I think it was the Duke of Wellington who said, when he looked at his troops before the Battle of Waterloo, "I do not know what they will do to the French but they certainly put the fear of God in me". Listening to our political leaders and listening to the pathetic little apologia from the Minister for Finance, this obituary for a third Coalition, I do not think that I have ever known a time when the economy was so completely out of control of the Government in charge.
Reading the pathetic little eight-page document and the admissions implicit in it and the pathetic appeals to the worker to moderate his wage demands and to accept a reduction in his living standards, it is very difficult to think that this is the same man we listened to two or three years ago, buoyant, full of extravagant claims and promises, the economic spokesman for this new Government which everybody, commentators, political pundits, all agreed that this was the most talented Government we were ever likely to see, and certainly that we had ever had in the State.
Where has all the talent gone? There is not a Department of State no matter which one you look at, leaving aside the disaster which is quite obviously facing us here in the Department of Finance, to which they can turn and say: "This at least we achieved. This advance was made while we were in Government." Of the three disastrous Coalitions this surely must be the one which will be remembered as easily the most damaging, the most pretentious in its claims and remarkable in its failures to honour those claims in action. Take the Department of Education, with cutbacks in spending and the situation of third level education. One might ask what use is education for youngsters who are not going to get work. The Minister for Health—a Labour Minister regrettably and Leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Corish—told us, as I now note here in a curious phrase that he did not believe in policies of confrontation. He was referring to the medical profession and we know what has happened—precisely nothing at all. The health services, hospitals, buildings, instead of the badly-needed expansion of the services at all levels, have been allowed to run down. Those who work in these services are told that we are not even going to maintain the level we have been providing up to the present.
In social welfare we know quite well that any advances or increases made have been totally negatived in the first place by the fact that the inflationary increase in prices has eaten away any advances that might have been given. Secondly, we have had the very ominous departure, as far as Labour are concerned, of the payment being taken away from the Central Fund and being pushed into insurance. This means the worker is paying more and more of his social welfare and the wealthy taxpayer is being protected from paying what in Labour terms should be his just dues to the less privileged in society.
The only thing one can say in listening to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, is that he appears to be a very frightened man. That is an advance; it is an advantage. At least he knows that what he was doing here today was appearing in the court of public opinion or in one of the parts of the national Assembly and making the declaration of a bankrupt, of a man who has to confess that he is bankrupt, that he cannot meet his liabilities to the community. This is what we listened to today. This is what they listened to in the Dáil the other day.
I have to say in my own defence that on the first time he spoke here so full of joie de vivre and euphoria I reminded him that was the way they began, and I predicted what I believed would be the way they would complete their term of office. This is the reason why I declined an opportunity to go back into the Dáil—so that I might be free to speak as I have done since this Government were formed. Despite their talent—and many of them are extremely talented men—despite their abilities, the policies they were following, that they must inevitably follow as the Labour Party is part of a Government dominated by a declared, honourably, repeatedly and continually honestly declared extremely conservative political party, Fine Gael, dedicated to the exercise of the dynamic of monopoly capitalism in attempting to create justice in our society, could not work. They have not worked: they never will work. The tragedy of this is that the main Opposition believe that in some wonderful, miraculous way or another we will get social justice as a by-product of the avarice, greed and selfishness of monopoly capitalism in operation. This is not a crisis of the Coalition in Dublin: this is the crisis of world capitalism, something which those of us who are socialists have been talking about for many years.
Part of me is delighted to see this day, to see the fact, to be here in public life at a time when I know that the Government are quite unable to meet the challenge of society and the demands of modern society with their economic policies. It does not really matter what the trade unions do about the national wage agreement, whether they agree to sell out or not—I will talk about that later on—all the oil-producing countries have to do is to put up prices again by another 10 per cent. Senator Kennedy, recently in the States, said it will be 37 per cent. That is all they have to do and anything done here, no matter what it is, will be wiped out overnight.
Of course, I must have a certain self-satisfaction in knowing after all these years that what I had felt to be true is being proved correct—that one cannot reconcile the capital aesthetic—wages are simply profits and dividends gone astray: dividends and profits are simply wages gone astray. This internal contradiction of capital for which there is no reconciliation is recognised by a growing third of the world which has already accepted that there is only a socialist answer for the social and economic policies of our society.
The only tragedy to me is—and it is written into this speech—that our people, the ordinary people, are going to suffer, men, women, their children and families. They will suffer because of the consistent, continual blundering and mishandling of our affairs by all the political parties since the State was formed, but particularly in recent years. It was not only those of us who were socialists who talked about the failure of private enterprise capitalism here. Most of us recall the famous CIO reports of Mr. Lemass which showed the inherent weakness of our affairs, the industrial base of our society, which was under-mechanised, badly managed, with poor export policies, failure to reinvest at a proper level, unwillingness to provide our workers with proper equipment in order to maximise profits and dividends. These documents written by members of various Government Departments are now ten or 15 years old. They foretold the collapse of monopoly capitalism in Ireland even if we had not had the great blows of the price rises.
It is extraordinary to hear people like the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Keating, people with very good understanding of social and economic matters generally, referring to the fact as if it had dawned on them for the first time that this was a small, open economy. It was always a small, open economy.
Indeed, it was this point that I raised with Deputy Keating when they were asking me to subscribe to their proposals about price control and about the control of the economy generally. This was the point I made to him and he knows as well as I do that you cannot control prices in a small monopoly-capitalist, open economy such as ours. It is wrong; it is dishonest; it is deliberately misleading the public to say that you can do these things. Either the Government knew they could not or they did not. No matter what way you look at it, they were dishonest or they were inept and incompetent and irresponsible.
These are the difficulties. It does not seem to have any meaning for them when they tell us that this is the position in Britain; this is the position in the United States; this is the position in many of the European countries. This is the position, in short, in virtuàlly all the great capitalist countries. They are all facing this last reality and above all, they are facing in some of these countries the problem of damping down the fires as the Minister for Industry and Commerce I understand says: "Let us keep the fires damped down." This, of course, refers to pay-related benefits. The fires are being kept damped down in some of the European countries and in the United States but it simply cannot go on and the Governments must know that. This, I imagine, is why the Government are frightened and particularly the Minister for Finance who is a very frightened man because it costs a hell of a lot of money to keep the fires damped down. What is it? A million pounds a week? How long can pay-related benefits mislead the worker into believing that life is not all that bad; that economic disaster, economic bankruptcy is months away or weeks away?
The Government talk of the new panacea, breaking the link with sterling. Over the years we have had these moves —free trade, tariff controls and the Control of Manufactures Act, the last one, of course being the great EEC myth that this was going to create prosperity for Europe: "To hell with the Third World, we will buy cheap from them and sell back to them and make a profit and we will be all right." This was economic imperialism and we, the Republic, which suffered so long under imperialism, became party to this as a result of the decision of both the parties to join the Community. We have become a member of this multi-national club: we will be looked after.
Did we not make the mistake of our lives? I recall the present Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy FitzGerald, telling us about price rises. I cannot quote him exactly but if he wants me to, I will look it up. I have done my homework and, as far as I can remember, these were his words: "I do not think prices should rise more than 10 or 15 per cent, if anything." Those were the halcyon days when everything was going to be all right in the garden and we would have plenty of money to burn because we were members of this imperialist or ex-imperialist group of communities.
We should have known: that is not the way they do things. We are a small country on the periphery of Europe and they have as little interest now in the Irish industries, no matter what their size, but particularly in the medium or smaller Irish industries, as Mansholt had in the small or medium-sized farmers. Do you remember what he said about them? He said that they were not necessary; that one had to have these large farms in order to be economically viable. It does not matter about the social consequences, the consequences in human terms. They do not matter. The planners in Brussels had a new idea for Ireland and we bought it. The industrialist bought it thinking that it just applied to the small or middle farmers, but it did not: it applied to him also. He is finding that out now in the bankruptcy courts.
How did they get into this mess? This deficit is a staggering total. It is a dreadful, terrifying, frightening total. Clearly the Minister has absolutely no control. Where is it going to lead? What has he done with the money? He is not a drinking man. He does not gamble. If he was an ordinary bankrupt and we were examining we would wonder whether he kept a blonde somewhere— fast women and slow horses. How did he find himself in this mess?
He turns to the worker then in order to bail him out. We did not get any information, and I hoped that we would, from Senator Russell. Senator Russell is a very talented person indeed, and a very skilled, successful and shrewd businessman. He told us about the need for sacrifices. He is supporting the Minister's plea for sacrifices from the workers. He ended his speech by telling us that there should be a massive capital investment programme. I did not like to interrupt him, but I suppose I should have interrupted him and asked him where the money was to come from, especially as he told Senator Dolan that there was no question of finding capital the way the money was going.
This brings me to the question of breaking the link with sterling. It is now a position in which there are two drowning men, the Brits and overselves, and if you want to you can cut the rope but both are going down anyway. It makes no difference who gets away from whom first because it appears, except on the most humiliating terms, neither the British nor the Irish economy can survive in the fundamentally erroneous way it is structured at present. Virtually nothing can save either of them short of a miracle. Who believes in miracles any more, even the EEC miracle?
I might say that the first time I ever talked about the link with sterling was 30 years ago, in 1948. At that time and since that time there could have been opportunities for considering the position of the link with sterling. Attempts should have been made to try to create independence for the Irish economy, but contrary to establishing independence for our economy we carried out the complete reverse in the establishment of the Control of Manufactures legislation which brought in the parent companies, mostly British, many of them American, most of them fair-weather friends, who are now baling out and leaving us because they are under pressure themselves and we are finding that, in fact, we are a very dependent, very poor open economy which we do not control any more.
This again is the product of the failure of successive Governments to follow through the real freedom for any community, not simply blowing people's heads off, bombing and shooting, but the establishment of real economic freedom in a community. We did not do that and now we are paying for it. It is too late to break the link with sterling. It makes no difference anyway if we do.
Listening to the Minister's very brief obituary notice, obviously one is attracted to the plea from the Minister to the worker to modify the national wage agreement, institutionalising as he does the link between incomes and consumer prices. He spoke of the increases which were beyond the economy's capacity to pay in the present economic difficulties. This is why I say to the Minister that he is a bankrupt, that he cannot meet his obligations. He is telling the worker: "I cannot pay your wages, I cannot pay my way and I must go into liquidation or else you must subsidise my ineptitude or my incompetence." This is what he is asking the worker to do. I sincerely hope —would that I were a trade union leader—that they will refuse to have anything to do with any serious adaptation or modification of the national wage agreement beyond possibly considering the 4 per cent reduction which may be brought about by the recent subsidies, although it is ominous to notice this morning that while it was hoped the price of all fuels would go down, in fact, the price of peat briquettes went up. This is more than likely what will happen in relation to the other subsidised items in the weeks and months ahead because there is no policy for the control of inflation in this statement by the Minister.
It is no good handing this across to the workers and saying: "You take a cut in your standard of living and we will survive." I sincerely hope there is no chance of that happening. The Minister is damned out of his own mouth, in his own speech on page 4, when he talked about
The deepening recession has been accompanied in many countries but not, unfortunately, in Ireland by quite remarkable success in curbing inflation.
Quite remarkable success in curbing inflation everywhere except here, everywhere except under his Government. Everywhere except under him there has been some, as he calls it, remarkable success in curbing inflation. Is it not interesting to notice that in this short speech the only appeal made in it for belt tightening, for restrictions in income, is to the worker. I was interested to note that Senator Russell in his concluding remarks suggested that it should be an all-round sort of operation. Dividend standstill, profit standstill, prices standstill, is that what Senator Russell meant? Are we going to freeze dividends and profits? If so, for how long—not simply put them into cold storage and take them out in two or three years time? Will there be any appeal for sacrifice on the part of those best able to make sacrifices, the already very wealthy among our society?
Why turn to the people least able to afford any sacrifices, the people who have been faced with rising prices but who have not been able to keep up? That is what the Government said they were going to do, something Fianna Fáil had failed to do, increase the standard of living because they are a Government of all these talents. Now we are not even going to have a standstill in our standard of living, a standard of living which we hear from the bureaucrats in Europe is the lowest standard of social welfare in Europe. As low as it is, the Government now want to bring it lower, a voluntary sacrifice on the part of the worker with no significant sacrifice being asked from those with the dividends and the profits.
Any increase which took place in the wages of the white-collar worker and the manual worker happened because he could not buy bread, butter, tea, sugar, milk, clothes, boots and shoes which he required for himself and his family unless he got that increase. He was not buying Mercedes, yachts or racehorses. He was buying the essentials which go into the housewife's basket. That is why the trade unions negotiated the national wage agreement and it was accepted that it was a just agreement for a settlement of their claim. If it was a just settlement, then to ask them to moderate it is to ask them to perpetrate an injustice on themselves and on their children. Why should they do it? Why should the worker make any attempt whatsoever to perpetuate this society in Ireland where 70 per cent of the wealth of the people belongs to 5 per cent of the people. In heaven's name, why is it that the workers are not doing everything they can, even with their bare hands, to pull down the whole structure of this society? What have they got to lose? All the countries of Africa and the Middle East, Morocco or Algeria, Libya, Egypt, an unending list of names, Angola, Mozambique, Portugal now in Europe; in Spain the trade union movement has gone Left; Italy, a magnificant victory for the Communist Party as a result of the intake of the 18 to 21-year-olds on the new voting register; even the backward right-wing conservative countries of Europe are beginning to understand that there is no good case for preserving these kinds of pacifist societies; there is nothing in it for them except hardship and sacrifice, blundering mistakes by successive Ministers for Finance in the various countries.
The solution of course is—Senator Russell did not say so—a freeze on profits, a freeze on dividends for ten years, a capital levy of 15 per cent to 20 per cent—the Minister for Finance said it the other night in his broadcast in which he disclosed an appalling number of facts about the economy: what has happened to the £47 million which is now £100,000, and various Government funds which appear to me to have been misappropriated by the Government in anticipation of this famous upturn that never came? The Minister said that because of the failure of investment by private enterprise, the Government had to step in. What he was saying was that there was no money in it for them and therefore they will not invest. He knows well that if there is no profit, if there is a freeze on profits, dividends, they will not accept that. He said in his opening speech:
It adversely affects business confidence and discourages investment thereby lessening job prospects.
Why is it that it is never considered by Ministers for Finance that I have listened to over the years to say to a businessman "You cannot have 12 per cent", or whatever it is? It is because he will be frightened away and you cannot do that because you need his money. But it is all right to turn around to the worker and say: "I want you to take less, I want you to lower your standard of living, I want you to moderate your demand."
According to those Ministers for Finance this will not have any effect on the worker at all because he is that stupid—is that what they think? —that he voluntarily takes a reduction in his standard of living in order to see that the enormous wealth and privilege of the 5 per cent minority in health, education, universities, beautiful schools with small classrooms, lovely houses and continental holidays and so on, will continue riding roughshod over the majority. How has it persisted for so long? This is the only thing I find so difficult to understand: why has the worker tolerated this kind of discrimination against his own people, his own children, in the schools, in the health services, in hospitals, in housing, and then the old people in their old age? Why does he continue to do it? As I have said before, so many countries in the world have rejected this concept of society that we can hope we have now got to the point in our own lives where it is being so clearly spelled out to them that the inescapable conclusion will be accepted by them and by the community generally that this monopoly-capitalist system in which they have put their faith over the years cannot bring them social justice in a just society.
I think the most distressing feature of this eight-page obituary to the demise of his Government or the Minister's decision to govern, is its incredible dishonesty, because he must know that the truth of the matter is that this kind of decision by him to say that there is nothing else we can do except increase taxes and reduce incomes, wages and salaries in order to keep going, is not true. I wonder what would Senator Russell reply if I had asked him where we were going to get the money in order to indulge in this capital development programme, because there must be such a capital development programme and the money must be found.
I sincerely hope the leadership of the trade union movement will refuse to accept Government on these terms and refuse to offer any sacrifices whatever on these terms, because it is not true to say that this is the only solution. It is not true that there is no money other than the money in the worker's pay-packets. This is an enormously wealthy country. We see the banks continuing to make great profits. We know that the banks have enormous capital reserves. Equally, so have the insurance corporations and building societies. There is a lot of fat in these various concerns in our society which could be lifted off them in order to see that if sacrifices are to be made those best fitted to make them do so first.
The banks, insurance corporations and building societies have plenty of money. I would simply take the banks, insurance companies and building societies into public ownership and use their capital as I saw fit for the development works talked about by various Senators—roads, house building, schools, colleges, hospitals, universities, endless opportunities for the creative kind of work to build up the social infrastructure of our society. There is enormous wealth unused and untouched. A pitiful £40 million at 12 per cent is totally inadequate compared to the amount which the banks can afford.
Even if we did not want to take them into public ownership the facts of the matter are that—I remember saying this to the Minister on the last occasion he was here, two or three years ago— Ireland is now for its size probably the richest little country in the world. It is unbelievable that a Government should come crawling in here on hands and knees through the Minister today and in the Dáil a few days ago, pretending that the State was in a position where it could not meet its commitments while at the same time there is the enormous wealth of the oil finds, the gas finds and in particular of the lead-zinc finds.
Deputy Keating said recently in an interview that our lead-zinc finds were the largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world, in Navan, not to mention Senator Russell's Silvermines and Tynagh. I find it difficult to believe that in the years ahead it will be possible to continue to conceal from the public this fact about the wealth that is there which belongs to the people, under our Constitution—many thousands of pounds. The only reason why the worker will be asked to make sacrifices and make his family suffer is because of the financial links between the Government, members of their political parties, members of the Opposition parties— their financial links and their financial loyalties first to monopoly capitalism, to the multi-national gas and oil companies and the great mining corporations. Their primary loyalty is to those people.
Their alleged loyalty to the ordinary people of Ireland is a subordinate and secondary consideration with them. This plea by them that the workers should make any sacrifice whatever is one which should be completely and totally rejected by the workers. The Government should be sent back and the scandalous behaviour of a Labour Minister, Justin Keating, should be sent back to undo the total betrayal of his socialist principles, made simply for office in this fifth-rate Government, in order to see that we get every penny out of that wealth except that which we pay to the men who dig it out for us.
I only hope that if the economic position here continues to deteriorate, and I feel that it must do so, because if they will not touch this wealth they cannot continue to pay the pay-related benefits, then we must get the same kind of revolutionary reaction from the worker as we have seen in Portugal, Italy and, we are very hopeful, in the next two years in Spain, revolutionary actions reflected in so many of the emerging third world countries; the demand for socialism and the revolutionary change in the whole structure of our economy.
When it becomes impossible for the Government to pay this pay-related benefit bribe, this subsidy to inefficient industrialists to conceal the fact that they have not provided jobs at proper salaries and wages for the workers, then the unfortunate worker will have to suffer. In his suffering I hope he will raise his voice and demand that this enormous wealth belonging to him under our Constitution be taken back from these multi-national owners in the various countries, including our own. They are pillaging and plundering our country of this great wealth in the same way as they pillaged and plundered so many of the unfortunate emerging countries of Africa, the Middle East and Eastern countries.
The workers are being asked to take cuts not only in their wages and salaries but are also being told that what the Minister called "necessary services by Departments" will have to be reduced. How can one justify reducing or eliminating the provision of necessary services for the community—health, education, housing, social services, roads, communications, and so on? Which ones do you choose? In addition to being asked to reduce his wages, which will mean that he must tell his wife to go out and buy the essentials of life but not give her enough money to do it, the worker will be cutting down on such essentials as bread, butter, tea, sugar, milk and clothes for himself and his family. We have had this kind of thing before but never quite so bad. I recall Deputy Keating telling us at the Cork conference two or three years ago that we had reached a plateau in price rises now—this marvellous jargon that he uses, he was using even then. We remember when he refused to allow the price rise in cheese at that time when it went from 2p to 3p or something like that. Those were the days when he thought he was in control. I have talked like this on a number of occasions in this House and on many occasions in the other House. I am quite sure that most people will say: "This is Senator Browne again; he must say his piece and fortunately there are not many like him around." I would like to read into the record a statement from a group of people who are very different from Senator Noel Browne, the socialist. This is a quotation from Business and
Finance, June 26th, 1975. It is headed “The cupboard is bare” and says in quotes:
It will be difficult to achieve economic growth this year.
It goes on to say:
Even when one allows for the characteristic blandness of official Government statements, this quotation from Review of 1974 and Present Outlook is a plain insult to the intelligence of the Irish people. The facts are simple and known to all. There will be no economic growth in 1975; in all likelihood, there will be a decline in the growth rate of 1% or worse. It is dishonest——
That is a harsh word from the people in Business and Finance
——to pretend that any other outcome is possible.
Civil Service temporising——
I resent that because of course the Ministers decide these things, not the Civil Service.
——is also displayed in the same document's statement that increases of the magnitude envisaged by the current national wage agreement "will make it difficult to maintain the competitiveness of our goods in domestic and international markets ...". Again the plain truth is that Irish industry is finding it, not just difficult, but impossible to maintain competitiveness in the face of the sort of pay awards it is currently obliged to make. Not just difficult, impossible.
The Government suffers from a collective speech impediment when it comes to stating these straightforward facts.
Then it goes on to talk about Richie Ryan devising this budget and says that:
The tragedy of our present crisis is not that we cannot see our way out, but that the Government does not have the nerve to dish out the medicine needed to start the patient's recovery. For cancer, the Government is prescribing aspirin.
That is their point of view. Effectively it is not very much different in its diagnosis of the case to the one which I put to the Minister. We have listened before to the Government telling us of the need for restraint, that little adjustment here and there will make everything all right with the economy. But what is really significant now is that they are not talking about any U-turns or upturns this year. It is pushed off until the end of next year, possibly the year after.
The big thing, I understand, will be the decision of President Ford to buy himself a second term in the White House by inflating the American economy. The repercussions will go all around the capitalist world and by virtue of this, we are given to understand that we should be a little better off. However, during all that time there will be 100,000 unemployed, which as everybody knows, is a completely misleading figure. It is at least 150,000 and probably, taking short time and youngsters who never registered, it could be 200,000 and if it is not, it will be. Our unemployment figures were always very high, 7 per cent or 8 per cent down through the years. The dreadful consequences to young people coming on the labour market, full of enthusiasm and ambition for the jobs they have in mind, are distressing.
Is it not fair comment then, when I talk about the Minister's few-page apologia, that it is a dishonest statement because he has concealed a fact from us? When he talks about depending on our own resources, is it not a fact that he has no intention of depending on our own resources, that he will not use our own resources, that he has signed away our own resources to these people outside the country who will take most of this wealth and that any we get we will buy back from them for the ESB and other concerns?
Deputy Keating makes this clear in an interview he gave in another magazine—rather, he did not make it clear because one could not make head nor tail of what he said—but he used the usual waffling clichés that he uses at such a rate. The general impression was that he would like to do so and so, he would like to be a militant socialist and so on but that he happens to be a member of this Government and therefore simply cannot realise his ambitions. This is a completely dishonest device on his part. He knew quite well, and Fine Gael left him in no doubt about this, that when he went into Government there would be no Labour Party socialist policies. Fine Gael were completely above board and honourable about these things. I have never attacked Fine Gael for their political views. They have a right to them. They are extremely conservative, very right wing, but I do not agree with them. I have never known any of them, with the possible exception of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, make any attempt to conceal the fact that they were right wing and conservative.
When this Coalition was established it was made clear to the Labour Party people, under their famous secret agreement which was never contradicted by the Labour leadership, that there would be no Labour policies whatever, particularly socialist policies, implemented by this Coalition Government, and they have stuck to that. They can go back to their supporters with their heads high. The Fine Gael people are completely honourable to their supporters: they have nothing to be ashamed of in political terms. What they tell the unemployed and these various other people I do not know, but that is their business. It is the Labour members of this Coalition who have so cravenly betrayed the whole Labour socialist idea and have left us in this position where there is a single individual, like myself, effectively impotent, much as I would like to think otherwise, making this case against private enterprise capitalism, trying to point out to these people that it is wrong for them to ask for sacrifices from the worker when we know quite well—we did not know it, say, ten or 15 years ago—that this is an enormously wealthy country.
The only result of asking sacrifices from the workers is to make richer the wealthy people like the Senator McGraths and the Senator Russells, and the even more wealthy men behind them in Canada, the United States and Britain, who come in, take the wealth and export it while we do the coolie work as happened in Zambia, Rhodesia, the Congo and all these places in the colonialist periods. It is incredible, since we are advanced in many ways, very much in advance of many of the unfortunate recently decolonised countries, that we should agree to do this and that our workers should agree to it.
In recent months there has been an awakening by the trade union leadership that they have a function which has been discarded by the political leadership. There is no left-wing political leadership in the Labour Party. They have all so totally betrayed their ideals that they have destroyed their credibility with the worker. It now rests almost exclusively with the trade union movement and the leadership of the trade union movement as to whether they remind the worker that he does not have to make sacrifices, that there is plenty of money, that we are a very wealthy country.
There is nothing unethical or immoral about using what is our wealth. It is not like taking money out of the bank, although I have no objection to taking money out of the bank because all profit is simply unpaid wages. It should have gone to the worker anyway but those who might have qualms about taking into public ownership, a bank, an insurance corporation or building society, need have no such qualms in respect of our mineral wealth. It is ours already under our Constitution. It now rests with the trade unions as to whether the worker is to go through this terrible Gethsemanae of suffering which I believe those who think it possible to make the capitalist system work will lead us through. These are decent men like everybody here but they suffer from this doctrinaire conviction that it is possible to make the monopoly capitalism work. It is not. This is where the Labour movement have failed the worker so totally. It should be saying we were right about the Common Market, that it was a disaster to join the Community and that it was a disastrous decision too, to go into Coalition with Fine Gael.
The struggle has passed over to the trade union movement. I only hope that they will honour their great responsibility and great privilege to defend the interests of the Irish worker against the attacks of these people—capitalists, businessmen, industrialists, bankers.
There was one comment, which was very enlightening, from Deputy Keating when he came back recently from the Soviet Union. He was met at the airport and one of the commentators asked him about inflation in the Soviet Union. For once, Deputy Keating dropped this appalling evasive technique he has developed in order to mislead. He said: "There is virtually none." When asked what is the position about unemployment in the Soviet Union, once again, Keating said——
