I know that it was five years. Perhaps the Senator thought we should take it over a longer period. I would have to say in reply that if one says we should tackle the unemployment problem and spread it over a longer time period one is also saying to countless thousands of people that, whether they know it or not, they are going to remain unemployed for that extra length of time. That may be a perfectly permissible and valid view but I happen to be of the school which says if it can be at all done we should make every human effort possible to cut down on the length of time for which young people find themselves deprived of employment opportunities. However, I recognise that there are greater risks and that greater efforts are needed if one sets an incredibly ambitious time-scale.
I am in much more agreement with the Senator when he says that much more important than the targets of the White Paper are the conditions essential to their fulfilment. The White Paper went on to talk about some of those conditions. The Senator also mentioned the lack of clarity in discussing the way in which some of these conditions might be met. This was a point which cropped up in some other speakers' remarks as well. If I am not mistaken, Senator McCartin made a somewhat similar point later in the discussion, saying that it was all very well to set these ambitious targets but we wanted to see more clearly how we were going to achieve them.
I should like to deal with this important point. The numbers in themselves are not important. The numbers are attempts to illustrate, in a simple convenient term which everybody can understand, the scale of the effort required to be made. It is easier to say to people that we need 25,000 more jobs a year and that compares with only achieving 7,000 or 8,000 a year in our previous best. That conveys very quickly to people the order of magnitude in the turn around and transformation we are seeking. The numbers themselves are not important. What is much more important is how you are going to do it. I am talking about the conditions essential to their fulfilment and the actual policies by which we are going to bring about the change.
Of course, if the only things that were associated with these planning documents were to publish the papers and set out nice targets, tables and discussions about the pros and cons of different approaches, it would not be worth the paper they were printed on. At the end of the day what is important is the action that is taken. Of course, we want to know how we are going to achieve these ambitious results and what action the Government are going to seek to evoke from the people in order to achieve them.
In some areas one can spell out the kind of action that is needed and where that is possible we have been seeking to do it. We have indicated quite a number of changes for activities that lie more or less wholly within the sphere of government decision and responsibility. For instance, if in order to sustain the kind of development that is needed for rapid increase in employment in a satisfactory way, one needs, for example, an improved road system or an expanded telecommunications network and so on, then these are areas of action which can be identified and the necessary decisions can be taken. We can claim that in the few months which have elapsed since the White Paper was printed there has been further evidence of the speed and the direction in which the Government are moving in these areas. So, if we are rewriting the numbers today, as Senator McDonald suggested, not all the rewriting is necessarily of an adverse kind. Some of it is very positive. We now see much more clearly the speed and the content of programmes for say, modernising the telephone system in a five-year time span and a ten-year programme for modernising the road network which was published a few months ago. Some of the action can be set out fairly clearly because on the whole it lies within the sphere of Government responsibility.
The most important areas are the ones where the results depend on the behaviour and reactions of others and are not simply a matter for Government decision or resolution. That is recognised not only in the White Paper but in any other statement of Government policy which one cares to name. I am thinking here of the importance of getting the right kind of climate in industrial relations, the right kind of decisions with respect to income increases and so on. Some of those matters were touched on by Senator Whitaker and other speakers.
At the time that our debate was taking place in March, I was not in a position to say a great deal because at that juncture we were in the middle of discussions with the trade unions and employers on these very matters. In January of this year the Taoiseach had launched the notion that what was required was a comprehensive type of understanding, embracing the social partners, which would cover not simply the traditional matters of pay increases but also would extend to commitments and support for this programme for tackling unemployment as well as an understanding on the policies and actions which would then be needed in other areas such as taxation, developments in social welfare and so on. Many weeks of discussion and work went into the production of just that very type of agreement. As we know, the original proposals which emerged from that work have not yet been ratified. There was an initial rejection on the trade union side which, I am happy to say, appears to have been largely overcome by some revisions. We should know, in a matter of a week or so, whether or not there will be the necessary support for the terms put forward in this draft national understanding. I should make clear that those terms, while they cover a limited period of 15 months, are intended as phase 1 of a longer term, five year programme which would deal with all of the issues arising from a five year programme for achieving full employment.
Let me point out to the House that the trade unions, in their first discussions on these matters in March of this year, when they were deciding on a mandate, so to speak, for their negotiators, expressed their commitment to and support of, the target of full employment which is planned. They welcomed and recognised the efforts which had already been made by the Government to achieve that result and said that they would work to help to achieve it. The terms of the proposed understanding which at present relates to the initial period of 15 months or so, give some indication of the approach which is being adopted in that area.
I do not suggest that all the problems that will arise in that context of the national understanding have been solved. No-one believes that they could be. If phase 1 is adopted, there would be even more complex, perhaps even more difficult issues to be resolved in the second or later phases. If you are in the business of changing things, you have to make a start somewhere in bringing about changes. We are justified in maintaining a reasonable degree of optimism that the necessary type of change can be forthcoming in these areas. I would like to emphasise that the approach to policy formulation is not simply the publication of nice targets and rosy promises. It is the setting out of guidelines and the bench marks for action, action designed to bring about the necessary changes in behaviour. Those changes in behaviour, however, require the understanding and support of groups outside the domain of Government itself. This takes time and one must recognise that progress is not going to take the form of a simple smooth upward path. Who, with any sense of history, would expect or believe that this is the way mankind progresses in any area? Anyone with even a limited familiarity with history knows that the progress of mankind since he first came out of his cave can be more appropriately likened to the drunken man going up the flight of stairs. Not only does he make his progress by occasional upward jerks, very often there is the temporary relapse or the slide back down one or two steps, before another upsurge occurs which takes him to a new height, or new plateau.
If we are to be realistic in our approach to bringing about the action that will help us to achieve our targets and our goals, we must be prepared for the hard work, for the ups and downs, for overcoming the initial doubts, hesitations, difficulties, objections and so forth, and for building up the necessary degree of support and commitment which will eventually enable us to achieve our goals.
I hope I have explained why, while it is possible, in some areas, to spell out, with a fair degree of clarity, the nature of the policy action to be taken in support of targets, one cannot do that in other instance and, indeed, why it would be foolish and even dangerous to attempt to do so. The areas in which reticence or silence is noticed appear, on careful examination, to be areas in which it is prudent and wise to be silent. If there is a case for prudence and planning — as, of course, there is—those are the areas in which prudence is appropriate.
There are a number of other contributions on which I would like to comment and I shall try to be brief. Senator Robinson emphasised that she was very disappointed with the lack of reference to the role, or possible role, of the National Development Corporation, and invited the Minister to elaborate on that when he came to reply. This is a perfect example of my point about the timing of comment in some of these areas. At that juncture, in March, one had embarked on discussions with trade unions and one of the issues on the agenda was the question of the development corporation and the possible role which such a body might fulfil. It was not until the end of April that those discussions had reached a sufficient degree of progress where one could arrive at any clear decision. As you know, the Government took the decision, which is incorporated as part of the proposed national understanding, to establish a new National Enterprise Agency. This agency would undertake the task of harnessing new development opportunities as they arise, whether as joint ventures with other groups in the private or public sector, or acting on its own initiative. That is a very convenient and adequate example of the need to balance openness and clarity with the need to take account of other views and other proposals which have not yet been finalised.
At this point, it is relevant to take some remarks which Senator Governey made, both last day and earlier this evening. He listed some areas in which he was disappointed that there was no progress from the Government. He was also disappointed with the lack of decision in the White Paper, and listed some areas.
It is totally unrealistic to imagine that one can slice out one particular day of some particular week and say "In the first weeks of 1979, the Government are going to take decisions on A to Z and are not going to take any other decisions," presumably, for the rest of the year. With the best will in the world at any point in time one can only hope to assemble so many areas and take so many decisions. If we wanted to play the numbers game, I could produce more than 20 specific decisions in the White Paper, which is not bad going for any one period of a couple of weeks. In addition to those 20 or more specific decisions, one can list a number of areas where further decisions will be taken in the near future and, indeed, some of those subsequent decisions have already been announced. It would be inappropriate and unrealistic to try to organise our planning on the basis that all decisions were to be incorporated into the "White Paper of the Year." I do not believe that would be helpful. If we attempted to do that, it would act as a major obstacle to progress because, presumably, then one would have to wait for the rest of the year, to be hallowed or blessed with the dawning of a new year and another White Paper. I trust I can be dispensed on that point.
As to the Senator's other points, there were a number of areas where he made some interesting suggestions that we shall certainly follow up.
On the general point, that not all the specific proposals put forward in our election manifesto two years ago have yet been implemented, the same marked infairness applies. I could get him a list of, I think, more than 40 specific items which have been implemented, which, again, is not a bad record. It should be clear that the manifesto was a programme for a whole term of Government; we have two to three years more in which to complete the task. In particular, in the area of decisions which were identified as being urgent, requiring action within the first 12 months, every one of those has been implemented. So, far from that being a criticism, I would regard it as evidence that we had indeed kept our promises to the electorate and that we were pursuing the programme for which we had received a mandate.
That brings me to the concluding point, that there has been, undoubtedly, a change in the environment within which we have to operate since the White Paper was prepared, deterioration that was most pronounced in the international area because of the upheavals in oil supply and the consequential major increase in price.
That deterioration in the international outlook was reinforced by the damage inflicted by our actions at home, especially in the field of industrial disputes. Some Senators suggested that this deterioration in the economic outlook means that we should, scrap our development plans. It would be absolutely ridiculous to scrap them. The fact that some external event has intruded; the fact that all of the initial conditions that one has set out as being necessary if any targets are to be met, have not been fulfilled; the fact that conditions have changed, is not any argument on the merits or demerits of the policies themselves.
This worsening of the oil situation means that we shall have a slower rate of growth this year, that we shall have worse inflation, in common with the whole of the western world, or that we shall not get as big an increase in employment as we would originally have liked. These are not arguments for scrapping plans or proposals. On the contrary, surely these are arguments for saying what are now needed are even greater efforts in this direction. We must now think in terms of new ways of searching out employment opportunities. We must now learn to cope with the consequences of a less prosperous outside world, therefore, a world which offers fewer opportunities for our exports. That means that there is an even greater need to put our own house in order and the field in which urgent improvement is essential is industrial relations, with the associated income increases.
Members of the Government from the Taoiseach downwards, right through the Cabinet, have all consistently stressed the vital role of the efforts of our own people in achieving our ambitious development targets. We consistently said that there can be no question of bringing about the necessary results if we have the damage and disruption of protracted industrial disputes, especially in any sort of key services, and the less visible, but just as damaging, longer term consequences of excessive pay increases. Unfortunately, in the months that have elapsed since we initiated this debate, there has not been the improvement that we would have wished. For, that reason, our progress is not as rapid as would have been possible. Progress not taking the form of a simple upward graph surely means that, far from losing heart and saying that we should slow down and become less ambitious, we have to make an even greater effort so that we can recover lost ground.
In the immediate future, we must first see the outcome of the discussions on the proposed national understanding. If that proposal is accepted by the trade unions, we must certainly look to them to honour fully, in the spirit as well as in the letter, commitments which it enshrines about, improving the climate of industrial peace and bringing about more orderly arrangements for resolving any disputes that may arise. While we cannot expect to achieve perfection overnight, there is no reason why we cannot embark on the path of improvement at the earliest opportunity. There is a whole generation of young people in Ireland who will never forgive us if we cannot share their impatience to win a place for themselves in their own country.
