourers because many of them have gone to Whitegate, and more power to them.

Mr. Larkin

Have they not gone further afield? Have none gone to Birmingham?

Mr. Corry

No, we leave that to the Dublin jackeens. That is the position as I view it. I would not have bothered standing up at all, were it not for Deputy Corish's lucid statement in relation to unemployment and the reasons for it. I think it was the tit-bit of the night and I am very glad he was honest enough to say it.

Mr. Lindsay

Permit me, first of all, Sir, to say how sorry I am that a member of the Fianna Fáil Party, Deputy Corry from East Cork, should have taken advantage of this motion to cast aspersions on the workers who found it necessary to leave the county of Mayo to work in Cork. Far from deserving any censure from Deputy Corry or any other member of the Fianna Fáil Party, these men are skilled men, good workers, honest in their endeavour and I would suggest that Deputy Corry keep his mouth shut in relation to them, because the Cork farmers would be blessed by taking advantage of their skill and honest labour.

In case any Government speaker offers himself and proposes to be more factual and less swashbuckling than the Minister for Health in speaking on this motion, I would, with respect, deem it advisable to direct the attention of the House to the words of the motion and the amendment. The motion reads:—

"That, in view of the continued high level of unemployment and emigration and the failure of the Government to fulfil the promises made at the last General Election that they would deal effectively with these problems, the Dáil has no confidence in the Government."

The amendment, sponsored by Deputy Dillon and Deputy Cosgrave, reads:—

"After ‘emigration' in the first line, to insert ‘and the acute problems of those engaged in agriculture, business and industry, which have contributed to this situation'."

On the overall picture both the motion and the amendment propose to the Dáil that it express its lack of confidence in the Government, by reason of the high level of unemployment and emigration and the acute problems of those engaged in agriculture, business and industry which have contributed to this situation. The issue before the House is extremely simple. The Minister for Health in the course of a long, rambling, repetitive speech made no effort to assert that unemployment is not at a high level. He made no attempt to deny that emigration is at an equally high level. He failed miserably to make any reference to the non-implementation of the promises made by his Party during the last general election in relation to these matters.

The last general election is now sufficiently far back in perspective to render it unnecessary to bother about making mere debating points on promises. The people know now all too well how insincere and, in a great many cases, how fraudulent those promises were. I am content to leave it to the people to judge the present Government on their promises when they get the opportunity.

On the question of unemployment and emigration, it is not my intention to refer to broken promises. I shall refer only to a principle of government enunciated by the Tánaiste during the last general election. He laid it down specifically that "the acid test of government is unemployment and emigration". That was the principle laid down by the man who is now Deputy Leader of the Government. I would have expected that some member of the Government, or some Deputy in the Fianna Fáil Party, would come in here and say that the level of unemployment at the moment and the level of emigration reflect credit upon the manner in which the Government have applied the formula enunciated by the Tánaiste: "the acid test of government is unemployment and emigration." Of course, anybody who would come in here to assert that would be surpassing any of the effrontery to which we have become accustomed in this House.

There are acute problems in agriculture, business and industry and those acute problems are making their contribution to a situation involving high unemployment and emigration. Will anybody on the Government side of the House, be he a member of the Government or simply a Deputy, dare to say that there are not acute problems in agriculture, business and industry, thereby disagreeing fundamentally with Deputy Corry who, in the latter part of his speech, quite frankly asserted that such problems exist?

It is an extraordinary thing that, despite repeated statements that there were remedies, emigration is still at a high level. More surprising still is the fact that, despite the high tide of emigration, unemployment is still at an alarmingly high level. The answer is to be found in two directions. The first is the 21,200 fewer people in insurable employment this year as compared with last year. Taking a purely objective approach, I do not think that they were unemployed people who left the country. I would say they were a mixture of unemployed and employed. I shall deal with the employed who leave the country at a later stage.

In mid-June of this year, we find we have a population of 32,000 fewer people than at the corresponding period last year. As Deputy Norton put it, making an average allowance of 28,000 for the normal excess of births over deaths, that represents a figure of 60,000 persons who have left this State between mid-June, 1957, and mid-June, 1958. Obviously they were unimpressed by the £100,000,000 plan of Deputy Lemass. I am afraid they will be equally unimpressed, if not more so, by the £220,000,000 plan announced at yesterday's annual Ard Fheis of the Fianna Fáil Party. I have no wish to be irreverent, but it was rather curious to find in the Irish Press one item banner-lined: "£220,000,000 for Capital Development," and immediately below another item headed: "Dream of Gerontius.” Perhaps the £220,000,000 plan foreshadowed will be a dream. Certainly it will never have the same high spiritual value as the original.

It is curious that, as Deputy Corish pointed out, in relation to housing, about which there was a most dreadful wail in the latter part of 1956 and early 1957, we now find, as a result of the activity of the Minister for Local Government, activity solemnly promised by the Taoiseach with his customary profundity, that there are 734 fewer workers engaged in housing this year as compared with last year.

In relation to road works, and the cause of road works were solemnly espoused with great vigour and enthusiasm by the Minister for Local Government when he was in opposition, we find that this year there are 902 fewer workers employed as compared with last year. That is not evidence to any right-thinking person, who directs his mind to facts, of the promised activity and the land flowing with milk and honey which was to be ours for the mere election to office of Fianna Fáil.

In an effort to justify what had been done by them and to cast slurs upon what had been done in the past, the Minister for Health referred to the transatlantic service. I do not know that that will turn out to be a matter for boasting. I am not so sure that the people depending directly or indirectly for their livelihood on Shannon Airport are so happy about the consequences that might well flow from the inauguration of such a service. For any part, I wish the service luck but I do think that it was embarked upon without a great deal of thought and certainly with a magnificent disregard for consequences. Of course, as long as there are Irish in America and more Irish here to join them Aerlinte should be reasonably successful but there must come a time when there will be nobody to leave this country if the rate at which people are leaving continues.

Money expended by the previous Government under the Local Authorities (Works) Act has been referred to here as "slush" money. In any given set of circumstances, money expended on drainage or on any aspect of husbandry or on any work that tends to make the land more productive and which, at the same time, helps small farmers in the leaner periods of the year, is certainly not "slush" money in my opinion. But, if there is this fierce objection to "slush" money on the basis that it is unproductive, let us have, once and for all, from some member of the Government or some Deputy designated by them, concrete plans of the expenditure of money that will not be what they call "slush".

I appreciate the difficulties in rural areas where the local authority may have road work in progress which must eventually come to an end. In such cases legislation like the Local Authorities (Works) Act could be brought into operation with a view to the expenditure of money among people who had been in the habit of earning money for a number of weeks, in other words, continuing the supplemental earnings of the smallholder. Once you cease expenditure under the Local Authorities (Works) Act, or kindred schemes, or reduce the amount expended on anything that tends to supplement the earnings of people on smallholdings— and I am speaking for those—the inevitable result is emigration by at least one member of the family affected. There should be a concrete scheme to provide alternative work when work of one kind finishes in an area.

In business the small shopkeeper is extremely badly hit. He has had to pay almost double the prices for his usual stock. In consequence, he has had to pay higher bank interest and to extend the amount of credit.

These are the matters to which the Government should direct their attention, that is, if they care. I do not think they care. The comfort of the majority which they now enjoy would appear to have lulled them into inactivity, into a negative approach to everything.

I referred earlier to the people who leave the country and said that some of them left of necessity because they had no work. Others left employment. I know people who left what would be considered reasonably remunerative employment in this country. When considering the situation with regard to unemployment, emigration and the acute problems in agriculture, business and industry and the effect of those acute problems on unemployment and emigration, one must take very serious note of those people who leave employment. It is when people begin to lose faith that this or any Government must fail. As I have already pointed out in this House on many occasions, I firmly believe that national prestige is no longer a matter of individual concern. I firmly believe that national morale has reached a very low level and that that has come about partly by the lure to go, but is, in the main, attributable to the disrepute into which public men and public institutions have fallen as a direct result of the people's painful consciousness of the fraudulent failure to implement promises made to them from time to time. The surprising thing is that people continue to be fooled. That is probably due to the fact that the herring is not always red. The Fianna Fáil Party are almost able to supply rainbow herrings at all times in order to delude and deceive the people into believing that they, and they only, hold the key to national security and national prosperity. Such a view is wrong but that matter can be developed at a later time on a threatened business in this House.

Let me conclude by saying that if this attitude of fraudulent promise— deceit—is pursued and persisted in by the Government and the Party supporting it, the time will come when there will not be any problem of unemployment or of emigration, when there will not be any acute problem in business, agriculture or interest, because there will not be anybody left, because people will be folding up their tents and leaving the country, not because they have to leave but because their faith has been so shattered by the continued failure of people to keep their word.

Mr. Kyne

A motion similar to the motion we are discussing this evening was tabled in this House some 12 months ago. At that time, I felt that it was slightly unfair to bring the Government to task for not having formulated schemes and implemented them within a period of six months of assuming office. Though I was rather critical and doubtful of the promises they had made to secure office, I was quite content that they should have an opportunity to see what they could do before being condemned by this House. Twelve months have now gone by and I feel it is not unfair on the part of the Labour Party, or the Fine Gael Party, to pose the serious questions: how were the promises kept which were made by the Government, and also how does the country stand as compared with the time when they took office?

During the 1957 election campaign, I had no doubt that many of the promises I heard in my own constituency would not be fulfilled. In fact, I am too seasoned a politician to expect that all and every promise made by any political party, or any political speaker, would be fulfilled in entirety, but I had hoped that some of this Government's promises would be redeemed in the interests of the people I represent, the ordinary workers in my constituency. In 1957, the economic position was grave. Those of us in the Labour Party who stood up to speak at that time were as critical of the Government, of which we were part, as some of the members of the Opposition. We did not disguise the fact that there was grave unemployment, that there was huge emigration and that there were grumbles about the cost of living.

What happened since? I do not believe that any Deputy from Waterford constituency is required to stand up in this House to tell the people of Waterford that unemployment is at a higher level there than it ever was before, notwithstanding whatever manipulated figures may be issued from the Central Statistics Office. When I say "manipulated", I say it with all respect to the accuracy of the figures supplied by the officials employed therein. By manipulation, I mean the method by which those who sign on the live register are being suspended on investigation of fraudulently drawing the dole. I venture to say that in any one week, in my constituency alone, at least 100, or even 200 cases are under investigation, all of which will be readmitted to benefit in a month's time. Multiply that by the 26 counties and one can easily find a device that would account for the reduction, the apparent reduction per week, of some 2,000 to 3,000 people.

Whether that be true or not—and there are many people who believe it to be true—there is no gainsaying the fact that in the City of Waterford, only some two months ago, men of all political Parties, men of various standings, including members of the Chamber of Commerce, the Waterford Harbour Commissioners, the Corporation, the various trade unions coupled with the various Labour Deputies, and led by a worthy priest, sent a deputation to the Minister for Finance. They did not appeal to him for the establishment in Waterford of a boat-building project at a cost of £2,000,000 to £3,000,000. They did not even appeal to him for the establishment in Waterford of a factory costing anything in the nature of £15,000, £20,000 or £30,000, but they did appeal to him to give a small sum of £5,000 or £6,000, in the form of a temporary loan or grant, to be used to prevent men and women from starving in the city during the coming winter.

So bad was the position that the Chamber of Commerce and the Waterford Harbour Board issued an appeal to employers that it was their duty to employ an extra man or woman, even if it was only for one half day each week. It was in that atmosphere that we appealed to the Minister for Finance. We received a promise that our request would be considered, but, up to the present moment, nothing concrete and nothing more definite than that has come to pass. The Waterford worker will have to seek his breakfast in the very same way as the down-and-out hobo in New York during depression times, that is, by pulling in another hole in his belt. The only thing that Waterford City has improved in is in the number who board the ship in Waterford harbour, on the three days of sailing each week, to cross to Great Britain.

Within the past year in my own town of Dungarvan, a prosperous glue and gelatine industry has completely closed down, with a loss of employment for some 60 adult workers who have all since emigrated. The powdered milk and chocolate crumb industry, which was seasonal and which employed some 40 to 60 workers, has failed to reopen this year and, throughout the rural part of the constituency the secretary of the county council, or the acting county engineer, will inform any member of this House, as I was informed, that practically 200 fewer workers are earning their living, due to the reduction in road grants and the failure of the Government to implement the Local Authorities (Works) Act. As I say, it does not need any speech of mine in Dáil Éireann to tell Waterford workers how much better. off, or how worse off, they are now than they were in 1957.

The various figures of insurable employed over the past five years, given by the Minister in reply to a question to-day, indicate that as compared with 1957, there are 36,700 fewer people insurably employed, and they give the he to the suggestion that conditions have improved. I do not believe it was necessary for these figures to be published, but they do make it very clear that, notwithstanding all the talk of a resurgence of hope, and of the new outlook in this country, the actual truth of the matter is that there are fewer people employed now than there were in what we believed were critical days, in late 1956 and early 1957. Rosslare and Waterford harbour can tell the tale. Each hamlet, each village and each town in my constituency are weekly sending their quota of boys and girls flooding out through these ports. The lifeblood of the constituency is draining away. I am quite sure that what is happening there within the bounds of the City and County of Waterford is equally happening throughout every constituency in Ireland—that the lifeblood of the country is draining away notwithstanding the promises we received.

Those who remain have the pleasure of realising that when Irish workers leave their homes and families for the loneliness of London, Birmingham or Manchester they, like the English people, can buy Irish butter at 2/9 a lb. while we in Ireland must continue to face starvation and poverty and, out of a miserable pittance, on the whole, have to pay an increase to 4/4 as compared with 3/9 per lb. in 1957.

There is a saying that when he asked for bread they gave him a stone. When the workers of this country asked the Taoiseach for employment that would give them the bread of life, he answered them by saying that they will have a referendum on the subject of proportional representation. I suggest to the workers of this country and to each serious man and woman voter, including Fianna Fáil voters, that they now have an opportunity in this referendum of saying "yes" or "no"—but the "yes" or "no" will not be on whether or not proportional representation should be abolished but on whether or not Fianna Fáil have kept their promises, the promises they made in 1957 and broke in 1958. I shall conclude by appealing to every working-class organisation throughout this country to use all the influence they can possibly command to force that referendum into a general election and give the people an opportunity of once again forming a sane Government in our land.

Mr. N. Lemass

Industrial employment and production received a severe setback in this country during 1956. It began to recover during 1957 and, in the December quarter of 1957, output and employment had both increased as compared with the same period 12 months previously. That was the first time since March, 1956, that such an increase in industrial activity took place. The recovery continued and output for the first quarter of this year was up by 7 per cent. as compared with the same period in the previous year. Employment in industry was up by 1½ per cent. and the earnings per worker were up by 7½ per cent.

The Government have never been complacent with regard to our industrial or economic position. This year the following steps have been taken. The elimination of a Budget deficit will provide £8,000,000 during the year for productive capital works. Local authorities are getting £2,400,000 more for housing and sanitary services. The total road grants this year are up by £2,900,000. The amount allotted to special employment schemes is up by one-third as compared with that of the previous year and substantial concessions to industries to come into force next year will speed up the industrial drive.

During the life of the previous Government, the total labour force, that is, the number of people employed in the main branches of our economy, fell by 43,000. In 1954, 8.1 per cent. of the total labour force were unemployed. The figure went up to 11.6 during the period January to March, 1957. It went down to 10.4 per cent. in the same period in 1958 and, in the period May-June, 1958, it went down to 8.3 per cent.

The events which have taken place since Fianna Fáil formed the present Government, show clearly, I think, that they have not been complacent at any time regarding the twin evils of unemployment and emigration. The announcement by the Minister for Industry and Commerce yesterday at the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis regarding the White Paper which is being prepared for the programme to be followed in connection with national economic development must, I think, have taken a lot of wind out of the movers' motion.

Mr. Coogan

There was a lot of wind at the Árd Fheis.

Mr. N. Lemass

It took a couple of years to clear up the mess and to solve the difficulties of some of those 43,000 persons whom the Deputy's Party helped to put out of work.

Mr. Coogan

When we have the Briscoe factories here we will be all right.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order !

Mr. N. Lemass

They are better than the Deputy, anyway. We have recovered a lot of the ground that was lost when the mover of this motion was Minister for Industry and Commerce and, I would say, showed he was not capable in his job.

Having recovered a certain amount of this lost ground, we are now in a position to go ahead with the improvement of the national output with much greater speed than heretofore. During 1956, as we all know, unemployment spiralled so rapidly that it reached emergency proportions. In fact, it came to the stage when the people realised it was the survival of the nation that was at stake. The public, realising that every time the Government did something in order to try to rectify the situation they ended up by making it far worse, seized the opportunity to give Fianna Fáil the biggest majority they ever had in this House.

The previous Government were condemned by the people. The people did not believe at any time that things could be put right overnight. They did not think it would be an easy road nor were they led to believe it would be so. It was pointed out on several occasions by ex-Ministers or potential Ministers at that time that if we were to succeed we would have to exercise a certain amount of restraint, that we would have to make an extra effort and that it would be a long hard road. The people were prepared to face up to that and we have done so up to now and some of the lost ground has been recovered.

We are coming to a situation which I think is generally realised that we may have a free European common market. In the event of this becoming an actuality, we shall be in the position, I think, either of prospering beyond the wildest dreams of any Minister or politician or alternatively of going under completely. To prosper, we must have the effort of every individual and the co-operation of people who can influence these things.

The national wage agreement did a lot to rectify our position. The public, in general, showed a proper restraint and ground is now definitely being recovered. If the leaders of organised labour had the welfare of the nation at heart and if everybody were prepared to co-operate with the Government in their aims to increase production we would have absolutely nothing to fear. As I see it, political labour is too often trying to gain short-term political advantage which is often to the long-term disadvantage of the labourer or the worker.

Looking back, again, on the period 1956-57, we find that, probably for the first time in the history of the State, industrial production and employment suffered a serious set-back. Production of transportable goods fell from 107.8 points to 102.4 points and production for all industries and services fell from 100.4 points to 102.4 points. We find that employment in the former fell by 4,100 workers and in the latter by 8,000—all this in a period of 12 months. More serious still was the fact that during almost the last quarter of the term of office of the previous Government, when these statistics were compiled, employment in manufacturing industries had fallen by 7,000 people. It reminds us of the old Cumann na nGaedheal Government when the 117 factories were closed up during their last year of office.

At that time also, net agricultural output fell by £6,000,000 compared with 1955. It is to our credit, therefore, that unless the situation which prevailed 18 months ago was rectified, the people could not have the same standard of living as they enjoyed in 1955. The task with which the Government were faced when they took office was the arresting of that decline, and the restoration to the previous levels of industrial and agricultural output and employment. The Government have succeeded in arresting the decline. The previous levels of employment and output will be achieved and we can go on to the prospects of full employment which this Party has pledged itself to make every effort to achieve.

The early decisions of the Government to remove many of the severe restrictions imposed by the Coalition on the import of many goods did manage to restrict the decline. The Government are to be congratulated on taking that step. They also have put the accent on exports. The real way to solve balance of payments problems is to step up production and export in far greater quantities. This is the only way to do it if the standard of living is to be maintained. In trying to solve the problem at the same time by a policy of restriction you weaken the economy, discourage private enterprise from investing money in new industrial enterprises, inflate the unemployed register and reduce the standard of living of the people.

The Government has the right approach and it came none too soon. We cannot succeed, however, until we secure the co-operation of all sections of the community. It is the only way to a permanent solution. It will not be easy. I do not think it will be as rapid as everybody would like it to be, but with a concentrated effort by all sections of the community, there is no reason why full employment cannot be achieved in this country. The steps taken, even in the first Budget, to give reliefs and inducements designed for the encouragement of industrial expansion, the accent being on industrial export, and the amendment of the Control of Manufactures Act with a view to increasing external participation in industrial expansion all add up to help achieve the aim which we all wish to achieve.

The mover of the motion, if I remember his previous speeches, is quite well aware that external participation in industrial expansion is a very desirable thing. It helps us to gain access to the export market and it can help us to organise industrial projects on a much larger scale than what we have heretofore been doing for the home market trade. These measures will prove to have the desired effect. Progress is being made. The progress may not be as rapid as we would like, but we are going the right way and are not as we were when we took over, running downhill.

I think this motion is put down for one purpose only. I think political Labour hope to gain a political point. In fact, to my mind, what they are endeavouring to do is to weaken the confidence that has been restored in the Government of the country and by so doing injure and hamper the prospects of further employment in this country. It is a great pity that we have not an organised labour movement which is free from all political ties. I think the workers would be far better off. The Labour members who are in trade unions should use their influence and do something like the workers in a major industry here and start a shilling a week campaign. If the trade unionists decided to invest a shilling a week in some central fund and put it into industrial projects, that would be a practical step.

Mr. McQuillan

They are still doing it. You were codding them.

Mr. N. Lemass

I am glad to hear Deputy McQuillan say that they are still subscribing. The workers have always supported Fianna Fáil and they are still doing it.

Mr. McQuillan

That is how they are being codded.

Mr. N. Lemass

If the gentlemen opposite were to direct their efforts to constructive criticism instead of trying to hamper, progress might be made. They would do themselves more good politically and would do a great lot of good nationally. I understand that the wage agreement has ceased. I am firmly convinced that the agreement made by the I.P.U.T.U.O. regarding the restraints on wage claims has done more to help the economy than many other steps that have been taken. It is clear to me that wage-induced inflation of any sort must be avoided. I also think that a limited inflationary policy would take real incomes away from those on fixed income, in the first instance.

Dr. N. Browne

What about Government policy on price control?

Mr. N. Lemass

I would suggest that any Deputy with any association with business in this country realises he is dealing with a buyers' market and not a sellers' market.

Mr. Belton

Question?

Mr. N. Lemass

It is essential for national economic progress that all sections of the community should have confidence in their ability to goahead and improve the economic position. The Government have a duty to lay down a general policy. Private enterprise and the leaders of organised labour with due understanding of the national problems should co-operate at all times with public policy, if public policy is to succeed.

We are fortunate in this country in having a number of competent and enterprising people among our industrial leaders. These people, I am sure, look probably, in the main, to fostering industrial expansion. In answer to a question here in May last, I think, the Minister for Industry and Commerce said that there were 115 new industrial undertakings which came to the notice of his Department during the previous year and that there were many others of which there was no official record.

General MacEoin

The same number as the number closed—117.

Mr. N. Lemass

They are open now. We were quite well aware of the Fine Gael attitude. It was to restrict expansion. It could not be done. Bring in England and let them establish industries here. We were well used to the Fine Gael attitude.

Mr. Coogan

Codology. Speak the truth.

An Ceann Comhairle

This is not a crossroads.

Mr. N. Lemass

Substantial progress has been made and continues to be made in this country. There are wide opportunities for future schemes of industrial activity. There is no reason that I know of why development should not continue on an expanding scale and with a much greater impetus than heretofore because, as we said before the election, the first step to national recovery is to restore confidence in the nation's ability to get ahead. That has been done to a large extent. We have many advantages for industrialists in Ireland in non-repayable cash grants, special tax reliefs, freedom from company taxes in respect of new exports for the first ten years, workers with intelligence above the average——

Mr. Kyne

And a pool of unemployed.

Mr. N. Lemass

——who have shown themselves readily adaptable to modern industrial processes. The Government can influence the general level of economic activity and are doing so, but granted the most favourable possible conditions for increasing economic activity, production and investment, in addition to the incentives and advantages I mentioned a minute ago, other steps have been taken by the Government to assist in every way the expansion of industrial production. For example, the amendment of the Control of Manufactures Act, and important legislation whereby the resources of the Industrial Credit Corporation have been increased. Considerable funds have been placed at the disposal of that corporation to enable it to assist in every way the expansion of industrial production during the past 12 months. Those levies which had adversely affected our production and employment were removed; hire purchase restrictions were eased and the Trustee (Authorised Investment) Act was another step in the right direction.

One significant effort by the Government was this year's Budget. Surely the most desirable inducement we can offer to businessmen is to guarantee a stable level of taxation? The Minister for Finance stated that this was his aim when he introduced his first Budget and he demonstrated his determination to achieve that aim this year when he imposed no new taxes and declared that, in his opinion, the level of taxation was high enough.

The Agricultural Exports Committee has been set up and is now getting down to examining the national problem of selling our agricultural surpluses. Agricultural development has always been a number one priority with successive Governments and, as far as Fianna Fáil are concerned, no action is ever taken by the Government in any sphere without giving full consideration to its effect on agriculture. Our most valuable national resources are the fertility of our soil, our equitable climate, described by a certain foreign diplomat as "perpetual spring" and the inherent skill of our farmers. The farmers as a group are urgently in need of new and efficient marketing systems. It is a matter of vital importance to them and the rest of the country that the Agricultural Exports Committee should be successful in their efforts. I understand that the committee has set up various subcommittees to deal with different aspects and are at present busily at work.

Mr. McQuillan

I do not like to interrupt, but is it in order for a Deputy to read his speech in the House?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy is not reading his speech.

Mr. Corish

The Deputy is.

Mr. N. Lemass

These are only notes.

Mr. McQuillan

I understand that a Deputy is not entitled to read his speech in the House.

An Ceann Comhairle

As far as I can see, the Deputy is referring to notes.

Mr. Corish

The Deputy is reading it.

An Ceann Comhairle

That is not the impression the Chair has gathered.

Mr. N. Lemass

These are notes.

Mr. McQuillan

I heard that so often before I know quite well what it means.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy may not read his speech, but the Deputy is referring to notes. There is no rule against referring to notes.

Mr. Coogan

There are a few there he should not refer to, anyway; they are no addition to him.

Mr. N. Lemass

Tourism offers great scope for expansion and it certainly has not been neglected by Fianna Fáil. Tremendous efforts have been made in this direction and the introduction of the transatlantic air services will give tremendous help in this direction. It is a great pity that these services were not established services and that our hard-bought dollar planes were sold for sterling, out of sheer spite, nearly ten years ago. The extensions at Shannon Airport are included in these steps in this direction.

The restoration of confidence in the future of the country was the primary aim of the Government. The fact that deposits with the commercial banks have increased substantially, that the Prize Bonds continue to be popular, net receipts being £6.7 million, that the last National Loan was successful and that Exchequer Bills continue to be oversubscribed, are all evidence that there is now widespread confidence in the soundness of our financial structure. In fact, the Government have succeeded in restoring public confidence to such a large degree that it has provided the firm basis necessary for further expansion.

As I said, having provided this basis, we were asked about our programme. "We can win prosperity",—this is the printed document of a speech made at Comhairle Atha Cliath, which was referred to by Deputies opposite. In the promised White Paper, we can see this programme becoming a practical possibility. We must take every step to avoid a return to the conditions of 1955 and 1956 when the corrective measures of the Government of that day reacted unfavourably on employment and production. Three things must be kept moving forward together —production increasing, employment increasing, and the balance payments rising at an ever higher equilibrium level.

My main reason for opposing this motion therefore is that it is designed purely to reduce public confidence in the Government. Any lessening of confidence can only be harmful to our prospects of full employment. Measures of this nature may gain short-term political advantages for the movers, but to my mind, can only end up with long-term disadvantages for the workers. I hope the leaders of labour, particularly the people in political Labour, will in the future endeavour to direct their efforts to the long-term advantages of the workers and come to this House with constructive criticisms and suggestions which will help the present trend of increasing productivity to proceed with greater impetus. Motions such as the one before us, put forward by those who claim to represent the workers, deserve only one treatment, that is to throw them out and let us get on with the business of the country.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Whatever the Dáil's reception of this motion, there is no doubt that the people of the country have already given their verdict on it. It certainly takes some nerve for Deputy Noel Lemass to talk as he did about the restoration of confidence. Deputy Noel Lemass must have forgotten the fact that two distinct constituencies in this City of Dublin have given their verdict on the Government, one constituency on the north side and another on the south side of the city.

Mr. N. Lemass

We do have a new Fianna Fáil Deputy here somewhere.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

You have a Fianna Fáil Deputy with a landslide of votes against the Government in the constituency of Dublin South Central.

Mr. Corish

He only got in under proportional representation.

Mr. N. Lemass

Was that not bad enough for the boys opposite?

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

They got no Fianna Fáil Deputy to replace the Deputy whose untimely death caused a by-election in North Central. They got in a Fianna Fáil Deputy in South Galway, again with a landslide of votes against the Government. The people of Dublin City and rural Ireland have already recorded their verdict on the motion before the House to-night. As Deputy Corish said, we all know what the result of a division here will be. The Fianna Fáil Deputies will troop, like well-controlled ballet boys behind their leaders, into the Division Lobbies to defeat this motion. It is simply a matter of counting heads and the Fianna Fáil Deputies, no matter what they may say at regional conferences or at branch meetings with regard to the work of the Government, will not pass this motion; and well we know it. However, as other speakers have said, it was well worth the while of the members of the Labour Party putting this motion on the Order Paper and having it discussed here, to fix attention on the failure of the present Government to deal with the problems mentioned.

I do not think there are any Deputies opposite who will deny the fact that, at the last general election and at the by-elections which preceded it, the whole weight of the Fianna Fáil propaganda machine was turned on to the questions of employment and emigration. Every bit of print put out by Fianna Fáil, every word uttered by their spokesmen from public platforms in the by-elections preceding the last general election and in the last general election itself, were hammering home the Fianna Fáil complaints against the then Government on the questions of unemployment and emigration.

What have Fianna Fáil done since they were re-elected Government of the country at the last general election? Is there any Fianna Fáil Deputy listening to me who is prepared to stand up and boldly make the claim that the present Government have done anything worth while to deal with those twin evils? It was easy enough while they were in these benches to jeer and criticise and taunt the members of the inter-Party Government and to endeavour to shake the people's confidence in the inter-Party Government and in the very idea of Irishmen co-operating in an Irish Government and an Irish Parliament. That was an easy task and that was a task which was well done by Fianna Fáil Deputies when they were in opposition.

We hear them whining now that anyone who shakes the confidence of the people in this Government is doing a bad day's work for the people of the country and postponing the day when we will have full employment. Did we hear those sentiments expressed by any Fianna Fáil Deputy when they were over on this side of the House? When Deputy Noel Lemass and his colleagues were out on the hustings during the general election, did we hear any of them endeavouring to restrain themselves or hold their voices or their criticism in check, lest undermining the confidence of the people in the inter-Party Government would jeopardise the policy for national production and employment which was announced by Deputy John A. Costello as head of the inter-Party Government?

Mr. N. Lemass

And the housing programme.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

We hear a lot about the housing programme. There are people here better qualified to deal with it than I am and I hope they will do so.

Mr. Corish

There are fewer people employed now than there were a year ago.

Mr. N. Lemass

There is £2,400,000 more allocated this year for housing and sanitary services.

Mr. Corish

There are still fewer employed in Dublin City.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Let us see to what the Fianna Fáil Government have been devoting their attention since they came into office. Everyone will remember how the year 1956 was painted as the black year in this country, the black year in unemployment and emigration. We remember the criticisms levelled by Fianna Fáil spokesmen against the levies imposed by the inter-Party Government. We remember how the people were warned by Fianna Fáil spokesmen that these levies would cause some dislocation in the employment position, that it was to be accepted that that was so, that the Government was measuring up to the responsibility which rested on their shoulders to face up to that situation. There was no holding back of the punch or the criticism by Fianna Fáil. What have they done in relation to the levies which they blame for so much unemployment? The only concrete method that they had of dealing with them was to make the levies part of our permanent taxation system and framework, as they did in their last Budget.

Fianna Fáil may think that they have contributed to easing the problem of unemployment and stopping the floodgates of emigration, by their policy in relation to prices. If they believe that, I very much doubt if they are correct. What has been their prices policy and how has that policy affected emigration and unemployment? In their first Budget after their return to office, Fianna Fáil removed the subsidies and pushed up the prices of practically every item of foodstuffs that goes into the house-wife's cupboard at the end of the week. That was the Fianna Fáil policy on prices. Do they seriously believe that that has no impact on unemployment and emigration?

If people are by deliberate, positive, Government policy put into a position where they find it harder to live in this country, where they find that prices are outstripping their wages, is it not the most natural thing in the world for the father of a family, the bread-winner, to turn his eyes across to the other side of the Irish Sea, to look for better wages and better conditions, for more money to feed and clothe his family and educate his children? Did the members of the Fianna Fáil Party, did Deputy Noel Lemass, who supported that policy, give any consideration to them when he marched into the Division Lobby to support a policy of high prices and the high price Budget introduced by his Minister for Finance?

That was how Fianna Fáil dealt with prides. They kept on the levies as part of our permanent taxation. There were other increases which were attributable to Government policy and all of these things have had their impact on the two matters complained of in the motion put down by the members of the Labour Party and the matters referred to in the amendment tabled by Deputy Dillon and Deputy Cosgrave.

Some months ago, before the Summer Recess, I tabled a parliamentary question to the Taoiseach and I asked him to give the estimated figures for persons engaged in industrial employment and agricultural employment in the years 1956 and 1957. I ask Deputies again to bear in mind that the year 1956 was painted by Fianna Fáil Deputies, from the Taoiseach down, as the blackest year for employment and emigration.

Mr. N. Lemass

And by Deputy Costello in this House.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

The provisional figures then available to the Taoiseach, when I tabled that question, showed that according to the provisional estimate, as between industrial and agricultural employment, there were 24,000 fewer persons in employin the year 1957 than in the year 1956. In other words, after Deputy Noel Lemass and his colleagues had the handling of the affairs of this country for 12 months, we find the situation that people were going out of employment at the rate of 2,000 per month. That is the Fianna Fáil contribution to the employment situation. I admit there are fewer people registered as unemployed to-day by a few thousands than in the "black year," as they put it, of 1956. If there are fewer people registered as unemployed, and if there are fewer people in employment, is it not quite clear that there is a gap and that must be accounted for in some way? Is there any other way of accounting for the gap than to say they have emigrated, that they have gone abroad?

When Deputy Lindsay was speaking he gave a calculation which I accept, and which I think Deputies opposite will accept, of at least 60,000 persons emigrating from this country in the last 12 months. That is how Fianna Fáil has dealt with the question of emigration. I have here one of the sheets of election literature issued by the members of the Party opposite when they were inviting the electors of Cork City to galvanise the country, as they put it, and put Deputy Galvin into this House. The people of Cork did that and this is what they did it on. I find on page 3 of this document, in large black letters, "Fianna Fáil Plans to End Emigration." But there is an unexpected burst of frankness at the end of the document and they have another heading—"The Worst is yet to Come." The worst has come and the people know now that instead of galvanising the country by electing Deputy Galvin, instead of galvanising Cork City— with apologies to the Minister for Education—they found they lynched it. Fianna Fáil have had ample time within which to put before the people, even if they have not implemented it, some solid proposal to deal with these questions of unemployment and emigration, to deal with these topics which they never tired of hammering home when they were on these benches.

I do not blame Deputy Noel Lemass. Like other good troopers he just follows the leader. No doubt Deputy Noel Lemass, as well as other Deputies in the Fianna Fáil Party, regularly read —I do not know if they were required to contribute to it—the Fianna Fáil pamphlet entitled Gleas, which came out regularly while the Fianna Fáil Party were in opposition. My understanding of the native tongue tells me that the word “gleas” can be roughly translated as “ammunition”. It reminds me of a war-time refrain and, if I might parody it, I can well imagine a group of Fianna Fáil Deputies month after month when Gleas came out, singing to themselves “Please the Chief and pass the ammunition”, because that is the Fianna Fáil policy in a nutshell. They will boost the Chief and they will use the ammunition.

There was no question of Fianna Fáil refraining from criticism of the inter-Party Government while they were on these benches lest that by undermining the people's confidence in the Government they would be jeopardising the plans that Government were putting into operation. Speaking as a Deputy who supported the inter-Party Government I am very glad to have belonged to a Party that worked together with other Parties in this House to give us a good Government. I am not one bit ashamed of the work that was done by either of the inter-Party Governments. In the long run, comparing results year by year, and comparing the records of the Governments led by Deputy J. A. Costello with the Governments of Fianna Fáil, the people will now have cause to regret that, by their default in the last general election, they enabled the Fianna Fáil Party to get back into office.

There was a reply given to a parliamentary question to-day which has a direct bearing on the motion before the House. Deputy Rooney sought information as to the numbers in insurable employment in each of the years from 1954 to 1958. We find that the figures given—I assume they were only estimated figures—in reply to that question show that again in the black year of 1956 there were 501,000 persons in insurable employment. In the first Fianna Fáil year of 1957 that figure had dropped to 485,000 odd and in the second Fianna Fáil year of 1958 that figure had dropped further again, to 464,000 odd. Is that a record of which any Government could be proud, particularly any Government that went before the people at the general election hammering home their propaganda about employment and unemployment?

Does not every one of the Deputies opposite, particularly those in Dublin City such as Deputy Noel Lemass, remember how they stuck out their chests and used their paint brushes to placard this city with posters crying out to the housewives with the words: "Wives, get your husbands off to work." How many of them have they put to work? Would it not have been a much truer prophecy for Fianna Fáil organisers in the last general election to have appealed to the wives to get their husbands off to the emigrant boat? Does not Deputy Noel Lemass and every other Deputy on that side of the House remember the speeches of Fianna Fáil spokesmen and the terms of Fianna Fáil advertisements during the election saying that unemployment was the test? Unemployment was the acid test of Government policy, they said, and it was not good enough to have so many thousands of people out of work.

Do they not remember how at least one Fianna Fáil spokesman, who was of sufficient importance to have his speeches recorded in the newspapers, spoke of a Fianna Fáil Government putting the question of unemployment as the primary task to be solved, the task on which Fianna Fáil were going to start work the following month? Here we are about two years later with, because of the general easing of the financial and economic situation, a slight decrease in the number registered as unemployed but a large decrease in the numbers in employment.

As I say, the people of this country, the people of Dublin City, north and south, and the people of the rural constituency of South Galway, have already recorded their verdict on this motion. They have already passed this motion. We are not going to get it passed in this House. Fianna Fáil, even under proportional representation, have managed to get an over-all majority but if there is any shame in the Fianna Fáil Party at least some of their Deputies will have to look very closely into their hearts before they march into the Division Lobbies to oppose this motion.

Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Smith)

I have listened to a number of debates over the years including several "no confidence" motions, and I think I cannot remember any discussion that had such an air of unreality about it as that which has taken place here this evening. I do not know why it is that Deputies regard it as a useful approach on a matter of this nature to paint a picture which will be immediately recognised as dishonest by those who are following public affairs fairly closely.

I can remember when we met here after the 1957 election when the proposal was made that the present Taoiseach should become the head of the new Government, one of the complaints, charges or allegations made in the course of a discussion on that motion was that we had received a blank cheque from the public; in other words, that we had clearly been given the responsibility to form a Government without giving any specific undertakings as to what our policy would be.

That statement of mine is true because my recollection is quite clear. The allegation that we were given a blank cheque is also true because those of us who have been in this Party for many years, those of us who have been associated with the establishment 33 years ago of this organisation that has put us here knowing that the position—maybe not knowing it as intimately as those who were members of the then Government knew it—was bad, as experienced men, were not going to tie ourselves up in undertakings as to what we would do and what we might achieve in facing the task of Government that, long before the election, we felt would be entrusted to us.

To listen now to some of the Deputies who have spoken, both the mover of the motion and of the amendment, and the others, one would think everybody in the land had forgotten that situation, that they had even forgotten their own words. As a matter of fact, they pressed the proposed Taoiseach to give assurances on certain points because we had not given any assurances to the people before they cast their votes. How, then, can we be accused—as we have been accused here —of breaking our word and demoralising public life, bringing about or spreading, or being responsible for creating that spirit of despair and hopelessness which the Opposition claim is abroad in the public mind? Deputies on the opposite side know quite well why we got the blank cheque, and members of the community of every class know why we got it. Is there any Deputy here who can deny that the period for some considerable time before that election was really the period when the lack of confidence was abroad? That is the period when the public had lost faith in the finances of the country, the period when the country and the people who lived in it had lost faith in our capacity to survive.

Just think of a few items that were a source of concern in those days. I remember it was suggested in the House at Question Time that some of the local bodies were in financial difficulties and that statement was energetically repudiated from the Government Benches. But we knew, we know now, that some of those local bodies were in financial difficulties. We knew then and we knew since then—we knew it with a vengeance when we became a Government—that they were in financial difficulties, that they could not meet their obligations to the public and to the ratepayers. After the election, we knew the Road Fund was indebted to them and that the Government could not honour its bond to them and pay the moneys due to them. We knew that before our predecessors went out of office a conference of county managers had been held at which the Ministers for Finance and Local Government attended. One of the first documents I saw when I went back to the Department of Local Government after the election was a report on that discussion and, to invite me—I suppose I need not accept if I did not want to do it— to listen to the Deputies who moved this motion and the amendment and to this discussion—well, one would think there was nothing wrong.

The report to which I refer was addressed to county managers in terms like this: do not take on any new work: stop any proposals that are there; let them be there, whether they concern housing or water or sewerage schemes. Sit on them. I did not see the faces of the county managers at that conference, but judging by the remarks made in the course of that report, they must have been the most subdued lot of men imaginable. I can tell the House that when I came back to the Department, I could not get the county managers for a considerable time to ask me even for the money I knew they wanted to meet their commitments. They were ashamed to do it after this interview. To-night I heard Deputy Lindsay talk about this situation as if Mayo County Council did not owe £250,000 to people scattered throughout Mayo who had built houses and to whom the money was due by way of supplementary grants.

Sometimes when one listens to a discussion like this and to the claims of those who talk about the effect of politicians and political Parties and of propaganda and of speeches and the literature issued by these Parties, one would think, listening to the charges made this evening, that the record to which I have only briefly referred did not exist in this country or that the event to which it referred had not taken place only about 18 months ago.

There is something I can say for myself—I think it represents not only my view which I have held all the time but also the views of my colleagues— that our principal aim and determination during the course of that election in the full knowledge we would be responsible for public policy in the years ahead was to restore the confidence of our people in the finances of the country.

As Deputy Kyne has stated here, we may not, as no Party ever will, I suppose, be as successful in all our efforts in these matters as we would hope. However, there can be no doubt that, so far as this Party is concerned, immediately on our coming back into office, we did try genuinely to correct the situation to which I have briefly referred. When we got a look at things, we tried to release many of these proposals by local bodies that were held up because the moneys would not be made available. In the first eight or nine months—I am not saying it was as a result of any special effort on my part as an individual, but as a result of the general approach of the Government to this matter—we released these proposals and provided moneys to county councils and other local bodies to meet their commitments, and no matter what may be claimed on that side of the House and no matter how often it may be claimed, it will not make the public believe otherwise than that we did that with success.

Some time before this, our predecessors made up their minds to go to the country. There was a discussion in our own Party as to the advisability of tabling a motion dealing with housing. Being the former Minister for Local Government, I would naturally be expected to put my name to that motion. I was very hesitant about it and I resisted it for a while. I heard the then Minister being questioned in the House in relation to housing, local authorities and other matters of one kind or another. I did feel he was not as frank as he should be. Maybe he could not help it, but I resisted for some time taking responsibility for a censure motion, although we are not supposed to have any consideration for Government difficulties when we are not in office. Although perhaps I am not the Deputy who would be regarded as having the most consideration, yet I had some. But I shall tell you what changed my opinion, what changed my attitude and brought me to the point that I freely put down my name to that motion. I was convinced, as a result of this happening, that it was time for the then Government to go.

I received a message from a businessman in my own constituency. He was linked up with builders suppliers who had an organisation of their own all over the county. He was not a political follower of mine; in fact, the majority of the association were political opponents of mine, but I believe, without saying it in a boastful way, that they had some confidence in me, even though I was a member of the Opposition. They asked me to meet them. I did not know really what it was for, but I met them. They showed me their accounts, their bank overdrafts, their letters from the bank manager, and all the rest of it. These men were at their wits end. They would not give a prospective builder of a house as much timber as would make the bridge of a fiddle, not because they did not want to sell—

Mr. O'Sullivan

You are pulling the long bow now.

Mr. Smith

I am pulling the true bow. Those men are there to this day, and although they will not hear my words now, they can peruse the record and they will know whether I am telling the truth or not. I saw the accounts and the way in which they were being treated. I am referring to this in the hope that in whatever time is left for this debate there will be some reality on the other side as to what the problems were that we had to meet when we came in here about 18 months ago.

The subject matter of agriculture has been mentioned in this amendment, although, except for one Deputy on the opposite side, very little has been said about it. Everybody knows that this was a tremendously difficult year for all those who have to live by the land. In saying that, I am not looking for sympathy as Minister or seeking to shirk any of my own responsibilities because of that fact. However, a few suggestions have been made here by Deputy Dillon to which I should like to refer because some of them were made in perhaps a serious way, although I do not think they are practicable.

The first suggestion was in connection largely with the grain position. He accused me, more or less, I think in relation to some parliamentary questions by Deputy Corry, of not treating the House fairly, that I was using the majority which Fianna Fáil has to deprive Deputy Corry and the House in general of information they should have. There was nothing further from my mind. I had no such intention.

In so far as this problem is concerned, and it is a grave problem, the Government made up their mind that, while they were prepared to pay a guaranteed price for the percentage requirement determined, they were not prepared to subsidise for sale, either on the foreign market or for animal feeding on the home market, any excess over and above the stated amount. That scheme was announced some time in the spring. The spring this year was a bad one. The summer was bad. The harvest was worse. Although the acreage under wheat was substantially higher by some 12,000 acres, it was apparent as harvest time approached that the yield was not likely to be as high as it would have been in a normal year.

Early on, in the first week in September, when the first results of the harvest were coming on the market, it was apparent that the crop was far below standard. A new approach was necessary and that new approach had to be made quickly. One could not permit oneself to be tied up in schemes devised at a time when nobody could foresee what the weather and the harvest might be. It was clear that, if some new scheme were not devised, a great deal of the wheat offered would not be accepted by the millers under the standards then fixed in the Wheat Order. My anxiety was to ease that position to enable growers to sell their wheat, even though it might be inferior from a milling point of view so long as that inferiority was not the result of the growers' own neglect. In consultation, therefore, with all the people interested and affected I decided on the scheme which came into operation on 11th September. That is a scheme under which a grower of wheat, classified as millable under a new determination, gets not less than 57/9 per barrel after all deductions have been made, while the levy collected on such wheat will be used for the purpose of disposing of any portion of it held undesirable for conversion into flour.

The point is made and the argument advanced here that we should do something more. Growers of wheat have suffered great losses. Unfortunately that is something inherent in agricultural economy. We cannot protect agriculture from a visitation from God. In adopting the new approach to which I have referred— the Government and the Department of Finance gave me permission to announce the new scheme notwithstanding the fact that it might cost ultimately anything from £250,000 to £750,000—we made a substantial contribution towards meeting the situation. We all know the losses involved.

There are other farmers besides wheat growers. I had a question addressed to me to-day in relation to those farmers who grow our potato requirements. My reply was that, while we all had sympathy with these because of the importance of the potato and its popularity in our diet, at the same time we have to think of those who are harvesting only half to one-third of their normal crop.

Mr. Corish

The point there was that it was the farmer who should get the price and not the middleman.

Mr. Smith

The middleman has always been with us. There is no difference in distribution methods to-day as compared with former years.

Mr. Corish

But this is a time of special scarcity and there is an added drawback.

Mr. Smith

The scarcity is not of such dimensions as to involve its being availed of in that way.

Because of our gesture in departing from the scheme drawn up last spring, and because of our preparedness to help financially, and before we have any record of what the results will be, the actions of some people both inside the House and outside it are somewhat akin to counting chickens before they are hatched. It is not, of course, to be expected that Deputies on the Opposition Benches would give me or the Government credit for our approach. I have my own means of meeting the people involved in all this and I know that they are grateful that we were so quick off the mark in the first week in September. The scheme was announced in the first week in September and it was made retrospective to cover any wheat held in the mills. I do know, as I say, that those people are quietly appreciative of that gesture.

One other suggestion was made in the course of the speech made by the mover of the amendment—a suggestion from which, perhaps, good results would be obtained if it were put into operation—namely, that there should be some incentive in the form of an increased price of milk in areas where bovine T.B. is most widespread. That suggestion has been made to me before. As I said then and have said since and will say now, there is no limit to the number of incentives I could think of that would make a tremendous difference in this matter, but there is a limit to the distance one can go. Those who make that suggestion realise that as a result of the weather conditions, the bad summer and autumn, milk yields have gone down and the suggestion is that because of that fact we need not have regard at all to the problem of a surplus of butter. I am not afraid of a surplus of butter. I would not be greatly afraid of it even if the year had been normal and even if production had equalled or exceeded that of last year. I was hoping that we would find some way out of the difficulty. There is no use in anyone, especially one who has had the responsibility of Minister for Agriculture, pretending that there are not tremendous problems involved in this whole matter.

Naturally, we do not want to discourage milk production, not so much because we want increased production of butter, but because we realise that, without an increase in milk, we cannot hope to increase our cattle numbers. I have heard it suggested that a Minister for Agriculture should make speeches advising farmers and milk producers to change their system somewhat and to use some of the milk produced for feeding young calves and so on. While I should be glad to see farmers pursuing that line of action, where possible, I do not like to lecture them on that proposition because I know that it would present problems to those who depend on the creamery cheque. While it would be good policy, if they could be induced to adopt it, to increase the number of cows, young calves and young stock, if they are lectured from a height by somebody like me on that matter, naturally they will have their come-back, if not publicly, at least privately and will say: "He does not seem to realise that the monthly creamery cheque is something to which we have been accustomed and something which is very vital to us and that it would be very difficult for us to change over, even in a small way, from that practice."

As I have said, I could think of several ways of giving incentives that would undoubtedly more than cushion farmers and milk producers in the areas where the incidence of T.B. amongst live stock is fairly heavy, but this is a practical matter and one can do only what is reasonable and fair. I am not saying that the scheme as it stands now may not have to be changed with the passage of time. There is nothing fixed. All we are trying to do in regard to this matter is to face a task the difficulty of which I cannot find the word to describe. If, in the course of time and as a result of the experience we gain, we find it necessary to switch from one incentive to another, of course we will always consider it, but one man may say: "Give an incentive in the price of milk"; another may say: "Give an incentive in respect of young shorthorn heifers"; another may say: "Give an incentive in the form of double byre grants", and so on. There is no limit to the number of incentives that could be suggested.

Take the question mentioned by Deputy Dillon, the double byre grant. After the discussion on the Estimate, I did not intend to refer to this matter here again; I was finished with it, from the point of view of meeting an accusation that I was trying to misrepresent anybody. I shall not deal with it now either, but I shall say that when I went into the Department, I saw the file dealing with all this matter; I saw the view of the late Senator Moylan; I saw his approach to it; I saw the approach of the Minister for External Affairs who was acting Minister for Agriculture for a period; I saw Deputy Dillon's approach.

As I say, I do not want to misrepresent anybody. As I said on the discussion of the Estimate here, when I suddenly brought discussion on this thing to a close, I looked at my officials, at the Secretary of my Department and those who were with me. These men served every Minister— Deputy Dillon, Deputy Aiken, the late-Senator Moylan and myself. They served them loyally. If I were to stand up in this House with a file in my hand and deliberately misrepresent a situation or deliberately distort or he about some matter of that kind, I should not like to think what they would think about me. I have never given officials any reason to think about me in that way. Anything I said then I said truthfully. Apart from that, I agreed with the view that I found on record of all my predecessors in regard to the double byre grant. It was an expensive innovation. Apart from the fact that it was expensive, it was not really achieving results commensurate with its expensiveness.

In the case of a man who applied for a double byre grant he called on the local veterinary surgeon to have his herd tested. He went on with the work of erection at that stage and received half the grant, and later had the veterinary surgeon test his herd again. After that second test, he received the other instalment of the grant, but it could have happened that the applicant was an isolated farmer, perhaps in Cavan, Monaghan, Laois, Offaly, or Cork, and after he received the full grant, there was no supervision to see if he were maintaining the position his herd had achieved. The payment and the incentive were gone. In my view, as far as making a substantial contribution to the eradication of the disease was concerned, that procedure was worth very little.

I was asked again what was my attitude towards the Parish Plan, and the House was told of all the good that resulted from it. I believe I have made this statement before, and I now do so again. I admit quite frankly that the more we can induce our farmers to seek scientific advice, the better it will be. We all believe that the country would benefit if people who owned the land could be encouraged to avail of such advice, but if we want to have the services extended, as we do, why should we build up two organisations to achieve that? We have the county committees of agriculture and they employ their own staffs of instructors. Each committee has a C.A.O. and a number of agricultural scientists. The idea of the Parish Plan is to place another agricultural officer alongside these, and his work as parish agent will be supervised from the Department of Agriculture.

I am not trying to slaughter any scheme or any proposal on that line, whether it originated in the mind of the late Canon Hayes or wherever else it came from. My approach is an entirely practical one. If there is to be development along these lines, it should take place within the framework of the committees of agriculture. I have seen one file concerning the case of a parish agent who was not getting on too well in the district to which he was allotted. I am not saying that the agent was at fault or who was at fault. That does not really arise, but, as a result of the complaints and misunderstandings, investigation had to take place. There was a series of visits by inspectors of my Department to that area, one week after another, and that illustrates the cost, the turmoil and the confusion that would result if these two systems, or organisations, were allowed to grow up alongside one another. There would be tremendous waste.

I was invited to comment upon a parish agent who was operating in my own county and I am on record in the public Press, though not on the records of this House, in that case. On that occasion, I said what I thought. Of course, I approved of all and every effort that could be made to place scientific knowledge at the disposal of farmers, but, as in the case of these officers, it is the same with practically every other type of person, the creamery manager, Deputy, doctor, or lawyer. The tremendous difference between persons in each of these categories is not dependent upon the qualifications one man has, as compared with another, but upon the real interest which one man has in his work as compared with another. For administration purposes, for compactness and in order to secure the elimination of waste, my approach to this whole matter will be that these appointments should be made through the county committees of agriculture, and the activities of all these officers should be supervised by the committees.

The grading of pigs has been mentioned and that subject is a very old timer, in this House and in the country.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair, of course, pointed out to Deputy Dillon, who raised that subject, that it was not relevant on the motion.

Mr. Smith

I agree that is so, Sir, but you know there was a fair share of harm done by the time the Chair became aware of the approach to this matter, and I was hoping that I would be allowed to do a little harm so as to even things up.

General Mulcahy

Fair enough.

Mr. Smith

I will be only a few minutes. I do not know what system could be devised to eliminate what I myself know exists to some extent, that is, the lack of confidence in the method of grading. I can give the House this assurance, that I watch the percentages very carefully because I am suspicious too, and from the percentages which I have seen from time to time as to the number of these carcases that are graded A, I am at least able to assure myself to some extent that the approach being made is reasonable. I am not contending that it is possible to devise a scheme by which you could achieve the perfect thing. Unfortunately, you find, to a large extent, accusations of that nature being made by farmers, not only in regard to the grading of pigs but also in regard to quite a lot of the commodities which they produce and which are handled by businessmen and business concerns. There may be something from time to time in their complaints and suspicions, but I do not think they are justified every time you hear them made.

All these problems about which we hear so much—the problem of the countryside, the problem of the small farmer and the smallholding, the movement that has been going on for quite a considerable time not only in this country but in many other lands as well, the difficulties that confront the owner of a smallholding, what would compensate him for his labours having regard to what he would earn in another occupation, the means and sources available to him of earning an income by remaining on the land —what are they? Pigs, bacon, milk, poultry, and so on. If we are to take these three—milk, pigs, poultry—the markets for these are not so enticing. We are obliged to subsidise heavily the sale of butter.

Deputy Kyne referred to the fact that powdered milk and chocolate crumb were not being produced this year at Dungarvan which indicates the position of the market to which these were being sent previously. Because of the policy pursued for some years by the British, the whole situation in regard to eggs and poultry has changed. Any excess of butter can be sold only by the payment of a substantial subsidy. I am not contending that it is not justifiable for the State or the Government to pay a subsidy but it is discouraging and disappointing and very insecure to attempt to look into the future and to see little prospect of producing that to which these small people are accustomed to produce, unless by the payment of a subsidy.

We have, then, to encourage our people by every means at our disposal to improve their land, the milking capacity of their cows, and their whole position in regard to pig production. We have to encourage and help them along these lines and to make whatever provision we can from the resources at our disposal to simplify the task that is there for them to undertake.

There has not been much discussion on agriculture as a subject during this debate. I have referred to the few points made regarding it. It is a very wide subject. This has been a very difficult year but it has many compensations and many indications that are encouraging. I mentioned here before the taking of figures, going back on the records to show which Minister was most successful in a particular Department, to show what some individual achieved as against another. To tell the truth, in many ways I regard that as a lot of nonsense. I hear it trotted out in this House and it is not because it refers to the year in which I previously occupied this office-that I am in any way sensitive about it. Suppose that next year we had— with the help of God, we shall—the most tremendous year, that the spring was just everything a farmer would desire, that the summer would be likewise and that the harvest would be better. You might as well say by comparing 1948 and 1949 with 1947 and 1948, that that was achieved by some human agency. That is nonsense. I have figures before me to prove what I say.

Take the trends in pig production. If I were to use these figures, say, for 1948, 1949, 1950 and 1951—the period of the first Coalition Government—it would be seen that the trend in pig production, which started off all right in 1949, declined every year afterwards to 1951. In 1951 it started to increase —when Fianna Fáil came into office. It continued to increase until our predecessors came back again and then it proceeded to decline. I would not bother my brains, because I have plenty of work to do, going over that field or trying to impress anybody with that sort of reasoning or that sort of approach. I know that a wise policy by a Government and good judgment by a Minister mean something.

We know that to act in a timely way and grapple quickly with problems which you can have some effect on can make some contribution and can inspire confidence in regard to those who have to do the major part of the work. I am well aware of that, but to pretend to an intelligent people, as our people are, that I, my successor, or my predecessors can, by the production of some magic wand, make the hens lay the day following their coming into office is even more childish than the attempts made by the speakers on the opposition side to remind the public of Fianna Fáil undertakings and promises which they allege we have deserted. The effort on the part of any man to set himself up as a genius in agriculture is just as stupid and childish as the efforts made here to condemn this Government for a failure of which we are not guilty.

General Mulcahy

It will be all right when P.R. is wiped out.

Mr. O'Sullivan

The putting down of this motion has been amply justified by the fact that it has evoked certain contributions which are interesting. We witnessed on the part of the Minister for Health a display of histrionics when he tried to build around the miserable proposals on the back of the Order Paper a positive programme for the autumn session.

Last week, the Dáil was called back after three months. It adjourned for specific reasons. Again, the Government got another respite, a week in which to present to the Dáil a programme proving that they intended, having been given practically two years in which to do it, to prepare the plans mentioned ad infinitum to implement all the action promised in the sheafs of literature which we could quote all day, to-morrow, next week-and for months afterwards if we were to pin this literature round the ears of the Government who got into office because they gave undertakings and specific promises.

The situation in the country to-day in relation to emigration, unemployment, the cost of living and the-terrible conditions existing in agriculture demands from all sides of this House a very serious understanding of the difficulties the people are meeting and a realistic approach to the question of solving these problems. What did we get when the House met to-day? There was an exodus from the Government Front Benches when Deputy Norton, the Leader of the Labour Party, stood up to move his motion. There seemed to be more attention given to the stage of the Mansion House than to Dáil Éireann. That is a warning to the country as to what could be expected if there was not a vigilant and energetic Opposition in this House. We had the spectacle of the unfortunate Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach being left to face the barrage of criticism which he knew was to come.

Mr. MacEntee

I asked the Parliamentary Secretary to occupy the Front Bench for three minutes, while I went out of the House. I fully intended coming back as I was going to open the debate and reply on behalf of the Government. The Deputy knows that very well. He is just trying to misrepresent the position.

Mr. O'Sullivan

The discussion went on for more than three minutes. The Parliamentary Secretary agreed that the House should adjourn for half an hour to provide him with an opportunity of discovering a Minister to come to the House. That was the way in which this debate was launched in the House to-day after three months. It is an example of the manner in which the business of the country is being approached by the Government. Who is put in to make the apology on behalf of the Government? The Minister for Health.

Again, we were back to the year 1947. We cannot get the Minister for Health away from that year and we cannot get the Minister for Agriculture away from it, either. Why? Because that was the last year in which both were permitted to occupy the Ministries of Finance and Agriculture. That was the year in which hundreds of T.B. people were awaiting attention in the hospitals.

Mr. MacEntee

On a point of order, might I correct the Deputy? I was not Minister for Finance in the year 1947. That is a slight misstatement on the part of the Deputy.

Mr. O'Sullivan

I should, indeed, remember, as every other human being remembers, that the Minister was Minister for Finance in 1952. It is something that will never be forgotten. In relation to the assertions of the Minister for Health to-day, all we need say is that, no matter how he may explain himself outside, the Taoiseach gave the answer. He did not put Deputy MacEntee back into the Department of Finance. He was wise in that.

The Minister referred, of course, to the old, old story-the difficulties left by the previous Government. He regrets that the Minister for Finance did not have the legacy of £24,000,000 that was in the Marshall Aid Fund——

Mr. MacEntee

£24,000,000 worth of debts.

Mr. O'Sullivan

And which was spent in six months. The only legacies on this occasion were the millions in the Prize Bonds scheme. Of course, that was not mentioned by the Minister. The only business on the Order Paper was that under the aegis of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. He was not present; he was elsewhere, but he was in Dublin yesterday, in the Mansion House. He made some important pronouncements—pronouncements which were not repeated by the Minister for Health to-day, who made absolutely no reference to the £220,000,000 plan. The Minister for Agriculture has just sat down after speaking for quite a long time and he did not say one tittle about the much vaunted £220,000,000 plan. Was that because of the reception it got from the Fianna Fáil delegates at the Ard-Fheis? Will it be relegated to the same scrapheap as that to which the £100,000,000 plan was consigned—the plan launched in Clery's restaurant?

The Minister for Agriculture fell back to-day on an old claim of his, that the Government were given a blank cheque and, consequently, are not obliged to present to the people any fulfilment, or attempt at fulfilment, of the assurances which we claim they definitely gave at the last election. We have sheafs of quotations which could be used to prove that they obtained the suffrages of the people because specific undertakings were made by the Taoiseach and the humblest candidate put forward in every constituency throughout the country. That kind of talk can do no good. If any Minister said to-day that there were serious problems which they should face up to and that they had run into specific difficulties, one might sympathise with them, although it would be difficult. Instead of that, we have explanations from the Minister for Health that certainly take a lot of swallowing.

In relation to emigration, we were told that the people who emigrated were people who had made arrangements to go before this Government came into office. What lead was given in regard to emigration following the accession of this Government to office? Within a matter of a month, we saw the picture of a whole household, relatives of the Taoiseach's family, emigrating to America. Had they made arrangements to go before this Government came into office?

Mr. MacEntee

On a point of order, the Taoiseach has denied that statement. The people who left and whom the Deputy refers to as being relatives of the Taoiseach were stated by the Taoiseach not to be related to him in any way. They happen to have the same surname as some people who were. The Deputy ought to accept that.

Mr. O'Sullivan

I am in very frequent attendance in this House and I did not hear him make that statement, but I accept from the Minister for Health that that statement was made.

Debate adjourned.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 30th October, 1958.