Then at column 1949, he delivered himself of this confession:
I must confess that I have a very considerable dislike of most of these proposals for money for nothing——
——what we were trying to do was to provide money for employment and an increase in the industrial expansion——
——and, in the past, whenever I had as Minister to bring propositions here involving Government grants of any kind, for any purpose, I felt obliged to defend the proposal in full, and the absence of any attempt to defend this Bill——
——mark you, we were to defend the kind of thing the Minister for Industry and Commerce is perpetuating today——
——by the Minister in introducing it, the unwarranted assumption upon which he based his remarks, indicate to me that no very great thought has been given to this proposition at all.
Time belied, and will continue to belie, the prognostications of Deputy Lemass, because, as the Minister said, this is only a temporary measure to meet further requirements in the field of industry.
At column 1950 Deputy Lemass went on to say:
I believe that this Bill introduces an undesirable principle in the operation of industrial policy, that it is unnecessary, that the aid which industry requires is not this type of aid and that the whole origin of the Bill is the inability of the Government to think beyond the surface of things, to get down to an understanding of the real causes which are holding up national development, their desire to appear to be doing something, whether they get results or not, in order to safeguard their political position for the time being.
Again, time and the statistics produced by the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Central Statistics Office show how valuable this measure was and how right and proper it is that in 1968 we should increase the moneys available to the Industrial Development Authority, as suggested in this Bill.
Then Deputy Lemass at column 1950 said:
The Minister can have his Bill as far as I am concerned, but I want to make it clear that, in my view—and I may at some time in the future be empowered to influence Government policy—I think it has no importance whatever in relation to our industrial development and it represents a completely wrong approach to the problems of Irish industry as they exist today.
That was Deputy Lemass in 1956, and now in 1968 we have a sum of £30 million being provided for grants under the Act. Deputy Lemass took the trouble some time after his Party had been returned to office, after 1957, to repeal that Act. He did of course, but the principle contained in the new Act was the same, and we merely got rid of the body that was administering the Undeveloped Areas Act and amalgamated it with the Industrial Development Authority. Of course, the idea was that the Industrial Grants Act would continue to be in operation but it would have been enacted during Fianna Fáil's terms of office.
It is right and proper to point out that it was the late Deputy Norton, as Minister for Industry and Commerce in the inter-Party Government, who introduced that Bill and on the same day, the Finance (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, another stimulus to industrialists and exporters, was introduced by Deputy Sweetman, then Minister for Finance. Now, that is dealing with some of the malicious——