Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 20 Dec 1950

Vol. 39 No. 4

Supplies and Services (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1946 (Continuance and Amendment) Bill, 1950—Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Liam Ó Buachalla

I think that just before I moved the Adjournment last night I had been dealing with Section 3 of the Bill and the reasons, why, because of this section, the Bill has been made the target of so much criticism. I had been dealing with the question of labour unrest and I had expressed the hope that the sanest of counsels would prevail when the whole question of wage adjustment, prices and profits had been investigated. Is it too much to ask of the acting Minister that we should be given some idea of Government policy in regard to this question of wages and their adjustment? The public, I pointed out last night, is not alone suspicious, as Senator O'Brien said, but the public is disgusted at the conduct of the present Government. As soon as a problem arises a commission or committee is established or a new board is appointed. The country has suffered and individuals have suffered severely because of Government policy in regard to certain industries. Emigration got a new fillip on the advent of the Coalition.

The Government has failed, and failed miserably, to deal with this question of transport. Just 12 months ago we were handed the Milne Report. On the release of that report, a campaign of vilification was launched against the then management of Córas Iompair Éireann. The Government declared that it had a way of solving the transport problems of the country. What has happened? Transport charges have gone up. Transport charges affect everybody in the country. They affect the industrialists, the merchant, the trader and the worker. They affect the housewife; they affect school-going children. Transport costs have gone up and certainly transport services have not been improved. The company is faced with heavy losses and the public is still left to shiver on the quays for the want of adequate shelter.

To-day we are on the brink of a transport crisis; we are actually into that crisis. I do not know how many men have gone on strike but I understand there is something like 7,000 out. The first thing we notice about it is that it is not a lightning strike. We may thank God for that. The issues involved in this strike have been known, it appears, for a considerable time. Trouble has been brewing for a long time. When the campaign for the reorganisation of the transport system of the country was launched, we were assured that the old board was antagonistic to the interests of the workers, that it was because of that antagonism, because of the indifference of the then management to the workers, that there was so much unrest amongst the servants of the company. Some of the people, one at least a member of this House, who were most vocal on that occasion and who denounced the old board for its indifference to the interests of the workers have since been pitchforked into directorships of Córas Iompair Éireann. Nevertheless, the country is now plunged into this crisis.

There is no use in the Minister saying that Córas Iompair Éireann is no longer the responsibility of the Department of Industry and Commerce. What is the policy of the Board of Córas Iompair Éireann with regard to labour? What is the Government's policy with regard to labour? I would like to know to what extent it is differing from the policy of the board that has been sent down and replaced by the nominees of the Minister for Industry and Commerce.

I realise the gravity of the situation and I regret, as does everybody in this House, that strike action has been taken. These men must feel some grave sense of injustice or they would never, to the extent that they have, have taken the action they have taken, particularly at the present time. How that difficulty is going to be resolved, I do not know, but I think it is the duty of the Minister, in view of the gravity of the situation, to indicate what steps the Government feel they ought to take to end this deadlock.

Senator O'Brien, Senator Douglas and Senator Baxter held forth last night on the seriousness of the situation that is developing out of this dissatisfaction over wages. The House fully realises the gravity of the situation, but it is very little the House can do. Might I make this suggestion to Senator Douglas and to Senator O'Brien and, if I might throw in Senator Baxter for good measure, that they might approach their colleagues in the Coalition who happen to be paid organisers in the union involved in this dispute, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and the bunch with him who were formerly known as National Labour, and ask them to use their influence with the members of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union who are now on strike. These paid organisers, persuasive gentlemen as they are, ought to be able to convince the workers that the cost of living has not gone up and that the conditions offered them by the management of Córas Iompair Éireann are conditions that they ought to accept without question.

Will the Minister appoint an advisory board under this Bill to inquire into the conduct of the management of Córas Iompair Éireann in introducing diesel traction on to the rails? We were told of the inadvisability of such a step. We know the serious view the Minister took of it and we know how the Minister in that view with regard to diesel traction was supported by front benchers on the other side and by back benchers, by benchers to the right and by benchers to the left, on that matter. I understand that the directors of Córas Iompair Éireann now approach their offices holding their noses in order to avoid the smell that is arising from the pollution resulting from the placing of a diesel on the tracks of their company. Someone suggested last night that it was all a mistake, that that engine is a concoction of Senator Quirke on the part of Fianna Fáil and while the directors were out enjoying their elevenses he stole in and placed it on the rails.

Senator Quirke denies that; Senator Quirke's explanation is that it was Dada Christmas, as the children call him, who placed it there as a Christmas gift for the Minister for Industry and Commerce, that he might take the officials of the transport section of his Department and the other sections who now have nothing to do in view of all the committees that have been set up, for joy rides in order to pass all the time they now have on their hands. Will an advisory body be set up to investigate the conduct of Córas Iompair Éireann in that regard?

No wonder people are suspicious; no wonder people are critical of the Minister and critical of this Bill. When a problem arises we get a new committee or a new commission. Here is just one other type of committee or commission, the type provided for in Section 3 of this Bill. The Minister will, I hope, indicate to us what his policy is with regard to labour unrest in general and in regard to the unrest in the transport services in particular.

The Minister, in his opening address, dealt with the troubles that have developed in consequence of devaluation and of the Korean war. He seems to think that a good deal of our troubles have developed because of devaluation, and he is right in that. The only thing I regret is that when the Government were warned, as they were warned from these benches, of the possibility of the £ slumping and of the necessity to take measures in time, they did not heed our advice—instead, they sneered at us.

You will remember that on the occasion when the grave statements denouncing devaluation were made in Britain, the members of the Government were out somewhere gorging themselves at a big dinner. No wonder the public feels dissatisfied.

The Minister has talked of the effects of the Korean war. There are Senators in this House who will remember when in the summer of this year we, on these benches, drew the attention of the Government to the grave international situation that was developing. There are Senators in this House who guffawed at our mention of the possibility of war and it was suggested actually from the front bench on the other side that by our adverting to the possibility of war we were merely engaging in a political stunt and that, in fact—the words were used—"we were playing the communist game." A week later the Seanad met, and by the time the Seanad had met war had broken out.

Senator Baxter last night asked Senator Quirke did he think there would be war. Senator Baxter has not yet realised that there is war in many parts of the world. There is a war in Korea. There is war in Malaya. There is war in Tibet and there is war in Indo-China. When he discovered there was a war in Korea he asked whether Senator Quirke was going to go out to it. Now that Senator Baxter has discovered that there is a war in Korea, I have no doubt that himself and the Minister for Agriculture will lose no time in running for their woollies and their claymores and hie themselves off to play their part in that war. We warned of the dangers that were threatening and the response to our warnings consisted of jeering and little-making. We are now paying the price. Let us hope that we will not have to pay a heavier one.

May I take this opportunity to protest once more against Senator Baxter's conduct in this House? He accused Senator Quirke last night of failure to attend to his public duties as far as membership of the Oireachtas is concerned. The House has met three times in this Session, that is to say, since the Summer Recess. Senator Quirke, to my knowledge, has attended on each occasion. Regarding the recording of attendances of members at Sessions of the Seanad, I suggest that if whatever register is kept is examined it will be found that Senator Quirke's attendance in the Seanad is at least as good as that of Senator Baxter, and I think if Senator Baxter has not been here on occasions, he had good reasons. He has been acting for some time as International Monetary Adviser to the nations of the world and because of that he has found it necessary to go on the Continent on occasions. We can excuse his absence while he is engaged on such important work, but while he was absent Senator Quirke was in the Seanad attending to his public duties. Senator Quirke is a man who carries a good deal of responsibility. He is Mayor of Clonmel, the duties of which must call for a considerable amount of his time. He has wide business interests. He is a practising farmer and horse breeder. He takes a prominent part in the political life of this country and, considering all his responsibility, there are few men in this House who attend to their duties as members of the Oireachtas as well as does Senator Quirke.

The cost of living has been a trouble to the people not since August but for a considerable time. The trade unions have been protesting continuously for the last three years, demanding controls and adjustments of prices and wages. Housewives, as individuals and through certain organisations, have been protesting that costs have been mounting against them. Senator Hawkins last night gave a list of commodities the prices of which have risen and which enter very largely into the budgets of working people. I agree that where there is a grown-up family the shoe does not pinch too severely. Where the family have grown into young men and women and these young men and women are out earning, then the burden is not so irksome, but we must remember the case of the men and women with young families and for them, in particular, the last year or two have been crucifixion, if ever there was a crucifixion in the sense in which that word is used so often by the Tánaiste of the present Government. No doubt, statistics will be advanced to prove to these people that they are wrong just as, I am sure, statistics will be produced to prove to us that the diesel has not made its appearance on the rails of Córas Iompair Éireann: that we are suffering from some illusion or another: that it is merely what we call a trucal sidhe. We have had something in the nature of a statistics surplus let loose. Old-time top liners in the circus should include Mr. De Blacam, who proved to us statistically that emigration ceased in 1948 on the advent of the Coalition.

An Cathaoirleach

Do not mention names unless you can give quotations.

Liam Ó Buachalla

I am stating the fact that the gentleman I have mentioned published in an Irish Sunday paper an article in which he purported to show that emigration had ceased.

An Cathaoirleach

Can you give the reference to the paper? The date?

Liam Ó Buachalla

I will be able to provide it.

An Cathaoirleach

The Seanad does not like names being mentioned when the people are not present to defend themselves.

Liam Ó Buachalla

We have important journals like Reynold's News and the Belfast Telegraph quoted to prove that all is well down here in the matter of the cost of living. The political Labour Party provides us with statistics—no doubt the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs takes a big hand in their compilation. The Industrial Development Authority has been let loose to provide this enormous mass of statistics mentioned by the acting Minister for Industry and Commerce a fortnight or so ago the result of which will be to demonstrate to us what towns have an industry and what towns have not. May I express the hope and the fervent hope that the body we know as the Central Statistics Office will not allow itself to be pushed into this circus? It has done most valuable work in the past and has a highly trained and excellent personnel. It is capable of doing tremendous work for the country, so let us hope that that office will not be pushed into this circus and its own status reduced.

For the rest I feel that this Bill should be opposed. If there were a spark of independence, a spark of sincerity, in the majority of the members of the Seanad the Second Reading of the Bill would be refused for the reasons I have given. Our view is that if there were to be investigations it would be done much more efficiently on the lines indicated in the Industrial Efficiency Bill which was introduced into Dáil Éireann during the period of office of the last Government, which got its Second Reading and which was approved by the Labour Party. The other recommendation I would make is that the present Government should clear out as quickly as it possibly can and make way for clean, intelligent, progressive and national government.

Dr. O'Connell

If one were to judge by some of the speeches made since this Bill was originally introduced and by the articles and correspondence which have appeared in the Press one would imagine that this problem of the cost of living is one confined almost solely to these Twenty-Six Counties, and that the present Government is responsible for all the ills brought by the rise in the cost of living. Everybody knows, however, that this problem of a steep rise in prices especially in the last few months is a world problem and that a country like the United States which is the greatest producing and manufacturing country in the world has the same problem to an even greater extent. When the Government, being the body responsible, introduces in their wisdom a proposal which they believe will help to solve the problem the whole thing develops into a political dog-fight. The sins of the Government are listed by one side and naturally there is a protest from the other side. A matter on which we should all put our heads together to find a solution is made the grounds of a political dog-fight. That is not as it should be.

References have been made to what was said and what was not said and a lot has been said about election promises. My goodness, one would imagine that this Party was the only Party which made election promises and did not succeed in carrying them out. I have never known a political Party which went forward for election which did not make promises and I have never known a Government which did not fail to carry them out. This idea of making election promises is as old as Greece and Rome. Anyone who went on a pilgrimage to Rome and who went to Pompeii saw the election promises which were made 1900 years ago and I am sure that some of the people who made those promises were quite relieved when they saw the lava coming down from Vesuvius and knew that they would not have to carry them out.

There is one facet of the propaganda used since the Bill was introduced to which I think I should refer. I believe that as a result of that propaganda there has been a considerable amount of misrepresentation and that the discontent and suspicion existing in the country is due to that misrepresentation. It has been said more than once —and I was sorry to hear it said here again—that the Parliamentary Secretary when introducing this measure stated that the cost of living had not increased. Anybody who read the Official Report knows that he did not say any such thing. That has been repeated, however, and there has been correspondence about it in the Press. It is now generally believed, as a result of that misrepresentation, that the Parliamentary Secretary, speaking for the Government, said that the cost of living had not increased. What the Parliamentary said—and it is on record —was that the cost-of-living index— the wrongly-named index, as has been pointed out, because it is not a cost-of-living index at all—had remained stationary approximately from August, 1947 until August of this year. Either that is a fact or it is not. The figures are there. Anybody who says that the cost-of-living index did not remain practically stationary must blame the statisticians who compiled the index. We know that the machinery by which it was compiled was set up in 1947 when the Fianna Fáil Government were in office. It is quite definite. The Parliamentary Secretary's statement is there in the Official Report. Although he denied the statement attributed to him when he was concluding the debate, and although others have denied it, that story is still being repeated. Perhaps it was deliberate—I do not know: it may have been—but whether it is deliberate or not it certainly has led to a good deal of the discontent that exists at the present time. It may be good politics if you like, but it is not decent politics to indulge in misrepresentations of that kind.

As to the plan now proposed, my only criticism is that some such plan should have been proposed earlier. The trade unions, as a rule, are, I think, sensitive to rises in prices. It will be remembered that early this year they began to protest when prices were rising. As a result, they decided to give notice of the termination of the agreement which they had entered into two years ago. I must question Senator Ó Buachalla's statement that they have been protesting for the last three years. That, of course, is not so, because it is less than three years since the trade unions entered into an agreement with the employers on the basis of an increase of 11/-. That agreement was kept until they gave formal notice early this year that it would be terminated. I think that the Government would have escaped a good deal of criticism if, at that stage, they had tackled this question as they propose to tackle it now, and did not, as they seemed to do then, depend to the extent that they appeared to depend on the actual statistical figures regarding the retail price index.

Reference has been made to the present trouble in the transport system and the strike that exists at the moment. I do not want to refer specially to that except to remind Senators and the public that, as regards the transport system—the railway system—there has been in existence for a number of years a joint industrial council at which the workers and the company are represented. As a rule, the decisions of that council have resulted in keeping industrial peace in the transport system. While some of the unions submitted their case to this industrial council and accepted its decisions—they may have done so reluctantly, but of that I do not know —another union refused to submit its case to the industrial council and decided, as Senator O'Brien has said, to use their economic power to enforce its claims. I think myself that the public will feel inclined to think that that particular union should have submitted its case to the industrial council and should have abided by its decision. That, of course, is a matter for the union, but there are many who think that there is more than a question of wages involved in this particular strike. If that is so, I can only agree that it is very unfortunate.

Yesterday evening, Senator Summerfield—I regret he is not present— waxed very wrathful over a statement which was made in the Dáil by the Tánaiste. The Senator quoted an extract from the Tánaiste's speech to support the statements which he made here. I take it, of course, that the Senator selected the phrase which best suited the case he was making. I confess that I do not think there was anything very wonderful in what the Tánaiste had said in that particular phrase. He had said that there should be what he called a microscopic examination of any claims for increases in prices. Senator Summerfield protested more than once that he was in favour of price control. Well, if there is to be price control, there must be some examination of the factors which lead to an increase or a reduction of prices. I think that what he objected most strongly to was—so I gathered from him—that the benefit of the doubt should be given to the public. Well, perhaps that might be going a little too far. It is usual, if there is any doubt, that the person in the dock will get the benefit of the doubt, and so perhaps he was entitled to expect that the industrialists in this State would get the benefit of the doubt although the onus of proof, in this case, is on the industrialists.

However, I am always wondering what are these trade secrets that industrialists are so anxious to talk about I wonder what they are? As an ordinary layman, I have never been able to understand, and I have never been told, what are these great secrets that the industrialists are so anxious to hide. If they do exist, I want to be assured that they do. If they do exist, then I feel quite certain that an authority, with any sense of responsibility, is not going to blazen them forth in the Press. There is no doubt but that the general public do wish to know the reasons for increases in many cases. I will take the case which Senator Summerfield is interested in. Letters have appeared in the Press from time to time asking for information as to why, say, a motor car or a motor van assembled in this country costs so much more than a similar vehicle which is built across the Channel. There has been no satisfactory explanation of that. I am sure that if Senator Summerfield were to appear before this tribunal he would be in a position to explain more fully than it has ever been explained why there is that difference in the cost of a motor car or of a motor van. That is only one instance.

One may say that a motor car is a luxury, but nowadays neither a motor car nor a motor van is considered a luxury since both are used so much in business. This hesitancy on the part of industrialists to go before any tribunal and explain why prices are as they are is bound to cause suspicion in the minds of the public that there is something to hide. I think it would be a good thing not alone for the public, but for the industrialists themselves if they were to go before a body of this kind and show to its satisfaction and of the public generally that there is a case why prices should be raised. It has been mentioned in this House on more than one occasion that if the working man or a trade union or labour people want to get an increase in their wages, they have to go before the Labour Court, or before some industrial body, and give solid reasons before the public why they should get the increase. I see no reason why industrialists should refuse to do the same thing.

Mr. Quirke

The industrialists have been doing that for a number of years.

Dr. O'Connell

If that is the case, I cannot see any force in, or any reason for, Senator Summerfield's indignation.

Mr. Quirke

His indignation was because of publication.

Dr. O'Connell

I am sure Senator Quirke will agree with me when I say that I cannot conceive any body with any sense of responsibility publishing what, in their opinion, should not be published. That has happened in the case of the Labour Court. There have been occasions when cases were made before the Labour Court when there was a private sitting and no publication. I take it for granted that that will continue to be the position.

Mr. Quirke

If I understand the Bill, there are to be public sittings and I take it the Press will give everything.

Dr. O'Connell

Personally I see no reason why there should not be. There has been talk of competition. It is said that if there is free competition everything will be all right. I think free competition has practically disappeared from business; to a very great extent it has disappeared because there are agreements and rings, if you like, by which prices are fixed and the commodities cannot be sold below a certain price. Everyone knows that manufacturers set a price on their product below which it must not be sold. At the present time, for instance, no trader can sell cigarettes below a specified price. We know that there are what are called cut-price shops, but the cut-price shopkeeper, if he is found out, will get no more supplies from the manufacturers.

Mr. Loughman

Does not that seem to be an accepted principle? For instance, trade unions will not allow certain men to be employed.

An Cathaoirleach

The Senator should be allowed to make his own speech.

Dr. O'Connell

I am speaking of what is a fact. If it is done elsewhere, that is a matter that can be debated again. I am stating that many of the ordinary necessaries of life are in the same position—that the trader must sell them at the price specified by the manufacturers and therefore there is no such thing as competition. Then there is this whole question of distribution. There is no doubt that there are undue additions to the cost of articles because of the number of people through whom they must pass before they reach the consumer.

I had a few years ago an example of that which I might briefly relate. I required a certain article to try and patch up an old pre-war motor car. I inquired at several garages for the article and eventually the owner of one garage mentioned a firm where it could be got. I went there and asked if the article was available and I was told it was and it was put on the counter. I asked the price and I was told it was 18/-. The assistant was making out the bill when he asked me where my garage was situated. I told him that I was just a private customer and he said, "Then we cannot sell it to you; this is the wholesale price." I said I would be glad to get it at the retail price, but he said they could not sell it to me because I was not a garage owner. The argument was going on when a gentleman came in whom I had never seen before. The assistant said: "I think we can settle it up. This man is a garage owner. I will give it to him and he can give it to you." As I was anxious to get the article I agreed. The article was handed over to this garage owner and he handed it to me, and I had to pay 27/- for it. This gentleman whom I did not know, just because he was a garage owner, had the article handed to him and he handed it over to me and made 9/- on the transaction.

Then take the case of a farmer who sends up apples to the market here and see the price he gets and the price which the retailer gets. Although the farmer has gone to the trouble of looking after his apples, spraying them, attending to them and sending them to the market, the man who just hands them over the counter makes exactly the same amount of money and very often very much more than the producer. These are things which ought to be investigated. I am not quite sure yet what is the attitude of the Opposition to this measure. Senator Quirke first of all said it was unnecessary and then his next point was that it did not give sufficient powers. At one stage he told us that a similar measure was introduced by Fianna Fáil.

Mr. Quirke

A better measure.

Dr. O'Connell

A better one, perhaps. He said it was opposed by Fine Gael. Now when this Government brings one forward he opposes it.

Mr. Quirke

Because it is not as good as the one Fianna Fáil introduced.

Dr. O'Connell

He spoke of the tribunal inflicting grave sentences on people.

Mr. Quirke

Which tribunal?

Dr. O'Connell

This particular one.

An Cathaoirleach

Senator Quirke should discontinue his interruptions and allow Senator O'Connell to make his speech in his own way.

Dr. O'Connell

This is a proposal which, in my opinion, will help to allay any discontent on the part of the public who believe that prices are raised unnecessarily. If it can be shown that there is good cause—I believe myself that in some cases there is good cause —for having a price raised, the evidence of that should be forthcoming. As I said in the beginning, I do not think it will serve any useful purpose to list all the sins and faults of the present Government, any more than it would be any use on the part of the supporters of the Government to point out what Fianna Fáil did or failed to do. A Party seeking government makes certain promises and we can only accept them as their sincere belief that they will do certain things if and when they are returned to power. We all know that this Government has little or no control, none at all, perhaps, over the circumstances which have given rise to this problem of increasing prices. None of us can do more than prophesy as to what this particular plan will do or will not do. There is not very much use in doing that. The Government believe that it will help in some way towards the solution of this problem. The other side can prophesy that it will not do any good. There is nothing very much between them except the hope that it will or that it will not do what they think it will do.

Senator Ó Buachalla when concluding ranged over a very long and wide field and I was somewhat surprised to hear him indulge in some humour at the expense of the diesel engines. In the end, I gathered from him that he thought this Bill should not get a Second Reading. What will be the result should we refuse it a Second Reading? All controls will disappear on the 31st of this month. I do not know whether the Senator would be satisfied with that position, especially seeing that he and those who speak with him are so anxious that there should be very much more control than there is and that all the controls that had been removed should be reimposed. I do not know what object would be achieved if the Bill were rejected and the Government found on the 31st of the month that they had no control over anything. I can only suggest that this Bill is a measure which the Government, having full knowledge of the situation and having given the matter mature consideration, have introduced in the belief that it will help to solve this problem. I think it only remains for us to support the Bill, and give it a chance. If it does not achieve what we expect it to achieve, then we can only try something else.

Professor Stanford

May I say something in this debate on behalf of the poor, much-abused raw materials, the raw materials that have taken most of the blame in this debate? What are the raw materials of politics? Human beings—men, women and children like ourselves who need food, clothes, fuel, housing and transport. Now, I do not speak as an economist. Originally I had not intended to intervene in this debate, but perhaps you will forgive me if, as a humanist, I say a word or two on behalf of these raw materials. We as politicians must never forget that ultimately they are our essential raw materials—these people who need food, clothes, fuel, houses and transport. Mention of transport prompts me to say something on the crisis of the moment. I speak as one who uses the railways, and for the last two days there has been no railway service to take me to Dublin. It is quite true that I live in Dalkey, which is not very far away, and that I can take a bus, but I speak as one who has suffered some mild inconvenience by this strike. I know there are others who have suffered grave inconvenience by the strike. I find it hard not to be angry with these strikers, but I feel it is my duty as a Senator to consider the justice of the matter, to consider it in terms of justice.

What are the strikers doing? They are putting up the prices of their commodities. What are their commodities? Strength, energy and skill. Now, we may say they have no raw materials going up in price against them. As I see it they have. What are the raw materials of strength, energy and skill? I suggest they are things like blankets, eggs, shoes, meat. These are the raw materials that they turn into their strength and energy. They must have food; they must have warmth and comfort. Their strength and energy depend on these. If the prices of their raw materials, food, warmth and so on, rise, and they ask for higher wages, can we say that is unjust when other people have been putting up the prices of their commodities? I cannot see it. Are they doing any worse than the retailer or the industrialist, or any better, I hasten to add? I cannot see it. Senator Counihan for a long time has had a motion on the Order Paper suggesting that these people should be prevented from striking or indulging in lightning strikes. We have seen various neutral authorities intervening to settle strikes on various occasions. I want to ask one question: have they intervened to stop the rise in prices? If they have, that is good; if they have not, I say it is unjust. I speak as a person who cannot travel by rail on account of the strike, but I cannot see that we can condemn this action any more than that of any other person responsible for the vicious spiral in which we are involved. I see I am venturing into a very dangerous arena. I am not an economist; I am a humanist and I see it in terms of human nature.

As the debate went on, an old memory flashed into my mind. Many of you may remember a famous statue now in the Vatican. It is a statue of a Trojan hero and his two sons caught in the coils of two great serpents. These serpents have encircled their limbs and their necks and they will slowly crush them to death. The Trojan hero is struggling in one direction and his two sons in another, but still the serpents tighten their grip. I see the Minister as the Trojan hero grappling with these two serpents. We, the Seanad and the Dáil, are the two sons pulling, one in one direction and the other in another direction, and trying to grapple with these two serpents. The serpents are scarcity and high prices. We are caught in the coils of this vicious spiral, in the coils of these ancient serpents. I cannot see that we are shaking them off despite all that has been said in this debate. The more we struggle, the more we argue in terms of economics, the more we seem to become entangled. It means more forms to be filled up, more commissions for hard-working men to have to attend, more meetings of the Dáil, more meetings of the Seanad and our raw materials, energy, skill and strength are deteriorating. That is how I see it.

How can we cure ourselves from this? Is there any cure? I do not believe that statistics, tribunals or price commissions will ultimately solve it. I suggest that we need some other cure, something that will lift us out of these vicious spirals. I am going to say something that some may think foolish, but it is very simple. The question we are dealing with is ultimately a moral question, and until this country and every other country faces it in that light they will not solve it. Senator O'Connell has rightly emphasised that this is a world problem. I suggest it is a world moral problem. The only thing that would save us in the end is an improvement in our national and world-wide morale. We want hard work and temperance. Some Senators at this Christmas time may smile at the reference to temperance but I do not mean it in the narrow sense.

I think one of the faults in this country at times, and in other countries, is that we fight our moral problems on too narrow a front. We have a magnificent body of men and women called pioneers to tackle one aspect of intemperance, but where are the pioneers against luxury, extravagance, pride, greed? Where are they? I would like to see people wearing badges against these things, and I have hopes that the time will come when Ireland's economic and political problems will be alleviated. I suggest that is not foolish or fanciful.

We talk about morality in this country, but we do not mean one particular kind of morality. It is one of the seven deadly sins, but what about the others? We have a censorship against this one of the deadly sins, but where is the censorship against some of our advertisements that appeal to us to spend more than we earn, that appeal to us to drive faster cars—to kill more people on the roads, incidentally—that appeal to our wives to buy more expensive cosmetics and to us to buy more expensive types of wine? Half the Press is organised at this moment to encourage us to spend more money, money we have not got.

I do not want to dwell on this aspect. It is not a time for preaching sermons, but I think there is something in it. And do not please, say: "Ah, the puritans are coming back again—no cosmetics, no cinemas." I do not mean that, though I noticed that the dividend of a cinema not a quarter of a mile from this place was last week 20 per cent., which is pretty good. I am not against enjoyment; I am not against amusement. I think of the old, uncommercialised enjoyment in this country. When I lived in County Tipperary, there was dancing at the crossroads, there was card-playing, there were games that did not cost 1d. All that has gone. Will it come back? I think it must come back if we are really going to wrestle with this problem.

I do not believe our strongest allies against our enemies at present are statistics and the rest. Our enemies are greed, pride, distrust and division. Might I emphasise that ominous word "division" in this sense? I do not mean it in the technical sense but in the sense in which the very name "Devil" was invented. The name "Diabolous" means the divider, the separator, the man who puts a division between neighbour and neighbour and sows slander between friend and friend. As I look at the situation in this country as a humanist, I see the people divided up in classes and sections and groups. The number of divisions is growing stronger and stronger, and the only person who will be pleased will be the divider himself and his allies in the East.

I appeal to this House at this time of the year, which is the time of peace and goodwill, not to be deceived into thinking that these economic measures are the ultimate answer. I do not decry the value of tribunals and all the rest, but we are deceiving ourselves if we think we are going to get anywhere unless morality backs us up. I guarantee myself, if I were a business man, to make circles around any measure the Minister brings in. If he drives me out of selling ice cream, I will sell peanuts, and if he drives me out of selling peanuts, I will sell motor cars or something like that.

I am sure Senator Summerfield appreciates what I mean. If he—I hope he will not be—is driven out of one project, he will go into another and if the law will chase him around Ireland he will be a few steps ahead of them all the time. Good luck to him if he does that. It is the game a business man has to play. But if our business men, our workers, our professors and Senators face the moral aspect of this problem, that will not happen.

Mr. Colgan

When the Minister was introducing this measure he advised us very strongly to keep to the point. He mentioned that there is only one small change in the Bill, and that is the setting up of a tribunal to inquire into prices. Then he proceeded to do what he told us not to do; he proceeded to ramble over the whole ambit of wages, the cost of living and the rest.

I would like to deal with some of the matters he referred to. He stated specifically that, despite varying problems since the Government came into office in March or April, 1948, wages had been increased. They were not increased in that period; they were increased prior to the Government coming into office by reason of an agreement under the auspices of the Labour Court and employers, who instituted what is known as the 11/- formula. There was no increase in wages over the period mentioned by the Minister. It is necessary that that should be corrected.

Much play has been made about an alleged statement by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce to the effect that the cost of living had not increased. I think the Parliamentary Secretary defended himself in the other House by indicating that what he said was that the cost of living had not increased up to August.

Dr. O'Connell

The cost-of-living index figure.

Mr. Colgan

Whether you mention the cost-of-living index figure or the cost of living, the fact remains that at the Congress of the Irish Trade Unions held in July, pressure was used there for a general advance to meet the increased cost of living. Working people do not look for increased wages just for the pleasure of looking for it. Somebody is pushing them, and it is generally the housewife. Everyone here who has a home to keep knows that the cost of living has been consistently increasing. That is the position despite the official index figure, which tells us there has been no increase in the cost of living. We are not all fools. Many workmen may be unlettered, uneducated, but they know what they want and they know where the shoe pinches.

We are told the cost of living is compiled by statisticians of the first order. I have not the slightest doubt that is so and I have not a word to say to them, but I suggest the statistician who is more reliable than all the official statistics in the statistic office is the housewife with the basket on her arm and the purse in her fist who has to buy the necessaries of life for the family. She is a greater statistician than all the others put together.

The cost of living has definitely been increasing. The tempo has rapidly risen within the past three or four months. We are met by attempts on all sides, by employers on one side who are admitting it now and by the Government on the other side, telling us that the cost-of-living index figure is there and that it is a true reflex of the position. The trade union movement have had very little confidence in this cost-of-living index figure at any time. They realise that there were certain aspects of our economy that were not taken into consideration in compiling the figure.

We are told now that we are going to get a tribunal. As pointed out by other speakers, the last Government introduced the Prices and Efficiency Bill. I want to say—and I defy contradiction—that that measure was welcomed by the whole trade union movement as a serious effort to attempt to control the increasing cost of living. Much resentment and great disappointment was felt when the present Government decided to drop this Prices and Efficiency Bill. The Tánaiste, who is a member of the Labour Party in the Dáil—I happened to be there for portion of his speech—went out of his way blaming the problem on the Irish manufacturers. He referred, not on this occasion but on a previous one, to these people as "these boyos who had done well out of their country". There was no attack on the descendants of the Cromwellians or on the descendants of the planters or on the descendants of the ascendancy group. No, but on the Irish manufacturers, the new Irish manufacturers or the old Irish manufacturers, the men who in the old Sinn Féin days kept Irish industry alive. He is the man who goes out of his way to attack Irish industrialists because they happen to be Irish industrialists and because he wants some scapegoat to prove the ineptitude of the Government in attempting to control prices.

He stated he was going to freeze prices. I suggest we are not all fools. The Minister introducing this Bill pointed out that much of the raw materials that make up the articles we must buy have to be imported. We have no control over the prices that have to be paid for these raw materials. Why does not the Minister freeze prices on turkeys, hams and eggs? We will be told in January that the price of turkeys was frozen but that is not much use to the housewife who is trying to buy a turkey at 5/- a lb. nor is it much use to the working-class homes that will be without their usual Christmas dinner.

Mr. Counihan

Turkey is a luxury.

Mr. Colgan

I am surprised at you saying that. We are supposed to be a non-political body, but we are not. The position for many of the working-class people this year is that they will have a poorer Christmas than they had during all the years of the emergency. That is the position and we might as well face up to it. There is no use in saying that is political talk. I am here to talk always as a trade union official. I have 30 years' experience in that rôle.

The Minister mentioned the lifting of controls. I want to say in his favour it is naturally expected that when controls are lifted prices will fall. That has happened in practically all countries. In America some years ago when meat was de-controlled prices tumbled immediately. The position is we are not free agents in this matter. Take turkeys, for example. The price of turkeys is not fixed by the competitive price in Ireland but it is fixed by the price that Britain will be able to pay for them. That is the position. We are not free agents in many of the products we have to sell. The price is fixed not here as a result of competition but by outside sources over which we have no control.

The Minister mentioned this tribunal that is being set up. He ought to be in a position to give us an idea of the interests that will be represented on this body. I suggest that he ought give us some indication of the type of persons and the interests they represent who will form this tribunal. This tribunal is the same as I complained of on the question of the industrial authority on more than one occasion. When a problem is of a serious nature the ideal way to solve it seems to be to set up a commission. When this commission has come to a decision and presented its report invariably that is the end of it. I think this is a commission of sorts that is going to inquire into prices, and Senator O'Brien last night asked that it should be rapid in its decision. It cannot be rapid. I suggest that from its very nature it is going to be cumbersome and slow and, with the world situation as it is, we cannot afford to be waiting for a decision on one problem that may have changed completely by the time the tribunal is in a position to report.

Both Senator O'Brien and Senator Baxter and, to a lesser extent, Senator O'Connell, referred to the present transport strike. I want to say that I appreciate the generous attitude that Senator Stanford took in connection with this matter. The trade union movement is in existence, I suppose, for over 150 years, and it started in turmoil. It was an underground movement. It started in turmoil and strife. Everyone opposed it. The Government opposed it. The capitalists opposed it and I think the university professors opposed it. At any rate, it had no friends outside its own sphere. It was driven by harsh laws to desperate means and it is only in comparatively recent times that it has got to the position it now enjoys.

No movement, as we know movements, has gone through so much turmoil and trouble and yet achieved so much as the trade union movement. The trade unionists do not go on strike just for the pleasure of going on strike. I went on strike 35 years ago this year, just this very week. It was the winter of 1916 and if any of you remember that winter, it was one of the most severe winters we ever had. If Senator Professor O'Brien or anybody else thinks that £4 2s. 0d. a week is a sufficient wage for a railway worker on which to keep a wife and family, I suggest that he has to put up with the inconvenience of a strike.

I know of three depressed classes in this country. The first is the farm labourer; the next is the Post Office worker, the member of the Tánaiste's union; and the third is the railway worker. They are making an effort to improve their position, but the general public does not like to be inconvenienced and in the normal way does not care what happens between employer and labour as long as they are not inconvenienced, but they must be prepared to accept that position.

When Senator O'Connell raised the question of the joint conciliation machinery, he was not correct. The Transport Workers' Union were not members of that body.

Dr. O'Connell

That is what I complained of.

Mr. Colgan

What he said was that they did not submit their case, but they had no power to submit their case because they were not members.

Dr. O'Connell

I thought they should have been members.

Mr. Colgan

They were not members, and I do not like innuendoes that motives are involved in the strike other than the improvement of the workers' position.

Speaking generally, trade union officials are blamed for everything that happens. A trade union is of necessity a democratic organisation, and if an offer of wages is made to a union it is put before the members and if they reject it nothing can be done except to resort to a strike. Nobody in a trade union wants to strike, but we must do it as a last resort. We try to settle matters amicably, but do not blame the trade union official if the men go on strike. Men go on strike because they want to improve their position, because they want a decent standard of living for themselves and their families and because they are pressed and urged by their womenfolk, who have to make ends meet. Senator Baxter shed tears for the people of Connemara, but he had no tears for the men who are trying to rear a family on £4 2s. 0d. a week. It is very easy to conjure up tears when you want to, and I suggest that if any of the Senators have tears to shed they would be better advised to shed them for many of the workers of this country who are living in a position bordering on want.

Finally, the cost-of-living index figure for mid-November was published this morning and it shows an increase of two points. I would ask Senators McGuire and Summerfield and any other employer of labour here whether they agree that that is a true reflection of the cost of living as it has increased since the last index figure. It would be better for everybody if this figure was scrapped——

Dr. O'Connell

Hear, hear!

Mr. Colgan

——because it is not a true figure and in the normal way I believe that it cannot be made a true figure unless every item of expenditure in the working-class home is taken into consideration. Furniture, replacements, the thousand and one things that go to make the budget of the ordinary family are not taken into consideration. No worker looks for increased wages unless he has been urged on by his wife who has to go out to spend the money he gives her and who is not able to make ends meet. I would not like to go as far as Senator Ó Buachalla when he suggested that we should not pass the Bill. At any rate we have given our views. The question of the cost of living must be tackled and tackled quickly or else the whole position will get out of hand and become chaotic.

Mr. McGuire

I have listened to a lot of the debate in this House on the proposals before us and I also read the debate in the Dáil and I must say that many of the proposals' supporters in the Dáil did very little to inspire any confidence in the idea of setting up this tribunal because the tone and tenor of the speeches displayed a venom against the business community, ignorance of elementary economic facts and very often, even a socialist desire for State control. I think that is deplorable. On the other hand, while I was not in the House yesterday, I read in to-day's papers Senator Douglas' contribution to the debate and I am glad that for once a speech such as his was given a decent Press showing because our side, the employers' side, is very seldom seen in print.

If the proposals produced by the Government were to be backed by the spirit prevalent in these deplorable speeches I have mentioned, I certainly would not like to give any support whatever to those proposals, but I feel that the mind of the Government is better expressed in the words spoken by Senator Douglas. Because I am associated with the Fine Gael Party and know their influence is a stabilising one, it gives me confidence that the right kind of tribunal will be set up.

I would like to say, straight away, that the business community is not afraid of an investigation and does not object to a legitimate inquiry into business. I would like it to be clearly understood, however, that what we do object to and what people are afraid of is that the wrong kind of tribunal will be established. Unfortunately, those people who are protagonists of this tribunal did a lot to create a lack of confidence among the business community in this tribunal. One man went so far as to suggest that the kind of person he would like to see representing the consumer was a poor widow Poor widows may be very admirable and piotiable, but unless the poor widow knows something about economics, something about business and something about judicial matters I think she would be a deplorable person to have representing the community as a consummer. What we are entitled to expect if we are to be brought before this tribunal is a competent tribunal. We want a tribunal that will understand business problems and have at least some man-in-the-street knowledge of economics.

It is rather frightening to find, even here, the kind of arguments that are brought up by people who are highly intelligent. I would mention even the case of Senator Dr. O'Connell himself who made a very good speech but who indicated the very prevalent fallacy which apparently a lot of people hold, that is, this middleman business. There has been a lot of talk about unnecessary middle people. Senator O'Connell quoted a case where he went to buy a part for a motor car and was faced with the profit of the middlemen. That is an exceptional case. The only alternative to it is that everybody who wants something will go direct to the manufacturer for it. Take my own business. How would the suggestion apply there? In this way, I suppose, that if a person wanted to buy a linen towel she should go to the North of Ireland or wherever the linen manufacturers have their factories for it.

Dr. O'Connell

The article that I referred to is manufactured in England.

Mr. McGuire

Then the Senator should have gone to England to get it. What is forgotten is that all these middlemen and other people who are in employment will become disemployed if you cut them out. It will mean putting them on the dole or on unemployment benefit. These are elementary things. If people have to go before a tribunal they will be frightened if they find that the members are ignorant of elementary economics. On the other hand, we had Senator Stanford, a professor in the university—I hope that I am not quoting him incorrectly—suggesting that it was wrong to advertise and ask people to spend large sums of money on luxury articles, lipstick and other things. These things are the products of industry.

Professor Stanford

My point was that people were being asked to spend more than they could afford. I still hold that is wrong.

Mr. McGuire

Business men do not ask people to spend more than they have, but they do ask them to spend their money. Actually, it is a well-known thing that if a merchant only did business in the things that people want, he would do very little. In my own business, I would say it would be about 10 per cent. of what I do. About 90 per cent. of my business is done with people who buy things which they do not want urgently.

Professor Stanford

Of things they do not need?

Mr. McGuire

They need them as much as they need to live or to exist. The Senator denied that he wanted to establish here a puritan community, but I think there was that implication in his speech. However, to pass from that, I was dealing with the point that what we expect is a competent tribunal. It will need to be competent if we are to get the right results. For example, the tribunal should understand what profits are and how prices are arrived at. The tribunal should understand the factors which are present in prices. These are, at the present time, the world price level of raw materials, because we are lacking ourselves in primary industries. We have not the remotest control over the price of the raw materials which we have to import. Secondly, we have tariff walls which were advisedly set up here not to protect employers only, but to provide employment and to protect those in employment. Thirdly, we have the policy of guaranteed prices to farmers. We also have increases in the rates in our cities and towns. They are ever increasing, and, lastly, we have wage increases which are a major factor in prices.

Anybody sitting on a prices tribunal will want not only to know about these things but to have regard to them. At present, a merchant is very like a man who is standing on a weighing scales. He is being given more and more weights to hold. If you ask him why the indicator on the scales is going up, the answer, of course, will be because he is being given more things to carry.

I should like to deal with the question of profits. There is a complete misunderstanding of what profits are, and that is primarily due to the fact that they are shown in a particular way because of the law relating to income-tax. Items which are, in fact, expenses, are included as profits, and thereby help to swell the figure for profits. Further, it is forgotten that when dealing with profits the same considerations arise as when one is dealing with wages. That point was brought out recently by a representative of the workers when he stated that the value of the £ to-day had gone down to 8/-. That means that the figure of all profits would have to be taken at half at least in order to find out what they are, in fact, and what is their spending value. Just as in the case of wages, we have in the case of business to-day the cost of replacements of all kinds. The cost of living has gone up in business just as it has gone up for the workers. In fact, the cost of many of the commodities which we need in business to-day has gone up by as much as three times what it was in 1939. Take my own business. There is a paper bag which we used to be able to buy before the war at 18/- per 1,000. The price to-day is 44/- per 1,000. Now, in connection with profits it is frequently forgotten that in a rising market business men must consider the price at which they will be able to replace their stock. For instance, if a man is carrying a stock of £100,000, and if the price of everything goes up by 25 per cent., it will cost him at least £125,000 to replace that stock at the new prices. Even that increase does not allow for any stockpiling in the event of an emergency.

It has been said, and has been used as a very bad thing against Irish manufacturers, that they raised their prices when the price of wool went up. At first sight that would seem to be taking advantage of the situation. I suggest that is not so bad as it seems, because of the fact that when a man sells his stock without consideration of replacement value he will then not have sufficient money to replace what he has got rid of. In other words, he will have to work on a lesser stock in the future, and thereby cut down his employment and his production. Surely, that is not a thing that is going to be in the national interest, particularly at a time like this when we should be piling up our stocks.

I want to say that there is no case for an unjustifiable increase in prices at a time of emergency and of national stress. Employers and people in all classes of business are as anxious as anybody else that there should be a fair understanding by the community of all these business problems. I do not believe that any tribunal which is set up can bring down prices. I think it is wrong to give the public the idea that prices can be brought down by a tribunal. The tribunal may do this good, that it will enable the public to see that prices cannot be brought down, and that, where prices have to go up, they are justified. If that could be done, and if you had the right tribunal to do it, it might be a good thing. In that event business would not suffer.

I would like to say something about the whole situation that is being created here on the prices situation, on the question of the cost of living, on the demands for wages, and on the general unrest there is. I think this prices situation has been artificially created. I think that is a pity. It was created because the cost of living had gone up. There is the suggestion that panic measures should be taken. What I feel about it is this, that all parties, labour and employers, should come together and have the matter considered in an orderly manner. I think that if the Labour Court were properly utilised, if it were given proper powers and proper recognition by both sides in industry, a lot of the problems which we in the Legislature are trying to solve could be settled outside in the industrial field. I think that is the right place in which to settle them. Unfortunately, nowadays there is far too much of a mixing up of politics with industrial problems. When we act as industrialists or as employers in dealing with labour, we find ourselves very much restricted in our action by the fact that we are not talking about industrial problems at all, because we find that there are politics behind the whole thing. We find that there are certain men determined to bring the whole system of private enterprise into discredit. They are aiming all the time at discrediting that system. Their aim is a political aim to establish all sorts of controls for purely socialistic purposes. That is being wittingly or unwittingly done every day. A lot of this talk calling out for controls of all kinds on business and industry is politically inspired. You have only to look at the letters in the newspapers and the kind of people who write them to see that that is true.

Any attack on private enterprise is an attack on the individual himself and that is very often forgotten. Once you start controls on groups of people they eventually seep in until they are controls on the individual. This Tribunal is to be set up to control prices and perhaps profits, but there is no mention of controlling wages, which are a very important factor in prices. That may be advisedly done; it may be done even by people who think they are side-stepping something by doing that. But you can take it that control of prices and profits postulates control of wages, and if they are not controlled now, it will lead to control of wages, because if there is going to be a genuine attempt to keep prices down it must inevitably lead to the wages content in these prices. If you set up a tribunal, that tribunal may start off by being very determined to control employers and industrialists, but it will end up by wanting to control wage earners as well. That fact is recognised in other countries. President Truman has brought in a Bill in America to control prices and profits, but it also controls wages. I am not advocating control of wages; I do not think it is a good thing. But I do say that, if you start off by controlling profits and prices, you will finish up by controlling wages. I do not think that is realised by many of the advocates of these controls.

This is a Supplies and Services Bill. It should be remembered, however, that if we are going to have proper supplies and services in face of what seems to be a very serious world situation, it is very necessary that the business community should have confidence in the Government and confidence that they will get a square deal amongst the community. This is the wrong time to be blackening and discrediting the business community when all their energies and their enterprise are needed to stock up in face of a national emergency. To-day it is being made socially immoral to make profits. If a business man has a feeling that he is going to be very unpopular or to have the finger of scorn pointed at him for making profits, it is no encouragement to him to increase his business and to invest more money in his business so as to create more wealth and to give more employment. He is prevented from doing that if he feels that he is regarded as a social outcast in making profits. The man who does expand in business must inevitably make profits because, if he does not, it will not be worth expanding.

Therefore, I deplore the atmosphere in which this whole matter has been debated. I must say that the debate has been very good in this House, but in the Dáil it was deplorable. I feel that we should re-establish at once— I daresay the Minister will do that in his final speech—the confidence of capitalists. I use capitalists in the sense of those who own money or have saved money which they want to invest or reinvest. We should re-establish confidence in these people's minds so that they will be enabled to go ahead with free and easy minds to stock up and to arrange for the future of our national economy in face of this world danger. As I said already, rising prices call for increased resources to replace stocks and to stock-pile. Profits nowadays are almost the only new source of capital for industry and, when ploughed back, they are highly desirable and indeed a necessary form of national saving which will provide national dividends in the form of real wealth, employment and security in time of danger.

The success of the proposals we have before us depends totally on what kind of tribunal we are going to have set up here and the spirit in which it is set up. If it is set up in a spirit of suspicion of industrialists and employers, it is not going to be a successful one. But, if it is composed of people with high responsibility and of the necessary competence, I feel that the tribunal can do a better job perhaps than was done by the Civil Service one and that it will achieve the object which we all would like to see achieved.

Mr. Finan

It would be difficult to find a topic of greater public interest than the one we have been discussing these two days. If our contributions here can make for a solution of this problem, they will have served a very useful purpose. It would be a mistake, however, to magnify the position, and I agree with the last speaker that there is a certain amount of artificiality or scare about this whole question. Arguments may be put forward with regard to the rise in the cost of living, but he would be a foolish man who tried to deny that there is an increase in the cost of living. There is abundant proof also that there is an orgy of spending going on in this country. Every form of sport or amusement is largely supported. There appears to be an unlimited amount of money available for spending on sport or luxuries. If the proposed tribunal can do something to stem that extravagance and useless expenditure, it will serve a very useful purpose.

To my mind, there are two things that affect the cost of living. One is the extent of production and the other is the availability of money to purchase the products. Therefore, if we can increase our production, we ought thereby to reduce the cost of living. It has been pointed out many times that there are certain factors in regard to the cost of living over which we have no control. We are foolish to waste our time discussing these factors. We should concern ourselves with the factors over which we have control and see what we can do about them. The first essential step to reduce the cost of living, or at least to stem it, would be to increase our production in every field.

The Minister for Finance made himself rather unpopular some time ago when he suggested that the people should buy less. I very much regret that the people did not take his advice. During the last three or four months people have gone out buying things which they do not require. That may be the result of the international situation or it may be from panic, but there has been more buying during the last three or four months than there was any necessity for and that, I believe, is a very important factor in the present cost of living. People who had money were out to store up because they thought there was an emergency and this played its part in the rise in prices. One of the most important things in regard to this question is the terribly large amount of money in circulation in this country. I do not think that ever before in the history of this country has there been so much money in circulation. I wonder if something could be done about that matter by the Minister for Finance or by somebody else. The fact that so much money is in circulation and that so many people are ready to buy has resulted in the continuance of the present high level of prices. If we could have an all-out production effort, at the same time limiting to a certain extent the amount of money in circulation, I believe it would be a big step towards a better standard of living in this country.

Much has been said about rising wages. It is foolish for any Senator to deny that there has been a rise in wages. Only last week in my own county, the county council employees got an increase of 8/- a week. That increase of 8/- a week might not mean much to the working man but it means quite a lot to the ratepayers. Every individual labourer, not to speak of gangers and other individuals, has got an increase of 8/- a week in his wages. I am aware that the present wage that is being paid is not a good one, but I am aware also that the people who have to pay that wage have not got that wage themselves, and there is the difficulty. The working man cannot be paid a higher wage because those who have to pay him have a lesser wage themselves. To my mind, a far greater benefit would be conferred on the working man if his income could be made to purchase more. The question of money, although I am not an authority on it, can be very misleading. To suggest that a rise of 10/- or £1 a week is going to put everything right is a grave mistake. What the wage packet means is what it can purchase. If £2 a week could purchase as much for a man as £4 can purchase to-day, then the £2 wage was as good as the £4 wage. You can go on increasing wages until they reach sky level, and yet you are not doing one bit of good for the working man.

On the question of prices, I may say that I am not one of those people who think that it is right or wise to attack distributors or manufacturers. I believe these traders perform a very useful and a very important national function. However, on the question of profits, I think a mistake was made— or at least what occurred to me as being a mistake. Many people in this country are engaged in the wholesale and retail business. Such a trader was allowed a wholesale margin of profit and he was also allowed a retail margin of profit. If you add the two together I think you will find that he had a very decent profit. I consider that a limit should be set in a question of this kind where a man is combining his wholesale and retail trade. No matter what we may say, or what statistics may be published, not one of us is not well aware that there are ample proofs that those people have made a substantial amount of money. The evidence is there, no matter what the books or the figures may say. These people are the upper ten in society to-day. If there is luxury anywhere, they are the people who enjoy it. Many of them have built magnificent houses for themselves and their families and they can have new motor cars every year. All that cannot be done without money—and it must be done out of profits. It would be unfair to single out those people for special attack and I consider that to do so would be unwise also. An appeal should be made to their moral sense of justice to content themselves with reasonable profits and not to try to extort the last farthing.

If the wage earner happens to get an increase in wages it is unfortunate that there is an increase in the cost of living the following week, and the increase which he gets this week is of no use to him next week. This committee has a big and a difficult problem to tackle. No matter on what side of the House he or she may sit, I am sure that every Senator hopes that the committee will be successful in its work. The committee will have to tackle this problem from the point of view of the change in monetary values. The people all over the country will have to realise it, too. To-day, the £ is not worth what it was worth ten or 20 years ago. They will have to rid their minds of the memory of what the £ was worth some years ago and consider what it is worth to-day. Taking that consideration as a yardstick, the people who produce goods and distribute them are entitled to a fair standard of wage and a fair and reasonable profit. If that is done, the fear that the ordinary workingman is being exploited can be relieved and those who are employers can be assured that they will get a fair return for their money. While that may not do much towards bringing about a reduction in prices, the confidence of the community will be restored and that, I think, would be an achievement. The international situation is such that we cannot expect anything in the nature of a tumbling down of prices to-day, especially when we are not a self-sufficient nation. However, we need not fear, because I believe that we are able to provide the four elements which are most important to the country, should the worst happen— food, fuel, clothing and shelter. If we can provide these four essentials for our people. We shall bear the storm. I believe that the country is capable of producing enough food and fuel for the people—and a good effort has been made to provide them with shelter. For that reason, the outlook is not as dismal as one might imagine it to be.

At a time like this, I think that it would be most unpatriotic for any man to attempt to make Party politics and it would be disastrous for the nation. No matter what Government might be in power, they would be confronted with the same difficulty as the present Government is confronted with at present. If every individual approaches the matter in a spirit of goodwill— particularly in view of the season which is now before us—and resolves that in the coming year he will do his moral and physical best, I believe that the country will survive anything that may come before it.

Miss Davidson

I should like to say that I cannot feel very much sympathy for Senator Summerfield's denunciation of the proposed prices tribunal or committee, mainly because, as the Tánaiste has said, it would undertake a critical and even microscopic examination of the profits of industry. Surely the public is entitled to information which such an examination would reveal. We all know of cases where prices, even prices of essential commodities, have been increased overnight and where no reasons have been given for such increases.

The workers, on the other hand, especially since the establishment of the Labour Court have had to submit to a microscopic examination of their entire lives, their household budgets, their personal expenditure and, even when their scanty belongings have been exposed to everybody, they have had to wait very considerable periods before wage increases have been granted to them. The present proposal would be merely a levelling-up of the two classes. Workers and consumers generally will, I think, welcome the setting-up of the proposed tribunal. I am certain we can feel assured that the Government will see that the personnel of that body will be selected with care and understanding of the task they have to handle.

In regard to a remark made by Senator McGuire in the course of the debate, I would like to say that labour spokesmen have said more than once that they would prefer a control of prices rather than that the workers would be compelled to look for increased wages. If prices are controlled at a reasonable level there will be less desire on the part of the workers to look for wage increases.

Mr. S. O'Farrell

One small paragraph of this Bill has given rise to lengthy and, on the whole, interesting discussion. All the Bill proposes to do that is in any way different from what the Bill proposed to do in any other year is to provide the Minister with advisory boards or councils. The Minister has always had his advisers to consult, but this time the advisory body will not be civil servants and presumably, or assumedly, the evidence will be given in public. That is the only difference.

I do not share Senator Summerfield's fears in relation to this tribunal; neither do I share Senator Ó Buachalla's contempt for it, nor Senator Baxter's confidence in it. I think we are all expecting too much from it. I do not think it can do very much. It is a gesture, if you like, and anybody who expects too much from it is bound to be disappointed. Reasons have been given here in the debate to justify this tribunal. Of all the speeches made I was most interested in Senator Professor O'Brien's lecture on economics and Senator Professor Stanford's sermon on morality. I agree with both speakers. I think their contributions were very useful and very necessary. I think the time has come when we do need a different moral approach to the solution of our problems; I hope I shall not come under the description of a "craw-thumper" when I say that. If we cannot in our relationship with each other consider problems from the point of view of their moral values, then we shall always and inevitably have trouble and no committee or commission will alter that situation.

Comment has been made by more than one speaker on the fact that when a Government finds itself in difficulty it immediately sets up a commission or committee of inquiry. That did not begin to-day or yesterday. It did not begin with this Government. I can remember a commission sitting for five years; the Commission of Inquiry into Vocational Organisation sat for five years. It reported a good many years ago. Why I cannot say, but not one of its recommendations was ever adopted by the Government. They were not adopted by this Government; nor were they adopted by the previous Government which appointed it. I think we shall have to take some radical steps if we want to avoid the trouble? that we have now and those that may confront us in the future. I remember Mr. de Valera saying on one occasion that if he could not solve the social and economic problems inside the framework of the present system he would be prepared to go outside it. I believe he would have gone outside it eventually and I believe that we must go outside it sooner or later.

Reference has been made to trade unions, to their defects, to their sins of commission and omission. The trade union movement, even in my lifetime, has undergone a very radical change. When I was in the trade union movement first we organised the workers so that each group might protect itself against an unfair employer. In each small business we tried to organise the workers so that they would be in a position to negotiate with their own employers for better wages and better conditions. That was a difficult thing to do. We organised a shop here and a business there. Eventually, when we had become fairly widespread and when we had organised a good many places with small protective groups, the employers themselves, in turn, began to organise and they formed an employers' federation. That completely altered the position. That made war inevitable between capital and labour. Before we could close any small shop or industry where conditions were bad and where wages were abnormally low and by closing them inflict certain losses on the proprietor or proprietors, and thereby, induce him or them to step up wages or improve conditions as others in the same industry had done, but we did not injure the public. If we closed one small shop or manufacturer or business we left open the others and the public were never seriously inconvenienced. But when the federation of employers came together, the minute a small strike was called everybody was locked out. We had such a case in Dublin in 1911. A few tram men went on strike. Not alone were the tram employees looked out but other businesses in Dublin allied to the federation at that time locked their workers out and made it a total war on the workers in an attempt to starve them into submission and smash the trade union movement. I am not blaming anybody for that. I am merely telling the House the history of it, as I lived through it. Some of those listening to me to-day know it from first-hand too. It was necessary then for the trade unions to combine into larger groups, and we had the federation of trade unions. Then when there was a lockout in one place the trade unions closed down everyone else, and since then it has become open war.

The situation has become even worse now because there are semi-nationalised or nationalised industries and monopolies like the transport monopoly. I shall not say who is wrong and who is right in the present strike, but we would be fools indeed if we were afraid to mention that there is a strike. Against whom is the strike directed? It is directed against the employers; and the employers in this particular case happen to be the taxpayers, and the taxpayers happen to be the ordinary public, rich and poor. I suppose the workers had no alternative but to strike, or they believed they had no alternative but to strike at this particular moment. But this particular moment happens to be the time when they can inflict most suffering on the public and, in particular, on the poorer sections of the public. Everybody pays part of the subsidy to maintain the railways. Rich and poor alike pay either directly or indirectly, but only the poorer sections are hit by the stoppage of rail transport. The others can convey themselves or their goods by motor car. The poor have no motor cars. I am not blaming the workers who have gone on strike for that. The facts are there. They could not avoid it. They struck because they felt there was no other way in which they could enforce what they regarded as a reasonable demand and, in striking, they have hit their own colleagues and their own colleagues' children. If there had been a gas strike, and one was threatened some weeks back, it would have-been the poor who would have been the hardest hit and who would have suffered most. If there had been a bakers' strike it would have been the poor who would have suffered most. It has come to the position now that everything is so well organised that, when a strike does occur, it hits the whole community. It is no longer a struggle between an employer and his employees as to which will force the other to do what is considered to be right and proper; it is a conspiracy, either deliberate or unconscious, between the capitalists and the trade union movement.

It was said here yesterday that this Government probably will not last very long. I do not know. I am not a prophet. I do not know whether the people who said that are prophets or not. Perhaps this is my swan song in the House. I say that there is a conspiracy between the employers and the trade unions at the moment. The trade unions put in a demand, a reasonable demand, if you like. The employers have only to say: "We cannot pay you the money," a strike occurs and so much hardship is caused to the community that somebody or other has to come in and settle the dispute. The employer does not suffer; the strikers suffer, but the public always suffer and any group of employers know that they have only to refuse a demand, they have only to say: "We cannot or will not concede that demand" and immediately a strike will take place in which the public will be the greatest sufferers and the public have no power to settle it.

The setting up of tribunals or commissions of this sort is an attempt by the Government to give the public some share, in time, to settle the disputes if they occur, or rather, in this particular case, to prevent such disputes occurring. They are setting up a committee or a series of committees which, by inquiring into prices and proposals to increase prices, may prevent prices increasing and thereby prevent any further demands for increases in wages.

It is true, as has been said here, and nobody recognises it better than the workers, that a mere wage increase, if it will buy no more, is not worth fighting for. If prices could be brought down, even if prices could be stabilised at any one definite level, there would be less demand for increases in wages. I think it was Senator Colgan who mentioned that there are certain classes of workers who still are underpaid. The railway workers are such a class. Even if prices had been stabilised three years ago and had not risen since, the wages paid on the railway were unduly low. I realise the reason for that. The traffic on the railway had declined. First of all, wages on the railways were always low. Then traffic, both goods and passenger, declined; the cost of maintaining the railways went up; the cost of coal went up, when it could be got; the cost of replacing lines and buildings went up; all the overheads increased while the traffic declined. Railway revenue declined. There was no fund from which to increase railway wages. Railway incomes or revenues are bound to decline still further and the people who caused the decline are those who, because they were entitled to do it and because they kept abreast of the times, got motor transport for themselves and their goods. Unless you were to go in for some sort of State enforcement, which I would not approve of, nobody can force these people to abandon their motor cars and lorries and to send their goods by rail in order to increase the revenue of the railways.

The railways, therefore, have to be subsidised and will have to be subsidised still further, but even if, in this particular case, the subsidy gives these men a better standard of living than they have been able to get from their existing wages, I think nobody would say it is wrong. I do not want to see the same trouble continued indefinitely of wages and prices chasing each other. The minute wages go up, prices go up; the minute prices go up, wages go up, and there is no end to it. Everybody who spoke here wished that there was some way out of it. Some made suggestions. I cannot see any definite suggestion that I could usefully make at the moment. I could make guesses, like anybody else. I do say that I think it is wrong to condemn the proposal here as something that the Government are doing to hide their own inefficiency. However efficient the Government were, or whatever Government were in power, they would have to adopt some such thing as that if they were to try to prevent the war between capital and labour becoming worse and worse as time goes on. Conditions are not normal and are not going to become normal for some time. We have to face up to that and we have to try to find a remedy for the difficulties that are ahead of us.

There is no reason why I should go into detail and try to answer the points made by other speakers. Senator O'Connell asked the question, how could you explain the difference between the price of an Irish assembled motor car and the price of an imported motor car. That is one thing I think I could throw a little light on. I am not in favour of high prices, even for motor cars, although I have not got one and do not aspire to have one, but I can quite understand that if I go to England I can buy a car off the assembly line because they are being turned out there to the tick of the clock and I can get a car there at whatever the price may be, but if I want the manufacturer to collect all the parts and to pack them in a box and label them, check them and re-check them so that not a screw or a nut will be missing, and then send them over to me, and if I must set up a factory or assembly yard and put men in to put the parts together, the cost is bound to be higher than if I imported the car. It would be the same if I imported a watch. If I went to Switzerland and brought home a box of parts for making watches and asked somebody to put them together here it would cost me more. If you go into a toy shop and buy a toy clockwork train you will get it cheaper than if you buy a box of parts and make your own train.

The fact that things are dearer does not always mean that there is profiteering. I do believe that, in certain trades, certain distributive trades, in any case, the margin of profit, seems to be higher than it might be. If the tribunal or committees that are being set up now can reduce the difference between what the producers charge and what the consumer pays they will be doing good work. I think that applies to agricultural produce as well as to manufactured goods. Reference has been made here to the difference between the price the farmer gets and the price the consumer pays. I had an experience some years ago. It was not peculiar but, as it happened to myself, I can say with truth that it happened. There was an orchard where I was living at that time that contained some very good fruit trees. I decided to pack the fruit as carefully and as neatly as any imported fruit. I picked each apple off the tree by hand so as to avoid bruising. I rolled them carefully in specially procured paper. I packed them in the auctioneers' trays and brought them to the Dublin market. They were sold. The following day, in a shop in Dublin, I saw a box of my apples and they were marked 4d. each. I had the bill from the auctioneer in the Dublin market showing that I had received 4d. per dozen for the apples. They were sold to the shop that was charging 4d. per apple. When I read the price that the farmer gets for his produce and compare that with the price that is charged in the shop, it seems to me the margin is too great. That is a matter into which somebody other than a committee of civil servants might well inquire. The cost of distribution, in some cases, is exactly as high, if not higher, than the actual cost of production. That should not be the case in a small country like this.

I am glad, therefore, and I think everybody is glad, no matter on what side of the House he may be, that something is being done to stabilise or to attempt to stabilise prices because, until you stabilise prices, you cannot hope to stabilise wages and unless you stabilise wages and prices and find a formula by which ordinary, inevitable increases will be met with improvements in wages, you will have strikes and you will have trouble. I do not think anybody wants strikes, least of all the people who walk up and down in the picket line. I have not the same hope of success for this effort as some of the Senators who spoke seem to have but I think we are at least making an effort and to say that this is just another commission and to throw cold water on it in that way is hardly fair or useful.

Mr. Loughman

First of all, I should like to say that it is rather unfortunate that a subject which offers such wide scope for discussion should come before this House at the eleventh hour. Many of us would like to devote a long time to a discussion of many of the problems which could be discussed under this measure but we are tied to time and we have to forget a number of the things which we would like to say. It has been emphasised over many years that to offset the increase in the cost of living it would be necessary to increase production. Last week in this House we gave a final reading to a Bill, the purpose of which, we were told, was to improve methods of production and to expand means of production. While that Bill was being discussed in this House, many things were said which seemed to imply that industrialists were outcasts or should be outcasts in this country. While I might be regarded as being biased in favour of industrialists, when a person like Senator Dr. McCartan rose and spoke, I felt from his heart, in protest against the things that were said about these industrialists, I came to the conclusion that I was not biased and that the things that were being said were, to say the least of it, undesirable. I regard industrialists in this country as people who should be looked up to by every citizen in the State. In the beginning, when industrial development got under way away back in 1933 or 1934 industrialists were derided here. They were told, as was mentioned in the last debate, that they were employers of slave labour, that they had back lane factories, etc. Notwithstanding that, in face of terrific opposition they improved their factories and the conditions of employment for their workers. They improved the products of these factories and in the process they made certain profits for themselves. Why these people should be condemned because they made profits is something which I can never understand.

I heard even Professor Stanford refer to a dividend of 20 per cent. as a fat dividend. Talk of that description, and without any qualification, leads certain people very often to conclude that these industrialists are raking off userers' profits, that they are Shylocks, as the Tánaiste called them, and that they should be made real outcasts in this country. To take a particular case, I know of an industry which started on a small capital and put its profits over the years into expanding that industry and building it up. It paid no dividends and hardly paid any directors' fees. Then, perhaps, after ten or 15 years, the share capital being the same as it was in the beginning, it was able to pay dividends on that small share capital. Although the dividend was 20 per cent., the shareholders were simply recouping themselves for past years' sacrifices and the dividend was in no way related to the enormous amount of production which that factory carried on.

I think that the Tánaiste's speech in the Dáil last week, while we were discussing the Industrial Development Bill, did much to discourage industrialists in this country. I thought he would particularise in his references to industrialists. In the beginning he spoke about a certain type of industrialist, but in the last line of his speech he referred to these particular industrialists who committed the enormous offence of trying to raise funds to keep in power a Government under which they felt industry could prosper. I do not think these industrialists committed any sin or deserved any condemnation from the Tánaiste because they did that particular act.

Mr. Douglas

They did not all do it.

Mr. Loughman

I quite agree. The Tánaiste evidently had these particular industrialists in mind when he was referring to industrialists in his speech in the Dáil last week. Of course, the Fine Gael Party themselves had representatives in my own home town who did not hesitate to call on me to solicit a subscription on behalf of the Fine Gael Party. They called on a number of people in the town of Clonmel whom I know as positive supporters of Fianna Fáil. If they had got their money they would have accepted it or if they had got my money they would have accepted it, even though it had a taint of coming from a person who supported Fianna Fáil.

Mr. Douglas

Is that peculiar to one Party?

Dr. O'Higgins

They never pass my house.

Mr. Loughman

Why make an attack on industrialists because they combine to raise funds to provide Fianna Fáil with election expenses? What I am particularly protesting against is that a man holding the position of deputy leader of the Government should go into the Dáil and there actually slander people who have in the past done great work in this country and who can in the future do greater work still. Senator Summerfield yesterday told us that he had plans for industrial expansion west of the Shannon, but that because of the feeling of insecurity created by the Tánaiste's speech, these plans were going to be put in abeyance. I think that is a very serious matter and that the Government should take serious notice of that statement of the Senator. I think we should ask the Tánaiate to clarify his statement. If there is any particular person in industry whom he knows who is doing things that should not be done, he should mention him and not simply use the word "industrialist", vaguely particularising by mentioning those who supported Fianna Fáil.

Senator Professor O'Brien made use of the phrase that the public is in a very suspicious mood at the present time. To my mind, the public for long years have been in a suspicious mood. They have now reached the stage when they are firmly convinced that this Government is a bad Government for the country. They have reached the conclusion that no reliance at all can be placed either on the Government collectively or on individual members of the Government. We know that various Ministers, at various times and in various places, made statements which were contradictory of one another, statements also which the people ultimately found were without foundation. Back in 1948, I remember advertisements appearing advising farmers to grow oats and potatoes, stating that there would be a remunerative market for them and a market for all that they could produce. When these crops were harvested, there was no market for the people and when they protested they were told to walk these things off the farm. In the next year they were told, also by advertisement, that if they grew oats it should be to meet their own requirements, and if they grew barley they should bear in mind that they would get only the price which the millers were prepared to pay for the quantity the millers needed and anything over that should also be walked off the farm; but, if they wanted a cash crop, they should grow wheat. In the previous year they were told: "If you grow wheat you will get a particular price for it." There was not any encouragement in that "if". This year they were told it was the only crop for which they were going to get a fixed price.

Later on, with the same Minister, we had the questions of encouraging egg and fowl production. People were told the more they produced, the better the price, would be. Later on they were told the price would have to be reduced, but it would be over a period of years. The prices of eggs and fowl were reduced. We are now told that notwithstanding the period of five years the prices of eggs and fowl are again to be reduced.

What reliance can people have on a Government containing a Minister who makes statements of that description? We had the teachers' organisation, for instance. They were given to understand that a commission would be set up and the findings of that commission would be implemented. The Roe Commission was set up and the findings were rejected. I could not quote the exact words of the secretary of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation in his summing up of that rejection, but I think they should have given the Government food for thought.

People were told before the last election that migration was a thing which could be cured overnight. We have had a commission sitting for over two years and we have not had any form of report in connection with its work, but we know that people are still emigrating. While the Government continues to carry on in that fashion, I fail to see how the country can have any confidence in them. I know that at the present time the people throughout the country definitely have no confidence in this Government. I know of people in the present very critical period who took a handcart and went around the fuel merchants in my town to see if they could get some fuel which they were prepared to cart to their homes. Merchants have asked me if I could not induce the Corporation of Clonmel to make available to them some coal out of a consignment which they got to keep the gas works going, in order that the people would be able to have a fire during the Christmas period.

The fuel situation is desperate in the country. I took up a Waterford paper the week before last and in the district notes it was stated that in the areas around Waterford in small villages and towns there was a coal famine. The worst of it is that the people can see no hope of that famine being ended in the near future. Yesterday Senator Baxter told us there was coal still in the Park. There is, but I understand a couple of hundred thousand tons of it were sold early this year for a quarter or a third of what it would fetch at the present time. It is not the price of it that is the great difficulty but the fact that the coal has gone; it is not there now to meet the crisis with which we are faced.

It is not only in Dublin that the coal dumps have been dissipated. We know that in various parts of the country where these dumps were they were sold and the result is that in many of our towns there is no timber, no turf, no coal. I only hope that the Government will be able to do something even now to see that before conditions get really desperate fuel supplies will be made available.

Senator Baxter yesterday referred to the increased prices which the farmers are getting when they send beef to Britain. When I said that the Tánaiste, in his speech in the Dáil last week, said the £ is now valued for 13/6—that is, in relation to the £ before devaluation—and consequently somewhere about £40 for a cow now would be equivalent to £27 before devaluation, the Senator said he never heard of it. Of course, when the Minister said that he was speaking from the dollar point of view, or in respect of goods which had a dollar content. But the fact remains that if we sell £40 worth of cow we are able to buy only £27 worth of maize with the money. When Senator Finan was talking he suggested that a person in employment would prefer £2 which would buy the goods he needed than £4 which would buy a lesser quantity.

We have heard a lot of talk about the benefits which the increase in old age pensions brought and we were told that this would help the people to meet the cost of living, but the 17/6 which the old age pensioners got, according to the Tánaiste, would be equivalent to about 11/9 when compared with what the money was worth before devaluation. In order to buy the necessaries of life, people have to get more money. It is no wonder, to my mind, that the people employed on the railways and in other places have to strike, have to make demands in order to get increased wages.

By the way, I would like to say that I condemn as much as I could condemn the action of the trade unionists who decided to take advantage of the people's difficulty by declaring a strike in Christmas week. During my life, I have always supported trade unionism, but I think Governments here should have power to prevent trade unions or any other organisation from holding the State to ransom. I know that at this period of the year it is the custom for people to foregather in their homes. I know people have the habit of sending presents to their friends here, there and everywhere. It is a shocking thing that any group of decent people in this country would use this particular occasion to gain their own ends. I cannot see that the matter was of such urgency that they should select Christmas week to have their strike. I think they have lost the sympathy of quite a great number of people throughout the country because of the time they chose to make their protest.

Since I am talking of railways, I would like to refer to another statement which Senator Baxter made yesterday. He said that the strikers were carrying posters protesting or trying to prevent other people from going to work on the railways, and that they should have on these posters instead a warning that if they got the increases in wages that that increase in wages would mean an increase in transport charges which would ultimately mean an increase in the cost of living. I am glad that he has come to that point of view, because we in Fianna Fáil suffered very considerably in a particular way, because that particular line was not adopted in connection with Córas Iompair Éireann at the time Fianna Fáil left office. When Fianna Fáil left office Córas Iompair Éireann had made an increase in wages involving tens of thousands of pounds—more even—to their employees. The new Government put an extra tax of 5d. per gallon on petrol and they compelled the railway company to keep in employment something in the region of 3,000 men who were redundant. At the same time, the Government refused to allow the then manager to increase the railway fares or the bus fares. Of course, Senator Baxter now finds that these increases can be made because it suits his Government to make them. It is a fact that the Government of the day made Córas Iompair Éireann practically bankrupt in order that they would be able to say—so far as I can see—that Mr. Reynolds messed the situation when, in fact, it was the Government itself who prevented the railway authority from passing on to the public the extra charges which they had to meet in order to pay these sums which I have mentioned.

We are offered in this Bill an advisory committee which is going to make all these examinations and all these recommendations to the Minister. I said that the people had lost confidence in the Government and that they had lost confidence in these commissions. Professor O'Brien suggested two things at least that he would recommend to the Government in connection with this particular advisory committee— first, that they should report quickly and, secondly, that the Government should accept their recommendations. I suppose he made these suggestions because of the poor record of these commissions and of the Government in the past, but my angle in connection with this particular advisory committee is in line with an old saying that I used to know—"If you want to get a thing done get someone else to do it, but if you want it done well, do it yourself." To my mind "yourself" includes in this case the Minister and his staff, and if the Minister and his staff wish to do the job that this advisory committee is being set up to do, I believe they can do it much better, and I, for one, am inclined to agree with all the people who have spoken, particularly those from the other side of the House who have no confidence in this advisory committee.

There are many things that I would like to talk about, but owing to the fact that this is Christmas week and the debate must conclude very soon, I will not hold up the House any longer except, again, to suggest and to put on record that, in my opinion, the Government has forfeited the confidence of the people and it does not deserve their support.

Mr. M. O'Dwyer

I do not want to prolong this debate. I cannot understand why the Government put Sections 3 into the Bill. This section says:—

"A Minister may from time to time by Order provide for the establishment and constitution of bodies of persons to advise him in relation to all or any of the powers conferred on or delegated to him by virtue of the Principal Act and any such Order may contain such ancillary and supplementary provisions as the Minister thinks proper."

Why the Minister should put that into the Bill I do not know. The Minister has power to appoint anybody to advise him. In fact, we all could do it. Why did the Minister not simply make the Order and give whatever powers he wanted by Order instead of putting this section into the Bill and causing endless delay and a long, protracted and angry debate for the last six weeks? There was no necessity for the section. I think it was a very cumbersome and slow method of dealing with the matter. There is a certain state of emergency to-day owing to the Korean war. There has been a dislocation of prices. Prices have risen rapidly. That is a position that requires to be dealt with quickly. The price of coal, for instance, has risen but, in addition to that, we find all over the country that in practically the same village or town the price of coal ranges from 8/- a cwt. to 10/- a cwt. and in some cases 11/- a cwt. That is a state of affairs that requires to be dealt with urgently and the Minister could have dealt with it under the powers he has already.

The question of how far the import price has caused a general increase in prices is a matter for more detailed study but there is no reason to await this Bill in order to be able to deal with that. The same thing holds for all the other increases that have taken place—the Minister could have dealt with them under the powers he already had. Those matters have been dealt with all the time under the previous Government. We know that prices were regulated very effectively under the previous Government in relation to some articles. Take butter for example. Under the previous Government—and even before the rationing or scarcity at all—the price of every pound of butter that was made by the manufacturing creamery was fixed as it was delivered to the wholesaler and retailer. The price of bacon was controlled more or less the same way and so with tea and sugar. The source and distribution of the food products were very effectively controlled. Where control is not sufficient, however, to keep prices at a reasonable level, the Government should subsidise foodstuffs and I think that this Government is inclined to fail in that matter. We know that an increase has taken place in the producing countries and that nobody can prevent an increase in prices here, but it is certainly the duty of the Government, if they cannot control prices, to subsidise essentials and maintain prices at a reasonable level for the poorer people. The previous Government, to give them their due—and it is right that they should get their due— did not hesitate to subsidise when necessary on behalf of the poorer sections of the community. The present Government seem inclined too much to restrict the subsidisation of foodstuffs which is so necessary and they would be well advised if they reversed their policy in that matter.

Why does the Government not use the existing machinery? Why do they wish to scrap it when it has been so effective both for them and for the people of the country? It is interesting to see the way the present Government have tried since they took office to discard everything they got from the previous Government. In other countries an incoming Government tries to carry on as far as possible on the lines of the outgoing Government so as not to cause dislocation, but this Government went on reverse lines and have done away with everything Fianna Fáil did. Their propagandists would seem to imply that there was two years ago nothing but chaos. I remember a man who had been married some years telling me that he could not understand why his wife was so anxious to get rid of everything his mother had around the house. Having first got rid of the old lady, she never cried halt until every vestige of his mother's housekeeping was out of the way, and it is the same with this Government. They did away with the air lines from Shannon, the short-wave station, the County Management Act— I cannot think of all the things. They have tried to scrap everything they got, and they have produced things which were usually much the same as the things they discarded, and here we have another example. The machinery was there for price control and there was no necessity at all for this long debate or for this section. They could have used the price control arrangement which existed and which had been carried on effectively. They could have strengthened it if they wished, but there was no necessity to scrap it, and there was no necessity for this Bill, which could have been done without.

Mr. Meighan

I consider this a very important Bill and I welcome it. One Senator yesterday said that before price control was introduced for clothing it was the practice to sell cheaper articles practically at cost and to make a higher profit on a dearer article, but when price control came in it was the same profit for all. I have personal experience during the 1914-1918 war. The then British Government gave us what they called utility clothing, men's and children's suits suitable for the working classes and the poorer people which could be procured at a very reasonable figure, and it is a pity that we cannot enjoy concessions like that. If there were a lower profit on cheaper clothing it would be very useful. Many people among the rural population in the West of Ireland rearing young families used to buy second-hand clothing which was to be had at a very cheap rate, and they would be in a very bad way for some time past were it not for the clothes they got from friends in America. If we are to have another emergency, if prices are going to rise, I would stress that we should have some sort of utility clothing such as could be procured during the 1914-1918 war at very reasonable prices.

There have been certain abuses with regard to this matter. I was a personal witness to this occurrence. Tea had been controlled for a long time and one would expect that the Government should have control of all the stocks of tea, but I saw a van pull up at the creamery in my own town with chests of tea in it. I handed out 28-lb. butter boxes to people who were in a position to buy that tea at 10/- or 12/6 a pound. That is a thing that should be kept in mind and a repetition of it should not take place.

Some Senator said yesterday that he thought it was often a mistake to tell people when a rise in prices was coming. To a very large extent I quite agree. When the emergency was about to take place the last Government advised people such as merchants to buy huge stocks, but when they went to the banks they were unable to get the necessary capital. The same applied to big retailers. They could get all the stuff they wanted in the way of drapery goods and the result was that everybody in the country who was comfortable got good stocks of flannelette, blankets and all essential household goods that carried them through the emergency, with the result that the poorer classes who were not able to pay cash down then were in a very bad way at a later stage. If there is a repetition of such conditions I would suggest that the Government should, if possible, take steps to lay aside in their own control some stocks of those essential clothing materials and household goods.

I heard it said that the margin of profit as between producer and consumer is high and that there is something wrong.

No later than the present week I had this experience. Turkeys, for instance, are being sold throughout the country at 4/- per lb. In some places the producers may be getting 4/1 or 4/2 per lb. In my own town, a fortnight or three weeks ago, the sum of £15,000 was paid for turkeys. The price given to the producer did not exceed 4/- per lb. Some days later I was in Dublin and asked the price of turkeys in a shop. I was told it was 6/- per lb. I cannot see why there should be that difference of 2/- per lb. in the price of the bird simply for taking it 40 or 80 miles up to Dublin. There may be reasons for charging that price, but I am not aware of them. I am not accusing anybody. Perhaps the difference in price as between what the producer gets and what the consumer has to pay is due to the fact that the birds are handled by too many middlemen. On previous occasions in this House I had to speak in somewhat similar terms about the prices which consumers had to pay in Dublin for eggs and butter. Many people are inclined to think that because they have to pay 6/- per lb. for turkeys in Dublin the farmers or producers are making fortunes. That is not so.

Let me say that I think this whole question of prices which we have been discussing here is a bit too serious to be making Party politics out of it. I listened attentively to the debate yesterday and to-day, and the conclusion that I have come to is that there was a little too much of Party politics introduced into it. I regret that, and I think it is a pity that it should be so. The times are looking too serious for that kind of thing, and, in my opinion, it is a pity that everybody would not co-operate and try to get the best results for the country. If that were done it would be for the good of the public at large.

I regret the stoppage which has taken place on our railway system at the present time. If it is a fact that the railwaymen in Dublin are in receipt of as low a wage as £4 a week then, in my opinion, that is not a fair wage, or sufficient to enable them to rear a family on. The labourers in our county have had their wages brought up to £3 10s. a week. The majority of them are employed on the roads, but they also have some land or some other little sideline. It is scarcely justice, I think, to give railwaymen in Dublin only £4 a week. At the same time, I must say that the justice of their claim could be just as well advanced at some other period of the year. It is sad to think that, due to the stoppage, there are so many people who will not be able to reach their homes this Christmas. They had been looking forward to their Christmas holiday, or there may be people who were expecting to be the recipients of a goose or a turkey. The parcels which their friends proposed to send to them are being refused by the Post Office. I think it is a great pity, in view of all that, that the stoppage was timed for the present season. Judging by expres— sions of opinion which I have heard from people on the trains, I think the railwaymen would have a lot more sympathy to get if they had timed this strike for another season. As one Senator said, this seems to be an abuse of their economic power. At the same time, I want again to say that if their pay is what it is said to be, then I think it is scarcely fair.

Senator Loughman wants us all to go away with the idea that the Government has lost the confidence of the people and that it is not wanted. He may have been speaking, as I suppose he was, for his own area, but I can tell him that, as far as the County Roscommon is concerned—if he has any doubts about it, he can come down there any day—he will very soon see whether or not the Government has lost the confidence of the people there. They very definitely have not lost their confidence in the Minister for Agriculture.

Dr. O'Higgins

This debate has naturally ranged over a very wide field. The very title of the Bill, which deals with supplies and services, ensured that a very wide range of activities would come up for discussion. On this occasion the Bill was introduced with a certain addition. It is introduced at a time when the public mind is agitated with the gravity of things that may come. We all hope sincerely that the situation will not develop into one of real gravity. One would have imagined that, with at least that element of danger, and in view of the public anxiety with regard to the future, even though this may be a political assembly, that, nevertheless, the normal political antics would have been dropped just for the occasion and for the purpose of this discussion. I listened to a great number of the speeches from my right. They were in the main perfectly sound and understandable speeches to be made at a crossroads during a general election, but not just the appropriate type of speech to be directed to a Bill of this kind on an occasion such as this. We had the normal political word play about promises made, to what extent they were kept, to what extent they were broken, and to what extent they were sincerely intended at the time they were made.

We had a coroner's court being constituted over every single act of the previous Government and all the past acts of this Government. There may be a certain amount of quiet mischievous enjoyment to the individual in the disinterment of bones of that particular kind, but it does not present either to the Seanad or to the public the sense of responsibility which people are entitled to expect in serious times. There is another matter. Even though the ordinary man in the street may take his information as to what is or is not said in the Dáil or Seanad from the columns of newspapers, one would expect Senators with experience and with a sense of responsibility to take their quotations from the published volumes of the Dáil and Seanad debates which every one of them gets free through the post.

At the start off, I must say, in defence of a very young colleague who is doing an entirely meritorious type of public service in carrying on his back, through the unfortunate illness of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the total responsibilities for one of the most difficult and complex Departments of State, that it was not quite fair that so many Senators should misrepresent his account, in his Second Reading speech in the Dáil, of the circumstances existing in this country. It is true that some of the newspapers took the wrong interpretation of the views which he expressed.

Mr. Hawkins

As they did in 1916.

An Cathaoirleach

The Minister did not interrupt the Senator.

Dr. O'Higgins

I do not know whether the person we are talking about was in existence in 1916.

Mr. Baxter

He was not.

Dr. O'Higgins

The heading in certain newspapers was to the effect that the Parliamentary Secretary (Mr. Cosgrave) claims that the cost of living has not gone up. Any Senator speaking in relation to that particular debate, if he read the Parliamentary Secretary's statement in the Official Report, would see that one thing he endeavoured to make very clear was (1) that he was referring to the official cost-of-living index figure, and (2) that he was claiming there had not been an increase in that figure as between August, 1947, and August, 1950. That is a thing he said not once but a few times in his speech in the Dáil. Then he went on to point out that since the late summer of this year world conditions had changed and there was a tendency for the cost-of-living index figure to go up. Whatever the excuse may be for the general public's misunderstanding of his words, there is no justification for Senators, with that volume sent to them free through the post, to misrepresent that young man carrying the enormous load that he is carrying at the present moment. I was glad to hear a condemnation of such tactics coming from Senator O'Connell and others. I suggest that it was not fair and was not decent.

We all know that the cost-of-living figure is made up of a great number of elements, rent, rates, food, fuel, clothing, textiles and other goods, and that, while the cost-of-living index figure may remain constant within that constant figure there can be rises or falls. As a matter of fact, between the official cost-of-living index figure of August, 1947, and August, 1950, you had increases in the clothing element, you had falls in the food element, but the all-over figure remained constant at 100. In the 1947 figure, it was 100 in each of the headings, food, clothing, fuel, light and rent. In the August, 1950, figure, the food figure was 96; clothing, 111; fuel and light, 102; rent, 109, and the over-all cost-of-living figure was 100, exactly the same as in August, 1947. That was the contention of the Parliamentary Secretary, and, except we are to impeach the honour and honesty of our expert statisticians, we should at least have reached the point that we can accept their figures. They have been arrived at by the same methods by an army of annotators taking the price of similar commodities in the same number of shops on the same day every quarter back through the years.

It has been mentioned by some Senators with truth that the official cost-of-living index figure is merely a rough indicator, that it does not claim to be, nor does it, in fact, show, the actual cost of living in any particular household. The goods that are brought into play in arriving at the cost-of-living index figure are a very limited range of goods and it is only on the assumption that all people are entitled to have food, fuel, clothing and a roof over their heads and that no other factor enters into the cost of living, that a figure such as that would represent anything like the normal family budget and the normal family expenditure.

The statistics branch is carrying out a number of investigations. When the branch is well under way, when its investigating machinery is complete and its investigations finished, I believe there will be an amount of valuable information available both to Parliament and to the public. One check which has been carried out, a rough-and-ready check, is to what extent the official cost-of-living index figure equates a general gallop through retail prices. In a rather hurried investigation into retail prices generally in comparison with the cost-of-living index figure, it was ascertained that there was only 1 or 2 per cent. difference between the results obtained by one particular method and the restricted results as outlined in the official cost-of-living index figure. The family budget or the normal cost of expenditure in any normal household must, of course, include commodities which are not absolutely necessaries of life but which enter into the normal expenditure of the normal household, even if they are living very little above the destitution level.

Charges have been rather recklessly made here that no serious or determined effort was made, following the change of Government, to reduce the actual cost of living. There was no sheltering behind a cost-of-living index figure, but the charge was made that no serious effort was made to reduce the actual cost of normal family maintenance. People in political opposition have sometimes, with regard to some factors, peculiarly long memories and, with regard to other factors, peculiarly short memories. I doubt if any action was ever taken in one month that had such a depressing effect on the cost of normal family existence than when the taxes were removed from beer, stout, tobacco, cigarettes and the cheaper forms of entertainment.

We are not a community that lives on the lines of the most severe form of austerity. We are not a community that engages in no pleasures, that never enjoys any of the ordinary simple comforts of ordinary simple life. In practically every family throughout the length and breadth of this country you have somebody who sucks a pipe or smokes a cigarette, you have somebody who takes an occasional bottle of beer or pint of porter, you have somebody who goes to a picture house once or twice a week. Where there is a family of normal size, the reduction in the family budget for those just normal little comforts of life must have been very significant. With regard to the working classes, the people engaged in heavy manual labour—men working in the holds of ships, and so forth—the reduction effected in the cost of living through that particular action was immense. At all events, when we are discussing the all-in cost of running a family in a reasonable manner, one would imagine that speakers who concentrated practically solely on the cost of running a family would at least have remembered the significance of that particular action if they are as concerned as they pretend to be about the cost of running the normal family.

The opening speaker on the Opposition Benches, Senator Quirke, introduced a number of matters which I do not think were strictly related to the Bill before the House. I did not quite understand how the Minister for Agriculture figured in this particular Bill but, following the line of cross-roads tactics, of course, the Opposition speaker feels that his day is worthless, that it is misspent, if he has not a crack at the Minister for Agriculture— and that is contributing to making the Minister for Agriculture the gigantically popular figure he is in this country to-day. The more of those barbs which are directed against him the bigger he will grow in the public estimation. Amongst the charges that were made was that, as the man responsible for directing agricultural development in this country on the most modern lines and for bringing about the maximum of production, the Minister for Agriculture referred to the fact that we were living in an age of mechanisation and that, with a farm of suitable size, mechanisation produces better results. Senator Quirke, of course, availed of that particular phrase to attack the Minister for Agriculture for eliminating the horse. He pointed out that our hunters and our show jumpers came, to a very great extent, from and through the mare that was used on the farm. That is true, to a certain extent, to-day. But 30 years ago and 25 years ago, to a much greater extent, the Irish hunter and the Irish show jumper came through the mare that was used as the hack cob and the trapping mare. When Senator Quirke and myself bought our first motor cars we contributed far more towards the elimination of that type of horse than any speech made by the Minister for Agriculture in regard to mechanisation. Let each man carry his own load. Let every one of us here, including the Senator who was regretting the passing of the noble horse, bear his share of responsibility When he got a mechanised vehicle to carry him around on his professional and other activities, just as I did myself, that was a far bigger blow at the Irish hunters and show jumpers than any mechanisation on the farm.

There were a number of references to the change in fuel production following, as was stated, the change of Government. During the war the public of this country had, of necessity, to rely exclusively on turf. The change of policy, either by one Government or the other, did not eradicate turf. What eradicated or reduced very greatly the demand for turf—and that, in turn, meaning the production of turf—was the reintroduction of British coal and its sale, unrationed, to the community at large. The reintroduction of British coal into this country, following the war and the emergency, took place in October, 1947. It was on sale freely up and down the country without any control, without any rationing. The day that was done, the big demand for turf and the big production of turf immediately ceased. That was done by the previous Government. There, again, we had the conveniently short memory: they did remember as far back as 1948 but they were incapable of remembering as far back as November, 1947. When coal came back into this country the previous Minister for Industry and Commerce decided that the Bord na Móna hand-won turf scheme had got to stop. It had got to stop because there was no point in producing vastly surplus to demand an article——

Mr. Hawkins

I wonder would the Minister be so good as to produce to the House and to the people the minute of that decision taken by the then Cabinet. It would be very interesting.

Dr. O'Higgins

As far as that goes, there has been objection both here and in the lower House to producing Government files and discussing them publicly. I was very careful on this particular point. I am merely acting as Minister for Industry and Commerce.

Mr. Hawkins

You have all my sympathy.

Dr. O'Higgins

I heard the statement made here yesterday. I heard it contradicted. I had not direct visual evidence of the correctness of the statement made and, knowing that this matter would arise, I took the precaution this morning of asking to have the file brought here and I read the note on it. I read it here at this table in the presence of the Seanad. I merely ask Senator Hawkins now to take my word with regard to the statement I am making; the decision is there on the file. I shall give Senator Hawkins an opportunity of perusing the file. If the Seanad wants to trample on established precedent I am here as the servant of the House. I have no objection to reading the file but all Parties here and in the other House object to that being done and I certainly would not like to be the one to disregard that objection.

Do not think that I am criticising the Minister of the day for that. I think that was a normal, rational decision and a decision which would be taken by any normal, rational man. The choice was to keep out coal, war or peace, or let in coal and curtail the production of turf. I would say that the previous Minister for Industry and Commerce was an exceedingly capable and able man. He had not to be told what the result of the reintroduction of coal would mean. He faced the natural results of the reintroduction of coal. That meant that it was still left to Bord na Móna to produce the maximum amount of machine-won turf. It was still left to the private producer to produce the maximum amount of hand-won turf for which there was, is and always will be a market. As far as Government Departments go, and there was some reference to Government Departments in this debate, we have continued to encourage the private producer producing hand-won turf and we have continued to provide a market for it in so far as ordinary domestic consumption fails to provide it.

As far as the Army is concerned, I met a deputation, consisting of Senators and Deputies of all Parties. The Army is still, in so far as turf is available, bound under regulation to burn so much hand-won turf, and the price is fixed each year. There is unlimited scope for the purchase of turf, and we do not buy it in large quantities. The unit in which we buy is designed to be within the reach of any private turf producer. We buy in quantities as small as one ton. That arrangement was made by me in March, 1948. Our turf quota has never been filled, or even nearly filled, because the men who would engage in that particular type of work have apparently got some more profitable work in some other direction. Most of them are in a position to cut only enough hand-won turf for themselves and for their immediate neighbours. That even applies to the Curragh Camp, and the Curragh Camp has extensive turbary on three sides of it and a very large expanse belonging to a private owner as well. In the Department of Health, too, hospitals and other institutions are designed specifically for the burning of turf. The market there has never been filled.

In addition to these references to turf and to fuel generally we have had references to a fuel famine. There may be a temporary famine of any single commodity at any time, either in normal times or in times of emergency, if every customer orders the maximum amount at one and the same moment. The Government is not unconscious of the difficulties that exist at the present time. The Government is not unconscious of the difficulties that small people experience in trying to procure supplies. They have been in touch with fuel merchants and others. The trouble is that everybody panicked, panicked to a certain extent because of world conditions, but to a very great extent by certain newspapers and certain public men, and demanded the maximum amount of coal they could get or pay for at one and the same time. One coal merchant pointed out the fact that he had about 1,200 customers. Normally he would supply 100 customers per month. He never and to supply very much more than 100 in the same month. But recently every customer planked in his demand at the same time. Therefore you have a state of artificial famine and a state of artificial shortage. In the ordinary way of trade most traders will supply orders as rapidly as they can in a position like that. It is much easier to supply a man who will order a full lorry load than to supply a group of customers ordering three, five or seven bags which entails the lorry stopping at half a dozen different houses in half a dozen different streets.

Having explained the situation to the Seanad I would like now to have the co-operation of the very influential public men, such as we have here in the Seanad, in allaying the panic and stopping the stampede in which so many people are trying to get the same goods at the same time. If they would exercise a little more restraint it would help the situation. If, when they are giving their order to the coal merchant they would say: "I am all right until late January, or February or early March; supply the more urgent cases first," then there would be ample coal to go around and supplies of coal would reach the provincial towns to which one Senator has just referred.

The Government is the normal butt for criticism and every Government must take that in its stride. If there are any bricks hanging around any building that are not in use, the best way to use them is to throw them at the Government. One would expect, from listening to some of the speeches made, that the prices section of the Department of Industry and Commerce had just collapsed with the change of Government, that there was complete inefficiency inside the Government itself and that efficient organisations functioning under the Government became suddenly inefficient, the infection going from above down. When people are criticising work done by the prices section and the work done by the Government as responsible for that particular section, I wonder if they pay any attention to the fact that, in spite of all the things referred to by Senators, in spite of devaluation, partial war production, a high degree of scarcity in certain lines of goods and increased rates, in spite of all those factors which operated, some of them continuously over the last three years, most of them over the last two, and in spite of an increase in wages to practically every worker in the country, up to last August there was not an increase in the cost-of-living index figure.

Surely, if there were not an effective control machinery operating, any of these factors, certainly all of them together, would have produced increased prices, as reflected in the over-all retail prices or in the cost-of-living index figure. Yet, you had not got that up to last August. Surely that is sound work, well done. Surely that is the high-mark of exemplary service by a section of the Civil Service, not only to the Government it happened to be serving for the time being, but to the public as a whole. When we have these gibes, sneers and jeers with regard to complete inefficiency, complete break-down all over the place, it is an indictment of honest servants of the State who have been doing their work honestly and efficiently. Their results are there and those results should at least be taken into account before we have these carping, reckless, unfounded condemnations.

Speeches were made in the course of this debate with regard to other matters. There was a line of approach to the advisory committee which it is proposed to establish which was rather difficult to follow. There was condemnation of that particular proposal. We were asked what use was an advisory body and were told that it can do very little. Coincident with that criticism and that type of half-hearted condemnation, we were told that the powers were always there, that the previous Government had by law established, or made provision for the establishment of, machinery such as this, and the previous Government could do no wrong. I may be slow in my understanding of these things. I wanted to reconcile those two different lines of criticism coming from the one mouth or, at all events, from the one bench. If the powers were already there in the legislation of the land for the assistance of the Minister, what is the necessity for anybody to get hot and bothered about it as if it was a completely revolutionary measure introduced only in this Bill? If the powers are already there, is there any harm in calling attention to the fact that they are there? If they are already there, established by law on the initiative of our predecessors, is there any harm in merely accentuating the point that those powers are there and in using the machine which was left to us? You may say, if the powers are there, what was the necessity for legislation? That was a point that was in doubt. The necessity for legislation was merely for clarification and for safety. When there is any doubt about a matter such as that, as to whether this machine can be used for that purpose, and legislation is coming before the Dáil, every Attorney-General will advise that the safest thing is to clarify it and to put it there in black and white.

We have had that body criticised on very different grounds. Senator Summerfield seemed to be the type of person that is more panicked by words than by deeds. Like a sensitive horse that shies at a shadow on the ground, he is not a bit frightened when you bring him up to the substance of the tree. Senator Summerfield's whole case, as far as he had a case, against this particular Bill, was around words used by the Tánaiste. Words, he was afraid of. Deeds, he did not worry about. In fact, in so far as I could delve down through his very excellent but rather impassioned oratory, I found a rather unenthusiastic acceptance of the principle of the Bill.

Mr. Hawkins

I would like to have a statement from the Minister present now that the words used by the Tánaiste in the Dáil were not Government policy.

Dr. O'Connell

Wait and hear.

Dr. O'Higgins

I have no doubt the Senator would like a whole lot of things, some of which I could give him, some of which I cannot give him. I would like a lot of things that the Senator could not give me. What I am going to give him is the words that were objected to.

Mr. Hawkins

I think the House should be allowed to know whether the Tánaiste was speaking on behalf of the Government on that occasion.

An Cathaoirleach

The Minister must be allowed to make his speech.

Dr. O'Higgins

The words objected to by Senator Summerfield were the words he quoted perfectly fairly:

"That tribunal will be expected to undertake the most critical and the most microscopic examination of every claim for an increase made to it, and there must be no increase given by that tribunal unless the case for such an increase is proved beyond all possibility of doubt. If there is to be a doubt, it is the public and not the applicant who will get the benefit of that doubt."

Apparently it was that paragraph that excited the Senator. He objected to the language, probably to the word "microscopic".

Mr. Hawkins

I want the Minister to explain whether this body is to be a tribunal or an advisory council.

An Cathaoirleach

The Minister must be allowed to make his speech. If the Senator has a question to put, he can put it afterwards.

Dr. O'Higgins

In order to meet the impatience of the Senator, I can say it is to be an advisory committee.

Mr. Hawkins

Therefore that particular statement was not true, in fact.

An Cathaoirleach

The Minister must be allowed to make his speech now and I hope there will be no further interruptions.

Dr. O'Higgins

Senator Summerfield objected to the particular words there. He presumed to give the Tánaiste a lecture with regard to exaggerated sentences. We all may need to be lectured on our choice of words; but in selecting an instructor or lecturer to convey generally the restrained and moderate use of language, I would turn elsewhere than towards Senator Summerfield.

Mr. Summerfield

That was not my full quotation. The Minister has given only part of it.

Dr. O'Higgins

I have given the quotation and have asked if there is any objection to that. Apparently the word that excited the Senator was "microscopic". I would say that "microscopic" in that context implies the most searching.

Mr. Summerfield

I do not want to interrupt, either, but I want my full quotation. That was only part of it.

Dr. O'Higgins

I am not quoting the Senator but the portion of the Tánaiste's speech which he read out—

Mr. Summerfield

I read a further portion.

Dr. O'Higgins

——on the question of publicity and the extent to which there would be publicity. I endeavoured at certain length to deal with that in my opening speech and I am trying to avoid repetition and do not wish to take up too much of the time of the House. I gave the Senator assurances on that point and that answers the question put now.

With regard to whether the Tánaiste was stating Government policy in that particular speech, with regard to this Bill, in the broad sense he was. In the broad sense, any Minister speaking to a Government Bill is definitely stating Government policy.

There were references from different parts of the House to unreasonable profit and reasonable profit. Some Senators pointed out what is beyond dispute, that unless the investor were allowed the hope of reasonable profits from his investment and for the risk he is taking, there would be nearly a full stop to the development of Irish industry, if not to the existence of many present industries. No Minister could possibly dispute the soundness of that particular line of approach. The Tánaiste, with reference to that aspect of the matter, quoted Government policy in this particular paragraph:

"So far as the Government is concerned its attitude in relation to profits is this: it wants to ensure that the honest decent man or woman, the honest trader and the honest firm, which invests capital in an enterprise, will be permitted to get a reasonable return on that capital. We want to permit the decent manufacturer, the good industrialist, the good provider of services, to obtain a reasonable return on his capital and assist him to pay decent wages and to observe decent conditions of employment."

That is given in column 1822 of the Debates for the 6th December, 1950. I do not think a single industrialist, manufacturer or distributor would object to those views or the intentions conveyed in that paragraph. That is the Government's view. The Government is naturally as much concerned as any other Government in the past or future with the maintenance, development and expansion of Irish industries.

I was asked by more than one Senator whether I could give if not the names of the members of the committee, at least some description as regards the type. All I can say on that is that there would be no purpose in a Government establishing a committee of this kind unless it were one that had full public confidence. If it had the confidence only of the consumer and not of the distributor and the producer, it would be still-born, it would be a failure from birth. In my opinion, the very fact of establishing it would do more harm than good. The Government is determined, as far as they can, on the advice available to them, and with an immensely long panel of names, to present to the public a committee that will have the fullest confidence of all concerned that it is possible to get for any committee working on a difficult class of work such as this.

We are determined to get a committee that will have the confidence of all and certainly of the three classes most intimately concerned. We are determined above all to get a chairman who will be popularly acclaimed by all interested parties, even including the political Party opposed to us. I believe that can be done and will be done. However, it would be premature to start just now to parse and to sectionalise the committee, to say that it must of necessity consist of two from the industrial classes and two from the trade union classes. You could make a mistake at the very outset if you committed yourself to that kind of sectionalisation.

Mr. Quirke

If you worked on political Parties, you would be nearer to it.

Dr. O'Higgins

The purpose of all these discussions and the purpose of publicising a thing like this is to get suggestions and the Senator's suggestion will be taken more seriously than it was given, and that is not saying a whole lot. I would ask the Senator not to press that point, because the balancing, if balancing there is to be, is one of the major considerations of the moment. There may be a balanced committee, such as those which operate in the case of arbitration for banks and so on—two sides, with a chairman in the middle. If we could get a public committee attracting more public confidence by not having that mathematical balancing, it is the better committee we would go for, and what we hope to do with regard to this committee is to give not the second best to the public but the very best.

I am in the difficulty that I am not dealing with the Department with which I am conversant and that I am deputising for another Minister, and, in these conditions, I ask the Seanad to balance my difficulties with my deficiencies in the matter of a number of the questions which were raised, but there is one matter which was referred to by a number of Senators, the unfortunate situation with regard to the rail strike. There is a unanimous view that it is a regrettable and an unfortunate situation and there is a unanimous view, too, that the timing is particularly unfortunate. The particular season of the year is one at which this situation hits most of the people most acutely, and, within reasonable limits, the poorer they are, the more harshly they are hit. Most of us, either on our own wheels or with the assistance of the wheels of friends, will manage to get where we want to go, with or without trains.

There is something more than sentimental about Christmas in every Irish home. There is something holy about the desire of children and parents, brothers and sisters, to meet at Christmastime. Irish people, who would not care a fig if there was an interruption of services which involved them in the loss of their summer holiday, would be more than heartbroken by the idea of not being able to enjoy the family union at Christmas, and, where the full family union is not possible in every case, there is the old long-established token of the gift, the gift of remembrance, the gift not only of the solemnity but the joy of the occasion commemorating the birth of Christ. It is certainly to be regretted by all that the timing is such as to coincide with the Christmas season.

The merits of the case and the strength of the claim would not be minimised one iota by a postponement of this particularly drastic action. The general public of this country are very fair. They would see the strength, if there is strength there, and would appreciate the merits, if there are merits there. There would not be an adverse reaction and there would be more public understanding and support for the drastic weapon of the strike operating at any time rather than at the holy and happy season of Christmas.

When a strike does occur, there are two things of uppermost importance: (1) to get it settled as speedily as possible; and (2) to prevent its spread and extension, and, above all, to do nothing that might invoke or provoke an extension, or give a pretext or justification for its extension. There are many well-inclined people, in the Press and elsewhere, who come along with suggestions, suggestions which in most cases are obvious, but suggestions the adoption of which could only be contemplated if there was no risk that their adoption would spread the fire that we all should combine to try to keep down. It would be unwise for me in any capacity, but particularly in my awkward acting capacity at the moment, to go into this matter in any detail.

Mr. Colgan

Is there anything the Minister is prepared to do to try to bring about a settlement of the strike?

Dr. O'Higgins

That is tantamount to asking what is being done. I wanted to head off that question.

Mr. Colgan

I accept that.

Mr. Quirke

I asked if the Minister could give us the amount of wheat in the country at present—how many days', weeks' or months' supply of wheat we have?

Dr. O'Higgins

I will get it for the Senator.

Question put and agreed to.