In regard to this proposal to cut the wages or salaries of the Guards, some information elicited from the Minister for Agriculture in the course of questions is of interest. If my hearing was correct I understood him to say that we are giving 31/- a cwt. bounty to give our butter to England at 40/- a cwt., so we have on that transaction 9/- a cwt. on our butter for producing and landing it in England, while the Guards here have to buy their butter from shopkeepers who have to pay 133/- for it. That is the lowest price at which the biggest trader will get butter at the present time. We have been told that there must be sacrifice all round, and those who pretend to speak for the agricultural industry here claim that the agricultural community want cuts in the salaries of public officials. If they do get cuts to bring them down to the hunger line on which the agricultural population is to-day, how far below the hunger line will the agricultural population be driven when their only market —and the Government has nearly exhausted the dictionary for adjectives to describe that great market we have here in this country—is taken from them? We lose 9/- upon the lambs that we export. We lose all round.
Additional Financial Resolutions—Customs. - Public Services (Temporary Economies) Bill, 1933—Committee Stage.
The Deputy cannot, on a motion to cut the salaries of members of the Gárda Síochána, go into the whole economic position of the country.
I am not going to go into the whole economic position, but the case attempted to be made here is that the position of salaried officials and wage-earners should be correlated with the position of agricultural producers.
That is obviously a matter for a Second Reading speech, and is not relevant to a specific amendment dealing with a cut in the salaries of the Gárda Síochána.
I accept your ruling. The particular cut of about £6 per man in the case of the Guards is really what the Minister is asking for, as a contribution to give England cheap butter. A peculiar situation will arise with reference to Civic Guards and other officials in the reduction of fixed assets. These fixed assets in many cases are not paid for. They have been created by borrowed money, and when the standard is lowered a very delicate and dangerous situation will arise as to how the value of these fixed assets can be redeemed. Viewed from any angle, it is a dangerous and backward step to reduce the wages or salaries and standard of living of any class. But to reduce the peace officers of the country from a wage not already by any means too high, is going to lower the morale of the force. It is the one force that should not be tampered with.
The Minister for Finance was very eloquent yesterday on the condition in which he found things. If the Minister examined his conscience, he would see how far he and his colleagues were responsible for the conditions, even the condition of affairs of this country as he found them. The responsibility for that was not due to the Guards. If it were not for the Guards, conditions would have been much worse. This is the compensation given to the Guards by the Minister and his colleagues, who tried to create impossible conditions for the Guards to function under. When the Minister and his colleagues got into power, almost their first attempt at economy was to cut the salaries of the very men who held this State together. The sum of £3 15/- was held up here as a princely salary for men who have to be practically always in harness, day and night, with no regular hours. That condition has been brought about by the Labour Party's support of the Government. If their salaries and the salaries of others are cut down, these wage-earners will not be able to give the same price to those who are providing the necessaries of life for them. The wages of these people, too, will have to come down.
I wonder will Deputy Norton and his colleagues keep in step with the Minister in marching through the streets of Dublin bearing a banner with the words: "The wages of tradesmen must come down to the level of the Guards?" That will be the position inevitably. We cannot get away from it. The wages of the tradesmen at £4 per week, even the tradesmen working in Government Departments, must come down. As a matter of fact, I know that tradesmen in Government Departments are getting less than I am paying tradesmen at present. And that Government has the support of the Labour Party!
No case whatever has been made for this particular cut—I could say all cuts, but the Ceann Comhairle would look towards me if I included anyone but the Guards, and I know what casting his eyes over this way would mean. The Guards stand in a particular position and their wages should not be reduced. In certain key public positions special consideration must be given to the salaries paid. To speak in plain, crude language, the salary is paid to protect the recipient in the discharge of his public duties so that he will not be open to bribery. I am not suggesting that the Guards here are, or will be, open to bribery, but we are tempting them by cutting their salaries to make them up by other means and thereby neglect their duties. Nobody can accuse the present police force of this country of being capable of being bought, even though their morale has been seriously shaken by the present Administration to the extent—I will not proceed any further with that.
You had better not.
Is that a threat from the Minister? Those who have abused that force from public platforms dare not accuse them of being anything but an efficient force. No attempt has been made to question their efficiency or the impartial way in which they discharge their duties. The Minister corrected me last night and said the cut only applied to unmarried Guards. He would not even extend the remission to an unmarried Guard if he got married. I do not know whether he will or not, but he would not promise it anyway. In any event, he will only gain by this sub-section £6 per unmarried Guard. Is it worth the money he will get and the danger of shaking the morale of the force? I do not think it is. I hope the Minister will accept the amendment. For the sake of the few pounds he is getting out of this section, it is not worth the dangers to the country that loom ahead if the Minister goes on with the section.
We have heard a good deal about the hardship that this cut is going to impose on the Gárda. The total amount which we will receive as a result of the cut out of the total pay-roll of the Guards is only £33,000.
How much does the Minister say?
A total of £33,000. At any rate the cut works out at the rate of 2 per cent.
On the single Guards' rate of pay?
An average cut of 2 per cent. We have had Deputy Belton and other members of Cumann na nGaedheal making eloquent speeches in defence of the Gárda. We had the ex-Minister for Justice who was responsible for that force under the Cumann na nGaedheal administration getting up and tearing his passion to tatters, as is the habit of Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, but none of them has told us what is the truth and what is well known to every member of the last Government, that in 1931, three months before they went out of office, the very people who are defending the Gárda now against a cut of 2 per cent. had determined to cut the Gárda by 5 per cent. all round.
The economic war.
That statement is quite inaccurate and the Minister who is making it is completely and utterly misinformed as the Minister has been misinformed entirely throughout the course of this debate. The Minister informed us last night that a definite arrangement had been come to between the then Minister for Justice, the late Mr. Kevin O'Higgins and the Guards' that there would be a reduction in the Guards' pay as soon as the cost-of-living figure fell below 170. No such arrangement was ever entered into and there was no acceptance of any such bargain on behalf of the Guards. What the Guards were told definitely by the then Minister for Justice was this: that there would be no reduction of their pay until the cost-of-living figure fell below a certain figure—it might have been 170—but there was never a definite statement to the Guards: "As soon as the figure falls below 170 then inevitably your salary will be cut."
The Minister says now that immediately before the dissolution in 1932 the then administration had determined to cut down the Guards' pay by 5 per cent. That is not correct. The Executive had come to no definite conclusion on the question of the Guards' pay. The Executive Council had put certain proposals before the Répresentative Body which they were to consider because the Executive Council had, in law, no power to cut down the pay in any way until the matter had been discussed and the views of the Representative Body of the Guards had been taken. As a matter of fact the views of the Representative Body of the Guards were not taken because the Representative body did not meet. Then the dissolution came and there was no definite decision come to by the then Executive Council, no definite decision of any kind, but at the time of the dissolution very many matters were being discussed in those days because matters were quite different from what they are now. The Executive Council were endeavouring to balance the Budget without imposing extra taxation on the people of the State. In order to carry that out the then Executive Council considered that some reduction in the Gárda Vote would be necessary, but there was no definite and final decision ever taken that it would take the shape of a cut in the Guards' pay or that if it did take the shape of a cut it would be of any definite or specified amount. The whole matter was under discussion and no definite ruling had been come to at the time of the dissolution. Now I shall go on a bit further. The Minister has told us——
Would the Deputy just for the information of the House detail the circumstances which led up to the dissolution of the Gárda Representative Body?
The Gárda Representative Body was never dissolved.
Are we not discussing this amendment now and not what happened two years ago?
The Gárda Representative Body was never dissolved, as far as I know. Certainly when I was Minister for Justice the Gárda Representative Body was never dissolved, and as far as I know the Representative Body is still in existence. I should be very much surprised if it is not. Let me deal a little further with this question. We had a speech from the Minister last night. The Minister, of course, was in a very great state of excitement last night and when he rants, as he was ranting last night, he lets a little bit more of the truth, a little bit more of the real facts, slip from him than he usually does. Last night he told us that he now cannot drag one halfpenny more in taxation out of the well-to-do people of this country. He has found that that source of taxation is dried up and there is nothing for him to do if he wishes to increase the amount of taxation but to go down to the food of the very poor. We all know that the economic policy of the Government is having that effect. We all knew that the country was being broken, but I was glad to hear that admission coming from the Minister last night.
Now consider the bearing of all that on this particular Vote. The Guards have to be cut now, and other services are to be cut also. They are going to be cut now because one single penny more cannot be taken from the taxpayer. That is the reason they are to be cut. What is going to happen next year? Everybody knows that next year conditions will be very much worse than they are this year. A very eminent economist——
It surely is not in order to prophesy on this amendment what will happen next year.
With great respect I will bring it in in this fashion, which I submit is completely in order, that if there is going to be an efficient police force there must be a sense of security in that police force. There must be a sense of security in this sense, that their pay is going to remain in some way stable. Every single one of them must consider, reading the Minister's speech last night, that whatever reduction may be imposed on them this year they will have to meet a much heavier reduction next year. The Minister's speech, coupled with the attitude he is taking on this amendment, is such that it must sap the confidence of all public officials, and sap, especially, the confidence of the Guards in the stability of the country. I submit that is an argument which is perfectly in order. What we want is a contented force, a force that will know definitely what the salaries of its members are, what its conditions and prospects are. That is what we want in this country, and that is precisely what we are not getting. The Minister says: "A man is getting £160 per annum. We will take £6 from him. What is that? He is left £154." What is to prevent the Minister coming in at a later period this year, or again next year, and saying: "This man has £154 per annum; we will take £20 off it?" He can say it just as glibly and with the same face of assurance as he did last night. Not only this Bill, but the way in which the Minister has been conducting the debate in this House, must shock the confidence of officials in the stability of their position and of their salary.
I wish to impress upon the House that there cannot be any single thing more important to the stability of the State or any stability in the State than the efficiency of an active police service. You will not have that. You will not have the Guards assiduously doing their duty to the best of their skill and ability and with real zeal if you persist in shaking their confidence in the stability of their position, and that confidence must have been shaken by the speech delivered by the Minister for Finance last night.
I intended to give a good example to the House by casting a silent vote on this amendment but I have been so intrigued by the mock heroics, melodrama, the pantomime and ramies and irrelevancy which have characterised the debate on this amendment that I am induced and feel almost compelled to take a hand in this gigantic game of bluff.
You are in bad company.
Mr. Burke
I am sure I am. There is nobody in whose company I spend so much of my time than in that of my friend opposite who interrupted. There was one redeeming feature about the discussion and I was delighted and rejoiced to hear it, viz., the declaration by the Ceann Comhairle that he would no longer tolerate and would stop unseemly and improper interruption, wherever it came from and in fact would check such action in the interests of the prestige of this House of which we ought all be extremely jealous and careful. During the debate also there was made, in my opinion, a very sensible remark by Deputy Anthony when he said that the Economies Bill and its consequent cuts including the section now before us—I want to bring myself in order—and the amendment we are debating was rather a confession of failure on behalf of the Government and an admission that they felt that they would not win the economic war.
In connection with the Economies Bill and its consequences I can quite understand the attitude of the Government. There is a motto pecca fortiter— if you lie at all lie boldly. The Government have lied boldly. They promised better times, reduced taxation and low rates. They knew quite well they could not carry these promises into execution. They make no apology for making these promises—absolutely none. They say: “The people returned me to power.” It is the same old sort of imposition mentioned by the Latin poet populus decipi vult: decipiatur. If the people want to be fooled, in God's name let them be fooled. And they have fooled them. There is one thing more that I cannot understand——
There is one thing I cannot understand, to wit, the relevancy of the Deputy's speech.
Mr. Burke
The relevancy is this. We are discussing an amendment to a particular section and I am trying to point out that I can quite understand why the Government brought in this Bill.
The Deputy is not entitled to make a Second Reading speech now.
Mr. Burke
I am talking about the Economies Bill.
When the Chair rises the Deputy speaking is supposed to resume his seat. The Deputy is making a Second Reading speech in discussing the reasons for general economies. He must get down to the amendment.
Mr. Burke
That is what I am trying to do. With the greatest respect, what I am trying to point out is that I cannot understand the attitude of the Government in respect to this particular amendment. That is what I am trying to do. I may not be putting it properly or relevantly, but I feel I have been as relevant as other speakers.
Order. The Deputy must not, directly or indirectly, question the Speaker's ruling.
Mr. Burke
That is what I am not doing.
The Deputy will have to bring himself into order or resume his seat.
Mr. Burke
I assure you, A Chinn Comhairle, I accept, with the greatest respect, your ruling and would be the last person in the world to question it. I am trying to explain myself and am pointing out that I did not intend in any way to question your ruling. What I am endeavouring to say—and if you rule it out of order I accept your ruling—is that I understand the Government's attitude in forcing through an Economy Bill and forcing this particular section of it, to which an amendment has been moved. If I am not in order in doing that I shall at once resume my seat. I want to say that this particular section is the result of the Economy Bill, and if I am out of order in putting that point of view that I am trying to put before the House I shall sit down.
The matter before the House is paragraph (a) (i) (ii) of Section 6, with an amendment which proposes that the Gárda should not be included in the category subject to cuts.
Mr. Burke
And I am endeavouring to show, and I am still striving to show, that I understand the action of the Government in resisting this amendment. Is that in order, may I ask you? That is all I ask. I want to know is that in order.
The Deputy is now in order.
Mr. Burke
I was going on to say that I can quite understand the Cumann na nGaedheal Party voting for that amendment, because, to put it on no higher ground, they naturally feel it is their duty to be against the Government. I cannot quite understand the Labour Party, because they are against wage-cutting, but whenever it is a question of saving the Government from destruction they always come to its aid. I cannot quite understand the position of the Centre Party, which has got its name on the lucus a non lucendo principle, because it is the most eccentric Party in the House. I do not want to waste the time of the House.
A Deputy
Hear, hear.
Mr. Burke
I am glad to hear somebody agrees with me on the other side of the House. I had intended to speak at much greater length, but I can see that the Ceann Comhairle does not want me to do so. I can see it in the gleam of his eye. I am not interested very specially in the Civic Guards, but I admire them as a very worthy, able and respectable body of men. I do object strongly to a penny wise and a pound foolish policy. I object on principle to the Government embarking on a niggardly scheme of economy while squandering money on madcap experiments, white elephants and mare's nests.
I would like to ask the Minister where he got the two per cent. He expects a saving of £33,000. The total salaries in the case of the Gárda Síchána come to £1,500,000.
What about the allowances? The total salaries come to £1,500,000, and there is a sum of £90,000 for allowances.
It would seem the Minister gets the average cut suffered by each Guard by taking in the people not cut. In calculating the average cut he includes the people who are not being cut. In that case we have the usual trustworthy figures that the Minister is accustomed to bring before the House.
They are correct.
No, they are most misleading. It is a serious matter, in the interests of good order in this country, to do anything that will make the Guards uneasy about their position. Nobody who has had any experience of the Guards for a number of years past will suggest that anything like disloyalty will be manifested or even felt by them if they are subjected to this cut. Anyone who has had any association with or experience of the Guards will feel quite safe and sure so far as that is concerned. But surely the Minister must know that in a position that is to a large extent a position of trust there may be great differences in the spirit in which the duty is done. If you treat any body of men, Guards, civil servants, teachers or any other class, in the way in which they are being dealt with here, without any shadow of justification, there will be the inevitable human result. There will not be any gross neglect of duty; there will be no neglect of duty; but there will not be the same zeal. It is only human nature. I am not now casting any slur on the Guards. They are ordinary human beings, ordinary Irishmen, and it is only natural to expect that this treatment of them is bound to have reactions in some way.
We listened last night to two histrionic outbursts from the Minister. He made an extraordinary speech. At one moment I was under the impression, so stirring was the appeal made by him, so much was he carried away by emotion, that the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, who then occupied the Chair, would begin to weep. I was afraid that would happen, so stirring was the appeal. In the course of that extraordinary appeal the Minister revealed a peculiar position of affairs and he adopted an unusual line by way of justification for the cut. I hope I am not misrepresenting the Minister when I try to paraphrase what I understood him to say in that very touching scene to which he treated the House. He started off by saying that whatever might be said about the other cuts, this particular cut could be defended on its merits. He proceeded to try to defend it on its merits. He did not defend the cut in the Guards' pay on the merits. He did not show there was any adequate reason why the Guards should be treated differently from anybody else. I fail to see why the Guards should be singled out by the Minister in this particular instance and why he should endeavour to justify the cut in their pay on the merits. It merely shows what he must think of the other cuts. The cut in the Guards' pay is apparently the cut par excellence on which to have the real acid test as to whether people are or are not serious on the subject of economy.
We had an extraordinary tirade from the Minister on the subject of economy. It was a tirade so moving that it might have deceived anybody if it was not the same Minister preaching on the necessity of cutting the Guards' pay, who a fortnight ago introduced the Budget and who twelve months ago introduced his first Budget. It was impossible to believe it was the same man, speaking in that moving tone last night, who was responsible for the last two Budgets. Last night he told us that the State would be brought to a position of bankruptcy, a position horrible for him, the pure-minded Minister for Finance, to contemplate, unless this cut was carried through. He was driven into that position and it was not merely a question of wage-cutting. Everyone who has followed the Minister's expositions, everyone who has followed the expositions of the President on the same matter, well knows that this is wage-cutting for the sake of wage-cutting. There is not a serious-minded Deputy who really believes that this or any other cut is being carried through for the sake of economy. If that were true you would have a very different Budget to face this year and last year.
When we were listening to the Minister a fortnight ago he left us under the impression that he was not out to make economies, but to find methods of spending money. Having elevated the Guards to a high plane, he told us that his sole justification for these cuts was that when he came to balance his Budget he found himself short to the extent of £250,000. He declared he had gone to the limit so far as taxation was considered and not one penny more could be put on income tax, because the tax would be less productive in the future if he put anything more on. Having brought the country to a pitch of bankruptey, he tries now to save it by this twopence-halfpenny measure. He will not stave off bank ruptcy by saving £33,000 on the Guards or by effecting the other economies proposed in the Bill. That is not the way to do it. The Minister had an opportunity of putting this country in a safe financial position when he was dealing with the Budget. He will not do much with the paltry savings he is trying to make now. He would not borrow and yet by his own confession he is borrowing one and a quarter million pounds.
Apparently the State, which could not stand a quarter of a million, could stand many millions otherwise. The Minister tells us the State could not stand this quarter of a million. The Minister said that he suddenly found he was driven against his will to these economy cuts. Surely everybody knows it is not for the sake of saving this £250,000 that the Minister is introducing this Bill or that he is cutting the Gárda. Everybody knows that he is doing it because his Leader, the man who supplanted the Minister the other day as Minister for Finance, is carrying out his own philosophy. His philosophy requires sacrifices from everybody. His general policy is to make the ordinary man in the country pay for that philosophy. The man in the Guards and the public servant have to pay equally heavily for that philosophy because "our philosophy," as the President states, requires it. His philosophy, as far as he is concerned, consists of a cant repetition of a number of phrases that pass muster for philosophy. In reality no excuse has been offered to us here by the Minister for this particular Bill. He tried to create the impression, in opposing this amendment last night, that he was driven to it and that he was up against a situation which forced him to do it. But in the next speech from the Minister we learned he had really made up his mind to do it a year ago. The £250,000 was going to be cut off anyway. We know from his speech last night that he realised he was wrong in what he had said earlier, that the Bill was introduced not because he was driven to it but because it was part of his philosophy. The Minister's main object was not to save this £250,000. His main object was to cut all salaries. That is really the position.
I cannot understand how the Centre Party can support the Minister in this. They have not as yet given any indication of what they propose to do as far as this amendment is concerned. I suggest to them that there is no portion of the community which requires the protection of a contented, active, zealous police force so much as does that portion of the community which lives in the country districts.
Hear, hear.
I suggest that if there is any tampering with any grade in this particular police force that tampering will be felt first and foremost by the people in the country districts.
Why did not the Deputy say that in January, 1932?
The Minister has already been answered on that subject. The Minister will please get out of that Jack-in-box habit of interrupting. He displayed that habit to an extraordinary extent yesterday. He had that habit when in Opposition and he again returned to his form yesterday. This is really not an effort to get out of a financial crisis as the Minister said last night. No one could treat it as such for a moment. This Bill is brought in because of the perverted sense of justice of the head of the Executive Council. It is because of the policy of the head of the Executive Council that the people are to suffer.
Before the question is put I want to say that there are two statements of fact that have to be cleared up. I said, when defending this cut here recently, that the salary of the Gárda was related to the cost of living. I said in fact that when the Order was submitted to the Representative Body, a memorandum went out with it from the office of the Department of Justice specifically drawing attention to that fact. That statement was denied by Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney. I have here in front of me a copy of the memorandum which went out and which was supplied officially to the Guards when a reduction took place in the pay of the Gárda in 1924. In that memorandum we have this statement:—
It is not proposed that the rates of pay obviously should be subjected to a variation to meet a trifling or temporary fluctuation in the cost of living. The rates now proposed are based on a cost-of-living figure of 85 above pre-war and are intended to be applicable while the cost of living varies between 70 and 100... These rates will be subject to review if the cost-of-living figure passes outside that range.
The statement which I made on this matter was challenged by Deputy-Fitzgerald-Kenney. But that memorandum was issued by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government in 1924. That Government also in 1931 decided to cut the Gárda pay by 5 per cent. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney says this is not so. Here is a proof that it is so. This is a letter addressed to his Department by my Department:—
"I am directed by the Minister for Finance to inform you that in view of the financial crisis, and the serious falling off in revenue which it involves, it becomes necessary to curtail, as far as possible, the existing commitments of the State and reduce expenditure. The attention of the Government has, naturally, been directed first towards State servants whose remuneration has not been affected by the fall in the cost-of-living index figure as is the case in the Civil Service as a contribution towards the solution of the problem confronting the Exchequer. The Government have decided that an all-round reduction of 5 per cent. should be made in the remuneration of the Gárda Síochána. The Minister for Finance would accordingly be obliged if you would take immediately in hand the preparation of the Order necessary to implement the Government decision."
The date of the first letter was 5th January, 1932. I asked Deputy O'Sullivan why he did not make on the 5th January, 1932, the speech he made to-day. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney denies that there was any decision of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government to reduce the salaries of the Gárda Síochána by 5 per cent. in January, 1932. He may not have been aware of it, but he permitted this letter to issue from his Department to the Commissioner of the Gárda Síochána:—
"I am directed by the Minister for Justice to transmit for your information the attached copy of a memorandum received from the Department of Finance intimating that the Government has decided that a reduction of 5 per cent. should be made in the remuneration of the members of the Gárda Síochána. A draft order to implement this decision is in course of preparation and will be forwarded to you at an early date in accordance with Section 12 (2) of the Police Regulations Act, 1925. It will be necessary to submit this draft to the Representative Body and I am accordingly requesting that you will take the necessary steps to summon the Bodies of the Representative Council."
The result of that decision was that the Representative Body dissolved itself by disappearing, for its members resigned rather than meet the then Minister on the matter of these reductions. The Cumann na nGaedheal Government had decided in 1932 to cut all ranks of the Gárda by 5 per cent.
The Minister is again wrong.
The Minister to proceed.
This is a personal matter. I have been challenged here with having made a misstatement in the House. What I stated was perfectly right, accurate and correct. Before any reduction would take place in the pay of the Gárda it was necessary that that proposed reduction should be placed before the Representative Body and that their views be heard. The Department of Finance may have. I dare say, worded this letter unhappily. The procedure to be taken before any cut could be made was that the matter should be laid before the Representative Body, and it was simply put before the Representative Body to hear their views on it. There was no definite final decision made by the Executive Council. As a matter of fact that particular minute was scrapped by the Executive Council, and other methods of making savings in the Gárda Síochána Fund were under consideration at the date of dissolution. I said that repeatedly off public platforms all during the 1932 elections, so that there should be no misapprehension in the public mind.
I wish to support the amendment in connection with this matter of the cut in the Guards' pay, and I endorse everything that has been said by Deputy Norton. There is no question at all but that this action of the Government will be taken as a headline by all the employers in the country, with the result that every section of the community is going to feel the Government's action in the very near future.
There was a statement made by the Minister for Finance yesterday evening, which has had as far as I can gather, a very alarming effect in the ranks of the Gárda Síochana. He stated that whether we had an economic war or not it was intended that there should be a decrease in the pay of the Gárda. I do suggest to the Minister that that is a very serious statement, in view of the fact that certain definite guarantees were given to the Gárda in 1929, by the then Minister for Finance, that they had reached bedrock. Surely the time has arrived when the Guards should be told quite candidly when their position is going to be stabilised. The Minister for Finance during the year 1929 made this statement:
"The pay of the Gárda Síochána is down to bedrock. I want to be quite specific about it, and that so far as the present revision is concerned everything that the Gárdai have has been taken into account. The rates of pay, the rates at which increments were given, rents and all other allowances have been taken into account, and we are of opinion that nothing should be done to the disadvantage of any member of the Gárda Síochána financially in future."
In view of that statement, I think the Guards are entitled to feel perturbed and annoyed in connection with the position in which they now find themselves. I would ask the Minister for Finance to let us have a definite statement as to what the intentions are in so far as the stabilisation of the Gárda pay is concerned. We have had a statement made here by the Minister for Finance that immediately prior to the general election of 1932 it had been decided by the then Government that there should be a decrease in the pay of the Gárda Síochána. There is no use in the Cumann na nGaedheal Party denying that, because it was public property at the time, and was the subject of discussion on every political platform in the country. The Gárda Síochána Representative Body refused to meet in or about that time, because of the fact that the Government had signified their intention to cut the Guards' pay. I think the Minister for Finance might have gone a little further. He could have resurrected something else because statements were made at the time by men who are in the Minister's own Government now that if they got back into power they would not under any consideration cut the Gárda pay. We ought to have both sides of the situation. It certainly is a peculiar thing to hear now from the Minister that even if we had not an economic war the Gárda pay should be cut.
I think everybody will agree that the Gárda force is a credit to this country. They were formed, one might say, in the arms of a revolution. They were formed when it was very hard for anyone to do anything in so far as law and order were concerned. Those men had gone through a revolution. A great number had done their share in serving their country in the Anglo-Irish War, and they found themselves in a peculiar situation. They remained loyal to the country, and served the people well. I suggest that neither this nor the past Government gave them the consideration they deserved, or treated them properly. The Gárda had cuts of 17½ per cent. since 1924 in their basic rates. No other section of civil servants has had the same cuts, and they certainly are entitled to some declaration from some Government Minister that we have reached the time when there will be no more cuts so far as they are concerned. Along with cuts in their pay they have had a cut in their bicycle allowance, and the boot allowance has been removed altogether. They are compelled to maintain a bicycle. Up to 1928, I think, they had an allowance of £5 per year for the maintenance of that bicycle. The allowance was then cut to £2 10s. They had 1/6 per week boot allowance; that has disappeared altogether. In all other police forces, as far as we can find out, that allowance is given, and in the police forces in Northern Ireland or Great Britain it has not been reduced. There is a considerable difference in the pay of the police force here and that of the forces in Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney has gone to great pains in denying that his Government had agreed to cut the Gárda. I suggest it is only quibbling when he talks about having the matter referred to the Representative Body. He will have to admit that there was a Government decision to cut the Guards. The only conclusion we can come to, if he does not know about it, is that a letter was written by somebody in his Department about which he was not aware. If words mean anything, the words contained in the letter submitted by the Minister for Finance mean that there had been a definite decision to cut the Gárda Síochána. It was discussed upon every political platform in the country, and prominent leaders in the Fianna Fáil Party definitely stated that if they got back into power they would not cut the Gárda pay. In the light of the statement made by the Minister for Finance yesterday evening I do suggest that this is a very curious attitude for the Government to take.
Apart altogether from the minor duties of the Gárda Síochána they have been called upon in recent years to do a great deal more work than that which was allotted to them at the time of the establishment of the force. They have certain statistics to take, and that is a burden which has been placed upon them in recent years. Along with that they have been appointed as school attendance officers. All these duties take up a great deal more of their time than was contemplated when the Gárda Síochána was set up. They have to be available night and day, and I suggest that the amount of wages given to them is not sufficient, apart altogether from the question of a cut. In view of the very definite promises made by the Minister for Finance in 1929, I suggest that certain commitments were entered into by the Gárda, so far as housing and things of that kind were concerned, which will be seriously interfered with if this cut is carried into operation. I would ask the Minister to consider seriously his action in this matter, and to take the Guards out of the proposals which he has here for economy. The Gárda seem to be nobody's children. They have been attacked now by both sides. I suggest that some of the speeches made by the Cumann na nGaedheal Party here are mere hypocrisy, when we know quite well that immediately prior to their going out of office they were contemplating a cut of twice the amount contemplated here.
The Minister for Finance last night assured the House, as the first important matter to be dealt with, that this reduction of salaries was not a matter of settled Government policy. I wonder will he repeat that, having before his mind's eye the posters that used to be flaunted on all the hoardings with regard to the excessive salaries paid for certain posts—posters that I am sure Deputy Corry would whoop over at present. As far as Deputy Corry can be regarded as an ingredient of any settled policy in any Party, he is in favour of hacking these excessive salaries. The Minister, however, told us that this is not settled policy. It used to be settled policy, but with a difference. I believe that last night a statement was read in the House made by the President in Rathmines in February, 1932, saying that salaries between £300 and £400 were not excessive. He added to that on other occasions. He said they were barely sufficient for the maintenance of families in what was described as decent comfort; in what was supposed to be according to the Christian ideal. It is not settled policy to cut salaries, according to the Minister. Why then is this cut taking place?
First of all, right through the debate, there was the atmosphere that it has something to do with the economic war. Secondly, we had it introduced, I think, as a matter of principle for the first time, that the cut stands or falls with the cost of living. It is very good that on this day when we have later to debate civil servants' deductions the Minister should have introduced this principle of the cost of living and whether or not there is a sliding scale in salaries to correspond with the cost of living. We shall have to remember at a later period of the evening what has been said with regard to the Civic Guards. There was the Minister's statement made to-day with a clarity that cannot be denied with regard to this proposed cut in the pay of the Civic Guards—that the cost of living has something to do with it; that these salaries were fixed at a certain point bearing relation to the cost of living when it stood above a certain figure; and that it is equitable to cut them now because the cost of living has dropped. We shall see later how that will apply to civil servants whose salaries have dropped according to the cost of living and who, nevertheless, are being further cut under this Bill.
The phrase which the Minister read out is illuminating. It was not intended, according to the memo, the Minister read, to have these salaries suffer a fall or be increased according to any "temporary or trifling" decrease or increase in the cost of living. Does the Minister believe that the present decrease in the cost of living is a permanent thing? Does he not know that it has been brought about by the fact that we are living on the slaughter of a certain amount of the goods of bankrupt farmers, on the sale of bankrupt stock, and that when that bankrupt stock is exhausted—and it soon will be—we are not likely to have the cost-of-living figure at the same point at which it is at present? We are getting a slight temporary advantage to the permanent disadvantage of the country because of the destruction of the capital assets upon which farmers trade. Is the Minister going to base any case for a reduction upon a cost-of-living fall which occurs under such circumstances? Let him read again the memorandum and he will see that it has relation to a proper, permanent, and what could be regarded as a stable decrease in the cost of living of the community.
There has been comment about a decision of what has been called the Cumann na nGaedheal Government to cut these salaries. Let it be said here that the Executive Council of the day had made up its mind at one stage that they were certainly going to explore the avenue of cutting Civic Guards' salaries, and had taken a preliminary decision in order to get the matter brought before the Representative Body. They had also taken a decision that they would appoint a special sub-committee of the Cabinet to investigate means and methods of securing savings on certain services without touching salaries. But they did give an indication in advance, because money had to be got hurriedly if the Budget was to be balanced, that failing other methods there would be an attack upon salaries. As Deputy Corish says, we went before the public with the odium of that upon us.
The Deputy's audacity is amazing.
Deputy Corish said that that was promulgated from many platforms. So it was—it was promulgated as if it were a definite, serious decision and was let go as such.
It was.
Let us say it was in fact a definite decision, and let us consider the circumstances. The Minister last night was very vehement about the will of the people. The will of the people was certainly not expressed in favour of the Minister on the point of cutting the Gárda salaries, specifically put before the people and specifically voted upon by them. It was not—far from it. At that time, when these cuts were under consideration, that famous economist, Deputy Briscoe, went down to Townsend Street and stated that "because Fianna Fáil had opposed the Government attitude on the question of the Guards' reduction it had not been enforced." I do not know if Deputy Briscoe can be accounted as a leader even of Fianna Fáil public opinion, but, for what it is worth, he said that. On the 24th January this year, and the date is important in relation to the declaration of the general election, the present Minister for Industry and Commerce referred in the South of Ireland to the reductions in teachers' salaries and the pay of the Gárda. He said: "There were 100 avenues in which economies could be effected without inflicting hardship on anybody. Reduction of the Gárda remuneration was unwise, because it was obviously desirable in any country that they should have guardians of law and order who were adequately remunerated; and it was unfair because there were 101 other ways in which the amount to be secured by the reduction could be obtained without imposing hardship." That is a definite statement from the Minister that he thought the reduction in the pay of the Gárda was the imposition of a hardship, and that he felt that that was not merely unwise but unfair, because there were many other avenues from which these moneys could be secured.
The Minister's mind runs in hundreds. He had factories in hundreds when he talked about them. He had avenues of economies in hundreds when he wanted to prevent the people thinking during the election this year that Fianna Fáil had in mind the imposition of any cut upon the Gárda. Is that the way the will of the people is secured? Is that the way in which the assent of the populace was secured to what is proposed in this Bill? There were one hundred and one other ways in which the amount to be secured by the reduction could be obtained without imposing hardship! That is the way the Minister's group faced the electorate. It is on statements like that they now say they have the will of the people behind them in this measure. I do not think that we took decisions in this matter anything like what was stated on public platforms, but we had the public odium of being associated with these proposals and suffered for it.
Quite true.
The Minister did not go before the electorate with that proposed sin upon him. He did that. All the Ministers knew that there was talk of economies. They knew that there was a definite feeling abroad through the community that the State could not carry on with its old expenditure, that there were going to be savings. They were not content this time with the vague phrases of the old manifesto about the two millions of economies which could be secured without imposing hardships upon anyone. The Minister for Industry and Commerce went to the country and picked out specially the reductions in the pay of the Gárda and in the pay of the teachers and said they were unwise, and, secondly, that they were unfair because there were so many other ways in which money could be got. There is another circumstance we have got to take into consideration. The Minister said yesterday that unless we were going to increase the tax on sugar, tea and tobacco or reduce the amount paid in relief of unemployment, this money has got to be found. The money that we are dealing with at the moment is a sum of £33,000. We have had in the last fortnight a measure passed through this House imposing an extra burden on the community of about £76,000, and for the benefit of whom? For people who in the past broke the law and tried to break order in this country when the Guards whose salaries are now being cut were trying to preserve law and keep order in the country.
The Minister at certain stages is indifferent to the taxation that may have to be imposed. He can put this burden of an extra £76,000 on the country reckless of where it is to be found when he is thinking of the political advantage to be gained by paying these moneys and not ashamed of the people to whom these moneys are to be paid or ashamed of the actions which are now going to be remunerated under the guise of compensation for property alleged to have been destroyed. It is a crime to have that money paid under any circumstances, but especially in the circumstances of object poverty which the Minister revealed last night. He admitted that even after borrowing, of a doubtful sort, we still cannot balance our Budget unless we impose extra taxation this year, and even that extra taxation will not carry us through unless we get this £33,000 from the Guards. We are going to cut the guardians of the law by £33,000 in order to distribute twice as much to the disturbers of law and order. We are told in these circumstances that it is an equitable cut and one that should be borne with equanimity by the members of the police forces, one that will not cause any hardship although when the Minister for Industry and Commerce was facing an election he did not say that openly. In fact, he said the opposite. He implied that the cuts were hardships, that the cuts proposed in the Guards' pay were unfair because there were one hundred and one other avenues by which this money could be met. Where are the one hundred and one other avenues? When Deputy Anthony last night referred to the £2,000,000 economies, the phrase used by the Minister about it was that it was a slimy hypocrisy. It is good to get that phrase as a label for the advertisement which the Minister was responsible for issuing, and if there is any hypocrisy, slimy or otherwise, attaching to it, it is the Minister's Party which is tinged with it. It is the people who were foolish enough to believe in that advertisement who are going to suffer, the people who believed they were going to be better off if the Government got into office. This advertisement has been quoted frequently and it will be quoted continually until the people reading it attach more importance to it than those who issued it apparently thought they would. There were £2,000,000 economies to be made without imposing hardships on anybody, without interfering with any class of State servants and without impairing the social services. Deputy Cooney, another of the noted economists of the Party, was going to save £2,000,000 on the Army on one occasion. If we had that now we could increase the Guards' pay.
When? Quote the statement.
I shall give the Deputy the exact phrase, but I shall hold over the date until a later stage for the purpose of reading this glorious promise once more. "Our administrative programme" said Deputy Cooney, "included the saving of £2,000,000 on the Army and £500,000 saving on the Civic Guards. The other savings that could be effected——
The dates.
——on overpaid Departments would be put into productive industry."
Quote that with the date.
I have not got the date here, but I shall get the date. The Deputy does not think I am extemporising this quotation. "We have come to the conclusion that we can solve the unemployment problem in 12 months." That is a pretty tabloid of an election speech.
To quote speeches made at the last election or at the previous election is not in order on a particular amendment on the Committee Stage.
At the time I did not anticipate such opposition to our economic programme as we have received from Cumann na nGaedheal. "We will refuse to assist the Government in solving the unemployment problem." So said your colleague last night.
On an amendment relating to the Civic Guards it is surely in order to show what a Deputy said in regard to half a million saving on the Guards.
The Deputy has quoted half a million on the Guards, and £2,000,000 on the Army. Tapping the Bill with his hand does not bring the matter into order, nor does an occasional reference to the Bill or to the section of it now under consideration.
The Minister speaking last night referred to the whole Budget situation.
If the Minister last night strayed from the paths of order, the example should not be followed to-day. I do not know whether he so erred or not.
There has been a practice in this House, which may be abandoned now, that if a Minister in defence of a particular resolution makes reference to a particular matter that has to be countered.
It has been twice countered already during the afternoon. Considerable latitude has been given.
I have here a report of the Minister's speech last night running into some 40 or 50 lines and not more than four lines referred to the Civic Guards as such. The rest dealt with the general financial position, into which he fitted the special matter of the Civic Guards. I think it is only proper that some counter should be made to that speech, and that even considerable latitude in countering the statements of the Minister should be allowed.
The Deputy said he was replying to the Minister. But he then started quoting from Deputy Cooney's election speeches and from election posters.
On the Civic Guards.
Of which I have challenged the accuracy.
I think the only accuracy that was challenged was the date and that will have to be given later. I think I am permitted to say this, that Deputy Cooney did say on one occasion that there was half-a-million saving to be made on the Civic Guard. Now let us have that. Let me quote a higher authority. Speaking at Ennis in 1931, President de Valera said: "The police, a lot of whose work was of a political character at present, could be reduced and another half-a-million saved." I feel that Deputy Cooney at some time or other had been sitting at the feet of his Leader, because he had mentioned the very same amount. There, at any rate, is the promise, twice given, to save half-a-million pounds, and that saving was to be made not by interfering with the salaries of people who were to be retained in the force to do work which presumably had to be done, but by cutting out the political character of the work. Half-a-million pounds was the saving estimated then.
Could Deputy McGilligan say what was the cost of the Army at the time that Deputy Cooney said he could effect a saving of £2,000,000?
I happened to look up that and I found that it was less than £2,000,000.
The Deputy does not know the date of the statement?
I do, but I have not got it here. I am very glad the point of the date was raised. It will have to be put before the House specifically on some appropriate occasion later on. The Minister has talked about increased taxation. If we do not cut the pay of the Guards, we could not cut the pay of anybody was the logic of his argument and if we did not cut the pay of anybody, as proposed under this Bill and must get £280,000 then we would have to tax tea, sugar and tobacco.
Tea or sugar or tobacco.
There are commas here. He said we would have to find an additional £277,000 by putting additional taxation on tea, sugar and tobacco and he went on to say that this would be additional taxation upon those who could least afford to pay it. Does not that raise the whole question about the moneys that were going to be saved? Again I get back to what Deputy Corish said about the Cumann na nGaedheal Party. If we approached a decision or if even we took a decision to cut the pay of the Civic Guards we did so without telling the people that we believed there were £2,000,000 to be saved elsewhere on the Estimates for the public service. We did whatever we did prior to a general election; it was promulgated widely; indeed, as Deputy Corish said, it was shouted from a thousand platforms. The Minister for Finance went to the elections with the Minister for Industry and Commerce saying that these cuts were unwise and unfair and saying in relation to these cuts that there were 101 avenues in which the moneys could be secured otherwise than by pay reductions and that there was a sum of £2,000,000 to be saved in the Estimates for Public Services.
Has the Minister yet come to the point where he can confess that there is no £2,000,000 to be saved? To some degree he meets the situation upon this Bill if he says that; whether he meets the situation of his Party in the country is another matter. The Minister, in his speech last night, did state that there was no other way to carry on except on the alternatives he mentioned, so that clearly we are not getting the economies promised in these hundreds of other ways. We were to have a saving of £2,000,000. The Minister is not yet prepared to say that the promise of that saving of £2,000,000 was the greatest nonsense. Whether he believed then that such a saving could be made or not, it would now suffice to learn that with his present experience and wisdom he realises that £2,000,000 cannot be got. If the Minister says that, he will have closed one avenue of reproach.
We will take it off at the next election.
Take it off what?
Mr. Kelly
The £2,000,000.
He means he will take it off the six and a half millions.
Or perhaps he means he will take it off the election posters, which will be something.
Mr. Kelly
It is a good job it has penetrated at last. That is what I meant.
Then, if I may suggest to the Minister, Deputy Kelly ought to be carefully watched. He has already given us an indication of one successful election tactic— personation. He shows us his Party's programme and his Party's conscience on that, and by his last statement, I presume, he is also giving us his Party's conscience on the two million.
Mr. Kelly
We have no conscience. Did anyone ever hear the like of such talk in their lives?
Again I commend the remark of the Deputy for its frankness. I wish the President was here, and not in Rome, to note the scorn the Deputy put into that remark: "Did anyone ever hear the like of that"—conscience——
Mr. Kelly
They have consciences over there which enable them to do anything they like.
They have no consciences, they have merely remorse.
I should hope that hereafter more latitude will be allowed the Deputy because of the decided improvement in frankness achieved after the latitude now given. And yet everybody knows that what Deputy Kelly and Deputy Corry say is not going to count. It is the wise heads of the Party that hand out the proper stuff and Deputy Kelly, by innuendo, has very accurately described, the stuff to give the fools to make them vote. The Minister last night became almost hysterical between his anger and his emotion over the unfortunate Civic Guard. Over that he almost wrung out his little heart. But he had to steel himself against the kindly thought— the only thing that mattered was the deplorable state of the country and how the country had got into that deplorable state. I do not know how far we will be allowed to go into that although it was touched upon in the speech by the Minister. Let the Minister say, not to his colleagues on the Back Benches, but here now that there was no meaning in the old promises of economy, that it was the merest hypocrisy when the Minister for Industry and Commerce said that there were a hundred and one other ways in which the money could be got and that it was all hypocrisy to talk about the hardship of interfering with the Guards by this cut. If the comparison is made between what the two Governments did, let all the circumstances be taken into consideration. We had a conscience in this matter and we did not believe that two millions could be cut off the Estimates and saved. We said we would explore the various avenues and all the approaches to economy and decide as between these. We even said that if the money could not be got in other suggested ways there would have to be some approach to a cut in the emoluments of the Civic Guards but it would have been done frankly by people who felt that taxation could not be further imposed upon the people and who did not believe that such economies could be made in other ways.
The Minister has made one advance. He has shown a recognition in regard to that type of direct taxation in which his heart most delighted—that neither in the matter of income tax nor property tax is anything more to be wrung out of the country. It is now consequently a question of "all hands to the pumps." The boat is rocking and is nearly sunk, and now you call upon the Civic Guards who, in the past, did so much to stop the sabotage of the country—a sabotage that was never so successfully attempted in the old days as in the past few months, and attempted by the man put into power two years ago.
It occurred to me, having listened to the debate that took place on amendment 27, that it might be for the convenience of the House if amendment 29 were taken into consideration at the same time.
This Bill differentiates between members of the Gárda Síochána and superintendents and other ranks, sometimes erroneously called commissioned ranks. It was my intention to suggest that amendments 27, 28, 29, 103 and 105 be taken altogether.
Whatever suits the Ceann Comhairle will be convenient to me, but having listened to the debate it occurred to me that the arguments were addressed to amendments 28 and 29 rather than to 27. I thought it might be best to have them considered together. However, if the Chair is prepared to have another discussion, I am prepared to postpone my amendment.
If Deputies wish, amendments 23, 27, 28, 29, 102, 103 and 105 may all be taken together. They deal with the Gárda Síochána, whether ordinary members, superintendents or other officers.
Was it not stated from the Chair that the division would be taken on No. 27?
Yes, but that decision could cover all the others if the House so desires. I suggested that divisions might be taken on amendments 27 and 103.
Perhaps I had better postpone my remarks until we come to consider amendments 28 and 29.
Might I point out that in connection with Part II of the Schedule the amendment covers both the members of the Gárda and the inspectors and the superintendents. I think the right of division in regard to various amendments should be preserved.
There may be a division on amendments 104 and 106.
Perhaps it will suit the convenience of the House if I make such observations as I intend to make when we come to amendments 28 and 29.
I shall take the division on amendment 27 to decide amendments 23, 27 and 102.
With great respect, I submit that if the contention I propose to put to the Minister were rejected it would save a great deal of time if, after my observations and whatever other observations may follow, two separate divisions were taken. I imagine that those who have spoken to amendment 27 will not have much to add to amendments 28 and 29.
Of course I cannot refuse to hear Deputies if they claim the right the speak, nor can I curtail speeches.
I merely throw out the suggestion for the approval of the House.
I suggest that there should be the one discussion, but if Deputies desire to divide on any particular amendment they should be given facilities to do so. The question might be put: "That the words proposed to be deleted, stand."
I am in the hands of the House in this matter.
If the question is put: "That the words proposed to be deleted, stand," it would, I suggest, be impossible to put my amendment to the House. That difficulty presents itself. My suggestion is made merely for the consideration of the Chair and the House.
I suggest if that amendment is put to the House those who want to change it in any respect will have to vote against it. If the House decides against the question: "That the words proposed to be deleted, stand," then there is an opportunity of putting Deputy Dillon's amendment.
I am quite prepared to address the House now on amendments 28 and 29 and to take a decision, so far as my amendment is concerned, in the division that will ensue.
Very well.
My amendment is directed to exclude from the operation of this proposed salary reduction sergeants and Gárda who would otherwise come within the scope of its operation. I have listened to a protracted debate here to-day on an amendment over the names of Deputy Norton, Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney and Deputy Anthony. I have noticed that throughout it all the case has been based upon the effect the proposed reductions would have on those ranks of the Gárda. I cannot help saying that the position of Cumann na nGaedheal, in protesting against this reduction in the pay of the Guards, seems to me a little odd when it is well known that their purpose in the beginning of 1932 was to impose reductions on the Civic Guards as great or greater than those now proposed. It also strikes me as odd that the Labour Party should get so exercised because the immediate cause of the proposal to impose these cuts is the condition to which the country has been reduced as a result of the economic war.
The Minister does not say that.
We say it.
Of course you are infallible.
I did not think the Labour Party would enjoy this. I am not saying it for the purpose of securing enjoyment at all. When the whole question of the economic war was under discussion here I remember that the members of the Labour Party used to out-Demosthenes Demosthenes in exhorting President de Valera to stand over our rights and to defend the people against foreign aggression. They assured him again and again that when the fight was hottest they would be in the van. Some people from these benches ventured to point out to the President and the Government that if they proceeded along the lines they were then pursuing they would involve the inhabitants of the country in unnecessary and bitter suffering, and that in due time they would create a situation in which every section of the community would be suffering and suffering bitterly. Last night the Minister said that he was compelled to make these proposals as a result of the conditions in the country at the moment. Whatever condition the country is in at the present time it is the result of Fianna Fáil policy. They may be able to offer ample justification for that according to their lights, but they are responsible to the country and it is their responsibility to extract the country from its difficulties.
So far as we are concerned on these benches, though we deplore their policy and believe it to be profoundly misguided, in anything they do for the purpose of relieving the intolerable burden that is piling up upon the shoulders of the agricultural community we will help them. We will help them in anything they do to relieve the appalling situation which has developed. If they will settle the economic war, if they will reduce the number of officials, if they will reduce the extent of taxation, we will do anything to help them. In anything they propose to do by way of relieving unemployment and increasing revenue we are prepared to help them, provided it is consistent with the public welfare.
When we come to the proposals to relieve the situation by reducing the salaries of the sergeants and members of the Gárda Síochána very special considerations arise. The first of these was mentioned last night. These men have no votes. These men have no responsibility, direct or indirect, for the situation that has been created. Further we must bear in mind that in the past these men have made substantial contributions to the general reduction of taxation. Deputy Corish enumerated to-day the contributions they have made in the past. When we come down to the 50/- a week level we have got to realise that we are in an entirely different sphere from that in which salaries of £300 to £400 a year obtained. When you are undertaking a matter of this kind you have to ask yourself this question:—"Does the economy which we propose to effect by this reduction outweigh all the possible disadvantages of making the reductions?" It has been suggested here, and I think irresponsibly suggested, that this reduction in pay would result in the destruction of the loyalty of the Gárda. I was glad to hear Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney scotching that suggestion. I was glad to hear him saying that such a suggestion was unworthy and unthinkable, and that he, from his knowledge of these men, was sure that this cut would not result in any thoughts even of disloyalty, that they were men who would always recognise their duty to the State regardless of such things, and that they would do that duty. Personally I entirely subscribe to that. I do not think that that is a consideration that should enter at all into our calculations, except in this way, that when you have a body of men who you know will not let you down, you ought not to take advantage of them.
Every Deputy in this House can say: "We know perfectly well that these men will continue to do their duty; that these are men who have so high a sense of duty to the State, we know they will protect the commonweal." But you have no right to trade on that and you ought to ask yourselves the question: "Suppose these men would betray their trust because of this cut would we go on with it now?" If you make up your mind that you would not go on with it in that event you ought not trade on their loyalty when you know they are men who would not betray their trust.
I see a danger of this evil—suppose we reduce the basic rates of pay of the men, sergeants and Guards, it means that the 50/- a week for the new recruit is going to be reduced. At the moment no recruiting is going on in the Gárda because it is not necessary. I hope the Government will not have reason to change their minds before long in that respect. But recruiting for the Gárda will begin some time and this House should bear in mind that the duties the Gárda have to discharge are exceptionally delicate. They are very difficult duties. The skill with which the Gárda discharge those duties affects the liberties of every individual in this State. I do not wish to make invidious references but there are countries where the police force turns the lives of the ordinary citizens into something approximating to misery.
One of them is a Republic.
The country which I have in mind is a republic, but I am not going to be dragged any further into identification of that republic. It is only when you live under these conditions that you realise what an enormously important thing it is to have the right kind of men in the Gárda. I want to maintain the rate of pay for the Gárda which will mean that the Government will always have the very pick of the young men of the country from which to choose.
Ah, sure there is no crime in this country at all.
The Deputy is like the ostrich.
If that was all he was I would not mind. I am afraid that if we reduce the pay of the Gárda the effect on the country will be very bad. Let us not look at it from the point of view of the Gárda at all, but from the point of view of the ordinary citizen, and from the point of view of the Government itself. If we reduce the basic rates of the men and sergeants of the Gárda further than they have already been reduced, a situation will arise in which the type of men that we want in the Gárda will not be available when we come to look for them to fill up any depleted ranks. When I speak of the pay of the Gárda I ask you to keep in mind the reduction in their allowances referred to by Deputy Corish. That is a consideration which swings my colleagues and myself to the view that whatever economy would be effected by these reductions would be more than outweighed by the effect it would have on the personnel available to the Minister for recruiting for whatever vacancies there may be in the ranks. I think there is an alternative to this proposal. We have got the right type of man in the Gárda, and the only trouble I find is that the rank and file have not got enough work to do in rural stations. If times were normal, and if there was not a kind of implied approval given to activities that should not be allowed to go on at all——
What are those activities?
I will discuss that with the Deputy on another occasion.
Why not discuss it now?
What I would like to see is this: The Gárda are being held out to people as nothing but watch-dogs on them. I would like to see their duties considerably extended, and I would like to see them provide for the people facilities that are now being provided by inspectors and officials of other Departments. My purpose is to show the reason why I desire to except the Gárda and sergeants from the operations of this Bill. At the same time, I am putting to the Minister various considerations which should influence his mind: (1) that it is an undesirable thing to cut their pay; and (2) that by adopting a different attitude towards these people he would accomplish the very thing he desires to accomplish now by reducing their pay. There are a number of cases in which the country people have to make applications to the Department of Agriculture or some other Department of Government or to some section of a county council or board of health, where officials have to be kept on and maintained for their convenience in making these applications. It would be too tedious now to deal seriatim with these cases. But I would be glad to place a memorandum in the hands of the Minister referring to them. It is my suggestion that if these duties were turned over to the Gárda in the country stations all through the country it would have the double effect of providing the economies that the Minister is looking for; and secondly, it would materially alter the relations between the people and the Gárda.
A Deputy
Why not submit the details of this memorandum now?
I will probably have occasion to deal with it on the Estimates of the Minister for Justice. I spoke about the relations between the people and the Gárda. These relations are already good, but I would like to drive home to the minds of the people still further that the Gárda are there, first, as their friends and not altogether as their custodians; that they are there to protect the rights and interests of the people all along the line, and to be friends with them in every difficulty in which they can be of assistance to them. Those are three separate considerations which I would ask the Minister to bear in mind. It is idle for Cumann na nGaedheal to deny that they were about to cut the Guards' salaries if they were returned to office in 1932. It is idle for Fianna Fáil to deny that a large part of their campaign in 1932 was based upon the contention that whatever Cumann na nGaedheal was going to do with the Guards they would not do it.
Do not forget the Labour Party.
My recollection is that the Labour Party was particularly concerned with kissing the feet of Fianna Fáil up and down the country.
What was their attitude to the Gárda?
For the moment I have forgotten, but I am sure it was the Fianna Fáil attitude. In this particular case Fianna Fáil is still beating the drum, and the Labour Party is kissing their feet.
And you are playing the tin whistle.
The Centre Party kisses them occasionally.
At least I am trying to make a case to save those men from the operation of this Bill, and, unlike some of my neighbours, I am not doing my stuff for the sake of doing it. I am putting a case to the Minister for a compromise, for some concession towards these men, in the light of what he himself and his Party said from public platforms, in the light of the present situation and the situation he may have to face in the near future when he wants new recruits. It is a gesture he could make to men whose general scale of pay is on the low side. It is a gesture which, I believe, would do a great deal to get over the legitimate objections of this force to the Bill as it at present stands. I believe it is a gesture which would be welcomed by every section of the community as a just move, and as a fair recognition that these cuts represent a real hardship.
In this connection I want to say one word, and it is particularly for the cars of the Labour Party, that while these economies are a hardship, they are nothing compared with the hardships which the people in the country are suffering through the reduction in their income. I think it is well that the Labour Party should realise that if the present situation continues for another 12 months, the sacrifices called for in this Bill are nothing to the sacrifices that will have to be made in 12 months' time. I think the Minister for Finance realises that himself. He has this year added £6,000,000 to the national expenditure. He has admitted in the course of this discussion that income tax is drying up; we can get no more out of it. There is no other source of income available. Any further retrenchment must be by drastic economy. He has examined the whole situation, and he can find no avenue whereby he can raise the two millions that, I am sure, he honesty believed he could raise before he came into office. Let the Labour Party realise that if the present Fianna Fáil policy is to continue, we are going to ask those men, as well as every other public servant in the State, and every individual who goes to make up the State, to bear infinitely greater sacrifices than they are being asked to make now.
There is no use waiting for that situation to develop to start looking for a remedy. I think the Minister ought to tell the people of the country frankly that the year for sacrifices is at hand, and that it will be a steadily growing sacrifice if we are to pursue constantly and to the end the policy to which the country is at present committed. We ought to face that, and in that knowledge to examine the contents of this Bill. That is what we are trying to do, to face the facts and to contemplate the proposed legislation in the knowledge of those facts. At the same time I think it is the duty of the Minister for Finance now to warn the people of the country as to what the future holds, and to tell them frankly that these proposals are a mere overture to the grand opera that will be played this time 12 months.
I have listened with a great deal of attention to what Deputy Dillon has said. It seems to me that if the Deputy and the members of his Party who are associated with him in putting down amendment 29 were aware of the facts with regard to the Guards' remuneration they, on behalf of the farmers of the country, would not have allowed this amendment to appear upon the Order Paper. It seems that the whole of the plea which Deputy Dillon made for a concession and a compromise was based on the presumption that the great majority of the Gárda are paid at the rate of 50/- a week.
No, no.
Or at some figure which would approximate to that, or be in its neighbourhood at any rate. The fact is that the only person who could be paid at the rate of 50/- a week would be a boy coming up from the country to the Depot, as a raw recruit, and he would be paid that only during the period he is being trained in the Depot. The moment he is attached to a station his pay is increased to 60/- a week. The position in fact is that at the present moment there is not a single person attached to the Gárda who is in receipt of as low a remuneration as 50/- a week, and there has not been for a considerable period, not at any rate since recruiting has stopped.
I think the true position in regard to the Gárda pay should be put before the House. There are altogether 5,585 men in what I shall describe as the non-commissioned section of the Guards. Of those, 3,793—over three-fifths—are in receipts of exclusive pay, without taking allowances into consideration, ranging from 75/- to 83/- a week, or £195 to over £215 per year. Some of them are married, and in that case they have an additional allowance of £20, so that over three-fifths of the members of the Gárda Síochána have salaries ranging from £195 to £235 a year. From the salaries of the unmarried members of the Gárda, who are provided with barrack quarters, who have all the advantages that arise from living in community, this Bill proposes to deduct £6 10/- a year. From those who are married—this 3,700 who have incomes of from £215 to £235 a year—the Bill proposes to deduct nothing. I would ask Deputy Dillon is there any room for a concession in regard to those men? After all we have heard as to conditions which prevail in the country, is there any member of the Farmers' Party who could, on its merits, defend the proposal to forego reducing by £6 10/- the salary of an unmarried Gárda who at present receives £195 a year. Of the balance, 1,454 had, nine months ago, from 66/- to 75/- per week; 329 had from 60/- to 64/- per week. I doubt if at present any more than a handful of men have less than 64/- per week, or £166 per year. That is the worst case in the ranks of the Gárda. Again, I ask could a man in receipt of £166 per year not forgo £6 10/- of that to help the people in the present crisis, no matter from what causes it arises: whether it be due to the economic war or to the financial depression which is world-wide? Can any person, who is here to do his duty to the people who sent him here ostensibly as a member of a Party which stands for economy in the public service, say that we are asking a man in receipt of £166 a year to suffer undue hardship—a single man with the particular advantages that he has in the Gárda—by asking him to forego £6 10/- per year? If he is a married man, in the same grade, with the same length of service, his pay with the rent allowance will be £186. We are not asking him to contribute anything.
Again, I ask, in view of the figures I have given, is there any room for any further concession? The Government have already made substantial concessions in this matter. The House when voting on this amendment cannot allow its mind to drift away from the letter which I read earlier in the debate, a letter which, no matter how members of the late Cumann na nGaedheal Government may attempt to gloss it over, definitely set out the official decision on the last Government to cut all ranks of the Gárda by five per cent. It is quite true that we are cutting them, but our cut is going to be very much lighter than the cut which would have been imposed under the Budget of 1932, even when there was no economic dispute with Great Britain; imposed for exactly the same purpose as we are imposing this cut, in order to enable us to balance the Budget, a Budget which undoubtedly has been increased by the frank recognition on the part of the Government that it has certain duties to the citizens.
Deputy McGilligan stated that the late Government had considered whether they would cut the pay and allowances of the Gárda Síochána or not, and they had, he said, come to a tentative decision. The Deputy knows as well as I do that that was not a tentative decision, that that was a firm decision. The Gárda Síochána knew it was a firm decision and in order to put every impediment in the way of the Government at that date the Gárda Síochána Representative Body dissolved itself. Every member of it sent in his resignation and the only reconsideration that the late Government were giving to this question was how they were going to impose the five per cent. cut. Deputy McGilligan said that it was not only by reducing salaries that the late Government were going to balance the Budget; that they had set up what he euphemistically described as an Economies Committee. He did not tell the Dáil and the country what else the Cumann na nGaedheal Government were going to cut as well as the pay of the Gárda Síochána and the Army and the salaries of the national teachers. He did not tell them that they decided to cut old-age pensions; that they were going to make further reductions in the social services; that the grants for building were going to be stopped; that there was going to be no more constructive work undertaken.
On a point of order. Are these tissues of misstatements, which the Minister is now making, in order? Have they any reference to this discussion?
I have no evidence whether they are misstatements or not, but they certainly are not in order on the amendment we are discussing.
It arises in this way: Deputy Dillon asked me whether we were not prepared to make some concession with regard to the Gárda Síochána. I am endeavouring to show to him that in this Bill the Government has made the last possible concession to any branch of the public service.
That cannot include discussing what the Cumann na nGaedheal Government were going to do with building grants and the Army.
I was merely pointing out that, as Deputy McGilligan himself admitted, apart altogether from the reductions which they were going to make in the pay of public servants, the last Administration proposed to make other economies which would enable them to balance the Budget. We have been challenged with the fact that we have increased public expenditure. We have increased public expenditure, and we have increased it for the one and only reason that we are determined, as far as we can, that those who are in want and who are hungry will have some provision made for them somehow. It is in frank recognition of that, that we have to increase taxation. In order that this relief should be extended to those who are suffering amongst us, we find that we have exhausted the resources of taxation and that we have to meet the deficit in some other way. It is arising out of that, that we have determined to make the economies for which this Bill provides. As I said, this Bill represents the last concession that can be made. If we had come into office some six months later than we did, we should have found the pay of the Gárda Síochána reduced by 5 per cent. We propose to make a reduction which, on the average, works out at 2 per cent.—a very big concession; the last possible concession that can be made. I ask those who are asking for further concession now to ask any farmer or any shopkeeper whether, on the average, any one of the voters who sent us to the Dáil is in receipt of a sure and certain income ranging from £166 to £235?
Who and what brought the farmers to that condition?
It does not matter what brought them to that condition. We have to ask ourselves whether any of those in whose name we will vote to-day are in the fortunate position of the single young man in the Civic Guards, of not more than, say, 24 years of age, without chick or child dependent on him, as far as we know, without having to pay for any lodgings, living in community and getting his groceries and personal attendance much cheaper than he would get them if he had to live in lodgings, and drawing £166 a year. We are supposed to have no conscience, but will those who have a conscience ask themselves this question: Is there any one who will say with a clear conscience that the man who has £166 a year cannot suffer a reduction of £6 10/-?
Since I came into the House, in 1923, I have heard, on many occasions, from every quarter of the House, very liberal and generous tributes to the Gárda Síochána. If not previously, certainly now, the Gárda Síochána ought to look upon compliments of that kind with suspicion. The compliments that were so fulsomely paid on various occasions to the Civic Guards are quite inconsistent with the treatment meted out to them by successive Governments in this country. The record of the treatment meted out to the members of the police forces in this country by successive Governments is marked by a series of broken promises. I noted with interest when the Minister for Finance was speaking a moment ago, that when he spoke about having come to the limit of concession, he did not indicate whether or not the time has now arrived when the limit of sacrifice on the part of the Guards had been reached. It has been said frequently, and I do not think it is any harm to emphasise it again, that a contented and satisfied police force is a very good insurance for this or any other country. It is not desirable to talk about police forces in other countries, but now and again one reads and hears of ugly stories connected with abuses in the administration of police forces, that arise for one reason or another. I think that the Guards might very well beware now of the treatment that they may expect in the future, in face of the definite promises that were made in 1929, that the very last word in the very last act in worsening their conditions and disimproviding their rights of pay had been spoken. They find themselves being faced with further reductions now.
I should like to look on this matter in a different light to that in which the Minister for Finance has just asked us to examine it. I believe that the sum involved in the proposed reduction is £33,000. Having regard to the paramount consideration, the necessity for having a contented, satisfied and, consequently, an enthusiastic and energetic police force — because human nature must be the same in every service in this or in any other country— does the Minister think it worth while to search amongst the ranks of the Gárda for what is really in the end a very small sum? If he does, is he satisfied that even in that particular service some other of the avenues that have been referred to in another connection here, might not be explored with a view to seeking certain reductions? There must have been within the last 12 or 15 months a fairly considerable wastage in the Guards. It is inevitable in any service that you will have a number of deaths, a number of men discharged as medically unfit, a number of men leaving for one reason or another. There is no indication as to what difference that has made financially in the cost of maintaining the force.
Again, there is no indication from the Minister that the cuts proposed are temporary. I hope I am not unfair to him in that. In any case, it is the experience of some of us who have been in the House for a considerable time that wherever temporary economies were sought, as in the case of the national teachers in 1924, that what were called temporary reductions and temporary sacrifices turned out to be permanent reductions. I consider it disgraceful in view of the assurance of the Minister for Finance in 1929, that the new Government has again broken faith with the police force in the country, particularly in view of the promises made during the last election. The Minister for Industry and Commerce was mentioned in that connection, but I have a recollection of several other pronouncements of a similar nature from which quotations could be made, pronouncements of even a more binding character. They got all the political kudos that could be got out of statements of that kind and the police forces, who thought it might be expected that public representatives who aspired to the Government of the country, would be men with some sense of public honour, found that the promises were just so many empty words without any meaning whatever and without any desire on the part of the people who made them to honour them.
I hope that even yet, at the very last moment, the Minister for Finance will see that there is a much bigger principle involved in this matter than the principle that he stressed when he talked about the limit of concession. There is a question involved of keeping faith with men who have been asked to bear several reductions already. It is in that light the House ought to decide this amendment, failing a realisation by the Minister that even yet this matter should be viewed in the light in which a Government prepared to honour its obligations ought to view it.
I rise to support the amendment of Deputy Dillon. I confess quite candidly that it is with very great reluctance indeed I support any amendment which tends to reduce the amount of the economies intended to be effected by this Bill. I should not support this amendment were it not for the peculiar circumstances at present existing in this country affecting the maintenance of ordered conditions in this State. I have the impression that what is now being proposed taken in conjunction with what has already occurred is trying the Civic Guards too highly. The Minister cannot deny that these proposals have created great discontent amongst the Civic Guards. I do not for a moment cast any doubt upon their loyalty to their duties but these proposals have created great discontent and discouragement and there is already far too much happening to cause discontent and discouragement in the ranks of the Civic Guards. One might refer to administrative actions taken by the Government in connection with various officers of the Civic Guards which it is impossible to feel had other than a bad effect on the force. But as somewhat more important, one must refer to the fact that powerful organisations are in existence and are able to impose their will upon a good many members of the community, and, that in certain classes of crimes, the Civic Guards, in the exercise of their duties, bring before the courts it is not possible to get convictions. I think in cases of that kind, where they do get convictions, it is often found, for one reason or another, that it is not possible to impose any serious penalties.
Now the political ethics of the country are such that over and above the matters I have referred to the Guards have very special duties imposed upon them. We know it is characteristic of the large body of opinion that is behind the Government to be extremely intolerant. We do know that but for the exercise of a marked amount of courage and tact by the Civic Guards there would be — although the economic war is changing the situation —great difficulty in maintaining the rights of free speech. The Government Party having the rowdies on their side have not suffered in the same way as other bodies. Perhaps the Cumann na nGaedheal Party might be less liable to suffer, in this matter, than we on account of their military auxiliaries. We have to rely upon the Guards for the maintenance of order at our meetings. That political situation, and these political ethics, on the part of supporters of the Government, lay very special duties upon the Civic Guards that have to be taken into consideration when a matter of this sort is being discussed. I think it is of vital importance that that force should not be given any further reason for discouragement. Bearing that in mind, and bearing in mind the fact that they have no votes I have no hesitation, although I feel reluctance on the ground of general economy, in supporting the amendment.
Before the debate is continued, I might point out that there are other important principles to be discussed on the Committee Stage of the Bill, and there is an understanding that we are to get it at 10.30 to-night.
May I add one word which I had forgotten. It is in reply to what the Minister said in his speech about our duty to the poor, and the people whose incomes have been far more seriously hit than those of the Civic Guards by this Bill. The point I want to make is that there is nobody in this country to whom the Civic Guard is more important than the poor and especially the poor in the more isolated parts of the country.
In the course of his speech, upon this amendment, the Minister said that in 1924 it was laid down and accepted by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, by the Oireachtas and by the Gárda without question that as long as the cost of living index figure fell below 70 there should be a review of the scales of pay so as to make them conform to the principle upon which they were originally based. I do not know what was accepted by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, but I know that the Oireachtas did not accept the principle that there should be an upward and downward provision in the Gárda pay, determined by the index figure. I want to know the Minister's authority for saying that the Civic Guard Representative Council accepted the principle of having their pay based on the cost of living figure. The Minister says there was a memorandum attaching certain conditions given out at the time. I want to know whether the mere issue of a memorandum by the Department of Justice involves the automatic acceptance of the context of the memorandum by the people concerned. My understanding of the position is that that decision, of the then Government, was not accepted by the Civic Guard Representative Council. I think the Minister is not fair to the House, or to the members of the Representative Council, if he suggests now that they consented freely to that or that their pay was to be based upon a reference of that kind.
Last night I think there was more heat in the Minister's speech than there was light. He laid down the doctrine last night that he is going to propose continual revision of the Civic Guards' pay to be based upon a sliding scale adopting the cost of living figure. He said in one instance the figure is now 55, and, even if there were no financial crisis, if we were only amending the position settled and determined by our predecessors we should have to consider the special case of the Gárda, and to apply to them the same principle that has been applied, without any question or opposition from Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney to the Civil Service. He seems to indicate that further fluctuation in the cost of living figure is going to create this fitter basis of remuneration. I think the Minister might well tell the House that he is not going to follow that undesirable principle in relation to the Civic Guards and that he is not going to apply to the Civic Guards the serious end of that arrangement, because he is seeking to apply that arrangement now when the index figure is falling without giving the Civic Guard the benefit of the rise in the case of the index figure when it rose.
The Minister is performing some extraordinary gyrations in this decision. He is the oratorical gladiator of his Party. He is the literary champion of the Party. Some of us can remember him stumping the country not so many years ago, telling us how iniquitous was the settlement then negotiated between the teachers' organisation and the Cumann na nGaedheal Government. If one were to get any meaning from the speech the Minister then made, it was that he groaned over this repulsive act of the Minister and the leader of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation. He stumped the country, made wild declarations and declamations about the iniquitous settlement then made. He was making these declarations then on behalf of the teachers. It was a shame, certainly, said the Minister in effect, that that settlement should then have been arrived at in the circumstances of the time on the basis then accepted. If the Minister has any doubt about what I say he can read his speeches in Portumna and Bangor.
I was never in either of these places at all.
Is this a discussion upon the Gárdaí or upon the teachers?
Deputy Costello has not long come in, and he might afford to wait. The Minister now wants to know is anybody prepared to say that a person in receipt of £160 cannot afford to suffer any reduction. I wish the Minister had told that to the wage earners, all over the country, carpenters, plasterers, bricklayers, electricians, and all the other tradesmen for whose votes he was angling at the last election. I wish he had asked them did they believe that anybody in receipt of £160 a year could afford to suffer a reduction.
I did not say that. I said "living in the circumstances of a single Guard."
Yes, living in the circumstances of a single Guard. Let the Minister go into the City of Dublin next Sunday or some other Sunday to preach that kind of philosophy and mentality and I venture to say there will be a considerable number of yards taken off that high pedestal that he has erected for himself.
The Minister said yesterday that all you have to do is to cut the wages and salaries of the people affected by this Bill and then you will have a Republican passport to happiness and contentment for the poor and the lowly in the State. The Minister stated it was necessary to include the Gárda because money was required if they were going to supply relief to those who were poor and suffering. It was necessary, he said, to cut the Civic Guards in order to raise money to supply relief to those who were poor and suffering. Is this the kind of relief the poor and suffering are going to get? Is this the £33,000 mess of pottage that will be distributed amongst the 80,000 unemployed? If this is the kind of relief the Minister is going to give, then it will be of very little help to the poor or the suffering. The Minister knows — and he would say it if he were on the other side of the House instead of being on the Government Benches — that there is no solution of this problem and no passport to Heaven and to economic security for the poor and suffering by cutting the pay of the Civic Guard. The Minister knows that perfectly well. I suggest it was dope to tell a tired House last night that cutting the pay of the Guards would mean relief for the poor and suffering. If that is the kind of relief the poor and suffering are going to get, I can even generate more sympathy for them, because there is going to be no relief for anybody if this is going to be the basis of applying the relief.
The Minister said that if we defeat this section or amend it in the way suggested it will mean virtually the scrapping of the whole Bill. I hope it does. I hope this amendment is carried and I hope the whole Bill is defeated in consequence of the carrying of the amendment. I think the defeat of this Bill will be the best thing that could happen the Fianna Fáil Party. This is no way of dealing with an economic crisis. The existing condition of bankruptcy and poverty can be cured in another way. The Minister is not quite certain what method to apply in order to cure it, but he suggests the softest and simplest way. What the Minister is doing in connection with this Bill is singing one tune in the morning and another tune at night. We have listened to members of the Government Party talking about a Christian social policy. There is nothing of the Christian social policy in this Bill. You are patching up every rent in capitalism by reason of this Bill. You are trying to patch up and make workable a system of society that has crashed in every country in the world.
The Minister, though he would like a 22 or a 28 carat Irish political institution, wants to follow every other country in the world in its economical and social policy. The Minister will allow nobody to dictate the kind of political institution this country will have, but if he can get an example of wage cutting in China or Japan or even from his next door neighbour, he is not above copying it. I hope the House will accept this amendment and sabotage the whole Bill. I hope the Minister will interpret that decision as an instruction to get his money in some other way, to organise the nation in some other way rather than try to feed the poor at the price of the lowering of the standard of living for others.
Is Deputy Norton aware that considerable wage cutting has taken place recently, even in Russia?
On that point, half an hour of my time was taken up last Sunday listening to the complaints of employees of a member of the Centre Party who reduced the wages of his workers by 5/- a week.
Deputy MacDermot does not employ anyone and he knows nothing about that. He has not as much land as would sod a lark.
I will now put the question.
Is amendment 27 going by itself?
There has already been a ruling in relation to amendments 23, 27, 102 and 103.
I would like to call attention to the Schedule. We are seeking in respect of amendment 103 to exclude the ordinary Guard from the operation of the cut. There are two questions raised on that portion of the Schedule. It deals with the commissioned and the non-commissioned ranks.
Deputy Dillon agreed, and there was no objection on the part of the Labour Party, that the whole question should be settled when the division was taken.
On the contrary, I pointed out to the Ceann Comhairle the effect of doing so.
It was ruled from the Chair that 23, 27 and 102 should go together.
If the Government were defeated on a motion to the effect that the words should stand as they are, what would then be the procedure?
Wait until the Government is defeated first.
I do not mind if there are two divisions, provided they are taken immediately and that there is not much more time devoted to debate.
I want a separate decision on amendment 103.
Will 28 and 29 go with 103?
Amendment 27 will govern amendments 23 and 102; 28, 29 and 103 can go together.
The Chair is now putting the question in this form: "That the words ‘member of the Gárda Síochána' stand part of the Bill." Will that make an opening for my amendment to be put?
That is what I am endeavouring to do. I am now putting the question "That the words ‘member of the Gárda Síochána' stand."
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neal.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, William Frazer.
- Carty, Frank.
- Clery, Mícheál.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corkery, Daniel.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
- Crowley, Timothy.
- Curran, Richard.
- Daly, Denis.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- Dillon, James M.
- Doherty, Hugh.
- Doherty, Joseph.
- Donnelly, Eamon.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Maguire, Conor Alexander.
- Moane, Edward.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
- O'Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Pearse, Margaret Mary.
- Dowdall, Thomas P.
- Finlay, John.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Geoghegan, James.
- Gibbons, Seán.
- Goulding, John.
- Hales, Thomas.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Holohan, Richard.
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Jordan, Stephen.
- Keely, Séamus P.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, James Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamonn.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- Lynch, James B.
- MacDermot, Frank.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- Rice, Edward.
- Buttledge, Patrick Joseph.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C. (Dr.).
Níl
- Alton, Ernest Henry.
- Anthony, Richard.
- Beckett, James Walter.
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Broderick, William Joseph.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Burke, James Michael.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Coburn, James.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John Aloysius.
- Craig, Sir James.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Davin, William.
- Davitt, Robert Emmet.
- Desmond, William.
- Dockrell, Henry Morgan.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
- Everett, James.
- Fitzgerald, Desmond.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Haslett, Alexander.
- Keating, John.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Lynch, Finian.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGuire, James Ivan.
- Morrisroe, James.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, James Edward.
- Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
- Norton, William.
- O'Connor, Batt.
- O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Mahony, The.
- O'Neill, Eamonn.
- O'Reilly, John Joseph.
- O'Sullivan, Gearoid.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget Mary.
- Reidy, James.
- Rice, Vincent.
- Roddy, Martin.
- Thrift, William Edward.
I am putting amendments 28, 29 and 103. I am putting the question on 103 that the tabular statement in Part II stand Part of the Bill. We cannot go on the tabular statement until we reach it in its proper order. The decision will be taken on amendment 103.
Surely it is not now proposed from the Chair to withdraw my right to a decision on my amendment, when I got a specific decision from the Chair before the last amendment that an opportunity would be afforded?
An opportunity is being afforded.
Not on my amendment 29.
I said I was endeavouring to see that a decision would be taken on the amendment. Amendment 103 covers 28 and 29.
Surely it would be highly unbecoming for me to argue with the Chair. I asked you before the decision was taken did this leave an opportunity for a decision to be taken on the amendment standing in my name, and you replied: "Yes, that is the purpose of the course I am at present pursuing." It was not for me to suggest that the course you were pursuing excluded the decision. I do think it odd that I should be induced to go into the wrong lobby. It is all very well for members to bawl like jackasses, but I submit respectfully to the Chair——
Deputies of this Dáil must not be referred to as jackasses.
I withdraw the remark.
Excluding members of the Centre Party.
I submitted my difficulty with respect to the Chair, and on the Chair's direction gave my decision——
Not on the Chair's direction.
The Chair directed that the form in which it was proposed to put the amendment to the House would leave an opportunity for taking the decision of the House later on the amendment standing in my name. On that representation a certain course was pursued, and I submit with great respect to the Chair that an opportunity should now be given for taking a decision on the amendment standing in my name and also in the name of Deputy Wall.
Will not the House have an opportunity for giving a decision on Deputy Dillon's amendment when a decision is taken on amendment 103?
I respectfully submit that this matter was also discussed with the Ceann Comhairle, and we were certainly given to understand that the division on our amendment would be taken immediately after the division that has taken place.
Might I suggest that the division might be taken on No. 29?
We cannot take a decision on 29 because the House has taken a decision just now.
I am afraid what happened is this: I think it was pointed out to Deputy Dillon that the one way to ensure his getting a division on his amendment was to defeat the motion "that the clause stand Part of the Bill." He did not do that.
The Deputy chooses to misrepresent the situation. There was quite another way; if the Chair chose to put No. 27. "That the section stand," the section could subsequently have been amended.
If the House takes a decision, "that the section stand," surely the House cannot then decide that it be altered.
Surely it is not in order to question a decision that this House has come to.
I suggest that if responsible Deputies, not jackasses, will continue to vote against their own expressed intentions in the division lobby we should not waste further time?
I am not wasting time. I am endeavouring to make it clear to the House that at a later stage a decision can be taken on numbers 28, 29 and 103, and Deputy Dillon will have ample opportunity for getting the decision of the House on what he wants decided.
I put it with great respect to the Chair that it was clearly conveyed to Deputies before the last division that a division would follow immediately afterwards on No. 29. I have no desire to embarrass the Chair——
The Chair is not in the least embarrassed.
——or to resist its ruling, but I do think that the Chair gave me and most Deputies in the House to understand that a division on No. 29 would be taken immediately after the last division.
There was no word "immediately." There was not one word said as to time, but that there would be a decision taken on No. 103 which would govern 28 and 29. There was not one word as to when it would be taken.
Surely you understood me when I asked you the question immediately after you had called the last division? You understood me to be asking for protection as to a decision on the amendments standing in my name?
And you assured me that I would have an opportunity.
My assurance still stands, that there will be an opportunity offered.
I was clearly misled, quite unintentionally I have no doubt, by the undertaking that you gave.
You were not in the wrong lobby at all. You were in the right one.
I want to make the position of the Chair clear. Deputy Dillon did ask if there would be a decision taken on his amendment, and I remember saying — although Deputy Dillon raised the matter in a rather irregular fashion — that that is what I was endeavouring to do. There was not a word as to time, but that an opportunity would be afforded for a decision on what Deputy Dillon wanted a decision on.
Those were the words I heard certainly. We cannot leave in the word "member" and take it out at the same time.
The Ceann Comhairle said amendments 24, 30 and 107.
Amendment 40 is not being taken with this?
Amendment 40 has been ruled out of order.
No, it has not yet.
On a point of order. If any move is made for a closure to-night, have I an undertaking from the Chair that before that motion is put an opportunity will be given to divide on amendment 103?
I am not in a position to say what the Government may do, whether they will propose a closure motion or not. Obviously, I could not say whether at any stage we will be able to take the tabular statement or not.
Surely any Teachta is entitled to the protection of the Chair in the particular circumstances? When the Chair deems it expedient to accept a motion for the closure it bears in mind the rights of Teachtaí of Opposition and minority Parties. You said to-day, and the Ceann Comhairle said before you, that an opportunity would be afforded to us to divide on the amendment standing in our name. You said it might be on amendment 103 or at some other time, but that there would be some opportunity. I am asking for a reassurance that that opportunity will be provided before the closure is accepted.
Obviously the Chair cannot give any assurance of that kind.
But the Chair did give it.
In the ordinary course. The Chair cannot give any guarantee that a closure motion will not be moved after ten minutes or after five hours.
The Chair can refuse to accept the closure motion.
I cannot say what the occupant of the Chair will do if the closure motion is moved.
I am only asking for a guarantee of our right to divide on this matter which has been promised by you. I ask you to guarantee it against a specific danger. You have given an undertaking that we shall be able to divide on the subject matter of this amendment and I apprehend that amendment 103 might not be reached.
I have guaranteed, as far as lies in the power of the Chair, that a division will be taken on the subject matter of the amendment, but I have not guaranteed anything as to whether a closure motion will be moved or when it will be moved or whether it will be accepted.
You can guarantee that you will not accept a closure motion.
An Leas-Cheann Comhairle cannot accept a closure motion.
I, personally, cannot accept a closure motion.
The Leas-Cheann Comhairle has no authority to accept a closure motion.
The Leas-Cheann Comhairle is speaking for the Chair.
There are certain circumstances governing the acceptance of a closure motion and I cannot say whether the Ceann Comhairle, if it is moved, will think these circumstances are present.
Will you, sir, make representation to the Ceann Comhairle in the matter?
The Ceann Comhairle and the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will have to endeavour to carry out their duties as best they can and in the way they see them. I cannot give any further guarantee.
In view of the fact that Deputy Dillon has mentioned the possibility of a closure motion, will he say whether he has received any intimation from the Government Whip as to their intention to move such a closure motion and what answer has he given on the matter?
The Minister for Finance mentioned it this morning if the Deputy were here to listen to it, but he was not.
I was.
The following amendments appeared on the Order Paper:—
24. In sub-section (1), line 27, after the word "person" to insert the words "not being a teacher in a national school."—(Gearóid O'Sullivan; Fionán Lynch.)
30. To delete sub-section (1) (a) (iii).—(Fionán Lynch; Gearóid O'Sullivan; William Norton.)
107. To delete Part III.—(Fionán O Loingsigh; Gearóid O'Sullivan; William Norton; Timothy Murphy; Richard Corish.)
In moving this amendment, I can assure Deputy Dillon that I will not delay the House for any undue length which will be an excuse to closure this discussion and prevent the amendment mentioned by him from being discussed. The three amendments which we are now discussing deal with one specific part of this Bill. It is very difficult, in view of the range of the debate in Committee, to keep oneself from attempting to make a Second Reading speech on a matter like this. I shall deal with the subject by telling the House the reasons given why this amendment, first of all, should not be proposed, and, secondly, being proposed, why it should be defeated. There are three reasons. The first is that it is the most popular thing the Government has ever introduced. The second is that many persons think that national teachers are too well off. The third is rather narrow, and, I may say, I do not believe it — that all the teachers are supporters of Fianna Fáil. With regard to the first, the popularity of this particular attempt at economy, I agree that in certain parts of the country there is, what one would call, popularity for cutting the salaries of teachers. My submission to the House is that the type of popularity that this attempted cut brings with it is represented sometimes in this House, and very often outside it, in fact, wherever there is a person who has less than somebody else. Cuts are all right if we cut somebody else. It is very popular to say that such-and-such a teacher has £230 a year. There are certain parts of this country — not the cities — where £230 or £250 is a colossal amount indeed. There is a feeling that because a teacher leaves school between 4 and 5 o'clock in the afternoon and need not return until 9 o'clock next morning he has what they call "a grand job."
I regret to say that there is in our race a certain type of peasant-mindedness which feels that nobody, no matter how able or how efficient he is in his job, should get more than a certain amount of money. It is a co-relation of this particular profession with the general policy of the present Executive to press down the standard of living? Somebody was once asked how a certain Government Department worked, what their scheme of operation was. As a matter of fact, I think it was the Revenue Commissioners. The answer was a very simple one— the wine press; to crush out until the last drop is drawn. That is the position of the Ministry on this occasion. There is no parish in this country but will feel the effects of this particular cut.
I do not want to go into a comparison of civil servants with teachers, their relative positions, salaries and so forth. There are, however, places in Ireland where there are no civil servants, such as Ballydehob, Ballyporeen, Ballyjamesduff. There are teachers in these places, but no civil servants.
There is not a parish in this State in which the Executive will not be able to push through its policy of the hair shirt cum bawneen, and they will begin it in this particular way. They can get the civil servants in the cities and in the bigger towns. They will be pressed and crushed, but there is no service that will be affected or in which the Government can so effectively carry through that policy in every corner of Ireland as the service affected by this particular cut, namely, the national teachers. Even the Civic Guards, notwithstanding the sympathy we have for them on this particular matter, do not go into every parish. There are parishes where there are no Civic Guards, but there is no parish in Ireland where there is not a national school and where there are not national teachers. This policy of the Government to press down rates of pay and to reduce the standard of living is an appeal to persons who have the miserable idea that nobody should have more than £5, £6 or £10 a week. I think at the second last election it was said that nobody should have more than £1,000 a year. This is part of the same policy, but in respect to this particular class of public servants it goes more closely, more intimately and more finely, if I may say so, down to the most remote parish in Ireland than in any other case. That is one of the chief reasons why I oppose sub-section (3). The reason for it has been already so fully discussed on Second Reading that I do not want to go into it again.
I should like to mention that if there is one class of public servants in this country who have made sacrifices for the country that class is the national teachers. I do not want to talk about what they did to bring the State into being or what they did subsequently. Up to a dozen years ago there certainly was not in Ireland or probably there was not in the world any class of persons worse paid than the national teachers of Ireland. The establishment of the Irish Free State at least did this: it emancipated them for one thing and it paid them. I do not care whether having been emancipated, and having been paid, they turned on those who emancipated them and paid them and helped to put them out of office. That has nothing to do with the fundamental question in this matter. This is an appeal to cupidity really. That is the appeal in the rural parishes in Ireland. It is the very same appeal to cupidity which was preached at every crossroads in Ireland at the last and second-last general election campaign, an appeal to persons who had little to vote against those who had something, an appeal, say, to persons who had no land in these terms: "Mr. X. has 250 acres and we will have that divided amongst you." The appeal to persons who had nothing, who were unemployed, was similar: "We will build factories for you."
The effort here to reduce the teachers' salaries is an appeal to the cupidity of persons who do not happen to have as much income as the teachers have. It is an appeal to the man who is working on the road at the magnificent wage of, I think, 24/- — sometimes it is 21/- — as fixed by the present Government, in these terms: "There is the teacher cycling home from school at 4 or 5 o'clock in the evening; is it not well for that fellow to be going home at this hour of the evening when you have to work for another couple of hours. Why should he get more than 24/- a week which the Government have decided you should get." That is exactly the appeal that is made in this instance. It is because of that appeal that the story is going around that the cuts in the national teachers' salaries are the most popular of all the cuts.
It is because of this appeal to the cupidity of some of our people——
Was that the reason Cumann na nGaedheal decided on a ten per cent. cut?
Is the Deputy speaking in English or Irish?
Mr. Flynn
In English. Was it for that reason the Cumann na nGaedheal Government tried to enforce a ten per cent. cut?
That has nothing to do with it. The teachers made their sacrifice. That sacrifice was made in arrangement with the then Executive Council. As the House knows very well, an arrangement was come to between the Executive Council and the teachers.
That was not so, in the case of the ten per cent cut. There was no agreement since 1923.
The Deputy knows all about it apparently. I should like him to remember that he is not in school at present and that I am not one of his pupils. I suppose I should not be here if I were. In the year 1929 an arrangement was come to between the Executive Council and the teachers in a discussion on this matter. Some people may be interested in that and the House will doubtless hear what happened. I do not want to delay the House unduly on this matter, but I would urge that you should not have throughout this country from one end of the State to the other, not a single parish excepted, a discontented service in the matter of teachers. Everywhere — in cities, towns, villages — that feeling must be permeated. The discontented teachers must naturally pass on their discontent to somebody else. The usual way discontent proceeds is, I believe, through the liver, and the children will feel nothing happier because they have a discontented teacher. I said that it was undesirable to discuss the question of these cuts on the basis of a comparison with the cuts imposed on civil servants, but there is one important aspect that should not be forgotten and that is the question of pensions. Unlike civil servants, the teaching profession contributes to its pension fund. Unlike civil servants, the teaching profession has no cost of living bonus. When the earlier arrangement was made as to basic salaries it was understood that they were settled on the basis that the cost of living was then taken into account and that the salaries would remain fixed.
I can quite understand the desire of the Minister for Finance to make economies. Why should he not? It is quite necessary. Our President has said that everybody must make a sacrifice and continue to make sacrifices. The farmers and the business people are doing so, but why the teachers are drawn in is what I would like to know. I am sure the Minister for Education is entirely opposed to this. I can quite understand the Minister for Education saying that education is a very necessary thing, and that we must educate the people of this country. We must educate our children. Every nation in the world makes sacrifices for education. People have gone over Everest in the interests of education. People have gone into the depths of the sea. People have gone to the North and South Poles for the advance of science and of knowledge. People have gone to the jungles of Africa.
I remember a picture exhibited here in which occurred the phrase: "Bring them back alive." The explorer brought back his lions and tigers and panthers alive. I can quite understand a discussion between the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Education as to the necessity for cutting the teachers, and the Minister for Education insisting upon the necessity of having teachers who would be a credit to the profession and to the nation. But I can see him surrender, but at the same time saying to the Minister for Finance, "Yes, get them skinned, but bring them back alive." That is, I think, the position to-day. The necessity for introducing the teachers into this Economies Bill requires to be established in a better way than it has been. I am speaking of this not in any Party spirit. As I said already, we were told it was improper to propose this amendment first, because the cut was a popular cut. That feeling arises because of a certain type of meanness that exists in certain parts of the country. Secondly, we were told that teachers are better off than civil servants. I disagree with that, but at any rate I do not see why one body of public servants should be contrasted with another as a reason why it should be cut. Thirdly, we were told as a reason why this amendment should not be moved, that the teachers are all Fianna Fail. I do not know whether they are or not, but I still maintain that they should not be incorporated in this economic measure. I shall not take up the time of the House further.
Deputies in this House are placed in the ridiculous position of being asked, at this stage, to give their approval to cuts in the salaries of teachers after the cuts have already come into operation. I say it is the most ridiculous position in which Deputies were ever placed, since this House was first set up. The Government Party, which claims to have a mandate from the people — and I challenge that in many respects in this and other matters — should at least have waited for the sanction of the majority of Deputies in this House before proceeding to put cuts of this kind into operation. I challenge that attitude. I think there is good ground for challenging the legality of the attitude of the Government in cutting the salaries of teachers, Civic Guards and other civil servants before they have the approval of the Oireachtas.
I have no hesitation in saying here, as I said elsewhere, that if the members of this Party still held the position we held in the lifetime of the last Dáil, that is if we still held the balance of power, this Government would not risk bringing in a measure of this kind before the Dáil. Will the Minister for Education and the Minister for Finance deny that it was their intention during the early lifetime of the last Dáil, shortly after they came into office as the result of our votes, to put legislation of this kind before the House? I have good reason to suspect and I will not go further, that one of the real reasons for the dissolution of the last Dáil in January was to get the clear majority that President de Valera wanted for the purpose of carrying out a policy of this kind. I have very little hope, in view of the attitude adopted by the majority of the House in the last Division, that anything we may say in opposition to this proposal will have any effect. When I see Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party giving their silent support, as they have done, to the fixation of a payment of a maximum of 24/- a week to people engaged in relief work I have very little hope that they will do much by their influence to prevent the salaries of teachers from being cut.
I understood that provision was made for a discussion on this and that Deputy Davin was prepared to discuss this question on another occasion. Is it in order on this amendment?
It is only a passing reference. It would not be in order to anticipate anything on the Order Paper.
It was only a passing reference such as many other Deputies and the Minister himself has made to matters of this kind in speeches before I got up to speak. I would be the last person in this House to challenge the attitude of any Government elected by the Irish people in coming to the House for the purpose of passing legislation to carry out their mandate. But I challenge the Minister for Finance to produce from the speeches of any Minister, any indication that if they were again returned to power they would bring proposals of this kind before the House. I wonder if the Minister for Finance were in opposition, instead of being on the Government Bench, what line he would take upon a proposal of this kind if it was brought before the House by the late Government. I have a clear recollection of reading the speeches of Deputy MacEntee, now Minister for Finance, in a speech made in a very important town in my constituency in February, 1932, held under the chairmanship of a teacher, where he gave a pledge that if returned to power he could give an assurance that the salaries of the teachers would not be cut, as had been proposed by the outgoing Cumann na nGaedheal Government. I ask was there any manifesto issued by President de Valera on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party that conveyed to the teachers or to any other body affected by these proposals that it was the intention of the Government to put through proposals of this kind. I read a speech — and it is one of the kind of speeches that one is forced to read to keep in touch with the times — by a very influential Deputy that Fianna Fáil got a mandate from the country to reduce the agricultural grant. If that Deputy had made that speech before the last election he would not have been a member of this House. My complaint against the Government is that they have failed to carry out the pledges they gave and to implement those pledges in this House and that, on the other hand, they are proceeding to do things for which they sought no mandate from the people.
Anyone listening to the speech for the Minister for Finance last night, and he made five speeches upon Section 6 of the Bill, and who knew the voice of his predecessor, Mr. Blythe, could hardly see any difference between the two speeches or between that speech and all the speeches of his predecessor to which we had been listening for the last ten years. The Minister was speaking in the voice of his predecessor, putting forward the same arguments in support of the same policy, a policy which is bound to fail here as it has failed in every other country. The Minister said that alternative proposals to those in his Bill would increase income tax. Of course, that remark was obviously made with the intention of securing the support of Deputy Good and his colleagues for his policy in this House. He also said that alternative proposals would be likely to increase taxation upon tea or sugar or tobacco. Surely it is not without the bounds of the elasticity of the imagination of the Minister for Finance to find revenue from some other source, for instance by taxation of luxuries, to make up the small amount he proposes to cut from the teachers.
It would not bring in any money.
At any rate you are taking money out of the pockets of people by this taxation that you promised at the last general election not to interfere with. I would not grumble if the Fianna Fáil Party had put this clearly in their election programme and sought a mandate for such a purpose.
The Minister for Finance, in one of the five speeches which he made on this section, said that they clearly saw that economy was necessary even before the economic war was started. Will the Minister for Education risk giving an explanation of what was in the mind of the Minister for Finance when he made that statement? If he clearly saw that economy was necessary before the economic war was started, will he get so far as to say that he had in mind economies of this kind? It he had, he should have made his views known to the people when he was looking for votes during the last two elections. The Minister for Finance says that the purchasing power will remain in the pockets of the poor people. I believe if he had any realisation of the position in the country he would not make a silly statement of that kind.
Deputy Davin is making a Second Reading speech ever since he started. It is time he came to the amendments.
I am dealing with statements which the Chair allowed the Minister to make on a similar amendment upon which a decision has been taken.
If a decision has been taken, obviously we cannot discuss it at this stage. No statement has been made by the Minister on these amendments and I would like the Deputy to come to the amendments. The principal one is the deletion of sub-section (3).
The Minister for Finance made this statement in dealing with an amendment affecting a similar proposal upon which a decision has been taken. If I am now out of order the Minister was setting a very bad example when he introduced matters of this kind on a previous amendment. I will listen with the greatest care and attention to what Deputy Cormac Breathnach is going to say in support of the section as it stands or in favour of the amendment moved by Deputy Gearoid O'Sullivan.
If he speaks in Irish what will you do?
I will listen to him with great care and attention. I was surprised at the vote which Deputy Cormac Breathnach gave in the last division. I suggest to him that if he wanted to make a good case — and a good case can be made and by him better than by anybody else in favour of the amendment moved by Deputy O'Sullivan, an amendment which also stands over the name of Deputy Norton — he should have taken his courage in his hands and voted in favour of a similar proposal upon which a Division has been taken. I was sorry to see he would not support it.
Deputy Davin has treated the House to a very admirable example of his debating skill but, as the Leas-Cheann Comhairle has pointed out, he has not dealt with the question of the teachers' salaries. I should like to correct a misapprehension which may arise owing to the statement by Deputy Davin that this is already in operation and that the Government had no authority to enforce it. The Second Reading of the Bill was duly passed and it was made quite clear on that occasion that the purpose of the Bill was to make these cuts during the period of the present financial year. Therefore, the cuts operate from the beginning of the financial year and there is no question but that the principle of the economies having been sanctioned by the House, the Government has full power to make the cuts accordingly.
May I ask the Minister if he means that they have legal authority for the putting into operation of all these cuts?
In addition to that, I would like to tell Deputy Davin that the electorate, Deputy Davin or anybody else, cannot have been under any misapprehension as to what the position was regarding the teachers. It was well known that the Minister for Finance and myself met the teachers last year and endeavoured to reach a settlement with them. It was well known that in December, 1931, the late Minister for Finance made an offer to the teachers which the Teachers' Executive accepted, representing a cut of ten per cent. On both occasions the body of teachers apparently refused to accept the terms offered. At a later stage in the proceedings, when the Congress was sitting in Galway, representations were made to us to meet the teachers and a telegram was sent from the President stating we were willing to meet them as regards the pensions question, and that offer still remains open.
As regards the question of the cuts, neither Deputy Davin nor Deputy O'Sullivan has dealt with the quoted point that in this matter the teachers are being more badly treated than the civil servants. It seems to be conveniently forgotten that the civil servants received a heavy reduction in the beginning of the present year, when there was a very substantial fall in the cost of living bonus. I hope that eventually a settlement of the Pensions Fund will be arrived at. I would like to point out that both the late Government and ourselves endeavoured to reach a settlement and, in spite of the efforts of those in the teachers' organisation who thought that the offers made were reasonable, the body of the teachers apparently were not satisfied. Since that the financial position has not improved; it is considerably worse.
The Minister for Finance has introduced this Bill and it is the intention of the Bill to effect economies all round. As Minister for Education, I regret, as would any other Minister whose Department is likely to suffer, that the teachers have been included. But we ought either to have economies all round or not at all. In addition to that, if economies have to be made, they have to be made with the idea of getting in a substantial sum of money. It has been stated by Deputy Davin that there was no mention of these proposals at the last election. The fact that we have been in negotiation with the teachers and that our predecessors had been in negotiation with the teachers and that the whole question of teachers' salaries and pensions had to be settled was there and everybody knew that.
Salaries of £300.
It was known also that the Government were committed to a policy of economy in the last two general elections. They assured the country that they would endeavour to bring about economy.
Not on £300 salaries.
For reasons which Deputy Davin understands, these economies were not brought about last year. In any event, in our negotiations with both the civil servants and the teachers — I am not sure about the other bodies concerned — we were not able, when we made approaches to them, to secure any basis of agreement for a voluntary cut, and accordingly this Bill had to be introduced.
Mr. Lynch
I am supporting these amendments, which are aimed at excluding the national teachers from the operations of the cuts. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney pointed out, when speaking on the Gárda cuts, that the Gárda were not overpaid. I think that is more true with regard to national teachers. The teachers in this country are not overpaid, considering the importance of the work which they are called upon to do and the desirability of getting into the profession the very best type of candidate, men and women of character and education. The Irish national teacher, up to the year 1920, was easily the worst paid public servant in the then United Kingdom, if not in the whole world. It is a most extraordinary fact that a body which was always so very well organised was unable, until that very late hour of the day, to secure anything like fair treatment in the way of salary.
It is in order to appreciate the position to-day and the position that the teacher will be in, as he will be affected by these cuts, that it is really necessary to have a picture of the position prior to that year. In pre-war days a young teacher started on the munificent salary of £63 a year. After three years, if he were able to satisfy the inspectors that he was doing his job well, he got an increment of £7. If he was still a good boy, at the end of a further three years he got another increment of £7. Eventually as assistant teacher he rose to the dizzy heights of £86 a year maximum. The scale was the same for the principal teacher, except that there was an annual capitation grant for the principal teacher in accordance with the size of his school.
The war came, and prices jumped up by three, four, or five times the prices that ruled before. Other public servants were immediately, or at least very shortly, put in the position that they would not suffer any ill-effects because of the new cost of living. They got a cost-of-living bonus. Apparently, it was thought that the Irish national teacher did not have to live in a house, or eat food or wear clothes, for he alone of all public servants was singled out and got no allowance. To be strictly correct, I should say that a couple of years after the start of the war he got the advantage of 3/- or 4/- a week added on to his pre-war salary, and after three or four years more he got a further rise of 10/- a week. Eventually, 1920 came, and apparently the authorities did realise that the teachers had, in fact, like other public servants, to live in houses, to eat food, and to wear clothes, and it was conceded that they might have children who would have to live in a house, wear clothes, and eat food.
The salaries were at last brought up to a scale commensurate with the work the teacher was doing and with the training he had received. Any Deputy who has the will to do so can very well imagine the plight of the unfortunate teachers during the years 1914 to 1920, with their miserable pre-war salaries, miserable even as pre-war salaries. Anybody who knew the position of the teachers through the country knew very well that it was a fact that the friendly shopkeepers in the towns who had their custom prior to the war and found them honest payers had to give them credit until the end of the quarter, when their quarterly pay order arrived. I had nearly forgotten mentioning that they were paid quarterly. This munificent salary came to them once in three months. The shopkeeper, however, felt that he had in them a good pay, and he did not see the teacher and his family go hungry. He gave him credit until better times arrived.
When better times did arrive, in 1920, 80 per cent. of the national teachers throughout the country were up to their necks in debt for the necessaries of life. They were only allowed to enjoy their higher salaries for three years. The aftermath of the civil war had thrown on the Exchequer a big burden, and in order to repair the damages it became necessary to look for economies. Unfortunately, the national teachers, the last to receive fair treatment from the British Government, were one of the first victims of the economy campaign. The teacher had not at the time recovered from the swamp in which the war years had placed him when his salary was cut 10 per cent. It is now proposed by this Bill to cut him a further 5 per cent. to 8 per cent. Apart from the 10 per cent. cut the teacher got in 1924, there is a compulsory reduction in the teachers' salaries of 4 per cent. for pension purposes. Now there is an additional cut of from 5 to 8 per cent., so that the nominal salary fixed for the teacher in 1920 is now to be lessened by a total of something like 20 per cent. That is not fair, and it is its unfairness that made me put my name to these amendments on behalf of the teachers. As Deputy Professor O'Sullivan pointed out, if we were to believe the stories that we heard from the platforms, something like 80 per cent. of the teachers voted Fianna Fáil. Therefore, there is no politics in it. I do not, however, believe for a moment that anything like 80 per cent. of them voted Fianna Fáil. I still believe that there is more than 20 per cent. intelligence in the national teachers.
This is payment for services rendered.
Mr. Lynch
Yet if it were true I should still feel compelled to support this amendment because of my old association with the teachers and the fact that I number in that body some of my greatest personal friends. I press the amendment also because of the great unfairness against the teachers, for whenever there is a lack of cash in the Treasury there is going to be a dip into the pockets of the unfortunate teachers.
Deputy Professor O'Sullivan pointed out that many people think that the teacher's life is a very soft one, because he goes into school at 9.30 in the morning and leaves at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The life of a national teacher is a strenuous one. I know of no other profession or employment that causes such a great strain, and which requires such good physical condition. Many people who have no experience cannot see that. I should like to take some of the persons in the country who talk about the munificent, salaries of teachers, and even some of the members of this House who talk about teachers being paid too well, and put them for one month in charge of one of the junior classes in a school in a Dublin slum district, or in charge of a one-teacher or two-teacher school down at Brandon Creek in Kerry. I am sorry that Deputy MacDermot is not here, as he is one of the frequent critics of the national teachers. I should like to take Deputy MacDermot from behind the handles of the plough for a few months. I should like to take him from behind the plough, and put him in charge of one of those small schools, or of a junior class in Dublin. In one week he would change very much his outlook on the lives of the national teachers, and on the softness of their work. I would even say that within a week he would be very glad to go back to the milking of his cows, or to whatever other avocations a practical farmer like him indulges in. Anybody who knows anything about it knows that keeping the attention of young children from half-past nine in the morning until three in the afternoon causes the greatest physical strain, and keep the attention of the pupils the teacher must, if he is to have any success as a teacher. If he is not successful as a teacher, if he does not satisfy the inspectors in their periodical rounds, his increments will cease, and eventually he will walk the road. Even the unconscientious teacher — if there are any; I have not found very many of them, I must say, and I know the profession very well — must, if he wishes to get the emoluments that ordinarily fall due, exert himself and strain every nerve to keep the attention of the children, so that they will satisfy the inspector as between one visit and the next.
Reference was made to our proposed cut in 1921. I was glad to hear the Minister for Education say — though he was particularly vague — that they had made an offer to the national teachers with regard to pensions. We made certain offers, in 1931 I think it was, which were accepted, as the Minister for Education pointed out, by the Central Executive Committee of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, and were subsequently ratified by a special congress called for the purpose. They were departed from subsequently, I agree, by an ordinary congress, but at any rate I would be glad to hear that the proposals now being put forward by the Minister are no worse than the terms agreed on with the central Executive of the I.N.T.O. I do not know whether I would be allowed to follow the lead of the Minister for Education and go into the question of pensions, but I will have an opportunity to do so on amendment 40, so I shall postpone it until then. At any rate, I would like if Deputies would really consider the position with regard to national teachers, and if they would stop listening to the clap-trap — to use the Minister for Finance's words— about the munificent salary the teachers are receiving and the easy work that they do. I hope that the Dáil will support these amendments, and give the teachers a chance of doing the very hard job they have got to do without being perpetually worried by those raids on their hard-earned salaries.
Before I proceed to make my observations proper I should like to correct a few statements made by various speakers. Deputy O'Sullivan stated that the Free State emancipated and paid teachers. That is not correct. Teachers were paid the new salary in 1920, after agitation with the British Government. In fact the Free State, after being set up, very soon deprived them of ten per cent. of their salaries. That cut was contested in the law courts and the teachers failed. The Minister said that the Executive Committee in December, 1931, accepted a ten per cent. cut from the Cumann na nGaedheal Government. That is not true. The acceptance was of a six per cent. cut, which was afterwards rejected by an ordinary congress, as was pointed out by Deputy Lynch. Deputy Lynch also stated that we enjoyed for three years that salary secured in 1920. That is not so. The full effect of that salary did not come into operation until April, 1922. It was cut by 10 per cent. in November, 1933; therefore, we enjoyed it for just one year and a half. The Minister mentioned a moment ago that the contention that we are being unfairly treated in this cut is not sound. I contest that. He mentioned the fact that civil servants had suffered a serious loss by way of fluctuation in the cost of living figure. We too have suffered very seriously for the past ten years under the former administration, and I will quote some figures to show what we have suffered. The ten per cent. cut which came into operation in November, 1923, has cost us in the interval £3,375,000. The 4 per cent. which we contribute to the pension fund is responsible for £1,000,000. The fees for Irish, which lapsed, of course, in 1922 with the coming into operation of the new programme, is responsible for a loss of £210,000. The fees for extra subjects, namely, mathematics and rural science, which were taken away by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government in 1929, account for a loss of £28,000. The evening school fees of which we were deprived at the same date are responsible for a loss in the past four years of £32,000. That makes a loss of nearly £5,000,000. In addition, the teachers have what other public servants have not, expenses incidental to their work. Teachers here in Dublin especially, and of course in the poorer parts of the country, very often supply free books, pencils and so on, to their children. That is a very common practice amongst teachers, and a practice from which other public servants are entirely free. Putting it at the smallest figure, say, £5 per head from the 10,000 teachers in the Free State, I say we contribute £50,000 per annum towards supplying books and stationery free to pupils. On the question of Irish classes, we all know that teachers were for four or five years compulsorily taken from their homes and sent into towns and places where there was not very much accommodation. They had to live there for a period at very large expense to themselves, because the amount given by the State would not meet half the expenses incurred by the teachers.
I maintain, as I say, that we have been unfairly treated under this Bill, and this unfair discrimination has created much discontent amongst teachers and has raised more anger even than the cuts themselves. That discontent was augmented by the Press summary issued by the Department of Finance on publishing this Bill for the first time. The Press summary spoke about concessions to the teachers, as if the teachers were getting concessions ! However, when you opened the Bill you found, in place of concessions, the very reverse. Mention was made in that Press summary of the granting of pensions to convent school teachers. That is a belated concession and one that ought to have been given ten years ago. I may say that the Government of Northern Ireland, from the date of its inception, granted pensions to convent school teachers, a concession not given here yet.
The total amount sought to be got in cuts from the teachers is £175,000. The total cuts proposed by this Bill amount to £280,000. That means that the teachers are asked to contribute 62½ per cent. of the whole cuts. That amounts to about £6 5s. out of every £10. We are told that there is to be equality of sacrifice. From the figures I have just quoted I cannot see it. There is more evidence, however. The total amount paid by the State in wages and salaries amounts to 12¾ millions. The salaries of the teachers amount, roughly, to £3,000,000, or one-fourth of the total amount paid in salaries and wages. If we are to have equality of sacrifice, the amount to be borne by the teachers would be one-fourth of the total amount, or £70,000, whereas the teachers are asked to bear, not 25 per cent., but 62½ per cent. of the total cuts.
The Minister last night said that this was a temporary measure designed to meet the present situation. If that is so why in this temporary measure in which we are to have equality of sacrifice, not take three men, A.B. and C., who on 1st April, 1933, had each £400 per annum, and cut them in equal shares. Has that been done? Not at all. A teacher earning £400 has to suffer a cut of 7½ per cent. An officer in the Army or Gárda, having the same salary, is submitted to a cut of 5½ per cent. A civil servant with £400 has to submit to a cut of 2 per cent. In face of these figures, I think it is absurd for the Department of Finance to issue a Press summary with this Bill stating the teachers were being specially favoured. I fail to see the special favour.
I deprecate very much the comparison made between teachers and civil servants. It did not originate with us but with the Department that sent out the Press summary in which we were spoken of as receiving some special concession. If you are to establish a comparison you must take a teacher and equate him with some civil servant doing equally important work and who has, generally speaking, the same standard of education. That is the only way to do it. It is not by referring, as the Press summary did, to teachers who in 1920 had £100 per year and civil servants in 1920 who had £100 per year and going along year by year. That is a foolish and ridiculous way of making a comparison. If you want a comparison, select some grade in the Civil Service and get a man who has about the same standard of education as a teacher and who does equally important work. For that comparison I would select the junior executive officer, and the comparison is not against the Civil Service in that case. The junior executive officer enters the Civil Service between 18 and 20. I know the examination is a stiff one and that the competition is very keen. He enters, however, on the Honours Leaving Certificate, the examination on which the teacher enters the training college and spends two further years preparing himself for his profession. Yet I shall allow the comparison to go. We are told by the Minister that civil servants have suffered through the fall in the cost-of-living bonus. Very well. Assume that in 1922 a junior executive officer entered the service and that in the same year a teacher entered the profession and we compare their salaries for that 11-year period, year by year, allowing for the fluctuations of the bonus and their respective increments, we find that in that period the junior executive officer earned £384, or £35 per annum more than the national teacher. I challenge the Minister or his experts to prove that these figures are inaccurate. Yet that junior executive officer is now getting no cut, while the teacher will get a six per cent. cut. Yet we are told that teachers are getting special treatment.
Supposing, again, that on 1st April, 1933, the civil servant were on his maximum, that is £350, plus £106 bonus, he would have a total salary of £456. The teacher at the maximum of his super-normal grade would have, at the same date, £358 10s. 0d., or £100 less than the civil servant. Yet that teacher is now cut seven per cent. and the junior executive officer two per cent. Again assume that ten years ago the junior executive officer were at his maximum and the teacher at his maximum too, and that neither received any increment since then; that the national teacher's salary would be stationary except for the ten per cent. cut and that the civil servant's would fluctuate. Even so, the civil servant in that period would have received £506 more than the national teacher.
I do not want to weary the Dáil with figures, because I know they are rather confusing when not taken down. There is an opinion abroad, as Deputy Lynch said, that teachers are overpaid. The average salary for all national teachers, young and old, high and low in grade, is £4 10s. That includes junior assistant mistresses. If they are excluded the average salary amounts to about £5 per week. Is that salary too high to pay the teachers of the State? Then the commencing salary of a male teacher, after spending four years in a preparatory college and two years in a training college, is only £2 16s. per week. The commencing weekly salary of a female teacher, after undergoing the same course of preparation, is about £2 11s. 6d. per week. Yet we are told by the Centre Party and other people that the teachers are being paid too much and that we are spending too much on education.
What about the Fianna Fáil Party?
The Deputy got his own flock nicely shepherded away when the axeman was passing round. To prove that this country does not spend too much on education, I shall read for you the cost per pupil of education in other countries. The cost per pupil in England and Wales is £11 5s. 4d.; in Norway, £9 15s. 11d.; in Switzerland, £9 8s. 4d.; in Holland, £17 4s.; in the United States of America, £11 16s. That is the cost per head per annum of pupils in the primary schools. In the Saorstát in 1925 the cost per head was £7 1s. 11d.; in 1926, £8 8s. 9d.; in 1928, £8 4s. 8d., and in 1929, £8 6s. 5d. That is to say that in these other countries — England and Wales, Norway, Switzerland and the United States of America — the cost of education per head of the pupils is far higher than it is in the Free State. Yet people say we are spending too much on education in this country.
I have already mentioned that the conditions of service in the case of teachers are different from those in the case of other public servants. First of all, they have incidental expenses in connection with their work but there is worse than that. A civil servant who once enters on his position is certain of employment. The teacher is not. The teacher may be trained for a year, or two or three years and find no employment. The State does not guarantee him employment. He may be employed and through declining average, lose his position. At the present time, I know of a man with 13 years' experience as a teacher, a B.A. and B.Sc., a man who holds the Higher Diploma in Education and who has the Ard-Theastas, who lost his position through a decline in average, and is now acting as substitute. That state of affairs could not obtain in any other public service. Several teachers every month lose their positions because of declining averages or from one cause or another. You have also at the present time, and I think it is a matter for which the ex-Minister is responsible, a surplus number of teachers trained, teachers for whom no employment can be found because there are no schools for them. There is also the fact that when the teacher falls ill he has to employ and pay his own substitute. That does not obtain in any other Department of the public service. When a civil servant, Gárda or Army officer falls ill he draws his pay and he has not to employ a person to work in his place; the teacher has.
Deputy Gearóid O'Sullivan mentioned the position of teachers employed down the country and the lack of accommodation for them. The question of accommodation is important, because in the case of civil servants they are congregated where they can find accommodation very easily and in the case of the Gárda or the Army they are provided with barracks. Teachers in the country very often find the accommodation very poor. I myself spent the first two years of my teaching career in a labourer's cottage. That is a common experience with teachers. I had no other place to go. I was glad to have it and I was reasonably comfortable in it. There is also the question of marriage allowances. In the case of civil servants a marriage allowance is paid. In the case of teachers no such allowance is paid. Then in the case of pensions the teachers contribute 4 per cent. towards their pensions, but after 40 years' service they receive only 40-80ths or just half their salary as pension, whereas the civil servant gets 40-80ths plus a lump sum amounting to one and a half years' salary or something like that. The conditions of service are in several respects different.
The Minister for Education pointed out that an offer was made to the teachers — I think it was in June of last year — of a 5 per cent. cut all round with a settlement of the pension question. That offer was rejected by the teachers. If the Minister wanted to impose, as apparently he does, a cut on the teachers why, at least, did he not impose the June offer? It was far better than the conditions in the present Schedule. The cut was lower in the first place and under that offer the pension question was to be settled. The action of the Minister reminds me of the action of his predecessor who when the former Executive agreed to a six per cent. cut, said: "If this is not taken you will get a ten per cent. cut." Apparently, the present Minister decided that as we refused five per cent. we should get a worse cut.
I should like to make the House aware of the fact that the teachers are responsible for the secular and religious instruction of 97 per cent. of the children of the Free State. Our work is not confined merely to teaching the three R.s. We have in our hands the moral and religious training of the pupils as well as their secular training. This is a factor that does not enter into the minds of people who advocate these cuts, I am sure. If you want to prevent this country lapsing into Pagan darkness we must have schools and teachers. This country is more free from Communism and Bolshevism and more true to the ancient faith than any other country in the world, and if that is so, much of the credit goes to the national teachers of the State. Yet, great though the services they rendered, they are the worst treated of any body of public servants at the present time. We heard very often references in the Press and on the platform to Ireland Gaelic and Ireland free. I ask anybody in this House how without the teachers you are going to make Ireland Gaelic and Ireland free. I would like to hear by whom it is to be done, if not by teachers. I am not playing politics. As everybody in the House realises I am in a very awkward position in this matter. I say the body to which I have the honour to belong are at the moment very discontented and embittered by the very unfair discrimination made against them in these cuts. I appeal to the Minister to make some gesture even at this stage to allay that discontent and to soothe these ruffled tempers. The national teachers of Ireland are a very important body of public servants and because of their public service deserve very special consideration. That consideration has not been shown. I again appeal to the Minister to reconsider this position. He has done so in the last 24 hours with regard to the Universities. He settled their cut at five per cent. It is not too late yet to modify this cut— I do not ask him to wipe it out as I fully appreciate a cut is inevitable— but I appeal to him to do something to allay the present discontent.
I quite agree with the last speaker that it is rather invidious to draw comparisons between the different services cut. I quite realise the fact that he was forced to come to do so himself because of the unfortunate memorandum sent out by the Government for publicity purposes some time ago. It gave to the ordinary public a lot of misleading information. In many ways that was a most misleading statement. It left the ordinary reader under the impression that for the first time the question of pensions for lay teachers in convent schools — I do not know whether junior assistant mistresses were included— was considered and favourably considered by a Government here. That, of course, was not so; on all matters of that kind an agreement was reached between the previous Government and the Central Executive of the National Teachers' Organisation.
We listened to-night to what I think must be acknowledged to be an extraordinary speech from the Minister for Education. I have never been a person to question any mandate the Government may have. I hold that they deceived the electorates but I always held that any electorate that returned a Fianna Fáil Government should be prepared for anything. But as the Minister in reply to Deputy Davin did raise that particular question perhaps a moment or two spent upon its consideration will not be out of place. He said it was perfectly well known that an agreement was come to with the previous Government. It was equally well known, still more well known I think, that the Fianna Fáil Party were pledged not to cut. I quite admit it was known that we had made an agreement, but it was equally known during the 1932 general election that they were pledged not to cut. In the 1933 election the Minister said it was known that the Government were pledged to economies. Can anybody who voted in 1933 be expected to take that seriously? They had been 12 months telling the country that they were achieving these economies. All that was known was that there were negotiations going on. I suggest it must be clear whatever was held with regard to the previous Government that this Government was pledged not to do the thing which it is doing. However I am not raising the question of mandate. The people who elected the Fianna Fáil Government, and kept them in power, must be prepared for what they get. The House must have noticed, even the members of the Fianna Fáil Party must have noticed, that no justification was put forward for this cut by the Minister for Education. The attitude was not taken up that was unfortunately taken up by the Minister for Finance in discussing the last cut, namely, that it was deserved upon its merits. The Minister did not take up that attitude. No effort has been made to examine these cuts or to defend the cuts proposed on their merits. Whether in the extraordinary eloquence of the Minister for Finance or the more placid style of his colleague, we find the one plea that the country cannot afford it at the moment. That gets us back again, despite every effort to hide it, to the particular line of argument that the country is on the verge of bankruptcy and that, therefore, none of these cuts, and certainly not the cut we are now discussing has been considered upon its merits. The only justification put forward is relating the cuts to the Budget. If there is one thing that does not justify the cuts it is the statements of the Minister for Finance this year and last. Whatever cause there is for the cuts in the case of a Government trying to balance the Budget we suggest there is no justification, so far as this goes in that particular line for these cuts. I wonder whether the general effect of this policy has been considered.
There were a couple of years during the existence of this State when there was a scarcity of candidates for entrance into the teaching profession. That may not be so at the present moment. I think it is not so, but a couple of years ago, despite the salary there was a scarcity of candidates for entrance into the training colleges. We were not able to get for a couple of years candidates of the required standard. I suggest that to risk a recurrence of that is not a wise policy. The teachers are certainly not overpaid.
One question that might be raised, and it was a question that was raised when Fianna Fáil were on these benches, is the question as to whether we get value for the money. Anybody who has an interest in the future of the country will hesitate to interfere with the amount of remuneration that is being given. We were faced with the situation of trying to balance our Budget without imposing any extra taxation. We proposed an additional sixpence on income tax, but we were most anxious to avoid as far as possible imposing fresh taxation. In dealing with the teachers there was one thing we did recognise, and that was that it would be unfair to ask the teachers for a contribution unless at the same time we settled the question of the pensions fund. What is happening at the present moment? You would have, as the fund now stands, to look upon the four per cent. paid into the pensions fund by the teachers as a cut, because they are paying into a fund that is confessedly bankrupt. They are paying into a fund out of which many of them can reap no advantage. I hold it is unfair to tackle this question of cuts in salary without at the same time taking up the important question of the pensions fund. These two things went hand in hand in a settlement that we proposed to the Central Executive of the National Teachers' Organisation. They accepted that and it was subsequently endorsed by a special congress.
Hear, hear!
That has been mentioned many times during the Minister's absence, and it is no new revelation. It was then rejected by the General Congress, relying on the promises of Fianna Fáil at the election. The teachers at the congress specially summoned accepted the settlement of the pensions fund plus the cut that we proposed, but relying on the promises held out to them from every platform and in the election literature of Fianna Fáil, they rejected it when it came before the General Congress. They have been deceived by the promises of the Government. I am sorry that the Minister's "Hear, hear," brought me back again to that particular matter. I suggest it is unfair to make this cut without the Government reaching a settlement of the pensions question. The settlement of the pensions question that we pro posed was that the Government would take over full responsibility for paying the pensions of national teachers.
If the national teachers in the year 1931 consented to a cut of 6 per cent., then they were, at least so long as this State was solvent, secured of their pensions. So far as the public knows, that is not the situation at present and, so far as this Bill goes, and so far as any public statement of the Minister is concerned, the teachers are now being cut and they are still continuing to pay into a fund that is bankrupt. That fund was bankrupt to the extent of several millions some years ago. As everyone knows, it is still more bankrupt now. It was calculated — I am relying on my memory now — that at that time it would take an amount equivalent to 8½ per cent. per annum of the salaries to make the fund solvent. What amount would it take to make the fund solvent now? Perhaps the Minister is in a position to state. I am not. It must, however, be a considerably greater sum. The amendment in my name does couple up these two things.
Are we discussing the amendment?
I am not proposing the amendment.
Then are we entitled to discuss it?
I am entitled to discuss why the Government should not make the cut, and one of the strongest reasons is that the pensions fund is bankrupt. You may have some rule saying that a proposal to impose taxation cannot be made by a private member, but surely that private member can take cognisance of one of the prime factors of the situation. It is only the Minister for Finance who could suggest otherwise.
Who let the fund go bankrupt?
Is it not the duty of the Chair to decide what is in order?
Yes, but not the Deputy from Cavan. When it is necessary, the Chair will draw my attention to the fact that my remarks are not in order. The fact that the Chair has taken no notice of the Minister's interruption leads me to assume that what I am saying is perfectly relevant. The importance of the work done by the teacher has not been taken into account. The President of the Executive Council has taken up a line which is really amazing, coming from a man occupying his position. He is the idealist, the believer in a Christian State, and he is the Chancellor of the National University. He made a distinction between the productive and the non-productive classes. That is an extraordinarily materialistic view to take, as if every person who works in the capacity of a civil servant or in the capacity of a teacher is not, to the best of his ability, doing productive work for this State. That it should come from the Chancellor of the National University would certainly cause surprise were it not that he happens to be the particular person he is.
That is a wrong conception. You cannot build up any decent future in this country unless you have a proper system of education. Every effort has been made to improve that system year by year and those efforts will, I am sure, continue. But in connection with those efforts, as previous speakers have pointed out, heavy duties have been placed upon the teachers, duties especially heavy on those teachers beyond a certain age. As a body they have faced up to the imposition of these duties and they have not avoided them. These were the considerations that were operative with us when we took over responsibility for settling the pensions fund. I have confined myself strictly to the amendment. I have pointed out that the Minister who spoke on this particular matter did not even make a pretence of putting up a case for these particular cuts.
May I call attention to at least one other matter? That is that when you come to examine this Schedule you will find in it what I call discrimination according to the different rates of pay. What I should like the House to bear in mind is this: it practically means that the older a man gets in the teaching profession the more he is cut, because he goes up year by year and he naturally gets higher pay. But it is not an advance to a higher grade as from a junior to the higher executive. It is purely a yearly increase. I suggest that the older a man gets the heavier are his responsibilities. That is realised when a higher salary is being given to the older man. From those who advocate so very strongly the necessity for their Christian State here in this country one would expect the least they might have done would be not to penalise the men with families. That is exactly what is being done. The higher percentage cut is taken off the older teachers and not off the younger teachers. The Schedule is from that point of view most regrettable. The older men are precisely the men who will be least able to bear the cut and these are the men who are now called upon to bear the major portion.
Attention has been drawn by Deputy Lynch and by Deputy Breathnach to the fact that the teachers were not in the position for many years to enjoy a living wage in this country. That consideration seems to have been left out of account in the passion displayed again by the Government for mathematics. All the human element was left out and the only justification put forward here is, "we are inflicting so much damage on this class and we are inflicting so much damage on another class; we are taking ten per cent. off that class and ten per cent. off this." The only justification they have put forward for any of the clauses or subclauses of this Bill up to the present is that the damage they are going to inflict will be inflicted mathematically.
The teachers have always contended that when the rates of salaries were being fixed in 1920 it was distinctly conveyed to them that the rate was not being fixed with any reference to the cost of living and that the salaries they were to get were to be independent of any variation in the cost of living. That is what the teachers have always contended was the understanding that was arrived at between them and the British Government when the salaries were fixed. They have always contended that had the question of the cost of living cropped up and had it been taken into consideration they would have got probably a higher salary at the time. All these have been left out of account.
There is another thing to which I would like to call attention. I have already said that if you had a Government that was determined to make economies it might put up a case for this Bill. But the Government is determined to do the very opposite to making economies. Every step they have taken since they came into power in the country has shown that they are determined not to make economies. The idea is to suggest from the point of view of the general public that by cutting this paltry quarter of a million they are making economies. That is the purest camouflage. In reality the idea is a policy of levelling, and that has got complete control of the head of the Executive Council. I am convinced of that. He thinks he is going to level up, but he is certainly succeeding in levelling down. That is what he is really doing.
As Deputy Gearóid O'Sullivan pointed out, there is undoubtedly a certain amount of opinion in this country—a certain amount of jealousy as to the salaries enjoyed by the teachers. I have no doubt but this particular Bill will pander to that particular type of jealousy. It is in full keeping with the general tendency of the policy of the Party who introduced and are supporting this Bill. It is not true in the main that it will do any good to the country or that it will foster, promote and develop any interests in the country. Nations generally take a certain pride when they are dealing with national expenditure in boasting of what a high percentage of their general expenditure is spent on education. They are anxious to show as the years go on that a higher sum of money is being spent thereon. We at least will be in the position amongst other matters of being unique as the years go on in the percentage which the money spent on education in this country bears to the total expenditure.
In the debate on the previous amendment we had an exhibition from Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney in relation to the proposed cuts in the Gárda Síochána, which, in view of the position taken by the Government of which he was a member on the 5th January, 1932, and duly communicated to the Commissioner of the Gárda, I should find it difficult to find words to fittingly characterise within the precincts of the House. But that exhibition by Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney has been paralleled and could only have been paralleled by the exhibition given by Deputy Professor O'Sullivan just now. He asks us to declare that the teachers were certainly not overpaid in the middle of May, 1933, when the cost-of-living index has fallen to 55. He asks us therefore to declare that they were certainly not overpaid in December, 1931, when the cost of living figure was 70. The Deputy who is attacking the Government's proposals in regard to this Bill is the Deputy who met the national teachers in November, 1931, and submitted to them a proposal to reduce their pensionable salaries, not by the lesser amounts set out in this Bill, but by ten per cent. I heard Deputy Breathnach say that the cut which was proposed on the 8th December, 1931, by the then Minister for Education and the then Minister for Finance was only a cut of six per cent. I should like to correct Deputy Breathnach's misapprehension on that point, because I have a statement of the proposal which was then submitted in my hand now and it is worded as follows:—
"The reduction of six per cent. in the teachers' salaries making with the existing four per cent. contribution a total reduction of ten per cent. in existing salaries."
Beyond yea or nay, the proposal then made by the Minister for Education and the Minister for Finance was that the salary should be cut by ten per cent.
Mr. Lynch
And the proposal now is as high as 12 per cent.
Deputy O'Sullivan went on then and said that there had been no attempt to examine this cut on its merits. Why should there be? The merits of the Government's proposal now before the House was sifted, examined and scrutinised by a special congress of the National Teachers' Organisation held in December, 1931.
I am not going to say that the product of human intellect can be other than imperfect, but whatever faults this proposal can have in it, with whatever original sin it was conceived, at any rate it had the benefit of pre-natal baptism at that special congress of the national teachers on the 19th of December, 1931, when solemnly the teachers met, and by a majority of over two to one, decided to accept, not as I have said the comparatively favourable proposals enshrined in this Bill, but the much more serious and much more grievious cut of ten per cent. which was to be imposed on them by Deputy O'Sullivan, in his then capacity of Minister for Education, and by the then Minister for Finance. Why should we waste the time of the House examining the proposals now before us on their merits? There is, as I have said, a much more serious "cut" which was accepted by the National Teachers' Congress. Of course there has been a change. Something happened. There was a change of Government, and then some people thought they would play politics. When the present Minister for Education and myself met the representatives of the national teachers we did not hold them to the bargain which they made with the previous Government, but, bearing in mind the general position of the national teachers and anxious to meet their point of view, and possibly being less careful than we might have been of the interests of the taxpayers, we submitted to them a proposal for a cut of five per cent., making with the present contribution of four per cent., a total of nine per cent. on existing salaries of pensionable teachers. There was added this further concession, that the income for pension purposes should remain as at present, and that the four per cent. continue to be returnable as heretofore. Furthermore in the case of the junior assistant mistresses, who were to be cut 10 per cent. under the preceding proposal, the cut was to be six per cent., and in the case of the lay assistants, nine per cent., and, clearing up the whole difficulty in regard to their pension rights, both these classes were to be placed on the pension lists, and get credit for pension purposes for two-thirds of the service given as such prior to April 1, 1932, the service given after that date to count in full, and their taxable income to remain intact as in the case of the general body. There was also this further concession, that the cuts were to take effect as from August 1st, 1932, and to continue in operation for a year, when they would be subject to revision, the Government to take the initiative if it should be proposed to continue them beyond that period, and the State to accept responsibility for the future payment of pensions.
I would ask anybody, even a national teacher, to examine these two proposals fairly, and I challenge him to deny that the Government in making the second proposal went beyond the limits that might be fixed even by reasonable generosity. As I said, times changed however. The organisation which had accepted grievous and serious cuts imposed upon its members by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government decided to reject that offer by a majority of over 12 to 1. That is why I say that there is no occasion to examine those proposals any longer on their merits, because we find we were not dealing with reasonable men and that there was no possibility of securing anything like a fair agreement from that organisation. A Deputy has said that it is unfair to ask teachers for a contribution unless the Pensions Fund question is being settled. When the Teachers' Congress met last Easter there was a deliberate overture made to them then by the head of the Government and the then acting Minister for Finance, to come along and discuss this question of the Pensions Fund, and get a settlement before the cuts came into operation.
What settlement?
What happened? Were the body which accepted, as I said and as I must emphasise, the much more serious cut of December, 1931, in any mood to come along and meet over a council table to settle at once the question of the cuts and the question of the pensions fund? Were they then clamouring that they might have this vexed question settled at long last, and that they might be secured in their pensions, because remember that so long as that question remains unsettled it is their pensions remain in danger and nothing else? When they were asked to meet and settle the question, what happened? They rejected the overture. They would not listen; they would not negotiate. They preferred instead to pass resolutions protesting that because they were cut by nine per cent., six per cent., five per cent., or four per cent., they were not going to be good Irishmen any longer; they would not play Gaelic games; they would not teach Irish history; in fact, they would not do their duty to the State which employed them. That was the attitude taken up by them.
Mr. Lynch
No. Certainly not.
I suggest that the Minister is quite in order. Unless this is a point of order I suggest that he be not interrupted.
He will not be interrupted, I hope. They passed resolutions of that sort. They decided to go out on a one-day strike, and parade the streets of the city with banners flying. The people who were prepared to accept a ten per cent. cut from the last Government would not even come to discuss the question with us. Deputy Breathnach has said that the trouble about it now is that the people were becoming embittered. It is quite true people are becoming embittered. The common people everywhere, the members of the Fianna Fáil organisation — does anyone think we could defend a concession to the National Teachers' Organisation after the way it has ruled itself out of court during the past few weeks? I quite well appreciate the efforts which have been made on the part of national teachers who have not lost all sense of national responsibility to find a solution for this problem, and, even yet, if a solution of the Pensions Fund question is wanted we are perfectly prepared to meet the teachers' organisation and to discuss that question, but to discuss that question alone. The cuts as they are in this Bill stand as the cuts for this year, because this year some sacrifice is necessary from every section of the public service.
I am not going to enter into any invidious discussion here as to whether a teacher is better worth his salary than a Junior Executive Officer, a Guard, or anyone else. That is not the basis upon which these proposals have been submitted to the Dáil. We are not determining here that any man is worse off or paid less than he ought to be as compared to another. It is not a question of levelling up or levelling down. It is merely that we are taking things as we find them in this year 1933. We will have to take the money where we find it in order to make ends meet in this year, and in order not to fight the economic war, but to fight the war which we have determined to bring to a victorious conclusion against poverty and starvation. For that, and no other reason, are those moneys being required.
Now you are talking.
We might have played politics. We might have said "There is a dispute on with England. Our hands are tied. We have got to look to the public service." We might have done that but we are not of that calibre. We said "We will fight the battle on both fronts, internally and externally. We are going to hold to our own while we are providing for our own. It is because of that we have to reduce the teachers." In making the reductions, as I have said already, we are not taking into consideration at all whether the scales that apply to the national teachers are fair or equitable or not. We are taking them as we find them and applying the cuts in the most equitable manner we can determine. Having done that, when the end of the year passes, if in the meantime there has not been a settlement of the pensions question, which will resolve the whole of this position, we shall allow the position to revert to what it was on 31st March this year, and if it is no longer necessary to have these cuts— and I believe it will not be necessary— there will be no person prejudiced in any way. The whole position will be restored as we had intended to restore it under our proposal of 1932, if the necessity for the reduction had no longer existed. Henceforward, though the question of the settlement of the Pensions Fund and the question of the temporary economies will remain separate and distinct, unless some person, empowered to act as a plenipotentiary on behalf of the teachers, comes to us with a definite proposition. We are not going to go back to the position that has existed here since August, 1929, when our predecessors made continuous attempts to secure a settlement of the pensions fund question and when every attempt that they made was defeated by the teachers' unwillingness to send people by whose agreement they would be bound. If there is going to be any further discussion and negotiation with the National Teachers' Organisation on any matter relating to salaries or to the Pensions Fund during this year, those negotiations will only be opened, so far as the Government are concerned, with accredited representatives in a position to close a deal over the council table.
I regret that the Minister for Finance, in view of the statements he has made, had not an opportunity of hearing in full two speeches that were made earlier in the debate. I refer to the speech made by Deputy Lynch and to the speech made later on by a member of the Minister's own Party — Deputy Cormac Breathnach. These speeches, if they do nothing else, will do something to dispel a great deal of the ignorance of a large number of the people concerning the actual position of the teachers. One finds it hard to follow the line of reasoning which prompted the Minister to defend his action in this matter in the way he has done. His main contention is that there is now no reason to examine the proposed cut on its merits, that it was already examined and submitted to the teachers and accepted by a special conference. What are the facts? The facts are that a certain proposal for a cut was made and submitted to the teachers' executive and, as the Minister said, accepted subsequently by a special conference. But what happened immediately afterwards? What was the line of action taken by the Minister and his colleagues in regard to that decision? I do not think I am misquoting the Minister when I say that, in at least one speech he referred to the action of the teachers' executive as a betrayal of the teachers. Was there not an outcry all over the country to evict the executive that consented to that betrayal, an outcry that resulted in putting an executive in power that was more in harmony with the views of the Minister and his colleagues? Was there not an outcry against the General Secretary of the teachers' organisation at that time? Will the Minister tell us now who was playing politics that time and who is playing politics now? The Minister referred later in his speech to the offer made by the President to the teachers to discuss this matter. He did not, however, advert to one fact, and that was that the President wanted to meet a deputation armed with plenary powers to discuss the matter. The teachers rejected that proposal and rightly rejected it. They had a notable example, and a notable precedent to guide them in that matter, because the President on many occasions has referred to the disastrous effects that followed the giving of plenary powers to a delegation to negotiate a settlement.
They were taken; they were not given.
A Deputy
They were given.
Mr. Murphy
It is, of course, quite a different thing to talk of a cut in teachers' salaries associated with a settlement of the pensions fund, from divorcing it from that settlement and to leave the position of the teachers altogether uncertain in regard to a very important portion of their work and a very important aspect of their position in the future, and that is the attitude of the Minister to-day. This particular cut, as well as this whole Bill, is a response to the ignorant clamour going on all over the country for cuts, here, there and everywhere, ruthlessly and recklessly. The demand for this cut is a parallel to the demand for the cut in the salaries of Deputies. A great many people during the last five or six or ten years have talked about the enormous salary that Deputies enjoy. We do not hear so much about it now because the real facts surrounding that particular salary and the amount of comfort which Deputies are able to draw from it is better understood now than it was then. As the facts associated with the work of the teachers, and the real merits of their case will come to be discussed some time in the light of reason, and with some conception of their rights and the amount of fair-play that ought to be extended to them as important and useful public servants, we may hope to have a reasoned examination of the whole position and an attempt to repair what is being done now in response to nothing else than the most ignorant clamour that could be aroused in the country. The type of resolutions that we have seen passed all over the country in the last five or six weeks are a fair example of the amount of intelligence that is behind resolutions of that kind. I very much regret to see that outlook finds expression even in this House where matters of that kind ought to be examined intelligently.
There was one statement of Deputy Gearóid O'Sullivan that was almost as audacious as some of the statements made by the Minister. He talked about the Free State emancipating and paying the teachers properly. Deputy Breathnach referred to that statement already. The fact is that after years of slavery the teachers found themselves in 1920, for the first time, in the enjoyment of something like a reasonable salary. The Free State that was alleged to have emancipated them proceeded, after 12 months, to take a large part of the salary away and to pursue that policy by withdrawing certain other emoluments which the teachers enjoyed from time to time up to 1929. The same mentality is revealed in the Government that has succeeded them and the same attempt has been made to defend the cuts on the ground that financial stringency must always be eased by taking money out of the pockets of wage earners and public servants. One finds it hard to understand that outlook.
If low wages, poor salaries and bad working conditions enable countries to reach prosperity, certain eastern countries where men work without wages at all, where they live on a handful of rice that is doled out to them to enable them to sustain life, should be very prosperous countries indeed, but countries of that kind at the present time are anything but prosperous. The most awful misery, the most terrible poverty exists in countries of that kind. One finds it very hard to understand why this Dáil should pursue a policy of this kind to-day in view of the fact that in neighbouring countries industrialists who have had the fallacy of a policy of this kind proved conclusively are now appealing for better wages for workers and in a number of industries are restoring the cuts made in the last few years. One must realise that in countries of that description the depression and the financial stringency about which the Minister talks is prevalent to a very considerable extent. One finds it hard to believe that the Minister for Education has any sympathy with this proposal. His whole speech proved that, if it proved anything. A more half-hearted or a more pathetic defence of the attitude of the Government in this matter it would be hard to find than that made by the Minister. One gives the Minister credit for being honest enough to see as clearly as any member of a Party in his position at the present time can see that the whole policy underlying this proposal is a fallacious and foolish one.
I thought I noticed in the House this evening when some Deputy — I think it was Deputy Lynch — talked about the strenuous work of the teachers, some members smiling sceptically. I think that that claim made by Deputy Lynch on behalf of the teachers could not be emphasised overmuch. Unquestionably the teachers' work is very hard. I live next door to a national school. I hear the teachers at work. I very often pity myself for the amount of work thrown on my shoulders, but I am honest enough to pity the teachers who have to work in that school a great deal more. When I remember that these teachers work under fairly good conditions, that the building is a good one, that the surroundings are clean and decent, I am often forced to think of the plight of teachers who have to work under very different conditions. I know teachers in my own constituency who have to work in wretched buildings, if they can be described as buildings, in which the rain comes through. I have seen pieces of cardboard, pieces of cloth and other things stuffed into the windows to keep the rain out. I have seen the floor broken in places and children and teachers in danger of their lives in buildings of that kind. One has to remember above all that, the terrible disadvantage under which the teachers work, having regard to the impossibility of getting any decent results in conditions of that kind.
There is just one other point. I did not hear it mentioned to-day although a great deal of what I have said has been said in much better form by other speakers who preceded me. There is no doubt that one of the most urgent problems we are up against in this country at present is what to do with the youth of the country. The responsibility of parents who have a growing family with no outlet in life is for a good many I am afraid a terrible one and it will be more so in future. If the children of the present, or the children of the future, are to be helped as they should be helped to get any decent opportunity of living in the country, when we consider that hundreds more will be claiming that opportunity in future than have claimed it in the past, and that the national school is the only school available to the bulk of the children of the country, then they must get the best possible results out of the national schools. If the teachers, who have had time and again to defend their wages and salaries, who found themselves only a short time ago lifted out of a position of misery that they occupied for a great many years — when they had to be not alone teachers to the children in the schools but the servants, the advisers and the letter writers of every person in the parish — are not encouraged by being kept above the line of discontent and poverty in their profession, then they will not be in a position to give of their best to the children in the schools and education, education that is going to be a matter of life and death for us in this country in future, is going to suffer and suffer very severely. That is a point that might be advanced against the proposal we are discussing at present. While I have very little hope, in view of the decisions that have been already taken on this Bill, that even now any claim to reason will percolate into the final decision that is to taken on this Bill, I believe the representatives of all Parties in the House who are prepared to examine the matter reasonably will agree that the line taken generally, but particularly on this proposal, which it is sought to amend, is a foolish and disastrous one. I hope that even still something may happen that will induce the Minister to change his mind or, failing that, that will induce the House to reject the proposal in this section.
Listening to the debate this evening, and to the criticism of this proposal, I was forced to the conclusion that there is very little prospect before this Government of being allowed to put through their general programme in the ordinary way of constitutional advancement. The criticism here is certainly not sincere. It is worse than that. It savours very strongly of hypocrisy, but it ends at that. At various times in the course of the discussions I have heard members on the opposite benches refer to election speeches. Election speeches are generally understood to be statements coloured as favourably as they possibly can be on behalf of the candidate or the Party concerned, but it is, I assert, good business on the part of the individual or the Party, once they attain the right to enter the Dáil or any assembly of that sort, to drop their election speeches and settle down to hard realities. It is there that the Opposition has failed. They made their election speeches, and nobody will deny that their election promises were more extravagant than any others. But to the credit of the people, be it said, they were not deceived by their extravavance. It ought to be a lesson to the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, who thought of nothing but making extravagant election promises, that the people were not carried away by those false promises. Sincerity is what is wanted. But to come back to the point. I believe it may be the duty of this Government, if they are to carry through their economic programme, to stop a lot of the nonsense that is indulged in here and that is holding up progress, and to take such measures as are necessary to get on with the work and not to allow the work to be thwarted by people who think only of their own interests as politicians.
Close down the Dáil for six months.
Mr. Maguire
It might be a splendid idea, and I wish we could. What are the facts? The main Opposition Party entered into a contract before they left office to reduce those salaries to a much larger extent.
Mr. Lynch
Certainly not.
Mr. Maguire
Yes, they did, and the papers are there.
Mr. Lynch
The papers are there, but they do not show that.
Mr. Maguire
They had in preparation cuts much larger than those they are now opposing. What is the reason now for their great interest on behalf of the teachers and the Guards and others in sheltered position, who are sure of their salaries month by month and of pensions after a certain number of years of service? They do not think of the unemployed in the country. They do not think of the needs or of the poverty of the poor people in the country. Even Deputies on the Labour Benches defend those people in sheltered positions. Only last month we saw a settlement with the railway workers which they had to accept and, also, we saw that numbers of them were dismissed from the service. We find in the country to-day numbers of other people disemployed. Why do Deputies not strike out on behalf of these people? I think far too much interest is given to the case of those people included in the cuts brought forward here by the Government. The teachers are not the callous class of people that they are generally represented as by Deputies opposite. I myself know many of them who quite understand the need for these cuts. I could produce letters from at least three, all of them married men, who wrote to me last year saying that they were willing to bear their share of reductions at the present time and that they would defend further reductions in their salaries.
Are they men married to teachers, because if so they could afford it?
Mr. Maguire
They are married teachers.
But are they married to lady teachers?
Mr. Maguire
No, they are not married to lady teachers. The object of the Opposition is to endeavour further to divide the people in the crisis we are in. They are appealing to the selfish instincts of a special class of the community. The farmers are led to believe that it is the Government that is the cause of the losses from which they are suffering; then the unemployed are led to believe that the Government are responsible for their distress. Civil servants are told that the Government are responsible for any reduction in their salaries and emoluments, and the same story is told to the teachers, the Guards, and the Army. These sinister motives move the Opposition, blind to the realities of the situation, and leave them to occupy the illogical position they occupy in their present attitude to the cuts.
The real situation is well known and the real cause for the necessity for these cuts is known too. And the people knew it at the last election and Deputies opposite should have learned their lesson and applied more sincerity in their conduct. If they had done so they would have found better results. I suggest that what would be far more dangerous to the teachers than the cuts would be the ruin that would be possible to this country from the contribution of the Opposition. It may be an inconvenience to many teachers to suffer cuts in their salaries, but it is necessary and will cause less inconvenience in the long run to the teachers, than if the children attending their schools were allowed to go hungry. It is for the purpose of balancing that situation partly that this cut is necessary. We have made provision in our Budget to supply milk to necessitous children attending schools, and to provide them with some food and shelter in their homes. These are the classes of the community that we are thinking of and making provision for. These cuts are necessary towards that contribution. Will Deputies opposite, and will Deputies on the Labour Benches who pose as the strongest advocates of the poor — and I have no doubt their sympathies are with them and with their needs — show us how to find schemes to provide for the needs of these people better than those we have?
The Deputy must realise that he is making a Second Reading speech.
Mr. Maguire
I am referring to the criticism of the Opposition, but if you feel that I am travelling too far I shall curtail my speech.
It is a sound, sensible speech, anyhow.
Mr. Lynch
Especially in regard to the Fianna Fáil election speeches.
Mr. Maguire
Great interest is taken in the teachers by the late Minister for Education. There was great consideration shown by him to those teachers, many of whom did not agree with him politically and who were dismissed from the service and refused to be allowed back for years. To-day he embraces them all in his arms having ascertained their worth and the salaries that the State can put into their pockets. He has further ascertained that the Government are levying heavy damage on all classes of the community, the teachers included. What form of damage does he assert we are levying? The damage done by him and his Government when they were in office, we are endeavouring to repair. It is no infliction of damage to ask the teaching profession to bear a share of the necessary sacrifice, to make good the position in this country so that there may be a living for the poor as well as those who are in sheltered positions. There is nothing more than that asked for. If the Opposition continue their action and their attitude let me tell them that they have no more authority behind them, or no more claim to speak the sentiments of the teachers whom they profess to speak for, than that they speak the sentiments of the people who want this country to be provided for out of the resources of its own people.
Mr. Lynch
Even the President of the teachers' organisation has not it.
Mr. Norton rose.
Before Deputy Norton speaks, I should like to say that there was an arrangement that the debate on the Committee Stage should conclude by 10.30 p.m. Unfortunately the debate has dragged out much longer than was anticipated and, if there is further debate, I do not know if it would be possible in the hour and a half left to us to do what we want to do.
We are no party to that arrangement. We made it perfectly clear that we would be no party to any arrangement involving a closure.
The position is that the Government must get through its business. There were occasions yesterday when it seemed as if several Deputies were taking up the time of the House unnecessarily. If we do not conclude at 10.30 it will be necessary to call the Dáil to meet again on Friday.
Mr. Lynch
So far as we are concerned, we made that agreement and are prepared to stand by it. I presume that it can be met by formally moving the amendments without debate.
I do not know whether the Chairman of the Labour Party would see his way to do something of that sort.
I think that Deputy Maguire, in his opening sentences, made some very extraordinary statements. He said that in order to carry through its policy—this policy of slashing wages and salaries—the Government will have to take some steps to check, what he describes as the nonsense that is being talked in this House and to take some measures to ensure that it gets its programmes through. I am sure that when Deputy Maguire's speech is read in Berlin to-morrow there will be a cheer from the Storm Troops and the Nazis there. That is the kind of petulance that distinguished every petty tyrant in Europe. That is the mentality of people who want to regard Parliament merely as a rubber stamp for their decisions and I hope that the Minister for Finance, in his reply, will let the House know where his Party stands in that regard. The Labour Party will oppose, and obstruct if necessary, any proposals introduced here which are designed to lower the standard of life of our people. Because of that we will give no facilities whatever to any proposal to impose cuts in wages or salaries. We do not mind if we get no facilities ourselves. We will give no facilities for the lowering of the standard of life in this country and we will not be gagged by the suggestions of Deputy Maguire that the Government should take steps to stop discussion and to steamroll its decisions through this House.
Deputy Maguire said that the opposition was a move to divide the people in this crisis. Nobody ought to know better than Deputy Maguire that, so far as this Party is concerned, it is no move to weaken the morale of the people in this crisis. My one regret is that the Government have not dealt with the crisis in a more vigorous and courageous way than they are dealing with it to-day. We are engaged in an economic war and every day that passes convinces me that the Government have not the courage to fight it, and if we do lose that war we will lose it by default because they are not fighting it as vigorously as they ought to fight it and as they promised they would.
Give an instance.
Deputy Cooney asks me to give an instance. Deputy Cooney gave a speech attacking capitalism and deploring the very thing that is contained in this Bill. Deputy Breathnach, undoubtedly, treated the House to a good deal of useful statistical information in connection with the cuts, but I think I am entitled to ask Deputy Breathnach where he stands in connection with this matter and in connection with the whole Bill. The Deputy made some comparisons between the teachers and the civil servants and the Civic Guards in the matter of pensions. I do not know why that was introduced, except to support the mentality that is in this Bill. That kind of comparison did not help the teacher. It was not doing justice to the teachers and I do not believe that the teachers of the country desire that these odious comparisons should be made.
It was in answer to a Press summary issued by the Government when the Bill was published.
This issue ought to be fought not by comparing one class with another. It ought to be fought on its merits, and the Bill ought to be beaten on its merits, if it has any merit in it. It is a wage and salary slashing Bill, and not all the speeches of the Minister for Finance can erase that impression from the minds of the members of this House. I want to know why Deputy Breathnach thinks that the cut is a justifiable thing in the case of the Civic Guards and not in the case of the national teachers. Deputy Breathnach is the chairman of the National Teachers' Organisation and we are entitled to know where he stands on that matter and what is the difference between the teachers and the Civic Guards in that respect.
I was elected a member of a Party, and, as a member of that Party, as Deputy Norton well knows, I am bound to support the Party. When Deputy Norton abolishes party government — which might be a good thing — and introduces some other system, he can ask these questions.
I have heard the Deputy's explanation and shall not comment on it any more. I do not think it is necessary to comment on it. Here the Minister comes before the Dáil with a Bill of this kind designed to secure approximately a quarter of a million pounds in cuts, and in this matter of teachers' salaries he might well have adopted a penitent rôle to-day. Far from adopting a penitent rôle, the Minister was most volcanic to-day. I do not know whether the Minister will go down to history as a good Minister for Finance, but I am certain that he will go down to history as a good political actor. The Minister told us that Fianna Fáil and the Government might have played politics. I think that was a very unfortunate expression for the Minister to use. In 1931, when the teachers were in negotiation with the then Cumann na nGaedheal Government a certain agreement was arrived at between the teachers' executive and the Cumann na nGaedheal Government. The Minister has a hobby of reading letters in this House from official files. Might I suggest to the Minister that his pastime might extend to reading to this House some of the letters he wrote to the Press on that occasion condemning the cuts and the settlement then made by the teachers' executive because, on this matter, they would be much more interesting than some of the letters he read from official files during the past eighteen months. Everybody knows that the moment the teachers' executive accepted the cut proposed by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, or a modified form of cut, there was, naturally, resentment among a considerable number of teachers in the country and it is not without significance that many of the most prominent antagonists of that settlement were prominent members of the Fianna Fáil Party. So far did they succeed that, at a subsequent conference, having read all the letters which the Minister wrote to the Press in the meantime, and recognising in the then Deputy MacEntee the shadow Minister for Finance of the future, they decided at an annual conference to jettison the arrangement which they had previously come to. They told the new Government and the old Government that they would have nothing to do with the bargain which they had previously accepted.
I do not like to interrupt the Deputy, but after these letters were written, was not a special conference held, and with the full light of the letters before them they accepted a ten per cent. cut.
Am I to understand from the Minister that after the conference he wrote no further letters? I doubt that, although I do not want to question the accuracy of the Minister's statement, but if he did not, at least the Minister for Industry and Commerce made up in speeches for the missing letters of the Minister for Finance. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, speaking at Cahir on the 25th January, 1932—that was after the settlement had been rejected— stated that there was no case for cutting teachers and no case for cutting Civic Guards. Some time after that, or a short time before it, the Minister for Industry and Commerce went down to East Cork and, before an assembled audience, stated that the acceptance of this cut by the teachers' executive was a grave betrayal of the teachers of Ireland. Is he prepared to say the same to-day, and how much of that statement is made up of political bias and political malice against the General Secretary of the Teachers' Organisation, the then Leader of the Labour Party? What did we find in the Sligo-Leitrim election last year? A handbill issued on behalf of the teachers. Again, apparently, feeling that the shadow Minister for Finance was shortly ascending the throne, a pamphlet was issued in that election calling upon the teachers in Sligo-Leitrim to vote for the Fianna Fáil candidates in the constituency because it was believed that their economic interests were safe in the hands of Fianna Fáil. There must be many teachers to-day who are wiser, but there are many teachers who are sadder too. They have been saddened by the knowledge that, in my opinion and I have no hesitation in saying it, prominent people in the Fianna Fáil Party were behind the move to displace the old teachers' executive which accepted the cut from Cumann na nGaedheal, and they did that in the belief that the then shadow Minister for Finance was going to give them a better deal if he was not not perhaps going to avoid the cut completely.
And the belief was justified. The offer was made in June, 1932, and rejected by the teachers by 12 to one.
The Minister may try to put any kind of sugar he likes on this cut, but I prefer to think that in this matter Deputy Cormac Breathnach knows the real mind and feelings of the teachers better than the Minister for Finance or Deputy Maguire. If the Minister for Finance tells me that that sugared cut that he offered the teachers last year was such a desirable one, he might explain to the House why it is that it was rejected by such an overwhelming majority, and by an executive, the overwhelming majority of whom give political allegiance to the Fianna Fáil Party.
The Minister imagines that because the teachers made a bargain, by a majority vote, with the last Government that they ought to be held to that bargain by this Government. That is a most extraordinary doctrine for the Minister for Finance to preach, and some extraordinary doctrines have been propounded by him, notably on this Bill. The idea of the Minister is that the teachers ought to be held, or held substantially to their original bargain. That is the most extraordinary statement that, I think, the Minister has made. The Minister knows perfectly well — he stated it in this House — that the last Government made a bargain with the British Government giving them five and a half million pounds a year. Does the Minister for Finance want to say that this Government should be held substantially by that bargain? If the Minister was entitled — I believe he was rightly entitled — to repudiate the bad bargain then made by the last Government so also are the teachers entitled to repudiate the bad bargain made with the same Government.
Before I conclude I want to go back to the President's statement again. Speaking on the 1st February of last year in the Town Hall, Rathmines, he said that salaries of £300 and £400 a year were not excessive salaries. That was the declaration that we had from the President then. Again, I must state, because it needs emphasis, that on the 9th February, 1932, the President stated to the electors in an election manifesto that so far as the middle and lower grades of the Civil Service were concerned he did not propose to seek economies by restricting social services or by cutting the salaries of the lower and middle grade civil servants — these would include people with salaries of £300 and £400 a year which in his speech in the Town Hall, Rathmines, the President said were not excessive — which in most cases, the President said, were barely sufficient to meet the cost of the maintenance of a home and the support and education of children. That was the election policy of Fianna Fáil last year. It was the bargain and the agreement between the public servants, including the teachers, and the Fianna Fáil Government. Yet, after they are elected to office, with no specific mandate whatever to impose cuts on the teachers, the Government come along and they tear up a bargain and an agreement, and when it is sought on these benches to oppose that tearing up of a bargain and that repudiation of an agreement Deputies on the Fianna Fáil Benches suggest that the Government must take measures to stop criticism of their actions in tearing up an agreement: that it must find, presumably, some means of steamrolling these reactionary measures through the House.
The Minister said in his speech that he was afraid now to go down to the country and justify the position of the teachers before the Fianna Fáil Cumainn. I do not know what the general standard of sensibility is in Fianna Fáil Cumainn. I hope it is high, but I do hope that the Minister would have no hesitation whatever in justifying the teachers before those Fianna Fáil Cumainn who want the nation's lands handed over to them for division and all the road work in a county handed over to them for distribution. The Minister knows perfectly well that he has no mandate to cut the teachers' salaries. Nobody in the country would lose a night's sleep, notwithstanding the three letters that Deputy Maguire got, if the teachers are not being cut. He knows perfectly well that the people of the country would be perfectly willing to see the present scale of teachers' salaries continued. They have enjoyed them for an all too short period, but I suggest to the Minister that, in this matter, he ought to give some indication that he is still the Deputy MacEntee of 1932 on cuts and to show that, even though he has since been elevated to that regal throne of custodianship of the nation's purse, he still believes fundamentally in the sound advice which he gave to the country in 1932 in opposing the cuts then threatened by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government.
I have already drawn attention to an understanding that I am informed did meet with general acceptance. I would suggest that, in order to honour the agreement, in the spirit if not in the letter, that we take the division on this particular amendment and then take the Government amendments without debate and that any important amendment dealing with principle might be withdrawn and might be taken afterwards on the Report Stage. The time is so short that we will scarcely have time to do that if there is much further discussion.
I should like about five minutes to reply to some of the points made as my name is to this amendment. I do not know exactly what amendments are down which would be any way vital, but I will take only five minutes and I will be agreeable to have a great many other amendments to which my name is attached wiped out.
We could take the division on this at 9.30 and then take the Government amendments Nos. 46, 56, 71a, 78, 80, 82a, 83, 95a, 96, 101, 113, 115, 122 and 124 without debate, but with a division, if necessary Some of these amendments clarify the Bill and some of them amend it, to a certain extent, at least, in the direction in which the opposition to the Bill tends to go. If we got these amendments accepted now, the Bill would come for Report more or less as the Government desire it to be considered in its final form and, if there are any amendments of significant importance from the point of view of principle which members would like to introduce, I will not object to them being brought in and discussed on Report Stage.
Will they have to be introduced again?
The Deputies who have them on the Order Paper now will have to accept responsibility for introducing them again and that would refer particularly to the amendment in the names of Deputies Alton and Thrift.
Could the Minister not put it with his amendments now and accept it?
I am afraid not.
Do I take it that, if there is agreement in regard to what the Minister suggests, the Bill would be recommitted?
No. The understanding was that the Committee Stage of the Bill would be disposed of this evening. There is no question of recommitting the Bill.
I do not know if the Minister quite understands what I mean. The Minister is asking the House to accept, without discussion, quite a large number of amendments, the numbers of which he has read out to the House. There are other important amendments in the names of different Deputies and we are asked to let all those go now. Would the Minister agree that, if any of these amendments of importance or principle come up on Report Stage, we should go into Committee for the purpose of dealing with them?
I do not think I could agree to that, because it would mean that the Report Stage of the Bill would be unduly prolonged. On the other hand, I might be prepared, if reasonable arrangements could be made in regard to time, to consider the question of recommittal.
I do not think that the request I make is at all unfair on a Bill of this importance and in view of the fact that there are over 120 amendments. I think the Minister will find that there is not any desire to prolong unduly the discussion on these amendments, and it will probably save time if the Minister were to agree to a recommittal of the Bill.
Provided that the Report Stage were taken without further debate, but, remember that, on the Report Stage, it is the Minister who would be at a disadvantage and not the Opposition, because he can only speak once.
The Minister might also remember that, in regard to amendments which, by reason of this arrangement, are not to get into the Bill, Deputies might find themselves excluded altogether if we were to stick absolutely to the Standing Orders.
I considered that. If a case of that sort were brought, I will meet the House fairly in the matter. If there were amendments which clearly raised matters of vital principle, which were not merely accidental and which could not be discussed on Report Stage, I would consider the question of recommitting the Bill.
I should like to be clear on one point which the Minister has put before the House. Do I gather rightly from him that the offer made to the teachers last year was that for their consent to a five per cent. cut, plus, of course, the four per cent. ordinary contribution to the Teachers' Pensions Fund, the Government would take full responsibility for the pensions of the now active teachers when they came to their pension time?
For future payment of pensions.
Mr. Lynch
The Minister did not make that clear in his speech. In the arrangement we arrived at with the Central Executive Committee of the Teachers' Organisation for a six per cent. cut, with the four per cent. to which the teachers were already subject in respect of pension contribution, we were prepared to take full responsibility for the pensions of the future. I only learned now that the present Government in their offer were prepared to accept that responsibility. What the Minister said in his speech was that they were prepared to discuss the question of pensions with representatives of the teachers' organisation. He agrees and, to use Deputy Norton's phrase, he gets quite petulant because of the rejection of that offer by the teachers' organisation by a majority of 12 to one. Why was it rejected? It was rejected, as Deputy Norton and various other speakers have pointed out, because of the pre-election speeches of the Minister and of other Deputies who are now Ministers, and because the teachers' executive, elected at the Congress of Easter, 1932, hoped for better things from a Fianna Fáil Government, not having heard Deputy Maguire's announcement to-day, not having heard that election speeches are not to be taken seriously, and not having heard that Fianna Fáil pronunciamento as to election promises. They believed what responsible members of the Fianna Fáil Party had said prior to the election.
I hope the Minister's speech will be very fully reported in to-morrow's newspapers. I hope he will get a verbatim report because the teachers' eyes will be somewhat opened. I hope also that Deputy Maguire's announcement as to how Fianna Fáil election speeches are to be taken, that is, with a good grain of salt, is also fully reported. The teachers, when they have read Deputy Maguire's statement about election promises will be disillusioned. Deputy Murphy stressed, again, the hard work the teachers have to do. I stressed that as much as I could because I believed it and had experience of it. I said that I knew of no occupation in which there is greater physical strain involved than that of a teacher of a large class of junior pupils in a national school. I know of no harder work than trying to keep the attention of the young children for five or five and a half hours every day from Monday to Friday. I could tell a little story about that. The Ceann Comhairle was in a certain place subsequent to Easter week, and he knows what sort of life was there. In Portland Prison, part of our job was sewing mail bags each day for a certain number of hours. I remember a prisoner remarking to me, when a warder's back was turned, how awful the work was. I said that I knew of one harder job than sewing mail sacks in penal servitude and that was teaching in an Irish national school.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neal.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, William Frazer.
- Carty, Frank.
- Clery, Mícheál.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corkery, Daniel.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
- Crowley, Timothy.
- Curran, Richard.
- Daly, Denis.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- Dillon, James M.
- Doherty, Hugh.
- Doherty, Joseph.
- Donnelly, Eamon.
- Dowdall, Thomas P.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finlay, John.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Geoghegan, James.
- Gibbons, Seán.
- Goulding, John.
- Hales, Thomas.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Holohan, Richard.
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Jordan, Stephen.
- Keely, Séamus P.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, James Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamonn.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- Lynch, James B.
- MacDermot, Frank.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Maguire, Conor Alexander.
- Moane, Edward.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
- O'Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Pearse, Margaret Mary.
- Rice, Edward.
- Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C. (Dr.).
Níl
- Alton, Ernest Henry.
- Anthony, Richard.
- Beckett, James Walter.
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Burke, James Michael.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Coburn, James.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John Aloysius.
- Craig, Sir James.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Davin, William.
- Davitt, Robert Emmet.
- Desmond, William.
- Dockrell, Henry Morgan.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
- Everett, James.
- Fitzgerald, Desmond.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Haslett, Alexander.
- Keating, John.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Lynch, Finian.
- McDonogh, Martin.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGuire, James Ivan.
- Morrisroe, James.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, James Edward.
- Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
- Norton, William.
- O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Mahony, The.
- O'Neill, Eamonn.
- O'Reilly, John Joseph.
- O'Sullivan, Gearóid.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget Mary.
- Reidy, James.
- Rice, Vincent.
- Roddy, Martin.
- Thrift, William Edward.
Amendment 31: "To delete sub-section (1) (a) (iv)." Is that withdrawn?
I think it is.
Oh, no.
It was understood that if agreement was reached amendments intervening between Government amendments were to be disposed of as "not moved."
All right. It is not moved.
I am not suggesting that there is agreement on the question.
There is a doubt in the mind of Deputy McGilligan. There was an understanding that on the Committee Stage all the amendments were to be disposed of by 10.30.
I heard some doubt cast upon that.
No. Was the Deputy in touch with his Whip?
Is Deputy McGilligan the only person concerned?
No. I am dealing with Deputy McGilligan at the moment, unless Deputy Davin wants to save him, they do hunt in couples.
Other people have rights here.
Do not let anyone protect me from this.
In order to meet the situation which has arisen I did make the suggestion — and I think it met with a general response, until Deputy McGilligan intervened — that only Government amendments would be moved at this Stage and possibly a division would be taken at 10.30 on 103, in order to safeguard the position which arose to-day. Any amendment which contained a matter of vital principle might then be reintroduced on the Report Stage.
They all come under that heading.
Very well. Then we will have to sit on Friday.
If we are to sit on Friday we can discuss this amendment now.
We are quite willing to move the amendments and to carry on. We have not violated the agreement in any way. If a certain amount of time has been lost on the Bill, I suggest that the House knows who is responsible.
It seems that there is no use in wasting further time.
Certainly not if the Minister does not want to carry out the agreement.
The Minister is prepared to keep the agreement that all amendments were to be disposed of by 10.30.
Yes.
The Minister is prepared to meet the situation which has arisen, not through his fault, by permitting amendments to be withdrawn, and if they deal with matters of vital principle to agree that they should be reintroduced on the Report Stage.
Who is to be the judge of what is a matter of vital principle?
The amendments could be moved on the Report Stage.
I am not moving this amendment now.
Do I take it that amendments 31 to 45 are not moved?
What about amendment 35?
We will take that amendment as not moved.
I object to this horse-racing that is going on here. What does the Minister want to make of the House—just an automatic machine for registering agreements with somebody else? I am entitled to know what amendments are not being moved and I am going to take my time about it.
Then I am afraid we will have to sit on Friday.
I do not mind sitting on Friday, Saturday and even Sunday, if necessary.
The Minister is putting the cuts into operation already. It is a penny-in-the-slot machine you want here.
Would Deputy Davin operate under those circumstances?
Amendment 31.
Not moved.
I formally move amendment 31.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neal.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, William Frazer.
- Carty, Frank.
- Clery, Mícheál.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corkery, Daniel.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
- Crowley, Timothy.
- Curran, Richard.
- Daly, Denis.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- Dillon, James M.
- Doherty, Hugh.
- Doherty, Joseph.
- Donnelly, Eamon.
- Dowdall, Thomas P.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finlay, John.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Geoghegan, James.
- Gibbons, Seán.
- Goulding, John.
- Hales, Thomas.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Holohan, Richard.
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Jordan, Stephen.
- Keely, Séamus P.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, James Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamonn.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- Lynch, James B.
- MacDermot, Frank.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Maguire, Conor Alexander.
- Moane, Edward.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
- O'Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Pearse, Margaret Mary.
- Rice, Edward.
- Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C. (Dr.).
Níl
- Alton, Ernest Henry.
- Beckett, James Walter.
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Broderick, William Joseph.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Burke, James Michael.
- Davin, William.
- Davitt, Robert Emmet.
- Desmond, William.
- Dockrell, Henry Morgan.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
- Everett, James.
- Fitzgerald, Desmond.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Haslett, Alexander.
- Keating, John.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Lynch, Finian.
- McDonogh, Martin.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGuire, James Ivan.
- Morrisroe, James.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Coburn, James.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John Aloysius.
- Craig, Sir James.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, James Edward.
- Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
- Norton, William.
- O'Connor, Batt.
- O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Mahony, The.
- O'Neill, Eamonn.
- O'Reilly, John Joseph.
- O'Sullivan, Gearóid.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget Mary.
- Reidy, James.
- Rice, Vincent.
- Roddy, Martin.
- Thrift, William Edward.
That decision governs numbers 33 and 119.
I move amendment 32:—
To delete sub-section (1) (a) (v).
This amendment seeks to exempt from the provisions of Section 6 of Part II of this Bill persons employed in any capacity, whether permanent or temporary, in the public service of Saorstát Eireann. The Bill sets out in the Schedule that in respect of certain salaries there shall be no cuts where the salary does not exceed £300 per annum. But when dealing with the class comprised under this sub-section I should like to point out that in the case of this sub-section the remuneration of the staffs affected is governed by two factors. The basic wage is a pre-war wage, and in addition to that wage there is the cost of living bonus, which fluctuates in accordance with the rise or fall in the index figure. During the past few years many of the grades who were affected by this portion of the section have already suffered very severe reductions in their remuneration. I should say that during the past ten years these grades have suffered reductions varying from 30 per cent. to 40 per cent. in the remuneration which they enjoyed in 1921. Now the Minister comes along and seeks under this section to impose a further reduction in the remuneration at a time when the cost of living factor in the remuneration has already fallen, a fall due to the nominal decline at all events in the cost-of-living index figure.
Many of these civil servants are officers who have a contract with the State. They are transferred officers. It has been frequently declared by the last Administration and the admission has been made by the present Minister for Finance in the early days of this Government that they had no desire to interfere with the contract of the civil servants. Here, however, it is proposed to break that contract which the State has with these civil servants; not merely will these people be subject to a reduction based on the cost of living index figures but actually a cut is imposed in their basic remuneration. I feel that no case whatever has been made for that especially at a time when these officers are already suffering severely owing to the reduction in the cost-of-living index figure. There is no case whatever for inflicting a further cut in their basic remuneration.
I think the Minister is ill-advised to have inserted this sub-clause in the Bill. I think his action is a clear demonstration of that penny-wise and pound-foolish policy. Many of these are transferred officers. Under this Bill their basic remuneration will be cut; that cut will constitute a material alteration in their conditions of service, and will have a detrimental effect on their position. Consequently they will be entitled to go to the Civil Service Compensation Board and there demand compensation for the worsening of the conditions that will be inflicted on them if this section is passed. If they do that these people will be entitled to a retiring allowance and a pension based not only on their actual service, but they will be entitled to add to their actual service ten years. They are entitled to a lump sum on retirement. The sums that will have to be paid by the State under this head will more than wipe out whatever benefits or savings the Minister hopes to get through this sub-section. That will be the position in the case of those who retire. But many of those who will stay on will be labouring under a sense of grievance. It is not good business for the country that that should happen. That is how this Bill will work out. Perhaps I would be entitled to refer back to Part IV of the Schedule. Am I entitled to do so?
It is covered.
In that case I want to call attention to the seriousness of this whole position and again I want anyone who has paid any attention to this question of low wage rates to appreciate what the Government are doing. Under this section, it is proposed to cut the pay of a whole variety of people. We had some time ago a statement from the Minister that he proposed to give something to the lowly paid people. He told us he was not touching the salaries of the lowly paid people. What are the facts? Under this section he will be cutting the scale payments of sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses. Out of 2,041 scale payments to sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses only 198 receive wages of more than £3 a week. Fianna Fáil Deputies ought to be under no delusion on this Bill. If they vote for it they will be voting for cuts in the salaries of 1,308 people whose complete remuneration is less than £60 a year. In fact, there are many of these people with only £18 a year. That is their sole income. Every vote given for this section is a vote for slashing the wages of people with less than £60 a year as their sole source of income. I ask the Minister to square his action on this section with his speech on another occasion.
Mr. Costello rose.
Deputy Costello is a party to the agreement.
That agreement has been scrapped.
Not so far as Cumann na nGaedheal is concerned.
I understand this amendment has been moved. Everyone will admit it is one of the most important amendments in the Bill. It deals with the whole position of civil servants. If opposition is taken to this now it cannot be put down at a later stage. Is not that clear? If this amendment is now defeated it cannot be put down again. Therefore, the only opportunity, as a result of the agreement between the Labour Party and the Government, that Deputies at this side of the House will have——
They could have had an opportunity if they curtailed their speeches on the other parts of the Bill.
May I point out that everybody who has been in this House during the last two years will know that the irrelevancy of the speeches was due altogether to the speech of the Minister for Finance.
I should like to ask the Minister, arising out of the agreement that was made, has he now made another agreement with the Labour Party that the Labour Party, who were his allies last year in bringing about the conditions which necessitated these cuts, are to be the only people who are to come in on this discussion to-night.
I have no agreement with the Labour Party.
This is waste of time. Deputy Costello to resume.
I can assure the Minister for Finance that I would certainly not willingly be any party to the breaking of an agreement that exists between the Whips.
Exclude the Labour Party Whips.
Nor is there any intention of breaking such an agreement. As regards the curtailment of the speeches, so far as I am personally concerned I refrained this afternoon from speaking on the amendments to the section relating to the Civic Guard, in order to curtail the discussion. It was a topic that I was most anxious to speak upon, having regard to my own relations with that force over a period of ten years, but in order that there might be some opportunity of ventilating the grievances and the hardships inflicted on the various classes of people who are mentioned in the amendments down to this Bill I contributed at least my quota to the curtailment of the discussion. In the existing circumstances under which this amendment is moved, and because it deals with a class of persons with whom also I had very close contact for ten years, I feel that it would be highly improper for me to allow this discussion to pass without taking at least some part in it. I also feel that at this hour, a quarter of an hour before the adjournment, it is perfectly futile for me to attempt to discuss the Civil Service case in the time available. It is all the more serious from this point of view, that while the case against the civil servants has been made over and over again with great detail, by the members of the Ministry and the Government Party, no opportunity has been given to the civil servants or those who are entitled to speak on their behalf to put before this House and before the public of the country generally the case in favour of the civil servants and against the proposed cuts. They are given here to-night only a few minutes, and, practically speaking, it would be impossible to discuss the case of the civil servants in the time available.
There is Friday still.
The civil servants themselves proposed to adopt the course that they considered, and which I think all fair-minded people will consider, to have been a very regular and very judicious and proper course to adopt. They wished to place their case before the public. They desired that the public should know that they were not, as has been alleged from every platform in this country, a class of people in sheltered occupation, overpaid, under worked, and battening on the miseries of the people of this country. They were denied that opportunity by the Minister for Finance, and there is little or no opportunity to make a case on behalf of the civil servants now. I feel it is perfectly futile at this hour to endeavour to put forward the points or make the case that could and ought to be made on behalf of the civil servants.
Deputy Norton has pointed out that the civil servants are in a unique position in relation to this Bill. They are in a different position from all other classes affected by the proposed cuts that are contained in this Bill. When I say they are in a unique position I am not to be taken as being particularly in favour of any class of people who are embraced within the wide scope of this Bill, but they are in the position that was pointed out by Deputy Norton of being the only class of public servants of this State that had the system of basic salary and bonus applied to their remuneration. It is well known from the history of the bonus system that many years elapsed during the Great War before even the smallest measure of justice was meted out to civil servants. They had to carry on over a period of years a protracted fight to get any concession that brought their remuneration even into the faintest proper relationship to the actual cost of living as it existed from 1915 until 1920. During the early years of the War they got nothing. Some of the lower branches of the service got an insignificant addition to their weekly wage, but it was not, I think, until the year 1920 that any measure of justice was meted out to the civil servants. It was not until 1920 that their salaries were in any way related to the cost of living, and even their salaries were not brought into line with what the actual cost of living then was. A particularly artificial method was adopted of relating their salary to existing conditions. It has been judicially held that the bonus system in relation to civil servants is only an artificial method of trying to bring up pre-war standards to existing conditions.
From 1920 until the present year the bonus has dropped from 165—I think that is the figure—to the figure of 55 in this year. As a result, the State has gained at the expense of its public officials something in the region of two million pounds; in other words, the civil servants of this State have contributed to the economies of this State something over two million pounds. That is a figure that has been contributed by no other section of the public service. Their bonus has been falling steadily from 1920 when it was at its peak. A salary of £1,000 a year at that time—I am speaking from recollection, and am subject to correction-carried a bonus of something like £510, and it is only something over £100 now. A salary of £300 has dropped something like £80 on the bonus.
I do suggest that in regard to the provisions of this Bill the civil servants are in a unique position, and deserve better treatment than they are getting. If there was any further reason required for exempting from the provisions of this Bill the civil servants of this State, the type of discussion that went on here to-day provides an unanswerable argument in favour of exempting public officials of all kinds from a Bill such as this. I listened to-day and yesterday to the speeches of various members of different Parties in this House, one accusing the other of having cut the Civil Service, and one accusing the other of having gone to the electors on public platforms and promised that no cuts would be enforced on the servants of this State. Civil servants are supposed to be outside politics, and it is time they were put outside and kept outside politics. I do not mean that they are to be deprived of their civil rights as citizens of this State. What I mean when I say that they are to be kept outside politics is that they are not to be made any longer the pawns of political Parties, because, if they are, the services of this country and the Exchequer of this country are going to be very seriously injured indeed.
On the Second Reading of this Bill I paid such tribute as I was able to put into words to the service given to this country by the civil servants of the State over the last ten years. I said that I was quite sure, notwithstanding the cuts and the injustice that was being perpetrated on these public servants by the provisions of this Bill, that they would do their work and stand loyally as they did in the last ten years by this country, which they look upon as their own country, which they loyally and patriotically have served for ten years, and which they will continue to serve. They are, however, only human. If the Minister says that the country cannot afford to pay the salaries under existing circumstances which are being paid to these officials and that the cut now imposed is only a small amount, having regard to the salaries; and if he asks dramatically, as he asked in the case of the Civic Guard, can they not afford this small cut in existing circumstances, I say I suppose they can afford it at the expense of their families. But I say this: that the State, and the people, and the farmers cannot afford it, although they will vote in favour of the cut, because I firmly believe that the policy enshrined in this Bill in relation to civil servants will cost the State, not £57,000, which the Minister says he will save at the expense of civil servants, but something probably running into millions.
I say that it is a very bad principle that the civil servants, who are supposed to be outside politics, should find themselves now in the position where the whole basis of their relations to their employer, the State—the supposedly model employer—is completely taken away. Their relation was one of contract expressed or implied; an unenforceable contract, of course, but a contract which was described by one of the chief officials in the Department of Finance, before one of the various committees set up under the present Ministry, as a contract entitling them, by custom or otherwise, to assume that their salaries would not be interfered with and that their tenure was a tenure fixed for their lives. That basis is taken away once you interfere in any way with the salaries of civil servants. They now find themselves in the position that they are made the pawns of political Parties. One Party goes to the electorate and says to that section of the electorate which consists of public officials, their relatives and friends: "Vote for us; use your influence for us, and we will not cut your salaries; if you vote for the other fellows, they will cut your salaries." What reaction is that going to have on the services of the State and the efficiency of the service given by public officials? Civil servants are only human. They will come in contact with influential political persons in various parts of the country. What guarantee is there that a future Civil Service will carry on that high tradition which the present Civil Service will carry on? What guarantee is there that in future you will get the best material for the Civil Service and that, having got inferior material into the Service, as you will undoubtedly as a result of this Bill, that they will give that impartial service to any Government whatever its policy or nature may be; that they will give that impartial service necessary if the machinery of the State is to work smoothly, as it ought to work? What guarantee have you that the law will be administered impartially amongst various classes of the community, irrespective of political opinions? It will be merely human for any official who knows that there is a particular individual who is a strong supporter of a political Party to see that he is not pressed in relation to certain matters when other people perhaps are pressed in relation to certain matters. It cannot be said that I am making any suggestion that the present civil servants will do any of the things I am saying. I know they will not, because I know them better than any Deputy here.
I want to put this further aspect of the case before the House. Civil servants are handling the revenues of the State, either in collection or in expenditure. They are dealing with something like £30,000,000. On their brains and their efficiency and their loyalty depend whether or not the revenue that must go to keep up the essential services of the State will be adequately and properly collected and, when collected, will be economically, properly and legally spent. To do that, you must have men who are not subject to political influence, as they will be if this Bill is passed; men whose economic safety is assured; who will know that the promises made to them when they entered the service, and the contracts that were made with them, will be kept. If this Bill is persisted in, I firmly believe, as I said before, that you will find yourselves in the position that, instead of a paltry paper saving of £57,000, this State will lose many millions in revenue and in uneconomic and wasteful administration.
As I said, I have not time to go through the whole case for the civil servants. Deputy Norton has pointed out that all that is claimed to be saved by the cuts in civil servants' salaries is the paltry sum of £57,000. If 40 civil servants leave the Service under the rights guaranteed to them, according to the President's statement last May, by the Civil Service (Transferred Officers) Act, 1929, far more than the £57,000, that it is alleged will be saved by the Bill, will in fact be lost even in the lump sum payments. You will find yourself in the position that this State will have to pay out far more in lump sum payments than the £57,000 that is alleged will be saved this year, and, in addition, you will have to pay pensions to these officials and provide other officials to take the place of those who retire under the terms of the Treaty. I want to make this last point. It is a point going to the justice of the case. A large number of civil servants came over from the British Civil Service on the invitation of the Government of this State.
A Deputy
Sent over.
They came over at the express invitation of the Government here. They were not sent over by the British Government, or anybody else. We found ourselves in the position in 1922 that the machinery of the State had to be set up and proper institutions got going. We had to have the best brains to do it, and we asked men with the best brains to come over. They came over relying on the fact that the word of Irishmen would be kept, and this Bill breaks the word of Irishmen. That is why I say it is unjust, unpatriotic and un-Irish.
The full meaning of the effect of the sub-section, which Deputy Norton proposes to delete, can hardly be thoroughly understood by the Fianna Fáil back benchers.
I move to report progress.