Adjournment of Dáil: Motion.

The Taoiseach

I move:

That Dáil Éireann at its rising on the 18th December 1980, do adjourn for the Christmas Recess.

The year now drawing to a close will long figure in the economic history of the world. Economic growth dried up throughout the Western developed economies. Most of the developing countries suffered a serious set-back to their solvency as the increasing cost of oil absorbed their limited resources. Unemployment on a scale not seen since the second World War has re-appeared in countries which had come to regard full employment for all as permanently assured.

We in Ireland have suffered severely from the effects of this world recession largely because the oil-price increases, which are at the root of the recession, took away a greater share of our resources than in other less oil-dependent countries. The fact that we have come through the year not only without damage to the underlying strength of our economy but with significant improvements to its capacity has been due in large measure to the approach and the policies of the Government.

As I stated in the budget debate at the beginning of the year, and on several occasions since, the Government do not believe that drastic deflationary policies are appropriate to a country like ours with its young and increasing population.

That is not to say that we can manage our economy without prudent limitations on expenditure, both domestic and external, and without regard to the discipline demanded by the trend in external deficits and internal prices. But the essence of good economic management in times of economic difficulty, is to maintain intact the ability of our economy to provide acceptable standards of living while improving, as much as possible, its basic capacity so that it can seize the new opportunities rapidly and effectively when the world economic climate improves.

It is this economic commonsense which has enabled our economy this year to grow at a rate which is above the Community and OECD averages; to maintain levels of investment which are among the highest in the Community and OECD area; to expand our exports at a rate above the Community and OECD averages; to achieve record levels of new job approvals in modern competitive high-technology industry; to not only maintain but to increase marginally the volume of agricultural output; to reduce our external deficit; to bring down the rate of inflation from a peak of 20 per cent to the current annualised rate of 12-13 per cent; to reverse the trend in interest rates and bring them down to their current level of being the third lowest in the Community; and to have had the lowest number of days lost through industrial stoppages since 1977.

The performance of our economy generally this year compares more than favourably with the general Community and OECD performance. Furthermore, we are aware from our discussions with the trade union movement that the economic policies being urged by me in the European Council have the support of the trade union movement throughout the Community because they give priority to the maintenance and provision of employment. Unemployment has now reached nearly 7½ million persons in the European Community and the projections are that it is likely to increase further next year. This is a sombre prospect unless the necessary measures are taken to give the protection and provision of employment the highest priority in economic management.

The European Commission has now urged that the solution to unemployment is in a package of short-term and medium-term measures designed to strengthen competitiveness and to help achieve more effective adjustment of the structures of the economies of member states in order to rebuild the foundations for more sustained growth. The Commission has also stressed that deflation must be ruled out as an instrument for restoring external equilibrium. The Commission considers that, while member states must endeavour to reduce gradually their external deficits caused by the oil price increases, these deficits are due to an imbalance in relationships with the OPEC countries which can be rectified only in the course of time. The Commission, therefore, recommends that these oil-induced deficits be tolerated at least for the time being. In this context, it is relevant to note that 40 per cent of our external deficit this year is due to the increase in the cost of oil imports alone.

These recommendations are a firm endorsement by the Commission of the policies we have been pursuing here. The Presidency conclusions of the recent European Council gave further support to these policies by stressing the need, in current economic and social circumstances, for increased investment and for improvement in infrastructure.

I think the recommendations of the Commission and the conclusions of the European Council are convincing evidence that the Government were correct in their economic judgment to increase during the year, as the need became evident, the provision for investment in the economy even though this involved a higher Exchequer borrowing requirement than was originally envisaged. The Government had made clear, at the time of the budget, that additional expenditure would be incurred if this was considered necessary to sustain economic activity and employment.

As I explained in moving the motion of confidence in the Government's economic policies in October last, the level of the Exchequer borrowing requirement is one that must be determined not by any dogmatic formula but with due regard to the general economic circumstances and to the composition of the expenditure involved. Our economy needs exceptionally high levels of investment for a period if it is to become a productive, competitive and efficient economy. That is why, as a deliberate act of policy by the Government, gross domestic fixed capital investment is running this year at about 30 per cent of gross national product as compared with only 22 per cent in 1975 at the height of the last recession.

An analysis of the present state of the Irish economy and the population trends point clearly to the lines along which economic policy should be directed in the period immediately ahead. We need to achieve a massive improvement in our infrastructure of services by a major programme of productive investment. At the same time we must restrain current expenditure so as to achieve a reduction in the current budget deficit in order to free as much of our resources as possible for this investment and as a contribution to reducing the rate of inflation.

The deficiencies in our infrastructure are clear. The growth of our industrial and commercial activity and our general competitiveness and productivity are hampered by lack of capacity and efficiency in the communication services so vital in a modern trading economy such as telephones, telex, roads, harbours and airports. The rate and pace of growth of our industrial sector is dependent on greater investment in industrial buildings, equipment, installations and services. We have shown the capacity to develop a modern competitive high-technology industrial sector, and we plan to accelerate the growth of this sector by increased investment next year.

An economy developing from our state of development requires a faster growth of energy consumption than a more developed economy. We are faced with the need to increase our energy production by half as much again by the end of this decade if we are to maintain the momentum of our economy.

Increased output and productivity in agriculture are also directly linked to investment. Our fast growing population — both because of natural increase and because our people are returning in large numbers from abroad — requires increased investment in essential social capital. Our economic and social progress is reflected in growing urbanisation, and this demands increased provision of the necessary sanitary services to keep down the unacceptable rise in the cost of building land.

Our general objective through increased investment must be to create an efficient and expanding economic structure with the same standards of efficient services as our trading competitors. Only in this way can we hope to maintain and improve our living standards in an increasingly competitive trading world.

As a corollary to increased investment we must restrain consumption. In terms of the public finances, that means that we must start reducing the current budget deficit. The practice which prevailed throughout the seventies of financing a current budget deficit by borrowing must be brought to an end. Borrowing for investment is justified in that it will, directly or indirectly, provide economic activity, jobs, new production and revenue. The adjustment over time to a decreasing current budget deficit will be restrictive but it is unavoidable.

The Government are currently examining in careful and critical detail the Estimates for 1981. This is a difficult and demanding exercise so that we can strike the right balance between restraining expenditure and avoiding hardship and unemployment. We are, therefore, reviewing meticulously each item of proposed expenditure so that the fairest balance of economic and social advantage possible in present circumstances can be found.

It is because of our conviction that an efficient and adequate infrastructure based on increased productive investment must be the corner-stone of economic policy for the future that the Government will publish early in the New Year an investment plan for the economy. This plan will outline our proposals to develop and improve the basic framework in which the economy functions in order to make it more efficient and productive. It will be based on the principle that we must have the highest possible level of productive investment consistent with our resources. We must mobilise all available resources for this investment plan, which will provide the context in which new and accelerated growth in the economy can be achieved.

To ensure the maximum utilisation of resources we intend to mobilise private sector resources to supplement the resources in the public sector. In the new investment plan, therefore, we will start a process of providing opportunities to the private sector to invest in public facilities and services which have in the main been financed, heretofore, by Exchequer borrowing. In my speech at Ennis earlier this year I outlined my belief that in a mixed economy such as ours we must provide scope for mobilising private sector financial resources to make long-term growth investments in the future of our economy. I note, incidentally, that the journal The Economist recently made exactly the same suggestion in relation to the United Kingdom economy. We know from our discussions with financial institutions that substantial funds are available in the private sector for new productive investment and that there is clear goodwill to use these funds to supplement public sector investment in many areas.

The Government's emphasis on increased investment accords with the recent recommendations of the National Economic and Social Council in their report Economic and Social Policy, 1980-83; Aims and Recommendations that the Public Capital Programme should give greater weight to productive capital projects including related infrastructural projects. The council envisaged an integrated policy package which, through an adjustment in the current budget deficit and the current balance of payments deficit, would enable productive public expenditure to increase in real terms, on a selective basis, so as to improve the capacity of the economy to take advantage of increased world economic activity when it develops. In this way, output and employment can rise as the world economy moves out of recession.

The major objective in increasing investment is so to expand and improve the structure of our economy that it will generate higher employment. The sharp rise this year in the number on the Live Register of unemployed is a symptom of the lack of sufficient investment in the past to generate the level of jobs necessary to absorb our rapidly growing labour force.

This rapid growth in our labour force is a new factor of great economic and social significance. Up to recently it was thought that the labour force was increasing by perhaps 10,000 per year at most. The results of the 1979 Census of Population suggest that the actual labour force increase this year could be over double those estimates. We will shortly have the results of the 1979 Labour Force Survey and these will enable us to determine more precisely the growth in our labour force and, even more important, in our employment. New industrial job approvals are running at record levels. This year over 35,000 new industrial jobs have been approved. The magnitude of this achievement is clear when we realise that in 1975, at the height of the last recession, new industrial job approvals amounted to only 14,000. It is clear that we now have the capacity to provide at least 30,000 to 40,000 new jobs annually. Unfortunately, these are being largely offset this year by heavy job losses particularly in the older traditional industries affected by reduced demand because of the current world economic recession. As these job losses abate, and as the record level of new job approvals is translated into actual jobs, we will be able to offer to our growing labour force a wide range of highly-skilled and rewarding jobs in manufacturing industry and in services.

Part of the additional investment funds provided under the second national understanding are designed to accelerate the translation into actual jobs of the record levels of new industrial job approvals. Under the new investment plan we will continue this acceleration so that the new jobs are provided as quickly as possible after the formal approval has been given. In this way we intend to offset job losses in older industries.

Because of our underlying strength to provide new jobs not only in manufacturing industry but also in the services which have been growing rapidly in recent years, we should be able to maintain and even increase our non-agricultural employment this year. This is in spite of the rise in the Live Register which is now reflecting the overall growth in our labour force.

The 1979 census showed that our population was greater than we had heretofore estimated, including in rural areas throughout the west. This suggests that the assumptions made in recent years about the decline in the agricultural labour force may have been too pessimistic. In any event, much of the so-called job losses in agriculture are due to retirement and death and do not represent labour force vacancies in the same way as in the other sectors.

We must all recognise, however, that the farming industry has had two difficult years. I think that 1980 in particular will be remembered as the year which underlines for us the basic fact that the other economic sectors depend greatly on a prosperous and progressive agriculture.

The economic difficulties of the farming industry this year have been of special concern to the Government. I myself met the farm leaders on six occasions this year to discuss the problems of the industry, and the Ministers for Agriculture and Finance have also met the farm leaders on other occasions. Arising from these meetings a series of new measures were taken which it was agreed between the Government and the farm leaders would give substantial material help to farmers in coping with their financial difficulties. I also held several meetings with the representatives of the associated banks to discuss the special credit problems of farmers and in these meetings arrangements were made which helped to alleviate the repayment problems of individual farmers suffering financial hardship. The Government intervened with local authorities to waive the second moiety of this year's rates for farmers in the £40 to £60 valuation category and to ensure that no farmers would be pressed to pay rates this year, if he could not afford to pay because of temporary financial difficulties, and that he would pay no interest on the debt incurred.

This important series of meetings between the farm leaders and representatives of the Government and the measures taken as a result clearly show our deep concern as a Government about the problems of the industry and our determination to act positively to alleviate them. There can be no doubt, however, but that the problems of the farming industry in this country and in other Community countries cannot be solved at national level alone. The basic problem of the industry is the heavy loss of real income it has suffered this year and last year due to the gap between production costs and Community-fixed prices. This loss is widespread throughout the Community though our farmers have suffered most because of the higher input costs in our exceptionally open and heavily oil-dependent economy. The solution can only be found in the realisation at Community level that farm prices must be fixed at levels which ensure the fair standard of living for the agricultural community which the Treaty of Rome envisages.

I raised this issue at the recent European Council and I believe there is now a growing realisation of the economic and social importance of the Community's farm industry which employs eight million people and ensures the security of Community food supplies and the stability of Community balance of payments. In particular we must promote the view that in considering the evolution of the Community budget and its impact on the Common Agricultural Policy, the special position of regions like Ireland heavily dependent on agriculture which makes relatively small demands on the Community Budget must have special consideration.

This is the background to the case the Minister for Agriculture has now presented to the European Commission for additional assistance to the farming industry in Ireland. The Presidency Conclusions of the December Luxembourg Council stress the necessity to ensure that Community instruments are used to improve the economic situation in the less-favoured rural regions. The Treaty of Rome itself recognises that the Common Agricultural Policy must have regard to structural and natural disparities between the agricultural regions of the Community. The relatively high proportion of our population which depend on agriculture for their livelihood, and the basic importance of the agricultural industry to our overall economic performance make it mandatory on the Government to fight determinedly in Brussels to protect and promote its interests. I would ask that the other sectors support the Government in whatever measures it urges at Community level or takes at national level to sustain the agriculture industry on which over 40 per cent of our exports are based.

In this context we award top priority to the need to make adequate resources available in the Community budget to finance existing Community policies including the demands created by the enlargement of the Community.

I have referred to the intensive series of meetings I held during the year with the farm leaders. These meetings have been paralleled by similar meetings with representatives of the other economic sectors. The complexity and sectoral interdependence of a mixed economy such as ours which is in course of rapid transformation requires, in my view, close dialogue and discussion between the Government and these representatives. Our economic and social objectives can be achieved more rapidly and more completely if we work together in close consultation and common accord than if we dissipate our energies on sectional conflicts and dissensions. It is my intention to discuss the forthcoming investment plan to the extent that opportunity permits with the interests most directly involved in the achievement of economic progress.

Apart from increased productive investment, the other special focus of economic effort next year must be to achieve higher standards of efficiency and competitiveness throughout the economy. We know from research studies that our general level of productivity is much lower than that of our trading competitors in the Community. While this is a matter to cause us concern, it is also a challenge. There is no reason, if we put our minds and our wills to it, why we cannot achieve the same levels of productivity as workers and management have achieved in other countries. The fact that they have been able to do it shows that it is possible for us to achieve comparable levels of efficiency by using known methods of organisation, management, marketing and technology. Increased efficiency is not necessarily a question of working harder; it is a matter of working in a more organised and rewarding way.

I have asked the social partners to consider urgently how we might best improve our efficiency and competitiveness and to bring forward proposals and recommendations as quickly as possible. These will form the basis of new efforts to do what employers and trade unions in other countries have shown is possible. Industrial peace and reduction in absenteeism can greatly help to increase our efficiency and competitiveness.

I appealed at the beginning of this year for industrial peace in 1980 and, in the event, the hours lost this year through industrial action are the lowest since 1977. Nevertheless, we must try to do better in 1981. In particular, the high incidence of unofficial stoppages cannot be considered justified when we have a strong and skilled trade union movement well able to defend amd promote the interests of their members. To undermine and bring into question the competence and authority of that movement is to damage gravely not only the general economic interests of our society but the best interests of trade-unionists themselves. I think the dangers inherent in unofficial stoppages are becoming apparent to the vast bulk of trade union members and I am hopeful that we may see a new spirit in 1981 and a new support by members of their union leaders.

I have outlined the main features and prospects of our economy. But we must not forget that we are not an economic unit only. In the most profound sense of our human condition we are a social unit. That is why during the year the Government have given the highest priority, in spite of our economic difficulties, to maintaining and advancing our social provision for the needy and disadvantaged. We brought about a real increase this year in social welfare benefits and have undertaken in the second national understanding to continue to increase social welfare payments at least in line with the cost of living. This concern with social welfare recipients is also reflected in the double payment of long-term benefits this month.

We have also undertaken to widen the scope of our social services by introducing paid maternity leave and increasing the statutory health eligibility limit. The introduction of full income-splitting for tax purposes was another important social advance during the year.

We will publish later today a White Paper on Education which will reflect the thought the Government have been giving to the further development of our educational system. The transformation of our economy to higher levels of output and productivity is closely linked to the capacity of our educational system to provide the necessary education and training which will assure our young people of a rewarding role in the life of our economy. This White Paper will provide the focus for discussion and debate so that all necessary action can be taken to improve the capacity and content of our educational system.

I have also stressed several times during the year the importance from a social viewpoint of ensuring that our economic growth benefits all regions. One of our important social objectives must be to ensure that people are given satisfactory opportunities to live and work in their own regions and localities. In my view, this will multiply and release the talents and energies of local communities to improve their economic and social environment. Our investment policies, therefore, have sought to ensure that all regions receive their due share of investment resources and projects. This policy will also lessen demand for new social capital caused by excessive concentration of population and economic activity in a limited number of areas. Our recent decision to decentralise over 3,000 government posts to regional centres is a clear example of our commitment to regional growth and development.

Tourism has a very significant contribution to make, not only to national growth, but also to regional development. Our tourism industry is now beginning to grow again following some difficult years. We must, in particular, seek to obtain maximum benefit from the competitive currency advantage we now enjoy with the United Kingdom and United States, and we must in particular concentrate on the services and facilities we offer to touring visitors of modest means.

I believe that there is now a widespread understanding throughout our community of the depth and extent of the present world recession and the serious difficulties it poses for us. These difficulties can only be increased by the further increase in price of oil which is on the way. By any criteria we wish to apply, 1981 will be a difficult year. However, we must not be pessimistic about the future. There are many hopeful and encouraging aspects. Our economy is basically sound and has enormous potential for growth. There are indications, tentative admittedly, that the deepest point of the world recession may have passed and that an upturn can be expected during 1981. In our particular case, we can look forward with a reasonable degree of optimism to finding oil and further gas reserves off our coast which would have a profound impact on the growth and capacity of our economy. It is also legitimate for us to look forward to the successful conclusion of the Law of the Sea Conference which will open up for us the full possibility of exploring and exploiting our continental shelf and its waters. This can lead to exciting new prospects not only for hydrocarbons but for other physical and biological resources.

We have come through a dangerous and difficult year with our capacity for continued economic and social progress intact. We face into 1981 with economic and social policies which should enable us to improve further our productive capacity and to increase our levels of social justice and welfare. We have a wide range of attainable economic and social objectives to achieve as a nation. We do not underestimate the problems of 1981 but we will face them with confidence in our policies, belief in our objectives and faith in the capacity and enterprise of our people to grasp every opportunity for continued economic and social progress.

Dr. FitzGerald

I do not propose to devote my remarks to the errors and deficiencies of the Government in economic management—ground I traversed two months ago in economic debate and with which other speakers no doubt will be dealing. Nor shall I follow the hares raised by the Taoiseach in his selective presentation nor be tempted by the complacency of his remarks to get involved in direct controversy on points he has raised. I shall attempt to look at the situation with a slightly more detached stance and to analyse objectively our problems, long-term as well as immediate, although my starting point inevitably must be the critical economic situation that exists now.

First, I shall deal with the significance of the imbalance in our finances and in the balance of payments, discussing the alternatives of a continuation of the present situation, leading within a couple of years inevitably to a dramatic deflation forced on us by the IMF when the flow of external loans eventually dried up, or of a more gradual elimination of the current deficit designed to avoid a further deflation of our economy. I shall suggest that the latter, if it is to succeed, without imposing very serious constraints on the public sector, would have to be accomplished in a period of economic growth. In present circumstances such growth can be attained in the short-term especially, only through bringing inflation under control rapidly so that our production of goods and services becomes more competitive, recovering ground lost in the domestic and external markets. I shall suggest that anti-inflation policy must lie at the core of any worthwhile economic strategy.

I will go on to show why this is more important for Ireland than for other developed countries, because of the scale of the demographic revolution that has been taking place during the past 20 years, to which the Taoiseach made only glancing references, showing how the effects of this will continue to have their impact upon the numbers seeking employment in Ireland until well into the next century. This is both a challenge and also an opportunity, unique in Europe, to attain rapid growth over a quarter of a century and more without the socially disturbing effects of immigration of labour that is culturally differentiated— a source of many social problems for the workers concerned in the countries which in the past have been dependent upon that type of immigration for sustained economic growth.

I will go on to point out the need for our political institutions to respond to the challenge of our new population structure, and to their failure so far to do so, contrasting this with the early days of the State when relatively young men held the levers of power. Having referred to some of the steps our party have been taking to deal with this problem, I will go on to suggest that if we are to face it and provide for the needs not alone of this new generation of young people but for the problems of poverty also, we shall have to reintroduce a measure of medium-term economic planning to replace the present hand-to-mouth operations of government for, as a result of pressures from interest groups, the gains we make tend at present to accrue to strong pressure groups in society. This can be prevented only by a planned utilisation of additional resources directed towards the groups that do not control such power, the young, the old, the under-privileged generally.

In this connection I will advert to the need to build into our system a wider measure of consensus to deal with difficult problems, such as those in the industrial relations field, pointing to the successes already achieved in inter-party co-operation for the public good through our present committee system within the House, to which all too little attention is directed in the media.

I conclude by referring briefly to the urgency of having in power a Government which will not merely have a majority and a mandate for action, but will use this mandate to tackle the immediate problems and to prepare to meet the longer-term needs of our rapidly-expanding population. With that summary of my remarks to guide the House through the detailed exposition of my theme. I turn first to a brief analysis of the nature and scale of our present economic difficulties.

There is no shortage of material with which to criticise the Government's performance, the Taoiseach's selective statements at the outset of his speech notwithstanding, including his dubious claim of growth on a scale unparalleled in the EEC despite the estimates of the Central Bank of total stagnation. The drop in the external deficit is due to the recession that the Government themselves have induced. Objectively our economic situation is critical. Government finances are overstrained, as the Taoiseach has admitted — and next year's balance of payments deficit — after taking account of this year's effective halving of the true deficit by a 7 per cent cut in imports due to de-stocking and the artificial level of cattle and beef exports — will be around £850 million.

Even if one deducts from this the £225 million or £250 million oil-induced factor to which the Taoiseach referred and which he says the EEC regard as tolerable, we are still left with the deficit of £600 million which does not come under the definition of what the EEC regard as tolerable. This leaves no room for stimulation of demand to get us out of our present stagnation. The result of the Government having got us into this situation is that unemployment is of the order of 116,000 or 125,000 on the old basis of including short-time working and people over 65 years of age. At the same time, farm incomes are about 40 per cent down in terms of their purchasing power and the production capacity of agriculture has been run down rapidly.

I could spend my three-quarters of an hour deploring these facts and figures, analysing the extent to which the problems which I have mentioned arise from external causes outside Government control, as some of them do, and the extent to which they arise rather from the actions, firstly of the Lynch Government and secondly the inaction of the present Government. For my part, I would prefer to look at a wider canvas and to approach our economic and social problems as constructively and impartially as possible, leaving on one side as far as I can the question of blame for the present situation. I shall try, indeed, to project myself back 15 years before my entering into politics, when I was writing weekly in The Irish Times on economic and social issues. If I had then been faced with the present situation, I would have had to, and would have, adverted to the errors of the Government and the need for certain actions by the Government and I would not be able, without distorting the canvas, to avoid doing this to some extent.

There are basically two parts to our problem. The first is the scale of the present imbalance in our finances and underlying external payments and the extent to which the continuation of this would threaten a massive deflation when the sources of borrowing dried up and we found ourselves in the hands of the IMF. At the same time, the bringing of this under the control gradually will involve constraint and our capacity to provide for the public needs of our people, infrastructural, developmental and social, for a number of years to come. The other side is the scale of these needs arising from our demographic situation, a theme which I want to develop in some detail.

First, we must face the consequences of our present financial external payments situation, which the Taoiseach in his speech has sought to conceal rather than to face. No serious economic observer, no financier, no informed businessman, no one in the trade unions, in the borrowing community or elsewhere, who is seriously concerned with the country's fate would assert that we could continue indefinitely borrowing 14 per cent of GNP, half of it or more to finance current budget deficits, or that we could sustain our currency in the EMS if inflation were to continue after next year at the kind of level now foreseen for next year — around 15 per cent. Incidentally, the Taoiseach's annualised 12 to 13 per cent inflation rate is misleading. Given the effects of the recent national understanding, the inflation rate for next year is more likely to be around 15 per cent. The former course of maintaining borrowing at 14 per cent would lead, at some point at present unpredictable but within what can loosely be described as a couple of years, to the loss of our credit rating and the sudden withdrawal of that part of this 14 per cent addition to our national resources which derives from borrowing abroad, perhaps around half. Any external aid then available would be from the IMF on terms that, as we know from other countries which have faced this, would demand drastic deflation involving, inevitably, a massive further rise in unemployment.

No country finds this kind of sudden shock easy to take, but I feel that ours is less ready for it than most. The very extent to which we have cushioned ourselves from reality, by spending consistently 12 to 14 per cent more than we produce, has created a level of expectation and has led to the disappearance of any sense of reality on a scale which would make the shock of such a development very hard to take. Certainly, confidence in our democratic institutions would be badly shaken and all democratic politicians, not merely those in Government, whoever they might be at that time, would suffer in their credibility. We already have enough sources of instability in our society deriving from the running sore of Northern Ireland and the persistent failure to tackle that problem, to make us all very wary of allowing that situation to develop.

The alternative to letting the present situation continue is to tackle this problem now — and I mean now — and to eliminate excess borrowing over a short period of years on a planned basis, making steady progress at a rate sufficient to persuade our external lenders to keep on lending to us at a diminishing rate until a reasonable balance is obtained. I do not believe that this means the elimination of the whole of the 14 per cent. A country at our stage of development with a capacity for additional output from agriculture — admittedly a capacity which is temporarily not available to us due to the situation in that sector as a result of the way the Government have handled it — has a long-term capacity for growth in agriculture, a country with a proven capacity to attract new industry, even at the depth of a world recession and perhaps also, as the Taoiseach has said, with certain hydrocarbon resources, although they remain uncertain and unquantifiable. Such a country can properly borrow for productive investment in future development and can expect both domestic and foreign lenders to provide part of the means of achieving this development, though these lenders will look to us to provide part of that investment out of our own current public revenue — something which we have not done for many a long year. I believe it is probable that we could not merely sustain the present level of public investment in infrastructure and productive activity but could even increase it as a proportion of GNP if we not merely eliminated the current deficit but developed a small current surplus to put towards this investment need.

I also believe that, broadly, most of our public capital needs for investment purposes could be raised domestically and that we could achieve this high level of public investment without much external borrowing. The condition of all this is to liquidate the current deficit over a short period of years. If this has to be done in conditions of stagnation such as exist today, despite the Taoiseach's remarks about growth, it could impose a severe constraint on the provision of necessary public services. If we could restimulate growth to the kind of level attained even after a period of declining borrowing in 1977, to the figure of 5¼ per cent, then the process of getting current finances into balance could be relatively painless. Over three years of that kind of growth rate, which we achieved with a reduction in borrowing, the problem could be solved without increasing the tax burden by allocating half of the buoyancy of revenue in real terms to this purpose, leaving most of the other half — some will be needed to finance additional debt remuneration — to provide additional public services or transfer payments to aid the underprivileged.

Surely it is preferable to bring our financial situation under control in that way rather than to continue on our present spendthrift course and face enforced deflation at the hands of the IMF? Is it not equally desirable to do this in conditions of growth so that the public services can be expanded rather than conditions of stagnation under which the public service would have to contract, a course of action which would itself contribute to further stagnation due to withdrawal of public spending. The immediate task, therefore, is to restimulate growth. The difficulties are all too obvious in the adverse world climate, even if there is no further jump in oil prices, and we cannot count on that. Moreover, we have to face the damage already done to agriculture, which makes a decline in output there in the short-term now inevitable and makes growth difficult to achieve, perhaps until as much as three years hence, and that only if growth incentives are offered and disincentives removed very rapidly in that sector, as our party have proposed in a concrete way and as the Government have so far rejected.

Under these conditions short-term growth must come primarily from the non-agricultural productive sector selling goods and services competitively at home and abroad. This depends, above all, on halting the growth of labour costs at a rate disproportionate to those of our EMS neighbours so that we can begin to recover and then expand further our now diminishing share of the United Kingdom market — and that it is diminishing is one of the most striking features of our present situation, something which has never happened, to my recollection, over 25 years since the present Government came into power — and to accelerate the expansion of our markets elsewhere. This will happen only if workers see price increases moderating. Workers will not be willing to, and have shown themselves this year unwilling to, accept pay increases at the kind of level that would bring inflation down when they are not confident that their co-operation will have effect.

The contrast with 1977 is striking. In that year, because workers believed — and rightly believed as it turned out in the event — that inflation was rapidly declining, they accepted pay increases which were very low by comparison with the historical rate of inflation in the preceding 12 months but proved appropriate to the rate of inflation which emerged in the 12 months that followed. They had confidence in the Government, confidence in our policies, and they acted accordingly. It is a fact that that confidence does not now exist and has led to a national understanding in which the effect on earnings and on labour costs is to make them run at about double the rate deriving from the 1977 wage round. Thus anti-inflation policies must take priority at this stage, otherwise there can be no growth and the restoration of balance to our finances could be accomplished at best on a gradual basis but with cuts in the real level of public spending or, at worst, after further drift, suddenly end up with a massive deflation induced by the IMF. This anti-inflation policy is where the emphasis of Government policy should be. I shall forbear from pointing out the extent to which they have, in fact, pursued inflationary rather than counter-inflationary policies.

All that I have said would be true in any economy facing our problems of financial imbalance and overspending abroad, but it is especially apt in our case because we face unique problems, the nature and extent of which we are still evading. It is now just 17 years since I sought first to draw attention to the then impending demographic revolution, in an article in The Irish Times in November 1963. Noting the sharp drop in emigration that had occurred in the preceding two-and-a-half years, following the new impetus given to the economy by Dr. Whitaker's first economic programme and assuming, with justification, as it turned out, that a continuation of economic recovery begun in 1979 with that programme would be sustained and would lead to a continued drop in emigration, I forecast then that our population would rise quite dramatically and that within 12 years the enormous growth in our young population would lead to a rise of almost 40 per cent in the marriage rate. I underestimated the rapidity of the change. Marriages rose by the predicted amount not in 12 years but in eight. I also failed to foresee the development of net emigration from about 1972 onwards, like everyone else. Moreover, if I recall correctly, my forecast of the increase in the number of 20 year olds, ultimately a rise of 60 per cent I thought, has proved much too cautious. That increase had occurred in 1977 and is still continuing. We can now say, with reasonable certainty, that within about eight years from now, the numbers in this age group will be double what they were in 1961 and the numbers in their thirties will be about 60 per cent higher than in that year.

It is now clear also that within this period, less than the lifetime of the next two Governments, the number of married women in their twenties and thirties will have increased to a figure double that of 1961. These are changes which have no parallel in any other developed country. They have brought in their train a rise of the number of births from less than 60,000 in 1961 to 72,500 last year despite a dramatic fall in fertility from about 1965 onwards, interrupted only momentarily in the immediate aftermath of the publication of Humanae Vitae, a decline which seems to have averaged more than 3 per cent a year over the last 15 years. Up to the present time the increase in the number of young married couples has so far exceeded the fall in fertility, dramatic though that has been, that more and more babies are still being born each year.

While it now seems probable that this trend in births will be reversed within the next couple of years, with a slowing down in the growth of the number of young married people of child bearing age, the number of births each year will remain close enough to 70,000 throughout this decade to make it certain that the number of young people leaving the educational system annually will remain at or around its present very high level until well into the next century, starting to decline significantly only sometime after the year 2005.

The rate of economic expansion required to provide employment at home for this flow of young people into the labour market, allowing for the increases in productivity which will certainly occur, with and without which there could be no rise in living standards, is very high indeed even if one assumes this cessation of the inflow of returned emigrants with their families, that new and quite unexpected feature of the seventies. No developed country anywhere else in the world needs anything like the kind of growth rate we need for the next 30 years, and no other developed country could attain such a growth rate without the emigration of very large numbers of people of a very cultural background, with the intended social problems that kind of emigration creates, above all for the emigrants.

We thus have a unique chance of creating in Ireland a rapidly expanding community under unusually favourable social conditions if we face, even now belatedly, 20 years after this process started, and 17 years after it became clearly visible, the need to create the necessary infrastructure of education, employment opportunities and housing for this new Ireland. Already we have lost a lot of time. Throughout the sixties and most of the seventies we failed to respond to the need of the new generation, expanding our educational system too slowly — one can see, wherever one goes in the country, these prefabricated huts and a school, in one instance at least, with 700 pupils all of them in prefabricated huts without a solid building of any kind in which to congregate or be taught — lagging behind in the provision of housing, as this Government did when they were in office for 16 years and as they have now started to do again. We can see this from the papers today with the announcement that in Dublin public housing is to be held down to 1,500 a year despite the fact that the waiting list is many times greater than that and despite the inflow into that waiting list each year of large numbers of young people getting married who are not in a position, under present arrangements, to have huge mortgages.

Despite a remarkable performance by the IDA we have also been failing to match in employment opportunities the needs of this new generation. Moreover, through an extraordinary failure in planning, we have also lagged badly in basic infrastructures, such as roads and telecommunications. Again, we inherited in 1973 in telecommunications a barely credible situation, 16 years of total neglect, in which we were forced to plan at trebling telephone connections and achieved in fact, despite the economic crisis, a two-and-a-half fold increase within the period we were in government, which proved quite inadequate to cope with a demand which had built up under the previous Government because of their neglect. Very striking is the failure to provide serviced land, especially for housing. Those needs were identified and put before our political leaders as long ago as 1965 by the National Industrial and Economic Council, the predecessor of NESC, of which I was then a member. Despite the fact that these needs were identified and despite the fact that the economic growth then planned and then likely to occur would need the provision of this infrastructure nothing was done to provide it. We inherited a vast wasteland of neglect when we came into office in 1973, which we began to do something about in that four years, which is now being further extended and increased by the failure of this Government, which is leading to the cessation of starts in so many areas and the halting of progress in the provision of infrastructure, housing, roads and so on throughout the country.

Nor have our institutions responded in any realistic way to the social and political implications of this completely new population structure. Apart from the concession of the vote at 18 in 1972—very willingly accorded, it must be said, by those who then had the franchise—there are few signs of an awakening in the public sector to the fact that the numbers aged 20 to 39, the ten year olds and 30 year olds, in our population, have already risen by half and within seven years will be 80 per cent more than in 1961. Our politics have yet to reflect in any serious way the fact that the proportion of voters under 30 will by the next election have almost doubled from 16½ per cent to over 30 per cent, probably the highest figure for voters under 30 ever attained in a democratic developed country.

Only five Deputies in this House- —Deputies Bertie Ahern, Liam Aylward, Myra Barry, Síle de Valera and Enda Kenny—belong to this age group—3 per cent of the Dáil are representing 30 per cent of the electorate. Of course, in any parliament at any time the younger age groups in the population will always be underrepresented—we have to accept that fact—and our parliament, by continental standards, is far from elderly, although distinctly middle aged. The underrepresentation of the young in our parliament is an especially acute problem because of the size of this generation, the urgency of its needs and—it needs to be said—the wide divergence in outlook on many issues between the great majority of this new generation and the older section of our population. This divergence has been strikingly illustrated by every survey of opinion touching on matters such as contraception and divorce, though, more strikingly, not on abortion.

The dangers of a Parliament failing to reflect the attitudes and aspirations of the youngest third of the electorate should be evident. The most obvious and immediate is that parliament and politics can come to seem irrelevant to those who belong to this generation. A body, 97 per cent of whose members belong to older age groups than themselves, must seem alien to the third of our electorate. We have not done much either to make ourselves relevant to them. Far too often our actions and words are governed by fears of losing the support of older people who have become fixed in their views for decades past, and even when we sympathise with some of the aspirations and attitudes of the young we go to considerable trouble to hide the fact from them, lest we lose votes from the older generation.

It was not always so. Our Dáil and our Government were not always middle aged. Let us cast our eyes back to the early Governments of this State. Michael Collins was 28 when he was appointed Minister for Finance in 1919. My father was first appointed to office at the age of 31 and became Minister for External Affairs when he was 34. Paddy McGilligan became a Minister when he was 36. Kevin O'Higgins was 30 when he became Vice-President of the Executive Council —Tánaiste in our modern terms—and was only 35 when his brilliant career was ended by assassination. Seán Lemass was appointed to the post with which he will always be so closely associated, Minister for Industry and Commerce, when he was 32 years of age. By contrast, in the present Government there is only one Minister under the age of 37, Deputy Geoghegan-Quinn, and seven of the 15 are in their 50s, as indeed I am myself.

It may be said with truth that physical age is not as relevant as mental attitudes, although I think we should not ignore the problem posed for the younger generation of identifying with rulers almost all so much older than themselves. But I am not convinced that in our mental attitudes we are showing ourselves receptive to the needs and aspirations of this new generation. By contrast, we are very receptive to all kinds of pressure groups which represent established interests in society. These interests are accorded consultative status on a scale that has begun almost to smack of corporatism. But no similar consultative status is accorded to the young, most of whom have yet to become part of one or other of these interest groups.

For my part I have done what I can to meet this need, first at party level by establishing the self-governing Young Fine Gael organisation which produces its own policy initiatives and increasingly influences the senior party's stance on various issues, but have also established contact with the National Youth Council and guaranteed that a Fine Gael Government will accord to it and other representative youth bodies the same kind of consultative role on the whole range of policies affecting young people as the established interest groups enjoy. I have also agreed with them to introduce a measure of positive discrimination in favour of young people in appointments to bodies whose activities concern them particularly, such as RTE, Bord Na Gaeilge and so on.

At the same time I take every opportunity to talk to young people in schools about politics—not about party politics, but about the importance of politics to them, and about the influence they can have, with almost one-third of the voting strength, on political life. I urge my colleagues here to do likewise.

But I remain concerned that we are not doing enough to make politics relevant to the young, and that while we are a long way away from the situation in Northern Ireland where almost no one under 30 is involved in politics, except for the handful who have been brainwashed into becoming cannon fodder for the IRA and other para-military organisations, we risk following along this road, at some remove. The 40 per cent abstention rate among voters under 26 in the last general election was an ominous enough sign of this trend.

It has been my experience in visiting schools, and I have visited several score in recent years, that the initial reaction to a politician emerging to talk to them tends to be sceptical, cynical, even at times derisive. However, even after a short 20 minutes, if one makes the point of the relevance of politics to their lives, the way in which their future will be determined by decisions politicians take, and the political power they hold because of the 30 per cent of the vote in the hands of people under 30 years of age, that cynicism and derision change to a realisation that politics is relevant to them.

Only yesterday I received a letter from the headmaster of a school I visited recently. I had found my way around the corridors of the school with him and he had expressed great nervousness about the reception I would receive. He told me about the continuing interest the young people there had shown in politics since my visit. In another case a headmaster wrote to tell me that a week after my visit the pupils were still not talking about anything but politics. I might add that that is on the basis of my not talking to them about party politics at all. I urge on other politicians to attempt similarly to bridge this gap. There are so many schools that no one person can get round them all, but if we attempt to make contact in that way we will be as surprised and impressed as I have been at the response.

There are other unorganised groups in our society for whom we do not cater adequately. We remain blind to the poverty around us, the poverty of old age, of loneliness, of the overcrowded and ill-housed who are forced to live in insanitary dwellings, the poverty of all those who have never been given the chance, through deprivation in their childhood or lack of educational opportunity, to fulfil themselves. Many of these people could help themselves if they were given a chance to do so. Others need help before they can help themselves. Others may never be able to help themselves and will always need some proper aid to get them through life. But for none of these groups do we provide the kind of aid needed, and the one serious attempt to experiment with methods of providing such help, to search out the causes of poverty and find ways of eradicating it, has just been wiped out by a deliberate act of this Government, the withdrawal of all aid from the National Poverty Committee.

I read in The Irish Times of Monday the remarks of Sister Stanislaus Kennedy — Sister Stan, as she is called by anybody who has contact with her — who said that about 11 community projects, from co-operative schemes in Donegal to inner-city self-help schemes in Dublin, could disappear due to lack of funding of the National Committee for Pilot Schemes. She said that at a meeting last week the Minister had not given her any commitment about finding alternative funding when the present funding runs out at the end of the month. She added that there is need for a national body to act as a pressure group for and with the poor in research into poverty in Ireland.

The critical point is, she said, that people now see the possibility of control over their own lives. She said: "We have trod on the toes of those who really have power in society, but that is our mandate". That is true. I appreciate that that committee made mistakes in several instances; they trod on toes, but we will not solve the problem of poverty if we do not tread on many toes.

I have done all I could to lobby, to try to persuade the Minister to provide funds to enable the committee to continue, because if the pressure fails this committee may be wound up. If they are, the Fine Gael Party are pledged to restore this aid. So, I understand, are the Labour Party. We want to give this committee back their crucial role in seeking to find and to remove the causes of poverty in our society, even if we go on treading on a few toes, including our own, in order to face up to the material needs of the new generation and of the poor and the needy.

Mr. L'Estrange

The Taoiseach is shaking his head.

Dr. FitzGerald

I am afraid it is from that source that present difficulties have arisen. Anything that disturbs the system of patronage which makes people paupers, on which our Government and our political system are based, is anathema to the party opposite. In order to face up to the needs I have been talking about we need to restore economic planning.

Proper planning can alone lend coherence to our approach to these problems and ensure that the sources are not diverted from these urgent needs to the exclusive advantage of those already established in society, those who have jobs, houses, who have property of one kind or another. Where there is not planning, as is the case today, the urgent takes precedence over the important and the immediate pressures of interest groups take precedence over the needs of those, whether young or otherwise, politically unorganised, who lack political muscle.

We have seen how our industrial relations increasingly have become a matter of dividing available resources among those who are in employment at the cost of squeezing out of employment a bigger and bigger proportion of the labour force who, once unemployed, no longer have any bargaining power or anyone to fight for their interests, for their right to jobs taking precedence over the rights of those in employment to a higher share of available employment.

It is true that politicians try to protect the weak to some degree. This may be seen in the way in which old age pensions are raised at budget time despite the absence of any effective organised body to represent the old. But the odds are weighted against the underprivileged in our system and this is something which could be more effectively tackled if we would plan the allocation of resources some years ahead, freer from the pressures of interest groups than we are. But we have no such plan and just respond to the pressures placed upon us.

This has been the case substantially since the second programme was abandoned after the relatively mild recession of 1966, one of the less wise and less courageous decisions — and he made many courageous decisions — of Deputy Seán Lemass as Taoiseach, and above all since the abandonment in 1970 of the third programme, with its useful innovation of an allocation of resources to the four main areas of social need. With the abandonment of medium-term planning our output has become increasingly foreshortened and we now find ourselves with a fortnight to go to 1981 and not a single official or semi-official projection for that year, even of total growth, never mind of how resources are to be allocated to meet different needs. We should face more realistically the problems posed by our party structure for rational planning in the interests of the weaker groups — the young, the old, the one-parent families, the itinerants, the unemployed; as it operates at present, it is very vulnerable to pressures that work against the interests of such politically unorganised groups.

More could be done fo face these pressures, if we extended the area of all-party consensus operating through committees of this House. It has been noteworthy that whenever Deputies and Senators have been brought together for all-party committees they have readily transcended party differences. It is something which is little recognised because many of these committees are closed to the press and those that are open to the press are rarely attended by the press and rarely reported in the press and that aspect of our political life is hidden from the public eye. But we have seen it operate again and again. We saw it in the all-party committee on the Constitution established by Deputy Seán Lemass under the chairmanship of the present Tánaiste which, 13 years ago, did two things: it reached agreement on an amendment to the controversial Article 3 of the Constitution from which we have been running like frightened rabbits ever since; it also agreed on proposals for the introduction of divorce, albeit in my own personal view those proposals were vitiated by their failure to treat all equally before the law. We see it regularly in the Committee of Public Accounts where Government Deputies join with the Opposition in criticising maladministration and where this all-party approach even held good in the face of the strains imposed on the then Government members of the Committee in the task of investigating the missing £100,000 ten years ago. There are many members of the present Taoiseach's Government who were on that Committee and who took their duty seriously and did not attempt in any way to prevent the truth being discovered despite the political embarrassment involved. I do not think they ever got sufficient credit for the way in which they approached that problem.

Mr. L'Estrange

They never got the money.

Dr. FitzGerald

We have seen this operating too in the EEC Committee which I had the opportunity of establishing under Opposition chairmanship and which, first under the present Taoiseach and now under Senator FitzGerald, does its work free from any constraints of party alliance. Recently, to take just one small example, we have seen the same thing operate on the Committee on State-Sponsored Bodies which has come up with radical proposals to control private motor traffic in Dublin which no individual party would have been likely to put forward. We should try to extend the area of consensus by leaving room, and that will not be hard, for the genuine divergencies of outlook on key issues which provide a basis for the choice of alternative Governments. My party has, for example, twice publicly offered co-operation in securing such a consensus on industrial relations legislation, an offer which I regret the Taoiseach has not taken up and this is an area where he has been content in his speech today to waffle on again about, hoping that everything will be all right next year. That is a very different tone to that he adopted with confidence the day he was chosen as Leader when he spoke at that press conference and promised legislation in this area. We responded at once in the national interest.

I recognise that I have ranged fairly widely in my remarks and have deliberately departed from the traditional format of speeches on such occasions as this, by-passing as far as possible the cut and thrust of party political battle despite the opportunities offered to us on this side of the House about the present condition of our economy and the extent to which even impartial observers attribute a large part of the blame to the present Government. Those who follow me in this debate will take up some of these issues. But the situation we now face, both in the immediate future because of the Government's financial problems, and in the medium and longer term because of our demographic situation, is much too serious to be allowed to become exclusively a matter of party battles across the floor of this House. There must be some occasions on which the broader interests of the nation are raised and discussed here on a less controversial basis and I have tried to make a contribution to such a debate. This Government came to power with the largest majority a Government has ever enjoyed in Dáil Éireann. They could have governed effectively. They could have tackled the problems. They could have gone back to the people with some substantial achievements to their credit and possibly then been returned to office. They chose to do otherwise, the choice being made when they adopted the disastrous manifesto before the election and the choice being ratified instead of reversed when the present Taoiseach came to power. At the next general election the people will have a choice between a Government that has chosen to throw away the opportunity for national service provided by having such a majority and a Government that will offer the electorate a chance to have these national problems tackled effectively and honestly. We await the verdict of the people with some impatience because there is so much to be done and so much that needs to be done urgently. We cannot afford to drift any longer. The Taoiseach himself must be aware of this despite the tone of depressing complacency that runs through his public remarks. He is far too intelligent not to realise just how dangerous a situation we are now in in this State. I hope that even now, although there is damn all sign of it in his speech, he will take his courage in his hands and give the country an early chance to elect a Government committed to tackling the problems I have outlined rather than to dodge them as he has done for the past year. The time is now ripe for the people to give a fresh mandate to one team or the other. Let us get on with it.

Mr. M. O'Leary

I apologise for not being here for all of the contributions of the Taoiseach and Deputy FitzGerald but bad communications and weather conditions in Luxembourg delayed me this morning.

I just want to make a few points mainly relating to industrial relations. The elements of the economic problems before us have been well and truly discussed in this House over the past two or three months and we are all reasonably familiar with them.

At the outset let me say that I genuinely hope that this is the last Christmas debate of this Dáil because whatever Government may be returned to office after the election, whenever it occurs. I believe that a renewal of mandate is needed. The problems we face can only be tackled by a Government which enjoys a renewed mandate. The formula which brought the present Government into office was the manifesto of 1977 and the elements of that document have been well and truly dissected and its manifest failings referred to. That document still remains the one which brought this Government to power and which is responsible for the errors made by the Government. The mendacity of this document is not tolerable; it is based on a collection of fallacies. It has been defended in latter days by some of the representatives of the Government opposite on the grounds that oil prices knocked its targets askew, that those prices and their severity could not have been anticipated. That is all right as far as it goes. But the whole question of rocketing oil prices was recognised by most Governments by 1977 so it is a little hollow at this stage to make the defence made recently by the former Minister for Economic Planning and Development that such was the rate of increase in oil prices that it was one of the principal elements which vitiated the manifesto and led this Government into their present problems.

No one disputes that there is only a narrow band of action open to the Government in today's circumstances. Our trading interdependence with other countries means that matters are not solely under our own control, but all opportunities however within the Government's area of influence must be fully exploited. That has not been the case under the present Government. The reason may lie in a faulty analysis of the problems or their eagerness to return to office, but throughout most of their present term they have proceeded on a mistaken course because of the 1977 manifesto. Their spending has been done at the wrong time as a result and their borrowing has been for the wrong purposes, leading us to a situation where the Government, now in their last days, are coping as best they can. Coping is not adequate for the problems before us.

The report of the Manpower Commission makes the case that any solutions to the problem of increasing employment must be long-term rather than short-term. Such long-term policies can only be adopted in the context of a five- or ten-year plan with the agreement of all concerned. There must be genuine co-operation with the trade unions and employers and all the economic partners for the long haul that lies ahead. At the moment we subsist on the basis of renewed national understandings or wage agreements. Whether these will be possible in the future is questionable, but it seems that any Government will be forced pragmatically to the conclusion that we require a five or ten year plan and incomes settlements within the plan if we are to make any significant headway on the matter of employment. The point has been made that with such a young population this one of employment is the major problem in the economic area.

We must ask how the area of manoeuvrability open to us has been utilised and whether it has been used to assist us in achieving the major economic objective of increasing employment. In the last budget it will be seen that it was wrong to rely so excessively on indirect taxation, and it was predicted that this reliance would intensify pressure for high wage settlements and that union negotiators would be forced to take into account the effect of this indirect taxation. They would be forced to seek wage settlements to compensate their members for the increase in the cost of living and this process would contribute to the rate of inflation. If annualised this year it would be fair to say that the average rate of inflation is 18 per cent, but depending on one's viewpoint it can be annualised on the basis of the rate for November and this works out at 12 or 13 per cent. The Taoiseach has adopted this latter method of calculation. However, most commentators would agree that November was an exceptional month and it would be fairer to say that our inflation rate this year is 18 per cent and it will be nearer to 15 per cent next year. Our high rate of inflation makes it difficult to hope for success in employment policies. Admittedly our inflation rate is influenced by factors outside our control but there is a large element which is within our control and which is susceptible to Government decisions at home.

It is my contention that the last budget, with its heavy reliance on heavy taxation, intensified the pressure on wage negotiators to look for settlements to compensate people for the increase in the cost of living, thereby contributing to a very high inflation rate and making it difficult to create the conditions for job expansion. It remains a permanent necessity in Irish economic policy that we attempt to keep down our rate of inflation relative to that of our trading partners. Many of them have superior natural advantages and we must compensate by taking decisions which will keep down our rate of inflation. We have not done so during the past year. Our budgetary strategy must not exacerbate the situation and make it more difficult. If one regards it as the prime economic objective to bring about conditions which will enhance the possibilities for job expansion, one is driven to the conclusion that within the area of action open to us Government policy must at all times be subordinated to the need to keep our rate of inflation as low as possible. That will remain a permanent feature of any policy of successful expansion of employment. This need is all the more crucial when one considers the youthful composition of our population. I do not advocate a low wage economy, but I am suggesting wage rates which may not be nominally as high as at present but which would give a better return to the families depending on them if our own rate of inflation were reasonably low.

The CII in their budget submissions to the Government, whilst they are attracted by the superficial advantages of indirect taxation as against heavier direct taxation, admit that as long as such indirect taxation will figure, as it must, in the argument of wage negotiations then it should not be relied on. The CII came overlate to conversion to this rather fundamental fact and the Government figures should also accept it. I hope we will not see the Government, or any Government, relying on indirect taxation and not take it up in wage negotiations discussions.

A Government only earns the right to refer to the part external events play in holding back economic performance to the extent that they can with honesty say that they have made the best of the area of manoeuvrability open to them. If in looking at their behaviour over a span a Government cannot say that, it is evasive and dishonest on their part to point to external factors and say there was little they could do. It is a type of national habit of blaming events beyond our shores that has come to light recently. We should remember the path that leads to. If there is not anything an Irish Government can influence on the economic sphere at home we sell the legitimacy of having a sovereign Government. It is in our interests, and it is the proper thing, that we should have a Government here so that we can benefit from the State operating the economy on our behalf and making the best decisions possible for our citizens.

At present the farmers are blaming the CAP. The future of the CAP is not a very happy one, and those of us who attend the European Parliament are aware that the CAP will not yield the same type of return for Irish farmers as it did in the past. Irish farming is in a bad state at present but Irish agriculture, even without the crutch of the CAP, must increase its efficiency and productivity. In the long term that would be its salvation rather than the CAP for any period of years. The roots of low productivity of our agriculture grow deeper than the CAP.

Another example is the state of Irish tourism. That cannot be blamed solely on the Arabs. There was a very poor season last year, and that can be blamed on pricing policies, the cost of drink and so on. Undoubtedly, that had a bad effect on tourists who visited this country. There was a shortage of tourists, and I doubt if next season will be any better.

In this and other economic debates it has been said that a good industrial relations system is crucial to any success or survival in difficult times in our economy. The Government rely a great deal on the continuation of the system of national wage agreements or national understandings which we have had since the early seventies. It is an open question whether there will be a successor to the present understanding in 1981 because last year there was a lot of criticism from the trade unions about the non-pay elements of the last understanding. The trade union leaders in the main were referring to the lack of success on the employment creation front.

There is no doubt that the level of redundancies next year will cancel out any IDA grant-aided industrial gains. We have had an uninterrupted period of centralised wage bargaining which in the main brought a lot of advantages to the country under all Governments. It brought some certainty but not certainty for firms planning their way forward from year to year or the same certainty in maintaining industrial peace. Too often we consider the question of industrial peace in too narrow a fashion, considering the causes of unrest in an industry or in a sector and neglecting the fact that people working in an industry or in a firm are citizens who have resentments about taxation. I believe a lot of the difficulties in industrial relations in recent years can be traced to that fundamental dissatisfaction employees have at what they see as an excessive taxation load. We have seen evidence of that dissatisfaction in the PAYE marches.

I should like to see an interim report from the Commission which is considering the question of taxation issued in the near future. The habit of commissions is to delay progress in a certain area, but I do not think we can afford to tolerate the grossly unfair system of taxation we have. Those who pay tax under the PAYE system feel that they are over-taxed in contrast to other sections such as the self-employed. Those of us who are acquainted with trade unionists throughout the country will understand that that is a strongly felt grievance on their part. They feel they are discriminated against in the weight of taxation and the manner in which they have to pay in comparison with others who, as they see it, have a more favourable and privileged way of paying. They feel such people are less hit by inflation. An interim report should be issued as soon as possible and some early action taken in regard to this matter, if possible in the budget.

That system of centralised wage bargaining which in the main has been of assistance to governments in their plans carries within itself the danger of intensifying wage rivalries. Inequalities are deepened when there is uninterrupted centralised wage bargaining. That is a potent cause of industrial unrest, apart from the taxation burden I referred to. With those two matters there is also the failure to register improvements on the jobs front. The possibility of a renewed national understanding next year is doubtful because I cannot see any improvement on the jobs front. I cannot see any improvement at the rate sought by union leadership. That being so the Government in power should prepare for the possibility of a return to the free for all system of wage bargaining.

It can be said that the roots of the Government's misdirection go back to the manifesto. Their failure to maintain conditions which would allow moderate wage settlements go back to their reliance on indirect taxation. If the present high rate of inflation continues into next year, even at 15 per cent, it will have an effect on the prices of our products on the export market. If that is not corrected Irish jobs will be lost. If our products on external markets are excessively priced as a result of high inflation at home Irish jobs will be lost. We need a Government which can look to a relatively secure future and draw up an economic plan having a job element and an income element in it. We need a Government with a renewed mandate to tackle the causes of inflation.

It is a difficult task that cannot be achieved in the short term, but a beginning must be made, a beginning which is difficult to make for a Government who are near the end of their term, and a very complicated task it will prove to be. Anyone looking at public sector settlements over the past few months cannot but be worried about the entire future of public finances. That is why it can be said fairly — and perhaps the Government side will echo this — that an early election is necessary from the national point of view at this time because there is need for a fresh mandate to be given from the House to anyone willing to take on the task of Government. An onerous and difficult task it will prove to be over the next few years.

Politicians have a way of referring to difficulties as challenges and there will be plenty of challenges over the next ten years for a Government who are desirous of governing. Apart from inflation the extraordinary expectations aroused by the publication of this manifesto must be tackled. The question of our high borrowing must be tackled, although perhaps we should not tackle it in the precipitate way suggested by some economists. I would not like to see the consequences of a very sharp reduction in our borrowing rate. Those who say that we cannot proceed to such sharp draconian cuts are right because of the effects that would have on taxation, industry and agriculture. Therefore, we cannot cut too precipitately but we must begin a rational programme of reduction, of winding down our rate of borrowing because it cannot be sustained. The economists who say that are correct. It cannot be sustained indefinitely at present levels. Indefinitely seems to be our general prevailing attitude. Nobody wants to hear the bad news in relation to our borrowing. Indeed, public feeling seems to be growing up in the country that a Government's success is to be measured by their ability to borrow abroad. Apparently there is some mysterious expertise involved here. It is a strange approach and a dangerous one. The attitude appears to be that great acumen is displayed by those who can borrow more than anyone else and that there is an amateurish, unpolitical flavour about those who warn about the borrowing rates and talk about such old-fashioned matters as paying your way. If we lived in the best of all possible worlds, as former Ministers of the Government opposite now no longer with us — those economic Dr. Panglosses, believed we could go on for ever in that fashion, but it cannot be done. As the Taoiseach knows, our neighbours. Chancellor Schmidt or someone else is bound to say to us, "What are you doing over there?" and we cannot continue it forever. I think that there is realisation of that on the part of many in the present Government and I hope they would agree that it is necessary to move reasonably soon for a renewed mandate.

There are plenty of challenges ahead. There is the question of employment for our young people and the winding down of our rate of inflation. On industrial relations I have said that the difficulties there cannot be localised within the four walls of industry. We must look at our taxation system which has had an adverse influence. If the self-employed people's revolt against what they see as a bad return for their work and so on is to evade taxes, the revolt of the PAYE sector is to seek a high wage settlement in compensation for what they see as an unfair system. Therefore, we have the spectre of more disputes which helps nobody, least of all those who go on strike.

The high cost of housing has another significant influence on certain of the bad industrial relation patches we have gone through in the last few years. The large proportion of young people of our population means that many young couples are meeting the very high cost of housing repayments at a young age in their working lives. In their wage claims they try to pay off these huge burdens. It would be useful for the Government to tackle this question of the high costs of housing in the same fashion as they have done recently in their agricultural document. It must be said that that agricultural document attempted to cope with certain problems of land ownership. Similarly, any Government with a renewed mandate or before an election — because it would be a useful and responsible appeal to an electorate — should put forward reasonable proposals for reducing the cost of housing. Central to that is the question of the cost of the sites for such housing.

It might seem that there is little connection, but I think there is a connection between the high cost of housing and certain of the disputes which we have encountered. One can muse all day about the reasons for industrial disputes and one reason may be as good as another. You are left at the end of the day as a Government with the decision on what should be the institutional response to disputes and conflict, when they arise. A commission have been examining industrial relations and when they were set up first I said that I would make a submission to them and I did so. I proposed to that commission that there should be a division between the conciliation sector of the Labour Court and the Labour Court proper, that the industrial relations services should be separated from the court and the adjudicating process of the court separated from the investigative conciliatory aspect of the court's work, but that this separation should be formalised in the following manner. The industrial relations service should be made a semi-State body with a chief executive with autonomy, as we have seen in other semi-State bodies, and with the power to intervene. I ask the Taoiseach to look at this because I think there is a lot of merit in the idea. There should be this kind of autonomy which we have seen succeed, in certain instances at any rate, in the semi-State area, and it should be given to an agency with the expertise and the personnel, ready to move into a disputative situation either before the dispute has broken out or even when it has broken out, but with properly paid people attached to it. I attempted this in a small way in the Department of Labour when we were in Government but it was not taken up then in the manner I would like because of financial restrictions on its opeation.

Instead of moralising about some of the problems in the industrial relations area I would like to see action on these institutional lines. Everyone agrees on both sides of the House that we can do very well without industrial stoppages. I would like to see more attention given to some kind of concrete action in this area. I contested for a long time the idea that there is some legal panacea to industrial relations problems. It is extraordinary that people accept the legitimacy of a democratic approach to most problems but in industrial relations there is a feeling that we can impose solutions on people. In Poland we have seen what can happen when you attempt to impose solutions. There is no case that I know of where an incomes policy successfully backed by statute has served over a long period. If we accept the privileges and duties of living in a democracy we must also accept that industrial relations can and must be improved with the co-operation of those in that area. Allied to the approach of improving industrial relations we could increase the amount of finance going to trade union education.

We did something about this during our period in office and it is on the record that at least we sought to bring the amount of money going to trade union education to the level of that which had previously gone to the Irish Management Institute. Many people in the IMI did not consider me the best possible person for their interests, during the time I held the post of Minister for Labour because they were held back in their expenditure claims because I took the view that if there is a management centre the industry of the country should pay for that centre. I believe there is something wrong with a management centre that try of the country should pay for that centre. I believe there is something wrong with a management centre that cannot pay for itself from the fees of its members. Who is better in a position to pay for a service than the people supposed to get that service? If they had to exist on subsidy there must be something wrong with the service they were offering their constituent firms.

I attempted to bring the amount of money going to the various trade union education programmes up to the level paid to the IMI. I think that serves the national interest very well. If we want to see better union negotiators meeting their opposite numbers in management then more money should go to trade union education. It would be money well spent and would probably achieve better results than — even if it were possible in view of our Constitution — to legislate for larger unions coming together with the elimination of those smaller units which lead to such difficulties. I do not wish to see money spent in that area leading to control of particular programmes by a Minister or Department but money given simply to the trade union movement, to recognised sectors with proper standards to which they would send selected people from their constituent bodies and train them properly so that union negotiators would be au fait with economic realities and understand the complexity of problems before industry and be better able as a result to negotiate improved and more secure conditions for members and thereby eliminate possible industrial disputes.

I have confined my remarks to some elements of the economic problems as I see them, and the need for a renewed mandate for the Government to tackle those problems because successful tackling of them depends in the long term — there are no instant solutions; I believe we are talking about five and ten year programmes — on public support. I should like to see the next election signalled by confrontation about rival programmes of the parties seeking the responsibility of Government, with the electorate involved in deciding which is the more realistic and responsible and has the best prospect of getting the community behind it. If it were possible in the past to go without it — which I doubt — certainly in the years ahead we shall require governments able to elicit a full response from the community, governments that will be able to explain the range of problems facing us with no suppression of facts and governments which would be entitled to the support of the population in carrying out their programmes. If we do not have that sort of commitment from the people over the next few years we would need to be very optimistic in looking at the present situation to think that there is any prospect of survival as a meaningful economic unit. Already we have seen a country which as a result of that 1977 document was deliberately divided as a community. I do not say there were no divisions before 1977 but that most mendacious political document in our history deliberately sought to fan rivalries in our community. We must abandon that approach if we are to get a wholehearted response such as is needed in the next few years. Therefore, a fresh mandate is needed. I hope that this Christmas debate will be the last before an election and that whoever wins, the election will be marked by that sense of responsibility which the hour calls for.

Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach (Mr. Moore)

Any impartial observer listening to the contributions of the Taoiseach, the Fine Gael Party leader and Deputy O'Leary of the Labour Party would have to conclude that the Taoiseach in examining our policies struck a note of confidence in the future. The people, as they showed in the Donegal by-election, are convinced that the present Government are organised and geared to face whatever problems confront the country. If the problems were confined to this country perhaps we could adopt different policies but John Donne wrote on one occasion that no man is an island and in the present world situation we can apply that to countries because our every effort is influenced by world conditions particularly those in Europe. While we have always been an integral part of Europe we must accept that we have to take some of the problems of Europe into our own country and try to solve our own problems in the context of the larger existing problems.

I believe the Government's policies are best fitted to meet these conditions. The Government's economic and social policies are sound. The Donegal by-election showed that the people were supporting the Government and that if an election were called tomorrow the people would again return Fianna Fáil to office despite the problems of today because they realise that if Fianna Fáil were not in power their sufferings, although hard at present, would be much greater without the same hope of success in overcoming them if they had a Coalition Government in power.

Many of our problems are due to economic factors which show that we are an expanding economy. This year we have provided 35,000 new jobs. Of course many of those were negatived to some extent by the loss of many other jobs. We do not deny this but when one looks at the high rate of unemployment in Europe one realises that the increase here is proportionately much less than in the case of more powerful nations. That is what gives the people confidence in the Government: we are not just blaming the world recession but we are actually tackling our problems and succeeding in overcoming them to a great extent. We created 35,000 new jobs this year. In 1975 the previous Government, admittedly when there was a world recession, created a little over 14,000 jobs. We are creating jobs of a high standard, especially in the technological area. It is the intention of the Government, with the backing of the people, to pursue our policies so that we can achieve the targets set. We want to ensure as far as possible that every Irishman and woman will be able to lead a full life in their own country, with employment, housing and all the necessary social amenities. Every one of us has a part to play in overcoming our problems.

Apart from the economic area, we are living in difficult times from the political point of view. An incident in this House yesterday brought home to us the grave unrest in the six north-eastern counties which has spilled over to us. I do not know what we can do to solve the problem. At times one feels the only thing to do is to pray that good sense and humanity will prevail. I suggest that humanity must prevail in all sectors if we are to get back to a state of normal living.

The problem of industrial relations is affecting our ability to overcome economic problems. When the Taoiseach was elected last year he asked that 1980 be a year of industrial peace. It is not quite that but the figure for lost days show an improvement.

Mr. Kelly

They are the best since the Coalition were in office.

Mr. Moore

There was not much industrial activity then.

Mr. Leyden

There were very few jobs for people.

Mr. Kelly

The unemployment figure now is much higher than when we were in office.

Mr. Leyden

When the National Coalition were in office there was very little industrial activity.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The debate so far has been on a very high plane but now we are getting a little bit of hassle. The Minister should be allowed to continue his speech without interruption from any speaker.

Mr. Moore

I am sure Deputy Kelly will not lower the standard.

Mr. Kelly

The Minister has broken many records including that one.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Kelly will be the next speaker. He should allow the Minister to continue without interruption.

Mr. Moore

Deputy Kelly said the unemployment figures were lower during the term of office of the National Coalition, so were the employment and population figures. There is no valid comparison to be made. I am sure the Deputy will agree we must improve our industrial relations. The trade union movement in Ireland is very strong, probably one of the strongest in Europe. It has always puzzled me why we have so many unofficial strikes. I have been a member of a trade union all my life. I was reared on the doctrine of Jim Larkin and I know how hard men like him fought to build up the trade union movement to help the workers. I remembered in my young days hearing about a man called William Murphy. He was always held in odium for his part in the 1913 strike and was regarded as an enemy of trade unionism. Perhaps, some day somebody will examine the whole situation and give a proper assessment of his attitude. I do not know what was his position with regard to trade unionism but some trade unionists said he tried to destroy the movement. I do not know if that is true, but I suggest that many of the unofficial strikes are harming the movement to a greater extent than was done by any employer organisation in the early years of this century. I do not understand how people by unofficial action can disrupt industry and even inflict suffering on people, especially the under-privileged. This is happening far too often.

This kind of situation is occuring in the public sector. Many of us who have advocated during the years that that sector be extended are starting to have doubts about the whole matter. We wonder if there should be a return to the private sector. Our transport system takes most of the odium and criticism directed at the public sector.

It does not give any of us any pleasure to see the old and handicapped, among others, standing at bus stops waiting for buses that seldom come. As a trade unionist I ask people who are involved in this area to realise that the ICTU is a force for their betterment. They should use that organisation to achieve the legitimate objective of raising their standard of living. If they do this the whole trade union movement will increase in stature. Above all, by taking this line they will prevent suffering being inflicted on people who have no industrial muscle to fight their battles, who are not organised and who suffer as a result of unofficial disputes. I am sure thatpeople involved in such strikes have not gone out to inflict suffering on anybody, but it must be brought home to them and to every trade unionist that they have responsibilities. The methods used must be changed. If workers have a grievance they should pursue the matter through their trade unions.

Every member of a trade union must pledge his loyalty to that movement and ensure that no action of his or hers will bring discredit on it, or suffering on a harmless section of our people. The question of the morality of strikes has often been stressed and in the world in which we live today the morality of action is not always discussed, examined or even thought of. The onus is on us to ensure that by our actions we do not inflict suffering on the weaker sections of our people.

Next year, which will come in a very short time, is the Year of the Handicapped. The State, in its wisdom, has provided such things as free travel for senior citizens, many of whom are handicapped. I am sure that the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party members are just as genuine in their approach to the problem of the handicapped as we are on this side of the House. I do not claim we have a monopoly on that. However, can we as political parties, with the trade union movement, try to ensure in this Year of the Handicapped that no handicapped person will be without the facilities of free travel because there is no service? This is one small point, but think how it affects the handicapped, particularly in this city where one-third of our population live. The handicapped person who rises in the morning may want, perhaps, to go to hospital, to visit relatives or just to go into the city for some shopping or as a social exercise. We cannot even guarantee that a public conveyance will be there to take that person into the city, even though the people are being taxed to provide free travel. We must all dedicate ourselves to improving things in 1981, particularly as it is the Year of the Handicapped.

There are many things that we can do, but we must get down to the basic things which make life a bit happier for the people. Along with our senior citizens, we have a very young population. I am not complacent. Even though the standard of living of our people is rising I refuse to accept that the standard of living of many of our people is at the appropriate level. In the present system of free enterprise, plus State investment where necessary, we could create a society which would ensure that every person would have equality of opportunity, not depending on the station into which he or she was born but depending on his or her ability. We can ensure that every person who has ability to do a certain job will be given that opportunity.

We must dedicate ourselves to pursuing policies which will ensure that all our children are cherished equally. We are trying at the moment to do that, and in some cases we are succeeding. However, in this city of ours, with which I am most conversant, there are many children who have not that equality of opportunity. The children of the travelling people, for instance, have not got it. I wish to pay tribute to the State organisations, the religious organisations and other voluntary organisations for their work in this area. If one crosses O'Connell Bridge and sees the children there, it gives a jab to one's conscience that we are not succeeding quickly enough. I am not saying that the parents of travelling children are blameless. For many years I was a member of the Dublin Corporation committee looking after the travelling people and know the amount of work being done by the officials of the corporation. Dún Laoghaire Borough Council and Dublin County Council. These men and women have striven very hard to create conditions whereby these children would have proper homes and a proper way of living and the fact that they have not succeeded fully should not depress them. It should urge us all on to greater efforts so that by the end of 1981 we can record much greater progress than in the past as regards the children of travelling people, or indeed any handicapped children or adults in the country.

Deputy O'Leary mentioned the housing situation. Again, this naturally engages our minds very often. If one represents a Dublin area it is brought home to one every day that there is a shortage of proper housing. We do not deny that. I would, however, point out that Dublin is a fast-growing city, and remember that it is only growing cities which have a housing problem, dying cities have not. Very shortly, in the greater Dublin area we will have a population of one million people. Our people are marrying younger and are seeking a higher standard of accommodation — and to the natural increase in the population is added the immigration of our people, the fact that they are coming back. This was demonstrated to me very clearly during the Donegal by-election campaign. I spoke there to a schoolteacher who told me that on the roll of his school over 50 per cent of the children had been born outside the State. I rejoice in that fact and that the population is growing, but it puts a great onus on us to ensure proper housing for them.

The housing problem has been met over the years to the best of our ability and I would go so far as to say that since the State was founded Governments generally have been very concerned with the housing problem. Governments have had to deal with the housing problem and luckily they have dealt with it, or the situation would be very much worse. The present Government have a policy of inner city development of Dublin. When we look around the sites which are now being developed we can take pride in the fact that the very heart of Dublin is being rebuilt. There is evidence of this in many areas. There is, however, one point in regard to inner city development, which is that it costs a lot more than suburban development.

The cost of acquiring land and the cost of one housing unit in the city area is frightening. Despite that I and my colleagues, especially those in the Fianna Fáil Party, on the city council, when I was a member of it, have always pursued that policy because it is the right one. I do not want to suggest that we have a monopoly of that. I want to pay tribute to the other parties on the council who also shared our desire to see the heart of this city rejuvenated. However, we should sound a warning that if we are to provide money for housing the only way that can be got is from taxation. While the rents received in some cases may be fairly high we must not forget that if we re-house a senior citizen and his wife in a flat or a small house in the city, which may have cost £15,000, those people may only be charged a rent of 10p a week for the rest of their lives. It is impossible to get back the money on such houses with such rents.

We are, by this policy, succeeding in giving such an old couple a standard of living which we believe is their right. When the Government are being criticised for the taxation methods and when thousands of people claim reduction in taxes, we should remember that we must have taxation to ensure that the weaker section, like the old couple seeking housing are looked after. I believe that people generally will respond to the call for more taxation for things like housing and social services.

Next year is the year of the handicapped. We may think that handicapped people are just people who are sightless or physically handicapped in some way, but we have also got to include the children of the travelling class and elderly citizens, who have not got proper housing. Those things are worth pursuing. Our party will pursue social justice. We may not succeed but at least we can try. We are trying to do something for the most defenceless section of the community who have not muscle. When one tries on behalf of the people who have not muscle one feels more fulfilled in one's role as a public representative. I hope that by the end of 1981 we will be able to show that we have made giant strides towards creating a better society for all our people.

Mr. Kelly

The Minister said a few minutes ago that the debate had been conducted on a high level so far. I agree that it has been at a high level of polite uneventfulness so far, but I do not think the same could be said about the level of veracity so far as the opening speech at least was concerned. I want to point to a couple of things which that speech contained in order to lay the ground for some further remarks I have to make.

We were told at the outset that our solvency, like that of the other countries in the developing world, was imperilled by the increasing cost of oil. That is the kind of cry which is always heard from people on the other front bench when they are called to account for things which are very largely of their own making. We are told that the oil crisis has knocked the economy off course. Perhaps this is a point too primitive to make. I have said it before and if that is the case I have not heard it refuted. It seems to me that a £ spent on imports is a £ gone out of the economy and out of the country whatever it is spent on. I cannot see that a £ spent on oil has got some moral stain attached to it, or that some moral stigma attaches to the country, on account of this expenditure, which would not attach to a £ spent on a tin of imported biscuits, or a £ spent on a foreign holiday.

In order to give the comparison I am making some reality I want to draw attention to the relative proportion of imports represented by oil in the ten months of this year for which figures are available and in the last couple of years of the National Coalition's administration. The value of total oil imports in 1976 was £291 million and the total imports of all kinds was £2.338 million, a proportion I work out at 12.4 per cent. I do not recall any great consensus in the House from the far side that the drain on the economy represented by the steep increase in the proportion of imports accounted for by oil since 1973 was a satisfactory excuse for our difficulties.

That is what it was in 1976. In the ten months of 1980 for which provisional broken down figures exist, the amount spent on oil imports was £582 million and total imports cost £4,407 million. The proportion there is 13.2 per cent, less than 1 per cent of a difference, an absolutely marginal difference.

It seems to me that there is no question but that the steep rise in that proportion, by comparison with 1973, has implications for the economy. I also accept that other goods which are oil dependent will represent a hidden burden on the economy when they are imported, which is oil related. That is just as true for 1976 as it is for 1980. It is time that people took an interest in this saver that is coming from the far side that there is something unique about this here, that this year the thing has got particularly bad, that somehow the oil weapon wielded by the OPEC countries has caught us on the base of the skull this year in a way which the Coalition were able to avoid. That is not true. The official figures of the CSO will bear that out.

The Taoiseach said today that it is in this economic situation on which he brought commonsense to bear that we have been enabled to maintain levels of investment which are among the highest in the Community and OECD area. I know it is a hard year for the world economy generally, but again let me put that in perspective. The changes in the volume of investment revealed by the quarterly bulletins of the Central Bank show that in 1976, by comparison with the previous year — we must not forget what a black year that was — the change in the volume of investment under the much despised National Coalition Government was plus 12.2 per cent. The economy grew in that bleak year by almost one-eighth. It added almost one-eighth to its weight. In 1977, by comparison with 1976, it added 10.5 per cent, over one-tenth, to its own weight by comparison with 1976. In this year — this is what we are supposed to believe when it comes from the head of the Government, when he feels able to boast about the level of investment — in their forecast in mid-summer the Central Bank gave a decrease in investment of 6.7 per cent, but they have now revised that and have added two percentage points to that forecast decrease! They now expect in this year a decrease in investment of 8.6 per cent.

In other words, under the Taoiseach's administration the economy has shed one-twelfth of its weight, whereas in the last two years of our administration it picked up damn near a quarter. This is the genius in front of whom we are supposed to suspend our reasoning faculties.

However, that is not the worst. We are invited to admire the way in which we have reduced our external deficit — this is in page 3 of the Taoiseach's speech. I will give the figures both in regard to the crude trade balance and the balance of payments deficit. The adverse trade balance in 1976 was £478 million. In 1977 it was £572 million, not much of a change in view of the fall in the value of money. But in 1980, in the 12 months up to the end of November, the figures issued by the Government's own agency show a trade balance deficit of £1.133 million, damn near three times the 1976 deficit. That is something we are supposed to boast about, about which the commentators are supposed to be mesmerised, about the style, and the Government will not even bother to check.

The balance of payments deficit, in other words the balance of trade mitigated by invisible inflows from things like tourism, things that do not come under the head of trade, was £157 million in 1976. In 1977 it was somewhat less than that, £155 million. The latest forecast from the Central Bank, which economic commentators are now saying is too low, is £628 million, more than four times our worst figure. How can that man over there have the gall to produce figures of that kind and expect to be admired for them? Does he have such a low opinion of the media that he expects to be admired about figures like that? Does he think his back-slapping and boot-licking of the media for the past 20 years have been so thorough that they will not even follow these figures up but that they will take them from his script?

Sir, that has been the tone of the debate which you told us a few minutes ago is being conducted on a high level. I know it is not your duty or function to comment or even to bother about the veracity of the speeches made here, but if that is a high level, the country has a great deal to learn and, a very, long way to go.

The Taoiseach's speech also told us that figures from the labour force survey were being awaited which, no doubt, will give us a true picture of the unemployment situation. The day before yesterday the same answer was given by Deputy O'Kennedy. Of course he could not have been expected to have had his mind on the job the last day — he must have had his mind on higher things: he had reached an ambition which, I suppose, he had formed well before December last year. I said to him: "Do you not realise that the EEC labour force survey when last conducted in 1976 showed an unemployment figure about 10,000 below the registered figure of 110,000; in other words the EEC figure showed 104,000?" I suppose the figure on our register includes people who are claiming benefit who are not entitled to it — that there are about 10,000 dole spongers in the country.

That was not taken to be the case when we were in Government. It was the other way around. We were told that far from over-stating the true picture the register of unemployed understated the position. We were told that we had forgotten the tens of thousands of school leavers who were looking for work, that in order to get the true figure you had to add 50,000 or 60,000. Indeed Deputy G. FitzGerald, a month before the Dáil was dissolved, gave a figure of 170,000 as the true unemployment figure.

That was the level of sophistication with which the man who is now the corner-stone of our economy operated in those days, the man recently promoted by the Taoiseach to be Minister for Finance, who during the endless financial debates from 1974 to 1977 never opened his mouth except in a disorderly fashion. What contribution did he make to the wealth tax, to the capital gains tax, the capital acquisitions tax debates? We did not have any from the man who is now running the economy under the direction of the man holding the marionette strings of government. Is there any limit to the contempt with which it is apparently possible to treat the people now without provoking protest?

It has not been the usual technique of the Government in recent months, but I will come back to the economy later, if I have time. Their technique has been to distract attention from domestic difficulties by focussing on external events in the first year during which the new administration have been in operation, and even before then under Deputy Lynch. We are supposed to assume or accept activity on the Northern Ireland front, culminating in a meeting ten days ago, much heralded and publicised, between the Taoiseach and Mrs. Thatcher. We do not know what happened at that meeting. It is part of the Taoiseach's stock in trade to think that this adds to his style, that it confers some added dimension of mystique on him, and apparently for some people it does. I have never seen a press or a set of commentators so uncritical of what exactly is going on in regard to Northern Ireland policy.

I am sorry to say, and I hope it will not be misunderstood, that I detect in the way that visit was reported in the press a certain strain of that awful paddyism which has been our curse. There is a certain note of self-congratulation because as many as four Englishmen travelled over. The gentry had looked into the gate lodge, and not only the master of the house but his dowager mother-in-law as well, and had admired the stove,

Mr. Wilson

That subject is much too serious to be flippant about.

Mr. Kelly

You are the people who are not taking it seriously.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

We will not have interruptions, but I would point out to the Deputy that we have already debated this subject. The Deputy is entitled to make a passing reference to it. It should be left there.

Mr. Kelly

I did not speak on the last occasion and I just want to get in my twopence worth. It does not matter what Deputy Haughey and Mrs. Thatcher agreed. I agree it would be worth while to have British goodwill on that or any other front, in relation to the economy or something else, but it does not matter what we agree with the British because the British are not in a position to make any given solution stick in the teeth of the opposition of the Northern majority. I do not admire them, I do not respect them, I consider they very largely brought their own misfortunes on themselves by their grotesque selfishness towards the minority over whom they were allowed to rule for 40 years, but we have to live with those people on the same island and Mrs. Thatcher is not in a position to make a solution stick with them that they will not have.

Among the proofs I have of the mesmerisation among the media, who were vocal enough when we were in power, is the extraordinary uncritical way in which that fact has been forgotten. Take The Irish Times, a very fine paper, and everybody who works in it or for it or runs it deserves in a general way admiration and congratulation for what they do. But on this point an extraordinary uncritical attitude seems to have come over the people who dictate the editorial line. They do not seem to read their own Northern editor, Mr. McKittrick. He sends an endless stream of realistic stories from Belfast, which I believe, but they do not make any impact on the editorial office itself. Two or three people there, who make the Northern editorial line, were, ten years ago, in the business of prophecy; they were heavily into the Moses line. There was not even going to be a federal solution according to them; we were going to have one Thirty-Two county republic. And they relied on cultural resemblances and affinities which they thought could be detected in peggy's leg and yellow man and Lammas Fair and RUC men playing the tin whistle to carry us over the reluctance, which they simply did not want to know about, of the million other people to have anything to do with a solution of that kind.

I can remember one thing that sticks in my mind because it was one of the first scripts I handed out after being elected to one of the Houses of the Oireachtas. It was in Dunleer in County Louth. This was in the Autumn of 1969 after the trouble got very bad in the North. I said that there was no reason why, in a federal Ireland, the people in the North should fret about our divorce laws or contraceptive laws, whatever my own feeling about them might be, because they could have their own, because any federal solution would make sense only if a certain range of things, of which these are very obvious examples, were remitted to the independent legislative expression of whatever authority functioned in the North under that federal arrangement. I was severely rapped on the knuckles by The Irish Times. That would not do at all; that was hibernianism. I was back to the old Irish Parliamentary Party or something even more feeble, something that, as Deputy Haughey said not long before he took over in Fianna Fáil, had so degraded and humiliated public life that no one of any sensitivity or intelligence could touch them. That is the way he spoke about men who either bled to death or gave their lives in other ways for Ireland. I was back to the stage of these old chaps with their buttoned boots and their stick-in-the-mud ideas if I spoke about a federal solution. There could be no question even of that. It was the whole or nothing.

We are a long way from that now. The same paper and others were telling us that there was no such thing as a Unionist blacklash, that we could press ahead, do what we liked in the North, twist the arms of the English and everybody else in sight. I must say I cannot blame them for that because the same kind of message was coming from the SDLP, that we need not worry about the Unionists, that they would lie down, that they were only a paper title. I am sorry to say that three or four hundred murdered Catholics since then proved them wrong. Three or four hundred absolutely innocent and uninvolved people, the victims of sectarian violence, proved them bitterly wrong.

It does not matter what Mrs. Thatcher consents to and I have not the least doubt that she would be delighted to clear out of the North in the morning if she could and her party with her and the rest of the British public. They would be delighted to disengage themselves and I do not doubt they will do so as soon as they feel they decently can and perhaps even if they do not think they decently can they may well do it. But how are we going to make this stick? How are we going to make anything stick up there unless we are able to persuade the Northern majority that they can live in peace with us and that they can have their own traditions and they will not be priest ridden.

Michael Collins, somebody whose valour will not be questioned in this House from either side, openly said that there could be no question of coercing the North. I cannot help noticing—I do not want to be abrasive or inflame old wounds — that when the Civil War broke out here in 1922 and the summer of 1923 the anti-Treaty side were damned careful to restrict their activities to the Twenty-six Counties. They never fired a shot in the North or for the North, notwithstanding that presumably the State up there was just as illegitimate as the one functioning here in Dublin.

Mr. Wilson

Is the Deputy sure of his facts?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

1981.

Mr. Wilson

No, I wish to speak about 1980. Yesterday I introduced a Supplementary Estimate for my Department in the sum of £33,036,000 and I do not intend to indulge in any flamboyant rhetoric but simply to talk about some statistics and stubborn facts in my own field and to indicate to the House that the Government in their allocation of resources to education are still in line with the traditional stance of the Fianna Fáil Party in relation to education.

Investment in education in 1980, voted and non-voted, totals £545,397,000. As all Members will readily admit, this is a colossal sum. Some time ago there was much talk and propaganda about the PAYE income tax burden. If my expenditure on education in 1980 were deducted from the most recent figure I have for the PAYE contribution to general Government funds there would be very little left. In fact, £545,397,000 was the sum for education in 1980 and the total PAYE contribution for 1979 — the last full year for which I have figures — was £647,500,000. Expenditure on education in 1980 was 21.7 per cent higher than in 1979. Both Deputy Collins and Deputy Horgan were delving and nit-picking yesterday but they made no comment whatsoever on the statistics I gave yesterday on the Supplementary Estimates and did not challenge them.

Another factual point is that the total capital budget in education for 1980 was £59,500,000. I have had to listen for some time to various speakers, notably the spokesmen on Education, talking about the amount of the capital budget and purveying fanciful figures on this subject. Deputy Collins twice asked yesterday whether I was giving figures for 1980. Had he reflected he would have found that Estimates introduced here in 1980 are for the year 1980. We must await the budget for 1981 and the Book of Estimates to learn of the expenditure for that year.

In the expenditure of £59.5 million finance was provided for 176 new schools or major building schemes. That was a substantial figure for primary and post-primary schools in 1980. I met representatives of the trade unions at the beginning of the year and I guaranteed them that there would be a substantial building programme in 1980. I am pleased to inform the House that I delivered on that promise of a good solid building programme for 1980 from that capital allocation.

I should like to give a few facts about achievements for 1980. At the outset I should like to refer to the objective I set myself in 1977 of reducing the size of classes and the corollary of that of giving as much help as possible where it was most needed by way of remedial education. I should like to give one statistic on the size of classes. In 1977-78 3,260 classes had more than 40 pupils. It was on those that I made the onslaught. In 1978-79 I had reduced that figure to 2,160 and the most recent statistic for 1979-80 shows that figure has been reduced to 980. It pleases me to think that that stated objective when I took office in 1977 has been substantially achieved. With regard to the corollary, as I called it, the necessity to give aid where it is most needed, I should like to tell the House that 300 teachers were trained to give a better class size and to make more remedial teachers available to the schools. The number of teachers since 1977 has been increased from 17,300 to 19,000. In the post-primary field during 1980 I sanctioned 100 remedial teachers to give maximum assistance to those who needed that extra help and tuition for one reason or another, either slowness due to socio-economic reasons or social reasons in the home.

In the allocation of those teachers I exercised a positive discrimination in favour of problem schools and problem pupils. The House will agree that that was a highly desirable basis for a policy in that regard. With regard to aid for secondary schools, some people have undertaken a campaign seeking to indicate that secondary schools are being discriminated against. I had the privilege during the year of undertaking the full payment of the pay-related social insurance which fell to be paid by the schools as a result of a change in that scheme.

I should like to give the House some surprising facts with regard to technical and technological education. We have heard a lot of talk about our educational system being overbiased in favour of what is called the academic line rather than the practical, but it may interest the House to know that 80.9 per cent of the intake to our regional technical colleges and the colleges of technology, the Dublin complex, came from secondary schools. At first, I found it hard to accept that that figure was real. There are other surprising and pleasing facts with regard to this theme. In 1978-79, the year I have the most recent statistics for, the intake to the universities was 5,752 while the intake to the regional technical colleges, the colleges under the various vocational education committees, was 4,343. When one adds to that the numbers in the National Institute for Higher Education, Limerick, which existed in that year, and the intake now to the National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin, one can see that there is nearly a balance. One should not forget that the university figures include a large number of students who enter the technological field because our traditional universities, unlike many of the continental universities, provide a strong technological sector in the various branches of engineering.

The National Institute for Higher Education, Limerick, is being extended and the National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin, is under way. Lectures are being given, courses are being held and the building is proceeding apace. There are also four regional technical colleges planned for the Dublin area. The balance between what is falsely called academic and technological and practical education is reaching equilibrium and the products of our post-primary schools are opting for the regional technical colleges and technological education in increasing numbers.

There is very often — I do not wish to use very harsh terms about this — what I would call uninformed criticism of the educational system in this field and on this theme. At times I believe that the people who make this criticism — I shall indicate later some proof of what I am talking about — are criticising schools that are not there, or, perhaps, what obtained when they were at school, and they have not taken any steps to inform themselves about changes that have taken place or about the present position. It is wise to advert to this fact: that pupils of any institution are not merely fodder for industry nor has anybody any right to programme them for the servicing of any specific area of our national life. What we must do in an age of very rapid change, technological change particularly, is make sure that there is a sound basic education, that a mind is being educated — I do not like the word trained — which is flexible and creative. All planning of syllabi should be geared to that objective, and I am not talking merely in the Irish context; I am talking in a global context.

It has become almost a cliché nowadays to talk about the microchip revolution. It exists. It will create social as well as educational and technological problems as the century progresses and in the 21st century. When speaking to UNESCO I indicated that UNESCO, for example, were in a unique position to make a study of this in that they have as members citizens of rich countries and just come out of the new stone age and they have members who are the most sophisticated industrially in the world. Therefore, they are in a unique position to make this kind of study of what the optimum syllabus would be to train for new skills so that if adaptation retraining would tend to make skills obsolete, people faced with that will have a good, solid, creative, flexible foundation upon which to build. We can ask the Secretary-General of UNESCO to address himself to the fact. I think we can do that with profit because, sometimes at least, one feels that as a UN organisation they spend their time on less worthy objectives.

I said that some people talk about education as if there had been no changes. They talk about academic orientation when they did not examine the realities of our school life. Therefore, I would like to give the House some facts on that. Of 100,113 boys who took the intermediate certificate 49,855 or 50 per cent took woodwork; 57,783 or 57 per cent took mechanical drawing; 44,060 or 44 per cent took commerce; 33,460 or 33 per cent took metalwork and over 90 per cent took science, that is among boys. Of 96,211 girls, 66,668 took commerce; 59,887 took science and 70,342 took home economics. I am sure that some feminists would object to so many girls taking home economics and I did not give the statistic for boys. Some boys in some schools are taking home economics. I had the privilege of opening one — Scoil Lán-Ghaelach i gCorcagh tamall ó shin — and in that school the boys by compulsion studied home economics.

I am giving those figures to indicate the truth of what I said already, that some people talk without knowing the facts. The glib phrase "academically orientated" is often thrown around and I am convinced — in fact I have proof of it in one or two instances — that people are talking about what went on in their own schools when they were at school themselves and if the school is still existing they draw the conclusion that the modus operandi is still the same.

We know that vocational schools have given great service and lay great emphasis on practical subjects. What is not understood is the revolution, practically, that has taken place in technical schools. In 1978-79, for example, out of 330 technical schools 152 offered woodwork, 165 mechanical drawing, 277 commerce and all offered science. Apropos of that it would be my ambition to be able to train sufficient teachers of engineering workshop theory and practice and of building construction — those being the titles of those subjects woodwork and metalwork — at the leaving certificate stage; to train enough in the new purpose-built college in Limerick, Thomond College, so that all post-primary schools in the country could employ a teacher or teachers in those practical subjects if they wished. I know from correspondence coming into my office that there are many at the moment looking for those teachers and we have not got them available. As far as Thomond College is concerned this is the first year when teachers of rural science, of engineering workshop theory and practice and of building construction have started their formal training there. Originally, Thomond College trained physical teachers and those others have now been added. A Chathaoirleach, I would like you to tell me what time I have left.

Acting Chairman (Mr. Noonan)

The Deputy has approximately seven minutes left.

Mr. Wilson

In referring to the importance of the syllabus and of educating our young children — I avoid the word "training"— in a manner which will leave them with flexible and creative minds it is important to realise that there will have to be a core of general subjects. In this country we consider Irish, English, mathematics, a foreign language and a science subject desirable. To finish what I have to say on that theme, I think it is agreed generally that over-specialisation too young does not provide that kind of flexibility or creativity. In many countries — even in the Federal Republic of Germany which, as the House knows, is the strongest economic unit in Europe — where they over-specialised in business education for a while they found it was completely frustrating and they had to broaden the base upon which the early business training was given to remedy that.

I might say a word about 1980 and youth, although this is the domain of my Minister of State, Deputy Tunney. I think it is generally agreed in the House and the country that he is doing a magnificent job in his own field. My Department have provided £1,565,000 for the youth employment scheme this year. Very many worthwhile projects have been completed under this scheme. It has served the dual purpose of providing amenities and giving employment and training to young people. I also call the attention of the House to the fact that out of the Tripartite Fund £5,000,000 was made available to be spent in providing facilities for youth and sport. The scheme for 100 youth development officers has been completed in 1980 and they are to be key figures in the development of youth organisations and movements. They are to be the active and dynamic agents of the Department in doing that work.

I am talking here of innovations in my Department. These things did not exist before; they were originated by me in the Department. We have provided 300 caretakers for large national schools and we have also provided 500 clerical assistants to aid in the administration of the larger schools. Deputy Horgan specifically asked about the creation of jobs. I mentioned the clerical assistant jobs which were initiated and brought into effect in my Department for large primary and secondary schools. I have appointed 500 young people. I have expanded the non-teaching staff, mainly clerical, in vocational schools and in the regional technical colleges. In all, over 500 young people were appointed and 1,500 young people were employed on the youth employment schemes that I have mentioned. In pre-employment courses 3,000 young people participated in second-level schools at an estimated cost of £2,881 million. I do not want to make political points but let Deputy Horgan compare that record with anything that went before.

It is well to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the cost of these innovations, new posts, will increase annually through the award of increments on the salary scales of additional teaching and non-teaching staff. There is a tendency when looking at one year in isolation to decry the provision has to be that year, conveniently overlooking the fact that although provision has to be made for the new services introduced, provision has also to be made for additional costs arising as the years go on. We are seeking for our young people the best education and the highest possible level of service but we must remember that improvement in the level and quality of the services can only come from growth in our economy. Neither I nor any other Minister for Education can wave a magic wand and bring in money. The statistics I gave at the beginning indicated that the amount payable by the Pay As You Earn group about which so much brouhaha was made barely covers the Education Vote and the figures I have given.

I want to refer briefly to the NESC report which I mentioned yesterday when introducing my Supplementary Estimate, No. 53, Economic and Social Policy 1980-1983: Aims and Recommendations. The report stated that on the basis of the 1980 estimate for Education there would be a cutback in the real level of current expenditure given an annual rate of inflation of the order of 20 per cent. I shall not go into the relevance of the CPI to the education scene. The increase on the total expenditure is 21.12 per cent compared with expenditure on current services in 1979. Capital was also mentioned. In 1980 a total of £59,500,000 is being provided for capital works in my Department compared with £48 million in 1979, an increase of 24 per cent. Expenditure on primary building was £22,250,000 and not £17 million, as indicated in the report and on which the report based its statistics.

My chief complaint about the report is its lack of scientific method in comparing an estimate — it indicated that it was an estimate — for 1980 with an outturn in 1979. Anybody who knows the workings of this House knows that never yet has the outturn in any one year been the same as the estimate. I should also like to draw attention to something else that is relevant to the NESC report — the indicator that the NESC people used in regard to building. The building unit in my Department operates a strict system of cost limits which enables the cost of school buildings to be kept well below the cost index of the Institute of Chartered Surveyors of Ireland. Let me give some comparisons of the two indices as follows: with 1975 as base year the cost index of my Department was in 1976, 100 against 116 on the chartered surveyors' index; in 1977 it was 113 as against 138; in 1978 it was 127 as against 163; in 1979 it was 149 in my Department and 180 on the chartered surveyors' index. The cost limits in my Department are well below the index on which some of these deductions are based. The surveyors' index is based on costs of labour and material; my Department's costings are based on market and tender prices. The strict design and cost control exercised by my Department ensures that costs are kept down and that excellent value for money is obtained by the public.

The most recent census shows that between 0 and 14 years — this is in 1979 so that you can add one year for this — there were 1,029,900 young people in the country, an increase of 98,800 or a percentage increase of 10.6. In the grouping 15-29, which is not very helpful in regard to education statistics, there were 823,100 but a large proportion of those are also in our schools.

The Government are dedicated to providing the best possible education within the means at our disposal and the means put at my disposal by the Government have been generous by any standard. Sin iad na firicí. Léiríonn siad go bhfuil sé mar dhúngaois ag an Rialtas an t-oideachas a fhorbairt ionas go mbeidh seans ag gach mac léinn sa tír oideachas sásúil a fháil don saol deacair, casta achrannach atá rompu.

Mr. Horgan

I am sorry I was not present for the greater part of the Minister's speech and I do not want to create a situation which might be a re-run of the little argument we had yesterday on the Supplementary Estimate. However, I intend to talk about education in more general terms in the latter part of my speech. I was interested to hear in regard to the Taoiseach's speech this morning his promise that in the very near future an investment plan will be proposed which will give an indication of Government thinking in this area for the immediate and no doubt medium-term future.

For some time it has been obvious that the Taoiseach has failed signally in the two aims he set himself in his first major statement as Taoiseach after his election — I exclude for the time being the question of Northern Ireland. He set himself the task of putting industrial relations to right and of putting the nation's finances in order.

With regard to industrial relations, it is plain that apart from the apparent success at this point of his intervention in the matter of the national understanding effectively nothing new has been done to improve the climate of industrial relations. The best we can say is that the Taoiseach, with whatever good sense he was born with, has not seized what many conservative spokesmen would see as the opportunity offered by industrial disputes of pushing anti-trade union legislation through this House. The Labour Party have never believed that this was, is, or will be the solution to industrial relations problems. We believe that the major role a government can play in relation to this matter is to create a climate in which there can be good industrial relations. That kind of climate can only exist where working people believe they are not being taxed out of existence, that they are not being fobbed off with specious excuses and that the wool is not being pulled over their eyes by governments or anybody else.

The facts of the industrial relations situation indicate clearly to me that working people do not believe the Government have delivered on their promises to any substantial degree, or that they are ever likely to. They retaliate, as is their right, by looking for increases in their pay that will at least match the rate of inflation under this Government. The sad fact is that inflation is such and that the Government's actions in other areas are such that even take-home pay will not buy in terms of the quality of life what it bought in years gone by. Of course this prompts even further fury, frustration and rage on the part of working people when having fought and gained a measure of wage increase that in their view is proportionate to what is needed they are still worse off in real terms. The Government spokesmen can crowd the picture with statistics but people know what standard of living they are enjoying or failing to enjoy and they will be slow to accept that the Government have done anything to improve the situation.

In relation to public finances, the situation has caused much alarm even in conservative spokesmen. Irish industrialists who are not hasty to complain when somebody else's money is being spent are growing increasingly alarmed about the extent of our foreign borrowing and about the uses to which it is being put. I suspect many of them had divided views about the Taoiseach when he was elected. Some of them saw him as the unacceptable face of capitalism; no doubt some of them saw him as a man of decision and initiative, who would cut through the fuddy-duddy procedures of the civil service and public Departments, who would take the necessary decisions to pull the country up by its boot straps. Today the country's boot straps are around its neck, and they are there because the Taoiseach put them there.

We now hear that with a stroke of genius that might be enviable if it were not so patently hollow private domestic financial interests and perhaps foreign interests will be asked to invest in our infrastructural development. There is a report that the Government are planning to raid the very substantial pension funds of semi-State companies and to use them on the basis of long-term repayable loans to bridge the appalling gap opening up in our public finances not just year by year but month by month.

A classical economist will argue that the Taoiseach and the Government will have to take £500 million out of the economy next year, not to solve the problem but just to stop it from getting worse. On the evidence of the last year or even the last few months, have we any guarantee that if and when this money will be taken out of the economy it will not be done in a way that will hurt most those who are least well equipped to bear that hurt? There is considerable evidence that the real cost of the recession is not being borne by the broad shoulders of the wealthy but by the increasing queues of the unemployed, by young people for whom schools are not being built or repaired fast enough, and by the old whose living standards are not being sufficiently protected against the ravages of inflation.

The unemployment situation alone should give anybody in this House food for thought. There is a school of thought that unemployment is not a serious election issue and never has been. It is felt that only 10 per cent — I use the word "only" in inverted commas — of the working population are unemployed and, therefore, that when people complain about the matter and criticise the Government their words do not mean a great deal to the 90 per cent of people who are gainfully employed.

However, there are not only the unemployed themselves, there are their families, their children and all their dependants. It has already been estimated, with some degree of accuracy, that there are more than 100,000 children who are dependants of families living on social assistance alone, whose sole income is provided by the State. You could multiply that figure of the actual unemployed by their spouses and so on and then you will get some kind of picture of the reality of human misery which is conjured up by these very bleak statistics. We must remember, also, that these statistics are, in themselves, inaccurate, or certainly incomplete. I do not want to become involved in a slanging match with the Government spokesman on whether it is 113,000, 120,000 or 160,000 — although these were the tactics which they used to considerable effect coming up to the last election.

The fact is that we all know that there is a pool of unemployment which is substantially greater than the quoted figures would have us believe and that that pool is being swollen every day, not least by the addition of young school leavers. Only the other day, a report published by the National Manpower consultative committee, chaired by the Minister for Labour, indicated that the size of the youth unemployment problem was substantially greater than the figures would suggest. The reasons are quite simply explained. The figures are much worse for the very simple reason that many young people who leave school do not go on the dole. They do not go on the dole because, as they are living at home, they are regarded as having means and the difference between the means that they are regarded as having and the dole to which they would be entitled is 30, 40, 60 or 70p a week. What young person with any sense of dignity would sign on the dole three days a week for the sake of less than £1? For most of them, that would not even pay the bus fare. We have here a very heartless and cynical ploy, designed to help maintain that unemployment assistance is available to all regardless of their age, but which, in fact, operates very strongly to keep young people, in particular, off the unemployment registers.

In a survey done recently in Finglas under the auspices, I believe, of AnCO, it was shown that some 12 per cent of the young unemployed were still looking for their first job a year-and-a-half after leaving school. On the other hand, we hear cries for more police action to do something about vandalism. I fully agree with what Deputy Cluskey, the Labour Leader, said in his speech at our annual conference in Cork, to the effect that violence against people — and against old people, particularly — by young people, or, indeed, by anyone should not be tolerated in our society. If it takes more gardaí on the streets to prevent this kind of thing happening — and I stress that prevention is ten times better than cure, as anybody will tell you — then we must accept the need for this kind of development. However, it is no use merely preventing a problem from becoming public, if we are not prepared to do something about its long-term, structural and underlying causes.

Vandalism is not entirely the result of poverty, but it bears a very big relationship to it. It is not entirely a result of unemployment, but it bears a very big relationship to it. One of the problems is that we have "ghettoised" poverty in our society, we have "ghettoised" unemployment in our society. In other countries which we are given to criticise from time to time, people are sent into social exile, into cities far away from their home country and are politely excluded from society for a while. We have here a system which is none the less effective for being more subtle. We do not haul people up in front of the courts and sentence them for being unemployed, or for being poor. We do confine them, almost as surely as if they were confined in a prison, in the savagely depressed inner city areas in Dublin and in a number of other urban areas and we do confine them in some of the overspill towns which are being built around Dublin, especially on the east coast, to which working-class families are sent, grateful for the roof over their heads but astonished and depressed to find that they are miles away from the heart of the city that they knew, without any adequate transport service, without any adequate shops, without any adequate social or recreational facilities. We create conditions for violence and vandalism in our society and then, when the victims of what we have done turn on us, we blame them, rather than blaming ourselves.

I cannot emphasise enough that this does not mean that we should not do something about crime but I would argue, also very strongly, that if we are to do something about crime we must pay special care and attention — more attention than is generally paid — to crimes against persons. It is a fact, as the morning papers show, that crime is on the increase and, to some extent, crime will always be with us. However, we should still seriously look at our law and our system of administration of justice, to see whether or not we pay too much attention to crimes against property — which, after all, cannot bleed — and too little to crimes against the person.

I now turn to the question of prices. It is always easy, one could say, for a Government to be attacked by an Opposition on the question of prices because prices must always, always go up. What I propose to do is to level an attack in two areas where the Government do have, or could have, some control over prices and where they have steadfastly refused to take the action which they could take. In one of the areas which I am going to mention, naturally taking action would cost money, but in the other area the taxpayer would not be called upon to pay a red cent.

The first area which is of basic concern to us is the matter of food. Nothing can be more basic to human needs than food and yet, over the last year and especially over the last three years, we have seen the prices of basic commodities rise to an inordinate degree. The Government were plainly determined at one point to totally phase out subsidies on milk, butter and bread. They seemed to lose their nerve at the last minute, for which we must be thankful, and some subsidies remained, but the percentage that they form of the price of these basic commodities is now only about half of what it formed when they were introduced first in 1973 and 1974.

The point of subsidising these basic foods is that older people, poorer people, unemployed people, consume more of these, proportionately, than anybody else, and spend a higher proportion of their income on food, in general, than anybody else. While it is true that subsidies benefit the houseperson in Foxrock as much as they do the houseperson in Sean MacDermott Street, they are of much greater benefit, proportionately, to the working-class family. If we were to adopt the argument that you could not subsidise anything because it only helps the rich who are well able to afford to buy these commodities, then we would not subsidise education. We would allow the rich to pay for all their children's education, which some of them could. A responsible society has never regarded that kind of action as appropriate. At the same time we have this Government's action in refusing to take the basic step of at least maintaining the value of food subsidies on basic foods so that people can go to their corner shops and at least know that when they go to bed at night they will not go to bed hungry.

I remember not too long ago the Taoiseach paid a very swift and very well publicised visit to the inner city of Dublin and declared a commitment, on his part and on the part of his Government, to the regeneration of the inner city. If the inner city is being regenerated to any degree it is in spite of Fianna Fáil rather than because of them. It is because scattered, almost isolated protest groups and individuals have fought for the inner city, that anything at all is being done for it and that the whole lot is not being bulldozed to make way for offices and commercial development of a type calculated to provide the largest single return. If the Taoiseach had taken an extra five minutes on his journey through the hard core of deprived Dublin and called in to any one of the huckster shops which still exist at little corners here and there of that part of the city, if he had asked them what their turnover is in milk, bread and butter every week and how many old people come in and buy these commodities and little else and if he had asked them if they had heard of any complaints about rising prices, he might have gone away from Seán MacDermott Street without such a wide smile on his face.

The second area I want to refer to in relation to increased prices is housing. It is now plain that two things in particular have contributed as much as anything else to the rise in the cost of housing which is putting it almost out of reach of many young couples. Their income puts them out of reach of a local authority loan or a local authority house. It is too low to allow them to get the normal mortgage which about 80,000 people hold. One of those things has been the alleged £1,000 grant for a new house. I use the word "alleged" advisedly because after the Government came into office it was perfectly clear that this £1,000 was not a grant which would be paid de novo but which was simply a conflation of existing grants which in some cases might amount to as little as £300 more than the couple would have received in any case. Within two quarters of that sum being mentioned publicly and being inaugurated by legislation the price of new houses had jumped by almost the same amount. In the House this year the Government blandly set their face against a Land Bill introduced by this party which would have had the effect of controlling, at no cost to the public purse, the speculative gains which are made by people at the moment who buy land on the edges of our cities and towns, hold on to it until it has increased in value or changed its zoning, then flog it off and move on with their profits to do the same thing somewhere else.

Land is one of the most critical cost elements in the price of housing generally. The price of a serviced site in Dublin has jumped from about £3,000 to approximately £6,000 in the last two years alone. We believe that is immoral, wrong and unjust. It is creating a situation in which many of the new housing estates being built around our cities are being built by speculators and bought by them because ordinary couples cannot afford to buy them. They cannot afford the deposit but if they are lucky enough to afford it they cannot find the money for a mortgage.

We were saddened but not surprised when that action was taken by the Government in relation to our Bill. It has often been said that the Government find their friends among the higher ranks of the building profession and that when one back is scratched another must be scratched also. The irony of it is that not even all those ploys have helped the building industry into anything like the period of prosperity it once enjoyed. I remember going around knocking on doors in 1977 and meeting people in the building trade. I had angry words with them when they told me they were voting Fianna Fáil because it was only when they were in office the building trade prospered. I will be going to those same doors next year and I will be very surprised if I get the same answer.

I would like to make a plea in relation to the educational system. For far too long we have accepted the educational system almost as something which arrived carved in the tablets of stone from the top of the mountain. We have never really paused or seriously examined the role the educational system plays in our society. We have never stopped to examine ways in which it redistributes incomes from the poor to the rich, in which it reinforces the class barriers in our society and in which it serves, badly and all as it does, a greedy private industry sector rather than turning out mature and well developed human beings.

The system was criticised recently by the committee I mentioned earlier under the chairmanship of the Minister for Labour because it was not turning out people — I used the industrial metaphor with some distaste — who had the necessary skills to do the jobs that are actually available in our society. The problem about the educational system is manifold but one aspect of it is that the pupils, especially at second level, are being stretched like the travellers of old were stretched on the bed of Procrustes to fit the bed that is measured and carpentered by the university system. Only a small minority of our young people will go into third level education and a smaller minority than that will go into the universities. Yet the stranglehold which the universities are allowed to have — I stress "are allowed to have"— on our educational system through the inactivity of the Minister for Education and the failure to develop quickly enough adequate institutions outside the universities, is distorting the whole pattern of education right down to our primary schools.

When we are looking at what the schools are doing in relation to people's career chances we should also be looking at what they are doing in the way they develop as human beings. If we are satisfied that our schools should continue to produce a docile class of people, meekly accepting authority because it is authority, and not people with a critical, open intelligence, loyal to our basic democratic institutions, never cynical but critical and ready and open for change, we will not only be failing them but our country.

Mr. Leyden

I compliment the Taoiseach on his opening speech. He illustrated in clear terms our present difficulties and our great opportunities for the future. It was a realistic but not pessimistic speech, forward looking and not dwelling on past achievements. It set out clearly our goals and objectives.

My first point is that when the Taoiseach speaks in this Chamber some arrangement should be made for the live broadcasting of his speech. I would extend this to the Leaders of Fine Gael and Labour. Discussions should be held between RTE and the parties here with a view to an arrangement in regard to the broadcasting of major speeches in adjournment debates, the debate on the budget, the speech by the Taoiseach here on 11 December on the communiqué issued after the 8 December Summit with Mrs. Thatcher. That communiqué was misrepresented by many people. It was a clear statement, signed and sealed by both Prime Ministers. It was a forthright document. A live broadcast of the debate on the communiqué, particularly of the Taoiseach's speech, one of the most brilliant made in the House since I came here in 1977, would have been of benefit to our people as a whole.

That speech was one of the most encouraging speeches made here in a long time on the Northern problem. It was a light at the end of a dark tunnel. It was encouraging to the minority in the North and to everyone in the South, a clear example of the type of speech that should have been broadcast to every home in the country, because it showed clearly the calibre of the man leading the country and of his magnificent grasp of a complex issue and his willingness to move forward to meet the majority in the North.

It is the first priority of this Government to do everything possible to solve this problem and the Taoiseach has devoted a grear deal of energy to it. As I have said, the broadcasting of his speech and of those of the Leaders of the Opposition would have helped to enlighten our people. It would have made the Dáil more meaningful to our people. It would have demonstrated to them that this is where legislation is enacted, where speaches are made, where the people who fought in 1916 and since do the business of the country.

Therefore, I suggest it is in the interests of our people and of democracy that such proceedings would be broadcast live. I am sometimes surprised at the number of people who have never had an opportunity of visiting this House. I have encouraged as many school groups as possible to come here on special visits. I am a member of the Committee on Procedure and Privileges and I should like through them to initiate a development of this idea. At the moment facilities for such visits are limited.

On certain occasions I would suggest that proceedings here would receive live television coverage as well as on radio, again to enable our constituents to be made fully aware of the events that take place here. It would eliminate the possibility of misrepresentation of speeches in the media because then the people themselves could see and hear what happens here. When I say this I am not casting any doubt on the fine standards of journalism, of the work that goes on every day in the Press Gallery. I compliment the Press Gallery for their help in making the Dáil meaningful for the general public. If it were not for the Press, people throughout the country could not know what is happening here. However, mistakes can be made and of course Deputies complain now and again that they were not given a line in the newspapers. Of course, space is very limited but nowadays reports of Dáil proceedings have a wide readership and accordingly people are being given a better idea of Parliamentary work.

This is 1980 and surely we should have at least radio broadcasting from the Chamber. I emphasise that this is purely a personal view of a Fianna Fáil elected representative. Fortunately in Fianna Fáil we have tremendous freedom to express our views — indeed we are encouraged to do so, unlike Deputies in other parties.

I compliment the Minister for Education on the speech he made today. He has played a very important role in the development of education. It is recognised that in the very positive, calm, cool and collected way in which he operates, he has played an important role in the provision and development of educational facilities throughout the State. The publication of the White Paper is an indication of movement in Government policy which has been awaited in the educational field.

I wish to thank the Minister on behalf of the people of County Roscommon and my new constituency of North East Galway for the various school buildings. In the last few weeks I had the pleasure of announcing the erection of a new vocational school in Roscommon to replace the school which I attended myself for a number of years. The Minister allocated £0.5 million to this project, which will commence in the first few weeks of 1981 and will be completed for the school year of 1982. This has happened even though there is a recession and funds are limited. During the years of the Coalition, nothing was done. I was delighted, as a past pupil of that school to be in a position to tell the good news to the parents, pupils and teachers. The Minister has also approved the development of the Christian Brothers secondary school in Roscommon town; he has approved the erection of a major extension to the Convent of Mercy school in Strokestown; tenders are being considered for the erection of a school in Saint Mary's College in Ballygar and we are looking forward to having a new school built in Castlerea, County Roscommon. Last month I attended the official opening of a new school in Athleague in my own parish outside Roscommon town and I look forward to the opening of two new schools in my new constituency of East Galway which are near completion. I also hope to see further development of four new school buildings in my constituency. The Minister deserves to be congratulated for providing these fine school buildings which will benefit the people, the pupils, the teachers and future generations. This area was neglected during the Coalition period in office; very few buildings were approved or sanctioned in those dim, dark days. I am confident that those dim days will never return if Fianna Fáil govern and continue to govern in the years ahead.

Let me go on to the question of labour relations generally. Earlier in the year the Taoiseach appealed for industrial harmony, and that has been achieved to the extent that this has been the best year for industrial harmony since 1975. There are more people employed now than there were during the Coalition period. During the Coalition period there was a relatively good labour situation as far as industrial disputes were concerned but, as I said to Deputy Kelly this morning, the unemployed cannot go on strike and cause difficulties for the Government. We have created more employment than was ever achieved in the Coalition period. That is a great achievement when there is a world recession. In 1975 only 14,600 new industrial jobs were created whereas in our period 30,000 to 40,000 new jobs have been created per annum, and this during a period of general recession. This is a tremendous achievement for any government.

In relation to industrial harmony the outgoing Minister for Labour, Deputy G. Fitzgerald, and the Minister of State, Deputy Brendan Daly, have made a major contribution and I want to compliment them on that. Deputy Daly has been in the Department only six months but he has made major contributions not only in relation to industrial harmony but in relation to training of people in unions and also in relation to women's affairs generally, which were sadly neglected until he took over six months ago. We must always remember that roughly 50 per cent of our population are women and they are not being given the opportunity to participate fully which, in a male-dominated society, men have always had. The Minister is working very hard to achieve more equality in relation to women's affairs, and we do not have this type of extreme feminism which is rampant in certain so-called liberal areas here in Dublin. We have some wonderful female politicians on both sides of the House who are showing the way forward to the young girls in our society. Women should get more involved in political organisations. The only way to become a Member of the Oireachtas is to go through the political party system, and in Fianna Fáil we have opened our organisations to women and there are many thousands of women actively involved, but we want many more. I appeal to any Fianna Fáil orientated woman or any independent-minded women who wants a role in public life to join Fianna Fáil. It is the one party that will give her the opportunity. We are the party that appointed a Minister of State in the Department of Labour to look after women's affairs, and I know the Minister himself is particularly anxious to see more women involved in public life. We must recall the statement by the Taoiseach at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis last February when he called for winning women candidates at the next general election, and I hope that we will have many winning candidates in constituencies throughout the country. I know the Ceann Comhairle will encourage women candidates in his own constituency.

An Ceann Comhairle

I suggest that the Deputy should leave the Ceann Comhairle out of it.

Mr. Leyden

Would the Ceann Comhairle object to women candidates?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Ceann Comhairle does not take part in debates.

Mr. Leyden

I do not wish to be in conflict with the Chair. I represent a rural constituency, and when I was elected in 1977 County Roscommon faced problems of unemployment and empty factories and had no real plans for the development of industry. Together with my colleague, the Minister of State at the Department of Justice, I set out to achieve industrial development. During the past three-and-a-half years some measure of success has been achieved and advance factories have been provided in Roscommon, Castlerea, Boyle and Strokestown. Jobs have been provided in Roscommon and Castlerea and the only factory remaining to be filled is in Boyle. I am seeking the full support of the IDA to make this area of north Roscommon a top priority and I am confident that they will give it the attention it deserves. Unfortunately we are in the midst of a recession and it has become more difficult to fill such factories. Nevertheless the joint expertise of the IDA and the Department of Industry, Commerce and Tourism will ensure that jobs will be provided in this factory in the not-too-distant future.

The Government have contributed directly to the creation of employment in the constituency, and I am justly proud of the proposal to erect a briquette factory at Ballyforan. This has been achieved with the co-operation of the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism and the Minister for Energy. It is planned that work on the factory will commence in 1981, the first phase coming into operation in 1984 and the second phase in 1987. This will create approximately 250 new jobs in addition to the jobs which Bord na Móna have provided in the bogs adjacent to the proposed facttory. To date the Fianna Fáil Government have created approximately 200 jobs and this number will increase to 400 or 500 within the next three years. This area had previously been totally neglected, and the Coalition Government had no concept of this type of development by semi-State bodies. When I put the proposal to the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Deputy O'Malley, in 1977 he said he would examine it with an open mind, and through his effort Bord na Móna came up with this proposal which was backed by the Government. I am justly proud of this achievement in an area which has very few opportunities. There is no major town in south Roscommon, and the only development was in the environs of Athlone and Ballinasloe.

We have also provided a major scheme called the South Roscommon Regional Water Scheme costing to date well in excess of £1.5 million. It is now operational and is providing water for farmers and residents of the region.

I look forward to further development of the bogs. We in the west were for many years held back due to the extent of bogland which was a major hindrance to agricultural development. In the west Roscommon area of my constituency there are between 15,000 and 20,000 acres of undeveloped bogland. In these energy starved days I am asking the Minister for Energy and Bord na Móna actively to investigate the possibilities of a major development through the provision of a briquette factory. This product is much sought after and is in relatively short supply and should be retained for domestic use rather than exported. We should not export that type of energy when we have such large oil imports, and I hope this will be noted by Bord na Móna. Perhaps I am asking too much, but Deputies are noted for this.

Minister for the Environment (Mr. R. Burke)

Some Deputies.

Mr. Leyden

I appeal to the Minister for the Environment to include in his allocations for 1981 a sewerage scheme in Knockcroghery in County Roscommon, a scheme which I undertook to provide before the next general election. I hope it will be sanctioned at least. My commitment was to do everything in my power to ensure that this sewerage scheme will be provided and I know that the Minister, who has relatives in my own town, will do his best. I know that there will be a long time before the next election and I would ask the Minister to make this the first priority for County Roscommon. It will cost roughly £100,000. I can assure the Minister that two Fianna Fáil Deputies will be elected from the constituency next time and it will ensure his reappointment in the next Fianna Fáil Government.

This year the Cabinet should plan a proper budget. They should not come back here four months later and ask us to spend three or four weeks passing Supplementary Estimates. It is often said that a lot of time is wasted in this House, and if we spend two, three or four weeks passing Supplementary Estimates this must be called a waste of time. As a young person I feel the procedure in this House is totally irrelevant to the needs and aspirations of young people. The sooner some change is brought about in these procedures the better for all concerned.

The Government cannot budget their monetary affairs. They did not budget for the by-election in Donegal which cost the taxpayers £13 million. This type of reckless budgetting is totally irresponsible. The Government ask the housewives to budget properly, but how can they expect the housewives to do that when they are not getting good example from the Government. I ask the Government to be more responsible, caring and interested in the people of this country and in the handling of their monetary affairs. We must, of course, consider the underprivileged, old age pensioners, widows, deserted wives, unmarried mothers and people on disability and invalidity benefits and I am sure the Government will make adequate provision for them in next year's budget.

I was very pleased this morning to hear our Leader speak about young people. We are sick of lip service. Last year at the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis the Taoiseach spoke of our vibrant and young population and said how lucky we were that this was so. He said he did not see them as a problem but as an asset. If he does not do something about them they will no longer be an asset but a problem, because he has failed dramatically to make any provision for the growing young population of this country.

Our educational system has not changed to meet the needs of the young. In his speech today the Taoiseach said we will have the White Paper on Education this evening. I have been waiting for that White Paper since before I came into the House 15 months ago. I hope it will contain constructive proposals, because the present educational system is antiquated. It caters specifically for the needs of the minority, the 17 per cent of the population who will go on for higher education. Everybody is geared towards scoring points. This is very unfair, and many people find themselves suffering from undue pressures working under a system geared to scoring points. There are other important things in life besides As in Irish and Bs in English. The development of the person as a whole must be of vital importance. Therefore, a broader curriculum in our secondary schools with emphasis on education for living has to be a must.

Our administration system of education is very centralised. Everything happens in Marlborough Street. I suggest that the Minister decentralise education for the good of the whole country. Involvement at community level would serve the interests of education much better. While adult education is a new phenomenon it will fail if it only serves the needs of people who are educated. It must serve the needs of those who were not in a position to go to secondary school to learn how to cook, budget and sew. If it does not do so it is a total failure.

It is no wonder there is so much vandalism when we have such an exam-orientated and exam-pressurised educational system. People must let off steam or escape in some way. There are many people in the educational system who never wanted to be there and cannot see any relevance in it. I sympathise with them. When people find themselves under such undue pressure they tend to escape in vandalism, drink, drugs or sporting activities. We will have to have a more positive approach to sport and leisure. The major challenge of the eighties will be to provide leisure particularly when we will have a shorter working week.

As regards housing young people are weighed down by the problems of not alone securing a house but paying back money. We can no longer afford to have a housing policy that ignores the youth of the country. Be it in Cork, Donegal or the inner city of Dublin the housing problem is acute. What is emerging is frightening; a mobile home syndrome in every quarter of the country. In the interests of justice this will have to be eradicated. The £1,000 grant is a bit of a joke at this stage but it causes me a lot of problems. It was brought in as a great gimmick and secured votes. It sounded great—a £1,000 grant for first-time purchasers of a new house although people were only getting £970 at the time. Every week I find myself coming to the House with 15 or 20 people looking for this grant who have been waiting for it for perhaps one or two years.

Last week I was speaking on the telephone to the housing grant section of the Department of the Environment and asked about a young man with three children who could well do with this grant. I was very anxious that he would get the grant as he wanted it before Christmas. I was told everything was in order and the cheque was ready for payment but it could not be paid out until after Christmas. Is this justice? Can Department's hoard money in this way that rightly belongs to the people, be it in agriculture, the environment or social welfare? The irony of it all is that while the Government hoard this money and get interest on it the people are paying interest. The money is kept in the Government's kitty and this is happening regardless of what the grant is for. The Government give themselves such claps on the back for all the money they have spent on the farm modernisation grant. We hear week in week out that they are giving out grants like water but people are still waiting for them. The story goes that there is such a backlog in the Department that although the grant is ready for payment it will be at least another six weeks before it can be paid.

Having said that about the housing grants and farm modernisation grants the worst of all is in the Department of Social Welfare. Sometimes people are expected to live on air for four or five weeks. They send in sick benefit certificates and these are lost. The people get no payment and after a few weeks are forced to go to their TDs because they do not get any "soot" from the Department when they contact it in an effort to expedite payment. Deserted wife's allowance, children's allowance, disability benefits, invalidity benefit and so on are in utter chaos.

A question was put down about the famous number 786444 and things improved slightly for a while. However it is now back to normal and one can ring up to 50 times a day before getting through. Something should be done to ensure that the number is not jammed and that the situation is alleviated.

In their manifesto Fianna Fáil said they would create full employment within five years. Deputy Lynch said that any Government that had unemployment over 100,000 deserved to be thrown out. Deputy O'Donoghue is often quoted as saying that to create employment they would if necessary get people to dig potholes and fill them again. The potholes are there now and there are people available to fill them but unfortunately the potholes remain and the people are still on the dole queue. It is estimated that there are 115,000 people unemployed although I estimate it to be 150,000. It is a horrific situation. It is a basic human right to work. Everyone here, the press, ushers and TDs are lucky to have a job. We must bear in mind that there are people who do not have a job, completely demoralised and in a dreadful rut. As a result they do not have the will or want to make an effort to find employment. It is all very well to criticise them but we have never been in that situation. Young people are sick, sorry and sore. There are 40,000 young people under 25 years of age who are unemployed. They have gone through the educational system with all its pressures and have left it at 18 years of age unable to secure a job. It is sad to think that our young people will have to emigrate to secure employment. None of us wants a return to the days when emigration was the only alternative for our young people but it appears they will be forced to take the emigrant ship again.

I should like to make an earnest appeal to the Government to do something constructive about the unemployment situation. The dole queues are getting longer in places like Mitchelstown, Fermoy, Mallow and Youghal. Ministers can make brilliant speeches on job creation and tell us that 8,600 new jobs are earmarked for Cork. That reads well but we never hear of the 9,000 jobs lost in Cork last week. Job creation is good but we must not forget that while we may reach the targets in that respect many more people are losing their jobs. Tackling unemployment should be the main priority of the Government. We cannot afford to be hoodwinking our people and telling them we are creating a big number of jobs when we are losing the same number of jobs in other areas. That is not a realistic policy.

Our young people are very discerning. The economic situation is serious and the Government realise this. The Government no longer try to cloud this or tell us otherwise. All the cheerful and optimistic public relations announcements of how well the Government are doing will not convince the ordinary housewife, wage earner or young person that it is easy to live here at present. We cannot hope for much in the future. As a young Member I speak for 30 per cent of the population and, like others of my age group, I am aware that the Government are up to their necks in borrowing. What future is in store for us? It is of paramount importance that our young people get involved in Parliament and raise their voices to make Parliament more relevant to the realities of this country.

Deputy Leyden spoke of the need for women to become involved in politics and I agree with him but I would not be as prejudiced as he was in appealing to women to join Fianna Fáil. I appeal to women to join the political party of their choice after assessing all policies. In my view Fine Gael is best suited to women. If one looks at the structure and organisation of that party one will see that. Fine Gael is also the party that is most open to young people. Women and young people are not concerned about lip-service but about responsibility, sincerity and the need for a caring society. Our Leader, Deputy FitzGerald, is concerned about our youth and our female population. He understands our young people, appreciates their problems and can see ahead. He is a man with vision, which young people need. That is why I am a member of Fine Gael.

Our local authorities are in a horrific state. In fairness they did tremendous work in 1980 under difficult circumstances and with a tight budget. It was not possible for them to pay for the basic necessities to maintain essential services. We are all aware of the terrible condition of our roads. An official from the IDA last week told me that industry-wise we have moved too quickly. He said we were ready for the factories but our infrastructure was years behind. It is backward we are going instead of forward. Every county complains about the huge number of potholes. It is not possible to create an impression on foreign industrialists with our roads in such a condition.

In many areas it is impossible to get domestic refuse collected. That is wrong. People are entitled to a refuse collection service from the tax money they pay. However, that service is not operating efficiently at present because county councils do not have the funds. Local authorities did not have enough money even to trim the hedges along country roads. They cannot afford to give enough finance to the hospital services or for the maintenance of schools. Let us hope that next year more money will be made available to local authorities. It is my view that they have always used the money allocated to them wisely and distributed the work in a just manner.

Our young people are apathetic and cynical about politics and politicians. At times I do not blame them. The first question that must be asked is: what comes first, the Government or the people of the country? The Government appear to be more concerned about themselves and the re-election of Fianna Fáil than about our people. For that reason the sooner they call a general election the better. They should get over the bug of getting themselves re-elected and if they are returned to power they should govern instead of sitting idly by watching the country careering down the slippery slope. A general election is inevitable. The major difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is that one consists of tacticians while the latter consists of statesmen. Short-term tactical measures for political gain do not interest our young people. They need a caring, sincere and responsible party with a caring, sincere and responsible leader. With that I would like to wish you all a very happy Christmas. I hope that we will not be back in the New Year, that we will have an election before then. That wish may seem a little unusual, and I suppose it is, but in the interest of this country the sooner we go to the country the better.

Minister for the Environment (Mr. R. Burke)

I will resist all temptation to reply to some of the last points made by Deputy Barry. In a debate such as this the policies and achievements of the Government come under scrutiny. However, the time constraints on individual contributions are such that one could not attempt even the most sketchy review of the Government's achievements in the wide-ranging area of the Department of the Environment. Necessarily, I have to be selective and I shall concentrate on a few major items which it would be appropriate for me to deal with in some detail.

In many respects realisation of the Government's aim for economic and social progress has hinged, and will continue to do so, on the efforts of local authorities under my guidance as Minister for the Environment. While the demands of the local authority sector on resources are particularly heavy, the sector confers immense benefits on the community in terms of good housing for our people, roads for movement of persons and goods, adequate water supplies for industrial, agricultural and domestic use, sewage and waste disposal facilities and a host of other services which are indispensable to modern society.

I will deal firstly with the building industry, for which I as Minister for the Environment have special responsibility, and also with the general area of housing policy. It has long been recognised that this industry is a sensitive indicator of the state of the economy generally and is often first to suffer and first to recover from a recessionary period. However, I want to emphasise that this Government are committed to supporting the industry, as indicated by the additional £97 million public capital investment in 1980 which was provided in the context of the national understanding. Some £66 million of this related directly to the building industry. This is in marked contrast to that of the previous Government which allowed employment in the industry to fall from 85,000 to 76,000 between April 1974 and April 1976. This caused grave problems for the industry in the follow-up period when a severe shortage of skills was experienced. Since the present Government came to power we have striven to repair the damage caused during the recessionary years and in the Second National Understanding for Economic and Social Development we have given a firm undertaking to maintain employment in the building industry at the December 1979 level through 1981.

Apart from this immediate financial assistance the Government are also concerned with the medium and long term future of the industry. This concern is equally related to improving and developing our infrastructure. Evidence of this is the publication of medium and long term plans for the development of our roads and telecommunication systems. The Government are also conscious of the accelerating growth in population as revealed by the April 1979 Census and the housing needs which this growing population generates. This year will see a record level of new house completions and the housing completions targets for the next few years will be determined when the results of a survey on the housing needs for the period 1980-1985, which is at present being carried out, becomes available. In addition a major survey of the training and employment needs of the building industry over the same period is being carried out. From the foregoing I think that Deputies must accept that this Government are clearly committed to the wellbeing of the industry now and in the future.

On the local authority house building front it has been the stated policy of this Government to maintain a consistent programme at the level of about 6,000 completions per year. In pursuing this policy I am proud to say that we have been singularly successful: the figures for the last three years were 6,333 in 1977, 6,073 in 1978 and 6,214 in 1979. Despite the various difficulties which have affected the economy generally this year, progress on the 1980 programme has been satisfactory. By the end of October, 1980 a total of 3,715 dwellings were completed and I am now confident that our target of 6,000 will again be achieved.

Expenditure on the programme has been running at a high level this year due mainly to the continuing rise in the costs of labour and materials. As the year progressed it appeared that the initial £101.75 million allocated to the programme might not be sufficient to keep the programme on target in 1980. Following a comprehensive review of the capital position in line with their undertaking under the national understanding the Government made available a further £12 million, of which £9 million was provided by the Exchequer and £3 million by way of overdraft borrowings, bringing the total authorised expenditure for the year to £113.75 million. The corrective action taken by the Government should ensure that work in progress and general employment are maintained at a high level and it represents a clear demonstration of this Government's determination to honour their commitments in the area of local authority housing. On the employment side, average monthly employment in the first ten months of 1980 was 6,809 as against a monthly average of 6,650 in 1979.

The level of the national housing programme will be determined by established housing needs. Local authorities are at present completing an assessment of the housing needs of their respective areas. The returns from this comprehensive assessment will form the basis of the Government's housing strategy for the first half of the 1980s. The assessment will indicate accumulated needs at present and prospective needs over the next five years; and in carrying out this most important exercise local authorities are following guidelines prepared jointly by An Foras Forbartha and my Department which draw on international research and experience in the field. In conjunction with the survey local authorities are attempting to establish the condition of the existing housing stock, so that overall the exercise will provide a reservoir of essential information about the general housing conditions and housing needs of our people. The first results of the survey should be available to my Department early in the New Year.

Since I was appointed Minister for the Environment my main concern with the building societies has been in relation to interest rates. In April of this year the Irish Building Societies' Association informed the then Minister for the Environment that, due to increases in interest rates generally and the adverse effects of their relatively unattractive interest rates on the net inflows of funds to societies, it was necessary to recommend an increase in building society investment rates from 9 per cent to 10.75 per cent, standard rate tax paid. This would have necessitated an increase from 14.15 per cent to 16.5 per cent in the interest rate charged on home loans. Following consideration of the report of a working group established to examine the matter, the Government decided to make available, on a temporary basis, a direct subsidy to societies for the purpose of enabling them to increase their investment rates from 1 May 1980 to 10.75 per cent without increasing the interest rate charged on house loans. Reductions in interest rates generally since then have enabled societies from 1 October 1980 to bring their investment rates back to the level prevailing in April of this year and the need for the subsidy no longer exists.

The reductions in interest rates recently announced by the associated banks together with the highly satisfactory inflow of funds to societies in recent months left the way open to building societies to effect reductions in their investment and mortgage interest rates. Conscious of the fact that the mortgage rate had remained unchanged since December 1978 I had a number of meetings with representatives of the Irish Building Societies' Association to discuss the matter and to stress the Government's hope that a reduction in rates might be effected as soon as possible. I am happy to say that societies have now decided to reduce their mortgage rate with effect from 1 January 1981. The reduction of 1 per cent will result in a saving of approximately £15 per month for a person with a mortgage of £20,000.

The local authority house purchase loan schemes continue to provide valuable assistance in enabling persons not catered for by the commercial lending agencies to house themselves. The importance of the scheme is fully appreciated by the Government and is evidenced by the fact that substantial increases have been made in the loan and income limits since we resumed office in July 1977. The loan limit has been increased from £4,500 to £12,000 and the income limit from £2,350 to £5,500, which represent increases of 166 per cent and 134 per cent respectively.

These increases, coupled with the quick response of local authorities to the request from my Department that they pay instalments of loans as early and often as possible so as to overcome the problem of applicants with regard to bridging loan facilities, have caused a huge increase in the demand for such loans. This has resulted in considerable pressure on the available funds, although an unprecedentedly high allocation was made available in the Public Capital Programme for the payment of local authority housing loans in 1980. This allocation was increased recently by £7 million to bring it to over £70 million. It is the intention of the Government that the house purchase loan scheme be kept under continuing review in order to ensure that it fulfils the purpose for which it is intended.

The year now ending has set new records so far as the payment of housing grants is concerned, both in terms of the amount of money and the actual number of grants paid. It is important that I should stress this point since some Opposition Deputies have during the current session attempted to create the impression that very few grants were being paid. For the record, over 50,000 grants representing £27 million have been paid out this year. This capital sum includes an additional £4 million provided by the Government last September. By way of contrast I should remind the House that the Coalition Government's 1977 Budget provided only £4.95 million for housing grants. Included in the 50,000 are approximately 8,400 £1,000 new house grants, 23,500 house improvement grants and 18,500 special grants to reduce dependence on oil. During the year a very encouraging 9,410 applications for the £1,000 grant were lodged by first-time owner-occupiers.

The considerable success which has been achieved in paying out such a large number of grants has been due to commendable effort on the part of my Department involving the streamlining of procedures and the working of overtime as well as the assignment of additional staff. This effort will be maintained to ensure that grants will be paid as they mature. I expect a very substantial number of house improvement grants to be paid in 1981.

I consider an adequate road network is an essential prerequisite to the stimulation of economic development and necessary if we are to meet the challenges of the eighties. The significance of roads in the economic and social life of this country cannot be over emphasised — consider, for example, that up to 95 per cent of internal passenger traffic and 85 per cent of freight traffic is carried on the system.

For some years past, and particularly since our accession to the European Community, there has been a growing awareness of the deficiencies of the road system, of the costs which these deficiencies impose on industry, commerce and society generally and of the need for a co-ordinated plan involving a much longer scale of investment to bring the network, particularly the principal routes, to a standard capable of meeting present and future demands.

Against this background the Government last year approved of the Road Development Plan, which sets out their policy for the decade ahead. The plan provides that priority in direct State investment will be given to the principal urban and inter-urban roads, access routes to the principal seaports and airports, and to by-passes, relief roads and internal circulation roads in the cities and other important commercial centres.

It identifies as a first call on financial resources the preservation of existing road structures up to a satisfactory level thereby ensuring continued benefit from previous investment in the network. The critical situation reached last spring through the deterioration of road pavements has further emphasised the need for investment in road maintenance and also for strengthening and renewal of sections of the principal roads.

The plan provides for a continuous year-by-year programme geared to the essential development of the existing road lines including realignments, strengthening, widening, eradication of accident black-spots, provision of hard shoulders and so on. As such, I consider that programme a most important element of the plan.

The most dramatic element of the plan is probably the programme for major projects in the Dublin region and other large urban areas including by-passes and ring roads and for new roads and bridges and major realignments on the principal inter-urban roads. The programme has been derived from analyses of the deficiencies in the national routes and detailed studies carried out in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford and other urban areas.

The plan also provides for financial assistance in the form of road grants to the road authorities towards the cost of implementing their annual works programmes on roads other than the principal routes.

The plan has been accepted as realistic and welcomed by the road authorities, the Industrial Development Authority and representatives of industrial and commercial interests. It has been accepted by the European Community as a guide for future action in the development of transport policy. An expert, engaged by the EEC to undertake an economic assessment of the plan reported that the programme outlined in the plan was capable of acting as an effective instrument of Ireland's economic development.

The Government were criticised this year for their apparent lack of commitment to the plan. I want to take this opportunity to reiterate my own and the Government's commitment to the implementation in full of the programme provided for in the plan.

While progress has been made in the current year on the different elements of the works programme projected for 1980, I can assure the House of a considerably expanded works programme for 1981. I will be in touch with the road authorities shortly to outline my proposals, which will provide a challenge as well as an opportunity for them to participate in implementing the national plan.

Essential to the development of any area and the protection and improvement of its amenities is the existence of adequate water and sewerage services. These are the cornerstones on which a number of other vital programmes must be built, including industrial, housing, agriculture and tourism. Without the infrastructural base provided by the sanitary services programme these related services would be inhibited. A comprehensive sanitary services programme must take into account not only the immediate needs of the community, but also allow for the rapid growth taking place in the economic and demographic spheres, especially the increasingly rapid rate of industrialisation and urbanisation, and allow the necessary capacity to cater for future needs.

The Government have recognised the importance of the sanitary services programme and have steadily increased the level of investment in public and group water and sewerage schemes since 1977. The Public Capital Programme provision for the public water and sewerage programme has risen from £25 million in 1977 to £40 million in 1980 with a further £6.75 million being provided in 1980, arising from the Government's undertaking in the national understanding and bringing the total provision for the current year to £46.75 million, an increase of 87 per cent on the 1977 figure. The additional money provided this year, as well as providing additional finance for the ongoing programme, has enabled the commencement of work on 25 major schemes estimated to cost £30 million.

I have in addition in recent months approved the contract documents for a further 16 major schemes estimated to cost over £25 million. These schemes, some of which have already gone to tender and others which will shortly do so, will get to construction in the coming year. These schemes include such major works as Contract 5 of the Cork City and Harbour Water Supply, which will provide an abundant water supply for industry in the east harbour area; East Waterford Water Supply, which will provide a major augmentation of the supply to Waterford city; and the two final sections of the Greater Dublin Drainage Scheme, which will enable the provision of a substantial additional area of serviced land in the Dublin area for housing, industrial and other development.

This unprecedented level of investment in the sanitary services programme and the capital provision which I expect to announce for 1981 will be sufficient evidence of the Government's resolve to keep the programme at a level which will ensure that essential needs will be met as early as practicable, that the increasing level of employment in the area of sanitary services should be maintained and that other programmes dependent on the availability of adequate water and sewerage services should not be restricted.

The progress of private group water scheme development was maintained at a high level in 1980. Since the Government substantially increased grants for group water supply schemes commenced on or after 1 November 1977, from a maximum of £200 per house to a maximum of £300 per house, there has been a tremendous upsurge in group water scheme activity. As a result of these Government measures State expenditure on group scheme grants has increased from £1.1 million in 1976 to £4 million in 1980 and group scheme domestic water installations increased from 6,187 in 1976 to over 10,000 in 1979, or by 77 per cent. In the current year the number of domestic installations will again be well over 10,000. The future prospects for group schemes are bright because at the end of September 1980 work was in progress on the installation of piped water in an additional 8,000 houses approximately and over 200 schemes had been designed to serve a further 7,700 houses approximately. In July 1980 the EEC Council of Agricultural Ministers adopted a new regulation for a common measure for the improvement of public amenities including rural water supplies in the western area. I hope to be in a position in early 1981, on approval of this programme by the EEC Commission, to announce details of an improved grant structure for group water schemes in the western area.

With increasing economic growth and population expansion it has become more important to pay particular attention to our environmental values. It is generally accepted that there is no inherent conflict between the promotion of economic development, on the one hand, and the maintenance of good environmental conditions, on the other. That view has been expressed in the published work of the Environment Council. It is a view to which the Government subscribe, and are committed, but it would be a great mistake to conclude that our environment can be left to look after itself.

The environmental pressures will grow: we have to expect that and be ready for it. There will be pressures from population growth and town expansion. Already two-thirds of our people are living in towns. In 20 years' time it is likely that three quarters of a considerably greater population will be town-dwellers. There will be pressures as well from industrialisation, from increased leisure and tourism and from agriculture. There will be more demands on space. There will be more waste of all kinds to be disposed of in an environmentally safe way. Conflicts of environment and development interests are bound to arise. The necessary balance will not be achieved automatically. A careful and comprehensive management of environmental resources will be essential if unacceptable consequences, including pollution of various kinds, are to be avoided.

These prospects underline the importance of an adequate policy and statutory framework for environmental protection and improvement. It is an important part of my task to develop such a framework. The question of environment policy is at present under active consideration with the benefit of advice which I have received from the Environment Council. We need to define more definitely the aims of policy in this area. We need to identify the programmes that are most significant for the achievement of the aims and to assess their adequacy. It is my intention that work in this area should be advanced as quickly as possible so that we may have better terms of reference for directing our efforts and for checking our progress, as well as a better system for co-ordinating decisions on programmes, both public and private, which affect the environment. Such a policy will take its place as an integral part of overall Government objectives for economic and social development.

A particular aim will be to ensure good quality in development. At all stages of development, and in all kinds of planning, there must be acceptance of the need to take advance account of possible adverse side effects of development and to build into the preparatory processes whatever measures may be necessary to avoid significant damage. For this we need a strong sense of individual environmental responsibility, whether the individual be a person, a company, public body or whatever.

It will, of course, be necessary for this sense of responsibility to be supplemented and, if necessary, enforced by appropriate central and local institutions properly equipped for the task. Considerable improvements have been brought about in recent times in the planning and pollution control systems, including water pollution and waste disposal. There are other areas — atmospheric pollution and noise control, for example — in which a strengthening of the statutory provisions will be needed also and these are being examined at present. It will be my aim to ensure that our environmental defences are fully up to the demands that are going to be made on them, and I will bring forward whatever measures are required for this purpose.

The role and functions of the local authorities in all this are of fundamental importance. This applies not only to the operation of the planning and pollution control systems but also to their influence on the shaping of the local environment. Through their development plans and the quality of the development which they themselves undertake in housing, in road making and improvement and in the provision of services and amenities, the local authorities are effectively shaping the physical surroundings of the future, both directly and in the lead and direction which they provide for private enterprise. I would like to see a wider appreciation and emphasis, both within the local government system and outside it, on this creative role of the local authorities in relation to the environment and of the responsibilities and opportunities which it presents. To my mind it is one of the most important aspects of the future importance of the local authority function in the life of the local communities which they serve.

By way of example I might mention the way in which an enthusiastic local authority can generate community effort to tackle litter, graffiti and dereliction and to encourage tree-planting, clean up operations and amenity projects. Some local authorities are doing admirable work in this area, but there is need for much more of it. I believe that people are interested in their surroundings and willing to make the necessary efforts to maintain and improve them if they get encouragement, guidance and support. I see this as the kind of task that local authorities can and should undertake as part of their overall responsibilities not only to see to the protection of the surroundings but to promote their enhancement as well.

Some weeks ago in speaking on the confidence motion I did so very optimistically as to my hopes and expectations for the future. In the meantime this optimism has, with some justification, even increased further. I am afraid I can still offer no joy to my colleagues on the opposite side of the House. They still for historic reasons, based on their own abysmal performance when in office, too easily became the forecasters of doom. I wish to conclude by clearly putting on record the firm commitment of the Government and myself to ensuring the continued development and well-being of the building industry, to ensuring the continuance of a high level of house completions and to ensuring an expanded programme of road works and sanitary services in order to further stimulate economic development.

Mr. Tully

I love to listen to an optimist because it gladdens my heart. If we did not know the facts, having listened to the Fianna Fáil speakers this House would be a very bright place this afternoon. However, we know the facts and we must view the situation in a different light. I realise that the words "gloom and doom" are not the appropriate words to use, but I do not think the Chair would allow me to express what I really feel as I am sure it would be considered unparliamentary. The state of the country as a result of Government action is so bad it is very difficult to describe it accurately while remaining polite.

The last speaker spoke about his Department. Some time ago I remarked to him that he was only a short time in his post and I said it would be unfair if I blamed him for all the ills that have befallen this country since Fianna Fáil came into office in 1977. The fact is that he will be only partly responsible for the amount of money available for the Department of the Environment in the next 12 months. That is what is worrying me.

I regard the present state of affairs as shocking for the country but I mind even more the mess Fianna Fáil will make in the next 12 months with regard to the amount of money they will make available. The Minister is a strong personality and possibly he will put up a bigger fight than his predecessor did for a share of the cake. The unfortunate part of it is that he will almost certainly be pushed down by those who are longer in the Cabinet and who will be making a claim, and rightly so, because every Department is short of money. They will take advantage of the newcomer, the rookie. He will be left short, unless I miss my guess. It is a little unfortunate that people like himself should come in here and talk about the wonderful programme lying ahead and about the wonderful work which has been done in the last 12 months on housing, roads and so on. I do not know if they have gone back to the old days, and I would not blame them for doing that, but they are certainly not building houses now with cement. Cement sales dropped earlier this year by 30 per cent and the figure is now around 10 per cent of a drop, overall on the previous year. If cement is not being used, what are they using for building houses? I have no way of counting the private houses, the Department have, and I would always accept their figures. I would point out, however, that the system now being used is not, as someone said the other day, the system we used but maybe it is a better one. We had to take the figures from the people who were building the houses. They gave us their figures and they may have understated them for their own reasons. The present system is that the ESB connections are counted, which is a very good way of checking, although it may be a little overstated.

Local authority houses, which form a considerable component, had risen to about one-third of the number of houses being built in my time in office, but have dropped down further and further. What is going to happen? Houses are not being built. It was amusing to hear again a Fianna Fáil backbencher talking yesterday about the fact that in Dublin 70 per cent of the people on the housing list were families of three or less. I am afraid that the good lady got mixed up because, when the change of Government took place, the national average of people looking for houses, according, not to us but to Fianna Fáil who had just come into office, was 70 per cent of those on the housing list. Taking Dublin as an example, and Dublin is a very big proportion of the problem, the people who are looking for houses are very much more than three to a family. It is not unusual to have four, five and six people. In this city the situation has gone back to the bad old times when we took over from Fianna Fáil and when some people thought that they would never be housed. I have heard people bragging about the new houses being built in the centre city. I am delighted to hear it. I was responsible for that rebuilding of the centre city, with very fine houses. You will find them nowhere else in Europe. It is a good house and I am proud of it and but for the fact that we were in office, they would not be built. The schemes which we started are now coming to an end and building there will no longer take place because it is costing too much. I believe that, no matter what it costs to put a family into a house, it does not cost too much. I want to see everybody who needs a house getting one.

The building societies got in a lot of money over a period because of our joining the European Monetary Fund. Because of that a lot of money was withdrawn from Britain and deposited here, which was a very good thing. As a result, the building societies for a period were able to give out quite a substantial amount of money. However, like the EEC, the boom time is gone because you cannot continue to draw money from abroad when the money is not there. Now the building societies are having to tighten up and are imposing very stringent conditions on those who are looking for building society loans. This includes the amount of money that one must have invested in the company and the period of time when it must have been invested, which is a very long time. This will result, within the next 12 months, in a very big drop in the number of houses being built.

Strangely enough, as far as I can see, the people who are now building houses are the wealthy who can pay cash, the retired people, those who went out of business and rescued whatever money they could and moved out to retirement in the country villages, or the suburbs of the cities and towns. They are building big houses, but little houses are no longer being built. It is costing now up to £27,000 or £30,000 to build a three-bedroomed house in a country district or town, and here in this city you will pay that amount for a site, with no talk of a house on it. This is the most extraordinary thing that ever could have happened in a three-year period.

I have talked so much about housing over the last couple of weeks here and do not want to spend all my time on it but it is a very important subject. I am quite sure that the Members of the Government Party, Ministers and backbenchers are equally perturbed, but they cannot complain. They must sit back and give the impression that things are great when, in fact, we all know that they are not. Local authority houses are not being built. In my constituency, the number of those houses being built this year is pitiable. I am informed by members of the county council who are members of my party that the starts made this year, that will normally be finished next year, are so small that they do not know what will happen.

I said here yesterday and want to repeat it now, because there are senior Members of Fianna Fáil present, Fianna Fáil will have to, whether they like it or not, re-introduce the home improvement grant, because no matter how many houses are being built, if you do not do something to try to keep in repair the existing houses the number of houses is bound to drop. That has happened and Fianna Fáil can see that now, just as well as we could see it and predicted it. Their officials are working night and day in an effort to try to pay out reconstruction, heating, new house grants. You cannot knock blood out of a turnip and you cannot pay housing grants when there is no money. The result is that inspectors are sent backwards and forwards. Files sent to inspectors are said to be with them since last May and all this codology. It is not the fault of the officials, it is the fault of the Government who did not make the money available. This is a matter which must get attention pretty quickly. In addition to that, there are restrictions imposed on the existing grants, one on the new grant announced by the Minister for Energy, dealing with the question of preserving heat in houses. Nobody seemed to know that there was a date, that 20 October 1980 was the last day you could do the job. If you had the job done then, or a contract signed then, there was no point in doing it. Many people approached me about this who were not aware of this stipulation and they were told that they could not get a grant.

A few minutes ago the Minister talked about the increase in money available for sanitary services. Can I point out to him, and he knows it better than I do, that the amount of money must be related to inflation. A pound now is a very different thing from what it was in 1977. The European Monetary Fund has left many people in a very awkward position. I do not know why it should happen, EEC or no EEC, but this country is flooded with foreign goods, particularly goods coming through Britain, either made in Britain or coming through from third countries. The EMF bungle affects things here. People on fixed incomes now find that 20p is taken off their pound when they start buying, even in supermarkets, even agricultural goods. Incidentally one thing which really riles me is carrots from the USA, potatoes from Cyprus, onions from Spain, any vegetable. Mind you, they are not tinned, they are in plastic packages, and more annoying still, those plastic packages have been packed in an agricultural institute farm outside this city, so that many people think they are buying Irish articles. Maybe the vegetables are dressed up better and the people buying them think they are getting better value. I think it is a con job, which should not be allowed.

I come now to the question of fruit. I state categorically that Irish apples will not be bought for sale in most of the big stores. Why is that? Because, apparently, there is a better cut on French apples. Is it not ridiculous, when Irish apples which are very much better than the imported variety are not being offered for sale? The people who have them may feed them to the pigs or do anything they like with them, because they cannot sell them.

This is the bungling which has caused Irish agriculture to be in the position it is in now. Our farmers are in a worse position than they have been for many years. When the EEC was spoken about first they were all to be millionaires overnight. Many of them were very near that. They did very well for the first few years. All of us who wanted to tell them the truth were able to tell them before we entered the EEC and since that this would not last. We all must accept the majority there was to go into the EEC but the great increases will not go on year after year. It does not matter what the Minister for Agriculture does because there is no way he will be able to bring the income of farmers back to what it was two or three years ago.

We had derating of land and offering to do this, that and the other for farmers in an effort to win back their votes. That is not the way to approach the matter. It must be dealt with in a reasonably straight way and if that is done our farmers will understand as well as anybody else. On top of everything else, we are now selling the seed corn and the livestock in an effort to keep things going. The result is that we have a smaller number of stock at this time of the year than for many years. The numbers are going down day by day.

The Minister spoke about sanitary services and group water schemes. If he knows anything at all he must know that it is a lot of nonsense to talk about those things. If we put down a dozen questions to him in the House every day he is here—I propose to do that if the Dáil resumes—we will be able to show that those are schemes which came in before I left office and are still there with no hope of being done. Those schemes were supposed to be continued on a basis of so much per year over a number of years. There is one particular one at Mornington, County Meath where a very substantial sum of money was made available, first of all, by the Government before me, then by the Government I was part of, and it was to continue. It stopped. The job is half done and is left there. The Government do not care whether or not it is finished. I got a reply yesterday to the effect that because the money is not available it will not be done and other schemes have priority.

As far as the EMS is concerned people who are on fixed incomes and those who invested money — I am sure the House must be aware of this, particularly those sitting on the front benches — and were saving money for their retirement put it in building societies or in the bank and because of the drop in the value of money and the continuation of that drop they are now scared stiff they will finish up with practically nothing. It looks as if that will happen unless the Government do something about it.

We had a very expensive and very elaborate "Buy Irish" campaign and we have had the Irish Goods Council, Ireland House, Trade Centre, Strand Road, Dublin 4, telling us of the necessity to buy Irish. They explained it on the radio, television, the newspapers and even in the documents I have here. They are very good documents. One of them shows a group of children in a school and says: "Why the materials you buy today can affect the pupils of your school tomorrow. Purchasing guaranteed Irish is an important lesson we must all learn." It also says that it is crucial that those responsible for purchasing equipment and material for schools always specify guaranteed Irish goods. There is a letter from the Irish Goods Council dated 3 September.

This is an excellent product, with which I agree entirely. The only thing I find wrong with it is that this was distributed in a school to which a couple of extra classrooms were added in the last few years. They were finished a few months ago and a carpet was laid down there last week. The carpet was made in France and supplied by the Board of Works. It is by Gerfleck, made in France. What excuse is there for that kind of thing? That is in a school where the children have got the documents telling them about how important it is to buy Irish.

Mr. O'Toole

How far is it from Navan?

Mr. Tully

It is about 19 miles. The factory in Navan were on a three-day week twice this year. Goodness knows what will happen if this continues. Similarly, in relation to RTE. The Minister responsible is in the House now. I tried to get a couple of questions down to him but the Ceann Comhairle said it was not his responsibility, that it was a matter for the people in RTE. I tried another way but I could not get any information about the gentlemen running RTE.

Mr. Reynolds

The Deputy should have come to me.

Mr. Tully

I would like to go to the Minister but from my own experience it is wrong that people in the House should go to a Minister. He has his own advisors and he knows how things are done. If the matter is put to him he should be able to deal with it. RTE have been getting up to £80,000 in advertising from the carpet factories in this country but when they wanted to buy floor covering they went to the Goods Council who advised them that the type of carpeting they wanted, carpet tiles, were not being produced in the country. Who stipulated that is what should go on the floor? Why was the same carpet, which they found previously to be of excellent quality, not used again? There is no reason for them doing this except that some people get too big for their shoes and think it is a great thing if they go abroad for something like this. I am sure somebody had to go to Holland to look at those tiles before they bought them. We talk about buying Irish; we say if we do not we will lose jobs and all the school children will not be able to find jobs if this continues. This is the score but the Government do not care.

The Minister asked why I did not go to him. I raised this on a number of occasions. He saw it in the newspapers as well as I did but they still proceeded to buy their carpets abroad. I propose to make this an issue on every possible occasion. I do not believe in buying foreign goods. If I can get Irish shoes, shirts and clothing of every description I buy them. Sometimes I find it extremely difficult to get them because the people in the shops do not seem to be very anxious to put them on show. Perhaps there is a better cut on foreign goods. Unless we realise this is what is happening and that we must buy Irish goods we might as well go out of business altogether. It is the responsibility of any Government in office to see that it is done properly.

I stopped looking at the Fianna Fáil manifesto because I realised that it was so ridiculous now in the light of what has happened in the last few years that people will hardly believe Fianna Fáil promised what they did. They will promise more in the next few months and they hope they will get away with it again. The extraordinary thing about prices is that not alone are the increases granted but the fall in the value of the £ is also used against other items which do not apparently have any price control. The price of things which some people consider are luxuries, but which are used every day in the ordinary household, has gone out through the roof in the shops.

It is about time something was done to control all prices. It is no use lecturing workers that they should not look for more wages and at the same time allowing people to take the money out of their pockets in a get-rich-quick effort. That is what has been happening during the past few years, but more acutely in the past six weeks. Indeed, as Deputy John Ryan said here yesterday, the Minister for raging inflation has a heavy responsibility. He was noisy enough when we were involved but we know now what the score is.

At one stage when a lady Deputy took control of the prices section of the Department it was said there would not be any further price increases. All the women in the country were delighted. We do not hear her commenting now. Neither do we hear those who were so noisy in their praise when she was appointed. Apparently they are licking their wounds.

Yesterday I took Deputy Lemass by surprise when I pointed out that she, perhaps more than anyone else, on television abused the members of the then Government on the eve of the general election because, she said, they were making little of the workers. She said that any Government worth their salt would not tolerate the unemployment level and she guaranteed Fianna Fáil would find work for all, particularly school leavers. Perhaps I should not have pointed that out to her yesterday because as a back-bencher she could not have much influence, but the people who are now Ministers were not so innocent: they must have known that what they were saying then was untrue. They knew it could not be done, but their apparent sincerity made people believe that they could work miracles.

In particular Deputy Lynch, a couple of nights before the general election, promised that the dole queues would be abolished, there would not be unemployment any more, all school leavers would get work. When he was asked when it would happen he said: "When Fianna Fáil take over". They have been three-and-a-half years in office and the unemployment position is much worse than when that promise was made. Of course there has not been an apology from Fianna Fáil. They had known all along that it could not be done but they put it across in their manifesto and people swallowed it. I can assure the Government that the people will not swallow it again.

I can give instances of people who were working, who took any jobs they could get. Butlin's holiday camp in Meath is due to be closed. They employed many people, some married women and boys and girls as well as adult men. Immediately after Fianna Fáil took office when those people applied for unemployment benefit many of the married women were told they were not entitled to it because they were seasonal workers. I took the matter up with the present Taoiseach, then Minister for Social Welfare, and to his credit all those people were restored to the unemployment register and they drew their employment benefit until this year.

This year there was a relapse, and I have written a letter to the Taoiseach pointing out to him what the situation is and asking him if he will be as good now as when he was Minister for Social Welfare. It is disgraceful that those people should be knocked off benefits to which they are entitled legally.

I will give an instance. A girl got her first job in Butlin's and worked there for 23 weeks. If she had worked for 26 weeks she would have been entitled to unemployment benefit, but she could not because the camp was closed. She signed for unemployment benefit with a number of fellow girl workers. They were all told they had not got a sufficient number of stamps but that they could apply for unemployment assistance subject to a means test. The girl I am talking about lives with her father and mother and eight younger children, one of whom is in college in Dublin on a scholarship. During her period in work she saved £150 because she wanted to buy a typewriter — she wanted to do shorthand-typing which she is good at. When the investigating officer came along she truthfully said, when asked if she had any savings, that she had £150 in the bank. She has since withdrawn it to buy the typewriter. After about three months she got £10, but all her colleagues who had not saved a penny got £17.

This is the sort of mean attitude the Government are adopting in such cases. If the officers in Social Welfare had not been told from the top that they must adopt this approach they would not do it. It is a mean approach. I am sure that throughout the country there are thousands of similar cases. Last week I wrote to the Department of Social Welfare on behalf of dozens of people. One case involves a married man with eight children. He had sent in certificates for seven or eight weeks. He has not got a shilling. He has been working all his life. A man in Castletown-Kilpatrick had been working since he was 15 years of age. He is now 60 and he became ill for the first time. He applied for benefit on 18 August but he has not got a penny. How can a situation be tolerated in which a man entitled to benefit is not paid? A widow who was due benefit was owed £1,800 arrears and she was not paid until I threatened to raise it on the Adjournment.

What do the Department of Social Welfare think they are doing? Who do they think they are? They are being paid their salaries the same as we are, the same as the Minister is. People who have worked and stamped cards are entitled to benefits, to what they have paid for. They are not getting it.

Yesterday the Minister for Labour was promoted to the Department of Finance. I sympathise with him. He is in serious trouble. He is taking up a Department which is in a mess and he has left a Department in a bigger mess. I give credit to the Taoiseach as the best Minister for Finance I have faced across the House. He knew what he was doing. Maybe that is why he appointed this type of Minister for Finance: the Taoiseach can pull the strings, he can write the budget and there will not be a complaint by anybody, they will just accept what they are told.

In the manifesto Fianna Fáil promised they would take steps to do something about strikes, particularly in the Post Office. They appointed two people for different sections of the Post Office and sat back. Those two people do not seem to be doing anything — I do not see anything being done. The people who organise the workers there are not happy about the situation. Are consultations taking place or are we allowing the situation there to drag on?

The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs is a very energetic businessman. He has been talking about 60,000 additional telephones. If that many new telephones have been installed, good luck to him, but I would draw his attention to my constituency where hundreds of telephones are out of order day after day. He has a letter on his desk from a doctor in Summerhill where a man nearly died of a heart attack because all the telephones in the area went out of order, on the blink as they call it. I raised a question in the House about that area some time ago. There were seven lines there but not more than two of them ever worked. A week after my question they were all working, but within a month or six weeks they were all on the blink again.

This is extremely serious. The Minister had a letter on his table asking him to do something about a factory in Gormanstown. The owner needed a telephone to manage his export business but he was told he could not get a phone for weeks or maybe months. Eventually the telephone was fixed after I had asked the Department to make a special effort. It is no use putting additional lines on a system which is unable to carry the telephones there now. Here in Leinster House we cannot get an outside call. It is likely when you dial a number outside the city that you will be put through to a post office in Donegal or a police barracks in Derry. The Government have a deplorable record, and the sooner they do something about it or get out the better for the country.

Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and Minister for Transport (Mr. Reynolds)

I am delighted to have an opportunity to contribute to the debate. I listened with interest to Deputy Tully and was amazed at how he has changed his tune since last May when, during the debate on my Estimate, he wished me luck in the hard task I had before me, the big job of work that had to be done, the airey-fairy stories I have been telling about the number of phones that would be installed. He said that if at the end of 1980 I succeeded in putting in 60,000 new telephones he would be the first man to clap me on the back.

The contrast is very interesting. He has changed his battleground. The whole Opposition have changed their tune. They were quite happy to sit over there for the first part of this year and wait for something to happen, believing it was not going to happen. Now, unfortunately for them, it has happened and now they change their tack and produce complaints about specific numbers that have been out of order for some time. I have heard it in the last month and I heard it here again today. They generalised across the whole programme of the Department by pointing to two or three factors that, in their view, represent the total and complete performance of the Department in relation to telephones.

Let me make it clear that I never, at any stage, said that this job could be done overnight, that there was an instant solution to this problem. I do not want to rake over old ground, but I explained many times to the House that the infrastructure of the Department cannot be put right overnight. It must be done over a period of years and the ground work was not done when Deputy Tully was a Member of the Cabinet. I have produced facts and figures and statistics till I am blue in the face to show why I was not in a position to put it right this year. I have said what my programme is. I have planned it. The progress is there for everybody to see.

I am not talking about County Waterford. I am talking about the allegation made by Deputy Deasy. If the Deputy wanted to get the facts in relation to this he should have studied the report of the review group that was set up to look into the whole development of telecommunications setting out what was necessary to reach the target they set in regard to breakdowns and telephones being out of order. The target is one fault per telephone per annum based on a network that now comprises in excess of 500,000 telephones. If the Deputy wants to work that out and do the simple sums he will find that there can be 1,500 telephones out of order in any particular week. When the Deputy comes in here and tosses out three or four numbers and says the whole thing is on the point of collapse it indicates that he has got it all wrong. If the Deputy would do his sums, get his facts right, come in and present his case, I would be glad to answer him at any time.

I also listened with interest to what the Deputy said about local authority houses. He said that there were no local authority houses being started all around this country. I do not represent County Meath and I do not pretend to speak for County Meath. I am quite sure that the Minister for the Environment spoke for his own Department at length before I had the opportunity of coming in here. But in relation to the local authority in my county of Longford, two schemes have been started in the last three months, one of them consisting of 40 houses and costing over £1 million and another of 25 houses costing over £600,000. That should allay the Deputy's fears that no local authority houses are being started. I hope he will accept it is a fact because it is a fact. We deal in facts, not fairy tales. Let us look at the thing realistically and not come in here making small-time allegations. Let the Deputy not think for a moment that the Irish public will believe those allegations, because I heard the Deputy saying himself that he does not understand the Irish people. I do not think the Deputy understands the Irish people. He did not understand them when he was a member of the Coalition Government and that was why the Coalition found themselves out of office. He did not understand them in the recent Donegal by-election when this Government put the whole lot on the record; they put the facts before the people, telling them the difficulties we were in in an international recession, that this was an island economy and that we could not be cushioned against all the problems that this creates. We told them what the position was and what we were doing and the direction in which we are going and that they should cast their vote of confidence or go the other way. What did the people of Donegal do? They responded in the way that we expected them to respond. Labour lost votes and Fine Gael lost votes. The reality is that at the end of the day the test is in the ballot box. We were put to the test and we will be glad to be put to the test at some other future date on a national basis, because I have little doubt that the people of Donegal spoke for the rest of the 26 counties when they spoke in the November by-election.

Mr. O'Toole

And Fianna Fáil will continue buying votes.

Mr. Reynolds

We did not buy votes. We do not have to buy votes. We are realistic because we are pragmatists. We know the problems and we do not run away from them and we do not sweep them under the carpet. This Government did not choose unemployment as an instrument to solve our economic problems as our neighbours in more developed economies did. We put the resources that were available from the Government into trying to maintain the living standards of our people as best we could and into ensuring that we protected employment. That was our policy in facing into the blizzard of the recession this year. We put it to the test in Donegal and we will put it to the test at a future date and we will look forward to getting the same result.

Now I will turn in brief to the two departments for which I have responsibility. I share Deputy Tully's view in relation to buying Irish, selling Irish and making Irish. There is far too much money being spent on imported goods here, and the sooner we realise that the better. The sooner we realise that we are exporting jobs abroad when we badly need them at home, the better. It is a difficult message to get through to the Irish public. I fully endorse Deputy Tully's view on this, but I would call for a greater emphasis on selling Irish. In many instances the public are not getting the choice. The choice should be there at least. If they do not get the choice they cannot be expected to buy Irish. In the area that I am responsible for I have taken the opportunity to open up the big purchasing area to the public so that the manufacturers can see the opportunities that are available for manufacturing, because when we are embarking on such a vast programme and spending hundreds of millions of pounds, it is vitally important for the economy that the largest amount of that equipment that can be made at home is made at home. I have already mounted four exhibitions of imported components and I intend to mount a permanent exhibition in Dublin. This development programme in telecommunications affords opportunities to entrepreneurs and to existing manufacturers to expand their production lines; they have the opportunity of seeing what our requirements are over a period. We now have a good working relationship with the business community because I treat the business community as customers. They are big customers of mine as far as telecommunications are concerned, and when I spend my money I feel that they are entitled to the biggest slice that can be got for it.

It is not necessary for me to stress the importance of the development of our infrastructure. One of the greatest negative factors in the development of our economy and in the future development of our economy is the lack of a proper telecommunications system. It is precisely on that road that I am embarked. The Government are fully committed to getting ahead with this programme as fast as possible. Already this year very good progress has been made in many areas. But there is a lot more that has to be done, and the Government are fully committed to doing it. When the Government investment plan is published it will set out the priorities and I am glad to say that one of the priorities is telecommunications.

In the recent debate on the Supplementary Estimate from my Department I dealt at some length with the progress that has been made so far in implementing the programme, and I do not propose, therefore, to cover the ground again in detail. Instead I will concentrate on a few key aspects. This has been the first of the accelerated development programme and the concentration has necessarily been in developing the infrastructure of the service in terms of acquiring sites, getting buildings under way, ordering of new telephone exchanges and trunk equipment and so laying the ground work for the improvement of the service over the next few years.

The programme did not envisage any significant improvements in service this year and it would not have been possible to achieve it in the time scale. It is very important that this should be clearly understood as some critics had implied that the programme was not on target because improvements had not been made. Several instances were quoted. I wish to assure the House that the programme is on target in every aspect. So far over 100 of the 500 or so buildings needed for the programme have been completed and work is in progress on another 120. Over 300 telephone exchanges are on order and 20 exchanges were converted to automatic working during the year. The target this year was to install up to 60,000 new telephones and I am satisfied that this target will be met. Over 1,000 additional engineering staff were recruited during the year and other grades were also strengthened. I should like to congratulate staff at all levels for what has been achieved during the year and with their continued co-operation I look forward to meeting the various targets which have been set for the years ahead.

At this point I should correct malicious reports, which I assume have been circulated by persons who are jealous of what has been achieved, to the effect that many of the telephones installed are not working and that telephones are being installed simply to boost statistics while a service is not being provided. It was alleged that the Department were collecting money from applicants without providing a service within a reasonable time. This is not so. No applicant has been asked to sign an agreement for the provision of telephone service and make the standard payment if the Department did not expect to be in a position to provide a service within the normal time. Telephones are not regarded as installed until they are working and would not, therefore, boost statistics.

To speed up the provision of service, telephones have been installed in some areas a short time in advance of the cabling work being completed or the connection being made in the exchange and by adopting this practice, service can be provided more quickly when the cable becomes available or when the connection is made in the exchange. It was by adopting this practice it was possible to instal a record 6,900 working telephones last month. I would like to assure all applicants who have entered into agreements and for whom service has not yet been provided that they will be given service within the standard period of three months, unless in an isolated instance some unforeseen difficulty is met with when service is about to be provided.

Looking to next year, I would hope that most of the 120 buildings on which work is in progress will be completed and that work will begin on most of the remaining 250 needed. Improvements in the trunk service will begin to be experienced within the next few weeks when a new trunk exchange in Dublin is brought into use and additional trunk circuits are added; this trend will gather momentum in the second half of the year as numbers of new trunk exchanges and still more trunk circuits are provided. Manual exchanges will be converted to automatic working at an average rate of not less than one a week over the course of the year, and the target for installation of new telephones is up to 80,000. These are the targets and they are targets that I am confident will be achieved, given the level of staff co-operation that has been received this year. Recruitment of the staff needed to meet the targets in the later part of the programme will, of course, be continued.

It is planned to bring about other improvements too. New strengthened coinboxes with anti-vandalism features from which callers can dial trunk calls will be installed in many kiosks throughout the country next year. Push-button phones instead of dial phones will be provided for those wishing to opt for them in areas where digital exchanges are installed, and the planning of the introduction of Mobile Radio Phones will also be pressed ahead. I am anxious too that facilities for the public to transact their telephone business should be improved and, subject to suitable accommodation being secured, two additional public offices will be opened in Dublin next year in the suburbs. Provisional agreement has already been entered into for a new public office in the centre city in a building on which work has started. It is planned also to open offices at a number of provincial centres and the first steps in setting up these offices have already been taken.

We will also be pressing ahead with development of the telex and data services taking full advantage where possible of advances in technology, one example is the use of time-division multiplexing techniques which will allow doubling of the capacity of existing telex lines.

Our task, therefore, in 1981 is to build on what has already been achieved and to plan ahead for development in 1982 and beyond.

Although we have made steady progress in the last 12 months, bringing the telecommunications service up to EEC standards is a five-year task, and it is unrealistic to expect dramatic improvements in a short time. Even though I am confident that next year will see a significant improvement in the service, there will still be three years work ahead and in twelve months' time the improvement will be very perceptible to the general public. But the course to give a high quality service has been set by the Government, the programme is on target and we can confidently look forward to the time when we will have a telecommunications service up to the quality that our EEC partners have, and that will ensure development of our economy will not be burdened by a sub-standard telecommunications service.

Regarding mobile radio telephones, this service would operate, initially, in the Dublin area and it would allow callers in their cars to dial into and to receive calls from the public telephone network. If this service is successful in the Dublin area the intention would be to introduce a similar service in the more populated provincial areas and eventually to provide a national service if there were sufficient demand for it.

A prerequisite for the rapid expansion of the telecommunications system is the provision of buildings and buildings extensions on a very large scale. Most of these in turn require the prior acquisition of sites, often quite a lengthy process. The erection or extension of upwards of 550 buildings and the acquisition of much the same number of sites is, in fact, required, all within four or five years, and the cost is estimated in excess of £150 million. The buildings are needed to accommodate and train an increased intake of staff and for telephone exchanges, area engineering headquarter's stores, transport and so forth. For too long the staff of the Department have been expected to work in substandard accommodation in buildings which have been described as garages. This situation has now changed and our building programme is going ahead with the programme for the telephone exchanges and it has given a great impetus to staff morale to know that we too recognise that the proper workplace and the proper environment must be provided if we are to expect the fullest co-operation and the greatest throughput.

Progress achieved to date is a credit to the staff of the Department and to the Office of Public Works who have devoted themselves to the work with great energy and dedication. We have monthly meetings with the OPW to monitor the progress of building work and I am glad to say that they have shown the same enthusiasm for our building programme that we have ourselves. Next year alone we will be spending in the region of £60 million, the smaller portion on sites and the larger portion on buildings and this will give the desired impetus to the construction industry. This is part of the overall Government policy to ensure that the infrastructure of the economy is built up in time to take full advantage when an upturn comes in the world economy.

The primary aim of the postal service is to carry the mail quickly and economically. In addition the Post Office aim to give satisfaction to the public in the handling of all their counter business. The main feature of the postal service in the past year has been the attention given to maintaining a high standard of mails service. Reliability is the cornerstone of public confidence in the service and it has been my concern to see that that reliability has been achieved. This has required hard work on the part of everyone concerned in the Post Office and I am glad to say that this has been forthcoming. Continued efforts will be needed to maintain and if possible improve, on the standards which have been set. I am keen to see what we can so to provide more and better services for the public.

I am conscious of the fact that the public apply the same criteria to our service as they would to any service provided in the public or private sector. I always take the opportunity of emphasising to the staff in the postal service that their service stands the same test as that of any service in the private sector and that if we are to stay in business and ensure that we hold our position in the market place we must provide reliability of service and provide the public with what they want at a competitive cost.

If the cost of services could be spread over a greater amount of business, charges could be kept at a reasonable level. We have many skilled and dedicated staff working for us. We have an unrivalled network of offices throughout the country and we are looking at ways of making greater use of them. Any expansion of service should be of benefit to the customers in terms of the services available, to the staff in terms of job opportunities and to the Post Office itself in safeguarding its financial position in the future.

I am also concerned to improve the standard of post office buildings throughout the country so that both the public and staff have satisfactory modern conditions for transacting their business. I am having all our postal buildings examined to establish what better facilities we should provide to handle the growing business which we are aiming to generate.

I would like to refer to an unofficial dispute which is threatened to take place this evening by certain supervisory and management staff in the Dublin postal district and Cork. It saddens me to have to record that the action being threatened is not only in breach of agreements to which the staffs' representative association is a party, namely, the civil service conciliation and arbitration scheme and the national understanding, but is also coming at a time when negotiations on the pay claims involved were actually in progress. So far as the postal service is concerned, the action will hit at the time of the year when the post is most used and most needed. It is bound to deal another blow to a service which has already suffered heavily from industrial action in recent years.

Would it be too much for this House to ask and expect that senior staff would draw back from inflicting such a blow, which will damage themselves probably more than anyone else, and allow their union, the Post Office Management Staffs' Association, to negotiate their claims through the structures which are specifically agreed for that purpose? I would ask them to consider very carefully the consequences of what they are proposing to do and earnestly ask them to desist and act instead in the public and in their own interests. The table is the place for solutions. I never choose the road of confrontation. Consultation is the art of good communications and I hope the small section of senior management will allow their unions to return to the conference table and work out the problem. Every problem has a solution and that is the best way to find it.

In the time left I will deal with a few aspects of the Department of Transport. An issue that has been causing concern and which raised questions from many Deputies is the role of CIE and the impending McKinsey Report. The Government were seriously concerned about the deterioration in the financial areas of CIE and the ever-increasing burden of their deficit on the taxpayer—in 1979 it was £57 million and in 1980 it is in the region of £75 million. McKinsey and Company were brought in to do an in-depth study and make recommendations on the financial structures and the overall position of CIE. I expect to have that report before the end of the year—I might have the opportunity of reading it over the Christmas period. There is the mistaken belief abroad that this Government will concentrate their ideas on the financial side of this undertaking. I want to put it on the record that this Government are fully conscious of the social aspects of the public transport service and will take that into consideration when considering the McKinsey Report and other reports submitted this year. We will look at the overall position with a view to defining the role of public transport for the future.

As the House is aware, I asked the Transport Consultative Commission to examine the structure of the road freight haulage industry and to consider the adequacy, cost and efficiency of the services provided for domestic and international road haulage. Fast, efficient and economic road freight services are essential if we are to get our exports to the main markets and to import the vital raw materials so necessary to our industries. The restrictions on the road freight industry have prevented both users and operators from reaping the optimum benefits. Government policy is for a gradual liberalisation of the industry subject only to qualitative controls. The commission in the course of their examination will consider the manner and timing of a move from the present quantitative licensing to a system of qualitative control. I expect to receive the Commission's report early next year. This too will be considered in the overall transport policy for the eighties.

Air travel is now an accepted feature of modern day living. Despite the attractiveness of air service for the travelling public many airlines, including Aer Lingus, are incurring heavy losses. Steep fuel cost increases, high inflation, economic recession, inadequate yield all combine to increase the pressures affecting the air transport industry and to make 1980 the most difficult year so far experienced by the industry.

Aer Lingus have had to cope with very stiff competition on the North Atlantic. The company has always enjoyed strong ethnic loyalty in North America and this has helped the airline through difficult times in the past. The increased competition experienced in 1980 is likely to intensify in 1981, and it appears that this competition will be evident on the European routes also.

Air transportation has of course made the largest single contribution to the growth of international tourism and Ireland is no exception in this respect. The pleasure travel market is now a vital element for the airlines and this is evident from the severity of competition between airlines in such areas as fares.

The Aer Lingus ancillary activities are mainly in the aviation-related areas—in hotels, leisure and catering activities and in financial and computer services. Overall these activities are proving their worth in supporting the company's primary transportation activity, creating employment and providing a wider and more diversified base for the airline's operations and profitability.

At this stage I would like to refer to a serious matter that happened today, namely the collapse of a major travel agency which in the last few hours has gone into voluntary liquidation by order of the courts. I am extremely sorry that a collapse of an Irish tour operator—one of the biggest in the country—has occurred placing in jeopardy the direct employment of some 60 to 70 staff. More especially I am particularly sorry for the holidaymakers, both those on the continent, who are obviously anxious, and even more so for the 1,500 people who have committed themselves financially to Bray Travel Limited and who may now lose their holiday altogether. In recent years, and no doubt spurred on by our economic growth in that period, holidays over the Christmas season in places like the Canary Islands have become very popular. The fact that the collapse has occurred just as the traffic builds up to the Christmas peak is most unfortunate. May I say again how sorry I am for the holidaymakers concerned.

To put matters in perspective as far as my Department are concerned, I should explain that for operations such as the present one we do not exercise any statutory control over the operations of tour operators such as Bray Travel. Contracts between tour operators and airlines, hotels and so on, on the one hand, and between the tour operators and their customers, the travelling public, on the other are essentially commercial matters for the parties concerned. The fact that the Spanish airline Aviaco, with whom Bray Travel had negotiated the flight portion of their tour package, decided to suspend operations on behalf of Bray Travel was a commercial decision for Aviaco. My Department have a function in relation to the authorisation of flights in connection with tour holidays. This function is exercised directly with the airlines involved, in this case Aviaco.

In this connection I would like to draw attention to the fact that it is standard practice for my Department to include in the conditions authorising any such flights a requirement that, in the event of a tour operator being unable to fulfil his obligations, the airline must ferry home all stranded holidaymakers. Such a provision applies in the present case and I would like to assure the House that immediately my Department became acquainted with the chain of events which led to the present situation, contact was made with Aviaco and assurances received that, failing all else, the airline would meet their obligations to ferry home the 600 holidaymakers currently abroad. This assurance is necessary in view of the headlines which appeared in an evening paper which gave the impression that 650 Irish tourists were stranded abroad. That is not the case.

The present collapse highlights a subject which has been of concern to me since I took office last year. I refer to the question of what protection can be given to the travelling public to guard against their losing holidays which they book and the moneys which they pay to tour operators and travel agents. This, in my view, is primarily the responsibility of the travel trade itself and in that regard I acknowledge that the trade's record over the years has in general been excellent. The need for self regulation has been accepted by the Irish Travel Agents Association and, in the interests of guarding against a contingency such as the present one, it established a repatriation fund. My Department has discussed the present crisis with ITAA and it has established that the moneys available to that fund will be used, if necessary, to cover hotel bills of Irish tour makers who are abroad at present.

The fact that situations such as the present one can occur despite the best efforts of the trade points to the need for some form of more effective protection for the travelling public. For some time past my Department has been looking at what can be done by means of legislation. The subject is highly complex, and legislation in itself will not provide instant safeguards. Nevertheless, it is clearly desirable that action be taken very quickly, and it is my intention to seek Government approval early in the new year for a package of legislative measures to protect the travelling public in such a situation in future.

Mr. O'Toole

Sitting here one could be forgiven for being brainwashed by what one hears from the Government benches and the rapidity with which success stories are read from scripts. The adjournment debate is a time for stock-taking, reassessment and honest appraisal of efforts to get things done and solve problems that confront people. It is a time for honest appraisal, because anything less than that is irresponsible. It raises false hopes and creates expectations and aspirations which are not attainable unless there is a commitment to a change of emphasis in our approach. In some cases a radical change would be necessary to improve our economic situation.

Many of the promises made three years ago have been fulfilled at an enormous cost, but many have been left unfulfilled and the constant excuse given is a shortage of money. We have more important assets than money. We have land and people. It is often admitted, and it is true, that land is not used to its full capacity. We also know that the workforce are not used to their full capacity. We have a young workforce who are enthusiastic and awaiting an opportunity to play their part in economic life, that is, if the morale which nature imbued in these people can be maintained. To exploit these assets to the full for the economic and cultural development of all there must be many elements present. There must be leadership based on mutual trust and the will to succeed. Above all it must be based on honesty. I am not talking about honesty in the strictly theological sense but in the political sense.

This morning we had a further example of the kind of dishonesty to which I refer. In his speech the Taoiseach referred to the fact that our economic common-sense policy had enabled our economy this year to bring down the rate of inflation from a peak of 20 per cent to the current annualised rate of 12 per cent to 13 per cent. This juggling of figures is dishonest and a deliberate attempt to confuse the listening public when the Taoiseach knows well that this afternoon we are all aware of the current CPI level, which is 18.2 per cent for the year ending mid-November 1980. The 12 per cent to 13 per cent mentioned this morning is based on the quarter ending mid-November 1980 which shows a 3.1 per cent increase. Picking out this quarter and multiplying it by four will give an annualised rate of 12.4 per cent, but one may as well pick out a sunny day and base one's annual rainfall on it as do that. This is what I mean by a politically dishonest approach meant to confuse. It is wrong and intolerable.

Yesterday from the Government bench we had the same kind of attitude expressed by the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism who, in a very worthwhile speech concerning industrial development, dealt with the educational system and made the point, very briefly, that it was now fully geared to meet the challenge of modern society and modern economic development from the electronic and technical points of view. That kind of statement is not worthy of the man who made it, and I am disappointed that Deputy O'Malley saw fit to make it. During the past week we had a report on youth employment carried out by the manpower consultative committee. It stated that the committee recommended that a comprehensive examination of the educational system regarding its relevance to modern employment of a technical nature should be carried out. They also stated that lack of vocational preparation and training appeared to be a major obstacle facing some young people in their search for employment, and that the most disadvantaged in this regard are those who leave school at or close to the minimum age. The statement made yesterday in the light of this publication is something which no-one can condone. That committee was chaired by none other than the Minister for Labour of the day, Deputy G. Fitzgerald, now Minister for Finance. He endorsed every word of that report and he is a colleague of the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism whether he is a friend of his or not I am not in a position to say. However, it appears that the liaison between those two gentlemen leaves a lot to be desired. This kind of assertion which is motivated for political reasons does little for the morale of our young people many of whom cannot find a job. However, they know the facts and it is not easy to cod them. They are aware of the rising unemployment and their parents are aware of rising prices.

As far as our young people are concerned, those under 25 years of age, the increase in unemployment in that sector has been a massive 45 per cent. That kind of conditioning for political reasons is unworthy of any member of any Government and will be seen for what it is, an effort to confuse issues and could the real problems facing young and old here. There is a malaise evident among our young people. In relation to the external balance the ESRI state that this year the import of goods and services will reach 70 per cent of GNP as against our exports which will, hopefully, reach 55 per cent of GNP. That 70 per cent of GNP, put another way, means that for every person employed here at present he or she is facing a bill of £5,000 for imported goods and materials. That means that the nation is importing more than it can pay for out of current receipts. The gap between import payments and export receipts must be paid for, and the main facility available is through borrowing.

One frightening fact that comes to the surface in relation to this aspect of our fiscal policy is that this year our interest repayments will have reached more than £615 million as against £270 million only four years ago. In simple terms that means that for every man, woman and child here that there is an additional burden of £130 per head in interest repayments alone. It has been said before from this side of the House that in good times one does not borrow and in bad times one does but for the right reasons. We have seen the reverse operation adopted by the Government over the past three years. They borrowed on entering office when there was not any recession and, due to the corrective action taken by the former Government in 1976-77, they inherited an economy which got inflation down to single figures. Now, when borrowing is needed, we find we are up to our neck in debt. I do not have any ideological objection to borrowing for the right reasons, for capital investment, but not for current expenditure.

It has become fashionable to state from the Government benches that we are less than patriotic if we state the facts. One does not have to be a prophet of gloom or doom to state the facts; one tells the truth. If that is unpatriotic I am prepared to accept that appellation, because a big effort is being made to distort the perception of what is happening. I do not think that when 115,000 people are unemployed one can distort their perception of life as it affects them at present. It is not possible to distort the perception of 8,000 who are on systematic short-time employment by flippant 30-minute speeches which contain long litanies of activity within each Department. The major problem is that while all this is happening, while our borrowing is increasing, while our prices are increasing and while we have an intolerable inflation of 18.2 per cent — not 12 per cent or 13 per cent as mentioned by the Taoiseach — no specific measures are being taken to correct the malaise which seems to have reached us. Where corrective action has been taken in some areas it would seem not to work, because it is not stemming the tide which is now overtaking us.

In the area of industry and commerce, for example, measures have been taken which one would expect might give some relief, but we are still on the slippery slope. What do we need? In my view we need a new initiative, innovative thinking and imaginative action to bring about the corrective measures necessary if we are to reach our objective. In so far as the Opposition are concerned our objectives are the same as those of the Government — a better standard of living, full employment and a better society in which to live. They are our objectives also, but one would think from some of the statements made from Government benches that we had something less than those ambitions in mind because what we say is sometimes distorted and misinterpreted.

In the case of unemployment I should like to know what is being done to take the kind of corrective action now so necessary. The Taoiseach and members of his Cabinet have told us that we have an increased labour force and more young people coming on to that labour force and so on, but they allow unemployment to escalate at the rate of something like 4,000 per month. For example, what effort is being put into small industry, which to me is the one way at the moment through which we can hope to resolve our unemployment problem? The competition for big industry from abroad is such and the non-competitive state of industry in this country is such that at the moment, despite the best efforts of people like the IDA, we are finding it very difficult to keep that flow of industrial investment in our country.

I am surprised — and delighted, of course — that the IDA this year will reach their target. A disturbing feature of that target is the fact that in years gone by 75 per cent of jobs approved materialised on the ground in due course, let it be in two, three, four, five years. At the moment that 75 per cent is down to 50 per cent, and that is a very serious trend. While the figures are produced in all good faith in the column of job creations by the IDA, we can expect only 50 per cent of the total to materialise in time. The small firms sector must bear the brunt of the solution to our economic ills, unemployment ills, and this is nothing new. This has been a well-tried approach which has worked in economies much larger than ours. According to the Massachusetts Institute for Technology 77 per cent of additional jobs created in the US from 1960 to 1976 were in firms having fewer than 50 employees. That is the US economy. A recent German study forecast that the proportion of companies in Germany having between ten and 200 employees is expected to increase between now and 1985. In Denmark, the country with the highest standard of living in Europe, small manufacturing firms comprise a higher proportion of manufacturing employment than in Ireland. Therefore, the concentration must be on the smaller firm.

Overall utilisation capacity of industry in this country has reached the all-time low of 60 per cent. That means that if the markets were there and we could sell more produce we could make available 40 per cent more than we are doing at the moment.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy has five minutes.

Mr. O'Toole

I accept the efforts being made by the IDA, SFADCo, the county development teams and Údarás na Gaeltachta in all their respective spheres to produce more jobs. I accept also the new orientation in relation to the emphasis on small industries. However, what do you find when you boil down the figures? For example, in 1980, when the IDA completed something like 317,000 square metres of factory space, only 14 per cent of that factory space is in the form of the cluster factories about which so much is said. That percentage is much too low and I would like to see it increased where more concentration still would be seen to be made on the smaller industrial units, because that is where our future lies. We should make use of the entrepreneurial skills to produce many of the things which we need in this country. I was glad to hear the Minister for Transport and Posts and Telegraphs, Deputy Reynolds, point out that he would ensure in so far as he could that materials needed for postal service in the Post Office would be purchased locally.

Before I conclude I would like to mention two other matters which were referred to by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. The first is the unofficial strike which is threatened in his Department and which will affect postal services both in the city here and in Cork and possibly will have its effect further afield. Nobody can condone unofficial industrial action and I endorse fully the Minister's report that industrial action on an unofficial basis must be stamped out. The only way to resolve these matters is through consultation because ultimately consultation must end all this kind of industrial action both official and unofficial. The Minister should talk to his colleague, the Minister for Labour, and they should try as best they can to stamp out this recurring unfortunate incidence of unofficial action which dogs industry in this country and the public service also.

I am glad that the Minister has taken swift action in relation to the number of Irish people who were left stranded abroad owing to the collapse of the travel agency in this country. The collapse of any Irish firm is an unfortunate thing, and the victims of that collapse will find themselves many miles from our shores and worthy of any assistance they can get. I am glad that the Minister has used his office and his Department, in so far as he is allowed to do so by their terms of reference, to have these people brought back to their homes without any personal loss to themselves.

I conclude by saying that the current state of the economy is not healthy. We all have a part to play but in order that the Members of this House and the public at large can play the part they wish to play the one thing they must get is an honest appraisal of the current position. There must be no juggling of figures, no politically motivated statements. The facts must be presented to the electorate and I am sure that the people directly involved in industry and in the services will not be found wanting provided that the morale can be maintained and that the trust which they would expect of people in high office is there.

Debate adjourned.

Dáil Éireann debate - Thursday, 18 Dec 1980

Adjournment of Dáil: Motion.

Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 18 Dec 1980