This is the opportunity to inquire searchingly into the facade of progress the Taoiseach so proudly asserts exists. In the final analysis, it is not the statistical rubbish indulged in by the Minister for Transport and Power, or the truculent assertions of the Taoiseach that decide what the real position of the country is. There is no doubt that the wonderful situation so vehemently asserted by the Taoiseach has not yet reached the small farmers or the hardworking people of my constituency. It appals me to hear assertions made which are patently false when we should be endeavouring to approach our problems in a constructive way.
I have always been appalled and I still am, despite my many years in this House, that some of our major problems are either skated around or not tackled at all. There is nobody can tell me that we can in any way change the simple fact that in so far as Ireland's development is concerned, we must inevitably get back to the land of Ireland, to what is grown on it and to the people who get their livelihood from it. While I have always lent, and always will lend, my support to the development of sensible industry and will always exult in the development of major industries and in the development of proper relations between employer and employee, we will always have to get back to the fundamental fact that in this country, no matter how the Taoiseach tries to convert it into an industrial country, we must still get back to the land.
It is on this facet that I am going to attack the Government for a policy that is inept and, in fact, non-existent. The complete cause of our present stagnation may lie in the years of neglect rather than in any immediate neglect. I was interested to hear the Deputy from Mayo speak about drainage and the problem that arises in the west of Ireland because of the drainage situation there. That is a problem that is widespread in the State and I cannot see how any Government planning any expansion can do so without tackling the problem of arterial drainage and the drainage of the subsidiary rivers throughout the State. The present piecemeal system of drainage not only makes for difficulties and differences between the different parts of the country but also holds up the bringing into full heart of land that is badly wanted.
We have not heard of any major effort to correlate our drainage schemes or to get moving on a broad basis rather than on a provincial basis. Fianna Fáil started a gamble with £15 or £16 million on the drainage of the Shannon but the Roscommon by-election was lost and I do not suppose the Minister for Justice now has any interest in seeing that that money is spent there. We had great mutterings of what was to be done in East Galway. There is an immense number of problems to be dealt with there and the Government when talking about policies of expansion surely can give us some explanation as to why, apart from the fact that they got this salutary lesson in their former stronghold, they still allow these problems to exist in East Galway without doing anything about them.
This Government must have some regard for the realities of the situation. The amount of industrial expansion this country can have is limited. Anybody with any practical horse sense knows that unless we can develop our industry on the basis of raw materials available to ourselves, we are moving into an era of industrial development in which it will be impossible to import raw materials, manufacture them here and then export them to compete with their country of origin. In this country, if we are to have sound economic expansion, we must have every additional acre available to us drained and put back into fertility; we must have a vast improvement in the quality of our grasslands and the stock that feed on them. These are the unassailable assets that we should put into our national economy.
My complaint is that the Government are not getting down to the problem. Let us face the realities of the situation of the small farmers who are the backbone of the country. I will not challenge the fact that the big rancher, the big cattle grazier is getting a fair return at the moment and that the man who can afford to run heavy stock on his land is doing very well out of the £15 heifer scheme.
I am interested in the condition of the vast bulk of Irish farmers, who are the small farmers producing the bulk of our agricultural produce. They are going through the highest period ever of mounting costs, although it is unquestioned that they are now getting the lowest price in Europe for their milk. These people are not able to carry the increase of stock that the man with the multiple acres can carry. They cannot hope to benefit from the £15 heifer scheme which the Government are inclined to boast about as their one contribution to obliterating the years of the squealing calves and the slaughtered livestock.
Whatever about the heifer scheme, my constituency is full from one side to the other of people waiting to be paid money due to them under the bovine tuberculosis scheme. No Christmas cards from the Minister for Agriculture will hide the fact that there is a tremendous backlog in those payments and that a tremendous problem is being created by that backlog. It is vital for those of us who are interested in our economy from the point of view of farming stock that we should get our country clear of bovine tuberculosis as quickly as possible. From that point of view, it is important that all reactors should be removed and all sources of infection eradicated.
It is no good telling us that everything in the garden is lovely, that the national income is mounting, because that does not impress the small farmer I represent. In the past four or five days, we have had unprecedented rain and flooding in West Cork. The real problem is the speeding up of drainage because lack of drainage is causing havoc in areas where land is scarce. That is the position in Inchigeela, Ballingeary, Skibbereen and Clonakilty. Drainage has been neglected. The main catchments are not being done. The Government have abandoned the schemes under the Local Authorities (Works) Act under which a certain amount of minor drainage could be done.
It is no good telling the farmers in my constituency that everything in the garden is lovely and he will be wafted on clouds of artificial prosperity, when he can see all round him the difficulties he has to face, the periodic flooding and the problem of the supply of raw material or new strains in both animal and cereal production. This Government have the neck of Old Nick and they are getting away with it. They are trying to create an impression of up and doing. They are producing books in all the colours of the rainbow—blue for the Second Programme, black for the agricultural addendum. Everything goes back to this Second Programme. There having been no First Programme, they talk glibly about the Second Programme and the Utopia in 1970 at the end of the Second Programme.
All this is done in an effort to hide the fact that we have never had more unemployment than we have at the moment, never had as big a figure of emigration as we have at the moment, and all that since the start of the so-called First Programme for Economic Expansion. That is dead and buried now, but we still have increased figures over last year and the previous years of unemployment and increased figures for emigration, and that in a period in which the number of people employable is less and the number available for emigration is also less.
No matter what the Government and the Minister for Industry and Commerce try to tell us, the fact is the turnover tax had a disastrous effect on the cost of living. The index figure shows an increase running from 16 to 19 points. We know that, even though the Minister for Industry and Commerce refused to investigate, before ever the turnover tax came into operation there was a general increase in the prices of all retail goods, for which, as yet, no justification has been shown but for which the Irish people had to pay. We are now in the position, in this wonderful year of development, as the Taoiseach describes it, of having the highest cost of living ever.
We are living in economic circumstances in which the increase given to the workers has been absorbed by the impact of the increased costs the workers have to meet. Certain items are not now included in the cost of living but the cost of these items is of vital importance to workers and salary earners. You may argue until the cows come home but you will not convince anybody who has to face the problem of feeding and clothing a family that the cost of living has not gone up out of all proportion.
The Taoiseach and his Ministers claim big increases in the national income. They talk in millions. It is our task here to improve the lot of the worker and the salary earner by an expansionist economic policy. I said before, and I repeat now, that the Taoiseach was gambling when he gave, as he alleges, the 12 per cent increase under the National Agreement; he wanted to win the Cork by-election——