Today, at Question Time, I asked the Minister for Finance "what steps have been taken by him to release money from the 1972-73 Budget to improve the employment position" and the Minister's reply was:
In October, 1971, the Government took a number of measures aimed at boosting the level of employment and output. These measures included the allocation of an extra £20 million for spending under the public capital programme in the present financial year. In January last, following a review of the position by the Government, the Taoiseach announced certain further measures to stimulate economic activity including an indication that the public capital programme for next year would show a further substantial increase and that capital allocations for the year could be drawn upon by Departments and other public bodies during the remainder of the present year ending on 31st March in order to get works going and stimulate activity in the economy right away.
It is not yet possible to indicate the extent to which money from next year's capital programme will be needed under this arrangement to supplement the revised level of the 1971-72 capital programme.
In a supplementary question I asked him if he could say what had happened so far and could he tell me what money had been released and eventually he said that £1 million had been given to the building industry. He seemed to think that this £1 million which came out of the first £20 million had, in fact, saved the building industry.
I would point out that the unemployment position since the £20 million was given has been deteriorating rapidly: on 8th October, 1971, there were 56,912 signing as unemployed; on 4th February, 1972, the figure had reached 79,556 and I am quite sure the next figure will be over 80,000. More interesting still is the fact that in mid-October there were 119 building workers and 248 maintenance workers added to the register and in mid-November a further 173 building workers and 502 maintenance workers; in mid-December 1,256 building workers and 616 maintenance workers were added to the register. That is the answer to the Minister's claim today that the £1 million given to the building industry had, in fact, kept people in employment. I have quoted the figures now and I should like him to try to refute them, if he can.
A number of questions were not reached today and Deputy Barry Desmond had one down to which he asked for a written reply. It was Question No. 138. He got a written reply. The question was addressed to the Minister for Local Government:
To ask the Minister for Local Government (a) the housing schemes and (b) the sanitary schemes sanctioned by his Department arising from the recent revision of the State capital programme; and if he will state in respect of each scheme the date it was first submitted to his Department.
The reply was:
As the reply is in the form of a tabular statement, I propose, with the permission of the Ceann Comhairle, to circulate it with the Official Report.
The list is given of housing and sanitary schemes sanctioned by the Department of Local Government. It is interesting to note that some of the schemes were referred to the Department as far back as 1968. They have now been sanctioned. In my own county a housing scheme for Athboy was submitted on 30th October, 1968; the Minister says it is now sanctioned. With regard to sanitary services schemes, he says that, as far as Meath is concerned, the Ashborne water sewerage extension to Nine Mile Stone, which was submitted on 8th February, 1971, has now been sanctioned. This is the sort of codology that the Government and the Department of Local Government have been carrying on. Not one penny has been made available for these schemes. They have been sanctioned—full stop. There has been no permission to borrow from the Local Loans Fund and the result is that, while the schemes have been sanctioned on paper, nothing has been done.
I want to refer now to some interesting sidelights on this whole matter. On 28th April, 1971, in Volume 253, when introducing the Budget, Deputy Colley, Minister for Finance, said that the Government were determined to keep down costs and had cut the proposals put to the Department of Finance by the various Departments by roughly £75 million. This was an effort to keep down costs and the Minister was apparently very happy. At column 697 he said:
We decided that the rise in Government spending would have to be moderated and the original current and capital expenditure programme of £797 million for 1971-72 has been reduced to the total of £721 million —an increase of 9½ per cent on last year's outturn. This very substantial reduction, which was not achieved without difficulty, represents the main effort of my budgetary policy for 1971-72 and is of much greater significance for our economic wellbeing than the charges I shall announce today.
On 27th October, 1971, in Volume 256, he had a different story to tell. At column 331 he said he was increasing the capital programme by £20 million.
The increase of some £20 million brings the public capital programme total to £213 million for the current year and should serve as a useful and immediate stimulus to the economy. The financing of the extra £15 million draw on the Exchequer can be achieved without recourse to sources of finance other than those foreshadowed in the April Budget.
In April the Minister for Finance reduces the amount required to run the capital programme by £75 million and says that, on the advice of his experts, this is the right thing to do. He comes along in October and has to produce out of the hat £20 million more than he had budgeted for in April for the purpose of ensuring something will be done, according to himself, to relieve unemployment. I suggest that either the advice is bad or the Minister is bad. He makes a cut in April and in a few months time he comes along and says that he was wrong in doing that. He did not ask the question the Taoiseach asked when he was Minister for Finance: "What went wrong?" The Minister for Finance might well have asked last October: "What went wrong?" He found the country in a very bad position because he had pared off £75 million in April and, in October, he has to find another £20 million. I suggest this whole thing was a trick. Either the £20 million worth of work had been done and the money expended and this was designed to give the impression that the Government were putting money in or else the money was not there and was not injected into the economy because, with the exception of the £1 million for housing mentioned by the Minister, no other scheme has been mentioned into which any money has been put. I am sure the Minister knows that unemployment has been growing steadily, as indicated by the figures I have given.
On 19th January of this year the Taoiseach decided to take a hand in the game. At column 59 of Volume 258 he said:
An extra £20 million was allocated for capital spending in the present financial year.
At column 60 he said:
To maintain the atmosphere of confidence which these measures represent, the Government have reviewed their investment plans for the period ahead and have now fixed the 1972-73 public capital programme at a level which is substantially higher than the revised level of the 1971-72 programme. The result of this is that something of the order of £240 million will be spent in 1972-73. This is about £50 million more than the initial figure announced for 1971-72 and represents a further increase of over £20 million on the higher revised figures for that year. Most of the extra spending relates to activities in which the employment content is relatively short, so that this will make the maximum possible contribution towards reducing unemployment and redundancy.
The decision to increase the 1972-73 programme will take effect immediately. Departments and other public bodies may draw immediately on their 1972-73 allocations in order to get works going and stimulate activity in the economy right away.
I asked the Minister today would he tell me what programme had been put forward and what works were being dealt with in this way and the Minister could not do so. In fact, those of us who are involved in trying to find employment for people who are unemployed and trying to safeguard jobs for those in employment find that nowhere can we get any evidence that any effort in this direction has been made by the Government or by any Department, with the possible exception of the building trade where the Minister says they have been notified that an extra £1 million is being made available. I cannot even find evidence of that being notified as being available for spending.
We find that no local authority have been notified that they can reemploy people whom they have laid off and that the moneys will be backed up by State funds on any job. No public works have been started which will employ people who are out of a job. The Department of Lands have not been notified that they can reemploy the forestry and Land Commission workers whom they had to lay off because of shortage of money. The Board of Works have not been informed that they can give employment to people whom they had to lay off because of shortage of money. Would the Minister, in the time he gets tonight, give me the answer to my question which he could not give me today as to where the money has gone? Is this just a confidence trick being played on the unemployed because the money that we thought, and they thought, would be there to give them a job in order to put a few pounds in their pockets which they require to feed themselves and their wives and families does not appear to have been made available?
There is no use whatever in the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Local Government, trying to give the impression that sanctioning schemes is all he has to do. He must make the money available. In my own area I notice that he has sanctioned a small scheme to the Nine Mile Stone in Ashbourne and it went in in April, 1971. That scheme will cost, perhaps, £9,000 or £10,000, but he has not made the money available to do it, nor has he sanctioned the working drawings for a £250,000 sewerage scheme for Mornington which has been in his Department for the best part of 12 months. He has not sanctioned isolated cottages—45 cottages—urgently required in County Meath and hundreds of such houses all over the country. They have been held up by the Department for months and when sanction comes, no sanction is given for the borrowing of the money. If this is a breakdown in communications between the Minister for Finance and the other Ministers. I am sure the Minister will do something about it.
I suggest that this thing has been happening and does appear to be something planned for the purpose of giving the impression of doing something that is not being done. We hear a lot about the "Great Train Robbery", but I suggest that a great Cabinet robbery is going on. I believe that the Department of Finance are working a confidence trick on the public, with the assistance of the Taoiseach and every member of the Government, giving the impression that they are doing things which they are not doing. These are harsh words and I am sorry to have to say them to the Minister whom I regard as a personal friend of mine, but I believe that unless he is prepared to take this in hand, not one shilling, old or new, will be spent until after the next Budget is brought in.
The gentlemen who handle the financial affairs of the State are very good at giving the impression that certain figures can be written in and that that, fed out to the public, is sufficient, but it will not feed hungry children. The Minister might as well make up his mind here and now that this sort of codology being carried on, not for the first time, by this Government is not going to be accepted any longer. We want to know where the money has gone if it has been spent; we want to know if it was allocated at all or if it ever existed. When Deputy Corish was speaking in the debate and when I was speaking, both of us made the one point—would the money be made available immediately for schemes which were ready for sanction and could be put into operation at once? While we were not assured categorically that that would be so, the impression was given that we were stupid to suggest that it would not be done; but we are not that stupid and I want to know now from the Minister what exactly has been done.
The Minister may, perhaps, say that it is unfair to throw the question at him when he has not had an opportunity of checking back with his Department and that he will be able to give me better information in a few days time. I would accept that, provided I do get the information, but I want to point out that the question has been down for several weeks. Because of the way questions have been tied up, it has not been possible to get replies, so therefore there should have been an adequate opportunity for the Minister to get the information he requires.
I would finally say that one thing I regret here tonight is having to keep the staff of the House, and you, Sir, back half an hour after normal time to have this debate, but I felt, and so did my colleagues, that it should be done because of the fact that the reply we got today from the Minister was so ludicrous in the circumstances that if we let it pass, we would not be doing our duty.
