Private Deputies' Business. - Public Services (Temporary Economies) Bill, 1933—Second Stage (Resumed). – Dáil Éireann (8th Dáil) – Friday, 31 Mar 1933

Private Deputies' Business. - Public Services (Temporary Economies) Bill, 1933—Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be read a Second Time."

Minister for Finance (Mr. MacEntee)

I was showing the effect on the various Services of the respective scales which are set out in the Schedule of the Bill. I was showing how equitably they would apply to the various branches of the public service, taking all the circumstances into consideration. I think I had dealt with the position of those who are at a point on the various scales of salaries up to £1,000 per annum. At the point of £1,00 per annum a civil servant would, under the provisions of the Bill and due to the operation of the cost-of-living figure, suffer a deduction of £84 4s. per annum; an officer in the Army enjoying the same pay would suffer a deduction of £85 per annum, and an officer of the Gárda Síochána would suffer a deduction of £77 18s. per annum. Up to the point of £1,200 a civil servant would suffer, due to the Bill and the fall in the cost-of-living bonus, a deduction of £99 13s.; an officer in the Army would suffer a deduction of £100; an officer in the Gárda Síochána, £91 13s. At the point of £1,300 in the scale, a civil servant would suffer a loss of £117 5s., and an officer in the Gárda £107 14s. Up to the point of £1,400 per annum the civil servant would suffer a reduction of £136 19s., and the Gárda officer £125 1s. A civil servant whose total remuneration was £1,500 will suffer a reduction of £158 19s. per annum. There is no civil servant in the State with a salary of £1,600 per annum, but if there was such a civil servant he would suffer a reduction of £180 12s.

The figures which I have read will give the House and the country some idea of the economies which we are enforcing on the public service. These figures will give an idea of the magnitude of these economies. They will also I think serve another purpose. They will indicate that so far as possible the burden has been imposed equitably upon all branches of the service. I do not know whether it would be necessary at this stage to discuss the question whether that in fact is true or not. All I know is that it has been the purpose of the Government to realise such an equitable distribution. I would suggest that, possibly, it is a matter which does not arise immediately for debate at this stage of the Bill; that in the Committee Stage the Schedules can be discussed in detail and, as I think I have indicated, it is not proposed to take the Committee Stage of the Bill until after Easter. So that the various sections of the House will have time to formulate any criticisms they may have to make as to the manner in which the sacrifices are being exacted from the various classes of public servants.

As to the amount which we hope to gain from this Bill, I want to say that speaking last year I indicated that we hoped to secure by a reduction in the salaries and allowances in the various public services a sum of £250,000 per annum. Of course at that time already almost six weeks of the financial year had elapsed. It would be necessary, then, if we were to secure that sum in the remaining portion of the year to have imposed burdens possibly at a heavier rate than they are imposed in this Bill. Leaving that fact out of consideration, and remembering that the scope of this Bill is somewhat wider than was in my mind at any rate when I made that statement in May last year, the total amount which I hope to secure by the particular operation of this Bill as distinct from and excluding any savings we may secure in the cost-of-living bonus, will be about £280,000 for the year as contrasted with the figure of £250,000 which I mentioned last year as the saving in something less than 12 months.

This year we hope to make the saving effective for the whole 12 months. The burden may, if possible, be increased in some cases, in other cases our experience was that it would be desirable not to impose our original intentions in their full rigour but to ameliorate them in some way. I do wish to say, speaking personally, that I feel that these are heavy sacrifices. I do not want to disguise that from the community at all. I do not want to lead any section of the public service to feel that we are indifferent to the sacrifices which we ask them to accept now.

General Mulcahy

They are only for one year?

Mr. MacEntee

Yes, only for one year. Our need is very much greater this year than last year. The need everywhere of all Governments to secure economies is greater than it was last year. If we have to cast our net a little wider, and if in some instances we have to ask for increased sacrifices, it is merely, as I have said, because our need is greater, and that more drastic measures must be taken to meet that need. The year which is closing, I am happy to say, as far as present indications go, will be much less unfavourable, and will turn out to be much more satisfactory than some of the dismal prophecies which we were hearing during the last three months would have foreshadowed. The revenue has been in all circumstances fairly elastic. I believe that our Estimates in that regard are going to be realised if not exceeded, but the preliminary estimates of the revenue for next year which we have prepared, indicate that we may expect a substantial decline.

On the other hand, there has not been a corresponding decline in expenditure. Such a decline in expenditure could only have been secured at the cost of the social services and it is not the policy of the Government to secure economies in that way. On the other hand, if revenue is going to decline, and if expenditure cannot be reduced, there is only a choice of two ways in which the deficiency may be met, either by imposing additional taxation or meeting it to some extent, as the Government propose to meet it, by reducing, not expenditure on the social services, but by reducing the remuneration paid to public servants. I do not want to be taken as, in general, favouring that as a principle. I feel that the community ought to pay as much to its public servants as it can afford to pay, but the time comes when the ability of the community to continue to pay salaries at rates which were fixed in more prosperous times comes to be one for consideration and one for doubt. I believe that in our case it has gone past the stage for doubt, and it is now a certain and an assured fact that, for the coming year at any rate, public salaries and remuneration could not be maintained at the rates and the standards which have hitherto obtained here. Consequently we are in this position: We cannot, and we do not wish to impose any additional taxation. We have got to balance our Budget; we have to pay our way. Therefore, in all the circumstances, we have got to ask these public servants, who, taking every factor into consideration, can best afford to make the sacrifice, to make a sacrifice which will enable this State to maintain its good reputation and its good credit.

Mr. Dillon

I move:—

To delete all words after the word "That" and substitute the words "the Dáil declines to give a Second Reading to the Public Services (Temporary Economies) Bill, 1933 until provision is included therein for the reduction of allowances payable to Deputies and Senators."

The position that we on these Benches have taken up in this matter has been on certain occasions deliberately misrepresented and, therefore, I propose to preface my remarks by saying that we fully recognise that it is essential to secure the truly democratic character of this Assembly, and to do that it is the duty of the State to make it possible for people, no matter what their resources may be, to come here and represent their fellow-citizens if their fellow-citizens desire to send them. Therefore, every Deputy is entitled to an adequate allowance to make it possible for him to do that. I personally recognise that in arriving at an estimate of what an adequate allowance is we must have in mind the position of a wage earner who is obliged to absent himself from his work, possibly to leave his position, in order to discharge his public duties in this House. I certainly fully recognise that an allowance, sufficient to make it possible for such a person to exercise his democratic rights is essential.

The Minister for Finance suggested in the course of his observations that he would have preferred me to have taken a different course from that of putting down an amendment at this stage. I would have preferred to have proposed an amendment to introduce a new section, but the structure of the Bill did not permit of that. I would remind the Minister that the reason I have taken this occasion to bring this question to issue is that 12 months ago in introducing his Budget it was suggested to him that before he asked for further sacrifices from different sections of the community he should take steps to see that the members of the Oireachtas made their contribution on a fair and equitable basis. In the last 12 months we have heard nothing from the Minister as to his intentions on that matter, nor, so far as I am able to see, has he in this Bill, or in any of his public speeches, given any sign that it was his intention to examine this matter from the point of view from which we wish to have it examined.

I move the amendment in order to extract from the Government a Bill designed to effect economy in public services which we can support. Personally, I should much prefer to see the Government pursuing economy at the expense of the public services along the lines of reducing personnel and as and when they have reduced personnel as low as they can, consistent with an efficient public service, then and only then should they proceed to bring salaries down, if the public purse demands it. It seems to me, however, to be a strange form of economy to make a great public démarche of reducing salaries and, at the same time, increasing the junior staff in certain Departments to the tune of £60,000 or £70,000 as the Government are doing by the tariff policy in which they are at present engaged. To my mind it is going to serve the public purse very little to reduce the salaries heavily all along the line and, at the same time, to introduce a horde of new officials under the Wheat Bill, under the Tariff Bill, under the Prices Control Bill, and the hundred and one other measures that the Government have brought in, so that what we save to the public purse at the one end we are going to scatter at the other end in the creation of new officials. To my mind that line of economy is all wrong. The object of the Government should be to reduce the personnel so far as it is consistent with efficient public administration, and then, and only then, if public economy required it, to call upon that personnel to make such sacrifices as are just and equitable in the common good. We feel that to call upon that personnel to make these sacrifices without showing ourselves to be prepared to share the sacrifices is to give them reasonable grounds for resentment. If there are to be sacrifices—and the President did not put a tooth in it, because he said on a historic occasion, “We cannot have omelettes if we do not break eggs”—if we are to have sacrifices in order to prosecute this economic war, then our position is that the sacrifices should be equally and fairly divided amongst all sections of the community. The Government should not look to the agricultural community to bear the whole share of the burden, and they should not look to civil servants to bear the whole share of the burden.

The burden should be distributed evenly between professional classes, the Civil Service; the members of this House, the agricultural community and the labouring man; all should bear a fair and equal share. I know it may be said in certain quarters that it is comparatively easy for somebody who is not dependent exclusively on his Parliamentary salary to advocate deductions. I am not suggesting, nor will I at any other time suggest, that we should reduce the allowance of members of this House below the figure which we have laid down as sufficient for a civil servant or a public servant to rear a family on. I am of opinion that if we equate the Parliamentary allowance to the salary which was given by the State to a civil servant in 1922, when our allowance was fixed, we cannot feel that we are doing the poorest man in this House an injustice by bringing his Parliamentary allowance down to the same level as we are prepared to bring a civil servant's salary.

Mr. A. Byrne

What about the two homes—a home in the country and a home in Dublin?

Mr. Dillon

Deputy the Lord Mayor makes a most pertinent interjection— what about the two homes? Might I remind the Lord Mayor that members of the Seanad sat in the Seanad for 36 days in the year on an average, and have accordingly received salary at the rate of £10 per day in attendance.

Mr. Byrne

I am talking about members here.

Mr. Dillon

Mr. MacEntee

Might I ask the Deputy did he vote against the Bill?

General Mulcahy

I did not, because the Minister came in, as he has come so often to the Dáil, with the child in his arms, stating that he wanted all stages of it if the State was not to collapse.

Mr. Cosgrave

Voting against it would not have relieved them of the cost. I suppose the Minister does not know that.

General Mulcahy

The figures in connection with that measure are such as to suggest that for the butter alone that is exported out of the country £480,000 approximately is to fall on the people of this country, or nearly twice the amount of money that is to be saved under the Bill we are discussing. The farming community know that that is a very small figure in their total losses.

It is at this time when a policy is being pursued which is costing our farmers millions of pounds, and is going to throw on the consumers of butter a charge of £480,000, that it is proposed to save this sum of £280,000 and from whom? From the men who, in my opinion, are standing between the people of this country and the destruction of the State. I suggest that the Minister for Finance could not get another Minister to take this Bill and pilot it through the House because, as politicians at the cross-roads, they had told the mob that they were going to go and cut off the big salaries in Dublin. As administrators in office they met civil servants, big and small, and realised something of the work that falls on the civil servant, realised how very futile and very often misdirected will be the effort of a political head if he has not the preparatory work done for him and if he has not the guidance and the experience that is enshrined in our Departments of State. They find it difficult, coming from the cross-roads and having addressed the mob there as to what they were going to do with the big salaries—after spending a couple of months working in co-operation with the heads of the Civil Service, or the middle and lower classes in the Civil Service, to stand up in public and say: "These men are not worth their money."

It has been suggested in many ways that this country is over-officialed. When I think of the incompetence of some officials in various parts of the country that members on the opposite benches stand over in the administration of local government work and the salaries they pay them, and then think of the work that is done up here, I find it very difficult to have any respect for many persons on the far side or to have any belief in their sincerity that they want this country administered in a sound or economic way. I say to members of this House that this country in its Civil Service is not over-officialed. In 1922 we took over the Civil Service of this country such as it was then. It was a Civil Service that fed straight into the head Departments in London. Over that Civil Service we put a top: we put the necessary keystone that made the Civil Service here a self-contained unit and linked it up with the Oireachtas. We did that with an economy of numbers and an economy of salaries. I personally take exception to statements made by persons in responsible political positions in the country, such as Deputy MacDermot, who from time to time seems to make it as one of the foundation stones upon which he will build up a farmers' organisation in this country that "Mr. Cosgrave introduced a horde of officials into this country." Mr. Cosgrave did nothing of the kind.

Mr. Norton

Deputy MacDermot is not long in the country.

General Mulcahy

Any responsible section of people in this country that takes up the attitude that there is a horde of officials around the Government here in Dublin who are overpaid and underworked is doing as big a disservice, as a class, to themselves as they could possibly do, and is doing a very big disservice to the country as a whole. I do not think that there is a single Deputy in this House, whatever may be his politics on this measure, who has attempted to do any serious work for his constituents, who does not realise the excellence and the merits of the civil servants generally and the absolute necessity to this country to have a good Civil Service, and to have it so well paid that you will relieve the heads of the Civil Service from anxieties that might otherwise be theirs. It must be remembered that, while a Minister can leave his office at any time, the man who is at the top of the Civil Service has, night and day, the responsibilities and the worries of everything that is a matter of policy and of administration in the country here. I say that this Bill before us is nothing but low politics on the one side, and, on the other side, a continuance of the attack on this State that has gone on since 1922.

I, personally, do not approve of the amendment that Deputy Dillon has put down to this Bill. I think that the proposal in the Bill should be discussed on its merits, and on its merits alone. I think, in the circumstances in which we find ourselves here, and with this measure coming from the hands of those from whom it is coming, that the country or the representatives who can in any way stand for any scrap of the policy with which it is associated—the present economic war that is completely undermining our whole economic conditions in this country—are only reducing themselves to a very absurd and a silly position. What Deputies are paid or what they are not paid does not matter twopence in a country in which policies are being pursued such as those being pursued here. So far as proposals like it are concerned, they are as a smoke-screen drawn across the situation here and designed to feed further the stirring up of feeling among the mob and the unemployed that there are big people at the top with money, including Deputies, who can be stripped in order to provide them with the things they want. In so far as things of that kind are concerned, it is designed to help the Fianna Fáil policy of developing a very strong, very active, and well-mobilised left wing in this country. We are asked in this Bill to cut the salaries of members of the Civil Service, who are doing hard, solid and necessary work, men who, by the very fact of their existence—notwithstanding the policies that are being pursued on the opposite side, and which are actually being put into force—by their very existence and their work saved this country from some of the dangers and from some of the losses that would otherwise have fallen on this country. These people are going to be cut in their salaries. Their standard of living is going to be reduced. The domestic anxieties under which they labour, and under which they labour increasingly with the rise in income tax and the increasing difficulties that they are finding in placing their children into employment in this country, and with the hope of doing that receding in so many homes are to be increased— and these are the people whose salaries you are being asked to cut. You are being asked to cut the salaries of these men by people who, while individually digging themselves in pretty well, are destroying the economic foundations of this country—for that is what is happening.

We have been told that this Bill is urgent and that this Bill is necessary. We got it yesterday. We were told voluntarily from the opposite side that it was going to be discussed to-day. I suggest that it was deliberately left in that position in order that in a short session of the House—in a Friday House—there might not be the critical examination of this measure that it deserves. From the first letter to the last full stop we are opposed to this measure.

Mr. Norton

I want to say at the outset that the Labour Party is opposed to this Bill, and equally opposed to Deputy Dillon's amendment. Before I deal with the Bill, I should like to say a few words about Deputy Dillon's amendment. In my opinion, Deputy Dillon's amendment is so much eye-wash and so much claptrap, and nobody knows it better than Deputy Dillon, who, I am sure, is capable of working out a simple sum in arithmetic in order to see how much money would be saved to the taxpayer if the allowances to Deputies were halved. Deputy Dillon says that the present scale of salaries for Deputies was fixed in 1922; but he says that since then reductions were made in the allowances to civil servants and that, consequently, there should be a reduction in the allowances to Deputies. Everybody knows that the civil servants very vigorously opposed the reductions. In face of the protest by the civil servants, Deputy Dillon wants to offer them some consolation, or rather pretends to deceive them into believing that he is offering consolation, by an amendment of this character. Deputy Dillon took 1922 as the starting point for the purpose of his comparison. I am sure that Deputy Dillon is not unfamiliar personally with the fact that in 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913 and 1914, members of the old Irish Parliamentary Party were paid a salary of £400 per annum. If that was a fair and adequate remuneration for a member of Parliament from 1908 to 1914, and no protest, on the ground of extravagance against that remuneration was made, surely an allowance of £360 per annum in 1933 is not extravagant, when we remember that some members of the old Irish Parliamentary Party, admired then and admired now by Deputy Dillon, received at that time the sum of £400 per annum.

I believe what the Deputy said to-day was just part of the supercilious, superior nonsense that emanates from people who talk about doing things with a high public spirit, but who make sure that they themselves are well fortified with this world's goods, behind all their protestations of public spirit. There is not a member on these benches—and I make the offer now to the Leader of the Centre Party; and I do not mind if a Commonwealth chairman arbitrates — who would not exchange this world's goods with the leader and the deputy leader of the Centre Party. Deputy Dillon knows perfectly well, and so does Deputy MacDermot, that even if the amendment is carried, and even if there is a substantial reduction in the allowances paid to Deputies, so far as the leader and the deputy-leader of the Centre Party are concerned, there will be no sacrifice. Yet, apparently well endowed with this world's goods, they propose to set a standard for other people. I suggest that that kind of supercilious patronising outlook ought to be dropped. If Deputy Dillon feels that he has more salary or allowance than he can use, there are abundant ways to put it to some useful purpose, instead of coming to this House, fortified, presumably, with a good bank balance, and purporting to prescribe an economic existence for other people. I suggest to Deputy MacDermot that ordinary good taste should induce him to persuade the deputy-leader of the Party to withdraw the amendment.

I want now to deal with the Bill. I did not catch what the Minister said, but I understand from Deputy Mulcahy that he hoped to save approximately £280,000 in connection with this scheme of economy.

General Mulcahy

Inclusive of bonus.

Mr. MacEntee

I did not say bonus.

Mr. Norton

Presumably it is necessary to save £280,000 this year. On the Second Reading of the Railways Bill I stated that the Government definitely and deliberately decided to hand over £280,000 to the railway companies, which it is admitted by the Government and the railways is actually owing to the State to-day. I said to the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who was in charge of the measure in this House, that I hoped that as there was an economy crisis or when furrowed brows were endeavouring to balance the Budget, that someone would remember the generous gift which the State gave to the railways, because under the Railways Bill they are given £280,000. Apparently that £280,000, handed over to the railways by the State, is now to be got out of the pockets of the public servants who are attacked in this Bill. Does the Government want to act the part of Brewster with the railway companies and, in many cases, act the part of Lazarus with its own underpaid servants? The Minister said it was necessary to have the cuts, and this Bill is introduced to attack public servants, whose remuneration is threatened in the Bill.

Take the case of a doctor who is carrying on his practice and receives an income up to £1,000 yearly. Is it fair that a doctor in the Civil Service, receiving £1,000 per annum, should be asked to make this sacrifice when the doctor outside is not going to be asked to make a similar sacrifice, even though the outside doctor's remuneration may be twice as great as the remuneration of the doctor in the Civil Service. Of course this Bill is not confined to the cutting of the remuneration of civil servants in receipt of substantial salaries. The Bill is an attack not merely on salaries which are fairly substantial but on low salaries, because whole groups of wage earners will be assailed by the wage slashing policy enshrined in it. The Bill is endowed with the title "Public Services (Temporary Economics) Bill." That title is a masquerade. It is a wage-slashing Bill, and the Minister knows perfectly well that those in receipt of £2 10s. a week will be cut. I put it to the Minister, to Deputy Cooney, and to Deputy Cormac Breathnach, who have trade union connections, are they going to stand for trade unions or for an attack on the wages of people with £2 10s. a week? If that principle is announced, as Deputy Cooney and Deputy Breathnach know, there is a definite incitement to private employers to follow the example. If Deputy Good or Deputy Dockrell were here, I am sure they would have no hesitation in saying that the mentality postulated in this Bill will be noted with considerable glee in the Chamber of Commerce, and will be noted with care by employers' organisations in the city and elsewhere throughout the country. One can imagine the statement of the Minister for Finance being read carefully and analysed by some wage-cutting employers, in order that they may obtain from him the requisite amount of philosophy to "put over" wage cuts on their employees.

Call this Bill what you will, it makes a definite attack on the remuneration of people in the wage-earning category. Because it does that, and seeks to cut wages as a remedy and as a recipe for the existing crisis, which, in fact, will not be found to be either a remedy or a recipe, I am completely opposed to this Bill. The mentality behind it is the old capitalist philosopy; cut wages and everything will be all right. I could understand the Minister desiring to effect certain kinds of economies in the form of eliminating waste, but this is not a Bill to eliminate waste. It is not a Bill to cut out unnecessary or redundant services. This is not a Bill to get rid of trimmings which are unnecessary in this country.

This is a Bill steeped in the philosophy of cutting wages and that then everything would be all right. What is the economic problem the Minister is attempting to deal with? What is the economic crisis to which the Minister refers? If there is any crisis in this country it is the problem of poverty—chronic poverty with a large section of the people. That is the real and indeed the only problem. The economic crisis which confronts the country is due to the fact that our own people are unable to purchase what we produce here. The economic problem in this country and in the world to-day is due to the inability of consumers to purchase the products of industry. The gap to-day between production and consumption is widening and widening. That is the problem confronting this country. The Minister imagines that by cutting wages and salaries and by reducing purchasing power he is going to provide a remedy in a country where the purchasing power is already too low. Cutting purchasing power is not a remedy for an economic problem brought about by inability to purchase the goods and services that are produced here.

If cutting wages could ever have made the world prosperous, the world of the last ten years should have been a very prosperous world indeed. Wage slashing has been recommended here and elsewhere as a remedy for almost all industrial and economic ills. Has the wage slashing that took place in this country for the last ten years produced the remedy that some people claimed in 1922 that policy would produce? Has the wage slashing that we have seen indulged in in other countries in the world produced the remedies that those who sponsored such a policy prophesied it would produce? Everybody knows that the attack on the purchasing power of the community, in the form of cutting wages and salaries, practised for the last ten years, has not made the world better or more prosperous; it has made the world poorer and it has brought about the economic crises through which these countries are passing to-day.

If there is anything to be learned or any significance to be attached to the speech of the Minister for Finance, it is an indication that the Minister, at all events—and perhaps in this matter he is speaking for the Government—has got cold feet on his own economic and industrial policy. The speech of the Minister clearly indicates that he has no faith whatever in his own industrial and economic policy because if the Minister had any faith in the policy of his Government to bring about that economic and social regeneration, which is spoken of so glibly at election times, he has no case whatever for cutting purchasing power and attacking wage standards such as are being attacked in this Bill. This is just an attempt to apply a cut plaster to a disease which is not an external disease but which is a disease affecting the whole organism of society in this country. Merely to apply an external lotion, in the form of a wage cut, is not going to cure all the diseases from which the organism of society is suffering to-day. The Minister imagines, in the old capitalist way, that all you have got to do is to cut salaries and wages and that then everything will be all right.

Instead of the Government facing up to their responsibility, by implementing the Christian social policy we hear spoken of so often outside the House but which is never implemented in this House, we find the Government patching up to-day a system of society in this country which is neither Christian nor Irish nor moral. Instead of dealing with the matter by way of implementing the Christian social policy, about which the Minister speaks so eloquently at times, we find no attempt made to implement that social policy. Instead, we find the Minister following figuratively and literally in the philosophy of "cut purchasing power, cut wages and salaries and everything will be all right." Instead of bolstering up the foreign and unnatural social system, for which the Minister is standing in this matter, the Minister might well tell the House that he does not propose to deal with the economic crisis by wage cuts, but that rather he intends to build up a Christian social system without which we must have always wage cuts, always unemployment and all these social evils and sores which follow in the wake of an unnatural foreign social system.

Other Government, says the Minister, have found it necessary in other countries to cut wages and salaries. Is that any reason why we should do the same? Surely the Minister for Finance is not going to say that we will make up our own minds as to what is good for our country, so far as our governmental institutions are concerned, but, that in the matter of wage cutting we will follow the example of Chinamen or Japs. Governmental institutions, hall-marked 22 carat Irish, are the only kind of governmental institutions that satisfy the brand of patriotism that the Minister vaunts. We must have genuine 22 carat Irish political institutions, but when it comes to wages and salary cutting, let us look around the world for any example. No matter what country it comes from it will be good enough so long as it means a wage cut. That is the extraordinary omelette I find in the Minister's speech to-day. He wants to take his political institutions from Ireland and his examples for wage attacks from any part of the world. Surely the Minister will hardly contend that the economic conditions and the unemployment that exist in other countries are such as to justify him in following the examples of these countries in their economic or social policies? Wage cuts in these other countries have not brought the prosperity that those who stood sponsor for the cuts, maintained they would. Wage cuts there have brought what wage cuts here will bring, namely, a reduction in the purchasing power of the people and the enforcement, on those affected by the cuts, of a standard of living which in many cases cannot be reconciled with the vaunted Christian social policy for which the Minister claims to stand. In my opinion, there is neither vision nor remedy, as there is certainly no statesmanship, in this Bill so far as an economic and social policy is concerned.

The Minister wants to have wage cutting. He wants to reduce wages. He might make some slight show if he were only cutting the remuneration of those in receipt of salaries approximating to £600, £700, £800, £900 or £1,000, but let the Minister and every member of his Party remember that every vote given for this Bill is a vote for cutting the remuneration of people with approximately £2 10s. a week. It is a definite incitement to private employers to do the same thing. Now that Deputy Good has returned I am sure he will have no hesitation in saying that the speech and action of the Minister for Finance will be a very potent argument in the hands of employers when they come to endeavour to enforce wages reductions on their employees. This mentality displayed by the Minister will be welcomed, as one would expect, in the Chamber of Commerce, another institution which, with a few exceptions, believes in wage cutting, more wage cutting and still more wage cutting.

The Minister is making it perfectly clear in this Bill that, for his part, he is not concerned with what standards of living he breaks or what standards of life he invades. The Minister is only concerned with one thing in this Bill, and that is to cut the remuneration of wage earning groups. I challenge the Minister to go out into his own constituency or into the City of Dublin and defend there cutting the remuneration of people with £2 10s. per week. If the Minister tries to do that, I think it will not be long until he is sadly disillusioned because every working man and every trade unionist in this city and throughout the country knows the significance of this Bill. It is an attack on wage standards; it is telling private employers that wages of £2 10s. per week can be reduced. That philosophy is good enough for certain sections of society in this country, but one would expect that, after the radical and almost revolutionary declamations of the Minister in other days, he would not be the one to come into this House to claim the doubtful honour of setting a headline to private employers by cutting the wages of Civic Guards and teachers —setting a headline for private employers to invade and attack the wage standards of their own workers. It is because it is an attack upon wage standards, because I believe it will not cure the existing depression but aggravate it, that I am opposed to this Bill and to the whole philosophy of the Bill. Not merely is it an unwise departure for the Government, but, judging by the Minister's speech, it seems to me to be the first step along an economic and social road which will bring this Government to the same end to which the last Government came— a road which means low wages and a low social standard, the bringing down the level of our people until this country is just another Balkan State in Western Europe.

Mr. V. Rice

I have to complain, as other Deputies have done, regarding the manner in which this Bill has been introduced. It is a Bill which introduces a very big principle and a very big change in the social and economic life of a very important section of our people. It was circulated yesterday morning. Other Parties not having been told until late last night, time is taken to-day for the purpose of passing this revolutionary measure with a single day's discussion. Deputies have not been given a reasonable or proper opportunity to examine the provisions of this Bill. While I reserve the right and intend to criticise this Bill, section by section at a later stage, I wish to make some observations on it now.

The Bill is described as a Temporary Economies Bill. I adopt the expression used by the Leader of the Labour Party in another connection in his speech just now as a proper description of that title, and I say it is only "eye-wash." The Minister knows perfectly well that this is not a temporary reduction of the remuneration of public servants. He knows that, having regard to the economic policy his Government are pursuing, it is a permanent reduction in the remuneration of the public service. I take the view that the reduction of the pay of the Civil Service is a step to the detriment of the country. We have in this country a public service surpassed by none. This measure is calculated to introduce discontent and to interfere with the efficiency of the service rendered to the State. One section of the public service is the police. The police of this country have always had a high reputation for the cleanness of their work. The policemen of this country do not, as happens in other countries, put out their hands for tips. There have been very few instances in this country of police officers having been accused of receiving bribes from persons with whom they had to deal. The police here should be kept above all forms of temptation, and they ought to be given reasonable remuneration such as is given to a workman for his week's work. Our police are a very important body in the carrying on of the work of this country, and it is in the interests of the country that there should be clean administration and decent work done. I say it is a retrograde step for the Minister to propose to reduce the remuneration of the police below what is a decent living wage.

I complain, as I have said, of the manner in which this Bill was introduced without giving Deputies any reasonable opportunity of studying its terms. Perhaps I, with a certain amount of training in construing documents of this kind, have less right to complain than the ordinary Deputy who is without that training, but I do say that I, and Deputies like me, have a right to complain of the Bill being introduced in this way. There are sections in this Bill the construction of which might occupy a court for days, and Deputies are asked to discuss the terms of the measure without any such consideration. The manner in which the Minister introduced the Bill is on a par with the manner in which the President introduced this morning the first motion on the Paper. As the Leader of the Opposition pointed out, the first item on the Order Paper this morning was a proposal to effect a trade agreement with another country under which we were giving eight concessions in return for three concessions. If the President had had his way, we should not have been given an opportunity of discussing the relative advantages of these concessions. The Minister for Finance, in introducing this Bill, adopted a similar line. He took up what appears to me to be a novel attitude. He suggested to the House the lines on which the Bill should be discussed, and that we should only discuss the principle that he introduced. My view as to the rights of the House in discussing any Bill that comes before it is that it is entitled to discuss every aspect and every implication of the Bill, subject to the rules of order and the authority of the Chair. I am very glad to say that Deputies have refused to be led by the nose by the Minister for Finance as to what they should discuss. The Minister referred to what he said on 11th May last. The Minister said many things on 11th May last. We shall have a more appropriate opportunity of discussing what he said on 11th May last on the day on which he introduces his Budget for the coming year. I do not intend to be tempted now into comparing what the Minister said on 11th May last with what he said before he sat in his present position. But we do know that immediately before he took up that position he told us our taxation would be reduced by £2,000,000. We know now our taxation has been increased by about three times that amount. I am very glad to see that the Labour Party are at last wakening up to the implications of the alliance in which they have been engaged for the past 12 months. The President laughs. I am pleased to see him laugh. It is a pleasure and a novelty to see the President laugh.

Mr. Cleary

Deputy Rice should know all about making alliances.

Mr. MacEntee

And about alliances that go astray.

Mr. Rice

I am very glad to see the Labour Party wakening up to the implications of the alliance they formed with President de Valera's Party. It is a good thing to see that the representatives of Labour have awakened to the fact that what is behind this Bill is not really a proposal to save £280,000 a year out of the pockets of the Civil Service. We know, as a matter of fact, on a rough calculation; that the Government, by their present policy of what is called an economic war, are wasting just about that amount per week in carrying on a controversy and a dispute which they can settle any day they like on fair and reasonable terms. They are wasting each week they carry on this economic war the amount they propose to save in a year by reducing the remuneration of the public service. If this Bill had been introduced by the late Government, everything could be said in its favour from the point of view that they were economising and husbanding the resources of this country but, if a person spends half his income in buying dope and drugs, it is foolish economy to save a halfpenny on the price of his tea. That is what this Government are doing in introducing this Bill.

I am glad that Deputy Norton has awakened to these implications, and I may say, with regard to what he has said here, that this is the foundation of a policy to cut the remuneration of working people all round. That is true. I said to a large employer of labour, as soon as the terms of this Bill were indicated: "I suppose the big employers will be in favour of this Bill, because it will give them a headline to cut wages?" He did not answer me, and I said to him: "What do you say to that?" and his reply was: "I am deaf on that side." Deputy Norton is right. This is a headline deliberately laid down by the Government for the purpose of introducing a system of wage-cutting all round.

Mr. Cooney

To which you were always opposed?

Mr. Rice

Compare the remuneration under the late Government with the remuneration now. Personally, if I had the misfortune to have to work for a weekly wage as a labourer, I would much prefer 29/- or 30/- a week to 24/- a week, and I have not yet found any of the people to whom Deputy Flinn referred when he said that, if it was suggested that they did not want that wage, the people who suggested it would be torn limb from limb. I have not met them and, when Deputies come to consider how they will vote on this Bill, I ask them not to be misled by the talk of Deputy Norton about the wage-cutting policy of the late Government. Where was the wage-cutting policy of the late Government? How does their policy as regards wages compare with the policy of the present Government? Compare the standards that this Government have set up with the standards maintained by the late Government.

Mr. Cleary

Do not spoil your case.

Mr. Rice

I would rather spoil a case than be like the Deputy who interrupts who could not make a case on anything at all. This Bill is, as Deputy Norton said, an incitement to private employers to cut wages all round. I say that the whole principle of the Bill is vicious and, apart from that, it is a direct breach of the undertaking—I will call it an undertaking—given by the President in a speech he made immediately prior to the General Election of 1932. The Leader of the Opposition referred to that speech this morning and I am going to refer to it again.

An Ceann Comhairle

There have been repeated interruptions during the past ten minutes. They will have to cease now.

Mr. Rice

May I respectfully say that I am delighted with them?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Chair is not.

Mr. Rice

I said that I lost my seat in that election, and the one main element in causing me to lose my seat was the illusory promise made by the now President of this State to the Civil Service, because in the constituency I then represented and now represent again a very big element of the voters belong to the second and third grade of the Civil Service. They were deluded by the promises made to them and which have been broken by the introduction of this Bill.

Deputies opposite want to hear what the President said at that time when he was Leader of the Opposition. Ten days before the election he told the civil servants of the city, and the rest of the country, before they went to the polls to register their votes: "It is not our idea to start to cut the lower salaries. With regard to the salaries of £300 or £400 a year, I hold that those in receipt of them are getting nothing excessive. These are not the salaries I had in mind for a cut."

On the eve of the general election he went further. In this article—the article, I may mention incidentally to the President, is headed "Broken Promises"—he promised immunity not only to the lower grades but to the middle grades. "We do not," he said, "propose to seek economies by restricting the social services or cutting the salaries of the middle or lower grades of the Civil Service."

They were recognised. The Minister is going off on a false trail and trying to draw a weak red herring across the track of my argument. I am pointing out that the humble subject is entitled to protection and that the right of the subject was recognised by the late Government. Here is a measure introduced to prevent determination by the courts of the people of this country as to whether an individual has a grievance or not. The Minister can sit down in his office and determine the rights of any individual and there is to be no appeal to the courts as against his decision. I say that is the introduction of an undemocratic and retrograde principle. I ask Deputies, when they come to consider this measure, whatever they may do with the measure in general, if they have any regard for the preservation of democratic rights, to vote against that section.

I would like to say a word or two on the subject of Deputy Dillon's amendment. The subject-matter of the amendment was discussed in this House some years ago and I think the view the House took at the time was that, while a case could be made for the reduction of the allowances to Deputies like myself who represent metropolitan constituencies, no case could be made for such reduction as regards Deputies who represent rural constituencies. That distinction, if it is worth making, is sound. We are supposed to be working under a democratic system and all classes of the community in this State are entitled to be represented in this House. If the people want to be represented by Labour Deputies, they are entitled to have that right and we cannot expect the working men to finance Deputies who represent them here, to pay the expenses of these Deputies.

I think it is wholly false to suggest that the allowance made to Deputies is a salary. It is really an allowance to cover expenses and on that principle it is wholly justifiable. There are many other classes besides those who return Labour Deputies who are not in a position to finance their representatives in this House. I will refer to what happened in another House in another country on this very subject as a headline to Deputies like Deputy Dillon, who has made this proposal. There is a simple method for every Deputy who feels that he can do without this allowance. He can return the money to the Treasury or he can apply it to charitable work.

In another House on a certain occasion not very long ago a taunt was thrown from the Government Benches at a Deputy in the form of saying to him: "Well, you take your allowance, anyway." It did not transpire on that occasion that the Deputy in question did not, in fact, take one penny of his allowance. It transpired at a later meeting when the Minister who threw the taunt apologised and said he had learned that the Deputy had applied every penny of his Parliamentary allowance to charitable purposes. I suggest to Deputy Dillon and Deputy MacDermot that every member of their Party who favours the policy of cutting down or even abolishing the allowance to Deputies has that simple course open to him. He can hand his allowance to the St. Vincent de Paul Society or to other charitable societies in Dublin and that money will be certainly as well applied as if it is left in the Treasury.

Mr. Cooney

Buying sweep tickets.

Mr. Rice

I did not catch the Deputy's remark.

An Ceann Comhairle

It had nothing to do with the motion before the House.

Mr. Rice

I suggest that is a simple course and it is one that I will commend to the mover of the amendment. The foundation of this system of an allowance for Deputies is in order to procure representation in the Dáil for all classes of the people. That is the reason and the justification for the allowance to Deputies. I propose at a later stage, when I have had a chance of considering its implications, to ask the Minister what he means to carry out by Section 5, a section that prima facie may be the section which is designed entirely in relief of civil servants. I do not propose to deal with that to-day, but at a later stage I hope to have an opportunity of asking the Minister to elucidate what is intended by the section.

Mr. MacDermot

When the Government were announcing their economic policy to the country they represented that they could make tremendous savings without hardship to anybody. I suppose this Bill represents their attempt at the fulfilment of that assurance. Looked at from that point of view, it is not possible to congratulate them upon it. They seem to have overlooked a fact that they are rather fond of repeating, that they cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. There is no doubt this particular omelette involves the breaking of a good many eggs. In the present serious condition of the country's trade and finances, we of this Party feel it is our duty to give support to the Government's economy proposals. No matter how much their own policy has been responsible for the necessity of them, we feel it is our duty to give support to the Government's economy proposals, leaving on them the onus of the equities as between different classes of public service, but supporting the general principle, provided that we are put in a moral position to do so. That is the point of Deputy Dillon's amendment. All the criticism I have heard of it to-day is absolutely beside the point. If we were recommending the reduction of Deputies' allowances for the mere sake of reduction there would be some meaning in the attacks made on Deputy Dillon's amendment, but we are not. What we feel is that it is absolutely indecent for the Oireachtas to be imposing cuts on other people and refusing to submit to any cuts themselves. When we hear about the sacrosanctness of this particular figure, £360, we must realise that if it is unjust to call for any reduction of that figure then it was unjust not to consent to a considerably higher salary in 1922, because you have reduced the salaries of civil servants since and the cost of living has gone down.

Deputy Mulcahy has entered an objection to the type of controversy that he says we are addicted to on these benches, which consists in saying that there are too many officials in the country, and blaming the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, in part at any rate, for the extent of public expenditure and the multitude of officials that exists. I am unrepentant on that point. I consider the public expenditure in this country is definitely too high. Deputy Norton speaks as if there was absolutely no limit to which a nation could go in the matter of public expenditure. One would gather from his speeches that he thinks the country can spend and spend and spend, and that nothing but good can come of it. When the Deputy says that the economic troubles the world over are due to the insensate policy of Governments in cutting down salaries and effecting economies, he is merely flying in the face of facts. Everybody knows that is not true.

You might take, perhaps, as a supreme example the United States of America, where you had unreasonable expansion, optimism and the rising of salaries of every sort. And ever since the great crash in 1929, the Congress has been ineffectually struggling to deal with the situation. One of the main reasons why they have been so completely ineffectual in dealing with it is that they refused to get down to economy. They committed the same mistake, I am sorry to say, that is shown in the Government attitude here to-day. Such proposals for economies as were introduced into Congress were never allowed to contain any sacrifice for the members of Congress themselves. It is only when the country is going to crash over the precipice, when President Roosevelt comes in and gets semi-dictatorial powers to enable them to make economies to save the country from financial ruin, that economies in the remuneration of the members of the Congress at Washington are introduced.

I say, in reference to the general question of public expenditure, that I consider public expenditure in this country is too high. I admit I was not living in this country at the time and my evidence is not first hand, but I have the impression that the Sinn Féin movement as a whole was not alive to the true financial situation in this country. I do not believe that very many of them realised that under the old regime a great deal more was being expended in Ireland than was being drawn from it in the way of revenue. Ever since the Old Age Pensions Act was introduced in the British Parliament that has been the position. I do not believe that the Sinn Féin Movement realised that under the 1912 Home Rule Bill we were going to get substantial subsidies from the British Parliament in order to enable us to carry on the services which were then established and which otherwise we would not have been able to carry on without an enormous increase in taxation the moment Home Rule came into operation. I think they had an idea that by simply cutting adrift from Great Britain this country was going to come into a fortune, and I think they were under the impression after the Treaty, that in the negotiations that went on they had done extremely well for this country and that they had made "a damn good bargain." That is, as may be but this much is certain that if our cutting adrift in the way we did and in the circumstances we did from Great Britain, led to a great improvement in the financial position of this country, that improvement was not passed on at all to the unfortunate taxpayers and ratepayers. We find to-day that even taking into account the change in the value of money, and the expansion of the social services that the figure of public expenditure for the Free State alone is grossly out of proportion to what used to be to the expenditure for the whole of Ireland under the British regime.

That being so and the times being as bad as they are the world over, and especially bad in Ireland in consequence of this so-called economic war, this wasting disease which the Government has inflicted on the country, I feel we have no choice but to give general support to the economy proposals, much as we dislike them provided they put us in the moral position to do it. Are we in that moral position? I say we are not. Take first the most flagrant case, because the case of the Seanad is the most flagrant. I want to know is there any Deputy in this House who could justify the salaries paid to Senators? Senators have no constituents to meet. They have not the same kind of work to do between the sittings as the members of this House have. They meet 35 times or perhaps 36 times in the year. Suppose we take it that they meet 36 times, the position remains that they get, as Deputy Dillon has pointed out, £10 for each sitting.

Is that a thing that can be defended? I say it is not. I think it is specially difficult to defend in view of the desire of the Government that the Seanad should be somewhat different in character from this House. I suggest that the Seanad should not be regarded in any way as a whole-time job and that the people who go to the Seanad, poor as well as rich— if there are any rich still left in this country—should be paid on the basis of their attendance, and that it should be something like £2 a day, plus first-class travelling fare, instead of £10 for each session as at present. I have yet to hear of any sort of reasonable defence put up for the salaries paid to the Senators. The result of the present salary or allowance is to make it a laughing stock and to turn it into what it has become, that is, as a place for providing for persons for one reason or another that people wish to provide for, rather than in sending people there who would make the best possible Senators.

As regards this House itself it is quite clear that the member who does his work honestly as a Deputy will earn the £360 to the full. I admit that quite readily. But this proposal of a reduction last year as well as this year—for I was the one to make it last year—was not made as something desirable for its own sake, but only in relation to the proposals for economies to be imposed on others. I make my proposal in that situation—a situation where it is proposed that economies shall be imposed on others, shall be imposed upon men who have no other means of livelihood. The civil servant has no other means of living. He is not like the Deputy who has got a chance to earn something outside his work here, as a great many of them do. I say it is a perfectly impossible situation—it is impossible for a Deputy here to be put in the situation of being called on to support cuts that will cause so much resentment and hardship unless he is prepared to lead the way himself. Deputy Norton has talked of the bad taste of Deputy Dillon in proposing a sacrifice in the case of an individual civil servant. He said it was bad taste for Deputy Dillon to suggest it. I call it much worse taste and very bad taste to enforce cuts on unfortunate State servants and not impose cuts on themselves.

A Deputy

Why not vote against them?

Mr. MacDermot

What about the bad taste of the action of the Labour Party here? The Labour Party do not feel there is any sort of bad taste when they get up and make all sorts of proposals that would destroy other people's income by causing a high income tax to be imposed, or when they destroy people's income by voting for the economic war and when they propose that unfortunate railway shareholders should have their interests disregarded. That is not bad taste at all. It is only when one gets up and makes a proposition that should appeal to the most moderate sense of decency and good taste that Deputy Norton gets up and talks about the old Irish Party and say they were not ashamed to take £400 a year. That is an entirely different matter, because that £400 did not come directly out of the pockets of the Irish taxpayers. It came out of the pockets of the British taxpayers, who supplied the largest portion of it. Besides that, for years and years the old Irish Party did their duty at Westminster without any payments whatever from the public purse. There are a few unfortunate remnants of the old Irish Party alive to-day and in a state of almost destitution after all the years in the service of the country. All that service is now forgotten. We are ready to ladle out money for the new heroes at any time on any pretext.

Deputies of this House have very little cause to sneer at the old Irish Party, least of all on financial grounds, no matter on whatever other grounds they may sneer at them. At any rate that question of £400 a year was beside the point. It is not because we think £360 a year too high for a Deputy that we introduced this amendment at all. It is because we really feel it is asking us to do something that we should not in decency be asked to do when the Government calls on us to support their economy proposals, unless something was first done on our part to show that we ourselves are ready to make sacrifices as well. I think that the amendment moved by Deputy Dillon is, perhaps, as reasonable a one as could be moved; that we should be linked up with the civil servants to about the same scale of salary. Taking into account the time when this salary was fixed the deduction to be made from it should correspond to the deduction made from the salaries of civil servants. I appeal to the Minister to give us some satisfaction on this point, to declare that the Government will definitely introduce proposals for the substantial reduction of the Seanad salaries and that they will, at least, institute an inquiry, if nothing more, although I would like them to go a bit further and say definitely that they would make some reduction in the salaries of the Dáil in order to make our moral position stronger. We must not forget, although I do not wish to raise unnecessarily contentious points, that a number of Deputies during the last election were going around the country hounding the people on into the economic war, calling on them to put Ireland before their purse, to strike a blow for the good old country, to destroy the brutal British and discomfort John Bull. How they can have had the face to do it, or how they can have the face to do it again, while they take up the attitude that they will not sacrifice one penny themselves, is something beyond my conception.

Mr. Kelly

I did not intend to interfere in this debate. My policy, as long as I will be here, is to speak as little as possible. I felt, however, that some comment is necessary on the part of back benchers having regard to what I have heard to-day. With reference to the amendment proposed by a Deputy belonging to the Centre Party, I humbly submit to him that he is illogical. Either Deputies should be paid or they should not be paid. If he proposes that they should not be paid, I am with him. I have always held that men or women who wish earnestly to serve their country ought to do it without fee or reward. I am probably the oldest member who can speak with any authority on the Sinn Féin movement that has been alluded to more than once to-day. Probably I would not have spoken only when it was mentioned it came into my head that an opportunity might arise for me to say something concerning it. I will tell you about the Sinn Féin movement. If you lived nearly 30 years ago you might have rambled into a house in Fownes Street, and if your curiosity led you to go upstairs you would have found a man in a back room sitting at a broken desk on a three-legged chair engaged in writing. That man at the end of his week, having spent nearly all the six days and some of the nights there, would draw about 30/-. He had the greatest and the most subtle pen wielded in the cause of Ireland since the days of Swift. That was the beginning of the Sinn Féin movement. You know to whom I allude—the late Arthur Griffith.

General Mulcahy

And the end of it was that you said he sold his country.

Mr. B. O'Connor

He was called a traitor.

Mr. Kelly

If you are going to introduce these things you are going to be replied to very swiftly. More than he sold their country and all that can be said of them is that they sold it for a price.

And also that of the gentleman who sits beside you.

Mr. Dillon

I wish it was.

Mr. Kelly

You can very conveniently speak about a reduction of other people's salaries or allowances because you are on fairly safe ground. As I was saying before being interrupted, in connection with this matter of money and the Sinn Fein movement in its earlier days, the efforts of the late Arthur Griffith and those associated with him to keep up the Sinn Fein paper were almost superhuman. We went from door to door almost begging for money to keep it going. When the Sinn Fein daily paper was started the same thing happened. It only lasted six months, but during that six months the salaries paid were almost laughable they were so small. Towards the end—this has never been told before—two Irishmen undertook a mission to America to collect money for its continuance—the late Mr. Bulfin and the late O'Rahilly. Both of them spent three months in America and came back without even the price of a box of matches. Mr. Bulfin died a short time afterwards, and we know that the O'Rahilly was found with bullets in his heart during the fight in Easter Week. These things do not suggest in any shape or form that the Sinn Fein movement was founded by money grubbers. When other men and other methods prevailed, and the Sinn Fein movement, so to speak, almost passed away, and when, as a result of the work of these men and their methods the Easter Week insurrection was possible, and the events which followed it, you know very well the intense enthusiasm which was created amongst the Irish people, and you know that millions of money flowed into the Exchequer of the then young Irish Republic that these men brought about. When the first Dáil was elected I was one of a committee appointed to arrange the salaries for the President and Ministers of the Irish Republic, so that I know thoroughly well what I am speaking of. The salary arranged for the Ministers was £300 a year, and that for the President was £600 a year. He declined to take £600; he said £500 would be sufficient. That will give those gentlemen of the Centre Party, who were speaking to-day in connection with the Sinn Fein movements and things national in a spirit I do not like, to understand the self-sacrificing spirit of the men who founded those movements, who carried them on, and who, I think, brought them to success. I have nothing further to say on that point.

I thought, in my knowledge of debate, that the amendment only would be before the House, but I understand that both the Bill and the amendment can be discussed. My connection with the Bill will be very brief. It was my job, on the opening of the first Dáil in 1919, to read the democratic programme of Dáil Eireann. That programme set out what was proposed to be done for the workers and for the poor people of this country. I read it with pleasure. I believed it was going to be carried out. I give general credit to many of those associated with that movement that they had an honest intention of carrying those things out, but I fearlessly say here now that, until President de Valera and his men got together this year, no effort was made to carry out the democratic programme of Dáil Eireann. That was the reason I came in here to give them my little support in their effort to do so. When I heard just the last word of Deputy Norton's statement, to the effect that the men here on these benches were going to meet the fate of the men over there, because of their wage-cutting and because of their depressing the conditions of the poor and the workers of this country, I came to the conclusion that I am afraid Deputy Norton is not strictly speaking the truth. I do not think he was justified in saying such things, and I should remind him, and the members of the Labour Party generally, that there are other men here on these benches as closely associated with the Labour movement and as much in sympathy with it as they are. I should like them to understand that perfectly. If there was anything in the shape of interference with an honest living, with good wages, with good housing accommodation, or with good general support for the working classes of this country, we would have nothing to do with it. I honestly believe that President de Valera and his men are now engaged in carrying out the programme laid down 13 or 14 years ago. I believe they are honestly engaged in carrying it out. For that reason I support them, and will continue to support them as long as I am here. Whether that will be long or short I cannot say.

As regards my own position, I intend to keep an exact account of the £330 a year or whatever it is that we get for our services here. I intend to keep an exact account of it, just to see how it will pan out at the end of the year. At the present moment I have to shut up my shop for three days a week. I calculate that at a loss of about £80 or £90 a year, to begin with. I do not know what other losses I may sustain, but to think that we are here for the purpose of the £360 or £330 a year is wrong. There are men behind me on these benches—more vigorous and ardent, and probably more national than I am—who may be losing a good deal more than I am. I did not want to interfere in this matter at all, but having regard to the insinuations which I believe were made concerning men on these benches, I had to make a protest against them, and make it with all the vigour I possess at present.

They are men who have had specialised training for the position they have. There is no educational or physical standard of fitness required for a Deputy. It is possible for a man to be a member of this House who may be semi-illiterate, and who would not be worth 5/- a week in any commercial occupation in the world. That is the fact. Even to join the Civic Guard it is necessary to have a high standard of physical and intellectual fitness. I think in fixing this allowance some regard was paid to the low standard of personality that might possible enter this House. I am sure that there are many persons here in this House who are not worth £360 a year to the State. It is not proper to look on this amount as a salary. It is stated to be an allowance. If the proposer of this amendment had put it in a form which would take it out of this ambiguous category—whether it is an allowance or a salary—I would be very pleased to support it. In other words, if a man were to be compensated for the time lost in his business, for the actual time he spends in this House, and for his travelling expenses to and from this House, it should be in another form. But there is no doubt that at present it is by some regarded as a salary, and by some even as their sole means of living. In that connection it has helped to rear up in this State a very low peculiar form of professional politician. I would have been very glad to support the amendment if put in another form because I believe that this £360 a year is a lure to membership of this House. If it had been eliminated I believe we would have had a better class of man coming forward to serve the country here. That, of course, is a matter of opinion.

With regard to the general principles of the Bill before us the Minister was very apologetic for its introduction. In fact, he nearly wept over the necessity that has arisen for paring down the salaries of some of the highly placed civil servants. When the Minister and his Party came into power last year they promised the country an immediate reduction of £2,000,000 in taxation without making any inroads whatever on the public services.

Mr. MacEntee

The Deputy ought to prepare a speech for himself. That is Deputy McGilligan's copyright.

Mr. O'Neill

It is a public fact. I have a Fianna Fáil poster here that was issued to the public and I will read it for the Minister if he likes. At any rate, we are all familiar with that poster. The country was told that £2,000,000 a year were going to be saved in taxation, and that without any sacrifice whatever in the public services or in the cost of administration. Immediately the present Government came into office, not only was there no attempt whatever made to show the country how this economy in administration was going to come about but we were immediately in the new Budget taxed to a further extent, over and above what we had been already paying, to the tune of £4,000,000 a year. It is quite possible that this year there will be a further increase in taxation. All this time, it is freely admitted that taxation has reached a breaking point in this country. It has now gone to a point where it is beyond the capacity of the people to pay. We see this all through the country where it is impossible to collect the local rates. We see it in the general depression of trade. In the financial year that ended in March, 1932, the trade of this country was £86,000,000. In the year ending March, 1933, it was £64,000,000, a drop of £22,000,000 in the turnover of the trade of the country. More than £8,000,000 of that was accounted for by the foolish economic war which was not brought about by England because, as the President admitted, we fired the first shot. It is at this time, when the Minister sees that the capacity of the people to bear less and less taxation is becoming very evident, he grasps at this straw to save this one-quarter of a million of money, a comparatively miserable sum.

Mr. MacEntee

It is one of the wealthy Deputies who is talking now.

Mr. O'Neill

I am talking in relation to the extravagance of the Minister and of his policy of trying to save £250,000 by taking it out of the pockets of the true and tried servants of this State, while launching into extravagances in other directions where more than that sum could be saved. Mention was made to-day that, while the Minister was trying to save this money by taking it out of the pockets of civil servants, there had been a remarkable increase in the personnel of some departments. In the Vote for the Revenue Commissioners, there is an increase in salaries alone of £20,000. I can only attribute that increase to the pitch-forking of men into the Customs —men who, I am informed, did not pass in through the ordinary avenue of a Civil Service examination.

There is one thing in the Schedule to the Bill that I strongly object to, and that is the proposed interference with the salaries of the Civic Guards. The ordinary Civic Guard has not a salary or wage anything like that which an ordinary semi-skilled man is paid. Yet to become a Civic Guard he has to pass a very stiff examination. He has to be a man of more than ordinary education, and in the moral sphere must be above suspicion. His salary is going to be cut and, comparatively speaking, cut in a very drastic way. I protest against the reductions in Civic Guard pay. The Civic Guard is not confined to a 44 hour week about which we had all the trouble last night or to a 48 hour week. He is supposed to be on duty night and day as he may be required. His duties and responsibilities are increasing every day. Practically every Bill that is passed through this House means an addition to his work. The Traffic Bill that we discussed last week throws additional responsibilities on him for the safety of the public. I have not studied the Bill very carefully in so far as it affects the Army, and therefore, I do not propose to say anything on that aspect of it. As to the national teachers, they are coming out best of all so far as the proposed cuts are concerned. The reason alleged for that, is that they are great friends of Fianna Fáil. I do not know whether that is so or not. In certain parts of the country which I know well they are not, but in other parts I am told that they did wonderful election work for Fianna Fáil. I have been told too, that in many schools one of the first things that lisping children are taught is "Up Dev." That may be the reason why, comparatively speaking the national teachers are not being so severely cut as other civil servants. I think they would have done just as well if they had agreed to the reduction which was come to between themselves and Cumann na nGaedheal Government had it been put into effect.

Mr. MacEntee

They would have been enjoying those reductions for two years now.

Mr. O'Neill

This whole thing is a weak grasping at a straw on the part of the Minister to save himself from the financial chaos in which his policy has plunged him. The meanest and most contemptible thing of all in connection with the Bill is to be found in Part VI of the Schedule. I refer to the proposed reduction of the capitation grant to Industrial Schools. This whole Bill is mean and miserable, but I think this proposal is the meanest thing of all; this attempt of the Minister to try and save himself from the consequences of his own financial folly by cutting down the grants for the most unfortunate and weakest section in the community, the children and the orphans in the industrial schools of the country.

Professor Thrift

I want to be very brief, and with great respect to Deputy Dillon I do not propose really to discuss his amendment at all, because I think it raises questions that are quite unimportant compared with the general principles raised by the Bill. Taking the Bill itself, if the principle were simply that stated by the Minister, namely, the desirability for economy, I should not be rising to protest against the Bill, but I think, even from that angle the question in the Bill is much more than that. It is a question whether the economy that is necessary should be carried out in the kind of way suggested in the Bill. From that angle I find myself very much nearer to the point of view of Deputy Norton, namely, that the economy to be effected in the way suggested is much more like additional taxation of a certain section of the people than a real economy.

However, I do not rise, really to discuss the matter from that point of view. I may leave that to others. Neither do I rise to discuss it from the point of view, very important as that point of view is, of why such economies are necessary at all. That is a big question, and many others have pointed out that it is due, as I believe it is due, to very official economic policy. What I do want to discuss is the Bill from the point of view of what change it envisages in our Parliamentary methods. I envisage it from that angle in a most serious way. It seems to me to be, on the part of the Minister, a cynical recognition and admission of the fact that our Government—democratic Government by Parliament—is becoming from day to day more and more a simple stamping of the acts of the Cabinet by the Dáil, acting merely as a registering authority. If it were not for that, I do not think we should be discussing a Bill of such vital importance as this Bill at a late session on a Friday afternoon.

A Deputy

You did not object to discussing the Public Safety Act.

Professor Thrift

The attitude seems to be that they must get the final vote of the Dáil on any particular matter, but that no matter what is said by the Dáil they must get that vote in the way they propose. That is the only reason we are doing it, evidently, and we are only wasting time in discussing the matter before a comparatively small House. But there is much more than that in it. When I look through this Bill I see much more in it. We see it in the section to which Deputy Rice has drawn attention to-day. The Minister's say is to be final. The Minister is to decide. Further on through the Bill you will see such principles as these—that whatever is decided by statute or otherwise the Minister can revoke, annul or repeal and that he can act as he thinks proper —he alone! The Minister can consult with whomever he thinks right, be they outside bodies or other Ministers. It is the Minister that is to be the final dictator in all these matters. He is to have the final say as to what local authorities he will consult with, and he alone. I see, outstanding in this Bill, simply an incarnation of dictatorial government. It shines in it from first to last. We are dispensing with the functions of the Dáil beyond merely registering powers. We are dispensing with democratic government. We are electing a junta in charge of the State which is to be final and practically dictatorial in its methods. I think that we have brought out in this Bill in a very clear, vital and important way, the goal to which our democratic government is rapidly tending. For that reason, and for that reason alone, I shall oppose this Bill and protest against it as strongly as I possibly can.

Mr. Morrissey

Well, of course, not having two jobs like the Deputy, the allowance is to me a salary, and I am not ashamed to admit it. I consider that, like every other Deputy in this House, on all sides of the House, I am giving fairly good service for that salary or allowance. I consider, and I think it will be agreed, that I am not making any profit out of it. Before 1927, when the Fianna Fáil Deputies came in here, they advocated a reduction of the £360. According to them then it was altogether too much. We were supposed to be living on the fat of the land. Is there one of these Deputies now who is prepared to vote for a reduction of the £360? Is there one of them who has made any money out of the £360 per annum for the last five years? I put it to any member of the Government Benches that those of them who have done their duty here in this House—and I admit that most of them have done their duty—when they receive their constituents here in Dublin, that amount would not cover their expenses in any one year. Would they admit that?

Deputy Dillon's amendment is mere hypocrisy. It is absolute hypocrisy.

Mr. Dillon

On a point of order—is that a legitimate observation?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It is.

Mr. Dillon

It implies deliberate dishonesty. If the Chair rules that it is legitimate abuse, then I am going to treat it as abuse.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I think that Deputy Morrissey said that the amendment was sheer hypocrisy.

Mr. Dillon

If the Chair holds it to be merely vulgar abuse——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair does not hold it to be abuse. The Chair would not allow abuse. The Deputy has characterised the amendment as hypocrisy. That is the Deputy's understanding. He has not said anything about Deputy Dillon.

Mr. Jordan

It is his insinuation.

Mr. Morrissey

It is not an insinuation. It is a pure statement of fact and I can assure Deputy Dillon that I am going to say much more than that. Deputy Dillon is not fair to the Chair.

Mr. Cleary

He does not occupy the position which Deputy Morrissey did.

Minister for Education (Mr. Derrig)

The reason is that the secondary teachers' grants were cut last year.

Mr. Morrissey

I am open to get information on that point. There are many other points upon which one could touch, such as cutting the pay of the Civic Guards and of the Army. There is one section in the Bill and we do not know whether it is going to lead to a cut in the salaries of the employees of local authorities or not. Personally, I think that under the section as now framed, only the salaries of employees or officials of agricultural committees and vocational committees can be cut. I am sure the Department will make quite clear very soon what their intentions are. Deputy Tom Kelly has gone from the House and I am rather sorry. The Deputy dwelt for a long time on the democratic programme of the first Dáil. He told us the reason he came into the House, and the reason he was voting with the present Government was that they had attempted to carry out the democratic programme of the first Dáil, so far as it affected the workers of the country. I would be the very last to question the absolute sincerity of Deputy Tom Kelly, but I question whether he is wise in the statement he made. One of the articles in the democratic programme of the first Dáil was that the State should be responsible for the maintenance and the feeding of workers and their children and should see that no child in this State went hungry. Deputy Tom Kelly said that President de Valera was giving effect to the democratic programme of the first Dáil. How? After 12 months of Government by those on the opposite benches there are over 40,000 persons, according to their own figures, more on outdoor relief to-day than there were before they came into office. Is that giving effect to the democratic programme of the first Dáil?

On the 26th of June last a motion was passed in this House—I want to remind my late colleagues in the Labour Party of this—and accepted by the Government that it was the responsibility of the State to provide either work or maintenance for the unemployed in this country. What steps have been taken since then to give effect to that resolution? None whatever, and because no steps have been taken the responsibility was thrown over on the local authorities. The Government accepted the motion but they did not give effect to it and because of their failure to give effect to it, as Deputy Curran can state, in the South Riding of Tipperary this year for outdoor relief alone there is an increase of 2/3 in the £1 plus an increase of 1/4 owing to the reduction in the agricultural grant, making a total increase of 3/7 in the £1. Is that giving effect to the democratic programme of the first Dáil? As I say, I am absolutely satisfied that Deputy Tom Kelly, perhaps more than any other member of the House, would like to see full and absolute effect given to that programme. I am absolutely convinced of his sincerity in the matter, but I do respectfully suggest to him that the policy pursued by the present Government during the last 12 months, far from making it possible to put the democratic programme of the first Dáil into operation, has made it absolutely impossible for the present Government, and will make it very hard for any Government that succeeds them to do so.

Mr. McGovern

I should like to say a word or two in connection with the point raised by Deputy Morrissey, and I intend to be very brief. He more or less misrepresented the attitude of the Centre Party to this Bill and the amendment put forward by Deputy Dillon. He has misrepresented our attitude and said that there has been a division in this Party, and that it must have been a close one. I say there has been no division in the Party. We are absolutely unanimous in our attitude to the Bill. The amendment has not emanated from either Deputy Dillon or Deputy MacDermot, but it represents the desire of farmers, who are in such a condition at the present time and for a number of years past, that they cannot understand how the country can carry on if the scale of salaries paid to public officials is to be continued. As a matter of fact farmers have absolutely no income at present. They are running their business at a loss. I think the time is certainly coming when drastic reductions must be made in all salaries, reductions even more drastic than are proposed for the present year. There will have to be very drastic reductions during the continuance of the present economic war. The principle of equality of sacrifice should be accepted and the farmers, who have been described as the soldiers in the front line trenches, should not be expected to bear all the sacrifices. Otherwise this war cannot be regarded as a war carried on by other countries would be regarded. It would be a war confined to one particular class in the country. I am entirely in favour of the principles of the Bill, but as Deputy MacDermot said we want to be in a moral position to support it. We are in the position at present of a Party in a glass house, who are beginning to throw stones. That is what the Fianna Fáil Party decided to do, to start throwing stones in a glass house. They might at least have given the Centre Party a chance to get out. As regards the Labour Party they, like Cumann na nGaedheal, do not want to get out and they do not want the stones to be thrown. They pretend to have great sympathy for poor men who are unemployed; yet they believe it would be much better to spend money in paying salaries from £400 to £1,000 and perhaps up to £1,500 without any cuts and to leave thousands of the unemployed living on a few shillings a week. Small as are the cuts that are being made, they should have a great effect on unemployment down the country. I, as a Deputy representing small farmers in Co. Cavan, can tell the Dáil that the average farmer in Co. Cavan, if he got 50/-, £2 or even £1 per week would leave his little farm and be very glad to get the money. I do not want to delay the House further than to put these facts before it and to clear up a misunderstanding that seems to exist amongst the members of the Labour Party, with regard to the attitude of the Centre Party towards this Bill. It is absolutely necessary that cuts should be made and, on the other hand, it is necessary, if we are to be in a moral position to impose these cuts, that we can say we are not asking anybody to do what we are not prepared to do ourselves.

Mr. Costello

I am sorry that I had not the advantage of hearing the debate which has taken place upon this Bill. Unfortunately I am under the necessity of earning my own living, and I was unable to be here during the progress of the debate.

Mr. T. Kelly

We are under the same necessity.

Mr. Costello

Because of that necessity, I am all the more vigorously opposed to the fundamentally immoral principles enshrined in this Bill. I do not propose to make any comment on the amendment proposed by Deputy Dillon except to say that I am in full agreement with what Deputy Morrissey has said. It was unfair for a Deputy in Deputy Dillon's position to put Deputies into the position before the country of appearing to defend their own £360 a year. That is a separate matter that could be debated separately—as to whether £360 a year is a proper allowance for public representatives not only for the work they do in this House but for the heavy demands made upon their charitable inclinations and the other demands from the public which they have to meet out of their meagre stipends. I do not know whether Deputy MacDermot or Deputy Dillon makes any profit out of their £360 a year. If they do, they have not much company amongst the Deputies of this House. Every Deputy knows the demands made upon him by his constituents and by others all over the country in respect of donations to charitable purposes and subscriptions to different objects. When he has discharged these, when he has paid his own election expenses and the expenses of going around his constituency looking after the interests of his constituents, I should like to know whether he has a profit out of the £360 a year paid to him. How does Deputy Dillon or anybody who supports his view expect to get people to come here and give their time and labour to the work of the Dáil if they do not, at least, get some indemnity against the heavy demands made upon them? I am against the principle enshrined in this Bill for three reasons. I am against it because this Bill is politics and not economics. I am against it because the principle is immoral and unjust. I am against it because of the effect it will have on the purity and efficiency of the public service. I say that this Bill was introduced not for the purpose of saving money or for the purpose of enabling the Minister for Finance to balance his Budget in difficult times, but for the purpose of pretending to the people in the country, whom he has duped by his political advertisements extending over six or seven years, that he has fulfilled his promise of economies in public administration. He has introduced this Bill for the purpose of pretending to those dupes that he has fulfilled his promise and the title of this Bill instead of being the Public Services (Temporary Economies) Bill, should be the Public Services (Pretended Economies) Bill. As a result of this Bill, there will be little, if any, effective economy in the administration of this State. I am sure that previous speakers have pointed out that there are a multitude of ways in which far better economies could be effected and far greater sums saved than can be saved at the expense of civic guards, army officers and civil servants.

At the very outset, I want to say that I, personally, have been, as long as I have been connected with the Government of this country, against this principle of cuts in salaries of civic guards, teachers or anybody else. I say that the principle of cuts enshrined in this Bill is an immoral and an unjust principle. I am willing to admit that the Government with which I was associated for ten years made mistakes in effecting cuts in old age pensions and the salaries of civic guards and national teachers. I make a present of that point to anybody who wishes to make political capital out of it. It was a profound error to cut the pay of the guards, and I rejoice to say that the last Government came to a definite decision that they would not cut the pay of civil servants. They made inquiries among civil servants at that time as to whether they would voluntarily submit to a temporary cut in their salaries. The reply was such as you would expect from a body of men who have given such service to the people of this country and to the building up of this State. They were prepared, they said, if there was a state of national emergency, to make their contribution, provided every other section in the State made a similar contribution. They were prepared, as the last speaker said, to accept the principle of equality of sacrifice for all. The cuts that were proposed—if they were proposed—at that time were proposed in entirely different circumstances from those of the present time. They were proposed at a time when income tax was only 3/6 in the £. These cuts are made when income tax is 5/- in the £. Deputies in the Centre Party pay no income tax, and Ministers pay no income tax. The Centre Party is in favour of the principle enshrined in this Bill. They pay no income tax and Ministers pay no income tax. If the Government were really alive to their duty in connection with economy in public administration, they could save any paltry sum which they expect to save at the expense of efficient and loyal public servants by holding a tighter hand on the purse strings and not be indulging in profligate finance and expenditure for nothing but political purposes and political victimisation.

I take the position of the Department with which I am myself most familiar, the Attorney-General's Department. It would be invidious for me to select individuals for the purpose of showing the hardships that will accrue as a result of the political manoeuvre enshrined in this Bill. There were a Parliamentary draftsman and four assistant draftsmen when the Government with which I was associated left office. There were no more efficient servants of the State and no more efficient draftsmen connected with any Parliament in the world. The Government propose to cut the salaries of the Parliamentary draftsman and his assistants. At the same time, they have brought in an additional Parliamentary draftsman, and the salary of that additional Parliamentary draftsman would, I think, equate the amount they will save by the cuts they propose to make in the other salaries. There was no necessity to bring that additional draftsman into the Attorney - General's Department. They bring that man in without necessity, and, at the same time, they propose to cut the salaries of men who have worked harder than any Deputy in the Centre Party or any other Party in this House has ever worked in his life, or ever will work. I feel that it is a definite injustice to those men, with whom I have been associated for so many years, that their salaries should be cut. I am prevented from selecting individuals, but the Parliamentary draftsman has been mentioned so often in this House and in the Seanad for his efficiency that I may be permitted to say this: in the year 1922 he offered his long and wide experience in business and in law to the State and came into the service of the State. He worked for twelve solid months without knowing what salary he was going to get, or whether he was going to get any salary. I do say this, that, while I am against the principle of cuts in any direction, whether for guards, for national teachers, for civil servants or for army officers, I am also against the principle of cuts for labourers, because I think that this whole principle of cuts is eating into the economic life of this country and causing strife that should never be permitted to take place. The principle of cutting salaries or wages is nothing but taking the line of least resistance. It is easy to cut people's salaries, and it is easy to cut people's wages, because it enables the people who do that sort of thing to dodge the real issue and to avoid facing up to the facts and finding the real way in which economies can be effected, not at the expense of individuals whose lives are ordered and regulated for years on the basis that a certain salary would be given to them or that a certain wage would come in each week.

So far as civil servants are concerned, I think this Bill is a more profound injustice than to any other section which it is intended to hit by the Bill. They came into the Service on the basis that they would have a smaller salary than they could earn outside. They came in on the basis of security of tenure and security from interference with their salaries and it takes a civil servant many long and weary years to reach any sort of position in which he can even get married or maintain himself in a proper situation in life. Every penny of the civil servant's salary is mortgaged and regulated on the basis that it is going to continue over a period of years without interference. Numbers of them have bought their houses and mortgaged their salaries to pay for those houses on the principle of payment by instalments and they now find their whole family economy uprooted by this Bill, brought in by this Ministry for political purposes and to enable them to dodge the real issue of economy in public administration. These private individuals, who had regulated and ordered their family economy on the basis that their salaries were going to continue for a long period of years, with every penny regulated by their wives on the basis that the salaries would continue indefinitely, will find themselves in a position in which, in many cases, they will not be able to pay for their houses or keep up their policies of insurance on which their wives and families depend in the event of their death.

This is the policy that is sponsored by the big farmers in the Centre Party and, for political purposes, by the members of the Fianna Fáil Ministry. I have mentioned one so-called economy in the Department with which I was associated—the addition of an unnecessary draftsman. I want to mention another so-called economy. Army Officers' salaries are to be reduced. What was the necessity for the comic opera performance of busbies on St. Patrick's Day and the banquet or reception, or whatever it was, in St. Patrick's Hall on St. Patrick's Day? The amount of money that was put into those busbies and that comic opera uniform for the Army and the amount of money spent on lobster sandwiches in St. Patrick's Hall would probably go very far to save the amount of money that will be saved by cutting junior Army officers' pay under the proposals contained in this Bill?

We are told that Ministers' salaries are reduced, and we find that they are down to £1,000, so-called. They said and undertook in advertisements and political propaganda that Ministers' salaries would be reduced to £1,000. What are they in fact? They are £1,000 free of income tax, and it matters not to those Ministers whether income tax is £1 in the £1 or a penny in the £1. They can go on increasing other people's income tax and cutting other people's salaries but they give themselves £1,000 free of tax, and, in addition, give themselves a free motor car for the use of themselves and their families, free petrol and a free driver. The man who holds the position that I held as Attorney-General has these perquisites in addition to £1,500 a year, free of tax, and liberty to get as much money as he can by private practice. He has what I never had even when I was supposed to be protected—a free motor car, a free driver and free petrol.

I never said that they were drawing huge salaries. I never said anything of the kind

Mr. Cleary

But he did not complain that members of the late Government were drawing £1,700 a year, and he did not complain that the President of the late Government drew £2,500 a year. But he wants to make capital out of the fact that our Ministers, having considerably reduced their salaries, have not made further reduction by paying income-tax. As I said, the Deputy's argument does not surprise me. I have only one regret as regards Deputy Costello's career when he was Attorney-General, and that is that his Government took the advice he gave them in regard to the land annuities and refused the advice he gave them with regard to salaries reductions and old age pensions allowances. He is entitled to speak on a Bill of this kind, because he told us candidly that when he was Attorney-General to the late Government he opposed reductions of any kind either in old age pensions or in salaries. Therefore, he is the first man on the benches opposite who has a right to speak on this motion. He has been consistent throughout the years. Again, I regret that the late Government did not accept his advice with the same foolhardiness that they did on the question of the land annuities.

I regret that the Minister for Finance, in introducing this measure, did not go further than he has done. I am prepared to say here—and Deputies opposite can make what capital they like out of it—that I hope this is only the thin end of the wedge in making reductions in certain people's salaries. I have more respect for members of the Civil Service than Deputies opposite, because I did not set out to make political capital out of the Civil Service position, as Deputies opposite have done. Therefore, I hold that I have more genuine respect for the Civil Service than the Deputies opposite who prate and prattle about it. But I hold that while this country is in a crisis, as it is, it is necessary that certain official people in this State, who are guaranteed their future, not like people who do not know what to-morrow will bring them, should bear some of the burden of this crisis. We are assured by the Minister that as far as certain salaries are concerned, the lower grades particularly, this is only a temporary measure, and I trust that when this crisis is got over certain reductions that had to be made in the lower grades will be discontinued. I have no doubt about the country getting over this crisis. I am at one with the Leader of the Opposition who, speaking at the Ard-Chomhairle of Cumann na nGaedheal, held the view that the country will wear down this crisis. And I hope when the crisis is worn down the lower grades of pay will be advanced again to their former figure.

One other remark, and that is with regard to the salaries of teachers. I regret that the Minister, before he made further reductions in their incomes, did not go first to the higher Civil Service salaries and reduce their salaries by an amount equivalent to the amount the teachers were reduced by the Cumanna na nGaedheal Government. Then if further reduction were necessary the whole service would suffer an all-round reduction. Since things have happened as they have and a reduction is necessary, I hope this Bill will be extended to employees of local councils if necessary. They have fixity of tenure and a guarantee for the future, and in times of crisis they, too, should suffer some reduction. I am quite sure that the efficiency of the Civil Service will not be impaired in the least, that they will respond to this call and give as good a return in their work and service as they have given heretofore.

Deputy Costello talked about the foolishness of the Government expenditure on certain St. Patrick's Day celebrations. The Deputy, when he mentions that, would appear to have a very short memory. He should realise that this Government will be a very long time in office and will be carrying out celebrations on St. Patrick's Day for a considerable number of years before they spend as much as Deputy Cosgrave did when he was President on garden parties. Both functions are not to be compared at all. Except in so far as Deputy Costello is concerned, all the opposition to this Bill is simply a smoke-screen. I am convinced that, with the exception of the Labour Party, three members of the Centre Party, and four members of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, if Deputies were of the belief that their opposition to this measure would defeat the Government and force them to go to the country they would abstain from voting. It is quite all right to make speeches and to vote when Deputies know there will be no direct consequence to themselves. It is all right for them to create a certain sort of atmosphere for political purposes when they know very well that the Government is going to succeed with this measure. Members of Cumann na nGaedheal and the Centre Party know they are quite safe in voting and they create all the political propaganda that they can. In those circumstances we cannot take as serious their attitude in this matter.

I am glad that the Minister, when he sets out to economise, does not touch the lower grades of the Civil Service or the citizens to whom Deputy Cosgrave used to go when he wanted to effect economies. I am glad the Minister is not interfering with old age pensioners or with certain members of the Gárda Síochána. I think it is right that the slicing of salaries should begin at the top. What would be the position if Cumann na nGaedheal were in office? The ex-Minister for Agriculture, during and prior to the last election, said that Cumann na nGaedheal were going to go out for a very clear-cut system of economy by reducing salaries at the top, in the middle and at the bottom. I dare say they, too, would be forced to reduce salaries. I wonder if they were in power where they would start to reduce. I expect they would go, as they did before, to the old age pensioners. I expect they would interfere with public services and also appropriate money that would otherwise be voted for social services.

We have now before us a policy the very opposite of the Cumann na nGaedheal policy and I commend it very strongly to the House. I express the hope that so far as the incomes of certain people in this country are concerned it is only the starting point and that we will have later on an advance from this position. Let us hope that when the Budget comes up for discussion we will have a definite reduction in certain very highly paid offices.

Mr. Cosgrave

So far as civil servants are concerned—although they are last in the list I shall take them first—one might divide them roughly into three classes. There are the old British civil servants who have a contract of service and whose position is safeguarded to some extent by Article 10 of the Treaty, and subsequent agreements. There is the second class, the recruited class, who have come into the service during the last ten years and they extend, I suppose, over all grades. Then there are those who were attracted to the service. I was responsible for persuading one of them, if I may say so, to come into the Civil Service some years ago. There is nothing wrong about it. I invite the Minister to say whether or not the Government made any attempt to attract any person to the service of the State who might be in the employment of another State. The first class have certain safeguards. The second class came in on the honour of the State, of the electorate and the elected representatives of the people, and the Government subsequently elected in the Dáil. The third class is composed of those attracted to the service of the State such as the case mentioned by the ex-Attorney-General, of a man who could have left the service six or seven years ago and earned £800 more a year than he was getting from the State, but whose conception of his responsibility and of his civic duty was such that he would not leave the infant State at that time. As the ex-Attorney-General said, the marks of the excellence of his work are to be found in the statutes passed by the Oireachtas. What is the position of those who have been recruited? There are people of a certain mentality in this and other countries who think that any salary beyond a particular sum should not be paid. I would hesitate for a long time before recommending the adoption of that policy to any person of experience in administration or business or who knows anything about public matters. What a State ought to do is to attract to its service the most brilliant intellects, the ablest men, the most capable persons, that can possibly be got and pay them properly. They would be much cheaper than inferior material however poorly paid.

Deputy O'Kelly missed the point altogether of a statement made by Deputy MacDermot who said that those in the Sinn Féin movement had been ignorant of the fact that this country had been run by the British Government during the two or three years before the Great War at a loss, and that the Home Rule Bill of 1912 was framed on the basis that the revenue derived here was less than the expenditure. We were not unaware of that fact—we knew all about it, and a lot more besides. That economic situation was changed to our advantage during the Great War, and, at one period, I think in 1920, the amount received by the British Government from tax revenue over expenditure was somewhere in the neighbourhood of £20,000,000.

I never had a record such as that. During my term of office the number of people in receipt of home assistance did not go up by 40,000 in 12 months. Now the Deputy says it is because the democratic programme is in operation. That is more of the nonsense that is leading towards the destitution, the degradation and the impoverishment of our people.

This Bill is presented to us by reason of the fact that an outside jury mobilised by the Minister could not give him what he wanted. Not having got what he wanted, he puts up to us what the Executive Council decide. It is unfair; it is unjust; and it is going to shake the confidence of the public servants of this State. It is possibly going to result in less efficient legislation, and in connection with the whole administration of the State it is going to affect that heart which men should have in their work, and would have in it if the Minister were to take them into his confidence and tell them that the crisis is such that he asks them to give some assistance in solving it. It is not being done in that way. It has been botched, one might almost say, from the very beginning. Nobody has more admiration for the efficiency of the Service than I have. I have long experience of it. I know enough about the Service—and about the ordinary people in the street, in business or elsewhere—to realise that if you make the position such for them in connection with their income that they cannot put the heart they would like to put into their work the consequence will be a loss of efficiency in the Service, perhaps much more costly than what is involved here. The Minister would be very well advised to withdraw this measure, and to take those public bodies which are affected here —all the persons, from one end to the other—into council. Some fifteen or sixteen months ago, when a question of this sort arose before, civil servants through their secretary informed the Secretary to the Ministry or some other official that if a national crisis were in existence...

Mr. MacEntee

Fifteen months ago?

Mr. Cosgrave

Somewhere about October, 1931,—they were prepared to consider the case. It may be that the mistrust which will be occasioned by this measure will wipe away a lot of the profit there is in it. If that happens the situation will certainly not be improved; it will be disimproved. To my mind if the Ministry were in earnest, honest and sincere in this matter, they would accept the amendment which has been proposed by Deputy MacDermot. I agree with neither the Bill nor the amendment, and I propose to vote against both.

Mr. Kennedy

Mr. John Flynn

As representing the people of Kerry, I welcome this measure, particularly in so far as it relates to the local authorities. If there is not power under the Bill to deal with highly superannuated officials, I hope the Minister will amend it in that direction and make it more drastic than it is. As Deputies are aware, the amalgamation scheme that was carried out was one of the greatest curses ever inflicted on the country so far as local authorities are concerned. In almost all cases it led to a duplication of services. There are many glaring instances of that in the County Kerry, of officials drawing salaries at the present time under local authorities who are entitled under the amalgamation scheme to superannuation allowances as high as £700 and £800 per annum. There has been too much overlapping, so much of it indeed that very drastic action is called for so far as the local authorities are concerned. The secretary of the principal local body in County Kerry has admitted that he is in receipt of £1,450 per annum. That includes salary and emoluments. I hold that this measure is merely a gesture in so far as economies are concerned, and that the real drastic reductions must take place later. We welcome it so far as it goes, but power should be taken to deal with salaries paid by local bodies. As regards the £1,000 salaries, I think the Bill should be more drastic than it is. In the case of the lower ranks I think the grades of allowances are very fair, but the reductions in the case of people with £1,000 a year should be greater than what is proposed.

Very well, sir, I will not pursue the matter further. The proposal in this Bill has become inevitable from the policy adopted by the Government and by the Labour Party. It is their economic policy that is responsible —and I want it to be clearly understood what I mean by economic policy; I do not mean the policy that the people opposite tried to put over on the people as the beginning and ending of their entire policy, the economic policy of Arthur Griffith. That policy has no opposition on this side. The policy to which I refer is the policy of the Government to deprive this country of its markets. That is the only policy, because the real economic policy of Arthur Griffith, a real national protective policy, is impossible unless you have a market for your surplus goods. None of the Ministers will face up to that position. That war was declared last year by President de Valera. I say President de Valera, advisedly, because President de Valera is the Government. He is the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Justice and the Minister for everything else down the line, and the Minister for Finance opposite knows that very well and I know it too, and the Minister for Finance knows how I know it.

Mr. G. O'Sullivan

The Official Secrets Act!

Mr. Belton

As to the Official Secrets Act, they came as badly out of my Official Secrets Act as out of the one in Green Street. These reductions as I say, are the inevitable consequence of the reduction in national income, represented in our trade returns, of £8,000,000 for a half year and the position we are up against now. Apologists over there need not say that this is only temporary. Everything is done now with the appearance and the genuineness of permanency. The annuities have been taken out of the Suspense Account, or at least there is a book-keeping entry to the effect that they have been taken out—whether there was anything there to be taken out or not I do not know; the Minister knows that better than I do—but, as I say, as a book-keeping transaction they have been taken out. War to the knife has been declared. Agriculture was described picturesquely to-day as being in the front line trenches for the last year. The farmers cannot remain forever in the front line trenches and this trouble with England has got to be settled or pass this Bill, and Deputies opposite can rest assured that this is only the thin end of the wedge. The civil servants and the teachers and all the other public officials mentioned in this Bill will be very lucky if there is anything to pay them in six months' time if this economic war is not settled.

We were told by a Deputy to-day that the previous Government cut the roots of the tree and that the tree was withering when the present Government came into office. We know who cut the roots of the tree, and we know who tried to stop the tree from being planted. It was not the people that the Minister for Finance hopes some day to see standing on the broken arch of Mallow Bridge, not to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's, but to sketch in the pages of Irish history, the men who set up this State in spite of him and his colleagues. If the civil war had not been fought we would have millions of money now. That was what rotted the root of the national tree. What do we find in the so-called economic war and in the Minister's proposals? They are co-related financially. As Minister for Finance he should know. Some of his colleagues told us about them on political platforms, of course, where they were all playing football the one way. They do not attempt to tell us here. He told us of the money he is going to get from the printing machine in the future. He should know that times of stress are not the times to contract currency but the times to increase it. I refer him to the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons of 1832. He is going to restrict currency in times of stress. How is he going to restrict it? By reducing the wages and the salaries of State officials. In his comic turn a few days ago Deputy Hugo Flinn told us that the policy of his Government was to make this a self-supporting State. If this is to be a self-supporting State it must provide a market for itself within itself. What are the potentialities of a market within a State? The purchasing power of the workers within the State. This Bill proposes to cut by varying percentages the purchasing power of the people. They are only State officials, to start with. Remember that this means every wage earner and every employer ultimately.

Consider the position of thousands of thrifty civil servants in Dublin and around it, who, in the last ten years have bought houses on the hire purchase system. They have a fixed social scale and an ambition for themselves and their families commensurate with their remuneration, a remuneration that was guaranteed to them under Government contract. These civil servants have insured their lives. Some of them bought their houses through insurance companies and have to meet very high charges at the present time. Has the Minister considered what this might mean to them and what case in equity they might be able to put up? If they find themselves on reduced salaries unable to meet their obligations, and if they go to the Minister, to the banks or to the insurance companies saying "Our incomes have been cut down, even though we were under Government contract to get these incomes, and we want our contracts with you cut down," what will be the Minister's position? Perhaps he would refer the matter to the Farmers' Association of agricultural experts that works under the wing of the Fianna Fáil Party, but that contains no farmers. That Association always asks for the repudiation of bank debts. Perhaps it might become a semi-Government institution to deal with those house purchasers whose salaries will be reduced under the Bill and who will not be able to meet their obligations.

I do not want to refer to any irrelevant matters, but people have this feeling, even in the Civil Service, that, as a result of the change of Government, there has been withdrawn from this State service that feeling of security and that feeling that they have behind them the support of the Executive Council which they always felt and on which they could always rely. As yon know, sir, and as every Deputy knows, the civil servant and the member of the Army or the police forces of the State is in a very different position from that of the ordinary citizen. The Guards are not allowed to vote, although, personally, I believe that is wrong. The Civil Service and all these other services were not asked whether, if an economic or uneconomic war were started with another country, they were prepared to dole out to the extent of a quarter of a million pounds to meet the cost of the war. The civil servant cannot engage in other occupations. He cannot do the many things which persons in ordinary civil life can do. As a result, possibly, of his training and his experience, he proceeds to set out early in life to live in an ordered, regular fashion.

Other Deputies have referred here to the number of commitments that the civil servants undertook in the nature of purchase of houses, insurance and so on, but possibly one of the most important matters, namely, the education of his children, was not referred to. I think that it is a very serious matter for the civil servant to be faced to-morrow morning with the information that, having planned his budget for the year, he will receive from £50 to £150 less for the next year. That may be all right for the Minister for Finance who is dealing with national finances and really does not care whether or not his Budget will balance at the end of the year, but the civil servant is in a very different position because creditors and bank managers have an extraordinary habit of insisting on a civil servant paying his debts. It is very likely true that no body of persons gets less credit, or, perhaps, I should say, shorter credit, than civil servants, members of the Army, the Guards, and school teachers, all because they are State servants and "why should they not be made pay?" That should be considered. It is a very important item in this matter when, suddenly, without consultation or agreement, this attack is made on the income of these servants of the State.

As I said before, very likely in no other country in the world is it so important that there should be a loyal, satisfied Civil Service, military service, police force and educational body than in this country where we are inclined to go so much to the Left or to the Right in the matter of political thought. The people however Left or Right or red or green they think, should, at least, be unanimous in one matter—that they would have and should have a really satisfied Civil Service, military service, police force and educational body. The most serious objection to this Bill is the attack on these four important services in this most serious way. I take it that the most serious way in which anybody now could be attacked is financially, because, when we want to declare war on England, we do not throw up flags and fire shots, but we declare an economic war. An economic war has been declared on these four services which have been, and still are, the pillars and foundation of the State, but, in the Bill itself, there is a principle enshrined of a most objectionable character. Each member of these four services is a servant of the State and it would be well if Deputies, electors, farmers and others would, sometimes, realise that there is a difference between servants and slaves. They are servants of the State, but the State has no right to make them slaves. If any individual enters into a contract of service, either as an employer or an employee, that person has got the right, under the Constitution and under the laws of this country, to have the contract examined, enforced or qualified by the courts of the land.

What happens in this Bill? Section 8 says:

As I said, the civil servants, members of the Army and the Guards and the teachers are servants of the State. Let us cut their salaries, if you like, but let us not insist on making them slaves of the State. Why should not the civil servant, the Army officer, corporal, sergeant or other rank, the Guard or the teacher have the right against his employer, namely, the State, which every other employee in this country has—the right to go to the courts of the land to have determined his claim against his employer? I submit that there never was a more drastic section introduced into any Bill brought before this House. It makes these officials—the Civil Service, Army, Guards and teachers—not servants of the State but slaves of the State. It is likely a continuance of the policy which has shown itself in other ways but, as I said, I desire to keep from irrelevancies. I would like, however, to protest, as strongly and as loudly as I can, against that particular section and even the removal of that particular section will not alter the Bill.

To deal a little further with the section, it sets out that every case of doubt is to be decided by the Minister. The Minister says that the salary of Mr. X, a civil servant, is to be cut by £25. Mr. X thinks that it should be only £10 and who decides?—the Minister. The same set of officials who advise the Minister that the amount of the cut should be so much will again advise the Minister, and the ordinary rights of the citizen, as between employer and employee, are entirely removed from these members of the State services. They are being transformed from servants to slaves, not of the State but of Ministers. If there is any objection or doubt the Minister decides, and his decision and determination, whatever it may be, shall be final. The desirability that there should be satisfactory servants of the State and that these servants should bend their backs bravely to their jobs is very necessary. Any possibility of the servants of the State bravely bending their backs to their work is removed by a Bill like this. One would think that a Government composed of a Party that said for years that there were disloyal servants in the State, fighting England's battle, would take a big step to dislodge that theory instead of adding fuel to the flame of discontent which they allege already existed.

There are many other matters that might be mentioned. I only refer to general principles and general reasons why this Bill should not be supported. The teachers are a body of people, in this country, who render a very great service to the nation. I agree that they are a body well paid—the present Government said they were too well paid. Some speaker said that an agreement was come to with the previous Government for the acceptance of a reduction, during the period of economic depression. But what has happened in this instance? The present Government brings in this Bill. There is to be no separate discussion. Agreement between responsible officials of the Unions and the Government Departments is to come to an end. A tyranny has taken the place of government. Servants of the State are to be slaves of the Ministry, in order that an economic war may be waged. I am not discussing the merits or the demerits, the rights or the wrongs of that economic war. All I am asking is what is to be the end of all this. There is to be a saving of a quarter of a million. I ask the Minister seriously to consider the advisability of forcing this Bill. It will in the end mean no saving. It will bring discontent to the Civil Service, to the Army, to the Guards, to the teachers, and to their homes in the cities and the villages throughout the country, and in the end it will not mean a saving of even a quarter of a million. Especially unfortunate is the actual fact in the Schedule that the Guards are to be cut half-a-crown a week. It is very little satisfaction to the Guards, and very poor consolation to me, to be able to say that when the election promises were being made by the Party opposite I told them they would be cut. I said "Never mind the promises that are being made" but of course, it is little satisfaction now to be able to say to them "I told you so."

I would like to hear from Deputies on the Fianna Fáil Benches and, especially those who sit for the County Dublin, what explanation they will give for the promises they made that no Guard whose pay would be from £2 10s. to £2 15s. per week would be reduced by 2/6. I am glad to see Deputy Breathnach here. I should like to know what he will say, not to the Guards and the teachers, but to the workers in North Dublin, when these workers are faced by their employers with this consideration: "The Government consider it right to reduce the Guards by 2/6 or 5/- a week, and we propose to reduce your wages also." A headline is set to employers for a reduction of wages, a lowering of the standard of living, and not only that but in the outlook of civil servants, and the provision that they might have been able to make for their children. It is a pressing downwards. Instead of what we were promised, not only a few months ago, but fifteen months ago, that all would be rosy we are now being asked to consider reductions of 8 per cent. plus 4, plus 8½, plus 9, plus 12 per cent., plus 17½, and so on, going on through all these miserable figures, when in reality we were promised something a little short of the Garden of Eden.

Mr. B. Maguire

I think there is a dangerous suggestion contained in the proposed amendment. It seems to me clearly to indicate a frame of mind which if developed in this country would prove very dangerous. As the mover of this amendment is a second lieutenant in the Centre Party there may be some explanation from his point of view and that I assume would fairly well indicate the point of view of his Party or at least that of his leader. Last year, we had the grand example of the leader of the Farmers' Party showing his generosity by refusing to accept his allowance as a T.D. That was a generous gift, and one would have thought that it would have been followed by others of his Party. Apparently his Party to-day are not with him in his notions that this allowance should not be accepted. Last year, after the leader of the Party gave the example that he did, I did not hear of any of his followers taking any step in that direction. To-day his entire Party is behind him for a substantial cut. If we work this to its logical conclusion we can see a very sinister motive in it. We see that a man who last year disposed of his entire allowance might calculate that a situation might arise that made the prospective leadership available only for those who, like himself, could make those gifts voluntarily without any crisis arising. That displays to me a type of imperialistic outlook that is certainly not in keeping with the traditions of this country. I do not think his gesture will appeal to many of the people.

The general trend of opposition to the Bill shows that not alone the Centre Party but, in conjunction with them, the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, are completely out of touch with the people. They have laboured here the question of the necessity for this cut, and they have endeavoured to make political capital out of the fact that the cut is the result of the economic war in which the country is engaged. They seek to add to the discontented amongst the farming and business community, the civil servants and other servants in the State who are called upon to accept a temporary reduction in their salaries. Of course, if it were not a consistent policy on the part of the Opposition, and if the country were not already well aware of the attitude all this might be regarded as a very dangerous thing, but because we have had experience of these tactics for at least twelve months we are not at all astonished.

Speaking a short time ago, Deputy Belton attributed the necessity for the Bill to the civil war. Was the claim made that it was the civil war that was responsible for the reduction in teachers' salaries some years ago, and also for the reduction in the pay of the Civic Guards a few years back? Was the civil war responsible for the reduction in the case of old age pensions six or seven years ago? Reductions took place for several years back; it was found necessary in the economy of the State to make those reductions. Why is the whole responsibility for these proposed reductions now attributed to the civil war? Deputies who speak in that strain are not seriously tackling the proposition. I suggest they are completely out of touch with the people down the country. I represent a country constituency, and I know perfectly well that the farmers and business people are in complete sympathy with this Bill.

There is no person interfered with by this measure who cannot reasonably afford to make a sacrifice in a time of crisis. There is no person affected by the proposed reductions whose children will go hungry. But that is not true of the conditions existing in the case of many families in the country where a salary of £300 represents a condition of opulence that it is very rare to find. This measure is needed in order to cater for the wants of poor people in the towns and villages throughout the country. We are making provision for them in the only way in which provision can be made— by taking it from those who can afford to give without inconvenience to themselves. We are endeavouring under this measure to meet the requirements of many thousands of needy people in the country.

That is the proposal that the Opposition are opposing here to-night. They have wasted practically all the day appealing for a class of the community whom they endeavour to hold up as men so sordid that they can only think during every moment of their working hours of the amount of salaries coming to them. They suggest that civil servants will become indifferent if this cut is put into operation. Is that not tantamount to saying that every civil servant has little or no interest in the State, has no human sympathies and only thinks of the amount of salary that he gets? If that is really the outlook of the civil servants you cannot have from them that generous type of service that can only come when men work not entirely for the consideration of a reward in money but because of an interest in the service they are giving to the community. I suggest that that does not truly depict the Civil Service. It is wrong to make that charge against civil servants. I know a good many of them, and I am quite satisfied they are good, conscientious people. Many of them to whom I have spoken have indicated their willingness in this crisis to make this sacrifice, and more if necessary. I repudiate the charge that our Civil Service is made up of men and women who have no souls, no sympathies, and no national outlook.

All this talk we have heard to-day is mere camouflage. It is an endeavour to dishearten the people in their struggle. Almost every Deputy who has spoken has suggested that the solution for all this is to end the economic war. Of course, this economic war could be ended at any moment if we desired to put up our hands and say to England "We are prepared to accept your terms." We have no mandate for that. We have a mandate to fight this war to a finish, and we are going to fight it out. There are people in this country to-day who are shouting: "We cannot stand the strain of this economic pressure. End the war." The people responsible for that are the people who are actually responsible for the existence of the economic war.

This amendment is a ridiculous one. It is not inspired by anything that one could conceive to be national or honest. It is insincere. It is without backing. I am very glad to find that the amount of support of a sincere sort behind it is limited to probably a few men in Deputy MacDermot's Party. Even Cumann na nGaedheal Deputies, hard cases that they are—hardened in many respects—are not so shamefaced and are not such hypocrites as that they would even sponsor the motion. The Bill is a good Bill, and it is framed in the interests of the people who are most deserving of support in this State. I am sure the Deputies who support it will receive from the country the reward of people satisfied with work well done.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney

This matter has been debated at some length to-day and my contribution to this debate will not be made at any great length. But I do not wish on this Bill, which I consider to be a Bill of some importance, to content myself with merely a silent vote. I was very glad to hear a good deal of the speech of Deputy Ben Maguire, who has just sat down. I was very glad to hear a great deal of what was contained in that speech. I was very glad to hear the clear and frank admission on his part that the people of this country were suffering, and suffering at the present moment. I was very glad to hear an admission on his part that in country districts there is very great poverty. I was glad to hear that because I heard the Minister for Agriculture in this House urging the very opposite and taking the very opposite stand. I do sincerely hope that Deputy B. Maguire will not cease his efforts with his speech in this House but that he will go to the Executive Council and that he will press upon them the condition to which the small working farmer in this country has already been reduced and the still worse prospect that there is in front of him. I hope that the Deputy will keep hammering at the door of the Executive Council chamber until he manages to get his voice heard by that heretofore deaf body.

Now I turn to the actual proposal made by Deputy Dillon. The proposal is that there should be a deduction in the allowances made to the members of this House just as there is a taking away from the salaries of other persons. That appears to me to be a completely logical attitude to take up. I could not, for instance, say with Deputy Maguire: "Let everybody else when there is this economic war going on, when this country is called upon to suffer, let everybody else suffer except the members of the Dáil and Seanad."

Mr. MacDermot

Hear, hear!

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney

I would not take up that attitude at all, and if I were going to support this Bill, as most certainly I am not, I would also support Deputy Dillon's motion. I cannot understand the strange sort of logic which animates the Front Bench of Fianna Fáil when they will vote for the Bill brought in by the Minister for Finance and at the same time vote against Deputy Dillon's motion. I cannot see their logic. I would like to hear it explained and I would like to know what the difference is. If a fulltime officer of the Gárda Síochána whose pay amounts to £360 a year has got to have a reduction in his pay, I do not follow in the slightest the logic which would say that the part-time Deputy in the Dáil is not to have any reduction. If logic governs—but of course it does not govern—those who direct the minds of the Executive Council I do not see how they could have any hesitation in accepting Deputy Dillon's motion. But unfortunately logic, like a great number of other things, has been flung to the winds.

Now I come to the Bill itself. I am going to oppose this Bill, and I am going to oppose the amendment, put forward by Deputy Dillon. I do not see that the present time, and in the present circumstances bad as the condition of affairs is, you are going to help this condition of affairs by this Bill. You are going to do positive harm. There are times, of course, when economy in the shape of reductions may be justified—always undesirable as it may be, there are times when economy may be justified. If you come to the conclusion that your country is taxed as highly as it can be taxed; and if you are making real economies everywhere, undoubtedly you can then impose reductions in order to avoid imposing new taxation. If that can be done by the cutting down of salaries, by all means that is right. But when you are absolutely careless as to whether you have reached the peak point of taxation that the country can bear, it is quite a different thing when you are willing in one year to fling upon the shoulders of the country an extra burden of taxation, when you are willing to collect money and waste it in the fashion it is being wasted now by a spendthrift administration in all directions, that administration has no right to be economical in one direction and in one direction only—that direction being at the expense of the servants of the State, admirable servants of the State I would add. You can spend in every direction you like. You do not care how much you increase this tax, that tax and the other tax. You are regardless of money. You fling the money which is the State's money, to the wind, you waste it and then you come along and say "Oh, yes, we will put on another £4,000,000 or £6,000,000 extra taxation on the country. That does not matter the slightest bit." The Government then comes along, and not in any genuine spirit of economy, but simply as a mere political move they say "we can be wasteful spendthrifts in every direction but one, and that is, where the money is very well invested and well paid out and from which we get a very admirable return at the present moment." The State is getting no better return for the money it is spending than it is getting from the money which it is paying to the Civil Service, to the officers and men of the National Army, and, above all things, in my humble judgment, from the money that it pays to the officers and Guards of the Gárda Síochána.

I would like very much to know if the representative body of the Gárda Síochána have been consulted about this Bill? They are entitled to be consulted. They have a right to be heard before the Executive Council. They have a legal right to have their representations brought before the Executive Council and considered before any alteration in their pay or allowances is made. I would like very much to know if they have been asked what their views are; and if the representations made in consequence of their asking—if there has been such asking—have been considered? I would like to know what these representations are. I would like to know if the legal right of the Gárda Síochána to have their representative body consulted before any alteration is made in their rate of pay has been carried out in this case?

I think this is the worst possible time in which you should attack the pay of the Gárda Síochána. They have a very difficult task and their task is not being made more easy from day to day. They are a perfectly magnificent, loyal body, magnificently loyal to the State. The ex-Minister for Justice, Deputy Geoghegan, paid them the highest tribute for the way in which they saw the General Election conducted. And, this now is the time in which you come to them and say "We are to make these reductions, we will appoint any number of new persons; we will have these new offices, these new posts, and we will fill them up with highly paid persons; we do not care how many new posts we create and how many new jobs we give away; we can be as wasteful and spendthrift in that direction as we like, but you men, tried and trusted men, are men to whom we can say ‘you must bear a reduction'." I do not intend to go through this measure section by section. It has been very carefully analysed already. It has been pointed out again and again that it gives the most dictatorial powers to the Minister for Finance, that it makes him an autocrat and that questions that should be decided by an impartial tribunal are going to be partially decided by one person interested in the matter. I ask the House to reject the Bill as being a thoroughly bad, unsound measure.

Mr. J.I. McGuire

I rise to oppose this Bill and the amendment to the Bill. My reasons for opposing both the Bill and the amendment are similar. My reason for opposing the amendment is, however, slightly dissimilar in one respect from my reason for opposing the Bill. The amendment comes from the Centre Party and for that reason, on looking at it for the first time, I was inclined to suspect the soundness of the proposition which that amendment contained. As a matter of fact I suspect that this amendment has nothing whatever to do with economy. The amendment comes in reality I suppose from two Deputies of the Centre Party who would, I am inclined to think, not alone forgo £360 a year for attending in this House, but who would gladly pay £1,000 to come here and take up this political hobby of speech-making in the House, because it is in that light, I think, that the business of the House is looked upon by the Deputies in the Centre Party to whom I have referred. It is nothing more than a pastime to these Deputies. A pittance of £360 a year is nothing to the plutocratic front ranks of the Centre Party. My reason for opposing the Bill is, in general, that I am opposed to cuts in any branch of life in this State. Cuts in general should on principle be opposed. In this case there is no doubt whatever that the cuts are necessary. The condition of this country has been brought so low by the policy of the Government that the cuts are absolutely necessary. The Exchequer is empty and the Government is looking around exploring every source from which revenue can be derived. But that seems to me to be no reason why I, at least, should lend my support to the Government in putting through this Bill. In other words, why should any Deputy of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party register a vote which would help the Government to get out of a difficulty into which they walked with their eyes wide open?

The principle which underlies the Bill, we are told by the Minister for Finance, is the principle of economy. There would have been no necessity for this particular type of economy if the Executive Council had not lost a trade which was worth £30,000,000 a year to this country. If that trade were at present operating in this country as it should be operating, if it were operating 100 per cent., this Bill would never have come before the House. For that reason, I refuse by my vote to do anything which would help to take the present Government out of a quandary into which they walked with their eyes wide open.

The President

The task of the Minister for Finance in any country is not a pleasant one at present. At no time, in fact, is the task of the Minister for Finance a pleasant one. And yet, listening to some Deputies to-day, one would imagine that the Minister for Finance had gone out with his heart in his work, striving to lower the standard of living everywhere throughout the country. I had hoped for once—and during the time it was possible for me to be in the House my hope was not realised—that there would be some attempt made in dealing with this Bill to analyse the general position and to show how, other than by a measure of this sort, we could at present equalise the burden we must all admit is pressing heavily upon the producing part of this community, and upon the community as a whole. Deputy Norton spoke about wage-slashing. I was in the House during a part of his speech, at any rate, and I do not think the Deputy made good that charge that there was wage-slashing. I heard from the other side of the House that we were running away from our election pledges and promises. Anybody who looks at the Bill will see that it is scrupulously constructed with the idea of trying, as far as it is at all possible, to carry out those pledges in the same spirit as we have attempted to carry out every other pledge that we gave to the people before the elections. A statement which I made at Rathmines— I am not quite certain whether I made it in reply to a question asked in the hall, but I think I did—was to the effect that the general policy of our Party, if we were returned to power would not be to seek economies on the lines on which our predecessors had sought them, namely, by a reduction in the social services, cutting the old age pensioners, and then seeking substantial sums by cutting the lower grades of the Civil Service. I said that if we were returned to power our policy would be to seek reductions in the ranks that could best afford to stand these reductions. I spoke of the higher salaries and, when asked to mention a figure, said that to my mind salaries below £300 or £400 were such that every penny of them was needed, and every penny of them was spent in the support of families, and in the purchase of the necessaries of life. If anybody cares to look through the Bill and study it, he will find that we have kept to that promise. No civil servant whose salary is under £300 has been touched by our cut, and I think that most of you will admit that £300 now has a greater purchasing capacity than it had when I made that promise. I have kept within the letter of the promise, and I have kept within the spirit of it. The Executive Council has kept within the spirit of it as far as they possibly could, taking into account all the facts of the situation. The scheme therefore running through the Bill is that civil servants' salaries of £300 and under are not to suffer any cut, because, as the Minister for Finance has pointed out, there was an automatic cut which operated from the beginning of this year. That cut resulted in an automatic reduction of those salaries. I think every Deputy here will admit that in cases of this sort we have to deal equitably with all branches of the public service. If a civil servant under £300 can show that he has suffered an automatic cut, due to the bonus system, since 1st January— and a civil servant whose salary is over £300 has that added to the proposed existing cut—and that he has suffered since 1st January of the present year as compared with his previous remuneration a cut of £70 or £80, he will undoubtedly feel that other public servants should, if they are to be dealt with on the same basis as himself, suffer a similar cut.

There is a proposed cut in the Guards. We tried to discriminate, and not impose any cut on the married Guard. The reason for this in the case of the Guards was that there was a definite understanding that if the cost of living figure fell below a certain margin the rates that were being paid at the time were not to be regarded as fixed. We felt that it would be unfair if the cuts that were being imposed in fact on the Civil Service were not similarly imposed on the other branches of the public service. In the case of the teachers—it is not necessary for me to deal with it in full— there is another factor which operates. The Minister for Finance may postpone dealing with it until we come to deal with the particular schedule in the Bill. The truth is that we spent a very considerable time in trying to work out conscientiously the policy of not cutting the lower salaries, and of imposing an equal reduction in all the services. When you come to examine the scheme in detail on the Committee Stage of the Bill you will be able to see how closely that has been worked out. The Minister for Finance to-day gave you certain figures and certain stages in the scale, pointing out how it worked. I think it is an unfair charge to say with respect to the cuts proposed in this Bill that we have ignored our election promises. Deputy Norton says that this is not the way to deal with the economic situation. It is surely not suggested that this Bill is proposed as a Bill to deal with the economic situation as a whole? The only way in which it touches the general economic situation is this, that there has been a reduction already of purchasing power in the community; it is a question not of reducing it further, but of equalising the burden of that reduction. We are here imposing on the servants of the State certain reductions, because we believe that—when we compare the position of the primary producer to-day with his position some years ago—the reduction which the servants of the State will suffer in their salaries does not at all put them in a relatively worse position in relation to the primary producer than they were in some years ago.

It has been suggested by Deputies on the opposite benches—a most unfair suggestion—that this Bill has been prompted by some sort of animus against the servants of the State. There is no truth whatever in that suggestion. It is suggested that there is uneasiness and insecurity in the ranks of the public servants. I think that—in a year at the beginning of which there was perhaps a greater change than you could point to in any democratic assembly; a greater change, when you have regard to all the circumstances, than you would possibly be able to point to in history —the servants of the State have been dealt with fairly by the present Government. One of the Deputies went out of his way to drag in a case which has been in the courts recently. What was the Executive Council to do? Was the Government to stand by and see State files and secret documents handed out, even if it was for the purpose of writing a book? What right had any State servant to give out secret documents? Were we to sit idly by and allow it to be thought in the service that State servants could deal in that manner with confidential documents? There were two matters concerned. On the one hand there was a breach of Statute; that was tried in the courts. There was also a question of breach of regulations; that is a matter of discipline. Our attitude towards the Civil Service has been one of full recognition of their worth, but we are determined that there will be discipline. No servant who does his work honourably and loyally has anything to fear from this Executive Council, but we are not going to stand for indiscipline anywhere. If that is to be taken as indicative of any unfair attitude towards the Civil Service I want to know what is the proper attitude. There would have been those cuts in salaries—and on a very different system, I contend— if the previous Government were in office. The amount that is coming into the Treasury is no insignificant amount, and we hold that that sum is coming into the Treasury in the best way, and from the section which at the moment can best bear it. I have had experience during a year now of the work that is done by the higher servants of the State. I know how devoted they are to their work, and what long hours they spend at it, but I do want to say that if they do hard work and spend long hours at it, so also do the members of the Executive Council. I think it is most unfair to suggest that what Ministers do is lock up their offices at 5 o'clock, go away with easy minds, and leave all the business and all the worry to the permanent officials. There is no truth what ever in that, and the members on the opposite benches know there is no truth in it. The ultimate responsibility for decisions, and the ultimate responsibility for seeing that the work is done in his Department, rests with the Minister, and whilst it is true that he alone—any more than any man at the head of any organisation—could not do that work unless he had loyal and faithful assistants, it is, at the same time, true that it is not the assistants who do all the work.

It is the Ministers who have the final responsibility. They cannot divest themselves of it. Our experience has been that Ministers are certainly loyally and faithfully helped, and that every assistance which it is reasonable to expect from the permanent officials with whom they come in contact is given to them. I think it was Deputy Mulcahy who suggested that it was only the Minister for Finance who would be hard-hearted enough to stand up here and defend this Bill: that other members of the Executive Council had such experience of the chief civil servants who are working with them that they would not have the heart, so to speak, to stand up here and propose cuts in the salaries of those individual servants. I think it is true to say that the Minister for Finance is served as loyally in his Department as any other Minister and it can be no harder on any of us to propose a cut in the salaries of these officials whose work we know than it is on the Minister himself. I can say more, that the Minister for Finance has been the stoutest defender, when these matters were discussed in detail, of the branches of the service that he is legally the head of. Therefore, I think it is most unfair to suggest that his attitude towards the Civil Service is different from that of any other member of the Executive Council.

As I said this morning, I do not think there is much in the general principle if we keep really to the Bill and do not wander off to the civil war or to the present economic war. If we were to take these debates up again we could spend a considerable time at them. If we wanted to we could point out that while people talk of the loss the community is suffering at the present time, these same people did not talk of the loss to the country when it was paying out millions per annum, paid too by this same community. When the members on the opposite benches talk about cuts imposed they did not hesitate to impose more drastic cuts on a section of the community which was less able to afford it than the section which we are now proposing to cut.

With regard to the amendment, I think I can understand why it was proposed—from the point of view of putting the members of this House, if you like, in a moral position to impose cuts on others by accepting cuts themselves. Most of us, I think, will appreciate that there is something in that point of view. I do, at any rate. But when we come down and deal with it as a practical proposition we must remember that this matter has been dealt with in this House on several occasions already, when it was pointed out that this was the smallest sum—in fact that it was inadequate—which could be fixed. From such examination as I have made myself of the allowance, I think that better public service could be rendered by the Deputies if they had an increased allowance. If we were dealing with anything like normal conditions I would say that the allowance, considering the work that is expected from a Deputy, was not sufficient to enable him to do that work properly. I think it was the Lord Mayor of Dublin who interjected a remark the point of which should be obvious. He asked about the two homes that Deputies who come up from the country have to keep, and of the double expense. There is also a question of principle: that it should be possible for a Deputy to come here, to give up whatever business he has and to devote his whole time to his public work. It is not fair to say that a Deputy should be paid only for the time he is actually sitting here in the House.

Mr. MacDermot

Hear, hear.

The President

That is not right, because if he is to do his work it means a good deal more than attending here when the Dáil is sitting. To be fair and to get good service you must make a sum available which will enable the representative of any section of the community to give his whole time—if he is to do it well—to the work to be done here. I think this allowance was fixed on, first of all, by a Joint Committee in 1922. Later, in 1923, there was a further examination of it, and again in 1927. In 1930, when Deputy Thrift made a proposal for the reduction of the allowance to Senators, there was a further examination. Reports were submitted to the House on the results of these examinations. After the most thorough examination it was found that the sum which was made available in allowances for the Deputies and Senators was not unreasonable at any rate, and any suggestion that was made for a reduction was rejected. That being so, why should the Government take upon itself, having had recent decisions on the matter, to reduce these allowances which all of us, from experience, believe are certainly not excessive but rather inadequate?

Mr. MacDermot

Does that remark of the President apply to the Seanad also?

The President

With regard to reductions in the Oireachtas, I have always taken the point of view that the best way to get economies in the Oireachtas was to reduce the numbers to a reasonable amount. When in Opposition I suggested that about 120 members would give adequate representation in the Dáil. I saw there was no chance of a reduction in the other direction and suggested, therefore, that the reduction should be by numbers. In the case of the Seanad our view again is that if a representative of the people is to do his work and be available at all times, you cannot fix his remuneration by the length of time he is occupied in the Seanad. I am not going to pretend that the Senators do as much work as the members of the Dáil, not for one moment. Again, there is a minimum amount which would enable a representative of the people to give up his work, if necessary, and to devote himself to representing and working for the public interest. There is a certain minimum sum, and I for one would hesitate to cut that below the figure which I believe to be needful in the case of Deputies. I would hesitate to cut it down for anybody unless we were going by that fact to be prepared to see the representation fall into the hands of people who, out of their own private means, could take on the task of public representation.

With regard to the Seanad I have always held that, if we did have a second House here, we could reduce the number practically to one-half the number of the present House. During the elections, I indicated that it was our intention to abolish the Seanad as at present constituted. The question of whether or not we should have a second Chamber at all, to my mind, rests on this: whether a suitable second Chamber can be devised, a second Chamber that will have really valuable functions. I have an open mind on that matter myself. I have sought for solutions in various directions, and I have to confess that up to the present time I have not been able to get any form of second House that would warrant its being there, and warrant the expense that would be involved. If, however, we are able, within the course of a year or so, to devise a Constitution for a second Legislative Chamber which would warrant our proposing it instead of the present one, then, we may, instead of bringing in a Bill to abolish completely the second House, propose to bring in a Bill to establish such a second House with a constitution of the character which I have indicated, namely, which would give it some really useful functions. That being the position with regard to the Seanad, and it being our intention anyhow to bring in a Bill very soon to avoid the filling of about 20 vacancies which are due to come about, I think, next year or so—with that in mind, and also with the idea that there was a certain minimum limit beyond which we could not go, we felt we would not be justified in bringing in either the members of the Dáil or members of the Seanad under this Bill. However, I think the attitude of the Executive Council can be stated to be this—that if private members here in the Dáil bring forward a resolution or an amendment, when this Bill comes for the reduction of these amounts, we, as a Government, anyhow, will not oppose it. We will leave it here open to the private members to bring forward if they wish to put themselves in the position of which Deputy MacDermot speaks, that is, in the position of not appearing to cut others without suffering a cut themselves. We are prepared to consider such a proposal. We have no closed mind, at any rate, with regard to such a proposal. Personally, if it were an open vote, I would oppose it on the grounds I have indicated. But, for one, I can understand the attitude of mind which, possibly, could reasonably prompt such a proposal.

As I have said then, with regard to this Bill as a whole, we feel that the Exchequer needs this sum of money. We cannot have our social services; we cannot expand in the directions in which we need to expand unless we have money. We must economise where we can in order to expand. We are engaged deliberately in a process of expansion in certain directions, and we know that we cannot expand in these directions without employing further servants of the State. But we are anxious to see that no servant of the State will get a greater salary than the community can afford. We are anxious to see a certain levelling or equalising of the burdens if you wish. This money is necessary. The Minister for Finance finds it necessary. It has to come from somewhere. We are not going to save by restricting our social services. We cannot produce it that way. The question of increasing the burdens on the taxpayer is one on which everybody, who knows the effect that would have on further production and further employment, must hesitate. I put it to those Deputies who are inclined to disagree with this policy that, if they were in our position and had the task which the Minister for Finance has at the moment and had to find the money, the way we propose to find it is a better way than any that has been put forward in this House.

I do not think that the Executive Council need excuse itself in regard to this Bill. I have said that it is not intended to depress wages and I do not think that it will have that effect. It is not intended to depress the standard of living all round. It is intended to try to equalise the burdens which every section of the community must be prepared to bear if we are to deal properly with the present situation. If I would not be going too far, perhaps, outside the proper scope of a speech on this occasion, I should like to say that the present situation is a really serious one. It is recognised as being serious in other countries. It is particularly serious in our country from the point of view that so much of our production is from agriculture. We have unemployed in the streets. We have a duty to those unemployed. We have got to try to perform that duty by getting work for them.

I had a letter a short time ago from a friend who is a professional man and who was in receipt of a fixed salary of about £900 a year. He complained of the income-tax. He said that he was trying to rear a fairly large family, that he was now of a fairly matured or advanced age—50 or 60 years of age or over—that he could not afford a motor car, that he was not able to take any holidays. The only way he took any recreation was by working in his garden. He went on to say that in the past he had supported our Party but that he was doubtful, seeing the burden which was imposed on him by income-tax, if he could support us any longer.

I replied telling him that we were very sorry we had to tax earned incomes, that we were very sorry he could not have more out of life, more of the enjoyments, and more holidays than he appeared to be able to have. I told him also that there were people in the streets who have not got their daily bread. What about them? There are people whose homes are cheerless, who have not got fires. There are families living in single rooms for which they are paying exorbitant rents, and in which the ordinary decencies of life cannot be observed. I also said to him: "Do you not think their cases much harder than yours, and that the Government is justified in taking from you something which is not absolutely essential for you, but which is absolutely essential for them?"

That is the policy behind the whole of our administration. It is a difficult task. We have never made light of it. We believe that we are making headway with that policy. We believe that there would be a substantial reduction of unemployment to-day, if we had circumstances such as there were in the past, when the unemployment difficulty was relieved by emigration. Remember that we have now every year to provide for some 20,000 or 30,000 young people who are coming into employment. We relieve unemployment, so to speak, at one end of the scale, and make headway with it, but the problem is increased at the other end. Any reasonable Deputy who takes the position as a whole, if he wants to be fair, must put himself in the position of the Executive Council and of the Minister for Finance, who has got to make ends meet, and who has to consider where the necessary moneys which he deems absolutely necessary for certain services can be got, by imposing the least possible hardship. That is the spirit in which this measure is conceived. The idea is to get the necessary moneys from a section of the community with the least possible hardship.

I think Deputies on this side have been just as generous in their praise of the work being done by public servants as Deputies on the opposite side. It is a fact which civil servants themselves must recognise, that the purchasing power of their salaries is greater to-day than it was some years ago, and that they can afford at the present time, better than other sections of the community, to bear this part of the burden. No matter what may be said by others, I believe that there was a very proper idea behind the Deputy's amendment. At least, I think we ought to try to look for the best interpretation of what we find. Just as there was in my opinion a proper idea behind that, namely, that we should not be imposing upon others cuts that we do not impose upon ourselves, so I think that public servants who are paid by the producing part of the community ought not to be unwilling to bear a part of the burden which, willy nilly, the producing portion of the community are forced to bear in present conditions. The cuts are for one year only. The intention of the Minister was to show that we did not, in principle, regard the sums paid as in themselves extravagant, but that in present conditions, and in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, it was the duty of a section to bear that part. If we want to succeed and improve the standard of the community as a whole, we must be prepared to bear this burden. If we are to solve unemployment and other social problems we must be prepared to bear even greater burdens than these. If we do not, then we are going to have the position that certain sections of the community are to be, so to speak, outlawed; that they are not going to be allowed to exercise the God-given right to live. I hold that they have a right to live. I think it is necessary for the community as a whole to bear such a burden as will enable these people to be given the opportunity of living.

It is a big question. There is a big question of organisation behind it. I am not one of those who believe that it can be done by some sudden change in monetary policy. To my mind, there is a big question of organisation. You want the will on the part of the community as a whole, the part of the community that have to share with those who have not; in other words, to share the burden in order that those who have not may be enabled to live. In the first place, you want that will. After you have got that will then, in the second place, you want organisation of the community, so that the exchange of services between one section and another may be effected. It is fundamentally a question of organisation, and the attitude on the part of those who have in the community to part with a share of what is theirs, in order that those who have not may be enabled to live. Without these two things, I do not think there is any way of solving the problem. In this instance we are asking the public servants to do their part, just as when we tax income we ask the people to do their part. We are asking the public servants to do their part now. I, for one, believe they will. I believe that all the efforts that have been made on the opposite benches to urge them into unrest will be in vain. I do not think the higher members of the Civil Service have not the intelligence to realise that Bills like this are necessary, and that the sacrifices they are asked to bear are the type of sacrifices that every other section of the community will be compelled to bear if we are really going to solve this problem of unemployment. At any rate, we intend to do our best. We are prepared to be judged, even by this measure, in the direction in which we are going. We deny, as has been suggested, that this is a retrograde measure. We deny that we are departing from the path we have laid out for ourselves, or that we indicated to the electors we would take. We hold that this Bill is strictly in consonance with the whole idea, and the whole philosophy behind our policy, and it it as such that I support the Minister for Finance in asking the House to accept it.

Mr. McGilligan

This House is at the moment discussing an amendment in the name of Deputy Dillon in relation to the Public Services (Temporary Economies) Bill, 1933:

That the Dáil declines to give a Second Reading to the Public Services (Temporary Economies) Bill, 1933, until provision is included therein for the reduction of allowances payable to Deputies and Senators.

It was said that we would not need to reduce our salaries; economies were to be possible in other ways. "Substantial economies are possible." This was a serious promise set out in a manifesto—"Fianna Fáil is satisfied that substantial economies are possible without reducing social services, inflicting hardship on any class of Government servants or impairing in the slightest degree the efficiency of the administrative machine." There followed then the famous comment—or, at least, the comment I hope I have made famous by repetition—that having examined with precise care the Estimates, they were convinced that a saving of not less than two million pounds was possible. Does the President think that anybody reading that sentence when it was placarded around the country in 1932 would have thought that the phrase about substantial economies being possible without inflicting hardship on any class of Government servants meant this Bill? Is there a quibble—that, of course, the civil servants and the other people mentioned can suffer these cuts without incurring hardship? Would the President have written in those days, if he had been asked to be quite honest and frank in the matter, "Fianna Fáil is satisfied we can impose cuts of the type mentioned here and they will not inflict hardship on the services mentioned." He might have wanted to do that, but his propagandists would not have allowed him in those days. That was the promise and it is not to be laughed at. That is one of the considerations on account of which the Government holds office. We were to be brought into a promised land where wasteful administration was to be cut off. A great deal was made of the "wasteful administration." It was all summed up in that statement that not less than two million a year could be saved. That other phrase I alluded to was put in because the President knew well that his campaign of a previous period about salaries was going to lead to the conclusion in certain minds that cuts were intended, cuts in the Civil Service and in the services of the local authorities. The phrase I mentioned was put in to prevent that idea spreading and it succeeded. There were specific means pointed out for economies. At Galway, the President said that "the police forces in the country, which cost one and a half million pounds, could be decreased by one-half." It costs at this moment £1,600,000 and this is the second year of the administration. At that time, it could be reduced by one-half. That was part of the way people were fooled. Deputy Cooney was even more precise. He said that "their administrative programme included a saving of two million pounds on the Army." I do not think that the Army cost that amount in those days, but let that pass. "The £500,000 saving on the Civic Guard, with other savings that could be effected on overpaid Departments, would be put into productive industries. They came to the conclusion that they could solve the unemployment problem in 12 months."

Mr. Morrissey

Six.

Mr. McGilligan

It was 12 at that time. The "ante" was raised later and they had to reduce it. Speaking at Rathmines, in May, 1932, the President said that they were not going to start on the lower salaries.

"With regard to the salaries between £300 and £400 I hold that those in receipt of them are getting nothing excessive."

Then, we have this leading article in the Independent of May 28th.

"The immunity was promised not merely to the lower grades, but to the middle grades of the Civil Service."

"We do not," said the President, "propose to seek economies by restricting the social services or cutting the salaries of the middle or lower grades of the Civil Service." Yet, we are told to-night that this Bill is scrupulously drawn with regard to these promises. There are other things that we were promised—increases in the social services. There was going to be a revision of the unemployment and national health insurance schemes so that the full benefits would go to those insured—the workers—but they are now cast aside in favour of cuts.

The President has paid a tribute to-night to these civil servants whose salaries he proposes to cut, amongst others. He pays that tribute to them in a peculiar way. "They are certainly hard working," and, then, as if anybody had commented on it in any serious way, he adds: "So do the Executive Council," and, then, we are told that the Executive Council do not lock up at six o'clock and go away with easy minds and come back at a certain hour in the morning. "The Ministers have the final responsibility"—that was the case in our time. It was definitely the case in our time. The President well knows that members of his Front Bench and of his back benches went about the country declaiming that Ministers were living on the fat of the land and not working. Now, the situation is changed. They work, while he admits the Civil Service do also. Then he says: "This is only for a year." The Minister for Finance has emphasised that the cuts proposed are only for a year in respect of salaries earned and paid in the coming financial year, but he did not say that, if the financial position did not improve, it would not be imperative to deal with these salaries in another year. The President, at the end thinks that "despite the attempts made"—I suppose from these quarters—"to cause discontent, the Civil Service will do their part," the Minister for Finance, in introducing this Bill, to-day, said that the proposal to reduce salaries had been referred to in the Budget statement last year. How? There was going to be an endeavour to get, by agreement during the year, certain cuts. Then, he said that he found this year it had not been possible to get that agreement, and hence these cuts were being imposed, and the President is optimistic that the Civil Service are going to bear these cuts with equanimity. His Finance Minister told him last year that he would try to get agreement about these cuts and confesses this year that he failed to get them.

What was the President's optimism based upon? They felt that the Civil Service would realise that their salaries could not continue when the country was in an impoverished state, and I think that was a good analysis of the Civil Service mind. We certainly felt in our time that it was being borne in on the Civil Service that, if a certain depression went on, they could not continue at a particular rate. I wonder why has the change occurred? Surely it is the same change of feeling that is in most people of the country who are suffering—that they do not believe that the suffering is necessary; that they are not convinced of the justice of the treatment that is being meted out to them and that they can see no hope, that after these imposed sacrifices have been made, there is any better prospect a year, three years or five years hence than there is now.

Civil servants are like most other people in this community. They do not deny what the President, in one of his attempts to cloud the position to-night, referred to as "the God-given right of the people of this country to live." Civil servants, in the main, spring from the small farming community in this country and they know as well as the President what the economic situation of that class of the community is and they know what they are suffering at the moment. Most of them have, near and around, in their family circle or their circle of relations, people who sometimes feel that the God-given right to live is being denied to them, and they are as easily able to be touched by that phrase as anybody else, but they are not going to be touched by that phrase as used by the President because they feel that whatever was the God-given right to live in this country, it has been somewhat jeopardised by the policy of the present Government.

"The economic war is not an issue," the President said, to-night. It is at the root of this Bill. We are going to save how much? Last year, it was said to be £250,000 and this year, because the scope has been somewhat widened, it is said to bring in a maximum of £280,000. It has been pointed out that that is only the equivalent of the loss of one week from the present economic war. Rate, with as much importance as can possibly be given to it, the world-wide depression and add to it the 20 per cent., 30 per cent. or 40 per cent. the folly with England has caused us, and you will get from that 20 per cent., 30 per cent. or 40 per cent. more than the £280,000 that this slaughtering of the public services is going to get you. I had thought that we were faced with a very bright prospect once the Government came into power and got their economic policy on foot. I have alluded to what the then Deputy Boland had said in relation to emigration. Does the President not remember Deputy Lemass's, as he then was, forecast of what was going to follow from their economic policy? There would not be enough idle hands in the country to do all the work that was to be done. We would have to call back some of those emigrating; not merely would we stop the tide from flowing out, but we would have to call back some of those who had gone out. The President, not to be outdone by that statement, responded with a statement that the country could support seventeen millions of people.

We have had a year of this policy in regard to unemployment. The President, on one occasion, stung by a certain comparison that was made with the unemployment that was elsewhere, said that it was forgotten by the people, who, as he said, made propagandist use of depression in other countries, that this country had in its hands a remedy against unemployment that no other country had, and we presume the remedy has been found and that we are getting the full benefits of it. We have this declaration—it is ludicrous to bring it into a debate of a serious nature—but it was promised; it was dangled before the eyes of the people and it was what misled certain people. It was part of the consideration for holding office:—

Protection of industries means more money in Ireland. Money in Ireland means more employment. Employment means more buyers. Buyers mean more buying of Irish goods. Buying Irish goods means more money in Ireland. More and more and more money—why should it ever stop?

We have had a year of that rolling around of money in this country, and we have had the full benefit of the retention in this country of the moneys that used to go to England, and we have had our protection policy going, and we have had bounties for the main agricultural industry and, at the end of it all, we hoist the white flag—cuts.

Cuts! And over what a range do the cuts extend! Everybody has got to feel what sacrifice means, but I think most people would agree to the sacrifice if they could see what was the end of the sacrifice. If there were people who were being denied the God-given right to live, and who are now being denied in increasing numbers that God-given right to live, surely common honesty demands that instead of continuing the impoverishment and spreading it more widely, there should be a halt to get the plan exposed which is in operation, but which nobody seems to know anything about —the plan which is guiding the fortunes of this country, the plan which is going to give us happiness some years ahead. If that could be proved, and if it could be shown that after some years of sacrifice there was a prospect of better times, this country would do willingly what people like the Russians are being forced to do under stern necessity and compulsion.

The reason why there is aggravation over these cuts and over the suffering that is being caused is because nobody believes that there is a principle at the back of the whole thing; nobody believes that there is any thought-out, deliberate plan; nobody believes that anybody has thought out what the old economy was and what the new economy is to be, what the steps for the change-over are, how long they are likely to take and what the new situation afterwards will be. It seems somewhat ludicrous to be introducing these things into a debate of this sort, but they were paraded to the people. There was something of the old idea of the fortunes told at the country fairs. Fortunes were told for everybody. These things are about as good as the prophecies that were made around these fairs. We did get these prophecies. We were told about all the unemployed who were to be gathered into employment, all the emigrants who were to be called back to get work in this country, all the taxes and all the rates that were to be lowered and the better security for everybody. There was a precise promise that whatever economy was decided on it would not be such as would either reduce social services or inflict any hardships on any class of Government servants.

I took it from the Minister for Finance's speech to-day that the two million promised saving has been definitely abandoned, but I want him to say that. He finds himself in the dilemma that he must either increase his revenue, and he says that is only possible by increasing taxation, or else he must reduce expenditure. He said that preliminary estimates of revenue which were being prepared indicated that they might anticipate a substantial decline of revenue, but on the other hand there would not be such a decline in expenditure. That comes from the man who had promised two millions of a decline. And then he gives as an excuse that such a decline in expenditure could only have been secured at the cost of social services. It could be achieved, he said, by reducing social services. What is the correct position? Are we going to have a definite confession that former declarations were all nonsense, a complete sham and humbug?

We are told now that the Minister, after being a year in office, is convinced that a decline in expenditure could only be secured at the cost of social services. He designed the policy of the Government to secure economies in that way. Then he found himself in this fearful dilemma. If revenue was going to decline and if expenditure could not be reduced he had only the choice of two ways in which the deficiency might be met—by additional taxation or by reducing the expenditure in the remuneration of public servants. Everybody else knew, except the people who deluded themselves into writing that and the fools who believed it when it was written, that you could not get a £2,000,000 reduction in expenditure. We must not forget the promise that they would not reduce social services or inflict hardships on any class of Government servants.

We have got the truth in a halting way now. The Minister for Finance makes a certain statement by reason of an office which he holds by false pretences. If he said previously that the saving could only be got by reducing social services would be have been able to stand the criticisms that such a statement would have evoked? Was it his policy to reduce the social services and, if not, will he indicate where the £2,000,000 saving was to come from? That was no mere promise held out, because we have it definitely that Fianna Fáil had examined with minute care the Estimates of supply services for the current year and they were convinced that a saving of many hundreds could be made, not including such items as a sum of £1,152,000 paid in respect of R.I.C. pensions, and other similar payments not required by the Treaty. Then there was the final flourish: "The burden of taxation could be lightened by not less than £2,000,000 per year." After a minute examination and after a still more minute examination, we are now told by the Minister for Finance, who was probably behind the advertisement and got office on the foot of it, that he is in the dilemma that he must reduce social services if he is going to get any decline in expenditure, and his only alternative is £280,000 through these widespread cuts on public services of different types.

The President bases the justice of the reduction on this—he compares the position of the civil servant with the position of the primary producer. Will he take the sum that is to be saved, will be take whatever the world depression is and its effect on this country, will be take the extra amount of loss caused by reason of the trouble with England and say to the civil servants: "We could have refrained from saving £280,000 in this way if it were not for the trouble with England; even an economic depression would not have made it necessary; but the economic depression, plus that other folly, has made this necessary, and then put it to the civil servants clearly and bluntly that they have got to pay because he has called a certain tune, called it, as he admitted in this House, with the knowledge that there is going to be trouble over it, and continues to call it with no statement to this House that is of any assurance to it that he thinks the trouble is going to end satisfactorily for this country?

But the principle will not build up much of a saving for contingencies. In the case of the Electricity Supply Board it might be desirable that the deductions, in so far as it can be done, should be passed on to the general body of consumers. What deductions are we to get in the case of our bills by this saving? Is that a significant sum? Will the savings made in the salary cuts upon the officials of the Electricity Supply Board equate the extraordinary expenditure which they have been forced to incur by reason of the tariff on British coal alone? We were told by the Minister for Industry and Commerce that coal of equally good quality could be got elsewhere. We have two sets of evidence against the assumption of Ministers. The railway companies have told us that they tried one type of foreign coal and that, as it was useless, they abandoned it. I presume they abandoned it with the concurrence of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. The chairman of the company said that as a result of using that foreign coal some of their locomotives had to be laid up for repairs.

Mr. Lemass

He was misinformed.

Mr. McGilligan

I am sure he was misinformed if he said anything contrary to the Minister's policy. But this thing the chairman of the company said—that the Government proposed to grant allowances to them and that they could import a certain amount of their coal duty free. In the last couple of days we had a meeting of the Alliance and Dublin Gas Consumers' Company. I presume they, too, were misinformed by their expert. They have also stated that they did not find that the substituted coal which they had been using was of any great value for their purposes.

Can we get at any stage what expense the E.S.B. had to incur by reason of this tax on coal? Have they also been allowed to import a certain amount of coal duty free? It is absurd to talk about sacrifices made by the Agricultural Credit Corporation officials being passed on in order to build up a reserve for contingencies. It is equally absurd to say that the cuts on the Electricity Supply Board's officials will be passed on to the general body of consumers. I doubt if these cuts will even enable them to balance their books as they were being balanced and enable them to keep to the old rates of charge. The extra expense they had to incur in the last year will certainly drive them to increase their charges, if they do not see some hope of that situation being mended in a favourable manner. At any rate, this was the Government that was to get us reductions in taxation; lower rates and more security, employment for everybody and the calling back of emigrants to take up the work that had to be done here. At the end of a year of that Government we find ourselves in the position that in order to enable the Minister for Finance to balance his Budget, we have got to get, as well as other things, this £280,000 from the persons here indicated.

The President based himself, in the end, on the primary producer. We have got a fairly good test recently of the condition to which the primary producer has been brought; and that despite the optimistic phrases that we so often hear from the Front Bench that agriculture is all right. Agriculture is all right according to the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who said it was never better, notwithstanding any evidence to the contrary. His unemployment figures are going down, so he tells us, though they appear to be going up. We have this admission, made in this House under very severe cross-examination, that there are certain rates of wages admitted to have been paid on certain schemes in this country. These rates, we are told are equated to the agricultural labourer's wage. The agricultural labourer's wage in Cavan is 21/- for a six-day week. That was the official answer given; these were the wages paid on Government schemes in Cavan. I wonder would this rate work out at 4½d. or 5d. an hour. We had a further statement made in reference to that admission with regard to the road wages paid in Cavan; we have this statement made by the man who was asked would he stand over them. The Parliamentary Secretary said here that if anybody went down to the County Cavan and tried to take from the men in receipt of it that 21/- for a six-day week that they would tear him limb from limb. That is the condition to which this country has been reduced. We are told, of course, that that is the same as the rate paid in President Cosgrave's time. I deny that to start with. But at that time we were told, and it was the theme of every crossroads orator, that these rates of wages were scandalous and that the people were refusing them. Now we are told that 21/- for a six-day week——

Mr. Morrissey

With broken time.

Mr. McGilligan

——is so acceptable and that the people are in such a state that if one went down to Cavan and tried to take it from them, he would be torn apart limb from limb. In these conditions it is almost impossible not to agree to a cut in the Civil Service salaries. What has brought us to that? What is the main point of Deputy Dillon's amendment? It is outrageously hypothetical for the people who have brought the country to that state to ask others to make sacrifices when they themselves did not make the sacrifices that they previously promised, and when they will not accept cuts in whatever they are receiving at the present time. That is the point of the amendment, and so far as it goes in that direction it is good. But the amendment is not a proper one in the face of this measure. It is absurd to be tinkering with it, and saying that this Bill should not be passed until provision is made to include therein a reduction of the allowances payable to Deputies and Senators. It should be until this whole situation has been examined and explained to the people; until they will have some clear knowledge where they are going; until they can have it demonstrated to them that eventually there will be prosperity, and demonstration does not mean mere declaration. But until some reason like that is given to us, then we have to say that, although the country has been reduced to a terrific state of impoverishment, we do not think it is necessary that it should stay there, and that it is a proper thing to have further impoverishment by reducing the salaries of those people indicated in the Bill. For that reason I, personally, am not going to accept either the amendment or the proposals in the Bill, and will resist any such measure until I am told what are the reasons for hoping eventually that we are going to be in a better position, or, alternatively, that that reason has been demonstrated to the people who are now going to be cut, and that they have agreed to it. I will take their word second-hand, but I am not going to take the word of the people who have brought the country to the position in which we now find it.

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. Lemass)

Mr. Esmonde

Is the bounty coming off?

Mr. Lemass

I am speaking of numbers now—the number of cattle available. In every sphere of agricultural production there was the same decline during the ten years that the Party opposite were in power. The position in which we found ourselves when we came into office was that not merely had the wealth available in the country been decreased by the misgovernment of the Party opposite for ten years, but that the wealth producing capacity of the country had been definitely impaired. We have been repairing that position. Our anticipations in that respect have been exceeded, despite the economic war and the abnormal world conditions that prevail. At the rate of progress that is now being made we can contemplate a complete recovery in a very short period.

There are still many problems to be dealt with, many that require careful examination and very decisive action. No matter what methods are adopted for dealing with them, there is one that must be tried and that is to keep as low as possible the tax burden on the country. It is because that is necessary that this Bill is now before the Dáil. This Bill does not in fact impose any real hardship. There are many people in the country who have had to suffer much more substantial reductions in their remuneration than is proposed for any class of public servants under this Bill. We hope that these people as well as civil servants will benefit by any improvement that may result from the Government's policy in the next ten months or a year. If the Deputies opposite vote against this Bill and against the proposal to effect economies in the way proposed under it, then let them at least stop talking about a reduction of taxation, about the plight of the agricultural community and about the various measures that they would like to see adopted if they did not involve an increased cost to the public. A vote against the Bill, and against the achievement of economies in that way on the part of the Deputies opposite will stultify everything they have been saying during the past six months through the country. I expect them to vote against it, but at least let them do it avowedly because this Bill is a measure introduced by a Fianna Fáil Government. Let them admit candidly that that is the only reason they are opposing it. It is, I think, a pity that ex-Deputy Blythe is not available to-night to tell us exactly what economic excesses he was contemplating before the people got the opportunity of putting him where he now is.

The President

I regret that it has not been possible for the Minister for Finance to remain and, therefore, I move that the question be now put.

An Ceann Comhairle

The motion is that the Bill be now read a Second Time. To that an amendment is tabled in the name of Deputy Dillon to delete all the words after "that" and substitute certain words. I am putting the question—"That the words proposed to be deleted stand part."

Question put.

The Dáil divided: Tá: 79; Níl: 8.

Tá

Aiken, Frank.
Bartley, Gerald.
Beegan, Patrick.
Belton, Patrick.
Boland, Gerald.
Bourke, Daniel.
Brady, Brian.
Breen, Daniel.
Briscoe, Robert.
Browne, William Frazer.
Burke, Patrick.
Byrne, Alfred.
Concannon, Helena.
Corish, Richard.
Cosgrave, William T.
Costello, John Aloysius.
Crowley, Fred Hugh.
Daly, Denis.
Davin, William.
Davitt, Robert Emmet.
Derrig, Thomas.
De Valera, Eamon.
Dockrell, Henry Morgan.
Doherty, Hugh.
Doherty, Joseph.
Donnelly, Eamon.
Doyle, Peadar S.
Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
Fitzgerald, Desmond.
Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
Flynn, John.
Flynn, Stephen.
Gibbons, Seán.
Goulding, John.
Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
Jordan, Stephen.
Keely, Séamus P.
Kehoe, Patrick.
Kelly, James Patrick.
Kelly, Thomas.
Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
Keyes, Michael.
Kilroy, Michael.
Kissane, Eamonn.
Lemass, Seán F.
Little, Patrick John.
Lynch, James B.
McGilligan, Patrick.
McGuire, James Ivan.
Maguire, Ben.
Maguire, Conor Alexander.
Moane, Edward.
Moore, Séamus.
Morrissey, Daniel.
Mulcahy, Richard.
Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
Norton, William.
O'Briain, Donnchadha.
O'Connor, Batt.
O'Dowd, Patrick.
O'Grady, Seán.
O'Kelly, Seán Thomas.
O'Neill, Eamonn.
O'Reilly, Matthew.
O'Sullivan, Gearoid.
Pattison, James P.
Pearse, Margaret Mary.
Redmond, Bridget Mary.
Reidy, James.
Rice, Edward.
Rice, Vincent.
Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
Ryan, James.
Ryan, Martin.
Ryan, Robert.
Sheridan, Michael.
Smith, Patrick.
Traynor, Oscar.
Victory, James.

Níl

Curran, Richard.
Dillon, James M.
Fagan, Charles.
Finlay, John.
MacDermot, Frank.
McGovern, Patrick.
O'Donovan Timothy Joseph.
Rogers, Patrick James.

Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Little and Traynor: Níl: Deputies Dillon and O'Donovan.

Amendment declared lost.

Question—"That the Bill be now read a Second Time"—put.

The Dáil divided: Tá: 59; Níl: 30.

Tá

Aiken, Frank.
Bartley, Gerald.
Beegan, Patrick.
Boland, Gerald.
Bourke, Daniel.
Brady, Brian.
Breen, Daniel.
Briscoe, Robert.
Browne, William Frazer.
Concannon, Helena.
Crowley, Fred Hugh.
Curran, Richard.
Daly, Denis.
Derrig, Thomas.
De Valera, Eamon.
Doherty, Hugh.
Doherty, Joseph.
Donnelly, Eamon.
Fagan, Charles.
Finlay, John.
Flynn, John.
Flynn, Stephen.
Gibbons, Seán.
Goulding, John.
Jordan, Stephen.
Keely, Séamus P.
Kehoe, Patrick.
Kelly, James Patrick.
Kelly, Thomas.
Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
Kilroy, Michael.
Kissane, Eamonn.
Lemass, Seán F.
Little, Patrick John.
Lynch, James B.
MacDermot, Frank.
McGovern, Patrick.
Maguire, Ben.
Maguire, Conor Alexander.
Moane, Edward.
Moore, Séamus.
Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
O'Briain, Donnchadha.
O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
O'Dowd, Patrick.
O'Grady, Seán.
O'Kelly, Seán Thomas.
O'Reilly, Matthew.
Pearse, Margaret Mary.
Rice, Edward.
Rogers, Patrick James.
Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
Ryan, James.
Ryan, Martin.
Ryan, Robert.
Sheridan, Michael.
Smith, Patrick.
Traynor, Oscar.
Victory, James.

Níl

Alton, Ernest Henry.
Belton, Patrick.
Burke, Patrick.
Byrne, Alfred.
Corish, Richard.
Cosgrave, William T.
Costello, John Aloysius.
Davin, William.
Davitt, Robert Emmet.
Dockrell, Henry Morgan.
Dolan, James Nicholas.
Doyle, Peadar S.
Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
Fitzgerald, Desmond.
Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
Keyes, Michael.
McGilligan, Patrick.
McGuire, James Ivan.
Morrissey, Daniel.
Mulcahy, Richard.
Norton, William.
O'Connor, Batt.
O'Neill, Eamonn.
O'Sullivan, Gearoid.
Pattison, James P.
Redmond, Bridget Mary.
Reidy, James.
Rice, Vincent.
Thrift, William Edward.

Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Little and Traynor; Níl: Deputies Doyle and G. O'Sullivan.

Question declared carried.

Committee Stage ordered for Wednesday, 26th April, 1933.

The House adjourned at 10.15 p.m. until Tuesday, 4th April, 1933, at 3 p.m.

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht - Friday, 31 Mar 1933