Having listened to this debate and to the speakers from both major Parties, I wish I were a person of sufficient stature to act as an honest broker between the two sides in order to try to bring them back to the real seriousness of the position in the country today. I listened with great attention and great admiration—that is with admiration from the viewpoint of the practical politician—to Deputy M.J. O'Higgins last night. He made a very able, well prepared, well thought out, well delivered and extraordinarily well documented indictment of the Government and their activities over the last two and a half years.
His main charge was concerned with whether the Taoiseach is right in saying that the responsibility for the 40,000 fewer people in employment, is the responsibility of his Government or of their predecessors in office. I would plead with the Taoiseach that he should not preoccupy himself, in his answer to this debate, with an explanation as to who is in fact responsible for that very distressing truth. I would ask Deputies on both sides, in both major Parties, to try to understand that we have entered a most heartening—in some ways—phase of political development.
The disappearance to a considerable extent of the more contentious leaders of the Civil War period has led to a completely different atmosphere in this House, which personally I more than welcome. I think I should pay tribute to the Taoiseach for his attempts to reduce the level of acrimony and personal offensiveness which was so common here over the years. At the same time this period could be, and I suppose in time must show itself to be, the beginning of a most important watershed of political opinion in Ireland. The great differences of the Civil War which kept the politicians separated over the years are no longer there. The differences seem to have disappeared and we must now discuss our political differences in terms of ideologies, on an economic or social basis of economic policies and financial ideas. It seems to me completely irrelevant which Party must take responsibility or blame for the achievements or the failures of our present position.
While I am a strong critic of Governments and of Government policies I shall concede that there have been successes in some fields over the past 30 or 40 years for which both Governments may claim some credit. I think it would be much more desirable if we could begin discussing here, not whether Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael or the inter-Party Government was responsible for a particular failure or success, but whether a particular approach to the solution of a problem was more or less satisfactory irrespective of which Party put it forward.
I appeal to Deputies on both sides to re-assess the picture of our progress in the last 40 years under our different administrations and re-assess the different methods used by Ministers from both sides of the House to try to find out which is the more successful or the more applicable to our way of life, the more likely to be successful in future, and which is most likely to be acceptable to the people, given their background, education, opportunity and general attitude to standards and values. That is why I say that the 40,000 and the question of which Government were responsible for it is relatively unimportant.
I should like Deputies to consider the more important figures which cannot be controverted and for which there is joint responsibility, such as the 750,000 people who have had to emigrate since the State was formed, the 8-10 per cent. consistently unemployed and also the fact that no matter what Taoiseach is in office, if he is asked by his Minister for Agriculture or Social Welfare or Health to approve of certain proposals, he has no alternative but to say to him: "I cannot afford to increase the 27/6 for old age pensioners; I cannot afford to let you have money to educate our children properly; I cannot afford to give you the money so that we would be able to put ourselves on the same level as our fellow-countrymen in Northern Ireland or Great Britain or any other country."
The reason that money is not there is not that we are particularly meanminded, selfish, or disinterested about the hardship or unhappiness that all this degradation of one kind or another inevitably means in education, health services and the care of old people and of the under-privileged classes generally, but simply because our economic policies have failed to provide the State with money to assist these people and give them that modicum of comfort which most civilised communities have now come to accept as only their right. In that way a discussion or debate need not involve any acrimony or abuse by one Deputy or Party of another Deputy or Party or by one group of Deputies of another group.
Deputy Lindsay has told us that it is not the duty of the Opposition to put forward solutions for problems. I suppose that is substantially true but I think many people would be disappointed if the leader of the Opposition did not take an opportunity of more fully declaring the economic and social policies with which he felt he might like to replace existing policies. I do not think it is particularly original —it seems to me this is not an unfair capsule definition of Deputy Dillon's approach—to say that if you feed a four-legged animal it will get fat and you can sell it. More things are required to run society than merely the fattening of sheep, pigs and cattle and exporting them. It is an oversimplification of the policies of a large Party which hopes one day to control the destinies of this society.
It also seems that, in the light of the disclosures made by the Minister for Agriculture, following the admirable 1948 Agreement, changes came in Britain that to a large extent invalidated that Agreement and certainly weakened the hopes that many people had for it. The Minister for Agriculture conceded that these changes were legitimately made by the British in regard to their own internal policy, but hopes that we had of entering the British market with our agricultural produce came to little or nothing. It seems to me that should bring home to Deputy Dillon that the British market is not a sufficiently substantial foundation upon which to build our hopes of prosperity or on which to depend for prosperity and that alternative markets for agricultural produce should certainly be more closely investigated by him and suggestions for alternative markets, where there is a failure of the British market, should at least be put forward by him from time to time.
Apparently, the ephemeral qualities of demand in the British market have been clearly demonstrated over the years and, for my own money, I would not be satisfied with the consistent and persistent absolute dependence which the leader of the Opposition appears to have on the fat cattle and store cattle trade which is the basis of his policy. I also feel that in his speech he might have made some reference to social matters generally. However, he may take another opportunity of doing that.
I should like to ask the Taoiseach, probably the best informed Deputy in the House, some questions in regard to problems with which I am concerned because more than anybody else I suppose he could be considered as the breadwinner for our society for the best part of 30 years. That is a compliment in a way and it must necessarily be a criticism also, because he who has had this responsibility for so long—and I think it must be emphasised that the present Taoiseach is no newcomer to his job—cannot be given all the grace that one might give to a complete newcomer to the very responsible post which he holds because he still must have the major responsibility of deciding how our money, our national income is to be created, increased and expanded.
While the majority of the problems as such as would concern the appropriate Ministers as well as the Taoiseach, the Opposition Party has also played some part in the creation of our present position. The early Fine Gael attitude I think could be summed up in the attempted retention of the entrepreneur in Irish business, with a failure to develop Irish industry, whatever its merits, whatever its faults. That is a legitimate attitude for which, no doubt, they have a defence and, in the light of our later experience of the relative failure of Irish industry, it is possibly more justifiable now than then. However, that appeared to be their main economic policy, but at the same time they can lay claim to the earliest development of the idea of public ownership in relation to the Shannon scheme and, I understand— though there seems to be some difference between the two Parties—in relation to the establishment of the Sugar Company. It is on that problem that I should be very grateful to the Taoiseach if he would be clear and unequivocal in his defence or his repudiation of these conflicting questions, the merits of public ownership on the one hand, and the merits and demerits of what is called private enterprise on the other.
Perhaps I am prejudiced. I do believe in public ownership and maybe the Taoiseach can persuade the House that I am not completely informed on the question in all its minutest detail. But if we are to apply his simple test, a perfectly realistic test, to the record of these two attitudes to the organisation of a national economy, and the expansion of a national income in order to create the money with which one can care for the aged, look after the sick and provide education for children, then in the examination of these two attitudes, public ownership and private enterprise, that simple test which is suggested by the Taoiseach for politicians applies equally towards these economic processes, that is, their efficiency determined by the measure of employment and prosperity which they create for any particular society.
No doubt private businesses create prosperity for the individuals who control them but I assume, as politicians interested in the national welfare, we are concerned only with the impact of private business against public ownership on the welfare of the nation as a whole. I do not think there is any doubt at all that the development of native industries in this country was handed over to private enterprise. Productive capital investment was left entirely to private enterprise; the State, with a couple of exceptions which I shall mention, confined itself to some magnificent enterprises like Aer Lingus, Bord na Móna, the E.S.B., Irish Shipping, Irish Steel Holdings and, of course, the Sugar Company. These industries developed on certain conditions which I think were reasonable at the time. It appeared reasonable to the Taoiseach at that time that infant industries must be protected with tariffs, and so on, from outside competition, but the development of those industries must have been a disappointment to him.
They should have expanded. They should have created export markets. They should have given us unlimited opportunities for employment, and they should have made available to the various Departments the money with which we could have created a socially just society, and a prosperous society as well. I do not think anybody believed, hoped, or thought this wealth could have been created by the public utilities. They are not expected to create wealth. They are expected to serve a particular social function and nothing else, but these industries were intended to serve the needs of our people and, in addition, to create national wealth with which we could create a socially just society.
I do not think it unfair to say that these industries were largely still-born. Most of the so-called Irish industrial tycoons are merely branch managers of subsidiaries of British parent companies. On the whole that is what they are. All we have succeeded in doing is creating in Ireland an industrial little England, and the obvious consequence is that we have great difficulty getting into export markets against the British parent companies.
The parent company is not particularly interested in our creating exports and making foreign contacts, and is satisfied that our small home market could be readily supplied by the use of out-dated machinery, antiquated machinery. In fact, automation, mechanisation, time and motion studies can pass over our heads. It is like as if we were to try to avoid the impact on industry of the evolution of the spinning jenny. We simply cannot have all these developments that are taking place, automation, mechanisation, and all the other methods designed to increase the efficiency of industries, because our market can, be readily supplied by the present inefficient, costly, antiquated machinery of the small industries which we have at the moment.
It is a fact that in regard to many of these industries, if we were to advance as most societies are advancing in the great new expansion of scientific knowledge applied to industry, our industries would work for possibly 24 hours, supply the whole national needs and then shut down. We are dependent upon the fact that it is cheaper to have a large pool of unemployed and to use out-dated machinery. It is safer to do that and so this industrial revolution, which is taking place all around us, is leaving us completely untouched. With some exceptions that is generally true.
Our industrialists have not had sufficient initiative to go out and look for new markets, even in the great expanding economies of the Afro-Asian countries and the Middle East countries, to try to develop markets which would make it imperative to modernise their industrial methods and improve equipment in industry generally. They have had no need to do it, and that has been the fault of successive Governments. I was in one of those Governments and I accept full responsibility for the few years I was there.
Successive Governments have failed to put a limit upon the time during which we would, to use again the Taoiseach's expressive phrase, keep them as a pet. We have kept Irish industry as a pet for a great many years. We are continuing to keep it as a pet despite very valiant efforts of the Taoiseach and other Ministers of State to try to kick them into activity by touring in America and financing tours on the Continent and various other countries to help Irish industrialists to sell their products in a competitive market. Has that now been found to be impossible? Have the Government decided that we cannot compete on these export markets because of obsolete factory equipment, because our industrialists have lived in luxury for years without any significant competition to goad them into activity? Is Irish industry now in such a soft condition that it simply cannot compete against Western Germany, Japan, Britain, America and other countries? It strikes me that that is the true answer. Even with up-to-date machinery and modern methods it almost seems as if the position will still be hopeless. Perhaps our geographical position is against us. Perhaps we are using the wrong raw materials. Perhaps it might have been wiser for us to have based our industries on agriculture rather than on textiles and imported raw materials.
Today, the position is that we have not developed any export markets for our industrial products. We are now in a situation in which we find ourselves touting all over the world asking the Swedes, the Danes, the Dutch, the Germans and the Americans to come in and join the British and help to "make a go" of Irish industry. The frightening thing about the whole situation is that the Taoiseach said at a recent Ard-Fheis that our social services of one kind or another can only expand if there is, first of all, an expansion in our national economy bringing with it an increasing national prosperity. That is, I admit, a reasonable argument but, taken with the fact that most of the new industrialists and industries are promised years of taxfree profits and that those profits will more than likely be taken out of the country, there does not seem to be much prospect of increasing the national income. Even if people come in to save our bacon—I do not believe for a moment they will; why should they?; they have their own problems —I do not see where the money will come from to give us anything like comparable social or living standards vis-a-vis other civilised societies and communities.
We have failed to develop an export market. We are tied to a limited or restricted market. Consequently, we are tied to a restricted or limited national income. We are tied, therefore, it seems to me, to a stagnant, unchanging standard of living. I do not think the Taoiseach can promise us any alleviation in relation to our health services, our social services and our educational services in the foreseeable future.
The Taoiseach depended on private enterprise to save the congested districts along the western seaboard. He gave industrialists every possible encouragement. He gave them every incentive. As usual he gave them tax concessions, facilities in regard to factory buildings, and very good loans. All that has failed. Certainly most people do not regard it as a success.
The development of Shannon Airport has been given to private enterprise. This appears to be an attempt to help us cut our lossess on Shannon. This is a desperate attempt to save some money out of what is likely to become—my hope is that I may be proved wrong in this—within the next five or ten years the Shannon debacle. Shannon represents a tremendous expenditure of money by a relatively poor country on an overexotic scheme; merely because we happen to be situated on the Atlantic seaboard we go gaily into jet 'plane competitive transport. Most big countries are finding it very difficult to enter this business on their own, or stay in it on their own, and most of them are forming blocs to reduce costs and so on. To me, it is, to put it at its mildest, very unwise to spend millions of much-needed money on this extension of that particular facet of our air development. It would have been just as intelligent and just as reasonable to start building Queen Marys and Queen Elizabeths, huge Atlantic liners, because of our geographical position on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean vis-a-vis the rest of Europe.
There may be some aspects or some facets of our economic problem in which the Taoiseach thinks private enterprise has made a success of the job. But I have another criticism to offer. Having failed to develop export markets, and thereby failed to create consistent employment at good wages for those needing work, having been given every kind of protection at the expense of the ordinary taxpayer, the industrialists turn around and indulge in the meanest type of price rigging, restrictive trade practices and monopolistic practices of every kind. One of the most dramatic illustrations of that is now being painted before the present inquiry into the petrol business. It has got to the stage when I can no longer read the report of the inquiry because of the statements made by people there, people who are supposed to tell the truth.
It has been suggested there that a restrictive practice is, in fact, a competitive practice. It has been suggested that the Standard Oil Company has to buy petrol in the open market, getting 1d. or ½d. cut, and so on. This, and other industries which have been investigated by the Commission, disclose the presence of restrictive trade practices, practices which represent conspiracies against the consumer, neither more nor less. These are conspiracies to inflate prices artificially, and retain inflated prices, as a result of agreements arrived at. And, as was said in this present inquiry, there is nothing in writing. They are too cute for that. But they have to admit that agreements are entered into verbally and prices go up and down at the whim of half a dozen men. The consumer and the country is held up to ransom.
We had a recent experience of that in the petrol strike. Petrol and oil affect practically ever facet of our economy. I think most of us realised only recently how deeply oil and petrol have become enmeshed in our economy. Hospitals, industry, factories of every kind, even the humble bread van and the milk delivery van, are all dependent upon petrol and oil. Yet, the people who control this industry can increase or reduce prices as, when and how they wish.
The Taoiseach has admitted that he has no power to stop their doing this. He said that in reply to a question tabled by me recently. Because of that statement, I fail to see the purpose of the inquiry. It appears to me these people are outside the law and they can fix any price they like. It is we, of course, who must pay for their inflated prices in the milk, the bread, or the factory product we consume or use. I do not think it right that these people should be allowed to continue to get away with this persistent abuse of their privileged position in their tariff-protected industries. They should be made to develop some form of competition and there should be a definite time limit set for the development of that competition. The new European agreements may give them that time.
Be that as it may, I think the Taoiseach should long since have taken a more positive attitude and given them a definite time within which to develop an export market or else lose the protection of the tariff wall. It seems to me, on the simple basis of prosperity and the creation of opportunities for employment, that the private enterprise economic system has failed to answer the demand made on it and expected from it by the Taoiseach. The strange thing is that we are still apparently putting all our money into the desperate situation in which we find ourselves at the present time.
I should like to ask the Taoiseach would he defend his decision in that regard and would he defend his decision to ignore the claims of the public ownership conception of operating any company. We have seen the remarkable achievements of Aer Lingus and Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann. I mention those two particularly because they are both industries which operate in open competition with industries in various European countries. They have provided a magnificent service, a service second to none in Europe. They have won prizes for efficiency. We have found from amongst our own people the personnel and the managers. We have found the operators, the pilots, the service people and they have built up a level of efficiency and economy which has not been surpassed.
In Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann, we have a particularly interesting industry from our point of view, because it is primarily an agricultural one. It is the organisation of agriculture in a rational way so that the farmers are guaranteed prices and assistance in relation to growing and gathering their crops. They know where they are, unlike the admission which the Minister for Agriculture had to make in relation to the rest of the agricultural community. I have the greatest sympathy for the farmer, the turkey farmer, the egg producers, the cattle, sheep and pig people. I have seen them all myself and I know their terrible dilemma of keeping animals for a year or more, and then trying, and failing, to get a good price, particularly the small farmers. The richer farmer can carry on but for the small farmer it means the upturn of his whole economy.
Have those two industries, Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann and Aer Lingus, not got every aspect of the needs of an industrial system—the technicians, the capital we provide, the know-how, the ingenuity and the courage to take paths which they had not taken before, unlike private enterprise which has not anything like the same record? One of the finest and, to me, the most heartening development in relation to Comhluct Siúicre Éireann is the suggestion that they will now process agricultural produce and export it against our own exporters to world markets. That is what I have read; I do not know the details, but I hope it is true. One significant development since that announcement was made was the whine from the leader writers of Independent Newspapers that it is a most undesirable development and that these matters should be left to the private producers and to private enterprise and so on.
One of the things I have never understood is why these people who believe in private enterprise are so frightened of public ownership. They plaster it with slogans of inefficiency, of inability to retain its dynamism, inability to go out and look for markets. One would imagine that if it is inefficient, there is nothing to fear from public ownership. What are they frightened of, if it is inefficient? If it is not to develop export markets and produce goods of high quality, if these goods are produced of a quality which is poor and are of a high cost or a quality which is good and a high cost, what are they frightened of? If there are markets which these public companies can win in the world, what have private enterprise been doing for 30 years that they have not got them? If it can produce goods at a cheaper price why have not private enterprise done so?
What is the Taoiseach frightened of? What is his objection? Is there a moral objection? Is there an objection that there is a lack of personnel or which of these industries does he think has been inefficient—Aer Lingus, Board na Móna, the E.S.B. Irish Steel Holdings or C.I.E.? Let us take C.I.E. Quite clearly, C.I.E. has been smeared more than any other public enterprise in this State. The facts, of course, are that C.I.E. took over from two bankrupt private enterprise companies which came to the Government on their knees asking to be taken over because they could not continue. The public is still paying for their failure and we are still paying compensation for the shares of these companies and will pay it in the future to their heirs and successors until kingdom come.
Would the Taoiseach say what he finds wrong, bad or inefficient in these State companies for whose establishment he must claim credit—credit which I give to him gladly? In time of war, we established nothing but State companies because we felt in the circumstances that they would be most likely to act fairly and equitably and more efficiently by the consumer. I would say this is a critical time for politics in Ireland. The Taoiseach has made his declaration in Economic Recovery. Something in the region of £31,000,000 is to be made available by the Government—but again made available to private industry and so far as I can see, in the greater part to agriculture, industry and the hotels.
Why does the Taoiseach continue to place all his confidence in private industry in face of the facts of which he is much more aware and which he is much better able to assess than I could possibly be? They are failures in relation to the major problems with which we are all concerned. Out of a population of between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000, our emigration rate is threequarters of a million. Unemployment is at the startlingly high figure of eight to ten per cent. The extraordinary thing is that we have come so much to accept a figure of eight per cent. or ten per cent. that we quarrel about five per cent. or four per cent., here, there or somewhere else. There is a crisis in Britain if the figure is two per cent. It is enough to bring about a general election but we sit silently here with eight or nine per cent.
I do not want at all to appear to take any advantage of the Taoiseach. I am asking questions. In the face of failure, on the one hand and success, on the other, why does the Taoiseach, in his wisdom, think that we are likely to solve our very grave problems with dependance for the creation of employment on private enterprise? In its operation within the country, it seems to me to be defective, inefficient and unjust in many instances. It has made little or no attempt to expand our national economy. It seems to me that the average industrialist is concerned exclusively with the advancement of his personal position.
He cannot have the same interest as we, the State and the people, have in the promotion of the public interest. He is interested in the promotion of his own individual ends. The Leader of the Opposition, Deputy Dillon, seems to believe that we can get national prosperity and social justice as a by-product of having a prosperous farming community. If we have a whole lot of rich farmers, we shall get social justice and prosperity. The Government believe that we shall get all these things as a by-product of the activities of a handful of industrialists pursuing their own special personal private ends.
That is all right. I do not think there is any doubt about that. If it is the objective of the Opposition, on the one hand, and the Government, on the other, to see a group of privileged farmers and wealthy industrialists, a conflict in our political society will then develop between these two groups, with the industrial groups trying to make as much as they can out of society and a small agricultural group making as much as they can out of our society. It will become a conflict between two privileged groups for their own special interest.
I would suggest that it is the responsibility and function of the Government to concern themselves, not with the interests of any single section of farmers or industrialist, but with the people of the country as a whole.
The Taoiseach mentioned recently in his statement on Partition the fact that we are going to offer people in the Six Counties equal status to that which they at present enjoy. I hope I am not misquoting him. They certainly would not in any way suffer as a result of coming into a united Ireland. He admitted the other day that the cost of the social services subsidised by Britain was £10 million or £11 million. He has got to find that money and the money presumably to give us here the same standard as will be enjoyed by the members of the Six Counties when they are in a united Ireland. I presume we are not going to become secondclass citizens in a united Ireland.
The objects of his own Party are, first, the revival of the language, which is the main one. The next is the ending of Partition and the next is that the resources of the nation shall subserve the welfare of the whole community. Is it not clear that, as things are at present, there is absolute stagnation? Is it not clear that the methods which the Taoiseach is trying to use to create prosperity, the methods which have been consistently used by both sides over the past 40 years, have failed in the most disastrous way?
When we started to operate our own society, the emigration figure was 16,000 a year. It has moved up to 40,000 or 50,000 at present. That is a disastrous record. I am not interested in blaming anybody or any Party. I am interested in blaming a particular social and economic policy —the protection of a small minority at the expense of untold hardship and misery to the mass of our own people. I am not an economist; I am not a person of any great wisdom; I am not a person with anything like the ability of the Taoiseach. He must see all these things very much more clearly than I can see them but they are incontrovertible facts.
I would again ask the two major Parties to remember—and I think it is to their credit that they do—that the old differences are now irrelevant, but I would ask them to recall that the only problems which must separate us in the future are questions arising on the big issue of public control, public ownership of industry and the means of production and distribution. In short, socialism is the word for it. We must concern ourselves with the welfare state, whether we want it or not. People have a perfect right to feel as they like about it and believe as they wish about it, but it is a relevant issue. It must become a relevant issue between the Parties in future. The control of bureaucracy is the most important thing from my point of view as a socialist. You must envisage an extension of bureaucracy and the method of the control of bureaucracy in those circumstances.
These, it seems to me, are issues which must divide us in the future. On them the Minister for Agriculture was right today when he said to Deputy Dillon that he did not think there was very much difference between them really on the question of the marketing of turkeys. The main thing was the attempted centralisation of marketing facilities, on the one hand, and leaving it to the private wholesaler, on the other. The attitude of the Minister for Agriculture was that things were all right as they were and were not so bad that they could not be remedied.
I would ask Deputies to try to think about these matters as coolly as possible and tell me if there is anything sacrosanct about the whole conception of private enterprise. Why should it be the only thing preserved at the expense of so much hardship amongst the mass of the people? It is quite clear that looking at the past 30 or 40 years of government from the effective point of view of the attitude taken by Ministers in relation to special problems of health, education, the control of banking policy and public ownership, there is a tremendous amount in common between the members of the two major opposing groups. They are finding it harder and harder to highlight any differences there may be amongst them.
I particularly admired the very good Party speech by Deputy M.J. O'Higgins. Equally, I admired the very thoughtful speech by Deputy D. Costello who seemed to apply himself to fundamental problems which must concern us now. The Government must exercise some control of banking policy or credit through the Central Bank. That is the kernel of the whole problem.
I hope the Taoiseach will not devote himself entirely to repudiating charges about the missing 15,000 people who emigrated or who did or did not get jobs in the past five or 10 years. The problem is very much greater even than all that. From now on, the House should concern itself with the fundamental causes of those problems.
