No. There was a farthing, or some small proportion of the amount, dealt with in that way, but the big contribution remained. The main subsidy remained in the Estimates for expenditure right up to the end, and if the Senator looks back on the records he will find, I think, that that is correct. Take the question of butter. There is new expenditure. I do not deny at all that it was necessary expenditure in order to save the dairying industry. But, nevertheless, we have, I suppose, £600,000 per annum raised by a system of taxation without appearing at all in those figures that we are dealing with. I do not know what the amount for wheat will be this year. I think it will be in or about £900,000. That is not brought before us either. There is the levy on cattle which is to continue even under the new arrangement. That does not come into this either. So far as the taxation side of it is concerned, it is not disclosed. Altogether, I think there is something like £3,300,000 of hidden taxation, and, of course, most of it is hidden expenditure also, so that when we talk about an increase of £8,200,000 in expenditure, we are talking about only a part of the real increase, because the real increase must be over £11,000,000 which, I submit, represents a tremendous alteration in the position.
Now we have this policy of very high expenditure. We have great increases in the Customs duties, not all of which are purely protective. A lot of them have a mixed motive so that we have a burden on the public far in excess of what goes into the Exchequer.
In the year before the present Government took office something like £8,250,000 was raised by means of Customs duties. If the estimate of the Minister for the present year is realised there will be £9,760,000 collected in Customs duties: that is, £1,500,000 more is to be taken up from those particular sources. Everybody knows, however, that there is a great burden on the people beyond the amount raised by any Customs duty. First, the Customs duty becomes part of the trader's capital—part of his turnover— and profits have to be charged on it and the consumer suffers in that way. Then, when the duty is not a revenue duty but partly revenue and partly protective, it means that they have part of the amount of the duty added on to home produced goods which means that the people pay two or three, or five or six million pounds more which does not come into the Exchequer—which is a particular sort of subsidy towards industry. Generally, if all these changes that have taken place in the field of expenditure, and in the field of taxation, had taken place over a number of years and during a time when there was normal development, there would not necessarily be any criticism to be delivered; but at a time when, taking the economic structure of the country as a whole, there has been no development but, apparently, a certain retrogression, it is a most serious and alarming thing.
I know that it is always easy for people to cry "wolf" and to raise alarms about the financial position of the country. The Minister for Finance, when in opposition, and others did it. They talked about the desperate position that we were in and about the impossibility of bearing the burden of taxation. I do not want to imitate the Minister, and I do not want to speak in any alarmist tone about the position of the country, but I do think that the country is going backwards economically. If we have all the figures and look at them as fairly as possible—the figures of agricultural employment and of industrial employment as indicated by contributions to the unemployment fund—and if we look at the position of the farmers and estimate it as fairly as we can, the whole does seem to point, without doubt, to the conclusion that the country is suffering so seriously that a continuance along present lines is going to bring some disastrous results. This country had a good deal in the way of reserves and it has been able to bear a strain that, perhaps, would have caused a snap in another country less fortunately situated; but the loss cannot continue in definitely.
Two or three Senators have referred to the collection of the land annuities. Now, I hope that the Government will examine that question without any of the feeling that was displayed in the speech of one Senator—I think it was Senator MacEllin. It is no use saying that these amounts are due by law and that the people who are not paying, or who are indulging in any agitation against paying, are people to be condemned utterly and that there is no reason at all in their attitude. As I said the other day, I think there is no doubt at all that the position of a great many farmers has become difficult and has even become serious and that, in a great number of cases, all spare means have been exhausted: that there is great difficulty in carrying on and that destitution seems to be facing them and their families. Now, the question of land annuities has a history. It was, I remember, regarded as a matter for boasting that, in spite of the struggle that the people had to make during the land war and in spite of the opposition that was put up to the exactions of the landlords, when the land was actually bought out, the annuities were paid scrupulously and so punctually. That habit of ready and prompt payment of annuities continued until about the time of the civil war. Then a considerable amount of arrears accumulated. It was never possible to wipe out that mass of arrears. In fact, it never proved possible to make any satisfactory impression on it. It was reduced a bit, but then the new question raised by Fianna Fáil with regard to the land annuities, came up and the collection became more difficult again and the total of arrears began to mount up a second time. I do not want to argue the matter by way of quotations from statements that were made, but farmers did get the impression at that time that, if Fianna Fáil were returned to power, they were going to be allowed to retain the annuities or, at least, that the annuities were not going to be paid over any longer to the bondholders through the British authorities, and that the farmers were going to get all the benefits of that. Now they find that the annuities policy has robbed them of their profitable market; that it has caused every farmer to suffer very great losses; and, at the same time, it is demonstrable that, one way and another, every farmer—well, if not every farmer, at any rate, farmers in general—have had to pay much more than the amount of the annuities. The stock sold at home has suffered in prices, and the farmers have been injured in that way as well as in the way of having to pay the sums imposed and collected in Great Britain. When, on top of this, half of the old annuities is collected by the Government, it is not unreasonable for a farmer in difficulties to feel aggrieved and to feel that the attitude of the Government in this whole matter has been somewhat cynical.
The Government argues that, if they were to cease collecting the annuities for the period of the economic war, it would prove impossible to resume collection and that, therefore, the progress of land purchase would be impeded, that the financing of future land purchase would be made extremely difficult. If things continue as they are at present, however, it seems to me that the Government is going to be forced, by the movement of opinion in the country and by a growth of resentment and by increasing difficulty in getting in the money, to abandon the collection of annuities altogether. If the Government only stops or suspends the collection of the annuities when they are forced to do it and when they have seen completed the progress of events in the country illustrated by such figures as the two figures I mentioned in discussing the Finance Bill last week, namely, that on the 31st March, 1934, the uncollected arrears of land annuities amounted to something like £316,000 and that on the 31st March, of this year, the uncollected arrears amounted to £880,000—it means that they will not be able to resume collection. If, however, they recognise that the economic war creates a special difficulty and special hardships for all agriculturists, and if they say, frankly and candidly, that it is their intention to do what they can to remedy the situation, and that, if they are in office, it is their intention to resume the collection of annuities after a settlement, then they will have some chance of resuming the collection. I think the whole matter is a matter about which heat can be engendered very easily both on the side of the Government and on the side of those opposing the Government, and I think it is the duty of Ministers to look at the matter coolly and calmly and take a decision which will be a long-view decision. They should not hesitate, if they think the trend of events justifies change, to alter the views they have held up to the present time, and they should not hesitate even to appear to yield to an agitation which, they allege, is baseless. There is no doubt that there is a tremendous lot of feeling about this matter. It is not however a question of agitation. That feeling is not baseless. Everybody knows that you cannot get anywhere by agitation unless there is a real grievance to work upon. Accordingly, the Minister, and the Government, should not take the view lightly that there has merely been agitation at work amongst the farmers of County Cork and that these farmers have been persuaded by such agitation to do certain things. They should not take the view that there is no difficulty or no hardship and that the whole thing is artificial. County Cork, as far as I can learn, is not the only place where the collection of annuities has been becoming more difficult and where the mass of arrears has been tending to accumulate. Supposing the position is arrived at in two or three years that there are £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 of arrears, it must be obvious to the Minister that that amount will be utterly uncollectible. As I pointed out, a much smaller amount of arrears which had accumulated at the end of the civil war could never be collected in spite of everything the Government could do, and if the kind of thing that has been going on recently is continued, it must be obvious to the Minister that there will have to be another funding of arrears. If another funding of arrears takes place, it only means that it will encourage the people to hold back their payments until there will be another funding, and so on.
I think the Government are too much inclined to take the attitude of regarding this as being between men who are in a fight—that it is a question of an unlawful conspiracy. There is no doubt that anything that is based on conspiracy can be broken down by the Government. Conspiracy only lasts a little while, and the Government can break it down if there is no reason behind the conspiracy. I think it is entirely wrong for the Government to take the view that there is not a real difficulty here. I think it was the Minister for Finance who quoted a case some time ago of great profits being made in agriculture in a certain case, and he gave that as an example, but what was true in that case is not true of other cases. It is quite true that a man fortunate enough to get into tobacco a few years ago might have made a profit, but the normal farmer must lose; so that I think that the whole matter should be looked into in a new spirit by the Government. I hope also that we will not have a further development of the policy of meeting the expenses of various ventures by more or less indirect methods, because it is possible for the country to be carried into commitments which it will be extremely difficult to get out of, and carried into them to a distance it would not be carried if the money had to be voted. Coming to one or two other matters, I should like to ask the Minister if the Government has considered a resolution that was passed by the Seanad some time ago asking that a commission be set up to look into certain matters connected with the use of the Irish language or if they are inclined to set up such a commission or a commission with wider terms of reference? I think that is a matter that would well bear examination. A week or two ago the President of the Executive Council, referring to the teaching of English in the Gaeltacht schools, seemed to indicate, according to newspaper reports, that personally, he, at any rate, was in favour of the dropping of the teaching of English in those schools. I hope it is not the intention of the Government to take such a step. I believe that to do so would not strengthen the position of the Irish language in those districts and probably would actually lead to an increased family use of English. The Gaeltacht areas are now so small, they are so much surrounded and encroached upon by English-speaking districts that if young people were to be brought up there without an adequate knowledge of English they would be under terrible disadvantages. They would be cut off from a great many amenities and activities and there is no doubt that they would grow up feeling a grievance against those who insisted that they should not be instructed in English. Not only would they feel themselves aggrieved, and perhaps inferior to their neighbours, but their neighbours, who would have both Irish and English, would feel these people were inferior. I think the result of that would be that parents in the Gaeltacht areas would do their best to speak English to their children to remedy a defect which they saw in the education being given in the schools and the results would be that English would tend to become the family language in homes where parents are now quite willing to leave the instruction that should be given in English to their children to the schools.
I do admit that there is probably need for certain changes in the arrangements in regard to instruction in English in the Gaeltacht schools. For example, as far as I know, the children who come into the schools without English, and whom we should wish to continue to be habitual users of the Irish language, are expected to make as good a showing in English before the inspector as children from County Meath or County Dublin, who have had English in their homes and who will in most cases continue to use English as their habitual language. I think, while sufficient instruction should be given in English to enable Gaeltacht children to do any business they may have to do effectively and without discredit to themselves in English it is not right to seek to have a common standard for English over all the schools in the State. If we do insist on that standard of English in the Gaeltacht—I do not know whether it is altogether officially insisted upon, but I am afraid in practice it is the feeling of the teachers that inspectors want that standard—we are going to do much to put the Irish language out of use in the Irish-speaking areas.
I also think that the whole question of the requirements in regard to English from people from the Irish-speaking areas in public examinations needs to be considered. In the very weak state of the Gaeltacht and of the Irish language in the Gaeltacht, I think it has a most unfortunate reaction if a child who is bright and good fails in examinations solely because of some weakness in English. If the Irish language were stronger one might say it was all right, but in the present circumstances I think it is a matter that requires scrutiny and some adjustment.
With regard to the general policy of the Government about Irish, the President of the Executive Council, in the speech which he made in Galway, talked about the want of a systematic plan. There was some suggestion of concentration on the Gaeltacht. In my view, the place that it is most necessary and desirable to concentrate on is Galway City. One of the great weaknesses in the position of the Irish language is that it is a rural language, that it is not used to any extent in the life of any urban community. There are individual families in towns who use it, but the dominant language of every town is English. In Wales the position is different.
I can remember noticing this in various Welsh towns. I remember being on a bank holiday evening in Carnarvon. I was going through the streets with a friend and we did not hear anything but Welsh spoken. We went into shops. Welsh was spoken in every shop. Even in a town like Holyhead I remember going into a draper's shop, which was crowded. When I succeeded in making my way to a counter the man behind the counter spoke to me in Welsh until he found I was a stranger. The Welsh language has an urban position and, therefore, has a strength which the Irish has not, merely because Irish is only the language of some remote areas of some country districts. I think if the language is to be saved, it must be dominant in at least one urban area, it must be given that amount of backing, that amount of development, of wider use. It seems to me that the key position, from the point of view of the salvation of the Irish language, is Galway City. There is no other town of any size that may so easily be made an Irish-speaking urban area. One of the biggest Gaeltacht areas in the whole country lies right at its door. Large numbers of the actual citizens of the city itself speak Irish. Certain steps have been taken towards Gaelicising the City of Galway. A good deal has been done in the University College and I understand there is a steady and gradual progress there. The Irish speaking battalion of the Army has been stationed there, and I have no doubt that their presence has had an effect on the use of the language in the City. I remember walking the streets one evening and I actually saw and heard a soldier "picking up" a girl "through the medium of Irish". The Guards use the language a good deal. I was in Connemara recently with a Deputy. At one point we were not sure of the road. There were two Civic Guards standing on the side of the road. My friend spoke to them in English. They answered him in Irish and asked had he no Irish. I do not think they recognised who we were till I took up the running. A certain number of things therefore are being done—I am not trying to enumerate them. I think the Government ought to consider what further things can be done both by way of compulsion, which carries us a certain distance and which is necessary, but still more by way of inducement. There is a small sum in the Estimate for the Taibhdhearc, the Gaelic theatre in Galway. I have not actually seen any performances in that theatre for some time but I have read what was to be found in the newspapers in regard to it. I think the time has come when additional help ought to be given to it. When it was first established it was given a subsidy of £600. It has done a great deal of work since and has maintained its activities steadily. It has got a certain repertory of plays. It has got a certain trained personnel. It has aroused a certain amount of public interest and has attracted support. I was not in favour of giving very much money at the beginning because in the beginning of such a venture there is nothing easier than to indulge in big expenditure and incur a good deal of waste. However, a thing like that reaches a point when without further help no further progress can be made.
I think we can take it that there is little prospect of any dramatic movement of any value in Irish taking place except in Galway. The work that may be done in Dublin may have some value, but it is going to be artificial; there are going to be nothing but artificial audiences, people who will go in to listen to a certain amount of Irish, not to see a play that happens to be in Irish. You have, in the capital, a tremendous amount of competition in every sort of public entertainment. I think whatever value the language will have as a dramatic language in Dublin is going to be partly for school children and just as a stimulus, but I think there is going to be no real growth; it is going to attain no importance and is going to produce no literary movement. In Galway the situation is different. I was in the Taibhdhearc when plays were going on. I saw there old women in shawls enjoying the performance and young children from the Claddagh following the Irish perfectly. I think there is a possibility of the Taibhdhearc in Galway producing results in Irish comparable to the results that were produced by the Abbey Theatre in English. The Taibhdhearc in Galway, as far as I can judge, has made great progress in the last year or two. It will not be able to make much further progress on present lines. I think it can only go to real success if it is able to establish a small, permanent group of players. The actors now come and go. A great many of them are students, who go away after two or three years and other people come into their places. For various reasons, I think it is necessary that there should be some permanent group who would be paid; they would not require high pay in a city such as Galway. The Minister ought to make up his mind to increase the subsidy of £600 to, say, four times that amount. I think that such a subsidy would give very considerable results. I do not want to find fault with other forms of expenditure on Irish in the country, but probably better results could be got from that than from certain other things. It is a matter of life and growth and real development.
I should like to speak about one other matter before I sit down. It is connected with the same subject. The Minister for Lands is not here, but I should like to speak about the Gaeltacht colony which has been established in County Meath. There has been a great deal of interest in that colony. Columns have been occupied in the newspapers with interviews and accounts of those people. Probably there is an idea abroad that great results for the Irish language are going to spring from it. I think unduly high expectations have been formed about the thing and that harm may be done if they are disappointed. I should like to hear what the Minister for Lands has to say about it, but it seems to me that an experiment like that, though very interesting and bound to attract a good deal of public attention, has no chance of success.
I would like it to succeed; I hope I am wrong in my view, but I do not think it likely that the people who have been transferred to County Meath will be speaking anything but English after a very short number of years. So far as I can gather, something like 200 persons are to be transferred. They are going to be a very small group in the midst of an English speaking population. They are going to mix with their neighbours; they are going to meet them at Mass and in the markets, and when they go to hurling or football matches, and at dances and other social functions. The people around them know nothing but English. There may be some who know a few words of Irish, but, in the main, the grown-up people around them have nothing but English. These colonists for the most part—the young people certainly—have both Irish and English, and what is going to happen is that, while mixing with their English-speaking neighbours, the young people are going to speak nothing but English, and, in my opinion, they are bound very soon to lose the habit of speaking Irish. That is going to spread to a very large extent to the old people, except some of the very old, and I see no hope that a small colony such as that, planted in an English-speaking area, can remain as a sort of Irish-speaking oasis.
If much greater progress had been made with the language revival in English-speaking districts, the matter might be different, and it might also be different if it were possible to have a colony ten times the size, so that the the admixture of English in social groups would not be so overpowering. It might just be possible that a colony ten times the size could survive as an Irish-speaking oasis, and later on be drawn on, but with the present size of the colony and even with the special school—and I think arrangements like that are being made—it is over-optimistic to look for any success. I am not objecting to the Gaeltacht people getting land in Meath; I am not saying they should not be transferred or anything like that. I am only pointing out that in my opinion nothing for the Irish language can be done in that way, and that if they are going to be transferred to Meath, they should be transferred simply as a measure of social amelioration, without any expectation of doing anything for the spread or preservation of the Irish language by doing so.
If, in connection with migration, the Government wants to spread the Irish language, the way to do it would be different. I think the Government should transfer people from the strongly Irish-speaking districts to Breac-Ghaeltacht districts where the people know Irish but do not speak it. There are for instance, districts in Kerry, which I know of, which are returned in the census as having 97 per cent. of Irish speakers. I could mention one parish— perhaps the one I know best—in which very few of the people speak it now though nearly all know it. If a number of people from that district could be transferred to Meath and their land left vacant for people from strongly speaking Irish districts, the position of the Irish language would be strengthened, because the habitual Irish speakers would go into a district in which there were people who could talk Irish, even if it were not their habit to use it very much, and what might happen is that the newcomers might stimulate the others to speak Irish instead of being forced, as they are being forced in Meath, to speak English themselves.
It may be that the cost of that would be too great in proportion to the results that might be achieved and that the Government should not try to do very much with it, but at any rate I do not think the Government ought to proceed with any further experiments like the County Meath experiment, unless they were in a position to proceed with it on a very much larger scale. Even when it is on a large scale, when you bring people into such a difficult position, you cannot help them very much even by special facilities, because you may easily reach a point at which you are pampering them and any people who are pampered will always turn against you. If you bring a number of people into Meath who are to speak Irish and if, in order to encourage them to do so, you give them this, that and the other facility, the next thing that may happen is that you may have a deputation from them stating that unless they are given £200 per annum per family, they will not speak a word of Irish. It is a very difficult matter. The ordinary Gaeltacht family which has a claim to land could perhaps be given land individually much more cheaply, and rather than to continue the Meath experiment it would be better to do that and to save the money for some other purpose.
As I said, the main area—there may be other urban areas which should be concentrated on—in which the most effective work can be done for the Irish language is in a place like Galway City, and I should like that whole matter to be explored by a number of people. It is a matter in regard to which a commission would be very beneficial. The difficulties and pitfalls are very numerous, and I have not met anybody who could draw up plans by himself in regard to it. There may be matters in which an individual could draw up all the plans necessary and go ahead, but in this matter the complications are so great that an individual or even a Department, where there might be two or three people who are very competent, may fall into errors, because all points of view are not adequately represented.
I think that in regard to the Irish language the Government would benefit very much by setting up a commission to pursue the type of investigations which were indicated in the Seanad resolutions or other investigations. For instance, on the question of migration, if the Government do not want to abandon it, they would be very well advised to set up some sort of a committee, consisting of people with different views and different sorts of knowledge, to go thoroughly into it. In that way, disappointment would be avoided and a certain amount of unnecessary expenditure of money would also be avoided. I do not know what the attitude of the Government is and I do not want to speak in an unduly uncritical fashion. I am not trying to find fault for the sake of finding fault, but I do think that, without some sort of examination, such as I have proposed, the most effective lines of advance will not be found. Under the former Administration, there were several commissions and conferences of different sorts with different personnel. I do not say that in every case the recommendations were followed, but there is no doubt that the exploration which took place was extremely helpful in enabling sound policy to be devised.
