May I remind the Chair that I should be in possession and I will stick out for permission when the Minister finishes.
Committee on Finance. - Vote 3—Department of the Taoiseach (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:
That a sum not exceeding £56,200 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1969, for the Salaries and expenses of the Department of the Taoiseach.
—(The Taoiseach).
Possession lies here at the moment and will continue here for some time.
The referendum will take you down a step or two.
I should like to emphasise in regard to the matter just raised by Deputy Dunne that the previous two speakers were speakers from the Fine Gael Party in this debate. Deputy Dunne's attitude is the same form of inertia rather typical of the Labour Party which he represents——
Do not start raising trouble so early in the morning.
——by rising to take his place last night——
The only way the Minister could be here this morning was by staying up all night. Everybody knows his form of inertia.
Yesterday evening we did not have any contribution from Deputy Dunne, but in due course, I have no doubt, we shall be hearing from him in his usual cliché style. However, coming back to the important matter of the debate — a review of the economic and social programme of Government activity in the past 12 months—the emphasis should be laid in a certain direction. First of all, Fianna Fáil have proved that as a Government in the 1960s, as they did in the 30s, the 40s and the 50s, they are a Party of social progress.
What about the 20s?
Will Deputy Harte please allow the debate to continue?
The first time Fianna Fáil were allowed to implement their policy was in 1932 and since then they have shown themselves to be a Party of social progress. Now that Deputy Harte has interrupted me, it might be no harm to refer to a question which he put down recently in regard to the Vote for Education and to which Deputy Cosgrave referred yesterday. The total Vote for Education in 1930-31 was £4½ million, in round figures.
Out of a Budget of how much?
Order.
I am coming to that. The total vote for Education—I gave the figure in reply to a question by Deputy Harte recently—was £4½ million in 1930-31. The total Vote for Education in the current year is £54 million.
But as a percentage, it is 50 per cent less.
I would not have raised the matter if I were not aware that Deputy Harte might make this brilliant point which he made in the course of supplementary questions. Deputy Harte sought then to make this point and Deputy Cosgrave sought to lay emphasis on it yesterday—the point that the Vote for Education then was a high percentage of the total net expenditure in that year. The total net State expenditure in 1930-31, of which education occupied £4½ million, in round figures, was £20 million, again in round figures. That is what the State was spending on the whole range of social and public welfare in 1930, the year in which the old age pension was cut, the year of recession and retrenchment, the year in which Cumann na nGaedheal withdrew from their responsibilities and decided to cut back in public expenditure in respect of the less well-off.
It was 21.8 per cent of the total.
Deputy Harte may not interrupt in this manner. The Deputy will have an opportunity of replying to the Minister.
The Minister would be serving the House better by telling us what the Government are doing now for education. The percentage for education is less——
Behave yourself.
Keep you quiet. If your ambitions had been successful, you would be sitting over here.
If Deputy Harte continues to behave in this disorderly fashion, I must ask him to leave the House. The Minister is in possession——
He is being provocative.
I quieted Deputy Harte the week before and I will quieten him again.
Try it on again. Clean meat never fattened a pig.
I take it the whole purpose of people coming here as representatives is to engage in ordered debate. However, Deputy Harte has not learned that elementary lesson.
We heard it all on television. The Taoiseach ticked you off.
If Deputy Harte wants to indulge in flights of fantasy, he is welcome. Meanwhile, I want to come back to the point on which emphasis was placed by Deputy Cosgrave yesterday and of which Deputy Harte tried to make play. It is that in 1930-31, £4½ million was spent on education. What we are spending this year is £54 million and Deputy Harte sought to make the point that this represented a percentage——
It is 21.8 per cent.
Deputy Harte sought to make the point that it represented a higher percentage of the total net State expenditure in 1930-31 than the Vote for Education in the current year. What I am trying to say is that the total net State expenditure was in the region of £20 million in 1930-31, a year in which there were practically no social welfare benefits of any kind, a year in which even the meagre social welfare benefits there were were cut.
All they had were Lloyd George's pence.
The total net expenditure last year came to £290 million odd. Up to date there has been a jump from £20 million in 1930-31 to £290 million odd and this explains my whole point. Since that period, since taking over the Government, Fianna Fáil have consistently been responsible for social progress on all fronts, for progress in social welfare, for progress in health, for progress in education, for progress in regard to the relief of land congestion, for progress in regard to every conceivable development and Deputy Harte certainly had some temerity in coming into the House, and Deputy Cosgrave had some temerity in coming into the House, to lay emphasis on the most depressed year in our country's history.
Maybe, but we spent 50 per cent more on education than the amount being spent today.
It was a year in which there was massive unemployment, a year in which there were no conditions of employment, a year in which social welfare benefits were cut, a year in which there was depression all over the land. That is why, in 1932, the Irish people decided to put Fianna Fáil into Government to embark on a policy of social progress. This drew some comment from Deputies Cosgrave and Harte and I want to emphasise again——
There is less being spent on education than in 1930-31.
I want to repeat my warning to Deputy Harte for the last time. If he wishes to remain in the House——
The figures are the Minister's figures.
I am not concerned with the figures. I am concerned only with order in Parliament.
The Minister says they are my figures.
To bring the debate up to date further from the period Deputy Harte has been dwelling on, to bring it up to 1957——
Why not bring it up to 1968?
From 1957 I propose to bring it up to 1968. The figure spent on education in the last year of the Coalition was £15 million. The figure in the current year's Estimate is £54 million. In other words, we have jumped State expenditure on education from £15 million in 1957 to £54 million in the current year, which, allowing for the fall in money values in the meantime, represents three times more. Of all topics, this is one that should be avoided by Labour and Fine Gael because if ever there were famine years in regard to Irish education policy, the famine years were during the last Coalition period of office, when there was a complete lack of thought, when there was a complete lack of investment, when there was a complete lack of policy in regard to the development of education in general. Indeed, when Deputy Sweetman, as Minister for Finance, was applying the axe all around the place in various spheres of public administration in 1956 and early 1957, education suffered more than any other aspect of public administration.
You have not sorted that out yet. You have not done a lot yourself.
I do not blame the Minister for Education at the time. The poor unfortunate man was in the hands of an ultra-conservative Minister for Finance who at the time not alone applied the axe to the Fine Gael Minister for Education but applied an even stronger axe to the Labour Minister for Social Welfare.
You got the help of five Independents at the time.
Will Deputy L'Estrange please restrain himself?
His account of history is slightly better than yours.
Deputy L'Estrange is very erudite.
Do you know how to spell it? That is a wonder.
Certain facts of life should be brought to bear in this debate. The last act of the Fine Gael Minister for Education in the last Coalition Government——
You are spending less on education than was spent in 1930-31. Those are your own figures.
Will Deputy L'Estrange please cease interrupting?
You were brought before the Taoiseach last week for insulting him.
Order. Will Deputies please cease interrupting?
The last Fine Gael Minister for Education, under the axe applied by a Fine Gael Minister for Finance, which axe applied equally to the Labour Minister for Social Welfare at the time, when the Coalition Government finally foundered in the early spring of 1957, cut the grants for vocational schools by six per cent.
You have refused to spend anything on Creeslough school in County Donegal.
Grants for secondary schools were cut by ten per cent.
Should we have got our freedom at all?
The total State expenditure in 1957 came to £15 million. The total State expenditure this year comes to £54 million. All we had at that time were percentage cuts in education and this at a stage, mind you, where you had this cut of ten per cent——
Talk about all the things you have not done yourself.
I have warned Deputy Harte to cease interrupting. I will now ask Deputy Harte to leave the House.
Before I go, I wish to say that the figures I have been quoting are the Minister's figures.
The Deputy may not make a speech. He will please leave the House.
Deputy Harte withdrew from the House.
We now have the silver-voiced boy.
The Deputy used to be Trotsky but now he has gone respectable. There was a time when he was not. The cut of ten per cent in secondary school grants in 1957 is not the whole story in that at that stage you had no assistance whatever towards secondary school education in the form of reconstruction and construction of secondary schools. What Fianna Fáil have done in the past two years is to introduce a comprehensive scheme of 100 per cent loan and grant assistance towards reconstruction and construction of secondary schools. Now there is a scheme of 70 per cent grant and 30 per cent loan assistance towards secondary schools. That was not in existence at all until the last two years.
As I say, the meagre grants available to education in 1957 were then cut by the Fine Gael Minister for Education by ten per cent. It is fair to say that those were famine years in regard to education in this country. There was no thought, no policy, no thinking whatever on the importance of education as having a fundamental place in our social development. Of course, there is one thing that can be said, that is, that there was one good idea which came from Fine Gael. I am going to pay a compliment here to the Fine Gael displaced Leader, Deputy Dillon, in that he in this House, despite the actions of his various cohorts in the Party who co-operated to stir up trouble, consistently advocated a cause for the amalgamation of schools into larger school units so as to provide a wider range of teaching subjects in those schools.
I believe that the broad curriculum in our primary schools will be the best way of educating and training our young children and that the abolition of the primary certificate, which we have now done, will ensure that there will be less pressure on concentrated and narrow subjects in the future and that we will have a broad range of subjects in our schools so as to give a broadly-based type of education to our boys and girls. I deplore the Fine Gael running away from the admirably progressive policy adumbrated by Deputy Dillon in years past. They have gone away from that in the interest of hunting votes but that is not the way to achieve government in this country or any other country.
He would say anything, God help us.
General de Gaulle has proved this fact.
You are backing de Gaulle now. In the past that was not so.
They sent a message to Hitler in the past.
The overall importance of education is now regarded by our community as fundamental. This was an aspect ignored by Fine Gael and Labour over the years.
It was ignored by Fianna Fáil until the late Donogh O'Malley pushed it through, despite the conservative elements in the Fianna Fáil Party.
There is one thing we will not do here, that is, engage in clichés. I want to refer to figures I mentioned earlier on to show that there has been a planned policy in education since our return in 1957 and that this has taken place under successive Ministers for Education. First of all, there was the Taoiseach himself, then Deputy Hillery, then Deputy Colley, then Deputy Donogh O'Malley and now I am here in this position. There has been a planned, coherent policy on the part of Fianna Fáil since 1957 in education. Our investment in education has jumped from £15 million to £54 million in that period.
Deputy Cosgrave, as well as Deputy Harte earlier on made reference to the position in 1930 and 1931 but I wish to put certain other facts on the record which show that the total number of students attending primary schools in 1931-32 was less than 37,000 and that the figure for this year is over 160,000. In 1930-31 the population of institutions of higher education was less than 5,000 and it now stands at about 18,000. I want to see that go up to about 30,000 in the next ten years.
With the help of God.
With His help, of course——
Certainly.
——but with the very practical help of post-primary education introduced by Fianna Fáil last September, despite the allegations that this particular aspect of education improvement would not take place, that it was impossible, despite the wails one heard here on several occasions from Deputy Ryan, Deputy L'Estrange and others.
It was the policy we advocated before yours, as far back as 1961. It is there in black and white to be seen.
Order. The Minister.
As long as he speaks the truth. We must keep him on the rails.
Prior to the general election we had the policy document, Towards a Just Society, in which there was the most perfunctory reference made to education and educational policy and, indeed, in their anxiety to jump on the bandwaggon of a just society, the Fine Gael Party ignored the most central and basic fact in our society, that we must have equality of opportunity and must provide the educational facilities needed to develop the talents of our people to the fullest extent. This was ignored by Fine Gael in their policy document before the last general election. It has been also a topic ignored by the Labour Party in their various conferences in recent years seeking to achieve a degree of socialism, which term is now dated and outmoded.
Obviously the Minister is unacquainted with the fact that we were the first to produce a comprehensive document on education. I will supply the Minister with a copy. I do admit that before he would understand it he would have to learn the alphabet.
I would refer Deputy Dunne to the last Labour conference in which socialism was resurrected from limbo and adumbrated as Labour Party policy in 1968. Senator McQuillan has shown us the depth of Labour's attachment to socialism but socialism was resurrected from the limbo of the 1930s, the salad days of Deputy Dunne, and put forward as a practical policy in 1968.
My salad days are yet to come, brother.
I do not believe in theoretical socialism; I believe in practical socialism.
You believe in saying anything at all that will keep you where you are.
Fianna Fáil have always believed in practical socialism. We have been the Party of social progress in action, not in talk. If the Labour Party and the Fine Gael Party want the facts of life——
You want the kiss of death.
——the facts of life are that in 1954 to 1957, during the last Coalition period—it is no harm to remind people again of this because the spectre is raising its ugly head once again——
And haunting you.
Tell us about the future. The young people want to learn about the future, not about the past.
It is no harm to think in terms of socialism in action as against socialism in talk. We have had the just society in talk. We have had socialism in talk from both Fine Gael and the Labour Party. Let us go back on the record, on the fact of what, in fact, was achieved by them in combination between 1954 and 1957.
There is freedom to go back as far as you like. Go back to 1922.
What, in fact, was done for the achievement of a just society during that period and towards the achievement of a socialist society? One sees there, again historically right for the record, to be checked and counter-checked—I know I cannot be denied in this fact-that Deputy Corish, Leader of the Labour Party, happened to be Minister for Social Welfare during that Government. Deputy Sweetman, now opposite, again a potential member of some sort of opportunistic Government in the future, was Minister for Finance in that Government. Deputy Corish's sole contribution towards socialism between 1954 and 1957 was one halfcrown for all our social welfare recipients.
That is completely wrong and you know it.
Tenpence, tenpence and tenpence per year. Our contribution as regards social welfare during the past three years has been in the order of 5/-, 7/6d, 10/-. This has been Fianna Fáil's contribution over the past three years.
What about the period from 1932 to 1947 when it was never increased by a penny?
These are irrefutable facts to show that Fianna Fáil is concerned about the less well-off people, about practical socialism rather than socialism in talk——
Concerned with Taca.
——whereas in the last three years of the Coalition Government the sole contribution towards recipients of old age pensions and unemployment assistance was 2s 6d.
Complete eyewash.
During the past three years our contribution was 22s 6d. These are the sorts of basic facts which show what was the Party of social progress. I mentioned the figures in regard to education already. These figures in regard to social welfare bear out what I am saying. As regards the present point of time, prior to last year the annual increase in numbers attending post-primary schools averaged about 5,600. This was the average increase until last year. The numbers last year increased by over 18,000. So, with the jump from 5,600 to 18,000 in the numbers attending post-primary establishments, it is no harm to reiterate that this was Fianna Fáil policy and Fianna Fáil in action as a Party of social progress. It is no harm to emphasise that this was made possible because we initiated last September free post-primary education and initiated free transport of boys and girls in rural areas towards post-primary education in their local centres. This was done at some cost and as a result of Government decision based on a rational assessment of the cost involved and on a Government commitment towards investment in education as the most important field of investment as far as social progress in future is concerned. This was based on a planned policy of improvement in education by Fianna Fáil over the past 11 years under successive Fianna Fáil Minister for Education. This is an example of a Party of social progress in action. This is socialism in practice. This is the just society in practice and not just in talk.
Tell us where the men in 1916 let us down, as you told the London journalists.
He is trying to get around that. All this is camouflage that he has been going on with up to now, trying to circumnavigate this very tricky promontory that yet lies ahead.
I do not know what you are talking about.
You told correspondents of British papers about the men of 1916 letting us down.
I happen to be talking about education at the moment.
Yes, but——
I happen to be responsible for education.
You were very irresponsible when you made that statement.
I happen to be responsible for education.
As far as the Minister is concerned, it is a case of "physician, heal thyself" first.
I have no time for fading socialists. I am concerned with practical socialism today.
Tell us about Che Guevara. Tell us about the Commonwealth Secretary.
In the field of post-primary education, steps have been taken which have led to the increase in numbers to which I have referred. Our next problem is to ensure that these boys and girls can go on to higher education at third level stage.
And then export them to England because you have not jobs for them here unless they are members of Taca.
In this respect, the new Higher Education Grants Bill, which has passed both Houses of the Oireachtas, is a significant step forward in this direction. Again, coming back to practical socialism and practical facts, last year, the local authorities were able to provide 275 scholarships in the field of university or higher education. This year, the figure we hope to achieve is 1,000. We have a jump from 275 to 1,000 boys and girls participating in higher education, so that we have 725 extra boys and girls who heretofore, by reason of their economic circumstances, would not be in a position to participate in higher education who will be enabled to do it in the coming months. I am not satisfied, and the Government are not satisfied, with that figure. I regard the Bill which will be law inside the next few days as the first step forward in this direction. We want to do far more so as to ensure that there is complete equality of opportunity for all our boys and girls.
I would regard the most fundamental social principle in 1968 as equality of opportunity and this is basic socialism and this is the basic thought which every civilised country today recognises as important, that every boy and girl in the community will get an equal chance to make his or her place in the world, that the community as a whole, apart from the people concerned, can only benefit if talents are maximised to the greatest extent in this manner. The way to achieve this is to provide a ladder of attainment to all levels of education, and the way to do that is to ensure that the boys and girls who heretofore could not do so by reason of economic circumstances can get into higher education, no matter what the circumstances of their families.
We have in the Higher Education Grants Bill, shortly to become a statute, a flexible statutory framework within which we can increase that figure of 1,000 in the years ahead. There is ample power given to future Ministers for Education, and indeed if Deputy Dunne happens to occupy the seat, he can wield this legislative measure with the required degree of flexibility to ensure that socialism is put into practice rather than all this talk of socialism from the Opposition.
In that event you would be doing Che Guevara up in the Sugar Loaf somewhere.
As I say, in the coming 12 months we will bring the figure of student-grant holders up to 1,000. There will be a legislative framework which any succeeding Minister for Education can expand by way of relaxation of means tests or new standards equated to the needs of the community or by an extension of the spheres of higher education to which the Act will apply.
This is the whole essence of our thinking at present. We cannot look at education as a compartment in any particular sphere. Primary, post-primary and higher education are all parts of the unit. There must be a flow from one to the other, accompanied by the most expert advice for pupils in regard to career guidance and how they can be trained and adapted for the community into which they are moving. For this reason we at present have 60 teachers on a crash course in career guidance. We hope to double that figure next year so as to ensure that in all the large centres of post-primary education, we will have teachers available trained in career guidance who will be able to advise boys and girls along the right lines and to direct them towards where their talents should lead them. We will also have in operation in the coming year eight trained psychologists who will be travelling psychologists linking up with the career guidance teachers and able to give further more specialist advice.
On a point of order, I have heard innocent backbenchers being called to order when they were not going into anything like the detail the Minister is now going into.
The Minister is entitled to give a review of his Department.
On a further point of order——
These are not points of order.
——can a Deputy following the Minister do the same thing?
Deputies will be entitled to reply to the Minister. The Minister is permitted to speak on these lines and Deputies are entitled to reply.
Referees have rules for one side and other rules for another.
That is a disgraceful allegation.
Any person who tells the truth here gets that kind of mud thrown at him.
I am modest enough to suggest that I am trying to make a serious contribution. This matter is of importance to the Irish public and to parents and of great importance to the boys and girls pursuing education. It is a matter of far greater weight than some of the mouthings that may come afterwards from Deputy Dunne. Let us get down now to facts.
The point is you are getting away with something denied to the ordinary Member of the House. You are imposing yourself on the House and have done so.
This is a charge against the Chair which the Chair cannot allow. The Minister is entitled to speak on education as Minister for Education. Deputies will have an equal opportunity of replying to the Minister.
Replying to the Minister? On a point of order, I want to be clear as to what the rights of an ordinary Member consist of. The Chair now says that Deputies have a right to reply to the Minister. Is that our function—to reply to a Minister? Surely we have the right to criticise the Minister's Department?
That is not a point of order. The Deputy is long enough here to know what the rights of Deputies are.
I am. I am long enough here to know what is happening here this morning and I am pretty sick of it. I do not object to giving the breath of freedom to any Member of the House, but let it apply to everybody. That has been denied.
I again point out that the Minister is entitled to talk on education policy.
Last night people here were told they could not deal with individual Departments. The Minister can do it but a Member of the House cannot.
I am talking about how best our boys and girls can be fitted into our society today. I am talking about practical socialism and not Deputy Dunne's theoretical kind. The ordinary Irish people are tired of listening to clichés about a just society or clichés about socialism. They are concerned about what is going to be done. We are concerned with what needs to be done. As far as we are concerned, investment in education is the most important commitment in our society.
If you think you are codding anybody but yourself by that, you are making a big mistake. We know very well what you are concerned with. It is not education but holding on to where you are sitting.
Deputy Dunne is a tired man, a sick man, a man not really "with it" in regard to what needs to be done today. Senator McQuillan exposed the basic cancer in the Labour Party.
It is gone now. He is out.
Fundamentally, they are a Party of individuals. Fundamentally, they are a Party not concerned with social principles or socialism. Fundamentally, they are a Party who run away from any practical application of socialist principles. Fundamentally, they have shown themselves in the House and in their treatment of Senator McQuillan, Deputy Norton and Mr. Mac Aonghusa to be a Party concerned with narrow principles——
Put them on your free transfer list. You can have them. You usually pick up flotsam and jetsam.
Any analysis of the situation will show that the Labour Party are more conservative than the Fine Gael Party. They showed themselves as such during the previous Coalitions when they merged themselves with and lost their identity to the conservative Party. We are concerned with the practical progress that is required to be made in education.
I was referring, before Deputy Dunne interrupted me, to the emphasis on career guidance in our post-primary establishments and said that we will have 60 such teachers in those establishments in the coming 12 months. From this year out these teachers will have available to them record cards from the primary establishments from which the boys and girls come setting out the primary schools' assessment of the work, ability and aptitude of these boys and girls, so that proper advice can be given to them at post-primary level to guide them in the right direction.
I hope inside the next 12 months to have published in conjunction with the Department of Labour an overall assessment of the manpower requirements of our community in the years ahead. In this way every parent will know where the job opportunities are going to be. They, in conjunction with the school authorities and on the basis of the assessment made by the school of their children's aptitudes, can make a responsible decision in regard to how the children should be educated and in what direction they should train them in order to secure the jobs that will be available. This assessment to which I have referred will outline precisely where we are going in regard to education and show how education can be geared to the manpower requirements and job opportunities available in our society.
I mention this because it is a topic in which I think the greatest interest should be shown. If there has been weakness in our educational system in the past, it lay in the direction of creating job dissatisfaction. Too often in the past boys and girls emerged from the educational system not properly slotted for their jobs in our community. We had too many square pegs in round holes. With a proper intensive career guidance service, proper advice between parents and teachers and proper advice from expert psychologists, we can, as far as possible, guide boys and girls along the lines on which their aptitudes should lead them. This is a very important matter because if you have the greatest possible degree of job satisfaction, not alone do you get personal problems at family level settled as satisfactorily as possible but also from the community's point of view you have the greatest possible number of people making the greatest possible contribution through their work to the welfare of the community at large.
I mention this because I think that education as a whole should be recognised as a community obligation. The State is spending a substantial amount of money in the coming year on education and there will be recognition at all levels, from primary school to higher education, that education is fundamentally a community obligation. This is the thinking behind the new scheme of re-organisation in regard to higher education as a whole. We propose to establish a Higher Education Authority to supervise all higher education in the country and ensure that funds are allocated where they should be allocated and that students and faculties are developed and allocated in the areas where they should be allocated.
In this connection we propose to amalgamate the two university colleges in Dublin into one University of Dublin. We propose to have separate universities in Cork and Galway and we are considering higher educational establishments elsewhere. We also propose extensions in regard to technical and technological education. We have just opened a new technological college in Kevin Street and an extension at Bolton Street, Dublin and there will be a new technological institution at Ballymun, also in Dublin. These, together with the nine regional technical colleges throughout the country, will have their own field of higher education in technological subjects which can be administered in an overall capacity by the Higher Education Authority. However, their main function in the future will lie in the field of higher technician training.
The thinking behind this is that we should regionalise education along with various other aspects of regional development which have taken place here in the fields of tourism, industrial and agricultural development. We propose to have nine regions centered on these technological colleges outside Dublin and in each region there will be higher education in technological subjects related to the industrial requirements of the particular area. To give one example, in the Carlow College of Technology, we propose to have an advanced Faculty of Food Technology related to the needs of Erin Foods and the requirements of the Sugar Company in that area. In each area there will be emphasis on a particular high-level field of technology related to the industrial requirements of the area. We propose similarly to rationalise the situation in regard to the technological colleges in Dublin. They have already gone a considerable distance in this direction themselves and we propose to further that rationalisation programme. Thus we have overall supervision on the part of the State of higher education and we hope to rationalise higher education in the academic and technological fields according to the requirements of our society this year and each year in the future.
This is practical planning and practical socialism in action. It shows appreciation on the part of Fianna Fáil of the needs of the community today and in the future. We get very little thinking of this kind from the Fine Gael Party or the Labour Party. If a community has to adjust its people to the needs of the day, planning must take place. Fianna Fáil have shown since 1957 their belief in planning ahead and the first attempt ever made in this direction came about in the First Programme for Economic Expansion in 1958 which was the first attempt by any Government since the formation of the State——
Is the Minister claiming that was a Fianna Fáil programme?
——to introduce planning to this country on proper planning lines. It is one particular aspect on which the socialist Labour Party fell down——
That was not a Fianna Fáil production: it was Whitaker's Almanac. His name was on it.
If Deputy Dunne wants to put the record right as to how Fianna Fáil thought when we were in Opposition, about the time when we would come into power, in order to do something practical, he will recall that there were other documents on economic development, a foretaste of what was to come, documents published by Deputy Séan Lemass in 1955 and 1956. There were two documents, one is 1955 and another in 1956. These documents were amplified in 1957 when we returned to power. These showed our concern about planning for the future rather than merely holding on to office.
What I am saying is that the so-called First Programme was a Civil Service production produced by Mr. Whitaker and Fianna Fáil had nothing to do with it.
Deputy Dunne must cease interrupting.
I am listening to irrelevancies all morning.
The Minister is in order, as I have already pointed out.
If so, then the whole of the Taoiseach's Estimate debate will be taken up with each Minister reciting his achievements.
This is an Adjournment Debate.
I hope I do not appear to be reciting. This is a place for debating, not recitation.
That is what the Minister is doing.
Deputy Dunne's contributions to this House have already been geared more for headlines rather than making any concrete contribution.
It is unworthy of the Minister to say a thing like that.
Deputy Dunne's main interest in coming in is to catch the evening papers.
Of course I could not impute that to the Minister at all. That is not why he keeps going for an hour — in order to get into the evening papers.
I am concerned about making some contribution here.
Forgive me for laughing.
We met Deputy Dunne in Limerick city and dealt with him there.
And in a very appropriate place — under the Treaty Stone, symbolising what you were saying. That is where the people of Limerick were betrayed before.
The people of Limerick have spoken, as indeed have the people of a number of constituencies in the past 18 months.
The Minister wants to get away from Limerick now.
Will Deputy Dunne please allow the debate to continue?
Many a good trade unionist——
We in this Party happen to have a number of active trade unionists who represent Fianna Fáil in the major urban centres.
You put the boys in jail for going on strike. That is the kind of a trade unionist you are.
We have plenty of professional trade unionists in the Labour Party but we have trade unionists by conviction in Fianna Fáil. Our support has been, is, and always will be based on the small farmers and workers. Deputy Dunne knows this and Deputy Ryan knows it. That is our particular strength. We draw it from the people who give us their support. What counts fundamentally in politics is the degree of support a political Party secures among the ordinary people of the community. The ordinary people of the community supported us back in 1932, still support us and will continue to support us, despite the vicissitudes of political life which inevitably have an impact on the political Parties in office. We shall always be there.
There is no harm in saying it, but it is not true.
The results are displayed here on the Fianna Fáil benches.
They will not be there very soon. You will have a referendum going to the country shortly.
Fundamentally it is the results that count, because the voice of the people——
What comes out of the box is what counts.
We will always abide by the people's wishes.
You have no choice.
We will abide by the referendum results. We will abide by any change that may take place, secure in the knowledge that as long as we have the people basically with us, temporary vicissitudes will be overcome.
I do not see the Minister getting support in the hills.
These are the people who happen to support us. That is where our strength lies. That is where our socialism lies, in the hearts of the ordinary people. We have proved this over a number of by-elections and general elections, and we will continue to prove it.
The Minister has stood for only two elections.
Four.
How many was he successful in?
A number.
Do not be talking as if you were Deputy MacEntee or Deputy de Valera with a long record behind you. Wait until you are here 20 years.
The Deputy is a tired Trotskyite.
The Minister had better not refer to my physical condition because he may have cause to regret it.
The Deputy has become the epitome of conservatism in the Labour Party. He is trying to become a respectable and conservative member of the Labour Party, full of unctuousness. If one holds socialist principles, they are as valid in 1968 as they were in 1938. Our socialist principles are concerned with what I have just been talking about, investment in education, equality of opportunity in education. This is basic socialism, and it is our basic thinking in regard to the requirements of our society today. Apart from educational matters, there are a number of other questions with which the Oireachtas is at present concerned. The Minister for Industry and Commerce recently announced a comprehensive adjustment of the whole policy in regard to industry. He has already started the Small Industries Scheme whereby smaller industries throughout the country are being helped by advice from the county development teams and by way of grants from the Exchequer. He has announced that in designated areas these grants will be increased to 75 per cent.
Is this the Estimate for Industry and Commerce we are on now?
The Taoiseach's Estimate. The Taoiseach is responsible for all the Government Departments. I am dealing with matters concerning the Department of Industry and Commerce. I am dealing with education, first, and then employment, two matters that should be dear to any socialist's heart.
I wish to draw attention to the fact that some of the Members of this House have been stopped in their tracks in going into matters of detail in exactly the manner in which the Minister is now doing. Last night we were told that is not in order, that we may not particularise on this Estimate. The Minister has been doing nothing else since half-past ten, with the complete freedom and sanction of the House. I think somebody should draw attention to it because the Minister has no more rights to speak here than anyone else.
I have equal rights.
The Minister is superimposing superior rights.
I have been listening to Deputy Dunne's fulminations for hours on end.
If he waits today, he will hear further fulminations.
I have always happened to be reasonably brief in my contributions to this House. I have something to say, I hope, but Deputy Dunne's fulminations over the years have amounted to hours and hours of cliché-ridden speeches geared for the popular press and for the headlines.
The Minister speaks for the Scottish and Welsh press exclusively.
I have ample time at my disposal to refer to various matters of public concern which come within the ambit of the Taoiseach's Department.
Is there not a time limit on this?
There is a fixed time for the conclusion.
In other words, he is consuming time which belongs to the ordinary Member.
I am an ordinary Member. I have been speaking for one hour and five minutes.
The Minister has sufficient after dinner speeches written by his excellent staff not to be taking up our time listening to this repetition.
I regard Oireachtas Éireann as the place in which to say what I have to say by reason of the position I occupy by virtue of the votes of the Irish people. I do not want any anarchistic or Trotskyite behaviour from Deputy Dunne. If Deputy Dunne wants to go off to Paris that is all right, but I doubt if he would have the guts to start anything there.
What about surreptitiously shoving serious policy statements through the back doors of newspaper offices on Friday evenings?
I will come to that. This is in regard to our recent proposals for the merger of the two university colleges in Dublin and the independence of Cork and Galway universities under the overall supervision of a Higher Education Authority in relation to which a comprehensive statement was issued by the Government last Friday and welcomed by all the newspapers in the country, welcomed by the Belfast Telegraph, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Irish Press, the Cork Examiner.
I am talking about the method of making the statement.
Deputy Ryan had better not try to muddy these waters because everything is going well. The people outside are coming around to the decision taken by the Government.
The Minister was talking about making his contribution in the House. He did not do it last week. He sent a messenger down on a bicycle to deliver a serious statement to the newspapers.
I had been making a reasonably serious contribution on the whole question of education and was about to deal with the question of employment when interrupted by Deputy Dunne. The two matters are linked, education and employment. This is what I regard as fundamental in our society today. We are trying to shape our education to the jobs that will be available and trying to gear our education system from primary to higher education level to the requirements of the future. It comes down to the question of employment. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has recently announced increased grants, increased loans, increased facilities in regard to industrial development. He has decided to re-organise the Industrial Development Authority so that it will be an active agency in the development of industries, with particular emphasis on the regional aspect.
Coming back again to the matter to which I was referring earlier, the question of regional development, it is our desire to diffuse prosperity throughout the country, and not alone to promote development in Dublin and Cork but in certain growth centres throughout the country where people can be absorbed in gainful employment. We intend to extend the scheme of industrial estates, which we have established in Waterford and in Shannon, to the other growth centres on which the regional technical colleges would be based. Therefore we would have there the co-ordination between industries providing jobs and the education and training to equip our boys and girls for jobs.
This is the sort of co-ordinated planning on which the Government are engaged at the moment, the sort of planning which places emphasis on planned growth from the social and economic point of view in our economy. This is the sort of thinking which has brought us to make our decision in regard to decentralisation of Government Departments, and which has brought us to our thinking that further decentralisation of this kind must take place. Indeed, events throughout the world in recent months have emphasised again the importance of not having too much economic development in one particular centre, and that it is very important to have economic and social development balanced throughout the community on a regional basis. I want to emphasise again that in the proposals I announced last week on behalf of the Government in regard to higher education, we have been pursuing precisely that approach.
At present in the combined Trinity College and University College structures, we have 11,500 students. These will be coming together in one university. We have between 2,500 and 3,000 students in the institutions in Cork and Galway. These will be under the aegis of a Higher Education Authority. We propose to raise the numbers in university colleges in Cork and Galway to between 4,000 and 5,000, which I would regard as a minimum viable unit. Heretofore the university structures in Galway and Cork did not get this chance of expanding. I propose to ensure that they will expand along the lines mentioned. We anticipate that over the next six years we will have an increase in student numbers in the region of 6,000. We can absorb this increase to a substantial extent in Cork and Galway. We propose to rationalise higher education under the supervision of a Higher Education Authority which was recommended by the Commission on Higher Education.
Does the Minister intend to see that students at the universities get the lectures they are supposed to get, and do not turn up at classes to find that the professors or lecturers are not there to instruct them?
The Deputy has a point with which I would be in complete agreement. I would hope that under this overall Higher Education Authority we would have a planned system of recruitment, appointment, promotion, salary scales and superannuation for the university staff.
On condition that the university staff discharge the functions they undertake.
I grant the Deputy that point. This is an example of Government planning in the sphere of higher education, which planning is related to our overall conception of where we are going, how we can rationalise the system of university and technological education, and how we can guide our students through career guidance at post-primary level along lines that will lead them to the jobs which are available in our community.
Similarly in regard to primary and post-primary education, we must also have regional development. We wish to see regional education authorities always co-terminous with the catchment areas of the regional tribunal established which will supervise all aspects of primary and post-primary education. i paid tribute earlier to Deputy Dillon as being the person who first adumbrated the importance of having large central units at primary level. We want to equip the children in their tender years to face the more testing aspects of post-primary and higher education. Along with rationalising higher education, we must also rationalise primary and post-primary education. We must have a planned approach to education as a whole. I want to emphasise the need to ensure that our educational system will result in boys and girls emerging from it equipped and trained for the jobs that will be available. This is relevant to the facts of life as they exist in 1968.
I want to refer to another matter about which I have been taunted in this debate, that is, the question of what I said or did not say to the Daily Telegraph in the course of an interview. I would hope that as a result of the improvement in our educational system, people will be able to read and write properly. This is a cause of some contention at the moment in regard to our new proposals for the language courses for the leaving certificate.
As I said in reply to a question yesterday, I was horrified when I came into my present office and took up some of the leaving certificate papers and saw that students who had got honours were unable to write down in an essay in plain Irish, or plain English, or plain French, exactly what their thoughts were on a particular subject. We are going to place great emphasis on the essay. I believe it important in regard to language training that a student should be able to communicate verbally or write down in consecutive from what one's thoughts are. The leaving certificate courses will involve English literature, modern and past, and Irish literature, modern and past, but in the examinations the questions will not be based on literal excerpts from the literature. It will be a question of interpreting the real message in the literature.
The statement I made to the Daily Telegraph is one which I can stand over completely if people read it without any mischievous notion or without seeking to derive any misconception from it. People have got into the practice of reading the headlines and not reading the small print. The small print is very important because it is there that the full emphasis of what one is seeking to say emerges. Briefly what I said to the Daily Telegraph was a very simple message concerned with the fact that national independence, per se, of itself, is not the answer to the problems of any country or any region. This has been amply proved in Africa and in other places which have national independence. Indeed, Jomo Kenyatta has been at pains over the years to say to the people of Kenya precisely what I am saying. Briefly that was the message I set out to give in that interview. I said that the mere securing of independence, of itself, by the Scots or the Welsh, or any other people, or any other region, would not be the answer, and that further planning would have to be undertaken to build up the nation. However, in zealous work in building up institutions, in ensuring that social and economic development will take place, hardships have to be undertaken and difficulties have to be overcome. All of these difficulties have to be undertaken in regard to independence. The mere “Uhuru”, as some Africans would say——
The Minister should pronounce the word properly.
Forgive me. Whether this, of itself——
God help us if the Irish nation is to take "Uhuru" as its catchcry.
This is precisely the point I am making and it is the only point I am making in relation to the Daily Telegraph. It can be acknowledged as a fact of life that, as far as Scotland and Wales are concerned, there are obvious material disadvantages in the complete independence of those countries and those disadvantages must be balanced against whether or not the people want autonomy. It is a question of balance between two attractions and I made the point in order to put the whole matter in a balanced context.
I also said — and was again misquoted — that, in the context of Irish history — as a personal point of view — I feel that if we had secured through the actions of Parnell and other people, including Deputy Dillon's ancestors, a 32-County Home Rule Parliament in 1884——
1885.
——1885, when Gladstone wanted it and had persuaded the House of Commons to this end and was defeated by the House of Lords, at that stage we might have evolved — it is merely an historical speculation — from that 32-County Home Rule situation into a 32-County independent Republic today. This, again, was historical speculation on my part. This does not in any way reflect on the necessity for 1916, the necessity for the War of Independence between 1918 and 1921 in the context of the situation which arose by reason of the British Government's betrayal of John Redmond——
The Minister is all things to all martyrs.
That puts it into its historical context.
The Minister is on everybody's side.
If malcontents wish to interpret a balanced interview with a serious newspaper in the manner in which they have chosen to interpret it, they may do so. 1916 was completely necessary in its time and so was the War of Independence because of the context of the time. Redmond and the Home Rule movement had been betrayed by the British Government and there was need for Pearse and 1916 after that. People should read the small print and read in detail what is said and should not just be led away by the facile perusal of a headline.
Was the Minister not throwing cold water on the efforts of the Nationalists?
No, but I shall not be drawn any further, Deputy. I also said that, in my view, it would be very wise, having regard to the Irish parallel, for the British Government to grant Home Rule to Wales and to Scotland, having regard to the history of the Irish situation, having regard to the disadvantages that would arise. I said some sort of regional or Home Rule Parliament might be desirable for Wales and Scotland in the context of what happened in Ireland. That is precisely what I said. If the matter is read in depth, as well as the small print, it will be found that what I have said is the correct interpretation. I am glad of the opportunity to say all this in view of the misinterpretation and misconceptions that have arisen.
It is impossible in politics to avoid the situation but every man in public life should speak out on matters of serious importance and of historical importance in such a way as to help people to think, to speculate, to examine and question problems. It is part of our duty, as public men, not to utter clichés but, instead, to stimulate and further try to provoke serious thought on all aspects of our social, economic and philosophical development. It is important that, in our integrated community, we build up a better philosophy of life that will lead to a greater quality of life. Our whole education is fundamentally geared to that end. The subject of manpower requirements engaged me at some length this morning but far more fundament al than that is the whole basic problem of education which is to lead people on to a better life. The Latin word is educare. This is the whole essence of education — to lead our boys and girls into a community in the future that will have a higher quality and a better way of life in which they will be able to play a better part and enlarge and enrich themselves. Having said as much——
Quo vadis?
I spoke a lot about quo vadis before the Deputy came in here this morning.
Per ardua ad astra.
Coming to the mid-hour of the day, it is now appropriate for Deputy Dunne to intervene. He has been here for some time.
Any time, anywhere, is appropriate, for me.
He is anxious to intervene in his usual manner. We have had words and expressions between us over the past two hours or so.
The Minister has the urge for an aperitif. Is that not what he means?
As far as Deputy Dunne is concerned, I would hope he will continue to entertain the House in his usual brilliant way with his usual exposition of clichés and his usual grandiloquent gestures for some hours to come. I shall come in at some later stage to enjoy the valedictory address at the end of a long series of clichés.
The Minister will have a hangover at that time.
At any rate, in all seriousness and in conclusion, this debate has enabled us to come down to fundamentals. I would regard as fundamental in our society today education and employment. These fundamental social principles guide us in regard to Fianna Fáil planning for the 1960s and the 1970s — and their application to the basic needs of the community is far more effective than wordy platitudes from Deputy Dunne.
The Minister is anxious not to be misquoted. Did I understand him to conclude his observations with a reference to "social" or "socialist" objectives?
Social.
Indeed: indeed.
Indeed, I am not a bit afraid of "socialist" either.
The Minister has sat down and I am now in possession. Taking up the running from that point, the Minister has been trying, for the past 1½ hours that I have been here, to establish that there is no greater socialist in existence in Europe than he——
God save Marx.
——that his Party are to the left of Cohn-Bendit——
——and to the right of Rudi Deutsch.
I observe, though, that the Minister for Education, in the course of his interruption here, could not resist the temptation to smile cynically at his own political asseverations on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party. He is really laughing up his sleeve, as it were, doling out these things in which he does not believe and in which his Party do not believe. He talked about equal opportunity for all our citizens which we see of course embraced in the Proclamation of 1916 and in all documents of that nature around the country and elsewhere throughout the world. What equal opportunity is there in this country at present can the Minister tell me? Look around this House and tell me where is the equal opportunity? Let us take first things first. How many people are sitting in these seats because of nepotism and because of the fact that they were born into a specially privileged position? How many of them had to come in here on their own merits?
I suggest that that is one aspect of equal opportunity that might be looked at and you can take it from there through the whole of our society. Amongst the working people, it is an accepted thing and it has become the cynical cliché of our age that it is not what you know but who you know. Is this not particularly true of this whether he is living in the city or in administration? If a working man, the rural areas, whether he is self-employed or working for wages, wants to place his son or daughter in employment, can it be said that he has equal opportunity for doing that with the person who is well connected politically and well endowed financially? Is there any suggestion that there could be equal opportunity in that kind of situation? Do we not all know very well that if you are not well connected and that if you do not know people to get you a job, well, that is just too bad?
You are baying at the moon now.
I am talking facts and not trotting out the platitudes which you were trotting out all the morning. I quite accept that the Minister is capable of seeing a moon at mid-day but I am not.
The Deputy is capable of seeing the moon at all times: luna, the moon.
As Deputy Dillon so aptly remarked, per ardua ad astra, one must try——
Luna, the moon.
I know. I did not have the advantages you had but I picked up the odd word along the way. Life was not so cushioned. Do not tell me you have to go?
He wants to study English literature.
I want to preface my remarks by saying that the Leader of the Labour Party pointed to the need for the reform of procedures in this House. The need for this reform was underlined and emphasised last night by the fact that despite the presence of Members of the House, albeit ordinary Deputies, such as myself, who were awaiting a call from the Chair, it was possible and is apparently accepted as part of the procedure of the House that if at any time the mood falls on a Minister, he may come in here, sit down for a few minutes, wait until the speaker in possession has finished, and then get up and talk for whatever length of time he likes and then depart. He may be as irrelevant as he likes and I may say that the Minister who has just left the House went into matters of detail for which other Members last night were upbraided and called to order by the Chair.
As I say, this emphasises this gross abuse of the rules of debate by a Minister and emphasises the very great need which exists for reform of our procedures, for their modernisation and indeed for their democratisation also, as was referred to by Deputy Corish. In the near future, we hope to put matters in this regard before the Committee on Procedure and Privileges for the Members' consideration. We hope that whatever steps are taken will meet with the approval of the House because if we are going to have a debate of this kind conducted along the lines of which we have seen some evidence this morning, that is to say, by the intervention at will of members of the Government and the denial of time to ordinary Deputies thereby, then the thing becomes a farce and whatever democracy may be argued to exist in this Chamber disappears.
Remember that when Minister and Parliamentary Secretaries come in here to talk about their Departments, they are provided with briefs and they do not have to exercise their intellects to any great extent except to read what is in front of them, unlike Deputies who have the task of composing their thoughts — even Deputy Dowling, and goodness knows anybody confronted with the task of composing Deputy Dowling's thoughts could not be blamed for becoming somewhat affrighted. Here you have Ministers backed by hundreds and in some cases thousands of civil servants providing them with their briefs and they can come in here and abuse the privileges of the House to the detriment of the ordinary Deputies and take up the time of the House. This is something that will have to be attended to by the House when the opportunity arises.
"I will not be a weak Taoiseach." Where did we hear that before and how often did we hear it? "I will not be a weak Taoiseach." I suppose we could take this as the text for this debate. It is a betrayal of the man and the individual who occupies the high office of Taoiseach that he found it necessary to affirm publicly in this silly fashion his intention to rule his Cabinet with some degree of firmness. Briseann an dúchas tré shúile an chait, nature breaks out through the eyes of the cat, and in fact he has been a weak Taoiseach. Not alone that, but it is well known that his Cabinet is riven and split in a power struggle. There is no doubt about that. We are all aware of it.
Keep saying it long enough and somebody will believe you.
Everybody knows it. It does not really matter what struggling is going on in the Cabinet because I can plainly see that this is a transient Government; it is on its way. I have heard so much talk here about coalition, all from the Government side, all from people haunted by this idea that there might be a coalition and they might lose their little soft Ministries. All that is coming from the Front Bench of the Government. I have heard so much about it in the past few months that I can believe, particularly in the case of my esteemed colleague, who is trying to put over the referendum and who seems to have almost a little death wish, and not alone for himself but for the Fianna Fáil Party, that coming events are casting their shadows.
The Minister for Local Government can hardly make any statement at all without this spectre of coalition emerging from his mind. He is haunted by the fact that he may find himself in an extraordinary position, a position in which he has never been before. This was remarked to me by a constituent: "You know," he said, "the Minister for Local Government, Mr. Boland, was never a TD." I thought it over for a moment and then I realised that it was, of course, quite true; he was never a TD. From the first day he came into this House he has been a Minister. He became a Minister when he walked into this House. He has never been a TD. He has never had to do the ordinary collar work and the drudgery that others of us have had to do in order to maintain our position as Members of this House. Now he can hardly make any statement at all without mentioning this obsession he has, this idea of a coalition, obviously because he is afraid the day it comes, he will be out. If it comes, or if we were ever to find ourselves in a set of circumstances in which another Government might be formed, in that eventuality then the Minister will be out.
When this Administration goes, there will be no road back for them, unlike the previous Fianna Fáil Administration when you had at the top a figure who seemed to have a magnetic attraction for the Irish people. That figure is no longer there. The magnetic attraction is gone and the younger people of today are inclined to judge more on performance than on mystique. That, of course, is a good thing. Judging on performance, in the absence of any significant figure leading what was once a very numerous Party, it seems to be inevitable that there will be a diminution of support for the Fianna Fáil Party and, on that, will follow its disappearance eventually into obscurity, because nothing lasts for ever. I know there are certain people in Fianna Fáil who suffer from the same delusions as afflicted Adolf Hitler. He talked about the Reich that would live for a thousand years. Certain Fianna Fáil people have the same approach, but they will meet their bunker too. The Irish people are building the bunker for them and the strange thing is that Fianna Fáil are themselves helping to dig their own political grave because, unquestionably, the attempt to put over the so-called "straight" vote, the single non-transferable vote, will meet with a violent defeat. That will mark the beginning of the end of Fianna Fáil.
We are not too far away from an election day. I suppose at the outside it will be another 12 months. It is reasonable to assume we will have an election within 12 months. I think we really need an election. I do not say that as one who enjoys elections, but I think we undoubtedly need a shake-up. There is very great need for an infusion of energy and the replacement of the present cynicism by some tincture, at least, of idealism, a cynicism which characterises every action taken by this Government.
I listened last night, for my sins, to Deputy Corry and I regret that I was provoked into making some comment about his membership of this House. That is something I would not wish to do because, in spite of his shortcomings, and he has his share of them — we all have shortcomings — he is a man of venerable age and it can be said, I suppose, he has survived here over a long period and, for that reason, one should feel a certain kindness towards him. But that is very hard at times. It would be easier to feel kind towards him if one had a few Aspro, or something, to prevent the headache he always induces when he starts to speak. However, that aside, he talked about his constituency and I can only conclude — I hope the good people of his constituency will read his remarks — that there must be down there a kind of Paradise, according to Deputy Corry's definition at least. Apparently all he has to do, if there is unemployment, is to get on the phone to Lieut.-Gen. Costello and Lieut.-Gen. Costello will arrive in the town with a fistful of money to set up a new industry which will benefit both the farmers and the townspeople.
If that is the case, it is well to be like Deputy Corry. But one is inclined to think that it is not, perhaps, quite like that, because he went on to say, in a tone of wonder, that the county manager in Cork had sympathetically considered a man for a medical card, a married man, with six children, earning £20 a week. He was sympathetically considered for a medical card and, to Deputy Corry, this was something remarkable. The civilisation which Deputy Corry, apparently, has imposed on that area has to be seen to be believed: £20 per week amongst eight people. That such a person should get a medical card is regarded by Deputy Corry as a remarkable thing. That speaks for itself.
He also talked about tourism in the town of Youghal, the beautiful little town of Youghal, which, according to him, has industry instituted by Deputy Corry himself, encouraged and set up by Deputy Corry himself, and he defined "tourism" as "rooking the visitor." The people of Youghal, the hoteliers and the guesthouse proprietors, who make their living from that industry will have a view, I am sure, as to whether there is any validity in that comment. He capped his remarks by saying that Deputies who are groaning and moaning here about the plight of the people should themselves provide jobs for the people; in other words, each and every one of us should create jobs in our own areas for the unemployed in those areas. Apparently, Deputy Corry moves in a world in which we may assume that the Government have no responsibility of this kind and that everybody has a Lieut.-Gen. Costello at his elbow, complete with a fistful of money to run to his assistance. This is not the case, and despite Deputy Corry's far from polite remarks regarding the people of Dublin and its environs, who, he said, would not work in a fit, there is a great anxiety among the working class people of this city, large sections of it, in regard to unemployment, and a justifiable anxiety.
People are coming to me seeking help to get them work at the present time and this has been the case for some years. This is a fairly good way of measuring the prosperity of a country. I represent Ballyfermot where there is a considerable degree of unemployment and that is true of all parts of the city. Unemployment is, after all, the key to the question of how well or ill a Government may be doing. No matter how the Government may endeavour to conceal the fact, to conceal the figures by manipulation or argument, it seems to me, and it is shown to me quite plainly — I can show lists of the people who are looking for work in my area to any of the people who are interested, not that any of them are interested — by absolute proof that unemployment is not only present but growing. What this may mean to this country and to the working people of this country in terms of full-blown free trade is better left to the imagination.
We have had endless talk about free trade conditions, about the Common Market, and what it will mean. But, so far as I can see, we have made little effort to prepare for that condition of affairs and it really is a matter of great worry to everybody concerned who has an appreciation of what is facing us. One wonders how in God's name we will compete if the day should ever come, how we will exist as a nation when we will have to compete on equal terms with these continentals. It is all very fine talking about a large market being available there but if you cannot produce the goods at the same price as your competitors and if you cannot provide employment in the production of such goods which will give satisfaction at home, the end result must be chaotic.
However, mercifully, this business of the Common Market is not as immediate a problem as would appear. In the next few months, it might well be that things will be another way but with de Gaulle still hale and hearty and as long as he remains hale and hearty, we may rest fairly easy for the time being. We should be making, as many people state, the fullest possible use of our time of preparation. We have a lot of time to make up. We have to overtake the British and the other countries who had an industrial revolution, something which we, in fact, did not have. When other countries were developing factory power and mechanical power, we were still under the heel of the feudal landlord system, tenants at will, held there in economic subjection and it was not, one might say, until recent years that we got the opportunity at all to develop any kind of industrial potential. Even at best, our industrial potential would seem to be limited. In these circumstances, this business of absolute free trade is something that worries all thinking people. The most interesting thing to me as far as this Government are concerned has been their absolute about-face in the matter of their use of what is known as the national position Was anything more flogged to death than Partition?
In spite of the remarks of the Minister for Education here this morning, in which he sought to be at one with Parnell, Griffith, the men of 1916, and Uncle Tom Cobley and all, in which he sought to be on everybody's side, can anybody explain how a Party, who barefacedly and brazenly abandoned the devices with which the Irish people were deluded for so long, can have the hardihood to expect people to accept them as bona fide reasons? Either Mr. de Valera, as he then was, was right in his pursuit of a 32-County Republic when he said that the Ulster Government was illegal and, indeed, on a previous occasion, that this Assembly here was illegal, or he was wrong. Personally, I find it a fascinating thing that he should have induced people to follow him in that situation.
It seems to me there is a great anxiety amongst the present day people of Fianna Fáil to avoid discussion of this issue of the disservice the Minister for Education has done to the Fianna Fáil Party in talking loosely to correspondents of newspapers concerning Scottish or Welsh nationalism, the great disservice he has done by raising embarrassment over the past of the Fianna Fáil Party. There was supposed to be nothing more pure when I was a young lad than the Republican faith as interpreted and enunciated by Mr. de Valera. It was almost as if Wolfe Tone had whispered secrets into his ear for transmission to the Irish people. As time went on, things changed. We now find ourselves in the position that this Party who were said to be extreme left Republican, are now the Party which are more pro-British — you could say more imperialist — than any other group in the country.
Yet Fianna Fáil apologists expect the Irish people to regard them as bona fide idealists. Of course this kind of exercise is part of the explanation for the cynicism that is abroad, particularly in regard to politicians. The Taoiseach and the Government are to be blamed in no small degree, and their predecessors, for the generating of the lie that everybody in public life is a chancer and on the make. That is not true. I have met many people in public life in all Parties who have been self-sacrificing individuals, and I exclude myself from that noble company in case anybody might think otherwise; but because of the double-dealing, the departure from procedure, the specious arguments, the taking of positions opposite to those taken the day before, there has been a cynicism sown and encouraged among the public concerning politicians generally.
That is a very bad thing because politics, contrary to what some transient Members of the House may say, is far from being a dirty game, in my view. Any ordinary business outside contains far more opportunity and indeed involves the practice of far more duplicity than does the art of politics. There is the saving grace about a politician that his every act is subject to the searchlight of public opinion, something which is not applicable to the so-called businessman who may have the instincts of a privateer or a buccaneer and may very well get away. The Minister for Education today spoke about the diffusion of prosperity throughout the country: "diffusion of prosperity". One thing I will hand to the Minister for Education is that he is the master of cliché in this House: he hardly finds it possible to make a statement without employing platitude or cliché and he has given birth to a new one —"diffusion of prosperity"— meaningless and utterly untrue because there is not prosperity in the country.
The Industrial Development Authority apparently are in for renaming. This is another aspect of the Government's attitude towards institutions. The IDA were set up by the first inter-Party Government, I think, and one of the first officials of the IDA was a former secretary of the Labour Party, Senator Luke Duffy. It was a progressive move and that body did very progressive work during the years in exploring the possibilities of introducing industries to areas in need of them.
However, the IDA were an inter-Party or, if you like, a non-Fianna Fáil invention and therefore it must be changed to make it into the image and likeness of Fianna Fáil. We must first of all alter the description — the name must be altered from the Industrial Development Authority — and the IDA will now disappear and a new name will be given to that authority and as time goes on, the idea will be fostered that this was a Fianna Fáil idea. It is part of the exercise. We are well used to it and it is one of the undesirable things. There is inculcated a hatred of anything which does not spring from the Fianna Fáil Party — an actual hatred, and I have seen it. I have seen the faces of some of the Fianna Fáil fraternity, heavily injected with this idea. It was positively poisonous.
This is not the approach to build in modern Ireland, to bring to politics in modern Ireland. It is not what the people need. Sometimes there are outbursts in the House when certain people say certain things for which they are sorry. One does not mind that. At least one hopes too much notice is not taken of them but these things are seized on by anonymous gentlemen who do not like public representatives, anonymous gentlemen who are able to write editorials in newspapers about all kinds of things, including the salaries of Members of Dáil Éireann, but of the salaries of those gentlemen or of their identities we know nothing. As I have said, these momentary aberrations, these temporary outbursts of temper, are seized on by people outside the House. These things really mean nothing but they show the hatred which is nourished and encouraged by certain elements in the Fianna Fáil Party of anything outside their own Party which has been suggested or proposed.
Hatred, of course, is self-destructive; it destroys itself, destroys the person who indulges in it. I have long been convinced that the present Fianna Fáil Party are pursuing the road to self-destruction and the first milestone will be the referendum and, Lord, what a belting that will get in the country.
The Minister for Education spoke about crash courses in career guidance. This brings me to the Department of Labour. I have had occasion to make inquiries as to what the Department of Labour are doing concerning career information and so on and I have here leaflets from that Department — these are only some of the leaflets which are available — setting out the jobs that are said to be available in the country and how one can go about getting one of these jobs. There is one, for instance, entitled "The Barman and the Barmaid". You get three pages of in formation here about the work of a barman and a barmaid, education and other qualifications, how to become a barman, practical training, technical training, theoretical training and so on. Air traffic control assistant: is anybody interested in becoming an air traffic control assistant? We have a special leaflet for that. Now, to become an air traffic control assistant: this job is filled by open competition conducted by the Civil Service Commission. It consists of an oral Irish test and an interview. Competitions are held not more frequently than once a year and not less frequently than every alternate year.
We must have endless opportunities for air traffic control assistants. Indeed I am certain the people of my constituency who have young boys anxious and interested in aeronautics would be glad to put them forward for those opportunities. I wonder how many air traffic control assistants we have. I would suggest there are very few but they merit a leaflet about career guidance.
Here we come to something of importance, that arm of activity which is so badly in need of additional recruits, the barrister-at-law. This is where equal opportunity comes in for all our citizens, to which the Minister for Education addressed himself at such great length this morning. It does not set out how to become a barrister-at-law but it mentions some of the fees. It does not tell you how much you will have to pay to become a barrister-at-law. It does not tell you of the long training you have to reach the matriculation standard of education before you go after a King's Inns entrance or how much it will take your parents to keep you while you are studying at King's Inns. It makes some mention about how much it takes to enter King's Inns. The barrister-at-law is one of the job vacancies, the job opportunities, of the Fianna Fáil administration.
Then we come to the storeboy in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. A whole leaflet is devoted to him. There is one position of storeboy in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. How do you get this? You apply to the Controller of Stores. A competition for vacancies is held from time to time which consists of an interview and a simple test in Irish.
The solicitor is another job opportunity offered by Fianna Fáil. It is marvellous how the Fianna Fáil Party have invented all these job opportunities of barristers and solicitors. The solicitor, the great beneficiary of the public, a philanthropist without whom it would be impossible for civilisation to go on its way——
At least, remember where you are speaking.
My remarks have a general reference. Solicitors are to be found in all parts of the House and I do not think I have said anything uncomplimentary about them yet. That is not the point. The point I want to make is that this job of solicitor, by implication, is one of the jobs provided by virtue of the Fianna Fáil policies. They invented solicitors as well as barristers, the storeboy, the barman and the barmaid. The public relations officer is another one. We are all public relations officers to a greater or lesser degree. How many opportunities are there for this, apart from membership of Dáil Éireann? That is a very hard role for anyone to try to follow.
You could write the leaflet for that job yourself.
No better man.
And a supplementary to keep up with it.
How do you become one? It calls for a quota of votes. The point I am making in regard to this is that a lot of those are merely pretence. Those are not jobs created by this Government but are a facade to induce people to believe that by some magic Fianna Fáil have had a hand even in the creation of those jobs and that they have done something to make the jobs more readily available. You have the personnel officer, the commercial traveller and the fashion model. There must be at least opportunities for fashion models. I suppose they sign at a special hatch in Werburgh Street to become fashion models.
Twiggy did not come from aristocracy.
Mind you, she did not come from Hammersmith labour exchange. At least I never saw her signing there.
I understand she boasts about her proletarian outlook.
The best of British luck to her.
Amen.
I am merely saying there cannot be many opportunities for this particular job in this country.
There are not so many Twiggies.
Deputy Dillon is jealous because he does not qualify.
Here is another Fianna Fáil job: announcer in Radio Telefís Éireann. How can you go about that: how to become an announcer? Vacancies on the staff of Radio Telefís Éireann must be filled by special competition and accordingly it is the practice to put particulars of the vacancies in the daily morning papers. That is a ritual many people go through, putting in those advertisements. A written application must be sent to the personnel officer. Afterwards the final selection is made from persons who have been trained. Thereby no doubt there hangs a tale. This is another example of the creation of jobs.
The calculating machine operator is another one. That would not apply to politicians although it would appear so at first glance. Those jobs are for girls. I dare say there may be a fair amount of opportunities in that regard. The geologist is provided for. Those are career opportunities by Fianna Fáil. A designer has certain elements, I would say. Then we have the footwear factory operator. It would be very useful to hear how one could get a job as a footwear factory operative, particularly when that whole industry was threatened with extinction a few weeks ago, were it not for the efforts made by Deputy Treacy to ensure that there would be an extension of protection.
The painter, the artist — that is a career for boys and girls. There is a leaflet on how to become a painter, describing courses in the National College of Art. I do not know how many persons there are in this country who are making a living by being painters. I would suspect that there are not many. Nonetheless, the career is made the subject of a leaflet produced by the Department of Labour. It is a well-known fact that it is very difficult to make one's living as a painter or artist in any country. It is probably more difficult in Ireland where the population is small. However, that consideration does not deter the propagandists of the Fianna Fáil Administration from claiming that they have created openings in this direction also.
How to become a journalist is the subject matter of another leaflet. I do not know how this can be achieved. It would take a long time to read the details on this leaflet and I do not propose to do so. I suspect I know a little of how to remain a journalist, especially a journalist of a certain kind. If you write stuff that will please those who employ you consistently and long enough, you are sure of security but then I suppose this consideration applies in practically all walks of life. There is a great deal I could say on this matter but I have no doubt that I would be ruled out of order. I do hold in my mind the intention, if and when necessary, to say a great deal on this matter. For the nonce, we will leave it be. I would not think there are many openings for journalists. It is a highly desirable profession but I would like to think that the children of workingclass parents in Dublin would find it possible to gain ready access to the profession. I do not think that that is the position, for many reasons, one being that the number of vacancies is limited by the number of papers published here. However, apart from that, the idea, here again, is to suggest that if you want to be a journalist, you must vote Fianna Fáil.
There are leaflets dealing with careers as auctioneer, estate agent, veterinary surgeon, waiter and waitress, architect, radiographer, law clerk. The question I want to ask is: where are the jobs? I am very interested because I have many people looking for jobs. Where am I to send them for a job? Where are the jobs? What is the point of having leaflets describing these careers unless the jobs are available? I have not been told where the jobs are. I made inquiries. In one or two instances, it has been possible to gain employment for men but in the vast majority of cases I have not been successful and I am being asked day in and day out, as are most Deputies, to help people to get employment. I want to know where are the jobs. Certainly, the Taoiseach and the Government have not provided the answer.
This Taoiseach and this Government were responsible for the Electricity (Special Provisions) Act, 1966. I see a question on the Order Paper today in the name of Deputy Dowling, no doubt inspired. By "inspired"— I may as well spell it out — I mean that the Minister concerned asks Deputy Dowling to put down the question because he feels he has a suitable answer. The question is:
To ask the Minister for Labour if he will consider taking steps to repeal the Electricity (Special Provisions) Act, 1966.
Any Fianna Fáil Deputy who would put that question on the Order Paper must think the people outside this House are completely clueless. There would not be any Act of this kind on the Statute Book were it not for Deputy Dowling and this Government.
It is not that the Government were not warned that they were pursuing a disastrous policy so far as industrial relations are concerned when they proposed to put men in jail because they were on strike or because they were picketing. The Government were fully informed of this. They were advised from these benches. Efforts were made to hammer home the lesson as far as possible when we were opposing — and we opposed it as strongly as we could — this Bill which Deputy Dowling now, in a tremulous kind of way, asks the Minister to take steps to repeal. Nobody will be misled, I am sure, by Deputy Dowling's effort to suggest that he has done other than support the Bill. Deputy Dowling and every member of Fianna Fáil are as guilty as the Minister in so far as the committal to jail of the ESB men who went on picket is concerned.
It should have been obvious to any reasonable person that that just cannot be done. I am not going to talk about the special nature of Irishmen. Ordinary human beings in any part of the world will rebel against indignity. If you use force to try to compel people to do something they do not want to do, and in large numbers do not want to do, you are inviting failure. You cannot hope to succeed. There have been plenty of examples of that in our own history and in the history of the world generally. Not just Irish people, but human nature generally is such that you cannot drive people, unless you are prepared to go to the extremity, as Hitler was, of the gas chamber. You cannot drive people. You have to get their co-operation. You have to lead them and go a bit of the way with them, if you want to get anywhere. It was on the proposition that people can be driven, can be forced, can be compelled and coerced that this Bill was passed through the House by the Government and enacted with the help of Deputy Dowling and the other so-called, moryah, trade unionists we were told about here this morning. Not alone can they be described as nominally members of a union but they certainly do not know anything about human nature.
I would say that the entire Dáil was held up to public odium and contempt by the futile and irresponsible arresting of these men and their committal to Mountjoy Jail because they went on picket. There is a long history in this town. It may be difficult for certain people to grasp how deep-rooted the emotions are in Dublin city concerning trade unionism, concerning the picket and concerning jobs generally and the relationship as between employer and worker. I can understand if you have not been in close contact with it and have not lived amongst the people, it is difficult, perhaps, to grasp just what is going on, just as it is difficult at times for a city man to grasp what is going on amongst the farmers.
In the city of Dublin the workers, who up to recently spread their votes in all directions, are inclined now to concentrate in support of the Labour Party. They have a great tradition instilled into them. They listen to their fathers talking about the titanic struggle of 1913 and the results thereof — the demolition of the slums which is proceeding under Dublin Corporation, the creation of new housing schemes and better living conditions generally than the days of the tenements, when it was not unusual for 150 people to live in one tenement house with the use maybe of one or two toilets outside in the yard, houses where men, women and children used to live 12 to 15 in one room very often on heaps of straw.
This was recounted by the Commission of Inquiry set up by the British Government as a result of the strike of 1913 at which the conditions of this city at that time were described as being comparable with those existing in Calcutta. This description was not applied by Larkin or the people avowedly, openly, bitterly and fanatically for the slum dwellers, but by people who were said to be independent judges. All that has changed. That huge body of history enters into the question of the feelings of the ordinary worker whom we see on the job in Dublin and his attitude to industrial relations, strikes and so on.
When we realise that this is the situation, it must surely be apparent that you cannot solve the problem by any simple means. Happily, the day has long passed when all that was necessary was a few shouts from a ganger, a stevedore or a foreman to bring workers into line. The unions have brought about that change. Union pressure has brought about social justice. When dealing with that kind of situation, you have to have a sensible approach, but the approach by this Government was one of force. They said to the ESB workers that if they went on strike and picketed they would go to jail. They were put to jail and that made the position worse than ever it had been. It ended up with our own institution of Dáil Éireann being held up to public odium and contempt because it was shown to be ineffectual. What was known to be a fact was proved to be a fact, unnecessarily so. It was not necessary to pursue that line of conduct, but it was pursued to our detriment. It is to be hoped that in future, in whatever little time is left to them as a Government, the Government will not act so foolishly again. The temper of the people is such that they will not tolerate it.
Industrial relations is a most difficult subject. It will always be difficult because there is no ready answer for all the problems between worker and employer. Every problem is different, if only to the extent that different people are involved. Basically, all problems come down to personality differences and to questions of wages more than anything else. I would urge upon the Government, as has been done elsewhere, the need to create in the mind of the worker a feeling that he is a person of importance. We can do that only by making him feel he owns part of the business in which he is engaged. I will give an example of the effect of that. When county council cottages which for many years have been rented to tenants are purchased by them under a purchase scheme, they improve visibly because the element of ownership enters into it. We have all seen that. This is the key to industrial relations. More and more the employer is coming to be regarded as a person with a managerial function. More and more the worker should be regarded as a person with a vested interest in the business. To get him to accept that message is difficult. It needs time, care, patience and, in the heel of the hunt, basically enlightenment. Until we do that we are going to have the difficulties of industrial conflict.
The Minister for Education was on this morning about Fianna Fáil being the socialist Party. I commented before on this anxiety which has descended on all kinds of odd elements to race further and further to the left and to pre-empt the position of the Labour Party on the left. I remember the time when the left was as deserted as the Sahara Desert, a lonesome place. If it was visited at all, it was by gentlemen like Deputy MacEntee, who came like the Chinooks in a scorching breeze — usually on the eve of an election — to do the maximum damage to the decimated tribes who occupied the left in those days. Now everybody wants to be on the left. Everybody claims to be a socialist.
I do not think the people fall for that line as readily as might be thought. Some members of the Government may feel they are putting over a convincing line, but they are kidding nobody but themselves. They are transparently insincere when they talk in these terms. Everybody knows they have no real socialist convictions of any kind. We feel that the advent of socialism is inevitable. If you leave economic forces to settle, as it were, their own questions, where you have no governmental regulations and laws to ensure the protection of the weakest in the community, then the brigands — very often known as private enterprise — will operate as they have always operated, on the basis of a Dick Turpin approach. They will take no heed of the needs of society. They will be intent on taking the maximum profit from whatever transaction in which they are involved and the devil take the hindmost. Socialism implies an obligation on the State, the Government, to intervene and regulate relations between private enterprise and the remainder of society so as to ensure that the bulk of the people who spend most, if not all, of their lives in economic difficulties are protected. The State must intervene on their behalf more and more to see that they will get a greater share of the wealth they produce. That is socialism to us. Perhaps it is inadequately expressed but it is a deeply-held conviction and always has been in the Labour Party.
The Minister for Local Government and others in Fianna Fáil make a point of emphasising, where housing is concerned, that if there is a shortage of housing in any area, it is the fault of the local authority. If on the other hand, a lot of houses are being built, that is to the credit of the Government. I charge the Minister for Local Government with evading the issue in regard to his housing responsibilities. Surely there resides in the Custom House final responsibility for the overall national housing position, and for meeting the need for houses? That responsibility has not and is not being discharged by the present Minister. Without being repetitive, I shall say in one sentence how much more useful it would have been if the past two and a half or three months had been taken up with discussions on what we could do to improve the housing situation in every area rather than in the idle exercise through which we were compelled to go concerning the referendum.
Responsibility for the housing shortage must be laid at the Minister's door. He cannot get away with saying that if there are not sufficient houses in Dublin it is not his fault but that of the corporation or if there are not sufficient houses elsewhere that it is the fault of the local authority. The Minister has an obligation, if he feels local authorities are remiss and not providing houses, to take steps to ensure that they do their job. In other words, he is in a position to put them out of existence. Any local authority which does not do its job in providing houses should be put out of existence because it does not justify itself, since housing is the primary need of the people today and therefore any local authority which neglects housing should be abolished, in my view.
The Minister has the power to make life impossible for local authorities if they are not doing their job. He does not do that. He simply stands up here and is content to blame local authorities, particularly local authorities which he may feel are controlled by Parties other than Fianna Fáil.
Unlike the late Tim Murphy.
Very unlike him. The late Tim Murphy faced a harder task than faces the present Minister. When Tim Murphy became Minister immediately after the formation of the inter-Party Government in 1948, the housing need in Dublin was 30,000 houses. At present, allowing for exaggeration, it is in the neighbourhood of 7,000 or 8,000. I forget the figure for the country in 1948 but it was astronomical because there had been no building for the previous eight or ten years or more. He was a man with a mission and, like Deputy O'Malley in Education, Deputy Murphy died in pursuit of an ideal. He died on a platform speaking of the needs of children and of houses. We have not got that idealism and zealousness in this Government at the moment and it needs an infusion of that spirit to cope with the needs of our housing situation.
In Dublin, at any rate, we are faced with a problem which I think can fairly be claimed to be worse than any obtaining elsewhere. Week by week we see visible signs of the drift from the land. Young people leaving the land to go to England very often stay in Dublin city — or perhaps they stay there while on their way back from England to the rural areas — and do not leave. They marry and settle here and Dublin Corporation has the problem of providing them with accommodation. We also have the tremendous task of providing accommodation for many thousands of families occupying the remnants of old Georgian Dublin, all these tenements which appeared in other times and which are now in the process of being knocked down and replaced by new dwellings.
The provision of housing accommodation represents at all times the great task confronting Dublin Corporation. However, leadership in the approach to housing must come from the Government. If the attitude of a Government on housing is lackadaisical, semi-interested, that attitude will reflect itself right through the country. We must take into account that there is a managerial system there which is much closer to Government administration than the membership of councils would be or could be said to be. The managerial apparat reflects, by and large, Government policy as laid down by the Department of Local Government.
There is not and there has not been for years any determined or realistic attack on this problem from the centre, the Custom House. I listened to the Minister for Education talking about the record of Fianna Fáil since 1957 in the matter of housing. Those of us who can cast our minds back to the time when Deputy Smith or Deputy Blaney occupied the ministerial chair in the Custom House remember only too well the frustration we had to endure by the inactivity of both of these Ministers in regard to housing, their complete lack of appreciation of the problem of housing. The only contribution Deputy Blaney, who was the more recent of the two, made to the solution of the housing problem was to give us the estate at Ballymun, these colossal 15-storey blocks of flats standing up in the middle of what was once a beautiful rural countryside and on the fringe of an airport with planes flying in by the score every day. Deputy Smith made no contribution at all, but he made no bones about making no contribution. He did not care and he let you know he did not care.
What is needed is leadership from the Custom House that will bring a dynamism to the task of the provision of housing. At the moment it seems to be sufficient, and it certainly seems to satisfy the Minister, that local authorities, corporations, local councils or whatever they may be, make an assessment of the housing needs in their administrative area, and make these assessments on the basis of counting the number of families who are in a desperate plight for housing, and only families who are in such a desperate plight; this is described as the housing need. By the time these estimates are digested and processed through the county council, by the time land is acquired for the building of houses and the houses are planned and designed by local authority engineers, and by the time these plans are finally inspected by the engineers in the Department of Local Government, years will have passed from the time of the original estimate of the housing needs.
I have often seen two years pass in that way. The county council would estimate the immediate housing need at 1,000 houses on the basis that 1,000 families were urgently in need of accommodation. By the time these houses would be finally erected two or three years would have passed, and the figure of 1,000 would be completely irrelevant and would have doubled itself, and more. The result is that we have always been lagging behind the existing need. No matter how many houses were built, there were always five, six or maybe ten applicants for each house.
All this suggests a great need for the elimination of the duplication of work which goes on. For instance, why should it be necessary, when a housing scheme is planned in any local authority area, to have these plans examined in detail over a long period by the Custom House, referred back for alteration and then back again to the Custom House, and have up to a year wasted in that way? Why should this be necessary in a situation which does not admit of delay?
This bureaucratic approach with which we are saddled is responsible for a great deal of unnecessary suffering, because delay in the provision of houses means suffering and suffering of a very refined kind. There are few areas of collective human hardship to compare with the situation in which two families, or in some cases three families, have to occupy a small local authority house, whether it be a county council cottage or a corporation house. There can be up to ten or 12 or 14 people in four small boxy rooms and you get a condition of affairs which is hell on earth. It is small wonder that the people express their frustration and their suffering not in the most polite terms at times.
Why do the Government condone a situation in which we are at all times in arrears in the provision of housing? Surely it should be a priority that houses be planned in such numbers as to anticipate the increase in population which it is reasonable to expect will occur in specific areas? Surely it is not asking too much that a Government should try to meet the need that is already there? Apparently it is asking too much of the Minister of this Government in charge of housing, the Minister for Local Government, because he is more concerned with abstract notions of electoral systems and notions about getting himself and his colleagues cemented in office, than he is about the condition of the many thousands of people for whom he is charged with responsibility to provide housing accommodation.
The Minister for Education talked this morning about Fianna Fáil and long-term planning. I will say this for Fianna Fáil Administrations and long-term planning. They hold the record for long-term planning in at least one instance, that is, the North County Dublin regional water supply scheme. It was first mooted in 1937, and it has been paraded since then by my eminent and distinguished colleague, now dechained, at successive elections. The imminence of its arrival has been proclaimed at chapel gates throughout the length and breadth of our constituency but, lo and behold, no water has yet flowed through the pipes of the North County Dublin regional water supply scheme. I am beginning to lose hope that Deputy Burke and I will live to see the day when water will run through those pipes. This has been going on for 40 years. That is long-term planning with a vengeance.
It was meant and said to be something which would arrive in a few years, but it is still not there. It is no harm to recall pleasant memories. I recall being in the Spa Hotel in Lucan going on for ten years ago. The then Minister for Local Government, Deputy Blaney, was present. He performed some function — I forget what it was — in relation to the North County Dublin regioral water supply scheme. I think it was the signing of some document, but I forget. He was presented with a piece of Georgian silver, circa 1760. That was so long ago, but we still await the advent of the scheme.
Great speeches were made about what the scheme would do for the north county. The Tennessee Valley Authority faded into insignificance compared with this tremendous engineering achievement, and yet I have passed from youth to middle age, and am advancing towards the sere and yellow, and I do not see any positive evidence of this scheme, except that if you go across the country, you will see pipes and knots of men, and if you inquire from a local resident, you will be told: "It has something to do with you know what."
Last Monday-week I attended a function with the Minister for Local Government and, during the course of his address to the people present at the luncheon — nowadays there is a luncheon after the opening of any type of scheme at all, but a very decent man gave us lunch on this occasion — when he started to talk about the North County Dublin regional water supply scheme, he scarce forbore to smile, and that is not easy.
When he did not growl, was it not all right?
You would be lucky if he did not take a bite out of you. Of course, all these things are in the pipeline, in the immortal words of the Minister for Education, the master of the cliché, and if they are not in the pipeline, he is spelling it out somewhere.
There is a very serious situation in this city which I want to draw to the attention of the Taoiseach and the Government. There are thousands of families in this city who are paying rents of £5 and £6 a week for single rooms, flatlets and flats, because they are unable to get accommodation from Dublin Corporation, due to their position on the lists. In many cases they are childless couples, or newly-married young couples awaiting the birth of their first child, or perhaps the first child is born. I met a man who works in CIE. His take home wage is £11 odd and he is paying £6 a week out of that for a flat. He has a wife and one child. There are thousands of such cases.
I suggested to Dublin Corporation that we must go outside the ordinary conventional means for the provision of houses to relieve this very worthy section of the community for whom housing prospects would seem at best to be somewhat dim, at the present rate of progress of house building. Something will have to be done to rescue them from the awful trap in which they find themselves, paying more than half their weekly wage for shelter. The only method whereby they can be helped is by the provision, as a temporary measure, of pre-fab or chalet-type buildings. It is interesting to note that the Minister for Local Government was asked three years ago by Dublin Corporation to sanction the provision of 100 such dwellings which the corporation would purchase to provide for the people I have mentioned, but no sanction has yet been forthcoming. Three years ago we asked for sanction and we have not heard of it yet.
As Deputy Dowling has just come into the House, I will remind him of the fact that three years ago — and he is a member of the corporation — sanction was sought for 100 pre-fab or chalet-type dwellings, but no sanction has yet arrived from the Minister for those dwellings. That is a scandalous situation in the light of the fact to which I have been adverting while he has been having his lunch, that thousands of families, childless couples, young, middle-aged or elderly, are in some instances paying up to £6 a week, as he will have heard from myself and others, for flatlets. These are amongst the most long suffering victims of our housing situation. I want to make a special plea to the Taoiseach for God's sake to get a move on with regard to this matter of the provision of houses. At least an attempt should be made.
The Minister for Education, who is now available, I see — I hope — gave some time this morning to defining what he considered to be socialism, and so on. He claimed to be the lineal descendant of Karl Marx, in effect: he did not use that word. That was the general trend of what he was saying. As I mentioned earlier, he felt himself considerably to the left of the Sorbonne and Cohn-Bendit. It is a pity Deputy MacEntee was not here. The only person I know of who was a member of a Fianna Fáil Government and who was, in fact, a socialist — a member of the early Socialist Party of Ireland — was Deputy MacEntee, along with James Connolly, in Belfast. Whatever kind of a relationship Deputy MacEntee established with the socialists in those days, it certainly was not one of love because witch-hunting and anti-socialism were his favourite pre-occupations. However, I should have liked him to be here to hear the Minister for Education tell us how much he loves the idea of socialism.
Of course, you know, I do not like to hurt the feelings of the Minister for Education. He is a young man. The fact is that we do not believe in him. We do not believe what he says. I take it that I shall be given the same latitude as he was given. He made no reference, of course — when he was branching into the sphere of the Minister for Industry and Commerce — to the Potez factory. He made no reference to the dreadful piece of inefficiency that that represents. He made no reference to the expenditure of such large amounts of money and the small return we appear to be getting from it in terms of employment. So much was promised but so little was delivered.
The Minister for Education referred earlier in his speech to the First Programme for Economic Expansion. I wonder if he ever read it. That document was written by a civil servant whose name is on it, a very eminent and able civil servant. It was appropriated by the Fianna Fáil Party and produced as if it were all their own work. In fact, of course, it was anything but their own work. I do not think the Fianna Fáil Cabinet at any time got down to really constructive and intensive examination of our economic situation. Some effort was made in this direction, right enough, by the National Industrial Economic Council. However, the Fianna Fáil Cabinet has not been capable, to my mind, of formulating anything constructive arising from the deliberations of that body.
We did have these chancy things like the Second Programme. I suppose it sort of helps the Party at chapel gates to have silver-tongued people such as Deputy Dowling down from Dublin to tell the electors, as they came out from Mass at Dunlavin, for instance, of the glories of the Second Programme for Economic Expansion. It might have been thought to serve a useful prupose. It is a sad reflection upon what people consider to be the intelligence of the people of Dunlavin because, from my knowledge of them, they are highly intelligent people who are well-fitted to see through a mounte-bank politician who might come to persuade them to do things which were against all commonsense and against all natural justice, as Deputy Dowling would be liable to do.
The Second Programme is admitted by everybody to have been a flop. I remember when I first described these Programmes for what they were, just tales of mystery and imagination: I think I was the first to do it in the House. There was a certain reverential awe evident whenever these moryah Programmes were mentioned, as if people were somewhat afraid to say anything derogatory about these polysyllabic productions. Of course, the whole purpose of them was to baffle and bemuse people and to give the impression that something was in fact being done when nothing was being done.
I would put this to the Taoiseach and to the Government. If there has been any advance in any area, so far as the creation of industry is concerned, that is not due in the slightest to any action on the part of his Government but is due simply to the fact that it suits the convenience of certain international interests to come here and to exploit this country. The day it does not suit their interests, they will go. God knows, they have got every advantage by coming here. They have escaped taxes of various kinds. I am not suggesting that these advantages should not be offered: it is well that they should be offered. However, let us not exaggerate the extent of the so-called success of a policy in this matter. These interests will go only where they can make money. They found this country to be such a place. As we know from experience, some of them came here and were supplied with a considerable amount of money which, in the heel of the hunt, came from the ordinary people of this country, the taxpayers. These people apparently had no knowledge of what was expected of them in the field of industrial relations. Apparently, they were under the impression that they could operate in Ireland as they can operate in some other countries such as the United States of America and so on, whereas, in fact, such is not the case.
I join with others, not to discourage — indeed, far from it — investment from outside but to urge that in future we ensure that there will be progress when such investment arrives and that there will be uninterrupted co-operation. I would urge that foreign industrialists, or interests coming here to invest, be left under no illusion of the situation that, over a long period, we have established certain courses of conduct or traditions which are held to be very important such as the right of a man to belong to a trade union and the right of a trade union to represent his interests, if he feels that way. Let these things be impressed on all who seek to come here. If they do come with that attitude, prepared to accept these conditions, then they are more than welcome.
I was among the first to raise the matter of Biafra by means of a question here. It looks as if it has now become a kind of hobby-horse for many who are just interested in the publicity end of it. Because I did raise it first, I want to mention now that I think more is called for from our Minister for External Affairs so far as intervention to secure peace is concerned. When I raised the matter about three weeks ago, Deputy Corish in a supplementary question to the Minister asked about the feasibility of airdrops of food and he was told that it was out of the question and that it could not be done. Now this has become a matter of common discussion among countries which are anxious to help the starving people and airdrops seem to have become quite a possibility.
I am not suggesting that we should judge the position there. Certainly I am in no position to do so as I know nothing about the Nigerian situation except that I have had relatives there for a long time but they do not know sufficient about the political situation to give an opinion on the relative merits of the position. However, one must have a definite opinion about starving people and there can be no argument there. As I mentioned when I raised this matter on the Adjournment with the Minister for External Affairs, we who are living on this island have a special relationship with starvation. I am a middle-aged man of nearly 50 and in my youth I met old people who had been children at the time of the Famine. This gives us a kind of fellow-feeling for those who are suffering this terrible agony. We think of what our own people suffered and endured and from whom the marks of the Famine have not yet been erased because a lot of diseases, tuberculosis and so on, are no doubt traceable to the hardships of that time. As I say, this gives us a fellow-feeling with the Africans who are now suffering.
I am not at all satisfied that the Government have done all they might to intervene in the interests of these people. I feel our Minister for External Affairs is inclined to spend too much time at the high level cocktail parties around the Hudson and too little time thinking about what steps he could take to help people who are in such dire distress. I am not accusing him of being less humane than anybody else but I feel he is far too conservative in his approach to this matter. He is not prepared to take any diplomatic chance in making a forward move as he might very well do. I do not know the reason for this but it is obvious to the Irish people that that is what is happening. He is not prepared to go that little bit forward and offer to negotiate. Possibly if he did so he might succeed in getting a cease fire which seems to be the one way of really helping these people.
The very thought of their suffering must trouble our consciences. It is not a question of money or help; everybody in Ireland is willing to do that and not only are they doing it in a variety of ways but many are doing it by stealth which is the way in which most good is done. Most good is invariably secretive and unacknowledged. At the same time, there rests on the Minister this obligation to go further because with every hour that goes by, people are starving. A person who is dying of starvation dies a thousand times a day. I had a little acquaintance with starvation myself and that is how I know. I was not very starved, and I wish I could possibly have a little of it now and it might do me a little good, but I was 21 days without food and I know a little about it. It is a most excruciating thing but for a little child, it is just appalling. I simply want to say to the Minister, for God's sake get moving; let him take his courage in his hands and forget about protocol and who might be hurt and who might not, but simply try to bring them together to get a cease fire. Maybe both sides are as anxious for it as we are.
I have not said all I would like to say and certainly not in the terms in which I would have liked to express myself but the rules of order are such that they must be obeyed. I daresay before we meet again in this House, we will have had the referendum, and if that be the case, it is reasonable to expect that the Government will have had a very severe beating. I do not say this for any reason other than that I believe it sincerely, and most sensible people will believe it also, that the Government are going to be very thoroughly thrashed in the political sense on this issue. We will then have a situation in which the Government will have lost the confidence of the people and it must bring a general election much closer. I hope the Minister for Local Government is working on the recasting of the constituencies and that he will have the job ready because it will be essential if the Government's proposals are defeated, to recast the constituencies in accordance with the figures of the last census of population distribution level. If that is not done, there will be the danger of an election being held and subsequently being upset by a citizen who might establish that it had not been held in accordance with the Constitution.
In any event, we are not all that far away from a general election and the next general election will be fateful for this nation. I hope the Taoiseach, when he is considering the date of the general election, will have regard to the weather. It was not the custom of one of his predecessors to have regard to weather. Or, perhaps, it was; it was always at the coldest possible time, in the worst possible weather, possibly in order to enable him to don the longest coat that existed in Western Europe. In any event, I would urge the Taoiseach and the Government to prepare themselves, as we are preparing ourselves, for an election because, as I indicated earlier, the country needs an election. The people are anxious for an election. The people are anxious to see this Government out. There is no question about that.
As far as I personally am concerned, as I said, I suffer more than most at election times from the normal anxieties of a politician. I do not like elections, unlike Deputy Lemass, who was the only politician I ever heard say he enjoyed elections. Do you recollect that? He said he enjoyed elections; that could only be the remark of a masochist, someone who enjoys suffering. Nonetheless, there comes a time when we have to face up to difficulties in the interests of the people and the interests of the people demand that there should be given to the country the opportunity of rejecting this Government. I feel the people will do that, without question, and, when that has been done, the future of this country will then be a matter for those who come in here.
It seems to me we are at a crossroads even in that regard. Many of the older faces will possibly disappear at the next election, either voluntarily or through pressure of events. We have seen things electoral in the past week or two that would not have been conceived as possible a few years ago. We have seen people who were regarded as permanent fixtures in certain organisations shown to be expendable, just the same as everybody else. It is the one remaining and permanent truth of political life — the expendability of the particular Member. We saw that in the case of even Presidential elections when what people thought was impossible was brought within a hair's breadth of achievement. There can be very great changes when the election does come. The sooner it comes the better. Let us get it over because what we want more than anything else is a shake-out.
Our purpose today is a general review of Government policy and of matters related to this House. One of the most important matters relevant to this House is that its proceedings should be effectively communicated to the country. We hear much criticism in this House from time to time of press, radio and television because, it is alleged, they have failed in that regard. I think it is important that the House should, when opportunity offers, find an occasion to compliment such members of the Fourth Estate as may from time to time adequately serve the purpose of communicating the proceedings of Dáil and Seanad Éireann to the Irish people.
There is one feature I want to name. I do not know who is responsible for it. I do not know who prepares it, but, in my judgment, it represents the perfection of political reporting. It is the feature on Radio Éireann, "Today in the Dáil", at halfpast ten at night. I know of no piece of reporting which more equitably describes what passes in the Dáil from day to day and I liberally recommend the people of the country generally, if they want a fair description of what passes in the Dáil from day to day, to depend confidently on the report provided by Radio Éireann at halfpast ten under the title "Today in the Dáil."
I want to refer briefly now to the remarks of the Minister for Education this morning. I know that, for procedural reasons, it is inevitable that at the end of a session, the debate on the Adjournment should be limited in time, but I think, for the benefit of the Dáil, it is right that I should go on record as observing that, if we are to continue that prudent rein, Deputies should have regard to the fact that a limited time carries with it the obligation that the maximum number of Deputies desiring to participate should be facilitated by their colleagues and that marathon speeches on these occasions should, in so far as practicable, be avoided. I hope to set a good example in that regard myself today.
The Minister for Education touched on the particular issue of the developments in education, developments for which he claimed exclusive credit for the present Government, and said that theirs was the vision and theirs was the zeal to realise these objectives. I want to remind the Minister and the Government of which he is a member that the concept of education for all our people did not originate with the Fianna Fáil Party. At the 1964 Fine Gael Ard Fheis, it was my duty as Leader of the Fine Gael Party to address the Ard Fheis of that organisation in May of that year. I invited the Ard Fheis on that occasion to commit itself to four propositions. The first was to abolish poverty in our society; and I offered them that objective not as a remote ideal but as an urgent necessity of the kind of Christian society that should obtain in this country. Secondly, I exhorted them that the best we have to offer in primary, secondary, vocational and university education should be made available, through State aid, where necessary, for every boy and girl so that in future no child, who could benefit from higher education, will be excluded from it simply for the reason that his or her parents cannot afford to pay. That objective was formally accepted at that Ard Fheis in May, 1964. It was on the four points the programme of the "Just Society" was built and, when the Minister for Education speaks of no reference to education having existed in that programme, I would remind him that it is not legitimate to misrepresent the facts. The facts are that that was the programme of the Fine Gael Party as announced and formally adopted at a public Ard Fheis on 9th May, 1964. It is on the record and any progress we are making today is in fulfilment of that programme and the Government proposals for the widening of educational facilities are, I think, in no small measure inspired by the knowledge that, on this side of the House, such proposals were guaranteed in advance the cordial support of the principal Opposition Party, as indeed they were guaranteed also by the Labour Party——
It was in our policy document in 1963.
——of which Deputy Corish is Leader and, not surprisingly, I find in this matter, as in divers others, the difference between himself and myself as far back as 1963 was not very wide, seeing that we sat in a Cabinet together to good effect on an earlier occasion.
The second point I want to make is this, and it is a point often forgotten. If at this moment we are equipped and equipping ourselves to receive an evergrowing tide of students into university education in this country it is because we are in a position to provide additional facilities at University College, Dublin, at the Belfield site. I want this House to remember that the inter-Party Government, of which Deputy Corish and I formed a part, with the late Bill Norton and Tim Murphy and Michael Keyes — God be good to them all — was denounced by Deputy Eamon de Valera, as he was then, in 1952, when he resumed office after our first Government, because we had bought Belfield and authorised the President of University College, Dublin, Professor Michael Tierney, to acquire that vast site by stealth — observe the word — so as to avoid the university being charged intolerable property prices if it were known publicly that they were in the market. We it was who guaranteed the overdraft necessary for University College, Dublin to raise in order to acquire that property and to come to Dáil Éireann ex post facto to get the Dáil's approval of the guarantees necessary for the capital expenditure involved for the purchase of the entire Belfield site, without which no single structure designed for the accommodation of the natural sciences in University College, Dublin would be available today. Let us not forget that. I remember it with pride and I rejoice that it should be so.
Now, Sir, I want to say something in that regard. There used to be an old saying that the great danger of the Christian church was that in its earlier centuries they had wooden chalices and golden priests but in the immediate pre-Reformation days a time had come when the Church of God had golden chalices and wooden priests, to the great detriment of Christianity with all the divisive and hidden consequences of that period of degeneration. I want to sound this note of warning. We may establish four universities in Ireland; we may crowd them with new students coming from every stratum of society and every household rich or poor, but unless the professorial staff of those universities conscientiously discharge their duties to the students committed to their care, we will live to have to admit that we had wooden universities and golden professors and that we have exchanged them for golden universities with wooden professors.
I point my finger in no particular direction at this time but if what I am saying now is not attended to, I will point my finger directly at the department to which I refer. It must stop in every academic institution in this country that students are summoned to the lecture hall only to discover that the professor or the lecturer has not bothered to turn up. That is happening now and it has got to stop. If the alibi for its continuance is that the charters of these learned institutions confer on nobody the right or the duty to put an end to this abuse, then let the charters be amended and be amended now.
Secondly, as the greatly increasing number of university students enter the precincts of the buildings we provide, it is intolerable that it should continue to be the case, as it was the case 40 years ago when I went into university, that it is possible for young students to come up from rural Ireland and ramble through the corridors of the university having no human creature in the ranks of the teaching staff on which as individuals they have a right to call for guidance, direction and tutorial service.
Hear, hear.
I shall not go into greater detail on these two topics today, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, but I want to fix Dáil Éireann with notice that if the appropirate steps are not taken to bring these matters to a prompt and, if necessary, ad interim, conclusion, I do not think it is safe to wait until the new institutions are established. Where these evils exist they must be controlled now, for I do not want mischief-makers who have been sent in here from abroad to create and canalise student zeal and enthusiasm into misdirected channels, bringing them out in the streets to protest, and finding myself in the position of being constrained to admit the grievances they allege are well founded and rational representation has failed to remedy them. I am making the representation in public now. It is for the Minister for Education, it is for the Government, to consult with the authorities of the university and to confer upon the authorities of the university not only the right but the duty to put these matters on a proper footing and to negative grievances that could be exploited by foreign agitators sent here for the purpose of precipitating in Ireland the kind of antics which have disgraced so venerable an institution as the Sorbonne itself.
On these occasions it behoves the people who have been in public life for a long time to arrogate to themselves the duty and obligation of saying certain things that are extremely disagreeable. I feel I have a duty to do it now. I do not think it is wholly reasonable for the Taoiseach, on the one day in the year when his Estimate is under discussion, to absent himself entirely from the House. Much as I admire the Parliamentary Secretary who represents him on the Front Bench today, I do not think he adequately represents the Government on the occasion of the discussion of the Taoiseach's Estimate. I sympathise that it is a laborious task for the Taoiseach to sit here for a day and a half and listen to a discussion of this kind, but I do not think it is an unreasonable demand to make on him once a year. Whatever criticism we had of his predecessors, it was their practice to be present; and it did them good to hear what ordinary Deputies were thinking and speaking of in Dáil Éireann.
I am going to say something now I would have preferred to say in the presence of the Taoiseach and the Minister for Local Government, because I think there is a real danger to our institutions. I want to say that the whole system of planning appeals is beginning to stink to high heaven. That is strong language. I have tried to sound a note of warning on this topic several times before. Our Party introduced a Bill for the purpose of setting up a tribunal procedure which would bring this whole business of planning appeals out into the light of day.
If the Taoiseach were sitting there where he ought to be opposite me now, I would say to him: "I am not asking you to believe me. Go to any prominent solicitor in the city of Dublin and ask him of the talk that is going on in Dublin. Go to any prominent firm of real estate dealers in Dublin and ask them of the talk going on in the city of Dublin today. Go to any firm of architects and ask them of the talk going on in the city of Dublin at the present time." I know that the Taoiseach, if he were present, would be entitled to say to me: "If you know of any scandal, why do you not give us particulars?" I cannot give him particulars. All I know is that I am being stopped in the street by prominent solicitors, by prominent members of the real estate business, by prominent members of architects' firms, and being told that the common gossip is that the whole business of planning appeals, in which vast sums of money are involved, is becoming a reeking, stinking scandal in this city. I say it is the duty of the Taoiseach to institute such inquiries as he thinks proper to determine the source of that trouble. I invite him to address his inquiries to the categories of persons I have mentioned because it is from these persons that this news is reaching me.
I want to refer to the general problem of housing, but I do not want to go into it in detail. It makes me physically sick, in a city where we are telling married people with two children that their names should not be put on the housing list, to see all around me vast office buildings being erected to be set at 30/- per square foot, the bulk of which will be set to Government Departments before the foundations are laid. God knows, I think the homeless people of this city show a degree of public spirit and restraint which reflects immense credit on the stability of our political institutions. But when I think of a man and his wife and two children sleeping, eating, cooking and living in one room and being told, when they apply to the housing authority for alternative accommodation, that their names cannot even be put upon the list, and when I think that the same people walk down the city and see millions being spent on office accommodation to be set to their own Government at 30/- per square foot, I marvel at their patience and forbearance. I marvel at what appears to me to be the criminal irresponsibility of the Government who allow that situation to obtain.
It is wholly illusory to say that this is a matter for the local authority. I sat in the Cabinet with the late Tim Murphy. I saw him wear himself down to death. Deputy Corish was in the Cabinet Room with me the day Deputy Murphy collapsed and we put him sitting in the armchair in the corner of the Cabinet Room until he was able to be taken up to his office. He wore himself out following the local authorities in all four corners of Ireland. I remember him asking the Government to give him a new officer in his Department who would be charged solely with constraining the local authorities not to let the people go homeless. That officer was Mr. O'Mahony, later to become City Manager of Dublin. As a result of that pressure from the Custom House, with Tim Murphy as Minister for Local Government, we created a situation ultimately in which we had more houses than we had tenants to go into them. I compare that with the situation today and say to the Taoiseach that he should examine his conscience, because the present situation represents an evil which, in my judgment, appears to be virtually intolerable. There are two other matters I want to mention and I shall name one of them before reporting progress. I want to speak on the subject of old people. We are, I think, losing sight of the gravity of the problem growing up around us if the number of elderly people multiplies in our community as it does in every other community in the world. I suppose as one approaches that status one becomes more conscious of the problem.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.