Ere ye hurriedly depart, let it be clearly understood that I was active and very active against the Government's proposals on the referendum. I will say no more than that. The proof is there to be seen. I want to refer to something else. Yesterday afternoon we were treated to the spectacle of just one supporting speaker for the Taoiseach. Where were you all?
Confidence in Government: Motion (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following Motion:
That Dáil Éireann reaffirms its confidence in the Government and approves the Government's financial proposals.—(The Taoiseach).
Buying tobacco.
There was no less a speaker than the Right Honourable and Royal Member, as Deputies will know, Deputy Booth——
We had only one chance of a speaker after me, and do not be making play on that. That was the ruling of the Ceann Comhairle.
If you are satisfied with the good performance of your Party——
We have a good one coming up after you.
It was no less a person than the Editor of the Irish Independent whom he summoned to his aid, and in his battles and the battle of Fianna Fáil to take part, quoted excerpts from what was apparently an editorial in that paper of yesterday which, he claimed supported the position which he, Deputy Booth, was taking up and, indeed, also supported the position, more or less, of the Government. Now they have been chastened. He did not mention what constituency the Editor of the Independent represented or indeed, his name. I do not know. Perhaps Deputy Booth knows to whom he is answerable or whether the Editor of the Independent, for instance, has to face the test of public opinion as Members of Dáil Éireann have on the average every 2½ years. It was not mentioned. None the less Deputy Booth sought to make use of this emanation from obscurity, which takes on an important name—anonymous though it be—an all pervasive, all persuasive wisdom, simply because it is dignified with the name of an editorial. It was odd, I thought, that he made no reference to his own paper which is the official organ of the Party to which Deputy Booth belongs. Indeed, it struck me that publicity makes strange bed fellows. But all the preaching of Deputy Booth and all pomposity of the editorials of one kind or another to which we have been treated when they are pushed to one side do not affect the political issues. The fact is that this Government received from the people the most positive dismissal notice which has ever fallen to the lot of any Irish administration since the State was founded in the form of the rejection of their proposals in the referendum. The Taoiseach made an attempt, a feeble attempt, to suggest that, of course, these proposals were not political, as if a Party such as Fianna Fáil or, indeed, any Party in this House, can engage in politics and undertake matters of the kind envisaged in the referendum and be absolved from the charge of politics, if, indeed, it be a charge.
It is always being reduced to that level because politicians are becoming a much denigrated people. It is fashionable now to denigrate politicians. There is always somebody who does not have to answer at the bar of public opinion in the manner in which Members of this House have to, somebody who knows far better how to run this country than anybody in Dáil Éireann. There are always these people who denigrate politicians. But the Taoiseach seeking to elevate, if you do not mind, these political proposals above the arena of politics tried to create the impression that these were matters of such high concern that the people, when they had spoken upon them, did not do so with any reference whatsoever to the Fianna Fáil Party as such. Nobody but a fool, of course, will accept that argument.
It seemed to me from my observation of the voting in the referendum— and my observation was not just confined to polling day but it was spread over a couple of months prior to the referendum in very many parts of the country where I met people at chapel gates at early morning after-Mass meetings and afternoon and night meetings which went on until very late as well as all day from the opening of the polls until they closed—it seemed to me that the people in voting as they did in such massive numbers were incensed with the Government and were expressing their desire that the Government should go, that they were not fit to be let remain in office. Now many analysts, many pseudo-analysts, many know-alls, many fringe merchants in politics, have given us reasons for this tremendous upturn in public opinion in so far as Fianna Fáil are concerned, indeed, the reversal of their fortunes. I do not know as a practitioner in politics, any more than anybody else as to what the basic reasons were and the judgments which I formed are those based upon my experiences going through the country in the manner I have described.
In my opinion one of the first contributory causes of the Fianna Fáil debacle was the fact that the Fianna Fáil TDs did not work. They did not work because they did not believe in what was being put forward in their names. It was obvious to many of them that a change in the electoral system could very easily bring personal, political disaster to themselves. Therefore, one observed a complete immobility on the part of what is called the Fianna Fáil machine. With the exception of my gracious and distinguished colleague in my own constituency of County Dublin I did not see one Fianna Fáil operator in action anywhere.
There is also, of course, the fact that the people were satisfied that there was something afoot, something which a great many of them might not too well have understood, but there was something afoot about which they had to be concerned. There was a distrust among the great mass of the people of what was really intended by the Government proposals. Nobody was naïve enough to believe—as they might have been in another day, perhaps, under another Taoiseach whose powers of creating illusions were greater and more effective than those of the present Taoiseach and they might have accepted or been led to accept such a view—that these things were for the country's good or in the national interest and all that kind of jabberwocky that went on. On this occasion they felt a distrust which was based upon their experience of what has happened with this Government hitherto and they decided on a vast scale to reject the proposals. It was a good thing. If a secret vote of the House were carried out, a secret vote of the Fianna Fáil Party members in the House I think most of them would agree that this was a good thing and that it was well that the intentions of the movers of the referendum were frustrated.
Perhaps an undue share of the blame for the referendum has fallen on the wrong shoulders. It is not for me to rush to the defence of the Minister for Local Government. He takes up indefensible positions. He is a difficult person politically but I think he was the fall guy in this instance and that the person really responsible for these proposals and their promotion was the Taoiseach who now sits here. That is the very strong impression I have gained over a period from many sources, that while Deputy Boland had to do the donkey work and, undoubtedly, now has to take the punishment for it the real instigator of the whole affair was the Taoiseach.
If that is so it follows that the Taoiseach is completely out of touch with the mood and true feelings of the people. There is plenty of other evidence that he is out of touch. His very feeble attempt to scramble back on the rock of the Republic will not save him from the hurricanes ahead. Captain O'Neill said he was surprised that the Taoiseach should raise the matter of Partition. He was not the only one surprised. I was surprised and many in this House and in the country were surprised because I thought he had forgotten all about it altogether. We have not heard about Partition from the Government side for many years here. Indeed, on occasions when members of the Labour Party sought to urge the Minister for External Affairs to raise this question of Partition in the UN which one would think to be the natural forum for airing it, these proposals were looked upon as being in bad taste if not downright vulgar by the Minister for External Affairs. The idea that he should be asked to deal with such a triviality seemed to astound him. How could a man concerned with whether or not China would sit in the UN, a man concerned, apparently, with concepts of world peace, space research and the devil knows what, have time to be bothered with Partition? That is the impression he gave me in the House and it is supported on every occasion when necessary by the Taoiseach and his Government. If the Taoiseach imagines that at this late hour he can convince the Irish people of any bona fide intentions by his Party in this matter of Partition he is only fooling himself. It has long been accepted by the public that Fianna Fáil have abandoned the idea of a 32 County united Ireland except in its airy-fairy conception.
It seems to me that the Government have given an unparalleled display of the meaning of the phrase "the insolence of office". This Fianna Fáil coalition have been nearly 11 years in office. Let me dwell somewhat on the question of coalition. What have they to show for it? What they have to show is so well known as to make mention of it almost hackneyed if not boring. All the problems that were there in 1932 are still there but infinitely worse in many cases—emigration and the need for houses.
How can the Minister for Local Government or Deputy Blaney, his predecessor as Minister for Local Government, have the gall to come here and talk about houses and face questions about housing when they put a stranglehold on credit and stopped housebuilding? They were responsible for the present situation of the housing shortage in Dublin and throughout the country today and how they can pretend otherwise is beyond me. It is just an example of the insolence of office.
Returning to the question of coalition, which has been made a term of abuse by some members of the Fianna Fáil Party and the Government, I know that there are members of this Government who have nightmares about loss of office. I know that my colleague, Deputy Boland, has never spent a day in the House as a T.D. As one of my constituents said to me: "Sure he was never a TD." It is true from the day he was elected to the Dáil he has been a Minister. That day was an unfortunate day for Ireland. He and others who come to sample the authority of office dread the thought that they, at some stage, will have to knuckle down to it, perhaps, and work as an ordinary TD, as most of us do. I venture the opinion that not many of them will stand up to the strain of the job or survive an election if they have to face it in that capacity in the years to come. They have been coddled and cossetted and they have luxuriated in every conceivable way. They are people who, when the harsh wind of reality comes upon them, will be found very unfitted to face the real elements of the political storm outside these walls.
Has there ever been in Fianna Fáil anything but a coalition? Fianna Fáil has always been in itself a coalition. A coalition, as far as my understanding of the word goes, is an attempted reconciliation of what very well may be political viewpoints which are far removed. Does that not exist in Fianna Fáil? Indeed, it does and exists in the most unhealthy way because there are secret or semi-secret stresses and strains in that Party which are the subject of comment through the House and, indeed, in the newspapers also. It is said that second officer Colley is busily nursing such mutiny in the companionways of the old battleship as would merit the yardarm. We know from our own observations here of the Front Bench that there are gentlemen facing us who feel themselves eminently more qualified than the Taoiseach to fill the Taoiseach's spot. It is in a time such as the present when these motives and these motivations will come to show themselves and they will unquestionably show themselves in the months that lie ahead.
On the question of coalitions, I should like to recount a little of the history of the country in relation to the much-condemned inter-Party Government which I supported and voted for. I came in here in 1948, if I do not make a mistake, on the same day as the Taoiseach. I remember the Taoiseach running around Leinster Lawn in shorts.
Had he a hurley in his hand?
He was an excellent young man, preparing for athletic activity of one kind or another. He was then, as he is now, an estimable fellow.
In 1948, the then Taoiseach, Mr. de Valera, was removed from office following the period of hardship which was represented by the war, a period of loss of freedom and repression which went with the days of the Emergency and, contrary to what was expected by some members of the Fianna Fáil Party, with the departure of Mr. de Valera from office the sky did not fall nor was there an earthquake; there was no thunder; there were no flashes of lightning. Life went on. Life, in fact, improved and there was about the country a feeling of freedom. Some of those whom I am talking to would be far too young to appreciate this. Deputy Corry is not too young. I would say that it is just about within his memory. I think he was coming to maturity. There was a feeling of freedom that, at long last, shackles had been thrown off.
In 1951, there was a disagreement in the inter-Party Government and, as a result, there was a general election and I remember very well observing in this House the savagery—and there is no other word for it—of the Fianna Fáil ex-Ministers who were lined up here at the thought of their being deprived of office. I remember the abuse and the blackguardism that went on here in those years against the idea that anybody should have the temerity to think that there was any group in the country capable of governing or with any right to govern other than their own sweet selves and when they ran out of savagery they went down to the bar and loaded up with more savagery.
However, we had an election in 1951. We had been told ad nauseam in the interim since 1948 that as soon as the people would get the chance they would restore Fianna Fáil to power stronger than ever before and, by some queer concatenation of circumstances, they did not do it and Fianna Fáil came back as a minority Government and would not have been a Government at all were it not for the fact that they were supported by five Independents.
As I think back, I recall that the only occasion upon which we have seen such a spectacle as a Taoiseach coming into the House and proposing a vote of confidence in himself—a vote of confidence not proposed by a member of his Party, but by himself, as much as to say, "Look what a great fellow I am. Do not you all agree with me? You had better agree with me or you will not get nominated the next time"—the only occasion when that was done before was in 1953 when it was done by a gentleman who is now the President of Ireland when he was pouring a little testing acid on the supporting Independents. However, that was a minority Government in 1951 to 1954.
One would have thought, and we were told, that with this renewed blessing of Fianna Fáil being back in the saddle, when another election would come the grateful people of Ireland would rush to the ballot boxes to ensure that there would be no doubt about it this time, that Fianna Fáil would be returned in force. There was an election and, lo and behold, that did not happen. Instead, the inter-Party group were returned stronger than ever. I quite understand that young Deputies like Deputy Fitzpatrick have no knowledge of this because the side of Irish history that has been shown to them has been just Fianna Fáil's side—a brilliant green for green people.
These are the facts. Eventually, in 1957, there was a crisis and restrictive measures were imposed, measures with which I did not agree any more than I am in agreement with what the Taoiseach is doing now. Restrictive economic measures were taken which had an adverse effect on the economy and the Government of that day paid the price for them just as this Government will pay the price for their measures.
It is interesting to remember the terminology used by the Fianna Fáil Party. Any Fianna Fáil propagandist will tell you "Of course what happened in 1956 and 1957 was the fault of the Government, but what happened in 1964, Oh, that was the fault of world conditions." If we have a recession now, as we look like having due to the mismanagement of the economy more than any other factor, the Fianna Fáil propagandists once more will find that it was the fault of forces outside their control, of those international conspiracies of one kind or another. So you see the old system has not changed at all since Fianna Fáil was founded—anything you can do I can do better—and they take full advantage of any difficulty that may arise pretending to be concerned about the national interests. They have appropriated that phrase, "the national interest", or "the national good" or——
Even the National Anthem.
True enough. There is another one in another version of the Anthem which does not say "Sinnne Fianna Fáil", but it is hardly suitable for recital here. The Taoiseach and his Government made a Free Trade Area Agreement with Britain and, in my view and in the view of my Party, this was a disastrous undertaking. Have I much time left, Sir?
The Deputy's time will conclude at 4.48, or approximately in four minutes' time.
We are really hamstrung here because, before one can develop one's points, it is time to conclude. I have just said a few of the many things that I would like to say. I did want to refer to that Hans Anderson fairy tale, the Second Programme, which has disappeared. Where has it gone? What reality had that document or what relevance had it to the facts of life? None. That is admitted even by Fianna Fáil people. It was a complete abortion. I always felt that so-called expansion planning was a pretence and I think mine was the first voice to be raised in this House many years ago to speak along those lines. There were many who were impressed by the double-talk of economists. It seems to me that people with a knowledge of economics latched on to suitable phrases but made no suggestions as to how matters could be guided in any particular overall direction. Certainly, there was no suggestion made in regard to what I and my Party would be interested in, the direction of the economy along socialist lines in order to predetermine our economic future in so far as possible and not to leave it to the winds of chance or to the ordinary play of forces, or leave the welfare of our people entirely at the mercy of the bureaucrats and civil servants. However, I have not got the opportunity I should like to have to develop that point as the time is too short.
This Government is on its way out. There is no question about that in my mind. No matter how they stall they will not put off the fateful hour. I hope that they will take time, those of them who have been so occupied with their own self-importance, to look over their shoulders and think of how they have treated people they met on the way up because they will be meeting the same people on the way down.
Good man.
There is such an inviting array of topics to talk about in relation to this Government but I cannot do so without infringing the rules of order. I will conclude with a comment again on the changing times in which we live. When I was a young fellow there was depicted by Fianna Fáil in their newspapers and in the propaganda at their meetings a man of unrelieved evil, a Minister for Finance who cut 1s off the old age pensions. Deputy Corry will remember but the younger people will not. He cut 1s off the old age pensions and I felt that it was an unconscionable thing to do and I still think that it was an unconscionable thing to do, but now after the passage of 40 years where is this gentleman? In Fianna Fáil?
A Deputy
No wonder they lost the referendum.
He is in the inner circle.
And no means test.
I must remind the Deputy that he has now reached the limit of his time.
Thank you very much, Sir, for your indulgence. The few remarks I have made have been made on behalf of the people I represent. It can fairly and honestly be said that our motion calling for an early general election represents the views of the vast majority of our people today.
I should like to start off by saying that Deputy Dunne cannot cast any slur on any man or on any Deputy who risked his life to preserve what Deputy Dunne is howling about here. I am taking that for a start. We had to go out in 1922 with the full knowledge that we were fighting and losing a fight. We now come to the next phase of it. I have been here for 41 years. As far as Partition goes I expressed my views in this House in 1937, for which I got the blessings of nobody from any bench.
As I have said, I have been here for 41 years. During that time, I have seen young fellows come in here and disappear. It is now 36 years ago since Fine Gael, Cumann na nGaedheal, as they were then, were kicked out of office. They have been changing names for 36 years, trying to come back; but they cannot come back, for the Partition rope is around their necks.
I expect to see changes here from time to time. I expect, for instance, to see after the next election a Labour Party over there in their proper role as an Opposition. I have no objection to seeing a Labour Government. There is no doubt about that, for the men who went out with us from 1916 to 1922 and on to 1924 were the ordinary workers of this country and the sons of small farmers. We did not see any lawyers or fellows with spats then.
I saw five years of Fine Gael Government here, from 1927 to 1932; but the people hunted them out and they never came back. Away back in 1948 the man who saved this country through the Emergency from the horrors of war was put out of office and we then had a mixture of Fine Gael, Labour, Clann na Poblachta, Clann na Talmhan and Independents. They formed a government and went to work. They had a full free majority, as good a majority as we have today—in fact I should say a better majority. We had three years of that Government and, despite the efforts of the then Minister for Finance, who even went so far as putting a tax on ladies curling pins, they failed.
The Deputy would hardly need any of those.
With two years still to go in office they cleared out. With a full majority in the House, they ran. They were not able to stand up to financial difficulties. However, we had a few bob and we soon had the country straightened out.
You have it fairly straight now.
Those boys came in again but they lasted for only two and three-quarter years before they went out again, having spent all they could beg, borrow and steal.
Banks broken into——
I have seen poor devils come in there and work hard, to give you your due. You come in happy and satisfied, sit down and criticise every Government, criticise every Minister, mock every Minister, blackguard every Minister——
The Deputy is no bad hand at that himself.
The people have not forgotten the Fine Gael crowd yet. They have not forgotten, as Deputy Dunne has said, that a shilling was taken off the old age pension. They have not forgotten that and they never will.
(Interruptions.)
I interrupted nobody——
Was the Deputy asleep? He is an entertaining old cod.
Deputy Corry should be allowed to make his contribution.
We were the only people who were strong enough for government here. The other Parties could never do it because they could not agree among themselves. If Deputy Corish, Deputy Oliver J. Flanagan and my friend there with the glasses were put into a room together, it would be tantamount to putting in cats and stringing them up. You know that as well as I do.
We would agree on one thing—putting out Fianna Fáil.
The Deputy was brought in here as one who would print pound notes without typewriters, but you let them down.
Do not talk about letting down. The Deputy let the beet growers down.
The beet growers let the Deputy down badly.
Deputy Corry, without interruption.
The beet growers are paying for it now. I want to deal with the questions which were raised here as best as I can and as rapidly as I can. We hear a lot of talk and complaints here about unemployment. A Party that tried to wreck every industry established in the country complains about unemployment. Down in Irish Steel in Haulbowline they reduced the number of men employed there during the last three years of Coalition Government to just half what it had been. Now they complain about unemployment. A couple of years ago they spent three days here attacking a proposed industry. Every day I had to look on, with nobody but a caretaker in charge of what should have been a flourishing industry. The machinery was sold for scrap. Then Deputy Stephen Barrett came in here with a brainwave. We were asked to look at the money being wasted on the Verolme Dockyard.
There were some 700 or 800 men employed at the time. Today there are 1,100 men working there in constant employment. Deputy Dunne should take note. What would happen to those men if Fine Gael came into government? I will tell the House what would happen. Under a lovely photograph of Deputy Fitzpatrick the electors of Cavan were told that the financial policy of Fine Gael was based on the elimination of extravagance and waste, extravagance and waste such as Verolme Dockyard. These are the people who are shouting now about unemployment. These are the people who would have driven 1,100 men out of employment and put them and their families on the streets.
The men who fought to get freedom for us were the ordinary workers, and we have never forgotten them. It is for these men and their families that we started the Verolme Dockyard, Irish Steel and all the other industries. I challenge any Deputy to go down to my constituency, travel the length and breadth of it, and find ten unemployed men in it. They just are not there. Any man who does his job for his constituents can do as I have done.
I was anxious for the straight vote. I canvassed for it. I did so in the hope that we might get rid of the weeds. There are too many in this House who are not doing their job for their constituents. There are monuments to some people. There is one in yesterday's Cork Examiner, a nice little picture showing frozen peas being exported from the town of Midleton. That industry was started through the genius of Lieutenant-General Costello. The first year 250 acres of peas were grown and a sum of £17,000 paid in wages. This is the fifth year. The 250 acres have grown to 3,000 acres. The farmers collected £300,000 and the workers collected £210,000. Why will Opposition Deputies not go out and do something like that instead of sitting here moaning and groaning at one another and at the Government? The Opposition are good for nothing but shouting at Ministers. Get out and do a bit of work.
There has been a good deal of abuse of the Minister for Local Government here in the last couple of days. I know that, but for the Minister for Local Government, a great many of our people would have no future but the emigrant ship. Fianna Fáil have provided employment for the boys and girls here in their own country. As soon as they find permanent employment they begin to look around them and now, with the mini-skirts, they can pick a damn nice leg. They get married and it is our job then to ensure that they have a nice new house to walk into and settle down.
We are doing that with the help of this Government. I do not believe that any Government are unimpeachable. I do not believe that any Government are ever 100 per cent right. Because of the fact that those people over there will not even perform the ordinary function of an Opposition, very often I have to be the Opposition. They are not even capable of being a coherent Opposition. I hope they will be replaced by someone who will. That is what we come up against.
On the question of housing I admit that, when we came back in 1956, some houses had been built during the inter-Party regime. But I know that for six months before they cleared out, as a member of Cork County Council my heart was broken by the contractors howling for their money, and there was no money to give them. We had to go down to the Munster and Leinster Bank and borrow the money that should have come in Government grants to pay the unfortunate contractors who had built houses in good faith and who were to be paid out of Oliver's printing machine. That was the condition of affairs.
I am glad to see that Deputy Stephen Barrett has come into the House. After the speeches he made in this House he caused this little election address to be brought out, but he took great care that it was not printed in Cork—this brainwave of the financial policy of Fine Gael——
Deputy Corry promised extra employment at the last general election.
——advocating the abolition of the Verolme Dockyard. He spent three days in this House trying to wreck it, and trying to throw another 1,000 on to the unemployment list and on to the emigrant ship. Then they could help the Labour people to say: "Look at all the unemployment." That is how it is done. Those are the things we have to take into consideration. I think our time will be up here about the middle of the 1970s or thereabouts.
God spoke before the Deputy.
We will go then. That will relieve the minds of the Opposition. We are not people who run from the blast of a hurricane. We brought in a Budget yesterday which was unpopular in everyone's opinion. We did it because it was necessary to provide finance for the needs of the people. What is all this shouting about housing, when I saw in the town of Cobh 18 houses idle in the main street? Some of them were hotels. The doors were closed. No one was living in them because no one could buy them. I saw those days under a Fine Gael Government. The people saw those days under a Fine Gael Government. They have no intention of getting back to that.
Deputy Oliver Flanagan mentioned the beet growers. I want to give him a little enlightenment on that. I think it was in 1946 I met Lieutenant-General Costello. I was chairman of the Beet Growers' Association. We argued for four or five days over 6d on beet. At the end of that period I said to him: "Surely there is some better way of settling this." We put our heads together and we drew up a charter of freedom which is enjoyed in no other branch of agriculture. The beet growers get the cost of producing the beet and a bit of profit on that. About 400 farmers were costed and we found it cost about £6,000. The result was that there was peace in the beet industry year after year up to 1965. Then there was a difficulty. We were told they had no money. I was still chairman of the Beet Growers' Association at the time. I took our people out on strike and we won. We got the 5/2d which was due to the beet growers.
The following year we made an agreement with Lieutenant-General Costello which cost 8/9d a ton. The agreement was that whatever increase the workers got in the 12 months the beet growers would get it also. This is the first year in which that agreement has been broken. There is 11/- a ton, or £580,000, due on the beet going into the factories at present. This is a semi-Government concern which had a profit of £1½ million on its balance sheet last year. People say the farmers are complaining. That is one of the reasons. I endeavoured to get—but I was not in time to get it—the income out of the penny on the pound of sugar which was allowed to be put on last year.
Is all the money to flow one way and none the other? That is a question which I should like to have answered. We are not wreckers of that industry. The men working in the four factories, the beet hauliers and even CIE all get their whack. As a matter of fact, if the beet industry were killed there would be no CIE, because the Sugar Company pays 50 per cent of the total cost of CIE in transport charges. We do not want to wreck that industry. We made an honourable agreement with an honourable man and it is up to his successor to carry out that agreement. I am not going to go into the reasons for the campaign. I am sure that the men elected by the beet growers in their wisdom will do their job. If they do not I suggest they get out.
I am sure the straight vote was wrong.
You will learn as you go along if you have not learned already. I am sorry for you. I would hate to lose you as you are an old friend.
If you said this before the referendum and if the Deputy had PR he was right——
I have been here for 44 years. It is 44 years since I was first elected and I have been here ever since. I have been elected to the county council. I do not wish to go on further than this. I have given my reasons and in my opinion I make no bones about it. We would have got better Deputies in this House under the straight vote system because those who are climbing in on the coat-tails of others would have to go. In a national Parliament of this type you want men who are prepared to work for their people. That is what has kept me here. It has kept men like Paddy McAuliffe and Dick Barry and those who worked for constituents. I do not care what Party they belong to; if they work they will come back here. I made out one time that it takes four elections before a fellow is found out and thrown out.
Six elections.
I believe you were not in favour of PR also but in favour of the straight vote.
I am looking at all the people who have been elected here for six elections in this House. That is the straightest argument I have heard against PR yet. Those are the facts.
There are only two elections between us. You say four and I say six.
We have had seven by-elections since we were elected by a majority to this House some years ago. We won six out of the seven.
You have two good jumps to take now.
We take everything in our stride. We are well able. Those are the facts of the case anyway. We have the confidence of the people and the people rely on us that when a financial crisis comes up or trouble arises we do not run away but come and fix it. We stick it out and go along the road to prosperity. We do this year after year. I have seen the day when you went down to Cobh and the total employment in that town was of three weeks' duration under your Government. They were using sledge hammers breaking up good machinery so that Fine Gael could break it up for scrap. In Midleton there were 13 or 14 men working there in the flour mill. There was no work at all in Youghal. Go down for yourself and travel around. You used to come to Ballycotton. Come down again and have a look at the happy faces and the little towns I have built around them. Have a look at all those things and see them for yourself.
I have seen them.
You should be conversant with the matter.
Why did they all say "No"?
Listen and I will tell you. Deputy Seán Dunne a while ago stated he could not say something because it would not be Parliamentary language.
It must be a poor case if you cannot put Parliamentary language on it.
This Government have no intention of leaving office or making any change whatsoever until 1970. When their time is up they will go to the people and we will come back here and you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, will look at who is there. Have a look at them. I have seen them come in there and be there for 20 years and they go again and they never saw a Fine Gael Government. They sat on those benches 36 years ago. In 1932 we kicked them out. It was very early in 1932 in the month of February. They never came back since. Why? If this Government or its Ministers were so wrong, so contrary or so prejudiced as those gentlemen say, why did the people not throw them out? They did not and I have seen changed faces over there. There is a change in the Front Bench every six months. I have seen those changes and I welcome you, Deputy O.J. Flanagan, back to the Front Bench again and I am glad to see you there. We have looked at those here for so long. They have been 36 years on those benches even changing the name and even then it did no good.
I know you are quite happy and satisfied. You are satisfied to sit there and try to shout down Ministers when answering questions in case anyone should hear the answers. That is a perfectly laudable policy on your part. Surely men like something more than that. Will every one of you go out tomorrow and stay away from here for about six months and in that time establish some little industry in your constituency that will provide bread for men who are unemployed there? Will you do that? That is a fair question and a fair offer. Come to me if you are in any difficulty and I will help you. I have my own place all fixed up and I will fix up yours for you. I cannot make a more decent offer than that. All you have to do is twist the machine and roll out the one pound notes and the five pound notes and all the financial difficulties in this country will be settled for ever.
Any man who is elected and has a policy of reform should be fit for anything and geared for anything. The Deputies sitting on the Opposition Benches today had not anything to do with that mixum gatherum of a Coalition, any more than I had. I will admit that. However, you had two chances with your mixum gatherum and you did not do it either and it is a pity. I am sorry.
Unlike Deputy Corry, I want to deal with events in 1968 and refer to the 450 who have received notice, or are due to receive notice, of dismissal from the B & I Company, 150 of whom are from the constituency Deputy Corry represents. These are the people in whom we in Fine Gael in 1968 are interested and not in the living fossils that the Fianna Fáil Party seek to clasp to their bosom in 1968 in order to bolster up their iniquitous attempt to establish themselves in office for as long as Deputy Corry has been in this House.
Four hundred and fifty men under the scheme of modernisation, 450 men under the Fianna Fáil inspired scheme of expansion, are about to join the thousands of people who, year in and year out, are being added to the unemployment list. And this, we are asked to believe, is a Government to which we should give support in its dying hours because its Taoiseach, who has been found unsound in judgment, who has been found unethical in method, who has been found uninspired, has the temerity to ask his own colleagues to give him yet another chance.
Last week, Deputy J. Lynch, Taoiseach for the time being, acknowledged here in this House that he is not a judge of what is "reasonable". It is not given to everybody to compose his own epitaph but if ever a Taoiseach, in the last moments of his office, did so, that is the epitaph of Deputy J. Lynch —"I am not a judge of what is `reasonable' ". He has shown to Ireland and to the world this year that he has committed the greatest error of political judgment in this country in this century. He led his Party and he led the Government to the greatest defeat suffered by any political leader since 1918. At least, John Redmond did not bring the defeat on himself: it was not his judgment which brought it on him. The defeat from which the Government is suffering at the moment is one brought on by the judgment of the man who has control, the man who yesterday acknowledged that the decision was his—Deputy J. Lynch, the Taoiseach. This same man now asks us to give him a vote of confidence, having committed this gross error of political judgment which most of his Party now accept to be an error of political judgment.
We base our Motion of No Confidence on that political error of judgment. Since we have tabled the Motion of No Confidence, we have now been given, by the same man who has shown such unfitness for the office of Taoiseach, an example of error of economic judgment. Two years ago, the same man, when Minister for Finance, had to come back into this House within six months of a Budget, looking for another £9 million because of his error of economic judgment. This year, when he has control not only of finance but of every other Office of State, he has had to return to this House, in less than half a year, admitting an economic error of almost £19 million—a clear example of a grievous error of judgment.
The Taoiseach is clearly not a man of sound judgment either politically or economically. He is not deserving of the confidence of this House. He has not the confidence of the people. He has misjudged national priorities. He has misjudged the temper of our people. He has misjudged the timing of the political clowning in which the Government have been engaged over the past year and in which they are still indulging. He has shown himself to be a very bad judge of timing. Can such a man be trusted? I think not.
There were those who, at one time, would have trusted Deputy Jack Lynch but can they trust any longer a man who, on his own admission, after defeat, says, in effect: "I took the decision. I controlled and I dictated and I ordained the attempt to manipulate the institutions of this country, through the ballot box, so that I might stay in power forever"? Surely we cannot trust a man found wanting in economic sense twice in two years? This country cannot suffer any longer a Taoiseach who cannot be trusted.
Apart from sound judgment and a quality which can be trusted, we need also from a Taoiseach a capacity to lead. He and his Party remind me of the Pushmi-Pullyu. I think that is beyond some members of the Fianna Fáil Party who are not acquainted with the literature on Doctor Doolittle but a Pushmi-Pullyu is a two-headed animal. It has no tail because it has a head at both ends with horns on it. It was thought at one time to be extinct because it was very evasive and was terribly hard to catch. Only one half of the Pushmi-Pullyu slept at any time. The other half remained wide awake and, so, you could never creep up on it unknown to it. The day came, however, when sufficient members of the animal kingdom surrounded it so that it could not escape and it was caught. That is the Fianna Fáil Party today. This two-headed animal, with a head at both ends, and with horns on it, has been caught and trapped at last because nearly 700,000 of our people surrounded this Fianna Fáil Pushmi-Pullyu and captured it.
I am reminded of Doctor Doolittle's exclamation when the Pushmi-Pullyu was brought into his presence. He looked at this strange beast and said: "The Lord save us." The Duck asked: "How does it make up its mind?" The dog, very properly, remarked: "It does not look as though it has a mind to make up." That is the Fianna Fáil Party. One of the heads of the Pushmi-Pullyu is Deputy Jack Lynch, with that woebegone countenance of his, that "Oh, so much of it is beyond me" expression, while he mumbles through a brief prepared for him by a civil servant or one of his public relations officers. At the other end of the Fianna Fáil Pushmi-Pullyu is the greasy, bloated, menacing head of a Taca man. How can a Party with its head and its mind and its extremities controlled in that particular way give to the country the leadership it needs in this time of grave financial, social and moral crisis?
Apart from sound judgment, trustworthiness and leadership capacity, you need in a Taoiseach a status which commands respect at home and abroad. Our people have clearly asserted that the Taoiseach no longer commands their respect. Is it not a very sad thing, indeed, that for the first time in the history of this independent nation of ours we now have a situation in which the head of an Irish Government is known abroad as a man who has been rejected by his own people and who has not got the common decency to leave office? For the first time in the history of this State a Unionist Prime Minister in the North of Ireland has been able to point the finger of scorn and contempt at an Irish Taoiseach, and he has been able to do it because that man has been rejected at home by his own people and he no longer has any authority to speak on their behalf. Deputy Lynch is the Leader of the Fianna Fáil Party. That is their business and we do not presume to dicate to them whom they have as leader, but we speak with the voice of the people, with a majority of over a quarter of a million of the people behind us. The Taoiseach has not got our confidence and has not got the confidence of the majority of the Irish people.
What is the meaning of this recent massive vote by the Irish people? I think it is accepted by all that it goes far beyond the intricacies of constitutional law or electoral manoeuvring. It was, above all, a declaration of principles by the Irish people. It takes its place with Magna Carta and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and all other significant documents of political history. It is a declaration by the Irish people of their fundamental belief in fair play. That may not be a dramatic thing to declare to the world and to our people, but we in Fine Gael believe it is a very proper declaration to make at a time when the canons of fair play were being broken and when a government, power-corrupted, was seeking to destroy fair play forever.
The people have said that those who cannot play fair should get off the field. The people have said they will not change the rules just to suit those who cannot play fair. The recent vote of our people was a declaration by them that power is not for the benefit of those who hold it but that those who hold power must use it for the benefit of all. This recent vote was a declaration by our people that the institutions of State—and that includes Parliament, the Dáil and the Seanad—must not be mutilated, bent or twisted, to suit any particular Party. This was a declaration by our people that the rights of all take priority over the convenience of the few and are second to none. By "the convenience of the few" I mean not only the convenience of the members of the Government but the convenience of any people who for the time being happen to be Members of this distinguished Assembly.
This recent vote was also a refusal by our people to transfer power from the ballot box of the £100 a plate dinners of the political grafters. It was a declaration by our people that they want a broadly based democracy, that they want here a fair society, a just society, in which all are equal and in which money cannot buy any advantage, preferment or privilege. This vote was a repudiation by our people of arrogance, of the arrogance of this Government.
These declarations by our people have done this country good, and out of the evil wind of the referendum has come forth great good, because the people, above all, have given a reminder to those who thought that these fundamental matters had slipped into the forgotten. It is a wonderful thing to see that the mighty have fallen and that the little people have now risen and asserted themselves.
We in Fine Gael have no confidence in the Government, and we have confidence in our policies. I have particular responsibility for health and social welfare and I should like to refer briefly to those, because these two matters are fundamental to our philosophy of the just society. What is this just society of which we in Fine Gael speak? It is a society in which all people are equal, in which every person and every citizen is equally great, is equally strong and is equally comfortable. It is a society in which every person has equality of opportunity. It is a society in which everybody is self-sufficient because we are all mutually reliant.
The just society in which Fine Gael believe and which we seek to establish is one in which all the agencies of the Government and all the agencies of the nation would be so managed that the inequalities imposed by nature and by society would diminish. The society of which we in Fine Gael speak is one which would be concerned that seven per cent of our people are apparently perpetually unable to obtain employment at home. It is a society which would take steps to remedy the unjust situation in which 70 per cent of the people cannot benefit from a health service to which they are all compelled to contribute.
The just society in which we in Fine Gael believe is one which would not tolerate a situation in which 15 per cent of the people are obliged to live under conditions so crude that there are four or more of them per room and many of them in rooms that are not worthy of the name. The just society in which we believe is one which would end the worst sanitation scandal in Europe where 35 per cent of our homes have no sanitation. The just society in which we believe is one which would bring to an end a situation in which 13 per cent of our people have to rely upon the assistance of the last resort, home assistance, which is paid to them only when they can prove by statute that they are unable within their own income or other lawful means to provide for themselves and their families the necessaries of life, food, clothing and shelter.
As we seek to establish a just and fair society, so we seek also to establish here a modern, dynamic economy, with rising standards, with increased population, with increased production and increased consumption. We are not afraid, as the present Government are, of increased consumption, because with it you could provide employment, you could have the opportunities for production which are necessary if we are to achieve not only an expanded economy but also a just one.
Here, we in Fine Gael violently differ from Fianna Fáil, and there are mischiefmakers who find difficulty in finding a difference between us. The difference is that we reject their bogey that you cannot have social justice and economic expansion at the same time. We reject the view that economic expansion and social justice are not compatible. Indeed, to our mind they are not only compatible but one is a pre-condition of the other and any society which fails to observe both at the same time, as has happened, arrives at a situation which would create more evil. Unless we have an acceptance by the Government and other State agencies of these principles, we shall have a continuation of stop, go, stop, in our economy and a continuation of the many inequalities which are avoidable and which it is wrong to say we must wait to cure.
Those who now suffer ill-health, those who are now undernourished, those who are now ignorant, should not be compelled by our social system to wait until the financial advisers say "We can bring relief to you". Our policy on health is many years old. Before he left office, Deputy Tom O'Higgins, Minister for Health in the last Government in which Fine Gael participated, declared his intention of bringing to an end the Victorian dispensary system. He was not to have the opportunity of creating the framework of this before he left office, but since then we have created the framework and submitted it for public scrutiny to the mischievous committee which Deputy MacEntee, as Minister for Health, caused this House to set up during the lifetime of the Seventeenth Dáil.
Since we exposed our health policy to public criticism, nobody has been able to show that it is basically wrong. Indeed, Peter Kain-Caudle, an expert on the subject, has said of it: "It is well-founded and moderate. Its proposals to re-organise the health services are practical and well suited to Irish conditions". What have we to face? We are unable to put our own policy into operation for the time being, but next year we will get the opportunity and we will do it as a first priority. What we have on the opposite side are three long years of broken promises after many long years of inaction to advance social matters.
In the autumn of 1965, the then Fianna Fáil Minister for Health announced his intention of reforming the health services. In the following January he issued a White Paper. Since then there have been repeated promises of new legislation to reform what the present Government acknowledge are unsatisfactory health services. Yesterday, we had a statement from the Taoiseach that this would now once again have to wait. We have three years of broken promises and we still have an outmoded dispensary service; we still have the injustice of collecting from the rates of one-seventh of the population, who own houses, payment for health services from which they themselves are excluded. We still have the highest hospital bed rate in the world. We have more people in hospital beds per head of the population than any country in the world and we have had no action by the central Government to do what needs to be done to provide better health services for our people. They have done nothing about the provision of better domiciliary services, of home visits, of meals on wheels. What is being done is being done by the local authorities, again exclusively out of the rates, and the Minister for Health refuses to bring to the Government the requests of the Dublin Health Authority and others to see to it that a domiciliary service for the aged, the crippled, the disabled, is made a national charge.
In social welfare, we have the worst services in Europe. Bad and all as they are, we attempt to conceal how bad they are by throwing into social welfare costings the cost of institutions run in connection with social welfare. The rest of Europe, with which we are sometimes compared, does not do that but, notwithstanding that, the best of our social welfare services are only two-thirds that of the worst, of the least, of the European countries. Our old age pensioners are so poorly fed and nourished that the majority of them living on their own do not eat meat more often than once in every ten days, and then it is usually a sausage. There again, the Ministers for Health, Industry and Commerce and Agriculture will not even prescribe the minimum quantity of meat there should be in a sausage.
Sometimes we are led to believe the problem is that we have an old population, that we have one of the highest elderly populations in Europe. Of course, the truth is not so. Nineteen per cent of our people are more than 65 and there are many countries in Europe with a higher percentage. Britain, our nearest neighbour, has 18 per cent of the population who are more than 65 years of age. An interesting statistic, though I do not wish to disturb our womenfolk, is that here womenfolk have the expectancy of earlier deaths than in the rest of Europe. It is 72 years of age here and 74 in the rest of Europe. Accordingly, we have not got what we pretend we have: an elderly population which is uneconomic and costly to support.
We reject the Fianna Fáil thinking that the care of the aged, the disabled and our children is a burden on our community. We do not acknowledge that it is a burden. We believe that to help the less well-off of our community is a joy. What we need is the leadership of a government to get our better-off people involved, to get them concerned, and not only that but to get them to rejoice in helping our less well-off. We accept the benefits of a welfare State and the entitlement of the recipients because, after all, they are common citizens of the same society.
I should like, momentarily, to refer to education. The most disturbing thing in education in recent times has been the constant effort on the part of the Government to demean the main architects of and investors in our secondary education system. There have been determined efforts to belittle those who have dedicated their lives in Holy Orders—priests, brothers and nuns— for more than a century, to educating our people when the State refused to do it. We believe it is revolting to see a government, whose contribution to secondary education is a mere fleabite compared with the contributions of the religious for many decades, seeking to take the management, the control and the running of secondary schools out of their hands simply because the State in the last few years have done something to remedy the deplorable want before then.
One of the most sickening things in relation to education here must be the inverted patriotism which obliges even underprivileged children from neglected and poor homes to learn to the detriment of their knowledge of other subjects a language which the Minister and his Government and the members of the Fianna Fáil Party know full well these children will never use from the moment they leave school even if they do not go abroad. What is particularly sickening about the continuation of compulsory Irish by the Minister for Education is that as he seeks to justify and perpetuate that injustice he speaks about the economic advantages of being integrated with Britain and that they are so great that people should not be distracted by the emotional attractions of national independence. If ever a man is living a lie and showing himself, his Government and his Party to be frauds it is the Minister for Education who insists that mentally handicapped children, children from underprivileged homes, even children who are slow learners, must still fail in their tests and their examinations for life if they fail in the Irish language, a language which the Minister has put on record not only in this country but in the world as something which, while emotionally attractive, is economically disadvantageous. This is something which I think is in itself an indication that the Government have not our confidence any longer.
We in Fine Gael tabled our motion before we knew that the Government had reached what they considered to be the last resort. Last week I asked the Taoiseach if he remembered the words of the Minister for Finance in the Dáil earlier this year when he said that he did not think a second Budget was desirable and that a second Budget would only be introduced as a last resort. The Taoiseach could not remember it. He had a lot on his mind since then but he could not remember the considered opinion of the Minister for Finance who, at the end of weeks of debate here on the Budget, showed that a second one was not desirable, that it would not be necessary because the current one was then mathematically correct and that a second Budget would only be introduced as a last resort. That is what we now have, the last resort of a dying Government. It may well be that the Government will take a little while to die but is it good for a country to be ruled by a Government that has been rejected by a majority and ruled by a Government that accepts that they are dying? I do not think so. It is bad for the country and that is why we in Fine Gael have no confidence in the Government, which will expire sooner or later.
Two years ago Deputy J. Lynch, the then Minister for Finance, asked what went wrong with the Budget. He did not ask that yesterday but he suggested that what went wrong was that his warnings and the warnings of members of the Government about inflation, wages, and so on, had not been heeded. Is it not high time for the Government to accept that a policy of creeping admonition never succeeds in any country? They have a long and unblemished record of achieving nothing and the empty admonitions of the Government were certainly not sufficient to keep the economy of this country correct.
What is interesting is that while these admonitions were given there was never at any time any guideline by the Government to indicate their definition of what was or was not acceptable in regard to wage increases. There was only one indication given to the people. Let us think and reflect on this. What is significant is that the Government gave themselves and the members of the Oireachtas a 66? per cent increase in their salaries. If this was not accepted by the people as an indication of what was acceptable in the form of wage demands and wage increases I do not know what clear indication could be given to the people. The people are not to blame but the Government through the Taoiseach sought to take it out on the people. The little man, the pint man, the cigarette smoker paid for the policy of creeping admonition and personal advancement.
We believe that a wrong view has been taken by the Government about the economy. We believe that the dangers which have developed in recent months are nothing to the disaster which is ultimately facing us. In the Government's declaration of policy yesterday it was their view that the new measures would straighten the economy without endangering productivity or investment. There is no word here about employment. The best way to increase productivity is to disemploy. If two men are doing a job today and you sack one and you make the other do the job, hard and all as it is, you increase productivity. That is clearly what the Government are out to do—increase productivity and investment without having any regard to the growing and menacing figures of unemployment and increased emigration.
I mentioned earlier the remarks of the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland about the Taoiseach. It reminds me to refer again to one of the greatest problems in relation to Partition which is growing one year after another under the Fianna Fáil administration and that is the difference in the standards of social services between here and our fellow countrymen in the North. They have been increased out of all proportion compared with ten years ago. In yesterday's Budget there are increased impositions on everybody. The virtue, from the Taoiseach's point of view, of yesterday's taxes is that nobody who smokes or drinks or eats or purchases anything can escape them. There is nothing in this for the underprivileged, and the poorest of the poor will have to bear some part of the new burden. Clearly, where you have a new weight of taxes such as was imposed yesterday on our people there should be something for the people who are in receipt of social welfare. We believe it is necessary on humanitarian grounds.
We need not look beyond the borders of our own 26 County State to justify something being given to the less well-off people. However, in case that has no influence on the Government—and it would appear that they are not sensitive to what happens within their own country—I would urge upon them to reflect on this widening gap between the level of social services here and in the North. Every day that that gap widens, every day that that void yawns, we are postponing the reunification of our country.
Will you quote the figures?
The people have indicated their desire for a change. We are quite sure, as we know the Government are too, that many long-standing and conscientious supporters of Fianna Fáil feel that their Party would improve with a period in Opposition. We know, Sir, that many admirers of the Fianna Fáil Party want the Party to sort itself out. They want this "Pushmi-Pullyu" image of the Party to be destroyed. They want it to return to what it was at one time: a Party of idealism and patriotism. On that account we are satisfied that not only will Fine Gael on the next occasion get its own support, which is increasing week after week, but that we will also get, as we did on the 16th October, a substantial number of votes from people who in the past have voted for Fianna Fáil but who now feel Fianna Fáil need to be purified. There are many Fianna Fáil backbenchers who know that some of the Ministers ought to have gone recently and who feel exactly the same as the majority of the people.
The ballot box is now supreme. Notions, theories, posters, advertising agencies, gimmicks have all been shown to be of little consequence when our people think and when they use the ballot box. Deputy Corry—he was put up, you will recall, Sir, by the Taoiseach today as their best speaker who was to follow Deputy Seán Dunne— trotted out again the old nonsense that Fine Gael could not form a Government of its own. The Fine Gael candidate for the Presidency was beaten by a margin narrower than a hair's breadth. Is there anybody so foolish as to think that the massive increase in support given to the Fine Gael view on the referendum does not contain more than a margin of a hair's breadth additional support for Fine Gael? They know jolly well that it does.
We in this Party put forward our policy for adoption, in the first instance by the people. We are satisfied that the people want to become involved. We are satisfied that the people want to participate in government. We are satisfied that the present Government do not want involvement by the people, do not want participation. They think they know what is good for the people and the people must accept it. That day has gone and the people will not have it any more.
We have the youngest population in Europe. That is something that sometimes startles people. We in Ireland were led to believe that we have the oldest population. We have, in fact, the youngest. We have 31 per cent of our people under 21 years of age. The European average is 25. The British figure, I think, is 23. We have the youngest population in Europe. The only thing which can prevent this country moving forward to a policy of economic expansion and social progress is to stymie the wishes of the young. We in Fine Gael have asserted again and again that we believe that youth should be given its chance. We know that these young people want fulfilment and success in life at home. We know that they want what Deputy Cosgrave promised yesterday— honesty, freedom and social justice under a Fine Gael Government.
We are satisfied that, as soon as the present Government can be dragged whimpering, beaten and defeated before the people, the people will give a resounding vote of confidence and put in as Taoiseach of this country a man with sound judgment, a man who can be trusted, a man with undoubted capacity to lead, a man who commands respect at home and abroad. So great indeed is his respect, so much is he admired, that even his political opponents were anxious to use his image to win for themselves laurels which they otherwise could not win. Deputy Cosgrave will be the next Taoiseach. We have no confidence in the present Government. We want a general election so that we can have a Government with political judgment, economic judgment and indeed moral judgment, too.
A yes-no man.
There is a lot of that in your Party.
The Minister for Transport and Power and Deputy M.P. Murphy rose.
The Minister for Transport and Power.
On a point of order, Sir, there was an arrangement made by the Whips that there would be three-quarters of an hour given to each speaker in rotation. This, I suggest, is a breach of that agreement.
I do not think it is because since the debate opened two members of the Deputy's Party have spoken and three members of the Government Party. I think, so far as percentage is concerned, the Deputy's Party is not doing so badly.
Percentages do not enter into it. The Whips made an agreement that each speaker in rotation would have three-quarters of an hour. If any Minister comes in will he be called? Where in Standing Orders does the Ceann Comhairle find anything that gives precedence to a Minister over an ordinary Deputy?
The Ceann Comhairle is using his common sense.
He is not. He is breaking an arrangement made at the Whips' meeting.
A precedent has been established down through the years that when a Minister offers he is called by the Chair——
Sir——
Deputy Ryan has spoken for 45 minutes.
(Cavan): The Chair has said that a precedent has been established.
There can be no argument on the ruling of the Chair.
(Cavan): I want to make a point of order. If a troop of Ministers comes in after the Minister for Transport and Power, are they going to be called?
That would not be sensible. There would be no commonsense to that.
On a point of order, Sir, the agreement reached between the three political Parties here was that each Party would speak in strict rotation and that the maximum period given to any speaker would be 45 minutes. You cannot distribute the time fairly unless the next Fianna Fáil speaker who would be due after the Labour Party cedes the way to a Fine Gael speaker. There will have to be an observation of the rotation.
The Chair is not aware of any agreement entered into by the Whips about rotation.
I was called on to speak.
I am calling on the Minister for Transport and Power.
On a point of order—and you will have to hear it, that is your job, that is what you are paid for—you called on me to speak.
The Chair should be aware that the Whips made an agreement at the behest of the Government that speakers would be limited, which is unusual in this House, to 45 minutes each and that the speakers of the three Parties would be called in rotation. We agreed to the limitation of the debate, having got that assurance through the Whips. Surely now the Chair is not going to upset that assurance and give priority to a member of the Government Party and if, as has been mentioned by Deputy Tully, any member of the Government comes along will he get priority? The Chair must recognise that this is a special arrangement for this particular discussion on the votes of confidence and no confidence. This is something unusual in the House where you have a limitation on time. In view of that arrangement, Sir, I contend that I am entitled to speak, seeing that you called me earlier on and that, in accordance with the arrangement, I am the member of the Labour Party to speak.
Perhaps the Minister would be decent enough to allow Deputy Murphy to speak.
If the Minister would stick to the arrangement made by the Whips——
In regard to the point of order raised by Deputy Murphy the Chair was aware that speeches would be limited to not more than 45 minutes. The Chair was not informed that there would be any question of rotation until now. If the Chair had been so informed the Chair would have carried out the arrangement.
Would the Chair explain to me how it could happen that a 45 minute limit would be agreed on unless there was strict rotation? What would be the use of it? I am sure the Minister will be decent enough to accept the arrangement.
I just want to get the arrangement straight. Does that mean that Fianna Fáil will get only one-third of the total time?
(Cavan): That is correct.
Did our Whip agree to that? Could I ask Deputy Tully was that the arrangement?
The arrangement was that there was to be 45 minutes for each speaker and nobody would agree to that unless there was to be strict rotation and the Minister is as well aware of that as I am.
If we agreed to the proposal and followed the Deputy's interpretation then Fianna Fáil would have only one-third of the total time.
There would be no point in suggesting the arrangement if rotation was not included. We are not Fine Gael and Fine Gael are not Labour.
We were prepared to discuss this for the next two or three weeks.
And will do so if this arrangement is not kept.
We are also prepared to do away with the time limit.
If there was any agreement on that point concerning rotation the Chair might have been informed. The Chair was not so informed.
It was accepted. Anybody must accept that such an arrangement would be on the basis of rotation. Why should a special arrangement be made to let in the Minister?
I feel that the Deputy's Party is not being overlooked in view of the fact that they have had two speakers in the debate and the Government have had only three.
I want to give the Chair notice that unless the arrangement made is carried out we will not feel bound to finish tomorrow evening at 5 o'clock.
I want to give similar notice on behalf of my Party. We shall not feel bound to limit the debate unless the Minister behaves himself and gives way to Deputy Murphy.
We cannot entertain any threats made in this way.
Intimidation.
(Interruptions.)
If the Chair is officially informed by the Whips that such an agreement has been entered into the Chair will carry out that agreement. So far the Chair has not been so informed.
(Cavan): Is it not extraordinary that the rotation system has continued since the debate began until now?
It always does.
The Minister offered.
The Minister has no more standing than anybody else. He gets no preferential treatment under Standing Orders.
I do not mind giving way to Deputy Murphy on the assumption that I should communicate with the Fianna Fáil Whip to find out whether or not the intention was that Fianna Fáil would only have one-third of the total time——
Could we not adjourn the House?
There can be no adjournment. I am not accepting any motion to adjourn the House.
Would the Ceann Comhairle tell us what is the position as regards the Party speakers since the debate began?
Since the debate began Labour have had two speakers and there have been three Fianna Fáil speakers and three Fine Gael speakers.
That is five Opposition to three Fianna Fáil.
Yes. In view of that I think the Opposition should have no complaint to make.
The Chair is entitled to hold that view but we have a different view.
So far it has been three Fianna Fáil and five Opposition speakers.
We are the Labour Party and there have been two Labour speakers so far.
I do not mind giving way to Deputy Murphy and I shall inform the Party Whip about the situation to see if the agreement needs revision.
I am calling the Minister unless he gives way or the Whips officially inform the Chair of the agreement entered into.
I thought the Minister was giving way.
I am quite willing to give way to Deputy Murphy if he would like to speak next, subject to my getting in touch with my Party Whip.
This is a matter for the Minister himself. If he wants to give way——
If the Minister wants to speak and the Chair calls him he is entitled to do so.
The Chair has told Deputy Tully what the position is. So far as the Chair is concerned, I have called on the Minister.
I am prepared to allow Deputy Murphy to speak so that this matter can be discussed with the Whips and we see what the interpretation is supposed to be.
I am quite willing to speak but in view of the commotion I was prepared to give way to the Minister as a matter of courtesy but not as a matter of right. Who is responsible for the commotion that we have had during the past five or six minutes as regards who should speak next? Who is responsible for the motions that we are discussing today and will discuss again tomorrow, a motion of confidence by the Taoiseach, a motion of no confidence by Fine Gael and a motion calling for an election by the Labour Party? The voice of the people is responsible because were it not for that voice we would not be discussing these motions today. The people have spoken and they have told the Government that they have no confidence in them and as a result of that message from the people to the Government the Labour Party tabled a motion calling for an early general election.
The Ceann Comhairle is well aware that there is no Deputy in the House anxious for frequent elections and I can assure him that Labour Deputies are no more anxious for elections than Deputies on the Government side or Deputies in the Fine Gael Party but whether we like it or not we feel obliged, as a political Party, having had the views of the people, to ask for this general election and consequently we put down this motion which is one of the three at present under discussion.
How much of the time of the House has been wasted—I shall repeat this again and again if necessary—during this year discussing the Government's proposals and the referendum which took place on October 16th? Convening meetings of this House is a very costly business. I do not know the actual cost per meeting but it is sizeable. We bring in the Government members, civil servants, highly paid senior executives and Deputies from all over the country to this House for 34 or 35 weeks in the year to discuss public business but for most of this calender year, 1968, the discussion has centred on the Government's proposals to change the Constitution and substitute the straight vote for the present system of election.
In my contribution to the debate on the referendum proposals I maintained that there was no public demand for this change. That view has been vindicated forcefully and vehemently by the Irish people and by people who supported Fianna Fáil in the 1965 general election. We find, if we look at the figures for the 1965 general election and the figures for the referendum last month, that almost 30 per cent of the people who supported Fianna Fáil in 1965 did not support them in their referendum proposals. The actual reduction in their vote was 174,000. That figure cannot be challenged. Is it not quite evident, then, that the Government have lost the confidence of the people? Is not that decline of almost 30 per cent in their popular support a clear indication that they have lost the confidence of the people and, consequently, should not continue in office?
The subject of the referendum may seem a rather stale matter to debate, we have had so much of it in the House during the past year. However, it must be said that the immediate cause of this discussion today is the result of the referendum, particularly with regard to the proposal to change the electoral system. No one knows and no one can calculate the amount of public money that has been expended on this procedure. I am dealing only with the referendum proposals. How much of the time of this House was wasted week after week when we could have been discussing agricultural and industrial matters and other spheres of public activity? As has been said by so many, is it not quite clear from the vote of the people that the Government are out of touch with public opinion? From one end of the country to the other, the Government got their notice of rejection. Even in their strongholds of the past, in such places as Clare, Donegal, Kerry and the West, they were rejected just as they were in the metropolitan area of Dublin.
Is it not reasonable to assume that a Government that are so much out of touch with public opinion on such an issue are also out of touch with public opinion on many other issues? I maintain that the proposal put before the people in the referendum was a political issue. This bunkum talked by the Taoiseach and others about its being a constitutional issue does not carry much weight or cut much ice with the general public.
According to the Irish Times of today's date, the Taoiseach opened his mini-Budget statement in the House yesterday by saying that the Financial Motion on the Order Paper was a clear expression of the Government's sense of responsibility for good management of the economy. That is the reason why I am dealing with the financial aspect of the referendum. Was it good management of the economy to waste the time of this House and of Government Ministers and their political agents? Was it a group of sound economists who were responsible for the expenditure on this referendum of the funds provided by the Taca association, the funds provided from public sources, from the taxation of our people? I say it certainly was not. When a Government act irresponsibly and are found guilty by the vote of the people, there is only one thing to do if they have any honesty or integrity left, and that is to give the people a chance of again expressing their views on the Government's proposals for industry and agriculture through the medium of the ballot box in a general election.
It was not only the cost of the referendum that made many people sour on voting day or the fact that there was no demand for the proposed change. As from yesterday the man or woman who smokes and the workingman or the farmer or any other man who drinks will have to help to defray the cost of this referendum by paying 4d more for a packet of cigarettes and 2d more for a pint. The money lost in the referendum must be recouped through the tax proposals announced by the Taoiseach in his mini-Budget yesterday.
Apart from the wanton expenditure indulged in by the Government on schemes that never materialised—and I think I could apply the term "scheme" to the referendum—there have been other failures of the Government which are covered in these motions of no confidence. One example of their throwing money down the drain is the one that is often referred to in this House, the Potez factory just outside the city of Dublin. Then the old reliables, the drinker and the smoker, are called upon to recoup the losses. It is no wonder that these people are dissatisfied.
I have no doubt that people who drink and people who smoke would not hesitate to pay additional taxation —even though they are already taxed almost out of existence and there is a danger of a diminishing return from the high rate of taxation on drink and cigarettes and tobacco—if there was some good reason for it, if the money so raised was used to provide useful employment, if it was used to promote industry. When such taxation is imposed in order to pay for wanton waste, it is a cause of dissatisfaction.
What has been the record of the Government, apart from the referendum proposals, in various spheres of activity during the past 11 years when they have had a majority in the Dáil? I shall deal first with the most important industry, agriculture. What do agriculturists feel about the Government at the present time? Is it not a scandalous position that the two main bodies representing farmers, the NFA and the ICMSA, are continually at loggerheads with the Government and, in particular, with the Minister in charge of agriculture? One would expect that good relations would exist and that there would be harmony. The farmers' organisations could not tolerate the dictatorial and arrogant attitude of the Government and, consequently, they have come from all over the country to picket this House and the Department in Merrion Street. It is most inappropriate that that should be the position so far as our major industry is concerned and that is another reason why the Government should move out and give the people an opportunity of expressing their views again, not by way of referendum on this occasion but in a general election.
I do not like to refer to any statement made by Deputy Corry, as I have a certain admiration for him as an elder of this House and possibly a Member who may not be with us for too long. In any case, I remember the Fianna Fáil people here deriding the ranchers. The rancher was the man who was not helping our economy or our prosperity; he was the man who did not go to the creamery, the man who did not make butter, the man who had cows and let the calves suck them or sold the calves as grass calves, or else let them run on until they became stores, or, alternatively, fattened them. Here was the man who should be wiped out. What is he now? In the statement made by the Taoiseach yesterday he is the new patriot, the man we must admire and look up to, the man who has helped to rectify our balance of payments without any great cost to the Exchequer. Do we deride him now, do we scorn him or do we abuse him? No, we coddle him and we say to him "You are a nice fellow and we are going to provide you with £2 million for the purpose of coddling you".
This is a new departure from Government policy. It is a change-over. As Fianna Fáil are becoming older, they are getting wiser. However, this will naturally lead to diminishing numbers in agriculture. The Taoiseach in his statement yesterday said:
To help those herd owners not in commercial milk production, the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries has announced the terms of a new beef incentive scheme to be introduced as from 1st April next. The cost in that year is estimated at over £2 million which will be an additional charge on taxation. This scheme should offer a definite incentive to increased beef production through the development of suckling or nurse herds.
This is the new incentive scheme for farmers who will agree to having the calves milk the cows, not to make butter and not to take milk to the creameries but to use it at home for the calves. This is not an occasion for a detailed discussion on agriculture, but any farmer of average intelligence saw this position arising years ago. In west Cork we had farmers who were anxious to get into beef cattle. We had them asking for Hereford bulls, or Aberdeen Angus bulls or, if you like, beef bulls of one kind or another. They were quite satisfied with the reasonably good prices for beef cattle and for the stores and they were not so much interested in the milk side of the business.
What did we do? The Government gave them no aid at all. They told these farmers who were anxious to get beef bulls and to change over to beef cattle in view of the remunerative prices obtaining for that class of cattle that, unless they agreed to take a milk strain bull such as a Friesian or a Shorthorn, the Government would have nothing to do with them. Was that not shortsightedness on the part of the Government? It may not have been as great as their shortsightedness in regard to the referendum proposals, but it is evident that that type of policy is responsible to some extent for the mini-Budget which was announced yesterday.
We have the Taoiseach crying over the 240 million gallons of milk that we produce in excess of our requirements and which we can sell only with great difficulty and with the help of a heavy subsidy. This is all attributable to Government policy. It is not so long ago since the Government were crying out to the farmers: "We want you to keep more cows, produce more milk and put greater emphasis on the strain or the type of cattle which produces increasing quantities of milk, the best milk strains." The farmers lived up to their responsibilities and many of them at a great deal of expense went into dairying and bought dairy herds. Now, when they are seeking a reasonable price from the Government for their produce, they are told "We do not want it at all. We have too much of a surplus. Instead of giving you an increase in the price of milk other than the miserable penny offered to you by the Minister for Agriculture on Tuesday, we want you to let the calves milk the cows." That is only a brief statement of the Government's activities so far as agriculture is concerned. My remarks are quite relevant here because the majority of the farmers are not satisfied that they are getting justice from this Government. This is quite evident from the fact that they are up here marching.
There is an old saying that it is an ill wind which does not blow someone some good. Unfortunately, an ill wind did blow over our neighbours in England when their cattle suffered severe losses from a dread disease. As a result we benefited considerably by virtue of the high prices obtained for cattle and cattle products in recent times. I do not want to go into too much detail on agriculture but I could not leave the subject without mentioning pigs. The pig industry has disappeared completely. The factories are working at only 50 per cent of their capacity and, therefore, their processing costs must be well above average. Naturally, if a factory has an intake of only 50 per cent of its requirements, its processing costs are bound to be increased substantially However, we will have more time to discuss that when the Right Honourable the Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Blaney, presents his Estimate, if he is still in operation at that time.
We are making no headway in regard to industrial employment and these programmes for economic expansion—about which we heard so much and which were to cure all our ills—and the report which told us that we needed 12,600 new jobs a year in order to get full employment, are all eyewash. So far as providing new jobs is concerned, there has been a reduction of some 9,000 or 10,000 on the agricultural side. So far as new industrial jobs are concerned there have been very few of them. In West Cork we have been very fortunate during the past few years and tremendously fortunate in regard to the location there of the Gulf Oil refinery and plant. Undoubtedly, it was a tremendous advantage, but I do not think it would be right to refer to these as industries being established. The employment is largely of a temporary nature. That cannot be considered as creating new jobs.
To come back again to our motion, Iwish to emphasise that it is unusual for Parties or Deputies in this House to ask for a general election—I wish to make that clear—but having regard to the verdict of the people, any Party that has any respect for itself would request that a Government which put such a vital political issue before the people and got such a reversal, be disbanded and that it should go before the people again for a mandate. That is the reason why we included this special call for a general election in our motion. It is not because we like a general election but we have an obligation to the community. The people come first and individuals afterwards. That is why we ask through this motion that the people be consulted.
The Minister for Transport and Power will be telling us—I have read some statements made by him in Monaghan, clearly ridiculous statements—of his own activities or of the activities of Fianna Fáil concerning his own particular Department. Will he tell us, though, what action will be taken regarding the request of the county council, mentioned earlier by Deputy Corry, or what action will be taken in regard to the establishment of a harbour body in Bantry? I hope he will answer these questions.
Surely those questions do not arise on the Budget?
If the Minister for Local Government were here I should ask him about his schemes which have been abandoned.
(Cavan): The Minister thinks we are discussing the Budget.
According to the Order Paper we are discussing items Nos. 11, 4 and 5 which deal with three confidence motions. If the Minister for Local Government—the man who spent hours on his feet dealing with the referenda proposals—were here, I should ask him about the number of housing schemes which have been abandoned. Dublin city Deputies and Deputies throughout the country are referring to them. They had to be abandoned because there were no funds available.
I am prepared to give credit where credit is due. I am making an exception of the Department of Education. I believe that, as far as this Department is concerned, the Government have moved forward. I welcome the provision of transport for children and also the provision of higher grants. But the Government balance sheet must be a debit one, with very little on the credit side and a great deal on the debit side.
It is difficult to anticipate what the Minister for Transport and Power will say—he has made so many ridiculous statements about the referenda. However, I regard the Minister, as I am sure some members of his own Party regard him, as being a very capable man, but I am surprised at the many nonsensical statements he made during the referenda campaign and that he went out so forcefully to tell the people all about it. The Minister's statements were quoted in the papers every other day. I should like to ask him about the 174,000 people who went away between 1965 and 1968. Where have they gone to? Is it expected that they will all come back? Out of respect for Deputy Corry, I do not like mentioning what he said about there being no Government but Fianna Fáil. There will always be a government.
There could be a Coalition.
(Cavan): That did not get Fianna Fáil very far in the referenda.
May the Lord preserve us.
The majority of the Members of this House are entitled to form a government.
And run away then. What happened in 1956 and in 1951?
(Cavan): What happened to Fianna Fáil in 1968?
We do not run away.
(Cavan): Fianna Fáil will have to be flung out.
I do not know how the Government can stand up to such embarrassment.
You ran away in 1951 and in 1956.
I was here during the inter-Party Government's period of office and I believe it was quite a capable government.
The country did not think so.
That government introduced many worthwhile schemes, among them the Local Authorities (Works) Act and the scheme for draining land, but unfortunately they were defeated. My time is coming to a close but I should like to refer to what has been mentioned here and throughout the country concerning the referenda. It has been said that, since the foundation of the State, no Government or no group of people have made such a blunder. It is difficult to emphasise its magnitude. It was a blunder which held the Government up to ridicule even by their own supporters. It is difficult to understand how a Party which has claimed to have so much foresight and to be able to look into the hearts of the Irish people and feel how they are beating, went ahead with this proposal and got such a reverse. How did it happen?
My statement has dealt mainly with the referendum on the straight vote because it is that referendum that has brought about the ridicule which is now being heaped on the Government. I do not like to see ridicule heaped on any Irish Government but, in this case, I think it is quite justified. I spent at least eight hours on my feet during the discussion on these proposals beseeching the Minister not to go ahead with them because the people did not want the change and the proposals would be defeated by an overwhelming majority. Deputy Fitzpatrick must have spent at least 13 hours doing the same thing. But Fianna Fáil would not listen. The day is gone now—it is a good job it is —when the hierarchy of Fianna Fáil can submit proposals to the people in the belief that the people will accept the proposals and not think for themselves. The referendum was certainly worth some of the money spent on it because the result indicated clearly that the Irish people are an intelligent people, fully competent to make up their own minds. Many of the electors, particularly those who support Fianna Fáil, were not going to follow blindly Fianna Fáil's lead so far as these constitutional changes were concerned.
The Deputy called it a political issue.
Changing the Constitution was a political issue. How otherwise could one describe it? The Labour Party ask for a general election because the Government have failed to provide employment for the people; they have failed to establish industries. They have failed the people in housing, social welfare, health and related policies. They have not the slightest doubt now what the judgment of the people would be were the people given an opportunity to pass judgment. The people would sweep what would be left of Fianna Fáil from that side of the House to this.
We have had a great deal of talk about the result of the referendum. I have been quite frank; I have made it quite clear that we did predict very incorrectly the attitude of a section of our own supporters. It is absolutely true we made a wrong prediction. I was trying to find out whether any other government in any other democracy made the same kind of mistake or misdirection in assessing what the electorate might think of a proposed constitutional change. Curiously enough, I found a parallel in Australia. There were two occasions on which the Australian Government made very, very poor predictions of what the people would think about a constitutional proposal. The comparison is a rather interesting one.
Some time after the Second World War the Communist Party in Australia advocated violence and subversion, in addition to advocating the Communist doctrine. The Country Party, which had been in office for a very considerable period, principally because the Opposition is divided, recommended to hardheaded, individualistic private enterprise and to the agriculturally-minded Australians that the Communist Party be outlawed and forbidden to submit candidates for election. They were defeated. Another very interesting case arose about five years ago when it was felt by all the Parties in the Federal Government—the Country Party and the two branches of the Labour Party—that, because the Australian population had increased considerably and the Federal Government had begun to intervene to a greater extent, as we are doing here, by way of grants and loans for capital development and the provision of social welfare services of various kinds, the number of Deputies in the Federal House of Commons was grossly insufficient to do the work they must effectively undertake: the representational work that we, their counterparts in this Parliament, do here. All the Parties recommended a change in the Constitution to increase the number of Members of the Federal House of Commons by some 43 extra Members, making 160 Members in all instead of 127 as at present. Despite the fact that the proposal was supported by all the Parties the Australian people, by a very considerable majority, refused to increase the number. I mention that in passing to show that we are not unique in falsely predicting the result of a referendum.
It is a great source of consolation.
I do not think there was anything wrong in our submitting a constitutional proposal to the people and asking them for their opinion on it. We did it quite sincerely. There was a conservative group in our Party, both young and old, who would prefer to continue with the present proportional representation system. Some of them have spoken to me since the referendum and have told me that the Government has, in fact, been relatively stable and have pointed out that coalition governments in the past have, when they showed signs of breaking up, been very quickly thrown out. They did not want such a dramatic change from the present system to the type of system which obtains in the United States, in Australia and in Britain. There have been changes of government in these countries.
Having said that, I want to make it very clear that I have not had one suggestion, directly or indirectly, from any of my constituents that they are discontented with Government policy. No supporter of our Party, who voted to retain the present system, has suggested, directly or indirectly, that something has gone very seriously wrong with the Administration since the period in which we won six out of seven by-elections. None has suggested that the administration of the Government has become inefficient or that the Government is failing to look after the interests of the electors in Monaghan. No one has come to me and said: "You should go to the country because we have ceased to support you. We have ceased to believe in your policy and our decision to maintain the present system of election is linked with an utter disbelief in everything you stand for." We have had no intimation of that kind and, in view of that, I do not see why we should have a general election now bearing in mind that we want to make quite sure that the economic stability of the country is assured so that, when we do go to the people, we can point to a record of progress not temporarily impeded by some economic situation we failed to handle at any particular time.
One could continue with inquests. One could speak of the gross and scandalous propaganda during the referendum, when all sorts of side issues were brought in. But it is true to say that, even if a very great part of the Fine Gael Party had openly declared in favour of the straight vote system, the proposals in the referendum would have been defeated because the majority of the people are extremely conservative in their views about the kind of electoral system they want to have. Looking back now, it is my honest belief that, even if, as I say, a great part of the Fine Gael Party had openly supported us in our proposals, the verdict would have gone against us because the people did not want constitutional changes. I found it very difficult to ascertain public opinion in the period immediately preceding the referendum. I want to be perfectly honest about that. I found it difficult to assess what the people were thinking and that is particularly true of our own supporters; I found it very difficult to assess their opinion.
A child of six could have told the Minister the result.
I next want to speak about the Budget and the present economic situation in order that everyone will be clear in their minds that we are speaking truthfully about this. I do not know how many more times we on this side of the House will have to point out to the people of the country, and to the Dail, that an adverse balance of payments can build up very quickly under our conditions. An adverse balance of payments simply means, as everyone knows, that we import too much and export insufficiently. We can very easily reach the point where people cease to have confidence in the value of our money and the standing of our credit institutions.
Once it arises it can build up very quickly. An adverse balance of payments built up very rapidly in 1951, again in 1956, and again in 1965. There can be very quick changes in the pattern of consumption and in spending by our people, consequent upon immediate and fairly steep increases in incomes. That is a fact. If there were any government in office other than our own, they would find exactly the same circumstances. They would find that it is extremely difficult to regulate the balance of payments from one period to another.
The reason is that we are an import-prone country, a country that derives a great part of the materials for our industries from abroad. A great many of the industries here, just as in the case of industries in Denmark, in the Netherlands or in Sweden, use raw materials, or use in part raw materials, imported from abroad. We have to live with that until we discover huge quantities of oil. That is one example of an import that is with us. We have no iron. We cannot fabricate steel from our own iron ores. I could give a long list of raw materials which can be found in the United States and cannot be found here. As a result, we have to live with that situation. No change of Government will alter it. It will be perpetual for so long as we exist as a nation. This problem will always be with us.
It is about time everyone in the country committed this little fact to heart. If you spend another £1 as a result of a higher income, whether it be a salary or wage, you import 8s 6d worth of goods for every £1 you spend. That is that. It cannot be changed. Even if we were able to produce more goods for ourselves of the kind we still import, the chances are that those goods would be made from imported material, and it would not materially affect our import-proneness to any great degree. If incomes increase exports have to be very rapidly increased in order to get over the fact that 8s 6d worth of goods are imported for every £1 extra of income distributed in one form or another. Those are the facts.
We share this position with other countries. Yet we hear people talking in an isolated way as though the balance of payments position was created by the Government, as though we were handling some nightmarish situation of our own devising, and as though we were taking it too seriously. One need only quote the case of Sweden, a country which has what we have not got, enormous standing timber resources, enormous iron ore resources, and great steel exports. Sweden is now virtually the richest country in the world with a brilliant system of government. It has, shall we say, a middle-of-the-road Labour Government, in many ways rather like our own in their belief in social services.
The Government have been in office there for about 34 years. They have now been re-elected again but with all their accumulated experience, with all the close connection they have in relation to the negotiations that have taken place between the Government and the trade unions—the most superb negotiating machinery in the world almost— they found they were not able to persuade their own people to obey the rules in order to prevent inflation. They found fairly acute unemployment suddenly being created in the rural districts—which we have not had here —and they had to put a restraint on housing, one of the most inflationary features of Sweden's economy, in order to get over a very severe bout of inflation. They are now overcoming that bout.
The same thing happened in the Netherlands, a country which was devastated during the War and occupied. They managed to keep the rules in regard to incomes for a considerable number of years, but finally, in spite of the advice of successive Netherlands Governments, all the rules were broken and there was roaring inflation which had to be heavily corrected with measures far more drastic than the measures adopted by us either in 1965 or on the present occasion. So, it is no good talking as though a balance of payments difficulty is something which occurs only under Fianna Fáil Governments. It will be remembered that there were two acute balance of payments crises under two Coalition Governments, and in each case they ran out and refused finally to deal with the end effects of those balance of payments crises. They ran out and deserted their posts, whereas we faced the difficulties in 1965 and 1966 and overcame them. I believe we shall overcome them on this occasion, too.
Deputy Ryan spoke as though the Fine Gael Party believed in ever-increasing consumption and we were in some way miserly and mean in our attitude to the people, that we wanted to stop them spending, and that Fine Gael believed in spending, and spending, and spending. Every intelligent Government in Europe have had to stop the people spending at one time or another. They were purchasing too many goods with the result that they were importing too many goods. God forbid that Deputy Ryan would ever be Minister for Finance in a Fine Gael Government if he would come before the people and say: "We believe in spending, and spending, and spending." He would get the country into a ghastly mess, because the fact is that in this country and other European countries, when people spend too much on the purchase of goods and services, they have to be restrained at a certain point if the result is excessive imports of goods that cannot be paid for with exports.
That is not a conservative statement. It is a socialist and liberal statement. It is the statement of any sane man who conducts the economy of a country. There is no use in trying to pretend it is a Fianna Fáil concept. It is a universal concept accepted by all intelligent countries. When I hear this claptrap I dread to think what would happen if Deputy Ryan were in charge of the economic affairs of the country.
A suggestion has been made that the reason we are having this Budget at this time is that the Minister for Finance was afraid to impose sufficient taxation in April because of the referendum, and that he did not want to impose an undue burden in order to be in a more popular framework approaching the referendum. That, of course, is completely untrue. The Minister for Finance said in the course of his speech that, if there were a large increase in expenditure, he would have to correct the position with a Budget in the Autumn. He also made, at the end of his speech, the fairly optimistic statement that he hoped there would be no need for a second Budget.
In actual fact I can find no respectable authority to suggest that at that time there was visible evidence of the need for controlling consumption, or the need for making certain that there would not be a very large Budget deficit, because a large Budget deficit in itself encourages too much spending. The money has to be borrowed frequently and money borrowed takes away from the general capital programme of the country and prevents investment in useful capital projects. In any event, a Budget deficit has the effect of encouraging still more inflation. There is no evidence of this.
The very conservative Central Bank has had a very useful history in this country. Nobody could ever say that the Central Bank was over-optimistic about the course of the economy. Nobody can find a single paragraph suggesting the Central Bank in its reports was ever engaged in being extravagantly optimistic about the future of the economy. I would like to read the Central Bank's report. The Central Bank absolved completely the Minister for Finance and the Government from having deliberately waited to see what would happen at the referendum. In their report dated June, 1967, they said: "In present circumstances a moderate deficit can be contemplated without undue anxiety. In view, however, of the potential inflationary elements in the economic situation developments will need to be closely watched so that timely measures of restraint may be introduced if this should appear to be necessary." If you read the rest of the report there is a reference that shows that in April or May, 1968, all the elements were there which would compel the Minister for Finance to make quite sure, perhaps, of balancing his Budget without taking any restrictive measures. The reason was we had corrected the economy after the inflation of 1965 and 1966. In 1967 the rate of economic national advance continued at a satisfactory pace. Production increased enormously. Exports increased and employment in industry increased and if we continue the 1967 rate of progress we could be very satisfied with the general economic progress of the country.
In 1968 that continued. It was not until the second quarter and the third quarter of 1968 that the danger signs of inflation appeared and I defy any economist to prove to the contrary. We have based our decisions on anti-inflationary measures on the recommendations of experts to us. If Deputies who think that the Minister for Finance held back dis-inflationary proposals simply in order that we could reach the point of the referendum election in a more popular atmosphere they have only to read Quarterly Economic Commentary—in particular a comment by T.J. Baker in the September, 1968, issue — to find that the inflationary factors were building up during the year and they were not sufficiently evident at the time when the Minister for Finance had to frame his Budget in February and March of this year to suggest he was in any way wrong in framing the Budget as he did and in saying in a very guarded way that it might be necessary to have some further taxation and also in warning the country that if inflation came it would have to be dealt with. That was our attitude at the time. How on earth could the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries in February predict a record weather season? How could he know in advance that the gallonage of milk produced by the farmers would be so great or that the splendid wheat season would increase the price supports by £6 million? If he got up in the Dáil and said at the time of the Budget that he had an instinct there was going to be a marvellous summer weather period and that we were going to have to raise £6 million in subsidies and said: “Here is the heavy taxation required for it,” what would the Opposition have said to that? If he gambled on the concept that there was going to be a tremendous output of milk and a tremendous wheat season so that the normal price supports and guarantee arrangements would cost up to £6 million I wonder would the Minister for Finance have been very correct.
If he put the increase in the cost of salaries and wages for the public sector at the very highest possible figure comparable with the private sector would that have been encouraging to a country where we have been preaching for years and years unsuccessfully—and the Coalition Government were equally unsuccessful in so doing—that increases of income should measure up to increases in production? Nobody ever believed us. Nobody believed the British Government. Bobody believed the Russians. Nobody believed the Danes. The Danish Government whenever incomes exceed production take strenuous steps to overcome the wrong effects of not observing the normal rule that incomes should rise with production. I wonder would it have been advisable for the Minister for Finance to state what he thought was likely to be the cost of the increase in incomes and salaries in the public sector—there was nothing wrong in the demands made —so that he would then have to raise a great deal more money at that time. Those are the facts.
We have to rely on economic experts as every Government in Europe is relying on economic experts—they cannot do the work themselves sitting in Government offices. In every country in Europe the Government have to assess the comparative statements. If the experts are not agreed they have to compare the tables of exports and imports and of consumption and to compare trends of rising wages and incomes and their effects on the economy of the country. The Government have to assess what the experts say and make decisions based on prevailing conditions, on what they think would be acceptable to the people, and on what they know they will have to impose taking the most optimistic attitude possible.
There is not a country where that is not being done. We hope and pray the experts' assessment will be reasonably good. We had to listen to the experts. The experts have suggested to the country more or less what has been decided in regard to the rates of taxation in this Budget and in regard to the moderate restraints on hire purchase. We are simply asking all firms engaged in hire purchase to follow the general practice of a great many of them who have already the same terms. It is a form of restraint that can be quickly removed if necessary.
We are doing this not because we believe in the stop-go policy but simply, if I may make a comparison, because we want to put a brake on a train running at 55 miles an hour and bring it down to under 50 miles an hour. That is what we are trying to do. We have not done anything which will affect the employment position. I heard Deputy Corish say yesterday that the Government was thinking of balance of payments more than employment. We will not have investors coming here unless they see stable economic conditions here. They expect us to have a stable economy. They expect us to preserve the value of money here at least at the rate at which it is being preserved in other countries. We are able to live through some of these periods of inflation only because, mercifully, the rest of the world has inflation too.
If the value of money is going down at the rate of 2½ to 3 per cent per annum then we can afford some inflation. Over and above that, we have to look out. The Economic and Social Research Report suggests that next year, unless careful action is taken, we shall have an adverse balance of payments of £50 million. We believe that to be excessively high. We believe that it would discourage investors. Therefore, we are simply putting in train measures which we believe will curb that inflation to a sufficient extent that we shall not face another difficult balance of payments position. We are trying to do it now so that we shall not have to undertake more disinflationary policies when it is too late. A great many governments find themselves in a difficult position. Naturally, they like to put off anything to stop inflation until the last moment because the measures are never popular.
I think I might refer Deputy Corish to the plight in which the British Government, a Labour Government, find themselves, so that he might restrain his rather cheap sorts of jibes at the Fianna Fáil Government about thinking more of the balance of payments than of employment. The Conservative Party in Great Britain took action too late to restrain roaring inflation. The Labour Party were in office and they took action, too late, to restrain roaring inflation. The British have now taken sufficient action, and we hope they will recover from their difficulties because they are our principal trading customer. If anybody wants an example of the need to take action in good time they have only to go across the water, where there have been Conservative and Labour administrations since the war, and see how there even the Government have had to act in a most unpopular way in order to do something which, in the long run, will encourage more employment in soundly-based industries, in trades and in services, whatever its strictures may be in the early stages.
I never heard anyone in the Opposition talking about the Full Employment Report. That Report is being completely ignored. It is signed by prominent business people, by economists and by nine trade unionists. It stated quite clearly that, unless the rule in regard to incomes rising only level with the growth of production was maintained, full employment could not be secured in this country. It is absolutely clear that the people of this country will have to discipline themselves to accept that fact. Nobody wants to do that.
It can be reckoned that in 1968-1969, taking the two years together, the increases in incomes will outstrip production by 50 per cent. That is against the rules. When that happens, restrictive action inevitably has to be taken. If it is not taken by Fianna Fáil, then, if any government hesitate in doing it, the situation will become worse. If it is a Coalition Government and the Labour Party tug against the Fine Gael Party and, as a result, they cannot get the necessary measure of agreement on what to do, the situation would become worse. In fact, that is exactly what happened during the period of office of the last Coalition Government. They applied the brake and then disagreed amongst themselves as to the final policy.
In a government facing an inflationary situation, there must be uniformity of purpose, particularly when consumption is growing, when more people are being employed and are enjoying a progressively better standard of living. I admit that we have to do a great deal more in the fields of social welfare and health and that we have to find many more millions out of taxation to bring about increased production before we establish the right kind of economy and social services in this country. The people of this country, taking it large and wide, as a whole, are nearly one-third better off in real terms—after allowing for the increase in the cost of living—than they were in 1957. There are many unsolved problems.
I heard Deputy Ryan talk about the Just Society. His defination of the Just Society is in fact taken from what Fianna Fáil have been doing for the past 20 years in the way of improving health services and social services. When he started to build up the ideal picture of what apparently the Fine Gael Party would do immediately if they came into office, I wondered why he did not cost it. He seemed to speak as though the minute they achieved office there would be a vast change and a tremendous upsurge in social welfare payments and in health services, but there was not a word about where the millions would be found to pay for all that.
Listening to Deputy Ryan, I was interested to see if he would give some indication of how the money was to be found, but there was none. In other words, he was merely talking vacuously into the air. We could all do that. Fianna Fáil have a long-term plan for social services and, in fact, we have increased their scope and the provision for them. Under Fianna Fáil, the social services have grown steadily. They have grown a great deal more than the rate at which they grew under the two Coalition Governments. We take one particular aspect of it in one year and we deal with another aspect of it in the next year. It is done in accordance with the growth in national production and the taxability of the people.
I think it is true to say that taxation and rates will take about 30 per cent of the national income by next year: that is a very respectable figure. It is a little bit below the figure of some countries in Europe and it is a little bit above the figure of others. It certainly is a very considerable amount. When Deputy Ryan talks as though we were doing nothing to transfer from the more well-off to the less well-off social service payments, as though we were doing nothing to advance the interests of the people, I would refer him to the fact that we are taking 30 per cent of the income of the country in taxation and rates.
There are limits in regard to taxation. We could not have even dared to propose the present Budget increases were it not for the fact that we know that the national income of this country rose satisfactorily in 1967 and will rise again this year so that, as a proportion of the income of the people, these budgetary increases—in relation to their income, in relation to the growth in their earnings—will not be such as would paralyse initiative, will not be such as to paralyse the moral desire to do a proper day's work.
We know that, in the context of growing income, the increases can be afforded and will not have a severe or damaging effect on the people. That has always been the way in which we have acted. In 1956 the proportion was 22 per cent and now it has gone up to 30 per cent. We have reached the respectable group of nations in which a very large measure of the people's incomes has to be taken for education, for health and for social services. One can argue the toss as to whether it should be very much more but for a country with our total income we have to be very careful not to overtax. Nevertheless, in relation to the total income of the country there is nothing particularly aggressive in these increases in taxation.
My principal purpose in speaking here today was to make the point again that we do not believe in stop-go economics. It is very difficult to avoid stop-go, and there have been a great many respectable countries in Europe with a far longer history of freedom and of expert government who have got themselves into stop-go. We are trying to avoid it and the imposition of these taxes and our effort to balance the Budget is in order to see whether on this occasion there need not be any measurable stop. In 1965 we did, perhaps, act a little bit too late, a very respectable thing to do in Europe again, and there was a stop and then there was a go. We had the normal position reinstituted in 1967 after the reduction in the growth of our income during 1966. On this occasion we hope that, by adopting these measures, we can continue to move ahead.
It is extremely difficult to calculate. We take the best advice that we can get and, as I have said, eventually we are bound to assess the opinions given to us by experts in this field. There is no European country where Ministers are not placed in that position. It is the experts who prepare the documentation and make the assessments; Ministers cannot sit in the Cabinet room and do it for themselves. They use their own commonsense; they use their human faculties to ascertain how much they will accept of the proposals made to them, whether the proposals as they come before the Government will be a little bit less onerous or a little bit more onerous.
That is the best any modern social welfare government can do where there is private enterprise, enormous intervention by the Government, considerable supervision by the Government over the economy, an enormous injection of capital into the developing economy. In those circumstances that is all the Government can do. We have made the best effort we could with a view to seeing that the economy advances and that the economy is not unduly restricted in overcoming this bout of inflation.
The Taoiseach, when he introduced his supplementary autumn Budget yesterday said:
Even taking into account an increase in net invisible receipts, the likelihood is that, for the year as a whole, the balance of payments will be in deficit to the extent of £15 million, representing a negative swing of £30 million between last year and this.
I know from what the Taoiseach told us yesterday that he was distressed by this situation. There was a note of foreboding in what the Taoiseach said in relation to this problem, and rightly so. We share his distress and we share his foreboding as to what might happen and are distressed as to what has happened. Despite that, when the Members from this side of the House, in pursuance of their right and their duty, point out to the Government over there and to the country generally the mess that has been made of our affairs, we hear this evening from the Minister for Transport and Power the same old speech that we hear from Minister after Minister, put more urbanely, maybe more adroitly and with more dignity than we might receive the story from some of the Minister's colleagues in the Cabinet, but nevertheless the same old story that has gone on here ever since the Fianna Fáil Party went back into government.
If anything good happens in this country by a dispensation of providence or as a result of something that the Government have contrived, this is a Fianna Fáil victory; this is a Fianna Fáil gift to the Irish people. But if anything wrong happens we hear the same old story as we heard from the Minister for Transport and Power: "Do not blame Fianna Fáil. This is happening all over the world. The Government have nothing to do with the balance of payments, and it is wrong to say one nasty word about the Fianna Fáil Government in their moment of distress." We claim the right and the duty to explain the situation to the Irish people any time anything goes wrong as a result of Fianna Fáil mismanagement.
The Minister, too, mirrors the complacency with which the Fianna Fáil Party observe the condition of things at the moment. He says in his nice precise way that the Fianna Fáil Government must be careful not to overtax. If the Minister really believes this country is not overtaxed I want to assure him of one thing, that he and those who share that belief are in a very small minority. We are overtaxed. The people are groaning continually under the taxation which is being imposed upon them. The Taoiseach said yesterday, and I quote again from his speech:
The Financial Motions on the order paper for today are a clear expression of the Government's sense of responsibility for good management of the economy.
The Financial Motions brought before the House yesterday by way of supplementary Budget are no such thing. They are a clear expression of the Government's concern for its own interests. I am not sure whether the Budget we had yesterday is a carry-over from last year's Budget, because the Government were very sensitive to the wishes of the Irish people in the shadow of the forthcoming referendum, and they wanted to sweeten the Irish people so that as a result of a reasonably benign Budget the Irish people would feel more reasonably benign towards the Fianna Fáil Party.
Within the next year, Fianna Fáil have to face the Irish people whether they like it or not. They have to go to the polls and explain to the Irish people exactly why we are in the mess which the Minister for Transport and Power says happened not because of Fianna Fáil but because of conditions affecting the whole world. The psychology of this particular exercise is this: "Tax them now and by the time we come to the next Budget we will not have to put on this tax anew; it will be there already. The memory of the people is short and they will have forgotten the impositions last November by the time we go to the polls asking them for their preferences at the next general election."
I want to sound this note of warning to the Fianna Fáil Party: no matter what they do, no matter when they seek another mandate from the Irish people, the Irish people are now so fully aware of the mismanagement of the Government, are so fully aware of how completely out of touch the Government have got with the wishes of the Irish people, that it is inevitable, as day follows night, that the next time we come here as a newly-assembled Dáil Fianna Fáil will troop out of those benches there and the Fine Gael Party will troop into those benches as the new Government of the Irish people.
One of the funniest things about this Budget has been the quaint, old-fashioned approach of the Taoiseach to a problem which is very much up to date. He said that by putting up the prices of cigarettes, beer and spirits, he will keep down consumption. Ten years ago it might have been true. It is an old and well-known device to withdraw purchasing power from the people, as the Taoiseach told us he was doing. In the good old days, if a man saw twopence or threepence put on a packet of cigarettes he would cut down on his consumption. That does not happen any more. The people will follow the pint, the whiskey, the brandy, to whatever price the Government may raise it. The Government and the Taoiseach, as acting Minister for Finance, are again out of touch with the people. He confidently came to this House and said: "I will do this because it will restrict spending."
If anything, it will prove inflationary because if people pay more for their cigarettes, beer and spirits, which to many people have become necessaries, they will look for recompense and get it from their employers. Therefore, this supposed deflationary move might well prove inflationary. Our experience in recent years has been that the man in the street will thwart all efforts made on the standard of living by cutting his rate of saving rather than his consumption. This is the serious aspect of the fallibility of the Taoiseach's proposals here yesterday. No matter how much the Government may tempt people to save by giving attractive rates of interest, I do not believe people will have anything left to save by the time the Government are finished with putting up the prices of everything a man or woman might consume ordinarily.
I regret it. If the Taoiseach meant what he said about limiting consumption, the sooner the Taoiseach and the Government leave the front benches over there, the better for the country. If this is the policy the Government intend to continue, it is ineffectual, old-fashioned, out of date. If brakes on spending were needed, as the Taoiseach has suggested, the brakes he proposes to apply will not operate.
They are some of the reasons, the most recent, the most up to date reasons, why we suggest that this House should indicate plainly to the Irish people that the Government no longer enjoy the confidence of the House. We have many other reasons, the most outstanding being the recent referendum, the outcome of which showed that the Government are completely, entirely out of touch with the thinking of the Irish people. When we were discussing the third and fourth amendment of the Constitution Bills here, we constantly warned the Government: "You are doing this thing, you are incurring this expense though it is doomed to failure". From the very beginning we appealed again and again to them to forbear from this unnecessary action, from this unnecessary waste of Parliamentary time and of the people's money, in seeking a mandate for something which had already been adjudicated upon only nine years before.
If the Fianna Fáil Deputies, some of whom were smiling broadly in the back benches today, had been in touch with their constituencies they would have told the Taoiseach and the Government: "For heaven's sake have sense and do not rush into this mad escapade at the end of which there is only disaster." The lesson obviously is there. Not only are the Government front bench out of touch with the aspirations, the wishes and the hopes of the Irish people, but those who support them in the back benches are not any more aware of the aspirations, the wishes and the hopes of the people.
The Government now find themselves in a position of being a government on whom most recently an unprecedented defeat, an unprecedented rejection of their wishes, was inflicted. Any normal government long ago would have gone to the Park and asked the President to dissolve Dáil Éireann. But not a Fianna Fáil Government. They come back here, hang on and say there might be something wrong with the balance of payments, as the Minister for Transport and Power told us so urbanely tonight. They say it is not their fault. They cannot say what happened in the referendum—why they flouted the wishes of the Irish people—or explain away, as the Minister for Transport and Power tried to do, our deplorable balance of payments situation.
That is another reason why we come here tonight and propose that this House no longer has confidence in the Government. They are a Government whose fortunes have been dropping daily as a thermometer drops in cold weather. I am glad to say I predicted this some time ago. I came here and warned the Minister for Finance, Deputy Haughey, about the dangerous step he was taking in setting up a sort of secret society which would draw funds from dubious sources to fill the Fianna Fáil coffers. I was the first Deputy in the House openly to refer to and to regret the formation of the organisation known and registered as Taca, an organisation whereby there was injected into the rank and file of Fianna Fáil an entirely new type of membership.
Those of us who have been in politics for any length of time will know that to all Parties in this country there are attached decent, honest, hardworking men who will fight for one cause, for Labour, for Fine Gael, or for Fianna Fáil. But the fatal thing happened which started the rapid descent of Fianna Fáil to the depths they find themselves in. They introduced the mohair-suited brigade, the gentlemen not just with the humble fiver we in Fine Gael are glad to get from our subscribers, but the £100 plate at dinners; and the decent rank and file members of Fianna Fáil found themselves at their cumainn meetings being ousted by these gentlemen who came in not because they believed in Fianna Fáil, not because they had the interests of the future of the country at heart but because they had their own wellbeing in mind. When they put that £100 on a plate, they knew it was a good investment because it could buy from the Government the favours they wanted and which should not be capable of being bought. I told Deputies: "It is too late."
Recently, Taca lost their anonymity. Their first public meeting was held in Cork under the suspicious leadership of the Taoiseach, and the chairman of the organisation announced that they were coming into public. He explained their aims and objects which, he said, are purely social, purely in the interests of the Irish people. He explained that what they were giving now was 30/- a week, not £100 a year. I do not think that will do Fianna Fáil any good. The rot had started. The rot has progressed and it is not going to benefit the rank and file of the Fianna Fáil Party that now instead of paying £100 a year for favours what you do is you pay 30 pieces of silver a week. This is the sorry pass in which the Fianna Fáil Party find themselves. I rejoice and feel certain that the vast majority of the people who voted against the Government in the referendum recently rejoice in it too.
I want to tell the Deputies opposite why I am so convinced that they have lost the confidence of the Irish people. I am quite sure that anybody from this side of the House who went out canvassing knows well what I will say. We met many people who told us: "We are Fianna Fáil but we do not agree with this; we will vote `No' but we will go back to Fianna Fáil". Many of those people have openly changed their tune. They did intend to go back to Fianna Fáil but when they saw the enormous weight of public opinion swinging against Fianna Fáil they said to themselves and to others, including myself, "we will not go back to Fianna Fáil". This was a gigantic landslide revealing the powerful independence of the Irish people. We will not give these people ever again the chance of going back to Dáil Éireann as a majority Party.
I want to deal with something which is of grave and serious moment in my own constituency. In the local daily paper today there was a headline which was almost as big as that giving the nation the £15 million Budget shock. I quote from the Cork Examiner of November 6th, 1968. It says: “B & I Blow to Cork: City Stunned.”
On last Monday night the Minister for Transport and Power came to Cork as the guest of the Cork Shippers' Association. There was a very large and appreciative audience. The Minister spoke in glowing terms of Cork port, its geographical location and its human resources and he finished on a very benign note wishing the port and the Cork agents well. On Tuesday at 3.30 this port which had been referred to in such glowing terms suddenly found that any pretensions it had as a port of the future had been wiped out by the B & I Steampacket Company, a company under the aegis of the Minister for Transport and Power. This company had decided that it would break all links between the port of Cork and the ports in the United Kingdom.
This never happened in the last century during the darkest days of British rule. What will be the result of this in the first place? The Minister, as I say, paid tribute to the human resources of Cork. These human resources, 150 of them, 150 men with 150 families, the human resources about whom the Minister spoke so nicely on Monday night are now thrown to the wolves and they approach the festive season in the virtual certainty that shortly after Christmas they will lose employment in which some of them have been for well over 30 or 40 years. They have nothing to turn to. The stark horror of this is that there is no good reason that anybody can see for this move.
The whole history of the B & I vis-à-vis Cork is a very sad one. First, they sever the link which has been provided for as long as I know from Cork to Fishguard by the m.v. Innisfallen. This carried passengers and everything that could be carried between Cork and the United Kingdom. Quite suddenly the B & I announced that there will be no more sailings between Cork and Fishguard. That means unemployment and it means that those exiles who were unable to come home last year as a result of the foot and mouth disease and who were to return in much larger numbers this year will not be able to have a direct link with Cork. It means, in addition, that those who come from the south of England and Wales will no longer be able to come because they cannot come by rail. There was only one air link between Wales and Cork and this disappeared when Cambrian ceased their service between the Cork and the Welsh ports. From the 1st January onwards there will be absolutely no travel facilities between Cork and cross-Channel ports until May next when the car ferry between Swansea and Cork begins to operate. This is largely experimental. The people of Cork are left wondering what will happen if the experiment is not a success. The situation in Cork is much graver than appears on the surface. I quote from what the Dunlop Company said by way of reaction to the news they heard so suddenly yesterday. In the largest firms they knew nothing until they were told. A spokesman for the Dunlop Company said:
...One of the reasons for the selection of Cork as a site for the factory was because of the availability of a good sea service between Cork and the UK.
Since the factory's inception over 65 per cent of all raw material requirements were imported on the Liverpool-Cork route and a high percentage of the company's exports were also shipped through the B & I.
Then he went on to say what will happen in the future in so far as the Irish Dunlop Company were concerned. He said:
We have been in touch quite recently about shipping arrangements for finished tyres for export which the company anticipates will quadruple over the next two years and all our costing will now require revaluation.
I should like to know from the Minister and the Government whether before this arbitary, sudden decision was visited on the port of Cork, the Irish Dunlop Company were approached as to what the future arrangements would be for a link between the port of Cork and cross-Channel ports. I doubt very much if they were. If they were, it is extremely bad business practice that a decision like this should be taken without proper investigation of the future of the port of Cork. This means, Sir, that many other factories yet to come into operation might come to Cork for exactly the same reasons as Irish Dunlop came in the past; but in the future they will have no such incentive. We are told by the chairman of the B & I the reasons this step was taken. He said:
The directors realised that if the company was to survive without a substantial State subsidy they had to pursue a radical policy of adaptations as well as progressive rationalisation of services and terminals. It was quite clear that long term profitability depended upon.
(a) a movement from a labour intensive operation to a capital intensive service.
(b) A greater utilisation of the assets employed.
(c) A more efficient service at economic freight rates.
(d) A complete modernisation programme both in the physical and commercial sense.
Sir, I am forcibly reminded of something Lord Keynes once wrote. He wrote something which has often been quoted since, and I think there is no more appropriate time to quote it than on an occasion like this. He wrote that the ideas of the economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. He said "Practical men who believe themselves to be completely exempt from intellectual influences are usually the slave of some defunct economist." This is what has happened here. Some economist said: "A, B, C and D must be done. Even if it means wiping out the port of Cork, this must be done. We must rationalise." Come hell or high water, come disaster to Cork or otherwise, this is going to be done because some economist has spoken. The economist is not defunct. Instead, the hopes and aspirations of many Cork families are defunct as a result of B & I listening to a warning given to them by the economist who gave them this idea.
As a result, about 150 wage earners will be out of work. We hope that some of them will be employed again. As a result of this people who have used the port of Cork traditionally over the years to ship their freight will have to go elsewhere now, even if it only be from November to May next when the car ferry starts. But many of them will never come back again because they will enter into alternative arrangements with other shipping companies.
I regret what has happened. I charge the Government with suddenly visiting this upon the city of Cork, without making any proper investigation; without discussing it with the Cork Harbour Commissioners, who are primarily responsible for the welfare of the port; without discussing it with the Chamber of Commerce, who represent the business interests of the city of Cork; without discussing it with the Cork Corporation, who represent the people of Cork. I adjure the Minister, whom Cork Deputies saw today—and I must pay tribute to his courtesy and helpfulness —but I adjure him to do something about this and not to tell us that he has not power under this or under that. It was implied by the chairman of the B & I, when he made this announcement, that the B & I were under an obligation to the Government to run their concern on economic lines. Indeed, that point has been made to me since on behalf of the company.
I want it to be known to the House that the company, under the B & I Act of 1965 which set up this statutory body, has nowhere imposed on it an obligation to run on economic lines. It must have been apprehended, even in 1965, that there was a period of change ahead for shipping, that there would be a period of experiment, that money might be lost in the experimental stages and that money might have to be spent to tide people over difficulties arising from the experiments. It is not good enough for the Government to come along and say: "We are precluded by the B & I Act of 1965..." because this simply is not a fact.
In the past the Government have on many occasions subsidised much more rashly many less-deserving concerns than the B & I line in so far as its activities relate to Cork. Take the Taiscí Stáit Teoranta Act, 1963, the one which contributed so much of the Irish people's money to the ill-fated Potez works. This was an Act specially passed through this House to enable exactly that to be done. Section 3 of the Act deals quite plainly with this matter. It reads:
The functions of the company shall be:
(a) to acquire, hold, sell, assign and otherwise deal with shares and debentures issued by—
(i) any state-assisted industrial company,
(ii) any company to which a grant or guarantee of borrowing has been or is to be given under the Tourist Traffic Acts, 1939 to 1961, in respect of the development of holiday accomodation,
(iii) Aviation Development Limited,
(iv) Industrial Engineering Company Limited,
(b) to issue loans to state assisted industrial companies,
(c) to guarantee the due repayment with interest of borrowing by state-assisted industrial companies.
If the Government in 1963 could pass an Act like this for the purpose of bringing the Potez Works into this country, surely in 1968 they could pass through this House, by way of an emergency measure if necessary, a similar Act to enable the Government to give aid to the B & I at least to tide Cork port over the experimental period in which it is involved? There is not much involved in keeping the Innisfallen going and in keeping a link between the port of Fishguard and the port of Cork until May when the new car ferry between Cork and Swansea will commence. It would cost at the outside £63,000, if as much. That, I believe, is the company's estimate. Other estimates are much lower. It should be pointed out to the House that about 12½ per cent of the money which was used to buy Coast Lines' shares from Coast Lines and put them into this semi-State body came from the area of the port of Cork.
I would again appeal to the Government to think twice before they rationalise to the forebodings of economists and destroy almost overnight one of the richest shipping traditions known in this country. This tradition has survived under foreign and native Governments, decade after decade, until Tuesday, 5th October, 1968, when—concurrently with the shock of the savage Autumn Budget imposed on the country—yesterday the city of Cork, and particularly the unfortunate people employed, the business interests, the port interests, the corporation interests and others, were told, with a wave of a bad fairy's wand, that this blight had been visited upon the port of Cork.
I rise to support the motion in the name of the Labour Party, that in view of the Government's failure——
I must interrupt the Deputy to point out that there is only one motion before the House at the moment.
The Chair will appreciate that, in speaking to that motion, I am speaking in particular to the motion down in the name of my Leader and my colleague.
These motions are being discussed concurrently but there is only one motion before the House.
The purpose of our motion is to draw attention to the failure of the Government in the fields of agriculture, employment, industry, housing, health, social welfare and related policies and to call on the Taoiseach to call an early general election to enable the people to express judgment in all these fields.
Everyone knows the compelling reasons why we should have this debate and why we should call for an early general election. On 16th October the people were asked to stand up and be counted whether they were for the continuance of the present democratic electoral system or whether they wanted to support a totalitarian-minded regime. The people considered in great detail the terrible implications involved in the referendum, the so-called straight vote, the single-seat constituency, the gerry-mandering which went with it and the tolerance vote which destroyed the principle of one-man-one-vote. The Government were given their answer on that occasion and their proposals met with a devastating defeat. It is ludicrous to attempt to justify the attitude of the Taoiseach and his colleagues that the referendum issues were constitutional issues; we say they were certainly political in every sense.
The people voted for the maintenance of democracy and of their fundamental rights, the right of free elections, free association, free speech, a free agricultural council, a free trade union movement. They also registered their opposition to the Government in the other fields of political activity. The colossal majority of 223,000 against the Government's proposals in the referendum represented votes by the mass of the Irish people against the Government's incompetence, dereliction of duty, against their disdain and indifference to the people and the welfare of large sections of them. It was an indication to the Government that the people were fed up with them and wanted to end their regime, that they had been in power too long, had lost touch with the people and had shown arrogance and indifference when we pointed out the defects in our economy which were unpardonable and disgraceful.
Large sections of the people registered their vote in this referendum because they knew the things Fianna Fáil had in store for them if—God forbid—the referendum issues had been carried. If that had happened there would be a different situation in this Parliament. In a very short time we would have had a general election and, according to the indications and forecasts of impartial professors of politics, we would have had at least 100 Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party in this Assembly and the Opposition virtually wiped out. We would have had a government that would prove as overbearing and oppressive as any totalitarian government in the world in recent years with this system of election, the existence of which in north-east Ulster the Taoiseach himself deplored in recent days. We would have seen that kind of situation here: the voice of minorities would not be heard for a long time. The people realised, as did large numbers of Fianna Fáil supporters and Fianna Fáil Deputies, that it would be an intolerable situation if they permitted by their votes any Government to be given so much power that they could ride roughshod over the feelings and requirements of the people.
All sections of the people already had a foretaste of things to come. The farmers assuredly had experience of jackboot government. They had seen the disdainful way they were treated by successive Ministers for Agriculture in recent years. They had seen all their pleadings, hopes and ambitions for a better standard of life contemptuously thrust aside by this Government. They had seen themselves forced to protest by long marches throughout the country and by sitting for weeks on the doorstep of the office of the Minister for Agriculture. They had seen their colleagues in prison and they had seen established here a National Agricultural Council which was merely the plaything of the Minister concerned, a Council which could not be said to be based on the democratic process and one which was, in the main, filled by the Government Party and one in which the proper interests of agriculture were given no adequate voice. No wonder the farmers availed of this opportunity to ensure that democracy would prevail.
The workers also had an indication of things to come in the repressive anti-working class legislation which we know is lined up ready to be implemented, particularly if the Government in the referendum had got the majority they had hoped for. I am restricted in time tonight and I cannot elaborate on the nature of that legislation but it meant, in effect, that the Government were seeking to outlaw the right to withdraw labour, interfering in the trade union movement to the extent of deciding what unions would come into being and what unions would go out of existence, and daring to change the Labour Court from a court of arbitration into a court of law. The workers realised all these things, and in their wisdom maintained their free democratic trade union movement and refused to give the Government the power to shackle them in this manner. They realise that the only difference between the free man and the slave is that the free man has the right to withdraw his labour and the day that right is taken from him he is relegated to the role of serf or slave.
Likewise, the business people saw the significance of the issues involved in the referendum, especially in the emergence of Taca, this outright corrupt practice, the condonation of the acceptance of a political bribe on the understanding that favours would be granted by the Party in power, favours by way of grants, loans or jobs, political kudos of all kinds. The emergence of this despicable organisation conjured up memories of Tammany Hall and outraged all fair-minded people, especially fair-minded business people, and their vote in the referendum of 16th October was a vote for justice, morality, fair play and fair dealing, and equal rights and equal opportunity for all.
We in the Labour Party rejoice in the outcome of the referendum, rejoice that the Government's proposals were defeated in such a crushing and devastating way by nearly 250,000 votes. It will be a long time before any Party or any Government will have the audacity to attempt to interfere with our Constitution and the fundamental rights of our people. I believe that it was the desire to hold fast to those rights which prompted our people to vote in such a determined fashion. The Government now have a responsibility to withdraw forthwith the proposed Criminal Justice Bill because this was an issue which I believe was involved in the referendum. Any legislation which seeks to restrict the right of our people to free association and peaceful protestation will not be accepted. I shall not deal with this proposed legislation in depth or in detail as that would not be possible due to the restriction on the length of speeches but I understand that the Bill seeks to restrict the right to hold meetings or processions and the like. That is clearly an infringement of the rights our people enjoy at the present time. Such legislative proposals are fraught with very great dangers, especially for minorities in our community. They are an affront to our people and should be withdrawn without further ado.
The Budget introduced by the Taoiseach has been described as a mini-Budget. If this is a mini-Budget, I should hate to think what a major Budget might be. This so-called mini-Budget represents for our people a hair shirt which neither the teenagers nor the general public will lightly wear.
The severity of the Budget has shocked all of our people. It is a vicious Budget. This Budget has increased the price of a packet of cigarettes by as much as fourpence, the price of the pint by twopence and the price of spirits by twopence. The price of stamps will go up. Telephone charges will be increased. There will be an increase in wholesale tax. Typical of Fianna Fáil, this is an unimaginative Budget. All the hardy annuals— tobacco, beer and spirits—are again selected for increased taxation. There is no question in this Budget of taxing the furs, jewels, costly cosmetics and luxury cars that we heard of some years ago from one Minister of the Government. No thought has been given to alternative means of raising revenue—from, say, amusements, sports and so on. Our people would not begrudge paying from such sources taxation that was properly required. It is a bit much that increased taxation should continually be imposed on cigarettes, tobacco, the pint and the "half-one", the price of which affects most of our people, including working-class people and the very poor. It is time to cry "halt". We heard a former Taoiseach saying a number of years ago that taxation on these commodities had reached saturation point and that he could not hope to secure further revenue from them. Nevertheless, once again, these commodities have been hit with a vengeance. In my opinion and in the opinion of my Party, this is a vicious Budget, an anti-poor and anti-working-class Budget because it affects commodities which our people avail of in very great measure and from which they derive a great deal of enjoyment— tobacco and drink. In taxing these commodities the Taoiseach is removing them still further from the poor people, to many of whom a "half-one" would be a joy indeed.
It is the lack of imagination in the Budget, its severity and above all, the falsity of this mini-Budget which have appalled our people. Clearly, for the purposes of the Budget of last April a deficit of the kind that has arisen should have been foreseen and provision should have been made for the extra millions required to tide us over the full financial year but, as has been said by other Deputies, the Budget of last April was deliberately drawn up with a view to courting popular support in the referendum. This is the rub. The revenue has now to be provided by this Budget and, most assuredly, there will be a popular Budget introduced next March or April in order to create the favourable climate of public opinion which the Government desire to cultivate in order to secure votes at the next general election or, perhaps, in the by-elections.
The people can very easily see through this subterfuge, this deceit, this fraudulent approach to balancing our Budget. Fianna Fáil need not think that they are codding the people by gimmickry of this kind. Any idea they had of codding the people must surely have been eclipsed by the votes cast on the 16th October. Our people are a very sensible people, an intelligent people and common sense prevailed in the referendum. Our people have long memories and they will not forget that the bribe they got in the Budget of last April was given in order to secure their votes in the referendum, which anyway they did not give. This Budget, then, is the in-between piece of vengeance preparatory to a popular Budget being introduced before Fianna Fáil go to the people on the next occasion.
Inherent in this Budget through the increase in purchase tax and the over-all attempt to damp down consumption in so many fields of activity is the real fear of further unemployment. We in the Labour Party are concerned that at a time when we did have some buoyancy in industrial output from which it was hoped new jobs would be provided we now have a situation in which these restrictions are bound to curtail consumption and to place jobs in jeopardy. No one need try to tell us otherwise. A short time ago we had the Minister for Transport and Power, who has a holy horror of workers possessing money, saying that for every pound they spent 8s 6d goes for the payment of imports. This is one good reason why the Minister for Transport and Power hates to see any person spending a pound at all. His ultra-conservative approach most assuredly must be a product of the Manchester school of economic thought. He will see to it that very few pounds are left to spend because he alleges that 8s 6d of every pound goes to pay for imports.
The Deputy thinks it should be more?
I do not believe it is a fact. If it is, then the Minister has an obligation to try to ensure that many of the things which are imported will be manufactured here instead or a reasonable substitute found for them. Many of the things which we do import are things which we could well do without.
It is a pity that no worthwhile reliefs were granted in this Budget. The Taoiseach must be aware that there is a great need for relief in regard to income tax and especially for a more generous allowance in regard to dependent allowances. For a number of years there has been no improvement whatever in regard to these allowances especially under PAYE. Large sections of our workers are being scourged by the income tax which they have to pay every week from mearge wages amounting to £8, £9 or £10 a week. Everyone is aware that for unmarried workers the income tax rates are essentially disincentive and must affect productivity. Workers are disinclined to avail of new incentives for increased productivity or to work overtime because they are simply working for the taxman. Every £1 that is earned over some £6 a week is liable for income tax and we are concerned about the disincentive aspect of such a system and the unfairness of it for there has been a steep rise in the cost of living since PAYE was first introduced.
I trust that in next year's Budget a positive attempt will be made to give the working classes a better deal in regard to income tax relief. It is well known that other sections of our community have ways and means of avoiding the payment of income tax and do so but the great mass of working-class people are caught under the PAYE system and have no way out. It is intrinsically wrong that they should be forced to pay 7/- in the £ from meagre wages of £8 or £9 a week. I am sure the Taoiseach will have regard to the effect this is going to have on the economy if some incentive is not provided. It is also ironical to think that no income tax allowance is provided for a single man in respect of a housekeeper. There is no allowance for a car which may be essential for a man to get to and from his work, even though such an allowance is available to higher executives. Anomalies of this kind infuriate the working classes and it is high time they got a better deal.
Our motion is not so much concerned with this so-called mini-Budget as it is a condemnation of the Government's dereliction of duty over a long number of years especially in the field of employment. It was disturbing in the extreme to hear the Minister for Transport and Power a short time ago allege that full employment was virtually impossible to attain in this country. It seems as if Fianna Fáil have abandoned any hope of providing employment for our people. All their sunny promises of some years ago of providing 100,000 new jobs seem to have gone by the board. Indeed, it was quite evident to all intelligent people in this country, from the manner in which they introduced the issues involved in the recent referendum, that they were a government bereft of any policy whatsoever.
The Government had hoped to get into the Common Market by 1970 but this ambition was frustrated by General de Gaulle. The Government depended too much on the astrologers for advice and all their plans for economic progress went by the board. They were disastrous. The First Programme for Economic Expansion was a failure. Instead of the 100,000 jobs it was intended to provide in that period of five years, 170,000 of our people were forced to emigrate.
The Second Programme for Economic Expansion collapsed before it got off the ground at all and is a completely dismal failure. We now have talk of a third plan for economic expansion. The Government have clearly neglected their duty in respect of the provision of jobs for our people. They themselves have always said that the real test of any good government was whether they could provide jobs for the people. In this fundamental area they have failed abjectly.
The exodus from the countryside is running at more than 10,000 people a year. No less than 50,000 people have left the land of Ireland in the past few years. Little has been achieved in absorbing these people into industry. Agriculture is static. If it has increased at all, this increase has been about only one per cent. There has been no appreciable increase in the provision of jobs in industry. While the NIEC Report, which we read recently, indicated that during the next 15 years we would require to provide 230,000 jobs, the fact is that for many years the number of jobs provided each year has amounted to not more than 2,000 or 3,000.
We see clearly the gigantic leeway we have to make up in respect of employment. This is where this Government have failed. In this atomic age, this vast technological and scientific age, this vastly enlightened educational age, when it has been demonstrated in so many countries that it is possible to have good government, to provide work for people, to provide rising standards of living, to provide good welfare services, good education and the like, we find here that despite the long sojourn in power of the Fianna Fáil Party during the past 30 years, we are still not providing well for our small community of people. By reason of the extent of the haemorrhage of emigration which has gone on under this Government, we have come to be regarded as a vanishing race.
We condemn the Government in every field of activity, in the fields of health, welfare and education. It is true to say that in the field of health, Fianna Fáil secured thousands of votes on the basis that they would give all our people a really worthwhile health service. We remember the White Paper issued by the late, lamented Deputy Donogh O'Malley, then Minister for Health. It is some years since this White Paper on the Health Services was put to the Irish people. In it Fianna Fáil promised that, within a reasonable length of time, they would provide health services for all. They promised to eliminate to a large extent the odious means test attached to the provision of a medical card, a test whereby our people must expose themselves before the home assistance officer who determines whether one is entitled to a health card and whereby all the family income is taken into account. We were promised that this means test would largely be abolished and that our people would find it much easier to secure medical cards.
We were promised also a choice of doctor and the abolition of the dispensary service, which is an outmoded and archaic system. None of these things have materialised. Our people are still forced to expose themselves to this means test. They still have to go to the one doctor. Whether he likes them or whether they like him, there is no choice offered.
We still have the old red ticket dispensary system. We must challenge Fianna Fáil that, when they make statements of this kind, they are obliged to back them up and implement them. The Labour Party offers every support to them in the provision of a comprehensive health service for all our people. We have always adhered to this.
The same applies in respect of social welfare. Our social welfare services are the worst in Europe. It is true to say that those who are dependent on them, whether they be unemployed, widowed, orphaned or old aged, are dragged down to a miserable level of existence. They are forced to seek other sources of income through home assistance or from charitable institutions. We believe that there is tremendous scope for the improvement of these services.
As it is the ambition of this Government to go into Europe, they ought to remember the high standards in regard to social services which prevail in the countries of the Common Market.
In respect of education appreciable progress has been made, but we still have anomalies such as the one involved in the provision of free books for our children. It was a pity that a worthwhile and otherwise well designed education service was marred so badly by the lack of proper facilities in respect of the provision of free books. The Taoiseach may not realise that many thousands of Irish children are gravely embarrassed by the present system of the allotment of free books and the odious means test which goes with it and which places the headmasters of so many schools in a most invidious position in regard to the distribution of free books. What should be a prerequisite generally for those children who hold medical cards is not, in fact, being implemented. The scheme is not being administered as it should be administered and I appeal now to the Taoiseach to find ways and means of ensuring that free books are granted speedily to these children and that the means test is done away with.
I was agreeably surprised at the attitude of the Minister for Transport and Power here this evening. He tried to find excuses for the recent defeat of the Government. He told us of the many people, obviously Fianna Fáil supporters, to whom he had talked since, who had told him why they voted against the Government's proposals. It is a pity that the Minister for Transport and Power and his colleagues did not consult these people before they put the country to the colossal expense of the referendum and the colossal waste of public time in this House during the months it was discussed here. The major portion of the time of this House was taken up debating the pros and cons of an issue which has now passed into history and which will long be remembered by the Irish people. It will certainly not be forgotten by the Fianna Fáil Party and the man who took up most of the time here, as can be seen from the debates. I refer to the Minister for Local Government.
He held forth here day in and day out, obviously obsessed with the power grab he was trying to achieve. He forgot completely his very important responsibilities in other spheres of activity affecting the interests of our people. He seemed to abandon altogether his responsibility in respect of the housing of our people. It was obvious to us that, waking and sleeping, he thought of nothing else except winning the referendum. He forgot about the countless thousands living in hovels in this city and all over the country. Those of us who are members of local authorities know that the Minister has proved most incompetent; he has failed to provide houses for the people; he has failed to provide sanitary services. In my constituency of South Tipperary, I can say, without fear of contradiction, that all our schemes in respect of housing, the provision of water supplies, sanitary facilities and so on have come grinding to a halt under the administration of the Minister. There are major regional water supply schemes for Ardfinnan and Dundrum in the Department of Local Government since the autumn of 1965, awaiting the sanction of the Minister and the approval of the moneys necessary to implement the schemes.
The Deputy's 45 minutes have now expired.
As yet, we have been unable to secure the financial accommodation so urgently required.
I should like to express my sincere thanks to the Opposition Parties for their concern about the future of the Fianna Fáil Party and for their crocodile tears because we, as a Party, are slightly diminishing in the eyes of the Irish people, according to the Opposition. They are wasting their time because, so long as we are prepared to take the initiative and so long as we do not run away from our responsibilities, as the Opposition Party did when they met with crisis in 1956-1957, we will remain the Government of this country. In 1956-1957, the moment crisis loomed, the Opposition Parties in the Coalition Government packed their bags and crept into crevices and they did not emerge again until the dust of political confusion had settled down. The Fianna Fáil Party having returned to office, were faced with a disastrous deficit which they had to rectify by methods which though unpopular, were absolutely necessary to save the country from financial ruin.
We have always had the confidence of the people just as we have always had confidence in the people. Deputy Cosgrave said that the referendum was pushed through by the Minister for Local Government as a delaying tactic and this was a waste of the people's money. His memory is very short because he should remember the filibustering and the delaying tactics carried out by Opposition Deputies. Those of us who spoke on this side of the House spoke constructively and the Minister was given a limited amount of time to reply to each of the amendments put forward by the Opposition. These amendments were themselves designed to delay. Unnecessary debate here is a waste of time and money. The referendum issue could have gone before the people for decision much sooner than it did. Filibustering is part of politics, but one would not expect a man holding the responsibility of leader of the main Opposition Party to get up here and accuse Fianna Fáil of indulging in tactics designed to waste public money. I should also like to remind the Opposition that were it not for a High Court decision in 1961, as a result of pressure by a Fine Gael Senator——
The Deputy's Party did not appeal against it.
——we would not have to apply such mathematical accuracy to constituencies, 20,000 electors per Deputy. The decision will also entail a breaching of county boundaries, as will be clearly proved here when the Minister introduces his Bill to revise the constituencies. That 1961 decision is bearing fruit today. In the majority of the constituencies the boundaries will have to be breached. We and the Opposition know well that that is not desirable from the point of view of the Opposition Deputies who will be crying bitter tears when they realise that they will not be fighting Fianna Fáil but fighting their own colleagues when they are contesting an election. They should accept that situation.
They have consoled themselves up to now with the thought that their proper place is in Opposition — and poor Opposition they are. They do not want to be in Government because the responsibility of Government would rest too heavily on their shoulders. They would not like to have the responsibility of taking the initiative at the right time, and of having to deal with the public in accordance with the wishes and demands made on them. They realise that the security behind which they shelter in Opposition would quickly diminish if they suddenly, by some devious means, became the Government.
I want to ask the Opposition about one important matter. During the referendum campaign speakers from Fine Gael and Labour went around the country telling the people what they would do if they were in office, and what we were doing wrong. I accept that we are not infallible as a Party. We can make mistakes and we like to be reminded of the fact that we can.
The people reminded Fianna Fáil recently.
We also like to be reminded of the remedies which can come from the mistakes we make. Fine Gael and Labour speakers at church gates and in the propaganda they got out—and for which they got plenty of publicity—condemned the actions of the Government, but they did not say what their policy would be. They did not utter a single word about their collective policy, and that is the only alternative to a Fianna Fáil Government. They did not say what policy they would put before the people at the next general election. I ask them at this late stage to decide whether they are going to join together, and not hide behind a cloak of confusion. Fine Gael say that if they received the support of the people tomorrow they would form a government, but they know that unless there is some kind of a collapse on all sides of the House that is not possible. Similarly, the Labour Party say they will be the next government.
Fianna Fáil will not be the next government.
Will they coalesce again? Will there be an inter-Party Government? We would have the same negative results after a very short period. The people will decide to retain in office a progressive government which continue to put their policy before the people, and at all times express their wishes to serve the people in all capacities, and not merely to serve those in the upper bracket of the community as has been alleged by the Opposition.
Deputy Treacy referred to the attitude of the Minister for Local Government towards the referendum. He also referred to the dragging of feet in the Minister's Department. The Minister was not solely responsible for the introduction of the referendum proposals. As a Party we were united on that decision. We decided that the proposals to amend the Constitution were acceptable. We decided to go before the people. Those who are willing to apportion the blame for the referendum to the Minister for Local Government have very short memories. We made it known that we as a Party had decided to go before the people, and that this decision was made by the Party, not by the heads of the Party or the Minister for Local Government. The political propaganda used by the Opposition failed because they themselves are conscious of the fact that Fianna Fáil still stand united on the decision they made.
I might remind the Opposition Parties that Deputy Cosgrave and Deputy Flanagan expressed their desire to have the straight vote system, but when the time came for the decision to be made at the latter end of the referendum campaign, they were prepared to change horses in midstream and go the other way. Deputy Flanagan's recent promotion to the front bench might have been taken away from him.
Recent?
This is his second promotion. He was sitting in the back benches for a long time.
He was not.
If he was not he should have been and it will not be long until he is there again.
We have been criticised with regard to the progress made in the building of houses. There is evidence of that progress. It is there in the records of the House for those who want to see it, and those who are anxious to tell the truth about it. In 1963-64 we built 7,831 houses. In 1967-68 we built 12,017 houses. In the coming financial year it is estimated that we will complete 13,000 houses, an all-time record in the history of the State. This Government and the Minister for Local Government have been criticised by Deputy Treacy for dragging their feet in regard to our housing policy. How can Deputies realistically express such sentiments when they know well that never before in the history of the State were so many houses built? We spent £54 million on the building of houses this year, and that is the largest sum of money ever spent on the building of houses. The Opposition should accept that a certain amount of capital only is available to each Department. That capital can be spent only in a liberal fashion. The Minister for Local Government has done away with precedent, and he has accepted the bit and gone forward with the building of houses.
The bit suits him. I wonder would the Taoiseach put blinkers on him.
I would not interrupt too much if I were you because the Huns put you in your place in their own time and they will do it again. You are very small at the moment and they will take the rest off you if you do not watch it.
Before Deputy L'Estrange interrupted I was saying there was a progressive programme so far as housing was concerned. We have practical theories and progressive propositions and we put them into operation as regards housing in this country. We do not get away from the fact that we could build more houses if we had more money and that even at this stage although we are building approximately 13,000 houses this year we will not have enough houses to meet the needs. This is comparable to the policy of the progressive people. The people themselves have a desire to own their own houses and the economic progress of the country gives them the opportunity to go forward and get married at an early age and accept responsibility at an early age. It falls back on the Government that we should build an estimated 22,000 houses per year. This is the progress we would like to make and which we hope if and when we return to office we will make at a steady and sensible pace.
Our agricultural policy has been criticised and came under very heavy fire here in the Dáil and on the political platforms during the referendum campaign by the Opposition Parties. I want to say that our agricultural policy is a policy for which we ourselves, the farmers of this country, have the deepest regard for the simple reason that the Government are prepared to stand over their policy. It is a policy which we believe is acceptable to the agricultural community and which we have designed to help all sectors of the community and in particular the small farmers. In doing so we believe and are convinced that the welfare of the whole community can only advance on the progress of our agricultural policy. We are convinced that it is one of the most essential industries in the State and that whatever is done to disrupt or confuse in any way the agricultural programme is going to set back the general progress of the country.
It is easy to see why in the years 1958 and 1959 an estimate of £20 million was passed through this House as against £78 million in the current year. This clearly explains the Government's concern for the agricultural community which also is nearest and dearest to the hearts of all Deputies who are agriculturally-minded and who are in close contact with the agricultural community. We realise that there are certain anomalies in the policy of agriculture. We realise also that it is not possible to please all farmers to the same extent. When speaking about agriculture the Fine Gael Party say that if they were in power and if Deputy Clinton were Minister for Agriculture he would give the farmers an increase of a shilling per gallon in the price of milk. It would be very acceptable to the farmers only I do not believe the farmers are gullible enough to believe that any economy could withstand a shilling increase in the price of milk at one "go".
I do not believe that the ordinary industrial workers of this country would accept that in order to support the one shilling increase in milk their pay packets would be depleted by at least one-half again of what we are already taking off. If the Fine Gael Party believe that the farmers are completely dissatisfied with the attitude of the Government towards our policy why do they not put forward a policy which we can scrutinise and which the farmers can scrutinise and can either accept or reject at the next election? They will not do that. They will wait until they see what developments we have and the progress we have made up to the last minute before the election and then they will burn the midnight oil as they did before. They will have Deputy Ryan and Deputy Clinton, the Leader of the Party and probably a few of their law agents from the front bench getting together deciding in the late hours of the night on the kind of policy which would win them most votes in the rural areas.
Would that be preferable to sending cash couriers around the country to the Independents?
I assumed Deputy Lindsay in his interruption was speaking about an organisation we have in this political Party called Taca.
No. I do not indulge in dirty four-letter words.
I want to translate it for you. The particular word Taca means support.
It means rigging.
The Deputy should be allowed make his speech.
The Opposition Parties have in a most mischievous way by references to Taca made a malicious attack on the industrial people of this country. Industrialists and some well-known people who supported Fianna Fáil long before Taca came into existence will continue to support Fianna Fáil and have contributed to this organisation. Therefore, we can take it that it is corrupt to support any political party by virtue of the attacks made by the Opposition on the industrialists of this country. Every industrialist is now supporting some political party whether it be Fine Gael, which many of them do, or Labour. The Labour Party get their money by devious means, by slitting the corner of the worker's pay packet and letting the odd pence drop out through it. This is their means——
That is untrue.
It is not untrue, and you know it. You shake the packets and slit the corner and the money falls out—and Deputy Corish is down on his knees with the bag to collect the money.
That is not true and even the folk who signed the documents for you in the referendum had not the authority to do it——
This is scraping the bottom of the barrel.
It has been brought out into the open that their means of collecting money is illegal.
Is Taca subject to audit?
That money which the Labour Party get in that way goes towards the support of political campaigns by the Labour Party.
Be fair. This is a maiden speech.
It is a maiden without honesty.
Then they say that this is not blackmail.
What would you know about it?
It would be more honest to take the money out of the pockets of the workers and distribute it but, for heaven's sake, do not——
Violently anti-union and anti-Labour.
——do not take the money by slitting the pay packets of the workers——
I shall deal with you tomorrow afternoon.
I shall be here to interrupt.
You are not often here.
Mind yourself. This particular organisation has been abused because it has come out into the open and expressed its support for the Fianna Fáil Party. They have shown that they believe in the Fianna Fáil Party and in its policies. They are people who have supported Fianna Fáil all down through the years. These people decided that they would openly express their support. Where did the Fine Gael Party get their funds?
It is none of your business.
Cheese and wine parties.
Yes, they got it under the guise of a cheese and wine party. They need not tell us that they collected the funds at the church gates.
They do not get it beforehand, as yours do—the five per cent for the consortia.
Deputy Foley must be allowed to make his speech without interruption.
Twenty-one directorships.
The people who support the Fine Gael Party——
They are decent people.
——are hiding under a cloak. They would not come out into the open. They would be afraid to express their support for a Party which has been in the political wilderness for so long. Fine Gael's hopes of being a Government are so remote that the people would surely ask themselves, and ask themselves again: "Where is my money going in the past number of years?"
That is what they are saying.
Deputy Carter is laughing.
At least, we in the Fianna Fáil Party have the courage of our convictions.
You have the audacity.
We accept the responsibility of Government and continue to accept the responsibility of Government so long as the people of this country give us the mandate to rule. We shall stay here and do that because, in 1965, the people of this country elected us as a Government.
Never again.
We will stay in office until we feel we have served the people and served them well.
Now who is whistling while going past the graveyard?
We never ran away, anyway. You deserted the nation in its hour of need in 1957.
During our terms of office, we have never shirked our responsibilities.
Deputies must allow Deputy Foley to conclude his speech without interruption. He has not much more time.
We have at all times put the interests of the people before our own individual interest.
Deputies
Ah!
That is the Taca people.
We realise that our purpose as a Government is to bring this country to prosperity.
It is taking a long time.
What about the clouds on the horizon?
The only reason the Opposition have rebelled against this is because they themselves are not interested in the political future of this country. They are not really interested in the economy. However, they are interested in the fact that, for ever and a day, they want to stay over there on the Opposition benches looking at us making the decisions and deciding for the people what the policies will be. In that position, they do not want anyone to point the finger at them and to say to them: "When you were in office you did such and such a thing". Let it be put on the records of this House——
It is well worth it.
——that Fianna Fáil never ran away from its responsibility as far as this country is concerned and will not do so now. The harsh measures we have taken are necessary and were they not necessary, we should not have taken these steps.
You knew them before the referendum but you did not tell the people.
We realise that these particular steps are unpopular with the people——
That is true.
——and with a large majority of the people, for the simple reason that, no matter who you are, if you ask the people for money—I do not care who you are—as a government you will become unpopular. However, it has readily been accepted by the Opposition Parties at all times to be prepared to oppose every step which the Government take.
(Cavan): It did not make you unpopular with Taca.
They decide, collectively, and they vote collectively in the lobby against every step the Government take in the interest of the progress of this country. When the Opposition go out into the country on their rampage for power, they say to the people: "We are the individual Parties Fine Gael and Labour." When they come back again into this House, up they go in their numbers, through the gateway into the Division Lobby, deciding against every proposition which the Government put forward for the betterment of our country. Would you not think that, at this late stage, after so many years in the political wilderness, they would say to themselves: "At least we will study some of the propositions; there must be some merit in them; as they have been doing so well up to this, there must be some merit in their proposals?" Unfortunately, I do not think they will ever come to that.
Was there any merit in the referendum?
A Daniel come to judgment.
There is one thing that I can say about the referendum.
Deputies
Say it. Go on.
We went before the people——
——expecting to win.
——with a proposal. That was democratic because we gave the people the opportunity of deciding on it.
You could not do anything else.
The people decided it was not democratic.
We put the proposal to the people as to whether or not they wanted a reform in the Constitution. The people decided they did not want the reform we proposed. We are very much prepared to accept the verdiot of the people.
Have you any alternative?
You have postponed the butchering of the constituencies for another week.
I must ask Deputies to refrain from interrupting Deputy Foley. He has only a short time left.
——in Government.
We, as a Party——
Which Party? Which Party is the Deputy talking about?
The Taca Party.
We as a Party——
Which Party?
The Fianna Fáil Party. Fine Gael do not know where they are because most of the time they depend on the support of the Labour Party. Deputy Harte was not here when I was talking about the procession up and down the Lobbies when they are deciding against Government proposals and then when they go out into the country, up to the hills of Donegal, they say they are a separate Party and they will be the next Government.
That is where you got your biggest majority.
Deputy Foley must be allowed to proceed without interruption.
In conclusion, let me say that we in this country have achieved a considerable measure of progress over the last 10 years. In supporting the motion put down by the Taoiseach, I believe our policies show foresight and will gain the confidence of the people. I am confident that when the next election comes the people will put Fianna Fáil back into office.
If there is one great achievement of the referendum which has been fought it is the fact that it gave Deputy Foley such a fright that he came into the House and made a speech after three years.
That is a lie.
That should be taken off the record of the House.
Deputy Foley has been so seldom in the House that he could not tell whether I was in the back benches or in the front benches. The Taoiseach must be impressed by the manner in which his backbenchers are presenting themselves. This presentation in the House is the effect of the shock results of the referendum. The last general election was held in 1965, and the figures revealed a considerable falling away of support from Fianna Fáil to Fine Gael. The campaign of bluff which was conducted by Deputy Lemass, who was then Taoiseach, was responsible for getting together a sufficient number of votes to leave a Fianna Fáil Government in office. Promises were made by the then Taoiseach which he had never any intention of honouring, and when the votes were counted the Irish people were saddled with a further term of Fianna Fáil administration. Then came the Presidential campaign, as a result of which the Irish people decided in a very definite way against the very best Fianna Fáil candidate that Ireland could produce: again there was a swing away from Fianna Fáil to Fine Gael. In the following year we saw an extraordinary swing from Fianna Fáil to Fine Gael and Labour in the local elections. This year we witnessed the spectacle of Fianna Fáil getting a defeat at the polls such as no government in any democratic country in the world ever suffered, so much so that it drew a comment from Captain O'Neill.
The Taoiseach knows quite well that, although he is the head of this Government, at no time did he get a mandate from the people to rule them for 24 hours. The mandate was achieved by Deputy Lemass, not on merit or by honesty, but by deceitful means and by bluff. However, the present Taoiseach has no authority from the Irish people to remain in office. He never sought the support of the people. Therefore, the plea that has been put forward by the Labour Party to the Taoiseach to get out should be heeded. If the Taoiseach had any decency, knowing he is in office under false pretences, he would consult the people, particularly after the falling away in the last general election, the falling away in the Presidential election, the falling away in the local elections, and the disastrous results of the referendum.
It is very clear to everybody, to business people, to investors, to people who are planning for the future, that here we have a Government that has lost the confidence of the people, a Government that has been limping from crisis to crisis, a Government which even the dumbest in this country know will not be in office after the next election and that the only means they have of remaining in office is to try to put off the evil day as long as they possibly can.
When Deputy Corish asked the Taoiseach a fortnight ago when the Wexford by-election would take place, he said he could not tell. The word "election" is able to send such jitters up the spine of every Fianna Fáil Deputy that he hates to hear it mentioned. The word is able to bring a terrifying spell of nervous jittering to the members of the Government. They are all men bound together by loud talking, big mouths and empty heads, sitting there endeavouring to answer questions, not knowing how their Departments are being run, each Department being allowed to run amok.
The main reason why the Taoiseach should go to the country is because his own good name is at stake. If you sleep with dogs you are sure to get up with fleas. The Taoiseach has a bad crowd around him but there is no such thing as one being better than the other. They are all in this kettle of fish together, the Taoiseach being as dishonest as the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries or the Minister for Local Government. As I have said, they are all in this together; they are all part and parcel of an extraordinary set-up based, I am sorry to say, on bribery and corruption which is undermining the democratic institution of this State. Every voter is looking with suspicion at Fianna Fáil, thinking that there is something dishonest associated with them.
For confirmation of this idea of dishonesty, one can look at the organisation Deputy Foley mentioned, Taca, every member of which has the confidential telephone number of every member of the Government. They have them in their diaries, the confidential lines that get them right through to the Custom House, to Merrion Street, to Industry and Commerce—numbers that the general public have not recourse to, numbers listed confidentially for members of the Government. Taca are allowed to have these confidential numbers.
Does not anybody know that the surest way of getting planning permission today is to be a member of Taca? If a local authority refuse planning permission, the one way to get the Minister to grant the appeal is to present the Taca certificate. The good deed is done, the cheque book is presented either to Senator Mullins or whoever is in charge in Fianna Fáil. This kind of Government must stop. The people have found them out. They were tried on 16th October, convicted, found guilty and sentenced and they are awaiting the sentence to be passed in a very determined way on whichever date the Taoiseach chooses for a general election. There is one thing the Irish people will not stand for and that is cheating, dishonesty, bribery, corruption.
There we have, in a few words, the type of administration run by Fianna Fáil. Is there any democratic country in the world which would have a Minister for Local Government like the one we have here at a time when thousands of our people are homeless with no prospect of houses, no prospect of money to purchase houses, no loans from local authorities to help them to buy houses? Here we have a Minister charged with the responsibility of providing houses for all our people but what does he do? He spends eight or nine months talking about changing the electoral system in order to rig constituencies, in order that he might continue as he has been since he came into this House. He was never a Deputy. He walked into this House, signed the roll and two hours afterwards he was a Minister. In order that that situation should continue, he spent thousands of the taxpayers' money, not a penny piece of his own: these people do not spend their own money: when they are not spending other people's money they are busy telling the people how their money should be spent.
Today, we had Deputy Childers, the Minister for Transport and Power, saying he does not like a worker to spend £1 because out of every £1 he spends 8/6d is spent on imported commodities, so workers should not have £1 to spend as far as the Minister for Transport and Power is concerned. The Minister for Local Government has failed in and neglected his duty and he has been the subject of a serious rejection by the electorate who have recorded a vote of no confidence in no uncertain manner. I am ashamed of the Taoiseach for not having removed the Minister for Local Government. If he had a spark of honesty or a decent drop of blood in his veins he would not sit in any government of which that Minister was a member.
Bad and all as the Minister for Local Government is, the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries is worse. He has been responsible for the agricultural chaos that exists because he refuses to nod at the people, he refuses to pass the time of day, he refuses to speak to the people and he is prepared to allow them to sit in the gutter outside his door. It reminds me of the man in the parable who was left outside the door of the rich man to seek the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table. We have a Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries who will not talk to the farmers, who will not listen to the farmers, who will not be advised by the farmers, who will not consult with them as to the best ways and means of solving problems.
Surely the Taoiseach knows that no Government can endure in these circumstances, that no people will tolerate such conditions. Now, the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, after long and serious thought, has decided to make a statement which will bring prosperity into Irish agriculture. The greatest degree of prosperity he can promise is the stimulation of milk production by a penny per gallon for 7,000 gallons, which means that dairy farmers will now receive from Fianna Fáil approximately £35 a year. The day following that announcement by the penny Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries came a new Budget by the Taoiseach in which there is the extraordinary admission that though this supplementary Budget could not have been foreseen in the spring, the last Budget was not a properly estimated one and that consequently there was a sum of £18 million required. So, in order that Fianna Fáil may remain in office, the Taoiseach has produced a new Budget described by some as mini but really major——
Maxi.
——in which beer, cigarettes, wholesale tax, telephones, postage stamps and the entire cost of living in this country will seriously be affected In other words, the Government have now decided again to dive their hands down deep into the trousers' pocket of every taxpayer in the country, of every smoker and of every drinker to try to take a penny profit from every publican and everyone engaged in the licensed trade in this country, to deprive the businessmen of any little profit that he may be anxious to make by wringing more in telephone charges from him, from every professional man and everyone who must have a telephone service—and we were told that the Post Office was paying. Here we find that, in order to write an ordinary letter, it will now cost the Irish taxpayer sixpence.
We already have possibly the dearest motoring in the whole world. Then the Taoiseach and some of his members have the nerve to get up and defend the policy of the present Government. Surely, Sir, there is not one single item of policy which will reflect credit on the Government. There are thousands of our people still unemployed and in search of work with no hope or prospect of getting work. There are 53,000 that we know of and probably another 30,000 that we do not know of. We find that the flow of emigration, while it is mentioned in every important debate that takes place here, is freer from this country today than it ever was and that there has been complete failure on the part of Fianna Fáil either to provide work for our own people or even stem the tide of emigration. They have done nothing but have failed disastrously and hopelessly. They have failed to give our people proper social welfare services. There is nothing in this Budget which gives one penny piece relief to the widows and orphans, to the old age pensioners, to the aged, the blind, and the sick.
This is a Budget which takes all and gives nothing. We have the worst health service of practically any country in Europe. We have been promised before every general election better and improved health services but, like the draining of the Shannon, the health services never came. They are always around the corner and expected but we never have them from Fianna Fáil.
Surely the Taoiseach cannot stand up in this House and say that this Government has made headway when there are today practically no proper industrial relations. The amount of time that has been lost by strikes week after week and month after month has been colossal and has been the subject of mention on Continental newspapers. We have strikes and more strikes which means that there must be a complete breakdown in industrial relations and a complete breakdown between employers and trade unions. We have a Minister for Labour who was appointed by the present Taoiseach to deal with all these matters and I have yet to hear what the Minister for Labour has done to justify his existence since the day he was appointed.
Surely everyone knows that industrial strike after strike cannot go on indefinitely without some positive and practical action being taken. In all these cases the demands of the workers appear to be reasonable but after long periods with loss of time and loss of production without settlement arrived at eventually strike action is taken. There should be negotiations around the table at least 24 hours before a strike can take place.
We have seen in Bord na Móna a fabulous loss this year and the main cause we are told from the report of Bord na Móna was a strike. If a strike in Bord na Móna did not take place the losses revealed would not have taken place. I charge Bord na Móna with deliberately dragging on the strike and not properly entertaining the just claims made by the workers' trade union, because the well-to-do employees of Bord na Móna, the office men who were bogging down in four-inch new carpets were not concerned with the men who were out in the bogs working the machinery, cutting the turf and looking after the peat harvest. The result has been it has been a very considerable loss to the Irish taxpayer and to Bord na Móna. We will have another opportunity of dealing with Bord na Móna, which is a hive and a nest of Taca and Fianna Fáil men.
The results of yesterday will have serious effects on employment. I venture to say that the distilling and the brewing industries, which contribute generously to the pool of employment in this country, will seriously be affected by this Budget of yesterday. In the licensed trade, in the brewing and the distilling industries it will certainly lead to unemployment. Expressions of opinion on that have already been made. I think that the one way this Government can at least appear to be straight with the people is to resign and get out. The Taoiseach seems to be extremely worried as to what government will follow Fianna Fáil. Every member of the Fianna Fáil Party knows they will go out at the next general election. We on this side of the House are not concerned whether the election is in January, February or March or this time 12 months. It will be all the same when the election comes. People have their minds made up. The Taoiseach seems to be extremely worried as to the type and nature of government which will take office immediately after the next general election. The Leader of the Opposition said here last night that the next government will be a Fine Gael government. Fine Gael will have sufficient candidates contesting every constituency at the next general election so that if the Irish people want to give us an overall majority there will be nothing to stop them from doing that. I am convinced that that is what will happen. There is support rallying round Fine Gael now as never before.
Even in Donegal. No—88, Yes—85, in Rossnakill, polling booth, the Minister's own polling booth.
You cannot even count.
Where you were born.
They claim that they got 88 and we got 85 but it was we who got 88 and they got 85.
250 voted.
176 voted, 88 "No", 85 "Yes" and three invalid votes.
Do not be interrupting your Minister there.
Deputy Flanagan.
When you did not win there you will not win anywhere in Ireland.
(Interruptions.)
These interruptions must cease.
I am endeavouring to demonstrate, for the information of the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries particularly, that after the next general election we will have in this country a Fine Gael Government and that before the general election the Fine Gael policy will clearly be put before the people.
I heard you have another one. Deputy Donegan told us.
It will cover every aspect of life in this country— health, agriculture, industrial relations, social welfare, taxation, education——
Another few yet.
——housing—
Do not mention housing when the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries is in the House.
——and every single national problem.
And the Just Society.
And the Just Society because we have in this country, as the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries knows, a vast amount of hidden and concealed poverty suffered by people who are probably on fixed pensions and fixed incomes.
Like the Fine Gael—
What about the rate collectors in Donegal?
They are O.K.
You were not too satisfied with them. You expelled one from your Party.
You cannot afford to expel any one out of yours.
(Interruptions.)
Deputy Flanagan.
He was your best friend during the Roscommon by-election.
Look over your shoulder.
I am glad the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries asked a question about the Just Society because it shows his conscience is disturbed.
He has no conscience.
When the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries speaks of the Just Society it is most certainly a display of emotional disturbance, because he knows very well that under the Fianna Fáil Government there is no such thing as fair play and justice for our people and, above all, for the old and the homeless who have not alone got the blind eye but also the deaf ear from Fianna Fáil. Surely the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries must know that in this country today, while there may appear to be a great amount of high spending and prosperity, there is also a great amount of hidden poverty.
Take a bob off the old age pension.
(Interruptions.)
There was never a shilling taken off the old age pension in my time in this House and, thanks be to God, I am going on 26 years in this House. I was in this House with the Minister's father——
I know you were.
——who was a more decent man than the Minister, a very decent man
I do not dispute that at all.
Many a good father reared a bad son.
(Interruptions.)
I am afraid I will have to seek your protection, Sir.
You are having great difficulty. Deputy Flanagan.
You know what happens the rats.
(Interruptions.)
The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries asked a question about some old age pensions or other that were reduced some time in the history of this country. I do not know anything about it but I heard about it——
Deputy McGilligan will tell you.
——and that this reduction in the old age pension was carried out by a man called Ernest Blythe who was a Member of this House and who was then a Minister and who is now in the ranks of Fianna Fáil——
He is not in the ranks.
——and who was one of the principal advocates of Fianna Fáil policy with the Taoiseach, Deputy Lynch, and the Minister for Local Government in the recent referendum. I understand that this former Minister for Finance is the same person who is now commonly identified with Fianna Fáil.
Would this be his Budget we are discussing?
If Fianna Fáil have any questions to raise in connection with the reduction of a shilling in the old age pension they have the man who took the shilling in their own ranks now and they can get all the information they want from him. He is one of themselves.
He is one of the brass hats. He is not one of the ranks.
The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries need not address a query to me about this incident which is now part, fortunately or unfortunately, of Irish history. I am sure neither he nor I remember it. I do not think the Minister is as old a man as I am. He is wearing his years well despite——
I remember it, believe it or not.
If you do you are an older man than you look.
No, I had a conscience then which the Deputy had not.
Which you have not got now.
Fianna Fáil have many new found friends in recent years. God knows none of us envies or begrudges the Fianna Fáil Party the association with the former Minister that they are so found of quoting at times.
They had Paul Singer before. He set up Taca for them.
Since the Taoiseach is responsible for the conduct of all his Ministers some suitable reference will have to be made to the Minister for External Affairs. It is time the Minister for External Affairs was relieved of his responsibilities.
Send him to the moon.
God knows, when we all grow so old that we will not be able to undertake our work, I do not know how we will feel about it; but I am sure there are numerous other people who share my view that the Minister for External Affairs has reached the stage commonly described in the country in relation to old people as doting. The Minister for External Affairs has reached that stage. If the Taoiseach is to do as he says he is doing—bring a new image of youth and life and vigour to the country— for God's sake, let him get rid of this doting old gentleman who has served the country as well as he could but, when in 1968 that Minister is devoting most of his time to affairs outside the country, it is time that something was done.
He is like "The Fugitive".
When I asked what the Government's proposals were in relation to an emigrant service the Minister for External Affairs did not reply very suitably. I asked him when he last met any of our emigrants in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Coventry, Bristol or Newcastle or any important centre. One would imagine the Minister would be most anxious to help our emigrants. Most Deputies keep in close touch with emigrants from their constituencies. I visit the emigrants from my own constituency in London, Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford and Coventry each year. Thousands of our people are forced to emigrate because they are denied a living at home. They do not go for adventure or love of Britain but to get a better standard of living. They have many social problems. Representations have more than once been made to the Ambassador in London. The Minister for External Affairs has never displayed a really keen interest in the welfare of these emigrants. What is happening? The Irish Government appear to be washing their hands completely of their own citizens the moment they go abroad. That is wrong.
It is right to put on record that the new Fine Gael Government will courageously tackle the problem of putting into effect a proper welfare service for our emigrants. This has been too long deferred by Fianna Fáil. The new Fine Gael Government—this is more important still—will make a serious effort, with energy and determination to stem the flow of emigration and provide work for our people at home. The Department of Lands, for example, employs a total in forestry of approximately 4,500, while a proper forestry development drive should provide employment for between 15,000 and 20,000 in that sphere alone. These matters have been neglected because the Government is too old and too long in office.
The Deputy has two minutes left.
In those two minutes I want to say that nothing would be better for Fianna Fáil than a good rest and nothing would be better for the country than a new, energetic Government which would be responsible for a complete revival in every aspect of national life.
It has plainly been shown in the referendum by the people who matter that the people of Ireland do not want to be taken over by the cheque-book brigade now running this Fianna Fáil Party. This gang of racketeers or tacateers are trying, not alone to feather their own nests but to buy out the whole country for no other purpose than to better themselves. I am surprised that a man of the reputed integrity of the Taoiseach should allow himself to be tossed about like a cork at high tide by the winds blowing from the gangs in Fianna Fáil. We all know they are split into about six different parts, not only nationally but locally. In my own city they are split right down the centre and that split goes right up to national level.
They are split in Donegal also.
If there was any honesty in Fianna Fáil or in the Taoiseach he would take heed of the lesson given in no uncertain manner in the results of the referendum. The Taoiseach has taken no action, nor have the courts, to charge the Minister for Local-Government with fraudulent conversion of taxpayers' money, the amount of which we shall, please God, know next week, the amount the referendum cost.
No matter what our way of life we must all make speculations but in this tremendous gamble that the Minister for Local Government took in regard to the referendum he jeopardised the whole nation by the attacks he made on the clergy and on the press. It would be better for the country and the ordinary worker if the Minister were relieved of his post. The civil servants who have now introduced this mini-Budget must administer chastisement to the workers who came out in the referendum and said: "We shall not put up with this. We shall not have the Taca gang taking over the Government." What did the civil servants who compiled this mini-Budget do? They hit the worker, his pint of stout and cigarettes——
The Budget is introduced by the Minister for Finance.
The Minister for Finance, God help him, has my best wishes. Unfortunately, he is laid up.
Debate adjourned.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 7th November, 1968.