Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 9 Mar 1960

Vol. 180 No. 2

Committee on Finance. - Motion by Minister for Finance—(Resumed).

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance (Mr. J. Brennan)

When I moved to report progress last night, I was endeavouring to point out that the Opposition speakers had chosen to ignore the reasons for the definite increase in the Estimate on Capital Account in respect of civil servants, teachers, the Garda, and the Defence Forces. I am sure if these increases had not been awarded, the Opposition would be very vehement in advocating that they should be given, and that the Government were very remiss in not giving them. Since they have been given, they were ignored—no mention was made of them. Instead, they contented themselves with referring to what they described as the colossal increase in the overall amount of the Vote on Account now before the House.

They also chose to ignore the important increases shown in respect of such matters as agricultural lands and fisheries, which, to my mind, are definite signs of the implementation of the Programme for Economic Expansion. These matters are worthy of note and should not go unnoticed. Deputy Sweetman dwelt at considerable length on the question of the additional provision for the relief of rates on agricultural land. He pointed out that it was an indication of an overall rise in rates throughout the country as though it were something which had not happened before. I would ask him to examine the record of the county councils during the two periods of office of the Coalition Governments and he will find that the steepest rise in that continuous upward trend of rates for the past 25 years was recorded during those years. Let us not seek to imply that the increase in rates is due to direct action by this Government.

Mr. Sweetman

Of course it is.

Mr. J. Brennan

As I said last night, I am satisfied that the Estimates portray a picture which holds out a definite hope for the future and not merely gives encouragement in relation to the programme we are pursuing but indicates that we are pursuing the proper line. Figures just published today show a marked upward trend in the export of industrial goods. That is most encouraging, but Deputies on the Opposition side will immediately say it is offset by a reduction in the value of exports of livestock. In the matter of the export of livestock, we are dealing with something which fluctuates and is sensitive even to weather conditions.

The outlook for the future is good. It is particularly encouraging when something which is stabilised and not likely to fluctuate, such as an increase in industrial exports, shows a permanent improvement. That is a most satisfactory result. All these are matters which cannot be ignored and any Deputy speaking to this Vote on Account, if he is honest with himself, must give credit where credit is due. I am satisfied that there is more on the credit side than on the other side, irrespective of whether that is brought about by a temporary decline in market conditions, or by the implementation of the bovine tuberculosis eradication scheme, or any of the factors which operate temporarily to upset our market.

We on this side of the House have every reason to be satisfied that the efforts being made, as reflected in the Vote on Account and the implementation of the provisions of the Programme for Economic Expansion, are entirely satisfactory. If the trend were more noticeable, it would be still better, but, as I said last night, the fact that it is in the right direction is what concerns us most. I have already paid tribute to the speech made by Deputy Corish which gave due credit for the trend as reflected in the figures before us.

Mr. Corish

The Parliamentary Secretary would not like to quote me, would he?

Mr. J. Brennan

It would be well worth quoting the Deputy if I had the Official Report before me. The Deputy went some way—like Lana Machree's dog, he went part of the way—towards approving of the Vote on Account in principle. Many of the things which Deputy Sweetman attempted to shout down in his speech were not held in the same regard by Deputy Corish. I think I am not misquoting Deputy Corish when I say that he regarded the increases in the various salaries and incomes of the Civil Service, etc., as being something which was satisfactory and not at all unnecessary.

Mr. Corish

That is all right, but it is very different from what the Parliamentary Secretary said a moment ago.

Mr. J. Brennan

I do not think I misquoted the Deputy, anyhow. I think the end which the Opposition are attempting to achieve is to discredit any good that has been done. I thought that was a note which would not be sounded in this House and that the new note struck would be that we would all seek to encourage progress, whenever progress was genuinely in evidence.

Nobody can fail to see—perhaps Opposition members may not like it— the definite progress reflected in the figures before the House to-day. I am referring to how one may seek to use figures or records to suit one's purpose. I was amazed, looking at the three daily papers to-day, to see the headlines. The Irish Press said: “Industrial Exports up by £9 million.”

Mr. O'Sullivan

Never.

Mr. J. Brennan

The Irish Times said: “Big Increase in the Export of industrial Goods.” The Irish Independent said: “Adverse Balance Up.” That was typical of the Opposition attitude which decries any encouragement which may be evidenced in any turn of events and seeks to show the black side to the people in case we should get any credit rightly due to us.

Mr. Sweetman

I am sure we saw nothing about the increase in the adverse balance in the Irish Press, did we?

Mr. J. Brennan

You got the whole facts, as you always get them.

Mr. McQuillan

As you always get them, you mean.

Dr. Ryan

Why will Deputies not listen? We listened to them.

Mr. O'Sullivan

It is good-natured. When we want bad manners we shall go to the Minister.

Dr. Ryan

Try to bear up.

Mr. Sweetman

The Minister is a bit touchy on this Estimate.

Mr. O'Sullivan

He is very testy now.

Dr. Ryan

I like to see courtesy.

Mr. Kenny

Oh, yes!

Mr. Sweetman

The Minister does not show much of it in the House, whatever about outside it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputies must cease these interruptions. The Parliamentary Secretary must be allowed to make his speech without interruption.

Mr. J. Brennan

Interruptions are sometimes useful because they show the mentality of those who make them.

Mr. Sweetman

Hear, hear. That is a double-edged weapon, you know.

Mr. J. Brennan

The important items which show an increase are Forestry, Agriculture, Lands. I am satisfied that the amount of money being injected into the fishing industry in this country at present holds out the greatest possible encouragement for those of us who live on the Western seaboard.

Mr. T. Lynch

The fellows on the Eastern seaboard catch fish too but they get nothing out of it.

Mr. J. Brennan

There are a few fishy things on the Eastern seaboard, too.

Mr. O'Sullivan

There is not so much cod, though.

Mr. J. Brennan

Naturally, everyone would like the upward trend to be steeper. I am perfectly satisfied that the figures indicate that we are moving in the right direction. With restored confidence in the general economic set-up in the country today, I believe that, in spite of anything the Opposition may endeavour to do to discredit any attempts we may make, we have turned the corner if we have not entirely broken through on the road to complete recovery.

Mr. Dillon

I think the Minister for Finance is unduly sensitive. His Parliamentary Secretary is made of tougher stuff. The debates in this House could become so old-maidish if we accepted all the standards set for us by the Minister for Finance in his present frame of mind, which I will say, is not his permanent frame of mind, that Deputies would be afraid to make an interjection at all. I do not think the Parliamentary Secretary misunderstood the helpful comments made from the Opposition benches. As he himself spiritedly observed, they not infrequently assist him by their inspiration. But even stimulated and intoxicated by the inspiration he was receiving from the Opposition, I think that when the Parliamentary Secretary comes to read——

Mr. J. Brennan

We are not on the Liquor Bill at the moment.

Mr. Dillon

——his own observations he will be astonished by the moderation of his claims for the performance of a Government of which he constitutes a distinguished part at present and which has now been in office for over three years. According to himself, we have just started to turn the corner.

Mr. J. Brennan

The three years have been a significant period.

Mr. Dillon

I agree. But if, after that, we are only turning the corner and approaching the peaks I must say that that type of talk is very familiar to us. I have heard the present Taoiseach when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce say, over the past 20 years, that he was turning corners. One of the most remarkable corners he turned is situated in Inchicore. I find that the Fianna Fáil organisation bought a cheap house in Inchicore recently by private treaty and were so stimulated by the success of their transaction that they invited the Taoiseach to come down to open it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I do not see the relevance of this transaction to the Vote on Account.

Mr. Dillon

This is one of the corners the Taoiseach has turned and around which the Parliamentary Secretary is now in hot pursuit. Let me read for the Leas-Cheann Comhairle the corner that was turned by the Taoiseach in Inchicore and that has stimulated the Parliamentary Secretary to go skating round after him. The Taoiseach's corner in Inchicore related to the economic future of this country and is very relevant, I should think, to the Vote on Account. Watch the faces to see if they will blush. He proclaimed for the first time: "The keystone of Fianna Fáil economic policy is the British market."

Mr. O'Sullivan

Glory be.

Mr. T. Lynch

He would get his head broken for that, one time, at a Fianna Fáil meeting.

Mr. Dillon

It is not very long ago in this country since anyone who made that pronouncement was charged by the unanimous howl of the Fianna Fáil Party, Parliamentary and otherwise, (1) that he was guilty of high treason, (2) sabotage, (3) trying to sell the country and (4) that he was in a secret conspiracy with the British Lord Chancellor for the time being.

Mr. Sherwin

And that he was an Imperialist.

Mr. Haughey

No doubt Deputy Sherwin's support is very helpful to Deputy Dillon.

Mr. Dillon

I do not blame Deputy Haughey for feeling a little dismayed at this corner that he is now being called upon to turn——

Mr. Haughey

It is this new alliance that intrigues me.

Mr. Dillon

——but it is sensational. I do not blame the Parliamentary Secretary for feeling that he has turned the corner. He sure has.

Mr. J. Brennan

I should like to take the Deputy up on that.

Mr. O'Sullivan

The Japanese are the greatest imperialists of all.

Mr. Dillon

That statement by the Taoiseach is important. I welcome his conversion to that measure of economic sanity. He must excuse us if we recall that it has taken 30 years to teach him that lesson. He must excuse us if we recall in the presence of that pronouncement the day on which his ex-Leader spoke at Arva and told our people that the British market was gone forever and that the livestock industry was finished not only for the small farmer but for the big farmer as well.

Mr. O'Malley

Which he never said, of course.

Mr. Dillon

He suggested to them that, in examining the question of an alternative occupation because the livestock industry was no longer open to them, they might consider the advantages of honey. He said that if they proposed to embark upon the production of honey he was in a position to advise them that the most prolific variety of bee was the Egyptian bee. That statement was made at Arva as the Fianna Fáil policy for the land of Ireland.

I do not blame Fianna Fáil Deputies for laughing at it; they have learned something in the last quarter of a century but at what a cost! What a terrible price our people have paid for their education! My apprehension is that that characteristic irresponsibility may lead them into the paths of economic heresy again because they are incompetent and if they find that progress on sane lines involves problems difficult of solution they may revert to their old hysterical doctrine to the great detriment of the economy of this country.

On the 8th May, 1957, the Minister for Finance was talking in this House as reported at Column 947, Volume 161 of the Dáil Debates. On that occasion he announced that Fianna Fáil had decided to abolish the food subsidies. Of course, he said he profoundly regretted it but he could not avoid it. He added that these subsidies now cost the Exchequer £9,000,000 per annum. I would direct the attention of the House to the fact that the current Estimates for current spending, omitting capital items, are up £8,000,000 over 1957 and that the Central Fund for this year, as nearly as one can estimate it on the figure we have for last year, will be up by £5,000,000 over the Central Fund figure for 1957.

That represents in toto an increase, omitting all capital items, of £22,000,000 per annum over and above what was appropriated from this country in 1957. I ask Deputies of the Fianna Fáil party to reflect on that because there are certain additional factors which they ought to bear in mind. We told them in 1957 that if they precipitated the economic upheaval which would ensue on the abolition of the food subsidies it was entirely illusory to imagine that the Minister for Finance's exhortation in 1957 would receive the slightest attention from anybody.

If Deputies will look at Column 947, Volume 161 of the Dáil Debates they will find that in the paragraph, after he announced the abolition of the food subsidies, the Minister for Finance went on to say he wanted to warn everybody in the House that if we looked for compensation by seeking wage increases it would negative the value of this operation and set us on the road to inflation. No element in this community that was in a position effectively to reject that advice accepted it.

Since that day we have the sixth and seventh round of wage increases in the economy of this country. There are many groups of organised workers, professional, artisan and others, who to-day say that, despite their successful application for increased remuneration, they have not yet caught up with the increases in the cost of living precipitated by the Government's action. It is certain that those on fixed incomes, and a very large and wide range of pensioners and people dependent upon income of that kind, are worse off now than they were four years ago. Yet the burden of the cost on the Exchequer in the efforts made by this House in some measure to mitigate the impact of that 1957 imposition on pensioners and others of that kind has become very heavy and constitutes a large part of the £22,000,000 to which I referred.

But what people in this House frequently forget is that there has flowed from that decision also not only the increased burden of the £22,000,000 on Parliament but every employer in this country has been obliged to meet the fair demands of his working people to offset at least in some degree the increase in the cost of living precipitated upon them. We might as well face it because anybody with any knowledge of rural Ireland knows it to be true that more than one small business in rural Ireland has closed down because the proprietors are no longer able to pay labour in the business in which they are engaged, business of a character which cannot be carried on single-handed.

It is perfectly true to say—it is an inescapable economic fact—that in certain sectors of the economy you can have higher wages and fewer employees or you can have a higher number of men employed at a lower rate of wages. We tried to make the lower rate of wages worth more by keeping the cost of essential food commodities down and thus spread employment as widely as we could over all our people and to protect them from the spur that is on them now to emigrate to Great Britain in order to get the higher monetary income. All these consequences flow from the one fatal decision in 1957 to sweep away the then carefully constructed balance devised to maintain employment and keep down the cost of living in this country.

The cost of living here is now rising above that of Great Britain. The unfortunate fact is that the rate of industrial wages in Great Britain is infinitely higher than industrial employment can provide here bearing in mind the opportunities for overtime that exist in Great Britain compared with those that obtain here, but what none of us remember is that while the cost of living complex has been in some measure corrected by the sixth and seventh round of increases in wages for industrial workers in all categories, there is one section of this community that has not participated in any increase but yet has borne a large share of every increase that has been given. That section is the small farmers on the land of Ireland. Each round of wage increases awarded in this country since 1957—I think there were two—has in the last analysis passed back to the consumers and the bulk of those consumers are small farmers. Small farmers eat bread and they buy butter. They do not manufacture butter at home in the vast majority of cases. They buy creamery butter. Small farmers pay rates and small farmers pay their share of such expenses as bus fares.

Admittedly, bus fares impinge more heavily on the residents of Dublin, Cork and the larger urban centres. It is an item which costs the small farmers something too. They are in the deplorable position that they are ground between the upper and nether millstones because, although their cost of living is steadily rising, the cost of everything they have to sell is going down. They are not in the position of people with a stable income with the cost of living rising against them; they are in the position of people with the cost of living rising against them and their incomes going down. They have no trade union.

If that situation impinged on an organised section of the community we would be confronted with industrial upheavals, strikes and the like, but the plain fact is—and we all know it—that the general reaction in rural Ireland is to stick to their homes as long as they can. When the going becomes quite impossible, they simply lock the door and move out. That is a phenomenon which I never saw in my life until the last two or three years. Emigration we have always had to some extent and I saw for some time a growing tendency on the part of our young people to refuse to stay at home.

You would meet many a case where middle-aged parents were anxious to have a son to whom they could pass on the holding, but discovered that none of the sons wanted it and that they would sooner go and work abroad, but it is only in the last few years that we have seen families paying their debts in the neighbouring shop, putting the hasp and padlock on the door and moving out, man, wife and child. They are going because the cost of living, plus the steady decline in income from their labour, has made life impossible for them. Ordinarily, they do not belong to the mobile element in our community who are excessively mobile in that they can go without any cost: these are the most firmly rooted element in our community and they are being driven out by their present economic circumstances.

Seeing that we have carried the Taoiseach so far in his conversion to a realisation that the British market is the keystone of our economy and that it is something earnestly to be desired to promote the economic integration of our two countries, can I bring him to the point of agreeing with me that fundamentally, in the last analysis, the economic life of this country rests on the only natural resources at our disposal—12 million acres of arable land —and, unless they can be exploited profitably to their maximum capability, no efforts by any other section of the community can long continue to yield dividends for our people?

We can talk in terms which, to me, are always somewhat illusory and yet they give a certain global picture. In that context, I would direct the attention of the House to the fact that the statisticians claim that in 1953 the farmers received 29.4 per cent. of the total national income. In 1958, that share dropped to 25 per cent. and these statistics are to be found on page 8 of the Statistical Survey of 1958, if any Deputy is interested to see them. These global figures do not appeal to me because I see things more clearly through the eyes of personal experience in the knowledge of my neighbours' circumstances and, looking about at my neighbours in rural Ireland, I am obsessed by the fact that last year alone I believe the income of dairy farmers declined in respect of milk delivered to the creameries by not less than £2,000,000. That is only the beginning of the story, and I challenge contradiction on this, because 12 months ago a dropped calf throughout the south of Ireland was worth £25, while today the same dropped calf is worth about £15.

Mr. O'Sullivan

Or even less.

Mr. Dillon

Some may say less, but if it is less now, it might have been less last year. By and large, the price of dropped calves has dropped over £10. That is 2,400 pence and that is 4d a gallon on the milk of a 600-gallon cow, or 3d a gallon on the milk of an 800-gallon cow—take it what way you like. Can you imagine what the reaction of the creamery farmers would be if anybody proposed asking them to carry on the creamery industry on the basis of reducing the price of creamery milk by 4d per gallon? That is in fact what they have been asked to do in the past 12 months as a result of the fall in prices of calves.

We all know that the yield of an 800-gallon cow last year was 650 gallons, if the owner was lucky and a 600-gallon cow did not do too badly if she gave 500 gallons. Those farmers are having a bad time. Lambs that were worth £5 or £6 two years ago sold last year—if you could sell them at all—for between £3 and £4 and I saw hundreds of lambs brought down from the hills and driven back again because there was nobody to buy them. I, myself, saw lambs sold for £3. 15/- last year which would have made £5 15/- or £6 the year before.

The price of barley was reduced from 40/- to 37/- a barrel. The number of pigs going into the factories has declined steeply. I ask farmer Deputies here who are familiar with conditions in rural Ireland today: do they remember at any time since the war, prices for young cattle being worse or demand slower? I had cattle out at a fair last week and I was not asked where I was going. I would have had no difficulty in selling the same cattle last year at £60 apiece. It is bad enough to be offered a bad price; it is much worse when nobody asks you anything. All those cattle were cattle with green tags on their ears coming from a farm where there are only green-tag cattle. I do not know if Deputies recall— Deputies, like the Parliamentary Secretary who spoke, have conveniently short memories—the prices women got for turkeys last Christmas? How many women who sold turkeys last year had any profit at all? How many made a loss?

I read with edification and attention the calculations of statisticians but these are facts that I get, not from books, but from my own neighbours' experience and from my own experience in rural Ireland. I want to submit to this House that whatever the statisticians say, whatever Pravda says, so surely as the average standard of living of the small farmer and the medium farmer in this country declines, so certainly will the repercussions be felt in the rest of our economy in due time. Let us remember—we who are now working and living in the city of Dublin—that a great bulk of employment for our people is provided in the towns of rural Ireland in providing services and accommodation for the farmers who frequent these towns. I would ask Deputies: how do these towns stand at present? I want to submit to the House that already in rural Ireland the drapery trade, the boot trade, the hardware trade and, to a lesser degree, the grocery trade are in the doldrums. These are facts. So certainly as those facts are true, their repercussions will be felt in the boot and shoe factories, the drapery warehouses and the other urban centres of supply.

I am glad to see that the fiscal stimuli provided by the inter-Party Government by way of tax exemption on profits earned on exports have yielded some return in the increased volume of exports which, I am told, is to be found in this year's trade returns. But I think the Minister for Finance will be the first to agree that we have been fortunate in the past year or two in the terms of trade on which we have been called to import and export. I hope they stay in our favour. If the terms of trade operating in 1955-56 had continued into 1957, 1958 and 1959, our present economic condition would be well-nigh desperate. But, very fortunately, they have turned in our favour and have yielded us an advantage in the balance sheet of anything from £8,000,000 to £12,000,000 per annum.

I am glad to see an increase in industrial exports but the great danger is that a £9,000,000 increase in industrial exports will be inflated in this House into a suggestion that they are some adequate substitute for what is to me the appalling tendency of the agricultural industry to fade away. Do Deputies appreciate that according to the Minister's estimate—and the Minister for Finance has himself been a Minister for Agriculture in his time —he anticipates virtually no exports of butter this year? I wonder does he anticipate any exports of any creamery butter at all? I understand that some chocolate crumb is going out. First grade cheese is good, but not as good as it was. There is a vast export trade, if we could but tap it, for dried milk. But the gloomy prognostication of the Minister himself is that he sees no prospect of any substantial butter exports at all. I hope he is wrong. I believe he is wrong. I believe the good hay season we had last year and the mild winter ought to produce some surplus of butter for export and I shall be appalled if it does not.

The present trend gives one no reason to hope that we will have any substantial exports of bacon in the coming year, but I hope we may. At present we have no agricultural exports at all, except cattle, a trickle of sheep, and wool. Fortunately, we have wool; because we succeeded in doubling the number of sheep on the hills. But if the price of lambs continues to decline as it did last year, there is very grave danger of a contraction in the number of sheep with a subsequent reduction in our exports of wool.

I want to make this perfectly clear. In the last analysis, there is no substitute for the profit motive to persuade the farmers to extract the maximum return of which the soil of Ireland is capable. That is the first cardinal economic principle I have learned in my experience of the public life of this country. But there is a second: no matter how urgent the allure of price may become, we shall not get the maximum return, unless it is put within the farmer's reach to employ the most effective methods, with many of which he is not now familiar.

There is no means on God's earth of doing that except by bringing within his immediate reach—though not imposing upon him—a skilled adviser to whom he can have recourse for advice, if and when he wants it. This is absolutely certain. I learned by my own experience that it is true—I think the Minister for Agriculture is unduly obsessed with this—that, at first, in many parts of Ireland, the agricultural adviser is looked upon with suspicion, but if you have patience, he will get into one, two or three progressive farms in his area. Then, with astonishing rapidity, when the neighbours see what informed agriculture can do on their neighbour's holding, they will come in and seek the advice themselves.

The experience we had in Bansha cannot be too often repeated. I sent the first parish agent in this country to Bansha. My instructions to him were not to approach any farmer himself. I remember calling in a young inspector of the Department and saying to him: "Now, I am going to give you the most difficult assignment it is possible to give anybody. I am going to ask you to go down to Bansha and, in effect, to do nothing for six months. I want you to go down, sit in the parish agent's office and impose upon yourself the self-denying ordinance of being available to everybody while trespassing on nobody."

So it transpired that, despite strong local co-operation from Muintir na Tíre, a long period elapsed in which he did not make contact with more than half a dozen farmers in the whole of that parish. Before he left it, he had been invited into 99 per cent. of the holdings in the parish of Bansha and I do not want to weary the House with the statistical results of one agent's operations in that parish. They can be measured by the application of lime to the land, by the application of phosphate and potash to the land, by the increased output of the land and by the diversification of agriculture in that parish. The work of such an agent was beyond praise.

That can be done in practically every parish in Ireland and, given a reasonable price incentive and access to advice of that character, I am convinced that the output of the land of Ireland can be increased by 50 per cent. and I should be surprised if, over 10 years, it could not be doubled. That is the key to the solution of the economic problems of this country. If you could increase the total output of the agricultural industry by 50 per cent. you could increase the agricultural exports of the country, not by 50 per cent. but by 250 per cent., and that is the equation that a lot of people forget to take into account.

Every additional pound's worth of agricultural output in this country is destined for the export market. We ourselves are eating here all the food that our people require and are to-day the best fed population in the whole world, measured by international standards, and my recollection of the correct equation is that if we could increase the output of the land of Ireland by 50 per cent, that would result in an increase of 250 per cent. in agricultural exports.

If we can engender that increase, there will flow from it a very considerable volume of the processing of agricultural products in this country because, in our exertions to solve the problem of marketing so substantially an increased volume of output, it will inevitably emerge that some of it will be processed in one form or other for export. Its processing, and the development of industry based on that increased agricultural output, will in turn increase industrial employment and so will lead to a very substantially increased consumer potential in this country, and the one will help the other. In my judgment, by that means, we can reach, in this country, what is now popularly described in international economic circles as the "takeoff point in economic expansion".

I would remind the House that when O.E.E.C. experts came here, they committed themselves to the view that, having made a survey, they were satisfied the potential was here for an annual increase in agricultural output, not of two per cent. but of seven, eight or nine per cent, that we had the essential infra work completed and that, if we put our minds together on that increased output, over a period of ten years, we would detonate a real, dramatic—one might almost describe it—explosive economic progress. I know of no other basis upon which such a forward move can be postulated, and I am equally certain that on the land of this country and the people who live upon it, we have the basis upon which real progress could be made.

I do not want to underestimate the marketing problems that will be created by that increased output, but I have no doubt in my mind that, given adequate market research and a resolute determination to do what may be necessary to market the increased output, it can be done. I do not want to sound extreme because I do not believe we shall be driven to extreme measures, but I should be quite prepared to implement direct marketing to the consumer, if that were necessary, in order to market the increased output of the agricultural industry. I do not believe it is necessary and I believe we can get that increased output disposed of in the market of our neighbours, consisting of 50,000,000 people, who, working to the limits of their capacity on their own land, could not produce half of the food they ordinarily consume and whose tendency will be to consume more and more of the kind of food we produce as their standards of living continue to rise, through the ordinary channels of trade.

But, if it should appear to us that we would be blocked by an international cartel or combine, we have the means of entering that market direct, and undertaking direct selling in it in respect of commodities like bacon and butter, provided we have enough to supply it. I am referring to this only in the most superficial way because I do not think it is my duty to go into details of that kind at this stage. I think that is the job of the Government. Yet I am constitutionally incapable of getting up here and simply lambasting the Government, without envisaging some of the things we might do if we had the power to do them, which, unhappily at the moment, we have not got.

I do not expect the Minister for Agriculture to understand what I am talking about but I have some vague hope that other members of the Government may. I could well imagine, if it were put to me that I could not find room for this increased volume of butter and bacon, myself replying: "Take Liverpool and Cheshire and we will concentrate our supplies of bacon in that area, if needs be to the consumer direct through Irish bacon shops, and if we have butter and cannot pass it into the ordinary channels of trade, very well, let us concentrate on Cardiff and Birmingham and, if needs be, we will sell it direct to the consumer there also." I do not believe that situation would arise but the potentials are vast if the only problem is marketing, but you cannot have a market if you have not the wherewithal to supply it and the first thing to do is to get the supply, give the assurance that the Government mean to market the supply when it becomes available, and I believe we should give that assurance now.

I am convinced that out of the increased output of the land of this country, we could get a sound basis for genuine economic expansion that would provide employment for a great many more of our people than are at present being employed. I do not believe that there will ever be a complete cessation of emigration from this country and I want the House to mark those words carefully and well. I believe the day any country prohibits its people from emigrating, then that country is only fit for relegation behind the Iron Curtain. One of the fundamental freedoms of any free people is that they shall be free to come and go as they desire but what I want to avoid, and what I believe most rational people want to avoid, is that anybody should be driven out of the country by the fact that he cannot get a living in it.

What is the use in telling me that a man should not go? I know a man from the country who was earning about £7 a week, who went to Canada seven years ago and he is a millionaire now. If he had stayed here at home, he would still be earning £7, £8 or £9 a week. He never had to go but this would be a poor country if he had been forbidden to go. In my judgment, our aim should be to create an economic situation where our people can get a decent living here if they want to stay.

At present there is a great volume of emigration going on, particularly from the west of Ireland. The man to query on that is not the statistician; it is the man who has a shop in rural Ireland. Ask the man who sells drapery or the man who sells stout and the latter will be able to tell you how many bottles of stout were consumed in his area last year, and how many this year. You need not worry about whiskey. The young fellows do not drink whiskey. They have not drunk whiskey for the past 35 years, and they do not drink much lemonade, either. The old fellows do not buy a lot of clothes. When they buy a coat it is meant to do them 20 years. They expect to be buried in it. The old women do not buy much clothes. When they buy a coat they expect it to be hanging on the back of the door the day they are laid out. It is the young people who buy clothes. It is the young people who provide the bulk of the custom in the rural towns of Ireland and it is from the local shopkeeper that you will find out whether the population is rising or falling in his area.

I challenge any person with knowledge of any rural town west of the Shannon to deny that the population is steadily declining and has rapidly declined in the course of the last two or three years. It is that that I should like to see stopped. I should like to see the economic development in this country which did not drive people out.

What is happening at the present time is that on farms of less than 50 acres in Ireland it is no longer possible to make an income which will induce people to stay when they compare it with the industrial wages available in Great Britain and, when you get down to the 20, 25, and 30 acre farm, it is becoming more and more common for the farmer himself, his wife and family to lock the door and clear out. You will not get young people to stay on a farm in Ireland now that is under 40 acres.

I have spoken of rates. I have mentioned here the urgent necessity of bringing within the reach of farmers the technical assistance requisite to get the maximum return from the land. I should like to read for the House a very typical Fianna Fáil reaction. There was a discussion at Clare County Committee of Agriculture, reported in the Clare Champion of Saturday, February 27th:—

Mr. O'Meara said that the two farmers' organisations, the N.F.A. and Macra na Feirme, had asked them to supply more instructors.

Mr. O'Meara went on to say:

They had got a direction from the Minister for Agriculture that they would have to supply them. It was the intention of the Government to have an instructor in every two or three parishes.

Whereupon Senator Brady of Fianna Fáil spoke up and said:

Produce that direction. That is only Dillon's programme — the Parish Plan. There was no such direction from the Minister.

Mr. O'Malley

On a point of order, I would draw your attention to the fact that when I was speaking on the Vote on Account this time last year, the Ceann Comhairle ruled out of order the quotation of any abstract from any newspaper. On a further point of order, the Ceann Comhairle disallowed my going into detailed discussion of any specific Department of State, such as Local Government, on which I was speaking at the time. I respectfully submit that Deputy Dillon, the Leader of the Opposition, is out of order on two points: first, in going into a detailed discussion on agriculture, and, secondly, in quoting from journals which are of no interest to anyone.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Let that be remembered in Clare.

Mr. O'Malley

A ruling has been given by the Ceann Comhairle. I want to know from you does the same ruling obtain for Deputy Dillon as obtained for me on the Vote on Account last year?

Mr. Sherwin

The Deputy is telling the Chair its business.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Rulings similar to the type of ruling mentioned by Deputy O'Malley have been given by the Chair in the course of the debate on the Vote on Account. Deputies have been informed that it is not permissible to go into the details that would normally and more relevantly arise on the various Estimates. Deputies have been so informed since the debate on this Vote on Account commenced last night.

Mr. Sweetman

I was so informed.

Mr. Dillon

I have not referred to a single Estimate since the debate began.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

It is only the quotation that Deputy O'Malley does not like.

Mr. Dillon

I felt I had a duty to Senator Brady to accord him the immortality which that observation requires.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Before Deputy O'Malley intervened, the Chair was about to point out to Deputy Dillon that the matter to which he was referring did not arise on the Vote on Account and would be one for the Estimates.

Mr. Dillon

Well, Sir, Senator Brady is now safely erected into a monumental position and we need trouble ourselves no longer with his folly. But, in passing from that, I want to recall that I directed the attention of the House to the immense burden on the agricultural industry of the growing burden of rates. Fianna Fáil introduced into this House, in 1955, the Health Act and they represented it to the House as being an Act designed to secure that the poor would get better health services than they had had heretofore and, on that representation, the Health Act was passed by Dáil Éireann. I want to make the submission to the House now that the Health Act in its operation has resulted in little or no benefit to the truly poor and indigent in rural Ireland and that what is happening is that the relatively well-to-do are squeezing out the poor from services that the poor used to enjoy and are now being denied.

Mr. O'Malley

Nonsense.

Mr. Dillon

That is my experience. I think the House should pause. I want to sound this note of warning. After the year 1955, I understand the figures are not precisely identical. What were health services in 1955 are not identical for the purposes of the returns with health services in 1956 and the years thereafter. Substantially they are, but there are some elements introduced into the cost of health services after 1955 that were not in the figure for 1955.

Bearing that in mind, here are the figures for the cost of the health services as recorded in the Statistical Abstract: in 1955 the health services cost £4.9 million; 1956, £12.4 million —to the rates—this is the charge on the rates, not the charge on the Exchequer—1957, £14 million, on the rates; 1958, £14.4 million on the rates; 1959, £15.1 million on the rates and that is approximately one-half of their total cost because under a previous Health Act one-half of the cost of the health services is borne by the Exchequer.

I do not think we would feel as badly about that if we felt that the people for whom we were told the Act was designed were getting the benefit of it. I ask the House to consider, on the occasion of this Vote on Account, is the fundamental industry of the country wisely charged with a burden of that kind for the return we are getting for it? If we were getting something which made a real social revolution for the poor of this country I would be tempted to look upon so great a burden as that with a sympathetic eye.

I do not believe that members of the Fianna Fáil Party regard the poor and the sick poor as being accurately described by the unfortunate phrase employed by Deputy P.J. Burke when he spoke of them as the flotsam and jetsam of our society. I do not believe that is the approach of most Deputies to this problem but I think it is gravely lacking in moral courage and duty if all public representatives here do not query an increase from £4.9 million to £15.1 million in the cost levied on the rates of the land and houses of this country for a service which is giving very poor value to the people for whom it was designed.

When I go down the country either to my own home or to visit other places I ask myself what is the reason for the grey pall of gloom that lies over rural Ireland. Is there any Deputy who could say that a businessman or a farmer in rural Ireland has an optimistic or cheerful prospect or believes that such a prospect lies ahead? That is certainly not my experience. That ought not to be because the potential is there, but a great many people in rural Ireland have rightly got the idea that fundamentally this Fianna Fáil Government do not believe in the land. They believe that they have put the "dud" into the Department of Agriculture. They have put him there because they have made up their minds it does not very much matter where they put him.

Dr. Ryan

It was the Deputy's side did that.

Mr. Dillon

I do not challenge the Minister for Finance in his right to make that courteous interjection but I am constrained to that view by my observation. The Minister for Agriculture started in this Government as Minister for Local Government in the Custom House and, because the then Taoiseach was confronted with the fact that the whole staff of Radio Éireann was going to resign if he did not move Deputy Blaney out of the Post Office, Deputy Smith was made Minister for Agriculture. Can anyone maintain on that basis that Deputy Smith was the freely selected choice of the Fianna Fáil Party for that Department?

Mr. O'Malley

On a point of order, what has this to do with the Vote on Account?

Mr. Dillon

I do not know why the Deputy should ask the Chair to explain the significance of my speech to him. If he wants to make a point of order suggesting I am out of order, let him say so.

Mr. O'Malley

I have made a point of order but the Chairman is singing dumb.

Acting Chairman (Mr. Palmer)

I am watching the debate. I shall tell the Deputy if I consider he is out of order. We shall see what he is leading up to.

Mr. Dillon

The conviction is spreading through the country and is well founded, that Fianna Fáil do not believe in the agricultural industry, that Fianna Fáil, as at present constituted, believe that where there are not enough bricks, mortar and smoke there can be no really valuable expansion in economic output. On the contrary, we believe that, if there is to be a real and enduring economic expansion, it must be founded on agriculture, the land and its output. The fundamental difference between us and Fianna Fáil is that we are convinced that the potential is there if it were only exploited and we are convinced that in the present situation it can and should be exploited.

So far as this ship of State is concerned, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the ship in which we sail. There is nothing wrong with the crew that man it. It is the officers and the captain who do not know what direction to sail in and are busily sailing around in circles, with the economic danger that, with their passion for rounding corners and surmounting peaks, they will forget it is a ship and not a jeep of which they are in charge, and, instead of sailing forth into the broad Atlantic, we shall all end up on Ireland's Eye. Translate that into appropriate economic terms. I ask the House is it not so? Have we not been dashing about in a wide variety of directions?

I spoke at a meeting last December about the desirability of close economic integration between this country and Great Britain. I found the Taoiseach and his Ministers in London a couple of months later avowedly seeking that objective. They came home and we have never been told what happened. That was followed by a visitation of high and trusted officials from this country to London to pursue this matter further. They came home with no other news for us than that they hoped officials would come from London shortly to initial certain agreements. They came to Dublin and have gone home, and still nothing has happened. I accept the self-denying ordinance a responsible Opposition should assume not to press the Taoiseach too soon to take Dáil Éireann into his confidence but we believe something requires to be done now. We believe it can be done and we press on the Taoiseach and his Government to avail of the opportunity of this Vote to tell us what they intend to do.

I am certain that the marketing of increased agricultural output presents no insuperable difficulties. I fully appreciate the delicate problem of international trade but the time is overdue when this Government should tell us what their intentions are in respect of continental countries who are supplying us with anything up to £10 worth of goods for every £1 worth they buy from us, especially in respect of those countries from whom we are taking commodities without which we can well afford to do and in respect of whom we find ourselves confronted with quantitative restrictions on exports we have to offer when we know those countries are accepting similar exports from other sources of supply.

Bearing in mind all the difficulties of negotiating trade agreements and ancillary matters, I believe the Government should make its policy known in respect of this question and its readiness known to defend the interests of our agricultural export potential in those countries, even at some cost to industrial enterprises which may have an interest in maintaining the absurd balance of trade situation that exists at the present time. I am convinced proper pressure on those lines would help to create further marketing outlets for what we have to sell. We are satisfied that a combination of effort on those lines and on other lines into which I do not think it is appropriate to go in excessive detail, can be made to find markets for all this country is capable of producing. The only thing that awaits is the energy, the vision and the courage to get that production from the land through the people who live on it. The failure of the present Government to do that is drawing us deeper and deeper into a morass of depression, fatuity and frustration which is bad for the country and bad for our people. If this Government is not prepared to take the initiative in a new departure then I suggest, reverting to my metaphor of the ship, we should re-affirm our faith in the vessel and crew and resolve to change the officers and the captain. If we do that, we have nothing to worry about but if we keep the present body of men in charge there is every reason for grave apprehension.

Mr. McQuillan

I must confess myself in complete agreement with the remarks of the last speaker in connection with the pall of gloom that hangs over rural Ireland at the moment. That is as far as I can go with the last speaker in referring to that pall of gloom. I believe that that feeling of despondency has been in existence in rural Ireland for many years and in my opinion, neither the words of the Minister in moving this Vote on Account, nor the words of the Leader of the Fine Gael Party, will do anything to dispel the air of gloom over rural Ireland.

We are told that energy, vision and courage are necessary if this country is to be brought to anything like a reasonable state, to ensure a livelihood for the majority of the people. We need a lot more than courage, faith and energy. The people of this country have never been lacking in courage. They have seldom been lacking in energy. But apart from energy and courage, we need direction and control, yet direction and control seem to be words abhorred by the major Parties in this House. It would appear that the idea of our major political Parties is that we must have the utmost freedom in this country for the limited few who are able to live here in comfort, while the remainder must be satisfied with the lowest possible standard of living.

The small farmer, his family, and the workers in rural Ireland, are depressed today. They are disillusioned and cynical and before putting forward a policy to solve or to banish the feeling of cynicism, to give an air of hope, we should examine what has caused this sense of disillusionment. What is behind it? I do not suggest for a moment that I am sufficiently expert, or that this debate would allow me or anybody else, to give the full facts which lie behind that feeling prevalent today, but I do think that amongst the causes which brought about that atmosphere was primarily the feeling of lack of security and stability—a lack of security with regard to the worker; a lack of stability and the absence of outlet for the small farmer as far as his produce is concerned. In the last eight or ten years, certainly since I entered public life, we know what happened when the farmer produced more. Take the west of Ireland where he produced more pigs. We found that as he produced more, his outlet became more insecure. We found also that no matter how depressed prices became for pigs, there was no decrease in the profits for the bacon curers or manufacturers.

Last year, with a great beating of drums, we were told that there was no end to the credit made available by the banks and other lending houses for the purchase of cattle and other stock. Then for portion of the year it was impossible for the farmer to get rid of the stock so that it would appear, if it is beef or cattle that is concerned, the more he produces and the more he carries on his land, the more doubtful becomes the market. Even at the present time the price the farmer is getting for his cattle is one that is not too pleasing to him. That follows the exhortations for the last three or four years to carry two cattle on the piece of land where he had previously only one.

If we refer to the position of other agricultural products we find that the same criticism applies, with one or two exceptions. We must get over that difficulty. We must help the small farmer whom everybody in this House appears to want to help, and about whom we have heard Deputies from rural Ireland speak at great length. If we are to protect and give encouragement to the small farmer, in many cases it will be necessary to take very drastic action against vested interests and rings which exploit him. These vested interests will exploit him in the future just as in the past, unless some Government take the necessary action and some practical steps instead of making airy suggestions and expressing pious aspirations as to how these things can be done.

The Minister in introducing the Vote on Account did so with what I can only describe as an air of complacency. An air of complacency is the last thing any Minister, and particularly a Minister for Finance, should display at the present time. The Taoiseach and other members of his Cabinet have in recent weeks expressed themselves as being perturbed about the condition of our economy. In a number of guarded statements and speeches recently, the Taoiseach made his feelings clear to the public.

He believes that, in spite of the efforts made by himself and the Government, all is not well so far as the economic security of the State is concerned. It should not be unreasonable to expect that, when the Vote on Account is being discussed, we should hear something more concrete with regard to Government policy than vague references by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance to the proposals in the Programme for Economic Expansion, and to the means by which these proposals are being implemented.

The Government have now been in office for three years, and it is not unfair to suggest that their record, in so far as emigration, employment, and the standard of living are concerned, should be examined critically at this stage, especially in view of the fact that when the Government took office, they did so with a flourish of trumpets. They held out hopes that in their term of office, at least 100,000 new jobs would be provided. Taking that promise and that aim into consideration, we should examine how far behind their objective the Government are today in respect of employment.

Last year, in the Budget statement, the Minister for Finance made a document available to Deputies which disclosed that in the previous year, no fewer than 10,000 people had lost their employment. In other words, there were 10,000 fewer at work in 1958 than in the previous year. By April, we shall have more statistics available on the employment position. I venture to prophesy at this stage that the figures disclosed in the appendix to the next Statistical Abstract will show that the numbers in employment have decreased rather than increased since last year. It is fantastic when we consider the promise made by a very responsible man like the Taoiseach, that it was the aim and objective of his Party to create 100,000 new jobs, to find fewer people in employment than were in employment when the Government took office three years ago.

That statement cannot be denied. If that is agreed upon, the record of this Government is such that they no longer deserve the confidence of the people. It may be asked, and rightly so, have the people an alternative? I can only honestly say that, at the moment, I see no alternative. That, to my mind, is the great tragedy of the Irish political situation today. I feel that the only hope is that, on the retirement of the leaders of the various political Parties, those who replace them will have common sense and that they will show a sense of responsibility to the people rather than to their political followers. I hope they will be big enough to make the political decisions which will have to be made in the near future, if we are to have any progress in this country.

I have heard suggestions in this debate, and outside the House, that we should have closer ties with the British Commonwealth. It appears to me that certain furtive and hidden moves are being made to bring this country back into a disappearing Commonwealth. Some moves are furtive and hidden, and some are made in a very flamboyant manner indeed. It should be borne in mind that no matter what the association of this country with the Commonwealth may be, that will provide no solution for the major problems that must be solved here in Ireland first. It is no solution to suggest that if there is a first-class trade agreement made with our neighbour, it will solve our problems. There are those who look with longing on the restoring of political ties with the people across the Irish Sea. That will not solve our problems.

The major problems in Ireland will have to be tackled by the Irish people here at home. There is no use in looking across the mountains, or into the distance, and hoping that something will happen, and somebody will come to our rescue. We have looked with longing across the Irish Sea, and to our friends in America, and we can keep on looking, but there is no hope of the economic advancement of this country, unless the effort comes from within the country. If we lose heart with regard to our own ability to put our own house in order, then we no longer deserve to be described as a free and independent nation.

Deputies will say it is all very fine to talk in generalities but how can changes be brought about? I shall give briefly a few specific points which I think, if solved, would give a feeling of hope to the people that perhaps other evils would be remedied. I referred a few moments ago to the small farmer vis-á-vis the bacon industry. If we are serious about giving security and stability to the small farmer, so far as pigs and bacon are concerned, we must come down on his side and protect him from what I describe as exploitation by the bacon curers. Is there a hope, or a chance, that the necessary punitive and controlling measures to achieve that end will be taken by this Government?

I do not believe this Government can do so, because, in my opinion, the people who control that industry, who exploit the farmer, who make fat profits at his expense and also, incidentally, at the expense of the consumers, are very close to the Government. If an example were made of the bacon curers it would give some confidence to the bacon producers. The small farmer hears appeals on the wireless and there are all sorts of exhortations to him to produce more pigs but from now on he will not be misled by those exhortations.

I should like to mention briefly the position of another product of our farms, the turkeys. Is there any woman in rural Ireland who keeps turkeys who has an idea three months or even three weeks before the peak of the season at Christmas what she is likely to get for her turkeys? Is there any sense of stability in that industry? Deputies will tell me that that means control; it means a State board; it means the payment of civil servants. Of course it does and, at the same time, it means confidence and stability. It means that a fair return will be given to the producer. It means that the producer will not be exploited by the middleman, by the exporter or by anybody else. If there is a good year, if prices abroad are high one year, it means that whatever is saved will be given back to the producers and that it will not be siphoned off by these bandits on the road between the producer and the consumer. There are vested interests there. I do not think we shall get any measures to put an end to the exploitation or to give a sense of security to that industry.

We have contracts for malting barley, and so on. The producer is at the mercy of the various private companies which distil in this country. I know it will be suggested that the Government have no power to control these people. I suggest, however, that as our taxpayers are paying approximately £90,000 a year to help distillers to sell their product outside the State surely we can have some say with regard to the control of their contracts and surely we can have some say with regard to whether or not they are going the right way about the sale of their end products, and so on?

We are told it would be a crime to interfere with private enterprise. The distilling industry is one of the most important industries in the country to the small farmers, to our towns and to our export trade. If proper control were exercised right from the stage at which barley is sold until we put the finished product on the market outside the State, it would be of great benefit to the people generally. Let it not be said the market is not there. The market is there but it means that our private enterprise groups in the distilling industry here must sacrifice a certain amount of their autonomy and become part of a larger concern outside. That is an industry which the taxpayer is helping but no control whatever is being exercised over it on behalf of the community.

I want to come back again to the bacon industry. In this Vote on Account, we are making money available, to add insult to injury, to the bacon factories to improve their premises. A sum of no less than £50,000 is earmarked for the improvement and modernisation of bacon factories all over the country. Have the Government had a look at the profits of these companies? Have the Government decided these companies are so poor, after years of exploiting the producers, that they cannot afford to modernise their premises? It would appear that that is the position. I cannot object any more strenuously than I am now objecting to the allocating of £50,000 to bacon factories all over the west of Ireland which we know in many instances are closely associated with the Government.

Reference has been made to the money spent on the eradication of bovine tuberculosis. I suppose it could be said that to a great extent our major exports for years have been cattle and people. The British are insisting on getting tuberculin-tested cattle. They insist that the cattle exported from this country must be free from tuberculosis. I do not think it will be long before the British insist that our emigrants will undergo similar tests. At the moment, we have the extraordinary position that the sanatoria in this country are filled with Irish men and women who have contracted tuberculosis in Britain and have come back here to receive treatment and to be restored to health. The entire cost of restoring them to health must be borne here in Ireland while the disease was contracted in Britain.

I mention that to show that many of these young people are leaving this country when they are not fitted from the point of view of health for the conditions they have to face in Britain. Apart altogether from the fact that we are losing their value as workers, we have in many instances to pay for them when they are broken in health outside the State and return here to crowd our sanatoria. That is one aspect of emigration.

On the question of the money being spent on eradicating tuberculosis in our cattle, even though it is considered an economic heresy to cast doubts on aspects of this scheme, I believe that vast sums of money are being wasted. I also believe that a courageous Government would examine the position and say to themselves: "Now that we are in such a tight corner with regard to exports, is it not time seriously to consider the position with regard to the dead meat trade in general?" I have often wondered why some university graduate or some economic expert has not made a study and produced figures to show the relevant values of, say, 100 cattle slaughtered here for the dead meat trade —and the value of the by-products, the employment given here in respect of those 100 cattle—and 100 cattle exported on the hoof. If comparable figures were got, they would open the eyes of the general public to the tragic waste that takes place every year here in the cattle industry. I know I shall be told by Deputy Dillon that the cattle trade is the sheet anchor of the small farmer. I could not disagree more with him. One of the greatest curses in this country in the past 30 or 40 years has been the dependence of the small farmer on cattle, especially store cattle.

One of the main reasons why the west of Ireland is bled of its people year after year is this dependence on store cattle. A man with 15 or 25 acres of land who is expected to double the number of cattle on his land will, even if he does so, not be in a position to make an economic holding out of it. I should much prefer—and I do not care what anybody makes of it outside this House—to see the price of cattle reduced if those cattle were slaughtered here in Ireland and the sons of the small farmers had work on the processing and on the by-products of those cattle.

We know what happened over the years when attempts were made to get the dead meat trade on a proper footing. We had speculators and exploiters moving in. They tried to buy and depress the price of cattle. They made profits at the expense of the farmers. The result of it is that in the minds of many small farmers today the idea of having our cattle slaughtered here is open to grave suspicion. They feel they will be exploited by the middleman or the manufacturer in that trade, just as they are exploited at the present time in the bacon industry.

Acting-Chairman (Mr. Palmer)

This matter is one which can be more suitably discussed on the Estimate for Agriculture. We are dealing with the Vote on Account.

Mr. McQuillan

I accept the Chair's advice on that. I said what I wish to say on that line. I was really trying to give a picture to the House of the steps that should be taken by the Government to give a sense of hope and encouragement to the producers, especially the farmers. You cannot give them any sense of hope or encouragement, unless you give them a sense of security when they produce the goods. I shall finish with that aspect of the cattle business. It may be discovered that by utilising the most up-to-date marketing and services, we shall get a first-clas market abroad, even in Britain, for our by-products if we take the necessary step here of having the State move into this dead meat trade.

I do not think we are at liberty to deal with particular items on the Vote on Account, but, in general, I would say that some of the increases which are apparent in the Book of Estimates and for which we are voting money in this Vote on Account do not seem to be desirable at all. There is an increase for the President which I think at this time is uncalled for. There is an increase in the Vote for the Secret Service which I think is also uncalled for.

What is, to my mind, a most fantastic increase is the increase in the Defence Estimate. I do not think the Government can defend that extraordinary increase of over £740,000. I think the Government are living in cuckooland when we are asked to increase taxation on the people to provide more defensive equipment, which defensive equipment, I understand, includes aeroplanes.

Deputies will recall that over the past three years, members on all sides of the House have begged the Government to purchase at least one or two helicopters for the purpose of saving lives, helping the community on our barren coasts and bringing to our lighthouses mail and food when distress hits them. We were told that the Government could not afford to purchase even one helicopter. Yet we are faced with an increase of over £700,000 for the purchase of defence equipment, which includes aeroplanes.

I shall not go into any detail except to say that the Government should at this stage prune ruthlessly that Defence Estimate. Strong pleas were made by Deputies that more should be done for the old age pensioners, the widows and the weaker sections of the community. I have not the slightest doubt that if the various Ministers get cracking in their own Departments and do a little paring of administrative costs, they will find sufficient money in those Departments to enable them, in conjunction with the Minister for Defence who should be requested to take at least £1 million off that overflowing Estimate, to give something to the weaker sections of the community who have no organisation to fight their case and who can present no organised front or pressure group to obtain their rights for them.

I listened last year to the Taoiseach telling us that private enterprise was the only solution of our problems and that the Government were wedded to the idea of achieving any expansion in the economy through private enterprise. We are living in the past as far as that outlook is concerned. Even the Government in Britain, which cannot be described as a left wing Government, is far to the left of either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael in this House.

Within the past few weeks, we find that Government interfering every day with big business. They are interfering there in regard to the direction to be taken in the expansion of certain industries. The Government are empowered to interfere with regard to expenditure on capital development in these industries and the present Tory Government have interfered, and will interfere, in regard to the actual location for an expansion of these industries by "big business" in Britain. The motor industry in Britain is being directed by the Government to set up its new factories in Liverpool and elsewhere. Some of these big companies objected but the power is there in British legislation and private enterprise must accept control and direction in the interests of the public.

Here, in Ireland, we live on the basis that private enterprise is sacred, that it comes first rather than the good of the community. We know that the overriding consideration of private enterprise is gain and gain is often made at the expense of the general public. All British Governments have decided that the general public must be saved in so far as possible from the kind of private enterprise which is prepared to eat its neighbour, if necessary, to make more money. We shall have to take similar steps here. Are the Government prepared to do so?

The former leader of Fianna Fáil who is now sitting above in the Park said on a number of occasions in this House that he was going to give every possible opportunity to the system we have to see if it would solve our problems and give a living to our people. On a number of occasions, he expressed concern here because the system was not doing that. He often communed with himself in this House and wondered what he could do. Several times I heard him state that, if necessary, he would go outside this system and make a radical change, if he felt that the means we had already, had failed to give what it was the Government's duty to ensure — a chance to our people to live and work here in Ireland.

I think it is the duty of the State to move into many fields which it has ignored up to the present. If it does not move in, there is little hope for our future. Let nobody for a moment believe the story that seems to have emanated from a certain camp that the rate of emigration is dropping. There is nothing more dangerous than that Deputies should accept what is only a fairy tale. Final figures for this year cannot be got and the first time we shall have proper figures for the 1959-1960-1961 period will be when the census of population is taken in 1961. But we are entitled, on certain evidence available to us to-day, to suggest that the trend for the past five years is upwards and there has been no change in the past 12 months in that trend of emigration.

I have here figures which were given to me to-day in reply to a question. I do not suggest for a moment that these figures disclose the entire picture but they are accurate figures for one section of the community. I asked the Minister for Local Government if he would state the number of relatives and employees whose claims were admitted for the purpose of abatement of rates on agricultural land in each of the years from 1950 to date and in respect of whom employment allowances were paid to farmers. That question really relates to the number of relatives and employees of farmers who have been on the list for abatement over the past ten years and the list shows that in the past 12 months, there was a drop from 82,000 to 78,000 in the number entitled to appear on that list. That is a drop of 4,000. That includes only males over the age of 17, and not all males over 17 in rural Ireland. It includes only males for whom the parents are in receipt of employment allowances or who are employees on the farm.

In order to get the position clear in regard to the fair sex, it is not unfair to double that number, so that we get, so far as the farms are concerned, a drop of 8,000 boys and girls in the past 12 months on the farms in rural Ireland. That figure is accurate because this is a Government return, but we have no way of checking the numbers who have left the towns and who are not on these lists. I would say that the position has not improved one iota; the same emergency exists with regard to emigration.

I do not know if it is worth while speaking in this House. I remember on a number of occasions suggesting that all this debate could be dealt with by bringing in a series of long-playing records and I can readily believe that what I have said here to-day is merely what I said last year or something similar to it. I wonder how many more years we shall be allowed, if we are returned by the people, to dillydally on and hope for the best?

The aim of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael was stated to be to give maximum employment in the country, to give full employment. Have they ever said what they meant by full employment? Does it mean to give full employment to the few who are left? Does it mean that they believe, as Deputy Dillon would appear to believe, that emigration is not a bad thing at all? Does it mean that we can pour out the life-blood of the country, the young people, and then give the remainder a good time? I do not suggest that the man who wishes to leave this country, who wants to pack his bags and get on a boat to see Australia or Canada, should be stopped, but for every such person leaving Ireland, ten others go who do not want to go but who must go because of economic circumstances.

There is no use in trying to soft-pedal the problem of emigration by suggesting that a great proportion of the emigrants need not go at all. If we are able to cater for our people who would like to remain and work in Ireland, we shall not be doing badly for a start, but we are not even looking after those. The suggestion was put forward here that a man who leaves a good job in Ireland at £7 a week and goes to Australia or Canada returns a millionaire in nine or ten years' time. Do we ever hear of the other man who cannot even afford to write home——

Acting Chairman (Mr. Cunningham)

The Deputy is going into too much detail.

Mr. McQuillan

I do not intend to delay the House except to say that we may have emigrants who have gained a great name for Ireland abroad and of whom we can be proud, but, unfortunately, we also have a large proportion of people leaving the country who never get an opportunity of saving sufficient money to come back for a holiday. The Government have a duty to give employment to those people who have to emigrate. We take advantage of the fact that they send money home.

Acting Chairman (Mr. Cunningham)

I have already told the Deputy he is going into too much detail on the question of emigration. It can be referred to in a general way but not in such detail.

Mr. McQuillan

The Acting Chairman, if he will allow me to say so, is acting rather as a prophet at the moment. I was about to refer to the fact that so far as the balance of payments and our invisible assets are concerned—and Government policy has a bearing on this—we take credit in this country for the money sent home by our emigrants each year. Last year, I think, the figure for emigrants' remittances was in the region of £12,000,000. We accepted that and it helped us to balance our accounts. If the terms of trade are against this country and if our imports are in excess of our exports, we balance the books by bringing in on the receipt side of the ledger the money sent home by our emigrants.

The Central Statistics Office might be able to find out for us what the capital value of a human being is and give us figures for the different classes of people. What is the capital value of a youth up to 21 who has only a national school education? What is the capital value of that boy as far as food, clothing, education, housing, amusements and so forth are concerned? What is his loss to the nation when he emigrates? We might have the same information in regard to a youth who has a secondary education up to Leaving Certificate. What is the value in £ s. d. of a university graduate, say, an engineer or a doctor? Let us sit down and examine the loss to the country each year by the emigration of such people. If we are putting them out at the rate of 45,000 to 50,000 a year, we should put an average capital value on them if we are to take credit for what they send home in emigrants' remittances.

I shall conclude by referring again to what another speaker termed the air of gloom and the feeling of despondency in the country. If we are realistic on both sides, we shall not deny that such is the case. We shall also agree that this fog has not been cleared by any political Party in the past 12 or 14 years. It is a fog they have all helped to bring down upon the Irish rural scene, a fog that cannot be lifted by the methods adopted in the past 10, 12 or 14 years. I am talking of a period of which I had experience myself.

We have tinkered for too long with the old methods going back to the foundation of the State. It is time there was a complete and radical change and the State itself stepped in before it is too late and the Irish people are replaced, as is happening every day, by foreigners coming in here. I do not object to people coming in here in limited numbers, people who wish to live here and give their services to this country, but I do object to our negligence in failing to take measures to protect the Irish race because of our worshipping at certain shrines, such as that of private enterprise.

The Government's three years in office show they have no new approach or hope to offer the Irish people. There is no alternative as far as the political Parties are concerned. This period can be described only as a mark-time period in which there is an opportunity for the people in the political Parties to sort themselves out on economic issues and no longer on the question of whether you are for the Treaty or against it. From now on, the question should be: "Do you believe in a certain line of approach, as far as the State is concerned, on economics and social issues, or do you take up another line of thought?" If there is disagreement on that, the people can decide. There can be no such thing as hoodwinking the people and hiding your economic views under the green, white and gold flag.

Let us examine what has been done over the past 40 years by pursuing outmoded methods. Let the politicians and those who hope to get the support of the people in future on economic and social policy decide one way or the other whether they will take a conservative or a left-wing view. The merits of both types of approach will then be decided by the people. The sooner that line-up on economic and social issues takes place, the better for the people. If it is delayed much longer, I doubt, judging by the emigration figures over the past four or five years, whether any Government will be in a position to take steps to put a stop to that drain of our people.

Mr. O'Malley

I should like to draw your attention, Sir, to the fact that I should have been called on the last occasion. The Minister for Finance and the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Brennan, spoke from this side of the House. The Leader of the Opposition and Deputy Sweetman and the Leader of the Labour Party and Deputy McQuillan were called from that side of the House. I have been here since 3 o'clock and I might as well stick it out until 6.30.

One would have expected that the Vote on Account would have been an occasion for the major speech of a new leader of a political Party, and certainly it was with the utmost interest that many Deputies awaited Deputy Dillon's address on this Vote on Account. I am deeply grieved to say that I, for one, was gravely disappointed. Throughout his entire speech, he did not make one constructive criticism. He meandered into the realms of his own ideas on agriculture, the parish plan, ground limestone and those other matters which perhaps are more appropriate to a discussion on the Department of Agriculture. I think it is an indication of the whole tenor of the Fine Gael Party who are on the way out of Irish politics, and God speed their flight.

Deputy Dillon did, however, make a criticism of the Taoiseach for allegedly stating that the keystone of our economic policy was the British market and he congratulated this Party and the Taoiseach on our conversion. I am not aware of his conversion, or perversion, as I said before, but there is a difference between close alliance with the British economy and a close alliance with the British Commonwealth of Nations. There is a world of difference between close economic ties with Britain and close political ties and, of course, it was on the economic ties that the Taoiseach was speaking.

When, of all people, Deputy Dillon, speaks about conversion he should blush for shame. He spoke about the wheat acreage but that is the same Deputy Dillon who hoped that wheat would go up the spout with the peat and beet. That is the same man who now, as Leader of the Fine Gael Party and Leader of the Opposition in this House, bemoans the fact that enough wheat is not being grown.

Deputy Dillon also suggested that the Minister for Finance omitted to include any payment in the Vote on Account for the subsidisation of the export of creamery butter and I want to correct him on that. The Minister has included a sum of £250,000 for that purpose and I myself think that figure may be increased.

Mr. O'Sullivan

Under what heading?

Mr. O'Malley

It is on the bottom of page 223 —"Subsidies on Dairy Produce" with a paragraph which reads: "Provision for payment of subsidies on exports of creamery butter, etc." Last year £1,000,000 was provided and that was not used on account of the weather conditions, and this year £250,000 is provided. I now draw Deputy Dillon's attention to it and say that I do not think it will be sufficient because I hope the weather will be of such a nature this year that we shall have butter for export. When dealing with that, I should also like to draw attention to the fallacy which is being repeated at different political meetings that we pay the foreigner for eating our butter. It is a very lucky thing that we have the foreigner there to buy this surplus butter from us.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

"Thank God the British market is gone, and gone for ever."

Mr. O'Malley

I shall quote that for the Deputy. That is old trash.

Mr. O'Sullivan

Hear, hear.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Say that to the Minister for External Affairs.

Mr. O'Malley

It is a lucky thing that the Irish Government take cognisance of the plight of the dairy farmer and give a subsidy for the export of his butter. I think Deputy O'Sullivan will agree that if we did not export this butter, kept it at home and sold it to our own people it would cost the Exchequer about £9,000,000.

Mr. O'Sullivan

Put it beyond their reach to buy it. Pay the British to eat it but do not pay your own people to eat it.

Mr. O'Malley

This would be more appropriate on the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture but I should like to put an end to misrepresentation of the facts. Deputy O'Sullivan is now the dairy farmers' friend, particularly since we revised the constituencies, and we shall hear a lot about them from him during the next few years. I should like to point out that over the last fourteen years—is Deputy O'Sullivan listening?

Mr. O'Sullivan

Carefully.

Mr. O'Malley

During the last 14 years the price of milk rose from 10½d to 1s 6d.

Mr. O'Sullivan

What?

Mr. O'Malley

Is that all the Deputy knows about it?

Mr. Galvin

He has not even a goat. How would he know about it?

Mr. O'Sullivan

Is Deputy Galvin going to make his maiden speech?

Mr. O'Malley

Will Deputy O'Sullivan leave Deputy Galvin alone? Over the last fourteen years, the price of milk was increased from 10½d to 1s 6d.

Acting Chairman (Mr. Cunningham)

That would be a matter more appropriate to the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. Galvin

Deputy O'Sullivan has not even a goat. How would he know about the price of milk?

Mr. O'Sullivan

I shall get the Deputy to apologise to the Chair again.

Mr. Galvin

The Deputy never made me apologise to the Chair.

Mr. O'Sullivan

The Deputy is incapable of knowing whether he is apologising or not.

Acting Chairman (Mr. Cunningham)

Deputy O'Malley should be allowed to proceed without interruption.

Mr. O'Malley

Of that increase from 10½d to 1s 6d the Fianna Fáil Party were responsible for 6½d and Deputy O'Sullivan's Party gave them 1d.

Mr. O'Sullivan

You took that 1d off.

Mr. O'Malley

And previously Cumann na nGaedheal cut the price of milk but, as the Acting Chairman has called me to order, I shall leave that matter. Last night Deputy Sweetman spoke about the health services and he said:—

In regard to the provision being made for Health Services on page 354 of the Volume of Estimates in the current year, we are being asked to provide £8,160,000 under the main heading and £250,000 as a subsidiary, making a total of £8,410,000. I want the House to realise and understand that when we are providing that sum it means that our Health Services are costing £16,800,000.

Then he went on to say:—

This figure of £17,000,000 is a colossal one for us in our circumstances to expend on Health Services ... It is a sum which, when we are expending it, justifies us in ensuring that we are getting proper value for the money being spent. Everywhere I go in the country I am told by those who should be entitled to claim services of that kind that they feel, and many members of the local authorities feel, that the operation and administration of the services are such that we are not getting the value we should get for the expenditure of that vast sum of money.

Mr. O'Sullivan

On a point of order, would the Deputy please give the quotation?

Acting Chairman (Mr. Cunningham)

What is the Deputy quoting from?

Mr. O'Malley

He is quoting from notes of his own which he had made.

Mr. O'Sullivan

On a point of order, certainly he is not quoting from notes of his own. He is quoting, he claims, from a speech made by Deputy Sweetman.

Mr. O'Malley

That is not a point of order.

Acting Chairman (Mr. Cunningham)

Deputy O'Malley is in order.

Mr. O'Sullivan

On a point of order, this is——

Mr. O'Malley

What is the point of order? Before I go on I want to hear what the point of order is.

Mr. O'Sullivan

The point of order is that the Deputy claims he is quoting from a speech made by Deputy Sweetman on this subject.

Acting Chairman (Mr. Cunningham)

No; he said he was quoting from notes made—his notes of his speech.

Mr. O'Sullivan

Cannot you see, Sir, he is quoting from a typed document?

Mr. O'Malley

We have four typewriters in the Fianna Fáil rooms. I typed this out before I came in.

Mr. O'Sullivan

They must be miracle typists if they can type below what we say while we are saying it.

Mr. O'Malley

We can take quotations from the newspapers and even from the Examiner.

Acting Chairman (Mr. Cunningham)

The Deputy is in order.

Mr. O'Malley

The point I want to make with regard to the health services is that the Fine Gael Party try to make capital out of the cost of the health services and yet, whenever local authorities come to strike the rate, there is not one member of the Fine Gael Party on any local authority who can suggest any one item under the heading of Health Services which can be reduced by one penny. As a matter of fact, conscientious persons connected with the health services are of the opinion that, even though the cost is £17 million per annum, the services are still inadequate. That is also my opinion.

Without going into details which would be more appropriate on the Estimates, may I remind the House that ophthalmic and dental services are provided only for school children, that these services are not provided for others? I hope that in the years to come, next year perhaps, the medical card will provide for people in the middle income group free treatment by dispensary doctors. I suggest that the additional cost would not be very great.

Deputy Sweetman also recalled that the Minister for Finance, when he was Minister for Health, told local authorities that the rates would not be increased by more than 2/- in the £ as a result of the implementation of the 1953 Health Act. I recall the incident very well. Does Deputy Sweetman not realise that the Minister was telling the truth to the best of his ability, when speaking in 1952, before the Bill was enacted? Since then wages have gone up on three occasions, salaries have been increased, the cost of medicine has been increased and a new category of qualifying persons has been brought within the scope of the Act.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

All because you increased the cost of living.

Mr. O'Malley

Let no one go before the electorate and criticise the Health Act. The Health Act has been made an issue on election platforms in the past and the Irish people have endorsed it on two occasions. Deputy Thomas O'Higgins, to his credit, when he was Minister for Health, did his utmost to try to make the Act work. I do not know that he satisfied everyone but he tried to the best of his ability.

It is remarkable that the Health Act should be discussed without reference to the figures in regard to T.B. It is all right for plutocrats like Deputy Dillon, Deputy Sweetman and Deputy O'Higgins to criticise the expenditure of money on health services but do they realise that in 1953, when the Health Act came in, 30.9 per 100,000 of the population suffered from tuberculosis of the respiratory system? That figure was reduced to 17.7 in 1958. All other forms of T.B. were reduced from 9.4 per 100,000 of the population in 1953 to 2.8 per 100,000 in 1958.

Mr. O'Sullivan

The Deputy has not the 1947 figure?

Mr. O'Malley

What has the 1947 figure to do with it? I draw your attention to the mentality of Deputy O'Sullivan. He thinks I am on an agricultural Estimate and he wants to get in a dig about the Suez canal. I am talking about the figures for T.B. which, under every Government since then, including the Coalition Government, have progressively declined.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Are they covered by the Health Act?

Mr. O'Malley

Were the figures for T.B. covered by the Health Act? Is Deputy Michael O'Higgins so ignorant of the provisions and the intentions of the Health Act, 1953, and all its ramifications? It is a sorry position that a Deputy should ask has the Health Act, 1953, anything to do with T.B.

I have, I trust, shut Deputy Sweetman up for all time. He criticised the Minister for the bill of £8 million for health services. That would be £17 million for the whole country because the local authorities will have to pay the other one-half. It is a tremendous achievement to be able to say that the State, in that period from 1953 to 1958, has reduced the incidence of T.B. from 30.9 to 17.7 per 100,000 of the population.

Mr. Kyne

Deputy Dr. Browne.

Mr. O'Malley

What about Deputy Dr. Browne?

Mr. Kyne

He is the man who started it.

Mr. O'Malley

If he started it, we finished it. Deputy Dr. Browne went out of office in 1951. The Health Act proper came into being in 1953. I do not want to tangle with Deputy Dr. Browne or to criticise him in any way.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Had the building of sanatoria nothing to do with it?

Mr. O'Malley

I am about to come to that.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Good.

Mr. O'Malley

The building of sanatoria contributed to a certain extent to the decline in these figures.

Mr. O'Sullivan

Thank you.

Mr. O'Malley

But let Deputy Sweetman remember, when he is talking about the increase in rates, that there was far too much money flogged out in the building of sanatoria, far too much, far too unwisely. It could have been spent on the maintenance of mentally retarded and handicapped children, on the alleviation of congestion in mental homes. There was far too much spent on sanatoria by the said Deputy Dr. Browne, possibly with the best intentions in the world.

One would have thought that a former Minister for Finance in the Coalition Government would have been constructive in his remarks. Throughout his entire speech, Deputy Sweetman had not one constructive criticism to offer on the Estimate, except to sneer at the whole thing. I am sure that the Minister, when he is replying, will not have much difficulty in demolishing the few points made by the Deputy. The Deputy was Minister for Finance of a Government which, in 1951, left to a Fianna Fáil Government a deficit in the balance of payments of £61.6 million— a lovely item with which to face office. When Fianna Fáil left office in 1954 we had got the deficit down to manageable proportions, to £5.5 million. Deputy O'Sullivan's Government was not well back in office when, in 1955, the deficit in the balance of payments had again gone out of manageable proportions, to £35 million.

That was the start of the collapse of the Coalition Government of the time because then the levies and mass unemployment came. The criticism of Fianna Fáil at the time was not directed at the imposition of the levies as such but that the decision to take remedial measures, which was forecast by Deputy MacEntee and Deputy Dr. Ryan when in Opposition, was made too late and that Deputy Sweetman panicked. He should never have let the position get out of hand. I am glad to say the Minister for Finance, Dr. Ryan, in his first year of office remitted a substantial number of the levies——

Mr. O'Sullivan

And made the rest permanent.

Mr. O'Malley

——and I hope that before our term of office expires the balance of these levies which, as Deputy O'Sullivan interjected, are in permanent taxation, will be remitted too.

Mention of emigration was made by all the Opposition speakers so far. There is no use in going into that on the Vote on Account except to say that everything points to a downward trend. The excess of the outward passenger movement over inward movement shows that in 1957 53,000 more people left than came in. In 1958 that was down to 32,000. It is far too high but I quote the figure merely to indicate the downward trend.

Another point which Deputy Sweetman, the former Minister for Finance, overlooked and which the present Minister for Finance, if he wished to make a political speech, could have rubbed in very hard is in relation to the American counterpart loan. Do Deputy Sweetman and Deputy O'Higgins know what we are paying back for the balance of the American counterpart loan? We are paying back an annual sum of £41 million. When we came into power in 1932 we had to fight an economic war over the land annuities in respect of which the gentlemen on the other side not only did not give us any assistance but blackguarded us from one end of the country to another.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy seems to be going back very far.

Mr. O'Sullivan

If we may go back as far we do not mind.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is a matter for the Chair.

Mr. O'Sullivan

Certainly.

Mr. O'Malley

The land annuities were retained for the benefit of the Irish farmers.

Mr. O'Sullivan

May we go back that far?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is for the Chair to decide.

Mr. O'Sullivan

The Chair is being ignored.

Mr. O'Malley

What we are paying back on the American counterpart loan, £41 million per annum, is more than these annuities ever cost this Government. It was the Coalition Government who frittered it away on American motor cars, petrol, wheat and luxuries. It was the first Coalition Government who squandered that money and it is only recently we have had to start repaying principal and interest on that money.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

I take it we may talk about Argentine wheat on this?

Mr. O'Malley

You may talk about anything on the Vote on Account. This loan repayment is one of the largest items under the heading——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is incorrect when he says one may talk about anything on the Vote on Account. That is wrong.

Mr. O'Malley

Any particular aspect, I should have said. I trust the shadow Minister for Agriculture, Deputy O'Sullivan, will speak on this in due course. All aspects of agriculture show the one trend. In 1956 there were 747,000 pigs in the country, according to the Statistical Abstract. In 1958 there were 947,000. In 1956 there were 3,439,000 sheep; in 1958 there were 4,174,000. We are told today by Deputy Dillon there is a slight increase in the number of cattle.

Mr. O'Sullivan

Aged cattle.

Mr. O'Malley

Aged cattle? I shall give the figures in respect of cattle In January, 1958 to January 1959 the milch cow population increased by .3 per cent; in-calf heifers increased by 21.3 per cent.

Mr. O'Sullivan

That is right.

Mr. O'Malley

Where are the aged cattle in that?

Mr. O'Sullivan

When were they calved?

Mr. O'Malley

The calves were not born at the time for which I am giving you these statistics. The number of bulls went down by seven per cent. and all other types of cattle increased by 1.8 per cent. From January, 1958, to January 1959, there was an increase in sheep of 8.1 per cent. Under this Vote the capital expenditure has increased from £8.9 million in 1955-56 to £14.6 million in 1958-59. Deputy O'Sullivan is not in form today; he cannot contradict any of those statistics.

As regards agricultural workers, there was a progressive decline, on average, of 11,000 males on the farm between the years 1942 and 1953, inclusive. In 1954, for the first time in the history of the State, there was an increase in the numbers employed on the land. The Coalition took office then and in 1955 there was another drop of 3,000 in the number employed on the land. In 1956 the figure was 9,000 and in 1957, the year we returned to office, there were 10,000 fewer on the land. In the Coalition's term of office, 22,000 young male employees had departed from rural Ireland. I am glad to say that in 1958 this tendency was reduced to manageable proportions. There was a drop of 4,000 and I hope, when the figures for 1959-60 come out, the position will return to that which obtained in 1954 and that employment will be on the upgrade. I suppose Deputy O'Sullivan does not want me to bore him with the figures for wheat or barley or for the corn crop, which increased from 1,105,000 acres in 1956 to 1,189,000 in 1958.

Mr. O'Sullivan

And they are down this year.

Mr. O'Malley

There were some points made by Deputy Sweetman to which I should like to refer. Deputy Sweetman gave us figures of the amount paid out to local authorities for various purposes from the Local Loans Fund. I cite this case as a typical example of the gross, downright dishonesty of the Fine Gael Party leaders. Giving a cursory glance at the figures for 1954-55, 1955-56, 1956-57, and 1957-58, there would not be a very substantial change in the amount furnished from the Local Loans Fund to local authorities that would suggest that one year things might have been a bit better, that there might have been twice as many houses built, or twice as much sanitary work undertaken one year and the next year it might have increased again by a half million pounds this way or that way. What is the truth of the matter? The truth of the matter is that Dublin Corporation made an issue of £6 million 5 per cent. stock at 98 in December, 1955. The public gave £1,802,000 of this £6 million. They looked for only £6 million at 5 per cent., issued at 98, and the public gave £1,802,000. What happened? The remainder had to be taken up by the underwriters who were the Minister for Finance and the banks.

The decision to make the Local Loans Fund available for Dublin and Cork Corporation was rendered inevitable by the failure of the 1955 public stock issue. Hitherto, the Dublin and Cork Corporations had no access to the Local Loans Fund. When they could not get the money, the Coalition Government said: "All right; you can now draw on the Local Loans Fund." Then, from 1st April, 1957, Dublin and Cork Corporations got all the capital they required from the Local Loans Fund and they have relied on the Fund for all their borrowing, with the exception of a loan of £350,000 which the Dublin Corporation obtained from an Insurance company and a loan of £30,000 which Cork Corporation got also from an insurance company. It can be seen therefore if the Dublin and Cork Corporations had met their obligations, from sources other than the Local Loans Fund, the amount of money shown as having been drawn from the Local Loans Fund would have been a very insignificant amount indeed.

Here is an interesting figure in this connection. Expenditure in 1956-57 by local authorities, other than Cork and Dublin Corporations, for new houses to be put in hands in that year, was estimated by the Department of Local Government to be £1,110,000— £460,000 for urban areas and £650,000 for rural areas. In May, 1956, the Government decided that the estimated borrowings for all new works would have to be cut by at least 50 per cent. Between July 1956 and February 1957—when we came back to power—only seven unimportant local authority housing projects were sanctioned, outside Dublin and Cork. Between July, 1956, and February, 1957, seven minor schemes were sanctioned and the total expenditure sanctioned by the Coalition for the entire country—outside of Dublin and Cork—between these dates was what? Was it £3 million? It was £13,000— and then Deputy Sweetman has the audacity to criticise the Fianna Fáil administration for a hold up in the payment of housing grants.

Our criticism in the housing censure motion in December, 1956, which was moved by the then Deputy Smith on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party, when we were in Opposition, was not in regard to the number of houses necessary, or being erected or reconstructed. It was the fact that local authorities would not be told the truth. They did not know when they were to get their money. Houses had been completed and were actually being lived in and the local authorities could not get their money and no new schemes could be embarked on. When we came back into office in 1957, we found that unsanctioned arrears of tenders and site acquisitions, and partially completed local authority work, represented an ultimate expenditure of £1 million. On top of the deficit which Deputy Sweetman left us of £6 million in the Budget of 1957 which we had to bring in—the Capital Budget which he boasted was lying on the desk of the Minister for Finance—Deputy Smith, then Minister for Local Government, had there and then to pay £1.340 millions to the local authorities to clear off the debts left by the Coalition to the builders and the commitments of the local authorities.

Deputy Sweetman and Deputy Dillon chose to pick out for mention the Department of Defence, the Department of Health and one or two other items and queried the vast increase. In the main, all the increases in this Vote on Account for the Public Services for the year ending 31st March, 1961, are caused by increases in salaries and wages.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

And the withdrawal of the food subsidies.

Mr. O'Malley

Is it the case of the Fine Gael Party that they object to these increases? Do they think these increases should not be paid? If they do not object to increased remuneration for civil servants and officers of local authorities, where does their criticism lie? What are they complaining about? Would they be a little more specific? They cannot have their cake and eat it.

Mention was made by Deputy Dillon of rates on agricultural land. We brought that Act in, in 1953—I think I am right in saying that—and it provided for increased allowances of £17 for each adult workman employed by a farmer. The allowance previously was £6 10s. In 1956, the Government of the day adopted the 1953 scheme which was so vehemently criticised in this House. They extended it to 1959 and this year we, as we all knew, have extended it further to 1962.

Deputy Sweetman chose to skip very quickly through the Local Government Estimate, with particular reference to certain subheads. He did not deal at all with the Road Fund. I should like to recall to the minds of Deputies a serious omission on Deputy Sweetman's part. As we know, in the financial year, 1954-55, an allocation of £1½ million was given to the Road Fund from the National Development Fund. Payments from the National Development Fund were not made to the Road Fund in subsequent years. As a matter of fact, it was quite illegal to do so after 31st March, 1957. In 1955-56, supplementary grants were notified to all local authorities. They were discontinued in 1956-57. I want to recall to the minds of Deputies on the opposite side of the House what took place in 1956-57 in regard to the Road Fund and, when they criticise this Book of Estimates, they might bear this little item in mind. In 1956-57, the Minister for Finance found himself in such straitened circumstances that he stole £500,000 from the road fund.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I do not think the word "stole" should be used.

Mr. O'Malley

He raided the Exchequer to the extent of £½ million, and then the income which accrues under that heading—from petrol rationing, hire purchase restrictions and the import levies—which was a source of revenue, fell substantially. At 31st March, 1957, what were the outstanding commitments the Minister for Finance had to meet? He had to meet £4.177 million compared with £1.18 million on 1st April, 1954. We had to face £4.17 million, and it was obvious that some hasty decision was necessary on behalf of the Government by the Minister for Finance. What happened? In order that grants could continue at the same level in 1957-58 as in the previous year, a repayable advance of £900,000 was obtained.

The Minister for Agriculture was Minister for Local Government at that time and I should like to recall what he said at Column 899, Volume 161, of the Official Report of 7th May 1957:—

The position, therefore, as I found it, was that if reasonable interim payments were to be made to local authorities the total of new grants should not exceed £3,000,000—a reduction of £2,000,000 with a consequent drop in employment of up to 4,000 men. Neither an increase in the overdrafts of local authorities nor a further drop in the amount of employment afforded on road works would be desirable. In those circumstances and after consultation with the Minister for Finance, the Government has agreed that the funds available for road works in the current year should be supplemented by a sum of approximately £900,000 to be made available from State capital and to be repayable from the Road Fund over a period of years. This will enable the allocation for the current year to be maintained at the same amount as that allocated last year.

Commitments are still high. At 31st March, 1955, our commitments to the Road Fund were over £3,000,000, but we have maintained the grants at the 1956-57 level—and only with the greatest difficulty. It is for those reasons, as the Minister has pointed out, that special State assistance was afforded to the Road Fund under the Road Fund (Grants and Advances) (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1959, to deal with road problems arising from certain factors.

Again, when Deputies criticise this Government for increases under this item, I draw their attention to the fact that the Road Fund Act, 1959, makes provision for payments not exceeding £400,000 per annum for five years to the Road Fund, half of which is a free grant and half, repayable advances. This scheme of grants and advances enabled special assistance to be given to local authorities to deal with roads affected by the recent closing of railways and roads leading to particular major industrial undertakings. I understand major schemes with a very high employment content are now proceeding. We had the work on the Dublin-Bray road and the Dublin-Naas road, and work on the Dublin-Balbriggan road is going on at present and costing £124,000. The Dublin County Council section of this work was held up by opposition in certain quarters, and that cost £315,000, and the Corporation's proportion is £120,000.

The question of bridges comes under the Vote on page 120 of the Book of Estimates—Vote No. 32— Local Government. Three bridges which are often discussed here, Wexford Bridge, Youghal Bridge and Valentia Bridge, will all come up for consideration and be dealt with by the Minister for Finance in the coming year.

Progress reported: Committee to sit again.