Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 29 Jun 1978

Vol. 307 No. 14

Green Paper on Development for Full Employment: Adjournment Debate (Resumed) .

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That Dáil Éireann

(i) takes note of the Green Paper "Development for Full Employment"; and

(ii) at its rising this week do adjourn for the Summer recess.

—(The Taoiseach.)

Mr. V. Brady

: I am very glad to see the representation on the Labour benches this morning. For some hours last evening we thought they had given up the ghost; they are welcome back.

The Adjournment Debate affords us an opportunity of reviewing the activities of the Government over the preceding 12 months. It also affords us an opportunity of pondering on the possibilities of what the future holds for the Government and the country as a whole. In recent years the previous Government got very little joy from an adjournment debate. They were under severe pressure. Inflation had been rising to an all-time record. Unemployment had got completely out of hand. Prices of foodstuffs, clothing, footwear, transport and many other commodities had been escalating. Apparently, the Coalition Government at that time had lost control. They had not the will, the capability or, above all, agreement between the Fine Gael and Labour Parties to do anything about the situation. They could not formulate any policy or plans. The Coalition Parties could not agree on anything in the interests of our people and the nation as a whole. However, there was one area in which agreement could be reached. Of course, that was the unspoken agreement to hang on to office irrespective of the consequences for the country.

That was the situation confronting the former Government when embarking on an adjournment debate. We can well appreciate their dilemma, their difficulties and problems and the resultant mad scramble to put the onus and blame for misfortunes on everybody except themselves. Usually external factors were blamed It is true that the world did go through the trauma of deep economic depression. That external factor, combined with the absence of any ideas or plans whatever on the part of the previous Government, put us in a very serious situation and made the present Government's battle in sorting out the mess they inherited on assuming office all the more difficult.

Let us contrast that situation and the deep depression felt with the situation now obtaining. Let us take a look at the speech delivered by the Taoiseach here yesterday morning. There is an air of optimism prevailing in the country, except of course from the Opposition benches—but that is understandable. Obviously this depression will become deeper in the opposition benches as time progresses. But they realise, as do the electorate, that the country now has a Government committed to working for our people and attending to the policies set out in their pre-election manifesto. We have a Government planning sensibly to make life that little bit better for all and particularly to create the job opportunities so badly needed by our young people.

Fianna Fáil came back into office in one of the greatest landslides in our history. The election manifesto had been very carefully prepared, very serious thought and consideration went into it. It was not merely a handbook for the occasion, as people were led to believe at the time by the Opposition parties. It was to be the basis of a carefully considered and thought-out plan for the restoration of the ailing economy we inherited. That manifesto was fully accepted by our people and endorsed in the most comprehensive way. Undoubtedly their first year in office has been one of success for the Government. That is probably the main reason why the combined Opposition parties are at present in such disarray. For the first time in four years inflation has been reduced to a single figure. This is exactly in line with the plan set out in our manifesto.

For the first time in four years the unemployment figure has dropped below 100,000 and the signs are that this figure will continue to drop. The cost of living, the prices of foodstuffs, clothing and the necessities of life for the working family, have steadied and we now have greater price stability in relation to income than we have had in previous years. Following the budget introduced by the Minister for Finance last January real incomes rose and the less well-off are a little better off. We can never be really satisfied that the less well-off should have to depend on social welfare benefits at the present rate. I am satisfied that the Government are making a genuine effort to improve the conditions of social welfare recipients by keeping a tight rein on prices. I hope this situation will continue because there is little or no point in expanding social welfare benefits if a tight control is not kept on the cost of living.

The Government are not claiming all the credit for the fall in inflation. Obviously, outside influences assisted us in a number of ways, particularly the improved rates of currency exchange and the steadying of sterling. The removal of rates from private housing and the abolition of private motor car taxation were also very important factors. It should also be borne in mind that prior to the election last year Fianna Fáil and the electorate were told by the Opposition parties that a reduction in the rate of inflation to that which we now have, was not on. A very important thing has been the return of confidence in the economy. Investment has come back in a big way. The building and construction industry, which was always one of the mainstays of our economy, has become much more buoyant and is more active. The sales turnover for building materials for this year shows an increase in the region of 20 per cent over the corresponding period for 1977. This is an indication of how the industry has improved during the last 12 months. The outlook for the future is optimistic and no doubt we can expect to have many more jobs in the building and construction industry.

Compared with this time last year we have 10,000 fewer people unemployed according to the live register. The greatest improvement took place during the past three months. There is no doubt that unemployment still presents the greatest single challenge to the Government. Shortly, we will have more thousands of young people seeking their first jobs. The Government in their role as the biggest employers planned over 11,000 additional posts in the public sector. It is disturbing to note that so far, only about 4,500 of these jobs have been filled. I understand that the reason for the delay has been administration. I sincerely hope that the officials concerned will show more urgency in their approach so that there will not be any further unnecessary delays in relation to Government policy. I appreciate that delays in filling posts due to administrative difficulties can and do arise but exceptional circumstances require exceptional measures. I hope that the Ministers and officials in the Departments concerned will look at this matter urgently.

For our young people the special environmental improvement schemes are now getting off the ground. There are justifiable reservations regarding the method of recruitment of workers for these schemes. It has been suggested that in many cases the method of recruitment has led to a closed-shop type of operation. Responsibility for filling posts in such employment schemes should be the responsibility of the local National Manpower Service and the local council or corporation involved. It is of little comfort that unemployment at international level, particularly of young people, continues to be a serious problem. So far, in Europe there is no sign of any great improvement, indeed the signs are to the contrary. If this trend continues the EEC Commission must take action to alleviate or solve the problem. This would be of benefit to us as any additional aids towards youth employment would be of substantial help to us in creating jobs for young people. In the final analysis, however, the onus is on us to make whatever sacrifices are necessary. Unemployment is probably one of the greatest evils in our midst and it must be tackled properly so that we will have success in reducing it even further in the near future.

Our economic development during recent years and the accelerated growth during the past 12 months must give us added confidence in our future development in the immediate years ahead.

An Ceann Comhairle

: The Deputy has five minutes left.

Mr. V. Brady

: I just commenced this morning, a Cheann Comhairle.

An Ceann Comhairle

: Yes, at 10.34 a.m.

Mr. V. Brady

: I do not like to question the Chair, but are you quite sure?

An Ceann Comhairle

: Every speaker shall have 30 minutes.

Mr. V. Brady

: I have spoken for 16 minutes. In the past year we have been one of the few countries to show improved economic growth.

An Ceann Comhairle

: I wish to inform the Deputy that he now has 10 minutes.

Mr. V. Brady

: In that time conditions have not been too favourable and it is very encouraging to note that our rate of growth has been far above the EEC average. Our rate of inflation is down. Unemployment figures are coming down. They must, however, continue to improve. We have many advantages going for us. We should perhaps be doing a little better. We are in a very good position to attract more foreign industry. We must improve our image abroad and, of course, at home, so far as industrial relations are concerned. We have too many unofficial trade disputes. It is very disconcerting to note that the biggest percentage of industrial disputes last year were of an unofficial nature. Surely we should have reached a stage in our development where unofficial disputes should never arise? I do not for a moment place the blame on any particular section, whether management or worker. There are, however, three parties involved in any negotiation whether on pay, hours, internal disputes or whatever. Surely the parties should be big enough and mature enough to sit around a table and sort out their problems in a satisfactory way without anybody having to resort to unofficial action? We owe this maturity to the nation, we owe it to each other and, above all, we owe it to the many thousands of unemployed and particularly our young people who are seeking jobs for the first time. It is they who will suffer in the final analysis if foreign industrialists will not invest in this country.

The incentives for industrialists introduced by the Government in this year's budget are attracting many inquiries and great interest. Let us not cancel out these incentives. Let us be more broad-minded and fair to each other. The Government, and the Minister for Labour, particularly, have a responsibility in this area. The Minister has in the past stood accused for not becoming involved in strikes of some duration. Quite often for him to become involved would not necessarily help the situation. As has been pointed out on numerous occasions, machinery and procedures are available to all the parties in disputes and this machinery should be used in a proper way without necessarily having reference to the Minister. I hope, however, that the commission established by the Minister recently will come up with something constructive and will make good recommendations for improvement in this sphere.

It would not be sensible and indeed it would be rather naïve to think that in our economic development we can be divorced from all external factors. Our economy, based as it is on buying and selling abroad, must suffer in the event of under-development internationally. Estimates of European growth for this year show a figure of something under 3 per cent. This will be insufficient to create the needed additional employment but, irrespective of what happens at international level, we ourselves must take on the burden of responsibility and make ourselves equally competitive if not more competitive than our neighbours to attain the necessary growth at export level.

The Green Paper is a new and additional thorn in the sides of the Opposition parties. Their reaction has been that of the ostrich. There was vehement criticism of the Green Paper from the Opposition some days before it appeared, when they did not even know what it contained. In their wildest thoughts they could not have visualised that the Green Paper would turn out to be such a constructive and logical document, perhaps even revolutionary to the extent that it proposes to eliminate unemployment completely within five years. The Opposition Parties when in Government never considered that there was any way to create full employment. On the contrary. The Coalition Government accepted a minimum unemployment figure of at least 100,000 in modern-day circumstances. At one stage we had 117,000 officially unemployed. We all accept that the role of an Opposition is to oppose. In this term, however, the Opposition have carried out this role in a very disorganised and disjointed way.

An Ceann Comhairle

: The Deputy has four minutes.

Mr. V. Brady

: In the last 12 months neither Fine Gael nor Labour have offered any constructive opposition. They have not produced any alternative policies, with the exception of a brief policy on Northern Ireland which was altered after a few weeks following belated contact with the grassroots. Not a single piece of policy or a constructive suggestion has come from the Opposition since last June. Perhaps the reason for this is that both Fine Gael and Labour are now reconciled to sitting on the opposite benches for a further 16 years.

The Green Paper is purely a discussion paper, to examine the possibilities of speeding our progress towards full employment. It will create consultation discussion at all levels on the best way to go about achieving full employment for all our people. Perhaps the Opposition parties do not wish to attain such an objective. They should come out into the open and say that they are prepared to accept large-scale unemployment and that they are not prepared to consider anything that would go a long way towards providing jobs for our people. The electorate will not be fooled by this red herring. They proved many times in the past and as late as June 1977 that Fine Gael and Labour are only fooling themselves. I said earlier that Fianna Fáil came into Government because the people wanted a strong, decisive Government in which they could have confidence. That is why we came back with such a big majority. The Green Paper is now asking the people if they want full employment and at the same time it is setting out the options as to the best way such a policy can be attained. The Green Paper is honest and straight. Nobody can accuse the Government of being otherwise. I feel the Opposition will once more emerge from this particular effort with the usual lack of grace.

During the term of office of the previous Government law and order was a favourite banner and was thrown about quite a lot. At the same time we had a complete breakdown of law and order in our cities which deteriorated with time. We had the birth of large-scale juvenile crime and vandalism. Since Fianna Fáil came into office the strength of the Garda has been increased considerably.

There are a number of other points I would like to make but my time is up. The vast majority of the people I have come across in my constituency are very pleased with the Government's performance during the past 12 months. There are a lot of obstacles ahead which will be tackled by a Government working in unity and with a proper policy.

Mr. B. Desmond

: The motion before us relates to the Green Paper and to the adjournment of the House. We must examine the contention of the authors of the Green Paper that it represents "an imaginative and positive approach towards the problem". The paper also said that "the agenda for public discussion contains many radical choices". There is an urgent need not only for my party but for the House to examine the Green Paper and to put forward a critical but constructive alternative strategy to the country.

The Taoiseach has described the proposals in the Green Paper as radical. I submit that it is an abuse of the English language to suggest that it is in any way radical. The contents and the options outlined in the Green Paper are more akin, at a first reading, to an election manifesto of the Conservative Party in Britain for the next election than a response to Irish economic and social needs. The most frightening aspect of the Green Paper is that after 12 months in office all the Fianna Fáil Cabinet have to offer is the rather vague concept of work sharing and cuts in social expenditure. I do not know what the Cabinet have been doing for the past 12 months but they certainly must have worked with the enthusiasm of a chained gang in irons on this Green Paper because it certainly does not contain very much.

I am aware, as every Member of the House is, that there is a deep sense of national concern about unemployment, particularly about jobs for the thousands of young people who are now leaving school. I have no doubt that very many Irish people in employment, including myself, are prepared to make sacrifices so that our families do not have to emigrate or live on the dole. I believe that any Government calling for restraint must, above all, be seen in word and in deed to place a fair burden of sacrifice on all sections of the community. That is a real alternative which our party offer. We cannot support the assurances of my constituency colleague, the Minister for Economic Planning and Development, that all our people will ride on a rising tide of future prosperity provided people now in certain sections of the community are prepared to half drown themselves with sacrifices. I do not believe the deprived sections in our community will fall for this illusion. They fell for it in the past and they are still deprived as a result.

I am shocked to see that very many members of the Cabinet have no conception of what the real life of industry is on the factory floor and in the public service. It is absurd to suggest that work sharing, in the context in which it is proposed, which is also income sharing, reduced overtime and early retirement would produce 65,000 jobs in a year. When those jobs must come about in the context of reduced earnings, no real increase in earnings, more taxation or public service standstill in terms of expenditure, the proposition borders on the preposterous. If those meagre and largely irrelevant proposals towards job creation are all the Fianna Fáil Party have to offer on the anniversary of their election to office the prospects for the next few years are quite grim.

I believe that my constituency colleague, the Minister for Economic Planning and Development, is capable of far better work than was produced in the Green Paper. That is perhaps one of the most striking aspects of it. It is about time we got away from the pre-election article which he wrote in Business and Finance on 4 March 1976 because the Green Paper is virtually a rehash of the article by himself and Mr. Seán Barrett. We are told in that article where the cuts can be made. My constituency colleague is more than capable of producing far better work than this very disappointing document. I know that the pressures of party politics and of inter-departmental conflict and internal power struggles, which always goes on no matter what Cabinet are in office, leave their scars on documents but there is no reason why they should have left such a massive scar on this document. Another disturbing aspect is that the more hard-nosed and realistic members of the Cabinet—I will give two names to the Minister, Deputy Haughey and Deputy Brian Lenihan— freely admit that the basic assumptions behind this document are quite impractical at best. In practice they are quite reactionary, because we have the contrast of a political party which gave a £10 million handout to the best-off members of the community while threatening to abolish food subsidies for the poor. That kind of analogy does not require elaboration.

The £10 million tax rebate to about 2,000 individuals gives them £5,000 a year each. For each year to come they will have that benefit. That money would have built 650 houses each year for the homeless and would have helped to provide about 1,500 jobs each year. The situation is that a budget policy of massive handouts to everybody has resulted in a decrease of £200 million in State revenue in 1978 money terms. Now we are told that the shortfall has to be made good by general cuts in public expenditure. The pensioner and the unemployed breadwinner with a limited income who is getting no relief from the abolition of rates and car tax are now being asked to suffer from the abolition of food subsidies in the years ahead. They are even being asked to suffer from the cutback in the CIE programme. They are being asked to suffer what will effectively be a standstill with no real increase in social welfare or in the health services.

The electorate are going to scorn that kind of inverse means test. I do not see anybody morally supporting a Government which provides massive handouts to the electorate, particularly to the better-off sections of the community, and a year later demands sacrifices from the less well-off members of the community. The money that is urgently needed for social welfare, the health services and education was squandered by Fianna Fáil in their quest for power at any price. At a time when every single scarce resource of the State should be exclusively devoted to job creation, all Ministers Colley and O'Donoghue gave in the budget was a supermarket of free offers. Like all free offers, the customers will have to pay in full measure at the checkout.

The Green Paper does not hold out much hope for a significant reduction in unemployment in the short term. The job creation measures of the Government in the budget were welcome. They were decisive but are not sufficient to make an impact on unemployment. It has to be pointed out that the emigration figure of 14,000 in the past 12 months together with the partial recovery of the European economy and an excellent tourist season this year, have contributed as much to the reduction in the number on the live register as the Fianna Fáil job creation programme.

I am disappointed that the Green Paper does not see any major dynamic future for public enterprise. The proposals concerning State-sponsored bodies are rather sparse. The idea of an industrial development corporation is once again ignored. We are back to the old consortium which has not met more than three times in 12 months. I am disappointed that the CIE capital programme is half buried. By and large, the public capital programme seems destined to stand still. I am disappointed that the prospect of joint ventures between State-sponsored bodies and private companies is only half-heartedly endorsed. There does not seem to be any urgency about the need for exploiting our oil, gas and mineral resources. I do not know what the Cabinet are up to these days but I do not get an impression of urgency in that regard.

I know that the Government have bragged about the reduction in inflation to 6.2 per cent. When considering that figure we must take into account the abolition of rates and the stability in world commodity prices. To some extent it ignores the hidden inflation in food prices which has hit low-income families and pensioners. For example, the food price index showed an 8 per cent increase over the past 12 months. The underlying aspect of the 6.2 per cent inflation rate should not be ignored in the context of phasing out food subsidies, no increase in children's allowances this year and no social welfare increases in October.

One of the more sickening aspects of the Green Paper is its failure to see any responsible role for a fair system of taxation in our economic and social structure. We gave a few tax reliefs, abolished wealth tax and that is it. I have always said that taxation is a method of serving the dual purpose of providing the State with resources for financing vital public and welfare services and of ensuring a more equitable distribution of income and wealth. The squandering spree of the Fianna Fáil Party in the election, the two-stage rocket of a budget and the scramble backwards in the Green Paper have emasculated our taxation system. I believe that taxation is necessary if we are to have the public services we need in a modern and socially progressive democracy. Taxation is necessary if we are to reform the quality and improve the scope of our social welfare, health and education services.

The Labour Party's dispute with the Fianna Fáil Party's approach is with the manner in which the weight of taxation foreshadowed in the Green Paper is to be distributed now and in the future. There is clear evidence in the Green Paper that the relative burden of taxation and general charges on wage and salary earners are to be further increased. An example of that approach is, the temptation open to Deputy Colley to put a 2 per cent payroll tax on wage and salary earners to pay for our future health services which would bring in £35 million per year. That is the kind of option which people will be facing.

The Government have already made the tax system less progressive by dismantling capital taxation, the abolition of most domestic rates and the abolition of most road taxes. As a result, the contribution in taxes by the relatively better-off sections of the community has diminished. They are now buying bigger and better houses and will have much to say if second mortgaging is proposed by the Government. They are grabbing as much property and farmland as they can buy. Most of them are blowing their tax reliefs and rates reliefs on foreign holidays. Just try to get your car in or out of Dublin Airport at present and you will see clear evidence of where this money, given by Fianna Fáil to the relatively better-off section of the community, is going.

Comparatively little of what that section saved in taxation is being invested now in productive capital formation. If it were not for the productive investment growth from America we would be in even more serious trouble. Such investment is by no means assured or stable. Therefore, the alternative strategy of the Green Paper should have been directed to strengthening the general recovery of the economy, towards more radical and more definite measures to reduce unemployment and raise living standards. Instead we see prospective inflation and budget cuts, increased taxation and a minimal job creation programme.

There is an alternative to this very conservative Green Paper. I regret to have to use that description. I had been very hopeful that we would see a major document. I can assure the Minister, Professor O'Donoghue, that there is no more critical person in the House than myself in relation to previous Green Papers. In Killarney I had great disappointment in saying very harsh things about the Green Paper of the previous administration in the final year of their office. I was in serious difficulty with the Government side at that time for expressing such views, but I have always expressed my views and that is what we are here for. The present Green Paper is on a par with the previous one except that undoubtedly some of the chapters dropped from the earlier one in Deputy Ryan's time as Minister for Finance seem to have been resurrected and are emerging in a very conservative context, particularly as regards public expenditure.

The alternative strategy should be that of a modern mixed Irish economy. We can bring about full employment without poverty. It is not enough to say to the Opposition: "Are you or are you not in favour of full employment? Do you or do you not want it?" The issue is how to have it. Our strategy should be based on a much more effective system of national economic and social planning which would include the development of more commercial State enterprises. I should like to see the expansion of agriculture-based industries, where there is considerable scope. We need the encouragement of more investment in home-based exporting manufacturing plant in the private sector. I am not opposed to private enterprise but I do not expect it to provide full employment—which it never set out to do. Those who say private enterprise has failed to provide employment can scarcely understand the fundamental mechanics of the economy. I favour more investment in home-based manufacturing enterprise and I favour the balanced encouragement of foreign investment. The Government have given excessive emphasis to that aspect, trotting off to America at every hand's turn and to multinational companies trying solely to get foreign investment going here almost as though it was our saviour.

We should have an extension of our public capital programme to provide a better general infrastructure, better transport and communications. We can also provide employment from the immediate exploitation of our oil, gas, mineral, bogland and timber resources. The latter two have great potential. We should set up a national development corporation to initiate new industrial development and co-ordinate existing programmes. Two or three years ago I was sceptical about the idea of a national development corporation. I am opposed to bureaucratic structures for their own sake but the more I see the lack of Government policy in the case of successive Governments and the more I see lack of co-ordination between different State agencies the more I am converted to the idea of a general industrial development corporation, an extension of the concept of the IDA. This would be of major benefit. The consortium idea proposed and initiated by Fianna Fáil is not working. I do not think the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy, Deputy O'Malley, a very competent Minister in many ways, believes in it. The measures I am suggesting would provide many new jobs which with the provision of more jobs in our education and training services and in our social and health services, could bring about a degree of full employment.

There has been excessive dependence of late on foreign companies for the development of new industries. I am perturbed that we are becoming heavily dependent on American and multi-national enterprises. No Government here is likely to carry great influence on the foreign investment policies and controls of the Carter administration, for instance. We may have a good deal of ethnic influence, but any retrenchment in US policy in this area could have most serious effects on domestic employment. Large sections of our industry are now subject to external control. There is still a substantial degree of uncertainty about the future of our export tax relief system in the context of EEC policy. Therefore, I would wish to see much greater stress in Government policy on Irish participation in our industrial sector. For example only 3 per cent of jobs in manufacturing industry are in our public enterprises. We should have far greater expansion in that area.

In the Labour Party, as in ICTU, we have advocated the setting up of an industrial development corporation. It would have a number of functions. I am open to argument on it but I believe there is need for the establishment of new State industrial enterprises and for a more positive approach to the promotion of joint ventures between State-sponsored enterprises and private entrepreneurs. An industrial development corporation could identify potentially viable new industrial projects, for instance, in the food processing and maritime sectors.

I have been hypercritical of the Green Paper but I think the food processing end of it was reasonable. The section dealing with agriculture as a whole was thoughtful. There were other sections such as higher education, which are courageous, to say the least of them, but I do not know what happened in the slot machine at Cabinet discussions, but by and large there are aspects of the Green Paper which are certainly very defective.

There is need to balance the current large influx of foreign based industry, and an industrial development corporation can do this. We need a countervailing industrial influence with the development of more Irish participation in industry. A further function of an IDC would be to co-ordinate the substantial involvement of State agencies in the industrial sector. These agencies do invaluable work in industrial research, export promotion, in the advisory services and in industrial training and education, but there is need to co-ordinate these activities to ensure that they do not waste taxpayers' money and that we obtain the optimum benefit from their resources.

We come back to the old problem: where does the money come from? I believe there are cash resources in the country. The more I travel around the country, even in my own constituency, the more I am convinced that there is plenty of money and no need for great cutbacks in public expenditure. I am completely opposed to abuse even with regard to social expenditure, but I am appalled at the way this document has been presented. One has only to go into a public house in any city or town on any night and one can see the amount of money being spent. We can find the money for many of the services we wish to introduce.

We can have the cash resources we want from a just system of general taxation, which we do not have. We can have those resources from a proper social incomes control over the banking and credit systems, particularly with regard to the use of their money on house construction. We must do something about land speculation which is outrageous. All sections of the community will have to make more sacrifices in the national interest.

A good deal of the money which has come from the EEC by way of CAP income should be more fairly distributed. I am not opposed to the farming community getting as much money as they can from the Community but once the money comes to this country it should be redistributed more effectively. At the moment it is being distributed in a very narrow way, to very large farmers in certain counties, and they pay no tax.

The stress and the balance of the Green Paper is out of touch. It has proved to be a disappointment. I have not met many economists who regard it as a significant analysis of the present situation. I have not met many members of the NESC who regard it as containing positive and far-reaching proposals. I do not want to discourage the Minister for Economic Planning and Development but we must go back to the grindstone. There is a need to take very difficult political decisions at Cabinet level, to have another look at the document. My outline of alternative strategy has something to offer. I hope my contribution will not be regarded as too critical and that it will be regarded as positive. After 12 months of Fianna Fáil Government we are entitled to take stock of the economic and social policies of the Cabinet. I have no doubt that the Green Paper will be changed substantially. The Minister and the Cabinet should have a radical re-think of the document. I would then welcome it, irrespective of party political affiliation.

Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture (Mr. Hussey)

: The Adjournment Debate every year gives the Government an opportunity to examine their performance in the previous 12 months and to charter their course for the coming year. This Government are almost one year in office and today we can look back on their performance in that time.

First, we can look at the situation we inherited last year. At that time our country was listed among the nations in Europe with the highest rate of inflation and unemployment and we had prices spiralling practically every day. The people were disillusioned by the inability of the then Government to cope with those serious problems and there was a complete lack of confidence in the country. Even the Government themselves seemed to be bereft of any idea of how to govern. I appreciate that Coalition Governments are faced with more difficult problems than a one-party Government, particularly in relation to taking decisions and to getting agreement at Cabinet level and so on. This is especially the case when the parties in Government are made up of people with totally differing ideologies. I appreciate that it is difficult to get them to speak with one voice. That is why during those years of Coalition rule we had on a number of occasions Ministers making certain pronouncements but when questioned about them usually they said the views they were putting forward were not necessarily the views of the Government. This has always been the difficulty of a Coalition Government.

Today we can examine the achievements of the Fianna Fáil Government now almost one year in office. We can look back with pride on our achievements in those difficult months. It has been generally accepted that inflation has been reduced, for the first time in many years the unemployment figure is below 100,000, prices have steadied and there is an air of confidence in the country. The people feel we are moving forward steadily and that they can look forward with confidence to years of progress under this Fianna Fáil administration.

In our election manifesto last year we set out what we proposed to do to tackle our serious problems of trying to root out the evils that beset our Government and our country. In so far as it was possible in the short term we have succeeded in carrying out the promises in the manifesto. We abolished domestic rates and road tax on cars up to 16 h.p. We increased housing grants and loans and there has been an upsurge in the building and construction industry partly because of that increase which gave new hope to many young people who wanted to build their own homes. We have seen an increase in third-level education grants which has given hope to many young students. Jobs have been created for our young people and this has been the primary concern of the Government. Other items in the manifesto have still to be fulfilled. We said it was a five year programme. It cannot be achieved overnight and the Government have four years to implement the remainder of the manifesto. I have no doubt that this will be done.

For the remainder of my speech I shall deal with agriculture because this is the area for which I am responsible. Here, also, confidence has been restored. The favourable out-turn for agriculture in 1977 is probably already familiar to the House and I shall refer only briefly to the salient features. The overall increase in gross agricultural output was about 9 per cent. This very significant advance, even though attributable in part to good weather conditions, displays an underlying upward trend in farm production, higher productivity and improving standards of efficiency on farms.

The growth in volume and a very substantial advance in farm prices brought total agricultural output in 1977 up by about £350 million to reach a record level of £1,375 million. The volume and value of imports increased also, and, allowing for this, total family farm incomes reached well over £700 million. This was over one-third above that of the previous year. The improved income in 1977 compensated farmers for the outcome in 1976 when the advance in their income did not keep pace with those in other sectors or with the rise in living costs.

The improved income position of the farmers last year provided the resources necessary for further investment within the agricultural sector. There are very clear indications of a substantial level of investment being undertaken by farmers. Approvals for land reclamation works reached nearly 180,000 acres in 1977. Expenditure on farm buildings to the tune of over £70 million was approved for grant purposes under the farm modernisation scheme. The number of new tractors purchased is up by 20 per cent. Fertiliser use increased by more than 12 per cent in 1976-1977 and the level of sales this year clearly indicates a further expansion in fertiliser use.

Creamery milk production continues to show a significant upward trend in the present year and all the indications are that this trend will be maintained. There are good prospects too for growth in the livestock sector, and growth here will be enhanced if greater intensification and higher stocking rates are achieved and modern output systems adopted. The sheep industry has been given a new lease of life as a result of the arrangements made for access to the French market. We can, therefore, expect that this industry will now recover rapidly from the doldrums of past years. The acreage under barley is also up again this year.

Taken all round, therefore, the prospects for the farm industry are excellent and there is no doubt that agriculture will continue to make its contribution to growth in the economy. It is of the utmost importance not to lose sight of the value of that contribution, nor, or course, should we risk complacency simply because farmers and farming are doing well at present. Agricultural land is this country's major national resource. In terms of employment in farming itself and in industries either supplying farmers with their inputs or processing farm produce, agriculture is of vital importance. It is worth reminding ourselves of the value of our agricultural exports in our balance of payments. For example, the EEC prices deal negotiated by our Minister for Agriculture last May meant an annual gain of about £105 million for the Irish agricultural sector and an expected balance of payments benefit of about £70 million a year. The low import content of agricultural products exported means that agriculture's contribution to our balance of payments is greatly enhanced in value. I make these points merely to emphasise that when the farming industry is doing well it is not at the expense of the rest of the economy; quite the contrary. A prosperous agriculture brings enormous benefits to the entire community.

The Green Paper points to a number of policy options in relation to agriculture. These concentrate firstly on ways and means of maintaining and, where possible, accelerating the upward thrust in output from primary farm products. All the options set out in this area, whether they relate to performance incentives, a new direction and more positive development role for the advisory services, a greater emphasis on farmer training and education, a fresh approach to improving farm structure, a conscious programme for accelerated land drainage, a review of the smallholders' dole system and a suitable taxation policy for farmers, are all positively motivated. Some commentators have set out to look at many items in the Green Paper in a totally negative way or have sought to distort the ideas outlined in it purely in terms of cutting this or that area of expenditure. This negative approach is not helpful. The entire basis for the options is to seek to direct expenditure in the most productive possible way in terms of increased output and job creation. I hope that the farming bodies will approach the discussion which will be taking place on the Green Paper in an equally positive way during the coming weeks.

The main contribution which the farming industry can make to job creation will be to a great extent in the food processing industries which depend on the produce of the farm for their raw materials. In so far as farm output can be increased the throughput of the processing industries can be expanded and extra jobs can be provided in these industries. This is the second main area of discussion in the Green Paper.

There is no question of ignoring the significant employment content in farming itself. Indeed, in all discussions on the EEC socio-structural directives up to the present the Minister has placed special emphasis on the need to rethink the philosophy underlying these directives. When these directives were framed in the early 1970s we faced a much different situation from what we have today. At that time the European economy was buoyant and there was every prospect of alternative employment for those who might want to leave farming. In that climate it was rational that the directives should seek to induce movement of people out of agriculture so that those who remained in the industry could enjoy better living prospects. Today when employment is a critical issue, the philosophy of the sixties and early seventies is no longer appropriate. A job preserved on the farm now is as valuable as, and in some respects more so than, a job created elsewhere. Whatever about the long-term value of the strategy inherent in the EEC directives, we must take count of the situation that faces us at present. When we do so, we come to the conclusion that the right approach now must be to encourage all those who want to stay in farming to develop their holdings fully so that they can increase output as rapidly as possible and in the process also get a fair income from farming. This must be the objective to pursue in the review of the directives which is currently in progress. I am glad to see that in their policy statement issues this week the Fine Gael Party have now come to this same conclusion.

It is not that the directives as they stand have any adverse effect on farming. First of all, they offer a very substantial incentive towards capital investment by farmers. The State's expenditure on capital grants to farmers this year will be £28 million, and the figures for land reclamation and building work on farms, which I quoted earlier, indicate clearly that farmers are responding to the incentives offered.

There is an apparent belief in some quarters that only development farmers qualify for these grants. That is not the case at all. The bulk of the State's expenditure goes to farmers outside the development category. It is fair to say that the grants for farmers are generous and we certainly cannot over-emphasise the value of grants in developing farm output. The £28 million spent by the State this year may be small when compared with the £105 million accruing to farming from the recent price increases. I firmly believe it is the price he gets in the market place that determines the farmer's confidence in the future and stimulates his decision to expand output and, if I am right in this belief, the farmer has every reason for confidence at the present time.

There is an attitude that the only future for transitional farmers is to get out of farming. This is an attitude which, as well as being wrong, tends to erode farmer confidence instead of developing it. I think it was a Macra na Feirme spokesman who said recently that the modernisation directive is not an attempt to annihilate the small farmer and he went on to say that we should do less complaining about the EEC and seek more to avail of the opportunities it offered to farmers. This is the aggressive attitude one hopes for from young farmers.

The term "transitional farmer" is a much abused one. In my book the greatest scope for the development of the industry rests with the big numbers of farmers in this category and I hope to see the vast majority move upwards and onwards and certainly not out of farming. I want to echo in a general way the call for less moaning about EEC measures. As a west of Ireland man I would be concerned if we were not able to point to a real benefit from our membership of the Community. The benefits are, of course, there. Apart altogether from price gains, which apply to all areas across the board, under the disadvantaged area directive a sum of almost £21 million will be disbursed in the present year. Almost all of it will be in western areas. This is a big sum even by modern standards and it clearly brings a very valuable supplementary income to western farmers, many of whom are also in receipt of the smallholder's assistance from the State.

The general review of the areas designated as disadvantaged is now almost complete. All the areas which sought inclusion have been looked at and the boundaries of the existing areas have also been examined. The result is that a vast amount of information has been complied. This is now being sifted and assessed and over the coming months I shall be considering what possible adjustments might be appropriate. I have just announced the rates of headage payment for the current year. The rates for cattle and beef cows show an increase all round of £1 per livestock unit and the overall maximum payment for an individual farmer has gone up to £400 as against £370 at which it stood in 1977. Up to the present 35 per cent of the State's expenditure under these schemes has been met from EEC funds. There is a proposal already tabled by the EEC Commission to speed up the rate of recruitment to 50 per cent and I would hope that the Council of Ministers would take a positive decision on this before long. Apart from the value of these payments in supplementing farmers' income in problem areas, the payments should also constitute a strong incentive to small farmers in western areas to increase the number of cattle carried so as to gain the maximum benefit up to the limit of £400 a year.

Another EEC measure of direct interest to the west is the drainage measure. Deputies will be aware that one element in the price package agreed upon by the Council of Ministers in May was a decision in principle to provide for this measure. This means that about £21 million of EEC money will be directed towards accelerating drainage work at arterial and field level throughout the 12 western counties over a five-year period. This is now a firm decision and, once again, it shows that the special needs of problem areas like the west are not overlooked by the Community. There always seem to be plenty of voices ready to condemn the EEC but here is a tangible earnest of the Com-munity's willingness to assist where the need for assistance is established. Now that the decision to give funds for drainage has been taken the next step is to prepare a detailed programme for implementation of the scheme on the ground over a five-year period. This will cover such aspects as the acreages we would set as targets to be tackled each year, the way in which the funds would be disbursed, the organisation of the procedures to be established, the role of the co-operatives and so on. A considerable amount of detail and information must be complied and submitted to the Commission for approval. The preparation of the programme is already well advanced and my hope is that we can see the whole measure translated into action on the ground before very long.

This particular scheme relates to what I said about employment in farming and related industries. Apart from the jobs which can be generated in drainage activity the whole purpose of the exercise must be to put extra productive land at the disposal of farmers. If we do this, and follow up with proper management and use of the additional land which is improved, we will be making it possible for more farmers to expand output, improve their incomes and stay on in farming. At the same time we will be producing additional supplies of raw materials for expansion of activity in the processing industries. It all boils down to better job prospects all round.

Deputies will know that the Council of Ministers invited the Commissioner for Agriculture to present additional proposals which would aim at improving further the general conditions of farmers in the west. This decision came as a result of persistent demands by the Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Gibbons, that there was a genuine need for such measures and, of course, the fact that the Council heeded those demands is again an acknowledgement of their willingness to take special account of problem areas. Discussions on the possible content of further measures that might be appropriate for the west are progressing and we can expect to see specific proposals on the table before very long. The upshot of all this concern for western farmers will surely be that agriculture in the west will have a great deal going for it over the next decade. I believe it is possible to create a new dynamism among western farmers. It is there already in a number of areas. The more progressive cooperative societies have been the main agents for progressive developments. Building on their example we should be able to get things moving throughout the west.

Land, for us, is the equivalent of oil or mineral resources for other countries. Of all the EEC partners, we are unique to the extent to which the economy depends on agriculture. In times of recession that dependence becomes doubly important. The farming industry have not been found wanting in this respect over the past few years and we can be confident that they will perform well in the future.

I am confident that this administration will give every help and encouragement to the farmers to achieve greater productivity on the land, greater incomes for themselves and their families, and by doing so they will be making a more valuable contribution to our economy.

Mr. T. J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan-Monaghan): An Adjournment Debate before the long summer recess has been availed of over the years to take a look at the Government's performance over the previous 12 months. It is appropriate that on this occasion we should do that because this Government have been in power for 12 months. Contrary to what the Minister for State and Deputy Brady said this morning, the economy was handed over to them in a sound and growing condition. That was acknowledged by the Taoiseach in the December Adjournment Debate. The economy was nursed through a terrific economic international blizzard and was left in a sound and growing condition. In the words of the Taoiseach, the economy was ready to take off on a sound foundation. It is interesting that we should have a look now at how this Government have performed.

In my opinion the Green Paper has been introduced into this debate to muddy the water, to confuse the issue and to distract attention from the Government's performance. We cannot look at the Green Paper without looking at another document—the Fianna Fáil election manifesto. That manifesto was not about the economy but getting votes. It worked well in that regard. They got the votes on the promises contained in it—to abolish rates on houses, motor taxation and by implication to abolish wealth tax. Those promises have been paid for by borrowing on a grand scale. The time to repay that borrowing has not yet come. The interim between the time when a large sum is borrowed and the repayment date is always a pleasant period because it is a time of spending, a time to enjoy the borrowed money.

For election purposes in 1977 this Government borrowed money to abolish motor car taxation regardless of the income or the capacity of the car owner to pay. They borrowed money to derate houses regardless of the capacity or the income of the occupiers of those houses. They borrowed money to abolish wealth tax. They engaged in that borrowing with an enthusiasm and recklessness that would do credit to a spendthrift who would borrow money to go to the Chelthenham races or buy a fur coat or other luxuries. That was the type of performance the Government engaged in. As I said, the manifesto was not about the economy; it was about getting votes. The White Paper since published and the Green Paper are not about the economy either. They are to pay for the manifesto promises, for the spendthrift activities indulged in by the Government to get into office.

We have been accused by the Taoiseach of being pessimistic. Indirectly we have been accused of being antinational in regard to the Green Paper. I do not believe that document will generate confidence or that it will generate an economic atmosphere that will encourage people to invest. I am not the only person who has doubts about it. Today the ESRI published a document which throws the greatest doubt on the Green Paper and on the likelihood of that document to attain its objectives.

Fianna Fáil in government always have a stop-go approach to the economy, and that is what we have here. Last year they had money to spare. Now we have a document talking about cutbacks in the non-productive fields. If they talk about cutting back, in the non-productive fields they are really talking about less money being in circulation. If they talk about cutbacks in house building and social welfare, that means there is less money in circulation.

If I were a businessman thinking about investing in the immediate future and read the Green Paper and the report from the ESRI I would not feel confident; I would feel very doubtful about the future and would be slow in investing. That is the situation the Government have created by their spendthrift policies to get into office. Now they are going in the other direction. It would be a pity to spend too much time dealing with the Green Paper. On the one hand we have the Minister for Economic Planning and Development and on the other we have the independent experts in the ESRI who wrote their paper before the Green Paper was published. Let them battle it out and let the business people and the investing public judge. I trust that the strategy of the Government works but if it fails the blame must lie fairly and squarely with them for creating the situation in which we find ourselves.

I am the spokesman for my party on matters dealing with the environment and I propose to devote the remainder of my remarks to that field. The Minister for the Environment is a very nice person and one whose company one would enjoy but he has been a dismal failure in the Department. Perhaps he was given a task that was hard to perform. If the title of the Department means anything they are entrusted with the care of the environment. Last year the new Government met for a couple of days in July and adjourned until October and when the Dáil resumed I questioned the Minister as to his proposal about an environmental policy and I was told that I should repeat the questions after about four months when there would be some news. After Christmas I complied with that suggestion and there was a press release from the Department to the effect that the Minister was to prepare several policies. However, nothing happened and there is yet no definite policy on the environment or on any aspect of it. Four months later, on the eve of this debate, we had another announcement from the Department informing us that the Minister was setting up a council to advise him. There is no national policy, no regional policy on the environment. There is no policy in this respect relating to the Dublin city centre area or in regard to new housing schemes. Neither is there any policy relating to the conservation of our heritage, to major industrial development or to energy or transportation. It looks as if we are merely to drift on with a Department with a new name who have not indicated any performance to date. Time does not permit me to develop the matter further but I should like to hear from the Minister on the points I have raised.

One part of their policy on which the Government are clear is their determination to cut back on local authority housing. They served notice of their intention in this respect in the White Paper and they have repeated it in the Green Paper but we do not need any paper to make us aware of the Government's intention. The facts speak for themselves.

In the first quarter of 1978 there was a fall in the completion of local authority houses to 906 compared with 1,171 in the same period of 1977. That was a decrease of 20 per cent. The amount of money allocated for new houses to commence after 31 July this year has been cut back savagely. County councils applied to the Department for allocations of almost £14 million but were granted only a little more than £4 million or about one-third of what they requested. That confirms the Government's intention to implement a cutback in this area.

Mr. Barrett

: We never said that.

Mr. T. J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan-Monaghan): Time does not permit me to spell out what is involved and I would ask the Minister to desist from interrupting me.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

: The Minister will have an opportunity of replying.

Mr. T. J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan-Monaghan): The excuse offered for this savage cutback is that people wish to build their own houses but such an undertaking is now out of the reach of the ordinary family. Let us consider briefly the position. The cost of land for new houses in the County Borough of Dublin has increased from £3,755 per acre in 1976 to £4,833 per acre in 1977—an increase of 29 per cent. In the remainder of County Dublin the increase is 89 per cent. Local authority loans have fallen from 17.3 per cent of the total loans in 1976 to 10 per cent in 1977. The cost of houses in the private sector has increased by 30.46 per cent between the first quarter of 1977 and the first quarter of 1978, notwithstanding the fact that the house building cost index has increased by only 8.3 per cent and the Consumer Price Index by 8.4 per cent.

The Department of the Environment and the Department of Industry, Commerce and Energy have thrown in the towel completely so far as controlling housing costs are concerned. I am fortunate in that I have before me some information from the Department of the Environment which bears out what I am saying. The price of imported timber decreased by 9.3 per cent between April 1977 and April 1978 but that decrease is not reflected in any way in the house building cost index. The Department of the Taoiseach did not know that the cost of timber had decreased by that amount and neither was the information available to the Department of the Environment. The Department of Industry, Commerce and Energy are only being made aware of it now after I drew it to the attention of the Minister.

On 27 June I tabled a question to the Minister for the Environment asking whether there had been a decrease in the price of imported timber in the last 12 months and, if so, the percentage decrease and whether this decrease had been reflected in the house building cost index. The Minister replied:

The average price per tonne of imported coniferous sawn timber decreased from £149.50 to £135.53 or 9.3 per cent between April 1977 and April 1978 (the latest month for which figures are available). The timber element in the house building cost index, which is related to the trade price of timber, has remained static over the period in question, as trade prices have not reflected the decrease referred to. I am bringing this aspect of the matter to the attention of the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy for any action he may consider necessary under the Prices Act.

So much for the promise in the manifesto to monitor prices and to restructure the Prices Commission. Some agencies and timber merchants in this country are being allowed to rob people who have been building houses for the last 12 months to the extent of almost £14 per tonne. I want to know what the Minister has to say about that. I want him to explain how the price of houses has jumped by 30.34 per cent between the first quarter of 1977 and the first quarter of 1978 while the housing building cost index has increased by only 8.3 per cent and the consumer price index by 8.4 per cent. Is it not obvious that the Government are standing idly by, in the immortal words of their leader, and allowing young married couples to be fleeced, right, left and centre while, at the same time, refusing to build local authority houses and telling people they should build their own homes.

The next matter with which I want to deal is rates on private houses. We know that the Government, in their manifesto, undertook to relieve private houses of rates. We know that they did that. But they also undertook in their manifesto to see to it that the rate relief which the landlords would enjoy would be passed on to the tenants. That has not been done. Legislation was necessary to implement that promise. The requisite Bill to pass on the rates relief to 300,000 tenants in this country was introduced in this House on 14 December 1977. I need not repeat the history of that Bill. There were a couple of hours debate on it in this House in the last month or so. I pointed out that that Bill was absolutely defective, that it would not pass on rates relief to the tenants, that it would not afford tenants the machinery under which they might claim rates from the landlords who are enjoying several million pounds worth of relief as a result of that manifesto. We are going on holidays now until 11 October and that Bill still has not had a Second Reading. The Government made no serious attempt to have it passed through this House. As chief spokesman for the Opposition I had the opportunity of speaking on it on two occasions only, for a total of about 40 minutes. That Bill has no chance now of becoming law until well after next Christmas, over 12 months after the introduction of rates relief which is enjoyed by landlords but which has not been passed on to the tenants. Many of these tenants will have left their flats in Dublin or their private houses in the meantime and will never get this relief. The Minister for Finance, to whom I mentioned the matter in the House the other day, seemed to think it was not necessary to have legislation to enable tenants obtain this relief. Of course it is necessary. Tenants can claim if they are living in controlled dwellings, but approximately 5 per cent only of rented dwellings in this State are controlled. The remainder of tenants are left to their own devices. That is a deplorable dereliction of duty on the part of the Minister for the Environment and the Government. However, perhaps the Minister was given an impossible task.

Again in regard to the same Department—the Department of the Environment—I might say the Road Traffic Act broke down eight months ago. Since then there has been no satisfactory machinery for dealing with the offence of driving motor vehicles with too much alcohol in the blood. It took the Minister and his Department over eight months to get a Bill into this House to amend the Road Traffic Act and close the loopholes. Were it not for the co-operation given from this side of the House, again we would be going into recess with that Bill not enacted, with inadequate machinery still at the disposal of the Garda Síochána in regard to this very serious matter. It is another example of the way the Government deal with the serious business entrusted to them.

Another bit of dirty work the Minister for the Environment was asked to undertake was that in relation to the reduction of the agricultural grant. This Government came into power leading farmers to believe that all they had to do was elect Fianna Fáil to office and they would see no more taxation. The Minister for the Environment, as the agent for the Minister for Finance, with the concurrence of the Minister for Agriculture, put a Bill through this House reducing the agricultural grant to £60 and increasing the rates of farmers by various percentages from 33 to over 80. The Green Paper we are now discussing contains proposals to reduce that agricultural grant further and indeed abolish it altogether. Do the back benchers of Fianna Fáil approve of that?

I listened to the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture here for the last half hour dealing with agriculture. Unless I missed it I do not think he made any reference to land structures or to the Land Commission. He concluded his contribution by saying that land was as precious to our people as is oil to the Arabs. If so the farmers of this country are being thrown to the wolves. On the Land Bond Bill debate the other day I ascertained that the activities of the Land Commission had come to a standstill; in the last year they acquired compulsorily only 15,000 acres of land compared with their activities in my best year in office when their intake was approximately 34,000 acres. Again, we are going into recess until 11 October next and the Land Commission have been instructed by the Department of Finance to cease serving Section 14 notices, to cease acquiring land. The result of that is that small and large farms coming on the market are up for grabs at the mercy of speculators, professional people, non-farmers and very large farmers. The farmer with perhaps 30 or 35 acres of land will have no chance of buying 10 or 15 acres of land, or 20 or 30 acres of land, if it comes on the market within striking distance of him. That land is gobbled up by the big man, by the speculators, by people who are delighted to get into land now, people who heretofore could not be got to look across a ditch into a field at the time of the economic war or compulsory tillage.

It is an absolute disgrace that the Land Commission are not being encouraged to serve section 40 notices to protect the small farmers until the Minister, who in Opposition waxed eloquent about chequebook farmers buying up the land and depriving the small farmers of it, is in a position to implement the report of the commission set up by the previous Government which has been in this Government's hands for nearly 12 months now and until such time as the Minister gets legislation through this House to enable the small farms to be brought up to a viable acreage and to protect them from the ravages I have mentioned. It is no use for the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture to talk about the importance of keeping people on the land and the importance of the small farmers in the west if he, his Minister and their agent, the Land Commission, are not prepared to do anything to help and to protect them.

Minister for the Environment (Mr. Barrett)

: Shortly after I came in I heard Deputy Fitzpatrick refer to me as a nice fellow but a dismal failure in the Department of the Environment. I will not dispute with or worry about the term "nice fellow". What people think of me as a person is their business, but if I could be described as a dismal failure by the Deputy I should love to hear his description of my predecessor when what happened in this Department over the four-and-a-half years of the Coalition's term of office as a result of the policies my predecessor was obliged to pursue is compared with what happened during the past 12 months.

When I took over the Department of the Environment approvals for new house grants for the first six months of 1977 totalled 2,150. The number of grant applications for the new £1,000 grant reached 14,000 during the past 12 months, 9,000 of which have already been approved. Surely this could hardly be described as a dismal failure. Before I took over this Department sewerage schemes and road works were grinding to a halt because of lack of money. Since then there has been a drastic change for the better. The allocation for sewerage schemes this year has increased by £10 million and the allocation for roadworks has increased by nearly 40 per cent. Is this to be described as a dismal failure?

We gave undertakings in the manifesto. My Department have fulfilled their commitments, and will again where the policies of the Green Paper are concerned. We said we would do away with domestic rates and on the day after I was appointed we did this by way of a motion affecting 880,000 ratepayers. According to Deputy Fitzpatrick this is a dismal failure. We also said that we would remove road tax on cars of 16 horsepower and less. We did this on 16 April, the day after the Government was appointed, benefiting the vast majority of motorists. We increased the new house grant from £325 to £1,000 and removed the income limit of £2,350 that was in existence from 1 January 1976. The popularity of this decision is evidenced in the number of applications for the £1,000 grant. We increased from £200 to £600 the reconstruction or improvement grants for people who wished to improve their homes and we increased the water and sewerage grants. Of course, all this is a dismal failure and we should not have done it, according to Deputy Fitzpatrick. There are other instances of where we introduced necessary improvements. For example, in relation to houses for old people there are improved grants and loan facilities available for people who supply or build these houses. So far as my Department are concerned, there is nothing that we said we would do in the manifesto that we have not done. I have fulfilled my part of the manifesto; but, according to Deputy Fitzpatrick, I am a dismal failure.

This year it is estimated that my Department and the local authorities will spend a total of £560 million. More than £400 million of this will come from central funds and the remainder will come from rates which are still outstanding and from other sources of income available to local authorities. The massive injection of funds into the local authority sector this year gives an indication of the contribution this sector can make to our national economic and social advancement. For the man in the street this sector provides vital services without which ordinary life would be seriously disrupted. In these days of concern about employment it should not be overlooked that local authorities are major employers. The Department of the Environment have been deeply involved in the implementation of many of the policies of the Government outlined in the manifesto, again in the White Paper last January and more recently in the Green Paper. In important respects realisation of the Government's aim of economic and social progress has hinged on the efforts of the local authorities under my guidance as Minister for the Environment.

With regard to Deputy Fitzpatrick's criticism of the renaming of this Department, the decision to have a Department of the Environment is surely an indication of the Government's determination that good quality physical surroundings should be part and parcel of plans for improving our living standards. The Government's programme for the environment is progressive. The traditional programmes in housing, the provision of roads, sanitary services and local amenities are the means by which the physical environment is shaped by local government. The physical planning system is even more important in ensuring that the necessary environmental considerations are taken into account in the planning and carrying out of the various forms of development. Good progress is being maintained with the arrangements necessary for the implementation of the Water Pollution Act. A full account of the existing arrangements for pollution control generally and how they work is now available in published form in the Report on Pollution Control, which was prepared by the inter-departmental environment committee. The report serves to underline the range and complexity of pollution-type problems nowadays and the variety of arrangements which have already developed to meet them. There is a general conclusion in the report that the arrangements generally are satisfactory but that there is still room for improvement. Particular problems, which are identified in the report, are now being examined in the various Departments concerned with these problems.

The process of strengthening the arrangements for the protection of the environment will be continued. The Government appreciate that the quality of development and of the physical surroundings generally have become more important in the eyes of people as part of what goes to make up the quality of life and have decided that it should figure more prominently in the area of public policy and should receive still more attention.

One of the most important tasks which I have to undertake, as first Minister for the Environment, is to prepare, in consultation with other Ministers, proposals for the national policy for the physical environment. I have also to arrange for an assessment to be made of the state of the environment and for reports to be published from time to time. To assist me in these and other related functions the Government decided that an environment council should be set up as an advisory body. I see this body as a forum in which the different strands of interest bearing on the environment will have a chance to discuss and assess a range of topics and problems of environmental concern and, hopefully, come up with comments and advice which will help me to carry out the general environmental role which I have been assigned. I am happy to say that arrangements for the setting up of the council have now been completed and the inaugural meeting of this council will take place at 3 o'clock tomorrow.

Mr. Quinn

: I welcome it.

Mr. Barrett

: With regard to the building and construction industry the Government have consistently pinpointed the level of unemployment as a real threat to the future of the country. The Green Paper says:

Primary emphasis must be placed on action to increase employment.

The Government have done more than express concern with unemployment in the last 12 months. They have matched their words with action. Much of the increased employment which will flow from the initiatives of the Government will come in the building and construction industry, for which I have overall responsibility. I do not intend to dwell on the lean times which the industry went through since 1973. It should be enough to say that as a result of the positive action taken by the Government since July 1977, the performance of the industry in that year and the prospects in the medium-term have improved enormously. Anyone connected with the industry will agree on this.

This year looks like a record year for the construction industry. This follows on the Government's provisions for it in the 1978 public capital programme which amounted in all to £469 million, an increase of £98 million or 26 per cent on last year's expenditure which, I suppose, is a further failure on my part. Taken with estimated current public expenditure of £104 million the total public investment in building and construction at £573 million represents over 61 per cent of the expected output of £936 million for the industry in 1978. This expected output would give a growth rate of about 7.6 per cent over 1977.

I have, as Minister for the Environment, direct responsibility for certain sectors of the industry, such as housing, road works, public water supply and sewerage schemes and environmental services. The public capital programme allocation for those areas amounts to £201 million and has been increased by an enormous 37 per cent over the January 1977 allocation, another failure I presume. Indications this year so far support the considerable improvement expected in the industry. Cement sales, which are recognised as a good general indicator of trends in the industry, have during the period 1 January 1978 to 31 May 1978 shown an increase of 18.3 per cent, compared with the corresponding period in 1977. The year on year increase in sales was 10 per cent.

With regard to the jobs front published figures for employment support the improving trend. The index of employees in the private sector of the industry, which is published by the Central Statistics Office, covers firms with five or more people employed, This showed an increase of 7.9 per cent on average for the first five months of this year over the similar period in 1977. The latest monthly unemployment figure, which is March 1978, of 24,040 is 1,525 down on the figure for March 1977. The house building sector, which is one of the major sectors of the industry, accounting for almost 40 per cent of the total output in the industry, has also shown improvement in the last 12 months. Up to the end of May this year 1,257 more dwellings have been completed when compared with the corresponding period of 1977. All the signs are very encouraging and I am confident that this trend will continue throughout the remainder of the year.

Housing is by far the largest single contributor to output in employment in the building and construction industry. There have been many important developments in the housing area, not least of which have been a significant overhaul of the levels of grants available from my Department and the raising of loan and income limits for house purchase loans from local authorities. I do not propose to outline upward revisions in the range of assistances for housing made available by the Government. The Deputies will be fully aware of their extent from a study of my speech when I introduced my Estimate on 9 March last.

As far as housing generally is concerned I am confident that 1978 will be a good year. There is a high level of investment from the public capital programme amounting to £140.58 million, an increase of almost 42 per cent on the provisional outturn for 1977. In fact, this year's public capital programme allocation for housing is by far the highest to date and reflects the importance which the Government attach to housing. Some of the major figures in the 1978 allocation are the £39 million made available for house purchase and reconstruction loans compared with last year's outturn of £17.66 million and £17 million for housing grants from my Department this year compared to an outturn of £4.6 million in 1977. This is something which Deputy Fitzpatrick has forgotten. If one compares local authority housing at £80.77 million with the 1972-73 figure, when it was £28.78 million this shows some increase over that period. There were increases in between which I will refer to. Those figures reflect the Government's determination to maintain a high level of output in housing. The current projections are that last year's figure of 24,548 house completions will be exceeded substantially and that 1978 completions should reach 26,500.

As regards the private housing sector, by 6 July the scheme of new house grants will be in operation for one year and I have already given the number of applications and said that to date 9,000 grants have been approved. The pace of payments of the grants has increased as more and more houses qualifying for this grant are being completed and occupied. There were 847 grants paid in the month of May. Similarly demand for improvement grants has been quite unprecedented. Applications so far this year have been more than double what they were in the same period last year.

I should like to take this opportunity of correcting some of the misapprehensions of Deputies opposite about the local authority housing programme. The Government do not intend to run down or drastically curtail the programme. Indeed, they have strengthened their commitment to meeting the genuine housing need of families, disabled and elderly persons, and other categories who cannot provide suitable accommodation for themselves, by ensuring that adequate incentives are available to draw other categories off the waiting list of housing authorities.

The public capital programme capital allocation of £80.77 million for 1978 represented an increase of 9 per cent over 1977. That amount is sufficient to maintain activity on the programme this year at about the same general level as in 1977. Nearly 700 more dwellings were under construction at the beginning of this year than at the start of 1977. Employment on the programme in the first quarter was well up on last year in spite of the sizeable —but hopefully temporary—fall in completions and new starts. Nevertheless, the low completions and starts are causes of concern. I shall look to housing authorities and the NBA to play their part in improving the situation. We will have a better idea of what is happening when we get the returns at the end of this quarter.

There has been agitation among some Deputies opposite about the White Paper references to the need for a critical appraisal of the estimated cost of local authority housing schemes. The references to the review of the programme and its costs, and to the reassessment of housing needs and local authority rent policies, are simply sound common sense. They are good housekeeping on the part of the Government, who in the last analysis are answerable to the general body of taxpayers on whom the financial burden of the programme lies so heavily. The cost of providing a typical local authority house and the public burden of subsidising loan and other charges over a long period of years are now such that there is a serious obligation on everybody responsible for the programme to ensure that these outlays are incurred only where a local authority house represents the only practical way to provide for the genuine housing need of a family or person. The Green Paper has spelt out the Government's thinking and it is now open to public comment and debate. It would be helpful if Deputies would recognise the fact that capital costs taken in conjunction with the level of the programme in recent years and existing arrangements for subsidisation and financing of on-going expenditure on maintenance and management, have reached a level which places an enormous burden on the community.

However, I want to make it clear that, while the Government regard it as a duty to the general body of taxpayers to avoid unjustifiable expenditure from public funds, it is accepted by the Government that present standards of construction and accommodation should not be reduced. The sensible alternative course is to accept that we cannot afford to provide local authority dwellings for comparatively well-off families but that we should maintain a reasonable level of programme with special measures to ensure that the houses go to the really needy, including the small families, elderly and disabled persons.

As to central city redevelopment it seems that some Deputies opposite, whose own special interest in the redevelopment programme is acknowledged, regard it as outrageous for us to even question whether or not the tax paying community should have to subsidise the rehousing of one family for years and years at a cost of certainly up to £60 a week in some cases. They have raised time and again the red herring of comparing central city redevelopment costs and the costs of perimeter building.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

: The Minister has about five minutes left.

Mr. Barrett

: We know that some public services are already in existence in central city areas which have to be provided in new areas. We also know, however, that so many new houses are required that the bulk of them must be provided in perimeter areas, which must accordingly get the services anyway. The additional cost of providing in the perimeter the extra margin in services for the relatively few families which could be catered for otherwise in central city areas would be relatively insignificant. I would suggest therefore that Deputies opposite might adopt a more honest and more responsible approach to this aspect of the public housing programme, acknowledge that central city rehousing costs are abnormally high, and accept that they are supportable only when they are incurred as part of a general attack on central city problems. It is not true that more housing in the inner city area would solve the problems of the inner city. There are many other problems involved in the inner city situation.

With regard to road safety, it is now compulsory to fit cars with seat belts. However, we estimate that seat belts are worn by only 10 per cent of drivers. In many countries the wearing of seat belts is compulsory. It it compulsory in Austria, Australia, Finland, Norway, New Zealand, South Africa and many other countries and in all the countries of the EEC with the exception of ourselves, Britain and Italy. It has been well established that the wearing of seat belts has a tremendous effect in cutting down the number of fatal accidents and indeed injuries on the roads. There can be genuine and valid objections to the wearing of seat belts by certain categories, for instance pregnant women and invalids. Children cannot be expected to wear seat belts, but children should be kept at the back of the car. It is my intention to issue a formal public statement very shortly which will invite the views of the public on my proposal to make regulations under the Road Traffic Act which would require seat belts to be worn by drivers and front-seat passengers in cars and light goods vehicles, subject to any necessary exemptions from these requirements for the categories I have mentioned.

Despite the criticism of Deputy Fitzpatrick, sanitary services have been greatly increased in the last 12 months. Apart from creating immediate employment, there is no doubt that these services will lead to further development in housing and industry. In order to ensure a high level of activity in regard to this programme, I intend to approve the commencement of a considerable number of priority water and sewerage schemes in order to ensure that these services will be available in the coming year.

In regard to house prices, I appreciate that it has been a boom year for selling houses. The average price of lower cost houses has not increased as much as the average price of more expensive houses. One way to attack this problem is to make serviced sites available. The provision of serviced sites at cost price to the private sector or to anyone who wants to build a house will be a great help in reducing or regulating the price of houses. The cost of sites in the Dublin area of housing in the private sector has increased tremendously. When the price of these sites is compared with the average increase it gives an inflated effect. The price of houses in rural areas has not been greatly increased in the past 12 months. Despite Deputy Fitzpatrick's claim that I am a dismal failure, the record of my Department is open to judgment and I am sure he will find few people to agree with him.

Mr. Horgan

: In responding directly to the previous speech, I should welcome the Minister's proposed regulations in relation to the wearing of seat belts. This is a positive move. One could wish for more to welcome in the Government's programme than that, but it is a positive gain and it would be ungenerous of me not to say so. The Minister's party are fond of extracting statements of intent from other people. The irony in the events of the last few months is that the one statement of intent which they are all waiting for on the far side of the House has not been made, that is, the Taoiseach's own statement of intent. If that came out we might have a different political and economic situation.

To comment briefly on what the Minister has said, it is true that the cost of sites in the private sector in Dublin is astronomical. There was a curious gap in what he said in that, while he acknowledged the problem, he did not give any indication of his proposed method of solving it, except by providing serviced sites for the private sector. The problem of site costs in high density areas will never be solved unless a firm approach is taken to the control of the price of building land. The previous Government and the Government before them had the benefit of the experience of the Kenny Report. Much of the experience and wisdom of that report still remains and needs to be implemented. Unless that step is taken, the problem of the cost of sites will remain indefinitely with us and will probably expand into areas where it is not now common.

At about a quarter to seven last Wednesday evening the guillotine fell for the second time in two days on the Finance Bill on the ground that the Government needed to terminate discussion on that piece of legislation. The irony of that event could be seen within 24 hours of the guillotine falling when at approximately twenty-five minutes to five on the following day this House ran out of business. It must be unprecedented in the annals of this House that, within less than 24 hours of a guillotine motion being applied, the business before the House expired and the Government had nothing to replace it.

It is a useful illustration of what has been happening during the year, especially during the past few months. What we have been seeing during this time, especially in the last few days, is a Government being saved by the bell from having to face the fact that the Order Paper with which we were presented today when we came into the House is a legislative desert. There is nothing of major significance on the Order Paper with the possible exception of local authority legislation to deal with rates on flats, and there is no sign of anything substantial to follow. The legislative record of the Government, if you exclude Bills that were published or about to be published when they came into office, has been appalling. One could be happier if one could say that they spent all this time arguing about their White and Green Papers. But these documents lead one to suspect that all the time spent in arguing inside the Cabinet might have been better spent producing necessary legislation.

I want to deal in broad terms with the Government's Green Paper which was published for this debate and which has evoked a distinctly cool response all round.

Mr. Kelly

: We are all stunned by it.

Mr. Horgan

: The Deputy is not the only person to be stunned by it. When I compare it with other published documents, I find it is one of the most regressive documents that has ever been published by a government. It can be argued that it is more regressive than the White Paper which preceded it. It can even be argued that it is more regressive than the Third Programme for Economic Expansion which was produced a long time ago by a Fianna Fáil Government.

One of the areas in which it is most regressive is in its attitude to the public sector. There seems to be a sort of assumption running through the Green Paper that the public sector is by definition a non-productive sector; that jobs can be maintained there but need not and perhaps cannot be created. There is almost the assumption that jobs created in the public sector are always a cost and never a gain. It must be stated firmly from this side of the House that this view of the public sector is unrealistic, unnecessary and not founded on fact. We do not see the public sector as the sector in which the only jobs that are provided are jobs digging holes and filling them in again. We see the public sector as an area in which public policy can be directed towards creating service and industrial jobs in the same way and with much the same profitability criteria as in the private sector.

It is by no means impossible to create profitable jobs in the public sector, but one reason why the public sector has such a bad name on the employment scene over the years is that it has tended to be used by successive Governments as a sort of economic dustbin—anything private enterprise cannot make a go of, let public enterprise look after it. The public transport system is the classic example. The result of this has been that, except in a number of areas where there are happy exceptions, the assumption has grown that public sector enterprise is not good and that we have to carry it subject to whatever amount of political effort can be put into the organisation and adjusting of the level of subsidy. This is the most fundamental fault of the Green Paper. It says more or less: "We have done our bit in direct job creation or will have done it in the very near future: after that, it is for somebody else to pick up the torch and carry it on."

This is where another problem of the Green Paper comes in. It seriously underestimates even the scale of the problem of job creation confronting us. It is a massive problem. Not long ago in answer to a Parliamentary Question I put down to the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy we were told that each of the 800 permanent jobs that are being created over a period of years at the Alcan plant in Shannon is going to cost £350,000 in terms of direct capital investment. Not all of this is State money; some is private money from the consortium concerned. But £350,000 for a job is a staggering figure. It can be argued that this is unusual, but I very much fear this sort of figure will become more usual rather than less as companies go more for profitability, more for technology and less for job creation. The £350,000 figure is a multiple of the highest figure that the Industrial Development Authority have ever used as a yardstick for an adequate cost of direct job creation. The danger is that the IDA figure will float upwards rather than that the Alcan figure will float down.

This morning we had the publication of a report by the Economic and Social Research Institute which, although drafted before the Green Paper would, I gather, come to much the same conclusion if it were published afterwards. I regret that I have not the actual document but there are a couple of paragraphs from today's Irish Times to which the House should pay attention. It says:

On the overall employment front, the review is almost universally pessimistic. This year, as Table 2 shows, 17,000 new jobs will be created in the year to last April compared with the previous year. However, total employment, at 1,058,000 will still be below the 1974 peak of 1,066,000, and in coming years, agricultural employment is expected to fall at a rate of 2.5 per cent a year so that the total level of farm employment by 1985 will only be 188,000, a reduction of 48,000 on the 1976 level.

Another part of the article points out that one section of the review by Richard Vaughan reviews historical trends in profits in Ireland and suggests that, contrary to popular belief, excessive profit increases might militate against job creation.

These are the figures as estimated by ESRI and I suggest they are more realistic than the Green Paper figures. The Green Paper skates over the difficulties involved in job creation and leaves unanswered several vital questions. For example, if it is true, as the Green Paper suggests, that the boost which is being given to the economy this year will have the effect of creating more jobs in industry and in the public sector, what will happen next year and the year after in relation to jobs? If we are to read the Green Paper again what will happen next year and the year after will be deflation. Either employment will have to be be reduced or taxation will have to be increased. This may ultimately have the same effect of reducing the growth in employment generally.

The problem is that the Government, hung up with their manifesto, had to introduce this kind of budget this year without any rational survey of the needs of the economy. What was needed was caution and a certain amount of holding in reserve for the kind of boost that might be necessary if employment and the economy needed it later, in two or three years. The danger now is not just that the Government will have found themselves hung up by their own manifesto but that the economy and the employment market will find themselves the ultimate sufferers. For example, the Government have on several occasions made it clear that they do not want the burden of taxation increased beyond certain levels for the population as a whole. If they are going to take taxation as a proportion of the gross national product something else will have to give and it can only be jobs.

We have in the Green Paper the emergence if not the development of a concept of work sharing. It is extremely vague and will have to be fleshed out in much more detail. I suspect that if and when the detail appears it will be a much less attractive proposition than it is now, and I do not say that it is attractive now, because it is quite justifiable to read into the Green Paper on work sharing the notion that what is really involved is a hidden way of soaking up unemployment at the expense of the community as a whole in ways which may only lead to the further loss of jobs in one area. There is no point in robbing Peter to pay Paul: if you are going to create jobs here at the cost of losing them there the ultimate effect is nil.

I return to the role of the public and the private sectors as seen in the Green Paper. The Green Paper effectively relies on fiscal stimulus rather than on public investment in job creation. The point about public investment in profitable job creation is that with public investment you have options; without it you can only go down on your knees and say your economic prayers. There is a lot economic "piousness" in this document. It is all summed up in a persuasive theme of the sections of the document dealing with employment in general and with work sharing in particular, that what is really wrong here is people's attitude. If we change people's attitude to work, remuneration and so on—so the argument goes —we shall have a different country and have work enough for everybody. On page 71 of the Green Paper it is stated fairly categorically that those who have employment already must be prepared to make the financial contributions and provide the opportunities of work for the unemployed.

Even this analysis is open to argument. It could be argued that if those who are in employment are going to make sacrifices what will ultimately benefit will be the Government's level of borrowing and not the level of job creation. Even if we were to accept that this sentence can stand on its own we are implying that it is public attitudes that are the real key to economic and employment growth. While Members on these benches do not discount the importance of attitudes, we believe that economic analysis is the fundamental tool for deciding what should or what should not be done with the economy. If we base our proposals and our plans on economic analysis and not on a generalised moral appeal, we will find that this analysis will fit the hair-shirt—if there is to be a hair-shirt —to different shoulders from the ones for which Fianna Fáil have fashioned it.

I would even like to take on the Government on the question of attitudes. There is no more potent force in the formulation of attitudes than the Government themselves. We now have the spectacle of a Government who abolished car tax and wealth tax, who failed to increase children's allowances and who did their best in many instances to appeal to the most selfish side of human nature, coming back to the House and going back to the country with the Green Paper that looks for restraint and for the hair-shirt. It has all the jangle and the blare of a Salvation Army band. It is extraordinary to see the Government preaching against excess with all the zeal of a man recently reformed from some vice and who has now become puritanical in his obsession about it and in his opposition to it. If the Government do not succeed in this area it will largely be because they have set such an extraordinary headline themselves. When I was canvassing in the general election I visited quite a few comfortable households. The owners met me at the door and on hearing I was from the Labour Party asked, "What are you going to do for me?" I was driven to reply on many such occasions, "You seem to have done very well for yourself. What about doing something for somebody else?" The Government are now attempting to preach this gospel, but on the evidence of their performance in the past year it is difficult to see how they can claim any credibility for it.

I should like to deal now with education, as it features in the Government's policy to date and also in the Green Paper. What has happened in education since the general election has been much less significant than the Government or the Minister for Education would like us to believe. Higher education grants and the eligibility limits have been increased but not by the amount by which people were led to believe they would be increased. Prior to the general election the word went out from Fianna Fáil that when the grants would be increased the cost of living would be used as a guide. Not surprisingly, this very important qualification did not find a place in the manifesto but still the message went out. Although the levels have been increased they are still way below the limits to which they should have been raised if the Government had adopted the cost of living as a guide. In real terms they are still below the levels at which they were introduced by a Fianna Fáil Government ten years ago.

The Minister for Education introduced an Estimate in this House which would dazzle one with the number of noughts at the end of it. On 4 June 1978 he went on the radio to claim: "I have a full 20 per cent increase and increases down the line in all areas." Of course the Minister has a 20 per cent increase in global terms but when you strip out of that increase —as you must—the recurring costs for inevitable expenditure on teachers' salaries given existing pupil-teacher ratios and inflation, you will find that the 20 per cent dwindles to something almost like a tenth of that figure. Even within the increases, which are mostly related to £5 million that he seems to have got from the Minister for Economic Planning and Development for direct job creation, the sector that is most in need—the primary sector— has done less well proportionately than the post-primary sector. The proportion of extra points to primary schools —many of which were in the pipeline before the Minister ever set foot in his office—is still lower than the proportion going to post-primary schools. That is not the scale of priorities that this party think should be adopted and it is one we would want to see corrected. In fact, I would urge the Minister to keep the Minister for Economic Planning and Development out of his briar patch. In September last year at a meeting in my constituency at which I was present the Minister for Economic Planning and Development actually went on record as promising a structural reform in the Department of Education which the Minister for Education told me a month later, in answer to a parliamentary question, he had no intention of carrying out. That may be slightly misrepresenting the Minister's attitude at that time but certainly he seemed to be unaware of the commitment given in relation to his Department by another Minister.

There has been a tiny effective increase in the Education Vote this year. There have been increases in some areas within that Vote but they have been got at the expense of other areas. Of 20 grants-in-aid paid by the Department 13 either have been reduced or have been kept at the same level as last year. That means an effective cut of 7 per cent. These are the kind of figures that the Minister cannot escape with a generalised smokescreen about a 20 per cent increase.

In relation to primary education needs, I was interested to note that the Minister in this House refused to give a commitment that the maximum class size in primary schools would be down to 40 by the time the Government left office. However, on 4 June 1978 he went on radio to say that they hoped to have the figure down to a maximum 40 by the time they face the people again in the next general election. We want to know if that represents a commitment. I can promise the Government and the Minister that whether or not it represents a commitment—and it looks more like an attempt to weasel out of one—the electorate will be left under no illusions about it when the time comes.

In relation to comments on education in the Green Paper, the prognosis is not cheerful. Page 82 contains the statement that "reduced overall spending on education cannot realistically be expected". Further on the Green Paper states, "the Government would be reluctant to seek economies in this area". If I were the Minister for Education I would be shivering in my boots at the qualified nature of the support given here to investment in education. There is no commitment at all to improving the level of the educational service. There is only a very milk and water expression of the hope that things will not get worse. Even at that there is some conflict on the same page in regard to higher education.

The Green Paper says a loan scheme might be an appropriate form of finance and, in his radio interview, the Minister said: "I am not enamoured of the idea of loans." If the Green Paper thinks loans might be a good idea, and the Minister is not enamoured of them, where does that leave the Minister? Suggestions have been made on this side of the House that industry might contribute to financing higher education. There is in one of the Finance Acts a provision which allows industry to deduct from its profits for tax purposes the amount set aside for educational research and development. Virtually no industry has taken advantage of that concession and it is our contention that the way to make industry contribute to financing education is through taxation.

Finally, I would urge the Government, and especially the Minister for Education, to take a fresh look at the whole system and to accept the challenge—it is a big challenge—of making education a personal service more directly available and responsive to the needs of local communities by setting up a local education authority structure which would radically change the administration and, perhaps, also the politics of education. This will involve the Minister in challenging some of the powerful interests in education. If he is not prepared to challenge them, and there is very little evidence to date that he is seriously prepared to challenge any of the important educational interests in the interests of children as a whole, we will be left to stumble on with an educational system and administration which is more and more centralised in terms of administration and more and more powerless in terms of what that administration can actually do.

The Green Paper represents to the Minister for Education one of the most formidable perils he has ever encountered so far in his political life. Things have come to a pretty pass, indeed, when we can see the Minister for Health and Social Welfare, the Minister for the Environment and the Minister for Education depicted as the three lone socialists in the Fianna Fáil Cabinet. The economic policy the Government are pursuing, with its inevitable implications for social policy, is not one with which the Minister for Education can be happy. If I were him I would regard the contents of the Green Paper in relation to education as something very far short of the guarantee that is needed. The Minister for Education has public responsibility to be accountable for the public money that goes into the educational system. He is not doing that. He is simply wringing his hands when things go wrong. He also has a public responsibility to make that system more accountable than it is, more democratic than it is, and more responsive to the real needs of the people. I doubt if this will be done in the lifetime of the present Government.

Mr. Leyden

: I listened with great satisfaction to the opening speech of the Taoiseach yesterday. It clearly showed the tremendous achievement of the Taoiseach and his Government in a very short space of time. His hard-working team of Ministers have in a very short time brought the country back from near bankruptcy to economic growth and development. I pay special tribute to all our Ministers for their hard work and dedication. Pondering on the tremendous achievements in the last 12 months one can confidently say that over the next three or four years economic growth and development will surpass anything that took place even under former Fianna Fáil administrations.

In June 1977 Fianna Fáil inherited a broken country. Financially and economically it was on the verge of bankruptcy. That is why the people entrusted Fianna Fáil once more with the task of getting the country moving again. Inflation and prices were out of control. We were faced with a difficult task, the task of righting all the wrongs of four-and-a-half years of mismanagement. We have brought inflation down now to 6.2 per cent. Reducing inflation was one of the priorities in our manifesto. During the election campaign people actually asked me if the country were finished and if there were any hope for the country. I believed that, like a business running down and going into bankruptcy, new management would get the country back on its feet again. I was right in that belief and my confidence has proved correct. The country is moving and things are better than they were in the four-and-a-half years before we resumed office.

A sum of £820 million has been pumped into the economy. The money will go into productive purposes, into the provision of essential services, such as water, sanitation and roads. In my constituency of Roscommon-Leitrim we were getting very small subventions for major schemes and all the schemes we hoped to implement were held up. It is only since last June these schemes have been given the go ahead and the necessary finances made available to allow work to proceed. That is because we have been given a major injection of capital. It was worth while borrowing this money to provide benefits for our people. The money is being spent all over the country.

One of the major achievements of this Fianna Fáil Government has been in the reduction of unemployment. While the figures on the live register may not be absolutely satisfactory they are an indication of the way things are going. The figures indicate that the level of unemployment has dropped by 10,000 from June 1977 to 99,490 on 16 June 1978. The figure has fallen and I hope the next published figures which are due out shortly will show a still bigger drop. Unemployment was rampant and we made the provision of employment a priority in our manifesto, particularly employment for school leavers. This was a major issue in the campaign. Constituents asked me could we provide employment and I believed that, if returned to office, the Coalition Government would continue their disastrous policies, policies which would lead to still further reductions in employment and further increases in unemployment. Fianna Fáil were given a major task but we accepted it, and now we have achieved practically all our objectives as set out in the magnificent manifesto.

We are now going on to stage two of our development. Stage two is the launching of our Green Paper entitled Development For Full Employment. The proposal contained in it to create full employment is unprecedented in this or any other State. We have launched a campaign which we do not need to do. If any other Government were in office they would not commit themselves to this programme. They would carry on keeping at a certain level. Fianna Fáil, as a radical party who are prepared to take steps to solve the problems of this country, are prepared to launch this Green Paper and to work with the social partners to achieve full employment. In the fifties and sixties we cut down emigration from this island, and when we left office in 1973 emigration had practically ceased.

Our next task is to create full employment for the people here at home. It is my ambition to see people coming back from foreign shores to their native land to work here. In my own area in the last year I have noticed a number of families who have returned because of the improvement in the economic climate. Many of these families have found work in their own areas here and have been housed as well. I am delighted at this. It is a step in the right direction. In the years ahead when we create a situation of full employment for our people at home we will welcome more people returning from foreign shores.

Fianna Fáil have shown that they are more radical than the Labour Party. They do not compare at all with the Fine Gael Party.

A Deputy

: You can say that again.

Mr. Leyden

: Many Labour people would recognise that the steps we are taking are certainly radical in their approach, and forward-looking. If this country had the misfortune of having Labour as a one-party Government I do not think that that party would set out on such a radical cause. Fianna Fáil have the support of the people, and we intend to pursue this campaign over the next few years to achieve our main objective and the objective of the people, to create full employment.

Mr. Horgan

: For 51 per cent of the people.

Mr. Leyden

: Our opponents are hoping that we cannot achieve our projected target. They are not progressive in their approach and they are very negative in the comments they have been making since the Green Paper was launched. They have no alternative programme or policy. When the Coalition were in power they produced a Green Paper of their own in 1976. That Green Paper was entitled Economic and Social Development 1976-1980, and it is interesting to read now in the context of the present-day situation and of the election campaign of last year. I emphasise that it is the 1976 Green Paper I am referring to. Some of the titles in that paper are most unfortunate. The most notable is the somewhat unfortunate heading of one of the paragraphs in that paper, which in the final analysis was the comment of the electorate at large on the performance of the Coalition and their plans for the future on page 26, "An unacceptable outlook". Certainly a continuation of the Coalition policies and management was unacceptable to the voters of 1977. I venture to say that now, a year later, we have almost a re-run of the election campaign of 1977 with the launching of this Green Paper. In drafting the 1976 document it was clear that at that stage the then Government had decided that they were in the grip of forces outside their control and concluded that, and I quote from page 26:

... it must be realised and accepted by all that there is no real possibility of the economy continuing to 1980 on the lines on which it has developed since 1960. The more likely outlook would be of some transient growth for a short period, ending well before 1980, followed by a period of severe economic restrictions and very serious financial difficulties, when there would be little or no growth...

This outlook concludes that, given the very best efforts, the total of unemployed would drop to a mere 80,000 by 1980. I would hope that it will have dropped to this level by late 1978-79. Indeed we will have beaten many of the Coalition's projections at that stage. Here is another quotation from that Green Paper, page 25:

... there would have to be a real decline in current expenditure... which a failure to achieve an average growth rate would force upon the community, would exert a serious deflationary impact upon the economy and make impossible the attainment even of the 2% growth rate.

We now have 5 per cent growth and are continuing on that level and possibly even increasing that growth to 6 per cent.

Our Green Paper concerns itself with a very desirable package of policies designed to achieve jobs for all by 1983. There is no thought here of the harshness of the economic climate. Instead the Government outline a scheme whereby the benefits of higher growth can be channelled into higher employment, not at the expense of lowering the standard of living of those already in employment. The Government are asking for an acceptance of a lower rate of improvement in standards of living than would otherwise be the case given the high level of growth which we are now projecting. The Taoiseach said in opening this debate that those who could not see or accept that a solution to unemployment was possible were in effect at a stroke writing off as worthless the career or prospects of a vibrant new generation of the Irish people. Fianna Fáil's policy is to seize the opportunity which this new generation presents us to build a society which we can all be proud of.

The Green Paper which we have launched is an approach, an outline, a plan, for the future. It is vital that we have these plans to work with. Our aim is to achieve the programme which we have outlined.

Some aspects of the programme deserve comment. In relation to the level of housing and to finance for housing, the private, banking and insurance institutions are not playing their part in the provision of finance for private housing. In 1977 only £6 million was loaned by the insurance companies. The Irish Life Assurance Company, which is 90 per cent Government owned, in that period did not give one penny to finance house-building in this country. Even this company are now looking for a licence to open their own building society. I feel that their past achievement does not merit them being given this mandate. Some years ago I advocated, as I still do, that the local authorities under the control of the Minister for the Environment should be allowed to raise from the public directly funds for the provision of houses for our people. In England most of the local authorities are in a position to raise finance directly from the public. The local authorities with the technical knowledge of their engineering staff and the accommodation they have in most of the towns are in a position not only to provide the local authority loans which are presently available, but also to provide loans for people who are not eligible for the local authority loans as they are. This would be in a sense a national building society under the direct management of the Government. Prior to my election to Dáil Éireann and to Roscommon County Council I advocated that the Government should set up their own building societies, not taking over, amalgamating or monopolising the present building societies but in direct competition if necessary with them.

The situation where the interest rates are arranged beforehand among these groups is unsatisfactory. The lack of competition is not helpful to people seeking loans to build their houses. The banking institutions are not playing their part. They are more concerned about making profit. I would call the massive profits being made by the major banking groups as the unacceptable face of capitalism. Every time interest rates increase the banks make more profit. There must be competition when people are seeking loans.

A chairman of one of the banks said recently that there must be an adequate level of profit in the private sector. The bank profits are more than adequate and are totally unacceptable. They are a bad example to other private companies. The Government should take a serious look at this situation and at the amount of dividends being paid to shareholders at home and abroad.

Mr. Horgan

: That is not Fianna Fáil policy.

Mr. Leyden

: That is my own view.

Mr. Kelly

: The Deputy is the only radical member of his party.

Mr. Leyden

: I am expressing a private view.

Mr. Kelly

: The Deputy is in the wrong party.

Mr. MacSharry

: It is a long way from what existed when the Coalition were in power.

Mr. Leyden

: The Government should ensure that the banks provide more money for private housing and give more risk money to young people who wish to build their own houses. The banks are cashing in on this situation by providing bridging finance at high interest rates. This is an unacceptable position. They should provide bridging finance at the minimum rate because of the security of the loan involved. The banks will have to be brought to task when it comes to providing funds because they are the major lending finance institutions.

I recommend that the ACC be given a greater mandate to provide a banking service. The farming community should be in a position to deal directly with the ACC and obtain cheque book and other facilities. The Post Office should be allowed to raise more money. I do not think the Post Office Savings Bank has been exploited to the fullest extent. This is an area where the Government could obtain more money for productive purposes. The Post Office Savings Bank should be made more attractive and should be able to provide cheque book and other facilities. The Post Office should be encouraged to introduce the Giro system. In England the post office has made enormous profits for the State by providing this service. The Government should have a serious look at this.

Since Fianna Fáil came into office County Roscommon have been successful in acquiring funds for drainage schemes. We got £2 million for sewerage and water schemes in 1977. This money has allowed major water schemes, such as the South Roscommon regional water scheme, to proceed. That scheme which is costing nearly £800,000 is providing water for an area which has been neglected since the foundation of the State. This injection of funds to provide water will allow the farming community to expand production and will provide them with a service to which they are entitled, that is the provision of water on their farms and in their homes. As Deputy for that constituency I was proud to obtain the necessary sanction, approval and finance from the Minister for the Environment for that scheme. The Castlerea regional water scheme has also been sanctioned at a cost of £200,000; the Roscommon town sewerage scheme, phase two, has been sanctioned and work is now proceeding; the contract has been awarded and work will commence in the near future for the Athleague regional water scheme and we are hopeful for approval for sewerage works in Bally-league and in the village called Knockcroghery which also requires this service. We are hoping in the next few years to achieve all the regional schemes which have been planned.

In a developing agricultural economy the provision of water on the farm and in the home is vital. I know the Government have recognised this because of their injection of funds in my area. The money spent on these schemes will provide enormous rewards for the people involved and for the economy as a whole. We are now gearing ourselves to ensure that agriculture, which produces one of our greatest benefits, is given the maximum injection of funds to get the maximum return. A 50 per cent growth rate can be achieved in the agricultural sector if the necessary finance is provided and if the necessary restructuring of land holding is expedited by the Department. The proposed new Land Bill hopefully will help to alleviate the situation in areas like Roscommon-Leitrim where people need the land but, due to the high cost of land, they are unable to acquire it without the help of the Land Commission and possibly the new land agency.

It was a great pleasure to speak on this Adjournment Debate. I congratulate the Government on their success and wish them well for their future years in office, knowing we are about to achieve the greatest growth rate ever. We are setting ourselves a difficult objective in relation to the elimination of unemployment, but it is an achievable target. That is something no other country has set out to achieve. Fianna Fáil are setting out on this course which seems to be unacceptable and unwelcome to the Opposition.

Mr. W. O'Brien

: That is not correct.

Mr. Leyden

: The Opposition do not seem to be encouraging the proposals set out in the Green Paper.

Mr. W. O'Brien

: You were at the top of the league in 1973 and——

Mr. Leyden

: The Opposition are not welcoming the Green Paper——

Acting Chairman (Mr. Moore)

: Deputy O'Brien please. Deputy Leyden has another four minutes, and he should not invite interruptions.

Mr. Leyden

: I wish the Government well and trust that they will achieve their objectives in the next few years.

Mr. Kelly

: The reason for the Government's performance being scrutinised so seriously, and the reason for the complaints from the Government in regard to what they think is a cynical approach by the Opposition, by the Press and by virtually every commentator I have heard or read on the subject of this Green Paper, is not simple jealousy of the Government. It is not envy of Fianna Fáil or resentment of their having won so handsomely the last election. The reason for the scrutiny is that never since the foundation of the State have a Government arrived in office on the basis of so many absolute and firm undertakings, on the basis of so much expression of undiluted confidence that all they required was a majority in this House and everything would be all right.

It was because of this brazen pretence that they, unlike Fine Gael and Labour, did not consist simply of flesh and blood, that somehow they would get the gift from God of being spared external recessions, falls in the value of sterling and worldwide movements of a kind that can disrupt the best laid plans. It was because of those pretences, and because of the pitiful measurement that we are now able to achieve between performance and those promises, that there is this close scrutiny.

As was pointed out in a newspaper editorial recently, it is the function of an Opposition to give the Government hell. We can discount much of what any Opposition say, just as we can discount a good deal of the type of self back-slapping that we have heard from Deputy Leyden. The reason particularly for this close scrutiny of the Government is that, unlike the National Coalition in 1973 and, to be fair, unlike Fianna Fáil in 1969, in 1965 or in any other election they won, they have come into power on a positive and unequivocal set of promises. Now is the time of the small print, and we are being asked to look behind those promises and to understand the many promises that cannot be fulfilled overnight and to understand that a year in their terms may mean 18 months or two years, and that promises which were supposed to be fulfilled immediately may not be fulfilled until the next election, if they are capable of being fulfilled at all.

Another reason for the scrutiny stems from the pusillanimous tone in which the Green Paper is couched. The English used in it is abominable. It is full of talk about options. We are told that the Government wish to present a range of policy options, and to hear debate on these options. Was there a word in the manifesto last year about options? Was there a word in it about the people being presented with a set of choices, all of which would be difficult, but between which the people would be asked to make up their minds? Was there any word that in 12 months' time a paper would appear setting out a few tentative options, or was there anything in the manifesto to indicate that the options offered would be sacrificial? There was not, and neither was there any word in it about there not being easy answers, about there not being a panacea. Was there any word that if we were to make progress people would have to tighten their belts? If there was one promise the manifesto did not make, it was a tightening of belts, but it certainly distracted people's minds from any likelihood of being asked to make sacrifices. It steered people's minds away from the reality that there would not be an automatic improvement in their standard of living or in the employment situation.

We make all allowances for election time. At such times and at other times we may not mean everything we say and we would regret if people took seriously 100 per cent of what we say, but the performance of Fianna Fáil has been cynical and dishonest from beginning to end. If a Green Paper of this kind was introduced by the Coalition or even by the Government that preceded the Coalition or by any other government headed by Mr. Lynch, by the late Mr. Lemass or by the late Mr. de Valera, it would not deserve the same kind of niggling examination that it is receiving now; but this Green Paper is a product of the party who had all the answers, who laid down in black and white that there were "tens of thousands of jobs only waiting to be created", with the implication, which did not lurk too far beneath the surface, that nothing but Coalition stupidity, malice, envy and dissension prevented those jobs from being pulled out of the air. That is the background against which the Green Paper is being examined, and I do not apologise for adding my voice to that of my colleagues.

When I read this Green Paper with its promises of sacrificial times to come, of options that will not be easy, I am reminded of a story I heard as a child. It was one of the Brother Grimms' stories—a very apt name for the author. This story concerned a widower who had a beautiful daughter and who, for the daughter's sake, was anxious to remarry. When he put the matter to the woman of his choice she, being very anxious for a man promised him faithfully that the daughter of whom he was so fond would have wine to drink and milk to bathe in. Bathing in milk may sound disgusting now, but it must have sounded fine to a sixteenth century peasant audience in Germany. The marriage took place; and on the first day the girl had wine to drink and had milk in which to bathe, but on the second day there was no wine so that she got only milk to drink although she had milk in which to bathe. On the third day she had milk to drink but only water in which to bathe; while on the fourth day it was water all the way.

That is an analogy not too far removed from what we are discussing today. I make all allowances for the weakness of politicians. I have these weaknesses in full measure. Sometimes we promise more than we can fulfil. A politician may suffer from some personality defect which forces him into public life—that goes for everybody in this House and for everybody in every county council, too—in a sense it is a disease and I make all allowances for it, but the Government's performance tops all. I have never known anything else to come near what they have done. The Government of Deputy Cosgrave would have been ashamed to have been associated with a performance of this kind in order to get into office.

Twelve months after being returned to office on a set of promises the Government produce this document that is of stupefying banality. The Taoiseach said yesterday that we were "stunned" by the Green Paper. He is right so far as I am concerned, because I cannot understand most of it. Never before have I seen a document that is so slovenly, so badly written, which is so full of jargon and which, in the matter of using words that are not understood outside the Department that put them together, is a sure sign that the man who put the document together does not know any better way of putting across what he is trying to say.

The Green Paper contains words that have never before appeared in print in this country in the sense in which they are being used now. For instance, there is talk of a "secular trend" in agricultural employment. The word "secular" has two meanings in ordinary Irish speech. It is used in the ecclesiastic sense as opposed to priests in regular orders, and it also can mean secular as opposed to clerical or professional in a general sense. But, perhaps because I have the remains of a classical education, my guess is that the word is being made to bear the meaning "characteristic of the age". We know there is a trend in rural disemployment that is characteristic of the age, but why can the man who wrote the document not say that rather than use a word that the people cannot understand and which takes me all my time to try to disentangle?

There is another reference to increases being merely "incremental" increases in employment. I know what an increment is. I was on an incremental scale for a long time before reaching a maximum, but that is not what the genius means in this document. Neither is it what is meant by the genius who presides over that genius in the Department of Economic Planning and Development. What is meant here by an "incremental" increase in employment is merely a slight increase, an increase that is so small as not to be worth talking about, but why cannot the author of this document say that? The Green Paper reflects the belief that we are all Paddys. Indeed we are paddywhacks of the deepest dye when we can have the wool pulled over our eyes in this way.

Having said that about the Green Paper I must confess that it contains a good deal with which I agree, and I do not wish to appear to devalue those parts of it that are useful and which I am glad to see included in it. However, before going on to that I wish to make the Press and the people a present of my own conclusions about the way in which the document was put together. The Department who launched it were idiotic enough to give a clue as to the dissensions in the Government by issuing an errata slip setting out a list of misprints, seven in all, and each one of which one would flash past without having to be told what was intended. We are told by way of erratum, for instance, that the word “married” is spelled in the document with only one “r”. We do not need an errata slip to tell us that these were the parts of the Green Paper which reached completion last, but it tells us that these were the parts which came back from the printers and were rehashed. This slip indicates those parts of the document that were put together fleetingly. It is obvious that there was not sufficient time to read the proofs. The reason I am sure about this is that on my first reading of the document I found a further nine misprints and if the Minister wishes I can send him a list of those. The misprints mean that the document was so speedily put together that there was not time to correct it properly and this errata slip indicates the sections—one of which deals with health—about which there was the most contention, which were completed at the last moment which had to be recalled from the printer and re-set but without time to proofread before the document was bound. I will give that as a present to some other Sherlock Holmes to see what he can make of it, but that is my belief.

Some of the items I thought were good ideas, though certainly I was very far from being "stunned" by their novelty or dramatic quality, as the Taoiseach rather sadly said here yesterday. The idea of residence-related relief—even though it has been sneered at in the papers by one or two commentators—is a good one. The idea of providing taxation relief or other kinds of relief for work on dwelling-houses is a good idea. The idea of providing encouragement by way of taxation relief or otherwise for jobs which have an energy conservation element is also a good idea. I advocated it in this House on two or three occasions, and even though I have said hard things about the Minister's Department I would be proud if I thought that they had picked up that idea from me. The little section about real-value mortgages is a very useful one. I hope something will happen about that. I agree also with the idea that the financing of higher education—at any rate in so far as it concerns people who are not absolutely on the floor economically—should be undertaken by means of loans repayable at a time when the graduate, having climbed into an area of permanent privilege for the rest of his life, will be able to restore to the people some at least of the investment utilised in putting him in that happy position. These are things with which I agree.

One aspect of the Green Paper which I mentioned before, its banality, its abominable language, which conceals always an abominably mixed and unlucid mind behind it, offended me and must offend anybody. I am particularly offended by the untruths and ungenerosities which are stitched through it. The Minister opposite me is not by any means the worst offender on his side.

Mr. Begley

: His father came from Kerry.

Mr. Kelly

: In fact he is one of the most open-minded of them. It is threaded through with what I can only call ungenerosities in regard to the progress of the recession and of the recovery since the recession. In this connection an awful lot has been made by people on the opposite side, the latest of whom being the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy yesterday. I did not stay here for all his speech but, in the time it took me to go from that door to this door, I heard him boasting about the achievements of Fianna Fáil in bringing down inflation. I want to quote from no less a person than the Minister for Economic Planning and Development from an issue of Ireland Today, No. 924 of 1 March 1978. Had I more time I would stitch the cover into the text of what I am saying because it seems to provide ammunition for an Aunt Sally or two. In an article by him on page 2 entitled “The Challenges facing the Irish Economy” he says:

The resumption of steady growth coincides with a significant downward movement in the rate of inflation. Price increases are now confidently expected to fall from the rate of 18 per cent which prevailed in 1976 to single figures by early 1978. In some measure,

—and this is a big admission—

this improvement reflects the slowing down in the rate of increase in world import prices and the recent strength of sterling. However, it is also the fruitful outcome of the income restraint achieved in 1977.

That Bulletin of the Department of Foreign Affairs is a publication which is circulated all over the world—the truth or almost the truth, of course, has to be used for foreign consumption.

The OECD put it even stronger. The Taoiseach used a recent report of theirs yesterday when he said:

On the basis of the movements in real earnings and the progress made towards reconstitution of the profit share in 1976 and 1977, the pay agreements in those two years made a significant contribution to improving the employment and inflation performance.

The Taoiseach himself said that. The Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy would not like to hear it, he would not have that at any price. He would contend that it was Fianna Fáil alone which reached up like some Atlas and dragged down the inflation rate by main muscular force of political gumption. That is the view of the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy.

The OECD are somewhat more sober about it in their publication OECD Economic Surveys, Ireland, May 1978 where they say:

The sharp fall in the rate of inflation between 1976 and 1977, when it decelerated from 18 to 13.6 per cent, is attributable mainly to developments during the course of the latter year. As already mentioned, tax changes during 1977 played a role in this deceleration, as did price developments in the course of 1976, but by far the largest influence seems to have come from external prices during 1977. In the twelve months to November 1977, import prices rose by 11 per cent compared with 22 per cent in the previous 12 months, while the deceleration in export prices was from 26 per cent to 7½ per cent over the same period. The effective appreciation of sterling since October 1976 assisted in the deceleration of traded-goods prices and helps explain the similarity of the slowdown in inflation in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Finally the reasonably moderate national pay agreement of 1977 held cost pressures in check as for most of the year earnings rose less rapidly than consumer prices.

None of us are angels; we are all flesh and blood; none of us are geniuses, saving the Minister's presence. We must understand that it is not within the power of a Government to command large-scale results in inflation, unemployment or anything else, at least not in a country like this where one has to face the electorate every four or five years. Although I make allowances for the young Deputy over there who has just spoken, Deputy Leyden—I am not sure if it was his maiden speech—and he has come very fast and far, on which I congratulate him, that kind of Radio Peking or Radio Tirana sort of ignorant repetition—"it is all due to us; we inherited nothing but a shambles but we have brought the sun up over the horizon within 12 months"—is repulsive, is enough to drive people out of politics and keep them out.

Mr. MacSharry

: As far as his area is concerned he feels that; that is the way it is in his area.

Professor O'Donoghue

: Would the Deputy not quote the manifesto?

Mr. Kelly

: I make allowances for Deputy Leyden but we had the very same thing from the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy over and over again; he is not able to get to his feet without talking like that. We will have other opportunities, I hope, in the autumn when we will have a paper of some other colour to consider along with the Green Paper.

I notice a few things in regard to the style of this Government. For example, I notice that there is a very interesting thing going on at present; if one watches it closely one can track it in the papers quite easily, that is, a kind of dialogue between the Government and the private sector. The Government produced a range of tax concessions, the abolition of wealth tax and things like that. Their line is "We have done our bit, now it is up to you". No sooner has that been put out in two or three of these G15 scripts than the private sector come back and say "Do not leave that baby in our arms, do not tell us in 12 months time when the unemployment figures are nearly as bad as they are now that we are to blame". Then from the far side of the city the Confederation of Irish Industry say "Do not put the blame on us". The message from the Minister for Economic Planning and Development on 6 April, from the Minister for Labour on 30 March and from the Minister for Finance on 18 and 25 May was that the Government had done their bit for the private sector. Hardly had they said that when Mr. O'Donovan, the President of the CII on 24 and 26 May, and Mr. Hely-Hutchinson of Guinness's on 1 June, said that companies were not making enough profit and that if the Government wanted investment they would have to leave companies with more profits to invest and not until then would the Government see real action on the unemployment front.

It would make one cry to see this Government buying votes with enormous sums of money which make it impossible for them to devote the money where it is needed, and telling the private sector, as though the private sector were some kind of far-out reach of the public sector, that it is up to them to do this and that. It is not the private sector's job to create employment. I am sorry to have to tell a simple truth like that in the presence of an economist. The private sector are in the business of creating money for themselves. That is not a sin and I do not condemn it, but to expect people in the business of making money to turn around and behave as though they were a semi-State body with no obligation on them to make a profit, or if they make a profit to plough it back into some further economic activity of a general utility, is childish. We have told the Government all along that it was childish. Nonetheless this is the kind of dialogue which is now going on.

It seems that the private sector have been well treated in a sense, which has been, as we said at the time of the budget, injurious to the public interest generally and the interest of reducing unemployment, by this Government. I have no doubt, although we were accused of trying to sabotage things by saying so and Deputy FitzGerald was accused of being a national saboteur for doing his duty in saying this, that the abolition of wealth tax was a significant factor in stiffening the resolve of the unions not to touch a wage agreement of 5 per cent. It is a significant factor in the situation that the Minister now faces, where the wage calculations on which his strategy was based are significantly higher than they originally might have been.

Towards the end of our term in office, I must acknowledge, we had become unpopular for a variety of reasons. I noticed that we were being sniped at and bombarded on the one hand from the richest end of the private sector and from Deputy Noel Browne and Mr. Matt Merrigan on the other, and I used to say to my colleagues "Courage, if you have these against you, you must be on the right path, even though it may not necessarily be what is popular or what will bring in the votes." This Government have gone too far in conciliation. I would not have minded if the wealth tax levels had been raised to the sky, they could have been raised to £5 million and the Government could have raised the level at which wealth tax would occur, but the principle of capital taxation has been here since 1894 in the shape of tax on capital, on inheritance or succession, and it has been thrown away now to pay for the subscriptions that the private sector put into the Government party, at the cost of an extra couple of points in the national wage settlement. I know that perhaps the vast majority of the Fianna Fáil Party consist of decent patriotic people but that style of Government is repellent.

The laziness of Ministers and their inertia and unwillingness in relation to doing the things which were highest on the list of priorities when the Government came into office is discouraging. In his acceptance speech on 5 July the Taoiseach talked about reform of the public service. Where is the reform? I received two documents in the last two days, one of them a paper delivered by the Minister of State at the Department opposite and the other a report from the advisory committee on the public service. So far as the latter is comprehensible—I cannot make out what a lot of it is about because of the way they write English —the effective reform in the public service since 5 July last has simply consisted of upgrading Parliamentary Secretaries and giving them a higher salary, putting the planning sections of the Department of Finance under the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, and changing the name of the Department of Local Government to the Department of the Environment, and absolutely nothing else. These are not reforms and only a sleeveen would try to sell them to the people as such. It is dishonest and cruel to a simple people not too far away from bare feet to pretend that something useful is being done by superficial changes of that sort.

This is a Government of softies. They do not know what it is to govern. They are willing to incur any unpopularity. I worked within the National Coalition for four and a half years and I know what it is to see people doing things they knew will bring the house down around their ears, but they did because it was their duty to do it. The Fianna Fáil manifesto played a substantial part in the Fianna Fáil victory but in hindsight the National Coalition had become unpopular for reasons which the manifesto merely built on. One of the reasons was that the people simply had not the stomach to be governed in the way that we thought it our duty to govern. This Government are running away from difficulties. They are faced with a population which is becoming more and more ungovernable, in common with many other populations in the western democracies, because of the essence in western democracies whereby competing parties offer more and more cake and jam and the people vote for whoever offers the most.

I could not believe my ears yesterday morning when I heard the Taoiseach say that he "wished to thank the people for their support given last year". Of course they will support a Government who do nothing only give hand outs. They will support any Government like that. If there was an election tomorrow, except for the fact that fishermen and various other groups would not vote for Fianna Fáiu, the result might be the same as the one last July. If that is true, it is true for the reason that the Taoiseach intimated yesterday. The Taoiseach has the people's support in good times, but fair weather support is not worth anything and there is not much fair weather left ahead, as everybody knows. We had to fight through horrible external circumstances and horrible internal circumstances and naturally we trod on toes and made enemies when doing so. We have paid the penalty and I have never been heard to squeal about it. Unless this Government use their enormous majority to do these things now they will be in deep water in a few years' time. For example, take a simple thing on the security front. I do not wish to rake up an unhappy incident but the re-burial of the unfortunate Stagg at Ballina was an outrageous affront to Government. I am alive to all the personal elements in this, and please believe that I am not trying to re-fight a matter which is of grievous personal concern to relations and so forth, but for a Government to let that be done reminded me of the time they let Nelson Pillar be blown up, when one of their Deputies, the then Lord Mayor of Dublin, said that he had never liked the damn thing anyway. That was his reaction to the destruction of the principal monument of Dublin. It was from that moment on that the slide began.

An Ceann Comhairle

: The Deputy's time is up.

Mr. Kelly

: One last thing in relation to this soft approach which will land not just Fianna Fáil, but all of us in trouble is the impression which has been allowed to be created in the Garda that the force as a whole can call the tune. I do not know if any of the Ministers opposite read the editorial in The Garda Review after the new commissioner was appointed. You could clearly see that the GRB felt that they had sacked the old man and appointed the new one. Any Government which allow that idea, whether it is true or false, to get abroad, are in for trouble politically for themselves and will bring the country down with them. I dislike that style of Government. We have seen a lot of that over the last year. My advice to them now is to face their responsibilities and to take a leaf out of Deputy Liam Cosgrave's book. They will lose votes over it, but the people will thank them more for it in the end.

Debate adjourned.