I suppose it is expected from the opposite benches that we should with great rejoicing welcome this Vote of £300,000 for the relief of distress in different parts of the country. I think it is most lamentable, after so many years of those expedients and huge expenditure on Government services that the sole result of Government policy seems to be simply relief schemes when they find things are pretty bad in the country. Schemes of this kind, to my mind, are wrong in principle, and usually they are bad in the working out. They very seldom bring fruitful results. The people who talked from the Government Benches yesterday evening would have us believe that the existing conditions are not the outcome of the Government neglect of the affairs of this country. I think it will be admitted by all thinking men that one bad season alone would not bring the country to the state in which it now is. In the Twenty-Six Counties we should remember we have only a population of 2,900,000 odd. We have a population of less than 3,000,000, and with the resources, we have at our disposal, when our credit stands as high as it does— granting that it is as high as the Government spokesmen say it is—there should be no necessity, if the Government were in earnest about employment, for a relief Vote which in essence is degrading. In the olden times the workhouse walls wore based on the principle of relief schemes, and that very system of pauperism has been all along fostered by the present Government. We had relief schemes in previous years, and we found that when a few thousand pounds had been expended a certain amount of that money had to go to engineers and architects, and in similar ways, and after that the portion that went to the people to relieve distress in the various districts was very small. The number of people whom the money reached was small, too.
I think that this time if the Government are at all in earnest about this matter they will get away from that idea of relief schemes. If the Government set about trying to remedy the causes of distress in the country and bent their energies to it, I am sure they would be more successful in relieving distress and in bringing about success than can be attained through an expenditure of £300,000. The farming community are in a bad way. That is only the natural outcome of Government policy during the past five or six years. Speaking for the County Mayo and the West of Ireland, I must say that if the Government did their duty by the people there would be no necessity for them to introduce this motion here now to give relief to the small farmers. I say that candidly. Small farmers in the West of Ireland are workers. When a small farmer in the West of Ireland can make a living out of eight or ten acres of barren land, and on such a farm can rear a family in pretty bad times, that is proof that they are workers, and that they do not depend on Government relief schemes. It is only in very exceptional cases that they have to appeal for foreign relief or that they have to appeal for public works.
The Government should tackle the spending of that money very seriously. If that Department in the Government, which is the laughing stock of the whole country, I refer to the Land Commission, set about their work properly in the last five or six years, and gave back to the people the land out of which they were driven, instead of tying themselves up in red tape in the Government Offices, these small farmers in the West need not now be looking towards relief schemes to tide them over the winter. Deputy Davis said yesterday that we were inclined to turn this motion into an attack on the Government and a vote of censure on the Government. I answer that the motion introduced by the VicePresident of the Executive Council is a voluntary vote of censure on themselves on the part of the Government. I challenge any Deputy on the opposite benches to tell me that it is not. From the weather point of view, the season has been very bad, but if the small farmers had been treated in the way they should be treated by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, there would be no necessity at all for bringing in those relief schemes.
During the past live or six years the farmers who have bank accounts have been drawing on their bank accounts, and the small farmers who have no bank accounts have, to a great extent, been running into debt. That is what has been going on. The limit is bound to be reached. The bad season this year had the effect of bringing them nearer the line and on to the limit than might have otherwise happened had the season been good; but, at any rate, they were going towards that limit already, and their present position, as some Deputies on the opposite benches want to claim, is not the result of the bad season alone. It is not the bad season alone that is responsible for the distress in the country. Will the Cumann na nGaedheal Deputies tell me that if the experts in the Government Departments, in Finance, in Fisheries, and in the Land Commission, took the same interest during the past five or six months in Irish labourers and farmers as they took in the economic situation of the British Empire in London, that they would not have found some better way of improving the position than in the bringing in of this Vote for £300,000? There have been Ministers over in London for six or seven weeks, and they took a very great interest in Empire matters. You had the best experts in our Government Departments in London too. They were all divided up into groups discussing the affairs of the British Empire, and we were here at home looking on at the condition to which the farmers and workers of the country were being reduced. Then when these Ministers come back from London after five or six weeks, the toadies of their Party back them up, and they say that it is a great thing that after five or six months we are getting £300,000 for relief schemes. During that time you had the Ministers and experts in London masquerading with King George in Buckingham Palace, and you had the Minister for Education and the Minister for Fisheries down in Kerry. It was lamentable to read in the public Press that in one small, little hidden away place in Kerry they had 37 deputations in one day from the farmers' and other associations to tell them of the unfortunate conditions that existed in Kerry. That happened on the very same day on which you had two or three of our Ministers and our experts dining in London at a public function given by British statesmen.
Then we are told that our credit is high, the highest in the world's money markets, and that our resources are wonderful. I say that our credit is never higher than the conditions under which the mass of the people exist. It is very little good for the people to read the speeches in the Press about our credit being high. It is very little good for them to hear of these things if the credit of this country is not reflected in the lives of the masses of the people and in the conditions under which they live. And that is not so here. It is of little benefit to the farmers that some arrangements are made with Portugal to have cheap wines brought into the country. That is very little good to them. Their markets, fairs, rents, rates and taxes and the annuities demanded by the Land Commission are of very much more importance to the people of Ireland than these things.
If the Government did their duty there would be no necessity for relief schemes of this kind. If the past season had been 25 per cent. worse than it was, it would not affect them so much if the farmers had something to fall back upon and not have empty pockets. They would then be able to face even a bad season. They would not find themselves depleted in this stock as they are and they would be able to fight the bad season. As it is, it is necessary to bring in those relief schemes in order to meet the existing distress.
I hold that this amount now granted is only like a drop in the ocean. It will not appreciably relieve distress. Ministers should realise that the West of Ireland is pretty badly hit because migration is no longer allowed. It was rather fortunate heretofore for the Government that we had emigration, because when workers could not find employment here they obliged the Government by going to America. They obliged the Government still more by sending to this country large sums every year. The Minister for Finance even admitted that this year the amount sent from America by Irish emigrants will be very much less than last year. Therefore the country will be the poorer. It is good, anyhow, that we got the admission from the Minister that if the country were prosperous last year and is poorer this year, it was prosperous last year because of the charity of our friends in America. It cannot be claimed that it was Government action made the country prosperous. The Government will have to face the situation that there are additional young people in this country who will not be allowed to go abroad. There are other things which are very serious.
I contend that if Departments had done their duty the allocation of this money would not be required at all. If the money is to be given to the Land Commission for distribution I do not know where we will get. That is the institution which is always considering things but never does anything. It takes the Land Commission about five years to decide what the price of a farm should be; then it takes two years to make a decision about acquiring the land, and it takes another year to tell the people what they are going to do. I honestly object to the Land Commission being given this £300,000, or even the major portion of it, for the purpose of distributing it. Surely it cannot be claimed that this is part of their work. The Land Commission, that very expensive snail organisation, should not be kept there simply to carry out relief schemes at a time such as this. It is not there for the purpose of relieving distress. The Land Commission has work to do and if it does that work it will have enough to occupy its attention without bothering about relief schemes.
It is because of the huge failure of the Land Commission in the West of Ireland that we have to look forward to relief schemes like this. Here is a resolution passed by the Mayo County Council:—
"That we, the Mayo County Council, having learned of the opportune proposal of the Government to give a grant for the relief of distress, avail of the opportunity to request them to have this grant administered in the Gaeltacht through the county councils, so that it may be devoted principally to the repair of roads formerly constructed by the Irish Land Commission and their predecessors, but which do not comply with the terms of the Local Government Act, 1925, and cannot, therefore, under existing legislation, be taken over by a county council. Furthermore, we are of opinion that a county council with its local knowledge and its survey staff available will be in a far better position to distribute equitably the grant allowed than any other body. Grave dissatisfaction was expressed on the occasion of the last distribution in Mayo of a similar grant through the medium of the Irish Land Commission, because of the fact that owing to lack of local knowledge by the officials of the latter body large areas in the county did not participate to any appreciable extent in the distribution of the funds."
I agree with the members of the Mayo County Council, even though the Chairman of that body, Deputy Davis, spoke in very different terms here last night. I think the county councillors have better local knowledge than officials of the Land Commission could have. They could attend to the people's requirements more effectively than could the Land Commission officials. I do not mean to convey that the officials would not do what they thought best in the locality. I dare say they would. In Mayo, however, you have very disgraceful conditions existing, and I suppose the same would apply to other counties also. There are people living in Mayo with no road accommodation to their houses or lands. Those things could be dealt with by the county council. Disgraceful conditions exist in Mayo, and I believe, even though it is a Cumann na nGaedheal county council there, it would still be more effective in administering this grant than would the Land Commission.
It would be more effective to have the money distributed by the county councils in the Gaeltacht, which comprises the greater part of Co. Mayo, The conditions in the Gaeltacht are rather bad, and I expect that applies also to the Gaeltacht in other parts of the country. The housing grant is being administered there very slowly. I cannot understand why the measure passed in very great haste some time ago has been more or less held up. From Mayo alone there were some two thousand applications received, and in the part of the Gaeltacht to which the Act applies there are only two hundred applications for loans sanctioned. At a time like this when conditions are so bad surely there should be some speeding up.
Yesterday evening Deputies stated here, and I think the Minister for Local Government said so too, that the fact that outdoor relief is at such a high figure was no indication of a great amount of poverty in the country. Surely when complaints are made about the state of destitution by various boards of health, and when the amount of relief is in most counties at a higher level than ever before, it must naturally follow that destitution is at a high level too. Deputy Davis made a rather funny statement when he said that the extra outdoor relief in Mayo was caused by the amalgamation schemes passed some years ago and that county councillors are not so anxious to keep down the rates as they are to get into their areas expenditure of every kind. Am I to take it that the county councillors in Mayo, the majority of whom are Cumann na nGaedheal, are not so anxious about the rates as they are about granting home relief, whether the parties who receive it are or are not in need of it? That is a poor tribute to pay to one's associates, and I am surprised at the Deputy who made that statement; but I dare say any argument is good enough when you are hard up for one. I do not agree that that is the case.
I know that in the towns and in the country there are very sad cases of destitution. There is flooding to such an extent that farmers have lost their crops in Mayo. Potatoes have rotted and oats and hay crops are lost. A grant of this kind is not going to compensate farmers for their losses. It is the duty of the Government to approach their different Departments, such as the Land Commission, the Board of Works and the Department of Fisheries, point out to them how badly off are the people in the country, and particularly those on uneconomic holdings, and urge them to speed up their work. They should encourage officials to tackle their tasks in a serious way. All the red tape, which is given as an excuse for delay in settling the land question, in carrying out drainage work and improving estates, must be pushed aside, to some extent, anyhow. If the Departments were instructed to do the work they should do we would not require any relief schemes. I would be against any relief scheme if only Departments were urged to do their duty. Relief schemes to my mind are demoralising, and in the last analysis they have no effect on the situation.