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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 10 Dec 1959

Vol. 178 No. 8

Adjournment Debate—Government Policy.

I move:—

That the Dáil, on its rising on Friday, 11th December, 1959, do adjourn until Wednesday, 10th February, 1960.

We are sitting until 10.30 tonight. Does that need any amendment of the motion?

No, it does not. We can amend it, if necessary, by agreement now.

On the occasion of its adjournment, it is not unreasonable that the House should embark on some stocktaking of the general economic and social conditions which have emerged and with which we are now confronted. I recall when this Government took office it was in the atmosphere of a plan announced by the Taoiseach at a meeting which he held in Clery's Restaurant. So impressed was he with the validity of this plan, that he bespoke the cooperation of the Irish Press and they published it as a special supplement. Its outstanding feature was that there was an unlimited number of millions of money to be borrowed for investment in this country, with the consequential creation of 100,000 new jobs, at the rate, I think, of 15,000 new jobs per annum.

In the election that followed, Fianna Fáil harked back to those happy prognostications and confined themselves to plastering the country with posters: "Women, vote for Fianna Fáil and get your husbands jobs." That poster had two agreeable implications. One was that the Taoiseach was "raring" to go, if he got the chance, and the other, and more sinister, implication was that the members of the Government then in office were relatively indifferent to the trials and tribulations of their unemployed fellow citizens, and that the economic difficulties through which the country was then passing were the responsibility of an indifferent body of men who saw their neighbours suffering and did not care.

We were not concerned to say— perhaps we were not so touchy—what the Taoiseach is reported as saying last week in a reference to us as representing a banshee convention. We did not think it was a banshee convention. We thought it was a very dishonest attempt to deceive our people and a heartless attempt to exploit the sufferings of unemployed people for the political advantage of a Party, hungry for power.

I do not think ambition is any fault in a public man. That is why that is a charge which I have never levelled against the Taoiseach. It burns brightly in him and indeed it should. The person who aspires to the leadership of the public life of the country is entitled to be ambitious to serve his country and I am prepared to say that the Taoiseach is so ambitious. We are entitled, when he attains to the power he sought, and has had a reasonable period of three years in which to put his policies to the test, to ask him to render an account of his stewardship. That is the purpose of this debate tonight. The Taoiseach has had a clear majority in Dáil Éireann now for three solid years and we are entitled to look for results.

I know that statisticians rejoice in preparing endless tables and I make no apology for admitting freely that, although I have as much experience of those calculations as any man, I have never got the wheel of my intelligence around the axle of a number of speculative calculations made by statisticians. When I read these tables setting out the net and gross annual product and the net and gross annual income and study closely the constituents of those calculations, they are of so ephemeral a character that I am inclined to say: "You pays your money and you takes your choice." If you are feeling gloomy, you can shift the figures and the results will be gloomy. If you shift them to a different place the whole result comes out looking rosy and lovely.

It may be that the fault is in me that these types of calculations leave me in the greatest doubt as to their validity, but there is one calculation which in my experience has been in the past and will forever be, in my judgment, a fairly reliable indicator of the fundamental prosperity or imminent economic difficulty of any country, and that is a study of its physical exports and imports. They can be measured by ascertainable methods which are clear and certain and free from equivocation.

We were in office from 1954 to the Spring of 1957 and in that time the world, particularly Europe, passed through a series of great political and economic difficulties. I think when we left office the bank rate in England was 6½ per cent. and rising. It was the highest it has ever been since the beginning of the 1914-1918 war. I give that statistic merely as an indicator of the general economic confusion raging in Western Europe over that period. Of course, it had its repercussions here, but as a result of the measures taken by the Irish Government of that day without much regard to their political popularity, we have it to tell that for the first time since the conclusion of the European war of 1939-1945 there was a credit in our balance of payments for the calendar year 1957 of £12 million.

That fact I think secured and consolidated the economic foundations of this country at a time when the economic foundations in other countries were being rocked by economic events that were passing all round. On that basis of security, I think it was legitimate to expect that real solid progress might have been built up in the years that followed on because, mind you, a credit in our balance of payments can be bought at an excessive cost. If you secure credit in the balance of payments by no other device than shrinking the volume of your trade, especially of your exports, it may have a very undesirable result.

But in the year to which I refer the volume and the value of our exports rose higher than at any time since Fianna Fáil first took office in this country in 1930. I speak deliberately not only of the value but of the volume of our exports. It was in that situation, a record year of exports from this country, that we secured a credit in our balance of payments of no less than £12,000,000, which is something which had not been secured before except in the years of the actual war.

Let us look at the situation that has supervened since we attained that point—the maximum volume and value of exports of credit balance in our payments in 1957. In 1958 we had retreated substantially but still there was practically no balance one way or another. If we assume that our calculations of invisible exports at £60,000,000 per annum are consistently correct and if we come to 1959—that is the year in which we now are—the adverse balance of trade for the first ten months of this year amounts to £71.27 million. By the end of this year we shall be fortunate if the adverse balance of trade is less than £80,000,000 and if we accept as the average, that our invisible exports are running to £60,000,000 or thereabouts, we shall be fortunate if we reach the end of this year with a balance of payments deficit of much less than £20,000,000 sterling.

That figure standing alone, I think, will be sufficient to cause the greatest possible concern if you take that figure with the realisation that our exports are sinking steadily. If you take that figure in the light of the fact that to-day we have no exports of butter or bacon and that our farmers will have to go back to dependence, so far as our agricultural exports go, on cattle, sheep and meat products, we are brought slap up against the very formidable question: What is going to happen to this community if for any reason we should cease to have them?

I think we have lived so long in the enjoyment of the livestock exporting industry that we have never stopped to think what would happen to this country if it came to an end. The great danger is that there are people in high places who do not understand what the livestock industry of this country means. There are people in high places who imagine that this country might profitably exchange the traditional store cattle export trade of this country for a dead meat industry. Such people believe, because they do not understand, that there is a reasonable prospect of a dead meat industry compensating our economy for the disappearance of the store cattle trade.

With that kind of mentality abroad, I look at the progress made with the bovine tuberculosis eradication scheme and I ask myself whether this Government is serious in the efforts to stamp that plague out. Have they asked themselves what will happen if the livestock trade should go? At the present time the farmers of this country are struggling not only with the problems created for them by the task of eradicating bovine tuberculosis in cattle, but they are struggling with the fact that, since the economic war, the price of cattle has never been more disastrous. There are very few farmers to-day who have made any profit out of cattle in the past twelve months.

The price of sheep and lambs this year has left very little profit for any farmer who deals in them. The price of turkeys, which, after all, is an important thing in the economy of most rural households, has been utterly catastrophic. I do not think I am exaggerating if I say that anyone who reared turkeys this year has lost money on every bird produced. I do not think I am being unreasonably alarmist when I say that the consequence of that will be felt not only in every house but in every rural establishment in Ireland.

From the first to the last week of December, 50 to 60 per cent. of the normal Christmas trade in many departments of the rural distributive trade depends on the proceeds of the turkey market.

I ask myself what are the Government doing in the light of these events. I gather the Minister for Agriculture feels that past Administrations charged themselves with too great a responsibility in the presence of facts such as these. I do not think they did. I think it is a source of considerable help and consolation to farmers when faced with a situation such as they are now confronted with to know that the Minister responsible for their industry is concerned about them and anxious to help in any way he can.

I view with astonishment the atmosphere of sleepy inactivity which the Department of Agriculture appears to manifest to-day in the presence of what I consider to be as acute a crisis for the farmers as any I remember since the Economic War. When I think of the reduction in the intake of milk by the creameries and translate that as nearly as I can into the reduction of a cash income to our farmers, I believe they have lost at least £2 million this year from reduced intake of milk alone.

No rational man will blame the Minister for Agriculture for the type of weather we have had. I think many people in the Government labour under the delusion that because the weather was fine and suitable for the seaside, everyone living on the land of Ireland had a good time. It may astonish some members of the Government but I venture to suggest that our farmers for the past year, with all the sun and fine weather we had, had a worse time, by and large, than they had in the catastrophic wet year of 1958.

The reduction in income experienced by our farmers in the past 12 months was much greater than the losses involved in the inclement harvest weather of the year before. What causes me acute concern is that the collapse of the number of cattle exported coincides with the catastrophic fall that has taken place in prices.

I do not understand fully the astonishing fall in the numbers of cattle exports. I know there must have been a shortage of grass and feeding stuffs in Great Britain which, undoubtedly, to some extent would react on our exports of store cattle but I cannot imagine it having as much effect as it appears to have had unless something else is operating. I ask myself, in these circumstances, what this Government intend to do or propose to do. The only clue I have to what they propose to do is a document on which they have been resting cheerfully for some considerable time, the Programme for Economic Expansion to which I want to refer.

Before I do that, I put it to Dáil Éireann that if we are to get the kind of expansion necessary to restore the trading position of this country, if we are to get the kind of expansion in exports requisite to put our trade in permanent and enduring balance, is there any source from which we can hope to get it other than the land? I do not want to denigrate the possibilities of getting industrial exports from as many sources as we can, but, when you put them all together and look at the sum of nearly £50,000,000 that exports of cattle alone are worth in a given year, it must be manifest that if you really want an upward surge in exports, it is to agriculture you must look. We are badly in need of that upsurge now if the present trade position is to be corrected.

I cannot see any evidence of action. It is a source of amazement to me that the Government have turned their back on what I call the parish plan but which was really the germ of a national advisory service. I do not believe we shall get the kind of expansion urgently necessary for our agricultural output unless we provide a national advisory service under the direction of the Minister for Agriculture and working in the closest cooperation with the Agricultural Institute which was recently established by an Act of this House. If we get that and use it, valuable progress might be made in expanding agricultural output, always bearing in mind that we have to deal with the problem of marketing the product profitably, if and when we get it. When I look at the Programme for Economic Expansion for light and guidance as to what the Government themselves propose, I find that paragraph 15 refers to “the welcome upward trend in agricultural output which has been evident in recent years.”

The tragedy of our position is that that welcome trend is now reversed. I think it was there when that paper was published but it has now stopped and we are travelling in the opposite direction. I find in paragraph 17 "Climatic and market influences combine to make grass the most important feature of Irish agriculture." I welcome that conversion, I welcome the recognition of that by the leaders of the Government. It is not a very revolutionary discovery to anybody who understands the agricultural industry.

I rejoice to find in paragraph 18 that "we are now one of the largest users of lime per acre in Europe." I need not remind the House of when we started on that road. Up to now, nothing new is heard. In paragraph 20, clovers are recognised as by far the cheapest source of nitrogen. Fortunately, that wisdom was pressed home on the Government in time to prevent them from saddling us with the dearest source of nitrogen. It is not so long since they were indignantly resolved in this House to spend £7 million on building a factory to produce nitrogen of the wrong kind, at the wrong price and at the wrong time. They have changed their minds about that and I welcome that decision. I could go through all the proposals contained in this Programme for Economic Expansion and am much tempted to do so for the purpose of pointing out to the House that every single suggestion contained in Part II of this Programme for Economic Expansion is in fact a reference to the proposals which were in operation when this Government came into office and which were initiated by their predecessors. I do not think that matters so long as they are continued.

I turn now to Appendix I and this provides the key to the whole mentality of the Government and the man who is Taoiseach. Appendix I sets out the estimated net capital cost of development proposals. Remember, this is the programme for economic national expansion. In the first year, it envisages, in respect of the net capital cost of the development proposals in 1959-60, an outlay of £6.15 million, of which £2 million relates to agriculture, £500,000 credit provided for the Agricultural Credit Corporation and £1½ million for the subsidisation of phosphate fertiliser, but that is accompanied by a footnote to say that £500,000 will be taken from the Land Project. For 1960-61, the total sum provided is £9.2 million, of which £2.25 million is for agriculture; for 1961-62, the sum provided is £10.58 million, of which £2.75 million is for agriculture. In respect of 1962-63, the sum of £12.55 million is provided, of which £3.25 million is for agriculture; in 1963-64, there is £14.6 million, of which £3.75 million is for agriculture. That gives you over the whole five-year period, of which one year has already passed, a total extra investment of £53.04 million, of which extra, £14 million is for agriculture, and of that £14 million, £7½ million is given over to the Agricultural Credit Corporation to issue to farmers if they ask for it.

I turn to Appendix II which gives the estimate of the public capital expenditure programme from 1959-60 to 1963-64, inclusive of additional expenditure projected in the Appendix to which I have just referred. The total expenditure over the five-year period is estimated to be £220.44 million, of which £48 million is provided for agriculture, of which £11 million is in the form of agricultural credit to be offered to the Agricultural Credit Corporation, if they can find farmers to borrow it.

What shall we say of a programme for economic expansion which envisages the investment of £220 million over the next five years, out of which, in effect, £37.66 million is provided for agriculture; if you choose to add the £11 million for the Agricultural Credit Corporation, you can call that £48.66 million. All the rest is for aeroplanes, railways, shipping, fuel and power, telephones, industry, industrial credit, tourism, ports, harbours, airports, and building and construction. Surely a Government who seriously believe that our economic problems can be resolved by a programme which is to be measured in terms of £220 million, out of which effectively £37.66 million is to be made available for agriculture, is a Government gone mad.

I wish to ask the Government if they have considered the marketing reports which have been laid before them. I have inquired repeatedly from the Minister for Agriculture who tells me he is preparing a White Paper and that preparation on that White Paper is going on and on and on. He was given a report on the marketing of turkeys especially early with a view to offering some help to the producers of turkeys, but, of course, nothing whatever has been done in relation to it. I ask if and when he proposes to make any announcement of what the Government intend to do over the whole field of marketing, because the hope of getting increased production, unless we can make it abundantly manifest to the farmers that they can sell their output, is very poor. On the other hand, I believe if we can find the demand and take the requisite measures to smooth out violent oscillations in price and give the farmers an assurance that there will be a market for whatever volume of produce they extract from the land, we can easily increase our output by at least 50 per cent. and what is so vital is that if that were achieved, it could represent an increase of at least 250 per cent. in our total agricultural exports.

I shall give the Taoiseach, who is very sensitive to criticism if it is not accompanied by constructive counter proposals, some proposals that may be of assistance to him and I do not think they are of the character of his assurance to us that copper would be worth £400 a ton in the foreseeable future. These are practical proposals and proposals which could be put into operation without delay. The first is—and it astonishes me that no progress has been made in this field heretofore—to seek an agreement with the British Government of a reciprocal character which would give us a secure market in Great Britain. I believe that agreement should go the full length of integrating the two economies of these countries.

I recall that 50 years ago Norway and Sweden were amalgamated under one crown as this country and Great Britain were. Fifty years ago, the people of Norway took the decision that that was no longer acceptable to them. Though that decision created much heart-burning in Sweden, they divided their political institutions, established two separate Governments and became two sovereign and independent States. In a recent publication by the Government of Norway entitled: "The Nordic Council and Co-operation in Scandinavia," the following paragraph occurs on page 27:

The year 1905 saw the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden, following various Norwegian steps which caused bitterness in Sweden. Nevertheless, the statesmen of the two countries succeeded in reaching a peaceful solution to this difficult conflict, which left no lasting discord between the Norwegian and the Swedish peoples. Nor did the conflict over the union cause any major setback in Nordic co-operation. Only two years after the events of 1905 the members of the Scandinavian parliaments set up their own private organization for Scandinavian collaboration, the Nordic Inter-parliamentary Union.

These are the words I want to emphasise:

After Norway had attained complete political independence it was in fact easier to interest the Norwegians in Scandinavian co-operation, the three peoples now meeting on an absolutely equal footing.

Many difficult political decisions have had to be taken and in so far as this part of our country is concerned, in any case, we should be in a position of matching the benefits to be offered by Britain and ourselves to our mutual advantage. The time is overdue when our Government should boldly confront that situation and seek to negotiate on the basis that it is common sense to provide the maximum resources from these two islands for the benefit of the population of each.

There are 55,000,000 people living in the two islands. We here in this island with 3,000,000 people can feed 10,000,000. They, in the other island, with more than 50,000,000 people cannot feed 25,000,000. Our combined resources could go, not all the way, and I do not believe the British people would want to go all the way, to provide themselves with all their requirements of feeding stuffs and food, but we could go a considerable part of the way and thereby increase the purchasing power of a community which to-day is one of its best customers in Europe, if not in the world.

Surely on that basis there are grounds for the negotiation of a reciprocal trade area agreement with Great Britain. If we were prepared to contemplate association with the Free Trade Area of Europe subject to certain qualifications it ought to be possible to negotiate at least some modification of that exhaustive agreement with our next door neighbour and it ought to be our first priority in the negotiation of markets for the products we have to sell. I think that should be followed up by realistic inquiry as to the possibility of markets elsewhere and I think the first problem that that realistic inquiry will bring to our attention is the fact that there is more than one European country at the present time exporting to us five, six and ten times the quantity of goods they buy from us. That is not due to the fact that we have not got anything that we can sell to them. It is due to the fact that our products are greeted on their thresholds by quota restrictions whereby they positively refuse to accept our goods.

I know from my own experience that in these negotiations one must be flexible and at times be prepared to accept less than one would want to receive, but there does come a time, after flexibility has been given the fullest play, when one should say to a trading partner: "Either you are prepared to increase your purchases from us in order to restore some approximation to equality or, if unilaterally you consistently refuse to take from us what we have to sell and prefer to buy it from other sources, then the time has come when we shall restore the balance by restricting importations of your goods." I think the time is overdue in respect of more than one Continental country when we should take that action. I particularly refrain from particularising because it would serve no good purpose, but I do say that if we are to accept motor cars and cheese—and we do sometimes accept products of this sort which at first glance it seems unreasonable to ask us to accept, but in the give and take of negotiation we do it—if we have done it we are entitled to say now: "We shall not do it any more if you are not prepared to buy back from us sufficient goods for the purpose of establishing a satisfactory balance between us."

I think we have got to face the fact that if we want to make effective progress there must be a very substantial investment in the agricultural industry. It must be of an informed kind and it must be done with informed co-operation from the agricultural community. I think the Taoiseach may challenge me by asking: "What are you going to do with the increased output?" I do not think the duty devolves on me in my present situation to answer that kind of question. I am entitled to ask the question but I believe the situation to be such that I shall undertake the duty of making a concrete suggestion to the Taoiseach as to where I believe an extensive increase in our exports could be achieved forthwith and rapidly.

I think the Taoiseach might very well consider with Great Britain the question of the export of live pigs. At present we are exporting bacon and I think we should extend and develop these exports to the limit of our capacity but that should not be the limit of our potential exports. I believe that at present there is a shortage of pigs in Britain. They cannot be brought in from any other country in the world except Ireland for veterinary reasons. There was a time when we exported to Britain between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 pigs per annum. Under the 1951 trade agreement with Britain provision was made for the export of live pigs but circumstances obtained at that time which made it expedient that these pigs be slaughtered here at the commission of the central purchasing agency then existing in Britain. I suggest that there is scope there for immediate and dramatic expansion of our total exports. It would involve a comprehensive agreement with Great Britain which, I suggest, is not impossible and which, I suggest, there is a grave duty on the Government to undertake.

I think this country is mad if it sits back and watches the whole of Europe divide itself into two great trading areas—the six Rome trading countries and the Free Trade Area of the Seven Outer countries—and drift into the position in which we are in complete economic isolation. If that situation is allowed to develop without our having taken precautions in advance to secure for ourselves some safe market we shall be subject forthwith to economic strangulation by anybody who wants to attempt it upon us.

The time has come when that requires to be said openly, because I apprehend that this Government are, for their own reasons, which I do not fully understand, trying to spread a kind of artificial equanimity everywhere and to proceed, both by their spoken word and their day-to-day actions, as if it did not matter a damn to this country that the whole of Europe was dividing itself up, as it undoubtedly is. But bad and all as we would be if Europe divided into two economic blocs, leaving us outside, what will be our position if they forthwith come together and form one bloc? Where will we turn for the means of disposing of what we have to sell? Do not let us imagine that that will exclusively affect our agricultural exports, which, of course, it certainly will. If we should find ourselves in economic isolation outside Europe, united within a Free Trade Area or a common Market, I seriously doubt the possibility of this nation's survival economically at all.

It will be a very grave reflection on those who took over the responsibility for this country in the year when our exports reached their maximum in value and in volume if we are allowed to drift quietly into a backwater and to die of economic inanition. That is the danger with which this country is confronted at present. It is not a danger that cannot be averted. If this Government would show any realisation of what the situation is, I believe effective and useful measures could be taken forthwith.

I want to suggest to the Taoiseach something which simply appals me. The Taoiseach must know at present the great difficulties associated with the fourteen-day test, the herd test and all the other complications that confront the export cattle trade at present. When, on top of that, is superimposed some deplorable domestic quarrel between the cattle dealers and the marts at which the cattle are habitually sold, how on earth can any responsible Minister for Agriculture simply sit on his sash and announce that he proposes to let things rip until somebody comes to him?

Suppose neither of them comes to him? Is he going to let these two bodies completely disrupt the livestock industry of this country? Mark you, it is within their power to do that. The Dublin cattle market is already seriously upset. The evil is spreading throughout the country. The longer it goes on, the more insoluble and difficult of solution it becomes, because people take up positions and then find it extremely difficult to depart from them. Surely any responsible Government—if the Minister for Agriculture will not do it, maybe the Taoiseach will?—should bring these people into the Department of Agriculture preferably, sit down and hear both sides of the question and point out the urgent necessity for the removal of such complications for the cattle industry?

I am perfectly certain that if that were done, a reasonable and rational settlement of the outstanding difficulties could be arrived at. But if it were not reasonable and proper, steps could be arranged to put an end to the position with the full authority, not only of the Government, but of this House behind them, once it was established that a full effort had been made at conciliation, which, I have not the slightest doubt, would succeed if it were undertaken forthwith. It is a matter of acute and urgent necessity that that should be done, and the fact that it has not been done suggests to me that this Government in some way are suffering from a type of lethargy which I consider constitutes a very real danger to the whole of this country and to its economy.

I want to say that I fully appreciate that, fundamental as is the importance of the agricultural industry to our whole balance of payments and trading position—I do not think that can be over emphasised—it would be ridiculous to maintain that the development of our industrial economy should be a matter of relative indifference to any responsible man. It is of vital interest to everybody concerned with the economic welfare of this country. It has been deplorably delayed and frustrated by the whole cracked policy of economic self-sufficiency operated by the Fianna Fáil Party, which is now collapsing around their ears. The trouble is that they have taken up certain positions and they find it extremely difficult to retreat from them. The whole atmosphere is thick with it.

When the Taoiseach inaugurated this doctrine of economic self-sufficiency, one of the first things he did was to prevail upon this Parliament to pass the Control of Manufactures Act. I think it was true of the Taoiseach that at that time he believed there were long queues of rich capitalists rushing to invest in Ireland. I think it has taken a quarter of a century for him to discover that, far from that being so, it was extremely difficult to get anybody to come in and establish industry here.

We still have on the Statute Book the Control of Manufactures Act, originally designed to keep all foreign capital out of this country. I admit that, by amendment and subsequent legislation in recent years, a great deal of the effect of that has been reduced. But surely the time has come to take our courage in our hands, abolish the whole fraud and acknowledge that we want foreign capital in this country, that we want foreign technology, that our primary concern is to get employment for our own people in their own country, that we would much sooner see industry come from Birmingham, Manchester or Pennsylvania and establish itself here in Ireland rather than see these industries draw our people out of Ireland to labour in Birmingham, Manchester and Pennsylvania? Is it not time we faced that and said it out? I often ask myself the question: do Deputies ever ask themselves why we want industry in this country? I often think they do not. I wonder would I shock anybody if I said the only reason why I want industry in this country is to see my neighbours employed at good wages in their our country.

The Deputy is not unique in that.

Is that not the important thing?

Does it matter a hoot, provided this employment is given to our people at fair rates of wages and under decent conditions, who runs the show? This is a sovereign Republic and we can legislate to prevent any gross abuses. We are not living in midVictorian days when the sweatshop and exploitation were lawfully possible in a civilised community. All that belongs to yesterday. We want to get established here industries which will employ our people under decent conditions in their own country. What is the essential prerequisite of getting that done on an expanding scale? Is it not the attainment of markets into which the output of this industry can be sold at a profit? Do we not know ourselves that, with our own best endeavours, we here in Ireland encounter very special difficulties in breaking into the very large industrial markets where the large output of industry in international trade can be absorbed? We all know that if some genius produces some exceptional specialist article for which there is a world demand in a highly selective trade, he will be able to sell his product because people will beat a footpath to his door owing to the uniqueness of his product but that is not the kind of industry that will employ large numbers of our people at decent rates of wages in their own country.

Think of what it requires to get employment for 10,000 men in industry in this country. Think of ten factories each employing 1,000 men. They would be very large enterprises from our point of view but chicken feed from the point of view of the great industrial combines of the world, and I am never tired of pointing it out to this House and I point it out to it again. I had the experience of seeing a first-class factory in this country that was producing a first-class product from domestic raw materials and employing a very considerable number of people—men—at decent wages under decent conditions. The product of that factory was submitted to the test of international standards and met it handsomely but the fact remained that its produce piled up and could not be sold.

I was myself approached to know if I would give assurances, as Minister for Agriculture, in regard to supplies of raw material to a big international corporation engaged in the same trade —Bowaters—and fortunately, with the collaboration of my colleague, Deputy Blowick, we were able to give the guarantees that were required. Bowaters came in and associated themselves with that enterprise. Within 12 months, the entire accumulated stocks were marketed. They have since doubled their output and, I believe, contemplate increasing it again. The whole marketing difficulty has finished. Why? Because Bowaters have a marketing organisation in existence all over the world into which they simply poured the product of the installation here which, from the point of view of their total output, was a mere drop in the bucket.

I cannot understand why it is not possible to seek similar enterprise in other lines of production and I believe it could be done if we went the right way about it but I am bound to say that if we spend much more time at the United Nations with our present Minister for External Affairs, I do not know where we shall go to get the kind of co-operation I think we stand in need of at the present time. I am sure the poor man was well-intentioned but since he turned up in New York, it is sufficient for any traditional friend of Ireland to appear in discussion at that council table for our Minister for External Affairs to take the earliest possible opportunity of kicking him in the stomach.

It is true that, as a result of alienating the United States of America, as a result of kicking France in the stomach and as a result of giving the Union of South Africa a swift kick on the shin, we have secured the undying friendship of the Dalai Lama, and I am glad to have it. I think the Dalai Lama is entitled to the sympathy and respect of every independent nation. But, I have always understood that the purpose of diplomacy was to serve the vital interest of my own country and it seems to me that the vital interest of Ireland is to multiply the number of our friends among the nations of the world. Apply that foot rule to test the activities of our Minister for External Affairs at the United Nations and I invite the Taoiseach to say does he consider that our foreign policy has been a success.

There are many Deputies who think that foreign policy is a kind of nice game that you play in Iveagh House, at cocktail parties in New York and at luncheons and dinners in Paris, Rome and elsewhere and that it is entirely divorced from the practical day to day life of our people. Nothing could be further from the truth. We want help from our neighbours and we are not the only country which wants help. The United State of America is as busy as a bee making friends for itself, sending its Vice-President all over South America and, when he is mobbed, finding out what gave rise to the misunderstanding and trying to put it to rights; sending the highest officers of the State on trips all over the world and sending, at this time, the President of the United States of America to visit countries as far away as Afghanistan. For what purpose?— to make friends for America.

America is a big, powerful country. You have to be a little member of the society of nations, like ourselves, to be able to afford a Minister for External Affairs like ours. He does not go travelling all around the world to make friends for Ireland; he goes to New York in order to take the United States of America out by the lug and make it stand in the corner and tell it where it went wrong. When he is finished with them and has put the dunce's cap on their heads, he calls out France and says, "You are going to get into trouble, fidgeting around with an atomic bomb. I know what is good for you. Go home, de Gaulle." But, of course, de Gaulle does not go home but the Press of the city of Paris say very plainly and bluntly what they think of Ireland.

Then, when we are finished with them, we call up South Africa. I am sure Dr. Browne was delighted and thought we were very well advised to give them a slight lecture on how to deal with their racial problem. We may have our own personal views about many problems in the Union of South Africa. It could happen that we might have a solemn duty to go on record on matters arising there but it would suit us better to apply ourselves first to the task of multiplying our friends before we start on the unrewarding task of trying to reform the few who are left to us.

There is nothing more disagreeable, no one from whom we flee more expeditiously, than the frank friend, the person who is always protesting that he loves you dearly but would like to tell you that your face is dirty, that you are ugly, badly dressed and do not walk well and that it would be better for you if you changed the way you went on. We all say of that person: "That is a most edifying man but God deliver me from him" and, if he is peculiarly good—I cannot imagine anyone saying this in contemplation of our Minister for External Affairs but the most charitable of the United Nations must have said some time, as they looked down on him telling them what the moral law was: "To live with the saints in Heaven is glory but to live with them at the United Nations is quite another story" and certainly we are getting the backlash from that disaster, and he is a disaster. Our Minister for External Affairs is a disaster and I suggest to the Taoiseach that he take the earliest possible opportunity to make him the Tánaiste or anything else he likes if he could wean him out of his perennial expeditions to New York.

Why have I dwelt on this at such length? It is because I feel that it is from our associate members of the United Nations and our associates in the O.E.E.C. that we might reasonably look, not for financial help for we do not want that—we are almost in the unique position in the world that we do not want money from anybody, and that is something for which we should be profoundly grateful—but we do want technical know-how and we do want access to markets which are being furnished at the present time by great industrial enterprises of France, of Great Britain, of the U.S.A. for historical and geographical reasons, which make our entry into these markets peculiarly difficult, whereas for them it is relatively easy.

It would be of immense assistance to us if we could persuade certain industrial units in these countries to establish branch factories here. Let us presume that we persuaded ten such industries to establish factories here, giving employment in the order of 1,000 men each. But that is not all. I think that would be an immensely valuable first step, but, in my judgment, it would be only a first step, because I believe that around each of these establishments there would arise a whole group of relatively small Irish industries engaged in the business of supplying, at economic rates, the components for the larger industrial units primarily concerned with the export markets into which we cannot, at the present time, make our way.

That hope is intimately associated with an improvement in our international relations which should be the concern of the Minister for External Affairs to promote. I think he has made a "hames" of that part of the business. I do not despair, despite his unfortunate démarche, that something along these lines might be done. I want to suggest that we are building up a whole network of grants, allowances and complications which, because we have enacted them and debated them in this House, we understand and which of course strangers, if they come to inquire, can understand after they have been explained to them. But I think the Taoiseach and the Minister for Industry and Commerce will agree that for strangers coming in here to tread their way through the whole maze of rules and regulations that we have now enacted in connection with industrial grants and inducements, is quite a formidable assignment. No ordinary board of directors could make them out without getting expert advice.

I think we have ready to hand a device which is perfectly simple and which would present a prompt and attractive inducement to any foreign firm which establishes itself here. I may be wrong. I may have a blind spot in regard to this but I cannot see that there is any disadvantage, from the point of view of the Irish Exchequer, or the Irish economy, if we said to any firm who came in: "In respect of any building or machinery which you may instal, we will give you a 20 per cent. depreciation allowance for five years, until it has completely depreciated". I think that is simple. I think it is attractive and it gives the entrant a virtual assurance that his capital is safe. He will get it back unless the thing collapses at once and presumably he will not establish it if it is going to collapse immediately. It also gives us the guarantee that after recovering his capital and operating the enterprise for five years, if he wants to withdraw, he leaves after him the capital investment which he originally made. It is highly unlikely that he will do that but if he does, and if we believe he does it from some ulterior motive, we always have the opportunity of carrying on where he left off.

The simplest board of directors could understand that. I mention it because I consider it would be something of consequence and importance and especially in the light of the figures which so greatly irritated the Taoiseach when I quoted them. I can only quote the figures I am given. Recently in this House the Taoiseach was asked what were the numbers of people actually working in insurable employment each year to the most recent available date. I have since got the figures for 1954 and 1955. They were not included in the series which the Taoiseach gave but the calculations were made on the same basis.

My reference is volume 177, column 885, for the four last numbers in the series which I now read out. In 1954, the figure was 490,000; in 1955, it was 500,000; in 1956, it was 501,000; in 1957, it was 486,000; in 1958, it was 465,000; and in 1959, it was 460,000. I said recently in public that, so far as I could read those figures, they represented a decline of 40,000 in the number of people in insurable employment. That caused the Taoiseach great exasperation and resentment but I am going to say now that they not only represent a reduction in people employed in this country but that figure is to be read in conjunction with the figures provided in the British House of Commons which suggest that over that period more than 50,000 of our people emigrated to Great Britain. In one year, something like 40,000 are calculated to have gone to Great Britain. I wonder over those six years how many have gone? Certainly if you were to judge by the atmosphere obtaining in the part of rural Ireland where I live, I would say that 20 per cent. of the population in that area have gone. That is 20 per cent. of the total population, but a much higher percentage of the working population have gone from it in the past five years and that is manifestly evident on any fair or market day if you enter a town in that area.

Those are alarming figures and they are figures that call for energetic action. I believe the action is available to us which should do much to set these things right, if we embarked upon them. Certain preliminary measures are requisite to make them effective. One is to establish good relations with our neighbours, which is the duty of the Minister for External Affairs. The other is to obtain markets in which we could possibly dispose of our increased production. A trade agreement with Great Britain is the essential prerequisite, followed by such ancillary agreements as we could get with other countries. No other country can ever have for us a tithe of the value of the British market, which was for so long despised in this country.

I cannot conclude this inquiry from the Government as to what they propose to do without recalling the condition of the fishing industry at the present time. I have a special interest in the fishing industry because I was Minister for Fisheries and I first entered public life as a member for Donegal. Am I right in believing that the Government have been effectively cured of what I describe—with no intention of being disrespectful—as "Bartley's follies"?

On the last occasion when I was Minister for Fisheries, I had the three old wrecks on my hands down at the North Wall which Deputy Bartley bought when he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Lands. They are still floating around. I could never get them all to sea at the same time because whenever one went to sea, the other broke down and at one crucial stage the engine fell out of the bottom of one of them. Incidentally, part of the stock I had at Killybegs was an engine which somebody bought for one of them and which did not fit it when it arrived. I had that on hands also. When I left office, they were still floating about at the North Wall and I had given instructions to sell them to the highest bidder.

When I went into Opposition, I do not know who succeeded Deputy Bartley in his former post but it was announced that the three old wrecks were to be revived and made the foundation for—it was Deputy Childers, of course—a grand new campaign greatly to increase the fishing intake of the country. They were all to go to sea. Quite recently, I heard one of them was on the rocks and two of them on the stocks for sale and my hopes are rising again that this Government have come to realise that our fishing industry is of very real value to our people, so long as it is established firmly on the foundation of the owner fisherman and that the moment we go into the business of sending trawlers to sea to flood the domestic market, we are throwing something away of infinite value and acquiring something which can never be of any industrial value.

I know there are some poor innocents here who say that if Norway and Iceland can live on their catches of cod, why could not Ireland do so? Because cod means a different thing in Ireland from what it means there. "Cod" here means Bartley's three navies; "cod" in Norway and Iceland means white gold. Why? Because the continental shelf runs all along the coast of Norway and Iceland and the temperature of the sea around Norway and Iceland is as near freezing point as it can be without freezing solid. We are sitting in the middle of the Gulf Stream and our Continental shelf is 150 miles west and south of our coast. Our circumstances and conditions are entirely different from those in the Scandinavian countries.

We have something that is of immense value and despite all that Deputy Childers has ever said in this House we are never going to make any material contribution, in my judgment, to exports or international trade but it is going to keep hundreds of families that were traditionally associated with this industry in a decent standard of comfort in their own homes and it is going to provide a market for boat-building facilities and a boatbuilding trade which will mean the difference between emigration and a living at home for a great many people in the inaccessible parts of this country. It will enable persons to obtain highly skilled training for those who want to go and assures for them employment of a decent standard as shipwrights, if they want to leave and seek industrial employment elsewhere.

All that has value if the whole codology of destroying owner fishermen is not persisted in as Deputy Bartley and Deputy Childers apparently want to do. I hope and pray that with the nitrogen factory, the trawlers will be laid to rest also. I wish the Taoiseach all the success that can attend his efforts in getting a fair and equitable price for these three hulks when he goes to sell them. I assure him of the cordial collaboration of this side of the House in any measures he can take aimed at promoting the interests of the fishing industry from our own shores. I assure the Taoiseach that I am not pessimistic about our future. I have always believed and have often been rebuked for excessive optimism in my estimate of what could be done with the land of Ireland. I think the event has amply justified the most extreme optimism I was ever heard to express.

I remember when I was very shortly in office attending a luncheon on a cattle boat at the North Wall and the proprietor of that boat made some polite suggestion that it would be well to hope that some day the capacity of that vessel would be taxed. I remember earning some criticism by saying that our purpose was not to tax the capacity of that vessel but to tax the capacity of this and many more in carrying livestock of this country to the markets of Great Britain. Within relatively few years, we had achieved that objective and, as it seemed to me, to be well on the highway to going much further.

I believe we have immense capacity here if we are prepared to use it. I believe there is a fair prospect before our people if we have the courage and common sense to realise it. I believe that unlike the great industrial nations of the world, we are blessed by the fact that our future is indissolubly associated with the land. I believe that places no embargo whatever on a very considerable volume of the most desirable kind of industrial development at the same time. But those who forget the land put this country in precisely the same danger as that into which Newfoundland staggered ten short years ago. How many Deputies recall that Newfoundland was an independent nation depending for its economy on the sea but they got too "grand" in Newfoundland to exploit and develop their fishing industry as should have been done. They turned their mind away from the fundamental industry that Providence had endowed them with and concentrated all their energy in attempting rapidly to industrialise a country that had not got, without its fisheries, the economic foundation to sustain an industrial superstructure.

Where did they end? They ended with three British Treasury Commissioners. Finally, by electing to surrender their sovereignty to the Federation of Canada, they found their way back through becoming a Federal province of Canada. We have no federation to which, with dignity, we can turn. We have chosen—I think, rightly, with our history behind us, politically to walk alone. We made that choice freely by Act of this Parliament and let us not forget it was by the free Act of this Parliament we made that choice. It would be a dreadful humiliation if, having made it, we were constrained to reverse it. It is in our power to avoid that humiliation and to prove that a country like ours can maintain the very high standards that we have and make them available to more and more of our people who choose to stay. If we fail, we have no one but ourselves to blame. If we continue as we are going, I am desperately apprehensive that we shall fail. I would far sooner see this Government succeed than give it to our enemies to say the whole nation failed to justify its destiny. If this Government do not feel equal to the task, if this Government entertain the fear, which some of the recent pronouncements of the Taoiseach would suggest, to disturb their sleep, then I suggest to them they throw in their hand and they will find there are people left in the country who are prepared to take up the burden and make a success of it.

A couple of weeks ago Deputy Dillon and some of his colleagues spent what I expect was a pleasant weekend in Malahide.

Many of his supporters were expecting Deputy Dillon on that occasion to declare what his policy would be as Leader of the Opposition. I have heard that many of the Fine Gael supporters having read the Deputy's pronouncements, made as a result of his deliberations during that weekend, were gravely dissappointed but, nevertheless, some of them looked forward to this debate to hear that perhaps at last he would give them that gleam of hope that would enable them to look to the future possibility of a Fine Gael Government, with some degree of confidence. In so far as I read his Malahide speech I think what he has said here this evening is to a large extent a rehash of that and, therefore, so far as he disappointed his supporters at Malahide he will have disappointed many more of his supporters here this evening.

He was, however, reasonably comprehensive, as one would expect the Leader of the Opposition to be in such a case as this, and he did make fundamental assertions with which I do not believe anybody could quarrel. One, of course, was that our economy depended largely on the success that we can make of our agricultural industry. Nobody can quarrel with such an assertion and I want to assure him that so far as this Government are concerned they have no intention of following the example which he gave us by way of analogy of Newfoundland.

However, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, it will be my function to deal to some extent with our industrial progress and the fact that I shall do so does not, and should not, lend any force to his implied suggestion that this Government have not got a full appreciation of the importance of our agricultural industry. I had to leave the House shortly after Deputy Dillon began to speak and, as far as I could gather during the couple of minutes I did hear him, he prefaced his remarks with the theme: "There are lies, damn lies and statistics." Of course he later came to using certain statistics to help establish a point he tried to make in relation to the employment figures over the last seven or eight years.

Many of Deputy Dillon's colleagues put questions on the Order Paper yesterday which were intended to provide ammunition for the purposes of this debate. Many of those questions, I think, had a boomerang effect on the people who put them. They tried to establish the contention that has been repeated so often that there has recently been a 40,000 decrease in the numbers gainfully employed. I should like to remind them that 40,000 decrease happened during the period towards the end of 1956 and early 1957, when the weekly Statistical Bulletins in relation to employment that were issued by the Central Statistics Office showed the number on the live register of those unemployed to range between 94,000 and 95,000. Anybody who cares to look at these figures at this stage will find what I have said is correct, and it was in that 94,000 or 95,000 that the reduction of 40,000 in the numbers employed was reflected.

This was a very quick trend that happened in 1956 and early 1957. As the Taoiseach pointed out yesterday in reply to questions put by Opposition Deputies, that trend was checked by 1958, and since then the trend has been reversed and the employment figures have been going upwards. He took for example the sale of insurance stamps as a basis and these show that for the nine months ending 30th December, of this year——

September.

——September, rather, there was an increase of 8,854, an average increase weekly sale of stamps, which apparently reflected the increase in the numbers of insured workers. If we take a shorter period, the six months' period ending on the 30th September of this year, the increase was 17,052, and if the shorter period in relation to the longer period is any indication it must mean the rate of increase has accelerated.

There are many people in insurable employment by reason of the legislation passed in this House.

On the other hand that can be disproved in so far as people reaching the upper limit are passing out.

Insurability has been raised from £600 to £800.

People who are exceeding the £800, as they normally would with increases, are passing out at the other end of the scale.

They would not balance.

I have never followed that.

These figures relate to all persons in insurable employment, and if I take the category of workers with whom I am more directly concerned as Minister for Industry and Commerce, those engaged in the industrial production of transportable goods, I think I can show the same trend is reflected. If I take the three years 1957, 1958 and 1959, the numbers of persons employed in industries producing transportable goods have been as follows: in the first quarter of 1957, 147.2 thousand, and that has been rising gradually over each quarter of 1957, 1958 and 1959 to a figure of 156,000 at the end of the third quarter of this year.

The increase, happily, has been steady if not spectacular, ranging from 147.2 thousand in 1957 to 150,000, 151,000 and 152.1 thousand in the remaining three quarters of that year. At the end of the fourth quarter in 1958 it was 152.5 thousand and, as I said, at the end of the third quarter of this year 156,000.

These figures are borne out also by the volume of production in industries producing transportable goods. If we take the year 1953 as the base year, and take the figure 100 as a base, the industrial production of transportable goods at the end of the fourth quarter of 1958 was 110.2, an increase of over ten per cent., and at the end of the third quarter in 1959, 115.9, an increase of almost 16 per cent.

The index of the volume of production, incidentally, for the September quarter of 1959 was the highest ever recorded in any corresponding period of any previous year. I should like to remind the House that I am referring now to the volume and not to the value. No regard need, therefore, be had in this context to increasing values of goods or the falling value of money. Much of this industrial expansion is reflected in exports of industrial transportable goods. These stood at roughly £17,500,000 last year. In the current year there is expected to be an increase of some £6,000,000, or roughly an increase of about 30 per cent. It is expected that that increase will continue apace into 1960.

The number of new industrial concerns and extensions to existing concerns has shown a remarkable increase in the current year. The total of these which commenced production in the period on 1st October, 1958, to 30th September, 1959, was 92. The figure for new factories in the course of construction was 26 in the current year; during the same period in 1958 the figure was 16. The locations of these new industrial undertakings are again happily widely flung, ranging from Dublin to Donegal, where there are two factories in course of construction at Ards and Killybegs, to Scariff in County Clare, Wexford, Ennis, Tralee, Killarney, and Kilsaran, Co. Louth.

What are the two factories in Killybegs?

I am afraid I have not got the particulars. These are just the locations. Normally, I hesitate to give figures on occasions like this because they tend to confuse the issue. From now on, I shall try not to refer to statistics in order to illustrate that there is and continues to be an upward trend—a trend we hope will continue—in industrial production.

The references I have made are to private enterprise. In State-sponsored concerns, or concerns in which there is direct State participation, there is evidence of increased expansion.

Comhlucht Siúicre Eireann Teo. have decided to embark on the processing and export of fruit and vegetables. The intention of Irish Steel Holdings to expand and modernise their plant has already been announced, and their proposals are under detailed consideration at the moment. To a smaller extent, we have the prospect of State industrial expansion in the West of Ireland, in a form that has been much criticised by the Opposition in general and by Deputy Dillon in particular. I refer to Mín Fhéir Teoranta. It is hoped that, side by side with the Peatland Development Station, this company will expand and develop the opportunities of employment in that part of the country. The Avoca copper mines, as was indicated here to-day by the approval of a Scheduling Order to the State Guarantees Act, were assisted to the extent of over £500,000 by a State guaranteed loan to make their works more economic and, incidentally, to expand their output.

Deputy Dillon suggested, while he did not appear to criticise in any way our policy of giving industrial grants, that other means might be more fruitful for the purpose of inducing foreign industrialists into this country. I shall refer later to his comments on our policy of protection. Industrial grants which have been approved of since August of this year amount in all to some £721,000 involving a capital outlay on industrial proposals of something in excess of £2,015,000. I recently had the opportunity of giving the breakdown figures of those likely to be employed in these industries when they are in production, having regard to the amounts already spent or the amounts committed for grant purposes. The figures are 4,500 and of that 4,500 the proportion is two to one of male labour against female labour. That, I think, is a happy balance.

These are the figures directly available to me. There are, too, general trends indicating that there is an expansion all along our industrial front and that there is a greater degree of confidence amongst those who finance and undertake industrial proposals. If we take the manner in which that confidence is reflected in the willingness of people to spend their money on goods other than essential goods, and if we look at car sales, for instance, we see that there was an increase of 30 per cent. in the sales of new cars this year as compared with last year.

Most of which are on hire purchase.

Related to some extent to hire purchase, but, unless people have confidence in themselves to make hire purchase repayments, they obviously will not embark on an expenditure which might be described in some respects as an extravagance.

Bank credit has increased. Perhaps the increase in bank credit has assisted increased purchases of motor cars and other non-essential goods. Bank credit increased in the past year to almost £20,000,000, an increase of 10 per cent. Of that £20,000,000 it is estimated that about £10,000,000 has been diverted to the farming community. I suggest the farming community have not been spending these credits on the purchase of motor cars alone. They must indicate to the banks the extent to which they are prepared to put these loans to productive purposes.

I was very pleased to read yesterday the annual report of the Cork Chamber of Commerce. I am sure I shall be forgiven if I refer to it. I know I am Minister for Industry and Commerce for the entire country, but the welfare of Cork is naturally very dear to me. I was very happy to read in the annual report, which, I think, will be read at the meeting to-night, a reference to the various new industrial projects undertaken throughout the city and county of Cork in recent months. The report says: "All these will add substantially to the forward march which is in evidence in all spheres". I know the man who wrote that report. I know he is a man of good economic standing and that he writes such matters from a very objective point of view.

Therefore, there is an indication— and it has been borne out not only by the facts but by the trends and the air of confidence that people display— that there is expansion; that there is room for greater expansion, that the people have confidence in themselves that they are able to take advantage of such industrial expansion; and have confidence in whatever moneys they are prepared to put into Irish industry.

In referring to that, I should like to mention the extent to which the Industrial Credit Company have been put into new funds by the enactment of the Industrial Credit Act, 1959, which authorised that company to increase their share capital from £5,000,000. Their borrowings which hitherto were limited to £5,000,000 were also increased. The share capital of the company increased to £10,000,000 and the amount which might be borrowed with the consent, or under the guarantee, of the Minister for Finance was increased to £15,000,000, making available to the Industrial Credit Company a total of £25,000,000 in all for investment, for loan, or for advances by way of hire purchase to industrial undertakings.

It has been stated that as a result of that no sound industrial project need suffer from lack of capital in this country. That has been interpreted rather loosely. Many people felt their own particular industrial proposal was soundness itself, and some people, to my knowledge, have been disappointed, but by and large, the Industrial Credit Company are liberal in their application of these funds and, being a board of experts, they must assess each application on its merits and only on what are, in their opinion, sound projects, do they feel justified in making advances.

If I may refer to an announcement I made last week-end, an increase in the money available for investment was provided by the agreement come to with the British life offices, an agreement which will divert £2,000,000 per year more in funds to investment in industry and other proposals in this country in the future. It will take some years to reach that stage but the British life offices have agreed to increase their investment in this country progressively, out of their liabilities to their Irish policy holders to that extent.

I should like to refer also to a number of activities which have been taking place in the past year, and in perhaps less recent times, which are designed to assist industrial expansion. Córas Tráchtála were established some years ago but by reason of their lack of security of tenure, they found they were, to a degree, inhibited in their work and that was reflected in the results that were achieved, good though they were. As a result of their being established as a full statutory board, they now feel they can extend with greater advantage all advances and assistance they provide to industrialists for the export of goods from this country.

In this connection, I should like to refer to what Deputy Dillon has just said about our foreign trade imbalance. The Taoiseach has already announced that this is a matter which is being reviewed because, as Deputy Dillon has also just said, that imbalance is reflected in many cases in a ratio of three to one, five to one, and even seven or eight to one against us, in some cases. I should like to mention that before General de Gaulle ever thought of producing his own atom bomb, and before the Minister for External Affairs, in the interests of world peace, ever advised that no new powers ought to acquire, or experiment with, an atom bomb, we had difficulty in breaking down the French quota wall. Long before the Minister for External Affairs went to the United Nations this year, our negotiations for a review of our trading agreement with France were broken off because of the intransigence of the French position.

The negotiations which have been initiated with Britain, and which will shortly be resumed, will have full regard to the possibilities there are for the expansion of trade between our two countries, to our mutual advantage. I should like to say that while Britain is our best customer, we, too, are a very good customer indeed of theirs—in the European continent, we are their best customer —for industrial goods, so it is not with any degree of empty-handedness that we need enter these negotiations.

I referred to the establishment of Coras Trachtála as a statutory body. That, in itself, will not achieve a spectacular increase in our export markets but at least it gives the nucleus of an organisation which will give the necessary assistance. There have been complaints for a number of years that our industrialists have not been taking advantage of the services provided by our Institute for Industrial Research and Standards. As has been announced, the Institute is being reorganised. Their premises are being extended in order to provide greater facilities for assistance to Irish industrialists. I hope to be announcing shortly the intention of the Institute to come more closely to the assistance of individual firms in any manufacturing difficulties they may encounter.

Technical assistance grants were initiated some years ago and are still being availed of by firms who realise the value of getting foreign know-how, of getting in experts to advise them in running their firms—even those firms which have a high degree of productivity already. All these assistance projects and facilities come, perhaps, at the end of our industrial pattern. It is as well that it has been realised that the initial stage of our industrial productivity and industrial ability must be looked after as well.

Recently, the Oireachtas passed the Apprenticeship Act of 1959. That Act aims at providing more satisfactory apprenticeship schemes designed to raise the scale and the standards of Irish industry. Everybody realises that our industrialisation programme has reached the stage where further expansion depends on our ability to find export outlets for some of the goods we produce.

There is no use tilting at windmills. I do not think we can say that we can hope in the foreseeable future to compete with the larger and more industrialised countries of the world for export markets in mass-produced goods. Of course, we have industries that have long export traditions. I am sure that they are making every effort to step up the level of their exports but the main purpose of achieving a significant expansion in industrial exports is in finding markets for speciality products.

Some of our industries producing goods that require a high degree of skilled workmanship are already exporting very successfully and some are even achieving greater success than perhaps might have been envisaged in that direction. I believe that the markets for a substantially increased volume of such exports are to be won. If they are to be won in the face of growing competition, every effort must be made to bring the industries concerned to the highest pitch of efficiency.

First, we must ensure that they will not be short of highly trained workers in the critical years that lie ahead. I believe that the framework of the present Apprenticeship Act will not only ensure the standards of craftsmanship required but will ensure also that the number of operatives in each of these specialised trades will be sufficient to produce the speciality goods on which we are placing so much hope for the expansion of industrial exports.

Before I leave that, I should like to refer to Deputy Dillon's suggestion that to allow a 20 per cent depreciation for a period of five years would be a more effective inducement to foreign companies to set up here than we have at the moment. I do not suppose that he envisaged industries being set up ab initio when, perhaps, even in the first five years, 20 per cent would mean very little to them having regard to the fact that they might take that time to get going on a worthwhile basis for the purpose of making a profit.

May I refer to his remark that our policy of protection has been daft? I believe that, without that policy of protection, we would not have the nucleus of industries here which, having commanded the necessary bases on the home market, would enable them to go into the export market to find an outlet for their products.

I believe, too, that the coming of the Free Trade Area and of a Common Market would have very little effect on our industrial front, were it not for that policy of protection. We would not have any industrial output and we would have no factories if such a policy of protection had not been pursued down through the years. However, the policy of protection is still there but our industrialists are alive to the possibility that they will, perhaps, have to rely less and less on such a policy.

I am happy to note that the Federation of Irish Industries have already taken steps to ensure that we can, by an increase in productivity or by a system of rationalisation amongst ourselves, be better equipped to meet whatever changes the future years might bring in the form of industrial production. I mentioned the Apprenticeship Act as a means of ensuring a greater degree of efficiency in our industry.

We have, too, taken part in a number of other activities, such as the establishment of a Committee of Human Sciences which is an offshoot of the European Productivity Agency. The main functions of that committee are to promote research into human problems which arise in industry as a result of technological and other changes and to co-operate with the European Productivity Agency in the overall programme which this agency has undertaken.

The Human Sciences Committee had a symposium in Dublin which was attended by manufacturers, workers and their representatives. I am told by those who attended it that it is something which, taken seriously and with the necessary enthusiasm, is bound to assist us in our efforts to achieve greater productivity from our workers.

I do not propose to delay the House much longer but I should like to refer, before I close, to industrial relations. In the first instance, I should like to point out that, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach stated in reply to a question to-day, there is a reduction of some two per cent. in the cost of living over a recent period. The consumer price index, taking 100 as a base in mid-August 1953, increased to 116.9 in midNovember last year. In mid-August of the current year, that was reduced to 115.6. Therefore, whatever the present trend the demands of individual unions for increased wages as related to it cannot be related to an increase in the cost of living over the past 12 months.

We are, however, at the present time going through what is a rather difficult period in wage adjustments but I am confident that both sides will deal with the problems and continue to deal with the problems that will arise in a responsible way and will avail to the full of the services of the Labour Court. The Labour Court has come in for some comment as a result of the recent petrol strike. It was suggested that there should be some form of appellate tribunal set up. If such an appellate tribunal from the awards of the Labour Court were set up, one might contemplate the immediate abolition of the Labour Court itself.

The suggestion was made that the Government should step in here and there when an award of the Labour Court proved unacceptable. The Taoiseach and I, having discussed the situation that arose over the recent petrol strike, decided that the situation was grave enough to intervene but only in such grave circumstances would it be necessary and desirable for the Government to intervene, after the Labour Court had made an award. I might say, too, that there appeared to be a new issue following the Labour Court award and to that extent the exceptional step was taken by the Taoiseach of requesting the parties to negotiate under a chairman supplied by the Department of Industry and Commerce. But I am suggesting that that is not a practice that should be lightly undertaken or followed too readily, if at all. The parties should, in so far as they can negotiate, produce agreement amongst themselves. Only in the event of failure to reach agreement amongst themselves should they have recourse to the facilities offered by the Labour Court.

I should like to suggest that, in their negotiations for any increases, the parties on both sides might have some regard to the relation of wage increases to productivity. I think this matter up to the present has not met with the attention it deserves. If we are to progress to any extent industrially and to maintain our competitive position in overseas markets it is essential that both employers and workers should come together to reach a practical working formula on this subject in their own and in the national interests.

The award of the Labour Court should be the final award and should be accepted in so far as it can be accepted. To suggest that there should be a tribunal over and above the Labour Court is a vote of no confidence in the Labour Court. So long as we have the Labour Court we have a very useful instrument in industrial disputes. Since we have had the Labour Court, our record of strikes compares very favourably with the incidence of strikes in European countries. The Labour Court has intervened to very good effect. It has avoided industrial disruption to a considerable degree and to the benefit of the whole economy.

The use of statistics in a debate such as this can be of considerable assistance. I do not see the need for the hesitancy of some of my colleagues when discussing their usefulness in surveying the general economic situation and the Government's record in the past two and a half years. The use of figures recently published is important in that we and the country as a whole can understand and appreciate the economic circumstances and the problems which face us.

The figures recently published in the Statistical Survey for 1958 and in the Trend of Employment and Unemployment paint a picture that is gloomy and depressing. It is depressing when it is realised that the national wealth has been stagnant and has indeed been declining. The figures for the gross national product at constant market prices show, with 1953 as the base of 100, that there was some increase between 1953 and 1955 to 103 and that last year, three years later, it declined again to just above 100. In the past five years, no significant progress was made in our industrial wealth and in the past three years there has been a decline.

Figures have been given for employment and unemployment. The Minister quoted figures which appeared in today's papers in answer to a Question yesterday concerning the increase in the number of insured workers which was ascertained as a result of the sale of insurance stamps. The Minister and the Government are inclined to lose sight of the wood for the trees. There has been a modest increase in industrial employment in the past year, an increase which we must all welcome, but it must not be forgotten that industrial activity is only one activity of the economy.

The figures of the number of persons in employment make depressing reading. The labour force in this country, the number of people employed, has in the past seven years, from 1951 to 1958, declined by nearly 90,000. In the past two years, according to the figures on page 37 of the Irish Statistical Survey of last year, there has been a decline of 32,000. The Minister, his Leader and his Party can make whatever points they like concerning the figures for employment in the past few years. If they so wish, they can endeavour to place the blame on their predecessors. What they as a Government and we as a Parliament have to bear in mind are the gloomy and depressing facts that employment is nearly 90,000 down since 1951 and has been declining every year.

The facts of this economic situation are all too apparent to those who have to suffer the terrible hardships of unemployment but these are only some of the economic conditions which bear on some people in this community. Prices bear on nearly everybody. In the past seven years, prices increased by 41 per cent. and since this Government came into office they increased by 10 per cent.

The most significant figure of the recent statistics is that which shows the decline in gross domestic fixed capital formation. It is a truism for economists to say that economic expansion depends on investment. The figures show a constant crisis since 1953. There was some increase in 1954 and 1955. Since 1955, through 1956, 1957 and 1958, the amount of fixed capital formation has been declining each year. The decline in the past three years has been of the order of £20 million at constant 1953 prices.

The picture these figures show is that notwithstanding the fact that this country shared in the industrial expansion that has occurred in England and throughout Europe in the past year or two, notwithstanding the fact that industrial production has increased and reached the peak and passed the peak which it had achieved in 1955, the other operations of our economy have not been expanding. The economy is stagnant, if indeed it is not declining. There is a continual decline in employment opportunities and there are soaring prices which bear upon every sector of the community.

It does not require statistics for those of us in this House and elsewhere with knowledge of our social conditions to know the real and great poverty that exists at present in this country, to know of the malnutrition and disease which exists here due to inadequate incomes, inadequate housing and inadequate educational facilities which are the lot of a great many of our citizens. Our society is not one of which we can be proud. A concentrated effort on a vast scale must be made to increase the national wealth. We must not be afraid to demand other measures, other concepts, other ideas and to adopt new ones more suitable to our needs and demands at the present time.

The proposals for economic expansion are totally inadequate to meet the real needs of the Irish nation at present. The Government's Programme for Economic Expansion which they put forward last year will not give us the increased wealth, increased production and increased employment opportunities necessary to make this a proper Christian community. It is of some significance that the Government have carefully eschewed the use of any statistics showing the amount of employment that is likely to be given by their Programme for Economic Expansion. They have failed to give any indication of the production increases that are likely to come about if their programme is put into operation. In the recent document they produced, showing their alleged progress in relation to this Programme for Economic Expansion, again no figures have been given to demonstrate what effect it is having on the unemployment situation and on the position concerning production. These omissions are significant because, as I hope I can show, the Government's programme will have very little, if any, effect on the employment situation.

This programme, which has been blazoned over the newspapers and which has been given such a tremendous amount of publicity, contemplates the expenditure under public capital over five years, of the sum of £220 million. Already that has been pared in respect of the provision of £7,000,000 for the fertiliser proposals. In money terms, that programme over the next five years is no greater than the public programme of 1956-57, which was a year of some prosperity but still of unemployment and emigration. In real terms, it is most likely that it will be lower than the amounts for 1955-56 and 1956-57 because our experience of the past few years is most likely to be followed in the future and the decline in the value of money is likely to continue.

The great criticism which can be made of this programme is in relation to the realisation of what the Government are proposing in it. The Government appear to have resigned themselves to the fact that Government and local authority capital expenditure is likely to decline over the years and the Government are making available large sums of money for private interests to spend if those private interests make decisions to do so. Agricultural credit for the next five years is to be at a figure of £11 million; industrial credit is to be at a figure of £20 million; and hotel grants are to be at a figure of £2.35 million. Of the total sum under this programme, the expenditure of over £33 million will depend on the decisions of private investors, industrialists, farmers and hotel owners. It is an undeniable fact that the decline in the Government's own expenditure will have a deflationary effect on the economy and is likely adversely to affect the decision whether this money which is now to be made available will be taken up or not. The expansion in industrial credit proposed on paper is a vast expansion over what has been the experience of the recent past. The expansion in industrial credit is a vast expansion over what has been spent on industrial credit in recent years and there is no indication to show that the Government are justified in believing that this expansion will take place.

As I have said earlier, even if this programme is fully implemented, which is indeed most unlikely, it will not significantly affect our employment situation. It is true that employment may be given in different sectors of the community but the fact remains that the total programme of the Government over the next five years will be on no greater scale than in 1956-57 and is most likely to be less. For these reasons, the Government have been very slow to give any idea of what the employment position will be as a result of this programme. The omission is a significant one because the Government realise that this programme will have but little effect on the general employment situation.

It is time that this Government, this House and the public faced up to certain consequences of what has been our experience in the recent past. We must accept the fact that private enterprise in this community is inadequate to give us the economic expansion we need. A distinguished economist in this country recently said that what is needed here is enterprise, whether it be private or public, and we must accept the fact that the private sector of the economy will not be sufficient to give us the economic development this country requires and produce the employment opportunities which our workers want so that emigration can be stemmed.

We must also accept the fact that ours is a mixed economy in which the private and the public sector have to play a part. If the private sector is unable to give the expansion needed, the public sector must play its part. We must face the fact that private enterprise, for many reasons which it is unnecessary to go into here, will not be sufficient in the future to give us the economic expansion which is needed and that the public sector will have to undertake activities on an ever-increasing scale in order to produce the conditions that are necessary.

There has been a curious approach to the whole concept of planning economic development in Ireland, and "planning" is one of those words which are regarded in some way as being almost anathema. I welcome the fact that the Government have set up a planning section in the Department of Finance but I still feel that the steps taken by the Government are inadequate for future economic development, that there has been in the past and there is at the present time a situation in which expenditure by the Government, by State bodies, and by local authorities is largely haphazard, unplanned and unco-ordinated and that if we are to get proper economic development, it must be planned on a much more extensive scale than heretofore.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce referred to the welcome fact that bank credit in this country in the recent past has expanded considerably. It has been our experience in the post-war years that bank credit has expanded considerably, that we have run into large balance of payments difficulties and that bank credit has very quickly and drastically been reduced. We have had sufficient experience in the recent past of the banks expanding credit to a very large degree and suddenly contracting it, and we have had booms followed by slumps in this economy which have caused grave hardships to those who have had to suffer from them.

I feel that the evidence shows that the time has come when the Central Bank must adequately control credit in this country. The ultimate operator of the level of bank credit in this country should be the Government, through the medium of the Central Bank. There have been various arguments put up as to why the present informal system with the banks is adequate. I feel that those arguments, in the light of the recent past, are not convincing. Our experience has been that the large scale expansion of bank credit has contributed to a considerable degree, even more so than the recurring increases in wages, to bringing about a deficit in the balance of payments. It is necessary, to my mind, that there should be a properly graduated expansion of bank credit, co-ordinated with the Government's general economic policy and that should be done through the medium of the Central Bank.

There are, I know, very great technical difficulties but they can be overcome. They have been overcome in other countries in circumstances similar to ours and I think they can be overcome here. I do not suggest that manipulating the currency is the sovereign remedy nor am I suggesting such a course. Past experience has shown that economic expansion can be hindered rather than assisted by such a course.

I do not see any prospect of this Government dealing adequately with the grave economic and social problems which confront us. I see no sign of recognition of these problems and I see no sign of great concern. On the contrary there is ample evidence of complacency on the Government benches. The country's social problems are great and very urgent. The difficulties under which many thousands of our people are living are crippling. What is needed is a sort of vision, initiative and courage which public men in the past had in a high degree in this country. They are sadly lacking now and that is the reason there is not, throughout the country, the optimism and hope that the Government have talked of, but, on the contrary, there are despondency, depression and pessimism which, to my mind, in the light of our experience and knowledge of the Government, are fully justified.

I welcome the opportunity given to us in this debate. I think it is time, since the present Government came into office, to have a searching of conscience and an expression of our condemnation of the conditions in which we find ourselves to-day compared with two and a half years ago. Up to this the two most important problems facing any Government in this country were unemployment and the high cost of living. These two problems are with us today, but, coming from a rural constituency, I can say that a much more serious problem has arisen for the people living on the land.

Without exception, every single item of produce that the farmer is producing is now without a market. I shall deal first with the deplorable condition of the cattle trade which has gone. It is completely gone and it was our principal export. I am speaking of the export of store cattle on the hoof and not of the dead meat trade. That trade has now completely gone after having been in a stagnant condition for the last nine months.

I am glad that the Minister for Agriculture is present. I want to ask him what steps are being taken at the present time to get rid of the glut of cattle on every farm in the country at present. At the present time we have over a quarter of a million cattle on hands that could have been and should have been exported. The value of these cattle is in the region of £18,000,000. In the West of Ireland, where the creamery industry is not yet developed, every holding is black with the finest of cattle that cannot be sold. Fair after fair is teeming with these cattle and there is no demand for them. I am not blaming the Minister entirely for that because a situation has arisen in Great Britain where, through the energetic measures taken by the British Government in the years after the last war, the British farmer is now completely independent of the Irish store cattle trade.

The facts are these. If English, Welsh and Scottish farmers can produce one store beast extra for every one hundred acres of land they will be completely independent of the Irish store cattle trade. That is a very serious situation for us, and, while I do not blame the Minister for it, I think it fair to ask him if he is aware of this position and what steps he has taken for the future.

To turn to other sorts of produce, I want to say that the sheep trade has become a farce. Lambs and sheep are gone. Bacon is practically nonexistent. The turkey trade has gone and for the average farm household this is ruination. These were what they lived on. Even at the best of times no farmer was paid a price which covered the cost of production and left him with a fair margin for himself and his household. They were not paid a fair price and the result is now plain to be seen in every household in the country where fathers and mothers after rearing a family, cannot get a sor to remain on the land. It is very hard to blame them. There is no return for what they produce. There is no guaranteed or minimum price.

The Minister was asked to-day i he could fix a minimum price for turkeys—a very small item—and he said that he could not or would no do it. I tell him that the time has come when some measure of security will have to be introduced, otherwise the farmsteads of this country will become vacant. Anyone who has any knowledge of rural conditions must be appalled at the number of nice, comfortable dwellinghouses built in the last twenty or thirty years, many of them at the expense of the ratepayers, which are now shuttered up and the families gone to England, Canada, or the United States. If we are to allow that to continue and if we are to allow the richest agricultural country in the world, through sheer bad management, to become derelict of its population we shall stand before the bar of history charged with criminal neglect.

The T.B. Scheme is meeting with an excellent response from the farmers. However, the Minister has not yet come forward with any plan to take the place of the 14-day test green tag cattle. It is about time the Minister put some scheme into operation. When questioned last week he would not tell us what the abuses were which made him close it down. I have no doubt there were abuses. In any public scheme there is always the odd character who sees an opportunity for making money illicitly and who will not hesitate to take it. I congratulate the Minister on putting a stop to these abuses, whatever they were. I was glad to note from his reply that no farmers were involved in them; a different type of person altogether was involved. My experience has been that the farmers are most anxious to get on with the clearance of their herds. They realise, both from their own point of view and from the point of view of the export market, that that is the only course to adopt and they are willing to give the Minister every help and co-operation.

I do not wish to interrupt the Deputy but I should like to say that I did not indicate that any particular section was innocent or guilty of any abuse we detected in the working of the scheme.

I understood from the Minister's reply that it was, to put it bluntly, the people trading and buying these 14-day green tag tested cattle.

I would suggest that the Deputy look up the record of Question Time. I do not think he will find I made that statement.

Very good. I want to make this suggestion to the Minister. It may not be the proper time to go into details of his Department but, seeing that our principal export is store cattle, I do not think it will be amiss if I make this suggestion. I would suggest to the Minister that he would make every effort to get the area enclosed by the River Shannon—west of the Shannon—cleared as quickly as possible. That would be a step in the right direction. If the Minister tries to spread the effort over the whole of the Twenty-Six Counties, admirable as that would be, I think he will be grasping too much and, like the little boy in the nursery rhyme, will lose all. However, I hope he will consider this suggestion for what it is worth. If he bends his efforts to clearing the area west of the Shannon he will not find it so difficult then to make halves of the remaining portion of the country. I honestly believe that is the best way to approach the problem, but the Minister has very good advisers in his Department and has more up-to-date knowledge than I have.

I want to turn now to the question of employment. The number employed here has gone down steadily despite the promise of the last election, which even caught some Government supporters, that there would be 100,000 new jobs. That was backed up a short time after the election by mention of the sum of £220,000,000 for the spending, though we have not seen much of it since. I think both of these things were figments of the present Taoiseach's imagination at the time. I think it fair to accuse him of knowing at the time that these things could not be done, that 100,000 new jobs, at the rate of 15,000 a year for a number of years, could not be accomplished. Anybody who was Minister for Industry and Commerce for so many years must have known that such was utterly impossible without a fabulous windfall that could hardly be expected.

If we look at the Book of Estimates, we find there a very ready reason why there is such vast emigration from the country. The reason emigration is so high is due to one fact alone—the fact that there is no employment for those who go abroad to seek it. I agree there is a certain amount of attraction in the form of better wages and, perhaps, more attractive conditions in England, the United States and Canada. At the same time, an astonishing number of boys and girls, particularly boys, would be content to stay at home, even at the low wages we could offer them, if the employment were there. I think any young fellow worth his salt would be giving bad example if he sat down calmly and wasted his youth here for the sake of being a good patriot or a good Irishman and did not join the crowd emigrating when we cannot provide work.

In the Book of Estimates we find that it costs over £115,000,000 to run this country. Going through the Estimates we find that only two or three Departments employ working men to any extent at all. The first of these is the Forestry Department, which employs about 5,000 people and spends £1,300,000 on employment. Next comes the Office of Public Works and arterial drainage. A sum of £125,000 is spent on arterial drainage, most of which goes on labour. The Office of Public Works in various schemes spends, including expenditure on materials, concrete, pipes, tools, etc., £776,000. In no other Vote can I see a Department employing working men. The net result is that from these three Departments—the Board of Works, Forestry and the Land Commission—we get a total expenditure for wages for the working man of £3,092,000, made up as follows: Forestry, £1,300,000; Board of Works £1,292,000 and Land Commission, £500,000.

If the Taoiseach is serious in his desire to put a stop to emigration, he should consider this £112,000,000 in the Book of Estimates, which goes in some mysterious way I do not understand and gives very little employment beyond the staffs in Government offices. He should consider doubling the £3,000,000 spent in the Departments I have mentioned on providing wages for the working man. Surely, out of £112,000,000 it should not be difficult to effect a saving and find another £3,000,000 to give employment to those engaged in the development of our country? As I said, it is not for pleasure that our young people are emigrating. It is because there is no employment at home. The reason we are not giving them employment is that we are not inducing private individuals or concerns to provide employment and we are not providing employment ourselves. Deputy McQuillan has a motion before the House on the question of the Local Authorities (Works) Act. That gave wonderful employment and helped to take a little trickle off the tide of emigration, but even that has been cut away.

Recently, the Taoiseach has been adopting the attitude that everything is all right, that there is nothing wrong about the serious deficit in our balance of payments, and anybody who raises his voice to point out what is going wrong is accused of being something of a banshee. I do not see that that will produce the results anticipated. The average person down the country, who has not £1 in the house for the last eight or nine months because of the complete collapse of every item of agricultural produce, knows that things have gone seriously wrong and that the Taoiseach's statement is not correct. The Taoiseach was not here a moment ago when I pointed out that, so far as the people in the rural areas are concerned, things with them are in a pretty desperate condition.

Cattle are not being sold. The price of sheep has dropped by more than 50 per cent and in most cases they are unsaleable. Through the autumn and up to the present time, the roads have been white with sheep returning from fairs. There was nobody to buy them. I do not know where the bottle-neck is or the reason for the sudden collapse in the market for cattle, sheep, eggs, butter, and so on. Somebody is at fault because the markets for these products cannot have dried up. It may be suggested that the collapse of the cattle trade is due to the dry summer in England and the resultant shortage of grass there. I do not think that is the answer. Certain things happened with regard to exported cattle that were supposed to be free from T.B., but these were only isolated incidents. Nevertheless, they did a certain amount of damage.

The Government must face up to the problem and find a solution. Approximately 250,000 cattle have been in the right condition for sale for the last six or eight months. They are still in the country, with the result that every holding and farm is black with the finest cattle that cannot be sold. Fodder to feed them in the winter is not available. It may be too much to expect the Taoiseach to be as familiar with this matter as a person from the country would be but I assure him that the position is pretty desperate.

The turkey trade is gone. Prices ranging from 1/4d down to as low as 10d per lb. have been paid for turkeys. While turkey exports were small, nevertheless, they formed a very important item in the average country house.

The figures for unemployment that we are getting do not show the real position. Due to an effort by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Social Welfare in letting loose on the country a host of inspectors, genuine applicants for unemployment benefit have been scared off. They could not stand the constant badgering from inspectors and the constant questioning. The result is that many people are off the list and have had to go to England to get employment or have remained unemployed at home and have not registered.

I am not referring to the odd cases here and there of persons who drew unemployment benefit and unemployment assistance wrongfully. I have no doubt that there were such cases. That small element is always there. The vast majority of those who have been struck off the list are persons who have not drawn benefit or assistance wrongfully but are persons who were afraid to apply. These people do not want to get their names up in court or elsewhere or in the public eye as being associated with any wrongdoing. The result is that the list published by the Statistics Office every week is artificial and does not show the true position. The actual figure would show 15,000 or 20,000 more than the list shows.

I suggest that the Taoiseach and his Ministers should go through the Book of Estimates with a view to cutting out wasteful expenditure and spending the money so saved in creating employment. It would also help to solve the problem of emigration. There is great need for drainage. Afforestation could be developed. The former Minister for Lands, Deputy Childers, was more concerned to cut down on afforestation except where a positive dividend was guaranteed in 50 years' time, when the forests would come to maturity. I could not tolerate such a narrow niggardly outlook. I would not tolerate the squandering of public money but I would take a slight gamble in establishing forests, in view of the fact that we spend £30,000,000 a year on imported timber and wood products. If the Government do not develop the forests, nobody else will.

Once again, I would ask the Taoiseach to consider the question of the market for agricultural produce, which has completely collapsed. Deputy Dillon suggested that it should be possible to develop markets for our produce in countries which export to this country and buy very little in return. I entirely endorse what Deputy Dillon said on that subject. I shall not mention specific countries but it is scandalous that we are buying goods and materials of various kinds from them while they have erected a steel curtain to debar our goods from entering their countries. The Taoiseach would be perfectly justified and would gain more respect from these countries in telling them that, if they do not buy goods to the approximate value of the goods we buy from them, we shall turn to a country that will buy from us.

I am disappointed with the standard of criticism I have heard so far in this debate because it has been so completely destructive, so completely lacking in evidence of positive thinking by any member of the Opposition. That was particularly obvious in the speech of Deputy Declan Costello who wandered far and wide around the whole political scene but seemed, to my mind, to be mainly concerned with preaching the new Left Wing policy of Fine Gael. Whether he was speaking on behalf of his Party or was flying a kite, I do not know but I strongly suspect the latter because his Party appear at the moment to be putting up numerous kites to see which will fly the highest or which will fly at all.

Deputy Costello produced that kite before and was shot down by Deputy Dillon, who is now the Leader of the Opposition, at a Fine Gael meeting and now we find it produced again: "The Government must interfere and must take over." It sounded to my mind almost like a policy of complete nationalisation. I should like somebody to explain to the House and to the country whether this is a new Fine Gael policy or whether it is just an effort to see what will get more votes. If it is a new policy to which the Party is firmly pledged, we would all be glad to know it. Personally, I doubt that very much.

Deputy Costello, followed by Deputy Blowick, gloried in a general atmosphere of pessimism, which depressed them enormously, but at the same time they delivered their speeches with the greatest enthusiasm and, having delivered them, both Deputies immediately left the House, having done their duty to the community to their own satisfaction. How anyone with any sense of Parliamentary propriety, apart from anything else, can do that, I do not know. If these Deputies really felt as desperate as they would have us believe, they would have sat on for a little while longer to see what some Government Deputy, even a backbencher, might say in reply.

I do not want to interrupt the Deputy but, in fairness to Deputy Costello, the Deputy might have made inquiry before making a remark of that sort. Deputy Costello had an engagement which he delayed in order to speak here this evening and had to leave in order to keep it. In fairness to Deputy Costello, that should be made clear.

Well, I am interested, to a certain extent, to hear that but, as a Deputy, his primary duty is to the House and on a motion, which his Party has called for, and on which his Party seeks to make a case of some importance it is treating the House with scant courtesy just to come in and make a speech and then go out.

I trust then that Deputy Booth will remain here until 10.30 p.m.

All Deputies do that when it suits them.

In view of Deputy Booth's attitude I think he might try to ensure that at least there is a House present to hear him.

Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,

I am very sorry if I have upset Deputy O'Higgins in any way. I should like to point out that it is not my duty to seek a House.

It is the Government's duty to see that there is a House present.

The confusion between myself and the Government is something I find very hard to understand. There are members on the Front Bench who are very much more responsible than I.

The Deputy is taxing them very severely.

I do not think so, but perhaps if I could be allowed to speak without interruption it might be more helpful to the House if anyone wants to listen. If anybody does not want to listen he can withdraw.

We shall keep a House for the Deputy.

The point I was making was that this general spirit of pessimism which we heard proclaimed by Deputy Costello and Deputy Blowick is to my mind entirely false and entirely unfounded. It is easy to accuse the Government of complacency, and it is a charge which we are fully prepared to meet, but there is a difference between confidence and complacency and an even greater difference between confidence and utter pessimism. There does not appear to me to be any grounds for believing that the Government has failed to appreciate the urgency of dealing with current social problems. That charge could not be laid at the door of a Government which took office, as this Government did, in 1957 with the whole country then really, honestly and genuinely in a crisis, when unemployment was never higher.

Only yesterday in reply to a question by Deputy O'Malley the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach informed him, and the House, that on the 26th January, 1957—which was very shortly before a general election —the number on the live register was 94,648, and that the number of unemployed on the 28th November, the latest available date, was 62,273, which showed a reduction in the number of registered unemployed of 32,375. Now Deputy Blowick has decided that this figure is entirely false and he has produced the fanciful suggestion that people who are genuinely unemployed, who are genuinely seeking work and who are genuinely in need of assistance are so frightened of the possible embarrassment of investigation of their claims that they have failed to register as unemployed. Out of the back of his head somewhere, he has produced a figure of about 15,000 to 20,000 frightened people.

If we are to have criticism of the Government on such flimsy evidence as that, the Government has nothing to fear. There is no evidence whatever that the Central Statistics Office have juggled with the figures of unemployed nor is there any evidence that people who are genuinely unemployed have failed to register or are frightened to register. That, I might confidently assert, is a pure figment of Deputy Blowick's imagination.

Deputy Blowick brought up the question of the decline in the cattle trade—something which is a great grief and concern to everyone, whether they are inside or outside this House. Yet it is not so long since the Government were being castigated for failure to place all their trust for agricultural prosperity on the development of cattle exports. We were told time and again that it was false to overlook what the Fine Gael Party believed to be a fact, that our whole prosperity depended on increased cattle exports. At the time it was clearly put forward that Government policy was to try and put agriculture on a much wider basis and we were told that was wrong.

Now it has been suggested that we were right, that while cattle exports and markets are favourable and a very valuable asset we cannot always rely on having the cattle market open to us. That is exactly what has happened in this particular case. That is precisely why the Government have been trying to develop agricultural exports other than cattle. For that reason the Commission on Marketing of Agricultural Produce was set up and very correctly that matter was given priority, because if efforts are made to increase agricultural production without first investigating market possibilities for exports you are going to ask the farmer to over-produce and put himself out of business.

What we have to do first is to establish definite markets for our produce and then get going and produce the articles required on that market. Everyone should be very grateful to the Commission which has worked very hard and produced numerous reports already, which, we have been informed, are receiving the close attention of the Government. Here again it is not a question of taking a snap decision; it is not a matter of taking a decision here by which we can export poultry, livestock and all sorts of agricultural produce to certain countries without their consent and without their willingness to accept them when we send them. Consequently a lot of bargaining has to be done before the market can be established. Again, it is only right that the farmers themselves, through the N.F.A. and other organisations, should take a share in exploring markets and not leave everything to the Department of Agriculture or the Department of Industry and Commerce.

In this criticism we find contradictions. There are some people who criticise the Government because they keep on interfering and other members of the same Party very often keep on saying that the Government should take responsibility for everything. You cannot have it both ways. The Government are doing as much as they can but they are trying to get the interested parties themselves to take an interest also and to take their share of responsibility.

We heard not only about unemployment but about emigration. Here also, efforts have been made to secure definite figures but all that can be established is a trend. The Opposition find that the trend does not appear to be suitable for their arguments; so they overlook it and start inventing figures of their own. I think we should pay attention to outside observers and I refer to the opinion of Mr. Garrett Fitzgerald who cannot be regarded as being naturally prejudiced in favour of Fianna Fáil and who has recorded his opinion that emigration has been substantially stemmed. It has not been stopped but the rising tide of emigration has been stemmed and the weight of emigration appears to him, as a statistician, to have been considerably reduced.

It is time he was exported.

I do not know that there is a market for him——

I do not think there is. I agree with the Deputy there.

Possibly there is, but what his market value would be, I do not know. That is typical of the attitude over there. If a statistician produces figures that do not suit them, they want to export him.

We are looking at the people going every day and we do not need to listen to the statisticians.

Deputy McQuillan might restrain himself and allow Deputy Booth to make his speech.

I can well understand Deputy McQuillan's point. It is awkward when statistics do not help in your argument. It is much more convenient for me when statistics do support whatever I am trying to put across so that I am in a much happier position than the Deputy who says he sees people emigrating every day. Again, I think that is fanciful. Deputy McQuillan has not seen anybody emigrating to-day and I doubt very much whether he saw anybody yesterday——

How does the Deputy know?

I do not know; I have just said that I doubt if the Deputy saw anyone.

The Deputy seems to be in doubt about a lot of things.

Deputy McQuillan will get an opportunity of making his own statement.

He is asking me to intervene——

The Deputy should not be drawn at this stage.

I am not aware that I asked Deputy McQuillan to do anything. All I said was that I do not think he has seen anybody emigrate to-day and I doubt if he has seen anybody emigrate for a considerable time. I think he has better things to do than to stand at Dún Laoghaire or at the B. & I. wharf and watch for them. Even if he saw them, I do not know how he would know whether they were emigrating or not. Quite a lot of people get on to boats and planes and go away, but if Deputy McQuillan stayed at the Airport or on the quay or at Dún Laoghaire harbour, he would find a great many coming in.

They are the tourists.

The tourist traffic is not unduly heavy at present. It will become heavy during next week but to say that everyone is a tourist who has been returning here for the past five months is complete nonsense. I wish the Opposition would be serious about this——

Is this a serious speech? The Deputy should have told us.

I doubt if the Deputy would have believed me, seeing that he does not believe me when I say anything else. Therefore, I do not think there is any point in warning him. I am trying to be serious and it is hard to do so when I am being persistently interrupted by flippant interjections. If these had any merit, I would try to answer them.

Would the Deputy accept the replies given in the British House of Commons as to the number who applied for cards for the first time?

I do not think that is relevant at present because those figures are not before me. If Deputy Lindsay would like to produce those figures, as I am sure he will——

If over 70,000 people applied for new cards?

Perhaps Deputy Lindsay would make his speech in his own time.

The difficulty is that when I try to put forward a defence of the Government, it becomes too embarrassing for the Opposition.

The Deputy did say he did not like figures when they were against him, I think?

I have not got any figures that are against me.

70,000 in one year.

I have no idea what the Deputy is talking about but I hope he will tell us later.

I shall, and I shall reconcile it with Mr. Fitzgerald's trend.

Perhaps the Deputy will be able to do that, but, as the Chair keeps on telling him, he will have his opportunity if he is patient.

Reference was made to the total numbers in employment but no reference was made to the fact that all over the world the number of people employed in agriculture is steadily declining. Likewise, no mention was made of the fact that the number employed here in industry is steadily rising. We cannot do much, if anything, about increasing employment on the land, apart from what is being done in forestry and so on, but in general the development of agriculture leads to its giving less employment. But if we can step up industrial development and employment, that, in itself, produces a home market for agricultural produce and should help to alleviate the present trend towards unemployment in rural areas.

Getting increased industrial employment is not easy. I do not think anyone on this side of the House ever said it was. It should be remembered that when this Government took office, they first had to stop the rot. Unemployment was mounting steadily and you cannot turn a trend of rising unemployment into one of rising employment. You must first stem emigration and stem rising unemployment.

You have been saying that since 1932.

I have not been saying that since 1932, as the Deputy suggests.

Since Fianna Fáil took over.

In fact, the rot has been stopped. Emigration has been greatly reduced and new industries are starting up steadily. To my mind, that gives much greater ground for confidence than if there were a sudden burst of employment. That would not look like proper economic or industrial planning. No new industry can start up overnight but plans have been maturing over the last year and new factories are now going up. Only about a month ago, I was talking to a director of one of the biggest building-contracting firms in the country. They deal exclusively with factory building and he informed me that their work during this year was at a substantially higher level than last year and that his firm was fully booked and could not accept any further orders for 1960.

If Deputies cannot hear Deputy Booth without interrupting, I shall have to ask them to leave the House. Deputy Booth is entitled to speak just as other Deputies spoke without interruption.

I accept that, but it is very hard to accept.

It was a harmless interruption anyway.

The idea was that a statement of mine could be written off. That statement of mine can be written off only if I am telling a deliberate untruth—which I am not— or if my informant was telling a deliberate untruth, which I confidently believe he was not. I should be prepared to discuss the matter with Deputy Carroll outside the House or in the lobbies and give him further information but I honestly believe that statement to be absolutely true. Believing that is absolutely true, I am confident that new industries are starting up and that not only this building contractor but many others are also involved, not only in this part of the country but in the new Shannon free airport, and other parts of the country as well. It is a truism that every man who gets a job becomes a better market for local shopkeepers, and so prosperity will begin to flow again—but it is not easy.

Deputy Blowick has been weeping crocodile tears over cattle and sheep prices. What the Government were supposed to do about cattle and sheep prices he never suggested. It is a fact that cattle and sheep prices have recently fallen very low on the British market and, as we are linked so very closely to the British market, we are suffering with them. Whether the Government could be held responsible for weather conditions I very much doubt, though Deputy Blowick did admit to a certain extent that the drought during the summer had had some effect on cattle prices, but it is not yet obvious what the Government are supposed to do about that.

I cannot see the Government jacking up cattle and sheep prices. I do not see that they should try to do that. It is part of the risk undertaken in any business, and farming is a business like any other. Sometimes the market goes in your favour, sometimes it goes against you. Criticism is being levelled at the Government that they even should do something about turkey prices, but nobody says what. Are we expected to subsidise cattle, sheep and turkey prices? If so, why should we stop there, and what are we going to use for money? The market has got sticky at the moment but it is not anything as bad as Deputy Blowick makes out. If he would go and watch the actual exports of cattle through the Port of Dublin alone, he would get quite a different opinion about the market position than what he appears to have at the moment. He appears to have got that opinion simply by standing at a gate, looking into a field and seeing cattle in it.

The Deputy should take a walk down the country and attend some of the fairs.

It is perfectly easy——

Come down some day.

——to see our cattle and sheep prices from market reports, but to say the bottom has fallen out of the market, and that no business is being done, is only nonsense.

Come down and have a look.

Order! Deputy Beirne might allow Deputy Booth to make his speech.

Considerable progress has been made in forestry, contrary to what Deputy Blowick said. The report issued to us to-day shows the average planted was the highest ever. Deputy Blowick had an opportunity of reading the report of the Forestry Division but apparently did not bother to do so. That again is irresponsible because, when a report has just come out to show that the rate of planting has never been higher, it is completely unjust to levy criticism on the predecessor of the Minister for Lands, Deputy Childers, and say he was trying to cut down the rate of planting. That is nonsense. In actual fact he has stepped it up. It was he who introduced the incentive system which contributed very largely to the progress made even subsequent to the compilation of that report.

The only difficulty set out in the report is that the building up of a sufficient reserve of plantable land is extremely difficult. That again has been tackled as vigorously as possible, and considerable progress has been made.

Considerable progress has been made also with regard to fisheries, not only in the development of new plans for the training of crews, for the building and purchasing of boats, but also in the question of marketing.

And the sale of boats.

I beg the Deputy's pardon.

The sale of boats.

The purchasing and the sale of boats. The really exciting thing is that the consumption of fish in Ireland has gone up amazingly. Our rate of consumption on the home market was incredibly low and, through much better marketing and better handling, there is now an infinitely better home market for our fishermen than there ever was before, and exports have also gone up.

Will the Deputy accept that the number engaged in forestry and fishing has gone down, according to the appendix to the statistics?

I shall accept that if the Deputy has the official figures before him, which I have not, but the important thing is whether those industries, and they are industries, are being put on a firmer basis. You can always employ men on an uneconomic level but that is not the way to deal with an economic problem. You have got to get the business running economically before you expand and take on additional labour. That is what is being done and has been done to some extent here.

The Deputy's policy would be to throw the workers out of work to build up the industry?

No, no. I do not think even Deputy O.J. Flanagan, in his wildest dreams, would expect me to suggest such a thing, but I was dealing with an interjection from my left which was on a different point altogether. I am in favour of giving increased employment, just in case Deputy O.J. Flanagan does not know that, but the increased employment must be on productive work and must be done economically. I am delighted we have got that point over though it is in a different context.

I do not want anything I have said to be regarded as evidence of complacency because there are no grounds for complacency whatsoever. We shall be facing grave problems in the future and our whole marketing of agricultural produce in other lands is tangled up with the economic framework of Europe generally. Here again we have taken a positive stand, and I think a valuable one. We have been criticised for not going in with the Six or with the Outer Seven——

We are at sixes and sevens.

In actual fact, there does now appear to be a growing realisation that neither the Six nor Seven can make any progress on their own, and that consequently the Six and Seven must come together rapidly. That is what the Government have always advocated. They have always struggled very hard to prevent that division arising in Europe, and are now trying to bridge the gap and bring the parties together under the aegis of O.E.E.C. When that has been negotiated, and I think it is only a matter of when—not if—we can look forward to an increased market potential in Europe generally, but it is quite impossible in the present state of uncertainty to plan with any confidence on the European market or any market, especially for agricultural produce, other than the British market.

Here again the Government have acted with decision and have initiated high level trade talks in London which are at present being continued, at intervals admittedly, but the results of which are being carefully investigated on each side of the Irish Sea. That, to my mind, is a very healthy trend. It shows that the Government are fully prepared to negotiate, as they have been asked to do, with the country which is by far our best customer.

That is a bit of a change from the time when people over there were shouting that the British market was gone forever, and thank God.

Deputy Flanagan must not interrupt.

A lot of things have changed, including Deputy Oliver Flanagan.

It was the Deputy's Party who said that. All belonging to it said it: "The British market is gone forever."

Deputy Flanagan must cease interrupting. The Deputy can make his speech later.

I hope Deputy Flanagan is feeling better now. The point is that a definite step has been taken to reach a new trade agreement with Great Britain. I think it will be found that, when that has been achieved, the Government will proceed as rapidly as possible to bring the other countries together and have a proper European trade agreement brought into operation. That may be exciting. At the same time, it may be dangerous. But the Government are fully prepared to negotiate and to act whenever they can.

I cannot see any signs of any complacency anywhere in the Government. I can see plenty of signs of active and constructive work. All around us are the signs that that work is bearing fruit. The fact that conditions are improving does not mean that we have not got to work very hard. We shall certainly continue to work very hard. The preaching of pessimism and disaster is something which is of very little political advantage to anyone. It is certainly very bad for the country. I do not expect the Opposition to hand out bouquets just for the fun of it. To keep on shouting that the country is in a crisis, that emigration is mounting, that unemployment is increasing when the facts clearly show the reverse——

What about the balance of payments?

——is nonsense. Take the balance of payments position. This Government will not get panicked into taking action with regard to the balance of payments because they have the foresight and the confidence to see that no crisis is in fact impending. They know the situation will right itself. How right they have been proved in that in recent months when the balance of payments position has taken a marked turn for the better. It would have been much more like the Opposition to panic, but this Government do not panic. They keep resolutely on their course, and have been proved right in doing so.

There are criticisms which can quite properly be made and I hope that, for the benefit of the Government, they will be made, but those criticisms must be constructive and they must be based on facts. If they are based on imagination, they will not be of very much help, either from the point of view of the Party which makes them or from the point of view of the country. By all means, let us have criticism, but let it be constructive, and positive, and based on facts.

I was interested in what Deputy Booth had to say. I think everybody will admit, especially the members of the Government, that they have quite a difficult task. I do not think the picture Deputy Booth painted in the last half an hour is the right picture. I think he has good reason for saying that the Government should not be complacent about the situation.

I intervene principally because of two questions addressed to the Taoiseach recently in relation to employment figures. Mark you, I think the Taoiseach has transmitted some of his optimism about the figures for employment to people such as Deputy Booth, who honestly believe that employment is rising when the contrary is the case. It was suggested to the Taoiseach last week that the contrary is the case. He became very indignant at the suggestion and he said he would produce figures to show that employment was rising in 1959 as compared with 1958 or 1957.

It may be true to say that the trend in emigration has turned the other way, but there is still emigration. All of us will admit that emigration has decreased but that decrease is due to the fact that we have practically reached saturation point where emigration is concerned. I do not think Deputy Booth could quarrel with me on that. There may be other factors, but the main factor contributing to the decrease is that we have reached saturation point.

Yesterday the Taoiseach replied to a question tabled by Deputy Desmond. I have not got the actual question but the reply is reported in today's Irish Times:“The Taoiseach told Mr. Desmond that in the nine months ended September 30th the number of insurance stamps sold amounted to 18,616,500 compared with 18,271,200 in the nine months ended September 30th, 1958. The increase over 1958 was 345,300 which represented an average increase of 8,854 insured workers a week throughout the nine months compared with the corresponding period in the previous year.” I am sure every Deputy believed that was the correct picture, but I know the Taoiseach knows it is not the correct picture. I do not say the Taoiseach was dishonest, but the Taoiseach should have mentioned other factors.

It is true to say that the number of insurance stamps sold in the particular period was 8,854 more than in the same period in 1958, but surely the Taoiseach remembers that he gave permission to his Minister for Social Welfare in October of last year to introduce what was described as the Social Welfare (Amendment) Bill, 1958. That raised the insurability of certain persons from a maximum of £600 to £800, and that meant an increase in the number of insured workers. On that occasion, those of us who spoke in the debate asked the Minister, or his Parliamentary Secretary, what new number of insured workers would be brought in. In column 913 of volume 171 of the Official Report the Parliamentary Secretary replied, and said:—

We estimate that the number of persons who will come in as a result of this Bill will be about 18,000——

What has the Taoiseach to say now about this increase of 8,854? We have got 18,000 new entrants.

No, no. The figure was all wrong.

The Parliamentary Secretary's figure?

That figure of 18,000 ignored the fact that all manual workers were insured, anyway.

But that was the figure given from the Government benches.

Let me quote what the Parliamentary Secretary said on that occasion:—

We estimate that the number of persons who will come in as a result of this Bill will be about 18,000——

Here is an important point for the Taoiseach in view of what he has just said—

and of them at least one-half will be State employees.

That does not suggest to me that at least half of these would be manual workers.

There are no stamps bought for State employees.

No stamps bought for State employees?

And the Parliamentary Secretary, when he referred to 18,000, said that at least half of them would be State employees and that 9,000 State employees would, under the new Bill, be deemed to be insured.

No stamps are purchased for them.

I am afraid I cannot follow that argument. It seems to me that the figure which the Taoiseach boasts of is now reduced to a minus figure of 10,000. I must confess that I cannot understand the Taoiseach's line of argument in this debate. I suppose I must accept his word when he says that no stamps are bought for these people. What sort of transaction is carried on between the Department of Finance and the Department of Social Welfare, I have not been aware of, and I am not aware of it tonight. In any case, it needs a good deal of explaining.

Apart from figures which many people in this House seem to ridicule, there is not much evidence that there has been an increase in employment. Deputy Booth admits, and all of us know, that so far as employment in the rural areas is concerned, it is steadily decreasing. There is a reason for that in respect of agriculture. Agriculture has become so mechanised, and has been for the past ten or 15 years, that the tendency is to lay off men. These men have either to seek employment in the towns or cities or emigrate.

I frankly cannot see—I use the word "see" deliberately; I am not depending on figures now—any increase in employment to the extent the Taoiseach suggests there has been in industry. For instance, I saw in a reply which the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce gave here today to a question about the number of new factories which have been established in recent years, that four new factories were established in Wexford. I shall not say that I am the best Deputy in the country, but I have a fair knowledge of my own constituency and I do not know of any four factories started in Wexford. I honestly have no idea whether small additions have been made to existing factories in Wexford, whether it is a new type of processing in an existing factory, or whether some small factory has been started and carried on in a backyard. I do not know anything about the four factories in Wexford which the Minister for Industry and Commerce talks about.

A Deputy from Waterford said it was suggested in that reply that there were seven new factories in Waterford county. He does not know of seven new factories. The whole total comes to about a few hundred. Of course, if we were to believe the Irish Press, there are about 25 new factories every Sunday. No reference is made to any factories being closed. I have read reports of the speech of the Taoiseach in Limerick last week when he talked about pessimism, about banshee wailing and hand-wringing. We heard the same from Deputy Booth. Will some one tell me who wailed and wrung their hands more often and more loudly than the members of the Fianna Fáil Party, the Sunday Press, the Evening Press and the Irish Press in the three years from 1948 to 1951 and in the period from 1954 to 1957? No one minds criticism and, of course, the Press have a special privilege to criticise as strongly as they can, but if the Government say there is an attempt by the Opposition Parties to undermine confidence in the Government, I say the criticism could have been stronger during the periods I have mentioned especially in view of the fact that there were three newspapers behind that criticism.

Deputy Booth is a relatively new member of the House and he criticises the Opposition for the questions they ask as if he had no idea what it meant to be in Opposition. Deputy Booth and his colleagues asked the same questions and made the same criticisms. The Taoiseach told us it was the duty of an Opposition to criticise. He said that was a right of the Opposition and that he reserved the right to criticise and not make suggestions. The record of that can easily be found. I well remember Deputy Lemass, as he then was, saying it was the duty of the Opposition to criticise and of the Government to produce results, if they could.

In reply to Deputy Flanagan, Deputy Booth said that the Government wanted to provide work but that it had to be productive and economic work. I disagree with him thoroughly, in view of our circumstances. I appreciate that efforts are being made, and I am sure they are being made at the present time by the Government and the Minister for Industry and Commerce, to provide employment, but the fact is that we will not get it this year to fill all our demands. I feel that we will not get it in the next three, four, five, six or seven years. We shall not have established in this country factories that will be productive and economical and therefore I believe it is our bounden duty, and the bounden duty of the Government, to provide work —just work, without any qualification.

I believe there is still quite an amount of work to be done in housing. A reply which I got from the Minister for Local Government today was to the effect that there are still 177 cottages needed in Wexford, but the Minister has so directed his housing policy that the Wexford County Council will build in each of the next three or four years only 40 cottages. That means that some of those 177 people who the Minister admits need cottages, will not have a cottage for another five years. That is a small example, but it is an example of work that could be done and should be done. I do not know why the Government are going slow on the housing question. There is a motion before the House at present in relation to the Local Authorities (Works) Act. Suffice it for me to say that I think it was a tragedy that scheme was stopped by the Fianna Fáil Government.

I wonder what was really in the mind of the Taoiseach when, in his usual spectacular way, about six months ago, he sent letters to the chairmen of the local authorities all over the country, and gave the impression, whether he meant to or not, that they were to send up all the schemes they could which would give employment—and I do not think he said productive employment. So far as the Government were concerned the sky was the limit. I know the local body in my home town, Wexford Corporation, sent up a scheme which would cost about £½ million. There are some simple people and there would be some Fianna Fáil people on that corporation who would be simple people —politically, I mean—and I think they have an idea in their minds that there will be sanction for a scheme for the improvement of the harbour in Wexford at a cost of about £½ million. Tipperary, Mayo, Limerick and Cork and the other local authorities have sent millions of pounds' worth of schemes to the Department or the Board of Works. I do not know which.

When the Taoiseach is replying, I should like him to say what is to happen to these schemes. As yet, I do not know of any scheme that has been approved. I was very suspicious, and I am still very suspicious, of that invitation to those people to send up all these schemes because I remember that in the Department of Local Government, in the Board of Works and in the Fisheries Branch, there are, at the present time, and have been for the past ten, 20 and 30 years, schemes filed away which could be put into operation if the objective of the Taoiseach is to provide employment.

Again, let me stress that I believe we should be able to afford, as Deputy Blowick said, an expenditure of anything up to £10 million per year in the giving of employment. Some people may be critical and say: "We do not want relief," and may try to persuade the workers that it is only relief work and work given for charity, but it is an investment of £10 million to keep people in this country so that when this productive work about which we all speak gets going, we shall have these workers to engage in it.

The Taoiseach is anxious and so is every member of this House to see that factories are established, whether in the Shannon free trade zone. Wexford, Mayo, Dublin or Cork. We are all anxious to see factories established but we know how slow a process it is. We know the protracted negotiations that must, of necessity, go on between Departmental officials and Germans, Belgians and Americans. Sometimes it takes three years to establish a factory. A man with 38/- a week on the dole cannot wait so long. The rural worker, who is employed for nine months of the year as an agricultural labourer, cannot afford to be living on £3 1s. per week for his wife and family for the other three months in the hope that these factories will be established. There is plenty of work to be done. There is plenty of productive work to be done in factories.

What are the detail difficulties about extending the forestry programme? We have stepped up our forestry programme spectacularly over the past ten years: whether it can be stepped up any more or not, we do not know, and we do not know whether it would be a good investment to pump more money into it.

We cannot be particularly proud about the roads we have in the country. Many local authorities boast about the condition of their roads and say that they have now reached saturation point, as far as the expenditure of money is concerned. Many roads are not in good condition, in view of the increased car and lorry population. It seems that we shall have to pay more and more attention to the roads. Therefore, an expenditure of another £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 on the roads would, in my opinion, be justified, not alone to keep money in this country but also to provide adequate highways for the traffic that will travel on these roads in a relatively short period. Whether it is on land, drainage, or road work, I think the expenditure of money is justified.

I cast no aspersion on the 62,000 who are unemployed at the present time. If there are instances where 10, 20 or 30 men want to go into some business or factory, employers have difficulty in getting the right type of worker. I do not necessarily mean the man who will work as against the man who will not work. Amongst those 62,000 there is a big proportion of men who are used to rural work only. Many of them are not suitable for factory work. They cannot adapt themselves too easily to the operation of a machine or the making of different articles but we will be left in a position in a short time, if we do not do something about the matter, in which 20,000 of the 62,000 will be forced to emigrate, and we shall never have any skilled operatives in the country or workers who can be trained.

I make no apology for repeating that the expenditure of £10,000,000 to keep workers in the country will pay off in the long run. The Government propose to spend substantial amounts in the near future in making grants to the hotel industry. I have no objection to that. They have poured out, I suppose. some millions of pounds to the hotel industry over the past two years. I have no objection to it. That will not pay off for another few years and maybe for three, five, seven or ten years, but still we thought we were justified and are justified at the present time in throwing money into the hotel business to promote the tourist industry and we will not get a return possibly for another seven or ten years when we hope this country will attract more tourists.

Similarly, the Taoiseach has—shall I say—gambled as far as the transatlantic air service is concerned. I expressed doubts in this House as to whether or not it would be a success and I do not want to comment further on that. He admits himself that it is now in the growing pains stage. He says it is more than an experiment. It is going to be a success. Still we have to give it a chance. Still he is prepared—I do not object to his doing it —to pour millions of pounds into the development of a project that will not show a return for five, six or seven years.

It is much more worthwhile to expend money on the employment of people in our own country or on giving them the means to live in their own country so that, when we do want them, they will be available. I would ask the Taoiseach, when he is replying, to refer to the reply he gave to Deputy Desmond yesterday and to relate it to the statement made by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Social Welfare when he spoke on a Social Welfare Bill on 25th November, 1958.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins rose.

Before Deputy O'Higgins starts, I want to direct attention to the fact that at least two members of the Fianna Fáil Party, three members of the Fine Gael Party, one member of the Labour Party and one member of the Clann na Talmhan Party spoke and although a number of other Deputies offered, they were persistently ignored by each member who sat in the Chair from 6 o'clock. I am speaking on behalf of the other people in this House. I think it is a disgraceful performance on the part of the various officers in the Chair. The people in this House were elected to have an equal voice when they are called in this Chamber. It is contempt of the public.

It is only fair to the Chair to say that I offered myself on six occasions. I have been here since the debate commenced. I have not seen any Independent member or members offer himself other than the members of Fianna Fáil.

On a point of order, I did not refer to Deputy O'Higgins personally and I hope he will accept that.

I hope Deputy O'Higgins will accept the fact that I have been sitting here all the time.

The Deputy will be called on, irrespective of whether I am in the Chair or not.

I do not care so long as some member from this part of the House is called on.

There are two of us.

Deputy Booth made an appeal that criticism of the Government in this discussion should be based on facts. I hope to criticise the Government and I hope to back every word of criticism I say with facts which I have before me.

I want to start by asserting it is a fact that this Government have failed disastrously all along the line. I want to assert that this Government have failed in dealing with the problem of the cost of living. I assert that this Government have failed in dealing with the problem of unemployment. I assert that they have failed in dealing with the problem of emigration. I assert that they have failed on the question of the balance of payments. I assert that they have failed in dealing with the problem of illegal activities in the State. I assert that they have failed in dealing with the question of health services and the preservation of harmonious relations between the Government, on the one hand, and the medical profession, on the other. I assert that they have failed in dealing with the agricultural industry. I assert that they have failed in their external affairs policy and have failed even in their effort to abolish P.R. and make the future safe for Fianna Fáil.

I think that even Deputy Booth will acknowledge that, prior to and during the last general election, all the artillery of the Fianna Fáil Party was turned on the previous Government and all their criticism levelled against that Government, principally on the question of employment and unemployment. I have here, and I intend giving, fact No. 1 from a pamphlet entitled "Facts for Voters" produced by the Fianna Fáil Party prior to the last general election on the occasion of a by-election in Cork city. I do not know if Deputy Booth will agree with me. Will the Deputy accept that what is stated in this at least was presented to the public by the Fianna Fáil Party as facts?

The first fact I want to refer to is that in that by-election which preceded the general election by a few months, the Fianna Fáil standard bearer had this to say of the Fianna Fáil policy which Fianna Fáil were presenting to the people and which they asserted they wanted to give the people an opportunity of accepting at a general election:—

Emigration has reached frightening proportions. Soaring prices are robbing the wage packet of its value. Rates have increased enormously. In Fianna Fáil we have set a state of full employment as our goal. We believe it can be achieved. We are working out the details of a dynamic programme of investment which, in an expanding economy, will bring the nation to that goal.

That was before the general election campaign started. Fianna Fáil were laying the fuse which they wanted to ignite at the right time. They had produced their proposal for full employment—the Lemass plan for 100,000 jobs in five years. We were told in the by-election in Cork city that Fianna Fáil were eagerly awaiting the opportunity of putting that proposal before the people.

In the same pamphlet, we read: "Fianna Fáil plans the end of emigration." It continues:

In contrast to the attitude of the present Coalition, Fianna Fáil has been preparing its plans for the day when the Party will again take up the reins of Government. The Fianna Fáil plan proposes an increase over five years in the number of new jobs by 100,000. This would result in full employment and the end of abnormal emigration.

We were told Fianna Fáil had a dynamic plan which they wanted to put into operation and that they were awaiting the opportunity to do so.

Then we come along to the period of the general election. Everyone knows that there were difficult days for the people of this country and that there were difficult days politically for the then Government in the year 1956. All of us know the measures which that Government were courageous enough to take in order to meet a crisis situation which had developed, not through any fault of the Government. Because of those measures, there was a dislocation in trade. There was an increase in the unemployment figures.

What sympathy did the Government get at that time from the then Deputy Lemass, deputy-Leader of the Opposition? What sympathy did the then Government get from people like Deputy Booth who were contesting the election on behalf of Fianna Fáil? Was there as much as one Fianna Fáil Deputy now in the House who stood by the Government in those days and appealed to the people to keep up their hearts and their confidence?

There was one voice crying out to the people in those days. He did it from the Government Benches and from the Opposition Benches. It was the voice of Deputy J.A. Costello telling the people that there was no need to despair. He put before the people in October, 1956, a programme for production which the Fianna Fáil Party are proud now to enhance and endorse. He told the people that a temporary period of upset and dislocation had to be faced, if we were to preserve the national solvency. What support did he get then from the Fianna Fáil benches? How many Fianna Fáil Deputies did we hear talking about gloom and despair?

Did we hear Deputy Lemass in those days asking the people to forget this talk of gloom, despair and despondency, to have confidence in the country and in its future? I believe many Fianna Fáil Deputies are confusing the people's confidence in the country and the people's lack of confidence in the Government. They are two different and distinct things.

If the people have, as I believe they have, confidence in the future of the country and in the ability of the country to overcome any handicaps which now beset us, that confidence is due in great measure to the work of Deputy J.A. Costello in appealing to the country and to the youth of the country to show that confidence, whether he was in Government or in Opposition. I believe the people have that confidence in the country but they have not confidence in the Government. They have shown that at by-election after by-election. In the two years and nine months this Government have been in office, in two out of three by-elections in the capital city, Fianna Fáil have suffered reverses.

The point I wanted to make was that, having prepared the ground, having the opportunity presented to them because of the difficulties faced by the inter-Party Government, Fianna Fáil took full advantage of it during the general election. Every one of us remember how every dead wall in the country was plastered with Fianna Fáil posters saying: "Beat the crisis. Let us get cracking. Wives, get your husbands out to work. Unemployment is the test of Government policy." In that atmosphere, we had the Taoiseach putting himself on record in a few speeches of which I propose to remind him.

I take it that Deputy Booth will accept it that these are facts. These are the words of his Taoiseach as reported in the Irish Press of 23rd February, 1957, speaking in his own constituency of Dublin South (Central). That report states:—

He said that the rise in unemployment during the past few months was indisputable evidence that things are wrong with the country. The policy of any Government should be judged by its effect on employment. If it is putting more people into work, it is all right. If it is putting them out of work, it is wrong. Fianna Fáil has never refused to accept that test.

I should like to pause there and ask the Taoiseach to ponder on the bit of wriggling being done in relation to unemployment figures today. The report continues:—

Its main economic aim was to bring about conditions in which Irish men and Irish women can get a livelihood through work in Ireland. Full employment must be the objective of any worthwhile programme.

Again, speaking in Drogheda, as reported in the Irish Press of 16th February, 1957, he had this to say:

The measure of the worsening of the national situation is the increase in unemployment. That is the real test of the soundness of the policy of any Government. Unless the policy of the Government is successful in putting people to work, of giving a chance of getting work to all who are dependent on it for their livelihood, it is not good enough. The aim of any worthwhile policy must be full employment.

Would the Deputy comment on the figures I gave?

I do not know that I remember the figures Deputy Booth gave but I propose to comment on figures given by the Taoiseach's Department on 11th of last month. The general Fianna Fáil pamphlet for use all over the country, produced for the general election with a photograph of their former leader on the front page, had this as one of its main headings: "All energies devoted to one aim: full employment. The whole energies of the Fianna Fáil Government will be devoted to the realisation of the objective of full employment. This can be achieved only through a rapid and substantial increase of national resources and it is to this end that Fianna Fáil will apply its economic policy." At the foot of the page there is this in bold, black letters: "Unemployment can be cured". On the next page, again in bold black letters: "Action can start now. Over 90,000 people are now out of work. The Coalition says it can do nothing for them now. Fianna Fáil believes that work must be provided at once."

That was the Fianna Fáil propaganda during the general election campaign. I do not think anyone can doubt that they were saying fairly and squarely to the people: "As far as this election is concerned, the big issue is the issue of employment and unemployment and we are coming before you as a Party offering full employment in Ireland. We are coming before you as a Party offering to create 100,000 new jobs inside five years, if you put us into Government with a sufficient majority to stay there for five years." Was that not the gist of the message conveyed by Fianna Fáil through the mouth of the Taoiseach to the electorate at the last election? Let them now examine their consciences. Let them now tell about the 100,000 new jobs they were going to create if they were given a sufficient majority to stay in office for a period of five years?

We have not been in five years yet.

At the rate you are going, I do not think you will be in for five years. However, the idea was something in the region of 15,000 to 25,000 new jobs a year. Lest Deputy Booth should think I am in any way misrepresenting the facts or misinterpreting the message which Fianna Fáil wanted to give the electorate at the last general election, may I remind him that when the Minister for Defence was even more of a greenhorn in the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party than he is today, he gave his interpretation of the results of the general election and he told us across the floor of the House why Fianna Fáil were put into office. If Deputy Booth cares to consult the Dáil Debates of the 15th May, 1957, he will see that at columns 1283 and 1284, he had this to say:

In my opinion, and in the opinion of any fair-minded person who even now goes back and looks over the speeches made in the election campaign, it is beyond all doubt that we were put in here as a Government to take the necessary steps to remedy the situation of mass unemployment and emigration brought about by the previous Government.

Again, in column 1288 of the Dáil Debates of the same day, the Minister for Defence said:

The people who have been affected by that unemployment and resulting emigration have put their faith in Fianna Fáil to remedy this situation, in the full knowledge that there would probably be a period of comparative austerity before progress towards remedying the situation became apparent.

Fianna Fáil have now been there for more than half of a full period in office and on the 11th of last month a question was put down by Deputy Lynch to the Taoiseach. The information given to Deputy Lynch in reply to that question, regarding persons in insurable employment over the years 1956 to 1959, showed that as between 1956 and 1959 there were 40,000 fewer people in employment than before Fianna Fáil became the Government. Remember, this is the Government which is supported by Deputy Booth who pledged themselves in all their speeches and propaganda during the general election that they were the Party who would give full employment; they were the Party who were to end emigration and cure unemployment; they were the Party who were to create 100,000 new jobs.

We find that, half way through their period of office, their best boast so far as employment is concerned, is that they have succeeded in pushing out of employment 40,000 people who were in employment before the present Fianna Fáil Government came into office. Is that anything to be proud of? Will Deputy Booth deny that is a fact?

These are figures from the Taoiseach's own Department.

That is a distortion and a misrepresentation of the figures I gave.

I shall read out the question and the answer.

Read out the figures given today by the Taoiseach.

I shall read out some figures given by the Taoiseach, in reply to Deputy Lynch's question.

What is the Deputy trying to prove?

I am trying to prove that Fianna Fáil are a disastrous failure, so far as employment is concerned. On the 11th November, 1959, this question was addressed to the Taoiseach by Deputy T. Lynch. I am quoting from Column 885 of Volume 177 of the Dáil Debates:

Mr. T. Lynch asked the Taoiseach if he will state the total number of persons in whole-time employment in the State in each of the years 1956, 1957, 1958 and to the nearest available date in 1959.

The Taoiseach says I am distorting the figures. This was the reply given by the Parliamentary Secretary:

Donnchadh Ó Briain: It is not possible to ascertain the total number of persons in whole-time employment in the State at any specific date. Particulars of the numbers of persons in insurable employment are, however, available in the form of estimates based on insurance stamps sold, or issued to employer depositors. Thus the average number of stamps sold per week in a year provides an estimate of the average number of persons in insurable employment throughout that year.

For the years ended 31st March from 1956 to 1959 the estimates of the weekly average number of persons in insurable employment were as follows:—

Year ended

31st March

1956

501,400

1957

485,900

1958

464,700

1959

460,200

A comparatively simple sum in arithmetic will show the Taoiseach that the gap as between 1956 and 1959 is a figure of 40,000 odd. Does the Taoiseach still question the figure?

My answer is that it was in 1956, in the last nine months of the Coalition that 50,000 people lost their jobs, and that explains the number.

That is precisely the statement the Taoiseach made in Limerick and, as he is prepared to take that statement as a test of his accuracy in this matter, let us deal with it. The Taoiseach says that for nine months, six months in 1956 and three, I think, in 1957, when the inter-Party Government were in office, the numbers in employment fell by 50,000 in these months. I think I am summarising the Taoiseach fairly. Will the Taoiseach just look at his figures? On the figures he has given, even as between the 31st March, 1956, and the 31st March, 1957, the reduction was 15,500 whereas the figure of 50,000——

In respect of the last disastrous nine months of the Coalition.

Anywhere in the four years given, show me a drop of 50,000.

If the Deputy wants the figures, I shall produce them.

I shall speak tomorrow. In that nine months, judging by insurance stamps sold, the drop was 50,000.

The Taoiseach is quite mistaken.

The Taoiseach already intervened——

I am intervening only to state the facts.

The Taoiseach already intervened to try to gloss over a figure given in a recent debate which was put up to him by Deputy Corish. The Taoiseach might at least do the House the courtesy of agreeing that they have some knowledge of procedure and some intelligence. The Taoiseach gives us figures for insurance stamps sold. He has not adverted to the fact, in his interjections here this evening, that the ceiling for insurance stamps was raised from £600 to £800 and that, according to his own Parliamentary Secretary in introducing the Bill which provided for that, there were 18,000 people being brought in. These were not 18,000 new people going into employment; they were 18,000 already in employment who will now be covered in this respect.

Most of whom were in employment for which stamps are not purchased. No stamps are purchased for civil servants.

There are.

There are. I challenge the Taoiseach on that and I shall apologise if I am wrong. I made some inquiries and, according to the information I have, stamps are purchased for civil servants, people in State employment, and the Taoiseach might check that and deal with it tomorrow.

Manual workers, no matter what they earn, were always insurable. We are talking about salaried workers, not manual workers.

The Taoiseach will find there are stamps sold.

I think the Taoiseach will agree that at least there are widows' and orphans' stamps sold.

I am talking about unemployment insurance stamps.

I should like the Taoiseach to check the tots of the figures given yesterday and see if they relate only to unemployment insurance stamps. However, I want to continue giving Deputy Booth some facts. Those are the facts in relation to unemployment figures as announced to this House by the Taoiseach's Department, that there were 40,000 fewer people in employment on the 31st March, 1959, than on the 31st March, 1956. Remember that that is only on a par with information which his predecessor gave me in reply to a Parliamentary Question I asked on the 12th March, 1958. On that occasion I asked the then Taoiseach to state the average number of persons in industrial and agricultural employment in the years 1956 and 1957. The information given—admittedly the figures were estimated—showed, as between 1956 and 1957, there had been a drop of 24,000 in the figures for industrial and agricultural employment.

I asked a similar question yesterday. I want to say that I take very grave exception to the manner in which the question was answered. I asked a question exactly similar in every respect, bar one, to the one I asked on the 12th March, 1958, the only difference being that in the question on the 12th March, 1958, I had to relate the question to the years 1956-57 whereas in the question yesterday I asked for similar information to cover the years 1958 and 1959 to date. While in March, 1958, the Taoiseach's Department were able to give an estimate of those engaged in industrial and agricultural employment, I was informed yesterday by the Parliamentary Secretary, answering for the Taoiseach, that those figures could not be given as far as industry was concerned and that he could only give me figures for those engaged in transportable goods industries. I should like to ask the Taoiseach why he is not able to give the figures in 1959 which he was able to give in 1958.

What figures? The Deputy has not made himself very clear.

I have 25 minutes to make myself clear.

The Deputy referred to two types of industrial employment. I do not know the difference between them.

I did not draw the distinction. It is the Taoiseach himself who drew it in the reply to the question yesterday. Perhaps if the Taoiseach would endeavour to make it his habit to read the questions put down to him and to read the answers given on his behalf, he might be able to follow things a little bit more clearly. My complaint is this. On the 12th March last year I asked a question and I got an answer. On the 9th December this year I asked a similar question but I was told I could not get an answer.

What answer was the Deputy looking for?

I was looking for the numbers of people engaged in industrial and agricultural employment in this country for the years 1956, 1957, 1958 and 1959 to date. Will the Taoiseach undertake to give those figures tomorrow?

For industrial employment there is no problem.

What the Taoiseach told me yesterday was this:

Current statistics of the number of persons engaged in industry and agriculture are available only from the Quarterly Inquiry into industries producing transportable goods covered by the Census of Industrial Production and from the annual Agricultural Statistics Enumeration respectively. These figures relate to all persons engaged in the activities concerned and not merely to employees only. I propose, with the permission of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle...

He then issued a tabular statement. That answer given yesterday was entirely different from an answer given to a similar question on the 12th March, 1958. I would ask the Taoiseach to look into it.

I doubt if it is necessary, even to satisfy Deputy Booth's appetite for facts, to emphasise by further quotation from Fianna Fáil election propaganda that the issue they were making in the last general election was the question of unemployment and, allied to that, the question of emigration and also the cost of living.

Not the cost of living.

The Deputy thinks that the cost of living was not in issue in the election? Let me quote from the election address of the Minister for Health:

To the electors of Dublin SouthEast. On March 5th you will have the chance to elect a Government. We trust that it will be a better Government than you have had since 1954. In living memory trade has never been so bad, unemployment so rife and the necessities of life so dear.

It winds up:

If you do your part in this election to put a Fianna Fáil Government in office, we believe you can look forward with confidence to a revival of industry, an increase in employment and greater security for all.

Hear, hear!

The Deputy might have said "hear, hear!" on the 5th March, 1957, but I doubt if he would find many people in his cumann to say "hear, hear!" today. The facts are that the complaint was that the necessities of life were never so dear. We have in the general election pamphlet, issued on behalf of Deputy Booth and other Fianna Fáil Deputies, a whole page devoted to telling the people how dear everything was. They were told that they paid more for tea, beer, whiskey, tobacco, cigarettes, coal, turf and a host of other commodities. Was that not putting the cost of living in issue in the general election?

The Deputy said that we pledged ourselves to reduce the cost of living.

I said the Deputy and his Party put it in issue in the general election.

I do not think the Deputy said that.

I shall undertake not to revise the script of what I said if the Deputy will do the same. Then we shall see who is right. Fianna Fáil put in issue in the general election the question of unemployment, emigration, and the cost of living.

I have already dealt with the Fianna Fáil history as far as unemployment is concerned. Having got back to office with an overall majority—as big a majority as any Government had since the State was established—having got from the people the power to put into operation any policy they wished, to implement, if they wanted to implement, their proposals for full employment and their plan to give the people of this country 100,000 new jobs— with all that power and no one to stop them, what have they done, apart from wasting the time of this House for nine months discussing the Fianna Fáil proposal to abolish P.R. and make the future safe for Fianna Fáil? Apart from that, what have they done in their two and a half years of office? They have pushed 40,000 people who were in jobs before they came into office out of their jobs.

That is incorrect. There are 17,000 more people working today than when the Coalition were in office.

That is not correct.

If the Minister does not accept the figures published by the Taoiseach's Department, I cannot help him.

If the Deputy does not understand the figures given by the Taoiseach today, I cannot help him.

Then they were faced with a by-election in Dublin, North Central. In the by-election we did not hear much of the 100,000 new jobs but we did hear, nine months after they got into office, that the Government had a policy for more work and that plans were being prepared. This is what they said: "Next year the plans being prepared by the present Government will come to fruition and a great improvement may then be expected in the unemployment situation. Even now the unemployment figure is several thousands less than at this time last year." In November, 1957, when they were faced with this by-election Fianna Fáil did not quite concede defeat but they did concede that there would be some postponement of the 100,000 new jobs that were to be created. Instead of being created in 1957 it was now going to be the next year.

Then they had a by-election in South Galway and I had to search their literature very carefully to find out what they would say about the question of unemployment. Now they had left 1957 and they were in 1958. In 1957 it was to be next year. In 1958 it was only at the very back page of their election literature that they made any reference to the drive for more jobs. The Minister for Lands may now wish to overlook the fact that the general election literature prepared for him and his colleagues said that there were over 90,000 people out of work, that the Government in office could do nothing for these people and that Fianna Fáil believed that work could be provided at once. In the South Galway by-election there was only very little reference to the strive for jobs when it was said: "The intensive drive of the Fianna Fáil Government is getting results."

One of the results claimed was that the number out of work was fewer by several thousands than at the same time the previous year. Notice how clever that is. They say that the number of people out of work was fewer but there is no reference to the number of people in work. This was in May 1958 and, according to the figures given by the Taoiseach's Department on the 11th of last month, there were approximately 36,000 people fewer in work in the year ended 31st March 1958 than in the year 31st March 1956. Deputy Booth, with his appetite for facts, can stand over the statement that the number of people out of work was fewer by several thousands but it would never strike him to ask about the number of people in work. To him the statement that there are fewer people out of work means that there are more people in employment. The fact is that it does not and on that occasion it meant there were 36,000 fewer people in employment when that by-election was held than there were in the year 1956. I am sick and tired of hearing Fianna Fáil Deputies—the Minister for Lands was at it here a few minutes ago—painting the year 1956 as the black year in this country.

It was the most disastrous year in our history.

There we are again.

The year Fianna Fáil were put into office.

Let that kind of thing go on the record because, according to the figures now being published by the Department of the Taoiseach, it was the peak year for employment in the past six years. There were more people in employment in 1956 than there were in any of the six years from 1954 to date. That is described as a black year.

Will the Deputy admit that 50,000 people lost their jobs in the last nine months of that year?

Where are the figures to support the assertion that 50,000 lost their jobs?

They are to be had.

They are not to be had.

They can be got by Parliamentary Question.

I shall now quote from the speech of the Taoiseach at Limerick and I am sorry he did not wait to hear it. The speech is reported in the newspapers of 6th of this month. I have the papers here, if Deputy Booth does not believe I have the facts in my own notes.

I am sure you have the papers.

Let us, first of all, comment on the fact that, in keeping with the phraseology of their Dublin North (Central) by-election speeches, of the plan being postponed until "next year", as recently as 5th or 6th of the present month, the Taoiseach states in Limerick that next year could mark a great leap forward on the path to increased national prosperity. Again, we are going over to next year. Remember, this was the job that was to be tackled at once. Fianna Fáil were to beat the crisis. Fianna Fáil were to be allowed to get cracking. Fianna Fáil told the people that "action could start now." Fianna Fáil told the people that there was no reason for any delay, that the Coalition were all wrong in saying they could not do anything then. Fianna Fáil said that something must be done at once. Now we find that it is postponed from 1957 to 1958; it is postponed from 1958 to 1959 and, in December, 1959, the Taoiseach again says "next year".

No, we are doing all right now.

You are doing all right but you are not putting more people into work.

There are 17,000 more people at work. That is not to be sneezed at.

It is certainly not to be sneezed at if it is not there.

I should be only too happy if the Taoiseach would stand over the figures issued by his Department, which show that there are 30,000 fewer people in employment.

There are 17,000 more people in employment.

They are all in England.

They are not, and you know it.

They must be in the Minister's Department.

If you take your own figure for insurable employment, the figures are there for you to see.

What about the increase in the numbers as a result of the 15,000 new jobs per annum estimated by the Taoiseach as being required?

There are 18,000 civil servants who do not use stamps at all.

May I go on, if the Minister has no objection? I propose to quote words which may not be palatable to him. The Taoiseach is reported as saying at Limerick:

Mr. Dillon may believe that what he asserted was a statistical fact, that the number of people in employment is 40,000 less than three years ago and said this proved the failure of the Government policy.

Then the Taoiseach asks: "What are the facts?" and he sets out what he, presumably, claims are four facts. I want to controvert each of the four. The first fact, following the Taoiseach's rhetorical question, is:

The three years of which Mr. Dillon spoke include the last months of the Coalition Government, the last half of 1956 and the first quarter of 1957——

I shall give him that fact. He goes on:

during which this country experienced a slump of unprecedented severity in production and employment. During the nine months' period when the Coalition were in control the numbers in employment fell by around 50,000.

If the Minister for Lands will look at his volume of the Dáil Debates for 11th November, 1959, not a month ago, he will see that that simply is not so, if the figures given by the Department of the Taoiseach in reply to a Parliamentary Question are correct, because the decrease as between 31st March, 1956, and 31st March, 1957, according to those figures, was 15,500. Even making due allowance for the Taoiseach's exaggeration, that is a very far cry from 50,000. The Taoiseach went on:

That rapid decline in production and employment was arrested before the end of 1957.

That was the Taoiseach's second fact. I want to ask him, if that is so, how is it that there was a further decrease in employment between 31st March, 1957, and 31st March, 1958, according to his own figures, of 21,200—an additional decrease of 21,200 persons, who were put out of employment under a Fianna Fáil Government in the year when the Taoiseach talks about the decline in production and employment being arrested? He says then:

In 1958 the long process of recovery was begun.

Then he says:

In this year, 1959, the recovery has been much more rapid.

Again I invite the Minister for Lands to look at the figures as between 31st March, 1958, and 31st March, 1959. Employment, according to that reply, decreased by a further 4,500 persons. These are another 4,500 persons who were in jobs and who have been put out of jobs under a Fianna Fáil Government. So that the gap between 31st March, 1956, and 31st March, 1959. as at 31st March, 1959, had lengthened out to 41,200 people—41,200 fewer people in insurable employment than there were before Fianna Fáil became Government. However, I imagine that even Deputy Booth has now had his fill of facts about unemployment.

No; I am waiting for them.

It might be as well to turn for a moment to the question of the cost of living. I asked a Question yesterday to find out what increases had taken place in commodities included in the calculation of the cost-of-living index figure as between March, 1957, and the latest convenient date. According to the answer given to me by the Department of the Taoiseach yesterday, there were 197 items included in the calculation for the cost-of-living index figure and, of those 197 items, 149 have increased in price since Fianna Fáil took office; there have been decreases in only 42 cases and in six cases there was no change.

I move the adjournment of the debate.

Debate adjourned.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Friday, 11th December, 1959.
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