The simple point that I am making is that this is a classic example of the Fianna Fáil governmental attitude, one gospel for the benighted foreigners abroad—at home, the mailed first and the velvet glove. This has always been their style especially in relation to the broadcasting media and it is something to which anybody who is in the broadcasting media should pay proper attention.
There are even as of yesterday and today substantial differences between the Taoiseach and some of his Ministers in relation to certain fundamental matters. Take for example the question of the European Monetary System. We had intervening in this Adjournment Debate today, with all the panache of the US Fifth Cavalry, the Minister for Fisheries and Forestry coming in to tell us that it was the sterling link which was the cause of all our problems and, once we had swept this nasty piece of international fiscal obstruction out of the way, we would be all fair set for wherever we were going. If the Minister for Fisheries and Forestry thinks this aspect of our negotiations to join the European Monetary System was so important why did the Taoiseach not refer to it once in his speech in the EMS debate yesterday morning? There is not, I grant, a direct contradiction but it is, to put it very mildly, extraordinary that something which the Minister for Fisheries and Forestry considers to be absolutely fundamental is regarded as being of so little importance by the Taoiseach that he chose not to refer to it at all.
I believe that the Taoiseach, in the last few days, has been embarrassed and annoyed by some of the speeches from these benches which compare his policies and the policies of his party with those of the Tory Party in Great Britain. He must have been equally embarrassed, as I pointed out in the EMS debate last night, to find out that it is not among the allies of Fianna Fáil in Europe that help for Ireland is to be found in the context of the EMS but among the socialist parties in Europe. The double irony is that if proof were needed that Fianna Fáil is fundamentally at heart a Tory party we had it again in the speech of the Minister for Fisheries and Forestry today when he came in to attack socialists, root and branch, as second only to the sterling link as the source of all Ireland's problems abroad. The classic definition of Tories is that they attack socialists so, after the Taoiseach's embarrassment, here comes the Minister for Fisheries and Forestry as a very large and voluble visual aid to prove our thesis that the policy line that that party is taking most closely resembles that being taken by conservative parties not only in Britain but in other countries of Europe as well.
I would now like to turn to the question of the economy in general and in particular to the question of jobs. We have had since this Government came into office—and more particularly since the publication of the Green Paper—an extraordinary display of professorial attitudes by the Minister for Economic Planning and Development, Ireland's answer to Sir Keith Joseph. We have seen the creation of a smokescreen of frenetic activity and policy making and speech making designed to conceal from the public at large what actually has happened in the period since this Government assumed office.
What was happening in 1977 when the Coalition Government left office and Fianna Fáil assumed office? What was happening at that time—and the figures prove it and cannot be denied—is that employment was rising and had been rising for some time; inflation was falling and had been falling for some time; a whole series of processes had been set in motion, and were to continue for some time after Fianna Fáil assumed office, in those twin aims of reducing inflation and increasing employment. The simple proof of that can be gauged from the fact that the day after the Taoiseach assumed office in this House the live register fell by 500. What economist, what politician, what statistician in his right mind would claim that the fall of 500 in one day was due in some miraculous way to the arrival of the present Taoiseach on those benches over there?
Of course it was not due to that. It was because policies had been inaugurated, decisions had been taken, things had been set in train which were having that effect on the country and continued to have that effect for quite some time while every Minister in this administration went charging around the country for the first four or five months opening things in the glory of being back in office. It was the brand new red-painted chromium-plated Fianna Fáil fire engine arriving on the scene long after the fire had gone out, its firemen pouring water into the upper stories of the house and creating far more damage than the fire itself could ever have done, others of their members hacking down with their hatchets and reducing to matchwood doors that were unlocked in an attempt to get into the house. Finding that the fire was out did not dissuade them; they had to pretend that without their arrival on the scene with their brand new gleaming fire engine the whole house would have been destroyed.
In fact the opposite was true. What happened was that their extraordinary mix of policies, while they had certain beneficial effects in certain areas, upset a number of very carefully balanced economic factors and produced within a very short time substantial problems which they are only now realising they will have to sort out.
The Taoiseach made great play of the fact that the number of people in employment over the last 12 months has gone up by a very substantial figure. That is true but we must look at that figure in context. The context in which we are looking at it is that of Government policy, especially that outlined in Development for Full Employment. That says clearly that the first thrust in employment creation will be in the State and semi-State sector and after that it will be up to the private sector to reciprocate. When we look at the grand total of those new jobs, assuming for the moment that they have been filled—all of them have not been filled—and if we ask ourselves how many of those are in the State and semi-State sector this year and to the end of 1977 and we look at the Government's projections for the origins of the next 20,000 jobs and the 20,000 after that, we will see that there will plainly be a distinct tapering off in the role of the public sector. The private sector are now being asked to respond.
It is our belief and one which has been backed up by frequent utterings by the private sector, that they do not see themselves in the business of mopping up unemployment to suit the Government. Mr. Hugh Munroe in a recent article in Hibernia said that any industrialist who is in business to provide jobs is not an industrialist but a philanthropist. Industrialists are in business to make money, not to provide jobs. If they provide jobs they will provide them as a by-product of making money. We do not deny that stimulating the private sector will create jobs, but we deny that it will create enough jobs to soak up the serious long term unemployment which has always been one of our major problems. We do not believe either that the role of the State and semi-State sector should be confined merely to the provision of service jobs in areas where employment can be rapidly expanded. We know that those service jobs are needed. There must be much more State involvement in industry than has been the tradition up to recently for any State or semi-State involvement in employment creation to be radical and far reaching.
When the Labour Party publish their detailed proposals for a national development corporation the Government will be able to see exactly what we mean when we talk about direct State involvement in the job creation area. We are waiting for a plan from the Government. The Green Paper, Development for Full Employment, is only a discussion document. It is certainly not a plan. I doubt the Government's ability to deliver a reasonable and rational, much less a radical, plan. We do not get plans from the Government benches, we get plots. The people on the other side are plotters. The chief thing they plot is how to stay in office for as long as possible at the least possible expense to themselves.
I spoke earlier about the effect of the policy initiatives taken by the Government in certain areas as spanners thrown into very delicately balanced economic mechanisms. There is one area where this has been classically proved true. That is in the area of housing. The famous £1,000 grant we have been talking about had barely touched the fingers of the unfortunate house purchasers before it vanished into the pockets of the builders. I suspect that a number of other measures had the immediate result of inflating the demand for houses beyond the point at which the present supply system for them could possibly meet it. The logical effect of that, as every serious unbiased economic commentator has pointed out since then, is that because houses were scarce and there was a demand for them the price rose to something far beyond their real value in non-inflationary terms to the people who were to buy them.
I have already spoken on this on the Labour Party Private Members Motion and I do not propose to go into it in any detail. It is a classical example of the over-enthusiastic fireman approach of Fianna Fáil, throw a few pounds around and everything will work out marvellously. Things are not as simple as that. We need more sophisticated, more subtle economic initiatives than the Government have provided since they came into office.
There is another item, which would be of interest to the general public, on which we should have a detailed reply from the Government. This is an answer to the simple question: why are we still paying on some grades of petrol 15p a gallon more than they are paying in Northern Ireland? I can think of no excuse for this other than the Government's unwillingness to tackle the oil companies, which have effectively created a cartel in petrol prices here. Before Fianna Fáil assumed office the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy was vocal in his apparent intention, which luckily for him did not find a place in the manifesto, to remove us from the outer zone agreement, which at the moment effectively allows the petrol companies and not the Government to fix the price of petrol. We have heard very little about that from the Minister since he assumed office. The motorists who are still paying 15p a gallon more than their counterparts in Northern Ireland have probably already calculated how many 15ps it takes to make up the cost of the car tax which the Government removed. There should be firm action by the Government to reduce the price of this essential transport commodity. Motorists will not get this from the Government. I believe that early next year we will see for the first time under a Fianna Fáil Administration, the price of the top grade petrol going up to £1 a gallon. The Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy will find that very difficult to concede.
I would like to turn now to the question of incomes. It is strange that, for some reason I do not really understand, despite the many speeches by the Minister for Economic Planning and Development, in which he has told us that real disposable income has gone up by 8 per cent this year, the same conclusions and the same assessment of the economic situation is not widely shared by the people actually earning the wages and paying the prices. The Irish Press, a newspaper which, in virtually all things, apart from its editorial on Northern Ireland, is to be listened to with great care wrote an editorial on 13 November last stating:
Many workers today are frustrated and angered about the shrinking value in real terms of their wage packages, sorely hit by the inflation of the past five years...
The Coalition Government were in power for three and a half of those five years but Fianna Fáil were in office for one and a half years of that time. The editorial went on to say:
...and with the Government trying to limit wage increases to 5 per cent, they see little hope of a correction of the imbalance within the present framework.
That is the voice of The Irish Press speaking on behalf of the many trade unionists who read that paper. They may not have heard the Minister for Economic Planning and Development or, perhaps, they did not believe him if they heard him. Let us accept for the purpose of argument that real disposable incomes have gone up by 8 per cent, the real question there is: whose incomes? The percentage rise in some incomes is obviously greater than the percentage rise in others, and it is possible for percentage rises in some incomes to be accompanied by percentage decreases in others. Even assuming, on an average basis, a percentage rise in some incomes by 8 per cent we have to look ahead to what the Government plan to do next.
What the Government plan to do next is spelled out clearly in the options presented for discussion in the Green Paper, Development for Full Employment. The implications of what that discussion document contains have been spelled out in turn with ruthless honesty by the NESC in their comments on the document. Regarding table 2.7 which refers to the implied growth in certain components of personal income for the years 1977 to 1980 along the lines of development for full employment, they say that if the proposal is to be implemented in any foreseeable way the figures will be as follows: in respect of domestic wage and salary earnings outside agriculture, 3 per cent per year; agricultural income from self-employment and other agricultural income, 8 per cent per annum; current transfer payments which comprise social welfare benefits, zero percentage per year. In other words, this is starting at the end and going backwards. According to the Government's strategy there is not to be any increase up to 1980 in real terms in the purchasing power of social welfare benefits. There is to be a 3 per cent increase in real terms for domestic wage and salary earners and there is to be more than twice that percentage—8 per cent—per year in the agricultural sector.
The unfairness of this hardly needs to be spelled out in any more detail, but in the same document the NESC point out, in relation to crude comparisons of relative tax levels, that in 1977 more than 15 per cent of schedule E wages and salaries was paid by way of income tax, that a comparable figure for farmers' income is not available but that it is known that 1 per cent of agricultural income from self-employment was paid in income tax in 1977. There is a gap to be bridged there, but if these proposals are to be implemented that gap will be widened rather than bridged. The council are upset particularly by the Government's intention effectively to peg social spending. This council are representative of employers as well as of trade unions, and they point out that it is not adequate to hold constant the level of social welfare payments in real terms, especially when real incomes in the community are increasing. It is pointed out that it is widely accepted that poverty is about relative if not absolute deprivation and that the council would wish to see a real increase in per capita income maintenance payments. The Green Paper gives no hope of any such real increase. Indeed, the price movements during the past few quarters have if anything suggested that the real value of present social welfare payments is being eroded by the fact that the price rises in respect of food—and social welfare recipients spend a much greater proportion of their income on food than do other categories—is much steeper than the increase in respect of other commodities and products on which these people do not spend so much.
This, then, is the writing on the wall so far as social spending is concerned. It is the line taken by the Government in respect of development for full employment. We have not heard that line being departed from in any way significantly by any spokesman for the Government. As my final example of the threat this poses to our social services, I will talk briefly about the threat it poses to education. The section about education in the Green Paper is one of the most mealymouthed statements on education that I have ever known to come from a Government. It is couched more in terms of regret that they cannot think of a reasonable rationale for cutting expenditure than in terms of a hope that real expenditure will be increased. I would have argued that, for example, education should find a part in a discussion paper of this kind in the infrastructure section and not in a finance implications section.
Education is a developed mental activity on the part of the State, on the part of the private interests engaged in it and also on the part of both those adults and young people who are benefiting from it. The other day the Minister for Economic Planning and Development in an exchange with Deputy Kelly was very scornful of a point of view that the Deputy had advocated. When the Deputy suggested that there was a difference between service jobs and productive jobs, the Minister said that the Deputy was talking in terms of old economics. But if ever I saw an example of old economics, it is contained in the section on education in this Green Paper. As an illustration I will quote a sentence from page 1 of the document Observations of the Higher Education Authority on Paragraph 7.33 in the Green Paper “Development for Full Employment”:
It should be kept in mind that these high levels of benefit, paid for by all taxpayers, accrue in large part to a small and relatively privileged section of the community who also enjoy the prospect, as future graduates, of relatively high earnings.
They are referring to higher education grants. The Government's proposals indicate a 19th century view of education. They regard education as a commodity, as something in the marketplace, which is of use only to the people who receive it. The Government view this old-fashioned and simplistic approach to education as part of an argument aimed at increasing radically the fees payable by students in third-level institutions. I am glad to note that the HEA, at page 7 of their document have concluded that:
it will not be possible to transfer any significant proportion of the cost of higher education from the Exchequer to those who benefit from it merely by increasing fees. Such a policy would put many courses, especially university courses, beyond the means of many students unless a State-administered loan scheme were introduced.
That was the judgment of the HEA on this quaint and old-fashioned idea, but there is a better answer, and this is the answer given by Professor Brendan Walsh in his comments which were published by the ESRI in their document "A Review of Irish Economic Policy”. Professor Walsh says that increased public expenditure on education can potentially enhance the productivity and employability of those seeking work, that money spent in this manner should not be regarded as a non-productive transfer payment but rather as an outlay with considerable potential for yielding a social and economic return in the future, that this also yields direct employment effects through the expansion of the education system. That is the new economics, but the Government's Green Paper is full of old economics so far as education is concerned.
There are two matters also in relation to education to which I should like to refer briefly. One of these relates to primary education. The Taoiseach in a major speech—a solemn utterance as it was delivered in Maynooth—on 3 March 1977—delivered himself of the opinion, as read for him by the present Minister of State at the Department of Education, and I quote:
That portion of our education system up to minimum school leaving age is the only part which is shared by the vast majority of our people. It also happens to be the most underfinanced part. My Party is concerned to provide much better facilities for this sector...
What has happened in this sector since this Government came into office? It is true that new teachers have been provided, but they have been provided in a smaller proportion in the primary sector than in the post-primary sector. The capitation grants for primary school pupils have been increased, but this is the increase to which the previous Government were committed. Even at this late stage, there is no sign of the increase which the Fianna Fáil manifesto promised would be introduced immediately. This has yet to take place.
There is one other aspect of primary education to which I feel I should refer, and that is the refusal of the Minister for Education to make funds available for the purchase of sites for multidenominational schools on the same basis as he has—generously, I might say—made them available for all Irish national schools. I have one project of each kind in my constituency so I might be accused of special pleading, but these are not the only projects. There are many others like them.
In the same speech the Taoiseach spoke at considerable length and depth about two things, the need to revive the Irish language and the need to unite the people of Ireland. He related both of these fundamental Fianna Fáil aims to the educational system. In relation to multi-denominational education he said:
Some of the ways I have suggested for trying to build friendship bridges include cross-border economic and cultural co-operation and encouragement of meetings between young children from different religious and cultural backgrounds. In this context I have raised the issue of a small pilot scheme of interdenominational schools on a number of occasions.
Later on in the same address he suggested:
Where a majority in a community wish to establish a single denominational school that is their constitutional right and the state has a corresponding obligation to provide it....
Where a clear majority want a multi-denominational school in a viable school situation they have similar rights.
Since coming into office this Government have put their money where their mouth is in relation to the provision of sites for our Irish national schools, but in relation to the other national aim, which I would consider to be at least as important, the aim of uniting the people and the children of this part of the island and eventually the island as a whole, across the deep denominational barriers that divide them, there has been a flat note. The Minister for Education has told me in this House that it is not his intention to extend the scheme of special help for all Irish national schools to parents trying, in the face of desperate financial obstacles, to create and found the type of school which I have been describing and to which the Taoiseach himself has been committed on at least an experimental basis.
If the Government are serious about the two national aims they should put their money where their mouth is. They should recognise that the present structure of our primary education system effectively discriminates—not, strictly speaking, in religious terms—against those who cannot lay their hands on the necessary cash or credit to pay for sites for national schools. There is a self-evident need for special Government assistance for site purchase for these schools. Before the election the Taoiseach spoke of pilot schemes. We have not seen a single pilot scheme of multidenominational education started and financed by this Government since they came into office.
Finally, I would draw the attention of the House to a splendid article by the present Minister for Education in The Irish Times of 4 February 1975 and headed “The Fianna Fáil attitude to the Government's education plans” which is a comment on the 1974 Coalition Government decision. One paragraph of this reads:
No reasons have been given in the proposals for refusing independent university status to the colleges in Cork and Galway. This is an unpardonable omission. Since July, 1968, these colleges have lived in that expectation. They should be immediately freed. The Federation of University Teachers——
whom the Minister has not yet met——
——urges that Maynooth College, in view of its accelerated expansion, should have "the option of independent status".
There has not been a peep out of the Minister on the question of when this famous Universities Bill will be provided, although that is something that in 1975 he said should be done immediately. He assumed responsibility for that portfolio in 1977. Not only are we still told that this Universities Bill is on the long finger but we are being refused any assurance that St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, will be given independent status without which it will lapse under the tutelage of the Catholic Hierarchy and end up perhaps a different kind of educational institution from the full university which it is entitled to be.
In this Government, in relation to education, the Minister for Education in his first Estimate was given about £5 million nett for extra teachers and maybe £1.5 million nett extra for a few more things. Any other developments that he has overseen have been achieved merely by moving around money within the Estimate and by cutting, for example, the free school books scheme savagely. But he has been given £5 million, £6 million or £7 million in his first estimate to put up the higher education grant and to do a few more things like that. He has been told that he can go away and chew on that now for at least two or three years because there will not be another bob for him until the next election. We are now serving notice on the Government that this strategem will not be ignored and will be widely published, because it indicates that the writing is on the wall for social spending in general and for the educational service in particular. We will be reminding the people of this throughout the period of office of this Government and we will not let them forget it when the next polling day comes.
