I move:
"That Seanad Éireann notes the Report on Full Employment".
It is appropriate that in beginning our discussion of public affairs this morning we should begin with what might be regarded as the most important concern of all of us, that is the provision of full employment in this country within the least possible time. It is the birthright of our people that suitable employment should be provided for them. I am sure that all parties subscribe to this.
We may all utter platitudes about the provision of full employment but more than platitudes are required to achieve that goal. We welcome this belated discussion on the very valuable Report on Full Employment which was issued by NIEC about three years ago. It is a sad reflection on the seriousness with which we are tackling the problem of creating new jobs when not only the Oireachtas but other bodies in the country have not had active discussion on this report during the past three years. Therefore, I hope that here today we may rekindle interest in this topic and I urge all voluntary bodies with any concern for the national interest to devote considerable time during the next six months to studying the problem of the provision of reasonably full employment as a matter of urgency. We should at least aim at the target set for 1980—the middle target.
Of course, many people would be forgiven if they were somewhat frightened by the report as it is written because, basically, it is a report of economists and it deals with figures from beginning to end. Therefore, it makes difficult reading for anyone not accustomed to dealing with economics. However, we shall consider the broad objectives of the report. They are that our present level of unemployment, which is running at 5 or 6 per cent, should be reduced to a figure of about 2 per cent.
We will always have some unemployment because of people changing their jobs and people being unemployable and so on, but if we could reduce the unemployment level to 2 per cent we would, in modern terms, be providing the equivalent of full employment. We must also take in the present level of emigration which is running at about 15,000 or 20,000 each year. This should be reduced to an acceptable figure of voluntary emigration which would be somewhere in the order of a few thousand persons. The figure suggested here is about 5,000. If these targets were achieved, all those who wished to work here could do so.
The report then goes on to lay down the conditions in which the planning should be done. The first observation is that because we are in competition with the British labour market and with the intense mobility between the two countries it is regarded as essential that our level of wages should progress more or less in line with Britain and the continent. That suggests that a figure of 4 per cent is necessary under that heading. As well as that, we must be able to compete effectively on the export market. Therefore, we must endeavour to improve the 1967 position. Since the publication of the report at that time, the position has deteriorated.
Of course, we are faced with the vast task of creating new jobs and of making available the capital that will be required for new industries and it is suggested here that 1 per cent per annum of the increased productivity should go towards that purpose. If we are to attain the middle course here of increasing productivity at a rate of 5½ per cent per annum we are faced with a big task. We have not reached this level before and few countries have ever reached it; those who have, only reached it for a very short period. Post-war Germany, of course, was an exception but then she was under exceptional conditions as well.
The best we did here was around 4 per cent. At any rate, that is the target we are told we have got to aim at so that our people under this would have to work harder and more efficiently than they have done in the past. In other words, the balance of payments would have to be kept in reasonable check and with increasing standards of living that is a difficult thing to do with a tendency to buy more imports, more luxury goods from abroad, and at the same time having less power to control those due to the development of free trade in the coming decade.
As well as that, the question of the stability of prices and of real incomes goes on. Again our experience of the last couple of years shows that is a very difficult thing to do. We have to do very much better than we have done during the last couple of years in that regard. In other words, we could have inflation in this country progressing at a greater rate than it is progressing with our competitors otherwise we would get into real difficulties. There would also be much greater need for savings than there has been in the past. We would have to attract in more foreign capital than we have done up to now.
That is not a very rosy prescription for getting into this era of full employment. It means we have got to do everything better than in the past and therefore the whole thing will depend on the will of the people to face up to those tasks. If we were at war we certainly would face tasks that would be infinitely greater than asked for here. Can we get the same effort in peace time when we are committed to the welfare of the country? When we all subscribe to this it is something which should be taken away from party politics completely. It should be recognised as one of our major national aims. As well as the question of the reunification of the country the question of full employment in this portion of the country prior to that must obviously be our main national aim. That in broad outline is the picture presented to us.
I do not want to go into all the figures in any great detail because what is here is largely a mathematical exercise. You take a set of assumptions, you work from that, you get out results but by and large whatever set of assumptions are taken to start with the end broad conclusions will be the same. We have got to do better under every one of those major headings than we have done in the past. We cannot simply accept the complacency of those who are all right, Jack, who are in reasonably comfortable jobs here and are prepared to close their eyes to the fact that other people's children have to emigrate or other people's husbands have to go. Those people go merrily on closing their eyes to what is happening around them, buy Scotch or buy breakfast foods produced outside the country, in other words, have no allegiance whatsoever to the fundamental condition for the creation of new jobs here, that is, the buying of the products of the jobs we have got. Yesterday I stressed the way we have fallen down in that campaign over the years. When we begin to get sophisticated on a Buy Irish campaign we sophisticate ourselves out of existence and the Buy Irish campaign is only a joke at the moment.
We have got to come back and see if we can get those new jobs. The authors here freely admit that this is only a blueprint, it is only setting out the magnitude of the task involved. It is trying to jolt us into a realisation of the task. The second stage will call for much more detailed planning and a critical look at all the sectors of our economy to know where the jobs are to come from. At that stage I would find myself very much at variance with the authors of this report because I think nothing more than this report shows us the deficiency of the National Industrial and Economic Council as constituted at present.
You can read through the list of distinguished signatories of this report, 20 in all, and not one of them has any close connection in any way with agriculture or its problems. They would be the first to admit it themselves because for ten years we have persisted in the ridiculous approach that agriculture is not included in our National Economic Council. Trade unions and employers are included but not our major industry, agriculture. I appeal to the Government as a matter of urgency to right that situation. We have appealed in the past. Where are the road blocks? I do not know. They probably lie in the over-possessive attitude of the Department of Agriculture to wanting to create a miniature Republic of their own who say everything relating to agriculture is their problem and the rest of us should keep out. The agricultural organisations who are far more progressive in their approach to this than the official Department policy have been calling again and again to have agriculture adequately represented in this. If agriculture were properly represented in this you would not have in this document the defeatist approach to agriculture which ruins it.
At this stage we have got to change our assumptions drastically because in the years since the war all our Governments have been trying very hard to get in more industry here. They have succeeded in that, as you can see from the increased output in industry which exists and from the new factories which have been established. Nationally, we have lost ground because the loss from agriculture has been too heavy to be taken up by the new factories. We have had 10,000 to 12,000 people leaving agriculture each year. The best the State ever has been able to do has been to create that number of new jobs.
Compared with 20 years ago, we have fewer people in employment today. That is a frightening thought. While we have evident prosperity, and we all know we are better off, surely the situation smacks of selfishness. We have succeeded by pushing out some people from the nest and sending them away. We should examine the cause of our failure. The drain from Irish agriculture has to be stopped. It has been forecast that Irish agriculture will continue to lose 10,000 people per year and that during the next ten years another 80,000 to 100,000 people will leave agriculture. This is national suicide. I suggest to anyone connected with the Government that no one who knows anything about agriculture can subscribe to that policy.
I ask that the help of the Agricultural Institute be enlisted that they be asked to prepare a blueprint for what agriculture should do during the next ten years. The establishment of the Agricultural Institute has been the greatest single happening in this country during the past 20 years. They have pioneered the way into scientific agriculture and have shown that we are only scratching the surface on the potential of Irish agriculture. Anybody from the country will remember that 15 years ago the accepted standard was a cow to 2½ or three acres. The Agricultural Institute today are having a cow reared on 0.9 of an acre. Progressive farmers—I know many—are rapidly getting close to this figure. A cow to an acre is quite a reasonable standard. Our present net output from agriculture is only about £15 per acre. The doubling of that figure in the next ten years is a target which the Agricultural Institute considered much too low. That is ahead of the target proposed here which only takes a liberal 3 per cent increase in the target per year.
Let us hear the authoritative voice of agriculture on this problem. Let agriculture take its rightful share in creating full employment by stemming the drain from the land. Anyone who is worried about figures can be comforted by the fact that we have fewer people employed per 1,000 acres than are employed on a similar area in Denmark, Holland and such countries. We have less capital and our knowhow is less than theirs. We are catching up rapidly, but we must have increased manpower properly organised on a system different from that in the past. This is badly needed. We are calling for the 1970 version of co-operation in this country. The co-operative centres must provide services, relief and otherwise, to enable the various localities to be developed.
I must now speak on another facet. We feel we must be better off in ten years than we are today and we must have new jobs. It is suggested that we must be 50 per cent better off in real terms than we are today. That is a rather selfish approach to national development. No sacrifice is called for from the individual. If that extra wealth were in the people's pockets in the morning, an undue proportion of it would be spent on imported goods, holidays abroad and other things which create major balance of payments upheavals because the people feel called on to spend the major portion of their extra earnings.
I suggest that though on the one hand we appear to have more money for many sections of our people, life is far more difficult than it was 20 years ago when more personal services were available. The housewife with a young family or the person getting on in age was then able to get help with the household tasks. If sick, such people were able to get help. Those services have disappeared. They are now the real luxuries in life. If people have more money to spend, I suggest that they would be happier spending a great deal of that extra money on personal services. Spending it in this manner would not create balance of payments difficulties.
Those personal services would have to be organised in a more egalitarian manner than in the past. No longer is the old masterslave relationship acceptable. Such an attitude is not very conducive to the modern spirit. There is no need for full time personal services. What is called for is the organisation of such services on an agency basis where one can ring up for someone to come out to do a specialist cleaning job or some home nursing or any one of the other personal tasks such as skilled gardening or skilled work around the house. There are many personal services which people would be anxious and willing to pay for. Such services would be the greatest security the State could have against balance of payments difficulties. When one looks at the number of households with this increasing affluence and calculates that if each one of those over one year used the services of one person for even the equivalent of one half-day per week such employment would provide openings for approximately 10,000 workers.
In agriculture the amount needed for co-operative centres would certainly more than stem the drain from the land. These are some areas where we should look for real help.
When we talk about increased productivity we should set targets on a local basis so that the workers in each industry and in each locality can take pride in the fact that they are doing their share to create jobs there. A productivity increase of 1 per cent would mean only half an hour's extra work a week. If the machinery were run for an additional half an hour and the products were sold at no profit either to the shareholders or the workers that industry would make more than its contribution to full employment. I am sure other industries would follow this example.
When we look at what has been done we can easily see what still requires to be done and we should set about remedying the situation in a practical way. The Government should take the initiative and employ people such as Fr. McDyer or Mr. Con Murphy fulltime to deal with this urgent national task because simply playing around with figures will get us nowhere, we want action.
