This debate has wandered over a very wide range of subjects, from the history of the Huguenots on the one side to what constitutes the balance for car wheels on the other side. We have had economics, highbrow and lowbrow, political lectures and fiscal policy. Both of the big Parties have availed to the fullest of the opportunity of having it out with each other, over all these matters of high politics, if we might so call them. Goodness knows where the debate would lead us if, occasionally, a Deputy from these benches did not intervene to try to bring the discussion back to the subject—really to bring it back to earth, as it were. When thinking over this, it struck me that we have an illustration of how near both the big Parties can come to this discussion in the election speeches that were delivered during the week in Carlow and Kilkenny. Although unemployment is admittedly the most important subject before the country, and although this debate has been going on here for the last fortnight, anyone who took the trouble to read in the newspapers the election speeches that were delivered last Sunday will find that it was not unemployment the big guns of either Party were concerned with. They were concerned more about what was done in 1921 or 1922, and as to who fired the first shot in that disastrous civil war. In that connection I can only say that if the advice the Labour Party tendered both these Parties at Christmas, 1921, and in March, May and June, 1922, had been taken, that first shot would never have been fired, and the trouble we are now discussing would not, possibly, have assumed the proportions it did assume in the meantime.
I want to protest, too, against the attitude adopted in this debate by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. He is the Minister mainly and primarily responsible in connection with this subject. He puts down, when this motion was tabled, a platitudinous amendment, and instead of standing up, as, in my opinion, it was his duty to do, as the first speaker from the Government Benches, he adopts the quite unusual tactics of getting another Minister to propose the amendment. Of course, we have it from the President that he is not going to speak until the last Deputy on the Labour Benches has finished. That may be good tactics, it may be good strategy, it may be counted clever, but it is not treating the House and this subject properly. This is not a game of Party tactics. The motion has not been put down to seek Party advantage. In fact, it was deliberately framed so that its adoption by the House might not necessarily imply want of confidence in the present Ministry. It may be no harm to read the resolution at this stage of the debate. It asks the Dáil to affirm "that the measures hitherto adopted by the Government for the relief of unemployment are insufficient and ought to be extended immediately." The President told us all that has been done by the Government. Other Ministers have done the same and have taken credit for what they have done. It is not my purpose to deny them any credit that is due to them. If they want credit for doing the duty that was imposed on them when they were given control of the resources of the State, by all means let them have that credit. Even though much has been done, and we are ready and willing to give any credit for the Government's efforts in that direction, the question that faces us now is: Have the measures that have been taken proved sufficient for the relief of unemployment? I maintain that the test of the sufficiency is whether or not there are still any unemployed with us. The sufficiency of the measures will be proved only when the unemployed have disappeared for all practical purposes.
Let us examine that position. We have the registered unemployed—those who have registered in the Labour Exchanges. We have those, whose existence anyway is known of, who do not register because they cannot see any immediate benefit accuring from registration. They have exhausted any benefits coming to them, and they are not going to the trouble of travelling long distances and possibly standing in queues to register. We have what might be described as the semi-unemployed— the numerous uneconomic holders in the west, south and north-west, who are employed in the proper sense of the term for only a very small portion of the year, because they have not sufficient work on their little holdings for themselves and their families. We have the migratory labourers, who have to seek temporary employment in England and Scotland. In addition to that, we have the 25,000 or 30,000 people who emigrate every year to get employment somewhere else. In face of this, I hold that nobody can stand up and say that sufficient measures have been taken by the Government for the relief of unemployment. Unemployment is still with us, and it is still a problem to be solved. No doubt the Minister for Industry and Commerce will overwhelm the House with statistics when he comes to speak at the end of the debate. He will tell us all the people that have been employed and all the people who will be employed. But the bald fact remains that there are a number of unemployed people—let the number be, as Deputy Morrissey said, in the region of one hundred thousand or fifty thousand— the fact is that these people are there still unemployed.
The Minister for Finance was rather inclined to minimise the position. He said in fact that it was not too bad— certainly it was not as bad as in previous years. On that point I should like to quote just two opinions—one from the City of Dublin and one from a typical western county. I have here an appeal issued over the name of a distinguished civil servant by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Dublin. In the course of that appeal it is stated:—
"The intensity of the prevailing distress is without parallel in the experience of our members."
In a resolution adopted by the Roads Committee of the Mayo Co. Council within the last week occurs this statement:—
"The conditions in Mayo are worse now than they have been within living memory."
I put these to the Minister for Finance to show that when he says that things are not too bad, in fact they are not as bad as in previous years, there are other people, in any case, who hold different opinions and people who have, I maintain, some right or authority to speak on the subject.
The President claimed that during the last four or five years the Government have done all that was reasonably possible to tackle and solve this problem. Looking back over those five years and the attempts which were made by the Government to deal with the question, I was struck by this remarkable thing, which may have escaped the attention of many Deputies, especially the newer Deputies. Early in 1923 a Committee or Commission was set up, after a discussion in this House, and pressure brought to bear by the Labour Party at the time, on reconstruction and development. That was a representative Commission of employers, labour and financial interests. I believe that a respected Deputy of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, now sitting in this House, was a prominent member of it. This Commission brought in an interim report in which schemes were recommended which would give immediate employment to 40,000 men. The President, instead of accepting that report and acting on it, denounced the report and said with regard to one of the recommendations that it was a scandalous recommendation. Although this Commission, after the issue of the interim report, was setting about devising other schemes which would go towards solving this problem in a permanent way, in view of the President's attitude towards their findings in the interim report there was nothing left for them to do but what they did, namely, to dissolve.