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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 2 May 1968

Vol. 234 No. 6

Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 9—General (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:
That it is expedient to amend the law relating to customs and inland revenue (including excise) and to make further provision in connection with finance.
—(Minister for Finance).

I should like to mention a major proposal which is before each and every one of us here and which will involve expenditure on the part of this State on whatever expenses may arise because of the legislation. I should like now to say a few words on the matter because I did not do so on the occasion of the relevant debate. I am referring to the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1968, and to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1968, which legislation relates to the electoral part of the Constitution. I whole-heartedly support these two Bills. They are probably two of the most important Bills that have come before this Dáil in my time.

That does not arise on the Budget debate.

I was afraid the Ceann Comhairle would say that, but I was allowed to speak on this before reporting progress. However, there will probably be expenditure as a result of the legislation when it is enacted and this is a financial matter which I feel I should be allowed speak on. That is all I shall say on it now, in deference to the Chair.

Being from the only constituency in the west of Ireland which is not affected by the 1966 census and in which it would not be necessary to rearrange the constituency in any way to try to retain the number of Teachtaí Dála per unit of the population there under the present situation——

It does not arise relevantly now. The Deputy will get an opportunity of discussing this point on the Bill.

Before concluding, I should like to mention some of the effects which the Planning Act is having on our economy, which I have noted from experience in my constituency. The whole question of economic development in County Galway——

On a point of order, how much money is in the Budget for this?

I am referring to economic development. People with industrial projects find in the processing procedure that they must get planning permission before they can go ahead with a new factory or hotel. My experience shows that the Planning Act is acting as a brake on the development of the economy in County Galway, if not in the whole of Ireland.

This whole question of planning is quite new to this country. We have no proper planning engineers deciding on these matters. We have civil engineers giving decisions on which highly qualified planning engineers should be consulted. From the number of refusals I have seen, it must be costing my constituency and my county thousands and thousands of pounds, because it is stopping the progress of industrial development to a certain extent, whether it be by way of factory or hotel, or any other type of development which would give employment and put money in circulation. This has assumed enormous proportions and is acting as a brake on the development in County Galway.

In my opinion, more industrial projects are being processed in the constituency of Galway city and Connemara than any other rural constituency in the country, certainly in any other of the counties west of the Shannon. We welcome this development. We see it as a natural follow-through of the incentives the Government have provided to promote industrialisation in this area which is recognised and well known as being undeveloped.

There are people who use the slogan "Save the West", they sit in Dublin in safe seats and form committees. These people will not save the West. They must have little else to do than forming those associations and giving token sympathy to the problems we have to face. If they are sincere, they can invest their money in the west of Ireland as the Government are doing and doing successfully.

We have a large number of people interested in setting up factories and hotels and interested in doing a lot of other similar type projects which will put money into circulation and which will help to keep our people at home, help them to live better lives and improve their standard of living. It is thoroughly frustrating to think that the Planning Act is acting as a brake on this type of work. It is only within the past few months that the Government made a decision that the headquarters of Gaeltarra Éireann, a semi-State company, were to be set up in my constituency. It is something that was welcomed with open arms and it is something that was advocated through decentralisation for many years.

The decision was made and what happened? The Galway planning officer refused the semi-State body permission to erect their headquarters in my constituency. That is only one instance. They are too numerous to mention here. It is a most unfortunate situation when one considers that this can run into millions of pounds and over a few years it will amount to that.

I know of factories, hotels and motels along one 11-mile stretch of road that have been refused over the past six months. There is a motel in the course of construction at the moment in my constituency of West Galway and the gentleman involved has up to £45,000 invested in it to date. There was some mix-up in the planning office and they sent out a letter to stop building. I received a telephone message last night from the workers on this project asking me to try to do something about it. The planning officer to date seems to have refused to agree to a solution and is holding up the spending of up to £100,000 within ten miles of Galway city. I saw men working on this project who had not had a day's work for months, who were drawing social welfare benefits. They were happy and content to have employment for a continued period on their own doorstep and the planning officer turned them down. This is one incident. I do not know what will happen in this particular case. If this man closes down the job as he threatens to do will it be left there as an eyesore forever.

This is what we are up against and all the encouragement of the Government, all the schemes and grants and all the goodwill in the world will get us nowhere if we come to a full stop in the planning office. I have nothing against the people in this office. They are all friends of mine but they need assistance. I do not know how many qualified planning engineers we have. I doubt if there are many. I have been told there are very few in this country. It is too much to ask any civil engineer to act as an expert on planning when he has never been trained. They have a fear of making a mistake and prefer to refuse permission and leave the decision-making to the Minister who is overloaded with appeals. Consequently, major projects are being held up for six to nine months before the Minister can get a chance of making a decision. The Minister takes a reasonable attitude when dealing with these applications and in roughly 50 per cent of the applications he has granted an appeal.

This matter does not appear to arise on the Budget.

It is a matter which affects my constituency and a matter which concerns the whole general economy of the country and I feel obliged to mention it here.

It does not arise on the Financial Resolution.

There is one other point I should like to mention, that is, the additional money being granted to University College, Galway. I can only wish the Minister for Education every success in his endeavour to ensure that we will have in the city of Galway a world-renowned university, autonomous and successful. The goodwill of the Minister is there and the Government are making the money available. This is a long-term project. In the Book of Estimates, there is special provision for £70,000 in this year merely for the acquisition of land for the future campus of Galway University. It is good work and necessary. The natural outcome of the new University grants will be an increasing number of students attending the university.

We must plan ahead and provide facilities well in advance. We have all the amenities and facilities and sufficient brain power to make Galway University the major university of Ireland, a university of international standing, and we hope to do much for the autonomy of the university so that it will stand on its own feet. I have every faith in it and in the Minister's decision. It is in his hands to ensure that the great plans of the late Minister for Education will be carried out to the last line.

To conclude, we members of local authorities would like to know how much money the Minister will make available under the new local improvement schemes. This is one of the biggest problems local representatives have—to try to help people to get some assistance to repair access roads or by-roads or passages. They are called different names in different parts of the country. I heard a lady councillor in Galway talking on this subject and she said she can see roads in her sleep, though she is only one year in the county council.

This is one of the biggest problems —the question of providing proper roads into country homes and houses. We are hoping that when the Government announce the various grants under this scheme they will be at least double what they were last year when there was a reduction because of the credit squeeze of the previous year. That is something I would recommend very strongly to the Minister for Finance. There are people living where they have to wear wellingtons and to put wellingtons on the children to get to school. The children leave the wellingtons under a stone wall when they get to the main road and put on their boots or shoes and coming back from school again they must put on the wellingtons before they can get into the house in wet weather. The houses I am referring to are not in very isolated areas.

I hope the economy of this country continues to progress and that we can continue to balance our payments and that we will have a favourable balance of trade in the coming year. It is a remarkable development that we are now exporting more goods to Britain than they are exporting to us. This is largely due to the successful Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement which this Government negotiated and on which they are to be complimented. There was a lot of criticism of it at the beginning but the benefits and the fruits are to be seen here and it is due in a large measure to this one instrument that we are able to expand so well in so many of our spheres of activity. The Book of Estimates this year, on page after page, shows the increase under all headings of Government activity and it is deceitful to have a leading spokesman for Fine Gael, Deputy Clinton, stating that the increase in agriculture was negligible. I could bore him by going down through the Book of Estimates, through each penny of an increase under the Department of Agriculture. As I say, I could bore him by showing him exactly the number of increases that have been granted.

Under salaries, wages and allowances, the increase has been £129,000. For research the increase for seed testing, et cetera, has been £8,329; for veterinary research the increase has been £33,100; livestock progeny testing an increase of £19,269; contribution to the Irish Meat Association, a grant-in-aid of £10,000, a new grant; under agricultural aids and development you have agricultural schools and farms, an increase of £43,000; grants to private agricultural schools, an increase of £12,800. There has been an increased grant to the veterinary college of £22,500. The UCD faculty of veterinary medicine gets an increase of £123,000 and the Trinity College faculty of veterinary medicine gets an increase of £7,000.

As I have said, all these figures are increases. It is a pity Deputy Clinton is not here. Additional grants to the universities show an increase of £138,500. The small farm incentive bonus scheme, a new scheme, is to get £150,000. An Foras Talúntais grant-in-aid has been increased by £100,000. The land project scheme shows an increase of £150,000 and the brucellosis eradication scheme, £1,191,000. Payments to the Pigs and Bacon Commission are to be increased by £282,000 and the amount in the sheep subsidy scheme by £85,000. Under the Dairy Produce Act, 1924, there has been an increase of £13,000 and the Agricultural Produce (Fresh Meat), £50,900.

So it is not very fair of Deputy Clinton to say that there have not been many increases to agriculture. There is the basic increase of 12/- per cwt for pigs. This was designed to ensure a guaranteed price to encourage farmers to go into a trade which has been fluctuating. In conclusion, I hope we can report as much progress this time next year as we have seen reported this year by the Minister for Finance.

I take this opportunity of saying a few words on the Budget. It is like many other Budgets that have come before us—a little bit given on one side and a few pounds taken off on the other. Bit by bit it was prepared, and well prepared, by the Minister for Finance. To my mind, it is a political Budget designed to win the by-election in Limerick and the referendum later on, or, perhaps, a general election. Time will tell. If this is as good a Budget as Deputies from the opposite side have suggested, we are rather surprised that so many thousands of our young people still continue to emigrate because they cannot find jobs. We must always admit that a number of our young people would go if they had the best jobs in the country but, coming from the West, I know perfectly well that they are going because jobs are not there. They are disemployed from forestry and from ESB work and, as far as county council work is concerned, mechanisation has moved in and has left work for only small regular staffs.

Where are all these people to go to? We public representatives do the best we can for them but when we make representations we are told there is no guarantee. Therefore, the young boys and girls must go. They cannot adjust themselves to 50/- or 52/6 a week and hang on in hope. They have to go to Britain. There are fewer people on the land and if, according to Fianna Fáil Deputies, everything is so rosy on the land why are the people leaving it? I can tell them why. It is because working on the land throughout the whole of Ireland is a seven-day job each week, from Monday morning until Sunday night. There can be no hold up. No matter where one goes on a Sunday one has to get back to see that the cows, the calves and the other work are taken care of.

A young man working on the land can see workers engaged in other activities getting increases in wages and salaries, being able to finish on Friday night and not return to work until Monday morning, going off in a car to a dance. No young man will suffer this and see it going on without some increase or some encouragement. I would say to the Minister that, with all the subsidies that we are told about and everything else, there is very little extra given to those small farmers. They still continue to send their milk to the creamery and get £12, £14 or £15 at the end of a month after leaving their milk at the end of the road. That is the wages they get on a four-or five-cow farm. If a small farmer goes in under this Small Farm Incentive Scheme, I would like to know that the Government were taking precautions against an over-supply of produce. Only a few years ago I remember people having good seed potatoes and nobody would buy them from them.

In regard to the Small Farm Incentive Scheme, the Government should certainly take precautions to see that there will be a market for whatever extra produce is available. The first thing that will kill that scheme is if the produce is thrown in the haggard. Nobody bothers about it. A few years ago we had the heifer subsidy scheme. Some people made a fortune on it. Other small farmers carried two cows extra in order to get that £15. The result was they were nearly robbed over the whole thing. The calves were rubbish, half-fed. There were six cows where there should be only four and that £30 was the most costly they ever got. The Fine Gael Party tried to convince the Minister that there was only one scheme that would be of benefit to the farmer, a calf subsidy. If that were introduced and equalised all over the country and every man got a lick of it, it would encourage them to have three or four or five cows and everybody would have the same. There was grave dissatisfaction about the heifer scheme and it fizzled out when people had a certain herd of cows and that was the end of it. At this stage nobody can get in unless his stock is down considerably.

Those are the things we must tell the Government on the Budget. We must speak out our minds. It is very sad to see the west of Ireland going down as it is. When I was young, there were plenty of people there. If one went out during the day or at night, one met plenty of people. Now the town-lands that had 12, 14, and 16 homes have today two, three and four. Everywhere I go in the rural areas of my constituency in Sligo-Leitrim, I am told that the next 15 years will bring big changes. It is up to the Government even at this late stage to get down to it and give something that will encourage the small farmers of the West because, as I said, there has been very little change as far as working on the small farm is concerned. I agree that there have been substantial grants and that encouragement has been given but it must be realised that the number of people leaving those farms means that the labour force left is very limited. The result is that people are not able to avail of them. If encouragement is given as far as farm produce is concerned and if better milk prices are given and a guaranteed price it would be a help.

As far as the pig industry is concerned, something even better will have to be done than what is done in this Budget. It has been reckoned that the profit on a pig can sometimes be as little as £1. That is very small. No young man will continue to follow that up. If one stocks a piggery and stocks a barn with feedingstuff and keeps pigs for three months and then brings them to the market or the factory and discovers that the profit on each one is only £1 10s or £1, one will not continue with pigs. I think this subsidy will give encouragement but I would advise the Government to give every encouragement as far as the pig industry is concerned. As far as the production of bacon is concerned, the work is very hard. I have watched piggeries being erected. I have watched them being stocked and I have watched the pigs being marketed. I know that the young men who are doing this work need to be young men because it is hard work. One must watch the pigs so as not to let them get a few pounds overweight. Diseases are a problem and have to be very carefully watched also. Any encouragement given to the pig industry by the Government will not be wasted by any means.

Another matter I would like to mention is housing. Housing has got a great boost in the past few years. There was a problem of people who were growing old and this has been partly solved under section 5, but I would like to say that there are still married people who have been waiting for 18 years for a house. I meet them when I go into Sligo town and indeed in the rural areas. I met a young man not a fortnight ago whose name has been 18 years on a waiting list. He has a room, a kitchen and one other apartment. He has a 19 year old daughter, a 16 year old son and two other young girls. He is a county council road worker. His last words to me were that "the missus will soon go off to England if there is not something done." Of course planning has to be done. It must go up to the Department for sanction. It must come down to the county council and the solicitor for a signature. The man who is getting the house must go 20 or 30 miles to this man's office and the whole thing goes round in circles and those people are left in this condition.

That is what they call programming.

Progress or programming. One could not call it progress anyway. If there were not half the delay there is, there would be more progress. I have been making representations for three years on behalf of a young man whose wife is in England, promising faithfully to come home if the house was there to live in. Thanks be to God, within a couple of months, the contractor will be starting on it after a period of three years. That is what planning is doing in this country. It is holding up progress and it is too bad that so much harm should be done because a house in a rural area is only a house.

I think a few counties, including Sligo-Leitrim, should get special concessions as far as manures and drainage grants are concerned. While other counties have broad acres of good land, Leitrim and Sligo have thousands of acres which are very hard to deal with. Much of it has become impoverished and at the present cost of manures and of labour I can see it very hard for even this Government or any committee of agriculture to encourage the people into doing the work which needs to be done if we expect them to avail of this new grant.

I could not agree with you more. I was a tillage inspector there during the war and I know they are completely neglected.

They are certainly completely neglected. When I travel from Dromahair to Carrick-on-Shannon and somebody is with me I ask: "Who is going to tackle this in the proper way?" You have here acre after acre which is growing wild. The Government or anybody else are only codding themselves if they do not tackle the job there. They should say: "Here is the manure delivered as it is in Northern Ireland. Here is the lime delivered as it is in Northern Ireland. We will give you a grant to shake this on the land." If that is not done there is no use in anybody telling me that the plan to save the West will succeed. Let the lime be delivered to the people, let the manure be delivered to them and let a supervisor make sure that it is put on the land. If that is not done, it is only waste of time talking about saving the West.

I could not agree with you more.

If something like this is not done it is only waste of time doing anything else. In 50 years many more homes will be closed which would not be closed if this type of encouragement was given to them. I live not far from Sligo town and I would strongly recommend that an industrial estate be established there. Sligo holds a key position as far as the West is concerned. No traffic or no transport can come to the West from the North except through Sligo. It has a railway station, a seaport with the main railway line leading to the North both ways through Manorhamilton and Bundoran. I certainly say an industrial estate should be established in Sligo town.

Some small industries are going well in Sligo but it is crying out for more. It has a population of about 14,000 people and many young married couples are seeking employment. An industrial estate would make a big improvement in a centre like Sligo. We have a county development officer there, a Mr. McCarthy, who is covering two countries at the moment and he is doing a good job as far as development is concerned. There is a lot to be done in that respect.

I should like to know soon from the Minister how much money is being given under the local improvements scheme to Counties Sligo and Leitrim. We have been told for the past two years that nothing will be done until 1st April, that no applications will be entertained but that we will be informed on 1st April when it will be handed over to the local authorities. It has now been handed over to the local authorities but no sanctioned schemes have come down. The names of the applicants have come down but we are waiting to ascertain the amount of money that will be allocated to Sligo and Leitrim. I hope it will be a substantial sum of money because I know there has been a very severe falling off in that scheme for the past two years. It has been noticeable from the point of view of employment and the need for having those by-roads and accommodation roads put into repair. Many of them now over that two year period have been neglected and rendered impassable. As they still lead to the homes of hardworking people, it is very important that we should get a substantial sum of money for that purpose.

That is very true.

In the county from which I come, Leitrim, we still have hundreds of miles of those particular boreens and while some of them are becoming deserted we would certainly like to attend to those leading to people who are calling out for those grants.

The Deputy and I owe it to those people.

We certainly owe it to them to give them that type of grant when we are giving hundreds of thousands to tourists who spend a few weeks with us. Another matter to which I should like to refer is education. The late Deputy O'Malley left his mark as Minister for Education on this country. We will always remember him for his having provided school transport for the children. It is very comforting to see in stormy weather in counties like the western counties school buses moving around early in the morning loaded with children who would otherwise be wet and cold going into the local schools to spend five or six hours there.

We have discussions taking place at the moment regarding a comprehensive school at Manorhamilton. We have a technical school there which had to be enlarged by means of prefabs which were attached to it and we have a secondary school there. Discussions are now going on between the people concerned and the Department. I certainly want to get information from the Department as soon as possible regarding a meeting that is about to take place between those two groups and the Department because, as we all know, it takes a long time to proceed with undertakings such as the building of such a big school. I hope it will not be too long delayed because those schools are entirely full of pupils, which is something we are all proud of.

We certainly would not like to see too many of those prefabs surrounding the schools we have throughout the country. We have enough of them. They were a great standby as an emergency but I do not think it would be good for the country to see too many of them. We would not like to see any more of them. There is another matter I would like to refer to before I conclude and that is the question of hospitalisation. One thing at the moment which needs immediate attention is hospitalisation for the hundreds of mentally retarded children we have all over the country.

I cannot see how the Deputy can discuss this relevantly on the Financial Resolutions. It is a matter for the Estimates.

I did not know that: I shall not discuss it then. I must say the Minister did as well as he could in giving the extra 7s 6d to the old age pensioners. I hope it will not be like the last 5/- and that it will be applicable to every pensioner, regardless of what they are now getting.

That is what he said.

He made a bad mistake the last time and he realised it. We must give him credit for that.

Another thing I am very happy about it that the disability benefit is not being taken away when a man gets the old age pension. Only recently I had to go to the Minister in a case where a pension had been stopped. This man's wife was in England.

(Interruptions.)

In any case, this man lost both the old IRA allowance and the pension because his wife was earning money in England and it was very hard for him to live. The fact that he is getting the pension now will make all the difference.

From the tone of the speeches we have had from Fine Gael in particular during this Budget debate, it is quite evident that they are at their wits' end to find something derogatory to say of the Budget. They are concentrating mainly on the sins of omission as revealed in the Budget rather than the sins of commission. They must be completely out of step with public opinion if they persist in saying, as they have been doing up to now, that this is a bad Budget. The objective people think otherwise, whether they belong to Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or Labour.

And what about Mr. Feely of the Creamery Milk Suppliers and Mr. Maher of the NFA?

My Party are not great admirers of the NFA. I know the Deputy is, but I forgive him for that. Fine Gael are remarkably silent about sins of commission. I have heard them speak and they have told us all the things the Budget has not done, all the sections of the community that have not benefited from it and all that we in Fianna Fáil should do. But when it comes to raising the necessary taxation to give effect to the reliefs that Fine Gael advocate and have been advocating, I know that their actions in the House will certainly not match what they have been saying.

Deputy Cluskey from the Labour Benches said reasonably a few moments ago that the Minister for Finance could not get money out of a hat. Listening to Fine Gael one would think he could, and that he had just to put his hand into this hat and pull out the money and dish it out at will to whomever thought he should get it, but when it comes to imposing the taxation that is required, we all know what Fine Gael in particular would do. They would vote against additional taxation. They will not signify by the traditional method of walking through the Lobby that they approve of the taxation.

Let us examine the Budget as regards what it has done or proposes to do in the next financial year. Let us begin with what most people prize in a Budget, increases to the poorer sections of the community, the social welfare classes. The Budget proposes to increase by 7/6 a week the pensions paid to old age pensioners. This figure of 7/6 is not in itself very great but, when we consider the sequence of events in which this extra allowance is arrived at, we should give at least some credit to the Minister.

And everyone does.

We had two Coalition Governments, one from 1948-1951 and one from 1954-1957. In the three years of the first Coalition Government, they found it possible to give an increase of 2/6 a week or 10/- a month.

There is a big difference in money values now.

And in the second period of Coalition Government from 1954-1957, we had the miracle repeated of another 2/6 a week. Over a period of six years, the Coalition gave an increase of 5/-. Since 1957 when Fianna Fáil came to power, pensions have been consistently increased in subsequent financial years and old age pensions have gone up, not once, but nine times, and have more than trebled themselves, despite the fact that, as Deputy Governey said, money has lessened in value. The pension has been increased from, I think, £1 2s 6d to £3 5s and, despite the fact that the purchasing power of money has declined, we have more than trebled old age pensions. We have given more to them than the increase in the cost of living would warrant. It has been the policy of this Government, when circumstances allowed and when the financial position could justify it, to give the weaker sections of the community a better share of the developing economy, a better share of the pool that was available, and we make no apologies to anybody for making such an allowance.

We give you credit for that, but what about the relative terms of money.

The credit we want here is: Walk through the lobbies in support of taxes to raise this money. That Deputies opposite will never do. They are full of faith, but they have no good works. I wish to quote what the Minister for Finance said in his Budget speech at column 55 of the Official Report of 23rd April, 1968:

I propose, therefore, to give an increase of 7s 6d a week to all recipients of social welfare payments....

This will take effect from the beginning of August next in the case of the non-contributory old age, blind and widows' and orphans' pensions, the personal rate of unemployment assistance and the allowance for an adult dependant. Insurance benefits generally will likewise be increased by 7s 6d a week from the beginning of January next. The increase will apply to the old age and widows' contributory pensions, disability and unemployment benefit, maternity allowance, orphans' allowances and the allowance for an adult dependant. In addition I propose to give an increase of 2s 6d a week in the allowance for every qualified child of old age, blind and widow pensioners and of recipients of unemployment assistance and of unemployment and disability benefit.

He goes on to mention the infectious diseases and disabled persons' maintenance allowances, and then to say:

These proposals will cost the Exchequer £5.4 million in a full year and £3 million this year, subject to the Exchequer contribution to the cost of insurance benefits being slightly adjusted downwards.

I think it is fair and equitable that luxuries should be taxed to give effect to these increases.

We agree.

Why did the Deputy not vote for them?

We did not vote against them.

You did not vote for them. By luxuries, I mean the things that were increased as a result of the Budget: brandy, cigarettes, and all the other items that are classed as luxuries.

We did not vote against those taxes.

The people say you did.

The proof is the Official Report.

In addition to the increases in allowances payable to the social welfare beneficiaries, this Government made it possible to have a further expansion in the educational services. Last year saw the introduction of free post-primary education, and school transport. We were told this scheme would not work, that it was too hasty, that it was not conceived with enough thought. Still in every part of the country the buses are there in the morning to bring the children to school free of charge. Their fees are paid for, whether they go to the secondary or to the vocational school, and, if necessary, their books are provided.

Now we witness another step forward in the field of university education where grants available to students attending universities will in the coming year be more than double what they were in the preceding year. This will also benefit counties which because of very slender resources were not always able to provide through their local authorities enough grants to help the poorer children to attain whatever professional qualifications they desired.

There has been a remarkable increase in enrolments for secondary and vocational schools in the past year and this, we believe, will continue. The great improvements effected in education up to now do not represent something terminal; they will go ahead through all the different concepts that have arisen, through all the improvements that have been suggested. These also have been mentioned in the Budget and to them part of the extra taxation will be applied—new schools, new classrooms, additional accommodation, an increase from £1,500,000 to £10 million this year. While speaking on the question of education, may I wish the Minister for Education every success in his proposals to effect a merger of our two universities here in the city of Dublin?

May I wish the best of luck to him also.

May I also at this stage refer to something that has been causing me personally a certain amount of disquiet? Certain mischievous characters in University College, Galway, have been spreading rumours, to the detriment of that college, to the effect that under the scheme being prepared by the Minister for Education, certain Faculties might disappear from the college curriculum. Anybody who deliberately spreads a false rumour of that kind for his or her personal advancement is guilty of a grave injustice to University College, Galway, and I would ask the people who, for reasons best known to themselves, are circulating these rumours to refrain. They are doing no good. They will certainly do a lot of harm to the college that employs them and to the college to whose staff many of them got appointed by their parade of the Irish language, a language they have conveniently forgotten since they attained professional rank.

I wish to refer now to the Irish National Teachers Organisation of which I am a member. I understand that the previous Minister for Education, Donogh O'Malley, God rest him, had in mind a common course of training for all teachers and a common scale of salaries. Certain proposals may emanate shortly with regard to this and I hope that the claim, the just claim, of the Irish National Teachers Organisation will not be disregarded when the time comes. When I was referring to the Budget——

I do not want to interrupt the Parliamentary Secretary but could he tell us something about a matter which is agitating the minds of a lot of people in the country in regard to university education? Could he tell us what is the ceiling limit under which sons and daughters would qualify for going to university?

That is pertinent to the Minister.

The Parliamentary Secretary was talking about education. Could he tell us this?

We discussed in the House last week the Bill dealing with the higher university grants and there was circulated with that a schedule of the grants and the salary scales applicable. My recollection is that the upper limit was about £2,500 graded down to £1,200.

The other way around.

At £1,200, you would get the full grant of £300 for a residential scholarship and, according to the——

It is not as bad as that. Give him a chance.

I will tell you what I will do for the Deputy. Before I finish, I will send out for this scheme and give it to him.

I could not appreciate anything more.

I had it last week but I have not got it handy now. The Minister, in his Budget, showed, and rightly so, a great deal of concern for the old people, something that he showed previously when he provided them with free electricity and free transport. He extended the scope further this year and provided for certain concessions to be given to the old IRA members. No matter to what political Party we belong, whether the personnel of the Old IRA now belong to our side of the House or to the Fine Gael or Labour sides, these people are the concern of all of us.

That is very true.

Whether they took part on the Republican side or on the other side, the Treaty side during the Civil War, they have a claim to our consideration. That fact has been recognised by the Minister in his Budget. The concessions he proposes to grant may not be very big but at least it shows some recognition for their services. I feel sure that there is not a Deputy who would begrudge them what they have got. Now that their numbers are becoming smaller and smaller as the years go by, if something big were done for them we should not begrudge it to them. I hope in future budgets the Minister for Finance will continue this trend and show to these people in a practical manner the respect we all have for them. Some of them have fallen on evil days through no fault of their own. Many of them are not too well off as far as worldly goods are concerned but we should respect them in a practical way.

The concession as regards the assessment of means for old age pensioners and also the concession of free licences for radios and television sets have also been well received, so well received, in fact, that it is a matter about which we should all feel proud. I felt very proud the other day when I saw one of the big TV rental companies in a public advertisement in the daily newspapers showing their appreciation of what had been done in the Budget by granting for their part—this is a private concern and I hasten to add that I have no shares in it nor any connection with it—a 20 per cent reduction in rental charges for old age pensioners. At least it shows a proper appreciation for these people and I congratulate them. I cannot at the moment remember the name of the firm.

I was interested to hear Deputy McLaughlin say that the west was being neglected. He seemed to insinuate that this Government, or some other Government or Governments, were responsible for the fact that people were leaving the west. Some people leave the west for economic reasons, failure to get employment or inability to make a proper living or the living that they feel they should be able to make, but that trend of leaving poorer areas and going to the cities is not peculiar to Ireland. It is happening all over the world. Rural depopulation is taking place in highly developed economies like the economy of the United States and Germany. In Germany, I was told that marginal areas have been deserted and villages and townlands have been deserted as the residents leave those areas and make their way to urban centres where they have facilities of one kind or another, better jobs or better social activities and so on. The Government are making, and previous Governments have made, efforts to keep the people in poorer areas but this is not a labour camp and we cannot direct and should not direct people to stay in any particular area but we should offer and are offering every possible enticement to them to stay.

This Budget goes a step further to encourage people to stay in the west by giving a certain amount of support to an industry peculiar to western areas, the raising of pigs. The Minister has provided a grant equal to one-third of the total capital cost of providing pig fattening stations. In the area I know best there are two pig-fattening stations and another is proposed. I know that what the Minister has done for that area and for the people there is appreciated and the provision of another fattening station at the southern end of the constituency will be welcomed because people have been harping on this for a couple of years now, with little success.

I often wonder why our people are not alive to the economic return there is in vegetable production. It is a sorry state of affairs when one cannot get fresh vegetables in the west of Ireland. Greens are either in short supply or have to be transported from Dublin. Someone told me recently that it is virtually impossible in my own town to get cabbage, green or white. People who want cabbage buy it in the Dublin market. As a result of inquiries, I know that the same situation exists in many rural communities. That should not be the situation and, to crown everything, I was told recently that we are importing cabbage from Holland.

Mr. Verolme is, any time he stocks a ship.

I do not blame him if he cannot get it in this country.

He could get it in Cork. What Deputy Tully says is quite true.

It is very hard to believe.

It is still true.

I suppose it is. It is extraordinary that people who live in an area in which they have not got a reliable source of income will not grow vegetables for sale. It is extraordinary that we should have to import them, or to use tinned vegetables. This is a matter that merits the attention of the Minister for Agriculture and his Department.

The Minister dealt with relief of tax under Schedules A and B. I do not know whether Opposition speakers have been trying to insinuate that, now that the farmers are being relieved of income tax, the Minister hopes in some insidious fashion to tax them in some other way.

The suggestion is that he will.

That he has denied at least twice in this House. Yesterday, he denied it to Deputy James Tully, who asked for some explanation.

And I accepted the Minister's word.

I hasten to add the Deputy accepted his word.

I accept it, too.

Let it be clearly understood that it is not proposed to tax farmers, and the abolition of Schedule B tax clearly shows that it is not the intention to tax farmers. I refer to this because farmers have asked me if the Minister is going to get at them in some other way. He is not going to get at them in some other way. He has made that absolutely clear.

The Parliamentary Secretary is making it clear for him.

I am doing the best I can.

I hope so, because it was not clear up to now.

Finally, on the subject of strikes, a subject which has been debated by previous speakers here, my quarrel is not with strikes brought about as a result of action taken by reliable and trustworthy trade unions; my quarrel is with the spate of unofficial strikes organised by groups which have disowned their own unions and have taken action against the advice of their leaders. This is a matter of grave concern to the community as a whole. These strikes affect public utilities and, because they do, they strike at the very root of our way of life. The community at large should advert to the seriousness of this. It is something that affects all of us. It is something that could bring this country down very quickly. We would not be the first country brought down by actions of this kind, actions which pave the way to dictatorship and destroy the democratic way of life.

It is worse than the single vote.

It is all very well for Deputy Tully, a trade unionist, to joke about this matter. Candidly, I do not think he is joking. What I say is in support of responsible trade unions.

Disorganised groups and ad hoc committees of one kind or another should be discouraged. They can do a great deal of harm to the country, which has been doing its best to get on its feet and develop along democratic lines. It struck me lately that there may be in this country, as there are in a neighbouring country and in European countries this side of the Iron Curtain, agitators who try to make little of governments and of trade unions and who do as much harm as they possibly can on the slightest pretext. I am not talking through my hat now; I read in an English Sunday paper recently the confessions of a man who came to Britain for the avowed purpose of doing harm and creating anarchy. He stated publicly to a newspaper correspondent that he was paid to foment trouble. We all hope that nothing of that nature is taking place in this country right now. If it is it should be nipped in the bud.

Finally, I want to say that I praise this Budget. I have not heard any Opposition speaker who was in a position to criticise the Budget in any severe way. As I stated earlier, Opposition speakers have concentrated on sins of omission rather than on sins of commission as regards the Budget proper. It was all right for people to say that this should be done, that that should be done, and all the rest of it. They are very, very silent when it comes to the question of providing the necessary sinews of war by way of taxation to provide for these things. They forget about all their good resolutions then.

I have listened to the Parliamentary Secretary elaborating on the question of dictatorship. It is hard to understand why a member of the Government should mention such a thing. He spoke about workers and trade unionism getting out of control. He is of the opinion that a certain amount of dictatorship exists in the rank and file of the trade union movement.

I did not say that at all. I said it would pave the way for dictatorship. Stick to what I said.

Go back a few months. If there is any dictatorship in this country, it has existed for a long time in the Government Party.

I cannot see myself as a Fuehrer.

It is seldom that I say a few words in this House. I am sure I have been longer in the House than the Parliamentary Secretary. Take, for example, the time when the farmers were sitting and sleeping outside Government Buildings. Who were using their powers as dictators then? The present Government. The ordinary people of this country were of opinion on that occasion that the Minister for Agriculture should have met the organisation concerned.

Would the boot be on the other foot?

I think Deputy Spring should be allowed to make his contribution.

On that occasion the Minister for Agriculture should have met that organisation. In fact, I was surprised that the then Taoiseach did not force the Minister to meet them. At that period the people of the country believed that a real dictatorship existed. If any organisation at the moment are inclined to dictate, they got their lead from the example of the Government over the past few years. Therefore, I think the Parliamentary Secretary is mistaken in trying to advise the ordinary working people that they are now being controlled by certain people, in view of the fact that he and his Government gave the example over the past few years of a real dictatorship, and nothing else. Even last week, we had a Minister holding out his hands and saying that he was not prepared to meet these people. Why does he not call them in and meet them and say, once and for all, that he is not going to be a dictator? Why not give good example to the other movements in the country?

There is only one thing in this Budget with which we can agree, the increase for those in receipt of social welfare payments. We do not oppose that, or would not at any time. I want to say that something should be done by the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste to shake up the Department of Social Welfare, because it is a downright disgrace. Over the past 12 months, people in Tralee have suffered, due to the fact that there is now no social welfare officer in that town. There was a man operating there who helped everybody to the best of his ability. He died and he has not been replaced. I am sure that Deputy McEllistrim, who is a colleague of mine in North Kerry and who was elected to this House long before I was elected, will agree with me that local public men receive many letters about this matter. But for the assistance of local public men in Tralee town, many people would be waiting months for social welfare payments. Last week, the wife of a social welfare recipient called to me and said that he had not received a penny since 23rd March of this year.

I had occasion last week to telephone the Department of Social Welfare. A junior assistant came on the phone and told me that they were just sending this individual a cheque for £6 6s 6d. I asked what about the cheques since 23rd March. She said she did not know what was wrong. She checked and came back to the phone and told me that there were four cheques in the file but there was no instruction to issue them. That is what is happening at the moment and that is why people are grumbling and inclined to kick up a row. The one Department in this State that needs shaking up is the Department of Social Welfare.

I mentioned yesterday to the Minister for Social Welfare, to whom I had put down a Parliamentary Question, that during the bacon factories dispute in October, 1967, clerical employees of bacon factories, employed by the same firms, who were operating both in Cork and in Tralee, who were not involved in the strike, were laid off. It was found that the employees in Cork were allowed unemployment benefit while those in Tralee were disallowed benefit. I have been told by the officials concerned that they were surprised that the people in Cork were allowed benefit. I said yesterday to the Minister that I believed that benefit was allowed because of the fact that Cork city was faced with a by-election. It is hard to imagine that a Department of Social Welfare would stoop so low as that. I would not believe, but I was told I should believe it, that a Department of Social Welfare would stoop so low as to allow benefit to employees in Cork city due to the fact that Cork city was faced with a by-election, while employees of the same firm in Tralee were denied unemployment benefit.

I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to consult the Taoiseach now and to check. I make that statement here today because I have the facts from the trade union members concerned. So why should not people kick up a row? Why should not the people in Cork and the people in Tralee, employed by the same firm, be given the same concession? There is something wrong with the Department of Social Welfare. Notices were issued that the person's services would not be required, except on a day-to-day basis, for the duration of the dispute. I hate mentioning names of firms. You have Dennys operating in Cork, Dennys in Tralee. You have clerical employees in both firms. After the appeals officer heard the case of the people in Cork and allowed benefit, the union members in Tralee applied and were denied it.

Here is a case of the Minister for Social Welfare falling down on his job. I can elaborate further on the Department of Social Welfare. We know from our experience of public life what happens when a person applies for the old age pension. His case is investigated by the local social welfare officer and referred to the local sub-committee.

I do not want to interrupt the Deputy, but details like this would be more applicable to the Estimate for the Department of Social Welfare.

I thought that on the Budget debate we were free to speak on anything concerning a Department. It is 24 years since I made my first speech in the Dáil on a Budget.

They were lenient then.

I got plenty of leniency on that occasion.

Everybody else, including the Parliamentary Secretary, spoke on everything here.

I am still on the Department of Social Welfare, in case you want to rule me out of order. The claim is sent to the sub-committee. The members of the sub-committee know the applicant and recommend much more than the social welfare officer will allow. The case is then on appeal to the Department and can be on appeal for nearly 12 months. That is most unfair to the applicant and most unfair to the public representatives who have to make representations on his behalf.

If the Department of Social Welfare cannot decide a case within a month or six weeks, there is something wrong. I have been on to the Department about certain cases and the answer I receive is: "You cannot blame me because there are hundreds of cases piled up around me for decision." But that is no consolation to the applicant. The Department should appoint sufficient appeals officers to decide these cases within a month after they are received. It is unfair to have people waiting from six to 12 months before their case is decided. Judging from the Minister's replies to questions, he is not aware of what is happening in his Department.

In the case of disability benefit you have applicants on appeal waiting for medical referees to call to the local office to examine them. Often the applicants call and find these medical referees are not coming there. They are depending on the goodwill and generosity of the local shopkeeper to help them exist until their case is decided. Day after day Deputies are meeting these cases and I would appeal to the Minister to do something about his Department. It could not be worse than it is at present.

It is most unfair to have all these people, especially a married man with five or six children, waiting for £6 16s 6d or £7 a week. If he got it weekly he might not be too badly off but, if he has to wait six months, God help him. He is depending solely on the local TD to make representations on his behalf and to contact the local assistance officer to help keep his head above water until his case is decided.

We have had native Government for the past 46 years. I remember in 1933, when the present Government introduced unemployment assistance, known then as the dole. At that time it was just a matter of trying to help out people badly off. Has this country advanced during those 46 years of native Government? First, you had the ordinary unemployed getting the dole, but in the last 12 months we have had what is known as the farmer's dole. If we are going to keep on that way it looks as if, before I retire from public life, I will see the introduction of a dole for professional people. Are we trying to hand out this and that in order to gain support to keep us in power? We are not facing up to the real issue and that is to give people proper security and make them happy.

Today I listened to somebody talking about production. At present cattle production is completely down, despite the introduction of the £15 calf bounty. We know it was abused by certain people. I believe the proper people did not get it. Speaking on the occasion of the Trade Agreement with Britain, I said that, if we wanted to help the people breeding calves, we should have introduced a subsidy on heifer calves and we would be better off. We gave £15 to everybody, irrespective of who they were. Some of them had no interest in cattle production. The only interest they had was to collect £15 per calf and no more. They did not care if it was a good or a bad calf. So long as they got £15, they were quite happy.

Today we have a number of people receiving the dole. They spend Tuesdays going to the local Garda barracks to get their forms certified and they spend Fridays collecting their dole. No wonder production has gone down. The only way to increase production is to give assistance to people who are prepared to work and to produce what is required.

Give them incentives to work.

For years I have been dealing with the question of land reclamation. Millions of money are spent on land reclamation year in and year out.

Misspent.

I agree. People have received big grants for land reclamation and they have not produced one more ounce of goods off that land since they got the grants. In Kerry, we suffer severely from coast erosion. There is good land in Kerry which is flooded week in, week out, for the want of a few thousand pounds being spent. We want the Land Commission to give us protection walls so that we can save good land. Not far from where I reside, there is good land which is severely flooded every week of the year. I have asked the Department of Lands on many occasions to do something about these protection walls. They have given a protection wall to one farmer because his land is not vested, but the other farmer whose land is vested will not get protection from the Land Commission. It is hard to understand that we are spending thousands of pounds on certain protection walls and yet one individual can get no protection whatever from the Land Commission. These are the things I worry about when I think of the money we are spending.

We are asking the farmers to produce more to increase our exports, and yet we are driving them off the land. In Kerry, we cannot get one penny for coast erosion. We could have fairly good land if we got some assistance from the Land Commission or the Department of Finance. I appeal to the Minister to consider as quickly as possible providing some few pounds so that we can put into effect once and for all the Coast Protection Act which passed through this House many years ago. For the life of me, I cannot understand why Land Commission employees should do the job for one farmer and yet are not prepared to spend £2,000 or £3,000 to protect another farmer who is suffering severely from erosion. If £2,000 or £3,000 were spent on this holding it would make this farmer very happy.

With regard to health services, we have been promised something new for the past two or three years. We have had a change of Ministers. It is most disappointing to find that when a Minister is changed from one Department to another, there is a complete change of outlook. When a Minister holds one portfolio, he tells his audience at every function that he will introduce something at the first available opportunity. He says: "I believe it should be introduced; I believe in free services, free medical services for everyone," and so forth. Yet when there is a Government reshuffle and he is removed, the person who takes his place has a completely different outlook. That is not good for the country. It is most unfair that when a Minister says one thing today, because he says too much or something he should not say, he is removed to another Ministerial post, and whoever takes his place has a different outlook and denies what was said on a previous occasion.

We have another position up and down the country. I do not know what is going to happen. I think we are heading for disaster on the question of rents for local authority houses. I do not think anyone ever imagined that people would be asked to pay rents as high as £3 15s a week in an ordinary country town. We will have to start rethinking on this matter. We are told it is because of the cost of money; the Government borrow at seven or eight per cent and the local authorities have to borrow from the Local Loans Fund.

Because of the cost of housing, the inadequate subsidies, and the introduction of differential rents, people are paying from £1 5s to £3 15s a week for ordinary local authority houses in my town. I am sure people in Dublin will think I am completely off the rails when I say that, but in urban towns this is a serious matter. It is about time we started to recast our thinking on this matter. No one in 1922, or 1932 when the present Government came into office, ever thought that anyone would be asked to pay such high rents for local authority houses. There are concerns with plenty of finance. The Government should make a strong appeal to them to build up a fund so that people can be housed at low interest rates. When the ordinary worker has to pay £3 15s rent for his house, he has very little left to support himself, his wife and his family.

There is a great demand at the moment for rehousing. Every local authority is waiting for sanction from the Department of Local Government to erect houses. A danger which comes to my mind is whether, if we continue to build houses, the people chosen as tenants will be in a position to pay for them. Probably one day we shall see a scheme of houses ready for occupation but the prospective tenants unwilling to take possession because they know they will not be able to afford the rent. This is a national problem. People interested in this country should come forward and lend money to the Government actually free of interest to enable us to house our people at a reasonable rent.

Our biggest ratepayers are the people in occupation of local authority houses, whether they be urban council or county council houses. These people are getting no concessions whatsoever. In every county, those people are faced with exorbitant rates. The question is whether they can continue to carry the burden year in year out. The Government should re-think in this connection. If they do not, they will be sorry.

It is seldom I say a few words in this House and I do so on this occasion because I am dissatisfied. I am especially dissatisfied with the Department of Social Welfare and with the way assistance and benefits are administered. I appeal to the Minister for Defence, who is sitting here now and representing the Minister for Finance, to get the ear of the Minister for Social Welfare so as to try to re-establish the social welfare office in Tralee, a step which will be welcomed by the people there in view of what they have had to put up with in the past two years.

Whilst waiting to speak, I was glancing over a headline in a daily paper issued the day after the introduction of this Budget. One of the headings concerns the changes made. The principal points of the Budget speech are picked out. We read about taxation increases—2d per packet of 20 cigarettes, 2d per gallon on petrol, 1d per pint on beer, 1/- per bottle on wine and 6d a glass on imported spirits other than spirits of British origin. This rather amused me when I thought back to a few years ago and remembered a previous Minister for Finance in a Fianna Fáil Government—now Senator Dr. Ryan —who introduced a Budget which included what we now call the turnover tax. He told us, not perhaps in my words, but in effect, that the old methods of taxation had reached saturation point and that the turnover tax was a new method. Yet, in 1968, we still come along and tax the old hardy annuals.

I am not objecting to the 2d per packet of 20 cigarettes, to the 1d on the pint of beer or to the 1/- on the bottle of wine. This Party voted against the increase in the price of petrol and diesel oil. It is quite understandable why we should do so. Personally, I am not objecting to the other taxes. Even as a smoker, I do not object to paying 2d more for cigarettes if the old age pensioners and other classes of less fortunate persons in our society are to have some benefit from it.

It is not usual, I suppose, from the Opposition benches, to give a Minister for Finance a clap on the back. I shall not clap him on the back but I shall say "Hear, hear" for giving certain increases in social welfare benefits in general. The only fault I find is that the increases are not enough and that the Minister could have gone much further.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach applauded the increase of 7/6 per week to the old age pensioner. He went back over the years in order to make comparisons. Seemingly, the Fianna Fáil Party have a habit of going back. I am not prepared to do that. I believe in dealing with the present. If I am not mistaken. Deputy Carty went back to 1954 and talked about the increases given in social benefits by the inter-Party Government. He mentioned a figure of 2/6. He forgot to compare that figure of 2/6 per week with the present figure of 7/6 per week.

It was over a three-year period.

I am not in the habit of interrupting anybody in this House: I have not that name.

I apologise.

The Minister may want to put me off my point. I just want to mention that I was not a Member of this House when either of the two inter-Party Governments were in office. I am all in favour of increases to the less fortunate in our community and I have always stressed that point when speaking in this House. The only fault I find with the Minister on this occasion is that he did not do enough for the people of whom I have been speaking.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 5 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 7th May, 1968.
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