I take it that in bringing forward this Bill the President had no intention of announcing it as a Government alternative to the whole Report of the Gaeltacht Commission. It is intended. I take it, to be the Government's alternative to two clauses in that report. One, in the nature of a minority report, recommended that a special Commission on the lines of the old Congested Districts Board should be set up to deal with Gaeltacht matters. The other, which was signed by the majority of members, recommended rather that a Commission with a watching brief should be set up without financial powers but with powers to supervise and co-ordinate the work of the various Departments which have business in the Gaeltacht. I take it that the Government proposal in this Bill is a third means of dealing with the difficulties which those two proposals were intended to solve, and that the Government proposal is only one way of making it easier to carry out in detail the recommendations of the Commission. We are not, therefore, discussing the report of the Gaeltacht Commission, and there is nothing in this Bill to prevent, us discussing that report and the White Paper which deals with it at the proper time.
In a matter like this there is no room for complete and absolute optimism. Our attitude towards any measures that could be taken for the improvement of the Gaeltacht, whether from the point of view of the language or the economic condition, must be, as Deputy Hugh Law has said, an attitude of much anxiety rather than optimism, because everyone who knows anything about the condition of the language and the economic condition of the Gaeltacht must admit that both are very bad and that the condition of the language, in particular, is so bad and getting so rapidly worse that it will take every effort that can be put forward by the Dáil, or anyone in the country interested in the matter, to save the language in the Gaeltacht. There is no room for optimism, and I do not think that any scheme that can be put forward is likely to solve the whole question in a day or likely to do more than give us a fairly anxious time for a large number of years. We must wait and see how such measures as this would work out, and we must be prepared to keep a sharp look out for their working, and change them if they are not working satisfactorily. Personally, I signed the majority report of this Commission in regard to this special matter not with any great enthusiasm and with a considerable bias in my mind in favour of the report of the minority. I believe that Deputy Hugh Law touched on what is really the kernel of the whole matter in his remarks.
It seems to me that the third means which the Government has proposed is perhaps a better means than either of the two set out in the Report of the Gaeltacht Commission, for this reason: that the means that the Government has proposed, this means of setting up a special Ministry to deal with all the problems together, will give us all here an opportunity every year of going into the problems connected with the Gaeltacht in the utmost detail and of seeing whether the measures being carried out by the Government are working satisfactorily. The measures the Government proposes will establish the authority and power of investigation of the Dáil over that work in a better way than would have been possible by either of the two proposals the Commission recommends in the report. Of course, as I say, it is not a perfect scheme. No scheme can be perfect in dealing with the Gaeltacht. No scheme can guarantee perfection, but this scheme gives the members of the Dáil who are interested an opportunity og keeping themselves in touch, from year to year, with the work of this Ministry, and of ensuring that if in any respect the work of the Ministry is not up to the mark it can be improved and the full light of debate in the Dáil can be shed on it.
To come back to what Deputy Law said, and to what I consider the most helpful suggestion made in the debate, he pointed out that the great difficulty that the Minister for Fisheries had in setting up any scheme for dealing with the Gaeltacht is that it is unlikely to be an economic scheme, and that you must be prepared in a great many cases to lose money or to allow money to lie out for a number of years without being absolutely certain whether you will get a return for it or not. As a matter of fact, the Congested Districts Board, nearly forty years ago, was founded for that very reason. It was founded in order that it might be possible for the British Treasury, as it was at the time, to allow money to be handled more easily and to lie out for a longer time than would be possible under the ordinary rules of the British Treasury. That was the reason for the founding of the Congested Districts Board, and it was on that principle it worked. It had a kind of grant-in-aid from the British Treasury and it was not responsible to the British Treasury for that. Anyone who will read the history of the Congested Districts Board by its Secretary will see that that note of freedom from Treasury control runs through the whole history. That was the dominant idea in the minds of those who founded it and that was the principal idea its promoters kept in their minds all along.
If we proceed to set up a Ministry in order to deal with the Gaeltacht, I agree with Deputy Law that there is a considerable danger that we will find a tightening-up of expenditure in the Gaeltacht in a way that will not be advantageous to the public or to the Gaeltacht, that we will have not only a tightening-up, but a process of red-tape introduced into the expenditure in connection with the Gaeltacht, which may not be either an advantage to the Gaeltacht or in any real way an advantage to the public at large. I think the suggestion that Deputy Law threw out should be explored a little bit further. It seems to me that the real villain of the piece is not so much the Parliamentary Committee of Public Accounts. The real villain of the piece in this case is the Ministry of Finance. It is not so much because the Ministry of Finance is at bottom an essentially evil organisation or a force which is always trying to do the biggest amount of harm it can in every direction, but because the system of financial control which we have adopted in this country makes it necessary and inevitable that the Ministry of Finance should undertake and arrogate to itself the position of being expert in everything. Those familiar with the working of other Departments know that in a great many cases in the past schemes of the utmost utility have been held up for a long time purely because some official in the Ministry had to be persuaded that they were proper schemes, although the experts had decided on them long before.
It seems to me that Deputy Law, in touching on that point, has touched upon a question to which the fullest attention should be given by the Dáil. I am not very familiar with the process of controlling public money, but it would seem to me that we could arrange in some carefully defined and narrowly limited way, if you like, that funds under the control of the new Ministry should be accounted for, not to the Ministry of Finance, but directly to the Committee on Public Accounts. It seems to me that in that way you would protect the public interest and you would see that the Dáil would be well acquainted with the means by which these moneys were expended. At the same time you would allow the experts in the Ministry of Fisheries, the only experts who should have a say in the matter, the fullest latitude in expending these moneys as they thought best. I do not know whether that suggestion is workable, but I do think in certain respects, in respects carefully defined and laid down by the Dáil, that the finances of this new Ministry should be by way of a grant-in-aid rather than by way of an ordinary Vote in the Dáil.
There is one great reason which to my mind justifies the setting up of a Ministry such as this. That is that the work of trying to improve the Gaeltacht is not a work that lies along one straight line. It is a work that cuts across the work of every other Ministry in the State. As soon as you begin to talk about the Gaeltacht you come up against questions concerning the division of land, the development of fisheries, rural industries and so on. That being so it seems to me that a Ministry, like this Ministry which is being set up, is perhaps the best means of co-ordinating all these works. It seems to me to be a good thing rather than a bad thing that the Ministry which is responsible for the division of lands all over the country should also be in charge of the division of land in the Gaeltacht. It is recommended in the Gaeltacht Commission's Report for instance—I do not know whether it is workable or not— that some alleviation of conditions in the Gaeltacht would be possible by way of migration out of the Gaeltacht to lands in other parts of the country. If that is found possible—I do not say it will be found possible—the only Ministry which could deal with it is the Ministry which has to do with the whole question of distributing land all over the country.
The same thing applies to fisheries. I hold that the problem of developing the fisheries in the Gaeltacht is not by any means the same problem as the problem of developing the fisheries in the nation as a whole. I hold that the small type of fisherman who works a small holding along the west coast of Ireland has little or nothing in common with the type of fisherman you have in Howth or in Arklow. He has still less in common with the fisherman in the English centres where fishing is organised on a large industrial scale with immense capital resources, huge boats, and so on.
No matter what improvement we have in fishing conditions, there is a resemblance between the type of fishing that is carried on in the Gaeltacht and that must be carried on there, and the general fishing problem of the country, which makes it desirable that the work of looking after both types should be coordinated by the one Department. It seems to me that in those two respects, at any rate, a very good case exists for putting the work of the Gaeltacht in charge of the Department that has to do with the distribution of land and the fishery question of the country as a whole. The third aspect of development in the Gaeltacht, which is concerned with small industries, is, perhaps, on a slightly different footing. Deputy Fahy suggested that perhaps it would be better that that work should be put in charge of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. There might be something to be said for that, but it would have the disadvantage that you would take away from the Ministry which had very large functions in the Gaeltacht already a kind of work which is more important and needs more urgently to be developed in the Gaeltacht than anywhere else. I do not know that a Ministry which has to do with such a thing as unemployment insurance all over the country, with the Trades Loan Guarantee Act, the Geological Survey— perhaps there may be a weakness in respect of the Geological Survey—and matters that make up the work of the Department of Industry and Commerce, has very much in common with the problem of the small rural industries in the Gaeltacht. That is a problem which can very well be looked after by the Ministry that looks after the division of lands and the question of fisheries. It seems to me that it can best be looked after in the manner indicated by the Minister, by the creation of some sort of central depot in Dublin which will be looked after not by one organiser but by three or four officials who will attend not only to the organising of the industry in Ireland but will also look after the purchasing of materials, the various changes that take place in fashions, and who will make contact between the little factories and the markets. I have more hope for an improvement in the Gaeltacht in the development of small rural industries, if the matter could be taken up energetically and if it were put under the control of a properly organised central depot, than in either the development of fisheries or the further division of land. I think, for all these reasons, that the case for setting up this Ministry which the Bill indicates is a very strong one and that the work will probably—I say probably advisedly, because in this case we cannot be too optimistic—be better done by that kind of Ministry, which will co-ordinate all these various activities, than it could be done by the sort of Commission that we recommended in the Gaeltacht Report, or by the revival of the Congested Districts Board. I think Deputies should make up their minds on that question.
While I have every respect for Deputy Hugh Law, and while I agree that the Congested Districts Board did immense work for the poor in the congested districts in Ireland, I believe that the problem that faces our State in this respect is one that can best be solved by other methods than those employed by the Congested Districts Board. I would almost go so far as to say that part of the difficulty that we have to face in the Gaeltacht is the legacy that was left by the C.D.B. The Congested Districts Board had to deal with a terrifically difficult problem. It dealt with it fairly successfully, but in dealing with it, it could not avoid, and nobody could avoid, to some extent, creating new problems. Some of these problems are amongst the worst that have to be faced in dealing with this question of the Gaeltacht. One of them was indicated, perhaps unconsciously, by Deputy Clery; that is the idea that the people of the Gaeltacht are always looking for doles or bribes of some kind, whether it is in the form of an accusation against another party, or whether it is in the form of an appeal for pity. That is, perhaps, not the fault of the Congested Districts Board, but may be party due to the psychology of the people. It is one of the heritages left to us from the period of the Congested Districts Board. It is one of the things that we must get rid of if we are going to make anything of this Gaeltacht problem. We must teach the people in the Gaeltacht to stand on their own feet and not to expect that money will be spent for which they cannot give a return, and not to expect that they will be for ever the paupers of the country. That kind of problem is one that cannot be dealt with by an organisation on the lines of the old Congested Districts Board. It would only perpetuate some of the evils which, not through the fault of the Congested Districts Board, but owing to many circumstances, grew up while the Congested Districts Board was in office. For that reason, I think that a Ministry which will work in conjunction with the Dáil, and whose work will be subject to the constant scrutiny and examination of the Dáil, and that will be financed by the Dáil and financed, I hope, in a way somewhat different from the other Ministries, will be likely to do the best that can be done for the Gaeltacht. I propose to vote for the Bill.
