I should like to know if anything has been done in connection with insurance against war risks. It is most important that property should be adequately insured against war risks because it is beyond the capacity of owners to deal with it. I do not think any country has ever asked them to do so. It is always done by some form of State scheme. I am, as a rule, opposed to State action but in a time of war I think it is inevitable. For that reason I would be very glad to see all the resources of the State mobilised for that purpose in a time of war. Has the Government considered any means of dealing with marine insurance, which is probably the most important, and also the insurance of property against air or other forms of attack?
Appropriation Bill, 1939 (Certified Money Bill)—Second Stage.
Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
I wish to draw the Minister's attention to the attitude of the Electricity Supply Board towards the farming community. When the Act setting up the Electricity Supply Board was going through the Seanad, Deputy McGilligan, who was the Minister in charge at the time, enumerated all the blessings that rural districts would derive from the scheme when it was fully developed.
Leas-Chathaoirleach
Neither this question nor the previous one comes under this Bill. There is nothing about the Electricity Supply Board in the Bill, and no money is being voted for it.
I understood I could raise any question on this Bill.
Leas-Chathaoirleach
Any matter on which the Minister is entitled to spend money under the Bill when it becomes an Act. The Electricity Supply Board does not come into this Bill. I mention the matter, because I think it is advisable, after our experience on the last Bill, that we should try to keep to the point a little more.
My complaint is that the promises which were made are not being fulfilled. I wish to draw the Minister's attention to the matter by mentioning my own case which would apply equally to hundreds of other farmers.
Leas-Chathaoirleach
Is the Senator going on to discuss the Electricity Supply Board despite the ruling from the Chair?
When will I have an opportunity of raising the question?
Leas-Chathaoirleach
By motion, at any time.
The only thing I can do so is to wait for another opportunity. I also wish to draw the Minister's attention to the delay that is caused in clearing dutiable goods from the customs. There was a delay of about a fortnight in getting portion of a rake from manufacturers in England. It is very important that farmers should get quick delivery of parts to replace machinery that has been broken. The machine for which the part was required was made in England. I ask the Minister to see if something could not be done to expedite delivery of dutiable goods from England, and to avoid the inconvenience that is caused to farmers. I also wish to ask the Minister if something could not be done to amend the law of libel and slander.
Leas-Chathaoirleach
I am afraid the Senator cannot discuss that question now.
Is not the salary of the Parliamentary draftsman in this Bill?
The Government does not spend money on libel and slander.
Mr. Hayes
Surely a lot of it. Any amount of Party funds.
Am I in order in discussing the question of stall-fed cattle?
Leas-Chathaoirleach
If it is in the nature of a proposal for new legislation it could not be advocated on this Bill.
I should like, in the course of my remarks, to consider on this Bill, especially with reference to the general credit of the nation, both the public credit and the private credit of individual citizens, and I hope you will extend to me whatever indulgence may be necessary, in seeing that I may relate my remarks to these aspects of the financial policy of the Bill. In doing so I shall have occasion to criticise the general financial policy associated with the Minister for Finance and his Government, but I should like to emphasise that, in my remarks, I shall endeavour not to make what might be called a partisan speech, but to be concerned only with the objective aspects of truth. I will approach the matter from an academic rather than from a Party political point of view. The Minister cut his milk teeth as Minister for Finance some years ago, and, as far as I am concerned, I hope he will continue to be Minister for Finance until he cuts his wisdom teeth. I would even like to believe that he is at present engaged in cutting his wisdom teeth, and that we, and the State as a whole, will profit by the result.
I do not know whether the Minister has had the advantage of a classical education, but he will probably recognise the comparison when I say that the situation in which he and his Government now find themselves reminds me of the tragedy of Dido as recounted in the Fourth Book of the Æneid. You remember how Dido gave her affections to a false and treacherous idol and, in the end, through her disappointment, inflicted a fatal wound upon herself. We are told that as she lay bleeding to death, with her eyes she sought the light and groaned, and gave a groan when it had been found. I can see the Minister seeking the light and groaning in every line of his utterance when he thinks he sees, or because he cannot see, the light. At all events, that disposition to groan is, to me, a sign of grace on the part of the Minister, and I would like to facilitate not only his groans but his vision. He treated the other House the other day to a most admirable speech in which he probably ran the gamut of all the well-tried and proved financial orthodoxies which have ever been believed in. But I am not content that the Minister should approach the problem of the public finances with a set of stale financial orthodoxies when the whole subject-matter of those finances has been bedevilled by the fact that the Minister's policy, the Government policy, in the last six years has been built on a series of stale economic heresies.
I wonder could the Chair enlighten me as to what is in order on this Bill? I sympathised with Senator Counihan when he was ruled out of order on practical subjects, but now I have to sympathise with myself, having to listen to these stories from Senator Johnston. We were told about the man from Baghdad——
Is this a point of order?
On a point of order, have we to wait here while Senator O'Donovan is being enlightened?
Leas-Chathaoirleach
Perhaps it would clear the air.
I merely wanted someone to enlighten me, and I think I am perfectly entitled to ask the Chair——
Leas-Chathaoirleach
Yes, so long as you do not make a long speech on the subject. I was just considering at what point I should interrupt Senator Johnston. I did feel he was making a Finance Bill speech on the Appropriation Bill, a speech which should have been made on the previous Bill. I am afraid I will have to rule that only speeches on matters that come within the scope of the Appropriation Bill can now be made —that is, if there is to be an orderly debate.
I considered very carefully whether I should make this speech on the Fifth Stage of the Finance Bill or on the present Bill. It seemed to me that other Senators were sufficiently eloquent with reference to the Finance Bill, and I thought I would be in order if I kept my remarks for the Appropriation Bill, especially as my remarks concern, not specifically the Appropriation Bill or the Finance Bill, but the whole of the national finances which are embraced or expressed by both the Finance Bill and the Appropriation Bill, I believe one is quite in order in discussing the general financial policy of the State, and such important questions as the public credit in so far as it may be affected by the Government's financial policy.
Should that speech not have been made when we were dealing with the Finance Bill? I am a new Senator, comparatively, and I was merely asking for enlightenment. Even though Senator MacDermot interrupted me, it has now been demonstrated that I was right. My objection was justified.
Leas-Chathaoirleach
Perhaps the Senator will allow me to say what I think is in order? I will have to rule that only speeches that deal with Government policy as coming within the scope of the Appropriation Bill are in order on this debate, if we are to have an orderly debate.
Only speeches which deal with——?
Leas-Chathaoirleach
With matters of Government policy, as expressed in the Appropriation Bill.
Does that mean policy in expenditure as distinguished from policy in raising taxes?
Leas-Chathaoirleach
Quite so. I am loath to stop any Senator, but we must have some order in debate.
If Senator Johnston relates his speech to Government policy as enunciated in their expenditure scheme, he is in order?
Leas-Chathaoirleach
Quite in order. It is merely to prevent the debate going over the ground we already covered on the Finance Bill, that I think it advisable to make that statement.
I shall endeavour to observe the ruling of the Chair. I have no desire to depart from the rules of order. If you think at any stage of the proceedings that I am becoming irrelevant, I trust you will not hesitate to pull me up. I should like to avoid anything that could be regarded as irrelevant. I was going to say that the Minister is opposed, and rightly, to the policy or financial procedure generally known as monetary inflation. On that policy I have little to add to the words of wisdom used by the Minister in the other House, but I would like to say that the essence of monetary inflation is the increase of money and money incomes which has the effect of distorting prices and distorting the price and income structure. The essence of monetary inflation is not merely the fact that it causes a general increase of prices, but that increase of prices is not equal throughout all ranges of income and prices. It is unequal and it imposes a burden on some sections of the community while, in fact, conferring benefits on other sections of the community. I do not know whether I would be in order in summarising briefly some of the major evils associated with monetary inflation.
Leas-Chathaoirleach
I do not think so; not on this Bill.
If so, I will proceed to other matters, only regretting that I did not get up and make this speech on the Finance Bill, where apparently it would have been quite in order. Inflation—I am not going to talk about inflation, but this is leading up to the next point—has sometimes been referred to as the use of national credit. The Taoiseach rightly stated the other day that the use of national credit means nothing unless it means the use of the taxing power of the State. That is perfectly true. Now, my contention is that we have had already too much use of the national credit, in the sense of too much use of the taxing power of the State, in order to pervert and distort the national economy. Monetary inflation distorts the price and income structure, but, in fact, we, by the policy pursued over the last seven years, have distorted the price and income structure of the national economy, and produced evils of exactly the same character as would have been produced if we had resorted, seven or eight years ago, to a policy of monetary inflation, and it is because it is impossible to cure evils of that character by applying a remedy that would only intensify the disease that I applaud the fact that the Minister is not disposed to use the method of monetary inflation. At the same time, however, I would welcome some evidence that the Minister is disposed to reverse the economic and other policies which, in fact, have created this economic distortion, analogous to the kind of distortion that would have been created by a definitely inflationary monetary policy. Now, I come to the effect of a £32,500,000 Budget on public and private credit.
Leas-Chathaoirleach
I am afraid the Senator is still speaking about the Budget. This Bill is not the Bill that implements the Budget.
I hope to show you, Sir, in a minute or two, that I am concerned just as much with the effect of the expenditure of that money as with the collection of it, and this Bill relates to the expenditure of £32,500,000.
Leas-Chathaoirleach
It relates to the Estimates. That is what it relates to. It is a Bill to appropriate the expenditure of the money as set forth in detail in the Estimates.
Yes, the Title is "An Act to apply certain sums out of the Central Fund and to appropriate to the proper supply services and purposes the sum granted by the Central Fund Act."
Leas-Chathaoirleach
Yes. Under this Bill Senators are entitled to debate Government policy in relation to expenditure on the different Government Departments, and that has nothing to do, to my mind, with inflation, public credit, or questions that arise normally and properly on the Budget.
To my mind, the fact that this Bill appropriates a certain amount of money, which is being paid for my valuable services as a Senator, undoubtedly has improved my personal credit and improved the personal credit of every other member of this House. Based on that simple fact, I want to draw certain conclusions which are of the utmost public importance. The effect of the expenditure of the public money is to increase the credit of the producers of the services which are going to be paid for by that money, compulsorily abstracted from the taxpayers. That, I think, is as clear as noon-day. We happen to occupy a privileged position. We have a guaranteed market for our Senatorial services and a fixed price, and our credit, therefore, is of the highest possible description; but I ask you, if the £32,500,000 of the taxpayers' money is abstracted for the payment of services such as ours, what about the money that is left in their pockets, and what about the producers of the services which they would like to buy with the money that is left in their pockets—if they could afford to buy them—and what about the credit of these unprivileged producers of services catering for such money as we leave in the pockets of the taxpayers?
If the credit of one section of the community—the producers of the services paid for by the Budget—is enhanced, my point is that the credit of other sections of the community may be, in fact, damnified, injured and lessened by reason of the policy of which this Bill is an expression. Whether that is so or not will depend on other causes, such as the relationship between the national income as a whole and the public revenue as a whole, and, as I have showed on a previous occasion, that relationship is one in which an increasing proportion of the incomes of individuals is abstracted for the purpose of paying for public services.
Further, we have used the national credit, in the sense of the taxing power of the State, in order to put certain sections of our producers, other than civil servants and Senators, in a privileged position—producers, for example, of flour for the home market, or of zip-fasteners, or Christmas crackers. We have put them in a position to levy what I regard as private taxation on the rest of the consumers.
Leas-Chathaoirleach
I am sorry to have to interrupt the Senator again. In fairness to other Senators, such as Senator Counihan, whom I have interrupted, I am afraid I cannot allow the Senator to make a Budget speech on this Bill, and it seems to me that that is what he is doing.
Under the circumstances, then, Sir, I have no alternative except to sit down.
Leas-Chathaoirleach
Of course, it is quite open to any Senator to make a speech on Government expenditure.
I hope, Sir, that what I have to say will be accepted as being within the terms of this Bill, and that if I am to be interrupted by Senator O'Donovan it will be for some reason other than that I am not in order. Of course, I may be interrupted by the Senator. Now, Sir, the Government policy, by the Appropriation Bill, makes provision for the payment of a considerable sum of money to people in this country for the purpose of teaching the Irish language in an endeavour to restore it as the spoken language of the nation. Now, whatever certain members of this House may think with regard either to my competence to speak on the Irish language or my bona fides, I will say this by way of preface: that I have given a fair amount of service to the work of trying to create conditions here where we would be at liberty to have the language of our country taught, and where we would have liberty to see our children, anyhow, given the chance which was not given to some of us. Whether Senator McGinley and others believe it or not, I, in my time, have spent many weary hours trying to organise branches of the Gaelic League. I have gone to Irish classes, collected money, and done quite a number of other, in my opinion, quite estimable things in difficult times, in an endeavour to awaken the spirit which we wanted to re-create in the country, and in an endeavour to have the then attitude towards the language changed.
Anyhow, through the sacrifices of quite a number of people living, and of others who are dead, the nation to-day has the opportunity and the liberty to restore the Irish language as the living language in this country, but I myself feel, after a number of years, that the policy of the Government is not succeeding. At any rate, if the success achieved is to be measured by the number of people in the country, and the young people particularly, who are showing an active interest in the language movement and who are using the language, then the Government policy in this country on the problem of the language has not been a success.
What I feel about it is this: I believe now that the whole policy in regard to the Irish language has been commercialised to a degree far beyond what is wise. What you discover is that a great many people in this country to-day, or at least a very considerable number of people in this country to-day, who made really no effort whatever, and who took no part at all in the struggle to regain the country's independence or liberty, but who, with an eye to the future, came along and made a study of the language and became efficient in its use, to-day can get a much higher place in the country than those who worked and slaved and suffered and who were ready to lay down their lives so that the country would have liberty to live its own life in its own way and to restore its language to its proper place.
These people, or quite a number of them who are now occupying posts in this country, are getting money for their services, but their only concern. in my judgment, in the matter of the restoration of the language, is the extent to which they are getting cash for the services which they give. Hence it is that, outside of their work, there is no effort whatever being made by these people to make the language the living language and the force which it ought to be. Of course, you can commercialise anything. You can commercialise pig feeding, and you can have hundreds of people rushing in to make what they can out of pig feeding on a commercial scale, but once there ceases to be a profit in the job, they get out of it. So it is with a great many people in this country to-day.
They are prepared, and they are encouraged and facilitated by Government policy, to commercialise their knowledge of the language and put on a purely commercial basis the restoration of the language which is fast becoming an impossibility. There are a few things to be remembered about this. A limited number of people seem to think that our language can only be restored by the people who spoke it in the cradle, who were born in the Gaeltacht. My view is that the intolerance, narrow-mindedness and bigotry of quite a number of these people is doing the language movement in this country irreparable harm. The presence of a number of them enunciating Government policy with regard to the language is in many ways proving disastrous. It would be wrong, of course, to suggest that they are representative of the native Irish speaker. They are not. Some of the native Irish speakers, who are doing most constructive work for the language, are doing silent work. They are writers, cultured men and women whom people in the Gaeltacht will be glad to imitate. But there are others who are not of that kind who are ready to come along claiming themselves to be the highest type of mortal in this country, the Celt whom all should follow, that they are high-minded, highly-civilised, skilled in crafts, attracted by the arts, having made their contributions to them, and so on. The truth about it is that the language of this country will be restored throughout the length and breadth of the land, not by the native speakers, but by the non-native speakers. The most active spirits in the language movement to-day are men and women who were born in that part of the country where the language is not spoken but who spent their few pennies in learning it in days when it was not half as popular as it is to-day and when there was very little cash to be got out of their efforts. Young teachers who did not know a word of their native speech, went off to learn it and spent, out of their small salaries, money that they could not afford.
Those are the people who are working hardest, yet silently, to restore the language. But, it cannot be restored by the efforts of these people alone, nor by the few native speakers who are working very hard to raise the general level of the language in the cultural and literary sense. It can only be restored by the active co-operation of the people who showed spirit with regard to the language movement in days when there were risks in it. It is very difficult to show that spirit to-day in face of this other spirit that is so obviously abroad in the land.
If some of the people who wish to pose as the saviours of the language are really in earnest about it, the best thing they can do, in my opinion, is to make up their minds that the language can only be saved by coalescing all the forces in this country that stood at one time for its restoration, people like the Cathaoirleach, myself, and others who are here, who are not able to discourse fluently in the language of the Gael, in the first place because we did not hear it in our youth, and, in the second place, because during most of our life even 30 hours in the day would not suffice to enable us to do the work that was to be done. Are we to be turned aside from the purpose which we had 20 years ago? If we and those other sincere, silent, workers, who are doing their best for the restoration of the Irish language, are to be driven away by the few critics and intolerant creatures from this cause that is so dear to all, then there is no question whatever that none of the people, even the children of our generation, are going to see any improvement in the position of the language from that which it occupies to-day. There are numbers of other people who are prepared to say the same thing as I am saying, who have given service in the language movement. It may surprise some of the Senators when I say that when my youngest little girl went to school at the age of 4½ years she had not a word of English.
It surprises me if this is in order. Under what head of the Bill is the Senator speaking, and on what aspect of finance is he speaking?
I will answer the Senator. I hope the Senator will try to learn the rules of debate so that his further education will not be necessary. We are discussing to-day money spent on the supply services, education and all the rest. We are paying teachers in universities, secondary schools, primary schools, and so on. I am discussing whether or not the policy of the Government with regard to the restoration of the Irish language is going to succeed. I am pointing out some of the obstacles and difficulties. If Senator O'Donovan cannot see, there are none so blind as those who will not see.
Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Senator, in my opinion, is in order.
I am very serious about this. I am one of the people who always believed, and still believe, that the restoration of the Irish language to its place in our life was vital if we were to express ourselves really as a nation. I believe that we are not meeting with success in that effort. I would be very anxious to hear what the Minister himself has to say. Perhaps he may take it upon himself to reply in Irish. Perhaps he had a better opportunity of learning it than I had, but if he would not regard that as fair either to himself or to the House he will probably be able to say, also, that 30 hours a day would not suffice to enable him to do all the work he has got to do and at the same time make himself proficient in the use of the language. What I want to urge is that there is no use beating about the bush. We are either serious about the restoration of the Irish language or we are not. If we all mean it when we say that we want to restore the language, then there would be no injury to the cause of the language if we were to look into the present position. I see none who are satisfied with it. I talked to teachers, professors in colleges, parents; I know what their view is. I know what my own feelings in the matter are. Nobody can say that the teachers are not striving hard. Nobody will ever know what this effort must have cost the teachers in this country. It is because, like others of us, they gave their allegiance to the cause when they were very young that they are unwilling to-day to decry their own efforts and the cause for which they stood.
That does not take away from us here the responsibility of asking the Minister for Finance to convey to the members of his Cabinet our view that the situation with regard to the language movement in the country is being seriously impaired by much that is being said and by the happenings; that if the language is to be restored we cannot accept the narrow, intolerant and fanatical point of view which has been and is being expressed, which is driving people away from the language, but that what we require now is an inquiry into the whole position to discover whether we are on the right lines or not. I believe that there is need for a change and that we ought to be courageous enough to examine in what way this change can be brought about. There will be plenty of evidence made available to the Minister if he will undertake it, and he will have plenty of good wishes in his endeavour.
I want to make a reference or two to our broadcasting service. I did so on a previous occasion here. As I understand the position, it is this: that while the Minister collects about £80,000 a year from what we may call broadcasting taxes, and spends about £60,000, he actually appropriates a certain amount of the money so raised and utilises it for other purposes. On a previous occasion I asked here: What evidence had we of a cultural advance in this country in the last 17 years? For myself, I think there is great need for giving a shaking up to this broadcasting system of ours. We have only one broadcasting station. The Minister receives a certain amount of money each year from the people who have sets and out of other taxes which are paid on the importation of reception instruments, and if he thinks that he is justified in appropriating a considerable amount of that money, and in using it for other purposes, I cannot see how he is going to have developed here the sort of service which the country is entitled to have.
One might criticise the broadcasting service from a number of points. For instance, the service broadcast from our station on Sundays is certainly very unlike the Sunday service broadcast from the stations of some of the neighbouring countries. Again I understand that the fees paid to people whose services are availed of by our broadcasting authorities are altogether inadequate. They are certainly not calculated to encourage talent, or to get the right kind of talent. I have heard of cases in which the fees paid would not cover the costs incurred by those who gave their services at the station. In that situation, surely the Minister himself must agree that, so far as this service is concerned, the cultural life of the country will never get a chance to express itself or to develop. The service is never going to develop.
I do not know how the farming talks that are given infrequently by Radio Athlone appeal to other farmer-Senators. In my opinion, they are, with few exceptions, rather behind the times. What has struck me in particular about them is this: that they are always given at an hour when the farmer, if he is any good at all, ought to be out in the fields. Senators may laugh, but if they consult the timetable they will find that that is so. Those farming talks are given at an hour when, if you want to listen to them, you must come in from milking the cows, cutting the meadow, or getting up the hay. There are quite a number of other criticisms that I could offer with regard to this service, but I hope that what I have said will have the effect of shaking up those responsible. In my opinion, if the Minister wants to give the station a chance he ought to spend whatever money he receives so that we may be enabled to build up a reputation for this station and induce more people to listen in. If he wants to provide talks for farmers, then I would say to him that he should encourage those in charge not to be looking on our farmers with the usual Dublin eyes. The farmers of this country are generally not to be found in their drawing-rooms or their sitting-rooms on a Sunday evening in summertime at 7 o'clock which, for them, means half-past five.
It strikes me that this Bill calls for more intimate discussion than for eloquence. I should be glad if the Minister, when replying, would give me the information which I am about to seek from him. I see that Senator O'Donovan is not here; but fearing he would be, I was careful to mark off each item so as to make sure that it was referred to in the Bill, and that I was in order in referring to it. Vote 39 deals with the salaries and expenses of the Public Record Office, the Keeper of State Papers, Dublin, the purchase of historical documents, etc. On this Vote I would like to have some information from the Minister regarding what was known as the office of the Ulster King at Arms. I believe that, while he is not an employee of this Government, he is accommodated with premises by this Government. I should be glad to know whether the Government, in view of his rumoured departure from this country, are taking any steps to secure that the records attached to that office will remain here and do not leave the country. Under Vote 58, a sum of £37,500 is provided for transport and meteorlogical services. There is in another part of the Bill a sum of £39,000 for the same thing. Perhaps the Minister might care to explain to the House whether these sums are entirely for weather reports.
Provision is being made in the Bill for the Revenue Commissioners, and for what are called other services connected with the Revenue Commissioners. Under that heading I would be curious to know what is the exact position of a customs official, and what are the exact rights of a citizen when he is in the presence of a customs officer. On a couple of occasions I have myself seen this kind of thing take place: a dutiable article has been declared to a customs officer at the port of entry and is assessed for duty. For the sake of argument we will say that the duty to be paid is something under £1. A pound note has been tendered to the customs officer. He has refused to accept it and to give change. If an ordinary trader or shopkeeper took similar action he would render himself liable to prosecution for refusing legal tender. Surely citizens should have similar rights when it comes to dealing with customs officials, and are entitled to be treated fairly. If they offer legal tender in payment, they are surely entitled to be treated courteously and to be given change.
As regards the rest of the Bill, I do not intend to say anything. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the expenditure proposed, the Estimates are there, and the money when voted is going to be spent. There is only one other thing that I notice lacking in the Bill. It is this: that there does not appear to be any provision made in it for the Prime Minister's visit to a foreign country which, I understand, he intends to make in September. I should be glad if the Minister would inform the House whether the Prime Minister intends to go to the World Fair at New York at his own expense, or at the expense of the citizens.
Ní raibh dúil agam labhairt ar an Bhille seo ach rinneadh tagairt do cheist na Gaedhilge san díospóireacht. Ní shaoilim go bhfuil mórán bainte idir ceist na Gaedhilge agus ceist an airgid ach tharla gur labhair an Seanadóir Baicstéir ar an gceist seo agus ba mhaith liom é a fhreagairt. I dtaobh chuid den méid adubhairt sé tá mé ar aon intinn leis. Is iad na daoine, adeir an Seanadóir, nach raibh an Ghaedhilg acu féin a thóg an Ghaedhilg ón staid in a raibh sí agus a chuir áird uirthi.
Is fíor sin agus tá mé ar aon intinn leis. Ach shaoilfeadh duine ón méid adubhairt sé nach raibh an obair ag dul ar aghaidh go maith fé láthair. B'fhéidir nach bhfuil ach níor mhol sé aon tslí dúinn chun é chur ar aghaidh níos fearr. Maidir le caitheamh airgid, níl mórán airgid á chaitheamh ar an Ghaedhilg ar chor ar bith. Ní féidir a rá go bhfuil costas na scoileanna á chaitheamh ar an Ghaedhilg. Dá mba rud é nach raibh aon Ghaedhilg ann bheadh an costas sin orainn.
Tá Seanadóirí uaisle léigheannta annso agus caitheadh a lán airgid ar a gcuid oidechais agus ní raibh siad ag foghluim na Gaedhilge. Dá mbeadh an scéal againn mar a bhí faoi réim na Sasana, bheadh an t-airgead seo á chaitheamh ar na scoileanna.
Is mar an gcéadna leis an seirbhís phuiblí. Caithfí an t-airgead sin da mba rud é nach raibh an Ghaedhilg i gceist ar chor ar bith.
Dubhradh nach raibh na daoine seo dílis don Ghaedhilg. Is deachair don Rialtas dílseacht do chur isteach i nduine mara bhfuil sí ann cheana féin. Annsin, do réir Seanadóirí áirithe, tá barraidheacht ceann in áirde ag na cainteoirí dúthchais thar na daoine nach bhfuil an Ghaedhilg ar a dtoil acu agus tá spid acu ortha.
Ní dóich liom gur fíor é sin. Tá meas againn ar na daoine atá ag cuidiú le foghluim na Gaedhilge ach má tá an Ghaedhilg riachtanach le haghaidh post áirithe ní féidir an post sin do thabhairt do dhune nach bhfuil an Ghaedhilg aige.
Maidir leis na Gaedhilgeoirí ón Ghaeltacht, taobh amuich de scéim an £2, níor caitheadh mórán airgid orra agus tá na daoine seo a dhíth orainn. Mara bhfuil an dearcadh ceart ag muintear na Gaeltachta, tá an Gaedhilg acu agus ní féidir linn iad sin agus a gcuid Gaedhilge do chailleadh.
Is ar na scoileanna chaithfimid luighe maidir leis an Ghaedhilg agus tá na scoileanna ag déanamh a gcuid oibre go maith. Níl aon locht le fáil ar na scoileanna mar gheall ar teagasc na Gaedhilge nó teagasc aon adhbhair scoile eile. Bhí mé ag dul thart an tseachtain seo thart agus bhuail mé isteach ina lán scoileanna.
Chuireadh sé iontas orm an méid Gaedhilge agus an méid múinte a bhí ag na scoláirí.
Má leanann an Seanadóir Baicstear, agus daoine mar é a bhfuil tuairimí Gaelacha, ar an chasán céanna agus má chuidíonn sé leis na páistí, mar a bhí siad a dhéanamh, leis an Ghaedhilg do labhairt tar éis an scoil d'fhágáil, táim cinnte go mbeidh an scéal linn agus go mbeidh an tír seo Gaelach taobh istigh d'aimsir réasúnta.
In connection with Vote 55—the payment of forestry workers—I understand that our forestry workers are paid half-a-day if they go to work on a wet morning when no work can be done, except when, in some cases, alternative work is provided. These are very few cases, and I think sometimes there is a claim that favouritism may be shown to give the work to a few people. I think that it ought to be possible to have a scheme—even if it gave a little extra trouble—by which forestry workers would be paid by the hour. It is surely a bad principle that people may be paid for doing nothing.
I quite see that the arrangement exists so that they will get more or less a weekly wage. The amount they are due to receive on a full week is, I understand, 30/-, which is about 3/- more than the agricultural labourer's wage. That would be fair, owing to the lost time they have to make up in some way. It is just the principle of paying people for doing nothing that I think is wrong. It ought to be possible to make arrangements by which people would be paid by the hour. I would be very sorry if, through raising this question, advantage was taken, either by the Department involved or by some other Department that may be involved, to reduce the amount a man would receive. It ought to be the other way.
The fact that in this Bill we are providing for the salaries of all the Ministers entitles us to, at any rate, considerable scope as to the subjects that we may raise, and I propose briefly to throw at the Minister's head a mixed bag of questions and suggestions.
May I just on that point say that it has been the custom where the Appropriation Bill is under discussion for any Senator to communicate with me in advance and let me know the points which he intended to raise, so that I may be in a position to deal with them. Senator MacDermot has done that in relation to some matters, but I think it could not be expected that I should be in a position to deal with every item of the Government Estimates in detail.
I quite understand that the Minister could not deal with anything unusual. I do not think, however, that he will find any of the points which I am now raising unreasonable. I want to ask, in relation to the money we are voting for the Department of Local Government's housing grants, whether the Minister can tell us if anything is going to be done to reduce the cost of building houses, and whether he can hold out any hopes in that regard, and, in conjunction with that, I want to ask whether he can hold out any hopes of the Government doing anything, or pursuing any policy that is likely to accomplish anything, towards lowering the cost of living in general in this country. In a newspaper to-day I see an article by an eminent journalist, who has recently paid a visit to London, in which the following remarks occur:—
"I saw a London housewife's budget, compiled at my request, which indicated that nearly everything eatable is from 25 to 50 per cent. less in London than in Dublin. I saw new houses in residential areas priced at from £650 to £850. Houses as good in similar areas in Dublin could not be purchased at less than from £1,000 to £1,200. I saw, in fact, as a result of my observations, that the cost of living in Dublin is unconscionably high."
Those devastating remarks might be supposed to have been taken from the Irish Times or the Independent, but, in fact, they are taken from the Irish Press, and I feel that however the Minister might be disposed to disregard any mournful observations I might make on these particular topics, he can hardly disregard them when they are from his own Party's newspaper. I hope he will have something a little consoling and encouraging to tell us about the Government's plans for the future in regard to reducing the cost of building houses and the cost of living for Irish citizens.
There is no provision in this Bill dealing with the cost of living precisely.
There is provision to add to it.
There is certainly provision for grants for housing, and provision for the Department of Industry and Commerce and other Departments which might, by evil-minded persons, be regarded as having contributed something towards increasing the cost of living.
I also want to ask another question, of which again, I must admit, I have not given any notice, but it is not anything very deep or recondite. It is a question about the manner in which the film censorship is carried on. We are voting money here, as I understand, for the keeping up of the office of film censor, so I suppose we are entitled to reflect upon the principles upon which that Department is carried on. I was astonished to read quite recently that a film, which I have seen, called "The Confessions of a Nazi Spy.," which has had enormous success in America and in England, has been banned here on the ground that it is calculated to promote racial hatred. As to that, I would say, in the first place, that there were other films which have been shown here which could be at least equally ruled out on that ground. There was a film quite lately—perhaps it is still running, although I am not sure—on the Spanish civil war which certainly tended to promote hatred of Russia, just as much as "The Confessions of a Nazi Spy" tendes to promote hatred of Germany.
Has the Senator seen it?
Yes. I said I had seen it. There have been various films from time to time about episodes in the past of this country which would tend to promote hatred of England. I am not talking about that being the object of the film, but I am saying that that would be the natural effect of some of them. Why is this exception made in the case of Germany? I regard "The Confessions of a Nazi Spy" as a most excellent and objective film which, in fact, does not tend to stir up racial hatred at all. It makes a number of Germans very sympathetic persons who are sacrificed by Nazism. It does, I admit, give a picture of Nazism which is horrifying, but I believe the picture to be an absolutely true one, and there is scarcely a detail in the film that is not a mere reproduction of what has actually occurred in America and in Germany, in connection with Nazi spying in America.
I personally can see absolutely no reason why that film should not have been shown, especially, as other films have been shown that other countries would have as much right to be offended about as Germany would have to be offended about this film. I think the film is one that tends to promote love of justice, love of liberty and a sense of the dignity of man, and indignation against any system that tends to infringe these things. As such, I think it would do the public good, and not harm, and, aside from any question of good or harm, it is a film with great entertainment value. A most exciting and interesting few hours for anyone to spend would be at that particular film.
It has a good Press agent.
I have no financial interest, I may say, in films.
An ideological interest, maybe.
The one topic which I did give the Minister notice I was going to advert to is the topic of the preparations of this country for meeting the difficulties that will arise in the case of a European war. I do not intend to go back on what has been already said to-day, and a few days ago, on the subject of defence policy, but I want to know what is being done in the way of industrial preparation? We all know that if war breaks out, imports of certain commodities that are vital to us will necessarily be much restricted. There will not be shipping available to bring them here in sufficient quantities. Have any stocks of commodities that are of great importance to us been laid in so as to meet the position in the event of a European war? I would be very much obliged if the Minister could see his way to give us some information on these matters. I think, too, that Ministers should do more than they have yet done to educate public opinion generally about both the material and spiritual issues that will be involved in the case of a European war.
The Minister for Finance himself and the Minister for Industry and Commerce are both of them exceptions to the otherwise rather deep silence of the Ministry on this subject. The Minister for Industry and Commerce a couple of months ago did warn the country of the fact that there would be severe economic and industrial difficulties if war broke out. But his very excellent speech on the subject did not go into any detail, and it has not had anything like the attention from the country that it deserves. The Minister for Finance in his Budget speech spoke of the tremendous difficulties, from the Budgetary point of view, that would be involved consequent on a European war. There, again, I think, hardly enough attention has been paid to it.
Now, as the other House of the Oireachtas has gone into recess, and as this House of the Oireachtas is about to follow, I hope Ministers will be free to do much more than they have hitherto done in the way of educating the country so that people will understand what they will have to face if war breaks out. I think they might do something to set before the country as objectively as they can, besides the material difficulties that will arise, the spiritual and moral dangers that will be encountered——
As for instance?
If the Senator will allow me to continue, I mean that something should be done to guide public opinion about the sympathies that Irishmen ought to feel in regard to this great conflict, that something should be done more than has been done to give the people, as a whole, a realisation of just what would be involved by a conflict that was set on foot for the purpose of giving Nazism and Fascism domination over the civilised world.
I sincerely hope that the few remarks I have to make will be in order. They are of a sufficiently general nature not to raise any particular difficulties for the Minister in replying, if he cares to do so. In any case, I rather deprecate this extreme specialisation amongst Ministers. I do not see why when we have a Cabinet with a small number of Ministers that each one of them should not be prepared to get up and answer questions about the general policy of the Cabinet —at least about matters of general public interest. The first subject on which I would like to speak is the subject of education. I made some remarks here a few months ago about this whole question of reviving the Irish language and the means that have been pursued in that effort.
All I want to do to-day is to emphasise these remarks once more, and to say that I still believe—I have seen no reason at all to change my opinion —that the policy that has been pursued steadily and ruthlessly by the Minister for Education of enforcing the practice of teaching through the medium of Irish in the schools is going a long way towards killing the restoration of the Irish language. I do not see why the Minister for Finance himself should not have an opinion on that matter. After all, he is a parent like many others of us. Senator Baxter spoke about that already. The Minister for Finance has children who are almost native speakers of the language. They have gone through this mill with regard to Irish like everybody else's children. This is a matter that is not only the concern of Ministers and officials. It is of vital concern to parents throughout the country. There seems to be an extraordinary fog that is rather difficult to dispel over this whole subject. There is a tendency here to misrepresentation which is so very widespread that it is very hard to counteract it. I have always spoken on this subject as one who is most anxious to see the Irish language restored to use in the country. No one can be more anxious in that direction than I am. But I constantly find myself treated as an enemy of the language if I find I have to criticise certain steps taken in the matter. I do believe that great damage is being done to the language by this effort of compelling teachers who do not know the language well enough to teach children who do not know Irish certain subjects through the medium of Irish. Immense harm is being done to general culture and also to the effort of reviving the Irish language itself. It is because I feel that way about this question that I do not like to let an opportunity pass without referring to it. I wish I could induce all who are interested in Irish to voice their views on this question. It is the kernel of the whole subject. If the Department of Education could be induced to abandon their short-sighted effort— this policy that has been put across the Department without anybody knowing what was happening—the gain to the Irish language would be an immense one.
Ná dubhairt an tAire ná deintear é sin? Dubhairt an tAire blian ó shoin ná múineann siad dtrid an Ghaedilg acht nuair a bhionns an Ghaedhilg go maith ag an maighistir agus ag an mic léighinn.
Is mó bealach atá ann chun iochall do chur ar na daoine. The Minister for Education has often proclaimed that no compulsion is put on the schools to force them to adopt this method of teaching subjects through the medium of the Irish language. But everyone who has anything at all to do with the schools, and everyone who meets the teachers up and down the country knows that compulsion is being put on the schools, despite what the Minister says. This compulsion is not always compulsion carried out by means of a platoon of Civic Guards. There are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with butter. The compulsion in this case is rather analogous to choking a cat with butter because it takes the form of holding out an inducement to schools, offering them sums of money which they require badly and then telling them that they will not get these moneys if they do not teach subjects through the medium of the Irish language. It is only yesterday that somebody told me that in an interview with the head of a Dublin school he was told that that school had been compelled in one way or another by the Department of Education to undertake teaching Greek through the medium of Irish. Every parent protested in vain to the head of that school and several of the parents in question were people who were enthusiastic about trying to revive Irish and who regarded this effort to teach Greek through Irish as a destructive method. It is a terrible pity that this question, which is really dealing with educational methods, and not a question of principle, will not be allowed to be examined by educational experts, by people who can go into the question as to how you can do good of any kind by teaching children subjects in a language they cannot understand. What are the limits to which we can go? What are the particular types of schools in which you can hope to do good by providing this kind of teaching? I would not deny that there are cases in which good may be done by teaching subjects through the medium of Irish. There again there is danger of misunderstanding.
These cases are very special cases, I hold. What is happening is that the ordinary children of ordinary parents find themselves very often in the position where they cannot even be taught Irish properly because there is so much attention being paid and so much concentration being devoted to this effort which I regard as entirely irrelevant and practically useless. I know myself —it is my own experience—that you can either send your child to a school where he or she will be taught through the medium of Irish or you send the child to the school where he or she will be taught a little Irish just on the same basis as every other subject, but to find a school where the Irish language will be thoroughly well taught in its own time and where a sufficient amount of time will be given to it is a very different matter. I think that would be the experience of everybody who has children going to school. You can get schools where the general education of the child will be ruined by the attempt of people who do not know the subject they are teaching to teach them that subject through Irish.
I hope I shall not be accused of libelling the teachers. Everybody knows that we have started in a country a long way in arrears. We have a great deal of leeway to make up in the matter of capacity for teaching ordinary subjects in secondary schools. That is not our fault or the fault of the teachers. It is the fault of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. It was true, and unfortunately it is true to-day—it was true in 1922 and it is still true—that our schools in general are practically a generation behind ordinary schools in educated continental countries. That is not our fault. We cannot blame our teachers or our parents for that. It is just a fact that happens to be there and the first thing that we should have done, when we took over the direction of our national education, was to raise the level of our general educational power in the secondary schools and see to it that our teachers were thoroughly trained in the subjects they undertook to teach.
Instead of that, we introduced this wildly enthusiastic scheme for immediately teaching everything through the medium of Irish. We put ourselves at once in an inferior position, for example, to the Six Counties where teachers in secondary schools are compelled to have an honours degree in the subjects which they purport to teach. We have no rules like that in our schools. Still we expect our teachers to teach ordinary subjects successfully and we expect them to teach them through a language which neither they nor the pupils know really well. It seems to me that by that means we shall make no progress at all in our secondary education. The question of primary education is I think different. It is possible to do a certain amount in the primary schools with regard to teaching through the medium of Irish, but in the secondary schools instead of going forward we are going back.
Agus ins an Ollscoil.
The question of a university is an entirely different matter. I know I shall be accused of being supercilious, but I think that before you can lay down the law about university education, you surely ought to have some experience of university education. What I mean is that the university is a place which exists for teaching what it teaches to the highest possible standard attainable. That is its job. It is for imparting a knowledge of particular subjects to the highest attainable standard. Anyone who presumes to criticise a university or to lay down the law about it should know something about how that particular work is done, what it involves, and what it requiries. I know I shall be accused of being supercilious. One of the dangers is that we are a democratic country and that the vast majority of our people were never inside the door of a university and do not know what universities are for. At the same time, universities are absolutely essential to anything like a civilised life in this country. Owing to the fact that we are living under democratic control, there is a constant danger that somebody will come along and start tearing our universities to pieces, such as they are. I do not claim that they are perfect, but at any rate, they are very peculiar, very specialised institutions.
Tá siad an Gallda.
All universities are "Gallda." One of their objects is to keep students in touch with the knowledge, the culture and science of the world and they have to be "Gallda" in doing that. It is quite easy for us to abolish university education in this country if we want to fall into a state of savagery but there can be nothing more dangerous than for a democracy to start interfering with that kind of highly specialised and highly technical work. It is just the same as if the passengers of a ship decided not merely to run the ship but to remake the engines in the course of the voyage. It is hard to put it and it sounds somewhat offensive but it is the truth and there is no way of getting away from it. One of the troubles in a country such as this is the number of people who go butting into education generally without being particularly educated themselves, and without knowing very much of what they are talking about. These things have to be said if we are going to preserve both democracy and education in Ireland.
I feel one of the reasons why this state of affairs goes on so steadily in the Department of Education is that we have applied to education in this country, unfortunately, a most extraordinary form of bureaucracy, a form of control that, I think, our experience should lead us to decide is highly unsuited for educational purposes. I have often regretted that in 1922, in our eagerness to approximate our institutions to British institutions, even something beyond British institutions, the institutions of the French Revolution, we decided it was a bad thing to have boards of primary education and boards of intermediate education, that it would be better to abolish all these boards and that a set of anonymous civil servants should be substituted in control for these boards. I would suggest to the Minister and to the Government that if they could see their way to appoint some sort of an advisory board for education in general, a board of people who are educated themselves, and who have some sort of educational standing in the country and outside of it, to advise the Minister on questions especially like educational policy, they would be taking a great step in advance.
We have seen in recent months an effort on the part of the Department of Education to revise the Intermediate programme. They set about doing it in the most extraordinary way, a way that to my mind would be almost incredible if I had not seen it being done. The Secretary of the Department of Education writes to a number of different people and asks for their opinions about changes in particular programmes like Latin, Greek, French and so on. He gets answers from half a dozen people in each case; long answers, memoranda by those people to whom he writes, and somebody in the Department gets a scissors, cuts all the memoranda and pastes them together again in some other way that suits himself. The people who were written to in the first place because they knew something about it are practically never consulted again. The thing is done in that extraordinarily hole-and-corner fashion because bereaucracy can only work in a bureaucratic way, and because you have not a board of men with a public standing and a public reputation there to look after those questions of curricula and methods of teaching, which are really, to a large extent, matters of policy. You have nobody like that there to do that work, and the result is that you can only carry on the work of the Department by that kind of extraordinary, in-and-out, cat-and-mouse method between the bureaucracy and certain members of the public, who are not known to anybody because they are written to privately.
To my mind it would be well worth considering whether it would not pay the Government and pay the country to establish some sort of sound advisory board. I am not talking now about putting Anglicised people, or anybody of that kind, on such a board. I am talking about a board of educated people with high qualifications in the Irish language—as high qualifications and as many qualifications as you please, so long as it is recognised that they are men of a real educational standard and capable of giving the sort of advice that is wanted. I emphasise this matter because I do think that our education is almost the most important thing in the country, and that it is worth spending a little while on, even if it is not completely relevant to a Bill like this. We are apt to devote so much of our time to matters of taxation and finance and currency, and questions of that kind, that we are rapidly coming to think that our whole lives are concerned with finance and taxation and currency. We forget that what makes a country great, after all; what makes a period in the history of a country memorable; what produces great men in the long run in a country, is not the taxation or currency or finance of the country, but the cultural and educational institutions the country has. There is nothing more important to which to devote our attention.
Ba cheart ár gcultúr feín do bheith againn, i nár dteangain féin.
I am in entire agreement with the Senator—probably more so than any other Senator in the House—on that question, only it would take a long time to go into it, the question of national culture and the necessity for us in this country to have a national culture springing from our own roots and expressed in our own language. I think nobody could be more devoted to that ideal than I am, but that is a matter which has to be approached in a regular, trained, scientific fashion. What I am afraid of is that we are going into this whole question of education at present in a sort of hand-to-mouth way. We have trusted far too much to this anonymous departmental bureaucracy, and, from what I can hear about it, the internal organisation of the Department of Education—especially in regard to the secondary branch—leaves a very great deal to be desired. We go on casually and calmly, leaving, perhaps, the most important interests in the country in the hands of a small body of civil servants. I do not believe there are ten Senators here who could tell me who are the civil servants who are in charge of the Department of Secondary Education at the present moment, what work they do, or what are their qualifications. Yet, they are the people, who, to a very large extent, have the whole future of Ireland in their hands.
There are one or two other things which I wanted to speak about in connection with education, but they are of less importance, perhaps. I notice that the Vocational Education Vote has now grown so much that it is almost as large as the Vote for Secondary Education, and that is a subject on which I could hold forth at great length. I hope that the movement which is in being, I know, to make vocational education a really cultural type of education, and to divorce it from the merely materialistic sort of machine training that vocational education only too often means, will meet with the support of the Ministry and of the Department of Education as a whole.
There are a few other small points to which I should like to refer—at least they are small, perhaps, in comparison with education, but they have their own importance. Perhaps the least of them is the Vote for the Stationery Office, the question of the bureau for the publication of Irish books, and for the production of Government publications generally. I should like to ask the Minister whether he has ever considered, or whether he will now consider, the advisability of trying to find some ordinary expert in the book trade to whom to hand over that office. It takes a long time to find it out, but apparently it is true that civil servants are a body of people with constitutions and mentalities of their own, and it seems that one of the things they cannot do is to run an ordinary shop, because that bookshop for the sale of Irish books is one of the most peculiar and remarkable institutions in the City of Dublin. In the case of any ordinary bookshop you are encouraged to go in and look about and poke into every corner; at least I have never been discouraged from doing it in any bookshop, except one run by a very peculiar person. Normally, you are invited in and allowed to spend as long as you like in the shop, look at anything you like, and make up your own mind. But, when you go into the Civil Service bookshop, if you do not know on the nail the name of the book you want to buy, out you go.
And the number.
You almost have to know the number as well. That was the case for some time; I do not know if there has been a reform since, but the mere fact that you could have a bookshop run on that basis even for a week calls for inquiry.
It is run on a Government subsidy.
The whole thing is run on a Government subsidy. That is how it survives; it could not survive five days without it, but even with the Government subsidy I would suggest that the whole method of running that publication bureau might be gone into and put on a more rational basis.
References were made to the broadcasting service and to the cinema. I am not going to follow Senator MacDermot into his ideological criticism of the film censor. I should like to raise a question which is perhaps larger and more formidable, but still I think it ought to be raised. It is the question whether any Department of the Government has ever thought over this problem of the cinema in Ireland, what we are going to do about it, or whether we are ever going to do anything about it. Is it part of the great new world about which Senator Goulding spoke? Is it part of the revolution in our national mentality that we are going to go on allowing foreign cinema shows to be produced at practically every crossroads in Ireland until we are all turned into victims of Hollywood or Wardour Street? Is there any hope at all that, as a people, we can make a stand against the influence of the foreign cinema? It is not the moral quality of any particular films that I am objecting to. I am not purporting to criticise the film censor, who does his work, within the limits of his powers, remarkably well. I am referring to the whole question as to how long we can have any sort of independent minds at all, as a people, if we allow the cinema to spread amongst us and to become such an obsession with so many of us as it has become? I am speaking now as a person very much addicted to the cinema myself. It has seemed to me for years back that, if we go on with our present system of relying on the cinema to such an extent for public entertainment, and allowing the cinema to spread all over the country, no matter how good a film censor we have we shall inevitably become more and more Americanised— more likely Americanised than Anglicised. We shall change our whole nature under the influence of the cinema.
Surely it is the sort of question about which something should be done. I would suggest to the Minister that he should go into the question as to whether he could not take all the cinema proprietors in Ireland at the present moment, and compel them, by legislation even, to form one single Irish film company, which would be allowed to carry on for the time being as the present cinemas are allowed to carry on, but which would have as part of its functions in the future the production of native Irish films.
We should consider whether the matter is not so important—I believe it is vitally important—that some revolutionary method of that kind will have to be adopted. If we do not take some steps of that sort, we can have no hope at all with regard to the revival of the Irish language, for instance, or even with regard to the idea of trying to keep any spark of native character alive amongst us. We must do something about the cinema.
The question of the radio is a more difficult one still. There again, we are subject, and I am afraid almost inevitably subject, to all kinds of terrible foreign influences. I am not speaking as a person suffering from xenophobia, or hating foreign countries, but I would regard it, and I think we all would, as a terrible loss that through the instrumentality of forces like these our character as a people, such as it is, should be altered, or that we should be reduced to the same dead level as the populations of countries like England and America. That is what is happening to us steadily between the wireless and the cinema. I believe it would be easier to deal with the cinema. But, even in the case of wireless, surely something could be done. Surely it is not necessary for us, for example, to intensify that process that is going on by having these sponsored programmes every night at the end of our own wireless programme. For an hour every night—one of the best hours, I believe, from the listening point of view—we have a programme put on which is up to the highest standard of any English or American music-hall programme.
It is very popular.
Very popular— that is the trouble. Probably, if you had not them, the listeners would turn to one of those other programmes, like Radio Normandie or Radio Lyons, or some other place, where they can get jazz and crooning and swing music. Even though that is so, I do not see why it should be necessary for our broadcasting system to provide that sort of thing deliberately, even though we do make money out of it. Indeed, I am inclined to regard it in its own way as rather a national disgrace that we do make money out of the sponsored programmes and use the money on the whole for such very poor ends, because I agree with Senator Baxter that, on the whole, our wireless system, although it has great merits in many ways, does not shine in comparison with the wireless programmes of other countries.
I think we could do a great deal more to improve the standard. I think, in regard to the wireless above all things, that there is one axiom we should always keep before our minds: that for us, in our situation, only the very best pays. It is not worth while in Ireland to have a wireless station at all if we do not make it our object to produce always the very best which can be produced. It is the only way in which we can compete with foreign stations.
I believe, as Senator Baxter stated, that the great agency which prevents us from getting the very best is probably the fact that our standard of payment for artistes in this country, as compared with the standard that is applied in Belfast, for instance, or in England, is a joke. I suppose you get paid seven, eight, or ten times as much, even for an ordinary quarter-hour talk on the wireless in London, as you get here, and the rates that apply in London apply also, of course, beyond the Border, in Belfast, with the result that the people in the Six Counties get far better value, I believe, on the whole from the wireless than we do. It is a difficult subject to speak very much about and, of course, I do not want at all to be taken as criticising the efforts of the present Director of Broadcasting, because I think he does his very best under the most difficult circumstances and against difficulties which, to a large extent, have been made for him by the Department of Finance; because the Department of Finance insists, I understand, on holding by far the greater proportion of the revenue made out of broadcasting.
That is quite untrue.
I have been told that. Does it spend all the revenue it gets from broadcasting on the service?
It does not; but reasonable propositions have not been put up to us.
That means, of course, that the Department of Finance is the broadcasting station. When the Minister says that reasonable propositions have not been put up to him, he means that officials of the Department of Finance have not been satisfied as to the literary and artistic quality of programmes.
Is the Senator satisfied?
I would not mind suggesting that I probably would be better able to judge than a great many of the Minister's officials.
I am not suggesting that; I am asking, has the Senator been satisfied?
I suggest that the Senator should proceed more on general lines.
We are talking about propositions.
I must put it to you, Sir, that really I cannot, and do not propose to, undertake to defend either the broadcasting service or anything else. It appears to me that a number of matters touched upon by the Senator could very properly have been raised by way of motion and there might be more use in the discussion. The very interesting views that the Senator has expressed with regard to education might much more satisfactorily be dealt with if the Minister for Education had been here, and I feel that the discussion would have been of much more use to the State and to the nation. If we are going to continue on these lines, it is impossible for me to deal with them.
On a previous occasion, the Chair requested that Senators who wished to raise matters, for which the Minister for Finance is not directly responsible; either on a Central Fund Bill or an Appropriation Bill, should give notice to the Clerk of the Seanad in advance so that the Minister concerned might be notified. Senator Tierney is, of course, aware of that.
I am sorry, Sir. Probably I am taking up too much of the time of the House, and I feel rather reluctant to go on at all. The Minister is aiming at easy prey at this stage. I would like, however, to insist that general remarks about education are not so difficult that they cannot be apprehended and discussed by the Minister. If the Seanad can discuss this subject, either by way of motion or otherwise, I think the Minister for Finance might profitably take part in it also. I have considered the matter of putting down a motion, but the difficulty is that the motion confines you to one particular proposal. Later on, however, I hope to put down a motion.
The Senator is not so lacking in ingenuity or subtlety that he could not draft a motion which would enable him to bring in most things, even the radio.
I am not talking about education now. I am talking about a matter which I think comes directly under the Minister's own Department, and that is the wireless service.
The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs is responsible for the wireless service.
He is only a subordinate of the Minister.
No, it is a separate Department.
I beg your pardon. I thought he was. At the same time, the Minister rather let the cat out of the bag when he says that proposals had not been put up to him. That just raises the point I made here before about the way in which the Department of Finance exercises control over all these services. However, I do not propose to take up the time of the House by going into these matters any more fully. I think I have said all I wanted to say about all these subjects.
The annual discussion of the Appropriation Bill, both in the Dáil and the Seanad, gives an occasion for national stocktaking; and if, as the trend of the present discussion seems to indicate, the balance sheet presented to us is not too cheerful, perhaps good will come of it, if it stirs us up to make a more careful examination, with a view to detecting and checking the most exhausting and wasteful leakages, and improving and tightening up our administration of the national resources. I think, therefore, that the speech of Senator Tierney is extremely useful, because the question of education in this country, as in other countries, is fundamental. He said that what makes the quality of a period is its culture. I think it is the people who make the quality of a period, and that the people are the most valuable national assets we have—a fact that does not seem to have impressed itself on some of the economists whose voices are heard most frequently in this House. For that reason I would like to confine my remarks to the Votes dealing with employment and unemployment schemes. The worst strain on our essential riches is caused by the steady deterioration of an enormous number of our young people through unemployment. Bound up with unemployment, and partly responsible for it, is a defective and out-of-date system of education which, with its almost total neglect of manual and practical training, and its ignoring of the requirements of life in this country, tends to produce a large number of unemployed, because they are unfortunately deprived of the training which would make them employable.
Overstepping all the evils that menace us at the present time, and to which this debate has drawn attention, is the threat of war, with its unfortunate repercussions on the Budget—in a costly defence programme, an added shilling on income tax, and the condition of agriculture, about which Senators have been consistently lugubrious—is the deplorable extent of unemployment, with its demon brood of human misery, of sickness of soul and body, and of mental, physical and moral deterioration of the race. It is so heart-breaking, and the remedy is so hard to find, that we all have a tendency to try the Nelson touch on it, to apply the blind eye to the telescope focussed on it, and if the evil thing hits us even in that blind eye, to take refuge in a formula, and say that we are no worse off than other countries, that every other democratic country has its unemployment problem. I think that is a defeatist attitude. If we yield to it, and if democracy perishes in this country, as it has done in others, it will be largely due to our surrender to it. I have no remedy for it. If I had, it would not be a problem at all. If a cure could be found as easily as a conjuror seems to take a rabbit from a hat, unemployment would hardly be a problem at all or, at least, would not have grown to such tragic proportions.
But one thing we can do, and must do, we must face up to it. We must realise that if this nation is to be saved from its disastrous consequences, we must all come together and work hard to try to find a solution. The Government cannot do it alone. Nor can the Oireachtas. It is a matter for Church and State to come together on, to try to find a remedy and, in seeking that remedy, they must have the loyal help of every element of the community, trade unions, employers' federations, vocational and charitable organisations. All must be mobilised in an attempt to devise some way of dealing with what is in effect a national emergency. The Government and the Oireachtas must give the lead. The people of this country are being steadily divided on new and more sinister class lines, and while the conditions of those on one side of the line—those who are happy enough to have work to do—are being consistently and quite properly improved by our social legislation, the workless are drifting into ever deeper misery, into "the legions of the lost men."
One of the most impressive speeches I ever listened to in this House was made by Senator Campbell, in speaking of the impact of unemployment on the lives of the people. He told us something of what he had learned as a workers' representative in the Court of Referees and as a visiting justice in Mountjoy Prison. I wish his speech could have been broadcast to the nation. I was particularly struck by what the Senator said, when recalling his official visits to Mountjoy, "of the terrible ravages unemployment has wrought on people, particularly young people who have never been in industry." He had in mind, he told us, young fellows who had never done a day's work, and, as far as one can see, will never do a day's work. Work is a human need, as well as a condition of human progress and preservation. Their tremendous power and will to work were, after their Faith, the very best things our Irish people salved from centuries of oppression. But their enormous will to work, this grand ennobling pride in work, this competence in work, and this habit of work, which enabled our forefathers to hold on like grim death to their own land, by eking out a livelihood on the mountain-sides to which they had been banished is, under our own eyes, being lost. How can young fellows who never have been given a chance to work, or to fill their empty aimless lives with the satisfaction that comes from work well done, keep alive the will to work or even the faculty to work?
I hope the Seanad will impress on the Government the extreme urgency of this question, the tragic problem of unemployment, and urge them to face what is, in effect, a state of national emergency, and to rally the nation's best thinkers preparatory to mobilising all the nation's forces against it. I suggest that if war is averted Senators, whose means permit them to go abroad, could do very useful work by making a study of what other countries have done to deal with unemployment. I have in mind a nation like Holland. What made me think of Holland was a recent broadcast which told of the vast land reclamation schemes on which Holland had put her unemployed. An aspect which made a great impression on me concerned the thousands of fruitful acres that have been added to the surface of Holland. Hardly any machinery was used. The most perfect machine in the world, that which we are allowing to rot for want of use—the human body— is given its full value in the Dutch schemes. We have much to learn from that example. If Senators went abroad and studied what is being done in other democratic countries to deal with unemployment, they might bring back lessons that would be of very great advantage here.
There has been considerable discussion on this Bill. I could take every item in the Schedule and criticise it, because I think in every Department there is waste of money. I think a great deal of the money we are spending is definitely harmful, and that a great deal of money that is being spent, and that could be spent to advantage, is leaving us in a worse position. The fact that we have to support so many unemployed out of the production of the working people is driving more people out of employment. Strictly speaking, what we ought to criticise the Minister for is the total amount we are called to provide in the Appropriation Bill. I think the Minister should protest against the imposition of such a cost on the people.
The truth is that each Minister comes with his own proposals. Each one of these proposals might be excellent, but the total effect of them would be disastrous for this country. That is not the position, however, because a great deal of the expenditure incurred by the various Departments is not only wasteful, but definitely harmful.
In this debate I find there is a constant idea of more butting-in by the Government. What I want is less of that. Senator McGinley seems to want the Government to take a person by the scruff of the neck and say to him: "You will have to be nationally cultured and nothing else." I have some sympathy with the Senator, but only to a certain extent. On the other hand, Senator MacDermot wants a big propaganda campaign for the purpose of enlightening public opinion. He wants to give us nice films showing something of the horrors in Germany and not giving us any films that might be Spanish pro-Nationalist in char- acter. In every country the cost of government tends constantly to go up. When you are appealing to the public for support you have to say: "Vote for us and we will do this, that and the other thing." I would like to see a Party here prepared to say: "Vote for us and we are not going to do anything." The bulk of the harm in the modern world comes from the fact that the Government undertakes to do everybody's job.
Senator MacDermot refers to housing. A couple of years ago there was a housing strike here, and after that the cost of building went up by 25 per cent. Even before the strike took place here the cost of building was higher than in England, and was enormously higher than in Italy. In that industry there were employers and workers trying to make money. They had a row and how did they settle it? They said: "We will make up our losses and recoup ourselves out of the unfortunate consuming public." They were able to do that because it is assumed in this country that it is the Government's job to build the houses and rent them to people at uneconomic rents. The taxpayers here are paying 25 per cent. more towards building than they were paying before the strike. Neither the employers nor the workers are going to lose. The persons who will lose are the unfortunate taxpayers. You cannot say, "You are going to produce houses at a reasonable price or we will not buy your goods." The position is that you have the houses being built at an increased cost and being occupied. What I object to is this Government butting in, trying to run people's lives for them. What is the result of it all? The result is a constant increase in expenditure.
The question of education has been referred to. What comes out? Senator McGinley wants national culture rammed down the necks of the people, whether they want it or not. Senator Tierney followed from the question of education to the problem of the cinemas. We all agree that the people here are greater cinema-goers than the people in England. For the last 15 or 17 years we have had a national educational policy and it is the ambition of the present Minister for Education to see that the new generation has a spoken knowledge of Irish. I do not think that is an educational policy. If you went to the most backward parts of Albania you will probably find that the people of Albania have a spoken knowledge of Albanian. I think the word "culture" should only apply when you get beyond that. We have had 17 years of a definite educational policy here and at the end of that time we have Senator Tierney asking that drastic machinery be used to prevent people visiting the cinemas they want to visit. Perhaps there should be a cartel of cinemas and that cartel, running a sort of monopoly, should be forced to produce a certain number of Irish movies?
What is the experience with regard to Irish movies? We all know it, if we only have the courage to face up to it. Our experience is that when you produce a national cultural film here, nobody goes to it. You can, if you like, form your cartel and insist that money is thrown away on producing the films that Senator Tierney or Senator MacDermot believes would have a cultural or an ideological effect on the people, but you will find that the people will not go to see those films. The point is that you spend money trying to make the people nationally culture-conscious and, to a greater extent now than before you commenced your programme, the people are going to the ordinary Hollywood movies.
There is a proposal to spend more money on wireless in this country, for the purpose, I suppose, of spreading culture. I do not agree with that. I think that even if you double the emoluments you give to the wireless performers, or talkers, you are just going to have the same people giving the same stuff. If you try to give the people something on the lines of the marvellous educational programme promoted by the bureaucrats in the Education Department, some fine, elevating, high-brow programmes, you will find that they switch the wireless to some outside station. The fact is that you cannot force people to be otherwise than they want to be. All you can do is to endeavour to create a certain condition which will make it easier for those things that are good to appeal to the people in this country, and have a slight deterrent effect on those things that are evil. The Government should not think that it is a wise course to ram things down people's throats in the style of "You will have to be cultured and be damned to you".
All this comes back to the fact that the members of this Government have been going around the country saying, "Vote for us and the baby will not get measles; vote for us and you will have everything you dream of; vote for us and you will have much more money". What does it all come to? In the end the country produces less. The real producers, the farmers, are producing less and are getting less for their labour. The cost of government goes up enormously and, so far as culture is concerned, the movies are making bigger profits than ever.
Let me get to the point. So far as the Minister for Finance is concerned, I do not expect him to argue every detail of every Vote. This is what he should do. Let him go to the Cabinet and say: "The amount of money this country can afford for your performances during the next year is £x and I do not care tuppence how you spend it or divide it. I am not going to be put in the position of a poor, innocent lamb, sent to the Seanad to stand over a lot of things I know I should not stand over." Think of the effect on the poor man's soul! He has to come here and to be completely dishonest when he is pretending to defend these things.
There are many people who come along and say: "Why do not the Government do this or that?" The Government should try to create a condition here where a man who works will know that he will get the value of his work, where every man will be able to work and get value for the work he does, and where a man who does not work is not to get anything. They should try to create the position where the people who work will, out of charity for their fellow-countrymen, see that they get the means of living, and where the Government, in the cultural sphere, will try, by the most gentle and imperceptible ways, to make it easier for the desirable features to get a footing in the country and put a slight hindrance in the way of the things that we think disastrous.
One Senator went on to talk of the Government indulging in a system of propaganda. We have a sort of propaganda issuing from the President's Department and from the President's speeches—to my mind, an undignified thing. There is a sort of international propaganda going on. We have people lecturing in England about Partition. I think the less you say about Partition the better. If you think you are doing good by going to England or to America and spreading propaganda about things, you are not going to do anything of the sort. Every propagandist does harm. You have a case in point in Germany, where propaganda has been carried on extensively. Has it had any useful effect? Not at all. The British people are trying to spread propaganda throughout Germany and we are now thinking of going around the world on a propaganda tour.
Senator MacDermot wants some cultural films produced here. I want some pro-Nationalist films from Spain. Some other person may want something else. I do not think the Government have any right to ram Senator MacDermot's ideas and the results of his judgment—which I think is a very poor judgement—down other people's throats. He wants to have the Government use machinery to ram his opinions down my neck and my children's necks. My children would not stand for it. On the other hand, I do not see why Senator MacDermot's children should have the Government machine operating in such a way as to make them think that I am right and that their father is wrong.
Let us go to the point. The less money that is spent by the Government in this country, the better for the country. You can judge the benefit of the Government's policy by the small amount it spends, and every extra £1,000,000 that it spends means that it is only doing more harm in the country, culturally, economically and in every other way. Therefore, I say that the Minister for Finance should not allow himself to be put into the position of a poor innocent man coming here and, having to stand over certain things that are done, thereby prejudicing his own soul. I feel very sorry for him when he is forced into that position, and I should like him to have a little more backbone—or, at least, I should not say that, because I know that the Minister has plenty of backbone, but I should like him to feel that, when he is fighting these Ministers, for Industry and Commerce and so on, who have done an enormous amount of harm in this country, it would be better to vote against the whole Vote for Industry and Commerce because, in weighing up the good that has been done as against the bad, it will be found that the bad will far out-weigh the good, and I think it would be found that the country would gain if the whole Department were done away with. The same applies to the Land Commission, because the land that was to be divided has been divided already, but still we have the bee in our bonnet that the landless men must be provided with land, and that land must be taken off other people in order to give it to them. Therefore, let us all come together and say that we are not going to criticise the Government for not doing this or for not doing that, but for spending money and for the harm that they do by the things that are brought about by reason of the money they spend.
I do not know how to reply to the points that have been raised in this debate. I should like, however, to correct the wrong impression under which Senator Tierney seemed to be labouring as to what was implied by collective responsibility, when he suggested that he did not like this specialisation among Ministers and that any Minister who came here ought to be prepared, if necessary, to answer for the Department of another Minister. As I can see it, Ministers are definitely compelled, if not by the Constitution, at least by the Ministers and Secretaries Act, to specialise in the different Departments of State which are specially allocated to them, and they are supposed to be prepared to deal with those Departments, or any matter concerned with their respective Departments, at any moment that they may be called upon to do so by the Oireachtas. We have, of course, the collective responsibility that Ministers have for the general policy of the Government, but I think that that merely means this: that if an individual is asked to serve as a Minister in a Government, and if he agrees to do so, his faith and trust in his colleagues is such that he is prepared to accept public responsibility for their actions, but not necessarily that he is prepared to defend, in detail, that policy, or indeed, to defend in detail the administration of any Government Department. I think that, if we had that clearly appreciated, when a Bill like this came before the Oireachtas, perhaps the discussion upon the Second Reading of the Bill might be more fruitful and valuable.
It is merely because time is so valuable to the Seanad and the Oireachtas generally, and in order that it should not be wasted, that I have ventured to say these things here this evening. For instance, we had a number of interesting speeches—one from Senator Baxter, one from Senator MacGinley, and another from Senator Tierney—on education. Well, it is quite obvious that I cannot possibly go into any question of detail in that connection, and yet the whole value of that discussion would be that it should be a detailed discussion and that the application of principles, whether good or bad, should be exemplified here by examples and clear, specific cases of the good or ill that has been done. In regard to some of the statements that were made by Senator Tierney, the issue might, perhaps, arise at once as to what were the facts in the case, and I certainly could not deal with those. All I can undertake here is that I shall bring to the notice of the Minister for Education the speeches that have been made to-day in the Seanad on that matter, and that I shall certainly do.
Now, with regard to the points which were raised by those Senators who were good enough to send me notice of their intention to raise the points, perhaps I should say something before I sit down.
On the question of war risk insurance, although I understand that it does not come properly within the ambit of this debate because there is no provision for such a service in the Appropriation Bill, I should say that the matter has been engaging the attention of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and I understand that the matter of marine risks insurance is also receiving his attention and that he may, perhaps, be able to formulate a scheme in due course. The other aspect of the matter, which was referred to by Senator Sir John Keane, that of the insurance of private property, is a very much more difficult matter. I understand that the position in Great Britain, for instance, where the matter would seem to be a much more urgent one, is that they have only gone to the length that, at the end of a war, if such a catastrophe should befall, they promise to consider what can be done in regard to it. I am afraid that, with our limited resources, and speaking as Minister for Finance, I should not like to see our Government committing itself to a more forward policy than that.
As to the question raised by Senator Counihan about the delay in the clearance of goods, that may be due to a number of causes. It may be due to the inexperience, perhaps, of the importer. If the importer is relying on a clearing agent, the delay may be due to the dilatory methods of the agent and to the particular way in which the agent looks after that particular customer's business with the Revenue officers. However, if the Senator has any specific cases of delay in mind, I shall be only too grateful if he will give me the particulars and I shall endeavour to see what was the cause of the delay and, if the fault lies with the customs officers, to ensure that unreasonable delays do not take place in future. I know that at the beginning, when the new tariff policy was being introduced, a great many delays did take place. That was due to a shortage of staff and, as I have said, to the inexperience of the importers, but I was under the impression that these matters had now very largely adjusted themselves and that clearance through the customs was proceeding normally and as expeditiously as possible in the circumstances.
Senator D. L. Robinson directed my attention to the question of the payment made to forestry labourers, and the practice which prevails in the forestry branch of paying forestry labourers half a day's wages when they turn up for work and are not able to do anything because of the inclement conditions of the weather. I shall draw the attention of the Minister for Lands to the aspect of the matter which Senator Robinson mentioned, and I presume that the Minister will take notice of it and see whether it is possible to accede to the Senator's point of view.
Senator Baxter again has to listen to a very unfavourable response from the Minister for Finance because Senator Baxter on the previous Bill was blaming the Minister for Finance because he did not try to keep a grip on the expenditure of the State.
I never said that.
If the Senator has not said that, he has told us how the country has been groaning beneath the weight of taxation.
That is true.
If so, why ask me to increase the weight of taxation? It is the case that we get, I think, £70,000 in licence fees from the holders of wireless licences and spend about £90,000 altogether on the service. We might spend more if it could justifiably be spent. If it were agreed between the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and myself that better programmes could be given if only more money were provided, it could be spent, but if we did spend that little more we would have to make good that increased spending by increasing taxation. I do not think that would appeal to the Senator. It is always possible, as Senator Fitzgerald has pointed out, to spend more money on the Government services, but it is not possible to spend more money and reduce taxation at the same time or, in most cases, to spend more money and refrain from increasing taxation.
Senator MacDermot wanted to know whether we were taking any steps to reduce housing costs. In regard to that, I can only point to the fact that a commission has been set up to enquire into every aspect of the housing problem in Dublin and one of the matters to which this commission is directed in the terms of reference is this question of seeing whether the costs cannot be reduced. What the recommendations of the commission and their experts are going to be I cannot at this moment say.
With regard to film censorship, I will direct the attention of the Minister for Justice to that question.
Do not.
I shall because it is implied that the censor, whether on his own initiative or acting under direction, has exceeded his statutory powers. If that were the case I take it that any person who was interested in films has a remedy against the censor. The courts are there and the law is there and it is up to them to interpret it.
Senator Tierney mentioned the Stationery Office and the dilatory and unsatisfactory business-methods of the sales office. That comes within my Department. If the Senator will give me particulars of some of the instances of the unbusinesslike reception which customers meet when they go into the sales office, I will be only too glad to see if that cannot be remedied.
I could say a good deal about the cinema and the radio but I do not think that my remarks would be very fruitful or carry conviction to Senator Tierney. I do know that an interDepartmental Committee has been sitting to examine this question of the cinema to see whether anything could be done to develop an Irish cinema industry or whether, perhaps, some measures might be taken to reduce, if that were possible, what some people regard as the baneful effect of the cinema upon our Irish life. I take a rather broad and liberal view in these matters and I am not so certain that we are so immune from original sin or that we live in such a state of pristine innocence, that the cinema can do us a great deal of harm. It is difficult to see how we can confine ourselves in this island in a sort of water-tight compartment, shut off from the rest of the world. Some of our children have to go abroad; some of us go abroad on occasions ourselves and perhaps it is just as well that we should make some acquaintance, even if it is only on the cinema screen, with the sort of glamorous and dangerous temptations to which we may be subjected when we go abroad so that, being forewarned, we may avoid them. I think it would be far worse if we were to go out like young lambs to the slaughter and that this native virtue of ours should leave us an easy prey to the first wolf who might beset our path.
Again, with regard to the radio, my views, I am afraid, are very much like those of Senator Fitzgerald. I cannot see how we can compel people to listen just to the sort of programmes we want. I do not think there is anything very demoralising in listening to swing music or jazz tunes. I do not listen to them usually, but there are people who take a little innocent amusement in doing so, and, if they stay at home by their own fireside with a book and the radio happens to be playing something like "You are the Cream in My Coffee" I do not think it is going to do them very much harm. Probably somebody else will come into the house and switch on to another programme and there will be much less domestic harmony than if the person who bought the radio were allowed to listen to the sort of music he liked best. I should very much object if anybody came in and started twiddling the knob of my radio if I were listening either to a sponsored programme from Athlone or to one of the German stations which, apparently, transmit the sort of music which appeals to Senator Tierney but which might not appeal to nine out of ten Irishmen in this country, who are just as well entitled to their tastes and to have their wishes catered for as Senator Tierney.
Senator Crosbie raised a question about the position of the Ulster King at Arms. The Ulster King at Arms is not a charge on the revenue of the State and I do not think the question of his position arises under this Bill. The Senator has raised a point about whether the records of the office would be retained in this country should the office be discontinued. That is a matter which would be necessarily one for negotiation between the Governments concerned. I do not know what the position would be in relation to the records. I think they probably belong to us, and I do not think there would be any question about their being retained in this country if the office were being discontinued.
With regard to the question of the amount which is being appropriated in the Bill for the Transport and Meteorological Services, £300 is for payments in respect of certain steamer services connecting the Aran Islands with the mainland; £5,500 is being provided for the personnel of the several airports, and £40,150 is being provided for the subsidisation of air services; the balance of £20,000 odd is being provided for meteorological services.
Senator Crosbie also asked me what right a customs officer had vis-a-vis a citizen crossing our frontiers and coming into the country. He has the right, of course, to ask the citizen to declare whether he has or has not any dutiable goods in his possession. I think if the citizen declared that he had none and that the officer had reason to doubt that declaration he would probably have the right to search the citizen. If the citizen has dutiable goods and makes a declaration to that effect, I do not think that the officer is bound to give change if he has not got it. It may sometimes happen that he has not got it and, I think, if a sum in excess of the actual duty collectible in respect of the goods which were being imported were tendered to him he would probably as a matter of mere courtesy provide the necessary change, but I think the law is that the amount of duty must be tendered with the goods. So that the customs officer would probably be within his rights—I speak subject to correction—if he were not in a position to return the change to the citizen, in refusing to accept a £1 note if that were in excess of the duty payable upon the goods.
The Senator also asked me to inform the House whether the Taoiseach intends to go to the World Fair in New York at his own expense or at the expense of the citizens. I think the Senator is under a complete misapprehension as to the purpose for which the Taoiseach is going to the United States of America. He has been invited to visit America by the President of the Republic of the United States. He has been invited to go there, not in his personal capacity as an individual, but in his official capacity as head of our Government. A great honour has been done to the Government, I think, by the President of the United States, and it would be most discourteous for the Taoiseach, if he could possibly accept the invitation, to decline it. If he goes, he goes there in his public capacity, and there is no reason why he should go there at his own expense. I fear that Senator Crosbie must have overlooked the rather unworthy implication which was contained in his question.
Senator MacDermot asked me to let the House know what steps the Government were taking to deal with any emergency which would be occasioned by the outbreak of a general European war. I can say in regard to that matter that for over a year a committee of the heads of the Departments concerned has been sitting. This committee is presided over by the Taoiseach. The various ways in which such an outbreak would react upon our economic and industrial situation here have been very carefully considered, and such measures as can be concerted in advance have been, at least, outlined and have been determined upon.
May I interrupt the Minister to ask one question? Have stocks of petrol been laid in?
Every attempt has been made to endeavour to build up stocks of petrol, but my information is that the results in regard to that particular commodity have not been so satisfactory as was hoped. However, we have been endeavouring to induce traders to lay in supplies of what are essential commodities. Some of them have been able to do that: others have been less willing, or perhaps their capacity to lay up stocks has not been as great.
I mentioned petrol in particular, because it does strike one sometimes as rash when one sees an enormous number of new buses being put into commission and trams removed at such a time as this.
Again, that is not the sort of question upon which I could express an opinion that would be worth while, but I am perfectly certain that it is a matter that is engaging the attention of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. It is not to be assumed that if a war broke out, and that public transport here were dependent upon electricity as a motive power, that there would be any more electricity available for traction purposes than petrol, because the fact of the matter is that there has been an enormous expansion in the demand for electricity for all purposes here within the past two or three years. It has been going up by leaps and bounds and there is just the same difficulty in getting electrical plant—motors and all the rest—as there is likely to be in getting petrol, so that from the point of view of maintaining public transport in the City of Dublin, I think that on the whole—I am giving my own personal opinion for what it is worth now —there is very little to choose between the two things. I think that is all I have to say.
Question put and agreed to.