It is with a great deal of regret I ask the House to bear with me for a while here tonight while I explain the position in my constituency in connection with employment. I know it has been a long day here and it is a strain on many people, both officials and Deputies, to have the time prolonged by reason of a discussion on the Adjournment. I would not have raised this matter, were it not for the fact that many families in my county are in a very serious position through lack of employment.
The question which you, Sir, have given me permission to raise is connected with the grave unemployment and serious hardship caused to many families by the closing down of quarries and the use of up-to-date machinery on road works by the Roscommon County Council and the urgent necessity for providing alternative employment for those workers and small farmers who are being deprived of what hitherto constituted a substantial part of their income.
An almost similar suggestion as contained in that statement was put to the Minister for Local Government here yesterday and the Minister's reply was to the effect that he had no responsibility and that he was referring the problem to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance. He went on to state that grants for the specific purpose of providing employment are dealt with by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and: "I am forwarding representations already made to me by the council in this matter to the Parliamentary Secretary for consideration."
I do not intend to go into the details of ministerial responsibility on this but there is no doubt that the man who is really responsible and who should be put in the dock is the Minister for Local Government. However, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance is here and there is such a thing as Cabinet responsibility. Therefore, what I would have liked to say to the Minister for Local Government I propose to say now to the representative of the Minister for Finance.
There is an air of gloom and depression in many houses in County Roscommon tonight. Hundreds of homes in that county will be without the normal Christmas fare, due to the fact that the breadwinners are out of work. Unless the Government are prepared to step in and help them, they will be out of work from now until perhaps next spring. That is a serious situation and one that deserves sympathetic consideration by the Government. It is not the responsibility of the Roscommon County Council, although last Monday that county council unanimously supported a resolution directing the county manager and the county surveyor to re-open quarries, which have recently been closed, in order to give some relief in the form of employment to the people who normally received work from the county council on quarries and road making. I do not know whether that direction from the county council will be obeyed because the county manager and the county engineer have stated they are only carrying out the policy of the Government as pronounced by the Minister for Local Government. The Minister for Local Government has washed his hands of the matter and the only hope at this stage is that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance will step in and offer some help.
Deputies from other parts of the country may say: Is it not putting the clock back to criticise the use of machinery and to re-open quarries which have been described as uneconomic, or is it not nonsensical for Deputy McQuillan or other people to suggest that workers should be looked after instead of letting machinery in? None of the workers in my constituency object to machinery or to efficiency in roadmaking but they do object, and rightly so, to being displaced by machinery unless alternative employment is given to them. My view is—and it is supported by members of the Fianna Fáil Party in the county council as well as other members—that wherever mechanisation or modern techniques are being used for whatever purpose it may be and labour is displaced, alternative employment should be given to such displaced labour. That is not unreasonable.
When the question of the Common Market and of modernisation of industry was raised, we in the Opposition pressed on the Government the necessity for adaptation grants so that the workers who might be displaced as a result of automation would be given alternative employment so that hardship would be kept away from their families' doors. Why is it right to look after redundant workers in industry and wrong to look after redundant workers in the rural areas who are employed by local authorities? Why should not the same treatment be given to both sections of the community or is it another example of looking at rural Ireland through the Dublin "specs"?
Last Monday at a meeting of the county council a deputation was received from workers who have been working in a local quarry, the Garvinstown quarry. Twenty-three men who were working in that quarry were laid off. All of those men have families. Some of the 23 are small farmers with a valuation between £5 and £8 and the remainder of them are cottiers living in county council cottages with a half-acre plot and depending on the county council for work. They have not even got stamp money now. What are they to do for Christmas? Is it not in order to suggest that the quarry should be kept open and work given to as many of these men as possible—and they are willing to work hard—until such time as alternative employment is found for them? The same situation applies in Frenchpark, Gortagarry and several other areas of the county.
I shall not bore the House with details of each, but I can here give an example in regard to machinery. A stretch of road last year employed 30 men when it was being edged. They worked it with shovels and got employment for a limited period. Deputies may say this was a poor way of doing the job, but I would ask them to cast their minds back to the not too distant past when they could have seen on any road in the country gangs of men with hammers sitting on sacks on top of heaps of stones breaking them by hand for roadworks.
As I have said, on this stretch of road, these men got work for a limited period each year. What has happened this year? One machine and four men are taking the place of the 30 men employed heretofore. The 26 men thus disemployed are looking on, drawing unemployment assistance. All have wives and families. There is no alternative work for them. Will any Deputy tell me it is a fair or sound economic policy to save money by the introduction of machinery and allow all these men to go idle?
I want to make it clear that these men are most reasonable—too reasonable from my point of view, too cowed altogether. They are prepared to say: "We do not mind about the machinery; all we want is work." I ask the Government: why not make work available for these men? It is no use expecting the local authority, with limited funds, to do it. With the single exception of Mayo, County Roscommon has the highest rate for road expenditure in the country, a rate of 15s. in the £. On the average, many counties are 3s. in the £ lower. In Roscommon, where we have so many small farmers, the income from the land is only £8 18s. per acre. In Munster, it is £12 14s. and in Leinster, £11 4s. We have no industries worth talking about in Roscommon. The percentage of the county's wealth from industry is only 13 per cent. In Munster, it is 26 and in Leinster, 34.
From these figures, anybody can see the disadvantage Roscommon suffers by comparison with other areas in the matter of openings for industrial employment. In the past 20 years, 20,000 people have left that county, a rate of 1,000 people each year. And now we bring in machinery overnight; we close down the quarries in the name of modernisation; and we drive out many more of our people. Is that sound economics?
I should say here that I have never looked on road work as productive. I am not suggesting that for all time we should have our men engaged working on the roads, that forever the quarries there should be kept open. What I am suggesting is that we make the change over as easy as possible for those people so that it will not mean immediate disemployment for many of them and consequent immediate hardship for their wives and families. Even if we adopt modern methods, we must ensure that the welfare of the workers and their families is protected. The Minister must produce alternative schemes to absorb the labour there. Until he does so, the county council must be given authority to keep the men at work in the way they have been doing over the years.
We have the hope there that in the future vegetable growing for the Sugar Company, with allied employment, will benefit many people. That, however, will be limited to certain areas and will not arise for some time. Meanwhile, we are losing our people. That is why I now urge on the Parliamentary Secretary to prevail on the appropriate Minister to make funds available to the local authority there to have work carried out on roads that have not been touched for years, and which need repair — cul-de-sac roads and other small roads. There are many of them throughout the county and if funds were made available for this work, it would solve the employment problem over the winter.
In addition, the Parliamentary Secretary might convey to his Minister the desirability of restoring the grants under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. That, in Roscommon, would be of tremendous help to many people. Apart from its benefits by way of making the land more productive, it would give employment to many people who are now only waiting to leave the country. I wish some members of the Government would take a trip down to some of the villages in Roscommon, which Deputy Lenihan, the Parliamentary Secretary, and others know about, to see the conditions there, to see how the people there are expected to live during the winter months, to hear the woman with five or six children being told: "Your husband's stamp money is gone; you are now on the dole until spring when the council will be able to help out again."
What logic is there in building labourers' cottages for people who will be unable to pay the rent because no work is being provided for them? I was very glad of the opportunity to raise this matter because even though the Minister for Local Government, who should be present, has evaded his responsibility, I know the Parliamentary Secretary is a man with the energy and the drive necessary. He is also a man who knows and likes rural Ireland. I hope that in his reply he will give some indication of how work will be made available for the people to whom I refer.
