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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 16 Dec 1964

Vol. 213 No. 8

Adjournment of the Dáil. - Debate on Government Policy.

I move:

That the Dáil on its rising today do adjourn until 3 p.m. on February 10th, 1965.

I do not know whether the Opposition Parties want this final debate of the year to be just another Party wrangle or a serious discussion of public affairs. My personal disposition on these occasions is to try to deal seriously with serious matters and perhaps it is as well that I should, in the present mood of the Opposition Parties, try to set them a good example in that respect. I certainly do not want to give these people who write the leading articles in the Irish Times the opportunity for another lecture on the shortcomings of Irish politicians.

I think it would be appropriate that I should give on this occasion in broad outline the information that is available as to the outturn of the country's economic effort during the present year, 1964, and perhaps attempt a forecast as to how 1965 may be expected to go. I am glad to be able to report to the Dáil that most of the available statistics and estimates present a fairly favourable picture. So far as the Government are concerned we can face the end of the year in the knowledge that notwithstanding many difficulties, some of which were foreseen and some of which were unforeseen, our economic development plans worked out much as we had forecast. The economic programme continued during the year at a satisfactory pace and the outturn of the year will almost certainly show that a growth rate of between 4 per cent and 4½ per cent has been realised, as was foreshadowed in the Government's Second Programme for Economic Expansion. Both agriculture and industry as well as the services sector have contributed to this progress.

Industrial progress has been running at a level well above that achieved in 1963 which was substantially higher than that of 1962, although so far as this year is concerned precise figures are as yet available only for the first half of the year. In the first quarter of this year industrial output was up by 12.7 per cent above the production in the corresponding quarter of 1963. In the second quarter it was up by 13.8 per cent and there is no reason to expect that later figures for the remaining quarters, when they become available, will show any significant variation. The available figures show that employment in manufacturing industries was up by 4.3 per cent; that earnings by workers employed in manufacturing industries increased by 14.8 per cent and that productivity, that is to say, the average output per worker employed, had improved by 9.6 per cent.

Productivity always tends to improve when output is increasing but the improvement recorded this year in this respect is greater than I think we would have dared to forecast at the beginning of the year. It will be noted, however, that there is still a substantial gap between the rise in productivity and the increase in earnings.

The volume of output of the building and construction industries was up on the first half of 1964 by 21½ per cent. This figure may, however, exaggerate the overall rate of expansion. In the early part of 1963 output had been restricted by bad weather while conditions in the early months of 1964 were unusually favourable. In the second half of the year, building output was, of course, affected by trade disputes in the Dublin area but full working is now possible again.

In agriculture, the improvement in farmers' incomes, which is the main purpose of the Government's agricultural policy, was greatly assisted by the rise in the export prices of some agricultural products, particularly livestock.

Hear, hear.

It is now estimated that aggregate farm income for 1964 was £15 million above that of 1963, due to a ten per cent rise in prices and a two per cent rise in output. Between November 1963 and August 1964, the prices realised for farm products both on external and home markets—the agricultural price index —increased by 12 per cent.

Consumer prices rose by 6½ per cent in 1964 as compared with 1963. This was partly attributable to the turnover tax which came into operation in November 1963, partly to the effect of higher wages on prices, and partly to the effect of higher prices for farm products, notably potatoes, which are now in quite short supply, and to a 2 per cent increase in the prices of imported goods. The achievement of a greater degree of price stability in so far as this can be secured by our own internal arrangements is becoming an increasingly important objective of Government policy because of its economic and social importance.

The number of new jobs in non-agricultural occupations increased in this year by between 10,000 and 12,000. There was a continuation in the fall in agricultural employment and the net gain in employment during the year was somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 new jobs. While the movement is in the right direction, the annual increase in the number of jobs is still inadequate to meet our objective of full employment. The continued expansion of employment opportunities remains the main purpose of Government policy in all spheres.

Some increase in emigration and unemployment in the second half of last year was due, to a large extent, to industrial disputes. Unemployment, both in actual numbers and expressed as a percentage of our labour force, remained below last year's level for the first eight months of the year. Allowing for seasonal fluctuations, further improvement, when the effects of these industrial disputes have worn off, may be likely as last week's figures appear to indicate.

Total national income at current prices increased in 1964 over 1963 by between £70 million and £80 million or by about 12 per cent. Personal expenditure on consumption rose by about 10 per cent of which about 3½ per cent is attributable to the increased volume of consumption. Shopkeepers do not appear to have any cause for dissatisfaction in this respect notwithstanding the anxiety expressed on their behalf when the turnover tax was introduced.

There was a considerable increase in public investment in agriculture and industry, schools, hospitals and housing and other productive authorities. Public investment in 1964 was the highest ever attempted. Private investment also increased. There was a marked increase in personal savings. In these respects the national economy is now set on a firm foundation which should facilitate all our plans for future economic growth.

It is now estimated that the deficit in the balance of external payments for 1964 will be something in the region of £30 million, somewhere between £28 million and £32 million. On the other hand, the net external assets of the banking system and departmental funds were £9 million higher in October this year as compared with a year ago. While there is cause for concern that the deficit in external payments was higher in 1964 than was envisaged in the Government's Second Programme for Economic Expansion—and subject to the effect of the Buy Irish campaign, may remain at the same level in 1965—it does not yet call for any special action. It emphasises, however, the significance of buying Irish as a contribution to the country's progress and stability.

While the year left many problems still unsolved, as nobody knows better than we do, the rate of economic progress which has been recorded must be regarded as satisfactory by comparison with the experience of other countries and by comparison with our own experience prior to the inauguration of the Government's first Programme for Economic Expansion. It is in sharp contrast to the position under the Coalition Government when employment, production and national income were falling, when the balance of payments situation forced the Government to take drastic emergency measures, when emigration and unemployment figures were soaring to the highest ever recorded and when the country was on the brink of total economic collapse.

Because of the success of the Government's development measures there may now be a tendency among some sections of the community to take continued progress for granted, to forget that it could all be easily reversed again and that we could lose the benefits already gained. This seems to me to be the main political hazard which faces the Government, this assumption that progress will go on regardless and that the part the Government must play in maintaining it may be overlooked. I am prepared to give a pledge, in which I am sure all the members of the Government will join, and all the members of the Government Party, that I will work every waking minute of my life, that I will devote whatever energies and abilities I have to make sure that the conditions of 1956 will not be permitted to reappear and that Fine Gael will never get the chance of messing things up again.

I turn now to the prospects for 1965. There are some clear danger signals. We cannot yet estimate completely what the effect of the British 15 per cent surcharge will be on Irish industrial growth. Despite the measures which have been taken, and which I announced in the Dáil some time ago, this surcharge may have some retarding effect upon the expansion of our industrial exports although the previous anxieties which were expressed on this account are now greatly reduced. There is also, of course, the continuing effect upon production costs and prices of higher wages and incomes to the extent that they have not yet been overtaken by higher productivity. The steady and deliberate manner in which most Irish industrialists faced the imposition of the British surcharge was, I think, truly remarkable and is in itself a reflection of the importance to the nation of the strengthening of national morale in recent years and of growing confidence in our capacity to cope with unexpected difficulties.

We have been having discussions with industrialists in recent weeks. These discussions reveal a degree of optimism that there will be no falling off of industrial output during the coming year. It is now possible, on the strength of a recent detailed examination of the situation, in conjunction with industrialists, to assert with some confidence that there will be no falling off. Present anticipations of our industrial leaders point to a further rise of about 10 per cent or 11 per cent in the volume of industrial production in 1965. Notwithstanding the British surcharge and the problems created by it, our industrialists are planning for a further increase of about ten per cent in the volume of their exports next year.

It is now generally believed that exports to Britain can be maintained unchanged, although this will require the fullest co-operation of all concerned in keeping production costs down and assumes no further deterioration in the British economic situation. It is believed that exports to other destinations can be increased, and the effort to bring this about is being made on a wide front. It is noteworthy also that there has been no falling off in the number of new industrial projects coming forward but this movement assumes, no doubt, the bona fides of the British Government's assurance as to the very temporary nature of the surcharge.

The effect on industrial production costs of the ninth round wage increases is still being experienced. Although the increase in productivity, which was achieved in 1964, was striking, it was not sufficient in all cases, to offset the effect of higher wages on production costs and consequently on prices. Our trade and shipping statistics suggest that export prices for industrial products have not been raised and that the burden of increased wages, to the extent that it has not been offset by higher productivity, has been carried, to some extent, on home market prices, notwithstanding the pressure of the Minister for Industry and Commerce to curb this tendency. No early changes are expected in external market conditions as affecting agricultural exports.

There will be a great deal of discussion during next year in the GATT and elsewhere about agricultural markets and marketing arrangements but changes within the year are not probable. All the indications are, however, that the present prices for stock are likely to hold for some time. The OECD, in a recent report, forecast a continuing expansion in world trade in the coming year. Altogether external conditions seem likely to be favourable to our continued economic expansion here in line with the targets set in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion.

The volume of work in prospect in building and construction appears to be well ahead of the present productive capacity of the industry. This is a situation to which increasing attention must be given. Our development plans depend in a large measure on widening many bottlenecks in this industry which might operate to delay progress in other fields.

The upward pressure on prices during this present year, due largely, although not by any means entirely, to higher wages, has made it clear that until national income and productivity have both risen substantially above present levels any further inflation in costs, for this reason, could be disastrous. I use that word very deliberately. I do not think it represents any kind of exaggeration. The estimated increases in industrial output and industrial employment in the coming year, which I have given to the Dáil, are based upon the expectation that there will be no additional difficulty on this account.

The National Wage Agreement of January, 1964 provides for a further meeting between employers and workers' leaders to consider the position and negotiate a new agreement in 1966. If all goes according to our present plans we will, by then, have recorded a further growth in national income and the improvement of productivity should have, at least, matched the wage increases of the ninth round. The possibility of a further increase which, in my judgment, should, preferably, be, in future, on an annual basis, will then be open for consideration. This method of dealing with wage adjustment problems is still experimental. It would have been optimistic to have expected it to work without difficulties at the start. We are, I am sure, all fairly interested in what is happening in other countries in the same sphere.

I believe most Irish workers are attracted by the concept of an incomes policy and realise its potential benefits to them. The effort to achieve it will break down if undue or unrealisable expectations are allowed to be built up. I think everybody feels that there has been insufficient attention given to it and insufficient understanding of all that is involved in this matter. It is in the interests of both sides in industry, and certainly of the country's economic progress, to make two things clear. The first is that the intention to bring about periodic increases in wage and salary rates in real terms, and in line with the possibility created by the country's economic progress, is now a generally accepted policy and will be implemented. The second is that any attempt to move earnings and incomes ahead faster than this can only have the effect of forcing up prices which can react fairly heavily on employment as well as on the cost of living. This lesson has been demonstrated by our recent experience. It would, I think, be unsafe to assume that on that account it has yet been fully learned.

So far as Government expenditure is concerned, this year's Budget looks like being seriously upset by the unexpected cost of status increases to many grades of public employees arising from Arbitration Tribunal awards, by the higher than estimated cost of the calved-heifer subsidy scheme, and by some other factors. A deficit in the Budget, although of a size which cannot yet be estimated, seems likely to emerge. If further increases in taxation next year are to be avoided, as would certainly be desirable, this can only be done on the basis of avoiding any further major increases in expenditure and perhaps even by cutting down some present expenditures, although the scope for this is clearly very limited.

I know that this will not stop some Deputies from proposing to the Dáil very costly schemes, or supporting impractical demands put forward by special interests in the country, but I must make it clear now that the Government cannot contemplate any major increases in expenditure in the coming year and that some developments, which it would be the desire of the Government to undertake as soon as possible, may have to be put back to a later year. If we can avoid further increases in internal costs, either by reason of higher taxation or wage increases, we can, without doubt, maintain the four per cent to four and a half per cent increase in national output in 1965. This steady progress in contrast with the "Stop-Go" methods which have been criticised in Britain, is realisable if all who have functions of decision in these matters co-operate in maintaining it. Because of our growing dependence on export trade in maintaining the present higher level of economic activity, world events which affect our trade prospects are a constant concern to us.

The impact of economic difficulties in any one major trading country is felt beyond its own borders. The change in our situation is strikingly demonstrated by the fact that in 1964 our total exports were running no less than 100 per cent higher than the average for the years 1954-1956. The greater the extent to which Irish prosperity and economic growth depend on maintaining and expanding exports the greater the significance for us of developments which may affect the volume of international trade. It seems very probable that there will be important developments in the international situation in 1965, and particularly in the European situation, some of which will have significance for this country in regard to our present trading arrangements and generally.

In our case, because so much of our exports are consigned to Britain, economic fluctuations there and developments in Britain's policy vis-á-vis Europe and the world, have a very definite and very speedy bearing on our own development prospects. If the reaction of Irish exporters to the British surcharge—their drive to seek alternative outlets for their goods—is sustained and successful it can produce permanent benefit for the country and greater immunity from adverse situations in Great Britain or from lack of confidence in the future of the British economy. Already measures taken by the British Government to deal with its economic and financial problems have forced up the Irish banks' lending rates. This is something which we did not desire and which does not help our plans, although it was a necessary measure of defence to prevent the flow of funds out of Ireland, which would have had far more serious consequences on our economic progress.

In a private enterprise economy, such as we have, and intend to maintain, the mainspring of progress is confidence, confidence in the continued growth of production, confidence in the basic soundness of Government policies, confidence in the stability of money values. Confidence is a state of mind which can be affected by a multitude of factors, and which everyone interested in the national welfare should try to sustain. The British surcharge and other British economic and financial measures, particularly those taken in defence of the exchange rate of sterling, have not produced any signs of a decline of confidence in the future of Ireland and, while some internal developments may have generated concern, there is a fair prospect now that this concern will be allayed. Destructive political agitation could bring about a decline of confidence.

Let me make it clear now that I do not expect anything from political Parties in opposition to the Government other than criticism of the Government. We do not ask them to stop criticising. We do not even expect them to be fair, or reasonable, or intelligent in their criticisms, but I do suggest that there is on them an obligation to conduct their political campaigns in a manner which will avoid doing damage to national interests and an obligation on their Party leaders to enforce some discipline in this regard upon their less responsible members.

We will have many important measures for the Dáil in the next year and I cannot promise Deputies any lessening of the volume of business coming to them. Probably the most important of the new measures in its long term social implications is the new Housing Bill, which has been introduced——

Late in the day you thought about it.

——and those measures which will be required to bring into operation a comprehensive manpower policy. Because of the recent by-election and the pending by-election, the political atmosphere will probably be slightly more controversial than it was and will presumably continue to be so as we move nearer to the general election. This is not an unhealthy situation or one which need cause any diminution in the volume of useful work done by the Dáil. For my part, I can see no evidence of any significant change of public opinion except that, because of the steady progress of the Government's economic plans and the far too ready assumption amongst many of our people that they will go ahead without difficulty, there is a tendency to ignore the major considerations of public policy and to concentrate discussion and complaint upon matters of lesser importance.

My confidence, however, in the future political stability of the country and in the continuity of the policies of the Government is based upon sound statistical calculations. I am well aware —I am sure all Deputies in the House with political experience are equally aware—that by-elections are an unreliable indication of movements of public opinion generally, but in all the by-elections to date to the present Dáil the percentage of the total aggregate first preference poll gained by Fianna Fáil candidates was higher than at the general election of 1961, both in the same constituencies and over the country as a whole. On this evidence I feel we could face another general election in the expectation of doing better now than we did in 1961.

I am well aware that the Government's working majority in the Dáil is small, although it is larger than it was immediately after the general election. In the incidence of a by-election to any Dáil, there is always an element of chance. Of the six vacancies in the present Dáil due to the deaths of members, five were on the Opposition side, which is unusual. In case Deputies opposite think that is a source of grievance to them, I should point out that in the previous Dáil the experience was the reverse, when there were eight by-elections of which only one was for a Fine Gael seat. It is I think a remarkable fact that our political experience shows that seats won at general elections by either of the two main Parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael—grouping Fine Gael with their satellite organisations—are not usually lost by them at by-elections. Outside Dublin it is a very long time since that happened.

A general election is not due until late in 1966. If a situation should arise in the Dáil, or in the country, which could slow, down or impede the Government's effectiveness in fulfilling their plans, or if some unforeseen circumstances should give rise to new and major issues of policy, an earlier election might be justified. There has been attributed to me by some political commentators in the newspapers a desire to bring this Dáil to the end of its full term in the interests of future political stability and to encourage future minority Governments in the belief that it can be done. I think I should make it clear that this desire is not by any means an over-riding one with me. In this matter, as in all others, our decision will be based upon a determination not to permit Government development policies to be frustrated, but rather to make sure they are maintained.

I think the main source of public confidence in the country's future is the reasonable certainty that there will never again be a Fine Gael Government. If Fine Gael want to know why I think that, I am certainly ready to tell them: because they are not working. They are relying unduly upon Deputy Dillon's verbosity, and Deputy Flanagan's ingenuity in thinking up new falsehoods. Those are no substitute for honest toil. I know they can criticise, sometimes effectively, but it is nearly always negative criticism and unconstructive. We know they can delay important legislation, but they are apparently unable to improve it. We know they can present themselves as an alternative Government, but not as a Party with an alternative policy. Indeed, their failure as a Government is outmatched by their failure as an Opposition. Therefore, I can on this occasion give the people of Ireland this comforting Christmas message: they can enjoy the rest of the holiday period in the understanding that the country's progress will go on, and that Fine Gael will never be able to stop it.

It comes well from the Taoiseach of a Government whose Minister for Justice is hanging around the back doors of Fine Gael asking for advice as to how the mistakes of the Taoiseach's son-in-law can be set right, to tell us we do not work hard, whereas his progeny excel in that regard. We are at present engaged in the unprofitable task of trying to restore to coherency the tatters of the Succession Bill introduced by the Taoiseach's son-in-law, then Minister for Justice, and inherited by the present Minister, who is running from one member of this Party to another, seeking advice and counsel on how to get out of the mess created by the Taoiseach's son-in-law——

Honest discussion with Deputy J.A. Costello.

——before he was promoted to the position of Minister for Agriculture. I am exasperated into that remonstrance by the insolence and impudence of the Taoiseach in his concluding observations. Mind you, urbane insolence can be even more unbecoming in the head of an Irish Government than momentary irritation which could be pleaded in excuse of unbecoming conduct in the person who occupies the position of head of the Irish Government. The unhealthy gyrations of the Taoiseach and his Ministers at every dinner, dog fight and jamboree to which they can scrounge invitations in search of personal publicity, are an indication of the disintegration of this Administration which is becoming manifest generally.

We have the Minister for External Affairs declaring policy at Dublin Airport in regard to the Irish attitude on the admission of Red China to the Security Council of the United Nations, because he is afraid to come into Dáil Éireann and make such declarations of policy where they could be debated and examined for the information of our people in the appropriate forum. We have the Taoiseach's speech today which purports to be fortified by unanswerable statistics, and yet he sinks to the depths of dishonesty by quoting export figures without any reference to the corresponding import figures, to which I shall have reason to advert later on in my observations. We have a programme for economic expansion which is supposed to be the blueprint of the Government's intentions, and yet it encompasses a scheme which has been described as the heifer scheme this year, and they are not able to go within £2 million of its cost in the first year of its currency.

Because of its success.

Success, my foot. It was formulated at night for the purchase of a single vote in this House. It was developed in the course of the next week, and we were told the Minister estimated that its cost in the first year would be £460,000. We are now informed by his successor that its estimated cost in the first year is £2,460,000. Then we are told we have a programme for economic expansion. If that is an expansion programme, I do not know the appropriate word with which to describe chaos. The truth is we have a gamblers' Government, staggering from day to day, serving the bills on the public when their bluff does not come off. I listened to the Taoiseach today making his spurious comparison between the position in which the country stands today and where it stood in 1957.

Has be forgotten the quarter of a million to 300,000 young people who have left this country since 1957? Have we reached the stage when we count everything in terms of pounds, shillings and pence? Have we reached the stage when we are prepared to sell our people and glory in what we get for them? Three hundred thousand young people have gone and the Taoiseach tells us here today that the contemplation of that diaspora is something in which he rejoices. These are the 300,000 whom he told that we had ready for them 100,000 jobs, but he did not add—in Birmingham, in Glasgow, in London. We are told we should rejoice that they are gone and that we have been getting the money back in growing volume. He does not tell us that while there are between 250,000 and 300,000 more of our young people employed in England, there are 70,000 fewer employed in Ireland; he does not tell us that after that army of young people has been swept from this country, there are 50,000 unemployed at home today.

The members of the Fianna Fáil Party rejoice in that achievement. I do not: I think it is nothing to boast of; I think it is much to be ashamed of. I know we left our successors in 1957 a rock-like financial basis on which to stand, with a favourable balance of payments for the first time, practically, since the State was founded of £12 million and that that was achieved without selling this country to foreigners—our land, our property, the control of the lives of our people.

He triumphs today in telling us that next year there is to be a great new departure in housing. He told us the volume of building had gone up by 20 per cent last year. There is building and building. I refer to his White Paper on housing, page 37 of the note, which reads:

The decline in the number of houses built in the later 1950's was largely influenced by the growing number of vacancies.

We had built more houses when we left office in 1957 than there were tenants to go into. We have 20 per cent more building today, yet we have families in Griffith Barracks tonight and they will be there for Christmas because they have no houses to go into, and here are we sitting in Leinster House and the Taoiseach wishing us a happy Christmas, telling us to go home in peace and content in the knowledge that we can all return to the enjoyment of our conditions in the spring. But there are families who will spend their Christmas in Griffith Barracks because we have nowhere else to put them: wives will see their husbands for a couple of hours a day and children will see their fathers whenever they are permitted to inspect them. If this House has not gone mad, we shall tell this Government they have lost all sense of proportion and at great cost to the nation to which we all belong.

We have all got a lecture today from the Taoiseach on the obligation to sound his praises lest the economic foundations of the State should shake. It is an occupational disease of the Leader of the Fianna Fáil Party to ask us to believe that the survival of the nation depends on them. I so well remember his predecessor proclaiming that if Fianna Fáil were defeated, Ireland was doomed and I so well remember replying in the streets of Carrickmacross: "Doomed be damned. They are defeated—they are going out". And out they went.

This country survives in spite of Fianna Fáil, not on account of them. But there does come a moment of truth when an obligation devolves on people in public life to put the people of the country in possession of the real facts. When the adverse trade balance of this country reaches £180 million, as it did in the 12 months ended on 30th September last, and when that is accompanied by the prospect of an adverse balance of payments of £30 million or more, we have reached a moment of truth of which our people are entitled to be warned.

Great Britain has been brought to unprecedented straits by the adverse balance of her trade and payments with which she has been confronted, and in spite of a seven per cent bank rate, despite the breach of her solemn agreements with this country and her EFTA partners, she has been forced to seek emergency financial aid from the central banks of Europe in the form of a loan of 3,000 million dollars. That assistance will have to be renewed for Great Britain at the end of six months. No one knows the conditions attached to the existing accommodation and no one knows what conditions will attach to whatever further financial aid Great Britain may require.

In 1957, this country had a favourable balance of payments of £12 million and our Legal Tender Note Fund was covered by assets, amounting to 100 per cent of the notes outstanding, in the form of gold, British Government securities, the currencies and securities of the Federal Government of the United States of America which had been accumulated by Deputy Sweetman during his term as Minister for Finance. Our Legal Tender Note Fund today is of quite another category. Five per cent of its cover is represented by our right to borrow under the Bretton Woods Agreement. Twenty-three per cent of it is represented by the balance in the general fund of the Central Bank. We have reference in what the Taoiseach describes as his Programme for Economic Expansion, to the probability of extensive foreign borrowing.

We have learned in recent weeks, or we should have learned, that a currency is no stronger than its backing or the confidence it commands abroad. In 1957 we were in a position to say to any speculators against the Irish currency that our 100 per cent backing constituted a guarantee that currency speculators would burn their fingers badly if they made the Irish currency the object of their operations. In 1964 we must face the fact that, if currency speculators can shake confidence in our currency, our ability to burn their fingers rests on our ability to borrow abroad.

I want to direct the attention of the House to these facts. The cost of living has gone up by 11 points, from 164 in November 1963 to 175 in 1964. I refer to the Statistical Abstract Table 338 which sets out that the consumer price index, to a base, in mid-August 1947, of 100, was 135 in mid-February 1957, when this Government took office. The corresponding figure for today is 175, a rise of 40 points. The cost of living has gone up in the last two years by 10¼ per cent. Those figures need to be borne in mind. It is hard to believe that the pound today is worth about 14/- of 1957 money. The adverse trade balance is £180 million. The Taoiseach himself has pointed out today that as our cost of production rises as a result of the rising cost of living our capacity to export suffers as our competitive capacity in industrial exports dwindles.

We have an estimated adverse trade balance of £30 million this year despite the vast sales that have taken place, not only in agricultural lands but in business establishments and property, to foreigners. How many people realise that in this city at the present time, of all the principal hotels only one remains in Irish ownership? All the others have been sold to foreign combines. How many people realise how many of the old established industries of Ireland have in the last two to three years been sold to foreign combines? I want to warn this House that when you have a steadily rising cost of living, when you have a steadily rising adverse trade balance, when you have a growing adverse balance of payments, even though you temporarily conceal it by the import of hot money and the sale of land and assets to foreigners for cash, those things together constitute the armament of the currency speculators.

This is something our people should wake up to. For seven centuries our people fought to establish the centre of authority and of Government policy making for this country in Oireachtas Éireann. There is now the gravest danger that seven years of Fianna Fáil will transfer that ultimate power to the Central Banks of Europe or the International Monetary Fund. Whether that power migrates from Oireachtas Éireann to Zurich or to Washington matters little once it has gone abroad. It is time our people were told that if the present policies continue to promote an adverse balance of trade on the lines at present obtaining to raise the cost of living and production in this country, progressively to cripple our capacity to compete in foreign markets, sooner or later that ultimate power of Government will go abroad.

Let no one deceive himself that the discrepancy between the adverse balance of trade of £180 million and the adverse balance of payments of £30 million is reassuring, because, as we sell not only our lands but our businesses and industry as well, to foreign ownership there is an accumulating charge on our balance of payments which is a permanent and enduring charge. Let us not forget that for every £10 million invested in this country by foreigners in the purchase of existing businesses, or trade or industries, there is an enduring charge of £700,000 on our balance of payments which must ultimately be met. Unless we have a competitive export capacity to earn it, our servitude to those who have bought us becomes progressively greater every year.

The 15 per cent levy the Taoiseach speaks of on industrial exports to Great Britain operates simply to transfer to our balance of payments that fraction of Great Britain's adverse balance of payments with a corresponding increase in the burden of our own adverse balance. I do not believe that 15 per cent will long apply. I believe that its adverse impact owing to the strictly limited period of its probable existence can easily be met out of the substantially high fiduciary export inducements we already provide for firms engaged in the export trade and by whatever other Government measures as may be necessary to tide them over the strictly limited period in which this levy will operate.

We may console ourselves with the variety of euphemisms and statistics produced by the Taoiseach, but the stark fact remains that our land is passing into foreign ownership. A growing volume of our industrial enterprise, including the hotels and urban property, is passing into foreign ownership and all this in exchange for the cash we need to set off the otherwise appalling adverse balance of payments in which our trading situation would involve us. How much hot money has come in here in recent years it is impossible to tell. But the danger of the present situation is formidable, and looming on the horizon is the possible spectre of the devaluation of our currency.

It is right that people should be told now that any facile illusion that devaluation can permanently resolve our problem is a wicked delusion, because its only end would be to batter down the standards of living of our people. It is the certain instrument for ensuring that the poor grow poorer while the rich grow richer. While I think of the countless silent thousands of our people who are at present living in this country on fixed incomes and who are slowly being pushed over the Rubicon of extreme poverty, in silence, because the rise in the cost of living creeps relentlessly up while their incomes remain static, it fills me with horror and dismay when I hear the Taoiseach today or look at pictures of himself and his colleagues at their dances and dinners, rejoicing in the affluence which they claim abounds amongst their neighbours.

I want to say a word about the volume of legislation this House has been dealing with. This House has dealt with any legislation the Government have been prepared to bring before it but it has not failed to discharge its duty and no threats from the Taoiseach and no insolence on the Taoiseach's part will deter us from continuing to discharge that duty.

We contested the passage of the Land Bill which was disposed of yesterday in this House because it enshrines a damnable principle at the instance of the Minister for Lands which we will resist consistently and which at the earliest opportunity we shall repeal. The Land Bill brought back to the minds and memories of us all the horrible spectre of the evicted tenant, the horrible picture of the interested party who could point his finger at his neighbour's land and call for its inspection in order to initiate the process of evicting its owner. The whole purpose of the Land War and the driving of the landlord from this country——

Do not fight the Land War all over again on the floor of the House.

So long as we need to fight it, whether it be against landlord, grabbers or bailiff's son, let the Deputy have no doubt that we shall continue to fight it as long as it needs to be fought. I am sorry to say that the fact is that so long as Fianna Fáil are in this country the need will constantly recur——

Deputies

Hear, hear.

Fortunately, the people know that there is an alternative, to which they are progressively turning, despite the Taoiseach's dismal whistling in the dark as he passed the graveyards of Roscommon and East Galway. I repeat that the whole purpose of the Land War was to drive from this country the landlords, because they claimed the right arbitrarily, to point the finger at their neighbour to evict him from his holding. We believed we had effectively dealt with the situation so that no interested party would ever claim that right again in Ireland. This Land Bill gives to the political head of the Department of Lands the power to set in motion the whole nightmare of possible eviction in every rural home in Ireland. We shall not rest until the ghosts that that detestable provision has raised are laid again, whatever the cost and however long it takes.

I could say much more, Sir, on this subject and I might be tempted to say things which might sound harsh. Perhaps I have said enough today and yesterday on that topic——

Hear, hear.

It is not something which I would expect the Taoiseach to understand much about.

The Deputy is not trying to promote understanding.

You lack a lot of it.

If the Taoiseach wishes to provoke me, I can tell him——

Bring in the battering ram.

It would be well if the Members would give the Deputy an opportunity to speak.

I suppose the Chair's rebuke is addressed to the Taoiseach?

Acting Chairman

To the House.

Well, it ought to be.

Leave him alone.

He is not the House. He is only one half of it.

Half of it: that is right.

Less than half of it.

Leave him alone.

Acting Chairman

I would ask the Members to please observe the laws of order of the House.

It is grotesque to look over here and to ask us to do so, after the Taoiseach interrupted my discourse.

It is true.

We should all like an impartial Chairman, anyway.

Leave him alone. The Taoiseach is not a person who fully understands the problems involved in the land code. He cheerfully taunts me with my excessive solicitude in that regard. All I can tell him is that if I were to dwell unduly on those who, from his ranks, have sponsored this legislation—when I hear the Minister for Lands and Deputy Corry lecturing us on eviction—the Taoiseach might well reflect as to whether he has chosen wisely the sponsors for his land legislation.

I have already referred to the grotesque appearance of this demoralised Government presenting their Succession Bill to this House and now retreating after its exposure for what it is—a thing of rags and tatters which cannot be repaired. I look at the Government here today that have lost one Minister who openly proclaimed his utter lack of confidence, through experience of the Government to which he belonged, in their capacity to reach decisions at all and so he skipped overboard while the going was good because he said that he could no longer in conscience belong to that Government.

We have another member of the Government who is parading around the country glorying in the Government's ability to use their new-forged weapons to increase the tax burden on our people. We have another Minister, sitting now with the Taoiseach in the front bench, who openly dissents in his opinions regarding trade unions from the declared policy of his own Leader, so much so that on being challenged by members of the Labour Party, the Taoiseach was in the embarrassing situation of having to say that he felt it was no longer necessary for him to protest his innocence on some declarations of his own colleague.

This is a gambler Government, led by a gambler whose bluff has been called by the march of events, who stands paralysed with his busted flush, waiting for the people to pay the debts he has incurred. This is a Government more savagely repudiated by the electorate than any Government I can remember in my 30 years in this House, whistle as the Taoiseach may as he passes the graveyard and speculate as he may on the possibility of calling an election. Has he forgotten his constitutional prerogatives? I have heard him defend them very energetically in the Council of State as his undoubted prerogatives. As long as he commands a majority in this House, he can ask the President for the dissolution of the House and get it. If he doubts the verdict of the by-elections he has contested, why does he not make the test? He has the right. He said before East Galway that on that result depended the question of whether the Government would suffer a devastating blow or not. They have got the blow. What is keeping him?

I suggest that our situation now is that the ship of State has got a demoralised crew and a captain who does not know where he is going and is steering around in circles hoping for something to turn up. It is certainly true that in the course of the next year or two new international agreements will require to be formulated, economic plans will need revision, not only for today or tomorrow, but for the years that lie ahead. I suggest to this House that the company which now sits on the Government benches are no longer fit for these great responsibilities. They should not stand upon the order of their going, but they should go quickly and make room for others who are prepared to accept the requisite responsibility and to discharge their duty.

I think the Taoiseach sought to annoy today when he was insolent about the principal Opposition Party. I do not propose to be annoyed but I do not think I can be blamed if when the Taoiseach makes these taunts, I charitably remind him it was this Party that established the institutions, in the teeth of his opposition, which make it possible for him to occupy the position he now occupies.

We are back to the Civil War.

These matters require stating.

It is very necessary to remind the Taoiseach. It was this Party built up every institution of liberty we now enjoy. It was Fianna Fáil who put "Republican Party" in brackets at the head of their notepaper but it was this Party which declared the Republic.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

It was this Party which made that part of the Agreement with Great Britain that has stuck and which enables the Taoiseach to say today that the increase in our livestock exports, both in price and volume, has mightily contributed to averting the economic collapse which its absence would have involved. It was this Party which first established the normal healthy swing of the pendulum which permitted one Party to succeed another as the people's confidence waxed and waned. If we have settled institutions in Ireland today, the Taoiseach should hang his head in shame when he claims for himself any more, benefits he enjoys under them. It was this Party which always bore the heat and burden of the day and which will probably be called upon to do it again. When we are, we will be there and whatever needs to be done will be done and the country will carry on long after Fianna Fáil are forgotten just as it carried on before their name was ever heard. The country is not dependent on the Fianna Fáil Party or on the Fianna Fáil Leader. This country will have men to serve it when the Fianna Fáil Party and its Leader are in the oblivion they now deserve. So far as we are concerned, the sooner the Taoiseach puts that issue to the test the better pleased we will be. I invite him, if he is shaky, or if he has any apprehension about this country's capacity to survive his political obliteration, to put the issue to the test and if, as I believe they will, the people dismiss him, he can rest assured that the settled institutions which we established will carry on, not for our Party but for our common country.

The Taoiseach today put on himself a rather too ambitious task. It would have been preferable if his speech, which he confined to 40 minutes, had been devoted to particular aspects of the economy. I do not think he did himself a service, nor did he do his duty to this House, in what I regard as a very sketchy picture of the economy as it has been in 1964 and what he expects it will be in 1965. I must confess what I had to confess last year after hearing the Taoiseach's adjournment speech, that he seemed to blow hot and cold: he was optimistic in one part, inclined to be pessimistic in another, and cautious in yet another.

He spoke about imbuing confidence in the country but I do not think the speech he delivered this morning was calculated to imbue the country with the confidence he hoped it might because in his 40-minute speech he attempted to treat of all aspects of the economy and did it in a very sketchy fashion indeed. For that reason I want to confine my remarks to three or four aspects of the economy which I believe to be important. As far as the general economy is concerned, I believe we should make our speeches on such occasions as the Vote on Account or the Budget. I mention the things I want to deal with this morning because I believe they are of vital importance to big sections of this community.

We have been taunted here from time to time by the Minister for Finance and some other Ministers that the Labour Party always want to make social welfare the plank of their platform. There was a notable absence from the Taoiseach's speech of any mention of social welfare. Does the Minister for Social Welfare ever raise the matter of his Department in the Cabinet? I wonder if the Taoiseach is aware of the poverty that exists in the country among a certain section? It is true that the bulk of the information the Taoiseach gave us this morning is correct, in which he tried to indicate that we have had a year of prosperity and may look forward to another.

As far as prosperity is concerned, it is no consolation to the people affected to be told we have overall prosperity unless that prosperity is distributed equitably to certain deserving sections of the community. That is a task primarily for the Minister for Social Welfare and his colleagues in the Government, particularly the Minister for Finance. I believe the Minister for Social Welfare has fallen down on the job as far as his Department is concerned. The country may be deemed to be prosperous, but in my opinion it is not totally prosperous so long as we have sections and individuals who are in need or in utter want.

Recently in this House we discussed a motion which asked the Minister for Social Welfare to carry out a review of social welfare payments related to the cost of living and asking him to make the necessary adjustments. During that debate I never saw a more complacent or smug Minister. He trotted out the record. He boasted about the regular increases that had been given by this Government since they resumed office in 1957. It is a reasonable boast that increase have been given regularly, but there are other factors he ignored —whether deliberately or otherwise I do not know.

What we have to realise, and what the Taoiseach has to realise, is that extreme hardship is being suffered by tens of thousands of people. I do not know whether the Taoiseach knows it or not. For example, there are people who, by reason of a deficiency in their insurance record, are dependent on being assisted by local authorities. In this matter the Government are not entirely responsible, but their not being responsible does not necessarily mean they should not take an interest. Is the Taoiseach shocked when I tell him that a single person not entitled to social welfare benefit receives something like 15/- or £1 per week from a local authority? That is a scandalous state of affairs and something should be done about it. The initial and legal responsibility is on the local authorities, but they do not seem to have any sense of moral responsibility in this matter. The Taoiseach should ask the Minister for Social Welfare to inquire about these things and put a firm obligation on local authorities to do something or, failing that, that the Government would do it themselves.

All of us who are public representatives, especially those who have not the cares of Ministerial office, who meet our own constituents and other people throughout the country, have a full appreciation of what this poverty means to individuals and sections. I am tired of the monotonous boasts of the Fianna Fáil Party and their Ministers about the progress and improvements since 1957 when I think of these hundreds of thousands of people who have not shared in these improvements the Government spokesmen so often boast about. I am sure these people must hear with a certain amount of cynicism these boasts about greater production, a general improvement in our living standards, the increase in our national income, the increase in our exports and the many new factories we are told have been established since Fianna Fáil came back in 1957. If these boasts are true, these people have not benefited. If it is true the country is more prosperous, it is also true these people are less prosperous, and I will go on to show it.

From time to time here we pass legislation relating to, or speak about this section or that section. In many cases we are talking about 10,000 people or in some cases, when we talk about judges for example, we are talking about maybe 60 people. The reason I am talking about social welfare this morning is that nearly half a million people are involved. I do not suggest they are all absolutely poverty-stricken, but I am suggesting that approximately 300,000 people dependent on social welfare benefit are certainly in a very bad way indeed as far as their standard of living and weekly income are concerned. They have not been compensated for the increase in prices the Taoiseach admits and which he has recorded this morning. There has been no improvement in their living standards; on the contrary, there has been a deterioration.

The Taoiseach will pardon me if I give him details. I appreciate this may be regarded as a general debate, but within the time at our disposal, it would be impossible for us to give our views about the economy as a whole. For that reason, I want to mention just a few things that are important to the Labour Party. In August, 1963, the old age pensioner got 35/- per week. At that time the cost-of-living index figure was 159. Now, since August, 1964, he has 37/6, but the cost-of-living index figure at mid-November, 1964, was 175. The cost of living went up by 16 points or ten per cent between August, 1963, and November, 1964, but the increases in the Social Welfare Bill and in the Budget proposals gave the old age pensioner an increase of only seven per cent. The Minister for Social Welfare has told us that increases have been given regularly in accordance with an increase in the cost of living. That has not happened. By that standard, the Minister's and the Government's declared standard, the old age pensioner was cheated of one shilling per week because he got only 2s. 6d. where he should have got 3s. 6d. per week.

We well remember in this House that the Government, through the Minister for Social Welfare, accepted a motion that was put by an Independent Deputy suggesting that all social welfare benefits should be increased in accordance with an increase in the cost of living; but, if the old age pensioner was cheated to the extent of 1s. per week, the widow and the orphans were cheated of more, having regard to the increase in the cost of living, because the increase in respect of the widow's and orphan's allowance was applied only to the widow, who got 2s. 6d. per week. If she had one, two, three, four, five, six or seven children of qualifying age she got no increase even though the cost of living went up by ten per cent. That ten per cent was in the main an increase in the price of foodstuffs. Therefore, she found it much more difficult to provide for herself and, in particular, for her children as far as food is concerned.

Those in the social insurance group, the sick, those on unemployment benefit, recipients of contributory pensions, have not been compensated at all since the increase in the cost of living and, should I say, since the introduction of the turnover tax in November, 1963. Therefore, as far as the increase in the cost of living is concerned, there have been no corresponding increases for these people.

We have been told by Fianna Fáil spokesmen that if the money is provided, they will see that social welfare recipients will get their fair share of it. That has not happened under Fianna Fáil.

In the financial year 1957/58, tax revenue amounted to £102.7 million. Social welfare expenditure was £24.3 million. That means that 22 per cent of tax revenue was spent on social welfare. That percentage has gradually declined since Fianna Fáil came into office in 1957. It is now estimated, and I think it is a fairly firm estimate, that for the year 1964/65 only 19.1 per cent of tax revenue will be spent on social welfare benefits.

With regard to the motion by the members of the Labour Party in regard to social welfare benefits, that I have mentioned, the Minister put down an amendment saying:

The Government should continue to improve social welfare as national economic growth is increased.

That has not happened. National income has increased. The Taoiseach this morning gave figures for recent years. I should like now to quote a figure to demonstrate that what the Minister said and what various Ministers have said with regard to social welfare benefits has not happened in the context of the increasing prosperity of the country.

In 1957, the national income was £469 million. In 1963, it was estimated to have been £677 million—an increase of £208 million. That represented an increase of 50 per cent in national income between 1957 and 1963, but, even by that standard, social welfare recipients did not get a similar increase. They got much less than 50 per cent. Gross national product has increased in recent years. It increased by 42 per cent between 1957 and 1963. Recipients of social welfare benefits did not get a corresponding increase.

Therefore, as far as social welfare recipients, in particular, old age pensioners, are concerned, they did not get increases in accordance with the increases in the cost of living, the increase in tax revenue, the increase in national income or the increase in gross national product and it would be fair to say, despite what the Taoiseach says about 1954, 1955 and 1956, that these people were relatively better off during that period than they are now, in 1964.

The Taoiseach, this morning, did speak about the cost of living. All of us are particularly worried about the increase in the cost of living, which is a pretty steep increase since this time last year. Recent figures show that the cost of living index figure stood at 175 points as against 164 points in November, 1963—an increase of 11 points in a year.

It seems to me that many people talking about the cost of living and the increase in the cost of living immediately think in terms of increases in wages and salaries. One could say that in February, 1964, we saw the beginning of the pay out of the ninth round of wage increases. It provided, under the National Agreement, for an increase of 12 per cent. That agreement was welcomed and lauded by both sides of industry but it is distressing to find that since February of this year the cost of living has gone up by six per cent. That means that the 12 per cent which wages and salary earners received by way of increase in February has gradually been eaten into. The Taoiseach did say this morning that there are factors other than wages and he was good enough to mention that one of the reasons for the increase in the cost of living was the introduction of the turnover tax. I want to repeat that wages do not represent the bigger party, by any means, of the increase in the cost of living that has occurred between February, 1964 and November, 1964.

It must also be known to the Taoiseach that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions are very much concerned about the increase in the cost of living and about either the inability or the refusal of the Minister for Industry and Commerce to take effective steps to have some control over prices. The workers do not want to see an increase in prices. They certainly do not want to do anything to the economy that would create a further increase in prices. They are just as concerned as any other section of the community in endeavouring to see that prices are kept to a minimum but they have repeatedly asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce to institute effective investigation into price rises.

The Taoiseach and the Minister, to their credit, took action in recent times when it was announced that the price of petrol was to be increased. We were fortunate, I suppose, that the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis was being held, but just one word from the Taoiseach and an admonition from the Minister for Industry and Commerce were sufficient to prevent an increase in the price of petrol. I respectfully suggest that if a speech from the Taoiseach and an admonition from the Minister for Industry and Commerce can prevent an increase in such an important commodity, they can act similarly in respect of other commodities that are vital to the masses of our people.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce was successful in ensuring that there would not be an undue increase in the price of sugar but I am afraid that is as far as he has gone. I have before me today a long list of commodities the prices of which have increased steeply over the past 12 months, and the Minister for Industry and Commerce does not appear to be concerned. Price control to any degree or in any form seems to be anathema to the Minister for Industry and Commerce. It is all right to control wages but nobody seems to want to have any effective investigation into price increases. As a sop to critics of his inactivity since the introduction of turnover tax, the Minister for Industry and Commerce investigated price increases in certain commodities, in jams, in soap and canned and processed foods. As far as I know, no other price increase has been investigated by the Prices Advisory Body. The Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Government should take much more advantage of the machinery available to them under the Prices Act.

As I said, and the Taoiseach must know, Congress are concerned and Congress have a job to do. Congress are conscious of the fact that representing 350,000 workers, they feel responsibility to ensure that we shall have a stable economy, but they also have a responsibility to ensure that the present standard of living of workers is not impaired in any way. It can be said to the credit of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and its affiliated members that they have since last January when the National Wage Agreement was negotiated, honoured it to the full. There was a difference in view as to what the agreement meant in regard to a reduction in working hours but as far as wage increases are concerned, I do not think anybody can recall a rumble from any of the top representatives of the trade union movement to the effect that they intended to break the agreement in respect of wage or salary increases.

Speaking recently on the problem of prices, the President of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions thought fit to talk about price increases and to be critical of the Government and the Minister for Industry and Commerce for their inactivity in relation to price increases. The Taoiseach, if he has not already done so, should take notice of something the President of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions said in a speech to the Dublin Institute of Catholic Sociology on 27th November last and which I quote:

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions is concerned at the danger of further price increases reducing the purchasing power of wages. We have repeatedly asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce to institute effective investigation into price rises so that at least a psychological atmosphere will be created that will influence business against taking the easy course of pushing up prices.

The Minister has been successful in having increases in the price of sugar and the price of petrol set aside. Doing this he has, in fact, established the case that Congress has consistently sought to make. Investigations of other commodities would, we are satisfied, also indicate scope for reduction in prices.

I might point out that the national recommendation on wages and salaries makes provision for a review in the event of very exceptional circumstances. Should there be a tendency for prices to continue to creep upwards Congress will have to consider seeking such a review. It is up to industry and the authorities to see that such a situation does not arise.

I do not think anybody could call that a strong or a panicky statement. It is a reasonable and maybe somewhat quiet warning to the Government that those who represent the workers within the various trade unions will be required to seek a review of the National Wage Agreement if prices continue to rise as they have been rising over the past eight or nine months.

Despite what is being said or what has been said by the critics about the trade union movement, one must give them credit for this, that this National Wage Agreement for a period of 2½ years is a voluntary control of wages and salaries. The workers have done their job. They are contributing to the economy in agreeing with their employers not to have wage increases for a certain period. There is no such voluntary control in other sectors of the economy in respect of incomes other than wage or salary earnings. There is no control of company profits and, as far as one can gather from reports, these are certainly far and away ahead of the 12 per cent wage increase. There is no control, nor do I suggest here that there should be, of farm incomes which in the period between September, 1963 and September, 1964 have increased by 12½ per cent. Nobody begrudges an increase of that magnitude in farm incomes. What I am trying to say is that the emphasis always seems to be on the damage that has been or may be done because a workman, a clerk or some salary earner gets an increase in wages.

The Government will, therefore, have to make greater efforts to ensure that there is some degree of control at least in respect of the essential commodities. What must be of significance to the Taoiseach is the fact that of the increase of 1.94 points in the cost of living since mid-August, 1.24 points were due to food price increases. That is where the people to whom I referred some time ago, the social welfare recipients, are hard hit because it is very little, outside food, they can afford to buy.

The Taoiseach spoke about unemployment. The latest return Members of the House have got in this regard is that on 4th December, 51,182 were unemployed. At the same time last year, it was slightly fewer, 50,465 and in 1962, still fewer, 48,984. I know there has been a disruption of employment due to the building strike and, one could say, its repercussions, but I do not think the increased unemployment can be explained away entirely by the effect of the building strike. We cannot have it both ways. The Taoiseach suggests—I may not have heard him properly—that the result of the building strike was that many building trade workers went to Britain for a while. It cannot be explained away in unemployment and in emigration; the repercussions were not that big, and emigration has also increased pretty substantially in the past year.

I do not suggest that unemployment has risen spectacularly but it makes one uneasy to know that there has been a gradual increase in the figure over the past three years. It is also of significance that in Britain the percentage of unemployed, compared with the employable, is less than two while here it is 5.6. There have been times when it was seven and eight per cent but I doubt if one could say that December is one of the hungry months in regard to employment. An unemployed percentage of the employable of 5.6 is to me at least somewhat disturbing.

We cannot find much consolation in the emigration figures. At times over the past ten years, it has been up to 40,000 and sometimes 50,000. All of us were pleased when there was a gradual decline in the number. One of the reasons for that was—if you like to put it in reverse—that we had reached saturation point: there were not many more who could leave the country. In the year ended September, 1964—these are not firm official figures but the figures the Taoiseach usually quotes when he has not got up-to-date official figures, figures for passenger movements—it would appear that emigration was up to 24,900 while a year or two ago it was down to 20,000.

I think that figure was used a few years ago but it was a false figure.

It was used.

But it was used wrongly. I have not figures for the 12 months ended September, 1963 but I have emigration figures for the calendar year 1963 of 21,864. That means the emigration figure appears to have gone up by something like 4,000 in a year. I do not think anybody's imagination could stretch far enough to say an increase in emigration of 4,000 was due to the effect of the building strike in Dublin.

The Taoiseach seems to be achieving his target as far as the provision of industrial employment is concerned, if we take the forecast made in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion but I fear it still falls short of our requirements. As far as I know— I suppose it is the only sector in which there has been an increase in employment—there were 7,800 more in employment in transportable goods industries in the 12 months ended June, 1964 than there were in the 12 months ended June, 1963. This does not fill the bill, so to speak, in that we still have many people—I cannot put a figure on it but I am sure it is some thousands— who still cannot find employment in rural areas and come to the towns and cities and, when they cannot find work there, go elsewhere.

That is a figure for one period of 12 months ended June, 1964, compared with June, 1963. That may appear, and I am sure it is, a pretty spectacular increase, but when we have regard to overall employment, we cannot say progress has been as spectacular as in industrial employment. The total number employed in 1963, according to official figures, was 1,052,000 but that was an increase of only 1,000 jobs compared with April, 1962. I do not know what further plans the Government have for the creation of industrial employment or whatever other stimulants there may be to ensure more industries and consequently more employment.

The Taoiseach should clear up a matter that has confused me as an individual, that is, a reference recently by the Minister for Justice. I think when speaking in Athlone he suggested, if I correctly read the newspapers, that Athlone might be—I think he said "would be"—a centre of regional industrial development. In Limerick last night the Minister for Local Government also inferred or suggested, as far as I could gather from the newspapers, that the Government had some vague idea about the creation of industrial centres.

The reason I take that up is that the Committee on Industrial Organisation made this suggestion to the Government and up to this, apart from the reference which, perhaps, I have mis-interpreted—I certainly do not mean to misrepresent either Minister—the Government did not comment on it or at least agreed to defer it. I should like the Taoiseach to say if there is any significance in the references by his Ministers to this matter.

These are the matters I wanted to raise. I believe the Taoiseach, especially in respect of social welfare, even though he did not mention it in his speech, should say in reply what hope there is for these people who undoubtedly have not been very well treated particularly in the past year since the operation of the turnover tax and increased prices generally. He should give some indication whether there will be, in accordance with the motion accepted by the Government, a regular pattern of increases for these people when, of course, the level of their allowances has been fixed. I think nobody would agree these people would be getting a fair crack of the whip if percentage increases in accordance with the cost of living were applied. An effort must be made, first of all, to put them on a decent standard and then start, as the motion suggests, to give them increases in accordance with increases in the national income, gross national product or whatever pattern is decided upon.

There is one other matter. The Taoiseach will say to me: "That is OK. You want to give these people a good standard but where do you suggest we get the money?" I do not think it is for me to say where we should get the money. I do not think it was for the Taoiseach to tell the House when, in the debate on the British surcharge, he introduced proposals for the expenditure of £3½ million or £7 million, where he was going to get it. The Minister for Justice gives big hints, no matter what position in Government he occupies and it was he who anticipated an increase in the turnover tax.

A tax on fur coats.

He anticipated a luxury tax. The time for costing these things is not now. The Minister for Education brought in an estimate of £2 million last night but I do not think anybody expected him to say that we were going to tax chairs, tobacco or wines to raise the money. If the Minister in his Budget Statement, indicates that a fair share of tax revenue will go to these people, we will vote for such proposals.

In recent years we have been twitted that while we want additional benefits for the social welfare recipients, we will not vote for the tax proposals necessary to give such increases. We refuse to vote for a tax that in itself will be an additional burden on these people. Despite what the Taoiseach says, that there is not a great deal of wealth in this country, we believe that the emphasis in taxation should be to a greater degree on direct taxation. It is too lopsided now. Those who have should be prepared to give in order to ensure that the lives of social welfare recipients will be more comfortable.

Last night, as we sat in this House listening to the debate on the Succession Bill, it was with extraordinary interest that we heard a backbencher of the Fianna Fáil Party say: "the fabric of the State lies in tatters." Deputy Seán Flanagan is to be complimented on the apparent sincerity of belief with which he expressed his views. He either said that or he said that if the proposals which emanated from the Taoiseach's table in Government Buildings were pursued, the fabric of the State would lie in tatters. Could anybody more thoroughly or precisely describe the present economic situation of the country than Deputy Flanagan did in relation to the legislation introduced in this House by the Taoiseach's son-in-law when he was Minister for Justice?

In relation to legislation coming before this House, we have had the extraordinary experience of listening to the Minister for Lands introducing the Land Bill and of hearing the criticism levelled by the Taoiseach at the Fine Gael Party for the attention paid by that Party through Deputy Dillon and Deputy Flanagan, and their close examination of all that was wrong in most of the provisions of that Land Bill. Because they succeeded in bringing to light so many injustices and anomalies in that Bill, they gave the Minister for Lands the necessary time to introduce 47 amendments and then we are chastised by the Leader of the Government because we did not sit back in silence and allow a measure to go through which would have contained all the injustices and anomalies which the Minister for Lands himself saw fit to correct.

Is that not the normal healthy process of Parliament, that when a measure is introduced and circulated to all Deputies, independent of where they may sit in this House, each Deputy is given an opportunity of living up to the duties imposed on him by the electors to go into research and to decide, either in council with his Party or individual, on its merits and to draw his own conclusions arising from his experience as representing his constituents, his experience in this House and the forecasts made to the Minister as to the ultimate results of such legislation? It is from calling on this combined experience and by consultation with the active organisations in the country who are interested in such matters that we can evaluate the legislation brought before us.

I mention this in the context of asking what kind of a Government is it that sits over in Government Buildings and as a result, we assume, of careful deliberation, introduces a Bill in such a state that having been handed to the draftsmen to dot the "I's" and cross the "T's" it gives rise to such doubt and such fears on the part of members of the Party introducing it. But that fades into insignificance in relation to the chaos which resulted from the Succession Bill. Is it any wonder that a pretty prominent backbencher like Deputy Seán Flanagan should describe the resultant situation as "the fabric of the State lying in tatters?"

The manner in which these Bills have been introduced causes one to wonder if Ministers have sufficient time after they have done with their dinners and with their high jinks, either in the country or far removed from it, to attend to the business of Government. The only pity is that some of them have not been sufficiently far removed from the country. If they were, the country would be the better for it. They are so involved in dinner parties and in other high jinks that they have no time to devote themselves to a proper examination of the legislation they introduce to this House. Then, when proper examination, proper consultation and proper attention are devoted to it and when it is exposed for what it is, a thing of shreds and tatters, we have the Leader of the Government alleging here today that we, in this Party, are responsible, in some manner, for delaying the business of the House because we go into over-detail and because we dwell overmuch on the commissions and the omissions of faulty legislation, introduced by the present Government.

The Taoiseach has a sorry tale to tell in relation to the legislation of his Government. Now, let me deal for a moment with the administration of it. Before this man was charged with leadership of this Government, he betook himself to the town of Clonmel and said if Fianna Fáil were returned to office, they could so manage the affairs of this country that it could be done at far less cost, far more efficiently and far more effectively. Could any leader of a political Party approach the electorate with a far more attractive programme and with all the confidence that the Taoiseach, as a good poker player, is capable of presenting, if he wants to do so?

At that time it cost £108 million to run the State and today it costs £216 million. Everything we need, by way of foodstuffs, wearing apparel or services, is taxed to capacity. What have we got for it? As the Leader of the Opposition pointed out this morning, from 250,000 to 300,000 of our boys and girls have gone away. The grievance of the Government is that we cannot maintain output. We could maintain output if we had not this out flow of our young people.

Those of us who were first in Roscommon, and later on in East Galway, found at the end of the boreen the old couple who were left after those over the age at which we would look to them to become productive members of our society had left and were now more interested in the Labour Party or Conservative Party of Britain than they were in Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or any other Party in this country. We found in East Galway that there were 3,000 fewer people registered as votes than there were in the last general election, irrespective of those under 21 years of age, who had departed during that time, and were now working in Great Britain and elsewhere. In these circumstances, we still call upon those who are left to bear the full burden of taxation.

Let me come now to how the money is being spent under the head of administration. We are often asked, when we make appeals for increased allowances on behalf of the social welfare recipients and others in receipt of small allowances, where the money is to be found. But money is being found, has been found and will be found for the perambulations of this Government in many fields. May I expose here and now something which I found out regarding administrative developments over the past week? The Deputies in Cork county, the members of Cork County Council and particularly the members of the Cork County Committee of Agriculture have frequently been approached by farmers with regard to the delays in administration in the bovine tuberculosis office. I find, in consultation with my colleagues throughout the country, that it is not peculiar to our county. When we make complaints, we are told that they have not sufficient staff and they have had to employ temporary staff. We have, repeatedly, had to contact this office by telephone or in person to secure blue cards for the herd owners of our county.

What has occurred? They have, in the past three days, ordered the work of that office to stop and the staff were to devote all their time to writing envelopes to convey seasonal greetings from the Minister for Agriculture to every farmer in Cork.

It was a decent gesture.

It is a decent gesture which the Minister for Agriculture decided to carry out with all the thoroughness of which he regards himself capable. He would require the agricultural instructors to check the lists to see what farmers were called to their eternal reward during the past year because there would be a very poor view taken by the bereaved man's family if they got a Christmas card when he was dead.

Is he sending cards to all the farmers in the country?

He is sending them to every farmer who is registered as a herd owner. It will approximate from 250,000 to 300,000.

What about the poultry keepers?

They will, no doubt, be included, but they are not included in those in the bovine tuberculosis office. If he were to cover the poultry owners, he would have to find out in some way the names of all such owners. Every chicken keeper would have to be notified of the good wishes of the Minister on this particularly happy occasion.

Apart from that, there is that section of agriculture which is represented by Deputy Medlar, the grain growers. The previous Minister for Agriculture, who scuttled from the sinking ship, also represented them. If the Minister has not got a list of the grain growers to send Christmas cards to, they may have in one of the offices of his Department sufficient records of the names and addresses of all the grain growers in the country. If the Minister sends Christmas cards to the dairy farmers and omits the grain growers, his public relations will have broken down.

One is entitled to ask, relative to the operation of the issue of these hundreds of thousands of Christmas cards, when this work will be completed? Will the farmers who desire to dispose of their animals over the next month have to withdraw them from public sales throughout the country until such time as the staff engaged on the issue of Christmas cards can return to their normal duties? How long will it take, in 1965, the staff engaged by the Minister for Agriculture to come back to their normal business of dealing, not alone with current work but with the great arrears?

One is entitled to ask was there any provision in the recent large Supplementary Estimate for the Department of Agriculture for the purchase of and the cost of delivery of these Christmas cards that are destined for every herd owner in the country? I made inquiries, since I arrived here and this was brought to my notice, whether the staff in the office in the county of Waterford had been employed in addressing these hundreds of thousands of envelopes and I find that in other counties they have been doing so.

We are entitled to ask the Taoiseach, on this occasion, whether he has any idea of the way the moneys supplied for the administration of the different Departments under his administration are disposed of and what his views are in relation to these antics? On the night before last, when I received this information, I was asked to address a large meeting of farmers. I gave them the news of the felicitous wishes which the new political head of the Department of Agriculture was sending for the happiness—incidentally, at their own cost and expense—of the farmers throughout the country. It would not do, in my opinion, if the Minister failed to extend these felicitations to the other categories of farmers engaged in agriculture. There are retired farmers, too, who should be considered, including a Deputy representing the Party in my constituency who is no longer a dairy herd owner; it would be regrettable if he were omitted from the list.

Quite apart from that, however, omissions could create bad relations where these other categories are concerned. They may feel aggrieved if they are not the recipients of individual seasonable greetings from the Minister for Agriculture like the particular section that has been selected. One can recall the time when the finances of the State were devoted to a subsidy on the calf skin, the time when we were slaughtering hundreds of thousands of calves. We were doing that right up to 1947, when we slaughtered 147,000 of them. It is a happy augury now that a Minister for Agriculture in a Fianna Fáil Government should seek to make amends for the slaughter of the innocents and should call upon, of all people, the present Minister for Finance, the man responsible for the slaughter, to pay the expenses of having Christmas cards printed, addressed by a staff, to say nothing of the bill to be met by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs in distributing these hundreds of thousands of Christmas cards throughout the country.

Surely the other members of the Government will not allow the Minister for Agriculture to strike out on this road of personal relations and fail to follow suit. Surely it would be only right and proper for the Minister for Social Welfare — he has complete records and will have no difficulty of any kind—to send Christmas greetings to every old age pensioner in the country, reminding these pensioners that the Government regret being unable to follow the example set by the inter-Party Government in relation to social welfare recipients, but the money cannot be found now because of the antics of other Ministers. Surely the Taoiseach will not allow the Minister for Social Welfare to be so remiss in his public relations with those for whom he has responsibility.

The Minister for Defence could send seasonable felicitations to every member of the Defence Forces. The Minister for Justice could address a seasonable communication to the members of the Garda and those who are confined under his care in institutions. There is no doubt they would be happy recipients of the kind of felicitations being extended by Mr. Charles Haughey, Minister for Agriculture, to the dairying community. This new line of Government administration could prove a formidable task for the various members of the Government.

To my pleasant surprise—I will say it quite set me back because I thought my information was reliable—at Question Time yesterday, the Minister denied this operation was in progress. Subsequent to that denial, I checked my facts and I found the Minister's statement very far removed from the truth. We will see whether this ridiculous occurrence, and the Minister's refutation, is or is not a fact. I have emphasised this item to indicate how crazy the members of this Government have become. Why should it be such a shock to them then when the electorate repulse them so severely, remembering this kind of codology?

The Taoiseach this morning held out some hopes about the housing situation. Something is to be done. After seven years, something is to be done to improve the housing situation for those who are still waiting for houses. The Minister for Local Government might have some difficulty in addressing his Christmas greetings because it would not be easy to find some of the previous occupiers of public authority housing. He would, too, have to address them to various barracks; indeed, he would have to address two cards, one to the husband and one to the wife and family, since they are housed in different barracks.

With regard to the situation generally, there is sitting behind the Minister for Local Government a Deputy who is Chairman of the Cork County Council, Deputy Corry. At our meetings we are extremely concerned about the manner in which the Department are holding up the building of houses for those who need them. The position has become so aggravated that the Fianna Fáil Chairman, an active member here of the Fianna Fáil Party, has actually convened a special meeting. People may think that when we go away from here we will relax in the festive atmosphere, but one of the duties we must perform is to attend on Friday next a specially convened meeting because the Chairman has informed us that the situation is very grave and a great deal of detail must be gone into, so much detail that it would not be possible to do the business at a normal meeting.

As well as that, this is to be a combined effort in which the three housing authorities will pool their experience. The representatives of the various urban authorities have been invited to come in with us and meet in this atmosphere of crisis. This is unprecedented in local authority history in Cork. It has been brought about because of the frustration and annoyance experienced by the Chairman in trying to get approval from the Custom House for the provision of houses.

We need no legislation. All we need is a little bit of hard work, a little clear thinking, and a little more commonsense on the part of the Minister for Local Government. It was entirely wrong for him to allege, as he did at Dublin Airport when departing on one of his foreign jaunts, that the members of local authorities were responsible for any failure in the building of houses. I brought this matter home to members of the Government Party who sit on housing committees. Information was ascertained as to the date on which plans and specifications and lists of applicants had been forwarded to the Custom House and it was only when we suggested to them that they should have a word with their own Minister to ensure sanction would be forthcoming so that we could start building that they became alive to what they could do in their individual capacity. However, that apparently was not sufficient and this special crisis meeting has now been summoned to cope with the situation in Cork.

I have indicated some of the ways in which the people are being treated by this Government and it really ought not to come as a shock to them when the people take the opportunity to register emphatic opinions in regard to the Government's failure to administer the affairs of the country. The fact that one senior Minister saw fit to remove himself from any of the blame falling on the shoulders of the several members of the Cabinet is a clear indication of the way things are going. It is no wonder that that feeling of frustration and disappointment is shared by the people, who clearly demonstrated their feeling when given the opportunity to do so.

The Government are without a majority in this House. They have maintained themselves in office by the most dubious practices from the point of view of securing support from people who, when elected, had no mandate to pursue the course they have adopted in turning into the Lobbies here. One can recall that on previous occasions when Deputies were elected, clearly on certain lines of policy, and when they were got at and decided in their own personal interests—not in the interests of the people who sent them here but for their personal advantage—to take a particular line in this House, the moment the electorate got a grip on them they were never seen again in that capacity.

We can only hope this opportunity to which the Taoiseach referred this morning of allowing the people throughout the country to pass judgment, in the same manner as the people in Roscommon and Galway have unequivocally passed judgment in recent weeks, comes quickly, because the quicker the better. The longer this Government remain in office, the higher will soar the cost of government, the higher will go the cost of living, the higher will go the rate of emigration of people from the countryside, and the more we will see of `fluthering' administration by heads of Departments diverting members of their staffs to needless activities. The people will not appreciate that, because they have more commonsense, and more appreciation of what public servants should be doing, than is seemingly realised by heads of Departments.

It is very interesting to contrast the speech made by Deputy Dillon—wild statements, wild allegations, predictions of ruin—with the very interesting and constructive speech made by Deputy Corish. Deputy Corish's criticism was highly constructive, and can be appreciated by the Government. He admitted the economic progress we have made, the progress we have made in securing more employment for our people. He asked for greater speed. He said it was not sufficient, and he spoke of the difficulties in regard to the cost of living and suggested the Government should pay more attention to cost of living increases. He made that criticism but in the background of his speech there lay an absolutely clear understanding that we are making progress, and that we are making progress on a faster scale than in previous years of our country's history.

I must say I almost wept for Deputy Dillon when I heard him speak of the marvellous balance of payments position achieved in 1957 of £12 million, and how our currency was backed at that time. I recall the fact that two years before there was an adverse balance of payments position with no evidence of sufficient economic growth to cover it, with no volume of external assets held by the banks or the Government sufficient to stay it, with no growth of exports or income sufficient to enable it to be carried over for the period. At that time the adverse balance of payments that gave rise to the 1956-57 disastrous crisis was due to the Fine Gael Party—influenced, I think, by Clann na Poblachta—having ever since the war been extremely careless in their attitude towards the balance of payments position in our country.

We had the former Taoiseach, Deputy Costello, roaring around the country saying what a good thing it was to restore to this country foreign assets held abroad, without reservation, without making clear the danger that would lie in such policies unless they were used for productive purposes. We had a tremendous balance of payments deficit in 1951 of £61 million at a time when the country was totally unable to deal with the situation based on then existing taxation. For the next three years we had a Fianna Fáil Government in office and we were continually frustrated by futile arguments in which we made it clear we had to take certain financial steps to put the country financially in order, and the Fine Gael Party spent all their time talking about increases in the cost of living, increases in the cost of commodities, promising to reestablish the price status quo by bringing the economy back to the 1951 level but when they were in office they put very heavy taxation on the people.

At the end of their period of office, the cost of living was rising steadily by three per cent per annum. So when Deputy Dillon poses as an apostle of economic sanctity it amuses me, because the most serious problem we had to overcome and eliminate was the fearful despondency in which this country found itself in 1957 at the end of the three year period of the second Coalition Government.

The only mistake we made at that time was that we did not sufficiently advertise to the people at large the warning given by the present Taoiseach in October, 1956, that any predictions he had made in regard to the number of persons who could be given employment in any period had to be related to the very serious state of the economy, and that all such calculations had to be revised. When Deputy Dillon constantly talks about the promise of 100,000 jobs, he deliberately ignores the very detailed statement made by the Taoiseach at the end of 1956, in which he made it quite clear that the road back to prosperity after the second Coalition Government might be harder than anticipated. It is very like Deputy Dillon to conveniently forget whole speeches made by the Taoiseach when it is to his advantage, and when he thinks he can achieve some result by doing so.

Deputy Dillon, as usual, made some fearful predictions about our future. He spoke as though he deliberately wished to discourage the investment of capital by suggesting our economic state was very grave indeed, but he offered no solution to the problem at all. We have heard no solution from Deputy Dillon. If he really believes the country is in such a desperate state, why did he not make proposals today, his own proposals, and not merely tatters of badly expressed Fianna Fáil policy, with some amazing additions which would cost the country anything up to £80 million more a year?

We should like to hear more from him as to whether or not he thinks he could put right this mysterious economic situation and how he would set about doing it. For example, as usual he spoke melodramatically about foreign investment in this country. What he said was enough to discourage anybody from investing capital here. Does he think he is contributing to our industrial revival by statements of that kind?

We have not got the know-how, the technical knowledge, about a great many new industries. We thought we had the belated agreement of the Fine Gael Party for our policy of establishing industries throughout the country, that at long last, after a considerable period, they had begun to believe in the establishment of Irish industry. What does he mean when he talks about foreign money coming in? I understood we all welcomed foreign capital, that most of all we welcomed the investment of Irish capital in Irish industry and that, where possible, we welcomed a mixture of Irish and outside investment here, and that if that could not arise we welcomed foreign money. Does he want it to stop?

Again, Deputy Dillon and the Fine Gael Party apparently agree with us that we should join the EEC in circumstances that would favour our admission. If Deputy Dillon examines the situation in the Common Market he will find that international investment from one country to another is proceeding steadily and continuously. Does he believe foreign investment from one country to another can be arrested in respect of our country?

As usual, his statement was extremely exaggerated and can only have the effect of making the sort of people we want to attract and encourage wonder whether we are really serious about it. This, of course, goes back to Deputy Dillon's old suspicion of our industrial policy a suspicion so well illustrated by his statement in Dáil Éireann in 1952 that the tariff quota industries set up by Fianna Fáil were merely badly run relief works. A good illustration of that would be the women's clothing industry. Exports in that industry about 14 years ago were £50,000 a year. The exports in a recent year were £5½ million. That is a typical example of what Deputy Dillon calls a badly run relief work, because it was established with the aid of protection and of tariffs.

It illustrates the lack of appreciation of our industrial policy by Deputy Dillon. Every time he speaks I wonder whether he has really accepted in his heart the industrial proposals of his own Party which are, in turn, a clear imitation of ours, though not so well expressed or not expressed with the same confidence and belief as we have in them.

Deputy Dillon spoke of the Taoiseach as a gambler. We have always believed in taking calculated risks. We have seen such a frightening decrease in the population since the time of the Famine, and with it all the psychological attributes of character that go to make for continued emigration, that we have been determined to take measurable risks in economic development. I recall Deputy Dillon saying in May, 1947, in regard to Shannon Airport: "I venture to say that five years from today, when the rabbits have started playing leap-frog below in Rineanna, that the wireless masts will be used as knitting needles..."

That was a typical refusal of Deputy Dillon to accept the idea of taking a calculated gamble in a new venture. Today, there are some 4,000 persons employed at Shannon. Today, we have seen the end of the decline in the number of transit passengers as a result of overflying by jets, and an increase in terminal passengers which bodes well for the future.

I wonder why Deputy Dillon made the completely malicious suggestion that the heifer grants scheme was carried out at the last moment, without any consideration as to its financial cost, solely for some obscure political reason that he did not even name. Was it because it was yet one more new policy devised to increase agricultural production and that Deputy Dillon, at long last, has had to realise that Fianna Fáil as always had an agricultural policy and that the present policy completely outclasses anything ever dreamt of by Fine Gael or the Coalition in 1956?

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of his speech—whether it has any significance I do not know—is that for the first time he barely referred to the agricultural position. Perhaps he has been at last convinced that the Fianna Fáil agricultural policy has proved a success—that the number of cattle and sheep are increasing rapidly, that butter production has been at a record figure, that cattle exports have risen tremendously and above all, that farmers are showing confidence in the future. More and more they are now using modern methods; more and more they are borrowing from the banks and from the Agricultural Credit Company the wherewithal to improve their holdings; more and more they are using increased quantities of fertilisers due to the provision of Government subsidies to the figure of £4 million, whereas in Deputy Dillon's time it was a mere £200,000 or £400,000 a year.

Maybe that is the reason Deputy Dillon, in desperation, tried to raise some peculiar hare over the heifer grant scheme. The reason why the grants exceeded our estimate was perhaps because we were too conservative in our thinking of how far there would be a response to the offer of these grants. It was very difficult for the Government to predict the welcome proportions of that response, which exceeded the expectations of the previous and the present Minister for Agriculture.

The fact is that since 1957 the incomes of farmers per head had gone up by 1963 by 36 per cent. Though we should like to see a still greater increase to match the increase in incomes of the rest of the population, we can see that real progress is being made. Deputy Dillon referred to the number of people who emigrated over a set period and had the audacity to suggest that the policy of the present Government had something to do with it. He knows perfectly well there was record emigration during the last period of his office, that the whole problem lay in the quite simple fact that the national income rose only by one per cent from the end of the war until about 1959.

He knows that during that period the Coalition Government were in office for two periods, with an uneasy period of Fianna Fáil Government between 1951 and 1954. He knows very well his Government had the major responsibility for devising new policies for this country in the post-war period. He knows very well the whole atmosphere of both his Governments was that the people were entitled to a good living, that Fianna Fáil had indulged in what they called hairshirt economics. He knows very well that at the end of it all, there was nothing but the economic disasters of 1956 and 1957. With the attraction of employment in Great Britain and with the perpetual customary emigration ever since the time of the Famine, it was inevitable there would be a great flowing tide of people out of this country when the national income was rising by only 1 per cent.

Deputy Dillon should also know that after a period of time, between 1957 and 1959, during which, admittedly, the Government's programme of expansion had not shown any major results, we did at last get the economy of the country moving. The real growth in the incomes of our people moved at a faster rate upwards in the last six years than in any other period in our history since we became an independent nation operating under peace-time conditions. He cannot deny that the figures are there, that there are statistical records. He has no way of denying the progress we have made. It took us some considerable time before ensuring, as a result of Government aids and grants but, of course, very largely as a result of the greater confidence shown by our people which was an essential factor in ensuring progress, that for the last period of one or two years, for the first time so long as we can remember, as many people are gaining employment in the non-agricultural field as are leaving the land.

That is not sufficient. The figures given by the Taoiseach this morning showing the growth of employment in industry and the growth of employment in the non-agricultural sector are heartening and livening. We shall have to go further if we are to succeed in providing an employment world that is entirely satisfactory. At the moment, we provide it in certain areas. There are areas in Ireland where there is full employment in towns, and fifteen miles outside them, for anyone who wants a job. There are certain types of industries in Dublin where there is full employment. There are other areas where progress will have to be made before we shall have achieved our ideal, and I do not say we shall achieve our ideal quickly. It may take some time and there are all the special dangers we have to face at the moment. They were well outlined by the Taoiseach in his speech when he gave a realistic impression of the national economy. The fact remains we succeeded in equating the increase in the number of those employed in non-agricultural occupations with those who are leaving the land, and it was a triumph, from that point of view, that we reached that position.

Deputy Dillon and Deputy O'Sullivan referred to the high taxation in this country. We have made it absolutely clear that we need a great deal of money to promote the economic life of our country and we shall need more money in the future, particularly, for the inevitable growth in our educational services. We have never denied that we must take from total national income a considerable amount for national development. The facts are that in 1956-57 total taxation in all its forms in relation to the national income was something between 22 and 23 per cent. Even including the turnover tax and all the other additions to taxes that have been made since that time mitigated by increased allowances for income tax, and so on, the percentage taken at the end of this year will be, I gather, something of the order of 24 and 25 per cent.

We are taking no more in taxation, or no more than a fractional amount more out of the total national pool of income than was being taken during the last disastrous years of the Coalition Government. I want to be absolutely frank about this question of taxation. There have been periods in the history of Europe when Governments hoped that if the national income rose the amount people would have to pay would represent a lower and lower percentage of their incomes, taking the incomes of the whole people. Sometimes that situation was achieved. We know that the bill for national economic development, in all its forms, will be so high for us that we have quite clearly indicated in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion, so that everybody can see and read it, that there is no hope whatever that there could be a very large diminution of the percentage of income in taxation during the period from now until 1970. We have not denied it, nor have we heard from the Fine Gael Party any proposal whatever as to how they could alter the position. We had a promise of eliminating the turnover tax during the Cork and Kildare by-elections, but no suggestions as to where the £13 or £14 million were to come from or what services would be reduced in kind and in what Departments.

We had absolutely no proposals from the Fine Gael Party as to how they would alter the Second Programme for Economic Expansion in its main features. We hear that they intend to do more actual planning than we did but they have not described how they propose to do that. We had no major criticism of the basic framework of the economic programme from Deputy Dillon. He says at one moment that it is bluff but he does not say why. He does not deny the possibility of achieving certain industrial and economic targets in a given period. He makes no comment as to how we are to avoid maintaining taxation in the same proportions of national income, with slight variations upwards and downwards, between now and 1970, if we are to equip this country and provide it with the social needs and ensure a steady economic development in all its phases. We have had no proposal from Deputy Dillon and no suggestion of a change in the system or a change in policy.

Deputy Corish spoke about the need for the Government to consider increasing social services. As Deputy Corish knows, every year that it has been possible to do so social services payments were increased. Deputy Corish knows that the total record of the Fianna Fáil Governments is one that can be well contrasted with the Coalition Government in relation to social welfare legislation and increases in payments under the various heads in the Minister's Department. I should like to illustrate the progress we have made since the dreary days of 1956 in increasing social welfare service payments. These are just illustrations.

Very often, people only mention the figure for a single man or a single woman whereas, of course, we should be very interested also in the position of men with families. Take unemployment and disability benefit for a man, his wife and three children—and we will assume that the three children are under 16 years of age and include the children's allowances. In 1956, such a man would receive £3. 7. 8 a week. He is now receiving £5. 18. 8 a week, an increase of 75 per cent. That, of course, is a very much larger increase than the increase in the cost of living since that period, which is something over 25 per cent, and illustrates the help we are trying to give to people in that kind of position. A widow with five children, including the children's allowances for all of them, received £2. 11. 4 in 1956 and is now getting £4. 13—an increase of 81 per cent.

None of us would suggest that those payments are necessarily adequate in relation to the cost of living and the growth in the standard of living. All of us want to see further improvements. We want to see the social assistance payments increased in line with the growth of national income in this country. The Government are determined to devote portion of the proceeds of taxation in every successful year, which will increase as we become more prosperous, in order to ensure that these social welfare payments become of a nature of which we can all be proud. I am merely mentioning the fact that there is quite evidently a massive improvement in the position since 1956.

Deputy Dillon said something about the by-elections which seemed to give the idea that we ought now to be going to the country because of the results of recent by-elections. It might be well to remind Deputy Dillon that if we take the Cork, Kildare and Roscommon by-elections and take the preference votes for Fianna Fáil in the previous general elections in those three constituencies it will be seen that in 1957 we received 45½ per cent of first preference votes and we received 39½ per cent in the general election of 1961 while in the recent by-elections we received 47 per cent of the votes, indicating a higher percentage than in 1957. Nothing has happened since the Roscommon by-election to make me believe that there has been a major change in the attitude of the people towards the present Government.

No extraordinary emergency measures of any kind were announced in the Dáil or were not already being considered in the Dáil since the Roscommon by-election. The only thing that has happened, in actual fact, is the announcement of the 15 per cent levy and the very wise measures adopted by the Government to aid industry in the dilemma with which they are faced. As far as I know, that is the only major thing that has happened since the Roscommon by-election. If the whole lot of by-elections were taken together, then, as was pointed out by the Taoiseach, what we received in votes since 1961 is quite reasonably satisfactory.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, Deputy Dillon is trying to bluff his way out of an admission that great progress is being made and he does it by exaggerating in an alarmist way the problems that we face in the future. We can contrast the wise and calculated statements of the Taoiseach on the balance of payments position and certain problems we face in the future with the wild, unjustified outpourings of Deputy Dillon. The problems we have to face relate to the very great need for ensuring that productivity in industry goes up as much as possible in the interests of the workers themselves.

We are most anxious that this national incomes policy should be considered, debated and discussed on its merits at all levels. It is not a perfect system. It does not work perfectly in Northern Europe where it operates but it does ensure as far as possible that when wages are increased the workers, by the calculations made in advance, will be able to keep the greater part of the increase they are given and will not lose that increase when the cost of living increases. It also ensures that the whole income of the people is going up in a way which makes our trade competitive and that we can offer more employment to the children of the workers, that we can ensure a growth of employment, a growth in the scope and character of employment everywhere and that we can ensure that employment in one industry increases if there happens to be some inevitable redundancy in another industry.

This planning for growth is something which is not new at all. It is new only to us. It is a common feature of negotiations that take place every year between employers and trade unions in Scandinavia, Holland and Switzerland. If one looks at the real increase of purchasing power of the workers in those countries one can find that they have made tremendous progress. There is nothing to suggest that they have not gained their full share from the growth in prosperity of the country concerned. As the Taoiseach said, when one looks at the state of the economy at the moment one can see that part of the increase in the cost of living recently is due simply to the increase in the price of beef, mutton and potatoes which reflects on the farmers' prosperity and which is certainly not under control by the Government. Part of the increase in the cost of living is due also to the increase in labour costs in industry.

We all hope that when the National Industrial Economic Council present their report on the economic state of the nation, and when that report is validated, verified and signed both by employers and representatives of the Trade Union Congress, what they have to say will be carefully considered by employers and by the trade unions themselves when they come to discuss the statement on the state of the economy—employers with reference to how much profits they are ploughing back into reinvestment, new machinery, new equipment and how much they are distributing to their shareholders; and, in the case of the trade unions, how much more they can aid greater productivity in various ways and how much more the worker himself can help and enable still greater employment to be given and to ensure that when wages are increased, workers will genuinely benefit from the wage increase through this system of training which has proved very successful in other countries, even though no system like that can be perfect.

In connection with the national incomes policy, there are always matters which will require elaborate discussion between employers and trade unions and the various operative grades in each industry involved. If there is a growth in automation, a growth in the complex character of machinery which is used, it alters the character of a man's work and there is that to be considered. There is the question of workers who may have been left behind in previous wage increases and who need to be considered. It is a most complex matter and not in the least an easy one.

The simple statement about growth in the national income of any amount in a certain year by way of a basic increase in wages is something that needs to be examined by the trade unions in all its implications and importance. Nevertheless the Taoiseach was quite right when he stated what we in Fianna Fáil all believe and expressed the opinion that this kind of thinking would be possible. Indeed, one of the major reasons for setting up the NIEC was that there could be a body independent of political discrimination to present economic reports upon which could be laid the foundations of policies for the ensuring year that would bring the greatest prosperity to the greatest number.

There are many facets to this problem which no one considers when striving for wage increases in some particular sector of industry or trade. There is the fact that if non-agricultural incomes mount very rapidly inevitably the Government may find it necessary to transfer some of the income to the farmers by way of subsidy, apart from what they were getting the previous year. If they have to do it by way of taxation, then the workers and salaried people would be losing part of what they gained by way of taxation increases transferring income to the agricultural community. This kind of question does require careful consideration. From what I have seen of it working in Northern Europe the workers have certainly gained immensely in real purchasing power since the war and in some countries where they have managed to restrain inflation to a fantastic degree, such as Switzerland, where the cost of living went up only some 16 to 20 per cent since 1953, the real purchasing power has been quite extraordinary because of the very careful examination of all factors in relation to the economy when adjusting the rewards as between employers and employees from the growth in production.

I do not think I need say any more except to remark that making wild statements, such as those made by Deputy Dillon, is no substitute for sound, constructive policy at a period of our history when our progress has been very definite and when we face certain problems in the coming year which require clear thinking, problems in relation to a balance of payments situation which is not drastic but which could become difficult, in relation to the 15 per cent levy, in relation to the future purchasing power of the British people during their period of difficulty. A speech such as that made by Deputy Dillon can be no contribution whatever to the future of this country.

Some of the things which the Minister for Transport and Power had to say in the course of his speech could be described in no other term—by me at any rate—than as grotesque. I have felt for a long time that this canard which has gone on about the so-called Programme for Economic Expansion was a calculated Party political trick and nothing more. That belief was confirmed by what happened when the British Government decided to impose a tax of 15 per cent on imports and which affected our economy. Did it not become immediately evident to everybody that regardless of what has been said here in the Dáil, and outside the Dáil, by spokesmen of the Government Party in connection with our economy and what they were doing to improve our economy, whatever improvement occurred in our economy came about as a result of the situation in Britain and that even the slightest adverse wind which affected the British economy was immediately a serious matter for us?

What I am saying is that no steps by this Government have contributed to whatever prosperity there may have been or appeared to be in the last few years. I would think there has been a greater fluidity of money because we have been expanding into the British deficit and also because of the tremendous and spectacular development of European industry, notably in Western Germany, since the war. Anybody who has travelled there saw evidence on all sides of the result of the energies particularly of the German people, and others as well. Any slight examination will show that this tremendous upsurge of production on the Continent had its effect on Britain and in turn here. When the British economy became lopsided and steps had to be taken by the Government to try to remedy the situation we were affected by it and it immediately became evident to everybody that all the talk about programmes of economic expansion was so much hot air. In fact, I would say that scarcely one half of the Members of this House, if that many, have read the Government's Programme for Economic Expansion. I would take a bet that not all the Members of Fianna Fáil have read it and outside of the civil servants who wrote it I would say very few of the ordinary citizens have read it. I do not think the businessmen and industrialists as we know them are given to reading programmes for economic expansion.

They were interviewed about it; a great number of them.

Perhaps a small number. I am talking about the mass of industrialists and businessmen. In fact, when the Government meet the heads of organisations of various kinds and discuss matters of policy with such people let it not be thought that these discussions percolate down to the ordinary people outside. Very often they get no further than the little polite cocoon in which they are discussed. The Minister for Transport and Power has been talking about prospects for improvements in employment, production and so on, and this in the situation as I see it, is nothing less than grotesque.

I want to come to what is actually happening today in Dublin in CIE. I wonder is this to be thought a serious effort to help the people to get a fair living in the country without having to look elsewhere. I refer to the steps which CIE have been taking and are prepared to take to disemploy the men who have been for half a century engaged in the construction of buses at Spa Road, Inchicore. I charge the Government that under their policy of disregard for the really important element in industry, that is, the working people, they are creating a situation where it is obvious CIE, if permitted to proceed along the lines they are going, will end up with a colossal supervisory staff of non-producers watching over a handful of men doing the actual work.

Redundancy seems to be the main theme of Government policy as far as CIE are concerned: cut down on employment, get rid of the men. This is about to happen in regard to the construction of buses at Spa Road. I tried to raise this matter last week but was not permitted to do so. I think I have an opportunity now of going into it. Here we have an intensive campaign being waged by the Press, television, radio and every other means of public communication to buy Irish. It is a laudable campaign, one which I may claim to be the first to have mentioned in this House by way of question to the Taoiseach as being desirable. It is one we are all anxious to support, at least on the surface. In fact, CIE are importing buses in a condition called "knocked down". It is like a meccano set—they have only to be put together again. These buses were formerly made in Ireland by our own workers at Spa Road. The last bus made by them was finished about six months ago. Now we are about to import buses from England at a cost, I am informed, of £1½ million, or £1,250 odd for a single-deck bus. That is the immediate proposal. It is in train.

The Minister said in reply to me last week that this order was placed a considerable time ago. He intimated it was placed long before there was any notion of the 15 per cent tax being imposed on imports by Britain. However that may be, the British saw fit to break an agreement with us. On that basis alone, as a matter of ordinary political conduct between one country and another, we need have no qualms about breaking a contract with them in that situation. But there is no anxiety on the part of the Minister or the Government to break this contract for the importation of this colossal number of buses.

Let me explain. Buses have been made at Spa Road from the ground up. They came in as sheet steel and timber and rolled out at the other end as completed buses, made by our own workmen in Dublin by their own skills. That is to be done away with. It is admitted there will be redundancy at Spa Road, that the 200 men there will be reduced probably by half in 12 months' time and after that, of course, probably by much more with the further proposal, which is there, to import something like 170 double-deck bus bodies, no doubt at a cost of another £1½ million or £2 million, from England.

The buses are not imported whole.

They cannot be imported whole. The parts are imported and simply put together.

Exactly as is the case in the commercial car assembly industry.

However that may be, the point is that we have been making buses here. This has engaged the skill of our own people. Not alone have we been making buses but making them at a price which could compete with the price of buses made in England. In 1938, for instance, the Dublin United Tramway Company could compete with the Leyland Company for bus bodies. If that company were to buy bus bodies from the Leyland Company, the cost would be £850 each plus duty. They were made at Spa Road by Irish workers for £724, something like £500 cheaper. More recently, in 1954, Alexanders of Stirling in Scotland quoted for buses at a figure of £3,000, added to which would be 50 per cent duty for import here. Buses were made in CIE in 1954 for £2,500.

How can this come about? What has brought about this extraordinary situation that we are exporting money, rendering our workers unemployed and making them redundant? Inevitably we are compelling them towards the boat to go over to England to Birmingham, London or Coventry to build buses for export back to Dublin, because that is their skill—vehicle building. Men with such skills will find no difficulty in obtaining employment in Britain. The Dublin vehicle building trade is acknowledged as being one of the most highly-skilled of its kind in Europe. How does it happen CIE are doing this thing? Let me tell the House.

There is an unbelievable masquerade going on up there called work study. Work study was an idea originally examined by the International Labour Organisation. They have a publication entitled Introduction to Work Study. The idea behind it was to try to streamline production, to improve production by means of incentives and to eliminate waste. The official document of the ILO has this to say:

One of the greatest difficulties in obtaining the active co-operation of workers in this matter of work study is the fear that raising productivity will lead to unemployment. Workers fear that they will work themselves out of their jobs. This fear is greatest when unemployment already exists and the worker who loses his job will find it hard to get another.

Contrary to what the Minister for Transport and Power said to me personally in a discussion, any worker who loses his job in CIE has no alternative but to go to Dún Laoghaire or to the North Wall right away. There is not a sufficient volume of employment in the motorcar or any other assembly industry in Dublin to absorb CIE redundant workers. This is a very serious matter and one about which the workers are very worried, so much so that the men concerned marched from their place of employment to the precincts of the Dáil a couple of weeks ago in what the police described as a peaceful, orderly and well-conducted parade. They are all men with responsibilities, men with families, who are worried about their jobs.

Then there is the matter of work study. Less than ten years ago, there were employed in CIE in Spa Road, nearly 500 men and the supervisory staff there consisted of a manager and seven supervisors. There are now 200 men in Spa Road and the supervisory staff consists of a manager and 40 supervisors. That situation has come about as a result of what they call "work study". These 40 supervisors are gentlemen, some of whom were former producers on the floor of the shop. They worked with their hands. They were invited to apply for these supervisory positions as work study technicians—I suppose that is what you would call them. They are now non-producers and not alone in the bus body shops but right through the works in Inchicore, the wagon shops and everywhere else, there is an army of them standing with stop-watches in their hands looking at men sweating at work and trying to take the jobs off men, watching them with the intention of depriving them of their jobs, which is what has happened.

This is CIE policy defended and boasted about by the Minister for Transport and Power and, also, of course, Government policy. As a result of this ridiculous masquerade called work study—which is not, in fact, work study at all as it was originally intended as a beneficial thing for industry—work which should normally have been proceeded with, such as the care and maintenance of buses, has been neglected. So much so that I can give instances of buses being sent out of the shops with the emergency doors bolted up because it would take too long to put them into proper shape so that the doors could be opened at a time of emergency. So, in the interests of work study and economy, the policy is "Bolt them up and get them out". This happens. I can give the number of at least one of the buses which can be inspected today. If the Minister feels like it, he can go and look at it and see that what I am saying is true.

Similarly, I can give the number of another bus where if the passengers or the Minister for Transport and Power or any Government Minister care to lift the linoleum off the floor, they will find the floor full of holes. That bus is sent out on the road in that condition because the work study people say, "We have not time to attend to these things. Get it out." This is the so-called efficiency of CIE. The only way in which the Board of CIE have indicated efficiency is in the matter of getting men out of jobs.

I urge the Minister and the Government, in the name of God, to stop this thing that is going on, the disemployment and threatened disemployment of these men. It is against all commonsense. Does this matter ever come up for discussion at Cabinet meetings or is it left entirely to the Minister for Transport and Power who is as far removed from the realities of life as they affect these men as is the man in the moon? Is it ever discussed at Cabinet meetings as to what the result of this policy will be—the importation of buses, the robbing of our own people of employment, the export of millions of pounds, and all in the name of some notion called work study which is not even remotely related to any form of rationalisation of business?

The Taoiseach was in Inchicore Works on Friday last. I am sorry I did not get the opportunity on Thursday of talking about this matter because I could have suggested to him, with all respect, that he might inspect one particular building to good effect. Again with reference to this work study "carnival", three days before the Taoiseach was due to come to CIE, all these gentry engaged in work study were swept out of the offices, especially the block of offices where the Taoiseach was to go, and were put away in a galvanised iron shed, between the road entrance and the main entrance to the works, so that when the Taoiseach came there would be no danger of his asking why all these fellows were standing around with stop-watches looking at the fellows working. The Taoiseach did not see them. I am sorry that I did not get the opportunity to tell him where to go to find them because I know he would be interested.

It may be that I am wasting my time talking about this problem and that the will of the Chairman of CIE, Dr. Andrews, and of the Minister for Transport and Power will prevail, and that as far as the men in Spa Road are concerned, they will just have to put up with it, but as long as I am able to do so, I will raise the biggest outcry I can against what I consider to be flagrant injustice.

This CIE business is on a par with the programme for economic expansion. It is a pretence. The so-called efficiency experts who have gone in there are no more efficient than if they had no training whatsoever. They know nothing whatever about the job they are doing.

In the sawmills, it was decided that a certain lot of machinery was obsolete. Work study said it was obsolete. It was a considerable amount of machinery. Some distance away, there was a trench being dug in connection with the building of an extension to the shops. Instead of the machinery being sold to people who could use it, it was bulldozed into the trench as reinforcement for the concrete wall that was being built. This is the type of efficiency one sees in CIE. This is economy as practised by CIE. Many people in that line of business in the city would have been happy to make a cash offer for that machinery but it was destroyed.

Whereas in former days in the wagon shops where wagons are built for the railways, a tradesman who needed some material could send along his mate and get the material with minimum loss of time and trouble, it now takes several weeks to get material because of all the regulations in force as a result of the work study people. It will be seen that something must be done about this problem. There are highly paid gentlemen there none of them earning less than £20 a week and some of them earning £30 a week because they do a lot of overtime. That is another thing which has resulted from work study. In the old days before work study, if workers wanted to section off a part of the job in order to work in a certain place without being crossed by other people, they sent along a labourer with a bucket of whitewash and a brush and he put a whitewashed line along the shop floor. That does not happen now. The work study people say: "We cannot do that during working hours and stop the men working. It must be done after hours on overtime when nobody is working, and it is a highly technical thing, the width of the line, the depth of the line, and so on." That sort of thing, and worse, is going on in CIE. There is a multiplication of the non-producers and a progressive diminution of the producers, the men who are really doing the work. If I have done nothing else but expose the masquerade it is something. Leaving that, I want to make reference to the housing situation.

There is no housing situation.

Fianna Fáil are just not building houses.

This is a very serious thing. Perhaps the most serious aspect of this Government's policy has been that in relation to housing which has not failed just since the last election. I remember very well that in 1951 when the inter-Party Government went out of power, there arrived in the Custom House as Minister a Deputy who has since made his name in another direction for his great stand on matters of principle. He seemed to be obsessed with the idea that anything the inter-Party Government did was wrong. The inter-Party Government had initiated the greatest housing drive this country ever saw and this Minister felt it his duty to stop the housing drive. He put a dead hand on housing and I do not think housing ever fully recovered from that Fianna Fáil Minister's inactivity. It never seemed to get properly rolling again as it did under Mr. T.J. Murphy and Mr. T. C. O'Mahony in the City Hall, men who did great work, for this city particularly.

In the past few years, housing has been allowed to run down to a complete standstill and now there is a crisis situation in Dublin. Thousands of people are being taken out of unfit houses, condemned houses, and many of them are being offered accommodation which they do not want, of a kind and in a place totally unsuited to them. There are thousands of married people with small families living with in-laws, with all the turmoil that goes with it. Any public man who is in contact with the housing problem will agree with me that there is nothing as pitiable as the situation of unpleasantness which can develop between in-laws living in the same house. I do not intend to enlarge on that; it is part of human nature. However, that situation exists for at least a couple of thousand people in the city of Dublin, and largely in my constituency of Ballyfermot. There does not seem to be any hope that these people will be housed within the next 12 months. I lay the blame for that at the door of this Government and of the organs of the local authority, which went asleep on this job.

There is another very disturbing development in private house building, that is, the cost of these houses. There seems to be no regard at all as to how high the price of a private house can be allowed to go. It is high time the Government took some steps to bring under control the profiteering activities of certain elements of the building industry. The best type of young people, tradesmen or white collar workers or whatever they may be, save money to try to buy their own homes. What chance have they nowadays when the minimum deposit, in Dublin at any rate, for a man trying to purchase his own house under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts, having availed to the full of all the loans and grants, is £400?

That is the situation in which the Government should take a hand. If they do not, they will be guilty of having nothing but disregard and contempt for the people. My proposal is that there should be in the next Housing Bill a provision for making available 100 per cent mortgages to such people. If the Minister for Local Government, or the Government, consults with Dublin Corporation or Dublin County Council, the two authorities which have been mainly concerned with the administration of the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts—between them they have advanced loans to the amount roughly of £16 million—it will be discovered that the amount of defaulting has been a fraction of a fraction per cent—in other words, it has been negligible.

That is the best argument why mortgages to the extent of 100 per cent should be granted. The elimination entirely of this need for a deposit would be a very substantial contribution towards a solution of the housing problem and could be availed of by many people who have no alternative but to endure the frustrating delays of Dublin Corporation or Dublin County Council. I put that forward as a suggestion which should merit the immediate attention of the Government and it would be a considerable help if it were implemented.

Deputy Dillon's advice to us this morning was to get rid of the Government and to replace them by some kind of hypothetical Government which, I presume, was to be led by Deputy Dillon himself whose megalomania at this stage knows no bounds. Deputy Dillon appears to have a bee in his bonnet. He has very wide political experience. He started off as a Redmondite.

This has nothing to do with the debate.

I am entitled to comment on what was said.

The Deputy should keep within the rules of relevancy.

I do not know if I am going outside the rules. There were more peculiar remarks made this morning and Deputies got away with them. However, Deputy Dillon criticised this Government but, taking into consideration all the gyrations he has made himself, he must be the greatest chancer to arise in this country since the first cuckoo came here to take over the other birds' nests. He knows perfectly well, as does everybody else in the Government, that he will never again be joined by Labour to form the Government. Therefore he should not be wasting the time of the House as he has been in the past 12 months trying to hold other people up to ridicule and to delay every type of legislation introduced here. He may be influenced by the bogman editorials of the Irish Times but I am not and I shall not be.

If we go back to the year 1956 and think of the position here at this time of the year when there was not a county council which could issue a cheque worth £100 to anybody, we get some idea of what we would be in for if we were foolish enough to change the present Government. There is nothing to replace them except chaos, confusion and frustration. Any sane person inside or outside the House knows this is true. We know what happened in 1956: everything came to a stand still.

I happened to be in the office of the Mayo county manager at the end of December or the beginning of January, and he said to me: "Joe, it is a poor day when Mayo County Council is not worth £100". That was the position at the time of this alleged Utopia. Anybody who comes here and says otherwise is not telling the truth.

In County Roscommon, nobody would take a county council cheque, or in County Clare, and in my own county in many cases, the few cheques that were issued had to be given the county manager's personal guarantee. Yet we have this talk here today about the Utopian conditions of 1956. Perhaps other people had a different experience from mine. I did not see anything like that or hear anybody talk of it except a few on the other side of this House. We do not want to go back to these conditions and no matter what we have to do to prevent them recurring, we are prepared to do it. The price of progress is efficiency and hard work, not just specious promises which are being and have been made for the past few years and which will not be and cannot be implemented.

As against those wild promises, we have the actual achievements of the present Government and anybody who wants an example of them need only go to my constituency. We did not have a single industry there in 1956 and even the attempts made to establish a power station in co-operation with Bord na Móna were deliberately brought to an end. Today we have Bord na Móna operating there in a big way and one of the biggest power stations in the country at Geesala. We also have a grassmeal factory and a £3 million drainage scheme together with factories in Ballina and Newport and in other parts of the county.

I agree we have not everything we want because we want more factories and industries, but there is some tangible evidence of Government goodwill towards us and there is no reason to suspect they will not give us more in the future: I believe they will. As far as I am concerned, I shall do everything possible to ensure that the future will bring more industrial development of every description to that area. I have pointed out to the Government that it appears in recent years they have lost the urge to move west with industries. If they have any tendency to change their minds about their former attitudes regarding the establishment of industries in the west, they will be pursuing a foolish policy. There is no use in having the east and south of Ireland cluttered up with the whole population and the west left in a wilderness because whatever bit of real Irish culture is left is in the west. It would be a bad day's work if the Government did not continue their former policy of industrialising the west.

Their policy towards agriculture alone, if altered and properly implemented, could change much of the west in a very short time. There are hundreds of thousands of acres of bogland in the west, much of it doing very little. What can be done with it and how it can be done may well be seen at the grassmeal factory works, a place that could not support a snipe three or four years ago but which can now graze 10,000 sheep comfortably as well as produce hundreds of tons of grassmeal in the year. That is an example of what can be done from the agricultural development point of view with bogland. But the industrial development of bogland for the production of industrial power should be even more productive. There are tens of thousands of acres of bogland in North Mayo which could be further developed for the production of turf, and consequently electricity. The Government's policy of setting up oil-fired generating stations is not the right policy so long as this potential of bogland exists. They should rethink their programme for the production of electric power in future. The potential is there and it is merely a question of developing it.

I have never agreed with the agricultural policy of any of our Governments. I think it was shortsighted and those who carried it out were completely out of touch with reality. It appears that agricultural policy through the years in the case of all Governments was put into effect by people who never got outside the bounds of this city and knew nothing about agriculture. Had they known anything about it, surely they would not have done some of the stupid things that were done. One of the worst aspects of the present agricultural policy, as it affects the west, is that all schemes brought in seem to be aimed at helping the big man rather than the small man. The idea of giving a grant for agricultural purposes to a farmer in west Mayo on a basis identical with that given to a big farmer in Meath is completely absurd. It is inherent in all these schemes that the big man makes the money. The man who does not want money gets it and the man who wants it does not.

I am glad there is a new Minister for Agriculture who will approach this subject with a fresh mind and who, I am sure, will see this defect and make the necessary alterations. If we in the west had 60- or 70-acre farms, we would not look for anything from anybody; we would live out of our holdings. But the position here and in the midlands appears to be that the bigger your farm, the more subsidy you will get. It is like subsidising a big shopkeeper as against a small one and paying the big man 40 times more than the small one. It does not make any sense. When a halt will be called to that kind of thing I do not know but I hope it will be called soon.

You cannot get efficiency in a Department where people are not promoted in a fair and proper way. For instance, an expert on livestock in the Department of Agriculture may, on promotion, be sent to the Land Drainage Department. That man may know something about a horse or a cow but what can he know about drainage? The reverse is often the case. This method has been used down through the years in giving promotion to higher civil servants. They call a meeting and invite a Minister to it and get great publicity and, as a result, it often happens that the biggest dud gets to the top. I hope the new Minister will look into this matter and ensure that it comes to an end because it is not right or just.

It was Deputy Corish who drew attention to the inequities in the social welfare code and I agree with him that there are some grave faults in the present code. Those people who, very often through no fault of their own, have not succeeded in getting properly fixed up with insurance frequently find themselves in serious difficulty. There is no use in a county council handing out 27/6 a week as disability payment to a married man with ten children. What use is 27/6 to him? There is no provision in the Acts to give him anything extra except home assistance and that will probably amount to 10/- a week. That is disgusting in a county which prides itself on being one of the most Catholic and Christian countries in the world. I hope that situation will be remedied soon.

I do not want to rehash the debate on the Land Bill but I cannot see much in the arguments put up against it. The present position in the west of Ireland, where many of the owners of land have been in their graves for hundreds of years, creates a problem which must be solved. There are thousands of acres of land all over the west of which nobody knows the owners and it is left derelict, undeveloped and unused, while farmers nearby are crying out for additional land. That land must be taken over and put to proper use. There is no other way of securing improvement in the west of Ireland except by taking that land and seeing that it is properly developed.

The Australians can send their farm produce around the world and sell it in the British market at less than we can although we are near enough to that market to shake a fist at it. Are the Australians a crowd of lunatics or are we double-dyed lunatics? There must be something wrong in farm development here when such a situation can arise. Deputy Dillon said that sugar made from Irish beet was not sweet enough to make home-made jam and that foreign timber must be imported to make egg boxes. That kind of humbug must have had its effect when it was used down through the years and the method of tenure of our land is one of the reasons for the present situation. The greatest asset we have has been left lying useless and no action was taken until 1964 to do anything about it. That is a shocking situation in a country, the population of which have been leaving it as fast as they can for the past 100 years. No effort was made to divide the land and so make it possible for these people to stay. If the Minister for Lands ever did anything worthwhile, the putting through of the Land Bill was that. It will make a change which is indeed badly needed.

One of the problems which the Government must tackle if proper development is to take place is the drainage of the smaller rivers. It is all right to drain the Shannon and the Moy. We do not object to that but the drainage of the Moy is no use to the man living in Bangor Erris. There are small rivers all over the west and other parts of the country which the Government must tackle. It is unfair that we should see the people living along the Moy having their land drained while ours is under water. I know it is an expensive item to tackle but it is something that some Government must tackle some day and the sooner the better. If it is not tackled by the present Government, it is unlikely to be tackled by any Government.

One of my biggest grouses is that we have uncontrolled imports coming in here. An extraordinary situation had to arise in this country before any effort was made to induce us to buy Irish. The position is that many people buy foreign goods because they are not properly marked as such. We all know the racket of importing a red bicycle from Japan, painting it green and then calling it Irish. Any article that can be made in this country at a reasonable price should be made here and there should be no question of any competition with outside goods. A Dublin merchant sends a ship to Hong Kong or to Japan and it comes back loaded with trash. He may send it to Czechoslovakia and bring back a motor car. The tool box may be as big as the car and it would want to be because it would be needed the first day the car was on the road.

There should be Government interference to end that kind of thing. It is not the fault of the present Government. It has gone on since the State was founded and it should end now. If we are to buy foreign goods, we should buy them from the two countries which have taken our people, the United States and Britain. There should be no question about that. These countries should get any preferences available and there should be no preferences, good, bad or indifferent, for these other countries.

While on this subject, it is in my opinion high time the Government intervened to ensure our people are kept right when they emigrate. There should be agencies set up in both Great Britain and the USA to ensure the welfare of our people. Our emigrants are a tremendous asset. We talk about exports, visible and invisible, about our balance of payments, and so on, and so forth, and we never say an honest word about our emigrants who send back most of the money.

We hear a great deal about tourism. Who knows that it is the British tourist who brings in the money? The chances are that it is the young Irish boy or girl who puts it in an envelope to send back to the people at home. These emigrants are more important than any tourist or anybody else. We are not even giving these people an incentive to come back and invest their savings in their own country. That is a pity. The Government should let these emigrants know that conditions are improving here, that they are welcome home and will be given certain facilities, should they decide to come back and invest any savings they have in their own country.

Another category of our people who will soon be in even worse case than our emigrants is the small shopkeeper in the rural town. The Government will have to do something on behalf of these people. I have no objection to the Government subsidising farmers, or anybody else, provided they deserve it and provided they appreciate the fact that they are being subsidised. We have today a section in our community particularly penalised, namely the small shopkeeper and businessman in the rural town. It is not beyond the imaginative capacity of the Government to devise some scheme to help these people. If something is not done, inside the next five years, hundreds of these shops will close down because of the intensity of the competition from the chain stores. These people will then be on the unemployment market and they will have to emigrate to Coventry, Manchester and elsewhere, to fill to overflowing houses already filled with Irish emigrants. Something must be done for these people and that something must be done soon.

Although the Minister for Transport and Power always asserts he has nothing to do with it, I want to mention CIE. There is nothing in Europe, or maybe anywhere, like the service that operates to the west of Ireland into Mayo. Anything is good enough for the people of the West: chuck them in at Westland Row and chuck them out as often as possible en route; let them freeze, if they want to, and let them starve on the way home. Someone will have to take some action. It is grand to go up to Kingsbridge and see the southerners getting into their fast trains, getting home quickly, with plenty to eat and drink and every comfort on the train.

Getting into the train leaving Ballina or Westport, one would want to prepare as for a journey to the North Pole. One must bring food with one, particularly if one is travelling with the family, and, by the time one has changed in and out along the line, one has walked half way across the country. That is the type of service we have. Surely something can be done to improve it? It is no use telling us there is a bus service. There is a bus service running beside the rail service, taking people away from the train. Bad as the train service is, the bus service is worse.

There must be some member of the Government who can step in and do something about this service or, rather, lack of service. The services in other parts of the country are completely different from the type of service we have in the West. Someone must think we are all gone west when they supply us with that stupid, unsatisfactory, nonsensical service. We will not tolerate it. The service has been operating since the days of the British and it has been getting worse every year instead of better. In 1964 we want something better and, in 1965, we will see we get it, no matter what steps have to be taken to achieve success. It is grossly unfair to the people of the West and it leaves us in a very poor position from the tourist point of view.

There are, I know, other speakers waiting to get in, but I should like to say that I have not been in the slightest degree impressed by the anti-Government campaign which has been carried on. No human machine is perfect. No Government are perfect. We all know the Government are not perfect but they have at least done their best and there is no question that the achievements of the present Government over the past year compare much more than favourably with the achievements of any other Government in this State since the State was founded. No matter what type of ballyhoo is preached against the present Government, it will not alter that position. The people are not mugs, though at times they seem to be a bit soft. They should have learned the lesson of the Treaty of Limerick and should not allow themselves to be fooled by politicians with specious promises, promises which those who make them can never hope to keep.

I was rather tickled by the conclusion of Deputy Leneghan's speech when he talked in a pathetic way of some obsolescent type of railway that deposits people in Mayo and wondered who was responsible and who could solve the dilemma. I am quite sure that a positive indication of non-support for the Government in a vital division would find a new luxury railcar operating into Mayo. It is very hard to feel sympathetic with the Deputy when one knows he has the remedy in his own hands.

It is our task now to consider in this debate what the Government have or have not done, or are capable of doing, in relation to our present economic difficulties. I know of old that the Taoiseach when he is truculent, self-assertive and dogmatic is always on the defensive. That is the mood in which he approached Parliament this morning. He is suffering from the chastening blow struck in the Galway by-election and he has not yet quite recovered. He is looking into a future that holds possibly more difficulties. His description of what the catastrophic effect of a reverse in East Galway would be on the Government has left him hoist and he is now trying to water down the result and its effect. Before I have finished, I hope to assure him and his inept Government and the Party behind him that there is in the country a resurgent hope of his replacement and that resurgent hope is giving the country an unaccustomed breath of fresh air.

Debate adjourned.
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