When I concluded last Thursday I had been speaking about the telephone service and I had in mind to add some fairly minor points to what I had said already in regard to that service and to the Post Office service. However, the hour is pushing on and I shall not trouble the House with as long a speech as I had intended; but I should like to put to the Minister a few matters, some of them of a minor nature, on which I should be glad to have his views.
In the broad spectrum of European countries we are unique in having a very wide and thick network of post offices. The average continental European town with a population comparable with that of, say, Limerick, would have a head post office, but would be lucky to have two sub-post offices, whereas the system we have here — I do not know whether we have inherited it or developed it — has left us with a very thick network of sub-post offices distributed in such a way that in an urban area one is rarely more than a five-minutes' walk from a post office while in the country one can count on a post office existing in every village no matter how small. This situation is an enormous advantage so far as post office work is concerned, and it means also that the service can be used as a potential escape route in cases of national emergency of an administrative kind. What I have in mind here particularly is the difficulty in which this country found itself on two separate occasions of a bank strike, the first of which lasted for three months and the second for five months, if not more. Indeed, the second one was so prolonged that people were wondering whether it would ever end. During that time cheques were used in the same way as currency. Some people made money by printing cheque forms on which individuals could issue promises that directives to their banks would be met.
From the point of view of the ordinary citizen these two strikes may not have been very severe but the repercussions for the business community were severe. Although both strikes occurred during the tenure of office of the last Government there is no certainty that we might not have another such strike — so far be it from me to place unnecessary blame on the previous Government — but I should like the Minister to tell us, if possible, that somewhere in the Department there is a section with some intelligent man in charge where there is being worked out a contingency plan for using the Post Office system as a kind of make-shift banking system by establishing current accounts that would be operable through post office branches in the event of there being a bank strike of the duration and severity of the last two. That is a point on which I should like to hear the Minister's reaction when he is replying.
There are three or four other points I wish to make in regard to the postal service generally before I go on to deal with the subject of the broadcasting services. The Minister told the House that the Universal Postal Union is to hold one of its meetings here shortly. This organisation is used by lecturers in international law as an example of how international law functions in an unspectacular way, as it has been doing for more than 100 years, in the direction of carrying out regulations that are made freely by countries who enter into the UPU. It is worth reflecting that this organisation came into being through a simple consideration of mutual convenience. If a person in Dublin wishes to send a letter to a friend in Bulgaria all the State here requires is that a 7p postage stamp be affixed to the letter and that it be deposited in a mail box. The Irish State will have completed its part of the bargain as soon as the letter goes into a sack and is sent on its way. It is then transported by umpteen hands to Bulgaria where it will be delivered, perhaps, to the central mountain area of that remote eastern European country. All that has been done for an expenditure of 7p to the Irish State. The Bulgarian with whom one is corresponding will get an equivalent service by paying a small sum. This will ensure that his letter can be delivered to the far reaches of the Mullet Peninsula by an Irish postman, very largely at the expense of the Irish State. The essential sense of the system is its mutuality. It works very well.
The Universal Postal Union is a model of what an international organisation should be. The common interest behind this is obvious. I note that the union will have its annual beano — if that is not too frivolous a word to use, but my experience of these international congresses is that they very rarely rise above the level of a beano — here in the near future. I hope the Minister will let the rest of the world see that we have a fair share of good sense. I hope the Universal Postal Union meeting in Dublin will be remembered for the abolition of some of its idiotic and antiquated rules. I could list these all night but the House does not wish to hear them.
I should like to see the Universal Postal Union celebrate its meeting in Dublin by deciding to do away with sealing wax as a necessity in the registration of post. In less sophisticated times to put sealing wax on a knot guaranteed that the package would not be opened by an unauthorised hand. Those days have gone. Does anyone seriously imagine that the perfunctory dab of sealing wax applied to the knot of a parcel by a Post Office official is a guarantee against anything? A child could open the knot and replace the blob of sealing wax with another blob. The fact that the package had been opened would be indiscernible to the cursory glance, which, of course, is the only kind of glance the package will ever get from any postal official between here and Istanbul.
The whole system of the registration of packets and parcels is a technical one on which I will not offer views. To me it has always seemed a nuisance. No one in this age uses sealing wax for anything at all except for the necessary registration of parcels which are tied by string. Only for that, there would not be such a thing as a sealing wax company in existence. Even the lawyers — and everybody knows they are conservative — have done away with seals, in the sealing wax sense, because a legal document can be sealed with a paper seal. A wafer with a little gum at the back of it will do as a seal. The necessity to use this wax in order to shore up the insurability of a parcel or the responsibility of a postal department for the safety of the parcel can no longer be defended. I would like to see the meeting of the UPU in Dublin remembered for the disappearnce from international postal practice of idiotic and antiquated requirements of that sort.
I was interested to hear the Minister say that philatelic operations of his Department brought in more money last year. He said £130,000 had been harvested by what were identifiable sales of stamps for philatelic purposes. I wish him good luck in that respect. I will not bore the House with my views on the design of postage stamps. I was upset when I heard that the Minister proposed to replace the existing permanent series. It does not matter whether one likes the permament series. I dislike the practice in the modern world of doing away with something which is perfectly all right and putting something else in its place.
We had our first issue of stamps in 1922 which persisted into the late 1960s when it was replaced by the present series. That first series was an old-fashioned, poorly designed and not very interesting series. It had a sword of light, a Celtic Cross and the arms of the provinces. It was an unimaginative and dull series; but to me it stood for the stability of the Irish State under all Governments from that day to this. That series stood for the fact that this State was essentially — naturally I do not deprecate the social advance — politically and constitutionally the same kind of State it had been 50 years previously. I was very sorry to see that series, although artistically it may not have been defensible, being ditched in favour of a new series, even though I like it. This new series shows animals allegedly taken from Celtic manuscripts. What is the reason for ditching this new series? What is this passion for change? I am not necessarily one of nature's conservatives. I think it is unhealthy, in small and great things, that one should be always looking for things to smash and replace. Is the change to be made because the stamps are easily forged? Or has an unnamed expert decided that they are not aesthetically satisfactory or do not fulfil their subsidiary function of attracting tourists? Why is the present permanent series of Irish postage stamps being discarded?
As a footnote on the subject of design, I will illustrate the madness to change things which we have all grown up with and which are in a small way a part of our lives. I noticed during the last two years, and this was started by the previous Government, that the old symbol of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, the so-called Gaelic script was discarded. Why has that gone by the board, on all but the oldest vans which nobody has bothered to repaint? It is being replaced by modern lower case Roman sans serif "p+t". To me that symbol is hard to read. Whether it is right or wrong, I protest against the passion to do away with the symbol which we all remember from our childhood. The new symbol would be perfectly acceptable as the badge for an industry or business. Why could we not have held on to the old symbol? What was wrong with it? Probably some trendy young man with a tweed tie was given 50 guineas to sit down and design a new symbol for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs for no obvious reason. If there is a reason I would be glad to hear it from the Minister and from his predecessor. This was done at public expense.
The drab green vans were changed into marigold vans. Is there a sound reason for that? Drab green is a better colour for a van than marigold. A bright colour when it gets dusty or dirty looks a good deal shabbier than a dull colour. But one cannot prevent Post Office vans from getting drab and dirty. I am sorry to see the old green vans with the old which I remember from my earliest childhood disappearing, in favour of marigold vans with their, to me, not easily legible and unnecessary replacement in these lower case sans serif letters about which I have spoken.
That is a small point. I almost apologise for taking up five minutes of the time of the House by mentioning it. I would like to register this protest because of what I see as a general tendency both in Ireland and in the world.
The last thing I want to say about the postal service is something which may seem even smaller to the Minister. In my long years as a householder in Dublin I have been friendly with postmen who come to my door. I have often had sympathy with these men who worked in all kinds of weather trying to stuff the literature which I get through a small letterflap in my door. Partly to facilitate them and also to make sure that my post was not damaged beyond recognition, I installed a large letterbox some time ago in my own house. I do not say that to seek the praise of the House, but I think the Minister would be doing a useful service in alleviating the conditions of some of the State's employees if he were to recommend to the Department of Local Government and to local authorities which build houses on a large scale that the size of the standard letterbox flap in private houses should be enlarged.
The documents which every Deputy gets every day of the week and the shiny reports from State-sponsored bodies will not go into the ordinary letterbox. I hope that the Members do not think I am complaining about the material arriving at my house. I am merely putting myself in the position of the postman who travels a couple of miles a day in a suburban area in a highly-populated district. This man has to push a big wad of post through slots which are barely wide enough to take a Christmas card. Since the local election campaign started, I have been going around my constituency. When I come to a house where there is no one in I put the canvassing material through the letterbox, having written a few words on it indicating that it is a billet doux from their Deputy and saying that I am sorry to miss them. In at least 99 out of every 100 houses the dimensions of the available letterbox slot appear to be six inches by two inches. I reflect on what my life would be if it was my business to stuff enormous masses of material, such as every Deputy in the House gets, as well as many other people get, into slots six inches long and, perhaps, one-and-a-half or two inches wide. The Minister should do something to ease the work of the employees. He could recommend that no house would be built by a local authority, or would qualify for a local authority loan, which did not have reasonable access for the kind of material which is common in postal deliveries today. These are the points I wish to make about the general postal service and the telephone service.
I come now to the question of broadcasting. My departure point was conveniently made for me by Deputy Blaney the other day when he said in the course of the speech on the Estimate that he thought Irish nationality was weakening. I do not think there is a Deputy in this House whose political views and mine would be further apart. I barely need to wait for Deputy Blaney to get up before I know he is going to say something with which I profoundly disagree. But that particular sentiment which he voiced here was one with which I agree. The Deputy speaks in blunt words. He deserves the thanks of the House for saying something I have been waiting for someone to say for a long time. The Deputy said we were weakening as a people. I believe that is true. We are weakening as a people not in the sense that the three million people in the Republic are individually becoming lazier, but in the sense that the idea of national identity which sustained their predecessors, whether they belonged to the physical force tradition or to the parliamentary tradition through suffering and sacrifice, is weakening. Deputy Blaney is right about that. It is very important.
If the kind of man that John Redmond was on one side, or Pearse was on the other side, had been able to look forward 60 years and see the kind of country that would be produced by their joint efforts — and it was by their joint efforts in a sense— they might have asked themselves if it was worth their while giving up their lives or virtually dying of broken hearts to produce the kind of country which is culturally so porous, so pregnable, so vulnerable and so lacking in self-confidence and without belief in itself as that which exists in 1974.
I quite realise that when we talk about cultural leadership we are only a step away from ugly things. When talking about them, we are only a step away then from a kind of tyranny, whether fascist or communist, which we have been lucky to avoid. I am conscious of that danger. Deputy Blaney is right in saying that we are weakening as a people. The number of concrete criteria which we can point out in this country to a foreigner as differentiating us from our nearest neighbours and as having justified the work, let alone the fight, to establish independence even for Twenty-six Counties, is very small indeed. Those criteria are lessening day by day. I am not speaking about any particular class. The Dublin middle-class use terms like "It was only fantastic". That is not an Irish turn of speech. A lower stratum of the population write on walls, "Boot boys rule O.K.". That is not an Irish turn of speech. My own children, who have no inherited interest in this regard, follow English soccer clubs because they see in their schools and in their world that people take an interest in what is happening to Leeds United, Sheffield Wednesday and other clubs. These are English soccer clubs. It would not be so bad if they were interested in Irish soccer clubs.
Driving along Irish suburban roads, one does not notice a single architectural or social feature which would identify the houses as those of Irish people. This is so whether it is a road of corporation houses or a road on which the houses cost £20,000 to £30,000. Similar houses and roads can be seen in Scunthorpe, Macclesfield and Bromley, Kent. I look at the lives of the people in these houses and from what I see there is nothing which differentiates them from people across the water. I do not think one should give up one's way of life in order to be different, but I recognise that the people in the generations before us — and in this I hope I am speaking for Deputies on both sides of the House — whether they believed in the constitutional or the physical force way of doing things, felt then there was something in this country which deserved a separate existence and breathing space — something which could never get that breathing space under a British government. That is why I believe men broke their hearts or shed their blood for Ireland in the centuries gone by. I dislike the word "culture" and, like Hermann Goering, I tend to reach for my gun when I hear it mentioned but I am afraid that these men would be disappointed at the degree to which the shape and taste of our life here are becoming progressively more and more meshed into that of the island next to us. In saying that I do not want to be taken as saying anything anti-British. If I were British I would be proud of it, but I am not, and I recognise that this House and all the panoply here of a separate parliament exist only because our fathers and grandfathers would not recognise that they were British either. I have to ask myself then what would their reaction be if they were still alive to speak their minds about the island they would see today. I am afraid their reaction would be one of disappointment, a feeling that they had given their blood and broken their hearts for nothing.
We have Bills passed into law here and there is absolutely no reason to suppose we would not have had the same legislation if the British had remained here. There are exceptions. The Bill we had this afternoon was an exception. I was moved by the public spirit, the unanimity and similarity of feeling between both sides and by the fine speech of Deputy Andrews, the Opposition spokesman on Justice. I know we have an adoption system here which is different from and better than the one they have in Britain, but most of our legislation and most of our ways of doing things are not different. Not only are they not different but they are merely cogged from the British.
This has been a long prologue and the Chair has been very patient in putting up with it as an introduction to what I want to say about Radio Telefís Éireann and the broadcasting system under the Minister's charge. I think the sustaining of Irish nationality — I do not mean the idiotic, Chauvinistic inflation of Irish nationality— but the sustaining of it and the prevention of Irish people ever being ashamed of what they are, of the way they speak, of where they come from and who their parents were and where they were born — and the sustaining of their kind of culture, whether it be good or bad, is something on which a broadcasting service can have a unique effect and I am supported in that belief by the Broadcasting Review Committee.
The Minister had some hard words to say about them, and I agree with him in some of his hard words, but I am supported in what I say by the most central of their conclusions at page 20, paragraph 341. The committee noted the lack of any statement in existing legislation as to what the purpose of broadcasting is and they very rightly tried to say what they thought it should be. They said, and I agree with them:
Broadcasting should be concerned with safeguarding, enriching and strengthening the cultural, social and economic fabric of the whole of Ireland.
I have already said it is very easy to teeter into fascism, communism, into tyranny or puritanism if one takes a text like this and over-drives it. I am not asking the Minister to do that, but I believe that this is very near what most people who think about it would expect the purpose of a broadcasting system to be. I should like to see a system here, no matter what it cost and no matter what the difficulties may be, accepting its role to sustain Irish nationality. We are a small people. We are a poor people. We have the misfortune to share a language with the most powerful cultural complex in the world, a culture which is by no means in certain respects congenial to our way of life, and we are battered, I believe, by the cultural environment mediated to us through that language.
Radio Telefís Éireann has got a duty to sustain Irish nationality. If I appear to be diverging from anything the Minister has said inside or outside the House he will, I hope, be big enough to forgive me. I believe that Radio Telefís Éireann has sometimes, perhaps, been not fully responsible for dragging politics into everything. I believe that a large slice of the Telefís Éireann staff understand in their heart of hearts the obligation the Broadcasting Review Committee would wish to see formally accepted, and even the oddest or maddest of them has a very strong sense of Irish nationality and of the function RTE has in this regard. I am swallowing and choking down my very strong feelings about what I think has been occasionally— I do not mind saying "deliberately"—the glorification by one branch or other of RTE of movements which I believe deserve nothing but the one hundred per cent hostility of decent Irish people. I am choking all that back. I am not going to dwell on it. But, leaving that aside, I believe the majority of the staff, or a very large proportion of it, particularly those dealing with Irish language programmes, have got a sense of Irish nationality and a sense of responsibility for it and, so far from seeing less of them — again I hope this will be taken as a sign of open government when I say this in the Minister's presence — I would like to see the influence of that section, if only they would keep their politics out of it, growing rather than diminishing.
I believe that those whom we sometimes, a little derogatorily, perhaps, call Gaeilgeoirí, even the maddest of them, belong to the best people we have. Some of them are very mad, but I still believe they belong to the best people we have and I believe they represent, even in their madness — a lot of their madness arises from the frustration they have suffered and the hypocrisy they have been shown by this State on both sides over the last 50 years — real Irish nationality. I believe they are basically a people who deserve support and understanding, even though it is sometimes hard enough to understand them and hard enough to support them and their equation of Irish nationality with a political point of view of which I would be ashamed. They enrage me and, I am sure, many others; but I believe they deserve admiration and support for struggling both inside and outside RTE in face of a hostile world.
It might be socially easier for them and, perhaps, materially more advantageous for them to throw in the towel but they do not do that and, if these Gaeilgeoirí are the worst tyrants or the worst fanatics this country ever has to deal with, we will be getting off very lightly and very easily because they are basically people who, when they first started off 60, 70 or 80 years ago only had a culture in mind. They have been opposed by political interests. They have been treated with disdain and hypocrisy by the State, but they keep on plugging, trying to do what they think right for the country, in conditions that are unpopular, conditions in which it is easy to sneer at them. I think they deserve the gratitude of the people of this State, whether or not they are wealthy. We should make an effort to sever our feelings of gratitude towards them for that from our feelings of rage — and in my case it is unspeakable rage — for, in the case of many of them, trying to shackle the Irish language movement on to the physical force movement in the sense which that phrase bears today, which includes the "excusable"— in inverted commas — murdering of innocent people.
I know the Minister will take this in a friendly spirit. I would like to see that lobby — if it can be called such although I have no evidence that it actually works as such — I should like to see that branch of the broadcasting services strengthened. Even if it is cost us money I should like to see it strengthened. I should like to see a full radio and television service in both languages. I, for one, would be willing to defend here in the Dáil what financial sacrifice was necessary to make that possible. My favourite Irish author — and I do not mind telling the House if it is of any interest — in this century is the late Brian O'Nolan who wrote a column in The Irish Times under the pen name of Myles na gCopaleen. I often think, particularly in moments of dejection, that he was the only completely sane Irishman born in this century. Although he was a savage enemy of all cant, hypocrisy, and humbug, and mercilessly demolished the pretensions of anyone, Gaeilgeoir or otherwise, I remember one article he wrote probably 30 years ago, sometime during the war, in which he picked up for a change the whinings of some group who complained that Mr. de Valera was spending £500,000 a year on restoring the Irish language. From memory — it is one of my bedside books and I know the article almost by heart — what Myles na gCopaleen said was this: “I may be a wild Paddy, but I take the view that for a poor country like ours to spend £500,000 a year in trying to revive a language is nothing to apologise about; nothing to be ashamed of; it is a civilised and urbane pursuit particularly at a time when the so-called civilised nations of the world are spending about £200,000,000 a day trying to destroy each other”. In a nutshell, that is my point of view about it too. If only I could see that the effort had the hearts of people in Government, on whatever side they may be, behind it and it was producing results, I would be completely happy.
That is the correct attitude towards this thing; it is nothing to be ashamed of. I believe that RTE must pull its weight here. Even if it means spending money on it, even if it means a penny on the pint, I would put that penny on the pint in order to raise the Irish language from the condition in which it is. I do not mean it is in a poor condition but it is in a posture of defence. I would put money into that and I would defend it here even if it meant having to produce a budget, perhaps at a time which might not suit too well, and having to explain to the people why you were putting a penny or tuppence on the pint. I would do that, because I think that is the kind of thing for which this State was founded; for which the people on the constitutional side worked or, on the other side, died. If we did not fight and work for our independence for purposes like that, what did we work for? Was it merely that we would have a kind of glorified county council of our own? Or what was it for? because, day by day, I see these national objectives receding further and further into the distance. It is becoming more and more socially acceptable by people on all political sides to sneer at, laugh at, or speak dismissively or condescendingly about this objective.
The last thing I want to say about the Irish language and its position in regard to Telefís Éireann is this: that the assaults on Gaeilgeoírí are very often justified because, as I have said, they very often tie their flag to a mast which I would hack to the ground if I could. Although that is true, as a movement they are weak. They have not got the pulling or pushing power of other pressure groups. They do not draw enough water in Fine Gael, Labour or Fianna Fáil to make any real difference. Let me be quite honest about it: this House and country have seen in the past couple of months the Government — having issued a White Paper on taxation proposals — producing a further set of proposals which, while in no way departing from the principle of capital taxation, represented a very substantial modification of those proposals. We are not children and no one is going to make hay of this because everybody knows that one of the reasons behind that change was that the representations which the Government were getting from professional organisations, trade associations and other interests — all perfectly legitimate interests — were powerful ones and could not be ignored.
The Irish language lobby would not succeed in getting something like that done for itself. It is an easy dog to kick; it is an easy target. The Irish language lobby would not have knocked a halfpenny off the wealth tax but the massive reaction of individuals, political and trade organisations did so. When I see a body which represents, in no matter how distorted a form, something which the people who went before us worked and slaved for — even if they did not die for it — having to defend itself against attacks, I say to myself: With all their faults, these are people I should stand up for. I detest and abominate the tendency of these organisations to get involved in savagery. I will call it no other thing and I never have called it anything else; I have never put fine words on what is barbarous and shameful. I think the Irish language lobby has got itself mixed up with deeds and activities that would make one ashamed of being Irish and sometimes have made me ashamed of being Irish. But, when all that is said and done, these are people who, for the most part, are not in this effort for what they can get out of it. For the most part they represent a movement which is weak, which cannot bring all that much pressure to bear on a Government or Opposition; and that means that it should be defended by decent people; it should not be stamped on or stood on. It should be criticised; it should be checked; it is in no way immune from the world of criticism, opposition or hostility when it does, as I believe many of its representatives have done, ally itself with barbarism and savagery. If we can get away from that — and that is not easy; I do not want to get away from it; I realise the immediacy of people's lives and deaths must take precedence over what I am talking about — but if it is possible, in a time of agony such as that which we are now going through, to separate these things, the Irish language lobby would be far from being an object of laughter, which they are conventionally amongst the middle class — I will not put a tooth in it — the middle class and whatever comes under the middle class as well. There is no particular class in this country, high, middle or low, which has a completely clean sheet in regard to this. It has been sneered at by too many people too often and those who, for the most part, have worked and given their lives for nothing, for no reward, except for doing what they believed their fathers and grandfathers had worked for.
Whether it was only by contributing to the Irish Nationalist Party, the Redmondites, or going out and spilling their blood, these people deserve the support of this State and the ideals they stood for deserve the support of the State and the State broadcasting system. Even if it meant not a penny but five pence on the pint I would provide an all-Irish television and radio service, not impose it on people, not substitute it for the English language one, but as a choice or alternative. I know it cannot be done overnight and I am not trying to make small beer of what are very substantial difficulties.
I want to put on record what my feelings are on the matter: I am not ashamed of them and I think that many other people, if they devoted their minds to it, would be not far from agreeing with me.
The last thing I want to say concerns section 31 of the principal Act which has been used, for the most part, in order to prevent material of certain kinds being broadcast. The last Government — and it was a frequent matter of complaint from my point of view — when they wanted something broadcast or not broadcast, could make a telephone call and things did not go out, like the programme about the Mount Pleasant planning scheme which Mr. Boland did not want broadcast or like the programme about the Special Branch which the then Minister for Justice — I cannot remember who he was — did not want sent out. That was the end of that. This Government, so far as I am aware, make a practice — whenever they require something to be broadcast or not to be broadcast — of putting it on the record via a direction through section 31.
I should like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that section 31 has two subsections. One deals with the prohibition on the broadcasting of certain types of material and the other subsection, which is positive rather than negative, empowers the Minister who has collective responsibility with the whole Government to direct the broadcasting of certain material. At the risk of being called a fascist beast who wants to indoctrinate people, I believe that power has not been sufficiently used. I should like to see section 31 liberally used by the Government in regard to putting across messages about which, broadly speaking, there is no disagreement. The degree to which that is done at present is minimal. We get advertisements from the Department of Local Government — all credit to them — in regard to road safety and these are well made. There are advertisements — I do not think they are all that well made — in regard to smoking put out by the Department of Health; but at the risk of doing the unforgivable thing in modern Ireland and going a step beyond the English for a change, instead of trailing along on their coat tails and waiting for 20 years after they have done something, I should like to see the broadcasting service — I would wish to have a consensus about this; I would not want any Government to use this power in the teeth of what the Opposition were willing to accept — undertake the transmission of certain broad generalities in advertising form, and explicitly as such, under section 31, under direction of the Government through the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs.
There are large social problems here which go miles beyond anything as simple as the health problem regarding the tendency of smoking to give one heart disease or lung cancer. I believe these social problems might be responsive to large scale advertising provided it were not done in an offensive way. I do not want the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs or the Taoiseach to lecture people in the Castro mode with four hour speeches urging them to do good and avoid evil. But there are large-scale problems which I think would respond to positive direction. I believe it would have to be a consensus direction and it would be quite wrong if any Government were to put across a message which suited its own ideological book but was poison to the Opposition. I want to make that clear in case the idea ever becomes actual.
We all know that a family which is not, say, sufficiently equipped educationally to understand the consequences of getting into progressive debt and is not able to budget should be preserved from the consequences of excessive hire purchase commitments. I am certain Deputies opposite would agree about that.
