Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 14 Jul 1976

Vol. 84 No. 13

Appropriation Bill, 1976 ( Certified Money Bill ) : Second Stage (Resumed).

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

Mr. Dolan

In this Appropriation Bill we are accounting for a very large sum of money. The amount for the health services, about £37 million, is a very formidable sum. Naturally, one expects that with such a large sum of money involved it should be spent to the best advantage. The main concern should be the patient. Everything in the health services should be directed towards helping the patients. I referred already to the inability so far of the Government to provide a dental service for those between 12 and 14 years.

I referred to the amount of money for the telephone service and emphasised how necessary this service is in rural Ireland. I regret that the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs has found it necessary to ask ratepayers, apart from contributing in their ordinary taxation, to contribute in the rates towards the provision of local telephone kiosks in various areas. This service had been paying its way all along and often had a surplus of money and it is wrong that places such as Ballyhaise in County Cavan, where there is an agricultural college, should be without a telephone kiosk. It is not fair to ask the people of Cavan to provide one.

The Parliamentary Secretary said we were expecting too much from the Government. With all due respect, I should like to point out that the people of County Cavan are not built that way. We have put a fair amount of effort into it and if he wants evidence of that he should check on the number of times various towns in Cavan won the Tidy Towns Competition. Those results were not attained by Government grants; they were attained through community effort by the citizens of the county. I am sure the Minister has some knowledge of this as his grandfather was a Cavan man. That pinpoints the fact that we are not always crying for handouts. We make a good local effort.

With regard to the Department of Local Government, I deplore the fact that in recent years we were denied amenity grants which were of great benefit to rural Ireland. They helped provide amenities for many years. Counties such as Cavan. Monaghan. Donegal, Louth and Leitrim are problem areas. The Government, after six or seven years of trouble in that area, should be considering some way of granting special facilities to such areas. Now that we are in the EEC—the Taoiseach has told us that members of the European Parliament are to be elected from both sides of the Border —it should add to greater co-operation on both sides of the Border. There are many fields in industry, tourism and transportation in which we could play a prominent part. The local authorities in Cavan, Monaghan, Leitrim, Donegal, Tyrone, Derry and Fermanagh met in Enniskillen for talks recently. Such talks are very necessary for those areas. While we up north may not have the right end of the stick we feel that quite an amount of the finances collected by way of revenue go to the east coast or down south. It is necessary to give a greater injection of capital into the western and Border counties. As chairman of the regional development organisation of Cavan, Monaghan and Louth, I can say that about 13 per cent of the unemployment of the country is in that area. We have been badly hit because of the recession in the footwear and textile industries. I am also aware that an industry in Bailieboro is in trouble. While these may not be big factories they are in sparsely populated areas and are tremendously important. Any financial injections the Government can afford to give to keep people in employment there would be welcome and would eventually pay dividends.

Quite a substantial amount of money is devoted towards local government. Local authorities are charged, among other things, with providing houses and one method of assisting people to build houses is by Government house grants. The time is overdue when these grants should be substantially increased, particularly because of inflation and the fact that people in rural areas build houses because of need. Giving grants for building houses in this manner is better than putting people in a queue for local authority housing. It is better to encourage an individual to select his site and become the proud owner of his own home. The State should encourage him because, eventually, the State will reap the money back in rates and so on.

Group water supply schemes agitate us a lot in Cavan. Two years ago Cavan County Council sanctioned the appointment of an engineer to act as a liaison officer between the county council and the organisers of group water supply schemes but the Local Appointments Commission have not, as yet, appointed an engineer to do that work. We would like these schemes to proceed as quickly as possible in view of the fact that agriculture is so important, and the fact that we have such excellent creameries as Killeshandra, Bailieboro' and Lough Egish in that area. Those co-ops give great employment and make a great effort to foster and help design group water supply schemes so as to ensure their suppliers will have piped water.

The Government, or whoever is in charge, should ensure that the Local Appointments Commission appoint somebody to this post. We are not aborigines or anything like that in Cavan or Leitrim; we are just ordinary people. The climate is fairly good and the people are nice. If an engineer ventured down there he would survive and his family could live in the area in reasonable comfort. We cannot tie such people and tell them where to go. Many of them feel it is a vocation to go abroad but at the same time it should be a vocation for them to stay in their own country and give the benefit of their experience to local communities.

Another point that has crept in recently concerns planning permission. The planning Bill has not gone through both Houses yet but I am very perturbed that often when people are applying for planning permission in a small town they are asked to sign a contract saying that they will provide £1,000 or £2,000 for a car park in the area. I know a man who bought an adjacent premises with the intention of expanding it and, eventually, when he looked for his planning permission he was told he would have to provide this money. County councils provide car parks at places of worship. This is a necessary amenity. In small towns, especially in a county such as ours where the population has been falling steadily over the past 20 years and where people should be encouraged to stay, there should not be this unnecessary imposition of an extra £1,000 or £2,000 to provide a car park. The provision of that car park should be a matter for the primary road section. In housing estates the general policy is to try and provide green spaces.

I do not know what is causing the hold up regarding grants for main roads or primary roads. In my own county some money was provided for a bridge but I notice that we have tar barrels on a small stretch of the main road. They have been there for almost 12 months and are almost eaten with rust. That is not good enough. It is a national primary road and, because of the troubles in the Six Counties, it is being used much more extensively than it might have been in days gone by. It carries an enormous amount of manufactured goods from Killeshandra, Ballinamore and Ballyconnell up to the city.

Let me again make reference to the road here from Clonee into Dublin. I do not know whose baby it is, but it is there for quite a long time and somebody is responsible to the citizens of the north west for forcing us to try and negotiate difficult, narrow dangerous bends behind big articulated lorries on their way into the city with manufactured products from County Cavan. It is no wonder indeed that we in the regional development organisation of Cavan, Monaghan and Louth are trying to get grants to make a regional road that would take us out to Greenore and by-pass Dublin city altogether.

There is a fair amount of money in this for educational facilities for our people. In the past we were very generous. We have now come to the stage where we are providing not only primary education but post-primary education for our people. This is a good thing. People at post-primary level can now go up to the third stratum and they can complete a course in third-level education. That is something our parents dreamed of lonk ago. It is of great benefit to rural Ireland and to the country as a whole. We fully realise it is a very costly business. Any efforts that can be made to pare down the cost without interfering in any way with the efficiency of the service would be very welcome.

In many areas buses are taking pupils to schools, some of them to national schools and more to post-primary schools and taking them into towns. If they operated in the other way there might be a new look at this whole venture. In the midlands somebody decides to close five or six national schools and take the children into a town. That immediately causes a traffic hazard. It may be said it is giving a better service. I do not think it is. The first day the school opens it is all right but after that it is certainly a hazard for the children and it is difficult on the mothers. Pupils would be much better at home in their own areas in two or three or four teacher schools in rural Ireland. If the tendency was reversed and we tried to get them to come out from the towns into rural Ireland we would be giving a good service and we would be helping to preserve rural Ireland as it is.

There is not much difference between town and country now that we have rural electrification and so on, and I do not see any reason why it should be necessary to take these children into the towns by bus. Within a year or two the manager or the management board have to erect a prefab and then there is a call to have a new wing built on. In Dublin city new housing estates are springing up and then they are faced with the problem of providing new churches and new schools. Together with the burden of paying for a new house, for a newly married couple that is a very heavy imposition. It should be avoided especially in the years of a young married couple's life when they need the money and are trying to rear a family.

The same applies to post-primary education. So far as the top stratum is concerned we in our area find that if you draw a line from Dublin to Galway—I said this before—there is no university in the northern part of the country. There are universities in Belfast and in Coleraine, but in the whole western area, covering Monaghan, Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Sligo, Longford, Louth, Meath, there is none. It is wrong that the national university constituent colleges should have been placed in such a manner as to exclude that whole area. I am quite sure there are many people in our area who would benefit from third level education. There is a move, and a good one, to provide colleges of technology such as we have in Sligo and Dundalk. There should be a centre in Cavan, but there is not. This has been a disadvantage to the citizens of both Cavan and Leitrim. There is a vast area between Longford and Cavan and Leitrim that would benefit immensely if the Government decided to provide a college there. I wrote to the Minister on this matter and pointed out to him that it would be much better if he would add a building to the present college in Cavan rather than to extend, as he intends to do, the college at Dundalk and the college at Sligo. In that way he would give the people of Cavan the chance of doing the first year or second year at home in their own area and they would only have to travel for the third year. The number of people who go to those colleges now is very small because they have to go to live in those areas.

I mention these few points not by way of criticism but because they would be of immense benefit to the area and might cut down the educational bill as a whole. As a public representative and as chairman of the vocational education committee in Cavan, I realise that education is a very costly business, in particular the provision of rooms and transport and the various aids which are necessary if we are to make progress. Anywhere there is overlapping we should try to eliminate it and have as much co-operation as we possibly can at post-primary level.

Some money has been allotted for tourism. At present tourism is at a rather low ebb mainly because of the fact that we have had very severe budgets. Petrol is much dearer here than it is in the Six Counties. So are our butter, food, drink and, indeed our hotel prices. In many hotels it is impossible to get a meal unless you call at a particular time when they say you should be hungry. Owners of public houses should be encouraged to serve "pub grub". I do not know how we would get over the difficulty of bringing members of the family who are under age into a licensed premises.

To go into an hotel at present you would want to be a millionaire or very near it. Prices are very high and unless you are there at lunchtime it is very expensive. If you have to dine a la carte you do not know where you are going to get the money to pay for it. You might find yourself working all week for the price of one meal. That is not good enough in a country with a good climate which can produce good food and which has sold into intervention thousands of tons of beef that was lying off the coast of Cork or Kerry for quite a long time and then taken to Russia. The Government have helped the hotel industry in the past and we would like to see them doing well. It may be a question of staff or of money but there is such a thing as courtesy and there is such a thing as providing meals for people who are travelling, not alone tourists but our own people.

While I am on this topic I should like to mention the question of people who supply boats on the River Shannon and various other rivers. It was pointed out to me recently by a man who wanted to book one of these boats for a week that it cost him £100. That would not be too bad if they were charging those prices to Germans, Austrians and so on, but an Irish person might like to spend a few days in a boat on one of the rivers. That is an exorbitant price. Those boats would not be rented out unless they were being taken for the whole week. That is very wrong because those people were helped by the State to buy some of these cruisers.

There is a good potential in farm guesthouses if they could be encouraged rather than the hotels. A traveller could go to one of these guest-houses and get a meal there that he will enjoy whether he is rich or poor. There is no use in issuing fancy brochures and telling people about the great scenery that is in some particular area. From my own experience— and I am sure many people will agree with me—I find that if you are hungry you are not interested in the scenery, but if you get a meal then you can enjoy it. It is the first essential. If we want the hotel and tourist industries to recover we will have to encourage people to go into this industry and provide good meals at anytime. Tourists are very important to us because they buy drink, cigarettes and so on, and when they are on holidays they do not want to be told they have to sit in a room for maybe two hours before they can be served. That is not the type of service to give to our people. I do not know how that problem could be solved, but it is affecting our tourist industry. The tourist industry is only in its infancy, especially in my own area where there is cross-Border co-operation in regard to the lovely lakes and the interest taken by English and Continental people in fishing particularly. I know there are several towns in England from where you could send maybe 10,000 people into any county in Ireland. English people are very nice no matter what we may say about them, and they are very welcome. They are not looking for anything grandiose. They are quite content to sit beside a lake and fish, and even when they catch something they often throw them back in. Such people should be encouraged, and when we are discussing a Bill like this the Government should look into the matter.

Hamlet said, "There is something rotten in the State of Denmark" and I think that applies to our own State. I do not want to be overcritical, but there is something radically wrong when a Government after three years in office have succeeded in escalating our balance of payments from £5 million to about £365 million, and have borrowed millions of pounds at exorbitant interest rates and when there are 120,000 people unemployed and thousands of teenagers who do not know what they are going to do. I am not saying this in order to cause trouble, but a public representative must certainly be concerned about a situation such as that. Any Government worth their salt must try and solve that problem. It is no good saying that it is a matter for the Opposition or some other group to come up with a solution. It is the Government who are in charge and they must give a lead. The Government have been imposing wealth tax, taxes on farmers and so on, and while they may think that such taxes were popular at the time and worth implementing, they will have to sit down together and find a solution. This will be very difficult for them to do because the Fine Gael element and the Labour element in the Government do not seem to me and to many other people as an outsider, to dovetail.

The immediate task for the Government is to restore the confidence of the Irish people in themselves. That is very much needed. One method of doing that would be if the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs would inject some national spunk into our television and radio services, so that we could stand on our feet and not be ashamed of being Irish that we could say a few words of Irish and sing Irish songs through the media in a country where 50 per cent of the people know the native language. We should not be ashamed of the traditions that have been handed down to us. We should not always be suffering from this imported politeness and trying to be more English than the English themselves. The time has come when, if we want to assert ourselves as an independent nation in Europe, we will have to be more concerned about our image as a nation. We should be patriotic enough to buy the food, clothing, drinks and so on that are produced in our own country. We should also encourage Irish songs, the Irish language and everything pertaining to Irish life.

As the Taoiseach has said, we will be sending representatives to Europe. We should be very careful to ensure that those who go to Europe will be representing not England but Ireland, that they know their own language and have pride in their own country. It does not matter what their political outlook may be; we just want them to be good Irishmen, and we cannot be good Europeans unless we are good Irishmen. By good Irishmen, I mean living as good Irishmen. I do not mean advocating violence. The Government can play their part in this by using the media at their disposal. It may perturb some people to learn that the Government seemed to make an effort to take Radio na Gaeltachta off the air altogether or put it on at a time when people could not listen to it. That is not good enough. We should be proud of our national heritage and ensure, without forcing people to do so, that we keep it. Television and radio have a tremendous influence on our youth I have seen programmes for children between six and nine years and there was not one word of Irish in the whole programme. This is disgraceful, seeing that it is being taught in the schools. What we should be aiming at is to have not alone Irish included but French as well. At that impressionable age those children could pick up languages, which are no great burden for anybody to carry.

A language is the hallmark of a nation. It is important that it should not be disregarded. If we want to restore confidence in our economy the Government will have to tighten their belt, shake themselves out of the lethargy in which they find themselves and try to instil confidence in the people, give leadership and reduce the number of unemployed. If we on this side of the House can do anything to help in that matter, irrespective of what policy may be, we shall only be too delighted to do it.

Mr. Butler

I am glad of the opportunity to discuss the economy. This is the only occasion in the year that the Seanad get an opportunity to discuss the economic situation of the country. I would like to deal with industry and the volume of production and employment. They are vital statistics which may have some bearing on the thinking of Senators and the Minister.

If we look at the industrial side for the fourth quarter of 1975 we get an interesting picture. Regarding the period from 1972 to 1975 in my opinion the picture is not as bad as we have been led to believe. The volume of production for 1975 for industry and transport based on 100 for 1953 averaged 257.4. That increased in 1973 to 283.7 which was 10.2 per cent increase. In 1974 there was a further increase, the figure being 291.6, an increase of 13.3 per cent over 1972 and 2.8 per cent over 1973. We know that the world crisis and the oil crisis had a detrimental effect on production. In 1975 there was a figure of 273.0. That is a decrease on 1974 of 6.3 per cent. One would imagine, having listened to the prophets of doom that there would have been a substantial reduction. There was not. There was a reduction of only 6.3 per cent which we do not like, but that was almost all due to the oil crisis. If we examine it in relation to the 1972 figure we find there is an increase of 6.06 per cent. Therefore the picture is not as gloomy as that presented in some of the reports published. I think it is an achievement for this country to have an increase over the 1972 figure of 6.06 per cent. Of course if it was within our power we would have had a higher increase.

We now examine the volume of employment, using the same base, 1953. Again we average industry and transport and in 1972 we get a figure of 202.7. In 1973 employment increased to 208.8, an increase of 3 per cent. The volume of employment in 1974 further increased to 210.8 which is a 4 per cent increase over 1972 and almost 1 per cent over 1973. In 1975 the full effects of the world's economic crisis were felt and we had a figure of 196.3 which is a reduction of only 3.1 per cent over 1973. The volume of employment, taking all aspects into consideration, was a reduction of only 3.15 per cent over 1972. That was an achievement and industry must be congratulated on that.

Those figures indicate that the employment situation is not caused by the reduction in the volume of production. The increase in the unemployment position is caused by non-emigration of our people. It is good that people stay at home and wait for the opportunity to get employment here. It shall be relating the 1976 figures later and it will be evident from the figures that we now see the light at the end of the tunnel and are increasing the volume of production and the volume of employment.

I come now to average earnings. In 1972 average earnings per week were £23.56. In 1973 they increased to £28.36 per week which is 20.4 per cent, a substantial increase. If one takes into consideration the increase in the volume of production of 10.2 per cent and the volume of employment of 3 per cent. we had an average earning increase of 20.4 per cent in 1973. In 1974 the average earnings were £33.81 per week. This is an increase of 19.2 per cent over 1973 but 43.5 per cent over 1972. This is an enormous cost in production. I am not saying that those people should not have got this increase; I agree that workers are entitled to an increase. The value of the £ has decreased due to inflation.

The Appropriation Bill refers to 1975. In 1975 the average earnings per week were £44.38, an increase over 1972 of 88.4 per cent. The hourly increase over 1972 was 97.8 per cent. Looking at those figures I would think that people who were in production would have to say to themselves: "Are we going out of our minds?"

That type of percentage increase, which in 1974-75 was 31.3 per cent, is the type of increase that is being carried into 1976. It may go on to 1977. Then we could not increase the volume of production because it would cost too much. If we are going to produce for export and if we are going to produce at a high cost then we will not be able to sell on the export market. We must balance the situation. If we want to sell our produce we must produce it at a competitive cost.

With the type of build-up in earnings, we are going in the wrong direction. Of course people are entitled to pay increases but they must base their increases on inflation or in some way to production so that we will be able to export at competitive prices. As well as the increase in average earnings per week over that period the weekly hours worked were reduced, which added a further cost.

If we look at the ratio of production to employment, and this also comes into the picture, in 1972 the ratio of production to employment was 1270 to every 1,000 in employment. In 1973 the ratio of production to employment had increased to 1357 to 1,000 in employment. In 1975 the ratio of production was 1390 to 1,000. The ratio of production to employment has increased from 1972—1270 to 1,000—to 1390 to 1,000, but only barely increased from 1973. Therefore, the ratio of production to employment is almost the same as it was in 1973, but the ratio of earnings in the production line increased in 1973 to 1975 by 56.5 per cent.

I am not an economist, but reading those figures it is very plain to me that something must be done in this regard and it is very plain to me today, having listened to people speaking about national wage agreements and having read some of the demands that are now been made by certain unions and industry, that this cannot go on. We must have a national agreement that will take into consideration all that I have said, that will allow extra employment, that will get us extra production, that will get people back to work. It is the people who are demanding too much who are keeping others out of work. I have no doubt about that. I am involved with people working. I know the situation.

I know the type of demands that are now being made by unions and I think some of the unions who are making those demands want a national agreement but want to ensure that the increase will be as high as possible. The message should go out that the type of national agreement one must have must not alone take people into consideration but must take the livelihood of people into consideration, the right of people to work.

Having looked at those figures I think we moved the line of earnings too quickly and that had an effect on production. The world situation had a greater effect on the cost of production, but earnings must have had their bearing as well. I would ask the people, the trade unions, to consider these points and to look at the figures that I have quoted. They are in the industrial inquiries reports for 1975 to be calculated and examined carefully before any demands are made. People out of work are the unhappiest people of all. If we want happiness we must have people at work. It will cost those people who are now working a little to share with others the happiness that they have. I think they should make that sacrifice.

When I studied those figures I also looked for the consumer price index for the same years. In 1972 the CPI figure was 220.2 and in 1973 it was 245.4, which is 11.44 per cent more. The increase in 1973 in earnings was 20.4 per cent, so it had substantially increased over the CPI. In 1974 the CPI figure was 287.0, an increase over 1972 of 30 per cent and over 1973 17 per cent. But in 1974 the increase in earnings was 43.5 per cent over 1972 and 19.2 per cent over 1973, again increasing the margin of 30 per cent, 17 per cent, 43.5 per cent and 19.2 per cent. That is based on weekly earnings. If it were hourly earnings the increase would be much higher: the increase in the hourly earnings in 1974 was 49.2 per cent and in 1973, 21.9 per cent and as I said the CPI increase was 30 and 17 per cent respectively.

Again we must take the figure for 1975. In 1975 the CPI was 347.0 which is an increase over 1972 of 57.7 per cent. The increase in earnings per hour was 97.8 per cent, or 88.4 per week, over 1972. The increases given in 1975, if one compares them with the CPI, and compare it with the volume of production, were much too high and have created a problem for 1976. Given that figure in 1975 in earnings, the demand is now that that figure will be still further increased in 1976.

I think that we are going out of our minds. If we want production and if we want less unemployment we must base our figures not alone on the figures that I have mentioned but on how we can sell our production and what we will get for our production. The unions must take into consideration those two facts and many more. They must take into consideration the CPI. Salaries and wages are included in that figure and would have reached that type of proportion. Unless we look at that from the point of view of what it is costing, then we might as well be talking to the wind. The cost of production is the same, whether it is for the home or export market. If production costs are too high, the cost of the products will be too high and the sale will not take place. If we are going to produce, we must sell. The wages cost per unit volume of production for a week in 1972 was £18.40. In 1975 it was £32.27, a 75.38 per cent increase over 1972. That figure in itself proves that we have gone overboard.

I am a member of a trade union and my members always accepted the national wage awards. They demanded the national wages award which was given last year. That was their right. All unions will demand a national wage award because a national wage agreement is their right. In my opinion, the national wage award for 1975 was far too high. I do not know whether the Minister or anybody else agrees with me, but that is the way I read the figures I have before me. If that is the case it is necessary, if we are going to have a national wage agreement, that all sections sit down and discuss it. It is very important to do that. I know demands outside of the national wage agreement are being made; they are talking about increases of £15 or £20 a week, a shorter working week, extra pay for this, that and the other, which increase any monetary figure by maybe 20, 30 or 40 per cent. If we are going to demand that, not alone will the small industries suffer but the big industries and the producers are going to suffer. If the producers suffer, then industry will not be able to go into production and the country will collapse.

I suggest that we take a national pride in ourselves and in our country by making a sacrifice to accept only as much as the country can afford. Who tells us what the country can afford to pay? We must have a get-together of employers, unions and the Government. If we have only the unions and the employers meeting across the table, the whole picture cannot be put across. We will have too much brow-beating and no national wage agreement will be settled because one vital group are missing—the Government.

The Taoiseach said this evening:

... The constructive results of the recent Tripartite Conference between Governments, employers and unions were generally welcomed. Several speakers emphasised that Governments alone could not control the economic situation— they must have co-operation with employers and trade unions in decision making. Stress was laid on better co-operation between the social partners....

That is exactly the situation and that is the way we should do our business. We must bury our pride and all sections of the community must get together to try to negotiate a fair wage award. If we do not do that, our loss of competitiveness in the world market will be very substantial. We will not get outside investment. We will not get industrialists from abroad to invest in this country if they are going to lose money by that investment. Those people invest to make profit. Any person who invests hopes to make a profit. We should guarantee these people that profit. I know some of the industries that came to this country from time to time earn exorbitant profits. But all that can now be relegated. We must look to the future. We must learn from the past and take that learning into the future with us.

All Governments made mistakes in the past and we will make mistakes in the future. But let us make as few and as small mistakes as possible. A greater pride in the nation by everybody will ensure that those mistakes will be very small. We must have a greater involvement of our people in making decisions, a greater involvement of our work force at floor level, and greater involvement of people in the Oireachtas not alone in legislation but in advising the people on what the Oireachtas are thinking and taking advice from those people if we feel it is necessary. Producers, manufacturers, workers, employers and Government must come closer together for the benefit of the nation as a whole.

Tomorrow's problems can be reduced if we have that type of coming together and if we have a greater knowledge of what the nation needs and what is happening all over the world. People realise what damage can be done by placing too much of a demand on the resources of the nation. We could be a very strong and very influential country; we have been in the past. We will not influence any country unless we are able to look after our own affairs. We must have a strong hand in looking after those affairs to show those powerful countries that we will, at least, do our part here and we would hope that other countries would do their part and bring not alone this country but the whole world to use common sense. Even though our country is small, we owe help to those undeveloped nations, nations that cannot do for themselves. We owe them a little bit of help, and in helping them we hope that other countries will take example from us. We were a poor nation and we know how it feels to be undeveloped. We have developed to a very high degree and we should take from our history and from what we have seen in the past something that we can contribute to the rest of the world.

I want to impress upon the Minister that we must have the type of national wage agreement which will help the economy and all those who need help and especially those who cannot work for themselves. The standard of living of those people must keep pace with the rest of the community. I do not want to make political points but since the change of Government the less fortunate of the community, people on social welfare and so on, have benefited and the Government should be congratulated on that. Recently, I attended an opening of houses for underprivileged people and you could see the joy in their faces when the first door was opened. It created joy not alone for them but for all present. It showed that at least something was being done. It might only be a drop in the ocean but we hope that that will develop and that unfortunate people will have some happiness in their own country.

The agricultural sector, in which I am involved, was mentioned a few times today. It is our largest industry and all our agricultural produce is either consumed here or exported. We have to import very little in order to manufacture our agricultural produce. We hope that when gas is brought ashore at Kinsale, and our fertiliser plant is in operation, we will be able to produce fertilisers required for crop production. When that happens we can nearly say that our agricultural produce needs no external assistance. That time is not far off, so we should take a greater interest in agriculture. We should encourage farmers, through their organisations, to produce more. Farmers have their own trade unions and they, like all trade unions, demand more money for their produce. Taking everything into consideration, it is only since we joined the EEC that the farmers have got greater confidence in agriculture and have gained from being in agriculture. They are not now dependent on the British who before our entry into the EEC, bought our agricultural produce at the lowest possible price. We cannot blame them for that, it was business; whether it was good business or not is another matter. However, farmers can ask for too much, too soon. They must take into account also the effect their increased costs will have on the rest of the community. However, the farmers, like those engaged in industry, must be paid for their production and they must get a fair profit.

The year 1974 was a very difficult year for farmers. Although we were members of the EEC we learned a lesson from that year. I do not think that situation will arise again. The farmers had to accept much less than they deserved. They accepted £10 or less for a calf. The farmers are now more organised and the EEC understands our position better. Taking into consideration the fact that much of the stock of 1974 had to be held over, 1975 was a good year for farmers. In that year we had an increase of 114 per cent in the export of fat cattle, an increase of 20 per cent in the export of store cattle and an increase of 2,000 per cent in the export of calves. I am worried about the latter situation. Altogether in 1975 we exported 695,307 cattle, which was an increase of 55 per cent over 1974.

That is a very big interest. For me that was a benefit to the country as a whole. I believe that only for our agricultural exports in 1975 the picture would have been very black.

We must give credit to the farmers for the help they have given the economy. People will say that 1976 is not so rosy. Of course, we will not export as many cattle in 1976 as in 1975. We cannot do it because the 1975 export figures for cattle took into consideration the surplus from the bad year of 1974. Therefore, we cannot and should not expect our figures in 1976 to be as good as 1975. Anybody looking at our balance of payments for 1975 will see that but for agriculture it would have been very bad. As it was, our balance of payments for that year turned out to be the very best for many years. I hope the farmers will get the credit that is due to them. The Minister for Agriculture has congratulated them here and has helped them.

Mr. Killilea

And taxed them.

Mr. Butler

We will talk about tax in a few minutes. The Minister for Agriculture has done his best for this country: nobody can say otherwise.

As regard the farmers who are being taxed, I really have no sympathy for them. They are substantial farmers and if they keep accounts and do not make a substantial profit they do not pay tax. If they do not keep accounts and if they have more than £100 valuation it is only right that they should be paying some tax. We are all paying tax. The farm labourer has to pay substantial tax on the earnings he is getting from the farmer. Workmen working long hours doing overtime pay tax not only on their basic pay but also on any overtime earnings. If this country needs extra finance, it should not be looking to those who are now heavily burdened with tax but to some other source. Farmers of more than £100 valuation have come to me and said it was "an awful shame" that they should now be taxable. Of course, it is not a shame: of course, they should be taxed. Our sons and daughters who are working and bringing home small wages are taxed. We must have finance so that some of it can be distributed to those in need.

If big farmers have not got a social conscience they should develop one very fast; they owe it to the nation. They have a duty to educate people who cannot educate themselves. We were not all born equal; we were not all born with the same facilities but if we believe in social justice, somebody must help the weaker sections. The Minister for Finance must get the money to help them. We know the demands. We are all politicians and we all meet people asking for this, that and the other, all involving financial help from the State. We cannot expect the Government to wave a magic wand and say: "There is money for you". It must be got from those people who are well able to pay it.

Some help, as I have said, should be given to the industrial section of the farming community, most of which is controlled by the co-operative movement. I think the Government made a mistake in taxing the co-ops. Many people do not agree with me and they are entitled to their views. The Minister knows, because he has met many deputations from the farming community and from the co-operative movement, that the type of profits being made by the co-ops are needed, first, to develop the co-ops and also needed to process the farmers' produce, a substantial amount of which more than 50 per cent, is for export. I do not know if I am in order but I would suggest that to compensate the co-ops some tax exemption should be given for the export of this produce.

I do not want to delay the House as I am sure there will be other speakers on agriculture. I think that if the Minister, the unions and all concerned take to heart all I have said, if something is done in regard to a national wage agreement and if something is done to help production, there is no fear for our country. We have a great future ahead: I have no doubt about that.

Mrs. Robinson

The Appropriation Bill relates to expenditure by the Government and hence to their financial policies and the overall management of the economy. It allows Senators to assess and comment on the effectiveness of the Government in their overall approach. However, the Bill also poses problems in that it is difficult to respond in a useful way to the challenge of identifying key problems and making useful suggestions for a new approach. I have been impressed, as I am sure the Minister has been, with the seriousness of approach of the various Senators who have spoken. There is one factor on which we should concentrate and that is that we are debating the Bill against the background of a promise by the Government that a Green Paper on economic planning will be published in the next few weeks. It is, therefore, appropriate for us to approach the whole subject from the context of the basic and fundamental need for planning and for coherence and co-ordination in the devising and implementation of such a plan.

Such co-ordination and coherence is strikingly lacking at present. One hears conflicting statements from various Ministers about the scale of economic problems, and about the way in which these problems should be approached and tackled. This has caused great public unease. Here I am not making a political comment. I am trying to be objective in my approach. I think there is a lack of a sense of cohesiveness and purpose in what the Government are doing. There have been conflicting approaches to various problems, such as the recent Bill arising out of the bank dispute, the approach to the unemployment problem, to the national wage agreement, to the equal pay issue. There has been no sense of the Cabinet getting down to serious consideration of these problems and reaching united conclusions on them. I hope the promised Green Paper will allow for such a unified and coherent approach.

The lack of apparent consensus within the Cabinet undermines the authority and credibility of the Government and we need a Government with authority and with credibility. It is not so much a matter of a detailed plan as a coherent overall approach which will inspire and restore confidence in the people and confidence externally, confidence in our trading partners in the EEC, confidence in the United States and confidence in those other countries which do business with us.

The order of magnitude of the problem we face has been referred to in some detail by other Senators. It is becoming increasingly apparent to the people. There is a danger of spreading panic in relation to our situation and I here join with those Senators who are not totally depressed to the point of being unable to respond to the situation except by trotting out further evidence of the difficulties; of our high unemployment rate, the intolerable inflation rate, the imbalance created by loans from outside. We must approach these problems in a constructive attempt to resolve them rather than increasing and spreading further panic and hopelessness about our situation.

The problem of unemployment takes first place in my consideration of the different types of difficulties we have. Fortunately, considerable homework has been done in this area recently. I would like to refer here to a paper by Dr. Brendan Dowling, which he prepared for a conference organised by the Irish Council of the European Movement in March last on the economic implications of the labour market in the next ten years. He made it clear he was speaking in his personal capacity, that his remarks were his own and did not necessarily reflect the views of the Minister for Foreign Affairs to whom he is economic adviser. He pointed to the essential requirement of our recognising that the problems of unemployment are problems of a structural rather than a cyclical nature and that we must respond accordingly by the sort of radical measures which alter that structural nature, which respond to the fact that it is not cyclical unemployment but rather structural unemployment.

He referred to the fact that too few politicians or too few people in public life have seriously analysed the unemployment situation for the very good reason referred to by the previous speaker and several other Senators, namely, that we have allowed emigration to deflect our attention from the problem. Up to now the problem has been solved by the unemployed emigrating. This is no longer the case, and we are faced with the reality of our situation. In looking at that reality Dr. Dowling considered the effectiveness of our present industrial strategy and he was very critical of that industrial strategy. He said:

The industrial strategy adopted by successive Governments has been the use of State funds to attract foreign enterprises to Ireland, to grants based in part on the level of capital expenditure and in part on the level of projected employment. More recently a substantial amount of State funds have been devoted to capital grants to Irish based industry for expansion and for re-equipment. Indeed the influence of the IDA on the level of industrial investment in Ireland is such that no firm would conceive of undertaking new investment without first trying to obtain aid from the IDA.

The important question is whether this policy is successful and whether it is likely to lead to adequate employment growths in the future. In terms of net job creation the answer must be that the industrial strategy pursued to date has not been able to create sufficient new jobs to offset the decline in existing jobs in industry, the increase in the labour force due to democratic factors and the flow of labour from the agricultural sector.

Of course this inadequate rate of job creation could be due to the inadequate allocation of funds for promotion purposes and this would suggest that much more of the same strategy would yield greater results. However, I think that the evidence that allocations for industrial development funds have been under any type of budgetary restraint in the past is slight and that further funds have been made available as they were required.

He then went on to analyse this industrial strategy, to be very critical of it as being capital intensive, as not relating to our real problems of structural unemployment, as not showing that it is coping with the marked increase in our unemployment and the problems which this poses. He went on to examine the question of employment and public expenditure and he covered some of the ground that Senator FitzGerald covered this morning about the necessity to be aware of the size of the public cake, if one could call it that, in deciding in what way it might be sliced. Senator FitzGerald, I think, looked around at me when he talked about the calls for reform in areas such as the establishment of family courts and implied we cannot afford this type of reform. But that depends really on our priorities and on our overall social costing. I would agree totally with Dr. Dowling's conclusion on this aspect. We cannot afford to live like lords in the sort of serious economic situation we have. We cannot afford the same standard of living the Germans can afford. Indeed, we would be very foolish and very reckless if we believed we could. We have to decide on our particular priorities. I agree with Dr. Dowling when he says:

This is not to argue, as has been common in the past, that social reform and income redistribution can only take place in a growing economy. To do that is to sanctify the status quo and to ensure that little action will ever be taken in these areas. The proponents of this view tend also to be the proponents of the view that the time is never right for social reform. However we will be forced to recognise, through the constraint on public expenditure that reforms and redistribution will involve the transfer of resources within the community, will require sacrifices from the vast bulk of the community and not just the “rich” and that the redistribution cannot be achieved through increased expenditure unmatched by higher taxes or cuts in other services. Such a revision of policies and emphasis will not be easy and will not go unchallenged. Indeed the objections may well come from those groups who on the face of it are the strongest supporters of redistribution.

I agree with Dr. Dowling: it will come as something of a shock to certain people that they too must pay, that they too must accept a lower standard of living, and must assume part of the burden if we are going to have a genuine capacity for redistributive policies and for social reform in order to promote social justice and equity in our system. The problems are very real ones; they are new in their order of magnitude and new in the way in which they are coming to us in a cumulative fashion.

In response to these sort of problems it is not enough either for the Taoiseach or for the Minister for Finance to look into their heart and say that there must be a pay pause, or there must be a willingness to exert discipline. It needs a much more coherent, thought-through and consolidated approach than that. It needs, in other words, the authority of a national plan, the authority of the sort of social planning which will give a sense of purpose to the whole exercise, which will allow people to realise that if they must accept a lower standard of living, if they must accept a pay pause and incomes restraint, if they must forego certain services and certain advances, that it is all in the interest of a coherent overall policy.

In that regard I would like to refer to a speech made by Deputy Halligan —he was Senator Halligan at that time—in March last which has become known in the national Press as the Halligan Plan. Deputy Halligan is to be commended for a serious attempt to formulate an overall plan for our economy. He is in favour of a radical new approach to the problem which is not just a continuation of the earlier national plans. He says under the heading "Economic Planning" at page 7 of his script:

We need a third stage in our economic development process because the dimension of the employment problem, as we have demonstrated, is way beyond the capacity of the present policy, mainly geared around the IDA and completely dependent on private enterprise.

We need a fundamental reorientation of policy by resorting to economic planning and by simultaneously accepting the legitimacy, indeed by asserting the necessity, of state enterprise. We need to take the State out of its supportive role where it has acted as a crutch for private enterprise and to place it firmly in the centre of the economic development process.

He then goes on to criticise the absence of planning in its true sense, in the formulation of policy and in the thinking of politicians here in Ireland. On page 8 he states:

There is no real philosophy of planning in this sense in Ireland. There is no understanding of its philosophical underpinnings, of its ethical drive, of its institutional requirements or the scale of political and economic change it would involve. Worse still there has been no real debate. People are talking glibly of a process whose nature they have never analysed adequately and do not understand. "Planning" has come to be a synonym for the economic cure-all without the realisation that it requires in the very first instance a philosophy of society fundamentally different to that which now dominates ours.

He goes on to say that his philosophy, his balance in the various conflicts of interest and the various approaches to solving the problems we face, would be:

In terms of a philosophic base for planning in Ireland what we need is a middle way between the traditional liberal market economy and the detailed centralised and authoritarian type of planning which existed, and still exists, in the Eastern European countries.

Deputy Halligan is General Secretary of the Labour Party, which is one of the parties of the Coalition, and yet in no way could an objective observer get the sense that this approach of his is a unified Government approach to our present problems. This is regrettable because I think it would be desirable that there be a coherent overall approach. I personally would subscribe, in almost every aspect, to the type of approach formulated by Deputy Halligan in that paper. One does not get the sense that this is the way in which the Government as a whole will approach the devising of a Green Paper setting out provisions for economic planning for the short, medium and long-term.

Apart from that type of overall approach, I think it is necessary to consider the very important area of rural development in Ireland. This was referred to by Senator Dolan when he spoke of the essential necessity to counteract the attraction of the capital city and the other larger centres in order to have balanced regional development in the country. In that context I would like to refer to one other paper submitted to the March conference on Social Planning in Ireland. It is a paper prepared by Fr. Harry Bohan in which he makes a very strong case for a micro-economic approach to rural development in Ireland. This should form a very significant part of any social planning. He states:

Irish economic policies since the 1950s have been promoting export-orientated industry capable of competing on world standards and doing this largely by bringing in foreign firms already accustomed to these standards. In effect, we have been in the business of leasing or selling production facilities, land, buildings, plant, labour to industries from overseas. While these moves have proved a profitable investment in terms of social as well as individual enterprise, a number of problems of economic and social development have remained unresolved. Some of these are occasional such as the uncertainty of the performance of individual firms, but others concern the permanent framework of Irish society and the Irish economy, for example problems of distribution of wealth or of rural development, urbanisation and regional development. It is now evident that more and more people have become increasingly aware that reliance on foreign industry needs to be supplemented by the exploitation of home resources both from the viewpoint of economic development and national self-determination.

He then goes on to give an account of very significant voluntary initiative in this area, that is, the establishment of the Rural Housing Organisation. He puts this forward as a counterbalance to centralised, city-based, foreign-industry based development and he states:

Through our work we discovered that villages within commuting distance of employment centres continued to decline in population even though jobs were available locally. It followed that the distribution of population was determined not just by jobs but by other factors as well The effect of development did not spread far beyond the growth centres. This was because housing was not available in villages. Due to this, young couples who might otherwise have remained in their own communities drifted into the larger towns where housing was immediately available. The result was that villages were needlessly bereft of new development. As older inhabitants die no younger families take their place and population declines begin to occur. In other words, conventional methods of employment have uprooted people, have separated the generations to such an extent that serious social problems have been created and massive social welfare policies are needed as a corrective measure. In our work in the Rural Housing Organisation we have concluded that to survive as social entities villages must change their functional purpose. The traditional function was that of a service for an agricultural hinterland. With rural population loss this function is not adequate to maintain the village. A new function must be added. This is to act as a residential centre for young industrial and service workers who live within the village and work outside it initially. There is evidence to suggest now that housing can act as a primer for industrial and agricultural developments. This means that people who return to live will also find work in the local community.

He feels that there is a great deal of room for this type of initiative in providing houses in villages to give an impetus to rural development there, which leads to community centre projects, to younger people remaining in or going back to the smaller community dwelling. We should focus very substantially on this micro-economic level, on the need for a medium- and small-term industrial development, on creating and reinforcing the rural economy so that we keep people where they want to remain if they can get houses and then, consequently, jobs and employment and a useful life-style there. This is extremely important because of the sort of natural resources that we have and which have been referred to; the fact that we have land, that we have a young, active population, that we have all that immense potential which at the moment we are not using, in many cases because we do not appreciate it.

So much for the micro-economic side. Looking at the more macroeconomic side, the European level, Ireland should be approaching the present developments in the European Community much more seriously than is evident at present. Reference has already been made—I have referred to it on previous occasions—to the fact that the gap is widening in the European Community between the more developed centre and the regional areas, the peripheral areas. The gap between Ireland and the golden triangle of the Community is wider now than it was in 1972 or 1973. The disparities are greater, the imbalance is even more against us. We are failing to get across the message that if the European Community is to function as a community then very substantially different approaches are necessary at Community level.

In this context I should like to endorse very strongly the approach suggested by Dr. Whitaker in a speech at a conference in July, 1975 on the possibility of a European Monetary Union and implications of the sterling link. He referred to the basic objective of the Treaty of Rome, the task of setting up a Common Market and progressively approximating the economic policies of the member states to promote harmonised development in the Community. He went on:

If that objective means anything it will be necessary to pursue policies both in the member states themselves and, at Community level, in regard to the member states which are quite different. The countries which lag behind will have to be helped to catch up with those which are relatively more advanced. A measure of what is needed in our own case is given by the recent estimate that only a sustained growth rate would enable us to catch up with the standards of the other smaller EEC members by 1986. In short, what the implementation of co-ordinated economic policies should mean is an attempt to achieve a tolerable degree of similarity—not necessarily equality —of economic experience in the member states. This means substantial resource transfers to the less advanced areas. Otherwise attempts at phased progress towards monetary union will fail, because the diversity of economic conditions, particularly of rates of inflation, will prise exchange rates apart—or else put unbearable pressure on the free trade or common agricultural policy fronts. One can surmise that the less advanced members of the Community are likely to have more difficulty in controlling inflation than the more advanced, if only because of the greater disparity between resources and aspirations.

I should like to ask the Minister to what extent we are carrying through that message at the European level? It is not adequate, given the present level of disparity, given the different rates at which countries are controlling inflation and keeping down unemployment, to have identical policies in relation to economic controls and regulations. We need to have conjunctural policies. We need to be going in the same direction, but Ireland needs to be arguing that we must have the capacity to take the steps necessary to allow us to catch up with the more developed regions of the European Community, the golden triangle at the centre. We must be allowed to do the sort of things which are against the strict letter of the law of a common market and free competition. We must be allowed to take special measures to enable us to narrow that gap which has widened while the pure theory of the free market at the European level has been promoted. In this context I would agree with Brendan Harkin, now President of the ICTU, when he spoke at the Symposium on Social Planning in Ireland and said:

If the Community is to establish any credibility outside its golden triangle it will have to make important changes in its whole approach to the distribution of job opportunities to its peripheral areas. This means making more money available through the regional development and social funds. It also means recognising the fact that the outlying areas may have serious geographical and other disadvantages which merit abrogation of the rules of competition. A lot of work was done in Brussels on establishing criteria for regional development aid. The guidelines were based on levels of deprivation in terms of unemployment, emigration and low per capita income. Where these standards fall below an agreed mark, say, twenty-five per cent below the Community average, it should be possible to effect special measures. These could include such steps as subsidisation of employment and restrictions on imports. In addition penalties should be imposed by way, for example, of special taxation on industrial development in those already overcrowded areas.

I should like to refer now to the reference made by the Taoiseach in his statement in this House earlier this afternoon to co-ordination of development policies of the member states. I should like to ask the Minister what is his understanding of what is meant by "guidelines on co-ordination of economic policies" in that context? The Taoiseach said:

The Dutch Presidency has made certain proposals designed to strengthen the internal, economic and financial coherence of the committees and suggesting that the medium-term economic programme for the Communities should be made to play a role in a periodic review of national programmes. The proposals also referred to economic guidelines for member countries and to exchange rate developments. I emphasised the need to ensure that any guidelines should take full account of the real problems, particularly those of a structural nature, which impede progress towards a more cohesive Common Market.

To what extent does this include a well-planned approach at the European level arguing the substantial need for Ireland to be able to take the sort of special measures to protect our economy, to build up our exports, to protect our employment situation, to create employment here which go against the pure theory of the present state of development in the European Community but are in conformity with the political aspiration for European union and which will dramatically narrow that gap between ourselves and other more developed regions of the Community? To what extent are we making that argument? To what extent are we pushing it at the European level?

This approach is extremely important at this stage of Ireland's participation in the European Community, in particular in the context of possible enlargement of the Community to admit another country like Greece, which bears considerable similarities to us and which would face the Community with the political necessity either to enlarge very substantially its redistributive policies, its regional, social and FEOGA guidance and guarantee funds and other supports for peripheral areas, or else resign itself to a very different type of two-tier Community. In such a two-tier community there could be an inner core, possibly with institutional developments within it such as a directorate where the larger and economically more developed countries control the entire evolution of the Community, and the outer core composed of less advantaged countries which make the inner core safe for further advancement. At the Community level there is necessity for serious homework and for awareness of these dangers.

I join with Senator Yeats in agreeing that the approach of the Government on the equal pay issue does not tend to breed confidence in their handling of this type of problem. One gets the impression that the argument may be going by default because it is not being well presented at European level. We should be arguing for the type of parallel but not identical approach to converging economic policies which would allow us to take our place as a country supporting the principle of European union but needing to come from behind in a dramatic way in order to participate realistically in that.

Senator FitzGerald referred to the resources of our country; to our active young population, to our natural resources. These resources are there and it is important to remind ourselves of that. The problem is the political coherence of our approach to exploiting those resources, using those resources and having the benefit of those resources distributed fairly and equitably in our society. That is back to the political weakness of the present situation, the lack of cohesiveness in our institutions. I would agree with Senator FitzGerald that in order fully to realise our potential we may need much more substantial institutional reform; a better approach to local government and a new regional infrastructure. The two things are related. Until we have greater political cohesiveness we will not avail of and use our natural resources and we will not speak with the authority and credibility which will restore confidence in this country and persuade people to accept hard political decisions of this time; persuade them to accept that they must have a lower standard of living if they are going to continue to have economic and social stability, if there is not going to be a degree of social unrest and malaise which could further undermine our political and institutional structures.

The real challenge is a challenge of a political nature and it is reflected in our institutional approach. I was not quite sure at the end of his contribution whether Senator FitzGerald was proposing some type of national planning advisory council, which would have a very significant role in advising the Government on overall planning. I have often felt that there should be some possibility here of a counterpart to the central policy review staff which works alongside the British Cabinet and relates to the Prime Minister there. This would help to foster the image of a cohesive approach, would help to remind Ministers that the activities of one Department must be related to the activities of another and that the Ministers must also speak with one voice on important economic issues and on approaches to the key problems in our area.

There is a considerable amount of public analysis by independent economists, the sort of people I have been quoting this afternoon and that others have been quoting. One does not sense this is necessarily getting through at Government level. I say this because I found the Minister's opening speech less than imaginative in its approach to the sort of problems which Senators have been discussing and debating today. He uses the word "radical" approach but he does so in a context which leads me to believe that he does not think in terms of a radical approach. He says towards the end of his speech introducing the Bill to the House this morning:

Clearly, a radical approach is required—in particular a fundamental change in our attitudes. A high rate of export-led growth is a prerequisite to the solution of our longer-term, as indeed of our short-term, unemployment problem. Although we can anticipate assistance from a more rapid pace of expansion internationally, especially in the post-recession phase, this alone will not suffice. We must capture an ever larger share of world markets, recapture and hold on to a larger share of a growing home market, an outcome which relies to a large extent on whether or not we disimprove or improve our competitiveness.

It is not that this is something one can particularly fault. It is a continuation of the same approach as before. It is this same approach which Dr. Dowling criticises, which others whom I have quoted, say is not going to solve or not going to meet the genuine economic problem here. We cannot go on the same as before because the order of magnitude of problems is different. We no longer have emigration deflecting us from the question of our unemployment. We must ensure within the context of the European Community that we maintain our level of parity with other countries, that we close the gap with the more developed countries in the European Community, that we provide the framework for the generations to come.

This is the final point that I should like to make. There has been considerable reference to our active young population, to our unique demographic structure. There is, to say the least of it, a broad range of reasons why this is so. Some of the reasons may include a limited choice in relation to voluntary population control here. I hope there will be another opportunity in the near future to discuss that aspect of it at some length. It is a richness to have a young population but it is also a very significant challenge. We have a very high level of young unemployed, and we have an enormous problem of increasing school leavers who are going to come on the labour market.

In the present climate and attitude towards a person being unemployed it is a very serious failure of our society if we are not able to provide either jobs, training or retraining of these young people. If we leave them feeling that they are useless, unproductive and uncontributing people in our society then we will reap a very bitter harvest. We will reap what we deserve in the circumstances. Consequently one would expect a massive expansion in education. Even if there are problems in regard to the size of the cake, one would expect that there would be a very real emphasis on education. That is not reflected in the figures. We are not expanding in the way in which we should both the formal education possibilities and the training or retraining.

In the overall context, the most important of all is continuing education, the possibilities and opportunities for advanced education, adult education throught life. We are now expected to change jobs three or four times during a working life. There is no preparation for this at a serious Government level. There is no real response to the aspiration of married women after a certain period to come back to make a productive and creative contribution to the economic and social life of the country.

We cannot just pride ourselves on our natural resources of an active young population and a unique demographic structure and leave it at that. It is the biggest challenge that we face and it should form a key part of the sort of overall plan which one hopes will come from the Government in the next week or so and which will explain in a coherent framework why it is necessary for people to take the sort of serious and unpleasant steps that the Government have been haranguing them and that other people have been haranguing them to take. Haranguing people to take difficult steps outside of an overall framework is not a credible or authoritative position. It is only when it is placed in an overall strategy towards the development of our economy, towards our future and our children's future, that it begins to become acceptable to the people.

Mr. Russell

I should like to speak on the two aspects of the Minister's speech which I think are the most important. I refer to and I am not the only Senator who has referred to them, but I want to re-emphasise what has been said already—the subjects of unemployment and inflation which continue to be the greatest problems for this Government and indeed every Government in the developed countries today. We must admit that other countries have been more successful in tackling their inflation problem than we have to date, although we have made some welcome progress in recent months in that direction.

It is now generally accepted that we cannot solve one without tackling the other, that the problems of inflation and unemployment are interlocked and that success in one cannot come unless success is achieved in the other. This is a point of view that has not been generally accepted until quite recently. It was generally believed that you could, to put it rather crudely, "have your cake and eat it". That comforting belief rested in every sector of our economy.

In general workers have been accused of seeking wage increases beyond what the country or the industries concerned could afford. We can lay the blame broadly across every sector of our people, because as a nation over recent years we have been trying to take more out of the economy than we have been prepared to put into it. While this might sound as a very simplistic reason for inflation, it seems to me to be the basic reason why we have been suffering from excessive inflation.

It is interesting to listen to the contributions this afternoon and even more interesting to listen to the contributions from experts that have been quoted by various Members of this House over the past few hours. I have read the contributions and articles by a number of these experts in recent years but I failed to find a consensus among any of the experts as to the cause of inflation or its cure. Possibly the reason for this is that for the first time in the world's history, and certainly in its recent industrial industry, we have the phenomenon of inflation and recession. This used not to be the case in bygone years; but you had inflation with boon conditions: you had increasing employment, you had a type of prosperity which in most cases was short lived before the inevitable slump came again. But we and all other developed countries have been experiencing this unusual state of affairs in recent years where high inflation has been accompanied by recession or depression and heavy unemployment in most countries of the world.

The fact that it has been difficult to find a solution is indicated by what I have been saying, that experts in their particular fields, men who have given the greater part of their lives to studying these problems but who have failed to find a solution. I suggest the solution may be simpler than the experts suggest, that it may be basically the fact that we as a people, and other people also, have been trying to get a lot more out of the national pot than we have been putting into it. This situation has been accompanied by widespread inefficiency to some extent in industry, to a considerable extent in distribution, and to a far greater extent in the working of government, national and local, Senator Alexis FitzGerald suggested that every time the Government or a Government agency carried out a task which involved the distribution of resources from one section of the community to another it was the most expensive way of doing it and that a smaller organisation could do this task much cheaper.

It is a pity that in a small country like ours we do not make more use of voluntary or small organisations to undertake this task. There is a tremendous pool of goodwill in this country that remains untapped. If there was more co-operation sought by central government and by local government agencies, more help and more co-operation extended to voluntary organisations, these necessary tasks to assist the weaker sections of our community could be carried out with a great measure of goodwill and would be far cheaper.

Nobody from this side of the House will contest the charge that has been repeated by Senators on the other side over the past hours, that by any standards we have an unacceptably high rate of unemployment. We ought to be realistic about it and remember that unemployment unfortunately has been endemic in this country for as long as most of us can remember, in what are sometimes euphemistically described as the good old days, the days of the fifties and sixties, up to the seventies. In those days it was not unusual to have 70,000 people unemployed and a rate of emigration running at 30,000 or 40,000 a year. Another point to remember is the type of unemployment we have in this country. Senator Robinson touched on this. The type of unemployment we had in past years was largely the unemployment of the unskilled labourer who depended largely on construction work or in older days on road work or bog work and when he could not get this he emigrated to England. He was the man who in England built the roads and the railways, the hospitals and who helped to build industry. That type of unemployment is now radically changed and the unemployed man is the skilled man largely. We have now added to that category the young people coming out of schools and technical colleges and universities. The type of employment that was available some years back for the unskilled worker is not available now and is not applicable to the type of employment to which they are geared and educated for. A very careful study needs to be done, first of all of the type of unemployed we have and, secondly, the type of employment which is required.

In this House, about this time last year, I remember that forecasts of up to 200,000 unemployed were made from the other side of the House. Fortunately we have not reached anything like that figure. However, our unemployment is too high, it is well over 100,000 or about 10 per cent of our employed. It is too high but it could have been substantially higher if the Government had not—what they are now being criticised for doing—secured substantial extra funds by taxation and by borrowing. I am a critic in regard to excessive borrowing powers. Anybody who has any experience of finance will appreciate that the position is serious when a nation or, indeed, an individual over-borrows. I should like to ask the Senators on the other side of the House what was the alternative to heavy borrowing by the Government during the past two or three years?

The Minister, in his speech last year, if I remember correctly, spelled out the dangers of the policy of borrowing but pointed out that in the circumstances the Government had decided that the risks of massive unemployment and the social unrest that would follow were far greater than the risk of borrowing substantially. In the circumstances they were right, but this is obviously a policy that cannot go on. We have to moderate our demands for incomes right across the board and here again I should like to emphasise that when one talks about incomes one tends to talk about wages. One should remember that incomes are made up not only of wages but also of salaries, dividends, fees and so on. If we are going to have what I think is required, a national policy on income restraint, it must be applied right across the board, even if it requires Government legislation to curtail the payments of salaries and dividends. That proposal was made some months ago as a corollary to a moderation in wage demands. Unfortunately, neither one nor the other was implemented. We are still endeavouring to pay ourselves more than we can afford.

It is important that we should remember one or two fundamental facts about our country, and recall certain economic defects which will not go away. This should be emphasised because we have delusions of grandeur from time to time. We are a very small country with a population of some three million and a gross national product of just over £3 billion. Obviously, there is a limitation to what we can do within these resources. We have a wide open economy, possibly the most open in Europe. Therefore, we are vulnerable to outside forces, more so than most other countries. The proportion of our GNP that we export is amongst the highest in the world and the same applies to our imports. We are dependent to a greater extent than most countries on external trade and we can only trade at prices that our customers abroad will pay. We can only buy at prices at which our suppliers will sell to us.

A further difficulty which has compounded our situation is the fact that the comfort of a protected home market which we enjoyed for quite a number of years has now virtually ended. We find ourselves in the position that unless the quality and costs of our goods are competitive not only will we not be able to expand our export trade on which employment opportunities in the long-term must depend but we will also lose a substantial proportion of our home market. These are the facts of life; they will not go away and we cannot turn our backs on them. It is becoming more evident, and I hope this has sunk in in all sections of our community, that unless we pull our socks up, reduce our costs, moderate our demands and tone down our expectations we will be in very serious trouble in the years ahead. These might be old-fashioned ideas but they are as relevant today as they ever were.

Until we learn to apply them we will continue to have a high rate of unemployment and continuing inflation. This is more important than academic arguments about whether private or State enterprise is best for the country; whether private enterprise has failed and State enterprise is the obvious answer to all our difficulties. Unless we as a nation, as a people and as individuals are prepared to moderate our demands it does not matter very much whether we depend on private or State enterprise or a combination of both. The basic facts of life are that if we cannot produce goods at competitive prices and the right quality for the export markets it does not matter who manufactures or distributes them in the long-term. The basic requirements are missing and if that happens nothing else will fall into place.

Some indication of the enormous task facing the country if we want to achieve full employment within the next decade is indicated by recent reasonable estimates of the type of employment figures, the number of jobs required over the next ten years. It is not unreasonable to take one of the estimates made more often than others, a figure of 300,000 new jobs over the next ten years if we want to take on the unemployed, look after school-leavers and those leaving the technical colleges and universities. A low estimate is £3,000 per job. That is low because according to a recent issue of the Confederation of Irish Industry Newsletter, the fixed assets included in jobs has varied between £2,000, in the case of small industries which are always the cheapest and in many ways the most effective to assist, and up to £15,000 for jobs for foreign industry. That crude sum works out at something in the region of £9 billion over the next ten years, an enormous figure which we cannot hope to provide from our own resources. If we doubled that figure it would probably be nearer to a realistic estimate of the capital involved in providing employment over the next ten years. It is a formidable figure.

There is another aspect which we cannot forget. It is obvious in financing any new industry or distributing enterprise that a substantial proportion of the capital must come from our own resources if we want to maintain a majority holding for Irish industry in Irish hands. It might be a solution to our problems if we allowed private capital to take over a substantial, even a majority holding, in industrial development in the country but it would be disastrous for us as a nation.

If we want to protect industry and maintain it in Irish hands we must put up a substantial amount of the cash. We can only get the cash from a limited number of sources, by generating profits, by taxation, if the Government are to develop semi-State industry or assist private enterprise or by borrowing. Obviously, there is a limit to all three sources.

It is essential—Senator Alexis FitzGerald also made this point—that if private enterprise continues to finance a substantial proportion of industrial development it must be allowed to earn reasonable profits. It is unreasonable to expect that private industry can exist unless it can generate the type of profits which will allow a reasonable reward to the enterpreneurs, the owner-promoters and ensure that enough is left to reinvest in extensions to existing industries and businesses, provide new equipment and establsh new industries. This must be done. The talk which takes place sometimes about the profits in industries is ill-advised and, in many cases, misunderstands the situation. I am not speaking about excessive profits but about reasonable profits related to investment in industry. The same applies to State industries. State industries, whether they call them profits or surpluses, must have sufficient capital generated to reinvest in extensions and keep equipment up to date. These are the type of problems which face our country today. They are problems applicable to most small countries. If we want to exist as a small independent nation—we all want to do that—we must be prepared to make certain sacrifices. The first and essential sacrifice is the limitation of demands on employers, on industry and taking too much out of the national cake. It cannot be done.

We have many advantages here. We have an ample supply of good, intelligent labour, to which tributes have already been paid and a huge potential in the young people leaving schools, technical colleges and universities. If they are to secure employment at home we must accept the necessary financial disciplines and restraints which will ensure that adequate finance is available for the development of private and State industries. There is no other solution. If we are not prepared to do this we should not be cribbing about high unemployment and inflation. If a limited number of our people want to have a good time at the expense of the rest of the community the situation should be clearly explained to them and they should accept it. If we want to ensure growing employment for an increasing population we must accept sacrifices and restraints.

This is difficult, very often, in a democratic society. In the type of economy they operate on the other side of the Iron Curtain they can do this because they can direct investment into industry. They can virtually tell people what to wear, what to eat, who is going to have a car and who is not. In a democratic society we must depend on the good sense, the loyalty and the patriotism of our people to make the necessary sacrifices in the interests of all, particularly in the interests of the young population who are now coming on the employment market.

It is illusory to think the Government alone can solve these problems. We are all in this together, every section of the community, and we must accept the fact that the battle against inflation and the provision of new employment opportunities are not matters for the Government alone. We are all in it and all of us have a part to play. That is the important message for the Government to get over to the people. I believe our people will accept sacrifices and restraints. I believe they are prepared to moderate their demands if they understand that we, as a people, are totally involved in this national effort. We often made calls on our people for patriotic efforts and they were magnificently answered in past and dangerous days.

The patriot is the man who does a good day's work, moderates his demands for salaries, wages or dividends, and stands by the country in its hour of need. He will not get any headlines in the newspapers but he is the man who is really going to save this country. He must get a lead from the Government of the day. Almost certainly that will necessitate the Government taking difficult and unpopular decisions. If they have to be taken they should be taken. I believe our people will answer a lead if it is given. Just to say it is all a matter for the Government and the rest of us can sit back and take it easy is a complete hallucination. It is a matter for the Government and the people combined.

I am satisfied—and I think most people would agree—that if we stop trying to have our cake and eat it, if we are prepared to moderate our demands, if we are prepared in our different ways of life to do a good day's work for a good day's pay, we will then have the capital to provide new industry. We will then have the capital to provide the facilities for the weaker sections of our community, hospitals, education, schools and to help those who cannot help themselves. We cannot have these things and at the same time have a good time at the expense of the community. It is a time for national restraint. It may be an unpopular policy to advocate. I see no other policy.

I believe in the good sense of the trade unions. I believe in the good sense of their leaders. Obviously they have a job to do in the best interests of their members. At long last the penny has begun to drop and the powerful forces outside Parliament who nowadays have an enormous impact, an enormous say in the economy —the trade unions, the farmers, the employers—are now realising that their influence and actions can have an all-important impact on the future of the country and its prosperity in the years ahead. I believe that, given the necessary lead, the Government will get that co-operation. I want to emphasise what I have probably over-emphasised already, that we are all in this together and none of us should endeavour to opt out and to go it alone.

Mr. Killilea

In the past three years, almost four now, since we were elected to the Seanad I have observed speakers on the Government benches consistently but never until today have I seen such sadness in their expressions. I saw one sign of glee on their faces today when the Taoiseach announced that we would not have a general election in October. There were smiles of relief.

Minister for Justice (Mr. Cooney)

From both sides of the House.

Mr. Killilea

Not particularly from this side of the House. I have never seen so many people smile together for the same reason. Of course, they have extraordinary problems because no matter how they try to manipulate only about half of them will be back after the next election.

Listening to Senator Russell, suddenly everything changes. Now the new national heroes are those who apply restraint, those who do not look for more money and say nothing, those people in this island who today are suffering because of the confusion created by the Minister for Finance during the past three years. Now they are the new national heroes if they do not look for anything exceptional, or if they do not look for what they are entitled to. I do not agree with that. I do not agree that the Minister for Finance was, at any stage, correct in his application of the distribution of the wealth of this country for which he, as Minister for Finance, was responsible since he took office. He even expressed that himself in this House this morning when he opened this debate. In my opinion he begged for mercy in this House when he said that he wanted not a look back but a look forward.

One realises immediately that the Minister for Finance had a reason for that. His record in borrowing by this nation is unequalled. He has borrowed more money abroad since 1973 than this State has borrowed since its foundation. He has borrowed money for purposes which certainly have not been constructive. Since the Government took office, Fianna Fáil, both in this House and in the other House, have asked persistently for an economic plan, for an economic policy. Even up to two months ago the Minister said that was not possible. He said that on television. Ex-Senator Halligan was converted to our way of thinking in his demand for an economic plan. This week, yielding to the hounds of the Labour Party—as is usual—the Minister for Finance announced that we are to get a Green Paper, or a blue paper, or some coloured document, in midsummer setting out a new economic plan.

The dogs are now loose in the Labour Party. They are barking and biting and everything and anything will be done by the Minister and by the Government to keep them quiet for a little longer. They will come to a very sudden and sad end quite soon. As I said, we have borrowed and borrowed from every nation that had anything to give.

As has been said, "Every shaky sheik was shaken" to see if we could get a few bob from him. At 31st March, 1973, £1,298 million was the amount borrowed by this country. At March 31st, 1974, it had gone up by approximately £100 million; at 31st December by £300 million; at 31st December, 1975, by £1,200 million; and at 31st March, 1976, when all the Arabian money was collected, this nation had borrowed £3,200 million, an increase in three years from £1,200 million to £3,200 million—fascinating figures. It now has come to an end and we cannot borrow any more, not because we would not but because we cannot get it. The culmination was the recent borrowing from our EEC partners and, as was illustrated by Senator Yeats and Senator Lenihan here today, that was under certain conditions and terms of reference. The sheiks are gone now and we are left alone and little wonder that Senator Russell would rise and call the new patriots of this nation those that do not ask for what they duly deserve. We can now see properly the realism and the attitude of the Government benches when they find themselves in this frustrating situation.

The performance over the last four years has been the responsibility not of the officials of the Department of Finance but of the head of that Department, the Minister for Finance, who is responsible to the Government. He begged and borrowed his way throughout the world and has created the confusion we have today. Now the word is out in the Government benches that they rise steadily one after the other, and particularly all the Fine Gael people in the Government benches, because they are the only ones who spoke today, oddly enough.

Mr. McGlinchey

They are not here.

Mr. Killilea

They are not here now, but they are following instructions, and coming in one by one. There has not been one Labour spokesman as yet. Why? Because in their heart of hearts they could not justify this performance and they know that the people who have suffered more by them are the workers, the people they purport to represent. Then the Minister begs for mercy. He is not getting much mercy from us because he was asked—indeed at one stage commanded in this House and in the other—to produce an economic policy. The Government Senators will dribble in here one by one until this debate is over, hoping that it will be over sooner rather than later, because it is very hard for them to find speakers to justify the present situation. They have not seen the green paper or the blue paper for this new economic plan. I personally feel that it is far too late for one. Government spending demands a borrowing of at least 40 per cent of the national budget each year to continue in existence, and that obviously they will not get. They are incapable of getting that, because no nation, no matter how far away, will give or lend their money to this Government who have destroyed the credibility and the creditworthiness of this nation over the last three or four years and who would not listen to anybody and particularly to people who had 16 years experience. Ex-Finance Ministers of this party advised them consistently, but they would not listen. Now they find themselves in this chaotic position in which they beg for the mercy of the working people, who find themselves in an infuriating and incapacitating situation in regard to their incomes.

The National Debt is a national catastrophe. I have not worked out the figures per head of the population, but I am sure that every man, woman and child in this country owes a little more than £1,000 per head, and that is certainly a terrible debt for the National Coalition Government to put on the child who has yet to be born. I have never heard of it in any nation, and certainly it has never happened before in this nation. But now it has come to an end. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Ryan, stated in this House this morning that he was delighted, that after his persistence and the Government's persistence in the EEC chambers of Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg they have conceded the necessity for economic policy. How has he the audacity to talk, and from what platform could he and the Government he represents talk, who never had a policy and who persistently and openly said that they could not have one under the circumstances?

The cost of spending, as I said, has to be financed to the tune of approximately 40 per cent by borrowing. How can this continue when the Minister cannot borrow the money to pay? Taxes and the demand on workers are extraordinary. Social welfare demands on workers are again extraordinary. The demands on workers over the last 12 months have been so great that it is now as profitable for a man to be idle as to work. That is disgraceful. Small businessmen are vanishing. The constraints on small businesses are such that, as anybody coming into this city or any major town can see, they are closing at an enormous rate. This is sad, and it is a problem that still could be tackled if the Minister would realise the necessity of doing something to alleviate their problems. It is absolutely imperative that all those people in small businesses be helped now rather than hindered.

At present 10 to 12 per cent of our people are unemployed. There are over 120,000 people on the live register wanting work and none there for them. What is even more sad is that there is no effort being made to give them employment. We have gimmicks day after day and the most recent one of all was the one by the Minister for Labour, Deputy O'Leary, who is responsible for AnCO when, three or four weeks ago, AnCO ran a course for six weeks for leaving certificate students of last year who were not yet employed and who were signing on in the social welfare offices. A sum of £2.75 per hour was paid to teachers of a description, some with qualifications some without qualifications; £15 per student per week was paid for those courses. There was no set type of course. It was up to the teacher or the principal of the course to set whatever type he desired. It appeared they wanted to waste the amount of money that seemed to have been left over in that section of the Department, totalling £500,000. That is only my estimate; it may be much more than that. I have not the facts about the number of centres in which those courses were carried on, but I know how many there were in the country where I live. They are still going on.

I would ask the Minister for Finance to tell me what purpose is the end result going to serve in this waste of public money? Can it be that for the moment the number on the live register of the unemployed requires to be dropped while the leaving certificate result, which will be out soon, will increase it in another way? Is it just a ploy to increase unemployment steadily rather than rapidly? It is a point which needs clarification.

Would it not be better to have spent that £½ million on facilities for primary education where we find day by day, week by week, more pressure on families—rural families, in particular—to bring their own children to school and taking away from them the bus service that was there for them? It is happening, and I am sure the Minister is aware that it is happening. It appears that it is a saving, a saving on primary education, the first essential in the training of any human. Because we want to bring down or steadily increase the live register of unemployed, we will spend £½ million that could so well be spent on the transport of children to primary schools.

The Minister for Finance must be responsible for the enterprise of the semi-State bodies. I have listened year after year to Senators from every side of the House making suggestions about what could be done by State enterprises. We have semi-State organisations who are not playing their part, not for their own reasons but because they lack the finances to play that part. A lot could have been done here to help people who are unemployed and who want employment. We see that chaotic state of CIE, where only three weeks ago the chairman of the company said that they were broke. What effort can the Government make to bring CIE into line?

We all know that CIE are top-heavy with management and certainly lacking at the bottom. We saw the disgraceful performance by the Government with CIE management in Dublin when they closed a main line in Connaught. It was CIE's policy. I do not think that we shall ever forget it. I do not think that this Government will ever be let forget it. Small towns depended on that line and they wanted its existence under terms and conditions which seemed appropriate to any sensible person. I am sure that there are people employed in CIE who over the next two or three years will plan the closure of many more lines. Where the finances of that particular line are going I do not know, but I am sure that the people representing those areas know. People will be employed in CIE to phase out a new line and all the reasons will come up again as they have come up before. The sad part about it is that it is main lines that are being closed down now and not sublines. Such a catastrophe as happened to the line from Ballina to Limerick via Athenry should never again be tolerated. Indeed I would go so far as to say that the Minister for Finance should look into this and should view it as a possible opportunity of creating more employment by running a proper service. We do not want the service which CIE gave us on that line. What we want is a commuter service, properly organised to bring people to work to Galway, Limerick and Ballina —three very important points on the western seaboard. We want to bring children to school, to third-level education in Galway and Limerick, and back home because the cost of keeping those children in cities in flats is now reaching astronomical figures which parents are no longer able to afford. For this very reason consideration of the reopening of that line would not be out of line for any Minister.

CIE and their freight service have certainly to be reviewed as well and in particular in regard to the bleak parts of the west, where some people still have to live, where services are so disgraceful. I can point out a few if the Minister wants them specifically. A shopkeeper in one part of Connacht will order goods from a traveller on a Monday with one month's credit. After that month's credit is up the bill will come to that shopkeeper for the product and the product will not have arrived at his door. That is the type of service CIE are giving us in many parts of the west of Ireland. The service in parts of Mayo and Galway is disgraceful, to say the least.

A review of these services is absolutely necessary. It is the responsibility of the Minister for Finance as well as of the Minister for Transport and Power to give orders to the members they appointed to the board. It is well known why they were appointed to those boards. They stood outside every polling booth in the last general election and it became obvious they would take instructions from the Minister and that they would be responsible to the Minister who appointed them to do a job of work for the Government. They are failing disgracefully to the extent that some of them are resigning from semi-State bodies because they are not allowed to do the job they thought to be correct. There may, of course, be other reasons for more of them to resign. I will not go into that. An immediate review of CIE is absolutely necessary. CIE can give a service if they act to give a service. If this reneging is cried halt to and if the board are operated properly, it can be done.

I have asked for a commuter service from Ballina to Limerick. Proposals are in CIE headquarters explaining in details, even to the extent of timing and schedule, from people who seek a public service to which they were entitled.

How was the deficit of £250,000 arrived at? That question has not been replied to. I am sure the Minister for Finance will be canvassing in my constituency at the next general election and he will be able to back up figures with what he calls facts. If he is not, we will be there to remind him.

There is an outstanding case for a commuter service between Ballina, through Galway city, and Limerick. It would be used by children attending the regional technical colleges in Galway and Limerick and the university in Galway and by workers employed in local industries. It would help to alleviate the problems faced by parents who have to keep their children in those cities right through the term.

Since the fondation of the sugar factory in Tuam it has been the life-stream of the town. But there has been a noticeable decline in the potato industry. There were only a few working weeks in the potato plant last year. The farmer always seems to get the blame, but not always are those who blame correct and not, indeed, often those who are blamed are the people who may be correct. I did not condone then, nor do I so now, those who signed contracts and did not supply potatoes. Neither would I condone a semi-State organisation buying potatoes from the farmers of Connacht at £34 a ton, transferring them on to a lorry and sending them to the Dublin marts at £148 a ton. It is commonly known that that is what the sugar company did in Tuam. Does the Minister for Finance condone that type of action? Will he say publicly that he does not condone it?

Minister for Finance (Mr. R. Ryan)

I will say it now. I would not condone it.

Mr. Killilea

Will he convey that message to those whom he appointed to the board of the sugar company? Will he ask them to stand up and say that they do not condone it either? Will he ask them not to make petty statements saying they were trying to save a few shillings? It was on the cards from the beginning that the company would carry out this action.

The farmers of Connacht have, because of their geographical position, a particular type of "glic-ness" which is absolutely necessary to them. It was very necessary to them on that occasion that they had that intuition about what this semi-State body would do. The sugar company may not be to blame for their lack of purpose and energy which they could use to the benefit of the community, and particularly the community of Tuam. They make their million for the State each year but obviously the State took the million this year and did not hand it back for reinvestment.

I have asked several times that something be done about the millions of pounds that we are paying for imported manufactured products of farm implements which are arriving on our shores day by day from as far away as Czechoslovakia and Russia. I believe the sugar company have the technical know-how, the engineering staff, the ground staff, the connections, to make a viable proposition of the manufacture of farm machinery. My pleas have always been ignored. It is a way out of this impasse that the Government and the Minister find themselves in with regard to investment. They could, by direction to the board, instruct the sugar company to invest this million pounds they will make again this year back into the production of farm machinery. I do not specifically mean beet harvesters. If they did not move with the times in the manufacture of beet harvesters and beet equipment, they would not have any beet today.

I am talking about the other types of farm machinery needed in agriculture. They have the technical know-how. For nine months of each year they have the finest technical staff who could go into the manufacture of farm implements, who could, if they so wished, manufacture some of the finest implements that could be put into Irish agriculture. They are much needed today in these days of rising costs and rising demands. Not alone would they meet a necessary need but they would save a massive import capital that is being squandered, and they would also give necessary employment in towns similar to the one that I live in, Tuam. They have the finest equipment. They have the ground staff to sell. They have the communications already there in their industry, they would have no problem selling their products and servicing farm equipment. I ask the Minister to impress upon his board to change the direction of the sugar company and ask the new executive who have been recently appointed to give their views on this point. The £1 million profit they will make this year would be very little to ask them to invest in a project of this type, which would help the weakest section in the country— our section in Tuam.

Another Department has reached its peak performance of minus zero, that is, the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. If you live two miles outside the speed limit of any town the Minister will guarantee that for the next five years you have not got a hope of getting a telephone. I am sure every Senator and every individual who wrote to that gentleman over the last 12 months knows quite well that the circular from that Department states. Everybody who made an application for a telephone has got one. They have no hope, while the present Minister is in that office, of ever getting a telephone if they live outside the speed limits of the town.

If you live inside the speed limits of certain towns you have not a hope either, particularly in the west where we have an astronomical number of exchanges still with numbers like Athenry 1, Athenry 2, Athenry 42 and Athenry 407. After 50 years there are only 408 telephones in operation in that town. You have to ring the operator in certain areas before 11 a.m. or 10.30 p.m. or you will not make any connection. We had statements by the Minister recently where he blamed the union—I think they call themselves members of the Irish Post Office Engineering Workers' Union— and said they were responsible for the lack of our telephone communications. Everybody knows that if the Department do not have the money they cannot perform. It is a simple calculation and has been in existence since Adam and Eve—and that is some time ago —and the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, headed by Deputy Conor Cruise-O'Brien, the Minister, are still in that age and have not moved forward. Those of us in the agricultural community first, and in small businesses second, know that if we want to apply for a private telephone or for a public telephone kiosk in the neighbourhood, we will have no hope for six years. Nothing is being done and no money is being put aside to help in this direction. As I am sure the Minister for Finance is aware, the first things he sees every morning in his office is at least two or three telephones. If he had not got them there he could not exist in his Department as readily as he is trying to exist——

Mr. R. Ryan

I might get along better without them.

Mr. Killilea

Any more you might. There was a time when you spent so long ringing Iran and Iraq, and all those places, arranging to borrow that if you had not the telephone you could not have got it. and maybe it would have been a godsend to this country if you could not have made the communication and you would not have put us into debt to £3,200 million. That would have been a blessing.

If telephones had been provided in the west to small farmers and businessmen who need them to perform their work, it would have been a far better investment and we would not have been half as badly off. The telephone situation is desperate. It is no good the Minister blaming members of the union and holding them responsible for the bad service when everybody knows that he and this Government are totally responsible for the lack of investment in that Department. If the Minister says that they have made an enormous amount of money available to the Department of Posts and Telegraphs I may believe him but the people of my country have no intention of believing him. That is certain because it is no less than a national scandal that enterprising farmers and small businessmen cannot have a necessity of life—a telephone— and no effort is being made and no promise can made that they will ever get one. That is the most serious aspect of it.

Because of the promises made by the Government in 1973 we find our health boards in a desperate situation. Day by day the poorer sections of the community are suffering because of this inept Government. Patients in rural areas have no public transport available to take them to their hospitals. We put schemes into operation where taxis or public transport of some description could be arranged to bring them to the hospitals. If we paid now for that transport they could still be brought. We find that an order from the Department of Health to the health boards stated that they no longer can pay for this service and that we no longer have authority to pay transport services for elderly people, who need to be brought to regional or central hospitals. This is very bad, particularly in my area where we have no public transport.

It always is a good thing on Appropriation Bill to remind the Minister that the weakest in the community are always the first to suffer when, as he so classifies it, we have to tighten our economic belts. A new approach to medical cards has been adopted by the Western Health Board. Now you do not get the chance to review your card. You are told by some hypnotic way that due to circumstances recently come to notice, you are now considered ineligible for a medical card and they ask you to post in the one you have post-haste because they need it urgently. Some people will go to their local representative of one party or another and he will do his utmost for them, naturally, and will write to the necessary places to get forms, and will help that person, as is his duty, but there are many people who do not use that service and who find themselves lost. About 60 per cent of those who send back their medical cards are people who do not approach public representatives. They are at the mercy of their local doctor and their local pharmacist until such time as their own view will permit them to make an application for a new medical card. The levels of income required and the method of assessment for a medical card should be published in every local newspaper for three weeks running so that everybody would have the opportunity of understanding how they could be eligible for a medical card and be in a position to assess whether they are eligible or not to a reasonable degree so that if this medical card is taken from them they will be able to re-apply for it and state that because of what they read in the local paper recently they think they are entitled to a medical card and that they would like a new application to be processed properly.

At one time the Department of Health was the biggest employer of young girls who had got their leaving certificates. We now have a situation in my area and in the two neighbouring counties of Mayo and Galway where there is only one training hospital where 900 girls attended interviews for 80 places last year.

This year I assume there will be an increase of at least 20 per cent on that figure for fewer places, because it has now been announced that such places as Castlebar Hospital, Roscommon Hospital, Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe, and other smaller hospitals will no longer be able to train young nurses. It has been Government policy that without fear or favour every married woman in this country should be employed. This is the one department where that policy has upset the situation. I agree that some married women need work because they are settling down and have huge mortgage repayments to make. They are not helped now by the State because Deputy Tully was good enough to take the grant away from them last year aided and abetted by every Minister in this national Coalition Government. They have to work in order to meet this initial cost of setting up house and home.

But there are thousands of others, some of them whose husbands have more than a normal wage—I do not know what the new normal is to be, but whatever it is some of them will have even double that—who travel to those hospitals day and night to take positions as nurses as a sideline or as a way to get away from the kitchen sink. This is the new ideal dream of women, that they no longer belong to the kitchen and that they should never have been their in the first instance. In any event, they are now taking the place from their daughters or if not their daughters, their neighbours' daughters who used to get good employment as nurses in those hospitals.

In this particular aspect of Irish employment, I ask the Minister for Health and his Government or somebody in the Government who could be classified as responsible to ask or command those people to desist from taking up these very much needed positions for our young girls so as to stop them emigrating by the thousands as they will have to in this situation. They can no longer go to England. They must go further afield and that makes it sadder. I ask the Minister for Finance to please act immediately on this aspect of employment and start again that great flow of training young girls to be nurses. It is a profession which, it is believed, they have a vocation for. So many fine girls have to be left on the unemployment exchange when they could be trained as nurses for the future.

There was much talk today and during the last few weeks on our Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. I should like to deal with the fisheries section of it. Senator Alexis FitzGerald, with his lecturing right arm told us today about the great fields of fish and about the great industry which lies on our shores. This could be true. But what do we know expect what we are told and what we expect may be the truth? We should have been one of the countries, along with Iceland and America and other countries who declared some time ago that the sea fishery limits should be extended to 200 miles. But we are bound and rightly so, within the context of the EEC to define an exclusive limit for ourselves. For the first time since we entered Europe we are in the very envious position that we have at least one of the longest coastlines and as regards certain species of fish we have one of the richest coastlines in the EEC. We should set about the task of telling the EEC that we want and that we must have a limit which we define as proper. It is not correct for us as a people or the Government as a Government to broadly accept that the exclusive rights should be just 50 miles and no more or no less. We must do a quick educational course on fish, fish life and location—all aspects concerned with fish conservation—and then state what our limits must be in order to conserve this fish. We just cannot say that 50 miles is enough. In some areas, it may be too far and in others not enough. We know that your Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Murphy, is making an effort to conserve the herring stock.

Mr. R. Ryan

Deputy Begley is my excellent Parliamentary Secretary.

Mr. Killilea

Sorry. I thought it was Deputy M.P. Murphy who issued all the fishing licences.

Mr. R. Ryan

So he does but the Senator was referring to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance.

Mr. Killilea

No, I was talking about Agriculture and Fisheries.

Mr. R. Ryan

I trust I have not upset the Senator.

Mr. Killilea

No, not a bit; it does not affect me. It was just in connection with the drift net licences. I thought the Minister did not tolerate the way those licences were given out in the south.

Mr. R. Ryan

I thought the Senator said "your Parliamentary Secretary".

Mr. Killilea

No, "the Parliamentary Secretary".

Mr. R. Ryan

I would not like to argue over the gentleman——

Mr. Killilea

I referred to the Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture and Fisheries—with special responsibility for fisheries—I think that is his proper title, who gave instructions to the fishing fleet to conserve, on special days of the week, the herring stock. We had Russian trawlers as well as Danish boats—and Denmark is a member of the EEC but is never mentioned in connection with the plundering of the sea—only 100 yards outside the limits on days when our fishing fleets could not fish. They were mother ships rushing in their small crafts to clear out our stocks. We are trying to conserve and they are engaged in their effort to destroy. The effort to destroy was much greater than the effort to conserve.

This is a valid point in any argument that the Government, especially the Minister for Foreign Affairs, may use in their efforts for conservation. It is essential to determine the extent of the fishing zone, whether it be a mile, 50 or 100 miles, and it should be clearly defined. Mackerel are being taken in thousands of tons from our shores also. When we negotiate our exclusive fishing zone I hope we will know exactly where the fishing grounds are, the movements of fish and their spawning grounds so that we can control the stocks. We can learn a lesson from Iceland. After they had destroyed their own herring stock they made sure that their cod stocks would not diminish. They fought hard for this and I assume have won the battle to preserve their cod stocks. We have the richest herring and mackerel fishing grounds in Europe. We must show the way, not be shown the way. We must explain clearly why we must have this zone. We must back up our claim with a newer and more up-to-date fishery patrol service. There is an absolute necessity today for a coastguard airship to patrol our fishing grounds. In Iceland, their patrol service can photograph a fishing ship from the air and show exactly where it was fishing and this is upheld in court. When the crew of a ship is brought to court and found guilty of fishing illegally, it is not the catch and equipment which are confiscated but the trawler or whatever type of boat is used. It is time we also took such measures. We must tell the EEC that it is necessary that we conserve our fishing stock and that we intend beginning by introducing legislation under which the penalty will be so severe as to deter people from coming within our limits.

We will have to lead the way at the Conference of the Sea next August or September. Countries outside the EEC have imposed a 200 mile limit and it has resulted in serious problems, particularly when we consider the position of Germany, where approximately 69 per cent of the total catch is caught in foreign waters; 36 per cent of Britain's catch is outside their own territorial waters. Were it not for the fact that Denmark still have access to Greenland's waters, they would find themselves in a similar position. Holland must certainly suffer. As a result, ships suitable for deep water fishing will come on the market I assume and I would ask the Minister for Finance to convey to the Government the necessity to purchase those ships and make necessary arrangements through the EEC. Now is the time to train crews for these ships. This can be done without embarrassment to those countries. We can, in return, guarantee them supplies of processed fish, but not fish in the sea. It is something that must get a great deal of thought. It is an argument that the Minister for Foreign Affairs can use, an argument we are quite entitled to use.

The recent directive from the EEC about inshore fishing, with grants being paid to people, particularly the Germans, to scrap their boats and discontinue inshore fishing is an indication of the thinking in those countries. Before these large vessels are scrapped, before the EEC pays grants for them to be scrapped, the EEC could make a grant to us to purchase them and use them. That is a very logical argument any normal thinking person would apply and, if normality has returned to this Government, they could apply that little bit of normal thinking on this aspect of the economy.

Since the Appropriation Bill of last year we have had some records created. We have had inept Government and, having exhausted all world sources of borrowing, we must now face stark reality. We are now going to be asked to tighten our economic belts and face the issues at stake. That is exactly what Senator Russell said. We must now face the facts and the facts are becoming plainer daily. This Government should have the common courtesy to dissolve and give the nation an opportunity of judging whether or not the National Coalition was a catastrophe.

Mr. R. Ryan

The Senator might not like the verdict.

Mr. Killilea

Chance it.

Mr. Harte

I am always astonished when I hear people speaking as if nothing has happened during the past 56 years, or so, since we won the right to handle our own affairs. I say this particularly because of the contribution of Senator Yeats this morning. The Minister pleaded with us to be objective. I took it he was asking for objectivity because we have been through a very difficult period, particularly in 1975, and we might have some useful suggestions to make. Of course, simple me, I was naïve enough to think that that course would be pursued. Unfortunately, that has not been the case and, because of Senator Yeats's approach this morning, it is now necessary for me to alter my approach. His approach necessitates my going briefly over the history of the past 50 years to take issue with him on some of the points he made.

One would think that the Opposition did not have the opportunity in 33 years to take a certain course of action and do the things they now advocate. In 1926 we had 1¼ million people in work in the country. Fifty years later the number was less than one million. I do not think that anyone could get away with implying the present Government are responsible for that situation particularly in the light of the well recognised characteristics of the Irish economy in failing to absorb into the workforce the natural increase in population and the drift from the land. Those are two aspects that have been neglected from the beginning.

Emigration was a great safety valve. Nothing effective was done to tackle this question of absorbing the growth in population into employment. There was no effective policies. Certainly there was programming and certainly there were efforts made in certain directions. Conveniently, the argument is advanced as if the situation today is the very same as it was during Fianna Fáil's long period of office.

In the thirties Scandinavia had a GNP comparable to that of Ireland. They now have a standard of living which is three times better than that of our people. It is hard to have to listen to those who are very critical of a Government dealing with a very difficult situation. That situation is widely acknowledged throughout the world. How is it that Scandinavia, which had the same sort of GNP as we had in the thirties, could adopt methods which would bring the standard of living there up to three times that of Ireland? There was no such thing as an EEC then. We had a Government. It was a Fianna Fáil Government which had 33 years of office operating within the private enterprise system. They had the opportunity of doing something very like what was done in Scandinavia but, in fact, that opportunity was never availed of.

The approach by the Government who had 33 years in power, 16 of those on a continuous basis, to solving unemployment was emigration for both the unemployed and the unemployable. Not only did we allow our able-bodied people to use the safety valve of emigration but we also allowed some of our disabled people, the unemployable people, to take the emigrant ship. Because of a lack of policy and foresight no steps were taken to absorb workers into the services and manufacturing employments even though there was a downward trend in agricultural work.

There is no mention of the fact that emigration was the solver of the problem and it is conveniently overlooked that there were one million Irish-born people resident in the UK. Quite a lot of that emigration took place in the period of office of the Fianna Fáil Government. They are now critical of this Government but they are not comparing like with like in their arguments of how the present Administration are tackling their problems today. They do not have regard to the fact that 1975 was the most critical period in our history, except for the 1930s. It may even have been worse than the thirties. They make the arguments as if nothing had happened, nothing had changed, that the circumstances are exactly the same as when they were in power. They overlook the fact that in the 1950s there was heavy emigration which actually left an imbalance in the age groups. As a result of this imbalance there is a very high dependence on social services among the young and the old, which this present Government are trying to provide. That is something that was inherited. It cannot be denied; it is a fact of life. It is necessary to spend money now on the young and the old, and quite rightly so, but there is no appreciation of this fact by the Opposition, there is no acceptance of the need to deal with this particular contingency in the way it is being dealt with. This is despite the fact that the previous Administrations held office for a period of 33 years, which included the 1950s when there was high emigration.

Mr. Lenihan

In the 1950s there was mainly Coalition Government. That was the crucial period to which the Senator is referring.

Mr. Harte

It does not defeat my argument. Fianna Fáil still had 33 years of office——

Mr. Lenihan

I am only taking the Senator up on the period of time that was crucial in regard to this country's massive emigration.

Mr. Harte

If the Senator will wait a little, as I did until he had finished, he will discover that I am not confining my arguments to the 1950s. There were other periods and I would like to draw that to his attention. Let me put it another way to the Senator. You cannot blame the terrible 1920s, you cannot blame the awful 1930s and you cannot blame the war in the 1940s. If you take the war during the 1940s, there were 250,000 in the British armed forces which again was a solution in its own way. You have not got that excuse to fall back on, so you can take your pick. As a boy in the late 1920s and early 1930s I lived in poverty, I knew what it was and knew what high unemployment was.

Mr. Lenihan

That was when we were supported by the Labour Party, by the way.

Mr. Harte

I remember when Jim Larkin persuaded de Valera to go into politics, to stop his nonsense, to come in and make a contribution to the political situation and I am pleased that he did, in a way. But you had those solutions, you had the emigration for the bulk of that time. I admit that in the early 1960s Fianna Fáil could lay some claim to a time of sustained economic growth. It was a good measure of success. In the 1960s, 50 years after taking charge of our own affairs, after 33 years of office of Fianna Fáil, we had a 4 per cent per annum growth rate of the economy. That was good. Exports rose by 6½ per cent in real terms. The industrial sector expanded by 6 per cent. Yet despite those particular growth figures the astonishing fact was that compared to 1926, when there were 1.25 million people at work, we had only 1.05 million people at work during the 1950s. There was progress, expansion and good growth in the 1960s but nothing effective was done about putting people to work as the population grew. No provision was made for the growth of the population and the decline in agricultural work.

Mr. Lenihan

I agree with the Senator. It is all about putting people back to work.

Mr. Harte

It is all about putting people back to work and if the debate had started off on that basis we would have been all right but unfortunately it did not. At least I have started my contribution on a particular basis and I hope to develop it. However, I will be critical where it is necessary to be critical of the present Administration.

Debate adjourned.

The Seanad adjourned at 8.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 15th July, 1976.