I move:
That Dáil Éireann condemns the Government for the failure of its policies as confirmed by the terms of its own White Paper.
I think it right to say at once that having considered the White Paper issued by the Government and the general background in which that White Paper was published and circulated, we decided to put down this motion. Doubtless, when the Taoiseach comes to intervene, he will advise the House that if that motion is carried his Government must go and if and when he gives that advice I want to emphasise that the Taoiseach is right. Having reviewed all the circumstances surrounding the issue of this White Paper, we feel it our duty to put down a motion calling on the Government to go. If this motion is carried, the Government must resign, and the discretion then rests with the President whether to invite the Dáil to choose an alternative Government or to dissolve the Dáil. It is in the clear knowledge that that is the significance of the motion we move that we commend it to the House.
Whatever else this White Paper has achieved we can all agree on one thing, that it has produced confusion and dismay generally in the country. There never was a time when it was less expedient to create confusion and dismay in the minds of those elements of the community who want to play their part in what is admittedly a difficult situation. I cannot help recalling the brash impudence of the Taoiseach when he spoke in Wexford about going it alone not only internationally but internally. It is time the Taoiseach woke up to the fact that in a civilised and free society such as we have here no political minority should claim the right or the desire to go it alone and indeed a responsible majority, if it is a truly democratic majority, should glory in the fact that it does not want to go it alone. It will want to go it in collaboration with all the people. It will want to carry with it common consent in regard to matters of fundamental national interest. If ever there was a Government in this country that has every reason to acknowledge with gratitude the extent to which it has been supported by all elements of the community when it was believed that the vital interests of this nation were at stake, it is the present Fianna Fáil minority Government.
It is a difficult time and it is in that time that a White Paper is issued entitled Closing the Gap. Let us consider for a moment the background against which that White Paper is produced. I exclude all the banquets, all the dinner parties, all the hoolies which Ministers of this Government, not excluding the Taoiseach, have been attending, singing the glories of Fianna Fáil always provided that the room or tent was large enough to accommodate television lights and cameras.
Forget all that and consider what the Taoiseach had to say about the state of the economy in Dáil Éireann. In Volume 198, columns 1469 and 1470 in December, 1962, on the occasion of the Adjournment, I thought it right to direct the attention of the House to certain trends in our economy which, I felt, if they were to continue, were bound to create difficulties —we were then in the context of entering the European Economic Community—and unless these trends were corrected I suggested to the House that the cold analytical eye of the experts of Brussels would dwell on the facts and not on the lucubrations of the Taoiseach or any of his Ministers at the dinners and hoolies which have been going on for the past 12 months.
I urged the Taoiseach that now was the time to face the facts and state the opinion upon them so that general co-operation could be bespoken if there was anything going wrong which required to be righted. Here is what the Taoiseach said in reply:
Deputy Dillon expressed concern about the adverse trade balance. He talked about the gap that exists between the volume of our visible imports and the value of our invisible exports. It is true that the overall picture at the end of this year, when it will be possible to determine it in February or March next year, will probably show some deficit on our external payments, but in so far as that deficit has not involved, as the Deputy found out, any diminution of our external reserves, it is not a matter for great concern. Our economy is in a healthy state. In a period of national economic expansion there will be imports of machinery and raw materials for agriculture and industry in greater volume than previously. These imports will appear in the trade statistics as physical goods, whereas the money that frequently comes in to pay for them does not so appear.
Then, smiling up at us, he wished us a happy Christmas. He hoped that we would all come back in the best of fettle ready to face the future with all the confidence that radiated from him. The fact was that he was holding in his hand a busted flush. He gambled that the Brussels negotiations would succeed and that in the subsequent rejoicing, the contents of his hand would be overlooked and we would mistake the diamond for a heart. Now that he has had to put down his cards, he has got panicky, which is also characteristic of a poker player who has been found out. It is one thing for the Taoiseach to display embarrassment and dismay, but it is quite another in an atmosphere of panic and distress to issue a document of this character.
What is the fundamental defect of that White Paper? Its fundamental defect is that it calls for sacrifice but not for equality of sacrifice. Of course when you read it and reread it you discover all of the qualifications and all the circumlocutions of the trained bureaucrat preparing a document for Government consideration; but sooner or later, this Government ought to wake up to the fact that we are not living in an economic laboratory. We are living in a free society, and we here as politicians have an obligation to make on our people demands when demands are necessary, in terms calculated to mobilise their support and understanding. Can anyone say, in the circumstances in which that document was put, that the terms in which it is phrased were calculated to secure the consent and understanding of the bulk of our people?
I do not believe anybody here—certainly no rational person here—will claim that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions is a reckless or irresponsible body. There is a good deal of misunderstanding in the country, and I want to go on record deliberately as saying that, in my personal experience of dealing with trade unions in this country and in my public experience of dealing with them, I have always conceived the trade unions to be tough in negotiations on behalf of their members. That is what they are there for. But I find them in my experience to be loyal and faithful to agreements on which they entered and generally contribute their full measure of responsible co-operation in any national effort where the help of all was called for.
When we compare the record we have had of trade union experience in this country with the record found in America or the records the people in Great Britain had, I think that the trade union movement in this country has the right to claim that while there are, as is inevitable in industrial relations from time to time, breakdowns and misunderstandings, as a general rule the trade union movement has been responsible and honourable and tough in negotiation on behalf of their members, which it is their duty to be. But that body which I do not think I have over-praised has this to say about the White Paper, not on the morrow of perusing it but after careful deliberation and consideration:
The Government should have been aware that the publication of the White Paper could well create a sense of anxiety and uneasiness leading to a crisis of confidence with general reactions in the economic sphere with which we have been familiar in the past. It should certainly have realised that it would have the effect of creating an artificial atmosphere of concern in regard to wages and salary levels.
It goes on to say at a later stage of its statement:
There is no basis for any assumption such as apparently impelled the Government to issue the White Paper that the trade union movement would behave in an irresponsible manner or that it would in any way precipitate a situation that would damage the national economy and thereby the interests of the wage and salary earners whom the movement represents. The ready co-operation that has been forthcoming from the trade union movement at all levels, both in joint labour-management bodies and in government sponsored organisation, should surely have dispelled any idea that it would engage in any unreasonable action running counter to the nation's interests.
I believe that Deputies on all sides of the House will be constrained to acknowledge the justice of those two representations by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, and that they should have been forced into such a protestation at this time is no service to this country.
The plain fact is that Ireland is too small a country in which to establish two nations. Either we work altogether or we all go down the drain together. It never was more true of our situation than it is today that united we stand, divided we fall. There are some people in this country who believe that it is impossible and even wrong—and to this disreputable doctrine the Taoiseach has lent his name—that there can be unity on anything in the political life of this country, that there must be division and conflict about every matter that Parliament is called upon to consider or else Parliament is not rightly functioning. I want to say most categorically that nothing could be further from the truth. The obligation of a responsible Parliament is to acknowledge readily and willingly that in certain contingencies we should all be together defending the national interest but that about important other issues different views should exist and will be canvassed and, if necessary, carried to the country in a general election.
It is because we believe that the general policy of this Government has in its results shown itself to be wholly ineffective in the situation in which we find ourselves at the present time that we take the view that Parliament should now pronounce that it is no longer satisfied and that the country should be given an opportunity of passing judgment on the Government responsible for the policy and the situation which evoked the publication of this White Paper.
I have studied this White Paper as closely as I can and the impression borne in upon me is that it speaks of excessive purchasing power. That is the heart and centre of the whole theme. It is fortified by graphs of a very over-simplified kind. I want to direct the attention of the House to the danger of the employment of nice simple graphs like these. The graphs look beautiful until you begin to ask what they are about. The heading of Diagram 1 in the White Paper is "Indices of weekly earnings and output per wage-earner engaged in manufacturing industries 1958-62". There is a dramatic line drawn where at one stage the weekly earnings soared above output per industrial worker and everybody is expected to say at once: "There is the gap", but then you could turn to the graph published by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions which deals with labour productivity and real earnings of industrial workers and here we have the volume of output per wage-earner compared with real earnings. Here no gap exists at all except that the gap between real earnings and the volume of output tends, if anything, to widen.
If it is true, and I think it is true, all the graphs apart, that the core of the case made in this White Paper is that there is at present operating in our economy excess purchasing power, surely a White Paper that wanted to put the case objectively before the people would have something to say about the cost of living and the rise from, I think, 135 to 157 that has taken place in the course of the last six years? Surely, if it were excess purchasing power that we really wanted to deal with, we would not spend so many paragraphs and so much eloquence on wages and salaries categorically described without some reference to profits? Surely, if we were more worried, honestly worried, about excess purchasing power and we were talking about wages and salaries as one element in creating that excess purchasing power, we would have made some note somewhere on the impact of hire-purchase on the increased purchasing power in this country and we would have observed that in the last four years the volume of hire-purchase debt in this country has more than doubled, from £14.7 million to £31.8 million? I am not a statistician but I understand that most hire-purchase debt bears for a period of two years. Am I correct in believing that that represents a creation of about £15,000,000 per annum of hire-purchase debt?
Surely, if this paper were addressed to people with a desire to inform them fully, there would have been some reference to the creation of bank credit? Or, for whom was this White Paper intended? Did the Taoiseach seriously imagine that he was going to deceive the members of this House who are concerned with such matters or is it the desire to create a general impression in the country that the best way to resolve our problems is to hit the civil servants, to hit the local authority employees, to hit anybody who works for the State?
We are all long enough in politics to know that there is nothing more popular in any free society in the world than walloping the bureaucrats. Nobody is going to get very excited about the proposal to cut them down. But, the plain fact is that this country is greatly blessed in its public servants. They have never asked for more and, God knows, they have never got more than the very minimum of equality with persons in similar employment outside and the plain fact is that public servants in this country share the same handicap that people in public life have, that is, that their work must be done for a reward far lower than similar work would secure in commerce, trade or industry.
I do not think it is a happy thing to re-open this whole argument. I do not think it is a happy thing to go back on the agreement that was reached in 1954, when we finally decided to provide arbitration for people in the public service. There was a difference about that. Fianna Fáil were opposed to it; the rest of us were in favour of it, but we established it and Fianna Fáil have since adopted it.
Nothing could do more to shake the confidence of workers in this country than the implication that Oireachtas Éireann, having finally accepted the principle of arbitration, are going to wriggle out of it without repealing it. I believe it is a good principle. I believe on the whole it has worked well and I am convinced that, instead of going it alone, any Party in this country who are prepared to put the real economic cards on the table would get from the trade union movement in this country and, I believe, from the industrial organisations in this country, whatever measure of co-operation they wanted within reason to prevent such an expansion in purchasing power as to put the whole economy of the State in jeopardy and I believe if they had asked for it, they would have got it. Would it not have been a very much preferable thing if that were the way the story had been told?
If we had had some disappointed journalists recalling that there was no jizz or no fire in Irish public life, that actually all sides, recognising the economic emergency that did exist, had come together with a common plan to lend a hand to prevent an economic difficulty degenerating into an economic crisis, despite the disappointed journalists, I would have rejoiced at the evidence of sophistication in our democracy, of which I believe our democracy is fully capable if given the opportunity of showing it. But, if that proved a disappointment to the sensationalists, I would have regarded it as a chef d'oeuvre of the methods by which democracy works in this country. But, then, of course, we on this side of the House do not believe in the arrogance or impudence, whichever you choose to call it, of going it alone because we know that in this country, and God grant it may ever be so, our people are not susceptible to being kicked about by outsiders, or insiders either.
I have observed, as we must all have observed, that of course since document No. 1 was produced it is impossible to open the daily paper without document No. 2 and document No. 3 and document No. 4 being produced. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Transport and Power and anybody else who can get someone to put up a dinner for them have been back-pedalling as fast as the dinners would allow ever since this White Paper was produced. We have had grim memories in this country of documents No. 1 and No. 2. We have had a civil war started in this country once about document No. 2. It would be a world of pities if we started an industrial disputes war in this country at this critical time in the effort to determine which was the valid instrument of to-day: document No. 1, document No. 2, document No. 3, Dr. Ryan's document No. 4 or Deputy Childers' document No. 4½.
We have not yet received any clarification in any of the new versions as to what has happened since the Taoiseach spoke here in Dáil Éireann in December. What changed the whole situation that such extreme measures are called on to put right what we were told in December could not be better. It is not until the Government tell us in explicit terms what is the real nature of the problem that they can hope to get the kind of co-operation necessary to avert economic difficulties, if we are truly faced with them. It is equally true to say that any Government in this country will get that kind of help and co-operation if the people understand what is required and if all are asked to do it together. If the atmosphere created by the White Paper were to obtain, and I say deliberately, "created by the White Paper," because there have been various documents No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4, the general impression was that there was a hankering after the classical remedy of 1947— freeze wages; freeze salaries; let us have a Selwyn Lloyd pause.
I can understand the theoretical economists in the fortress of a lecture room or a research institute saying that the shortest way to go about solving the problem is to freeze wages and salaries, that if you can hold the line for a couple of years, the nation may be greatly advantaged, but what they tend to forget is that there are certain economic advantages which can be purchased at too great a price. If the price you have to pay is to shatter the whole fabric of industrial relations in the society in which you live, you have paid a price out of all proportion to any so-called economic advantage. You have created, over that period of two years, cruel injustices and inequalities which every just person would cry out to have remedied but which are left outstanding because the sacred doctrine of the wages freeze has become the gospel of the day.
Unless we retain the fabric of our own particular economic setup and unless we retain equity of reward in our economic effort, instead of getting peace and progress, we get distrust, hatred and suspicion, arising, perhaps, in many cases from very small disturbances but the greatest evil is an evil which we have had an opportunity of learning from in Great Britain, that very often the root of the illfeeling is forgotten but the illfeeling itself continues to grow. How often have we seen great industries in Britain held up and paralysed over the employees' cup of tea because of the failure of labour relations to solve completely and effectively the grievances of some person or group of persons about a cup of tea or about a five minute break for smoking? Because of that failure they have fallen into a whole forest of distrust and confused labour relations and great industrial undertakings have been paralysed at immense loss to the men, to the employers and to the nation as well.
Why should we allow ourselves to stumble into that situation when we have a trade union movement in this country that has shown itself ready, willing and anxious to sit down with the employers' organisations and, with or without consultation with the Government, work out a common policy on which to base expansion in the industrial sphere and show great restraint where that is necessary in order to achieve the appropriate results? I cannot help recalling to this House, and it is a useful thing to learn from the experience of others, that we have had a case closely analogous to this in the United States of America. We have had the case in the big steel industry there where the head of the Government went to the steel workers and asked for forbearance. That forbearance was forthcoming on the implied understanding that there would also be forbearance on the part of the employers with regard to profits. Probably due to a misunderstanding, steps were taken by the industry to raise prices and that caused something approximating a national crisis because the Government said "No". The Government said that if one side were to be asked to make a sacrifice, the other must also make a sacrifice. The Government said that there must be no question of asking one side to make sacrifices and saying to the other side: "For you, the lid is off".
There were elaborate arguments that could have been made for the case of increased profits but those who understood what the real national need was said to them: "Cut out all that tripe. What must be done here is justice and justice must be seen to be done. Industrial peace must be established and as we go on we can see what effort can be made." It transpired that instead of increasing prices, the steel industry found it expedient to bring prices down. The fundamental principle was involved, the establishment of peace in this great industry, and that is what is lacking in the proposals put forward by the Government here in this context.
I have advanced the thesis that there are indications that the economic situation of this country is such as to cause anxiety. I tried to express that feeling in the most restrained language I could employ last December when I directed the attention of the House to the trading figures up to the end of September. Since then, the figures for the calendar year have emerged. It is important to emphasise that too much stress can be laid on the mention of the calendar year. There is no more significance in the calendar year than in any other measurement of time. It may be a calendar year, or a financial year or a five-year period, but for purposes of comparison the calendar year is not really significant in this context.
There is no doubt that we are faced with an adverse trade balance of unexampled magnitude, over £100,000,000 in the past 12 months. That is a situation which must cause concern no matter in what context it occurs; if there were a strong, rising tendency in our exports and a stable, or even a declining, tendency in our imports then we could view that increase as a passing thing, without its giving rise to any very deep anxiety. But that is not the case.
We have an adverse trade balance of £100,000,000.. We can speak rather more freely and more emphatically of these things now because, certainly for some time ahead, the Brussels situation is irrelevant. It is not the case that we have this unexampled adverse trade balance with buoyant exports. Exports have been going down. Now I know that part of that decline in exports has been in agricultural produce, and to that I shall return in a moment; but, taking the overall picture, exports are going down and imports are going up. Now, in itself, that presents a picture calculated to cause concern, but there is a further feature which we must bear in mind. That situation is accompanied by what, at first glance, appears to be a phenomenon, and that is that our external assets of the joint stock banks, of the Central Bank and the Government Fund are showing no corresponding decline. That means that there are large capital movements taking place between this country and abroad.
What is the nature of these capital movements? Nobody seems to be able to tell us, and I can only surmise. There may be an element of hot money. I am not qualified to say if there is, but in so far as that hot money is deposited here for safe keeping its period of residence here depends almost entirely on the degree of international confidence in the stability of our currency. Some of it is sales of land. I do not know how much, and I do not believe the Government know, but there is no doubt that we are selling land for cash to foreigners who want to stash money away here in tangible form in agricultural land. Now, there will come a time at which our people, with their history behind them, will say: "This must stop. We are not prepared to create a new race of foreign landlords in this country."
Mark you, I differentiate most emphatically between the foreigner who comes and buys a house and garden, and enjoys the amenity of a holiday residence here, and the man who comes in and buys a large tract of agricultural land and sets it. I am told that at this present moment there is a standing order in many land agents' offices in this city for any parcel of Irish land of two or three hundred acres, always provided it is good land, and the instruction "The price does not matter much provided the title is good". I do not believe that can go on indefinitely, for social reasons. I do not believe the people will suffer it to go on, but let us remember that, when it stops, it means not only the desirable step of putting an end to the alienation of Irish land to foreigners but it also means that some of the money coming in to correct the balance of payments stops with it.
There is undoubtedly a considerable volume of foreign money being invested in Irish industry. Within limits that is a good thing. I rejoice to see new industries started with foreign capital. But let us be on our guard, however, against an excessive alienation of existing Irish industry to foreign ownership. There has been a good deal of trouble in Canada about that, and a good deal of unnecessary and evil international misunderstanding consequent on that in Canada. I do not want to go into the politics of a neighbouring country, so old a friend of ours, but there is no doubt whatever that that issue of excessive foreign investment in Canada, if that adjective be appropriate to investment at all, has created an underswell throughout Canadian society that it has gone too far.
I want to say most emphatically on behalf of our Party that, in our judgment, no corresponding situation obtains here. I want to say most emphatically, and let it be as clear as crystal, that, so far as the establishment of new industry here is concerned, foreign capital is welcome. We have always emphatically differentiated between the entry of foreign capital for the purchase of agricultural land and the entry of foreign capital for the purpose of establishing industry that gives good employment at fair rates of wages. Bear this economic fact in mind, however, when we talk of the balance of payments, that for every £10,000,000 of foreign capital invested here there will be an annual charge of approximately £700,000 on our balance of payments. Now we should want it that way because that is the hallmark of success. We want foreign investment in this country to be profitable. We want it to draw other entrepreneurs following in the footsteps of the pioneer, but we should not, when we see the balance of payments today apparently immune to the usual consequences of an adverse trade balance, forget that for each £10,000,000 invested there is a charge in perpetuity thereafter, so long as the industry thrives and prospers in the profits that must go out. In so far as these industries build up exports we can carry that cheerfully. In so far as other activities generate increased exports we can carry the financing of these problems, but we have got to remember that they are a charge which must come.
Now there is another very substantial contribution to the balance of payments at the present time. That is the remittances of the 300,000 emigrants we have sent out of this country in the past six years. But do not forget there is a tendency for those to dry up too. One thing we must remember —it is the least attractive—is the impact of the growing unemployment in Great Britain, where most of those emigrants are. There is also the traditional experience of all of us that, as boys and girls continue to live in Great Britain or America, they marry and settle down; the tendency then to send money home gradually declines. That is another source of income for the relief of our balance of payments which tends to diminish. We are, there fore, faced with a situation at the present time far different from that described by the Taoiseach when he spoke in December and told us that it is not a matter for great concern; that our economy is in a healthy state and everything is going as he would expect it.
All of us here want to see industrial expansion continue. There are some people who will say at once that you must not then say one word of criticism of the economic state of the country. That is all ballyhoo. People who contemplate establishing industry here, or investing money here, are not going to be affected by any self-generated euphoria that we create in Dáil Éireann. They are going to look at the facts and if we do not look at the facts with the same detachment and objectivity as they do, we are only deceiving ourselves—we are not deceiving them. They are going to look at the stability of this country.
I hope Deputy Corish will not object if I say that when he and I visited Europe together, one of the outstanding facts to which our attention was directed was the importance in Ireland of the availability of labour. I ask Deputy Corish to listen to this so that he may correct me if I misquote our common experience. The German industrialists and German economists attached great importance to Deputy Corish's statement, which he was peculiarly equipped to make, that there were good industrial relations in this country, a vigorous trade union movement in which the working people had confidence, and that there were satisfactory relations with employers, and reasonable settlements by negotiations on wage rates were established within a disciplined trade union movement which provided the very kind of stability which those who contemplated setting up industry set special value on in Ireland.
To my mind, to put all that in peril and to tear down the whole superstructure of confidence that has been built up pretty painfully from—I like to think—1948 onwards when Labour took its part in the government of this country and discovered there was a basis of mutual co-operation with others who did not belong to the Labour movement would be a catastrophe. Out of that has grown a growing sense of the significance and importance of the labour movement not only in the day-to-day negotiations on wage rates in the various industries but in the national and economic polity. If all that is to be blown away by the demarche which is adumbrated in the White Paper, the whole basis of confidence and stability, which I think Deputy Corish will agree constituted an added attraction to foreign capital, can be shattered overnight and it may take years to re-establish it.
You can plaster over the cracks; you can repair the individual mistake; but I venture to swear that for years hence there will be people who will recall the issue of the White Paper and what would have happened, and what it would have contained, if Fianna Fáil had 74 Deputies instead of 70. In so far as this Government have done that, they have done a great disservice to the country. Though I wish Fianna Fáil ill and would be glad to see the last of them, the plain fact is that they are still a great political Party in this country and at present constitute the Irish Government, and in those circumstances I would have infinitely preferred the political kudos of approaching this matter prudently and effectively and saying: "There is a problem; will you sit down with us, Labour, Opposition and all, and see if we can find any common recommendation couched in terms that will carry full understanding to all our people of what we are about, that we simply want to prevent economic danger growing into serious economic debacle?"
I know that we are going to have to face formidable difficulties. The news of the expedition by EFTA of their programme of tariff reductions, coupled with the corresponding movement within the EEC, in which there is now developing a race to see who will be first to eliminate tariffs and quotas from their economic setup, is going to create problems for this country more especially in our present situation in which we belong to neither, but they are not incapable of resolution. But if ever there was a time when stability, when good industrial relations, when mutual confidence were vital to the survival of industry, surely the time is now. I ask the Government how far do they think the White Paper and the circumstances of this issue have contributed to the confidence which I think all of us would agree is a vital sine qua non for the economic survival of this country.
Deputies will have noted that the terms of this our motion go further than the express and specific matter of this White Paper. All this constitutes part of a general picture which I am sorry to say I am coming to believe is part of the Government's reaction to a gamble that did not come off. I think the Taoiseach, not without difficulty, forced his Government to stake their all on the success of the present negotiations in the EEC. I believe the present Minister for External Affairs has been put in cold storage and is virtually now frozen stiff.
