Appropriation Bill, 1969: Second Stage (Resumed).

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

Mr. Brosnahan

Before the adjournment last night I paid tribute to the Minister for Education and also to the Minister for Finance and the Government generally for the massive investment in education. I pointed out that the Vote for Education had increased from £15½ million in the year 1959/60 to £58½ million in the year 1968/69. This is a massive investment in education, a massive investment in people and in the development of our country. This occasion should not be allowed to pass without putting that on record.

I referred also to the creation of more opportunity for education for a greater number of people. People who in the past could not avail themselves of post-primary education can now do so. I referred also to the rationalisation of the schools situation throughout the country by the elimination of the very small schools and also to the schemes of improvement in schools throughout the country. More than 1,000 schemes of improvement and reconstruction have been put in hand since 1967. I referred also to the very significant development in special education for mentally and physically handicapped.

I regretted to have to refer to a vicious campaign which has been carried on inside and outside this country against the teaching profession. It is very embarrassing for anybody to have to stand here before intelligent people to take a stand against this campaign. It has been triggered off by a small group of people who avail themselves of the various media to denigrate the teaching profession.

It would not be reasonable to resent reasonable criticism but one must strongly resent complete distortion and exaggeration. This is bad enough inside our own country but people have seen fit to go outside the country and use the television medium in the United States with a viewing audience of 35 million people, and portray the Irish people as a nation of savages. These words are not mine, they are words used by a member of the medical profession—and I must say that some of the people engaged in this campaign are members of the medical profession, a very small group who do not represent at all the magnificent profession of medicine in this country——

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

Has the Senator seen the film he is talking about?

Mr. Brosnahan

A Chathaoirleach, would you tell this man to desist from ignorant and ill-mannered interruptions?

Senators

Hear, hear.

An Cathaoirleach

The Senator should not refer to another Senator in that fashion.

Mr. Brosnahan

I did not say he was ill-mannered. I said his interruption was.

An Cathaoirleach

All interruptions are disorderly. Senator Brosnahan on the Bill.

Mr. Brosnahan

I shall refer to the film if it will satisfy the Senator. I said that the words I have used, that we are a nation of savages, were used by a member of the medical profession in this film. The same person went on further to describe how regulations prevent the slaughtering of a pig in the presence of other pigs but that children can be beaten and slaughtered in Irish schools in the presence of other children and that we should come abreast of pig psychology. This is the presentation that has been made of the Irish people to 35 million people in the United States.

Mr. Haughey

Of course, over there, as often as not, the children slaughter the teachers.

Mr. Brosnahan

I shall come to that too. Thousands of letters have poured into this country and many of them have come to our office and also to the Department of Education, seeking an explanation. Irish people and Irish-Americans have been gravely disturbed by what they have seen and have asked how could Irish people contribute to the creation of this image. One of the persons who contributed to the film, the person who used the words I have just used, has been described in today's paper as a person who calmly presents the case against corporal punishment.

The question of corporal punishment is not being discussed at all. We are discussing a campaign which tries to pin the charge of brutality on Irish teachers, on Irish schools and on the Irish system. They are the words used by what is considered a responsible Sunday paper—the strange story of brutality in Irish schools—not brutality, not discipline, not even beating but police brutality, teacher brutality and parent brutality.

This is the line that is being put out leading to the same situation as exists in the place where the film was shown. We see the results in the United States of the dropping of discipline in schools. People are trying to reintroduce it into the schools in New York where you have a blackboard jungle, where a teacher cannot turn his back on a class, where teachers had to go on strike because they could not get police protection in the schools, where in Chicago an armed policeman has to stand guard in the corridors of certain classes. If one read Time magazine a fortnight ago one would have seen that statement.

Those are the lessons to be learned from abandoning all discipline in schools; I am not making a case here on behalf of corporal punishment but I shall nail this charge of brutality against Irish teachers. The NBC team arrived in Ireland and they got a number of people to make statements. I was approached at the end after several people had spoken. A phone call came to my office asking me if I would answer some questions on the Irish school situation.

I agreed because this is a new dimension in any position in which people have to deal with the public—if one is asked to give an interview, one cannot say no. A team arrived at the office by appointment, with cameras and lighting equipment. I was asked a series of questions on the Irish school situation: what were the advantages of our system, the disadvantages, the problems and so forth, and then at the end I was asked about discipline in the schools. Incidentally, I considered the person who interviewed me to be a rather shifty-looking character; he did not seem too happy and he fluffed several of his questions. I have been interviewed by at least ten interviewers from RTE and I have never had the experience of an interviewer fluffing his questions before. I feel I must mention this if I am to comment on the film later on. I felt that this was a strange performance from an NBC interviewer——

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

He must have been frightened.

Mr. Brosnahan

He was not frightened, but as an explanation one of his colleagues said he had a bad night the night before and we know with whom.

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

If this is supposed to be a reference to me it is not true.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

Senator Sheehy Skeffington has been told it is not in order to interrupt. Is there to be one law for him and another for the rest of us?

Professor Kelly

And another for the Minister.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

Senator Kelly is beginning to get anxious.

An Cathaoirleach

Senator Brosnahan on the Bill, please.

Mr. Brosnahan

I told him that we had not got blackboard jungles here, that if he wished to see one he should go back to his own country. Corporal punishment was allowed; it was disappearing from the educational scene for certain reasons, which I gave —the abandonment of the results system on which a teacher's pay depended on the answers given by the children, the abandonment of the rating system where teachers were under pressure to produce high standards and these high standards were produced by a question and answer performance by the teacher and the children, the abandonment of the scholarship scheme under which children were pressured to perform beyond their capacities in examinations, the abandonment of the primary certificate examination, the introduction of a new curriculum on a child-centred principle rather than a programme-centred curriculum—I said all these things have led to an easing of corporal punishment. Any teacher who inflicts corporal punishment now for failure at lessons should have his head examined. There is no need for this and it has practically disappeared, yet in that situation this small group of people sought to go outside the country and drag the good name of the Irish people in the mud.

The man who has been described as calmly presenting the case against corporal punishment—I shall not name him because I do not want to take unfair advantage of anybody within the protection of this House—was described by a doctor living in Arizona writing to his sister in Ireland as a garrulous buffoon who destroyed his own case by exaggeration. Dr. Sheehy Skeffington is described in it too; to give credit where it is due, he is described as speaking well but he was also described as having very heavily attacked nuns and brothers. This is all in the film which I hope will be seen here. We are asking that it should be seen so that the Irish people should know what was said about them.

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

Hear, hear.

Mr. Brosnahan

And by whom. The country in which this film has been shown is a country where in some States there is corporal punishment and in other States there is not —it even varies from city to city— but in the places where children are protected against their teachers they are fed with the portrayal of violence and much of it can be seen in this country on television at the present time—stabbing, booting, shooting, and strangulation. This presentation of violence appears on television in America, yet these children are being protected by psychiatrists, psychologists and so on. I do not want to make a case against the American situation—there is nobody who has a higher admiration for the American nation than I—but it is a complete distortion of the truth to bring a film portraying an unreal situation in this country into an atmosphere of that kind. The only people in America who were shocked were the Irish and the Anglo-Irish. Anything they saw in the film could not shock the native Americans as they see violence all around them.

As a follow-up to that film, the group which organised it wrote to a firm of lawyers in Philadelphia asking for their support in a fund-raising campaign to stamp out brutality among the Irish. I think the Department of External Affairs, the Department of Education, the Government and the people of this country should know exactly what is being said on their behalf. I think it should go on the record of this House what is being said about the Irish people so that we will be in a position to say to the people who write to us about the Irish school situation that what has been portrayed is an unreal and distorted picture. This is a letter to a firm of lawyers in Philadelphia:

Quite some time ago, you and I met in the Gresham Hotel, Dublin, and had a long chat in the lounge with our mutual friend, Raphael Siev. I showed you some pictures and implements of punishment and gave you some accounts of the awful conditions in some of our schools. You gave me your card and offered your help. If the offer still holds, I would like to ask a great favour of you.

Perhaps you saw the big exposé in the September issue of N.B.C.'s television program "First Tuesday"? Well, this program has done a great deal to put pressure on the Establishment (Church and State) to introduce new regulations stopping the terrible beating of defenceless Irish school-kids. (The parents belong to one of three "camps"—(a) they don't give a damn, (b) they actually want their children beaten at school, or (c) they are afraid to open their mouths.)

You parents fall into one of these categories. You have no option. You don't care a damn, you actually want your children to be beaten or you are afraid to open your mouths. The letter continued:

At last we seem to be "getting places". However, the battle is not yet over. The teachers, the Department of Education, the Catholic Church Authorities, and indeed a large number of parents, are all bitterly opposed to us. Foreign exposure is the thing that really "makes the shoe pinch". N.B.C. has promised to send us the film of the T.V. program. I don't think Irish Television would allow it to be shown here. Maybe B.B.C. in London might be very interested. We will "shop around" when the film arrives.

The entire "REFORM" crusade has been a tremendous effort on the part of a small number of people. We have given of our free time, and money, in fullest measure. We really do need financial aid to keep up the battle. We are writing letters of appeal for funds to the leading American newspapers. We hope that the people who saw this television program will feel strongly enough to send us a donation. (N.B.C. reckon that about 35 million people saw it in colour.)

We wonder,..., would you agree to become our American fund agent? Could we mention your name and address in our letters to the leading newspapers —New York Times etc? We feel that those thinking of donating to a remote and little-known organisation might feel “happier” sending money to a highly-respected American firm of lawyers. In that way REFORM's “bona-fide” would be established in their eyes.

We, the committee, realise of course, that you may not be in a position to undertake the task we ask of you. There may be many reasons why you could not do this particular favour for us in REFORM.

Anyhow, we thought that it would not do any harm to ask you to help us in this rather special way. Unfortunately, time is running out on us and we must get these letters off to the American newspapers as quickly as possible. However, we must "hold fire" until we hear from you. Naturally, we would be most grateful (Mr. X) if you could let us have a "yes" or "no" answer as soon as you possibly can.

We had a committee meeting last night and I was asked to write to you without delay. Our letter of appeal should have been attended to long before now, but we were held up by NBC. Anyway, better late than never! Time magazine may do an article on this subject soon—the title being “Mutiny on the Blarney”. This would be great because it would “freshen up” the whole thing in American minds again. However, we cannot be certain that it will appear and we must forge ahead anyway, with or without this additional publicity.

I look forward,... etc.

A postscript said:

This is the final draft of the letter to American newspapers:

...Many millions of civilised Americans saw the September NBC "First Tuesday" television documentary on the beating of children in Irish schools.

Note "civilised Americans". Who were excluded? —the Red Indians?

To those of you who were shocked by what you saw, we, the committee of REFORM, appeal for your help.

Our association was founded in 1967 and has sought unceasingly to put a stop to the almost incredibly harsh and primitive methods still used in many schools in Ireland. Protests, over the years, have been virtually ignored by the authorities. The only effective weapon we have which can force the Government to take positive remedial action is publicity, bringing the true facts about corporal punishment in Irish schools before the eyes of the world.

The "David Moore" court case——

This is the case of a child who was beaten on the posterior and a coloured photograph of this appeared in a certain shop window in the city and it also appeared in colour in the film. It was an isolated case but it was enough to drag the good name of the Irish people into the mud of certain television systems.

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

Damages to the extent of one shilling were given by the court.

Mr. Brosnahan

That is the responsibility of the court. The draft continues:

——which you learned about in the television program is only one of the many instances in which REFORM's aid is vitally needed. But REFORM needs your support, financially, to carry the campaign forward to final success.

We are an entirely independent association and our only funds are the voluntary contributions of our members. It is another sad fact about Ireland today that many of her people are apathetic to this appalling situation in our schools, adopting the attitude that "what was good enough in grandfather's time is good enough for us", or— if they are more enlightened—they are afraid to oppose the Establishment. Consequently, the number and resources of our supporters are limited. That is why we so urgently need your help.

The name of the firm of solicitors was then given. The principal of this firm, the letter continued, brought back with him

first-hand information about conditions in certain Irish schools. He has, very kindly, agreed to act as our American fund agent.

——or 45 or 40 and where you have two or three blackguards who want to disrupt the whole situation and the whole order in the school, and the other 43 or 47 children want to be taught in an orderly, disciplined manner——

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

There should not be classes of that size.

An Cathaoirleach

The Senator has already spoken and he should allow Senator Brosnahan to make his speech.

Mr. Brosnahan

Mr. Brosnahan

But we are giving away to no pressures. I had a number of other things to say with regard to our educational system. Our organisation have sought for many years a university-teacher training college link. This has been a request which has been made as far back as 1902, repeated in 1908, 1923, 1953 and at various teachers' congresses since. We think that there is only one art of teaching and there should be one common qualification in the art of teaching. The principles of the imparting of knowledge and cognition are well and truly established. No matter what level the teacher is teaching he uses those principles established over the centuries by trial and error. We think that there should be one qualification in the art of teaching no matter what level one teaches, for the principles are still the same. There is just a variation of techniques.

When one is teaching the lower classes one must adopt various techniques of presentation—colour, illustration, change of voice and so on—in order to establish involuntary attention, because little children are incapable of paying attention and the teaching must be such as to compel, as involuntary attention. Then as the child grows older this appeal to involuntary attention eases off and the teacher has to rely upon acts of the will. The child must agree to learn. This is more or less voluntary attention. The teacher here has to again change his techniques, until one finally reaches the state of lecturing adult pupils who because of their dedication or necessity to qualify at the end of the course do pay attention. It is still the same art of teaching that operates at different age levels.

We think that there is unnecessary duplication in the giving of qualifications to a teacher. In the secondary schools the Higher Diploma in Education is required. In the secondary schools a two-year course of training is required. There is unnecessary duplication here, and if there was a common qualification people would opt to go into the area of teaching where they would feel happiest and because of that teaching would then find their level, and we would not have teachers who would make excellent secondary teachers teaching at primary level, or, similarly, hopeless secondary teachers might be much happier dealing with a primary school situation.

There would be freedom of movement within the profession and the profession would find its level. We think, therefore, that it is important that this university-teacher training college link should be established. This does not mean that all should be brought within the training college-building complex. Cadets from the Curragh can now get a university degree from Galway University by an external link with the university. Therefore, the training colleges at the present time can be reorganised to provide a course of sufficient length and depth to qualify for what would be the level of a university degree. Not that I find university degrees anything sacrosanct, or something to be chased after, because I have had experience after training college of spending a number of years in the university taking different degrees and diplomas.

As far as I am concerned a university degree has no magic at all compared with the training one gets in a training college, but we live in a type of society where one does not seem to have the status sought for by society if one has not a university degree. This is the type of situation which is abroad in people's minds and they are inclined to, in a snobbish way, look down on people who hold qualifications which are not of university level.

With regard to the school leaving age, this matter has come up in the Dáil very often—the age of transfer from primary to secondary education. I should like to say that here from experience we do consider that the age which has been established by the Department of Education is the correct age and has been approved in many countries in which research into this problem of transfer from primary to secondary has been examined. We think that it would be damaging to a child to transfer him or her at an earlier age than 12. There are certain children who can gallop along at a much faster pace and unfortunately for that small group they are held up by this 12 bar, but the people who are making the case for an earlier transfer are people who are interested in children who are attending private schools and now want to bring them into the secondary sector so that they can qualify for grants. We think that the Department of Education should not at all consider giving away to this suggestion. I know that there are parents concerned that their children cannot be placed in secondary schools earlier, but taking the situation by and large it would be a very retrograde step to reduce the age of transfer into post-primary schools.

I should like to suggest to the Department of Education that they should set up a national council for educational research. Such councils exist in Scotland since 1928 and year after year they present reports upon the projects on which research has been made. It would be a very useful council in this country because no amount of educational work has been done in this particular activity of research. There are researchers in various departments of education in the universities and in the teacher training colleges but we think that the time has come when the Department seriously should consider a national council.

I should like to emphasise something to which I referred here before, and that is the setting up of a system of career guidance in order to create a harmonious society in which the number of misfits in positions can be reasonably reduced. We feel that children should be advised, particularly at the primary school leaving stage, as to their aptitudes. This does not mean that a child should be advised or forced into an occupation. That would be wrong, but through a series of aptitude and ability tests over the years it would be clear to the career master in the school that a child would be suited to positions within a certain range. He would not be told to become a civil servant, a doctor, a teacher, a lawyer or a carpenter and advice would be given to the child and to the parents that this child would do well within this range of occupations.

Follow-up surveys in various countries show that where children have been advised they are much happier in their occupations in the long term. Entry into work in Ireland is haphazard and entirely fortuitous. The father meets somebody who has a vacancy in his firm or business and suggests that the child should be sent along. The child spends a couple of years there doing work in which he has no interest and for which he has no aptitude. After a while he abandons his position and tries something else. Then he tries something else and finally he emigrates. In other words, he is entering dead-end situations all the time until, having experimented with various occupations at home, he has to go abroad. This is a deplorable situation where children walk out into life in an aimless way like this and finally are forced to emigrate. I feel it would stem emigration considerably if children were advised as to the occupations for which they would be suited by their aptitudes.

I had a number of things I wished to say but I will not take up the time of the House because I had to spend a considerable time on one item. We must pay tribute to the Minister for Finance and the Government for the creation of a widows' and orphans' pensions scheme for people in the public service and also for the setting up of a system of ex gratia payments to widows of public servants and also for the acceptance of the principle of parity of pensions whereby pensions will be based on current salary. If salaries have to be increased to meet the rise in the cost of living it is logical to assume that pensions must be equally improved because the pensioners have to live in the same society and suffer the attacks which are made on their incomes by rising costs and depreciation of money values.

Therefore, pensioners should be protected and we are glad that the Government have accepted the principle of parity of pensions. They have not fully implemented this principle yet but they have promised to do so. They have improved the situation by basing pensions on the levels of salary which were paid to public servants on 1st February, 1964. We should not let this occasion pass without thanking the Minister for Finance for his generous treatment of the widows and orphans of persons in the public service or persons who had given service to the public.

Mr. Nash

I can sympathise with much of what Senator Brosnahan has said relating to schoolchildren and the difficulties of teachers in maintaining discipline in classes where some poor children attending those classes have not had proper advantages, have come from broken homes and therefore are not readily amenable to discipline. That is inevitable and undoubtedly teachers in this situation must exercise a certain amount of discipline. One can readily appreciate how this will happen in such circumstances with children with an unhappy background when one finds on the front page of the Irish Times of Thursday, 4th December, 1969, an account of a professor being assaulted at Trinity College. I quote:

A professor was manhandled, his clothing torn and a lecture abandoned yesterday afternoon in Trinity College when left-wing students continued their protest.

It goes on to state that during the melée the professor had his coat ripped and he himself was knocked to the floor. Surely if things like that can happen at university level where one would expect a certain standard of behaviour from students whose education to a great extent is being subsidised by the taxpayers of the country, one must assume that in the national school there will on occasion be a certain lack of discipline.

We in Ireland at the moment are heartened and encouraged and facing a challenge by the fact that in the next six or eight months negotiations will open for our entry into the Common Market. This will be a challenge for all our people—our farmers, our workers, our industrialists —and in approaching that challenge we must make up our minds what exactly our priorities are.

Are we to stress economics only or are we to consider that in the progress of a nation there are some things more important than mere money? We must consider also whether there is really a conflict. Do we want to maintain at one and the same time the American standard of living and the Irish way of life? Do we consider that those two things are possible? Do we feel that if they are not possible there there are certain priorities?

In this regard I may say go bhfuilim ar aon eagna leis an méad atá ráite cheana ag an Seanadóir Cranitch. He impressed on us that if we are to make progress in the real sense that while having a certain standard of living we must also be proud of ourselves, of our language, of our tradition, and that pride will probably lead us to further economic advances because no family and no nation will really make the same progress or have the same vitality unless it has pride in itself.

Those people who purport to decry the Irish language and to suggest that it interferes with economic progress in the west or any other part of Ireland might perhaps look to the Celtic nation which is nearest to us, Wales. Of the minority Celtic communities which were formerly associated with Britain—Wales, Scotland, Ireland— Wales is perhaps the country which was at all times militarily least strong and historically most easily subdued, but though Wales never had the victory of a Bannockburn neither did it ever have the defeat of a Culloden. In contrast with Wales, Scotland always has presented its case in a most extrovert manner with a technique, a facility, a fluency which would have done credit to the most progressive advertising agency. Yet if one compares the progress of Scotland and Wales one will find the benefit lies with Wales. Today, Wales is the Celtic country which is proudest of its traditions. It is the Celtic country which has adhered most closely to its own language and it is the Celtic country, in contrast to the others, which has done best.

Let us contrast the 140 years from 1821 to 1961. In 1821 Wales had 5 per cent of the total population of Great Britain; in 1961 it still had 5 per cent of the total population despite the large centering of finance and capital in London and in other parts of the country. In 1821 Scotland had 13.5 per cent of the total population of Great Britain but in 1961 it had only 10 per cent and that despite the centring of very considerable amounts of capital in the lowlands of Scotland. If we contrast this with that part of our little island, with which we hope one day to be associated, we see that in 1821, Northern Ireland—which had forgotten its language and which no longer took pride in its traditions— had 9 per cent of the total population of Great Britain but in 1961 it had only 2.7 per cent: it had depreciated to almost one-fifieth. In other words the depreciation in population was almost in direct proportion to the pride and interest which each of those three Celtic minority groups had in their language, their habits and in their people, and this is one point that we in Ireland should remember on the eve of our advent, as we hope, into the Common Market. There is much we can add to it, there is much we can do, but if we once feel the highest function in our life is merely to imitate other people and another country we shall sink into the backwater.

During the debate some people laid stress on the commission being set up to investigate the rights of women. I should like to make a few practical suggestions in that regard which perhaps might be useful. It is only in recent times by the Succession Act that the Irish wife had any security whatsoever. Prior to that many of us know of the saddest of cases where the man died, willed his property elsewhere, his wife was left practically destitute, or a life tenant, which is merely an unpaid servant, to keep the lands and estate for the benefit of nephews or other relatives. Therefore, the Succession Act was the first really practical step towards helping Irish married women. There are, however, many steps yet to be taken.

If a man is a drunkard, is dissipated, is cruel to his wife and children, the father of a family who inevitably must grow up under severe handicaps, relatively little can be done. In a summary manner the only protection or assistance the wife can get is if there is legal desertion. In those circumstances she gets at present a maximum of £4 a week which, of course, is completely inadequate.

However, let us remember the circumstances of the man, the wife and children living in a home where the wife has no assets, where no matter how cruel he is she cannot leave. She cannot, therefore, prove legal desertion and there should be a remedy in law to save that woman and her children. It should be possible in such cases to apply to the court to ensure if necessary that the man is denied access to the house, provided cruelty is proved. It should be possible for women in such circumstances to get a realistic figure towards their support and that of their children. Where a man earns £20 to £30 a week and gives his wife the paltry sum of £4, that situation is a social disgrace.

An Cathaoirleach

I do not wish to interrupt the Senator, but much of what he has said would involve legislation and it cannot be debated on this Bill.

Mr. Nash

This Bill involves the appropriation of money towards various Departments of State including the Department of Justice and it is on that basis that I was approaching the matter. But if you consider I should not follow it I bow to your ruling.

An Cathaoirleach

The Senator is in order in discussing the administration of the Department of Justice but he may not advocate fresh legislation.

Mr. Nash

A further matter the Department of Justice might possibly consider here is what could be done more effectively to deal with the rights and protection of women: whether the home of the husband, wife and child should not be treated as a family asset in which the wife and the children under age have a vested interest. It is sad at times to see a man who is an alcoholic or a compulsive gambler, dissipate the assets because he happens to own them even though perhaps the wife, by her own earnings, had contributed to those assets. I believe in any home the assets should be joint ones, the wife should have a definite legal right and she should be entitled to prevent the dissipation of those assets which would be detrimental to her children and to herself.

If the Department of Justice took practical steps in regard to the points I have mentioned, we would have far fewer problem children than we have at the moment. Little children in their early years should have their happiest time of life but what standard of happiness can they look forward to if there are rows, drunkenness and absence of security.

One matter which has contributed considerably to the industrial progress that we have made in this country in recent years is the assistance which has been given by the Department of Industry and Commerce to small industries. It is only by the initiative of the people that we can hope to have expansion in the rural areas where people can get off-the-land employment. However, a strange feature of all our social welfare legislation is that there is no provision for the self-employed man—the smithy who is running his own forge, the carpenter who starts his own little business or the shoemaker who expands his business and puts in machinery in his shoemaking shop. Under social welfare legislation as it exists at the present, this category of people has no protection whatever.

I recommend that consideration be given to them and that the man who starts his own business and whose income is less than that allowed for entitlement to benefit in the case of an employed person—up to £1,200 a year —should be entitled to partake of our social welfare legislation. At the moment he is practically a second-class citizen. If he dies his wife is not entitled to a contributory widow's pension and if he dies at a comparatively early age he is usually not very well off because any little capital he had has been put towards the purchase of whatever few machines he may have.

A fillip would be given to young men of initiative if some provision could be made for them under social welfare legislation. We have here the Parliamentary Secretary primarily responsible in that regard and I respectfully submit these matters to him for his consideration.

Despite all the criticism that has been made from time to time, by and large the progress made in this country during the past six or seven years has been practically phenomenal and has been due to the fact that each Department have approached their job in a businesslike way. They have not attempted to do anything spectacular because doing things in a spectacular manner is often the surest way to regret them. They have endeavoured to close the technical gap between the impact of new technology by the developments and encouragement of schools where that technology is taught. They have encouraged a high rate of investment and they have succeeded in their monetary system and policy by accelerating expansion while, at the same time, avoiding the overheating of the economy. Despite all that is said about our taxation system and while we, for the most part, consider that we are heavily taxed, they have so framed the taxation system as not to curb industrial investment or damage personal incentives. Those are factors of which any government might be proud.

The Government's realistic approach has been one of commonsense and practical good sense. There are many things that we would yet like to see being accomplished and we can confidently look forward to their being accomplished as time progresses.

Mr. Butler

As the nominee of the Irish Creamery Managers' Association I cannot but be primarily interested in agriculture. Accordingly I wish to make a few brief points and I will confine myself to the agricultural scene.

Nobody will pretend that there are not major problems in agriculture, yet the Department of Agriculture have no readymade means of consultation with the various interests in agriculture. We saw the result of the absence of proper consultative machinery in the recent past when a reversal of policy was introduced by the Minister for Agriculture. I am not here to deal with the merits or demerits of the new policy but I wish to emphasise that absence of consultation with those immediately concerned aggravated the insecurity and uneasiness which necessarily flow from a radical departure from previous Government plans.

It seems all too evident in the scheme for sealing down milk price allowances that insufficient consideration has been given to the technical and practical aspects of the application of the scheme at a time when people everywhere are expecting involvement in all matters which concern their lives. It should hardly be necessary to argue for a properly constituted, consultative committee or council which at least could contribute handsomely to the evolution of planning for agriculture and still have full regard to the overall agricultural policy.

Another area where the absence of Government consultation involves the whole agricultural community at the present time is the matter of the Anglo Irish Free Trade Area Agreement. I take the view that that Agreement, in so far as agriculture is concerned, was heavily in Britain's favour. I suggest with the weight of public opinion behind it and with a generally long term policy on agriculture worked out the Government could strike a considerably better bargain or agreement with our neighbours in Britain, which has increasingly found Ireland to be an extremely important and valuable market. This concept of course hinges on the preparedness of the Minister for Agriculture to take all interests into his confidence and to recognise that he, the Department of Agriculture and the different interests in agriculture throughout the country should be working together towards a common end.

At the moment, few will deny that the Anglo Irish Free Trade Agreement needs revision so far as quotas for agricultural produce are concerned. Our export marketing operations are severely and I would submit unfairly circumscribed by the terms of the Agreement. The Minister and the Government in the light of Britain's unilateral action to protect her own economy and her own interests are imposing on the Irish taxpayers an usually heavy burden. They should negotiate an agreement to get a better deal for farm produce. I suggest in such negotiation the Irish hands would be considerably strengthened if the role of the agricultural sphere has prior involvement with the Minister through proper consultative machinery.

Mr. E. Ryan

I should like to say a few words about the vote for Agriculture and in particular about the subsidies for milk approaching £27 million. There are of course other support prices for agriculture which need serious consideration but I want to deal for a short time with the one relating to milk. This is something in the region of £27 million this year. It has increased fairly steadily through the years. In spite of the fact it has now reached this very high figure, a figure which is a very heavy burden on the taxpayer, nevertheless the farm organisations have said again and again it is not enough, that the farmer is not getting enough for his milk, and that the farmers' income is not sufficient.

I do not accept the criticism by some of the farm organisations regarding the price for milk or their complaint about the price necessarily represents the real view of the farmers. I believe the average farmer is reasonably well satisfied with the price he is now getting for his milk.

Mr. McDonald

Or the reduction?

Mr. E. Ryan

Nevertheless, it is a fact, as a recent survey has shown, that the income of the farming community today as compared with that of the rest of the community does not compare favourably with other sectors and whereas the price of milk at the moment and the price of farm products may be reasonably good it certainly cannot be said that farmers are getting too much. If the present trend continues it would mean that this subsidy for milk would have to increase almost every year and this is something which I think we view with any composure because it is something which would certainly lead to a very serious financial crisis in the future. Therefore, we have to consider not merely the claims of farmers but also the claims of the taxpayers who have to pay this money.

We have to consider also the very unusual position we have in this country in regard to the relative number of farmers as compared with the remainder of the population and to realise that this is extremely high as compared with most other European countries. At the end of 1968, which is the last figure I can lay my hands on, the farming community represented something over 31 per cent of the community. This compared with three per cent of the community in Great Britain and compared with considerably less than half of 30 per cent in most other European countries. Just to give you a few examples, in Belgium it is 5.8 per cent, in France 16 per cent, in Germany 10 per cent, in Italy, the only one which compares with Ireland, 24 per cent, in Luxemburg 12 per cent and in the Netherlands eight per cent. It is quite obvious that the subsidisation of farm prices may be feasible in some countries where the farming community represent a relatively low proportion of the entire community. It is quite obvious in Great Britain where the farming community are only three per cent of the entire community that it would be easy, and is in fact easy, for them to subsidise farmers. In fact, the Government could give a pension to every farmer in the country and tell him not to bother farming at all and it would not be an insupportable burden on the community. Where you have 31 per cent of the community needing subsidisation from the community in general and from those in particular who are not members of the farming community then this is a very heavy burden and one which has to be considered and examined in the closest possible way. The position is that we in this country, the community generally, because of the high proportion of those engaged in agriculture, have to find far more than almost any other European country with the exception of Spain, Portugal and Greece, and on the other hand because of their high proportion there are fewer resources, fewer people, to find the heavy sums which are necessary to provide these subsidies.

There are a number of solutions, of measures which can be taken to try and deal with this situation. It is, of course, essential that new and more profitable markets should be found for milk products, and in this regard Bord Bainne have made remarkable progress, have taken remarkable measures to try to find new and more profitable markets, and have taken many measures to diversify the products which can be made from milk. They have shown great imagination and initiative in these respects even in taking a partnership in new industries which could use milk in such faraway places as Trinidad and the Far East. Certainly what they have done has eased the problem of finding a profitable outlet for milk, and I have no doubt that everything that can be done in this respect is being done and will be done in the future. But on the other hand what they can do and what they have been doing will not be a complete solution to this problem.

A second way of dealing with this problem is to endeavour as far as possible to send less milk to the creameries or other factories but to use more milk on the farm for feeding. I do not profess to be an expert on farming and I will not say anything more about this aspect of the situation except that some progress is being made in this regard and I hope it will be possible to make more progress in this regard. But again this way of combating this problem is only a marginal one and cannot do more, I think, than ease the problem as time goes on.

The EEC have certain proposals for cutting down the output of milk even by subsidising the slaughter of cows so as to cut down the total population of cows, and of course this will certainly, again, be of some help, but it is unlikely to have more than a marginal effect on the situation. In Ireland at the end of 1968 we had 1.6 million cows, which was a record number, and our milk in that year had gone up by some eight per cent on the previous year, so it can be seen that our problem is not merely to reduce the number of cows at the moment. Our problem is to stabilise it, and if we can do this we will be making a great contribution to the problem. Even holding the number of cows at the present number, it is quite obvious that as more scientific methods of breeding and so on take place the yield from those cows is going to increase and we are going to find with the same number of cows an ever-increasing amount of milk being produced and an ever-increasing problem to contend with.

Up to recently, up to three or four years ago, this problem was not considered to be quite so serious as it might be because it was said that if and when we became members of the European Community then the problem would be very much eased. Certainly if we had become members of the European Community in 1963 the problem of disposing of milk, and disposing of it at a profitable price, would have been met by membership of the European Community. But unfortunately the problem of surplus milk has overtaken the European Community just as it has overtaken the United States and almost every part of the western world, and even if we become members of the European Community now, although the problem may be for this country to some extent eased, nevertheless we will be becoming members of a community which have their own problems of milk surpluses and which during the last year probably had its most serious crisis since the setting up of the Community on the basis of prices for farm surpluses and in particular the price of milk and the surplus of milk. So we can no longer look to membership of the European Community as an answer to this problem of milk surpluses.

There is no complete solution, as I have said, in this country, and in spite of the amount of examination and study which has gone into the problem in the European Community there is no complete solution there either. There is the Mansholt Plan which has been introduced in an effort to deal with the problem, but that plan is based primarily on the re-structuring of farms, having bigger farms, having more economic units, and dealing with the problem to some extent in that way. This again is a plan which has given rise to very great opposition and a great deal of controversy. It is going to have a fundamental effect on the whole structure of farms and the farming community in the European Community if it is introduced. It is by no means certain that it will be accepted and it is by no means certain even if it is accepted and introduced that it will be a final or complete solution to the problem of milk surpluses.

Nevertheless, I feel that it will play a significant part in dealing with this problem. The fact that this plan may be an answer or a partial answer to the problem in the European Community does not necessarily mean that it would be, if we remained outside the Community, a solution to our problem or that any adaptation of it would be a solution to our problem. Nevertheless, it should be studied in this country to see to what extent if any, this kind of approach to the problem would play a part in solving it.

It should be studied whether we go into the Community or not because of course if we go into the Community we may have to accept it whether we fully agree with it or not. This is one of the solutions and we can of course endeavour and must endeavour to examine every possible solution to this problem because it is something which is becoming a larger and larger one.

I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting that the problem should be met or dealt with on the basis of merely cutting down that subsidy without any regard to the claims of the farmers or any question of tying that subsidy to a particular figure without any regard to the claims of the farmers. The farmers must be considered and very carefully considered in this problem but there is a limit to what can be found to deal with this problem. It must be realised that it cannot merely be dealt with by continuing to give larger and larger amounts. If that was the way to approach it it would be just a matter of finding larger and larger amounts every year and it would be merely a financial problem. The point I want to make is that it is already a financial problem, it is already a very large financial burden. What I am advocating is that every effort should be made to see whether this problem can be dealt with in other ways so as to limit the extent to which it is met merely by providing more and more finance.

Mr. McDonald

One of the greatest problems affecting the country at present is the threat of a recurrence of the Garda flu. This is something which is causing the public a great deal of uneasiness. I should like to say that the most effective way of dealing with this is to have in the shortest possible time a very rapid infusion of recruits into the Garda force. In practically every station in the country our gardaí, who are doing excellent work, are grossly overworked. During the Seanad election campaign this year I stayed overnight in Bundoran. It was the week a young garda was thrown over the cliff. I was told there were only five gardaí there to look after something like 20,000 people at the height of the tourist season.

Surely the Minister does not expect these young men to be supermen? It is grossly unfair to expose them, they are all family men, to the dangers of having to police large numbers of people in riotous mood, sometimes with such sparse numbers. Recently many of them have been transferred on temporary duty to the Border and in the Dublin area and even in large towns, the principal towns in many counties, the effective strength of the force is reduced to four or five men with perhaps somebody on sick leave and a barrack orderly.

These men are forced to work six days per week and four or five hours on Sunday when practically every other sector of the community has a five-day week. Their work is difficult and they should at least have the force brought up to strength. Indeed the normal strength of the force should be reviewed with a view to having adequate numbers to ensure that law and order will be maintained. It is bad for the morale of the force to force them into the position of having to take drastic action like falling sick. This is something that disturbs many peaceloving citizens.

I should like to mention the decline in the progress of the group water schemes. One of the worst tasks is to be forever a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. It is pathetic to see children in rural Ireland having to carry buckets of water half a mile or more. The group water supply schemes have been very effective, but with rising costs the grants are not adequate to cover nearly the same proportion of the overall cost as they did originally. In the absence of any increase in the grants, I should like to ask the Government if it would be possible to introduce a special grant towards the cost of providing the head-works, the reservoirs. With that expenditure taken off the backs of the groups, it would perhaps be feasible to continue with those schemes for another few years.

The extraordinary thing about these co-operative water supply schemes is that it is possible to instal or to lay a piped water supply scheme for about half of what it would cost a local authority. If we are going to reach the stage when we have those facilities in all the small towns and villages of the country up to a desirable standard then the cheapest way will of course be the only way open to us, namely, through co-operative schemes which have by and large worked very well. There were many difficulties in many of the areas but we must stick with this idea of co-operative effort, and as the years go on some effort should be made to correct the failings of the present schemes.

Up to last year one of the Department's main forces behind the scheme is a gentleman named Burke who, I think, has now gone to the National Building Agency. I do not know if this man's post has yet been filled but the number of engineers the Department have engaged on water supply schemes is not nearly sufficient. There is a great time-lag between the date a scheme is costed and when the work is carried out, and the unfortunate trustees of the schemes must go back to their members, not only once but perhaps twice, for increased contributions. This is never popular and I think a strong effort should be made to have these schemes got off the ground as quickly as possible.

It should not be beyond the capacity of the Department of Local Government to provide some definite aid for the organisers of these group schemes, some of which cost between £40,000 and £50,000. The administrative work is left on the shoulders of some local person who works in a voluntary and indeed thankless capacity of organiser for his neighbours. The administrative work is altogether too much for one person to take on and the Department should provide some kind of filing system, something perhaps on the lines of an account book which would include all the data that an organiser would need. After nine years of operation it should be possible to streamline this excellent scheme and enable the work to progress more rapidly.

I have listened with interest to this debate and there is one topic on which I feel I should speak—agriculture. There is no aspect of Irish life in which a clear statement of long-term Government policy is more urgently needed than in agriculture and I feel that the failure of successive Fianna Fáil Governments and Ministers for Agriculture to formulate such a policy has meant the extraordinary position we have at the moment where sectors of the agricultural industry are presently faced with a declining and reduced income.

Senator Keery yesterday, or perhaps the day before, spoke of the visions he had when reading the Third Programme for Economic Expansion. I should like to remind him if there is any ghost in this area it could surely be the ghost of the Second Programme for Economic Expansion to which the Government gave such an indecent and hasty burial.

I would remind the House that of the targets set out in 1964 in the Second Programme the only one achieved was the one set of 550 million gallons of milk to be produced by 1970. This year the Irish farmers will produce somewhere in the region of about 530 million gallons. Senator Keery spoke of and praised the MOVE effort. I think that organisation——

Mr. Keery

On a point of fact I did not say that. I said that no one could claim that the MOVE effort has been an unqualified success. I praised the public relations idea and intention behind it.

Mr. McDonald

I was about to say that this organisation deserved greater success but I submit that the only sector that met the targets set out in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion are now faced with a drastic and definite reduction in their income for the coming year. There is no use in drawing up a Third Programme and setting out targets when the people who achieved the targets are rewarded by a reduction in their incomes as a result of their efforts.

The price of milk, as Senator Ryan said, is not an easy problem. Last autumn the price of milk paid to our farmers was reduced by five-eighths of a penny and last April a further reduction of one penny per gallon was made to Bord Bainne out of milk produced by farmers. The Minister now proposes to give one penny back on all milk sent in by the farmers in May, June, July and August, but this is not to exceed one penny per gallon up to 1,000 gallons. The most a farmer could hope to gain by this one penny per gallon increase would be £16 13s 4d and this would only replace the one penny deducted last April and not take into consideration any increase in costs which have been considerable over the past year. Very few farmers have been paid this sum this year even though the Minister promised that payment would be made before November. Regarding the question of payment by the Minister I should like to mention that payment of the money held over after the wheat harvest in respect of the levy has not been paid out to most of the farmers to date. I hope that both these payments will be made immediately so that farmers might have something to spend before Christmas.

Under this new price scheme for milk, which is so very complicated, the Minister has introduced the new milk year which commenced on 1st September, 1969, and will end on the 31st August, 1970. He has set out the milk prices for this period. I have assessed them and I hope I am correct in thinking they are right, but the entire price structure is so complicated that I do not think very many people understand or are able to make it out.

A farmer sending in 7,000 gallons of milk in any year will receive the full subsidy which, I think, is 9d. To arrive at what the farmer gets, the Minister gave an increase of 1d per gallon, which was paid every three months by the creameries. Under the new scheme the farmer would still get the same 1d, plus the additional 1d in respect of the scheme under 7,000 gallons. The most the average farmer who produces 4,000 to 5,000 gallons can hope to gain for the next 12 months in respect of this 1d on the first 7,000 gallons will be £16 13s 4d—something equivalent to 6s 4d per week or 9½d per day. This is a very small increase which I think would not be tolerated by any other sector of the community.

The difficulty about this scheme is that a man who sends in more than 7,000 gallons and less than 8,000 would receive an increase in his income of £25 a year and those who supply between 8,000 and 9,000 gallons per year will be blessed with £20 16s 8d per year—the more you produce the less you get. For those who produce between 9,000 and 10,000 gallons the increase will be £16 13s 4d; for those who produce 10,000 gallons and less than 11,000 gallons an additional £12 10s will be paid. Those who produce 11,000 gallons and less than 12,000 gallons will receive £8 6s 8d per year by way of increase and those in the 12,000 to 13,000 gallon bracket will get an increase of £4 3s 4d per year. For those who produce 14,000 gallons, the price for next year will remain the same as for the current year. The same applies to those in the 14,000 to 20,000 gallon category.

This is extraordinary when we consider the Government's very determined effort to increase milk production in line with their Second Programme for Economic Expansion. Those who supply between 21,000 and 30,000 gallons will lose 3d per gallon in the same period next year and for those in the 31,000 to 40,000 gallon category, the loss will be 4d per gallon. For those in the 41,000 and not more than 50,000 gallon categories there will be a loss of 5d per gallon and for the 51,000 gallons and not more than 60,000 gallon categories the price will be down 6d per gallon, and for the 61,000 and not more than 70,000 gallon producer, there will be a cut of 7d per gallon. After that, no subsidies will be paid so that the farmer will be at a loss of about 9d per gallon.

This is an extraordinary price structure for any commission and it is unfortunate that so many people have not been able to come to grips with it. In the Second Programme for Economic Expansion a very high target was set—550 million gallons by 1970. This target was backed up by a very virile and active campaign by the Government. The county committees of agriculture were advised by the Department to launch intensive campaigns not only for clean milk but for greater quantities of milk.

The position that members of county committees of agriculture now face is that during the past four years they have directed their instructors to put in motion the greatest sales effort ever in this country. Not only did they vastly increase the output of milk, but they brought the number of farmers who qualified for the clean milk bonus scheme in my county from nine per cent of the farmers in 1964 to over 80 per cent in the current year. This was a tremendous effort and it demonstrated in no uncertain manner the attitude the farmers adopt towards the advice given by the Government and the fact that they played a full role in endeavouring to help the national economy by reaching the targets set out in the Second Programme.

However, after that Trojan effort they have been rewarded by a cutback in income. I should like to remind the House that the man supplying 61,000 gallons and less than 70,000 gallons of milk who next year will face a loss of 7d per gallon will actually have a reduction in his income of £1,200 or £1,300.

From the demands already in, I can see that our rates will sky-rocket. There is a widely accepted myth in this country that farmers pay no rates but I must remind you that in my experience of the 4,000 odd farmers in my county, 1,800 of these are over the £33 valuation and between them they pay £452,000 net in rates. The remainder of the small farmers who pay portion of the rates include the people who are within the £20 and £33 valuations; and all the others who pay full rates on buildings, plus the rest of the entire community, between them, pay only £432,000. Therefore, a small number of farmers who are being faced with a reduction in their incomes will pay their fair share of taxation but this is not generally realised and people refuse to accept it. As well as that, we all know that with the taxation structure being what it is at the present time, everyone is paying a certain amount of indirect taxation because of turnover tax.

Mr. Keery

On a point of information, it is difficult to follow those figures. Do I understand that the farmers paying rates in this county pay, on an average, less than £30 per year in rates? That is just a rapid calculation.

Mr. McDonald

What I said was that 1,800 farmers in my county whose holdings are more than £33 valuation collectively pay £452,000 in rates and the rest of the community, which includes farmers with valuations of up to £20 and who only pay rates on the farm buildings, plus the 1,100 farmers with a valuation in excess of £20 and less than £33 who pay on the farm buildings, plus a lesser amount on the land, together with the rest of the rate paying population in the towns and villages, collectively pay only £432,000. Therefore, farmers, and especially those in the more than 50-acre class, are paying rates and taxes at a very high rate and I submit that in proportion to their incomes they are more heavily taxed than any other sector of the community or any other individual in the community.

Mr. Reynolds

Sevenpence is the maximum.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Perhaps the Senators could either agree on a price or else allow Senator McDonald to continue.

Mr. McDonald

A figure of 9d, including 2d clean milk bonus, would not be very far out. Perhaps the Government might have a second look at this very difficult problem. The cost of production in every aspect of farming has gone up and I should like to comment on the manner in which the Minister for Industry and Commerce allows fertiliser manufacturers to increase the price of fertilisers each month. They get away with this in an inverted way and they of course penalise the small farmers every time because the wealthier people can afford to put on greater quantities of manure in what we might call the off-season. I feel that like every other commodity the price for manure should be stabilised and rationalised.

Mr. Haughey

Call it fertiliser.

Mr. McDonald

For the last couple of years the factories have been getting away with increasing the price month by month and I think this system of having a sort of sale bargain which helps the wealthier farmer is only creating greater difficulties. Senator Ryan mentioned the Mansholt Plan and I did not quite follow whether he was in favour of it, but I do not think the present milk price scheme could be said to be in line with Mansholt's ideas because it very definitely penalises not alone the large farmer but the people in the 30 to 50 acres category. As you all know, in any farm now with an acreage of less than 75 it is doubtful whether it is an economic one. Up to a couple of years ago the farm with 50 acres was considered to be economic. Surely that acreage should now be increased and something in the region of 75 acres should be considered as a viable holding.

Senator Ryan also wondered whether more milk could be utilised on farms. The difficulty about this problem is the fact that we have not got a guaranteed price for beef, and to that extent the cost of rearing beef on milk would possibly be a little too expensive. I would prefer to see the Minister for Education and the Minister for Agriculture coming together and instead of sending our butter abroad where in some places I have been told we are getting as little as 1/- a lb. for it, we could devote some of this subsidy, which is included in the £27 million mentioned by Senator Ryan, to introduce a scheme whereby all our school-going children might be given a pint of milk every day at the midday break. I do not know what this would cost. I suppose there would be some administrative costs attached to it but at least if the Irish taxpayer was subsidising the disposal of milk instead of turning surplus milk into butter, a considerably higher gallonage of milk per day could be used by giving the milk free to all our school children. In that way very many of our children, whose parents perhaps cannot afford to buy sufficient milk for them would get the benefit of the subsidy provided by the ratepayer.

Mr. Honan

You would probably get another film group from America showing milk being given to all the starving people here.

Mr. McDonald

If we are ever going to find a way out of this difficult problem it will be necessary to find more than one method of trying to use up the surplus of milk. Again as the production of beef is so closely related to the production of milk, if we are to continue producing beef we will always have this milk problem. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that the Government policy should be a long-term one and that farmers should have some guarantees in the long term before they are asked to invest the reasonably large amounts of money now required to change from one type of farm husbandry to another. The difficulties of changing from milk at the present time, after everybody has gone into it, are many.

I am glad that Senator McGlinchey mentioned that, because the fact that a large quantity of wheat has been smuggled in has meant that the Irish farmer has had to suffer a payment of a higher wheat levy this year. I put it to the Minister that were it not for the fact that a large quantity of wheat was smuggled from Northern Ireland the Irish farmer would not have had to pay a levy as high as 8/3. This is a disgraceful situation. If the present facilities or powers that the customs authorities have for dealing with these offences are not adequate some steps will have to be taken to combat them, because with the farmers' share of the national income it would not be too bad if it remained static but it is declining. I cannot see how any Government can accept this and expect to have in rural Ireland a docile and peaceful community. It is just not possible.

We have had during the last two or three years a difficult phase in Government farmer relations which I do not want to go into, but surely if we have a situation now where people find that they are worse off this year than two or three years ago this is not going to call for harmony and peace. We will have this trouble starting all over again. During the past few months the price of ordinary store cattle has fallen by almost £2 per cwt. This surely represents a loss in farm incomes. The trouble with the urban population at present is that they cannot accept that anyone would work for the income that the average Irish farmer is working for. I defy the Minister to challenge the fact that the average family farm income of 70 per cent of our Irish farmers, taking into account the amount of hours that the farmer's wife and children put into it as well, in the last year has been less than the agricultural wages obtaining in the country. This is a deplorable indictment of the Government's agricultural policy. Nevertheless, a thing I cannot understand is that in the recent election so many farmers voted for that policy.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

A high tribute to their intelligence.

Mr. Haughey

The Senator will never understand that.

Mrs. Farrell

One can do anything with figures and An Foras Talúntais certainly do.

Mr. McDonald

I have a high regard for An Foras Talúntais but if they bring up a figure that is unfavourable to the Government they are cold-shouldered. I do not think this is right. The findings of their projects should be published whether they favour the Government's policy or not and they should not be suppressed.

Mrs. Farrell

I am not saying they should not be published.

Mr. Haughey

I want to make it quite clear that there is no question of any Government interference with what An Foras Talúntais publish or do not publish, none at all. I am sure Senator McDonald will accept that the Government have not at any time interfered with the publication of any report.

Mr. J. Boland

Senator Farrell is quite right. The Minister for Finance did marvellous things with figures in the last election campaign.

Mr. Haughey

I do not know who this Senator is but I would ask Senator McDonald to accept that the Government have not at any time interfered.

Mr. McDonald

I do accept that.

Mr. McGlinchey

The figures that count are the last election figures.

Mr. McDonald

Farm incomes have not increased.

Business suspended at 1.5 p.m. and resumed at 2.30 p.m.

Mr. McDonald

Before the luncheon adjournment Senator Mrs. Farrell mentioned the figures of the Agricultural Institute. I should like to put it firmly on record that this very excellent Institute—which has been blessed with an outstanding team of graduates— produces figures as a result of their various trials and experiments on a set basis. If somebody wishes to dispute those figures it is up to them to indicate in a positive manner where the discrepancy, if any, lies. In the years since it has been established the Institute has played a very significant role in Irish agriculture. The pity is that so much of their valuable work is not channelled quickly enough to the advisory services. This is where the Government policy presently differs from the Fine Gael policy on agriculture. We believe we should have a rural authority established which would co-ordinate more effectively and actively the various agencies who are presently working in their own particular way to helping agriculture and I think that Senator Mrs. O'Farrell was on this point when she was speaking on this debate. We must have co-ordination of effort if we wish to be efficient. To coin a phrase introduced by Senator Keery, we would visualise a new organisation replacing the present county committees of agriculture which would embrace and control the activities not only of the advisory services but also the Land Project organisation, the Bovine Tuberculosis Eradication Scheme, the Agricultural Credit Corporation and all the agencies presently working in their various and several ways in agriculture.

If a farmer wants a farm building grant it could be dealt with more speedily if he could make the application to a central office in his own county and have the one team of advisers or personnel to inspect and advise and it should not be necessary to have the proposal vetted by several persons. At the moment if somebody wants to secure a loan from the Agricultural Credit Corporation we all know that the ACC send down a graduate to inspect the man's holding in addition to the man having prepared, in conjunction with his own adviser, a farm plan indicating the project. This I consider wastage of valuable personnel in both these services. We all know that unfortunately there is a scarcity of agricultural adviser graduates in the advisory services—practically every county are a few advisers short and this is a matter that is causing worry to many people at the moment In my own county we were five people short earlier this year——

Mr. Garrett

You could not expect anything else considering there is not a Fianna Fáil man on the County Committee of Agriculture in Offaly.

Mr. McDonald

Indeed there are. I do not know exactly what is the composition of the committee but I know that all the men, irrespective of whether they are Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or Labour, are excellent in the county of Offaly which is indeed a very progressive county from the advisory point of view. I cannot understand why the Senator should mention that county. There are many counties who have experienced difficulty in getting permanent officers appointed. The system is certainly wrong and leaves much to be desired because the tendency is for many of the advisers to move eastwards to the counties of Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow and Meath and the rest of the country is then at a decided disadvantage. On the other hand, with the way the agricultural industry in general has increased output during the past three years, the Government may think that farmers have already received official advice and perhaps they might like to slow down the practice by not providing official instructors to continue their good work.

Finally on that matter, I should like to compliment the Agricultural Institute on the successful work that they have been doing. I should like to see greater and closer liaison between the Institute and the Department. Once the Institute submit a report of their findings, that report should be readily accepted by all people in the Department as being very factual. Their experiments are very open and very intensive and they have clearly indicated the scope for expansion in the Irish agricultural industry.

The one great difficulty I see for the future of Irish agriculture is in the marketing field. There must be greater emphasis on orderly marketing and this can only be achieved if the farmers are guided by a modern and sound agricultural policy. A better tie-up is needed. It is not sufficient for the agricultural industry to be depending on either the smuggling of pigs to keep the factories going or on the smuggling of wheat to keep the mills going. We must be able to provide an outlet for the amount of produce that our farmers can produce.

I also regret that in the Estimates for the current year for the erection of glass houses there has been a reduction of some £300,000. This is surprising when one considers the import figures for the commodities that are usually grown in these glasshouses. I thought it would have been good policy on the part of the Government to continue that scheme.

Similarly, the lime and fertiliser subsidy scheme has been reduced by almost £1 million in the present year. This will have an adverse effect on production. All of these things show clearly that the Government obviously assume that if they continue to highlight the use of fertilisers and to promote these advantages but reduce these subsidies they will slow down production in a backhand way. Fertilisers will cost more in a year when farmers' incomes will be already reduced by the reduction in the income from milk and cattle which are already showing signs of decline.

Mr. Honan

The Senator will be disappointed if they do not.

Mr. McDonald

I shall certainly not be disappointed.

Mr. Honan

It looks as if the Senator is hoping there will be a decline. There will always be ups and downs.

Mr. Reynolds

They have declined.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator McDonald on the Bill.

Mr. McDonald

It is taken for granted that farmers' incomes in the cattle industry must fluctuate the same as in the pig industry. Were it not for the fact that so many pigs are being smuggled over the Border, the Irish farmers would be getting much more for them than they are getting, and even since the NFA put viligante groups on the Border the prices have significantly increased. Great credit must go to the public spirit of these people in taking time off to do this type of work which should not be necessary.

We in Fine Gael believe a healthy agricultural industry in the 1970s can only be achieved by adopting a courageous new agricultural policy. Agriculture has suffered for some years from the present Government's failure to produce a long-term agricultural policy. In consequence large sections of our rural community now face collapse. We believe that with a target and good leadership this set-up can be reversed and a prosperous rural community can find its place in the Ireland of the 1970s.

Mr. Flanagan

I have been listening attentively to the debate in this House during the past three days. My first reaction would be to say a word of appreciation to the Senators on both sides of the House for the very positive contributions they have made and their realistic approach to an examination of the problems of the country at the present time and looking to the future. I enjoyed every minute of the debate. I had no intention of doing anything else except continuing to enjoy myself until I realised last evening that there was a certain bias in the debate away from the West of Ireland and a bias away from consideration of some of the problems of the West of Ireland.

I remember one time during my career as county engineer for Mayo we had a vacancy for county manager. The first county manager died and an Assistant Secretary of the Department of Local Government was sent to Mayo to act as temporary county manager pending a new appointment. He remained with us for nine months, every month and every day of which we enjoyed. He was a tremendously good manager, sympathetic and well trained. At the end of his nine months' period we had a little farewell party and during that party this Assistant Secretary to the Department of Local Government said he had been 35 years in the Department and he further said: "Now I have been nine months acting as county manager in Mayo and I have learned more about local government administration in nine months in Mayo than I did in 35 years in the Department of Local Government".

That was brought to my mind when some time after nine o'clock last night I was thinking back on the contributions which had been made to the debate and from the Opposition side of the House I jotted down the names of Senators O'Higgins, Alexis FitzGerald, Kelly, Dunne, Sheehy Skeffington, Miss Owens, Horgan, Jessop, Dr. Belton, Miss Burke; and then Senator Brosnahan was speaking, everyone of them living in Dublin, everyone of them with a city bias in regard to rural Ireland.

Miss Burke

On a point of order, I am from Mayo.

Mr. Flanagan

Yes, by birth. The only Senators living in the country who spoke were Senators Quinlan and Russell, so I thought it might be well for me to get up and say something, not exactly on the big question of Government policy, but rather something in connection with the implication, the results and the difficulties of implementing various Government decisions. It is true, of course, that Dublin city comprises approximately 25 per cent of the population of Ireland and I thought possibly something might be said on behalf of the remaining 75 per cent. Today, I admit the position has been different because we had Senator Butler and Senator McDonald from the country speaking from the Opposition side.

The first point I should like to make is in connection with a very important matter affecting not alone the west of Ireland but anywhere in which the Board of Works have been operating very important drainage schemes. The Board of Works are particularly well equipped for the purpose of carrying out those drainage schemes. The present intention is once drainage schemes are carried out the after-maintenance becomes the responsibility of the local authority. I want to say this might be all right in theory but in practice it will not work out. I should like to put before the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance the need for a re-thinking on this matter. County councils have not the trained personnel, they have not got the equipment and they are not really geared to carrying out major drainage work for which the work force of the Office of Public Works is most adequately equipped and adapted to.

I want to make a suggestion that as far as the after-maintenance of major drainage projects is concerned the ideal solution would be for the Central Fund to accept full responsibility for the maintenance of the main rivers and the main tributaries. It would be reasonable to expect county councils to accept responsibility for minor rivers and feeder drains; and the benefiting riparian owners might be expected to contribute for the maintenance of field drains and land drains. No matter what work is in progress, no matter how industrious a farmer is, no matter how intent he is on improvement and development of his land arising out of the drainage scheme, unless each other body lower down than him carries out effective drainage the work he is going to do on his land will be ineffective.

The second point I want to make is that I was deeply interested in the very enlightened discussion in connection with education. Senator Brosnahan indicated that between 1958 and 1959 a sum of £15½ million was available for education and in 1969-70 £58 million is being provided. This is a tremendous breakthrough as far as education is concerned. It is certainly a tremendous breakthrough as far as financing education is concerned but I am one of the people who feel that unfortunately we have not got and we are not getting the full benefit of that expansion in outlay and expenditure.

I feel our education scheme was rushed. I feel even at the present time we are not equipped for the expenditure of all that money and that we are in fact not getting value for it. It is of no benefit to spend money on education or anything else unless you have down the line the building, the trained people and the dedication which will ensure that the expenditure of that money is to the best advantage.

Looking at it from that point of view, the first and most necessary thing to ensure the best results from that expenditure was to see that we had sufficient qualified fully-trained teachers and in the second place adequate school buildings. I would ask the authorities to consider what proportion of teachers in various schools at various levels, primary, secondary and vocational—I do not know about university but I will deal with that later on—are fully qualified, fully-trained teachers and within the age group in which they are capable of giving fully adequate value for the money they are receiving as teachers.

I am afraid that if an examination was carried out it would be found that there are two things wrong at the present time. One of them was dealt with here, and that was the size of the classes, but I would also think that there is a noticeable percentage of cases in which the teachers are not fully qualified, fully trained and in a position to give, as I said, full value for money. There is a grave necessity to look into the appointment of teachers.

Mr. Ruairí Brugha

Was it worth £5 in 1963?

Mr. Flanagan

There was a certain amount of novelty in 1963 which has worn off. People are now beginning to be a little more sophisticated and expect something better for their money. Afterwards Senator Quinlan dealt very extensively with Radio Telefís Éireann. Sometimes when I feel that I may be going to say something I jot down some notes, and I am perfectly satisfied, and I have confirmed this since, that Senator Quinlan was one of the people who agreed with me or at least went as far as to say that the present fee was reasonable and adequate, but he did criticise the lavish entertainment and the unjustified expenditure which is a feature of the preparation of RTE programmes. I will not quote him verbatim, but he said that RTE were not entitled to send representatives to the ends of the earth for the purpose of gathering a five-minute episode which may be of little interest to the majority of the people of this country.

I feel that our television programmes should be as varied as possible and that a reasonable expenditure possibly for the purpose of getting interesting programmes and features is justified, but neither I nor any other person will agree with the lavish expenditure which takes place in connection with putting certain programmes on the air before people which should never be put before the people. I am quite sure that when the representatives of RTE went to Lisbon on their way to Vietnam the people must have been relieved, or at least now will feel relieved, that they were not allowed to continue their journey, because without going very far, without leaving this country, programmes have been put on the air recently which were a disgrace to the authority.

I was listening in to the news a few mornings ago, and before the 9 o'clock news a person was interviewed on Radio Éireann. The interview was referring to a march which was to take place I think two days later. As far as I remember this programme was on Friday morning and the march was to take place on Saturday morning from the Parnell Monument to the American Embassy as a protest against the American war in Vietnam. If a business person wants to get a minute's publicity it costs him several hundreds of pounds but this morning an interviewer on behalf of RTE spent at least five minutes interviewing a lady who was interested in the promotion of this march, inquiring where it was to start, where it was to end, how many were to take part and giving it the widest possible publicity for nothing. It is a tribute to the good sense of the people of Dublin that notwithstanding all this publicity the number who took part did not exceed one thousand people.

I saw a Seven Days programme a few nights ago. Between one activity and another I get very little time for looking at television but I am usually anxious to see Seven Days. I was shocked. We all know that conditions in regard to housing people are difficult. We all know that unfortunately there are still people in unsuitable, insanitary houses. We all know that among those people there are problem cases, not typical cases. If one wants to elucidate a point one would be expected to take a typical case rather than an isolated one where neither the local authority nor the charitable institutions of the city could be held to be responsible for particular types.

This programme was intended to set out the difficulty of getting proper housing experienced by a couple who got married. The man was supposed to have been married at 18 years of age. His wife was in hospital after a confinement. The interviewer brought his cameras to the hospital. He asked the woman: "Is it a fact that your baby is not yet an hour old? Is it a fact that your husband has not yet come to the hospital to see you or the child?" The husband had not come but the Telefís Éireann cameras were there.

I remember the whole television outfit coming to Castlebar on one occasion. They were at least two days in the town setting up their equipment. I am just wondering whether the interviewer in this case even allowed the unfortunate woman to be left alone while her baby was being born. It is a fact that in order to give a certain bias to the difficult housing position in this city that unfortunate woman was quizzed for at least three or four minutes about her marriage, her other children, the second of whom had died, about whether her husband had come to see her. The whole sordid thing was there before the public. Many people must have felt that if this is the type of thing put forward by Telefís Éireann it is dear at any price.

Professor Kelly

The Minister for Justice might have found a house for her.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Flanagan

In connection with Radio Telefís Éireann I have no enmity. I admire that interviewer. I do not know him, but on that occasion my wife and I were completely disgusted, as I am sure were many others.

I suggest that a re-arrangement of programmes should be made on Saturday night and Sunday night when people in the country can sit down and look at television there should be more entertaining, more elevating programmes. We have had enough of 30 years old canned musicals. A few nights ago we had a 27 year old film —Yankee Doodle Dandy. If we can get only canned programmes could we not get some of the better BBC and ITV programmes. We should take some of their better programmes, some of the educational programmes, some enlightening and debatable programmes as well as some of their sporting items——

Mr. J. Fitzgerald

What about "That was the Week That Was"?

Mr. Flanagan

Again, the lavish expenditure is illustrated. Some time ago we had a programme called Quick Silver and now a programme called Cé Hé and the amounts paid out during half an hour are really unjustified and unjustifiable. However, I shall leave it at that.

I should like to say a few words in connection with traffic—the dangers of traffic and the methods being used in order to try to control traffic and to make it safer for people on the roads. I will not criticise the gardaí. I have always been on the most friendly terms with the gardaí and I admire them as being completely impartial and adequate for their duties, but it really does not show up the gardaí in a good light when so many prosecutions take place for driving offences where the gardaí in the squad car find it difficult to pass out somebody on the road. I travel 153 miles from Castlebar to Dublin fairly regularly, on my visits to the Seanad and for other duties, and I scarcely ever meet a garda on the road. During that four hours travel I seldom see one but the moment I come into town and park my car there is a gentleman with a yellow band, notebook in hand and a threatening look in his eye.

Unfortunately there are still very serious regrettable accidents on the road—mostly in connection with very heavy lorries. I think an improvement might be made, though I realise that this is a difficult situation. Many people use the roads only occasionally, for pleasure purposes or for short trips— I am referring now to farmers who go into town probably to do shopping, who go to Mass and so forth. They are not quite well up in traffic regulations.

Something must be done quickly, clearly to identify very heavy vehicles, particularly vehicles described as matadors, two-truck vehicles. Many accidents are caused when cars pass out the first vehicle and they do not realise there is a second truck on tow. Several years ago during a short trip to Germany I saw quite a number of those on the autobahns and they were clearly distinguished by a set of lights not alone at road level but on the top of cabs. This, of course, is all right for people in Germany but many of our people do not realise the significance of this lighting and something should be done to light the second vehicle on tow with a white light at the front and possibly two or three reflectors on the side.

Another serious cause of trouble is people running into parked vehicles. There is a regulation when a truck is stationary that it must bear parking lights and in addition have a triangular plate. Anyone who travels the road will realise that the way in which the triangle is placed, its size, is completely useless as far as giving a warning to oncoming traffic is concerned. I suggest that the Minister for Local Government would think about issuing new regulations in connection with this. The triangle should not be placed on the road level—it should be at least 2½ feet above the level of the road. The triangle should be on a tripod. Otherwise it is completely and entirely ineffective. One sees time and again that an effort is just made to satisfy the regulations but it is not sufficient to guard against accidents.

Very heavy lorries never keep as close as possible to the side of the road —for the good reason perhaps that they are heavily laden—but then keep as close as possible to the central line and when there is a hold-up of traffic they pile up. A passing car has no chance of leapfrogging between one heavy vehicle and another. There should be a regulation that in slow traffic a clear space of 40 or 50 yards would be maintained between one heavy vehicle and another so that people coming along, sometimes without knowing exactly what is happening, pass out the first vehicle and find themselves then in a string of traffic.

In connection with local government, there is a complete lack of uniformity as regards planning decisions. This is a matter in which I have no professional interest: having resigned my professional work of engineering I became a Member of this House. However, I am often called on by people who feel they have had a bad decision in connection with planning applications and sometimes I feel that is so.

One can see along some parts of the west coast of Ireland one local authority who select a spot on the side of a lake near Crossmolina or near Ballyroe or Cushla. They will pick out an area on the lake shore for a car park and parking for caravans. I do not see any objection to this, I think it is quite right, but then another man wants to build say five or six chalets on the side of the lake—permanent up-to-date buildings—which will help to bring tourists into the area. It is very difficult to understand how it is possible to have parking facilities on the lake shore and another person is prevented from building chalets. I think what happens is that county councils make an omnibus decision saying they will allow no building on the side of the lake between the road and the lake and then the next thing that happens is that the Land Commission put up a house and there is nothing more about it.

There is an old regulation in connection with local government regarding road grants and that is that they have to have a certain labour content. I am sorry that has been waived in recent years—of course the whole system has changed with the advent of machinery—but I think in the interest of giving some employment in the rural areas a regulation should be imposed in the making of road grants that there should be a certain minimum amount of labour content. The Minister has been criticised for dispensing with the Christmas relief scheme. I am rather glad; I had to administer that scheme. Everybody who has had to deal with labour knows that in the Register of Unemployed there are thousands of unemployables, people physically unable to work who have never worked and who never will be able to work. Instead of imposing hardship on these people by bringing them out to work, it would be much better if a more charitable scheme could be brought in to assist them at Christmas by either increasing their dole or allowances or by helping a charitable institution like St. Vincent de Paul Society. He must not put an unfortunate fellow out to work who has not handled a pick or shovel for possibly 12 months and who may not even have an overcoat to protect him and if he has an overcoat he is barely able to keep it on. It is simply cruel to expect these people to work.

Another matter I wish to mention, and on this I will be a little critical of ourselves, and that is in relation to the West of Ireland. Some effort should be made to encourage the better utilisation of the facilities we have in the west. On my journeys to Dublin I meet lorries going from Lanesboro' to Mayo with loads of turf briquettes. I remember the time during the emergency when we sent almost 300,000 tons of turf out of the country to help to keep industry going and to help to provide fuel for the people of Dublin.

I cannot understand why we should get away completely from encouraging our people to produce sufficient fuel for the purpose of satisfying hospital requirements, institutional requirements and factory requirements in our own country. It seems to me to be wrong to come up to the midlands, where the fuel is produced by machinery which means the minimum amount of employment, and bring it down to the west.

Something should also be done about the utilisation of land in the west. Again, it is regrettable that most of the vegetables and practically all potatoes now consumed in the West of Ireland are bought on the Dublin market. I do not know what would be the remedy but to some extent, I would suggest co-operative farming. People are no longer prepared to cultivate their land by manual labour but if a number of farmers could be convinced to buy machines co-operatively it would be a great help. It might also be possible to have some factory for the purpose of processing the material and that would be a help towards keeping people on the land.

Another matter, but I will only touch on it, is hospital medical services. Senator Belton dealt with the difficulties of dispensary doctors but this is a different matter. The time has come when we must realise that professional men, surgeons, physicians and others are entitled to be paid adequately and, for God's sake, cut out private beds in public institutions. It would be much better for the people and much more satisfying if the doctor was paid a generous and adequate salary.

Mr. Reynolds

Hear, hear.

Mr. Flanagan

In that way, equal care and attention would be given to every person. I would go along to some extent with collecting fees for hospital maintenance from people who could afford to pay provided that if the rule is made it will be carried out and that everybody who can afford to pay will be compelled to pay.

In talking about dispensary doctors, Senator Belton offered two suggestions. One was that the assistant medical officer of health might be available for weekend duties. I have been thinking about my own county and from what I can recollect, without having any documents before me, there are between 28 and 30 dispensary districts in the county. We have one assistant county medical officer of health so it is obvious that he would be able to do relief duty for a doctor only about twice in a year. The dispensary doctors want every weekend. Up to now they have been able to make arrangements between themselves for dispensary duties. They must have time off to attend certain functions and to have some recreation and they must also be able to attend court cases arising out of their practice. The fact is that dispensary doctors are on call 24 hours a day for seven days of the week. Something must be done about the position but certainly it will not be sufficient to say that the assistant county medical officer will be able to relieve these doctors nor will the appointment of one additional doctor meet the case.

Senator Brosnahan also mentioned the engineers. It is unfortunate that there is disagreement at the moment between local authority engineers and the Department of Local Government. Again, I can only repeat what has already been said in this House, that is that local authority engineers have not up to now been adequately paid— that if they were in posts in the private sector they would be much better paid. It is regrettable that any difference should arise because I know from working with them for many years that they are a dedicated body. They are people who have been called in many times in the interest of the State and of the country. From the very early days they were called in to solve the terrible problem of unemployment when we had three times as many labourers as we have at the present time and when people were very badly in need so that we had to rotate work for two, three or four days in the week.

They were called in again in connection with turf production and they worked late into the night in helping to get the turf away to Dublin by wagon. They amount of work that they did at the time was appreciated and they received a personal letter of thanks from the then President. We should not forget all that. We should not forget that if they are paid satisfactorily they have wonderful potential in the interests of the people of the country generally. If a public official is satisfied, he can give tremendous service and this applies to all people who are members of public bodies.

I agree with most of what has been said during this debate and, as I said at the beginning, I have been edified by the standard of the debate and I hope that that standard will continue to be a feature of the debates in this House. One feature of the debate has been contructive criticism and contributions in this House should be constructive and along the lines of doing the best for the people of the country.

Mr. Reynolds

I listened with great interest to Senator Flanagan, he being from the West of Ireland, and I can agree with most of what he said with the exception of his references to the question of heavy lorries on the road and of our articulated lorries. I find it necessary to drive one of these lorries and, God knows, I want to say to this House, for people who never had that experience, it is the greatest hardship which can befall anybody to try to drive a lorry with 20 tons of stuff. A person driving a car will often come along and say that a lorry-driver did not keep in far enough to let him pass.

I want to impress on this House the hardship it is on lorry drivers when they want to pull in. Most of those lorries are carrying 20 tons and when the driver pulls in he goes down slightly on the road and the whole weight comes over on that side. People driving along the roads in rural Ireland or near the city have often seen a lorry and trailer tipped over. This is caused by the driver trying to keep in to let a car pass. I often ask myself, with my experience of this matter, if people driving cars drive them carefully enough.

Senator Flanagan mentioned the triangle which must be displayed in front of a lorry in the event of a breakdown or a burst tyre. A motorist drives along probably between two lights at about 50 miles an hour. He does not see anything until he hits the lorry and immediately the unfortunate lorry driver and the lorry proprietor are blamed for the situation. I certainly could not agree that the whole fault is with the lorry driver. A big percentage of the fault lies with the car drivers and with carelessness. In my opinion the greatest number of those accidents are brought about by speed. I wanted to mention that at this stage because I feel Senator Flanagan and most other Members of this House will never be compelled to drive those lorries.

In this debate Senators, I am sure, spoke on the problem nearest to themselves. Some people who were quite capable of doing so dealt with education and others dealt with Health and some Senators mentioned the TV service. Others dealt with agriculture and I should like to deal with a few problems which are nearest to my heart and which are very hard problems to solve in the West of Ireland.

As was mentioned earlier on by Senator Belton, and more recently by Senator Flanagan the question of dispensary doctors is a great problem. There are a number of dispensary doctor vacancies particularly in Counties Leitrim, Roscommon and Sligo at the moment. These posts are very often advertised but no doctor applies for them. The unfortunate people living within that dispensary district have no service other than the service they are getting from the dispensary doctors in the neighbouring dispensaries.

At the present moment we have a situation in Leitrim where there is a vacancy for one dispensary doctor but no doctor will apply for it. The doctor who is carry out work in that dispensary area has since become ill, which means that there is one doctor trying to do the work of three dispensary doctors. That is all right for some of us who are blessed with enough of the worldly goods so that if we get sick or our wives or any members of the families get sick we are able to put our hand in our pocket and pay for a doctor.

However, there is a large number of people in that area who have medical cards and who cannot pay for any service. It is a great hardship on them now that there is no dispensary doctor there. I admit that somebody might easily ask how we are going to solve this. The only way this can be solved is by increasing the salary which dispensary doctors receive. I think the maximum of the scale in rural Ireland at the moment is £2,300. It will have to be shoved up substantially if we are to give a service to the people living in rural Ireland.

I was rather amused on looking back at the local paper, the Roscommon Herald, when I saw that the Minister for Education at the time, Deputy Brian Lenihan, made a statement during the general election campaign. He referred to Roscommon County Hospital and to the health services generally and this is what he said:

As far as health is concerned we have changed the system and now a patient may have his own choice of doctor.

Those are the words which were used. Perhaps he was saying this to try to fool the people in that area who did not know him as well as I do. If you look at the figures in that particular constituency you will find they are beginning to know the Minister.

Another problem very near to my heart is the question of mentally handicapped children. I admit both the Central Health Authority in the Department of Health and the county councils are doing tremendous work in this field but there still remains a lot of work to be done here. As one who takes an interest in this problem and realises the hardships which are involved, I know the problem which confronts the Department of Health. There is the question that if you build institutions it is very hard to get people to teach there. We all know that those unfortunate children, unless they are only mildly handicapped, once they go into institutions remain there until the Lord calls them. This means there are no vacancies to let others in.

I admit we have an increased number of beds and the accommodation available has doubled during the past couple of years but in my opinion it should be a first priority of not alone the Department of Health but of the entire Government to provide accommodation for all those unfortunate children. I had the experience quite recently where a man came to me with a child who was what you would say a degree above mildly mentally handicapped and that man was most anxious to get the child into a mental hospital. God knows we all know that is no place to send an unfortunate child like that. I often wonder if the Government's conscience is clear on it. I wonder if our consciences as members of local authorities are clear on it and if we could satisfy ourselves that we have done enough for this particular problem. I do not think that we have and there ought to be very much more done.

I was delighted also to hear Senator Flanagan speaking today about no private beds in any of our hospitals. I was wondering to myself if he had got a look at the "Just Society" which was being read here all morning by Senator Keery, the policy which was prepared by the Fine Gael Party and which was brought up to date prior to the last general election. In that policy we clearly conveyed that, and we told the electorate about that policy that we would all go to the door at the one level and only that.

Mr. Keery

They read it too.

Mr. Walsh

And they rejected it.

Mr. Reynolds

They had a right to but I will quote further from it where another Minister used it. The people did not accept it due to the propaganda that was used by the Government Party, but if we are sincere about giving people a health service in the lower income group and doing away with private beds in these hospitals the only way to do it is by adopting the Fine Gael health policy, and let us all go to the dispensary door at the one level.

We have another very serious problem in the West of Ireland, and that is regarding the housing of old on elderly people. There are a number of people—in some cases widows who live alone, in other cases widowers and in some cases man and wife in receipt of old age pensions—and these people would be quite prepared to move into a town centre and probably sell their land to neighbours, which would help to solve this problem of congestion in the West of Ireland.

In my county the local St. Vincent de Paul Society a year ago bought three old houses and re-constructed them at a total cost of £2,500. The county council gave them a grant of £800 and the Department of Local Government gave a grant of £800. It was the county MOH and the manager who appointed the three people who would occupy these houses. One of them is an old age pensioner who is paying 5/-a week, another is also an old age pensioner a little bit better off and her rent is 8/2d. The third is a man who sold his farm and got £500 for his land and he is paying 20/- per week. Now that gives a total income of 33/-per week for the three houses. Those three houses will have to be kept and maintained from this income. There is no other means of keeping or maintaining them. I am sure that any Senators here who are members of the St. Vincent de Paul Society or know the work the Society does have found that the day-to-day demands on them leave them with no money whatsoever for capital development. I certainly think that in cases like these these grants should be substantially increased, because the local St. Vincent de Paul Society Conferences are doing enough of work in their own way by means of contributions, by looking after these people, sometimes having to buy clothes for them—bedclothes and the clothes that they wear, boots, shoes and so on—and I certainly think that there is an obligation on the Central Fund to increase these grants.

Quite recently we have sent a further scheme to the Department of Local Government which is going to cost £25,000. This scheme includes five double houses which will house ten people, twelve single houses which will house 12 people, with a community centre, TV in it, kitchen and laundry. The local contribution will be £4,000 and we are finding it very difficult to get enough money by means of grant from any Department to cover the balance. These people can be kept much cheaper by the St. Vincent de Paul Society than they will be kept in any county home in Ireland. Most people will admit that even at this stage a certain stigma attaches to the county home and people are not prepared to move into it, so it would serve a twofold purpose to take those people into the centres such as I have mentioned. It would serve the purpose that more land would be available to sell to their neighbours, and ease congestion, and it would be taking them in where they would be nearer whatever church they wanted to go to, nearer to doctors for medical attention, nearer to shops when they would purchase goods they required to keep the human life together I hope that the Minister for Finance will take particular notice of that and give substantially increased grants to societies doing this work.

I would like to make some reference to the FitzGerald Report on hospitals In doing so I would like to mention at the outset that the makeup of the people who issued this report is ten people from the City of Dublin, one comes from Castlebar, two from Galway, one from Cork, one from Limerick, and one from Sligo, and it is rather funny in looking at this and at the make up of the personnel of the board that in each one of the areas where a representative comes from it is recommended within this report that there should be a central hospital Maybe it is coincidental. I do not know, but it struck me as most peculiar when I read it. The report talks of the community centres and explains on page 31 what is meant by a community health centre. It says that county hospitals not selected for development as general hospitals should become community health centres providing in-patient services similar to those in district nursing homes but backed by somewhat increased diagnostic facilities and a more comprehensive consultant outpatient organisation.

I find also that on page 97 of this report reference is made to the Roscommon County Hospital. I mention this solely for the purpose of conveying to the House the situation in this hospital. The Report says:

Hospitals are at present functioning in Roscommon (County Hospital), in Ballinasloe, (Portiuncula Hospital) and in Ballyshannon (Sheil Hospital). The re-organised service envisaged in this report, involving a more centralised hospital service with larger and fewer hospital centres, makes it impracticable in the long term to continue to use these hospitals for acute medical and surgical services. In the short-term, while the main centres are being developed to acceptable standards, the hospitals at Roscommon, Ballinasloe and Ballyshannon will continue, as at present, to provide a necessary service for their immediate surroundings. Close ties should be developed between these hospitals and the main centres. In the case of Portiuncula Hospital and Roscommon County Hospital these ties should be with the Regional Hospital in Galway while the Sheil Hospital should be linked to the General Hospital in Sligo. With the implementation of the programme aimed at having all acute work dealt with in these centres, a new role must be found for these three hospitals, one or more of which might have become Community Health Centres. This might be determined in the light of experience by the Regional Hospital Board. A new role must be found for these three hospitals one of which might become a community health centre. This might be determined in the light of the experience of the regional hospital board.

That is what the report said about the Roscommon County Hospital. Roscommon County Council took a poor view of the report naturally, first of all because of the amount of money that has been spent on that hospital. It was built in 1941 and it cost £138,000, £46,000 of a loan which was borrowed by the county council and which is being paid back at the normal rate of interest at that time. The grant received was £92,000.

The county council had to pay the £46,000. There was an extension built in 1953 which cost £68,286. Of this £14,426 was a grant and £53,000 had to be found by the council, again by means of borrowing. Everybody knows that the ratepayers contributed a very substantial amount. In 1968 there was another reconstruction job done which cost £104,000, £52,000 of a grant and £52,000 of a loan. Last year a new laboratory was built which cost £3,000. This was paid for by the county council. The total amount spent on the hospital since 1941, including the erection, extensions and everything is £313,276 and the amount of money received by way of grants is £158,426 and the amount contributed by the ratepayers of Roscommon is £154,850.

This hospital has given tremendous service to the people of County Roscommon and some of the adjoining counties, particularly the southern part of Leitrim around Carrick-on-Shannon. These people feel very aggravated that there should be any suggestion, even in the FitzGerald Report, of closing down this hospital. As a matter of interest the work that was done in that hospital in the year 1967 was: Admissions 3,423; Operations 1,246; Births within the hospital 411—the total number of births in the county was 830 so approximately 50 per cent of the children born in Roscommon in that year were born in the hospital— Laboratory tests 6,082; People who attended specialist clinics 2,371. I do not think it is fair to deprive these people of that service within their own county.

I want to quote a statement that was made on the very same day that the Taoiseach let himself loose around the country during the general election campaign. The heading in the Roscommon Herald was: County Hospital to be Retained and Expanded. Taoiseach addresses Public Meeting in Roscommon. The then Minister for Education, now Minister for Transport and Power, was there to greet the Taoiseach. On that evening he had got in touch by phone with two local newspapers that I know of and I do not know how many more. He asked them to hold some space for a prepared script he had with regard to the hospital. Naturally the papers did as as they were told and the script duly arrived. It is interesting to read it at this stage. I quote from the Roscommon Herald:

The County Hospital will be retained. I want to tell you this because a lot of talk was due to people from the Opposition who were using this for political purposes. There will be no downgrading. The hospital will be retained and expanded and further expansion will be taking place and at present I can tell you that there are plans in the Department.

I did not believe this but many people in Roscommon believed it. A few days ago when this was being debated in the Dáil after the Deputies who now represent that constituency had pleaded with the Minister, here is what the Minister said and there is no word about plans in it:

You have a lot to learn before you get too smartalecky.

Mr. Reynolds

As I have said before, I do not wish to involve myself in any rows between Ministers, but I should like to quote our policy relating to the Department of Lands. I am sure the Senator who began this morning must have read it in our Just Society: if not he will find it there:

The Department of Lands will be abolished and most of its functions will be taken over by an authority. The possibility of placing the afforestation programme, which is essentially a commercial type activity, under a new State company will be examined closely.

I wonder if Deputy Flanagan was, as he said, reading the Devlin Report. I believe that some time previously he had read the Just Society and this gave him the idea.

Again at column 1421 of volume 242 Deputy Flanagan referred to people, small farmers, who will not accept land, and I quote:

At least two or three Deputies mentioned that it was more economic for people in congested areas to refuse land than to accept it and this applies even where the 50 per cent annuity operates. This point is valid and reinforces my view that we would be adopting a sounder policy if we were to provide employment for as many people as possible leaving them with their 15 or 20 acre farms as a sideline. That represents a very considerable change in the system particularly for the West of Ireland and I shall await with interest the public reaction to this statement.

I think the reason people refused this is because the 50 per cent annuity is too high and small farmers nowadays are just able to make ends meet. If they receive further lands to add to their holdings, and they are being asked to pay 50 per cent of the annuity, they do not seem to be able to pay it. This question of refusing land never happened until the annuity was substantially increased a few years ago and for that reason I think the Minister for Lands would be better engaged if he looked at the possibility of giving a further reduction in this annuity.

I now come to his reference to the county I was born and reared in. At column 1413 of the same volume, the Minister for Lands out of the blue said:

I have plans for certain areas which I regard as being particularly suitable for forestry. I refer in particular to County Leitrim and I should like to inform the House that I have directed the Forestry Division to make an all-out drive to acquire land in County Leitrim, to plant it and thereby give employment to as many people as possible in that area. This perhaps involves acceptance of the fact that most of the land of Leitrim is not suitable for development in agriculture. It is as well to face realities in regard to matters like this and to abandon the effort of making a living where a living is not to be got. There are other questions with regard to forestry to which I shall return later.

One reads that and one reads the earlier passage where he referred to industries for Leitrim. That is not the first time the people of Leitrim were promised industries, but unlike the people of Roscommon, they did not believe it. However, they paid a rather severe price for not believing the Government, when their county was divided into three parts for election purposes, and this was done for no other reason other than they did not believe the Government.

In the 1967 local elections which followed, the Fine Gael representatives went from five to 12 which clearly indicated that the Fianna Fáil Party were in serious trouble in that county. Last year it was divided into three parts and it gave the result of one Fine Gael TD only, after Fianna Fáil had shufflled an extra seat out of it through the kind of promises I have mentioned.

Mr. Haughey

I have great admiration for Senator Reynolds and I am sorry that he is not in the other House any more, but allowing for all the latitude that is granted on the occasion of this debate, is he not going a bit too wide?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Chair was possibly within 60 seconds of warning Senator Reynolds that he was out of order.

Mr. Reynolds

I am making the point in reference to the promise of industry——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

In a discussion of this type it is essential to relate these remarks to the Bill under discussion and it is clear to see that the Senator has been dwelling on this point, which is without direct reference to the Appropriation Bill.

Mr. Reynolds

The reference I quoted was in relation to a statement from the Minister for Lands when he said that Leitrim will be planted. I bow to the ruling of the Chair but I wonder how much I am out of order. When one is examining this whole situation and particularly with regard to the problems of the present, one will see that there is a drop of 27 per cent of the total population.

Mr. Garrett

I compliment the various Senators from all sides of the House on their contributions but I think it is beyond a joke when a Senator stands up and reprimands the Taoiseach and the Cabinet for the attitude they adopted during the recent Northern Ireland crisis. I wish to compliment the Taoiseach and his Cabinet very sincerely and I am sure that I speak for at least 95 per cent if not 99 per cent of the people of Ireland who have already voiced their opinions by various means in thanking the Taoiseach for the stand he took during that time.

I should also like to compliment the Minister for External Affairs on what I thought was a most enlightening address to the UN on the Northern Ireland question. It proved without any doubt that the various Ministers of Fianna Fáil have been accepted as being second to none in their various positions throughout the world. However. I may forgive Senator Kelly. He is a comparatively young man but he made a vicious attack during his speech on the Taoiseach and the Cabinet for their handling of that situation of course, I accept that Senator Kelly was expressing only his own opinion because there is no indication from questions put and reports received from the people of Ireland that they did not accept the stand taken by the Taoiseach and his colleagues.

Certainly, we all want to find out what is the root of the trouble in Northern Ireland. We know where it lies and some of us are old enough to remember the time when a leader of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government came back with £5 million and said: "We have a good bargain". The root of the trouble in Northern Ireland lies in the boundary that was instigated, founded and accepted by the Cumann na nGaedheal Party.

Mr. J. Boland

That is not true.

Professor Kelly

What would the Senator have done about it?

Mr. Garrett

The cry from Fine Gael on the situation in Northern Ireland is accepted as being a bit belated. We all have good reason to accept that. I should like to refer to a body governed by the Minister for Finance—the Board of Works—and to point out that in some of the large drainage schemes that have taken place throughout the country and especially in the western areas there are certain rivers and drains that have not yet been completed. That may be all right in the eastern side of the country where land is not as valuable to the owner as it is in the West of Ireland. One can imagine a small farmer with ten or 12 acres of land trying to eke out a living for his family, but as a result of the drainage not being completed, four or five acres of that man's land are flooded at certain times of the year. Those four or five acres mean as much to that man as, possibly, 30 or 40 acres to a man on the eastern side of the country who probably had a farm of 150 or 200 acres.

I should like to impress on the Minister and on his Parliamentary Secretary that if they could do anything to ensure that those unfinished rivers and drains are completed before the machinery leaves the areas in which it is operating, it would mean a lot to the people concerned. The drainage of 90 or 100 acres of land may be the difference between existence or extinction of the farmers of a particular area. Of course, I do not mean that one farmer would have 90 or 100 acres—several farmers would be involved in that amount of land.

Speaking about the west, I should also like to mention small industries and in speaking about them one must bring in small holdings of land because one is complementary to the other. It is reputed and accepted that the largest families in Ireland come from homes along the western seaboard but we must accept that only one of these people, a son or a daughter, can remain on a small holding. The remaining six or seven, and sometimes ten or 12 children, must find employment away from home, be it in Dublin. Birmingham or London. These small holdings cannot support a man, his wife and ten or 13 children.

I should like to see more small industries coming to the West of Ireland in the very near future. If this does not happen, whether the Opposition like it or not, there will be no referendum but there will be only a one-seat constituency in Mayo because that is all the population will be able to elect. We want to see those small industries coming to the West of Ireland where families can be employed. Those who had to leave can then return to their homes and in this way they can supplement the farm incomes on those small farms.

In my own area I have experience of this type of work because we have in the Crossmolina area Bord na Móna works and an ESB peat station and we have seen small farmers' incomes supplemented by the incomes of their families who they worked on those projects. Those farms are now thriving instead of being downtrodden. We have seen how some of those poor farms can look in spring when the land is very wet and in need of fertilisers and manure. Now, with the increased income coming in from small industries, those lands become green fields with cows grazing in them.

Some of the younger children living on those farms are receiving a good secondary education and some of them are going to the vocational schools. They will not be forced to go out to work at an early age or go to the fields of Scotland and England picking potatoes before they are even school leaving age. As I said, I have seen what has happened in the Crossmolina area and I should like to see this spread to the eastern and northern parts of County Mayo as well as in further areas of the west part of the county.

I do not believe that planting a huge industry in a particular large town in Mayo or any other part of the West of Ireland will be the means of saving the West. I am sick, tired and fed up listening to the slogan: "Save the West". If we had the opportunity of demanding it as a God given right, we would save it ourselves and we do not want people coming in and doing it for us. We are quite capable, if we get the opportunity of doing so, of going out and finding industries which will come in there. I am sure many of them would be very happy to come in and start industries in the West of Ireland.

I have heard references to education and I heard one Senator saying that in the next few years the number of students attending universities will be something like 18,000. I believe, although our children are entitled to higher education, if an industrial drive began in rural areas instead of all the young children and their parents being anxious to have them get four to five honours in the Leaving Certificate, and attend university, they would be quite happy, and more than content, to have those children attend the local vocational school and eventually fit them out to take their place in industry, where they would be able to take over technician places. I may say, without fear of contradiction, that the young men I have seen going to the technical school in my locality have obtained very good technician posts and, without mentioning names, there has been one man, whose name appeared in the papers some months ago, who is one of the leading technicians of a big radio and television company in Dublin. He also lectures. He is a past pupil of the vocational school and he never in his life saw the inside of a secondary school.

I also know young men of the present generation who learned the carpentry trade in the vocational school in my locality and some of them are now employed in Dublin, while others are in England as agents for contractors and huge building firms. I believe if the industrial projects spread throughout the country and we can educate our young boys and girls in proper career guidance and direct them to the vocational schools, where they would become masters in art and industry, we would not have the clamour and sanctity attached to the university and the secondary schools. This is one of the finest cures and methods of reducing this egoism about attending a university. There are technicians working throughout the length and breadth of Ireland who are equal to if not better than some of the qualified men who come out of the various universities.

I have heard criticism from the other side of the Chamber that the Government are making no effort, or have made no effort, to educate our people for entry into the Common Market. When the Minister for Agriculture recently tried to educate people to prepare themselves for entry into the Common Market he was castigated by every speaker of the Opposition Parties in Dáil Éireann, and also in this House during this debate. He endeavoured to educate people to the fact that over-production of milk is a detriment to this country at the present time. All the EEC countries are now trying to reduce the production of milk. Despite this we now hear a clamour for more bonuses and subsidies to be paid to men who produce 28,000 to 40,000 gallons of milk per year.

The Minister for Agriculture has paid a subsidy to try to increase the production of beef. I do not see the gentlemen who are complaining being consistent in their argument. The people in the Twenty-six Counties have told them recently what they think of their arguments of the past 50 years. I should like those people to be consistent and to give any Minister credit who endeavours to educate the community and to prepare them for entry into the Common Market.

When he is doing that, I should like him to be appreciated and not castigated. This type of work is wrong, and they would get a far better hearing from the general public if they had the manliness and the common sense to stand up and to say that the Minister is putting us on a sound basis, that we know where we are going and that when we enter the Common Market we can get down and try to do it. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, the Minister for Finance, the Government and everybody else have been trying to educate our industrialists to reach the level of production that is operating on the continent so that when we do get into the Common Market we will be able to meet competition and to deal with our competitors on a very good scale.

I have also heard Senator McDonald saying that the Estimate for the pig farrowing scheme has been reduced by £90,000. I do not wonder at all at the estimate being reduced by £90,000. I happen to be a member of Mayo Committee of Agriculture, and we operate that scheme on behalf of the Minister for Agriculture, and last year we fell short by 200 applications. We could not get rid of this money that the Minister put at our disposal to increase the pig population. There was nothing we could do about it, although recently on the British market Irish bacon has come up in price to the second highest of all cured bacon entering into the British market, within 10/- per cwt. of the Danish price, which we have not reached for many many years.

If the money estimated by the Department is not used by the community I do not think that anybody can blame the Minister for reducing it by that amount the following year. I am sure that Senator McDonald and interested people who enter into this pig farrowing scheme will have no difficulty at all in getting the Minister to have a supplementary Estimate for more money, but until he is able to convince me of that fact I do not think it is up to the Minister to allot more money on that basis.

I should like to speak on the Department of Local Government and the housing programme, which is a very sore fact in my area and I believe in a lot of other areas. I am not blaming the Department of Local Government for not putting funds and everything else available. I know that they are there. I know that we can get them and use them. We had an experience back in one period which was a detrimental period in the middle fifties where we owed £750,000 from Mayo County Council and could not get it but the advent of Fianna Fáil within six months enabled us to wipe out our backlog. There is no shortage of money as regards housing at the present time in any county council that has adopted a supplementary housing scheme. There is plenty of them available, but what I would like the Department of Local Government to do would be to cut out a lot of the red tape that is concerned with the acquisition of sites and tendering for houses.

I speak with some authority on this we have especially a county engineer who wishes to dominate and dictate the smallest particle of policy to his engineers and will not allow them to use their own intelligence and their own initiative to adopt a scheme and implement it, for he has to come and examine every single detail, see all the applications; and if the Department of Local Government allows him to do that he holds up those housing schemes and I am afraid that the housing programme will be long delayed. What I would like the Department to do would be to cut through this red tape and get on with the building of houses and stop this monkey-doodling business, as I call it, of the engineers — I do not say all of them but some of them. I do not suppose it is happening in every county but it is happening in some counties. I would like if we could cut the red tape and get on with the housing.

Planning is another very sore item in the West of Ireland, but I believe there is going to be a new Department of Planning set up and owing to the fact that I believe this will be in the very near future I think I will reserve my remarks about planning until such time as that happens.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

I take it that we will continue until we finish the Appropriation Bill, and I would suggest that the Minister might get in to conclude not later than 5.30 if that will meet with agreement.

I model myself on the Senator.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

Tomás Ó Maoláin

Yes, I was dealing with the Department of Defence. I have great respect and esteem for Senator Jimmy Dunne, whose honesty and integrity I rate very highly. I was interested to see that he is anxious that we should restructure our society on the basis of some type of prices and incomes policy which would commend itself to the trade union movement which would then be prepared to cooperate to give it effect. Faith without good works is dead and when a fellow has bought a pig in a poke a few times he likes to see some evidence in advance of buying the pig again. I am very much afraid the these statements about the trade union movement cooperating are a little bit woolly.

Four or five years ago when the TUC met in Cork with Senator Dominick Murphy presiding I made a speech here on the fourth day of the Trade Union Congress discussion on the rationalisation of its own structure and on the need to deal with these mustang wild cat strikes that were occurring at the time. Just at that time also one of the first of the big breakaway groups formed a union and the TUC found itself unable to deal with that. Since then we have had many strikes, some of them very serious, some of them nationally dangerous, and all of them damaging to the endeavour to put Irish industry in such a position on the export market that when the EEC situation arrived we would find ourselves in fighting trim and able to meet any competition. These official strikes developed into a further phase of unofficial strikes so that now we have a system as far as I can judge, whereby the union will repudiate a group who go on strike and that group will describe itself as an unofficial strike. They will put on a picket and then the new religion about which I spoke four or five years ago with its first commandment: "Thou shalt not pass the picket" frightens the wit out of everybody in the town or anyone who goes next or near the edifice around which the picket is stationed and the unofficial strike continues and nobody can do anything about it. They tell the union bosses and everybody else to go to hell and they carry on their merry way. In due course a settlement is arirved at. Possibly the employers are bludgeoned into giving in but anyway they give in. Then the men go back to work. The union is quite happy and that is recognised then although it is breaking an agreement perhaps six months before the termination of the period for which the agreement was supposed to operate. It is now recognised as the norm by which all the other workers in that industry are to claim increases. The Trade Union Congress apparently can do nothing about it because they appear to have lost control completely over their members in the various unions.

It was appalling and deplorable to me, who have always regarded trade unions as a very vital and essential part of a democratic State, to hear Mr. Rory Roberts on television the other night, when questioned by one of those brilliant interviewers they have in Telefís Éireann, admitting that although the Congress had made a certain decision with regard to the visit of the Springbok team to Ireland it could not enforce that decision on the unions and that in fact one union had gone far ahead of the decision Congress had taken. This shows that before anything could happen in the line of co-operation by the trade union movement as such the Trade Union Congress must control the movement and must be in a position to enforce discipline among the units that make up that movement and——

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

It is a full partnership.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

——and must be in a position to make good a bargain which it makes with anybody else. I do not want to develop that any further in view of the possibility of legislation but I would say to all who are interested and who have any influence that the time has come when unions should catch on to themselves and realise that the great damage they are likely to do in this country, is not to the boss class which does not exist any more in the Marxism phraseology, or not to the Government or not to any inanimate thing but to the workers themselves. If they so cripple the economic position here so as to make it impossible for us to have a viable community, they should remember that the days of isolation of industry throughout Europe are ending and that we shall not be able to stand up but shall go to the wall and they will suffer most. Therefore all men of goodwill should bend their efforts to that end.

A couple of years ago I made a plea here which has been referred to by Senator Kelly — that is the question of buying Irish goods at Christmas. That is rubbish because we should buy them all the year round. The shops were filled with Irish goods — and I use the past tense here — but we now find that the shops are mainly filled with English goods, particularly women's goods, ladies' fashions, hose, hats, coats and so on.

We had the extraordinary warning from a fashion show, or at least a fashion debate in the Intercontinental Hotel the other night, that by 1975 most of our fashion goods will be in open competition with British manufactured goods and with tariffs so low that there is practically free trade and the importation of British goods will be at least two or three times the value they are now, and this only applies to ladies' clothing.

The figure was down to about £500,000, it crept up to £1 million and within the next 12 months it will have gone up by another million. It is the teenagers particularly and young ladies who buy British goods. They are the wives, the daughters and the sisters of trade union members, of the half million men who are registered in the trade union movement in this country and surely it is the first duty of the Trade Union Congress to see to it that concrete action is taken. Apart altogether from trying to worry about trade union structure and strikes, here is a concrete case where we can do something to preserve the jobs of thousands of Irish workers and to produce jobs for thousands more.

If you go into any shop at the present moment you will find it very difficulty to find Irish goods on sale. My information on this, and I have contacted very reliable people, is that very little effort is made by salesgirls in these shops to produce the Irish-manufactured goods to push them, to say these are better not because they are Irish but because they are manufactured from better material. The same situation applies to the sale of liquor and I find that barmen in this city are very guilty in regard to the sale of Irish drinks. I have gone into public bars and hotels, though I think this applies particularly to hotels, and if one does not specifically ask for an Irish whiskey, be it Paddy or Jameson, you will be served with Scotch. The same applies to beer — you will get Carlsberg from Denmark or Skol or ZHB. This is a sector in which we could make a more determined effort to buy Irish.

I should like to compliment the Minister for Finance on a couple of very imaginative Budgets in which original steps were taken on behalf of people who have been forgotten and on behalf of IRA veterans and the small farmers. I am satisfied with these activities in that direction and I think he deserves a word of praise. I should also like to praise whoever is responsible for the fact that we will have an Irish exhibit at Expo 70 in Osaka next year. Twelve months ago I appealed in this House to the responsible authorities to take advantage of the fact that in Expo 70 we will have one of the greatest trade fairs ever seen in the modern world, held in the neighbouring city to the capital of the fastest growing industrial democracy in the world, where wages are now reaching peak point and where the standard of living is as great as in the seaboard States of the US and as in the motor industry areas of Detroit and Michigan.

I refer of course to Japan where there is a tremendous market for manufactured goods in which we have not got our share yet. We are only selling about £1½ million as compared with the £6 million we buy from them. There is a big market there and anyone who has seen any of the recent films on UTV or BBC — I do not think I have seen them on RTE, they are too busy otherwise — those films dealt with the situation in the Far East from the trade point of view and may have our tongues hanging out when they hear that the price of a bottle of Scotch in Tokyo is £12. If they can sell Scotch at £12 in Tokyo we should be able to sell our far superior product for £15 to £20 but even £12 would be quite satisfactory. However the Irish distillers do not appear to be making an effort to put their product on the market. Perhaps here the Minister for Finance might be able to impose an extra tax for laziness in not trying to export our products eastwards. A measure such as this might help to remedy the situation.

Mr. Haughey

Where should you be left then if we exported it all?

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

High and dry.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

I am quite satisfied with Harp.

There are some other matters I should like to deal with. There is the question which our education brains trust here have been tub-thumping for quite a long time — we have a brains trust here, let the minions in the Lower House take note, this is certainly a citadel of education, higher, middle and lower. We have heard much of the new curricula in the national schools. I have not seen it but I have heard about it and I shall stick my neck out, possibly I shall be the only one in the Seanad to do so, by going on record as having grave doubts about this false philosophy of child-centred education about which the professors and the intelligentsia have been waxing so eloquent. As far as I can make out from reading this concept was the invention of Dr. Spock and was also conceived by a gentleman named Dewey. As far as my reading tells me, Deweyism became known as the curse of Columbia and has now become known as the curse of Ireland, if I can judge by the results of this child-centred education. Dr. Spock has now got such an eyeful of what the produce of his philosophy have been in the United States, in gangsters, killings and all the rest of it, that he is having second thoughts and is on the verge of requiting most of what he has put across to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, his ideas have been put across to us here and if they continue to be adopted to the same extent as they were adopted in the United States I do not know what the outcome will be.

This permissive society and the whole philosophy of Dewey which has been experimented with here has brought about a situation which, to say the least of it, is alarming, a situation in which we find not very far from a church in the centre of Dublin a number of beautiful little houses built for old people but in which the windows of every one of them have been broken and have had to be boarded up with the result that the old people inside are deprived of light. The kids continue to enjoy themselves and nobody is inclined to do anything about the situation.

To hell with that.

Mr. Malone

Is it in order for the Minister to use that expression?

Tomás Ó Maoláin

I was just saying that if Fr. Fergal O'Connor saw the instruments on that Late Late Show — he probably did not see it — God knows what he would have made of it. Bad and all as the film is, God knows what he would have made out of it because he is a teacher of political science.

I can relate that now to the subject under discussion because it has occurred to me that we are voting money here in this Bill for the universities and I do not think any man who conducts himself in the way a certain professor does — if I cannot mention his name, you know whom I am talking about — on Telefís Éireann, I do not think he is a fit or proper person to teach political science to Irish students. He will poison the minds of a whole generation of students if his attitude is that shown by him on Telefís Éireann.

I want to say to the Minister for Finance that I hope he will take note of this. If I were Minister for Finance I would, as a measure of disapproval, deduct from the university grant, the amount of salary, emoluments, fees or whatever is paid to this reverend gentleman who described St. Francis of Assisi on one of the Late Late Show programmes as the first of the hippies. He made a case for the hippies on the basis that St. Francis was the first of them and he described himself, I think, as a Christian Marxist priest. If university education is to be on that basis, then the sooner we do away with those university dons from the clerical end the better and get lay lecturers who will not have any inhibitions one way or the other.

The situation with regard to the merger is one on which we should like to hear a little bit of encouraging information — that the matter is under active arrangement, that it is being speeded up and that we will see a merger of those two famous institutions here in Dublin. I think apart from anything else it would do a lot of good to rid the academic life of Ireland possibly of some of the weirdies we have running it because maybe under a merged institution in Dublin there would be a selection board which would have more sense than to pick people who will do more damage to education than all the American gangster films we hear so much talk about on Telefís Éireann.

The last thing I want to say is that I am quite satisfied to vote this money in the Appropriation Bill. It is money which is being given to people who are spending it properly and rightly and it will pay good dividends in social, economic and political progress for this country.

Mr. Malone

This debate could best be described as a bumper one and some of the Members may know that a bumper is a good place for trying out the novices. Some of the contributions I have listened to in the last two or three days were very good and I am looking forward to the debates when the classics come up. I have just a few things I want to say on this Bill but before I do I should like to comment on something which the Leader of the House said towards the close of his remarks. Senator Ó Maoláin is one of those extremely keen debaters who never pull punches, but he is always fair. However, I think he departed from that in his reference to a reverend gentleman and I think it was quite uncalled for.

The contributions I have to make are under three short headings. One of them relates to the sphere of agriculture which has been covered rather fully by various speakers, but as far as I know no reference was made to sheep. We see in the booklet which was issued by the Department of Agriculture on the main activities of the Department that the sheep population in the country has been declining steadily. The most recent year quoted is 1968 but I think 1969 will show a further decline.

The Minister for Finance, as a former Minister for Agriculture, will realise the importance of the sheep industry in this country. He and his successor have made certain efforts to increase the sheep population in particular with the sheep grants given. They have nevertheless been unsuccessful in stemming the reduction in the numbers and some of those grants are wide open to abuse. They should be extended to include the lowland farmers.

Our entry into the EEC has been mentioned here by a number of speakers and I have noted in the papers that 1972 or 1973 will be the probable year of entry. While I do not know what the position will be in the British market regarding Commonwealth preference such as New Zealand for the importation of mutton and lamb they will find themselves in considerable difficulty and it will leave us with an extremely lucrative market. In the next two or three years, between now and our entry into the Common Market we have a great opportunity to build up our numbers of sheep and lamb and to avail of that market not to mention the even wider market on the continent of Europe a market which to take France for instance fluctuates during the season. When it is open there is a very spectacular rise in the price of lamb and when it closes the price drops considerably. But when the Common Market is extended that market will be there all the time. I would hope that the Minister for Finance would make a big effort to assist his colleagues in agriculture to vastly expand the sheep population so that we may be ready to avail of that.

There is another aspect of the sheep trade, namely that of wool. At the present time in a town in my own county, Newbridge, County Kildare, a very large factory is being built which will process the entire wool clip of this country. Not alone will it use the entire wool clip of the country but it will still have to import 80 per cent of its raw material. I do not know what the comparison would be of the increase in the export of wool as compared with whatever their final product is going to be for export and whether we would benefit in wool prices in that respect, but there is an aspect to be considered, namely that of the employment which will be given.

Despite the fact that it will be one of the most highly automated factories in Europe it will employ possibly in the region of 200 who I imagine will be very highly skilled operators and consequently will be in the very high income bracket, or should be. That is another thing to keep in mind when we are talking about the decline in the sheep population, to make sure that the decline is resisted, and it can be done with sheep in a much shorter time to bring them up to higher numbers than in the case of cattle.

I pass from that to a very brief reference about housing. I have every sympathy — indeed I am sure everybody in the House has — with the idea of better houses for old people. I think that they should if possible be brought into community centres into the towns and villages from outlying areas, but if you were to take my county where old people are living in vested houses they cannot leave them, but would have to dispose of their houses and would then not qualify for a house. I think that something could be done to enable them to so dispose of their houses and still qualify for a local authority small dwelling in a community centre where they would be near churches, shops, and so on, and not have them living in isolation, with the terrible loneliness that goes with that, not to mention in old age in particular.

The housing programme of the Government has been criticised. We in Kildare are making tremendous efforts and indeed I can claim tremendous strides in house building, but we have come up against a very severe problem, namely that of the small dwelling loans. Recently we have had so many people building houses in the country that in order to distribute all the money that is available to us for the loans we have had to confine it to people within the county. A certain individual who was building speculatively in one part of the county recently had his agent appear in a supplement to the Irish Independent. He criticised the Kildare County Council for doing this. He criticised the council for reserving this money given to us by the Department of Local Government for the Kildare people, and suggested that it should have been left wide open. If we convey his remarks to the Minister for Local Government or the Minister for Finance I am sure that they would try to meet the situation.

I move from that to the final item, namely, tourism. Tourism to my mind is one of our great assets. It is the goose that lays the golden egg but, alas, we are rapidly killing the goose. While a Senator on the far side yesterday evening almost referred to overcharging, he suggested that prices should be put up outside hotels and restaurants to show the people what the prices are inside. That to my mind is not the answer. We hear so much criticism from tourists — and I have heard it myself here in the country — referring to the prices being charged not just for bed and breakfast but for drink, tobacco, petrol and what have you, with the result that the great pool of tourists who cross the channel are to my mind turning from Ireland to the continent where they can have cheap holidays.

I cannot see anything wrong, instead of spending huge amounts of money in selling tourism here, in devising some system of giving cheaper petrol, cheaper drink, cheaper tobacco and so on and so encourage a huge influx of people into the country. The influx last year seemed to die down probably because of the disturbances in the North which may have kept some away, but nevertheless I think that when the figures come it will prove to have been a pretty good year. But it would increase the numbers coming in, and instead of having to sell it to people coming here the people would sell it for us and we would have them for many years spreading over the continent, over America, all over the world, that the place to go for a good and cheap holiday will be Ireland. That I am sorry to say is not the position at the moment, but I am sure that the powers that be will take note of that, and that when the Minister is drawing up his next legislation he will keep in mind that if he has to fall back on the hardy annuals he is going to do the economy a tremendous amount of harm.

Mr. McGlinchey

During the last few days the voices of Munster, Leinster and Connacht have contributed to this debate, and I feel that it is only appropriate that at least one voice from Ulster should say a few words before the debate concludes. In referring to myself as a northerner and as an Ulsterman I would like to protest at the attempts made by many people not only in England, not only in the Six Counties but also here on this side of the Border, to deprive the people in the counties of Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal of their provincial status. One would get the impression from many people that they believe that Ulster is confined to the Six Counties of the north-eastern portion of this country. Indeed I consider it an act of impertinence on the part of the British Government to introduce into Westminster legislation referring to the new so-called defence corps as the "Ulster Defence Corps".

The trouble in the Six Counties did not begin on the 12th August of this year or the 4th October of last year. It did not, indeed, begin with the Boundary Commission in 1925, the Treaty in 1921 or indeed with the Battle of the Boyne. To my mind the current trouble in the Six Counties could go back as far as the defeat of O'Neill and O'Donnell at Kinsale. They returned to Ulster and after four years they were dejected and dispirited and in company with 90 others they left this country. In doing so they left Ulster defenceless and provided the British Government with the opportunity of curing for all time Ireland's chief trouble spot. The land was the source of wealth and the basis of power, and in removing Irish Catholics from the land in Ulster and replacing them by Protestant immigrants the British Government felt that in a very short time they would yield to their power — and so the Plantation of Ulster took place. We found in Ulster then a Protestant community riddled with Irish Catholics.

Mr. Alexis FitzGerald

We did not spend much money on the Plantation of Ulster this year though, did we?

Mr. McGlinchey

If we would replant Ulster under the Department of External Affairs I think we could solve the problem.

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

That is advocating legislation.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator McGlinchey to continue on the Appropriation Bill.

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

He has not been on it yet.

Mr. McGlinchey

We found that the Protestant community in Ulster was riddled with Irish Catholics who were degraded and embittered and who remained there hoping that some day they would have a chance to fight again. Today, 360 years later, those Irish Catholics are still degraded, they are still embittered and they are still waiting on the chance to fight again.

I referred to the Plantation of Ulster because I feel that today in many ways history is repeating itself. We have not got a Flight of the Earls from Ulster at the moment but I believe that we have a flight of Irish nationalism, thanks to many doctrines — the Hume doctrine and the Cooper doctrine and many others and the "middle-of-the-road" doctrine which was referred to yesterday. I believe that the people who consider themselves "middle-of-the-road" are those who once again place their trust in British promises to Ireland and if we study our history we should know that British promises to Ireland were broken on many occasions. They were broken in the 17th century, in 1625 by King Charles, in 1685 when they were promised Catholic judges, Catholic privy councillors, Catholic employment in Ulster and they got them for a while but a few years later they got William of Orange. The Treaty of Limerick was broken before the parchment was dry and only 50 years ago the 1921 Treaty and the Boundary Commission to my mind was broken in the sense that the geographic and economic conditions were not taken into consideration as was promised and my county in particular has suffered considerably as a result. There is a grave tendency, in order to placate the Unionist Government in Stormont, in order that we may not rock the boat, that many people on this side of the Border are prepared to forgo all the principles that Irish people have stood for for so long. We should never allow ourselves to forget that when it suits the British Government they will reject the Irish petitions as they have done so many times in the past.

Only recently we had Mr. Quentin Hogg visiting the north-eastern part of Ireland. We heard him tell a Conservative Party conference of the tears he shed at the discrimination he witnessed. Perhaps he should have told us where those tears have been for the last 50 years. When Mr. Hogg expressed his dislike and his hatred for the Irish National Anthem he should remember that good Irishmen died so that we could play that Anthem and if necessary good Irishmen will die again if he or his ilk should attempt to take it from us.

Another popular theory at the moment is that the future of the Six Counties should be determined by the people of the Six Counties themselves. For reasons that suited themselves this particular section of Ulster was chosen to include the Six Counties and it would be a very simple matter for the British to ask those children to determine their future but I feel that as a Donegal man and an Irishman——

Mr. Alexis FitzGerald

And a Bourbon.

Mr. McGlinchey

Mr. J. Boland

As a new Member of this House — indeed I have been here for such a short period that the Minister did not know my name — I speak with some apprehension. However in view of the contribution of the last speaker and the latitude shown to him by the Chair, I feel some remark would be appropriate on the matter. It seems to me that the remarks from people like Senator McGlinchey, made in the way they have been, can only exacerbate a situation already troubled and inflamed. All of us in this part of the country deplore the recent incidents in Northern Ireland. All of us here are people in public life, some of us for a longer period than others, but it would seem that length of time does not always guarantee political wisdom.

People in public life are often inclined to make statements about affairs of national interest at the first available opportunity but it seems to many of us that the best contribution which can be made, certainly by Members of either House of the Oireachtas, is the contribution of silence. To speak out in terms such as those used by Senator McGlinchey can only add fuel to the fire and provide ammunition for those who are enemies of the State. I hesitate to say this, but it must be said, that it is just as likely were it not for the accident of birth and religion that Senator McGlinchey might have been a member of one of the organisations which supports the British Crown so actively and certainly the remarks he made, had they been looked at in that light, would not have been inappropriate to a member of the UVF. I hope further speakers on all sides of the House will endeavour to help the situation with silence.

Turning my remarks to the Appropriation Bill, in company with several of the younger members of the House I am concerned about the actual spending of money and the whole aspect of Irish living which necessarily is influenced by the manner in which this money is to be spent. There has been much good talk of development progress but sometimes it seems to me that we can become carried away by viewing the material prosperity of other countries while forgetting our national heritage and our national culture. A Minister who has, in many respects, as the Minister here has, shown himself to be a liberal thinker might devote his mind to ensuring that the national culture and heritage of this country are involved in the development of the resources of the country, people and material, so that instead of just becoming the poor carbon copy of society abroad we develop ourselves as an ethnic unit.

I recently read a booklet which gave some of the thoughts of one of the people who helped to found this State and who had the reputation of being more of a miltary man than a politician or administrator, but he put forward some rather interesting views in this regard.

An Cathaoirleach

Not wishing to interrupt the Senator, I should like to know if Senators wish to adjourn for tea or to continue until the debate is concluded?

Tomás Ó Maoláin

I suggest that we carry on until we conclude.

Mr. Haughey

How long more will Senator Boland require in order to finish?

Mr. J. Boland

About 20 minutes.

Mr. Malone

Would the Minister not like his tea?

Mr. Haughey

I never eat.

Mr. J. Boland

I will endeavour to be brief. The Minister has been patient with the House. Michael Collins, writing in 1922 about the development of our resources said:

In the ancient days of Gaelic civilisation the people were prosperous and they were not materialists. They were one of the most spiritual and one of the most intellectual peoples in Europe. When Ireland was swept by destitution and famine the spirit of the Irish people came most clearly to extinction.

He went on to deal with this culture which we have and continues:

What we must aim at is the building up of a sound economic life in which great discrepancies cannot occur. We must not have the destitution of poverty at one end, and at the other an excess of riches in the possession of a few individuals, beyond what they can spend with satisfaction and justification.

I wonder if we might just devote our thoughts for a few moments to that paragraph alone which was written more than 50 years ago and if we could say that this is a country where these discrepancies do not occur? To quote again from this booklet entitled The Path to Freedom:

The growing wealth of Ireland will, we hope, be diffused to all our people, all sharing in the growing prosperity, each receiving according to what each contributes in the making of that prosperity, so that the wealth of all is assured.... The keynote to the economic revival must be development of Irish resources by Irish capital for the benefit of the Irish consumer in such a way that the people have steady work at just remuneration and their own share of control.

These are the kind of thoughts to which a Minister of any Government in suggesting how moneys should be spent should direct his attention.

Mr. Haughey

I would not be prepared to accept that each receives according to what each contributes.

Mr. J. Boland

If the Minister cannot accept a suggestion——

Mr. Haughey

It is a very brutal and uncivilised suggestion.

Mr. McGlinchey

It would appear from that that the people who can contribute nothing will get nothing.

Mr. J. Boland

I am sorry if I worry the Minister about the suggestion that one should get in relation to what one contributes.

Mr. Haughey

I am just wondering if the Senator is misquoting?

Mr. J. Boland

I am quoting from a book written by Michael Collins. I turn now to the operation of some of the Departments. Some of the things that I have to say are laudatory and others might not be accepted quite so well by Members on the other side of the House but I might begin by praising the Minister for Finance on his decision to make the ex gratia payment to widows of civil servants who died prior to the date of the implementation of the present scheme. I had a particular interest in this and I know just how much pressure was brought to bear on the Minister and I know, of course, how much work he himself initiated in order to make this payment possible. It is something for which we must sincerely thank the Minister.

However, on the other side I might point to the interesting example which exists still in our democracy, and that is that a group of widows who, one will agree, are one of the weakest sections of the community, used effective methods to bring light to bear on their problem. The result is 50 per cent satisfactory.

While speaking on this problem, perhaps I should suggest that all our Departments should at all times go out of their way to assist widows. I must admit to having a personal interest in this regard which, I think, is also shared by the Minister. When a woman's husband dies and she is left with a young family she almost invariably becomes endowed with some extra qualities which strengthen her and give her energy and vitality to provide all she possibly can to raise her children. I was very shocked to discover only yesterday that Dublin Corporation, when letting off some temporary staff, turn first to the widows and dismiss them some few weeks before Christmas. I am sure that opportunities are available in many Departments for temporary work at various times of the year and when such work is available preference should be given to widows at all times. I do not suppose that any Member of the House would quibble with this suggestion.

The Minister has also endeared himself to many people by the tax relief he is giving to the Arts. This is the sort of enlightened attitude which helps to bring this country into greater repute throughout the world and is certainly an incentive to helping the development of and expansion of our national culture and heritage, which I referred to some moments ago. Those remarks might now be a little clearer to the Minister. I believe there is an urgent need to review the income tax code and the scale of allowances.

An Cathaoirleach

If I may interrupt the Senator, a passing reference to legislation is in order, but not any sort of detailed discussion, on this Bill. It would be more appropriate on the Finance Bill.

Mr. J. Boland

I appreciate the ruling of the Chair and I will leave it at that. Again, on a topic which concerns the Department of Finance mainly, in the Third Programme, about which we had such a lengthy contribution from Senator Keery on Tuesday, there is a suggestion that the level of public investment will jump very sharply in the first year and tend to level out in the remaining years. One wonders how realistic this suggestion is. Since 1957 our national debt has almost trebled, from £328 million in that year to £937 million in the present year. Government borrowing has amounted to £550 million and turnover tax and wholesale tax yielded over £80 million. Even the prize bonds scheme, which was criticised so strongly when it was originally introduced, has roped in some £30 million to the Exchequer.

One wonders sometimes where exactly all this money is employed? What return have we to show for it? One thinks of the situation in regard to housing and the difficulties which seem to abound in the matter of financing housing to a sufficient degree to meet the needs of our people both in the public and private sectors of housing. The fact is there are some 100,000 fewer people in employment than there were in 1956. In that same period more than 400,000 people have emigrated and the burden of taxation is becoming more pressing on a smaller number. The load should be spread more evenly.

I want to quote from a contribution made by a former member of the Fianna Fáil Party, reported in the Dáil Debates for 20th March, 1956. Mr. MacEntee, speaking to a motion by the Minister for Finance, was referring to farmers and he said:

What does the Minister propose to do for them? Rates are rising, costs are rising and taxes are certainly not coming down. How does the Minister intend to put the farmers of Ireland in a position to export more in the face of increasing competition? What about the country shopkeepers? Their shops have been empty and trade has been stagnant over the past month.

Further on he said:

Every day the real value of the incomes of these unprotected classes is declining. Every day they find it harder and harder to keep body and soul together. Every day they have less and less to spend. What does the Minister propose to do about their problem?

Later on he said:

A halt will have to be called. If it is not, we will head for a crisis which will require, indeed, extraordinary efforts and sacrifices to overcome. Somehow responsibility will have to begin to reign in the councils of the Government of this country. We cannot go on spending and spending until, as I have said, the primary producers of this country, the people who are bearing the whole burden, are crushed closer and closer to the earth.

I do not think it would be inappropriate if the present Minister for Finance were asked those same questions today. I am sure if Mr. MacEntee were still a Member of the other House, or a Member of this House, he would have at some stage during the past few months directed those questions to the Minister for Finance.

I agree with Senator Horgan and Senator Miss Bourke regarding what they said about the whole purpose and function of the Seanad. It is time for the Members of the Seanad and the members of the Government to decide what is the purpose of this body? What is its function? If, having decided that it fulfilled some useful function or that it could more usefully be employed some other way, then by all means let us go ahead and devote ourselves in a workmanlike way to carrying out this task. If, on the other hand, it is felt that this House of the Oireachtas is surplus to requirement, and mind you I do not know if I would particularly agree with that suggestion, let us face up to the fact and say that we do not need the Seanad.

It is perhaps, especially for new Members, a little frustrating to come in here in the first few months and to find that I am speaking now on the fifth day which the Seanad met since the election took place in August. One wonders when one finds the method in which the Seanad meets, perhaps next week or perhaps not for a fortnight, if there is any need at all to have this legislative Assembly. If we have not got great pressure of business this is something we might have a discussion about in this House at some stage during the present session.

I welcome, in company with other Members who have spoken, the decision of the Government to set up a commission on the status of women in our society. I am sure this commission will be welcomed by everybody in the community, especially by women, but also by the male sex. Senator Keery referred to the small print in the Third Programme. My only remark on this, having read the document some time ago and just this morning having re-read the review of it, is that it suggests that if they are phrases designed by the same people who designed the Second Programme perhaps they will have within a few years a very hollow ring.

Senator Keery referred at length to the various reports and investigations which have been carried out at the instigation of the Government. I agree it is a very good thing that we should have so many learned groups sitting on so many topics, but there is a danger that the solution to all the ills in our society will be seen as the setting up of a commission or the commissioning of a report. We must remember when those reports arrive on the tables of those who are charged with implementing the policies of the Government they must decide what decision is to be made and when.

A White Paper languishing for years in some Government Department will merely become a dirty yellow paper and it will not solve the problem. We are all quite prepared when there is some problem which the Government sets about investigating to await the arrival of the report or the findings of the commission in question; but all of us expect, and reasonably expect, that there should be some action taken when this commission or inquiry board provides its report. I do not think that this has always happened in the past, and I believe that very many groups such as those which have been set up in the past few years and which were detailed very extensively by Senator Keery have cost the taxpayer a very considerable amount of money. I wonder whether we have gained all we usefully could have from the information and suggestions put forward to us in these various publications.

I want to refer to an organisation or a body known as MOVE which Senator Keery spoke about at some length some days ago. I am not sure which is the Department responsible for having initiated the idea of MOVE but I wonder whether they or Members of this House have seen the article in the Irish Times dated the 7th January, 1969, by Hugh Monroe which is most critical of this organisation and is headed “MOVE shows lofty arrogance over £90,000 PR campaign”— PR meaning public relations. He speaks of it as giving an example of muddled economic thinking, and goes on at great length to dissect the report put forward by this body as to why it was set up and what its aims were. I do not propose to quote extensively from it but just to say that the gentleman in question is a well-known writer in the Irish Times and in other journals, and he concludes by saying:

MOVE should not be quietly discredited: it should be publicly disowned. The politicians and the people have a joint interest in firmly stating that where questions of choice in public policy arise, these questions are solved through the politicians, for the politicians are the only group who are chosen by the people and who have to take the responsibility for public choices. A situation where the State allots £90,000 to a body carrying no sort of responsibility and which then takes it on itself to "direct our national aspirations", is one which cannot be allowed to continue.

There were very many more remarks such as this in the course of this article, and I think that the Minister might well make some answer in this House to the sort of accusation which was made in this article against this body. If they are true, or even true in part, they are very serious, and certainly charge that there has been a waste of public funds on a large scale. One finds this somewhat hard to accept, and I hope that the Minister may be able to enlighten us to some degree in this matter.

Mr. Monroe says in one part:

MOVE talks for instance of the need for "radical and basic changes" without once saying what these changes should be. There is an empty, casual irresponsibility about this kind of thing; just what is the point of saying that groups must reform in some way you cannot specify, unless it is to demoralise those groups?

I just pick two paragraphs at random to quote to the House, but there are perhaps 30 or 40 paragraphs along these lines suggesting that an organisation set up by the Government to encourage national aspirations, as they themselves apparently say they were, was no more than a waste of public funds, and it would be very appropriate if the Minister could make some comment on the matter when he replies.

There are a group of public servants in this country who play a very important part quietly in our everyday life. I refer to the gardaí. I believe that we have here a group of highly disciplined and well conducted men who have served this State well since its inception. It does not seem as if their remuneration or their conditions of work can be justified in the Ireland of 1969. Certainly the comparison which the Garda Representative Body has made between the salary of the ordinary garda and other people engaged in the public sector or in fields of security shows the ordinary guard to be very poorly underpaid and to be expected to work for very long hours without any overtime or extra facilities. They quote for instance that:

A recent award gave to Dublin firemen a pay scale starting at a higher point (£16 1s 6d) than the guard's entry point, higher indeed than a guard's pay on completion of his initial period of training. Moreover the fireman's pay scale has a similar maximum to that of a guard's (£22 2s 3d) but in the case of the fireman this maximum is reached after six years, while in the case of the guards it is not attained until after about 10½ years.

We will see that the ordinary pay of a garda at his maximum is £22. For this he can be expected to work many long hours at a time. I think that there are gardaí both in the metropolitan area and outside it who have in certain circumstances and on occasions had to serve for over 24 hours at a time, and this without receiving any overtime and very often without receiving any time off in lieu of this very long continuous period of service. I realise that there is one of the commissions which I referred to some minutes ago investigating the whole problem of the salary and conditions of the gardaí. I would hope that this commission will report in the very near future and that we will have prompt action on those findings to bring the standards and conditions of the gardaí up to an acceptable level.

There have in relation to the Department of Justice been in the recent past rumblings as to the manner in which cases have been presented by the State, and in various courts in the country. I think again that this is a matter which requires clarification from the Government. It is a matter of grave public concern if people feel that cases are not being pressed or presented in a proper way. I think it requires a definite statement from the Government in this regard. There have in the recent past, as many members know, been some very serious allegations made concerning the Minister for Justice.

Mr. Haughey

I thought the Senator was going to say in sailing. I sailed in a force 10 gale. That is more than Dick Belton ever did.

In the review of the year they said:

Current Affairs programmes have been steadily developed and the distinction between news, news-analysis and news-comment programmes has been publicly identified in broadcasting practice.

A broadcasting service that seeks to be comprehensive must give considerable weight and effort to programmes in the field of information and public affairs, and such programmes are now part of the public expectation from broadcasting in this country. It is the Authority's policy that its public affairs programmes should be informed by a sense of the importance of broadcasting among the communications media, and guided throughout by an understanding of the responsibility for impartiality required of RTE by the Broadcasting Authority Act, 1960.

This is an interesting comment from a Board which I think it is fair to say is composed in the main of supporters of the Government. The comments would be welcome from all responsible sections of the community. They stated the division of RTE which dealt with news and public affairs was being extended and reporting in depth was being initiated and that they would go out of their way to ensure that impartial fair programmes were presented. However, there was a reminder in an oblique way that the Broadcasting Act, 1960, is there and if the Government had any grievance about the operations of RTE in any shape or form there are clear-cut procedures laid down whereby the Government could communicate its displeasure to the RTE Authority. I would hope that this would be remembered at all times when the Government have displeasure towards Radio Telefís Éireann.

I wish to refer briefly to the problem of water pollution which has been causing such great concern of late and I would point out that in the OECD Observer for October, 1969, there is an article which deals with the need to ensure water conservation. The article says that the problems of water research have been under study since 1961; water, both as to quantity and quality, has become a potential inhibitor of economic growth.

I realise that there are difficulties in dealing with this problem but when a body such as OECD suggest that the quantity and quality of water could become an inhibiting factor to economic growth and advancement the Minister for Finance might have a look at the problem. The article goes on at length to show the way in which lack of water or water pollution held up development in certain areas in many continental countries. I am sure the Minister would not like to see this happen here and that he will devote some of his time and talents to ensuring that some solution can be devised to this problem.

Mr. Haughey

Finally——

Mr. J. Boland

The Minister will not rush me. With regard to the Department of Local Government, Senator Garrett explained to us at some length that there was no lack of money for housing and rather than interrupt the Senator I decided to wait until I was speaking myself to ask if there is no lack of money why applicants for SDA loans to Dublin Corporation and Dublin County Council have been told that these cannot be sanctioned. Why did the City Manager for Dublin, who was the County Manager for Dublin announce some time ago that the worst that these people can be told is that they may have to wait 18 months for their application to be sanctioned?

Has this been done by Act of Parliament?

Mr. Haughey

The change has been announced but the Bill has not been passed.

Mr. J. Boland

On Monday afternoon the officials administering the scheme in Dublin Corporation understood that grants of £275 applied to houses of less than 1,500 square feet. I am delighted to hear that since Monday afternoon the Minister for Local Government, presumably in conjunction with the Minister for Finance, has decided to increase these grants and I am sure the people will welcome this.

There are 200 families squatting in houses belonging to Dublin Corporation. According to information compiled in relation to the 1966 census, 44 per cent of the corporation tenants in Dublin were sub-letting their houses. It is obvious to all Members here that they are not subletting by choice but that in fact almost all of them are subletting to sons or daughters who have got married, and for whom houses are not available. In 1967 4.1 per cent of the gross national product of this country was spent on housing. This places us third bottom of the list of European countries in this regard. We only managed to excel Norway and Britain in this matter. I am sure it pleases Senator Keery that we excelled Britain.

I was surprised at Senator Garrett telling us that the new Department to handle planning was to be set up soon because this seems to be directly in conflict with the statement of the Taoiseach within the last two days that he has for the moment shelved the idea of setting up a Department for Housing and Physical Planning pending examination of the Devlin Report. Again we are getting such instant Government now in the matter of housing grants, setting up Departments and taking away Departments that it is rather difficult to keep right up to date.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

The Senator is young yet.

Mr. Garrett

Progress is hard to come by.

Mr. J. Boland

It is the progress of doing nothing. I would ask the Minister to seriously devote himself to the matter, unless this has been changed also, of the income ceiling for applicants for house purchase loans, which stands at £1,200. This was the ceiling which was set some years ago and as many Members of the House will know a person going to a building society or an insurance company has not got very much chance of securing a loan to purchase a house unless he has an income of at least £1,500.

There are many young people who want to get married and who fall into the income category somewhere between £1,200 and £1,500 but they are ineligible for county council loans and corporation loans. They have not got sufficient income to secure a loan from a building society. This is a problem which is growing every month and one which should receive the urgent attention of the Government. Surely the maximum for SDA loans should be at least the equivalent of the minimum income for loans from building societies. I suppose it is too much, although I do not think it would require bringing in new legislation, to suggest to the Minister that he might use his good offices with his colleague the Minister for Local Government to reestablish and reconstitute the Corporation of Dublin.

In relation to the Department of Local Government, the activities of local authorities and the whole matter generally of local administration it seems we now have a system still operating in 1969 which has far outlived its usefulness. It is a system which was devised some hundreds of years ago which seems to many members of local authorities to be creaking at every joint. It seems there is an urgent need for an overhaul of the system of local administration throughout the country, if we are to bring it into line with modern business standards and with modern systems of communications and development.

I should like to comment on the activities of the Departments of Health and Social Welfare because I feel the Department of Social Welfare is one Department which could be said to be surplus to requirements. It seems to act now as no more than a paying agency and to look at a Department which by its title implies it is dealing with the welfare of our people and to realise it has not got even one trained social worker on its staff leaves grave doubts as to the worth or merit of the particular Department. It would seem as if the functions of that Department could well be taken over in the main by the Department of Health and in some aspects by the Department of Labour. It would in addition have the great benefit that it would remove some of the burden from the gentleman who at present holds ministerial office for that Department and allow him to devote some more of his time to the job as acting as a responsible Minister for Local Government. However, in view of the lateness of the hour, the long time this discussion has gone on and the fact that I know Senator Walsh is most anxious to speak, I will not go into this matter in any greater detail.

Mr. Walsh

I appreciate the fact that we now have spent more than three days discussing this Bill and I do not intend to detain the House very long. However, I should like to make some contribution to the Bill but before I do so I should like to make some brief reference to Senator Boland's remarks. As a newcomer to the House I do not believe in engaging in any form of heckling and cross talk but I should like to remind the Senator, and I think Senator Belton would wish to be fair on this and would agree with me, because we want to be fair on this matter, with regard to what the Senator said about there being no loans available from Dublin County Council. I agree with the first part of the Senator's statement. Unfortunately Senator Boland did not state everything he should have and did not say everything he was told by the city and county manager, Mr. Macken, when he had a special meeting of Dublin County Council to deal with this matter.

Senator J. Boland is a very good man for figures, I grant him that, and it is quite possible he may have them in his possession. On that occasion we had a very long, and sometimes very heated, discussion with regard to the availability of loans for people anxious to purchase houses. He was informed on that occasion that there was far more money allotted to Dublin County Council this year than ever before. During the month of July it became apparent to the City and County Manager, Mr. Macken, that the number of applicants had increased considerably this year. We then approached the Minister for Local Government and an extra allocation was made available to him to meet the thousands of people looking for loans. I may be wrong but I think I am correct in saying that roughly an additional £250,000 was made available to Mr. Macken. I am not denying that the city and county manager said he could not guarantee the sanctioning of loans from 1st September. I would not like to have included every statement that was given at that meeting by the city and county manager.

Mr. J. Boland

Might I explain?

Tomás Ó Maoláin

Quote some statistics from Fine Gael again.

Mr. Walsh

Just a second. I did not interrupt the Senator. I am a newcomer to the House and during the past three days I have listened to some very worthwhile contributions by speakers from both sides of the House. Many tributes were paid to the Minister for Finance in his capacity as Minister and many tributes were paid to him for his interest in education and the amount of money he has channelled in that direction. I should like to add my voice to one of those tributes also. There is no doubt we have heard different views as to the manner in which the Department of Education should be worked and so on but there is one thing I am very pleased about and that is that education is made available to all our children, no matter who they may be.

I have no doubt that in years to come, when the present day school-going children have finished school and set out into the world with the education they will have received they will be fully and properly equipped to meet whatever challenge lies ahead of them. Should they decide to move to other countries I have no doubt that they will be properly equipped to counteract the charges which we have heard so much about, which were made known in a special film of which we have heard so much today, and to which we have heard that some people in the House have made some contribution.

I was very pleased when Senator Ó Maoláin spoke at great length on this matter. No matter what side of the House, no matter what political beliefs we may hold, at least we should have the honour and the decency to come and speak and when something worthwhile is being done at least we should express our appreciation for that. I am a member of the Fianna Fáil Party. From time to time we had a Coalition Government. I know that the amount of legislation they introduced was very small, but once or twice I remember they did introduce some legislation which I have some admiration for and I never failed to give them credit for that.

Mr. Alexis FitzGerald

Control yourself carefully, then.

Mr. Walsh

Do not worry about that at all. We are well able for it.

There was one thing I admired the Minister for, and that was for having made an allocation of money for the development of recreational facilities for the young. We hear quite a lot about the slogan "The youth of today are the men of tomorrow." I appreciate very much the Minister's interest in that field. Apart from the fact that he has made this allocation of money for this development he has encouraged the people associated with this, for this is a recognition of their work. I hope that some of the money that has been allocated will be devoted to work for boys' clubs. The firm with which I am connected has employees some of whom are involved in this work, and it is only when one has discussions about their activities in this field that one realises the part that they are playing for the welfare of youth. I appreciate very much the Minister's attitude and thinking on these lines.

Three or four weeks ago on the first occasion when the House met we passed the final stages of the Bill to increase the borrowing power of the National Building Agency. This is something which I appreciate very much also. The National Building Agency is playing a very important part in the building industry today. As I said on that occasion, as a member of a local authority I have always been very impressed by the manner in which the National Building Agency operates, the speed with which it can get work started. This is something which is of great importance and something which we in the local authority are very grateful for. I would like to compliment the National Building Agency on its work.

I do not know if this is the responsibility of the Minister for Finance or the Minister for Local Government, but I would ask the Minister responsible that some time he would have a look at the manner in which the building societies operate. There is no doubt that there is a great interest in this at the present moment. The loan conditions certainly make it impossible for any ordinary worker to meet the repayments to these societies, and it would be very much appreciated by all sides of the House and by everybody concerned if we could possibly hear something from the Minister in this field.

I am not going to delay very long, but I was listening to some of the speeches today and Senator McDonald spoke at great length of the Department of Agriculture. He made some references to why and where the Fine Gael policy differed from Fianna Fáil policy in agriculture. As I have said I am not going to engage in cross talk but I would like to ask him which Fine Gael policy on agriculture, because I am sure it is clear to everybody that over the past ten years we have had a number of by-elections and a general election and on every occasion the Fine Gael Party came out with some different policy on agriculture. When the by-election was lost by them and another one came along we still heard something new on agriculture, and I intended to ask Senator McDonald which agricultural policy he had in mind — was it the one introduced in 1963, or the one in 1964, or so on?

We have heard a lot also about Telefís Éireann, and I am not going to make much reference to that, but I would like to refer to a speaker yesterday, Senator Quinlan. When he was speaking about this he mentioned the fact that he hoped that the Government would not give way to the request of Telefís Éireann to increase the licence fee. Listening to the radio last night and this morning he was quoted in a very different way. Possibly this could be a mistake, but it is quite possible that his speech could have been distorted more or less to suit themselves. He was quoted as expressing the hope that the Government would give way to this appeal. I would like to make matters very clear. I certainly hope that the Government and the Minister concerned will not give way to this request.

I do not intend to delay the House any longer. Thank you very much.

Minister for Finance (Mr. Haughey)

May I at the outset and on the occasion of my first appearance in the Seanad since you have been elected to the Chair offer you, Sir, my congratulations on your elevation to this office of great importance and responsibility. It is still for me personally a pleasure, and indeed very instructive, to go back over the records of this House and read the contributions which were made by your illustrious father. That you will now be carrying on a family tradition of service to the Seanad as its Cathaoirleach is something in which I think all of us take a great pride.

In mentioning your father may I hope that in regard to your occupancy of the Chair you shall have some peace there. I hope that there will not be many occasions for you to observe that midnight's all a glimmer whatever about noon occasionally being a purple glow. Finally may I express the hope that during your time here in the Seanad the Seanad will be a place where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.

There was some talk here about productivity in the House. I feel that many of those who spoke about productivity proceeded with subsequent behaviour in a manner which could hardly have been described as productive. I, as a Minister coming here to the Seanad, would greatly welcome productive and constructive debate, because I think that the Seanad can make a very useful contribution to the issues of the day, and I feel that in the membership of the Seanad we have people who are capable of being of considerable assistance to the Government in grappling with the issues and problems which confront it.

I would not think, however, that on this particular occasion the Seanad has fully availed itself of the opportunity presented to it by the debate on the Appropriation Bill and I think that perhaps the speeches have covered far too wide a field. Certainly, for my part, I have been bemused by so many different subjects and topics that whatever few coherent thoughts I began with when I came in here have more or less evaporated by now. I regret that a number of Senators could not apparently resist the opportunity to engage in party politics and personal attack. I have become increasingly intrigued in recent years to observe how the academics who come among us here in the Seanad seem to concentrate mainly on this personality type of political debate. One would imagine that if we are to get impartial and objective discussion and examination of issues in a broad way that we would get it from the academics. Unfortunately, that is just not so. It would be interesting to probe the reason why this should be, it may be something inherent in their way of life. However, it is something which the rest of us continually observe with interest.

I want to assure the House that a great deal of the matters which have been raised here are being actively considered by the Government. In regard to some of them, decisions have already been taken although they may not have been announced so that if I do not deal with a particular topic or aspect I hope the Senator who raised it will accept that I am not ignoring it. There are other matters which are the particular responsibility of particular Ministers and because of their fundamental importance in the policy of the particular Minister it is not really proper that I should make more than a passing reference to them because I would only, at the best, be dealing at second hand with something that is of very considerable importance.

One of the points that was raised early in the debate was the question of giving more State aid for bodies which are assisting our emigrants in Britain. The Government, as the House knows, have provided a sum of £10,000 to the Department of Labour to assist the voluntary organisations which are working in this field. The Minister for Labour has set up a fairly widely representative committee to advise him on how this money and any further moneys which would be made available for his purpose should be disposed if. This committee will help the National Manpower Service here also in its work and I feel that there is a great deal that can be done immediately in getting our people back from Britain to this country. There are many areas of this country where there is a shortage of labour generally or a small shortage of a particular type of labour. I know that the Department of Labour propose to enter into this field of advising our people in Britain who have particular skills of opportunities which are available to them here and we hope that as time goes on there will be perhaps a continuing flow of migration back to this country.

Somebody mentioned legal aid. I should like to deal with this because I was the Minister for Justice who introduced legal aid. At present of course it is only available in criminal cases and I have no recent information as to how it is working out in that area as a scheme. The question of extending it to civil cases will be a major one. It would, I believe — apart from any question of principle as to whether it would be a good thing or not or whether it would encourage vexatious litigation — be quite costly and perhaps the Department of Justice have other priorities though I would feel that the ultimate objective must be an extension of free legal aid in a limited, sensible and rational way into the civil field.

A number of Senators spoke about the situation of widows and asked some particular questions about the present position. In so far as civil servants who became members of the new scheme for widows in the public service are concerned the grants are being made in the normal way as the claims arise. With regard to the ex gratia scheme which applies to the widows of civil servants whose husbands were never in a position to qualify for the new scheme the position is that we have decided to make these ex gratia payments available or to give effect to that as from 1st October, 1969. We are working diligently on getting these payments made and I am sure Senators will appreciate that this is a fairly difficult task. Many of these people died many, many years ago and it is difficult to trace them and to verify them. It may be some time before every case is cleared up but we are doing everything we can to get it into full operation as quickly as possible. Indeed if any Senator is aware of a particular case I would welcome information from him about it and help to get it cleared up.

Somebody asked about the extension of this scheme to the widows of teachers. This has, in fact, already been done. A separate scheme, but similar, has been arranged for national and secondary teachers. Vocational teachers are, of course, included in the general scheme for local authority officers which was authorised by the Minister for Local Government last month.

There has been a considerable amount of discussion here during the last few days on education. Education is such a specialised field that I am sure the Seanad would not expect me to do much more than co-relate all the various points of view that have been brought forward and transmit them to my colleague, the Minister for Education, for his consideration.

Perhaps I might mention one particular matter that has been raised, that is the merger. I could say a great deal on this subject but I want to point out that it is a pretty fundamental part of educational policy and therefore better dealt with on some suitable occasion by the Minister for Education himself. I do want to endorse very much what Senator Farrell said at an early stage. I thought it was a very commonsense comment though Senator Sheehy Skeffington sought to confuse the issue later. Senator Farrell said that what the ordinary person really wanted was to get value for money in our university education system. I submit that is the primary community requirement.

Every Senator in this House knows that the expanding demands which are being made on our resources throughout the whole spectrum of Government activity will take us all our time to meet. Having to set aside every year increasing resources in practically every direction that Senators consider desirable — health, education, hospitals, schools, industrial development, agriculture and so on — the total of our annual capital programme now is quite intimidating and it is making very considerable inroads on our resources to keep financing that capital programme. In that situation we cannot afford any wasteful allocation of our resources. We must make sure that we get the best possible value for the capital we are prepared to invest in our development. To my mind that is at the nub of the development of university education. We are not wealthy enough to afford the unnecessary duplication of facilities and that must be the paramount question we keep before our minds when looking at the problem of development of our universities and the question of the merger.

Quite frankly, I was a little disappointed to see the reaction of a very considerable number of people in our academic life to the question of the merger. There are many in this community who believe that the Irish universities have not made the contributions they should have to the building up of our nation, who believe that when we were endeavouring to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps the universities did not play the part we might have expected of them.

The bringing forward of this great new concept will provide the Irish universities with an opportunity once and for all to dispel that feeling, if there is any validity in it. I would have expected them to approach the problem in a forward-looking way, with magnanimity and generosity, but I fear that the ordinary man-in-the-street thinks he has been let down by the academics in this matter. Instead of the sort of approach he was entitled to expect, there seemed to be a rush to man the particular academic barricades and in many directions there seemed to be a desire to defend a particular piece of academic real estate, status and prestige in different sections. I may be wrong about this but it is a view I hold, which I hope events may prove wrong. Perhaps I could not have got a better illustration of what I think about this than the fact that Senator Sheehy Skeffington in this House was prepared to offer us, as an example of something tremendous, the two particular faculties that had been swapping extern examiners for a number of years.

I listened to Senator Dunne with interest and respect. He mentioned his personal dilemma; I want to assure him, if it is any help to him, that in my eyes he will always be a sturdy and courageous trade union leader rather than a mere member of the Labour Party. Any time I sat around a table with him I never had any difficulty in finding a great deal of common ground but I would have hoped for perhaps a different emphasis in his approach on this occasion. It is not very realistic for us in this House to talk in terms of trade unions defending themselves and of attacks on the trade unions, I do not think that is a matter of realistic politics today. Most of us know that over large areas unions or individual groups decide the level of their own remuneration. I should have preferred, perhaps optimistically, if we spoke today about the lower-paid worker and the weaker sections of the community, as it is with this area we must concern ourselves more in the future. I want to make this point as firmly as I can — every time a strong, well-organised group of workers or trade unionists demands and gets an increase in income which is totally out of line with national production then it is the poorer section that slips down the line with less prospect of ever getting its rightful place in the sun.

I had really hoped that this year we would have been able to achieve something significant in this respect. We began the early part of the year with discussions which centred very much on the problem of the lower-paid workers and the weaker sections of the community. We spoke, in fact, of making 1969 the year of the lower-paid worker. In finalising the public service agreement and, indeed, the budget, the strategy of which was closely related to that public service pay agreement, we set a very useful headline. I am afraid that the effort has petered out and I would not be surprised if the statisticians were able to tell us at the end of 1969 that the lower-paid worker is relatively worse off than he was at the start. I am not sure of this but I am very much afraid this is the case. I would suggest to Senator Dunne and his colleagues in Congress, who I know are concerned about this problem, that there is, perhaps, scope for further consideration and co-operation between Congress and the Government on this issue and that what we failed to do in 1969 we might be able to do in 1970, or at least to make a significant contribution towards a real improvement in the conditions of the lower-paid workers. I want, through Senator Dunne, to assure Congress that the Government stand ready to enter into constructive and meaningful discussions on this subject.

Reference was made to the status of women in Irish life and I wish to assure the Senators who spoke on this that there is no need to harry the Government on this issue. In recent years the Government has been directing increasing attention to this aspect of our community life and I think I can fairly claim we have been approaching it in a humanitarian and sympathetic way. I believe we are about to take a really historic step forward in the establishment of this commission, which will go into the question in a fundamental way.

I was a little disappointed by the Senator who spoke about the commission being discredited. It has not yet been established; its terms of reference have not been set; the personnel who will act on it have not been decided and I really think that a comment of this sort is, to say the least, premature. Reference was made to a reply I gave in the Dáil in this matter. That reply was very carefully framed; I indicated quite clearly that, while equal pay for equal work was no doubt a matter the commission would have to deal with, the establishment of the commission in no way prevented a continuation of the principle of public service negotiations which we inaugurated last year whereby no differentiation was made in the increases granted.

I think this commission will be vital for the future of Irishwomen and I hope it may be given every chance to work and that no attempt will be made to cut the ground from under its feet before it starts. Of course it will have to concern itself with the question of equal pay but it will also have to concern itself with other matters and there will be many women who will regard other things as being of much greater importance than equal pay because there are a great number of women to whom equal pay does not matter. Let us not have any confusion of issues at this stage.

With regard to getting this commission set up we should all try to make sure that it is successful and that as a result of its efforts a significant contribution will be made not just to the status of women in society but to the betterment of Irish society as a whole. Nobody should be under any illusions about equal pay or should try to be glib about it. It is a major issue and of very considerable economic significance. Nobody in the Government is in any way opposed to equal pay in principle. It is simply a question of practicality.

Allied, perhaps, to the question of the status of women in our society is the question of old people which was raised by Senator Gallanagh and others. We have been making progress in this field and in my own constituency I see many encouraging things happening. For instance, I see quite a number of very pleasant little community centres where old people can live not only in great comfort but in great dignity. I am aware that there is a great deal of splendid voluntary effort by way of Meals on Wheels and so on and there are a lot of dedicated volunteers working in this field.

I am sure the Senators will also admit that we in the various Departments of Government have been generally developing a human and humanitarian philosophy in our approach to this aspect of our community life. I said recently that I think it is possible for a small nation to be great in the way that it provides solutions for its community problems. The value or standing of a nation should not be judged by the size of its gross national product. It can show greatness in other ways and I would like to see us regarded as, perhaps, to a great degree, civilised in the humanity and compassion with which we treat the weaker sections of our community and especially the old because, whatever we may say, practically every other section has the hope and the opportunity of bettering itself perhaps through its own efforts but the old must rely on us.

Much has been made of the Devlin Report and I have not much more to add to what I have been saying in response to questions in the Dáil. This is a splendid report. It is one of the most searching and careful reports we have had for a long time and I am happy to take this opportunity to pay tribute to those who compiled it. However, it is a very serious fundamental document and the changes which it suggests are of a very far-reaching nature indeed. It consists in practically turning our existing civil service machinery upside-down and we cannot, as a Government, even if we wished to, rush into decisions on this report.

Perhaps we are not even equipped as we stand to take the decisions on the report. We may have to develop our civil service techniques further before we can validly test some of the recommendations which have been put forward by that report. The report would require careful and accurate scrutiny by the Government and by senior members of the public service but we are looking on it as one of the major tasks confronting the present Government.

Strangely enough, there has not been a great deal of discussion on the general economic situation although Senators have adverted to different aspects of it. We must, of course, at this time look at our economic situation in the light of what is happening abroad. I am not sure if it has yet been announced that some of my colleagues and I will be going to London to have discussions on the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement with our British counterparts. We will be examining the workings of the Agreement in great detail and our discussions will have to be in the light of the recent developments in regard to the European Economic Community. At the present time, we must look on our own particular economic situation both from the internal and from the external point of view.

Perhaps the most important aspect of our internal situation is the problem of inflation. As Senators know, I have given the figure of 8 per cent as the inflation we had in the 12 months to August last. That is a very serious figure and one which must give everyone in the community who has responsibility in any area serious food for thought. I know that we are in a worldwide inflationary situation and that we are importing a great deal of our inflation but there is nothing we can do about that.

Nevertheless, we must make a real effort to get this situation under control and there is no point in anyone blaming anybody else or accusing others of being responsible for it. In every sphere we must try to bring about a situation where incomes do not go so far ahead of national production that inflation is inevitable. That is a spiral which if we once get into it there is no knowing where it will end. I believe there is not yet somehow a sufficient realisation among the ordinary workers that a wage increase or an income increase, no matter how large or how attractive it may be in money terms, if it is more than the community can afford it is only an illusion in the long term and that we will have a situation where everybody will be trying to insure themselves against mounting inflation.

Of course, that ultimately leads to complete chaos and collapse and a collapse brought about by working under inflationary pressure. It is the workers and the poorer sections who suffer most. Perhaps it is regrettable but it is true that the capitalist can always find some way of protecting his interests in that sort of situation. It is terribly important that whatever any of us can do at the present time should be done to try and get this fundamental truth established that we in the community can only take out of it what in effect we put in it.

In my Department every year we are prepared at the beginning of the year to state clearly and categorically what our estimate of the national growth for the year ahead will be. It is only reasonable that everybody should base their income and their expectations of income demand on the basis of actual growth and on nothing else. In so far as anybody takes more out of the pool than is justified then in effect they are, as I said at the beginning, really only hurting those who cannot fight as vigorously for their share.

I want to pay a tribute to the public service for their very enlightened approach to this matter last year when the agreement was entered into and I would hope the headline which they set on that occasion could be followed throughout the community because it would bring splendid results in growth, more in employment and increasing prosperity; I also want to pay tribute to the public service committee of congress for the initiative they took.

Allied, of course, to our inflationary situation — and perhaps a direct reflection of it — is the balance of payments deficit which we are encountering at the present time. I am sure the Senators by now are very familiar with the figures but, if not, I will repeat them.

In deciding on our general plan for this year, 1969, we anticipated a balance of payments deficit of £55 million and we said: "That is a pretty considerable balance of payments deficit. It is not one we would be prepared to tolerate indefinitely year after year but in the circumstances in this particular year we are prepared to live with it." Fortunately all the indications are that it will turn out to have been what we projected. There may have to be an adjustment of about £4½ million in respect of the sale of aircraft. That is only a technical adjustment and is of no particular economic significance. So, in fact, 1969 will have almost worked out in this regard very much as we anticipated and planned for; but what is disturbing is that whereas £55 million could be accepted as a tolerable figure for one year it looks now as if it may project itself, and perhaps even be increased, in 1970.

This is something to which we must again direct the most careful attention and which must influence us very much in our approach to all our economic affairs in the coming year. Again, if 1970 sees, on a broad scale, income increases of the nature we experienced in 1969 then undoubtedly we will have a balance of payments deficit bigger than that in 1969 and undoubtedly much larger than we could with any satisfaction contemplate. That is the situation we find facing us now in the closing weeks of 1969. It was a good year, economically. We kept up a a fairly steady rate of growth, four per cent or four and a half per cent. It is difficult to know precisely yet.

We continued to export very satisfactorily indeed. One of the really redeeming features about our whole situation is a continuing rise in our export potential. As I say our exports continued to rise in 1969 at a satisfactory rate but, unfortunately, we have this inflationary pressure at home, excessive consumption leading to the continuing and unhealthy deficit in our balance of payments. Fortunately, of course, the balance of payments does not bring itself so brutally to our notice because we still have a very satisfactory inflow of capital into the country which enables us to ride out those balance of payments deficits. Nevertheless, all of us must get down during 1970 to see what we can do to ensure that the inflationary spiral inside the country is halted and that our balance of payments is brought back to tolerable limits.

I want to assure Senator Boland, after the excellent contribution which he made here this afternoon, that I will remember his name for the rest of this Seanad. I apologise if I cannot deal with all the various points he made but I assure him and all the other Senators likewise, in so far as they have made particular points in relation to the activities of particular Departments, that I will convey those to my colleagues for their consideration and hopefully for suitable and appropriate action.

Question put and agreed to.

Agreed to take remaining Stages today.

Bill put through Committee, reported without recommendation, received for final consideration and ordered to be returned to the Dáil.

The Seanad adjourned at 8 o'clock until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 10th December, 1969.

Seanad Éireann debate - Thursday, 4 Dec 1969