Echoing the idea put forward by the last speaker, I would say in every election the electorate are looking for a new initiative, a new move and asking somebody to solve problems on their behalf. Never more so than in the last election was it obvious to people, through a great change in national and international circumstances, that now is the time when we must do something. We have unemployment running at a dangerously high level and any Government in office must feel a great urgency to solve this problem.
I give my assent completely to the idea of a new Department which will seek to solve this problem. When we think of economic planning in the past, and the programmes for economic expansion, the first programmes had some degree of success. After this there was failure, and almost a complete giving up of the effort to make planning successful. This pattern leads us who are not as well aware of the facts of the situation as Senator Whitaker to question whether the concept of planning was ever made to work. Its miserable failure in recent times leads one to believe that the progress we achieved in those years might have been achieved with or without that plan. That is a question I am not competent to answer, but it is one an ordinary intelligent observer must ask himself. It is never too late to get a new idea, or to make a move. Now is a good time to take a new look at the situation, try a new solution and make the best of it.
In the past we looked too much at our own weaknesses and expressed too many doubts about our vulnerability. We looked at our situation on the map, at our economic strength, at the openness of our economy, and we thought up all sorts of excuses why we were not doing better. We sought at times to protect and insulate ourselves. We failed to look at the other side of the coin, to look at our strength and resources, and ask what were the strong points in our characteristics as a people, in the kind of resources we had and what we could make of them. We did not exploit our agricultural resources. Our agricultural industry, until recently, was primitive in its approach to production. Nevertheless, it produced and sold well-produced goods, at the right price, perhaps not always well processed or well presented, but in competitive markets.
Looking at our social structure we have houses, schools and parishes full of young people, brought up in the right kind of environment, not in an urban structure where a high proportio of young people were spoiled by a wrong upbringing in slum areas before they got a chance to start in life or by family circumstances and their environment. Over the past ten years, or so, we had the ideal kind of young people to start building an economy. A high proportion of them came from a rural background and even in their early childhood, developing skills, learning to solve problems, to cope, to improvise, and to work. They knew what it was to work, and most of them experienced want to some degree. We had a great start on which to build a competitive economy.
We lost many opportunities in the past. We did not seek to develop our own brains and encourage our own entrepreneurs or business people. We did not have that tradition. We did not encourage young people to go out on their own and take a chance. That kind of industry would have served us much better in the long run. We got assistance from large firms such as Asahi and Ferenka. However, I do not see it as the same healthy natural development we could have got if we had approached the problem from the other side. Our planners depended too much on solving the problems of an under-developed rural area by bringing in one industry. The social changes were too fast. We had too much of a rush for housing in some small urban areas while houses were being vacated in other areas. People came in here with the skills and the machinery and they knew the products they wanted. They wanted the people to do the job.
I have no grudge against these people but, on the other hand, I do not like what too much of this kind of industry too suddenly can do to people. They came in here. They invited in the union. They paid rates of wages which were generally acceptable because most of these industries were fairly profitable. In the end, they created conditions in which it became more difficult for the local entrepreneur to develop. We expected international standards of wages. We looked at Britain, France and the United States, and we wanted their standards. Suddenly we found ourselves looking for the standards of living in those countries while we were still a poor country.
The small manufacturer, the person starting off in industry, had to compete with the wages paid by these people. The small industrialist starting on his own might have the idealism to carry him through difficult times and through years of small or almost no profit. It is very easy to transmit that idealism to workers and the majority would be quite happy to come in and work in this sort of industry and acquire skills. It would absorb the school leavers year after year as it grew in a particular area. It would be a much healthier development. Now, in recent years this small industry has had to compete in wage levels with the other type of industry I mentioned. While an industry paying good wages may seem very successful, ultimately it might not be the healthiest in our economy. This is an aspect of planning we overlooked to some extent. That basic trend I mentioned and the quality of the people freely available to build industry all over rural Ireland have been neglected. Planning here has usually been taken up by a small number who were regarded as highly qualified people. They spoke the jargon of the highly qualified and the educated. They kept the subject to themselves and very often it was difficult for the average worker or the small industrialist to understand the thinking or the logic.
I have listened to a number of speakers and some of them indulged in planning jargon. They discussed it on a level that does not make sense to those people who must necessarily be involved if we are to take the whole subject seriously. Ironically, it was left to the higher level ex-civil servant, Senator Whitaker, from whom the public might not normally expect to hear the most understandable language, to speak in a language which the average intelligent person, interested in the subject and observing what was going on, could understand. I do not completely agree with the theory he put forward but he spoke in terms which showed he knew what he was talking about. His speech was obviously aimed at the rank and file who must understand what we are talking about. The problem is to make the idea acceptable and so the whole concept of planning must be discussed in a language that will be understood by the people who must, in the end, fill the jobs that we hope to create and reach the targets that we hope to achieve.
To a large extent the trade unions do not seem to have participated in the actual planning of whatever progress we have made to date. Trade unions, for some reason or other, have not been involved as they should have been. In recent years I have noticed that people who speak for trade unions very often involve themselves in a sort of political ideology which the average worker does not understand or may not be interested in. They profess to believe that the system in which most of us must work is wrong and they are, in fact, actively working to get rid of it. It is very hard to participate in planning progress when, at the same time, you appear to be convinced and you try to convince people that the aim is the destruction of the whole system at the earliest possible opportunity. This is a pity. If we are to have proper planning towards which everybody will contribute then we must have all sections involved. Plans are not something for a Minister and his Department. Neither are they something for lecturers at university level. Plans are something in which all sections of the community must be involved if they are to reach fruition ultimately.
We all know how slowly the civil service moves and how slowly civil servants take to change. Some people say this is a good thing. It is healthy. It is as it should be. I do not know. But, if we seek to bring about change through existing Departments, it will be a very slow process. That is why I believe a new Department, through which we will have the opportunity to build from the ground up what exactly we want, where we will not be tied by the conflict of personalities seeking promotion, where there are many inbuilt restrictions, is so important. I would like to see a new Department in which the Minister would be free to take people from outside, from industry and from the civil service. I would not exclude civil servants. We must have a good mix. We must have people from the trade unions at every level. We must have a good mix of ideas. We must be able to move personnel and recruit those with the required skills at the right time to do a particular job. A new Department gives us a new opportunity. There will be plenty of work in this new Department for a Minister.
Somebody mentioned the bringing in of another Minister to the Department of Finance. This idea could do with a little more study. I have often wondered about the choice of the people available for the Cabinet. One goes into Defence, one into Fisheries, and so on, and then one comes to the Department of Finance and it is suggested there should be an assistant appointed. It must obviously be somebody from a lower level, somebody who has already been passed over. That is the impression I get. But that assistant will require more skill and more ability than, in fact, the Minister does. In an area like Defence—I am not saying it is not an important area—probably most of the important decisions there are made collectively by the Government. The day-to-day running of the Department would not involve the same ability as that required of an assistant in the Department of Finance. I see no reason why we should be restricted at that level. In a Department like Finance we should have a strengthening. The old system of taking the 15 and then taking the leftovers for the assistants should be looked at.
County development teams will be taken over by the new Department. This system has been in operation for a few years now. I am delighted something is going to happen which will enable us to take a new look at this system, its structure and its operation to date. The idea was a good one originally. The structure of these development teams—executive officers from the different areas in their counties, the CEO, the county engineer, the county secretary—sounded good at the time but it is not sufficiently broadly based. We have not got the sort of people there that we need, particularly in severely under-developed counties. Industry should be represented. The staff should be strengthened. At the moment everything depends on the county development officer. If, when these teams were organised, the right man was given the right job then the team was a success, at least for the moment. If the wrong person was given the job, the county development team was a failure. It was as simple as that.
The time has come to take a new look at this, to broaden the representation, and to bring in people from industry. If the staff of a county development team is being expanded, it should not follow that somebody from the county council is recruited into the office and serves as an assistant, and in that way the service is expanded. That is entirely wrong. If an assistant is required, the job should be advertised openly. As well as industry being represented on the boards of these development teams, we should seek to provide, through the development teams, people who understand the requirements of the smaller industries, because they depend on the teams.
The development teams have not been giving a very good service, apart from filling the application forms and making the case for the payment of grants to the Department of Finance. After that, the service given by the county development teams appears to dry up. There is no follow up, and no advisory service available in finance, or technology, or anything else. The industrialists in the less developed areas are left on their own and through their own devices they have to seek and pay for whatever advice they get. Very often this sort of advice comes from sales representatives and perhaps it is not in our best interests to leave small or young industries completely in their hands.
I look forward to a revamping of the county development teams and a new look at the system of encouraging small business people to get started and guiding them for the first years of their existence. I hope the new Department will be successful in the work they set out to do and, whatever weaknesses may develop, the idea is basically a good one.
