Vol. 219 No. 6
asked the Taoiseach if he is aware that anxiety is increasing in the western regions over the mass emigration of whole families from many parishes; and that a committee known as the Defence of the West Committee has focussed attention on this at meetings in Charlestown, Foxford etc. at which their lordships the bishops spoke very strongly on this problem; and what steps he proposes to take to remedy this situation.
7.
asked the Taoiseach if he is aware that many business houses in Charlestown, Swinford, Ballina, Killala, Ballycastle, Belmullet, Newport, etc. are experiencing a wave of depression due to the credit squeeze, and also because some of those towns have no industry; and what steps he proposes to take to prevent the collapse of those towns.
With your permission, Sir, I propose to take Questions Nos. 6 and 7 together.
I would refer the Deputy to my replies to similar questions addressed to me in this House on 27th April, 1965, 23rd November, 1961, 1st March, 1961, 2nd November, 1960 and 27th April, 1960.
The Deputy's attention is also invited to the references to the western areas made by the Ministers for Transport and Power and Agriculture and Fisheries in the course of their respective Estimates speeches in this House on 9th June, 1965, and 29th April, 1965, and to the speech made by the Minister for Social Welfare on 29th June, 1965, on the Second Stage of the Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, 1965.
It is true that the Taoiseach and Ministers have been going about the country making speeches while all that time the west is bleeding to death and whole families, as I have stated in the question, are clearing out and going across to England, and nothing is being done about it.
It would take me at least a half an hour to indicate in full all the measures taken by the Government——
Tell us one of them.
——to stimulate productive activity in the west. There is the pilot farm scheme, the changes made in the Social Welfare regulations enabling farmers in the west to increase their productivity without being subjected to a higher means test for their unemployment assistance in the winter; grants provided by An Foras Tionscal; the heifer grants scheme——
Another fraud.
——which, in the case of one county, was availed of by two-thirds of the herd owners of the county; the encouragement of co-operation; the provision of rate relief; special measures for the Gaeltacht, of which the House and the Deputy are well aware; the encouragement of tourism in the west; the encouragement of arterial drainage; the special housing grant arrangements for the congested districts in the west. As I have said, it would take me a very long time to indicate to the Deputy all the measures that have been implemented by the present Government to help the west. We are going on with those measures and more will be thought of in due time. The Deputy can be assured that we are fully alive to the needs of the west.
Can the Minister say why it is that people are going by hundreds and thousands out of the west?
The Deputy might like to be informed that according to the Register of Births and Deaths the rate of emigration has slowed down in the course of the last two or three years.
It would need to.
There are no more left.
When the census is taken and published in 1966 the Deputy will see that a great effort has been made to reduce the magnitude of the problem of emigration which was a feature of the Deputy's administration between 1954 and 1957.
No, no.
Can the Minister state that as a result of all these measures which he has glorified in his supplementary reply the population of the west has increased and the economic growth has increased? If he can answer positively "Yes" to those two questions, I shall be satisfied.
The census will reveal the figures for individual counties. The Deputy is aware of this. Quite obviously, the agricultural stocks have increased in the west; quite obviously there has been growth in tourism; quite obviously there has been growth in industrial production in the last eight years in the western counties. The Deputy is fully aware of that.
I am not.
Every step possible is being taken by the Government to provide the means whereby the incomes of the people in the west can be increased.
Can the Minister state whether the population has increased or not as a result of these measures?
We shall not know that until the census is published.
Question No. 8.
Arising out of the Minister's reply, will the Minister say that those persons who made statements in Charlestown and elsewhere are telling lies?
I have called Question No. 8.
