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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 30 Nov 1932

Vol. 45 No. 4

Private Business. - Supplementary Estimate—Vote 69 (Relief Schemes).

Debate resumed on the following motion:
Go ndeontar suim bhreise ná raghaidh thar £350,000 chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1933, chun síntiúisí i gcóir fóirthinte ar dhíomhaointeas agus ar ghátar.
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £350,000 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1933, for contributions towards the relief of unemployment and distress.

There are certain important things which require to have attention drawn to them on this Vote. I submit that the House is being completely misled by the statements made here by various Ministers—by the Minister for Finance and by the Minister for Industry and Commerce and that very large sums of money are being raised and misspent. The misspending of money is a matter that requires very careful consideration, and the effect of the way in which this money is being handled, I submit, has created a very, very serious state of affairs in the matter of administration. In introducing the Vote the Minister for Finance indicated in his statement that he was dealing with grants to the extent of £1,500,000—£155,000 from the previous Relief Vote, £350,000 from this, and £1,000,000 which he intended to borrow for road work, to be spent in unemployment relief during the present winter. He indicated that about £1,150,000 of this had been allocated, with probably half that money at least expended, and that there only remains £350,000 to be allocated. The Minister for Finance pointed out in his statement of the 18th of November, col. 2078—that he wanted to assure the Dáil that machinery was being set up to supervise and control expenditure on relief schemes. He said:

"The Government is straining every nerve, and the resources of the Departments are being taxed to the utmost, in order to ensure that the money will be wisely, judiciously and reproductively spent."

and he indicated that the works that were being done would yield a profit upon the moneys provided that would increase the general prosperity of the community, and that it would be realised that, in discharging a Christian duty to its people, the State has reaped its own reward.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce in various ways has indicated that having found—as he stated in column 1095 of the 3rd November last, —that before his time "the employment exchanges were being administered for the purpose of confining employment to a small section of the community—they were being administered for the purpose of giving employment to those who could be regarded as likely to be supporters of the Cumann na nGaedheal party,"— having found that, he changed the whole of it, and that he issued various instructions because he was determined that by every means in his power he was going to eliminate the chances of political bias or favour coming into operation, and he laid down a new order of preference. The order of preference was (1) married men with families; (2) married men without families; (3) single men with dependants, and after that, single men without dependants. He said "We insist in every case in which work has been given, that is work provided out of State funds, that the workers would be selected through the employment exchanges, that the manager of the employment exchanges is to select the people who are to do that work and the manager does select these people." I am incorrectly reported as intervening in the debate to ask "Why?" I think it must have been Deputy Morrissey who asked it. The answer to the question is "Because of my determination that under no circumstances is there going to be any danger of political consideration in the selection of the men."

In dealing with the Minister for Finance's statement of 3rd November in the matter of the uneconomic and bad expenditure of money, Deputy Gorey gave instances in regard to his constituency. The public mind generally has been disturbed by the type of agitation which has arisen in various parts of the country in connection with the employment given by local bodies under these relief schemes. Deputy Gorey pointed out that the local body in the City of Kilkenny had completely broken down as a result of the way in which these relief schemes were worked there—that at the dictates of what was called a "Soviet mob" some officials of Kilkenny City had been dismissed, and the House is aware that the regular employees of the Kilkenny County Council have had to organise themselves into an association to protect their own employment against the methods that were being used in the County Kilkenny. The public has been disturbed by similar movements throughout the country. You have workers invading, say, the county council chambers in Longford, and declaring that the county surveyor was an Englishman and should be got rid of. The county surveyor is a Cork man and his name is Murphy, but the use of the word "Englishman" is sufficient to help some people to achieve their purpose in starting up a feeling against officials who are honestly endeavouring to administer public funds in a proper way. On the day upon which the Minister for Finance was giving this House the assurance that these very considerable sums of money were being properly spent, that the Government itself was straining every nerve, and that the resources of the Departments were being taxed to the utmost to ensure that the money was being properly spent, the Mayo County Commissioners—that is the members of the Mayo County Council, who were restored to office by the present Government—were receiving a letter from the county surveyor. The letter was marked "private and confidential." We are indebted to the public spirit of the editor of the "Western People" for giving the contents of that letter to the Mayo people, and to the people of the country generally, because he said that it was the privilege of the people of the country to be placed in possession of the facts, so far as the chief official of the county council was concerned. I think every person interested in the doing of public work, or the expenditure of public money, or the tone of public administration, will approve of the attitude of the editor of the "Western People" in this matter.

The County Surveyor in Mayo advises the Commissioners in Mayo— that is the late members of the County Council restored as Commissioners—that he "regrets very much to have to report that we have not got value and that we are not getting value in a number of the works at present being carried out. The reasons are many, and are all outside our control. In the first place a number of absolutely useless gangers have been appointed—men who have failed to carry out the instructions given to them. In some cases, they were unable to carry out the instructions through ignorance, and in other cases they refused to carry out the instructions because they felt, and even suggested, that they were appointed by the Commissioners, and that the survey staff had little or no control over them. As a matter of fact, even members of the survey staff have allowed gangers to carry on irregularly, because they felt that they could not interfere with gangers who were appointed over their heads. The result has been that all kinds of difficulties have cropped up. We have cases in which gangers appointed to their gangs twice as many men as they were allowed to employ, with the result that very little work was done, there was practically no supervision, and the amounts were over-expended even before the assistant surveyors had an opportunity of checking the works. Other cases have arisen in which men have gone to work in spite of the gangers. In some cases the gangers were so terrified that they did not even try to check the time of their gangs, and the men actually left the work about 4.30 in the evening and were marked up for a full day." As a result of all this, the county surveyor points out that he is not getting more than 60 per cent. of the value of the money expended. Now, we have been told by the Minister for Industry and Commerce that all the men who are being put on relief works are recruited through the employment exchanges.

In reply to a question of mine the Minister for Local Government stated recently that out of the 589 men engaged on roads in the County Mayo 589 were employed through the labour exchanges. I understand these figures included only those that are employed on road maintenance or moneys raised by the county council itself, and that the employment that has been given out of the Road Fund does not include the number of men employed on relief schemes. Now, if 589 out of 589 men on the ordinary road works are stated by the Minister for Local Government and Public Health to be recruited from the labour exchanges, we are entitled to assume that he would be also told from Mayo that the men employed on the relief schemes are employed in accordance with instructions and are employed from persons nominated by the labour exchanges. The extent to which that is not a fact is shown by some further remarks of the county surveyor. I think he clearly points out that the information which the Department of Local Government are supposed to have from the Mayo County Council is that the 589 men referred to by them have been employed through the labour exchanges. I think the Minister is entitled to take it that he is probably misled by the Mayo County Council in that matter too. The county surveyor, however, says that recently twenty-six labourers and twelve extras forced themselves to work on a job in addition to the normal gang there, with the result that the work had to be closed down, and we have now at the present time a work being carried out under the protection of the Civic Guards, where young men without dependants, who have already supplied large quantities of stones, are demanding the right to hand-break these stones and so debarring married men with dependants, and men on outdoor relief from getting the work. He says in a number of cases gangers are putting men to work on receipt of notes from different people not connected with the county council, and works committees have been set up in areas to select the men in advance and supply the names to the gangers.

The result of this is evident in a recent case, which I checked, where a man had thirteen men employed in a gang, eleven of whom were single, and one was the son of a road contractor, who had over fifty years' experience of road contracts, and as a matter of fact, the ganger had room only for satisfactory men at the most. The county surveyor says in another case the ganger had twelve men employed, one was a boy about fifteen years, working in his father's name; ten were single young men, both of whose parents are alive and landowners, and not one of them had dependants,—in fact, two were working in their brothers' names not having registered, and there was only one married man. In another case a ganger had nineteen men employed, thirteen of whom were single men, and only one had dependants. Several married men with families, up to ten in number, came along and complained, but were refused work on the job. These extracts from the county surveyor's report made by him on the 17th November indicate to what extent the policy, as outlined to the House here on the 3rd November and which the Minister for Industry and Commerce enshrined in his new regulations, is actually being carried out both as regards the employment of men through the labour exchanges, and the giving preference to married men and men with dependants over the others. The position appears to have arisen in Mayo that local bodies, springing, I submit, from Fianna Fáil clubs in the area, have formed themselves into committees to decide what men shall be employed in their neighbourhood, and when these men are being engaged by these local Fianna Fáil clubs dependants are not taken into consideration; their selection is entirely based on the extent to which they are Fianna Fáil supporters in the county. I said that the county surveyor's letter was dated the 17th November. I said that the public had been disturbed by manifestations in various parts of the country, but so far as I know everything was absolutely quiet in Mayo until the pot boiled up a little bit at a meeting of the county council and which was reported in the "Western People" on the 5th November and from which I would like to read some extracts. I think it was Deputy O'Hara who raised some question here as to an order that was issued in July last by the Mayo County Council to this effect: that all gangers who did not produce references from the two county council members living nearest to them were automatically dismissed from their employment, and that no gangers would be employed in future until they produced references from the two county councillors living nearest to them. Arising out of a portion of that order, at a meeting of the county council reported in the "Western People" of the 5th November the following discussion took place:—

At one part of the proceedings Mr. Ruane said he noticed in the report a reference to gangers, which he quoted, and said he wanted to know were these 120 gangers new appointments, or were they in addition to the others. He also inquired about gangers who were dispensed with.

The Chairman (Mr. Campbell) said he did not think they should have this inquiry into the working of the staff.

Mr. Nally, T.D., said the council were entitled to this information.

Later on again Mr. Duffy asked, how many gangers were fired since the previous meeting, and the county surveyor did not reply.

Mr. O'Hara: I would like to ask how many were dismissed on the recommendation of the Chairman.

Mr. Munnelly: It is my candid opinion that we did not dismiss half enough because, as I said before, they ruled the country with a rod of iron for ten years and they wanted to keep these men in office for all time. It was time to dismiss them and a good many more of them will be dismissed. (Applause from the gallery).

He referred to a man dismissed by the county surveyor and the county surveyor said that the matter would come up later.

Mr. Duffy said he did not recommend anyone on account of politics.

Mr. Munnelly: "You are like them all—you have no politics. Apart from politics, you should not be here, or men like you."

Mr. Ruane said the council was entitled to the information. "We should know how many were dismissed, and what tribunal was set up to dismiss them."

Mr. Munnelly: "Pass on to the next business. Your days of power are over."

Later on in the proceedings:

Mr. Ruane again raised the question about the gangers and said they were "entitled to know what happened behind the backs of the council."

Chairman: "What is killing you is that you are not ruling here. I am ruling."

Mr. Durkin: "I think, in all fairness, the question should be answered."

Mr. Ruane: "Put the question to the county surveyor and let him answer it."

Chairman: "Do, and do not be making speeches for your friends."

Mr. Ruane: "When did the dismissals take place"?

Chairman: "Some pets of yours did not get the jobs."

Mr. Ruane: "You have more pets than any ten members."

Chairman: "He cannot swallow the medicine."

Mr. Durkin: "We are entitled to an answer."

Chairman: "You are entitled to something—you are a bad case."

Mr. Duffy: "Dismissals took place here after the County Council the last day."

Mr. Ruane: "Is it a fact that after the last meeting you went to the County Surveyor's office and blue pencilled the names of the people you did not want as gangers?"

Mr. Munnelly: "What should be used on them is the cat-of-ninetails." (Laughter.)

Mr. Ruane: "Did you ever get it?"

Chairman: "Have you got enough?"

Mr. Ruane: "I have not got an answer yet."

Chairman: "Go on to the next business."

A Chinn Comhairle, on a point of order. Are we entitled to review the proceedings of public bodies like the county council here?

The Deputy is quite in order in pointing out how these grants are being administered.

Will we all be permitted to make whatever quotations we desire?

Will we be permitted to quote the whole proceedings of a public body?

Let me inform the Deputy that I am not quoting half of it.

Only a little bit of it.

Later on in the proceedings we read:—

Mr. Ruane: How many were fired?

Mr. Munnelly: We will fire more. I am one man who will fire more of them.

Mr. Ruane: Were you at the last firing operation?

Mr. Munnelly: I will make sure I will have no man in the employment of the council who will not have an interest in the country and not be looking for help from England. (Cheers and applause from the gallery). We will not have people in this country fighting England's case against us. (Great applause). Let them change their habits and we will do something for them.

And again, later on in the discussion:—

Mr. Ruane again asked for a return. The chairman said he had spoken twenty times and he ruled the discussion out of order. The chairman and Mr. Ruane had a tiff, the latter stating he wanted to show how the workers were selected.

Mr. Munnelly: If you have any more to say about it, there is not a Cumann na nGaedheal worker or spy that we will not cut off.

Everything was going perfectly smoothly in Mayo; the only disturbances were in other parts of the country, until something came about to bring on that discussion at the County Council meeting in the beginning of November. Then we had a complete boiling up of the situation and a complete disclosure of how affairs in Mayo, including the Relief Vote that we are discussing here, are being carried out. We have the County Surveyor taking his courage in his hands and, in however private and confidential the communication to his Commissioners, we had him stating what the position was. We have it set out that gangers were being appointed by individual members of the County Council over his head; that men were forcing themselves in under these gangers to work and that, generally, neither he himself before 17th November, nor some of the officials under him, nor some of the gangers appointed even by the Commissioners, had courage enough to make known what was happening because of the general kind of terrorism in the neighbourhood. At the meeting at which the County Council discussed the County Surveyor's letter a number of communications were received from Fianna Fáil clubs in County Mayo. They dealt for the most part with the question of breaking stones by hand, but whatever they referred to they indicate what the position is.

The Kilmovee Fianna Fáil Club sent a resolution objecting to the use of the crushers, and put forward reasons why the stones should be broken by hand.

Mr. Hogan (Clare):

Hear, hear!

I am not discussing that aspect of the matter, except to point out that the County Surveyor reported that the doing of the work in this particular way would deprive certain married men and men with dependants of work, and it was possibly open to consideration whether moneys saved in that particular way would be spent on other work, giving quite as much employment.

Mr. Hogan

It is questionable.

It is questionable, but you have a technical man advising the Mayo County Council on the matter. I am not suggesting that the House should discuss the question whether stones should be broken by hand or not. I merely want to point out that on a question such as that

Joseph Flatley forwarded a like demand from Crossmolina Fianna Fáil Club, now operating as the Labour League, and stated that "if this request is not granted, the most drastic action would be taken."

I submit that you have here developing to rather big proportions in the County Mayo a peculiar situation under the control of persons put back into the office as Commissioners by the Minister for Local Government. This is the position you have: moneys being wasted to the extent, according to the county surveyor, of 40 per cent.; men who were in ordinary and continuous employment under the County Council have been dismissed; men have been taken on purely political grounds; men have forced themselves into the employment of the County Council without reference to anyone, and the whole scheme of controlling employment through the Labour Exchanges and the scheme of giving preference to persons according to their necessity has gone by the board in the interests of the Fianna Fáil clubs. As I say, all this has taken place under the hands of the commissioners who were restored by the Minister for Local Government. When you consider what is going on in the rest of the country, I think this House is entitled to hear from the Minister for Finance, in more detail, what he has to say with regard to the machinery that the Government is setting up that will efficiently control the expenditure of this money and see that it is spent in carrying out the most useful works. The House is entitled to hear from the Minister for Industry and Commerce what his new regulations mean with regard to employment through the Labour Exchanges and with regard to preference. We are entitled to hear from the Minister for Local Government quite a number of things, but we certainly are entitled to hear from him what reliance can be placed upon the information passed on to him by us as to the number of persons employed on road work in Mayo who have been recruited through the Employment Exchanges.

The House will remember that various Ministers have stated that it was the policy of the Government, when dealing with this grant, to distribute the money to the different counties on the basis of the number of persons registered as unemployed in each county. I would like to know if that is the case in Mayo, because some remarkable things have happened in Mayo as regards registration. We are told in the "Irish Times" of 29th November, as regards County Roscommon:

The officials engaged in carrying out the relief scheme in County Roscommon are finding a difficulty in locating men supposed to be looking for work. The employment exchanges supply a list of names of men to be employed, but when these men are sought to be informed that work is available, in a good many cases it is said they are found to be non-existent. Some left the country years ago; others are dead and, in a number of cases, schoolgoing children have been registered for employment.

The question of the allocation of funds to the different counties, based on the number of persons registered, also arises. That is a reference to Roscommon. I pointed out before that the increasing number of persons registered in Mayo, as compared with Galway, where the conditions ought to be similar, is very remarkable. I pointed out that even on the 29th August the number of persons registered had increased two and a half times in Galway and thirty-two or thirty-three times in Mayo. But in Ballina they had increased by fifty-two times. By the end of last month they had increased sixty-nine times in Ballina, so that on the 31st October last there were, in Ballina, 6,928 persons registered as unemployed. Those have completely disappeared. They are not in the return for the 7th November and they are not in the return for mid-November. We have the position that whereas 6,900 persons have disappeared off the register in Ballina as between the end of October and the middle of November, the total number of unemployed on the 14th November stands at 92,248 as against 92,943. 6,900 persons have disappeared off the register in Ballina, and, so far as the unemployment total is concerned, they have not been missed. Have funds been allocated to Mayo on the basis of 7,000 unemployed in Ballina? Are we in the position that whereas unemployment has increased in the other areas by 7,000, as between the end of October and the middle of November, the Ballina men are getting the employment which is badly needed in those other areas? I think that the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who makes himself responsible for the provision of those figures, should tell us something about that. We have not been told how any of these funds have been allocated, but we have been told that out of one and a half million pounds £1,150,000 has been allocated. Before the rest of the money is allocated, the House is entitled to hear from the Minister as to what is being done to secure a better return for the money, as to what is being done to secure that employment will be given to the persons most in need and in the areas where the need exists. The House is entitled to know whether, in view of what has transpired in Mayo and in other parts of the country, anything has been learned as to the lines upon which the £350,000 should be allocated. The House should know what the Government have in mind as regards a better system of control. Not only has this money been taken from people suffering under the burden of taxation, who can ill afford it, but this represents mis-spending in a way that is breaking down the valuable technical administrative machinery under local bodies, breaking down the courage of representatives of local bodies, as happened in the City of Kilkenny, breaking down the morale and morality of the persons acting as representatives in local government administration, as in Mayo, and stirring up the hope in certain sections of the people that by mob organisation they can force themselves into a position in which they can draw public funds without giving adequate return and without being in any way responsible to the officials in charge of the carrying out of the work.

Deputy Mulcahy did not take such an interest in Mayo since the time he abolished the county council. I doubt if he will ever have the opportunity of taking such an interest in County Mayo as he had at that time. He has read out a lot of stuff about what happened in the County Mayo under the régime of the present commissioners, who constitute the county council, as it was when Deputy Mulcahy abolished it. The county council is as it was then and I submit it was one of the leading public bodies in the Irish Free State. Its operations as regards local affairs were unquestionable. If Deputy Mulcahy was not so prejudiced as he is against the county council for having come back to replace his commissioner, he would look at the facts more closely before he would launch an attack such as he has just now launched. We are not surprised at his attacking a local body because he is against a local body existing at all. Very few local bodies would be in existence if he had his way. I am not a member of the commission which is the County Council of Mayo. But from what I know of the situation, I am prepared to stand over what has been done in the County Mayo. I am not ashamed of it. There has been no jobbery in the County Mayo. That distasteful system was introduced by Deputy Mulcahy's commissioner into the county and went out of the County Mayo with him. If certain facts are required to prove what I say about jobbery in that way, I am prepared to give some of the incidents in the presence of certain Deputies who are here now.

Here is the place for the facts.

If they demand the facts, we will have an opportunity of seeing whether my statement is true or not. The system in Mayo is, I hold, a very efficient system. A few things probably have happened which can be remedied. It may be, as Deputy Mulcahy stated, that certain men demanded employment, that a number of people collected, that where there were twenty-five men working, thirty men collected, and demanded that they should be given work. I hold that that is a better attitude than that of Deputy Mulcahy's non-political farmers, who will neither work nor give work. It is a healthy sign when people who are unemployed are anxious to get work. There are a large number of unemployed in Mayo despite Deputy Mulcahy's criticism of the unemployment register. There are a large number of migratory labourers home from England. There are a large number of people who would have gone on the emigrant ship if there were such a thing as emigration. While you have those people, it is almost impossible not to have incidents cropping up in certain areas where people will demand work and do their best to get it. It is better that they should do that than that they should stand around idly and grouse about not being catered for. I have had no say in the employment of gangers in the County Mayo. Not alone that, but if I had a say in the matter I would have attempted to get certain men appointed, and there are men who were appointed whom I would have taken out of their jobs in the interests of fair play. It is time that the system of one-man-one-job should be embarked upon by local bodies and by the Department in charge. Owing to the number of unemployed, that system is absolutely desirable and it would ensure that whatever work is going will go all round. It would give fair play to everybody and we would not have, as we have had in the past in Mayo, one man holding a number of appointments under a local authority.

There may be two or three out of a very large number of gangers in Mayo who, the county surveyor may hold, were not altogether efficient in their jobs. If that is so, the county surveyor, who is a very efficient officer, had his remedy, and has his remedy still. The commissioners in Mayo are absolutely standing behind the county surveyor in seeing that efficiency is the hall-mark of the work done there. There is a way for settling those things. I submit that the amount of dissatisfaction which has been given does not at all justify a general attack on the commissioners such as has been made by Deputy Mulcahy. I do not think that a single individual commissioner would have the hardihood to say that the system as at present administered in County Mayo, is a system of jobs and back-hand methods. I do not think that the commissioners would agree with that. I submit that the insinuations made by Deputy Mulcahy are not borne out by the report of the county surveyor. They may be to a certain extent borne out by the "Western People," which Deputy Mulcahy commends for its public spirit. He might commend that paper for its public spirit at the time he abolished the Mayo County Council in the same way, and attempt to show its respect then for the will of the people in Mayo as he attempted to show to-day. There was the name of a Mr. Duffy mentioned, who is a commissioner in Mayo. If he knew anything about local work in Mayo and the manner in which it is carried out, he would certainly leave out Mr. Duffy's name.

It is most advisable that such references to defenceless citizens should be avoided.

It would be very advisable. I understand that the point as regards the allocation of the work was that the commissioners agreed amongst themselves and that there was no friction between the commissioners of different political outlook as to the allocation of the money. The only fault that can be found, if any, is, as Deputy Mulcahy said, that according to the County Surveyor's report in a few areas certain things happened which were not very satisfactory. I do not at all agree that 40 per cent. of the money has been wrongfully spent in Mayo. I think the introduction of the matter here in that spirit should not be encouraged. I should like that an inquiry would be held into this matter by the Department and that, in order to give the public a fair outlook on this whole question, the inquiry should go back to the time of the appointment by Deputy Mulcahy of Mr. Bartley as Commissioner for Mayo, and that, from that time down, the whole system of administration in Mayo should be inquired into. If an inquiry is made into the administration during the regime of the old County Council, during the regime of the Commissioner, and the administration at present under the Commissioners, you will find that if at any period there was jobbery and a certain leaning towards corruption it was under the administration of the Commissioner appointed by Deputy Mulcahy.

Deputy Mulcahy complains about the number of unemployed registered in Ballina. Of course, he may take the headline of the "Irish Independent" in that matter, whose case it was that there were 6,000 people registered as unemployed in a town whose population was only 4,000 or 5,000, and that they could not explain it. The facts are that Ballina is the centre which controls a very large area of North Mayo, and that Belmullet, forty miles out, and I think about seven or eight miles on the Sligo side, are included in Ballina as a unit. That explains the large number of people registered in Ballina.

It does not explain where they have gone. They have disappeared.

Many of them are employed on local schemes.

Six thousand nine hundred!

If we are to take Deputy Mulcahy's argument for what it is, it is an assertion that the number of registered unemployed is absolutely false; that there is no such thing as a large number of unemployed. Will he continue that argument throughout the country? He says that there were men supposed to be registered as unemployed in Roscommon and that an inspector went there and found that there were no such men in existence. I am glad to discover that; that there is one man who is going to point out to us that there are not so many unemployed, and that the country is in a much better position than the figures of registered unemployed would go to show. He wonders if the same thing has happened in Mayo; if the 6,000 or 7,000 registered in Ballina are fictitious and do not represent the unemployed at all. I would be glad to be able to hold that point of view. My impression is that any money given to the County Mayo was given absolutely on the basis of the figures of unemployed and that that county was entitled to that amount. Deputy Mulcahy tried to impress on the Minister that he is giving more than its due share to Mayo. He is giving no more than Mayo is entitled to on the number of real, genuine unemployed there. In addition, it can be fairly stated that Mayo is a county which has all along, even under present circumstances, made every possible effort to pay its way, and I think it is well entitled to favourable treatment by the Department.

I am prepared to go a little way with Deputy Mulcahy in admitting that the figures as published do not indicate the position as it really is— that the position is not as bad as the figures would indicate. I am prepared to go that far with him but for a different reason; not for his reason that the men do not exist at all, but for this reason, that you have a number of men registered as unemployed who are small farmers and others who are migratory labourers. They cannot be said to be strictly unemployed. They are what you might call part-time unemployed and in the West of Ireland, particularly, many of these have swelled the unemployment register to a great extent. I do not mean to say that they should not be considered for employment, but that they are part-time unemployed. It should be realised that it cannot be taken as an indication that there is such a terrible amount of unemployment in rural areas, even though I admit that it is very prevalent at present. Another reason for the large unemployment figures in Mayo is this: When it was stated that the Government were anxious to find out by every possible means the number of unemployed, the County Surveyor in Mayo, accepting that in the spirit as well as otherwise, wrote to the local clergy of the County Mayo asking them to announce that people who were unemployed and wanted work should register for such work at the local exchanges. That they did so register much earlier and much more efficiently than in other counties is another reason for the large figures of unemployed in the County Mayo.

There is, however, another thing in connection with Mayo and it is this, that it was the principal county under Deputy Mulcahy's regime that exported people to America. Very large numbers of people left Mayo for America until emigration ceased. Since then the young Mayo people are remaining at home. Many of them have since grown up to manhood and womanhood and those are the people who now need employment. In addition to that there are the migratory labourers who used to go to England. These have not gone there so much of late owing to the bad times there, and this matter has also swelled the unemployment register. I would assure the Minister that the registration of the unemployed in Mayo is perfectly genuine. The figures that have been given will bear examination as well as the figures in any other county in Ireland and they can be borne out by the facts.

I think the Department should take the view, particularly in regard to the West of Ireland, that the thing which demands first attention is the question of drainage. Important schemes of that nature would go far to improve the land, and would go a long way to place the small farmers in an independent position in their holdings. Money given for improvement work of that kind would be very well spent. The County Surveyor emphasised to the Mayo County Council in a report which was confidential, and because that report was confidential Deputy Mulcahy was glad to read it to-day— the Deputy's love for secret documents and for confidential documents is——

Why should this report be confidential?

No more than any secret agreement to which Deputy Mulcahy was a party, and no more than any other document of that kind. There are secret agreements and secret societies of which Deputy Mulcahy is a member. Will he publish those secret agreements?

Does the Deputy ask us to hide that report? Is that what the Deputy would like?

No, not at all, but if Deputy Mulcahy did not read out that report, I would be disappointed. There was spice in that document which was marked "confidential."

Was it because there was spice in it that it was "confidential"?

Spice naturally gives a taste to Deputy Mulcahy in this matter. The Deputy always looks for secrecy and signs of secrecy, and this secrecy has an attraction for him. The County Surveyor in writing that statement to the members of the Mayo Commission stated that forty per cent. of the money was spent under relief schemes in a way that did not give a good return. I would agree that it was spent on works which could very well, to a great extent, be left aside. If that money were spent on a drainage scheme in Mayo it would give a very much better return. That also could be said of other items of expenditure throughout the congested districts.

In addition, the Department might take a greater interest in afforestation in rural areas. I think that money spent in afforestation in the West of Ireland could be better spent than money spent in any relief schemes carried out by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government when in office. I think this point should be considered by the Government in future when allocating grants for unemployment relief.

In conclusion, I wish to emphasise the fact that the Department need not try to be influenced by Deputy Mulcahy's version or facts as he relates them with regard to the County Mayo. The people there are public spirited enough to rectify any mistakes that have occurred or that may occur. In any grants that may be given in the future there is one competent body for the administration of the money and that is Mayo County Council. That county council, with the help of its officers of which the county surveyor is one, will be able to carry out any schemes and will be able to spend money in a manner to give a return for the amount spent and the Department need not fear putting into their hands any money they have to spend on the relief of unemployment.

At one time there used to be rather a tendency in this House when matters became local of the debate turning entirely into a Cork debate. But it looks to me very much now as if this debate is tending into being very largely a Mayo debate and it looks as if Mayo were going to oust Cork from its usual place in the proceedings of the House. The debate has developed, to a certain extent, into a Mayo debate. All through Deputy Cleary's speech there were certain things that it is necessary for me to deal with before I go into the general question of the expenditure of this grant. There is one statement which he made and it is a statement which I do not think ought to be allowed to go unchallenged. In my humble judgment it is a most unfair statement. It is a statement which the facts do not justify. The statement was that Commissioner Bartley was corrupt. I say that that statement is entirely without justification and I think it is only fair to Commissioner Bartley that a contradiction of Deputy Cleary's statement should be made here and now by some one who is aware of the conditions in Mayo.

Mayo had no jobbery until he went there and there was none of that corruption there which Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney likes.

Deputy Cleary said certain things about Mayo. He said that he thought it was an excellent thing that there were unemployed men in Mayo who were anxious to get work-that these men were willing to get work by any and every means. I think that is a very dangerous doctrine to preach. Suppose there is a ganger there and he takes on a number of workmen. Deputy Cleary's doctrine is that a number of people should go there and take the work by force. That is just preaching lawlessness. Possibly it is not very surprising having regard to the source from which it comes. The Deputy says that Mayo is not getting too much of the unemployment grant. I agree with him, I do not think Mayo is getting too much.

Nobody would expect Mayo Deputies to disagree on that.

Deputy Cleary says there was no more faking of unemployment figures in Mayo than elsewhere. I am perfectly certain that there was not. I am perfectly certain that all over Ireland there was the most complete faking of figures. I say that, because if you are going to tell the people all through the country that there are large amounts of money to be spent on employment and that that money will be spent in proportion to the number on the unemployed registers you will find that all over the country every single person will rush forward whether he wants employment or not and register his name for work in order that his county should get its share of the swag that was going and more than any other county would get. I know that happened in Mayo—I know it happened very largely in Mayo, but I am perfectly certain it happened in every other county just as well, because I do not think Mayo has got a complete monopoly of all the intelligence in this State.

It won first in the whole State—Ballina with its 6,000 unemployed.

That is not in my constituency. On this Mayo question the report of the county surveyor, to which allusions have been made, has a very much broader signification than a merely county signification, because it goes to the root of the whole distribution of this £1,000,000 of capital which is being borrowed on the security of the Road Fund. That is capital of the State; that is capital that ought to be reproductively spent; that is money that, above all things, should not be wasted. It is beyond question that in the County Mayo it is being wasted, and therefore I take it for granted that it is being wasted in other parts of the country too. We have this report of the county surveyor in Mayo. It is a very strong report, but it does not follow that Mayo is the only county in which such a report could be made. I saw, for instance, a report of a meeting of a public body in County Clare the other day in which a gentleman made a statement that it would require a Mussolini to put things right. I daresay that if the county surveyors of the other Irish counties went into the matter as fully as the county surveyor of Mayo went into it you would find that the same abuses which are, beyond question, in existence in Mayo are in existence in other counties as well. It is a very serious thing to discover that a large sum of money is being expended and that the workmen are not giving a fair output for the wages which they receive.

Now it is not alone that the money is being wasted, if you give a large sum of money to be spent in giving employment, and the output is only 60 per cent. of what the output should be, and that is the county surveyor's report, not that 40 per cent. was wasted, but that the output was only 60 per cent. of what the output ought to be; in other words, that the men are idling and are not giving a fair return for the very substantial wages which they are receiving. They are receiving a considerably higher rate of wages than the farm labourers in the county are receiving, and they are not doing a day's work or anything approaching a day's work for the money they are receiving. That is terribly corrupting. It is very bad that the young men should get it into their heads: "All I have to do is to go out on the road and idle practically the whole day long, and I will get a fine rate of wages." I cannot imagine anything which would demoralise the men more than that. It must demoralise them. Not only is it that the output is very bad, but-and I can say this from my own personal knowledge—the work is extremely badly done. I am not now criticising— though I think I could criticise—some of the schemes chosen. Some of the roads selected for widening certainly do not require widening, but it is absolutely no use to widen a road by clearing away a great deal of the grass margin and filling it up with material that is not very much better than mud. In other words new roads are no better for traffic when the work is finished than when it began. They are wider, but the new bits are really not fit for traffic. That is the result on some of the roads I have seen. They may go over them again; they may put that right in the future, but as far as one could see the job is finished—the men are working on further, and the roads are left in an extremely bad condition. The work has done no substantial good in a great many cases.

I think it is a matter of very great importance—I do think it is a matter of national importance—that persons should believe that Government money is not unlimited (there are people, of course, who think that Government money is unlimited) and that the Government is just as much entitled as the private employer to a fair and proper return for the money that is expended. That is a principle that ought to be driven into the minds of the people, and if any of the opposite principle gets into their minds it will demoralise them, and make the task of carrying on government by any Party very much more difficult.

As to the fact that there is this extremely bad output of work in Mayo, I do not see any reason why the output in Mayo should be worse than in any other county, and I am perfectly certain it is not. The whole country over, I am afraid, unless there is more careful supervision than there is at the present minute, will suffer very badly. It may be that the sums of money which are being allocated to the county council are larger than the county council are really able to cope with. The cure for that would be to have them spent by the Land Commission or by the Board of Works or by some of the other Government Departments, because the criticisms which I have heard levied against the work have not been levied against the works carried out by the Land Commission or by the Board of Works, or under the supervision of the Land Commission or the Board of Works.

There is in Mayo, and I believe it is perfectly well founded, a very considerable amount of criticism that political opinions are being taken into consideration when gangers are being selected, and that the ganger also takes into account the political views of the persons whom he employs. The result is that, instead of men who are really in need at the present moment and who have families to support, young men who have no families to support and who are not in want are being taken on and given the work. Those men are not even giving that money, I am told, in a great number of instances, to their families—they are simply using it or the major portion of it as pocket-money for themselves. Very careful supervision should be exercised—and I believe, in the case of the Land Commission and as far as I know in the case of the Board of Works also, it is being exercised—to see that the persons who are really in a state of poverty are the persons who get the major portion of the unemployment benefit.

I want to deal with another matter, on which for once I am in agreement with Deputy Cleary. He says that practically all Mayo is populated by small farmers, and it is very difficult to say when a person of that nature is in employment and when he is not in employment, because he gets full work for certain parts of the year on his farm or on his father's farm, and during other parts of the year he is free to take and is anxious to get work. It is very difficult of course to say when unemployment exists in a case like that and when unemployment does not exist, but to my mind it is not a question of employment or unemployment at the present minute; it is a question of want. Whether a person has got a farm he can work on, or whether he has got a farm he cannot work on, is not a matter of any importance from my point of view, at the present minute at any rate. The real question at issue is this: "Is the man in want? Is he in need? Is his family in need?" What we certainly expect out of these relief grants is that the persons who, owing to the present conditions of agriculture, especially in the West of Ireland, are in a state of poverty—who have been unable to sell their stock at all or have been compelled to sell them at ruinous prices, who are not able to meet shop debts and who find the credit in shops cut away—are the persons who, in my judgment, are at the present moment in most need of work under relief schemes. You must bear in mind that these relief schemes are only now at their beginning. In my opinion, at any rate, the need for relief schemes is going to grow and grow from day to day, if this present condition of affairs continues. At a time like this, in the months of November and December, and indeed until a great deal later on in next year—until April or until May of next year—want will not be experienced in the rural districts. Real want will not be experienced, because if the worst comes to the worst there is the potato pit still full, and there is the oats haggard still full, but when the potato pits are empty, when the oats haggard is empty, when there is no produce of the farm left, that is the time in which small farmers in the West of Ireland will really feel the pinch of poverty. There is an old expression, which I daresay, a Chinn Comhairle, you have heard. When I was a boy young people in my neighbourhood used talk of the month of July as "hungry July," and I am very much afraid if the present condition of affairs continues in this country, if the English market is still, for all practical purposes, closed to our cattle, if this ruinous economic war continues, then the month of July next will indeed be a month, not merely of poverty, but a month of starvation for a very considerable number of small holders in the West of Ireland.

What about the 12th?

I leave that to Deputy Everett. He may go and get a feed in Belfast that day if he likes. The month of July will be a very hungry month, and if the present condition of affairs continues a month not merely of poverty, but a month of starvation for a great number of the western counties, and in other counties which are populated by small farmers. Therefore, these relief grants are grants which must go to the relief of the small farmer, if he and his family are to be kept from starvation. I would like to remind the House that this economic war is hitting the small-holder in the West of Ireland very much harder than it is hitting the larger and better off people, say in Meath, Kildare or Westmeath, and the other counties, who buy the Mayo store cattle. I will take some figures, and I think they will be admitted by anybody in the House who knows anything about agriculture, as very fair figures. If a farmer from the County Meath, let me say, goes down in the month of May to Mayo and buys a £14 bullock, he would probably, if things went right, hope to get in or about November something like £20 for that bullock. That is possibly a high figure, but I am making it high on purpose. If this year instead of getting £20 he expects only to get the £14 he paid originally he will be indeed a loser of £6. If he gets less than £14, say £12, he would be a loser by £8 on that particular animal, but if he goes down to the County Mayo and buys the bullock which last November would have cost him £14 he will buy at £8 now, or less. He gets back £6 of his losses on the original figure which he has incurred, but the person who rears the cattle, the ordinary small-holder, who has his one or two bullocks for sale, he loses £6 on his bullock and has nobody else from whom he can get it back, it is he who suffers—the small farmer who reared from one to two or three bullocks in the year. These are the people who really bear the brunt of this economic war, and in consequence they are the people who are being most quickly reduced to poverty. He it is who is suffering most; he it is who is most in need of relief work, and will be still further in need of relief work, as I have said, in the coming July.

Now let me turn from that to perhaps a broader question. The other day, in introducing this Vote, the Minister for Finance said that he hoped the money would be wisely, judiciously, and reproductively spent. He talked also about the improvement of the national estate, and how the money now being expended would yield a profit to the State in years to come. Now, I would like very much if the Minister had told us, and I think the Minister should have told us, the nature of the works in which this money was being reproductively spent. I think the House ought to know this, and it is very much better late than never. If we cannot, and will not, have an opportunity of expressing any views upon it during this debate, I do hope when the Parliamentary Secretary comes to reply that he will not confine himself to the vague generalities which the Minister for Finance indulged in, but that he will become definite and specific and tell us of the reproductive works in which this money is being expended, and which will produce profit in years to come.

I cannot myself think that the widening merely of country roads or making country roads, making roads into bogs, and into small villages which only had bridled paths before, though all very useful and things in which the national capital—because this is national expenditure—really can be, I think, properly expended; but nobody really would call that reproductive work, and I would like to know if there are any really solid reproductive schemes on hand. Forestry, of course, is a reproductive work. I think I know something about planting trees myself—not on a large scale. But I do not think that very much of this grant can be expended upon forestry this year. There is £37,000, I think, altogether allocated to the Department of Agriculture, and I do not know how much of that the Department intends to spend on forestry. But assuming even the whole of it were spent, £37,000 is a very small sum out of 1½ millions, and I think possibly that £37,000 is more than could be expended between this and next April on forestry work. If forestry is to be carried out successfully it will be necessary to fence around the land that is required, cut drains in the land, etc., and all this will take time. But a very big hole is always made in any sum of money spent on forestry—I will not propose to say the amount, but I should say that considerably more than 50 per cent. would be spent in the acquisition of the land, even though it be bad land, and can be acquired cheaply. In the acquisition of the land and in the purchase of the trees necessary for the planting—though I am only making a rough guess, and I do not wish my figures to be regarded as correct—I am sure something like 50 per cent., at any rate, will be spent otherwise than on labour. In fencing any area which you intend to plant, you fence it in the cheapest possible fashion; you fence it with wire instead of banks or drains. Of course, the amount spent on labour would be trifling when compared with the entire expenditure upon forestry. But forestry is something that is reproductive, it will have something to show. If an ordinary pine plantation does well, you may expect that in twenty years wood will be available for pit props and there will be a certain return then, but the plantation would be fully matured, probably in 50 or 60 years.

I would like to know if there are any other reproductive schemes. When you are spending one and a half millions and when, if my judgment is correct, you will have to spend very much larger sums in the immediate future, you ought to have some big things which posterity can point to, some really big substantial work for such enormous expenditure this or next year. I would have imagined that there would be some large schemes, the details of which could be told to us. As regards the reclamation of land, there is a great deal of land in my constituency and, I daresay, it is the same all over Ireland, that could be reclaimed to a very large extent. I am sure that reclaimed land would give a reasonable return, but even if reclaimed land paid only 1 or 2 per cent. upon the capital expended, it would be something to show that the money was not wasted entirely. There are areas where I think a very considerable amount of land could be reclaimed from the sea, and I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to consider that matter.

I shall be very glad if the Deputy makes a definite suggestion as to a place where that can be done. I am looking into the matter.

I am not an engineer, and I have only considered the matter as an ordinary man in the street; but it does seem to me that you could reclaim a whole area if you draw a straight line from Blackrock Baths to the Pigeon House Fort.

At what cost, relative to the value of the land when you have reclaimed it?

Of course you would have to get a Dutch engineer to work it out successfully, because all the successful and necessary machinery for the reclamation of land from the sea naturally has been perfected in Holland, where they have reclaimed so much. Even down to the present day they are still reclaiming land there. They have sand-blowing machines and other things of that kind and their schemes manage to work out in a comparatively cheap fashion. I do not know what the cost of the scheme I have suggested would be, nor do I know what the value of the reclaimed land would be, but I imagine the cost of building a wall, nothing very elaborate but sufficiently strong to keep the tide out, and the planting of the reclaimed area with pine trees, which do excellently in that kind of sand, would not run to an excessive amount. I do not know what it would come to, even approximately, but I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to get his officials to interest themselves in the matter.

I will give £100 of my own money to any man in this House who will produce for me a scheme for the reclamation of such land which has a sound economic basis.

It would be worth more than £100.

I am hungry for such a scheme.

All this matter of reproducing money——

It is no use bluffing.

What does the Parliamentary Secretary call economic? What interest does he expect on his capital? I will give a specific example to the Parliamentary Secretary and I hope he will be prepared to consider the matter. There is a place called Bunowen, near Clifden in the County Galway, and in the eighteenth century the then owner of that place happened to be in Holland and he saw the work which the Dutch were doing. He came home and carried out a considerable amount of land reclamation work from the sea in that particular area. The reclaimed land is there still to be seen. If you want any further particulars you will get them in O'Flaherty's "Iar-Connacht," where the work this man did is alluded to. That is my historical authority.

It is absolutely impossible for a Deputy to make anything approaching a survey of the coast or to form any idea of the cost of reclamation. As to what it might cost to reclaim shallow water from the sea, I do not know. I am certain, however, that money spent is that way would certainly show something in the way of definite results. It would not be as wastefully spent as is the money that is spent on widening a road, the margin of which will grow in again in three or four years' time. I would like to be told what work is being done that is of a reproductive nature? What land is being reclaimed? What large areas are being drained? What area is being reclaimed from the sea or has any consideration been given to that question? What engineers have been employed to consider it? Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary might spend his £100 buying maps in order to see where the sea is sufficiently shallow for the purpose of reclamation work and he might send engineers to such places to estimate what the cost will be. Of course he could do all that at the public expense, but if he is so anxious to spend his £100 he might do it in that fashion.

Why not regard the expenditure of this enormous sum and the greater sums which must follow as a huge problem, as something that must be treated in a large way and in an imaginative fashion—something to be dealt with by men with big ideas, something to be dealt with by men who are willing to grapple with big schemes and not, as one may gather from the interruptions of the Parliamentary Secretary, men who are anxious to deal with this——

I am wild to deal with it.

——only in a very small and finicky way? A considerable number of Deputies spoke about the liming of land and the necessity for doing so. For my part, I do not think that the expenditure of money directly upon the burning of lime would be the best way to approach the problem. The results of the experiments of the Department of Agriculture show that after a very short time the land which is treated with ground limestone catches up the land which is treated with burned lime. It is very much easier to set up stations for the crushing of limestone. "Crushed limestone" is a technical and, probably, not a very accurate term. It means pulverised limestone— limestone pulverised to the fineness of slag. That crushed limestone is very much easier to handle and much more inexpensive to produce than is burnt lime. I suggest to the Department of Agriculture, or to any other Department willing to consider the matter, that they can, at very small cost, indeed, set up a lime-crushing plant. I believe that if a lime-crushing plant were set up in a suitable area, it would really cost the State nothing. It is the sort of work that the Land Commission could carry out on a paying basis, because, in a proper area, the value of the crushed limestone would be sufficient to meet the cost of production. I do not want to be local, but if the Parliamentary Secretary would like details of a scheme of that nature, I might refer him to a scheme which I drew up for the town of Ballinrobe. He will find that scheme in the Gaeltacht Department.

I should be very glad to have it.

These relief grants are enormous grants. Relief is being given, and has to be given, to an extent undreamed of in the history of this State. It is perfectly obvious that these relief grants must grow and grow. In my judgment, the extent of the relief grants necessary for the keeping of the people of the State alive must grow in proportion to the incompetence of the Government in office at the time. That is a sort of test. In consequence, I believe that these relief grants will and must grow. It is a matter of the greatest importance to the State, not only now but in the future, that when the resources of the country are being drained, as they are being drained at present, there should be something to show that the money has not been poured, as, seemingly, it is now being poured to a large extent, down a water pipe. Moreover— I want to emphasise this as much as I can—the expenditure of these relief grants can do infinite harm. It can demoralise the people. The money can be so expended that it would be much better and less demoralising for the people if they were put openly upon a system of doles, and given so much money per week. That might demoralise them less than putting them into a place nominally to do work, while they are doing no work. It would demoralise them less than encouraging them to obtain money by false pretences. You can do nothing worse to a country than to demoralise its young men. Make those men thriftless, encourage them to be idle and you are doing irreparable damage to the State. I am not only afraid but it is driven in upon me as a conclusion that my mind cannot reject, that that aspect— the most important aspect of the expenditure of these relief works— is not being considered by this administration at all.

Mr. P. Hogan (Clare):

A theory is held by eminent criminologists that criminals exhibit a morbid desire to revisit the seenes of their greatest crimes. I doubted that theory very much until I heard the front bench of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party revert to the question of unemployment and the administration of relief schemes. I thoroughly believe in that theory now. The Cumann na nGaedheal Party have come back, to some extent, to revisit the scene of their greatest crime—the unemployment problem that faced this State when they left office. They had no definite figures to say what was the extent of that problem. It varied, according to the Minister of the late administration who has spoken, from 22,000 to 15,000 or 10,000.

When the new administration came into office they proceeded to find out what was the true position regarding unemployment. They threw open the post offices, the Gárda barracks and the labour exchanges in an endeavour to discover how many people were unemployed. That has reacted in a way the present administration did not intend it should react. The regulations, concurrent with that system, seem to have made it possible for various defects to creep into the system as regards the non-employment of people who are really in need of it. There can be no question that there are plenty of schemes of work available. There can be no doubt that schemes. are being financed quickly and facilities afforded for the carrying out of work. But it is just as well that we should examine what is happening in a great many cases in connection with the procuring of gangs to carry out these works. We find that an official has to go to a labour exchange to get a list of men who are to be employed. We find that, in that list, there are set out the names of farmers and persons not as badly in need of work as those who possess nothing but a house on the side of the road, for which they have to pay a few shillings a week and who, possibly, have to maintain a family. We find the men I have referred to put on these works and, concurrent with that, we find that these gangs cannot alternate—that because a thing is done it is right. That is a very serious defect. I know of specific instances where an official not cognisant of the regulations put on four labourers on a scheme of work. They were married men, with from two to seven children. A higher official came along and dismissed these four men simply because they were not supplied by the labour exchange. He put on four farmers whose means may be measured by from five to eight head of cattle. Surely that is not what the Government envisaged when it drafted these regulations. Surely, there is no reason why these regulations should not be altered immediately. The Clare Co. Council, in session last Monday, sent a resolution direct to the Minister responsible urging that that system should be altered and pointing out that unless it is altered there will be serious hardships imposed upon men in need of employment. That is going on daily and it must be stopped. Surely it is not beyond the competence of the Ministry to devise a scheme to get away from that defect.

I am not in favour of putting any political advantages into the hands of any people nominating men for these positions. I am absolutely opposed to it. I do know, however, that the scheme, as it operates at present, is the worst possible scheme that could be initiated. I know, when the old principle was in operation, that you had not so many men entitled to employment who were not put on, and other men who are not in need of such employment put on, as we have at the present moment. That red-tape must be slashed at once and finished before you will have anything like effective arrangements for the employment of gangs when the work is being carried out; that, and the alternating of gangs where sufficient work cannot be supplied.

There is no doubt that a million pounds was given for road work. It is a large amount of money. It would be very interesting to find out, however, how much of it has been expended up to date. What is the good of giving one million pounds if twenty per cent. of it has not been spent after two or three months have gone by? Yet, on the very officials who are to expend that money you are tacking on the other work of superintending the bog roads and other works. Will they expend the money on the bog roads in the same proportion as they are expending the road grant money? There is no good giving negative inspirations to these people; positive instructions must be given to them that the work must be tackled at once. There is no good putting ten men on a gang in a quarry and ten men in another quarry, while there are thirty or fifty men in need of employment in that locality. That is not the way the road grant should be spent, and that is not the intention of the Administration. Positive instructions must be given and given at once. So much was this in evidence at the Clare County Council that we had to vote £1,500 out of the ratepayers' money in order to endeavour to deal with the unemployment in various parts of the county.

In the matter of the Road Fund, Deputy Mulcahy raised in an indirect fashion the question of stone-breaking and whether it would not be better to have the work done on the roads. I understand that there is a pious intention on the part of the Local Government Department that that is how the stones should be broken. I heard some Government Deputies the other day say that it was the intention of the Department. Yet we find stone crushers at every cross-roads. Not alone that, but we find that the material from old houses and old stone walls is brought up and dumped into the quarries to be crushed by these crushers while men are idle who might be employed in quarrying the material. Surely all this is something that might be considered immediately. I want to put it to the Minister responsible that these are things which must be tackled immediately. It is no good saying that there are no means by which you can get the right sort of men into the gangs. There are Civic Guards who would be able to tell who were workmen and who were farmers. It is no good putting a question into a questionnaire, "Have you any other means of living?" if there is no responsibility on a person to answer correctly, because in a good many cases it will not be answered correctly. There are home assistance officers in a position to give a certain amount of information as to whether people are or are not in need of employment. There are National Health Insurance inspectors who might possibly know who is or who is not in need of employment. There is plenty of machinery available to do the work and it only wants to be assembled. There is no use thinking that one official can travel from Kerry to Donegal and from Dublin to Clare and investigate these complaints. These complaints are serious and one man cannot investigate them in the time at his disposal. I put it to the Minister responsible that these matters are of urgent importance and I hope some means will be found to redress the grievances immediately.

I was very interested in the speech of Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, and the only objection I had was that he did not deliver that speech or a somewhat similar speech twelve months or two years ago when he was sitting on the opposite side of the House.

We had not the cash. He had to keep down taxation.

If it was necessary to keep down taxation two years ago I submit it is more necessary now.

We had not the cash.

While I agree with a good deal of what Deputy Fitz gerald-Kenney said, I think that he was, perhaps, not the Deputy to at tack the present Government regard ing their attitude towards unemploy ment. I think the members of the Labour Party and myself can say now, as we have often said before, that so far as the unemployed and poor were concerned it does not matter twopence whether it was Fianna Fáil or Cumann na nGaedheal was in power. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney I think very properly dealt, so far as we can learn from the newspapers, with the position of affairs in County Mayo regarding the arrangements made for the employment and disemployment of gangers and men according to the report made by the county surveyor. Assuming that what we have read in the papers is true, I think that every statement made by the Deputy is absolutely justified and that this is a state of affairs which should be immediately taken in hands by the Government Department concerned. If the statements made by the county surveyor and published in the Press represent accurately the position in Mayo, I think if the Local Government Department does not take action immediately it will be failing in its primary duty. I am afraid, however, that Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, in order to try to convince the House that the people of Mayo are no worse than the people of any other county, allowed himself by implication to cast a slur upon other surveyors in the Free State. He said that he was quite sure that if the other responsible officials of local bodies in the Free State were to do their duty as the county surveyor and assistant surveyors in Mayo were doing it they would find a similar state of affairs obtained in most other counties. I can speak only for my own county, and I can assure Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney and the House that that is not so, and I am very glad to be able to say that.

I think Deputy Morrissey is speaking under a misunderstanding. The position in Mayo is that the county surveyor is being interfered with, and the suggestion is that there is evidence of interference in other parts of the country. It is not a slur on the county surveyors in the rest of the country.

No, I quite agree that according to the county surveyor's report he is being interfered with and not alone interfered with but ignored. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney went on to say that that state of affairs was not peculiar to Mayo. I think I am not misrepresenting him. I am not pretending to quote him word for word but he said in substance that if every county surveyor and responsible officer in other counties in Ireland were to do their duty we would find almost a similar state of affairs obtaining in other counties. I can only speak for my county and I say that that state of affairs does not obtain. The Deputy went further and talked about supervision. From my experience I can say this and I can claim a fair experience of work on local authorities and I think it will be admitted by every member of this House, and by every member of the Labour Party in this House, that unless you have proper supervision you will not get a proper return on the money expended. I think nobody in the House will disagree with that. It is quite clear that unless you have supervision, and by supervision I mean supervision by trained and efficient men who know the return that ought to be given, you will not get the proper return.

When Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney goes on to say that the employees in Mayo County are paid a reasonably fair good wage for the work on the roads then I venture to disagree with him. I hope for a correction on this point, if I am wrong, but I am quoting from the papers. According to the daily papers we were informed that the rate of wages in Mayo was 4/2 per day. But I want to say that in my opinion 4/2 a day in the case of men who can only have a full day's work in fine weather, is not a good wage. By a wage of 4/2 a day you are not going to get a fair return for the amount expended.

Deputy Hogan, a Leas-Chinn Comhairle, dealt with a matter with which I also would like to deal. It is a matter that I have raised in this House over and over with the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I refer to the new regulation made by the Government regarding the employment of men on the roads. Deputy Hogan talked about red tape and he dealt with the matter very strongly. He, I know, has perhaps a better insight into that particular matter than many of us here, but I think it will be admitted by every member of this House who knows the position in the country that a more silly or absurd regulation was never drafted or could be drafted by any Department or any Minister than the regulation under which men are supposed to be employed upon relief grant work to-day in this country.

What is the position? Prior to these regulations being made by the present Government, whenever there was relief work in any particular area the county surveyor or the engineer to the local authorities applied to the manager of the local labour exchange for a list of the unemployed. From that list registered at the employment exchange he selected the men that he required. It was alleged very often in this House and outside of this House that many of those engineers, county surveyors and assistant surveyors and others were partial; that they allowed their political views to influence them in the selection of the men. That may or may not be true, but what is the position to-day?

The position to-day is that any man in Ireland is entitled to go to either the labour exchanges, to a post office or Garda Siochana barracks and register for employment. In many country areas you have an employment exchange situate in the country town. That may and very often does cover an area of fifteen or twenty miles from the town. The position to-day is this: that a man with 100 or 200 acres of land and with one, two, three or four sons can go to this office, can register for employment without disclosing that he has any land or any the country—to try and get, as nearly means of livelihood. He gets a card or cards and that card or cards for that family are sent from the post office or the Gárda Síochána barracks to the local labour exchange. If that man is registered on that card, even though he has three hundred acres of land, he must get preference over an ordinary labouring man.

Deputy Hogan in his speech made, if I may say so with all respect, what was a very slight error. He said that a list of the unemployed was supplied to the county surveyor. That used to be the procedure. It is not now the procedure. At the moment the procedure is that the county surveyor must inform the manager of the labour exchange that he requires fifteen or twenty men. The engineer or surveyor is not entitled to select the men. They must be selected from a list of 200, 300, 400 or 500 unemployed by a man sitting in his office who has no knowledge as to the position or even of the unemployed persons whom he is selecting and no experience of his job or the type of work they will be expected to do. I suggest to any fair-minded man in the House and to the Department of Industry and Commerce that they must have already found out that this scheme is absolutely unworkable. I want to call attention now and I do so without being in any way disrespectful to the Parliamentary Secretary. I might say that it is rather a shame on this question of unemployment that there is not in the House, and there has not been for the last hour and a half, a single Minister.

Particularly to correct their misleading statements.

I am not making any misleading statement.

No, only to correct their own.

I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to consult with the Minister for Industry and Commerce about this regulation which has been made. If he consults him or if he consults a member of any Party in the House I am sure he will find after enquiring into the matter that all of them are almost unanimous in agreeing that this regulation is absolutely and completely unworkable. If he has the slightest doubt about it he need only consult the members of his own Party. If he consults the Managers of the Branch Labour Exchange offices throughout the country, they will tell him that it is absolutely unworkable. There is just one other point I want to deal with. We were told by the last speaker that there were plenty of schemes available for dealing with unemployment, and that there was plenty of money available. I am satisfied that there are a great number of schemes in the offices of the different Departments, submitted by the Local Authorities, but I would like to know what percentage of these schemes have been sanctioned, and further I would like to know if the money is available for the schemes, if any, which have been sanctioned.

I think, sir, I would be quite in order in bringing in at the moment on this particular Vote a question of the moneys available from the Hospitals Sweeps for hospital improvement in the country, which we know quite well would give a great deal of employment, apart altogether from the question of providing proper accommodation and the most up-to-date way of dealing with the sick poor of the country. I would like to know, for instance, whether it is the Department of Local Government or the responsible local authority in my county is to be held accountable for the fact that, although schemes under this heading were submitted many months ago, and although I was informed by the Minister for Local Government here in this House that the money was available and ready to be allocated any time that the schemes were sanctioned, the schemes have not yet been sanctioned. I am satisfied that if those schemes were sanctioned and the work put in hands, seeing that the money is available, very useful employment could be given in that county.

I want to say, in regard to unemployment figures, that the figures given by the late Government were of very little use to us. The present Government started out, as they told us, to try and get a real picture of unemployment in as possible, an accurate figure. We have got at the moment a figure which ranges from, say, 87,000 to 93,000, as far as I know. I do not know accurately what the figures are. I want to say, as I have said before, that so far as I am concerned—so far as my knowledge and experience go—we are just as wise to-day with the 87,000 figure as we were twelve months or two years ago with the 25,000 or the 35,000 figure. Apart from figures altogether, whether it is 87,000, 93,000 or 25,000, I think any person who is in touch with realities in this country to-day will admit that there has been an increase of at least fifty per cent. in the number of unemployed within the last twelve months. I think I am not exaggerating when I say that. I want to say that the only effect, so far as I can judge, of the scheme of the Minister for Industry and Commerce for getting or endeavouring to get—and I give the Minister full credit for being quite sincere in his intentions—an accurate figure, in so far as it could be got, of the numbers of unemployed, is that we have got what I might call a double-barrelled position. We have got a number of people who are really unemployed—and when I say really unemployed I mean people who were available and are still available for employment—and we have got what I call "artificial unemployment." We have people to-day in this country registered for employment, not so much for the purpose of obtaining work as for the purpose of trying to obtain easy money by way of outdoor relief. There are very few members of this House who do not know that, whether they will admit it or not.

I want to say that I think it was, roughly, this time twelve months (it may have been a week or two later in the year) we had what used to be described by Deputy Cosgrave, when he was President, as the "hardy annual"—an unemployment motion. The members who now sit on the Government Benches then made great play— and I did not blame them; I personally was very glad indeed, as the mover of the motion, to have their assistance— of the position of the unemployed, and the numbers of people who were forced to look for outdoor relief. They made great play, and quite properly, of the fact that if the problem was not tackled, and tackled immediately, not only could the unemployed not continue in that position, but the ratepayers could not possibly continue to pay this outdoor relief. What is the position to-day? The latest figures we have got show that on the 31st October of this year there were roughly 23,000 more people in receipt of outdoor assistance than there were last year—not at all a bad indication of the position. Let me quote from a report in to-day's "Irish Independent" of the last meeting of the South Tipperary County Board of Health, held at Cashel: "The Secretary of the County Board of Health stated that the increase in home assistance represents £1,000 per week." That is not for the whole County of Tipperary. It is for South Tipperary.

An increase in money or an increase in number?

An increase of £1,000 per week. I will give the Deputy more details. "Mr. Hogan, Superintendent of Home Assistance, stated that home assistance had increased in Clonmel from £90 per week to £203 per week; in Tipperary town from £68 per week to £310 per week; from £68 to £310 per week in Carrick-on-Suir; from £65 per week to £166 in Cashel; from £23 to £123 per week in Slievard; from £70 to £200 in Cahir; from £20 to £80 per week in Golden, and from £14 to £80 in Cappawhite." These figures, I think, give us something to think about. I suggest that the Government ought to relate the position in this country to-day and the demand which is being made by the unemployed and the destitute upon the local authorities and upon the ratepayers, to the motion which was passed unanimously by this House on the 26th June last— the motion calling on the Government and passed unanimously by this House for either work or maintenance to meet the immediate needs of the unemployed. I think I am entitled to ask the Parliamentary Secretary this. I am sorry to see that he is going——

Unfortunately I had no lunch yet.

——I am sorry. Many of the unemployed are in the same position. I was going to ask the Parliamentary Secretary, who, we were informed by the President, after the Government being installed, had been appointed as the unofficial Minister for Employment, whether any report had been submitted by him to the Government, and if so, whether that report would be given to the House. I want to ask whoever is replying on behalf of the Government, what steps if any, have been taken to give effect to the motion which was passed by this House on the 26th June last. I want to refer to one other matter before I sit down, and that is the million pounds which we were told was to be raised or borrowed from the Road Fund to relieve unemployment. I, with Deputy Hogan, would like to know how much of that million pounds has been allocated and on what basis it was allocated. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney told us the rest of the Twenty-six Counties were just as dishonest as County Mayo in compiling their unemployed list——

On a point of order, Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney did not say County Mayo was as dishonest as the rest of the Twenty-six Counties.

I have not for a long time looked into what would roughly be the population of the town of Ballina, but I think I might say about 7,000 and it is extraordinary that there are 6,000 registered unemployed in the branch exchange at Ballina——

There are not. They have disappeared within the last fortnight, and there is not a single man of them left. They were there on the 31st October and they were not there on the 7th November, nor on the 14th November.

A Deputy

They joined the White Army.

My information is not as up to date as Deputy Mulcahy's, but the fact is they were there, and I want to know whether they have disappeared or not, and whether the million pounds was allocated on that basis. I want to know if the Minister will explain to me upon what basis that out of one million pounds available for the Free State £9,500 was allocated to the South Tipperary County Council as their portion, and £10,400 to the North Tipperary County Council as their portion. Further, I would like to know from the Minister why a letter was addressed to the North Tipperary County Council in September last making an allocation of £4,500 and informing the county surveyor—just imagine it, in the present state of unemployment—that they were now making the final allocation of £4,500 for the whole of the North Riding of Tipperary, and the county surveyor was to see that the £4,500 was expended before the 31st March next.

The county surveyor of the North Riding of Tipperary, in common with the county surveyors all over the Free State, after the announcement of the £1,000,000 was made, was asked to submit a scheme of roadwork, and submit it immediately, based on the unemployment in his area, and asking for an amount of money which could be usefully expended before 31st March, and which would secure that the unemployed in the North Tipperary Riding at that date would be kept in useful employment until the 31st March. He produced a scheme based upon the number of unemployed in the area, and that scheme was sent to the Department of Local Government on, I think, the 6th July. Up to the end of August he had not even got an acknowledgment, and the unemployed thinking, as we all did, that they would have employment at least until 31st March. Then we are getting £3,000— very little out of a million. After a little more trouble and badgering with the Minister and his officials we are getting a further £3,000. Then in September we got a letter, stating that our official allocation of the million was £4,500, which the Department hoped the county surveyor would see was expended before 31st March next. The county surveyor and the county council said quite properly they would have no trouble whatever in spending it, and spending it quite usefully, without being able to absorb 50 per cent. of the unemployed, in less than three weeks. I would like to get some information regarding these points. I think we are entitled to know what the Government are doing and what they hope to do towards a permanent solution of the unemployment question. I want to say for myself, and I want to be quite fair, that I think it is a terrible task—it is an almost impossible task for a Government in present world circumstances to find a solution which would be a permanent solution for the unemployment problem. I say that quite frankly, and I said it twelve months ago and two years ago, but I am putting to the present Government the query that they, when in Opposition put to the late Government. I am asking you to do what you asked the late Government to do, and if it were possible for them to do if it is equally possible for you to do now. I say this relief grant is not going to do any more for the unemployed than the £1,000,000.

My intention in this debate is to speak on two points which I will try to impress on the Minister for Finance, with a view to asking him to see that something should be done to bring about some alleviation of the distress at present existing. Listening to Deputy Murphy and Deputy Morrissey and a few others speak, I could not help making a few notes of some of the remarks they made. Deputy Morrissey spoke with two minds. On the one hand, he said the number of persons registered at unemployment exchanges had risen to a figure somewhere about 93,000, and he was just as fogged with that figure as with the previous figure. He went on to argue that some of these people registered because they wanted money—they wanted relief. At the same time he showed that in certain areas labour exchanges were active for a whole district and people came from a radius of 15 to 20 miles. He finds fault in this way, that a labour exchange in a particular town happens to have more unemployed registered than would constitute the population of the whole town. After he takes the trouble to explain why it is that certain labour exchanges in certain towns have a large number on the list, in fact, a number larger than the actual population of the town, he then proceeds to throw stones at the very matter which he has tried to explain.

I heard Deputy Mulcahy speaking chiefly about Mayo. He did not speak about Dublin, the city he represents. I will put this to Deputy Mulcahy: on the eve of last Christmas, Dublin City, out of the relief Vote granted by the Dáil, was allocated the handsome sum of £5,000. That was the amount given to it to keep the unemployed going over the winter. A sum of £45,000 was granted by the same Minister—Deputy Mulcahy was then a Minister—to assist in the construction of a war memorial, and directions were given that the employment on that memorial would have to be kept to an exclusive few. The Deputy spoke of preference and he tried to argue that there was preference in our system for persons who were inclined towards Fianna Fáil. I will prove to him, by arguing against the Minister on this very point, that the Minister has, in fact, so arranged matters that preference is reacting against persons who could be called Fianna Fáil or Republicans. I repeat that £45,000 was granted for the construction of a war memorial and employment was kept within narrow limits to the exclusion of other citizens.

That is not a fact.

What is not a fact?

The Deputy states that a sum of £45,000 was given for a certain work upon which certain persons were to be employed to the exclusion of other citizens.

I do not want to misrepresent the Deputy. Is it not a fact that Dublin got £5,000 from the Relief Grant?

I am concerned with this year.

A sum of £45,000 went towards a war memorial on which only ex-National Army men and ex-British Army men were to be given employment.

That is not a fact.

What is incorrect about it?

I think Deputy Briscoe ought to be allowed to proceed.

I intend to speak as closely as I can to facts, and if, by accident, I should make a statement not in accordance with facts, I shall be glad to be corrected, provided the Deputy is prepared to point out where my statement is incorrect.

Deputy Briscoe is speaking incorrectly of last year, and he is speaking of last year for the purpose of avoiding any reference to this year.

I intend to speak of this year, too. Are my statements incorrect?

Certainly they are.

To what extent?

Make your speech for the year 1932.

And forget 1931?

If I challenge the Deputy to point out where my statements are inaccurate and he cannot do so, then I contend that my statements should be regarded as correct. I say they are correct and the Deputy cannot controvert what I say. I intend to speak of 1932 later.

I suggest that the Deputy should not attempt to run away from the unemployment position at the present moment, and the way the relief scheme is being administered in connection with it. He should not try to run away from that by going back to something that has nothing to do with that matter. Even though the Deputy makes incorrect statements with regard to last year, I have no intention of helping him out to cover over his attitude of mind with regard to what is going on this year.

I maintain that what I have said about 1931 is quite correct. It will go down in the records of this House as being correct—the proof will be there.

Better get on the records what you think of the year 1932.

Keep quiet. I have given the Deputy an opportunity to speak and he cannot answer the challenge I have thrown down to him. He is like a colleague of his own who, when I challenged him to prove something, and when I sent him a note to say that I was prepared to give every proof of what I said, never took the opportunity to meet me. I am prepared at any time to produce documents showing the accuracy of my statements.

Any more red herrings?

What does the Deputy mean by red herrings?

These exchanges cannot be allowed to continue.

Deputy Mulcahy has the White Army so much before him——

Well, any more white herrings?

I am quite prepared to answer any questions or any suggestions put forward by Deputy Mulcahy.

I am not prepared to permit any more interruptions. Deputy Mulcahy must allow Deputy Briscoe to continue his statement.

As far as Dublin City is concerned, as a member of the Party which supports this Government, and as a member of the Dublin Corporation, which is the local authority administering the relief grant in the city, I may say that I am quite satisfied and happy with the proportion of the grant allocated to Dublin. We got this year thirty times the amount that was granted last year. If any fault is to be found with not spending that money in a sufficiently rapid manner and with the fact that numbers of unemployed able and willing to work have not been given employment, all that is due to the fact that the Corporation have not got a technical staff sufficiently large to deal with the work they should take in hands if they are to utilise all the money at their disposal. As it is, they have to take the unemployed on in a system of rotation.

I suggest that the Government should make some effort to even up the system of preference that is reacting against persons who, up to the change of Government, did not support the last Government. The order given to the Labour Exchanges is that, all things being equal, preference must be given to married men with the largest families, taking into consideration the length of unemployment and so forth. No one finds fault with that. What I find fault with is that the Labour Exchange officials, when interpreting the length of employment, generally take it as from the date of registration. I say that is unfair and unjust because many men ceased to register at Labour Exchanges for a period of four, five or six years when they discovered that under the last administration it was useless to do so. When this Government came into office those men reregistered and they are now only credited with being unemployed since they started to re-register although they really have been idle for almost eight or ten years. On the other hand, the men who kept on registering are being given a preference because their length of unemployment is being judged by the period of their registration at the Labour Exchanges. It works out this way, that a person who has been idle for nine months or twelve months gets the preference because he was registered at the Labour Exchange, whereas the non-registered person, who may have been idle for eight or ten years, gets no consideration.

There should be some means of verifying the statements made by applicants for work. I suggest to the Government that they should consider establishing a liaison between the Labour Exchanges and the relieving officers and, in areas where there are no relieving officers, between the Labour Exchanges and the Gárda Síochána for the purpose of checking up on the statements made by applicants and verifying whether a person has actually been unemployed for the period he indicates, altogether irrespective of the period during which that person has been registered. If such a liaison existed, a lot of difficulty would be overcome and a lot of injustice would be obviated. No relieving officer recommends an applicant for relief unless and until he has visited the residence of that applicant, has reported, and is prepared to vouch for the accuracy of the applicant's statement setting out the conditions under which he exists.

I want to ask the Government seriously to consider that, because, if they do, not only will they bring about a lessening of the disadvantages that a number of people suffer in the city but they will help to do so throughout the Twenty-Six Counties. I plead with the Government as strongly as I can to scrap that regulation and administer this relief through the local authorities on the actual facts of want and not as the conditions are represented to be by applicants at Labour Exchanges.

Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney said that we had no schemes that were reproductive and that all the money we were spending was being wasted. I am happy to be one of those who dissociate themselves absolutely and entirely from that point of view. Our present difficulty is the finding of a solution of the unemployment problem —a solution of a permanent nature. But while we cannot solve it permanently, at least, even if it means what Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney says— waste of money—I stand for the maintenance of our people who have nothing to exist on. The Deputy spoke of schemes of a reproductive nature. Does he want the Fianna Fáil Government to embark on a scheme like the Shannon scheme and pay labour 30/- per week? Does he want underpaid labour and a legacy to the nation—a white elephant—the loss on which annually will eat up a lot of the cash which would be available for expenditure on the relief of people without work? Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney wants us to embark on such schemes and to have an annual liability instead of its being reproductive—a liability in the sense that the loss will have to be made up for a great number of years from the taxation of the people. I should prefer to see maintenance given, even if no work was given, to keep people from absolute destitution. Even if work has to be done which is not of a productive nature, I should rather see it done than that no work should be provided at all. I am happy that I cannot bring myself to subscribe to the doctrine of Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney. The Deputy said that the giving of relief or maintenance on the basis on which it is given by this Government is bringing about lack of morals, and general demoralisation. I do not know whether that would bring about demoralisation more quickly than destitution or the parents of families being left without the essentials for their children. I think that demoralisation would come far more quickly if the system in operation in the past was kept up or if we were to be argued into accepting the suggestions made to us to-day from the Opposition.

If we are to be blamed because we have no schemes of a reproductive nature ready, at least we can say that there were not many left on the shelves when the last Government went out of office. We had to start afresh. I say, without offering any excuse, that if every penny of that million pounds was spent on unnecessary work, or work which was never going to produce anything, at least it would have served in saving for this nation a great many persons who would either grow up to be derelicts or who would not be able to live at all. That, I think, is a more reproductive investment than mere argument as to whether the making of a bog road is better than the draining of a bog or the building of a wall so that pine trees may grow or may not grow on certain lands between Blackrock and Dublin. The greatest asset this country can have is the youth of the country, provided that youth can boast of a well-nourished body which will be productive of a decent type of mind.

As against that argument, I want to say that in Dublin City we have submitted and have received approval of a great number of schemes. If we were to analyse those schemes a lot of people would declare them to be mere waste of money. Money may be spent on lowering the levels of certain little rivers to prevent them overflowing and damaging property in wet seasons. Nobody can argue that there is anything reproductive in that. The lowering of the level of a river is not going to produce anything, but it will, at least, avert disaster and bring about a greater state of comfort for the people in the neighbourhood. It is also going to afford useful employment, although some people may consider it waste of money. I could go through a list of the schemes we have in Dublin. There is, for instance, the cleaning of laneways not in the charge of the Dublin Corporation. Some people might argue that that is not reproductive work. It will, at least, give employment, make the city cleaner and lessen the danger of illness from these laneways. I cannot controvert the figures given by Deputy Morrissey, because when I asked him for certain information he refused to give it. In Dublin City the cost of relief is going to go up, and I am glad it is going to go up because it is going to go up by giving extra money——

Who is paying for it?

the ratepayers of Dublin, of whom I am one.

Mr. Byrne

Is that maintenance by the State?

The State has its obligations and so have the ratepayers. This Government are not the people who introduced rates. Rates were in existence before we came into office. Speaking for myself and on behalf of a great many ratepayers, I would rather see the relief increased by 25 per cent. than continued in the way it was given before. Deputy Byrne asks who is paying the relief. The present Government are giving, roughly, £200,000 to the City of Dublin to relieve citizens of their obligation to their fellow citizens. While we are increasing the amount given by way of relief, the Government is doing its share. Dublin Corporation is controlled by ratepayers and not by citizens. Nobody has a vote for the Corporation except ratepayers. There is no adult suffrage for the Corporation. If Dublin Corporation, which is the body of the ratepayers, was to increase its permanent staff or to take on temporarily men who could be given charge of certain works, a great deal of the relief now being paid would cease to be necessary because a great number of men could be employed who are now a charge on the rates. The greatest complaint that Deputy Mulcahy, Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney and Deputy Morrissey have against us is that we are making some effort to deal with the problem. We may not have gone fast enough. There may be certain defects in the plan but, at least, the will is there. The money has been voted and, so far as Dublin City is concerned, I say that we have been given a fair share. Deputy Alfred Byrne, when he was speaking on this matter, referred to people coming up from the country and becoming residents of the city on account of the relief available here. I am happy to think that, as things will work out now, we will not have so many persons migrating to the city. The Government is going to look after the whole country and not a section or part of the country. I challenge figures to be produced as to the number of persons, who, having hopes of employment in their own areas, migrate to the City of Dublin. There was a time when there was no hope of any kind. There is hope now with the general policy that is being pursued of building up industries. Deputy J.J. Byrne may laugh. He made a statement in this House about which I spoke to him privately. He spoke of the rates of wages paid in a certain area by certain persons who had been brought in as a result of our policy.

He said they belonged to a certain section of the community. I challenged him about that. I have made inquiries since and I find they belong to his own section, not mine. I hope that like a gentleman he will withdraw the statement he made on that occasion.

If I made an innuendo against the Jewish community that is not correct I withdraw.

You made no innuendo. You said "The rates of wages paid by these Jewmen." I have made inquiries and I find they did not belong to our community but your own. I hope the Deputy will withdraw that when he comes to speak.

Mr. Byrne

Your industrialists not ours.

That is the end of it. We must not have any more about that.

We have this kind of things talked about. People do not know what they are talking about sometimes. I ask the Minister in charge to look into this question of administration through the Labour Exchanges and see if he cannot devise some means whereby persons actually in want will at least be given first preference for the work.

This debate seems to me to have developed not only into a discussion on the Estimate before us, but into a discussion on the general policy a Government should pursue in the dilemma of unemployment. I should like to refer to an observation made by Deputy Briscoe with reference to Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney's speech. I think Deputy Briscoe misunderstood Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney did not imply in any way that he would sooner that men were not employed at all than that they should be employed on unproductive work. What he did say was that if you can choose between employing men on productive work or unproductive work it is very much better to employ them on productive work. Deputy Briscoe said that it does not demoralise men to get work when they are hungry. That is one way of putting it. I think that it does demoralise and that it humiliates a man to be put to work on building basilisks, roads that lead nowhere, and walls that are not wanted. I think that any selfrespecting man hates the idea of relief works, hates to be paid for what he knows is work that is no good to anybody. It is better for the man and for the community that the Government or the local authority should devote their energies to discovering useful work, even though, in ordinary circumstances, the community could not contemplate doing that work much as they would wish to have it done. It is much better to do that kind of work and put a man to work so that he knows that his labour is not being wasted, that he is simply not being made to work in order to provide the community with an excuse for giving him the dole. That, so far as I know, is what Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney said, and I think it is a different proposition from what Deputy Briscoe understood him to say.

Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney said it would be much better to put a man on the dole than on unproductive work. I listened to the whole of his speech.

I will not take up time going any further with it.

Will Deputy Dillon promise to read Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney's speech?

I shall certainly read Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney's speech and Deputy Briscoe's speech, although I listened to both attentively. I am satisfied that, as on a previous occasion, Deputy Briscoe will discover that I heard the speech with more meticulous accuracy than he did.

Is the Deputy now referring to the speech in which I said that the previous Government stated it was not their duty to provide work for the unemployed, because I stand over that statement?

We cannot make Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney's speech the subject of debate here.

It is Deputy McGilligan's speech I am talking about now.

I guarantee that I am going to drop it. Strangely enough, the speech made was exactly on the same question as we are now discussing. However, I do not think it is expedient now to go into a full discussion of Governmental policy for the relief of unemployment. I think it is regrettable to be continually wrangling as between Parties about what Cumann na nGaedheal did for the unemployed and what Fianna Fáil is going to do for the unemployed. The truth is that neither did very much. I am certain that it was not for the want of good will. I think a great deal more could be done if all Parties would admit what they realise, that the unemployment problem is one of such terrible gravity that it is perplexing the best minds in the world. If Cumann na nGaedheal, instead of trying to score points off Fianna Fáil by walloping them with the prostrate bodies of the unemployed, would make constructive suggestions such as the Parliamentary Secretary for Finance asked for, they would be better employed. If Fianna Fáil would get or of the habit they got into during the general election of telling the 83,000 unemployed that if they returned President de Valera they would all have work in less than no time, I think they would be better employed. Because, after all, these men who are suffering from want of work will clutch at a straw, and the disillusionment which follows when they discover that responsible men have told them what was ridiculously untrue, that they could find employment for them immediately if returned to office, may have a very undesirable effect upon the minds of these men. All that any of us can say is that all the help we can give towards the solution of that problem we are prepared to give to any Government in office, whether we agree with them in polities or otherwise; that anything in the way of assistance that we can give to them we are ready to give, is the most that anybody can do. It is evident in every country in the world that politicians and statesmen are coming to that view. They are all coming to the conclusion now that to argue or discuss the question of unemployment along political lines is futile and can do nothing but harm.

Deputy Hogan (Clare) referred to the regulations which the Department of Industry and Commerce have laid down for the administration of this grant and other speakers followed him. I had reason to refer recently in this House to the fact that political considerations were being allowed to operate when men were being employed on relief works. That was a charge that was frequently made by the Fianna Fáil Party when the Cumann na nGaedheal Party was in office. I have taken some trouble to look into that question and I am satisfied that the very self-same circumstances prevail to-day on relief works in the country as prevailed when Cumann na nGaedheal was in office. I am satisfied that there are areas in which unemployed men are being told to go and join the Fianna Fáil club before they get employment on public works. But, so far as I have been able to find out, that is taking place on works done under the control of local authorities. I recognise fully the great difficulty there is in the way of the Minister responsible controlling that. So far as I am aware, what happens is that the County Surveyor places a scheme in charge of his assistant; the assistant surveyor appoints the ganger, and the ganger appoints the men. Very heavy local pressure can be brought to bear on that assistant surveyor. He may do his best to resist it, but it works out in the end that the very self-same abuse is going on to-day as went on when Cumann na nGaedheal was in office.

I believe that men are being put to a political test in many cases throughout this country before they can get the employment. I suggest to the responsible Minister that the only remedy he has at his disposal is to bring strong pressure to bear upon the local authorities to caution their county surveyors against allowing that kind of thing to continue. I think there may be something to be said for taking out of the hands of local gangers the power to employ men who are to work under their control on the roads.

I do not agree with the point that has been raised here that labourers have been left unemployed in some cases while farmers are being given work. There are many parts of this country in the congested areas where the small farmer may be reduced to a state of destitution just as grievous as any labourer. It is well to remember that the small farmer, when he is reduced to destitution by poverty or sickness, has no national health insurance and no unemployment insurance to fall back on. He has the rate collectors coming to visit him and the Land Commission writing to him at stated intervals. For that reason, I do not see why the small farmer, who is glad to pay his way when he is able to do it, is to be turned down for work on the road.

I do not think there is prima facie evidence of mismanagement in the case made that farmers get work on the roads while labourers do not. If the cases are examined I venture to say that it will be found that many small farmers are in more dire poverty than some of the labourers in their own areas. I strongly impress upon the Minister that no discrimination or test should be allowed in these matters, that the first claim for work is the unemployed married man with a family, secondly the married man, and thirdly the man who has people dependent upon him. I think that is how the work should be given, in order of preference. There should be no departure from it. I think the Minister for Local Government and Public Health should press most strongly upon the local authorities that that principle should be abided by, and that the Minister should insist on that principle being observed in any scheme carried out under the sanction of the Department of Local Government and Public Health. The same should apply to all works carried out by the Commissioners of Public Works. I would very strongly make that suggestion with regard to all the work that may be undertaken under these relief grant.

It has now become fashionable to pour scorn on any proposal for a bog road. The Minister for Education or any Minister who is intimately acquainted with rural life in this country knows that one of the things that enter into the everyday life of the people in rural areas is the bog road. There are many parts of Connaught and Donegal where the people have actually to go a considerable distance into the bogs and bring out the turf on their backs. I recognise that the great difficulty about the bog roads is that in the case of the average bog road it is found that within three years after it is laid down it has practically ceased to exist through lack of maintenance. The people in the area are then no better off. Every Deputy here knows that a large part of our daily correspondence has to do with bog roads. Deputies are perpetually pestering every Department that has anything to do with these matters to get bog roads made in their constituency.

I suggest to the Minister that he might consider it possible to have a regulation made that where, say, twenty tenants are prepared to accept liability for an annual sum to maintain a bog road the Commissioners of Public Works or the Land Commission— whichever body has to do with the matter—will build the road. Unless there are very special and very peculiar circumstances neither the Land Commission nor the Board of Works will build a road into a vested estate unless the interested parties are prepared to consider a small annual sum towards the maintenance of the bog road. But if numbers of them are prepared to give that undertaking and have it paid in the same way as their land annuities then they should have a claim and a right to get that bog road made. That would very much simplify the situation. Then if a constituent writes to any Deputy about a bog road the Deputy can write back and ask "can you get 19 neighbours who will each allow 2/6 a year to be put on to their receivable orders for the maintenance of this road?" If the man looking for a road can do that there should then be no difficulty about having the work undertaken. I tell Deputies that unless something like that is done they will find that they will have to make an extraordinarily strong case to the Commissioners of Public Works before the Commissioners will build a bog road.

If the Government would make this regulation it would be a great lift in the lives of the ordinary homely people of this country. This is the kind of small thing that provides constant irritation in the lives of country people—that is the want of a bog road where they can bring out their turf. If the Minister adopts my suggestion he will do a great service to the small farmers of the country, and at the same time he will relieve the permanent officials of the Department concerned of the annoyances which Deputies must cause them if they are looking after their constituents' interest.

Afforestation has been referred to. I only want to say a few words on it from the point of view of my own constituency of Donegal. I do not think there is any county in Ireland that has been less generously treated in the matter of afforestation than Donegal. It seems to me that there are few counties in Ireland more suited to comprehensive schemes of afforestation than Donegal. There are very large areas in the West of Donegal which are useful for very little else than afforestation. On a previous occasion here the Minister for Agriculture said that one of their difficulties was that they were looking for suitable land for afforestation. I think I may venture to say on behalf of my colleagues, Deputies Blaney and Brady, Deputies White, Doherty and Myles, and myself, that if the Minister is in any difficulty in the matter of securing sites for afforestation any one of us would be most happy to show him numerous places in the County Donegal where successful afforestation can be quickly carried out and with very great benefit to the county at large.

Now I come to a question, sir, which I have raised on more than one occasion in this House, and to which I invite the Minister's special attention. There is one province where invaluable work could be done immediately, and where at the same time a very valuable economy of public money could be effected. There are in this country a number of old drainage boards, set up under drainage schemes which were carried through in the difficult times of the first half of the nineteenth century. These boards are at present subject to no central authority. In many of them the terms of the original award have been forgotten. In many of them the area which the drainage board was supposed to supervise has been forgotten, and the work is not being done. Nevertheless, there is an annual cess on certain lands, and it is a remarkable thing that the area liable to cess is never forgotten. They come round punctually every six months for that. I suggest to the Minister for Finance that if he introduced a short Bill into this House, giving the Commissioners of Public Works authority to take over all these drainage schemes, it would be a very much better plan than handing them over to the county council, because what is happening by handing them over to the county council is that their revenues are getting merged in the rates. The county councils are supposed to maintain the drainage areas, and in many areas they do not do it. Invaluable work could be supplied to large numbers of men at the present moment, if the Commissioners of Public Works would take over these drainage areas. Large areas of land, which are at present going back into bogs and rushes owing to the breakdown of administration in those areas, might be reclaimed.

The last matter to which I wish to refer is one which Deputy Briscoe referred to. This Government came into office last March, and I should like to know whether there has been a single man or woman taken out of the tenements in the city and put into a decent house since they came into office. Elaborate grants, I believe, have been given, but what I should like to know from the Government is what they have got to show for them. If they have nothing to show, is it not time that they insisted on a more vigorous and forward policy being adopted in connection with the housing of the poor of the city? There are still men and women living in basements in tenement houses all over the city. That, so far as I am aware, is a flagrant breach of the law, and it is a breach of the law at which the public health authorities in this city are conniving. They connive at it in so far as they do not get rid of it. It is the duty of the Government to insist that vigorous measures are taken to provide alternative accommodation for these people, and in taking those measures they can give very useful employment to large numbers of men in this city. There is a great deal of preliminary work to the building of houses in the City of Dublin, which would take practically nothing but unskilled labour. The clearing of sites, and the preparation of virgin soil, should be gone on with vigorously and at once. There is an emergency situation in connection with unemployment at the moment. We are approaching Christmas time, when it is desirable that as few men as possible should be unemployed. The Minister, and if necessary the Commissioners of Public Works, should themselves take that matter in hands with the Corporation again, and get as many as possible of the unskilled labourers of the city to work, clearing sites and preparing the way for housing that must be done next year—that should have been done ten years ago, and that the Fianna Fáil Government pledged themselves to carry out at the earliest possible moment.

A Leas-Chinn Comhairle, Deputy Mulcahy feels sore, especially with the Mayo County Council, and I dare say rightly so, because it was his attempt to steam-roll the Mayo County Council into submission nearly two years ago that is responsible for Deputy Mulcahy's being, as I might say, an ordinary Deputy of this House. He has discovered a mare's nest in County Mayo. It is not the first time he discovered a mare's nest. Long before Deputy Mulcahy became a Minister he was very good at discovering mares' nests. He read for us a lengthy document in connection with the administration of the unemployment grant in County Mayo. I happen to be a member of the Mayo County Council, and it is true that the members of the Mayo County Council did get a confidential document from the county surveyor, asking for closer co-operation between members of the council and the survey staff. There were forty-five extra gangers employed under this relief scheme. Deputy Mulcahy stated that even the gangers employed on the ordinary steam-rolling work in the county were dismissed. That statement is not correct. Not one man employed on the old staff of the Mayo County Council as ganger was dismissed. Three of the seventy-five gangers had to be removed by the county surveyor for inefficiency, and the whole thing boiled down to this, that I think the Minister can rest satisfied that when he gets the report of that meeting before him he will find out that good value has been given and good work has been done in the county for the money expended.

Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney talked about schemes. I believe he even said that he sent forward a scheme to some Department eight years ago in connection with the grinding of limestone in the Ballinrobe district. That certainly is a tribute to his work, that after eight years that scheme is there in that Department and nothing done about it, or is it that they found the scheme was not an economic one? He now wants the Fianna Fáil Government to take it up. I am certain that the people of Ballinrobe will take at its true value the fact that for eight years while Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney was a member of the Executive Council he never made one effort to push the scheme into operation, notwithstanding the fact that it would cost not more than £2,000 or £3,000. A lot of people seemed surprised at the number of unemployed in County Mayo. Quite a number of people do not realise the fact that while emigration to America was open we sent out of County Mayo 9,000 emigrants every year. We have 9,000 farmers living on farms the valuation of which is £10 and under; we have something like 3,000 farmers liv-on farms the valuation of which is £2 and under, and 4,500 living on farms the valuation of which is £5 and under. All those men have large families. I think we have, on an average, the worst land of any county in Ireland and the farmers of County Mayo have at all times paid both their land annuities and their rates. Whatever we got in the way of grants for the relief of unemployment we only got what we were entitled to, and I say this much, that 15,000 would be a nearer estimate of the exact number of unemployed in the County Mayo.

In connection with the schemes chosen, personally I do not agree with the way money is being spent on the roads. I think too many roads are being steam-rolled. I would much rather see the money for the relief of unemployment put into the land. We have very large tracts of land in County Mayo that are of very little use for anything else beyond forestry, and I hope that the Minister in considering any future grants to the county will give afforestation his consideration.

The attempts that were made by Deputy Mulcahy to weave a sort of corruption and bribery into the administration of the affairs of County Mayo have been a complete failure. I think it is admitted by everybody—and has been admitted even by Deputy Mulcahy himself, who, when he was Minister, abolished the Mayo County Council because they refused to accept his protégée as librarian for the county —that the affairs of the County Mayo were administered justly and in an equitable manner. I might say, as I said in the beginning, that it was his attempt to steam-roll the members of the Mayo County Council into submission to certain suggestions that may have been responsible for his being an ordinary Deputy in this House. And his attempt is a further attempt to try and create in the minds of Deputies in this House the feeling that there is corruption and that these grants are not being administered by the county surveyor in a proper manner.

A Chinn Comhairle, in rising to speak on this Vote, I think it will be apparent to this House that the economic policy of the new Government has been an absolute and complete failure and that perhaps one of the most marked failures in the Ministry is the Minister for Employment, Deputy Hugo Flinn, himself. We have listened to this debate. We have asked for something in the way of information in the nature of a constructive policy to deal with the problem of unemployment from the Government Benches and we have not had yet a single suggestion as to anything constructive being done to cure the problem of unemployment, although when they were on this side of the House they told us it was quite easily solved. Anybody listening to the speeches that have just been made need only ask himself one or two plain questions as to whether the economic policy of the Government is a sound policy, or whether it is a useless policy or not. We listened a few moments ago to Deputy Briscoe, one of the representatives of the City of Dublin. He told us he was thoroughly satisfied and happy with the position of Dublin City so far as employment was concerned this year. Now, I wonder what is there in the existing position of the unemployment problem in Dublin City that has made Deputy Briscoe so happy as he appears to be. It is the well known and well enunciated policy of the Government both before they got into office and since they got into office that they are prepared to find work for the unemployed, or maintenance for the unemployed. I would like to ask this House what is happening at the present moment in Dublin City with regard to the maintenance that was to be given to the workless of the country. At the present moment the ratepayers of Dublin City are shouldering a burden which is a national burden and should be shouldered by the State. The cost of relief is going up in Dublin City by leaps and bounds. The number of persons in receipt of public assistance on the last Saturday of October was 120,527, which is 7,793 more than in the previous month, and 22,686 more than in the corresponding date in 1931—an increase of 22,000 people for 1931. When the Cumann na nGaedheal Party were in office and when the new Government sat upon these benches we were told there was an easy solution to the unemployment problem, and that they had a plan by which they would absorb 40,402 workers into the industries of this State. I want to ask the Parliamentary Secretary before he concludes this debate if he will tell the House how many of these 40,000 people have been absorbed since they took office. Perhaps he will give us particulars of the industries which have absorbed them, and perhaps he will tell us something further of the plans that he has up his sleeve for dealing with in a practical way and finding a permanent solution of the unemployment problem. There is no member in this House who wishes to exploit the miseries of the poor; there is no member in this House who will deny that if the poor need assistance that assistance must be forthcoming.

A moment or two ago I referred to the fact that the Government policy promised work or maintenance for the workless of this country. I want to point out this, that over 30 per cent. of the workers of the whole Free State are concentrated in the City of Dublin. I want to ask the Parliamentary Secretary has he any intention on behalf of the Government to take any special steps to deal with the problem of Dublin City as it now exists. We have been told that when Fianna Fáil would get into power there would be a new Heaven and a new earth in the Irish Free State; we have been told that the solution of the unemployment problem was one of the easiest problems that existed in this country in comparison with any other country in Europe; we were told they had a definite plan for absorbing the unemployed, and after ten months in office that plan has not yet been put into operation. Deputy Morrissey asked a very iair question from the Parliamentary Secretary. He asked the Parliamentary Secretary would he inform the House what the Government is doing to find a permanent solution of this question. Deputy Briscoe, one of the representatives of Dublin City, is exceedingly pleased with the existing position. He is exceedingly pleased with the fact that the number of registered unemployed since the Government took office has doubled. Is that an achievement to be proud of, or is it something rather of a more alarming character which calls for the most drastic steps to be taken on behalf of the Government, to try and ease the existing conditions? Does it matter to Deputy Briscoe that the number of idle men in Dublin City is still increasing? Does it matter that the ratepayers are being asked to support an influx of idle people from all parts of the country that they should not be asked to support? Now, I would like just to give one instance of what occurred in the District Court within the present week. There was a man charged and brought before the court on a charge of vagrancy. He was found sleeping on the Custom House steps in the City of Dublin. I believe the man was from the County Kildare. He was asked by the magistrate would he go into the union or not. He had been in Dublin for three months in search of work and found none. He said that, of course, he had no other option but to go into the union. Now that is occurring every day in the week in Dublin City, and the ratepayers of this City are being asked to bear a burden of that kind which they are certainly unable to bear. I say that, in view of the well-defined policy of the Fianna Fáil Party, they are prepared to find work or maintenance for every idle man in this State, and with this influx of unemployed people from every county in the Free State into Dublin City, the ratepayers of the city should be relieved at the earliest possible moment from the burden they are being asked to bear.

I cannot agree with the happy contented frame of mind that Deputy Briscoe appears to have when he speaks of the present employment position in Dublin City. In my opinion things are in a most appalling condition here. We know that there has been a desperate attempt on the part of the present Government to create in a hurry new industries, and that there has been a plethora of tariffs levied with that object. Let us be fair in looking at the effect of that policy. What effect has it had on the problem of unemployment? Deputy Dillon, a short time ago, took up the superior attitude that he always takes up in this House—a plague on both your Houses—a plague on Fianna Fáil and a plague on Cumann na nGaedheal. His attitude was that neither had done anything. I am sorry that the Deputy is not in the House, but I would like to remind him that, when the Fianna Fáil Party took over office, relatively speaking we had the smallest number of unemployed of any country in Europe.

For the ten years that our Party was in office we increased employment. We found permanent employment, not relief works, for between twenty thousand and thirty thousand people, and all these were breadwinners and heads of families. The policy of the present Government is to disemploy breadwinners and heads of families. The factories set up since the present Government took office have given one kind of employment, that is, employment to juvenile labour or to girls, and that employment has been so bad that even the present Minister for Industry and Commerce has been forced to make the confession in this House that the conditions were so bad for the workers he had to take drastic action himself and close down one of those factories. As late as last week-end, in the course of his speech in Cork, he admitted that the present industrial policy of the Government would have to be revised: it would have to be looked into and changed. Does anybody think that the spending of one million pounds is going to do anything to solve the problem of unemployment? Does the empty boasting that comes from the opposite side of the House on a debate of this kind make any advance or provide any solution in the way of finding work for the unemployed people of the country? You may spend million after million on poor relief works, but that will provide no solution. What is wanted is work of a permanent character, work of the kind that the late Government did provide and got no credit for doing so.

Deputy Briscoe asked if we on this side of the House would recommend the Government to embark upon some white elephant schemes such as the Shannon Scheme. I presume the Deputy also included in that the Beet Sugar Industry started by the late Government. There is one thing that members of this House, no matter in what part of it they sit, should not do and that is to depreciate the national reserves of the country. The Shannon Scheme is a national reserve. Nobody knows better than the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance who is in charge of this Vote that it is only a question of time until the Shannon Scheme is a dividend paying concern.

We were the pioneers of the electrical industry in the City of Dublin. We know that for many years after it was started the citizens had to pay very heavy sums in order that it might be carried on. We know, too, that when we handed it over, as we did ungrudgingly, for the national good of the State, that the result of its operation was this: that it was reducing the rates of the city by something like £25,000 per annum and was putting substantial sums to reserve. All that took time. So, too, will the Shannon Scheme. We all know that the old jest of paying thirty shillings a week to working men on that scheme has been exploded like an empty cartridge case, and that nine men out of ten, instead of receiving thirty shillings a week when employed on the scheme, received anything from fifty shillings to fifty-five shillings and were very glad to get it.

The beet sugar industry has also been referred to as another of the white elephants of the late Government. We see in the newspapers that people in various parts of the country are falling over one another in an endeavour to get additional sugar factories set up in their areas. If the new sugar factories are nearly as successful in their operations as the first one set up by the late Government, then I say that a tremendous amount of national good will have been done for the country—that is, if the new Government only follow in the footsteps of the old. The late Government did constructive work. It did not indulge in this temporary handing away of doles. The action of the present Government in raising the income tax from 3/6 in the £ to 5/-and dishing the money out to the unemployed was not that of statesmen.

It was merely the adoption of an emergency measure that leads nowhere. Action of that kind will not establish the State upon a sound, financial and economic basis.

What I would like to know is what amount of work has been found for the casualties in Gallaher's tobacco factory in this city. Where have they got employment? What has been done for the two hundred or three hundred workers on the quays of this city who have been disemployed as the result of the senseless tariffs imposed by the present Government?

What has been done for the 100 men in the Dublin Port and Docks Board and, if I am correct, the men attached to the ports in Waterford and in Cork, who are now unemployed? Do you think if you find work for a girl or for a juvenile at from 11/- to 15/- a week and at the same time disemploy the bread-winners you are making national progress? Is it not the other way round? We want to make no capital out of the miseries of the unemployed. It is to the interest of every Party in this House that this problem should be solved at the earliest possible moment. But when one looks around and sees the results of this senseless economic war, £350,000 having been lost to the railways alone that could have been spent in the payment of wages to the heads of families, with such tremendous national benefit, one is forced to ask, how long will the country tolerate this midsummer madness, this senseless economic policy, that is being enforced by Fianna Fáil? It is very easy to speak for or against this motion. It is very easy to do the lady bountiful, as Deputy Briscoe did, by saying that the unemployed in Dublin were getting twenty times more money this year than last year. I wonder where the ratepayers of Dublin will be next year when another £350,000 will be required to pay poor relief. I want to put this question to the Parliamentary Secretary before the debate concludes: Has he any intention of giving State aid to the ratepayers of Dublin to help them in the tremendous difficulty with which they are faced, and in the burdens they are bearing, owing to the influx of unemployed people from all parts of the Free State at the present time?

One would think from Deputy Byrne's speech that legislation was needed for no other part of the State but Dublin. The position of Dublin to-day is definitely due to the policy of the last Ministry. If an industry was to be started it had to be started in Dublin. In that case the late Ministry said: "We will help you," but if it was to be started anywhere else, then the decision was: "No help." Deputy Byrne seems to forget that the rest of the country is paying something like £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 in salaries which are spent in Dublin. Nearly every official is gathered about Dublin, so that it is amusing to hear Deputy Byrne talking about the burden of Dublin and about the heads of families being unemployed, when we remember that the first rule laid down at every labour exchange during the last ten years was one giving preferential treatment, not to married men with families but to ex-National Army men. If a man with a wife and eight children went to look for employment he found that first preference was given at the labour exchanges to single ex-National Army men. It is no wonder when we compare unemployment figures now and twelve months ago there is a difference. What was the use of a man looking for employment at the exchanges up to this? I know men who registered at the labour exchanges week after week and month after month, and after doing that for six months they found that a gentleman who had been thrown out of the National Army got the job that the other poor devil had been waiting for for months. There is no use denying it. Only sufficient money was given in grants to keep the ex-National Army men going. There was nothing for anyone else.

That is not true.

Absolutely. Do you deny that preference was given to ex-National Army men with no dependants as against married men with families?

The Deputy stated that £350,000 was given to ex-National Army men.

I said that sufficient money was given in grants to provide employment for ex-National Army men, and no one else.

That is not true.

I can give an instance of it. We are told now about political considerations in the employment of men by gentlemen who put up the political consideration that single men without dependants, who happened to serve in the National Army for a couple of years, should get preference over married men with five or six children. We are told by Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney that the money spent on the by-roads is wasted. I am sure it is a long time since the Deputy drove a horse and butt, or since he had the job of taking a horse along one of the roads that were specially prepared by the late Ministry. If he did he would know the position. The late Ministry would give local authorities no grants for roads unless they were main roads and were made in such a manner that no horse could travel on them. It was roads for Rolls Royce motor cars they wanted. We are also told that we are not providing sufficient money for the unemployed. I will take one town that Deputy Mulcahy should have very happy recollections of until he mobilised an army to try to capture it a few weeks ago. The town of Mallow is in my constituency, and the Deputy went down with the White Army, some of whom came out of it red. When the late Government was in office the Deputy chanced to hear that there was such a place as Mallow on the map and £100 was given as a grant for the relief of unemployment. The work upon which the money was spent was undertaken at £99 by a contractor, but Deputy Mulcahy wrote to the Urban Council for the pound that was left. That is a fact. The letter can be produced. During the nine months that we are in office there was something like £2,000 given for the relief of unemployment in the town to which Deputy Mulcahy gave £100 previously, and to the Council to which he wrote for the pound. It is the same throughout the length and breadth of the country. At least, that is so in my constituency. Yet we are told that this money is being spent uselessly and that no benefit is being derived from it.

By the expenditure of £130 in my constituency we were able permanently to increase employment in one business from 20 to 60 hands. The same proposal was put up to the Cumann na nGaedheal Party but they could not see their way to provide the money. The expenditure of that £130 is going to lead to the permanent employment of from 120 to 140 men in one business. Another proposal, where £250 was spent in proving clay deposits, is going to mean the permanent employment of 60 hands in my constituency. It is far better than putting £1,500 per mile—and I think it is to cost something more in the end—into tar-macadam roads lest the motor cars of the £1,800 a year officials would be splashed on the roads. The expenditure of some £300 in Fermoy is being given on the definite condition that £500 will be spent in labour outside of that, and, from what I know personally of the proposal, it will lead to the permanent employment of 25 men if not more. I know that these proposals were put up to Cumann na nGaedheal who were afraid they might offend their brother—or is it their big sister they call her now?—if they dared to give any employment to Irishmen while Englishmen were idle. We had another proposal in Glounthane, in my constituency, in connection with the reclamation of land. It was also put up to Cumann na nGaedheal and turned down because a famous brewer living in the district wanted the seagulls to wake him in the morning and because it would spoil the view from his residence. These are plain, honest facts and these are definite proposals that are giving employment in my constituency and each one of them means permanent employment afterwards.

Deputy J.J. Byrne told us about all the permanent employment that was given by Cumann na nGaedheal. I have very good reason to know it. It was only a week after Cumann na nGaedheal went out of office that a famous English flour mill owner was down in Midleton measuring the plant and machinery in the mills there for the purpose of removing them, and, but for the prompt action taken by our Minister for Industry and Commerce, some 70 or 80 men would be unemployed in Midleton to-day. That was one of the little aids to industry that was given by Cumann na nGaedheal. Another one of the aids to industry given by them was in a place called Glanmire. The ex-Minister for Industry and Commerce put a 20 per cent. Tariff on foreign waterproofs coming in and a 25 per cent. tariff on the material for making them so as to give John Bull's manufacturers across the water a 5 per cent. preference as against Irish labour. That little factory is going to-day and it was closed for some five or six months before Cumann na nGaedheal left office. The last little job they did was to hand over, to the Victoria Rubber Company of Manchester, the making of waterproofs for the Civic Guard and oilskins for postmen.

Is there any money provided in this Vote for these industries the Deputy is speaking about?

I am dealing——

With the general economic policy of the Government, which is out of order.

——with the attack that was made and the statements that were made here by Deputy Byrne as to the relief of unemployment and the permanent employment that was provided by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government.

Deputy Byrne made certain charges against the Government regarding its alleged want of initiative in the matter of employment and such things. Obviously, we cannot traverse the whole economic policy of the Government on this Vote. That is what Deputy Corry is endeavouring to do.

I do not wish to go into the economic policy of the Government but I am showing——

Attack Cumann na Gaedheal and you are all right!

I will ramble along to the Deputy in a minute. The less the Deputy says the better.

The Deputy has a bee in his bonnet about Cumann na nGaedheal.

I am very glad that the Board of Works is taking up the making of by-roads and bog roads and also small drainage schemes. There is, undoubtedly, a lot of benefit to be conferred on the farming community by small drainage schemes. Unfortunately, under the previous Administration, the rate for these drainage schemes fell so heavily on the people afterwards that they were practically uneconomic propositions. I think that such schemes, where they are economic propositions, are the best means by which money can be usefully spent. I am aware, in my district, of areas in which there are several hundred acres of land which are now growing bushes and which are flooded at several times in the year and which could be turned into good tillage land. It would not, however, be an economic proposition for the farmer to bear the entire cost of that himself or to bear the proportion he was compelled to bear under previous legislation. As we are dealing with the relief of unemployment, I would suggest that the money would be more usefully spent in that manner than in the making of the billiardtable roads provided by the previous Ministry.

I should like to deal briefly with the rule in the labour exchanges in the matter of employment of men. We are told that there is a certain amount of favouritism shown to Fianna Fáil supporters as against others in this matter, but I would like to point out that at least 90 per cent. of the officials of the labour exchanges are ex-members of the National Army, and, surely, they are not going to give preferential treatment to Fianna Fáil as against their own comrades? I should also like to point out that up to the present there have been no specific instructions issued to labour exchanges in regard to the employment of married men, some of whom have £2 or £3 a week pension, as compared with the single man with four or five dependants who are kept idle while these married men get employment. That is a position in regard to which some definite rule should be laid down by which a man would have to declare on registering at the labour exchange what his income each week was, by pension or otherwise. In that manner the matter could be far better dealt with. I should also like to point out that the rule about the married men is undoubtedly a very definite preference to Cumann na nGaedheal supporters because the people of our view during the last ten years had no hope of employment and an unemployed man had very little business getting married. If there is any preference being shown at present, it is not a preference to Fianna Fáil supporters but to Cumann na nGaedheal supporters. It was very easy for a young man walking out of the Army with anything from £350—I believe that was the highest—to £75 a year pension to get married. The poor fellow who finished up in our army without any pension found, when he went to any employer, that he was blacklisted and he could not get work. When he went to the Labour Exchanges the first question he had to answer was whether he had been a member of the National Army. What hope had that man of getting married?

There are at the present time a large number of men who have remained single because they have an aged father and mother to support and, possibly, they have also to support brothers and sisters younger than themselves; they have considered it their duty to support them. These men are as well entitled to employment as married men who have not so many dependants. Perhaps the Minister will let us know what instructions have been issued to labour exchanges in regard to those men? If, in the first run of a grant, all the married men get two weeks in turn, will the single men be then entitled to some employment before these married men are again employed? Is there a bar to be put against single men and are they not to get any employment? A single man with an aged father and mother and other dependants is better entitled to employment than many married men who have a pension of £3 a week.

Why do you not give them all permanent employment, as promised at the election?

I was on the point of dealing with that aspect, but the Leas-Cheann Comhairle would not let me.

That would get over the difficulty very quickly.

I would like to point out that there is a factory in my constituency which Cumann na nGaedheal closed, but fortunately it has been reopened under this Government and it is now giving employment to upwards of 100 men. I could point to a lot of other cases in the same line. Surely Deputy O'Leary is not serious in his attitude. Is he prepared to say that Cumann na nGaedheal showed any kind of fair play? Did he consider it fair play that a man with five or six children should be left idle while a single man got employment just because he happened to belong to a particular army for a couple of months?

I have had no complaint from any workman in my constituency.

You knew the preference was there and I wonder did you consider it fair play?

I had no complaints in my constituency and I think that is a sufficient answer.

I would like to know from the Parliamentary Secretary whether, if a married man gets employment for a fortnight or three weeks, a single man will then be entitled to get a turn, or is there to be a continued preference for married men only, to the exclusion of single men? The unemployment figures under the Cumann na nGaedheal Government for the last ten years bore no relation whatsoever to the actual number of unemployed in this country. Unemployed men generally found it useless to register. The fact was that a married man, after going to the exchange for eight or ten months, found that a gentleman who walked out of the army a week before and registered got whatever employment was going. In that case the single man, because he came out of the Army, was given a preference over the married man. I challenge Cumann na nGaedheal to answer that charge. That was the policy adopted by the last Government. Men found it useless to go near the labour exchange at all and that was why there were very few registered under the last régime. When we came into office they knew they had some hope of fair play and some chance of employment. Therefore they registered.

I am rather amazed at Deputy Mulcahy's statement that thousands of unemployed registered in one district in County Mayo and then vanished overnight. I wonder where they got employment? There are only two sources of employment, one as an organiser for Deputy MacDermot's army and another as a member of Deputy Mulcahy's, or perhaps I should say Deputy O'Higgins's, army. These are the only two known sources of employment. I wonder to which of them did all these Mayo men go? It was amusing to hear certain Deputies talking about unemployment. These same Deputies spent the last six months endeavouring, by every means in their power, to prevent employment being given to people. It was amusing to hear Deputy Morrissey talking about unemployment. I remember that he voted against the proposal to employ men on the making of agricultural machinery in this country. When Deputy Morrissey talked about the artificial registration of unemployed in the labour exchanges I was tempted to comment upon the two artificial Labour representatives who came in here after the last General Election. If Deputies over there want to be of assistance they should try to stop——

——themselves from holding up a policy here which will undoubtedly give employment to every man and woman able and willing to work. That is the policy of Fianna Fáil. It is the only way in which you can do it, and this holding up that we observe here day after day and night after night is only going to do harm.

Three cheers.

I wish to draw the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary to certain complaints that have been made in my area. We welcome the unemployment grant as a gesture of sincerity on the part of the Fianna Fáil Government in their attempt to solve the problem of giving employment to those sadly in need of it. At the same time we wish to point out that, notwithstanding the fact that grants have been allocated to certain areas we find that the calls upon boards of health for home assistance are increasing in those very areas in which the relief grants are being administered. The reason is the method of employment through the labour exchange. I have no complaints with regard to one political Party more than another getting employment in any area. I have never gone near a labour exchange man and I do not worry as to who gets work so long as the most deserving members of the community get it. But the intentions which the Minister and the Government had have not been carried out by the machinery at present in existence. For example, men who have been in employment may have registered when they found there was money coming. They are the first men to get work and men in receipt of home help have still to depend on that assistance. I shall read a letter which I received from the Wicklow Board of Health. That board spent over £40,000 during the last twelve months in providing sewers and waterwork schemes. Instead of home assistance, they were giving employment, but they find in the last few months, owing to the adoption of certain schemes, that the men who were receiving home help in the areas concerned are not getting the work. The result is that they are prepared to put up 100 per cent. of the cost rather than be bound by the conditions laid down in the instructions issued by the Department. That will show the Parliamentary Secretary the grievances that exist. I hope that members will bring in writing the various grievances of which they are aware to the notice of the Minister responsible, and that they will show how the matter can be better dealt with. The letter I received from Wicklow Board of Health is as follows:—

The Board of Health and public assistance at the meeting yesterday directed me to write you to make representations to the Minister for Industry and Commerce that the feeling of the Board was that in relation to sewerage and other public works being carried out at Baltinglass and Donard the condition binding the contractor to employ men only from the local employment exchange would entail much hardship on deserving unemployed people who are in receipt of home assistance. The Board would prefer to forfeit the contribution of one-third of the cost made by the Government in these cases than to have this condition insisted on.

I want the Deputy's help and I should like if the Deputy would tell me whether these men, in receipt of home assistance, are registered at the exchange.

There is a definite intention that men in receipt of home assistance should get the preference.

They would not be as long unemployed according to the register as the men who came in first and got the preference.

It is suggested that these are men who had gone on the labour exchange and who got the preference immediately?

Let us take the case of farmers or men working threshing engines. They were never insured in their lives. They only registered at the employment exchange when they learned that this money would be available. Some of these men may have been working a month or a couple of months ago. However, the others were registered as working later and the former get the preference. In two other cases, the board had to take the matter in hand, forfeit the grant and employ the men themselves so as to give employment to the more deserving men, whether married men or single men with dependants, who are entitled to work as well as married men.

There are other grievances to be considered. I am sure that Ministers and other Deputies have got complaints regarding them. A county council allocates a certain amount of relief grant to a particular area. Let us assume that the area is Carnew. Some men from there register in Tullow while others register in Gorey. The county surveyor may send to Gorey for a list of men available in Carnew, in a different county. The result is that men in that area will get work while the men registered in another labour exchange are idle. That is the case where you have two labour exchanges catering for one little village. I am sure the matter will be investigated, because it is not right. I am one who hoped that a Fianna Fáil Government would come into power. I wanted a change, because I recognised that they were prepared to do something which the Cumann na nGaedheal Government had not done. But I am prepared to treat this as a Labour issue and to take a different side if, as a Labour question, it is not settled. I recognise that it is the supporters of our people who are the very men who are unable to get work under this arrangement. I never interfered with any man getting work, but I realise that the most deserving men are still on home help and that, with these conditions, they may remain in that position. I say to the Party here that we must press this matter and get a definite answer. If the Government are not prepared to give that answer, then I am prepared to vote against the Government to-night.

Another condition is laid down with regard to minor relief schemes. We may have two sets of men employed. One will be employed under the relief grant and receive the county council rate of wages. Another set of men will be engaged on a minor relief scheme. The instructions to certain county surveyors are that, on minor relief schemes, they are only to pay the agricultural rate of wages. The county surveyor is responsible for the minor relief scheme and he is also responsible for work under the relief grant. Under these conditions we will have one set of men paid 32/- per week on a particular road and we will have another set on the other side of the ditch paid £1 or 24/- with their cards left unstamped, as they are in the other case. What county surveyor is going to take the responsibility of administering minor relief schemes under these conditions—carrying out similar work at different rates of wages and with different conditions for the workers? We realise what has happened. We have had strikes and mobilisation of men at certain places. It is encouraging men to strike if you have one man paid 32/- per week, with his card stamped, and, under a minor relief scheme, you have another man paid £1 or 24/- per week and his card not stamped. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to make it a condition that the county surveyor pay whatever is the county council rate for road work in that area. If that is not done, you will have endless friction and the scheme of improving the by-roads will not be the success it should be.

That scheme should prove a great boon to the men who have been paying all their life for the improvement of roads for motor cars. They have never been able to have the roads up to their own houses attended to. When that is done, it will be a great boon, but I am afraid that the scheme will be killed in its infancy if the Parliamentary Secretary is going to have different rates of wages and different conditions from those which obtain under the county council. It is to encourage the Parliamentary Secretary and to assist him in making a success of this scheme that I draw his attention to these grievances. I have some experience in this regard, and I can say that, under these conditions, in my own county you will not get men to work under minor relief scheme No 1 when they see a higher rate of wages being paid on the other side of the road. They will demand the same conditions of work and they will be entitled to them. It is the same man who employs both—the county surveyor. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to instruct the county surveyors to pay the same rates of wages to both sets of men and to stamp their cards. The Parliamentary Secretary may say that this is agricultural work, and that the cards should not be stamped. It may be held that forestry is agricultural work but it cannot be contended that men engaged on improving by-ways and laneways and entrances to the residences of a large number of farmers are engaged on purely agricultural work.

Therefore, the men are entitled to have their cards stamped. One of the greatest grievances we have is this method of employing the men through the labour exchanges. The people are protesting against it and the boards of health are protesting against it. They see the amount expended in home help increasing, notwithstanding the fact that relief grant has been given for that area. I cannot agree with Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney that this is demoralising. Is it demoralising to give employment to men to buy food for their families? The men are responsible to the county surveyor and the county council. I am quite certain that with all shades of political opinion represented on the public boards they are not going to pay away money, as Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney said, merely to have men doing nothing on the roads.

As to schemes that can absorb a large number of men, there are thousands of acres of land in the County Wicklow which can be acquired for forestry purposes at a very moderate cost. That work would absorb a considerable number of men and would be a boon even to the farmers who will get £5 an acre, or whatever would be offered, for the land. It would give much-needed employment in areas where there is no road work. In conclusion, I appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary to look into this question of employment through the labour exchanges, because I will no longer support this method of employment, which is causing such dissatisfaction. It must not be allowed to continue, because the money voted for the relief of unemployment is not going into the proper channels.

I welcome this Vote because there is a large amount of unemployment in my constituency, particularly amongst agricultural workers. Money is being spent at present in urban areas, but the agricultural workers are badly hit. I suggest that some of this money should be spent, in my constituency at least, on the making of bog roads. There is a good deal of bog in West Cork which is, at present, inaccessible. The making of some of these bog roads was undertaken under former relief schemes, but the work was not completed. I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary has records in his office of these works which were left uncompleted, and these should be the first undertaken in that area. I know that they are absolutely necessary works, and where they have not been completed they will give much needed employment. I have received a communication from the Secretary of the Cork County Council which bears out what I am saying with regard to these roads. At their meeting on 3rd November, the County Council passed a resolution impressing on the Government that money for relief schemes in rural areas in that county should, in future, be expended upon land improvement and the making of necessary new roads in remote districts, rather than on improving existing roads. The resolution goes on to give the reasons for this, and the Parliamentary Secretary has got a copy of it. Speaking for my own constituency, and probably for other coast-line constituencies, I say that the making of roads into little fishing hamlets and such places, which are inaccessible at present, would give employment which is absolutely necessary.

There is another way in which money could also be very usefully spent along the seaboard and particularly, again, in West Cork. At present there is great difficulty in landing sand and seaweed, which is largely used by the farmers for manurial purposes. The provision of slips to which they could bring their boats and land the sand and seaweed and fish would be of great assistance to these poor people and the building of them would give much needed employment. These poor people are in the position at present that they cannot buy artificial manures. As a matter of fact, they never bought them. They depended on the sand and seaweed for manuring their crops. They are the poorest of the poor and the hardest-working people in the country, and if they could be helped in this way it would be a step in the right direction. I am not going to go into the question of the decrease or increase of employment or the cost of it, but I am asking the Parliamentary Secretary, when he is considering schemes, to give careful consideration to the suggestions I have thrown out and see that these poor people will get a fair share of what is going to help them over the difficult period they are facing.

The position is that we actually want this money. The House takes up Private Deputies business at 9 o'clock, and if the House would arrange to give us the Vote by 9 o'clock I would be very glad, because we do want the money to be operative.

The principal matter to which I want to call the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary is the employment of men through the labour exchanges. Deputy Everett put the matter very clearly to him. Like Deputy Everett, I am not satisfied with the method by which these men have to be employed through the labour exchanges. Going around County Dublin, you will see a lot of young men employed on these works, and in some cases there is as much as £6 or £7 per week going into one house.

I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to take a note of it. If he wants the names and addresses of these people I will give them to him. I know of cases where there is up to £7 a week coming in to a family and these are the people who are sent out by the manager of the labour exchange on this relief work. That is happening while you have men with families ranging from ten to four practically starving and forced to make application week after week to the board of public assistance to get a food ticket. If the matter had been handled rightly these people would be sent on by the manager of the labour exchange for work which is there to be done and which they are quite willing to do.

As chairman of the Board of Assistance I know what I am speaking of. The books are there and the Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister for Industry and Commerce can see them. The Minister for Local Government and Public Health knows that the names are at No. 11 Parnell Square. That Minister also knows that outdoor relief is on the increase every week, and this is all the result of the inefficiency of the labour exchange, and its failure to do its business in a proper way by sending out the names of these men who badly need work.

The Dublin County Council tried to relieve the situation by giving fortnightly shifts. But we did away with that last night because we saw that the whole thing was impossible and all through the incompetence of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and the labour exchange in the manner in which they dealt with the men who were to be employed. Any one can see married men with their wives and little children coming to the board begging for a food ticket. The highest the board can give is 15/-. We have exceeded the estimates already by £5,000 and there are still four months to go to the 31st March. The books are there to be seen. I have the auditor's report for the last two half-years in my pocket.

Any one can see that this is the state of affairs existing throughout the County Dublin at the present time. There are in Lucan 325 people registered as unemployed. Now the county surveyor there wanted some men and the people there decided to submit a list of 25 names. Of these 20 were married men and five single men. What happened in that case will show you how the business is done by the labour exchange. There were two copies made of the list. I got one and Councillor Tunney got the other for submission to the county surveyor. That list was put through the labour exchange in Gardiner Street when the county surveyor asked for 25 men. The manager of the labour exchange went through the sheet and he said only six of these men were registered at Gardiner Street. Now the men were brought into Gardiner Street and every one of them had their cards which they produced to show that they were registered. In spite of that the manager of the labour exchange stated that there were only six and only six out of the 25 names were taken.

That is the condition of affairs that exists there. I, as a labour man, do not mind what political views a worker holds. That is a matter of indifference to me, and I would not stand for any political test. I would not be doing my duty here or in the Dublin County Council if I were to stand for these conditions in the employment of workers on these relief schemes. That is the only complaint I have, and the sooner the matter is rectified the better. Practically there is a war going on within the county at the present time. Married men cannot get a day's work. We had the fortnightly shifts, but we had to do away with them. That was because the work was being dished out to these young fellows, while married men who had been twelve months idle could not get a day's work.

If this state of affairs is permitted much longer something will happen. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to go into it carefully and to give us an answer to it on this Vote when he is replying at 9 o'clock. I hope he will tell us that there will be some alteration in this business. I want to be fair to everybody in giving my vote to-night. I would not like to do otherwise, for I would be putting myself in a queer position before the House.

Can the Deputy give me that list?

I have the list but I have not it on me now. I might state for the information of the Parliamentary Secretary that last week they sent me a telegram to come out to Lucan and when I got there they gave me those names. To make sure that we did our duty we had a deputation to the Minister. Deputy Seán O'Grady last Thursday behind my back went on a deputation to the Minister. The Deputy belongs to your Party and he will tell you if this is correct.

I am not doubting it as correct at all. What I want is the actual list so as to take up the actual cases.

There are only six of them there and they did not get the work. I will say no more on that matter now but I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will do his duty with the labour exchange. I have to come back now to the Relief Vote. I am quite satisfied that the Government has been working for the past nine months to relieve the situation. In this matter I hold no brief whether a man is a Republican, Sinn Féiner, a Labour man, Cumann na nGaedheal, or anything else, nor do I inquire what his religion is so long as he is a deserving case. Married men with dependent families are the men I want to see getting this work no matter what views they may hold.

Last March I raised a question about the cul-de-sac roads in the County Dublin, and I raised it again a fortnight ago on this Vote for Relief Schemes. I want to know now is the Parliamentary Secretary going to do anything in the matter of these roads in the County Dublin? It has not yet been seen to. On the night following my raising it here the Dublin County Council sent a letter to the Department of Local Government and Public Health. I suppose they knew there was a meeting to be held, and a card was sent which was late for the agenda, acknowledging the receipt of the letter. Deputies know the usual kind of thing they send out. I have already stated that £1,750 is collected off the farmers in Clondalkin through whose lands this little road passes. Deputies will see that it is not a mere bit of a road. I am rather surprised that the Government have not dealt with that matter.

Deputy Everett mentioned a wage of 24/- a week on the roads. Well, the sooner that is rectified the better. It is a scandalous state of affairs to have such a wage. I thought the out-going Government were bad enough. I thought at one time that I would get gaol for what I said about the 32/- a week on the Shannon Scheme. I took strong exception to that. It is an extraordinary state of affairs that the wages are still being kept at 24/- a week. These three roads at Clondalkin, Finglas and Irishtown (Lusk) are a crying shame when Deputies remember that the farming community there are paying in Clondalkin alone £1,750 in rates. Now you can see roads in North Dublin and in South Dublin, and they are like skating rinks, they are so well kept. What is it for? For anyone who comes from Cork, Kerry or Limerick in their motor cars, for joy-riding and for lorries. Yet the farming community at Clondalkin pay £1,750 in rates to the Dublin County Council. I am only asking for a simple answer, "yes" or "no." I have not been able to get that answer up to the present. The Local Government Department will not put it in writing and the county surveyor said he could not spend the money on the roads. He holds that he would be dismissed by the Local Government Department. We took the onus of a surcharge. We passed £100 for those roads, and he will not spend that £100 for a test. The Local Government Department did it for a test. He says he cannot do it and that he will not do it.

There was a postcard to the county council yesterday saying: "I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter. Same will have our attention." I am not so green that I do not know what that means. What I want is to come to the county council saying straight out: "We will not give you grants to do it. We will not let you do it out of the rates or otherwise." The Parliamentary Secretary understands the procedure as well as I do. All I ask for is a grant of the money. We have heard people saying that the money is going to waste—that 40 per cent. of it is going to waste. I guarantee that in the works under the Dublin County Council not a penny will go to waste. We are not like County Mayo—we do not go by a dictatorship. The employment of the men will have to be done through the labour exchange. There will be no fear of young men getting preference over married men. I ask you to do something for the Dublin County Council in connection with these three roads.

Mention has been made of the allocation of the grants in regard to the number of unemployed in those counties. The point has been stressed that in Mayo particularly a certain number of men were registered who, it was argued, should not have been registered, and that they were registered for one purpose, in order to avail of certain grants. I merely mention that in order to show that the case in regard to Kerry is quite the opposite. Whether it was through disregard of their duty in connection with being registered, or whether it was that they had no faith in the procedure, very large numbers of the unemployed did not register until quite recently. I am quite clear as to the particular basis on which the allocations were to be made, that is, on the total number of unemployed in each county, but I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to bear very clearly in mind when making final allocations to County Kerry the fact that in County Kerry the full number of unemployed had not been registered until very recently.

In regard to technicalities, several important works in Kerry have been held up through technicalities introduced by the Board of Works in their negotiations with the Kerry County Council. I asked a question here several months ago in regard to the Dunquin Pier, County Kerry, and was informed by the Minister for Lands and Fisheries that £400 would be set aside. Dunquin Pier is the landing stage for the people of the Blasket Islands, who are living quite apart from the mainland, and the landing facilities are totally inadequate. Through a mere technicality, namely the Board of Works asking the county council to enter into an arrangement whereby they would be responsible for the future maintenance of the pier, this particular grant has been held up, and I think that it is more or less unfair on the part of the Board of Works, because at no former period did the county council have any responsibility in regard to this pier or the maintenance of it. That is one point. There is another point in connection with the Mall River, Dingle, which the Board of Works argue is the responsibility of the county council. That has been agitating the minds of the people for years. The river floods a large portion of the town, and the work in connection with it is very urgent. I think if the Board of Works are serious in assisting the people of Kerry they should not go into these matters, but simply try to act in a more progressive manner.

With regard to the question of preference for married men in connection with work under the relief schemes, I certainly voice the feelings of all Deputies, particularly the Labour Deputies, in saying that that system is a failure, in so far as Kerry is concerned at any rate. The conditions in Kerry are pretty hopeless in regard to the stipulation that married men should get preference. I admit—and so would any fair-minded Deputy in this House —that the principle is correct, but the meaning of married men getting preference is construed in a different manner at the local labour exchanges to the manner in which the Minister for Industry and Commerce meant it, and we would like it, to be construed. In Tralee town particularly, and in some of the congested areas on the Western seaboard, married men are not by any means the outstanding cases of hardship. Some of their families have employment, and they are not totally dependent on the work. There may be a certain percentage who are, but certainly not all of them. On the other hand, we have large numbers of young men who are the sole support of their families, and they have to stand aside until all the married men in the district are absorbed. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to consider one suggestion, which I submit is a practical one, and that is to make a fair adjustment on the percentage basis and allow 20 per cent. of the unmarried men to obtain work. I had a communication from Tralee, signed by the secretary, suggesting the adoption of this percentage basis. If the Minister for Industry and Commerce puts up the proviso that the system has been adopted and cannot be abolished —if that is impossible, and I believe it should not be impossible—I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to consider my point in connection with the percentage basis.

In regard to the point raised here by Deputy Lynch in regard to the mussel industry in Cromane and the question of a grant for that district, there has been a general misunderstanding in regard to that tariff. It has been suggested that it was as a result of the economic policy of the Government, and as far as I can learn that is not so. In regard to the export of mussels to the English market, I received representations from people from my district several days before Deputy Lynch mentioned the matter, and I am glad to say that the Minister for Lands and Fisheries took very prompt action in the matter.

In regard to the reconstruction work, I would like to inform the Parliamentary Secretary that the belief in Kerry is this: that all the grant allocated should not be expended merely on road works. There are other types of reproductive work, for instance afforestation, and also the repairing of the sea wall in Glenbeigh and in the Dingle district would mean the reclamation of thousands of acres of land. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to consider these matters and the possibility of their giving employment which would be of a real productive nature.

The construction of roads in backward areas is another matter I would like to bring before the House. The late Government concentrated more on the establishment of trunk roads and main roads throughout the country to the detriment of roads in the backward districts. I think it is our duty now to concentrate in the opposite direction— towards the repair of cul-de-sac roads— and this indeed will be a real benefit to the small farmers and people in isolated areas. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will look into these matters as soon as possible, and I can assure him the matters are indeed urgent.

Before the last Deputy spoke we had some very sound speeches made here on behalf of the City and County of Dublin, and I hope in view of what was said that the Parliamentary Secretary will not forget that the conditions in the rest of the country are far worse than in the City of Dublin. I must charge this Government with having more interest in cities and provincial port towns—more so than in provincial towns and rural areas. Most of the new industries which have been set up for the relief of unemployment have been set up either in cities or in port towns, and I think very little effort has been made to encourage the establishment of these in either provincial towns or provincial villages, if I may call them so. This present grant will be allocated, I understand, on the basis of the unemployment figures of the registered unemployed. So far as my constituency in Leix-Offaly is concerned, the official unemployment return is no index whatsoever to the actual number of unemployed. There are various rural areas right through the constituency of Leix-Offaly where hundreds of men have been unemployed as a result of this economic war who have never heard of this business of registering. I have approached several myself and suggested to them that they might go down to the post office and hand in their names. They would not hear of it. They said it would be no good. They were even told by people in neighbouring villages, who had been registered for weeks and months that they got fed up and that it was no use. I reasoned with them and said there should be some other system adopted for finding the actual number of unemployed if the grant was going to be allocated under that basis. So far as Leix-Offaly is concerned, I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary is aware of the enormous increase in both these counties of poor relief, and this would be more an index of the actual amount of people who are unemployed than the actual official unemployment figures. I think the Minister, when he is considering the allocation of these moneys, ought to pay special attention to these rural areas, where, as I say, the people are in much worse circumstances than they are in the cities.

I would like to draw the Parliamentary Secretary's attention to another important matter. Where men are employed by the county council or other boards on these relief schemes they generally have to work for a month before they get any payment; at least they have to work for a fortnight before they are paid. This system of sending in returns by the county council is, in my opinion, simply ridiculous. These unfortunate people, who have been unemployed for a long time, cannot possibly get any credit— they cannot get credit until the cheque comes from the county council. There is certainly something wrong with that system. I have spoken to a few of the officials of the county council on the matter, and they told me the system cannot be changed. Railway men are paid every fortnight, business people are paid every week, and it is most extraordinary that the county council workers cannot be paid for at least a fortnight. We have heard a good deal of talk about all the money that is being spent on productive schemes. Some people have suggested that the money is being wasted on unnecessary work. We all realise, I think, that most of the money spent on these grants is spent on unproductive schemes, but I would not say it was being spent on unnecessary work. I know that any little grant that came to Leix-Offaly has been spent on necessary work, whilst at the same time it may not have been productive. If this Government is to live for ten days, ten weeks, ten months, or ten years, it will never grant money on works which would be productive. The only way the Government could do that is by private enterprise, and private enterprise can only go ahead in this country by the establishment of confidence in the Government; the establishment of confidence in the State, and the establishment of settled conditions in the country. The people must not be threatened by certain legislation that their life's work or interest in their life's work might be confiscated. There has been certain legislation introduced into this House by the present Government which has created an air of fear, and an air of ill confidence, with the result that people who might be prepared to invest in industries have been frightened off. I think the Government ought to change their views so far as interference with industries is concerned, and try and bring about that air of confidence which would be necessary to encourage private enterprise. Private enterprise is the one thing which can restore employment. It is the one thing which can create reproductive employment and it can be used to produce other ways and means of still giving further employment.

In conclusion, I would like to ask the Minister to pay special attention to this poor constituency of Leix-Offaly. I understand claims have been sent in from both these counties and have been kept in the Department for some time. In view of the fact that conditions are in such a bad way, I hope the Minister will expedite matters and so relieve some of this distress.

I would like to call the attention of the House to the fact that this Vote is a Vote for £350,000. It is not a Vote for a million pounds borrowed from the Road Fund or anything of that kind. It is the remains of a Vote of £500,000, of which £150,000, as the House knows, has already been voted. The actual allocation of that £500,000 is: Public Works, £40,850; minor relief schemes, £151,000; agriculture, £38,300; Local Government and Public Health, £205,742; Industry and Commerce, £31,775, the total being £500,000. I do not want to say anything controversial in this debate. My attitude in relation to the Unemployment Vote is simply this: that it is a contribution, by the whole State, to the necessities of the more unfortunate members of it. It is exactly in that spirit that I am anxious to see it administered, and as far as I am personally concerned it is in that spirit it will be administered. It is in exactly that spirit that I have asked for, and to the extent to which I have got it have appreciated and used, the help of every member of the House. It is in that spirit that I ask that we should continue to regard this unemployment matter. Up to the present there has been practically nothing of a controversial character in the ordinary way introduced into this.

The only thing of a controversial character introduced to-day was in relation to Mayo. Now, as far as I am concerned, in Mayo the position is that whatever was wrong, or whether it was wrong or not, was not disclosed to the Government until a very recent date: that as far as we know everything that was alleged even to be evil is now in process of being remedied, and that everything that was wrong will be dealt with. If there is any other constituency in Ireland in which it is alleged that there are irregularities, that anything wrong has been done in relation to the administration of the unemployment grant, we will not regard it in any sense as a controversial matter to have it brought forward for our consideration. The fact that Deputies of all politics, that public men of all kinds throughout the whole State, have not called attention to the existence of any such evil as broadly as has been alleged in a certain newspaper in relation to Mayo is either, I suggest, a proof that that is not going on in any large sense or that there is a conspiracy between the whole of us, of all politics, to hide an evil which we know, and I am quite sure that is not so. I am inclined to think that, broadly speaking, there is a clean bill of health. All that I can tell House is that where there is not a clean bill of health it is the duty of every man of every Party in this House to bring it at once to the notice of the Administration for examination, and it will be examined and dealt with.

Another matter that has been brought up to-night, and I think also in a spirit of co-operation, has been the complaint in relation to what I may call the formula under which men are sent from the labour exchanges. We have varied that formula. We have altered it and tried to make it better. I am satisfied that it is not yet the best formula as expressed in practice. In theory it is everything, but there are evidently gaps in the translation of that formula into action. I will be very glad, as far as I am concerned, to take counsel with men on any side in the House that will tell us a better way to work it out in practice. For instance, I have come across rather curious cases myself. In certain places, where the old man of the family was a married man, he was called out to do road work while his strong sons remained at home. I mean there is an obvious case where the scheme is to some extent breaking down. The idea of unemployment relief, and especially minor relief schemes, is to bring some necessary cash into the hands of each individual family. I think it may be possible that we can find an arrangement by which, even where it was the married man who was entitled to the work, that that work may very well be done on his behalf by some son of his, living in his house and contributing to the maintenance of that particular house.

I will take the various matters roughly as they were mentioned, and if I leave out anything it is not because I want to avoid it. I frankly regard these debates as not in any sense controversial, but merely as the attempts of men on all sides of the House to make a better scheme of things. For instance, I think it was Deputy O'Donovan who asked in relation to certain works in West Cork. The House will recollect that I did ask all the Cork Deputies to come down to my office this afternoon at a quarter to five o'clock to see the actual scheme of relief works there, so that they could see for themselves the bog roads and so on that they were in favour of, and the areas that they thought were not sufficiently dealt with. It is a fact that only two Deputies did, in fact, arrive. I am going to give them the same opportunity tomorrow afternoon at the same time. I think they will find that the difficulties which were raised here are ones which can be solved infinitely better by reference to a map on which every single portion of public relief expenditure is graphically shown in the actual geographical position in which it takes place. They will be able themselves to improve the picture in front of them.

It has been suggested that mob organisations should not be allowed to alter the position and to force the granting of money. I am absolutely with that statement and I hope that we will have, as I believe we will, the support of members on all sides of the House to see that the distribution of money is not altered by excessive pressure of that kind. I propose, when the whole business is done, to give to the House a map of every county with which we have dealt. Deputies will see from these maps exactly how the money is placed and where it is gone in each particular area. We will be judged on the fairness of our distribution by these maps, and if they are less fair than the combined wisdom of this House can make them it will be because some portion of that combined wisdom has not been put at our disposal to help us to make them better. I have co-operation in that matter, I may say, from men of all Parties in the House.

Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney raised the question of lime as distinct from lime kilns. We are anxious to spend money on lime kilns in the areas in which they are possible, but in nearly every case lime kilns raise a difficult question because of the fact that you have not access to the actual quarry—that the quarry itself is on some private ground—or that any grant you give for the purpose goes to the benefit of some private individual first, directly, without any definite obligation to distribute that benefit to the community. We have set up a little committee of two or three members of the House who do know a good deal about the actual details of these matters. I may say that in every case I have come across these matters have been comthir plicated. Any scheme put up for lime kilns in an area in which lime is necessary that is sent to me will receive more than a cordial welcome. It will be submitted to this particular little committee to see if they can work out the practical details in the matter.

It is suggested that the figures in some counties are not correct. I think that is so. When I looked at the Mayo figures I was amazed. I think I told the House that at the beginning of our first distribution of unemployment money on the old basis of 30,000 population, it meant that there was no unemployment west of the Shannon which, of course, was an absurd position. Under the intensive registration of unemployment the map swung right over, until it looked like a map of the congested districts. In other words, the preponderance of unemployment was west of the Shannon. In my opinion that was not to a certain extent an unemployment map in the ordinary sense. The men who ordinarily live by earning wages are not now getting these wages. It was very largely a poverty map and, to that extent, I am inclined to think if you took the mixed basis of pure unemployment and poverty, the map probably is fairly correct at the moment. There is also this difference, which was put very well by Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney to-day, that the periodicity of unemployment distress is different in the purely agricultural districts and in what you might call the industrial districts. In the industrial districts I have taken the figures for an average of five years. You get a hill of unemployment at the beginning of the year, a hill of unemployment at the end of the year, and a trough in the middle. Against that there is no doubt whatever that in certain agricultural areas the old proverb of a hungry July is true, and, in the periodicity distribution of unemployment money, that will have to be taken into account. What we have to try to do this time is to see that the total amount of money that has been given to us we would so distribute in time and place that it would reach the areas which most require it at the time they did most require it, and that as far as possible the total amount would be expended within the financial year. I think that is going to happen to all the money, with the exception of that portion which is going to public health works. All the money which is allotted for minor relief works, and all the money allocated for roads and things of that kind, will be spent within the period.

But I am nervous that a certain amount of the money which has been allocated for public health works will not be fully expended in that period, and in that matter I would like the co-operation of members of the House, and not merely of the House, but of the country, in relation to local authorities with which they have to deal. There are preparations, and so on, necessary in relation to public health works which are not required in other cases, which cause delay. As we calculate there is going to be something like £300,000 involved on the public health side if the whole or the larger portion of that money is to be spent—I am not suggesting that we should tie ourselves down—but, without unduly rushing, and in order to get good value towards the end of the period, it is necessary that everyone who is in contact with local bodies in relation to the public health allocations should get after them, and see that preparations are made, as far as possible, to spend that money.

Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney raised a question about the doubtful value of some road works, and in doing so raised the whole question of what is the economic value of relief work. In some cases I regard relief work on the roads as of 100 per cent. economic value. The money which we are spending on the concreting of main streets, on main roads in counties, on concreting streets in small and backward towns, has an amenity value, and a social reaction value, and I believe makes expenditure of that kind into 100 per cent. value. As far as widen ing roads and clearing hedges is con cerned, one of the considerations there was that, roughly speaking, up to 90 or 95 per cent. of the money put into that work went on wages. That had to be taken into account against, perhaps, some of its less considerable economic value. I have known cases, such as the Deputy alluded to, in which I have seen the sides of roads filled in and not completed. If those roads are eventually to be completed I think that will be up to the 100 per cent. value, if the completion of the roads is of 100 per cent. value.

I have been asked by Deputy Roddy why the money should not be spent by the Land Commission. One of the reasons was because the Land Commission would not spend it. I did not venture that. The difference between "would" and "would not" certainly applies to the Land Commission in this matter. They represented that their staff was already fully occupied; that to the extent that I asked them to spend money on relief works their energies would be so absorbed they could not spend their own money, and they produced as evidence the fact that previously, whenever they had been given unemployment money to spend, they had always saved approximately the same amount and returned it to the Treasury. The result was that the cheapest of all ways to provide unemployment benefit was to vote unlimited money and to give it to the Land Commission to spend. It cost nothing because you simply saved on the improvement grant. These are the arguments of the Land Commission, and for that reason, very unwillingly, we have had to set up a new organisation to do ordinary relief works. That organisation is getting away quite well. Galway is eating up stuff as fast as we can give it. Cork is well away and certain other counties are doing very well. Some are not doing so well, but will have to do well before we are finished because we intend to spend our money—£151,000— through that source.

There, again, I would ask for the co-operation of members of all Parties in the House in relation to their local councils to see that their co-operation is given to us in the detailed work of spending £151,000—and it may be considerably more if the machine will take it—on works the average value of which is £100 to £150. Quite a considerable amount of detailed work has to be done and, in order that that may be done efficiently, we require the co-operation of the councils in seeing that we have the most cordial support in having it done.

Mayo, as I said, is a poverty problem very largely, just like Donegal, rather than an unemployment problem. We went into it very carefully and we found that three-quarters of the migrant labour came normally from Donegal and from Mayo and, in addition to that, their proportion of emigration in a normal year was very high, and you could explain many of the amazing figures which have been produced by Mayo, etc., on that basis, but I can tell the House that none of the people who got figures which were quite amazing succeeded in getting away with the whole of the figures. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney suggested that we should spend money on large schemes of reproductive value. I am very anxious for them. I suppose I am the last person living who wished to have placed on him the job of spending money unproductively. We have looked around to see what other lines we could get. For instance, if there were these obvious productive works, they would certainly have been in the Government files in the last ten years and we ought to have been able to find them. I have investigated half a dozen considerable reclamation schemes of the kind in people's minds and in no case, up to the present, have I found any one who was prepared to certify that the value of the thing saved bore any real relation to the cost of saving it. It would cost £40 an acre to save land worth £10 an acre at most, and that looking forward.

We are now investigating the question of reclaiming the back strand at Tramore, which, as Deputies know, was an area which was reclaimed, and in which all we had to do was to deal with a rampart which had been damaged. The cost of repairing even the gap in the rampart looks as if it is going to be a very considerable proportion of the total value. Deputy Flynn, I think, was the only man in this House who offended against the principle that we should use this debate for general purposes and not to speak of particular constituencies. I think there has been an enormous improvement on that line in this debate. Deputy Flynn raised the question of Glenbeigh. That is a typical case. I spent a fortnight in Glenbeigh, and we examined Glenbeigh very carefully in the hope of finding a solution. There is a considerable area—I think about 300 acres—on which the original sea wall has broken down. We could, undoubtedly, have repaired the sea wall and put it in condition for a sum of probably £1,200. The difficulty was that on the far side, the seaward side, the sandhills and so on were being eroded to the extent of allowing the tide to come in from another direction and, in addition, the sand was blowing from the sandhills on to the area to such an extent that we were not satisfied that when we had reclaimed the land, unless we were in a position to save it from being covered by such sand, we were going to have land which afterwards would bear a relation to the value of the improvements.

I give those two instances as showing that we have tried to go into any proposition of that kind put forward. I am very familiar with the area Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney spoke of in the West of Ireland and my recollection of it is that we could not get out of that at any cost which would bear any relation to the value of the land the reclamation of which he speaks of, but I am entirely in the hands of the House to the extent to which they can give any information of that kind.

I should like to make clear what I said. It is not really the area which the sea is attacking that you can reclaim but rather places where the sea is naturally receding. It is in those places that you can carry out successful reclamation.

Again, I will simply say that I should be very glad to receive schemes of this kind. There are plenty of schemes coming into the office at the moment—they are coming in at the rate of about 1,000 a day and one Deputy gave me 80 yesterday. Quite apart from that, if anyone will give me schemes of reclamation I shall be satisfied, but nothing on roads—let them give me nothing on roads.

Because I have plenty of roads. Deputy Dillon suggested that no bog roads should be done without a guarantee of maintenance. I should like to be able to get that but I am afraid it belongs to one of those worlds which we have not reached yet but up to which we will all educate ourselves in time. One of the real difficulties is the maintenance of these roads after you have got them and one of the difficulties we have been up against is that we have not been able to use the county councils direct for the purpose of doing small roads and so on, because, if they did them, they would have had to take over the maintenance of them.

I was very keen on afforestation as an unemployment scheme when we first started but I find that it is not available for emergency unemployment. Afforestation is undoubtedly a thing which can be used for dealing with the residual portion of people who are permanently unemployed, for the permanent residuum which is there, but, having regard to the fact that two or three years' preparation is necessary in the way of getting plants, dealing with local difficulties, the value of land and the question of law—and law is a considerable element—involved in the purchase, we found that for the purpose of what might be called emergency relief it could not be done.

The question of the income of unemployed people has been raised. At the present moment, everybody who goes to the unemployment exchange is asked to state what other means of living he has but I am not satisfied, as I said before, that that has been brought to as high a pitch of organisation as it might be but every effort will be made—I give the House this one single assurance—without any regard to politics or anything of any sort, kind or description to see that we will get to a system in which automatically those who are in most necessity get the best benefit from that amount of money which the State, as a whole, is prepared to give to those who are the least fortunate amongst its members.

Question put and agreed to.
Resolution reported and agreed to.
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