asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he is aware that there are over 75,000 less people at work in Ireland in 1966 compared with 1956; and what action his Department intend to take to provide extra employment opportunities.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Employment Opportunities.
43.
While there was a decline, of the order stated, between 1956 and 1965 (the latest full year for which figures are available), in the total number of people at work, employment in the Transportable Goods Industries increased from 186,000 in 1956 to 205,000 in 1965.
The main objective of Government policy in the campaign for increased industrial development and employment is to create and maintain the conditions in which private enterprise will be stimulated and encouraged to embark on new activities. With this end in view, generous incentives have been made available to stimulate industrial expansion.
The campaign for the attraction of new industry and for the adaptation and extension of existing industry is being pursued with vigour. A firm of consultants with world-wide experience has been engaged to assist in a major reappraisal being undertaken by the Industrial Development Authority of its campaign for the attraction of industry.
As a further step in the industrial development programme, legislation has been enacted enabling An Foras Tionscal to undertake the construction of industrial estates with factory premises available at reduced rents. The legislation also provides for the making of grants towards the reduction of factory rents on privately owned industrial estates. The development of these industrial estates is expected to attract thereto industries which might not be located in Ireland at all but for the facilities offered at these estates.
Surely the Minister knows that it is the overall figure the people are concerned with? The Minister admitted that there are 75,000 fewer people in employment here now than in 1956. Does the Minister think the people can live on promises alone? What has happened to the 100,000 new jobs we were promised in 1956? The Fianna Fáil Party are now——
Deputy L'Estrange may ask a question but may not make a speech.
Does the Minister realise that the Fianna Fáil Party are 175,000 out now in the forecast they then made? If we take the 1965 figure of unemployed, then there are 85,000 extra people unemployed today. Does the Minister realise that throughout the length and breadth of the country today factories are closing and others are threatening to close——
The Deputy is making a speech.
And a very good one, too.
Does the Minister realise that the people of Ireland cannot live on Fianna Fáil promises of pie in the sky and what plans, if any, have the Government at present to secure employment for Irish boys and girls at home in Ireland?
I do not know what kind of juggling with figures the Deputy is trying to do.
The figures are true and I have done no juggling. The Minister will not tell me that I have been juggling with figures.
Deputy L'Estrange must cease interrupting. I ask him to resume his seat. He has asked the Minister a question and he should listen to the reply.
The figures are quite correct.
The Deputy made a reference to something to which he is very fond of referring — the question of 100,000 new jobs. I happened to be present when that speech was made. I heard what was said.
The Minister came out of it all right. He has got a fairly good job.
At that time, Deputy L'Estrange's Party — Fine Gael — were the main Party in the Coalition Government and they were, of course, making a complete mess of the situation.
There were 75,000 more people employed.
There were over 90,000 unemployed and there were something like 100,000 emigrating that year.
Cod.
Nonsense: that is completely wrong. That was happening after Fianna Fáil came into power.
Why did the Minister not change the propaganda made then? It was not true.
At that time, we, as an Opposition Party, did not know exactly how bad the situation was.
Nonsense.
It was specified that if the situation were such and such, as the Government of the day said it was——
Why did you not publish that?
This is what was said.
Why did you publish something untrue then? Was it not for the purpose of getting votes?
That statement was published and it was specified——
We shall bring back the Irish Press quotation to the Minister.
The Government have had ten long years to put it right.
Keep talking. I shall say it, anyway. I have been listening to this for too long.
It will take us more than ten years to remedy the dreadful mess which this Fianna Fáil Government have created.
If the Deputy will wait he will hear it. It was said that if the position was as the Government of the day said it was, then, when we would take over we would — on the basis of that information — be able to devise schemes which would provide 100,000 new jobs. We did take over and we found that the position was much worse than the previous Government had said it was.
It is a lot worse now. Things have not improved.
I am coming to that. However, since we introduced the First Programme for Economic Expansion in 1958——
You have gone to hell altogether.
——we created 35,000 new jobs in manufacturing industry.
And you have taken them out in other places.
What the Minister says is cod.
We have created 35,000 new jobs in manufacturing industry since the First Programme for Economic Expansion was introduced. If the situation had been as the Deputy's Party claimed it was before they left office, then, by now, we should have been able to create the 100,000 new jobs. The Deputy, of course, knows that his Party ran out of office, leaving enormous debts and leaving the whole country shaken. He knows that it has taken us ten years to make up for that. The Deputy does not like to be told that or to be reminded of what happened.
We owed nothing in New York or in London and we did not owe the banks in this country £60 million.
We had our people fleeing out of the country. The state of the Irish people and the Irish country was never lower since the Famine than it was at that time.
The Minister believes that when this statement was made the Fianna Fáil Party were unaware of the facts?
I said it at the time.
But the Minister will remember that the Second Programme for Economic Expansion was announced about four years later. He cannot pretend that at that stage he did not know what the facts of the economy were. Despite what he says, he knows that his Government promised in that Second Programme for Economic Expansion that they would create an extra 7,800 jobs per year. That has not happened. On the contrary, the number in employment now is far less than it was in 1956.
75,000 less.
That is not true.
Of course it is.
The Deputy ought to distinguish between the two things. Supposing that the number of jobs envisaged in the Second Programme had been created, it would still be true to say that the number in employment in this country would be less than it was ten years ago.
It was stated in the Second Programme that there were an extra 7,800 jobs having regard both to agriculture and industry.
Per year.
That is not what was in the Programme.
Deputies
It is.
He does not even know his own Programme.
Question No. 44.
Is the Minister aware that the present Taoiseach, Mr. Jack Lynch, in March, 1965, speaking in Drogheda, promised 83,000 new jobs over the next seven years?
Knowing the way the Deputy quotes statements as he showed earlier today, I would want to see exactly what was said before I could accept the Deputy's allegation.
I am calling Question No. 44. I have allowed seven supplementary questions. I am calling Question No. 44.
I do not want——
Will Deputy Mullen please resume his seat?
Who are the consultants he is talking about?
Some Fianna Fáil supporters.