Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 21 Jun 1933

Vol. 48 No. 7

Rates of Wages on Relief Schemes—Motion.

Mr. Norton

I move:—

That the Dáil disapprove of the action of the Office of Public Works in paying rates of wages on relief schemes which are lower than the rates prevailing for similar classes of work in such areas where relief schemes are in operation.

I move this motion because I think this House, certainly those members of the House who protest violently against the mentality of low wages, should be given an opportunity of dissenting from the action of the Office of Public Works in paying on relief schemes the miserably low rates of wages of 21/- and 24/- per week. I think, sir, I ought to anticipate at the outset some of the erroneous arguments which will be used in this debate.

Some members of the Fianna Fáil Party—and the attitude is not confined to ordinary members, but apparently extends to Ministers as well—are endeavouring to show that so far as the Labour Party are concerned they have tolerated, and it is even suggested they have agreed to, the payment of 21/- and 24/- a week. I want to correct these misstatements, because they are very definite misstatements. While I hope the correction will satisfy those who have been responsible for disseminating that kind of mischievous and misleading statement, at the same time I wish that those not satisfied with the explanation I am going to give will have the courage to say here what they have been saying outside at the cross-roads. In November last, when the Estimate for Relief Schemes was going through the Dáil, Deputy Everett on behalf of his Party protested against the payment of 24/- a week on relief schemes, Deputy Everett then having some advance information as to the low rates of wages which the Office of Public Works proposed to pay. On 6th January last a deputation representing the Labour Party and the Irish Trade Union Congress had an interview with the Minister for Finance.

It will be observed from that that the Labour Party had been protesting to the Government against the low rate of wages which it was proposed to pay on relief schemes. I was not present at the interview with the Minister for Finance. Deputy Davin was, and I leave it to him to narrate the views of the Minister as then expressed. If, therefore, we were protesting on the 30th November and on the 6th January against the scandalously low rates of 21/- and 24/-, it will be obvious to every fair-minded Deputy that, so far as we were concerned, the moment we heard of the low wages proposed to be paid we immediately made representations to the House and subsequently to the Minister for Finance. When the interview with the Minister took place the Dáil had then been dissolved. It was not our fault if the interview with the Minister did not take place much earlier. It had been fixed on a few occasions and, because the Minister was not available, the interview had to be called off and later dates had to be arranged.

Then we had the election. The House met again on the 8th February. It sat for four days between 8th February and 8th March. I raised the matter in this House first by way of question and, in view of the flippancy displayed by the Parliamentary Secretary when replying to that question, I raised the matter on the adjournment that same evening. That shows that, so far as the Labour Party was concerned, not merely did it protest speedily, but it did everything in its power to have these rates of wages increased.

I must take the House back to the attitude of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance. In doing so I do not want the House to imagine that this is a complaint against the Parliamentary Secretary. It is true that he has been a rather uncouth mouthpiece of the Government in the Dáil, if one is to examine his defence of this miserably low wage; but then, this whole policy involves the wage policy of the Executive Council, and in that sense I want the House not to regard the matter merely as a censure on the Parliamentary Secretary. In this matter he is just the instrument of the Executive Council policy. When this subject was last raised I referred to the instructions which were then issued by the Office of Public Works in relation to these relief schemes. The instructions were headed: "Instructions to Inspectors." It was sought by the Parliamentary Secretary to lead the House to believe that that was a mere routine instruction; that nothing new had happened in relation to the instruction. He said it was something that went out in connection with all relief schemes.

It is worthy of note that 250 copies of the leaflet were reprinted in October last. That shows conclusively that so far as the Office of Public Works was concerned this leaflet was reprinted six or seven months after Fianna Fáil had been elected. Apparently there was so much community of interest between the present occupant of the post of Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister and the last Parliamentary Secretary to the same Minister that both of them could agree that 21/- and 24/- a week were good enough for Irish workers in rural areas. The publication of that document in October, 1932, six months after a Fianna Fáil Executive had been elected to office, is to my mind conclusive evidence that the Executive Council stood over the mentality enshrined in that document.

What is the objectionable paragraph in the document? This document, I may mention, is a circular issued from the Office of Public Works, a Government Department that ought to pay decent rates of wages. It contains this statement:—

"The rates of wages in the case of relief works are, where possible, to be fixed on a lower scale than that normally paid to agricultural workers in the district."

That is a clear incitement to farmers who might pay reasonable rates of wages to cut their wages below the standard fixed by the Office of Public Works in connection with these schemes. It is a clear expression of opinion also that so far as the Office of Public Works is concerned it considers that this work ought to be paid for on a scale comparable to the wages paid in the most depressed industry in the country. That is the attitude of the Office of Public Works in relation to the employment of persons engaged on these relief schemes.

If we ask ourselves the question: Why are low rates of wages fixed for these schemes, we can, I think, get some interesting information in so far as the Parliamentary Secretary is concerned. Replying to my question in the House on the 8th March last, the Parliamentary Secretary said: "On minor relief schemes, which were originally designed to deal with and confined to specially necessitous agricultural areas, the rate of wages is related to the wages paid to agricultural labourers in the district." He adds:—

"In response to strong local representation, grants for minor relief works have this year been made to counties to which they had not heretofore applied; these grants, naturally, carry with them the conditions which have always applied to and been accepted in relation to them."

The clear meaning of that is that the Parliamentary Secretary wanted the House to believe that these schemes were formerly confined to special necessitous agricultural areas, that in response to special local representations these schemes had been extended to other areas and counties, and that the original low wage conditions must apply even when the works were now extended to areas not regarded presumably as necessitous agricultural areas. I do not know how the Parliamentary Secretary is going to justify that answer in relation to my particular constituency. Works of this kind were carried out in the County Kildare in 1930 and 1931. These schemes in the County Kildare are not new schemes. These schemes in the County Kildare are old schemes of 1930 and 1931 when we had the Cumann na nGaedheal Government in power. Many of the things that they have done have not excited my admiration or interest. But we do find that in the County Kildare the wages paid under these relief schemes by the same Office of Public Works as that by which they are carried out to-day were that 27/- a week in 1931.

Mr. MacEntee

Is there not another figure in the return from which the Deputy is quoting? Is there not the figure 21/-?

Mr. Norton

Not in the Official Report that I have. If the Minister will turn to column 1389, volume 46, No. 5, and looks at "Kildare," he will not find 21/-, but he will find 27/-. The Minister can look at my report if he wants to. I was making the point that the Parliamentary Secretary tried to justify 21/- and 24/- a week on the ground that these schemes are now extended to areas where they did not formerly obtain. I have quoted the case of the County Kildare, and I have pointed out that in Kildare in 1930 and 1931 the rate of wages paid under the same kind of scheme of relief works was 27/- a week. The rate is now reduced to 24/- a week in that particular county. In the County Meath, in 1930 and 1931, the wages were 27/- a week paid under these schemes. In 1932 and 1933, under a Fianna Fáil Executive Council, the rate of wages was reduced from 27/- to 24/-. I will admit, quite frankly, that in some counties the rates have been increased, but if so it is because the rates paid in these other counties were scandalously low in that period. We have clearly to understand that in Meath and Kildare, under a Fianna Fáil Executive Council, wages had been reduced on these relief schemes from 27/- a week to 24/- a week. That is not merely on the plea that there is no more money to be paid for them. Take the action of the Parliamentary Secretary himself on this matter. He has not attempted to excuse his own policy. Speaking on the 8th March he said:—

"There are a great number of very poor people in Ireland to whom 24/- a week which they have received in cash for a week's work upon relief schemes during this year is the largest amount of cash they have ever handled in their lives."

I do not know on what information or what knowledge of Ireland Deputy Flinn bases that statement. I know this country as well as Deputy Flinn knows it.

Mr. Flinn

I question that.

Mr. Norton

The Deputy questions that. Well, all I can say is that his question is too ridiculous to answer. "Twenty-four shillings a week which they received in cash," says the Parliamentary Secretary, "is the largest amount of cash they ever handled in their lives." Long before the Parliamentary Secretary came to Ireland the Irish working-class people were able to work for, and received much more than 21/- or 24/- a week. What I object to is the patronising, supercilious outlook of the Parliamentary Secretary upon the poor mere Irish. Speaking later he said: "In many cases this amount is being paid to people who never had these wages. I have seen men breaking stones on the side of the road in Clare and Kerry—men who have never worked before in their lives for wages, and who never had a cash answer to their day's work; men who are working for themselves on piece work and who are anxious and glad to have an opportunity of working at this rate of wages." I do not represent the counties of Clare and Kerry, but at least I am entitled to say this on behalf of the people of Clare and Kerry—and there are other Deputies here in this House who ought to stand up and say it— that that statement is a reflection upon the working-class people of Clare and Kerry. Here we have attempts made in Clare and Kerry to pauperise the people and to brand them as a pauperised people, and to create, in these two counties, an untouchable class, far below the degree or standard of existence that should obtain recognition from the Parliamentary Secretary. Twenty-one shillings and 24/- a week are the rates paid under these schemes. One begins to wonder by what process of reasoning or research, or on what principle of reasonableness the figures 21/- and 24/- a week were fixed. It would appear to be that the Parliamentary Secretary said to himself: "The instructions I have got make it perfectly clear that so far as these public works are concerned the rate of wages should be based upon a rate lower than the agricultural rate." One is entitled to expect that the Government would base its standard of value on the needs of the people, and upon the necessity of paying a decent rate of wages, and would not relate its standard to the standard of pauper wages paid in the most depressed parts of the country. If the agricultural wages were 10/-, is it suggested that the rate under the relief schemes should be 9/-? Is the only justification for the 24/- rate that it is an attempt to pay a rate of wages lower than was in operation in agricultural areas? If that is the mentality of the Office of Works and of the Executive Council, then I say it is a mentality that the Office of Works and the Executive Council ought to be thoroughly ashamed of, because if there is any justification for fixing a wage it ought to be on the basis of a reasonable rate, having regard to the nature of the work and the necessities of the different recipients of the wages, and of their being able to discharge as Christians their responsibility not merely to their families but their social responsibilities to the State as well.

And when I mention 21/- and 24/- per week, I want the House to understand that it is not 21/- per week or 24/- per week all the year round, but 21/- per week or 24/- per week for a very limited period, and with broken time in addition. There are many times that some of those people receiving 24/- or 21/- a week are compelled to stand off because of inclement weather, and in addition to that when they do work for a week they receive this wage of 21/- or 24/- for a 48½ to a 55 hours week. They are subject to broken time. Their weeks extend from 48½ to 55 hours, which may have to be worked down in a drain or in a gripe, and for performing that kind of unpleasant work that is the measure of remuneration the Executive Council thinks good enough for Irish workers engaged in such schemes. Agricultural wages were suggested for comparison. Everybody in the House will be perfectly satisfied that the agricultural rates of wages were suggested as the basis of comparison, not because they were agricultural rates but because they were low rates. The agricultural industry was specially selected for comparison because it was known to the Office of Public Works, and it must have been known to the Executive Council, that the agricultural industry was passing through a period of unparalleled depression, and that comparison with that industry would afford an excuse for the further slashing of wages. One would imagine that since the work in question was drainage work or road work or quarry work, some effort would have been made to compare the rates with road workers' wages, forestry workers' wages, or with the wages of workers employed on arterial drainage schemes. No, instead, for special comparison was selected the agricultural industry.

Mr. MacDermot

Who first selected the agricultural industry as the measure of wages?

Mr. Norton

I am quoting from the circular issued this year. I have not got a copy of the circular for the previous years, but the Parliamentary Secretary has stated that this is the same as that issued by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government.

Mr. MacDermot

I was wondering how long that principle goes back. It seems to be an interesting point.

Mr. Norton

I cannot say how long the principle goes back, but I do know that it is a disgraceful principle, and the greater the depression in the agricultural industry the greater is the disgrace in my opinion. If we look at the wages paid to road workers, we find that for maintenance work, the rates paid to road workers vary from 26/- to 37/6 per week. If we look even at the road work carried out by means of Government grants we find that the rates of wages also vary from 26/- to 37/6 per week. As a matter of fact, 26/- per week is only paid in two counties—Leitrim and Donegal. If we look at the rate of wages paid under the Department of Agriculture in the forestry section, we find that it varies from 25/- to 30/- per week. If we look at arterial drainage schemes, we find that the rates vary from 25/- to 29/8 per week. So that, if the comparison had been with the ordinary road workers, even the road workers engaged on Government grant work, or with forestry workers, or workers on arterial drainage schemes, considerably higher rates of wages would have been paid under these relief schemes. Instead of that, the agricultural industry was chosen, and, in my opinion, it was chosen for no other purpose than that it would enable the rates of wages to be depressed in conformity with the depressed standard obtaining in that industry. I might here mention that there is no broken time in respect of road workers engaged on ordinary road work, whether reconstruction work or maintenance work. We have, therefore, this comparison: 21/- per week for 55 hours and broken time on relief schemes; on relief schemes on roads we have wages of from 26/- to 37/6 per week, and no broken time. That is the comparison which I hope somebody will attempt to explain during the debate.

I said before that this work was carried out under the auspices of the Government. It was Government work and the Government in a civilised Christian country ought not to get down to comparing its rates of wages with those obtaining in a specially depressed industry. In the agricultural industry many factors enter into the wages. There is the providence or improvidence of the farmer; there is his thriftlessness, his inability to handle his industry; there is the possibility of losses in speculations in other ways besides farming. All those factors enter into the capacity of the farmer to pay a wage. Surely a wage based upon considerations of that kind is not a wage which ought to be emulated by a Government which frequently talks about desiring to see implemented here a Christian social policy. There is a bounden obligation on every Government which functions in this country to respect and comply with the fair wages clause. The fair wages clause requires a comparison with workers engaged in similar work in the employment of decent employers in that area. Instead of that being made a test in this case for ascertaining a fair wage, the agricultural industry was specially selected because it provided the most fruitful excuse for justifying low rates of wages.

I have taken the trouble to look up some information as to what the cost of maintenance of a single individual is in some of the institutions in this country. It costs 10/- per week to feed a pauper in the Dublin Union; it costs 8/10 per week to feed a soldier; it costs 7/6 per week even to maintain an inmate in the Dundrum Asylum. In each of these instances the food is bought in large quantities at wholesale prices, or in some instances is grown or produced by the institution itself. Although it costs 10/- per week to feed a pauper in the Dublin Union, he is housed free, he is clothed free. The Office of Public Works, implementing the policy of the Executive Council, gives an extra 11/- per week to a man to buy clothing for himself, pay for housing, and to feed a wife and, perhaps, five or six children. I hope somebody will attempt to explain these figures. I hope somebody will attempt to show how, in relation to the cost of maintaining paupers in the Dublin Union, they can stand over the 21/- or the 24/- per week paid within 15 or 20 miles of the Dublin Union. Remember, too, that these people are not paupers. These people are supposed to be ordinary working-class people, working for a wage the same as any other industrial worker. If they were paupers, you would find it difficult to justify paying 21/- per week to them. They are not paupers, but ordinary industrial workers. The only pauperisation about them is the rate of wages at which they are compelled to work.

I have seen attempts made to apologise for the wage paid on the ground that this work is not ordinary work. It is alleged that all this work goes to farmers to improve their own holdings, that it is given to people to make roads, and that they will subsequently benefit by the roads. The attempt to justify 21/- per week must be becoming extremely difficult if that is what is being trotted out now as an excuse for this 21/- per week. This 21/- is supposed to be the agricultural wage. Nobody can ride away on that fact. If the man subsequently walks over the road that he made, that is no justification for the miserably low rate of wages which was paid for the making of the road. That is supposed to represent his wage for 55 hours' work per week, and excuses of that kind, which in any case are only partly true, are not going to whitewash the Executive Council in trying to justify this rate of wages.

If this question of 21/- a week or 24/- a week could be confined to workers engaged on relief schemes and that it had no other consequences the position would even then be bad. But the position becomes very much worse when we find that this 21/- or this 24/- a week mentality, displayed by the Government, is being held up as something worthy of emulation by county councils in different parts of the country. We find in Clare recently that a motion was made to reduce the rate of wages on the roads to 24/- a week. We find that in the Cork County Council an effort was made to reduce the rate of road wages there for 3,000 road-men to 24/- a week. We find that in the case of Waterford County Council a similar effort was made to depress the standard of living of the road workers down to the pauper level of the minor relief schemes. That is evidence that this policy of paying 21/- and 24/- a week is seized upon by grasping employers, is seized upon by reactionary public bodies and is seized upon by people suffering from the economic disease of a belief in low wages being the cure for the country's economic or industrial ills.

There was an effort amounting almost to panic recently on the part of some Fianna Fáil Deputies to explain this 21/- and 24/- a week wage. Deputy Cormac Breathnach felt uncomfortable recently. Speaking at a meeting in Cathal Brugha Street, Deputy Breathnach, chairman of a trade union organisation, said "he had seen a placard in various places with the figure 24/- as a weekly wage. That was not the Fianna Fáil idea of what a weekly wage should be." If that is not the Fianna Fáil idea of what a weekly wage ought to be, I hope Deputy Cormac Breathnach before this debate finishes will come into this House and tell us, if that is not the Fianna Fáil idea of a weekly wage, how he can justify the payment of 21/- and 24/- a week as a weekly wage under the Fianna Fáil Executive Council.

We had another distinguished contribution on this question by Deputy Briscoe. Speaking at Christchurch Place on 12th June, wooing the electors to give him their No. 1 vote for the Dublin Corporation elections, Deputy Briscoe referring to the Economies Bill, made this statement as reported in the Irish Press:“Speaking in reference to the reductions in wages he said they made no apology for the Economies Bill. They had always maintained that there must be levelling down,”—now, listen to the next—“so that the people below could get something.” Deputy Briscoe's belief is that it is quite all right to reduce the rate of wages and salaries paid to a person earning £139 a year, if he is a teacher; that it is quite all right to reduce the wages of £3 4s. a week paid to a civic guard, or £300 a year paid to a civil servant, or £20 per annum if the person happens to be a sub-postmaster in the service of the Post Office. Deputy Briscoe believes that this is desirable and right and proper, so that “the people below can get something.” I hope Deputy Briscoe will come in and tell us who “the people below” are. I should imagine that the people engaged on minor relief schemes are “the people below.” I want to ask Deputy Briscoe —and as he is not here, I hope his colleagues will convey my words to him —are “the people below” the people who are engaged in minor relief schemes in rural areas? Are these the people that he referred to at Christchurch place on 12th June? If they are, and if he justifies cutting public servants in order to help “the people below,” so that “the people below” could get something, is this his conception of a right rate of wages to people on relief schemes? Does Deputy Briscoe want to justify a 21/- rate per week? He wants to cut the salaries and wages of public servants so as to help the people below. When you come to ascertain what is the measure of Deputy Briscoe's Government's policy with regard to the people below, it is to give them 24/- a week for 55 hours' work, up to their thighs in mud and mire. That is Deputy Briscoe's idea of his Government doing something for the people below.

Mr. Davin

And not stamping their cards.

Mr. Norton

Yes, as Deputy Davin interjects, not stamping their insurance cards in addition. One could forgive Deputy Briscoe and Deputy Cormac Breathnach in the excitement of an election. But the Minister for Education is not a candidate for election to the Dublin Corporation. He went down to Carlow recently. Apparently, the Minister was feeling the draught there over the 24/- and the 21/- a week. He engaged in a long diatribe against Deputy Pattison, because Deputy Pattison had the courage to do what the Minister might have had the courage to do in other days, but has not the courage to do to-day, namely, to stand up in this House and outside this House to protest against a wage of 21/- and 24/- a week paid on these relief schemes. I do not want to refer at length to the speech which the Minister for Education made in Carlow. I hope Deputy Pattison will deal with that, but there are some portions of the Carlow speech with which I want to deal. I want to deal with these portions, because I think they reveal the puny, jealous, intriguing, inventing mind of the worst type of politician. "No complaints," said the Minister, "were ever made by these people themselves. All the complaints have come from politicians interested, who wanted to make a Party cry out of the grievances of the unemployed." That is what Deputy Derrig, the Minister for Education, said. I will quote in this House if any Deputy wants it, the resolutions passed by Fianna Fáil branches in this country protesting against a weekly wage of 21/- or 24/-. If the secretary or any prominent member of the Fianna Fáil Executive is here, I wonder whether he could get up with a clear conscience in this House and say that the Party headquarters had not been troubled over this 21/- and this 24/- a week wage. I wonder what does the local executive of the Fianna Fáil Party in Cork think of it, or will they come in here and say that there has been no agitation in Cork over the 21/- and the 24/- a week? Everybody knows perfectly well that the Fianna Fáil Party, that is the back bench members, who were prepared to talk and tell the truth about it, were for a considerable time in a state of ferment over the 21/- or 24/- a week. And Deputy Derrig, the Minister for Education, comes along and tells us that there were no complaints by those people. The Minister knows well that he is stating what is perfectly incorrect. I could quote resolutions passed by Fianna Fáil branches in his own constituency if he wants to hear them. I am sure his colleagues could tell him with absolute accuracy that many Fianna Fáil branches, to their credit be it said, rebelled and protested against this miserable wage of 21/- and 24/- a week. We get the extraordinary outlook of the Minister for Education in this phrase: "May I say again in conclusion, that the difficulties in connection with this matter had not arisen from the workers themselves or from the small farmers or from the agricultural labourers either, but from the agitators who were trying to exploit and mislead them." That is the worst cry of the mind of the Tory at his best. That is the same kind of mentality that the working-class people had always to fight against: they had always to fight against reductions of their wages any time for the last 20, 30, 40, 50 or 100 years. Anybody who tried to fight the battle of the working-class people was labelled an agitator, and now we have Deputy Derrig, the Minister for Education, going down to Carlow imitating what the Tory of 100 years ago did, branding as agitators those who protested on behalf of the working-class people against a wage of 21/- or 24/- a week.

I think that Deputy Derrig, if he reads his speech again in his calm and sober moments, will readily realise that it is an ill-tempered speech and a speech bristling with untruths. I think he will realise that his speech is a deliberate misrepresentation not only of the Labour Party's position but of the position of Deputy Pattison in particular. If I were a responsible Minister I would be ashamed to say that that speech, bristling with so many untruths ever came out of my mouth, and to be a member of the Executive Council responsible for controlling the destinies of this country.

I do not want to take up any more of the time of this House. I did not think that I would speak so long, but I do want to put it to the House that this rate of wages is disgracefully low and that the mentality behind the rate of wages is really worse than the rate of wages itself. The mentality behind the rate of wages is a poverty-stricken economic mentality and based on a belief that poverty and misery and squalor are to be for ever the destiny and the lot of the plain people. I reject that mentality entirely and I say that the working-class people of this country are entitled to expect from a Government that talks about Christian social principles some better standard of remuneration than is paid to them to-day. We have had the issue raised very often as to whether this country ought to be a Free State or a Republic. So far as I am concerned, I take my stand on this principle in that particular regard, that the people of this country, and they only, have the right to decide the form of government under which our people shall live. I do not stand for anybody else in any country attempting to dictate to our people the kind of political institutions we should have; but, while I take that view I have just as much contempt for the Cumann na nGaedheal Free State which enshrines a 21/- a week wage as its industrial and economic standard, as I have for the Fianna Fáil Republic if it is going to pay the same rate of wages per week. So far as the working-class people are concerned they have as little use for a Republic that stands for such a rate of wages as for a Free State which stands for a similar rate. So far as I am concerned, as long as I am a member of this House I will protest, no matter what form of government exists here, against any attempt on the part of the Government to prescribe a miserable starvation wage of 21/- per week for the Irish workers in return for a hard week's work and as the Government's measure of what is fair and equitable to enable the Irish worker to bring up his wife and family in a decent Christian existence.

Mr. Davin

I formally second the motion and reserve the right to speak later.

Minister for Finance (Mr. MacEntee)

I think it might be desirable if I were to recall to the House and to Deputy Norton, who seems to have forgotten them in the course of his speech, the terms of the motion which he has submitted. The motion is:—

That the Dáil disapprove of the action of the Office of Public Works in paying rates of wages on relief schemes which are lower than the rates prevailing for similar classes of work in such areas where relief schemes are in operation.

I think that the exact terms of that motion will bear a good deal of examination. It is quite clear that they have been very carefully drawn. It is quite clear that they were drawn with the intention—an intention which, possibly, had not been observed —of carefully excluding certain questions from the discussion. It will be noted that there is no reference in the motion to a specific rate of wage. Although Deputy Norton said a good deal in his speech about 24/- a week, the motion says nothing about 24/- a week, and yet this whole controversy originated with the allegation that the present Government sanctioned payment at this rate for works financed out of the funds for minor relief schemes. As Deputy Norton has reminded the House, it was on this line that the attack was first launched, I think, by Deputy Davin, in the debate of November of last year. It was renewed by Deputies Norton and Davin at the beginning of March, and I assume that the purpose of this motion is to lead the followers of the Labour Party to believe that the Party is, in fact, continuing that fight. But that is not the ground which they have chosen in the motion, however Deputy Norton may have changed his attitude in the speech. As I have said, there is no mention in this motion of any specific rate of wages. In the motion Deputy Norton does not ask the Dáil to condemn the payment of wages at the rate of 24/- a week, or even at the rate of 21/- a week. In view of their past attitude and of the speech to which we have just listened, I should have thought that they would have asked for condemnation in explicit terms, and I can only assume that, in their considered judgment when they came to draft this motion, they came to the conclusion that the Party is not now in a position to say that in certain circumstances the payment at the rate of 24/- a week may not be defended.

In taking up this attitude, it must be said that the members of the Labour Party are quite consistent with their past. The confirmation of this will be found in the table, to which Deputy Norton referred in his speech, which was submitted by the Parliamentary Secretary in answer to a question on March 24th of this year, and which is included in the Dáil Debates, volume 46, No. 5, col. 1389-90. That table gives the weekly rates of wages paid to labourers during the three years 1930-31, 1931-32, and 1932-33. From this table, if any Deputy cares to refer to it, it will be seen that in Leix-Offaly the rate of wages paid on Land Commission relief works, which is exactly the same type of work as is now being done under the supervision of the Office of Public Works, 24/- a week was paid in the year 1930-31, while the agricultural rate of wages in that particular constituency ranged from 23/6 to 23/9 per week. In the year 1931-32 it was again 24/-, and in the year 1932-33 it was the same, while the rate of agricultural wages varied within the limits of 21/9 to 23/6. We heard no complaint from Deputy Davin during the years 1930-31 and 1931-32 about this rate of wages. I have read very carefully—as carefully as I could —the Parliamentary Debates covering the whole of that period, and there is no record there that during these years Deputy Davin criticised the Office of Public Works, the Parliamentary Secretary, or the Government of the time for having paid rates of wages on Land Commission relief works and minor relief schemes of 24/- a week. It would appear that in 1931-32, at any rate Deputy Davin concurred in the implication contained in the terms of the Labour Party's motion that in certain circumstances payment at the rate of 24/- per week is not indefensible. I am not putting it any higher than that. Again, take the case of Cork. Cork also figures in the table which Deputy Norton has referred to. In Cork the estimated rate of agricultural wages in 1930-31 and in 1931-2 was 24/6 per week. The rate paid on Land Commission relief schemes in the same year was 24/-, or a shade below the agricultural rate. As Deputy Norton, like Deputy Davin, in 1930-31 and 1931-2 did not object to labourers engaged on those schemes being paid at a rate lower than the agricultural rate, we must also presume that he, like Deputy Davin, is prepared to concur in the implication contained in the labour Party's motion that the rate of 24/- a week is not in certain cases indefensible.

Mr. Norton

Go on to Kildare.

Mr. MacEntee

In due course. If Deputy Norton is assuming the role of the one just man who must save Sodom and Gomorrah we will leave it at that. In the case of Donegal, in 1930-31 and 1931-2 the rates of agricultural wages were estimated at 21/9 and 21/3 respectively, while the rate paid on Land Commission relief work was 22/- for each year. It is not quite correct to say that we had no protest from the Labour Party concerning the rate of wages paid in Donegal, because in fact Deputy Cassidy did in 1930 venture to protest; but Deputy Cassidy received no support from the Labour Party in that protest, and in the following year he was silent.

Mr. Davin

What would he say now?

Mr. Morrissey

He made a big mistake in 1932.

Mr. MacEntee

In Mayo for the years 1930-31 and 1931-2—and Mayo, it will be admitted, is a very significant county—the rate of agricultural wages was 22/- and 21/9 respectively, and the rate of wages paid on Land Commission schemes was 18/- in 1931 and varied from 18/- to 20/- in 1931-32. The Deputy, who at that time was chairman of the Labour Party, sat for Mayo, but during those years and under his leadership that Party made no protest against the rates of wages paid on relief schemes in Mayo, even though the rate paid on such schemes was then definitely lower than the prevailing agricultural rate for that county, which is particularly significant in view of the terms of Deputy Norton's motion. Again, in 1931-2 in the County of Limerick, which at that time, as now, returned a Labour Deputy to the Dáil, the rate paid on Land Commission relief schemes was 24/- per week, whereas the estimated agricultural rate of wages for the county was 25/3. Similarly, in Longford-Westmeath in 1930-31 and 1931-32, when the rates of agricultural wages varied from 22/- to 23/6, the rate paid on Land Commission relief schemes was 20/-. Once more, as in the case of Limerick and as in the case of the other constituencies to which I have referred, there was no protest from the Labour Deputy who represented the constituency during those years. Likewise, in Wicklow in 1931-2, when the estimated agricultural rate of wages was 26/-, the wages paid on certain Land Commission relief schemes was 24/-.

Mr. Everett

Will the Minister state where any relief work was done under the Land Commission in Wicklow? We got very little.

Mr. MacEntee

You got some.

Mr. Everett

Very little, but it is not the wages paid to road workers; there is a great difference between that and forestry.

Mr. MacEntee

I am dealing with 1931-2, and I am pointing out that the rate of wages paid on Land Commission relief schemes was 24/-, whereas in that county during the same year the agricultural rate of wages was 26/-.

Mr. Davin

You are chasing the hare.

Mr. MacEntee

I am taking those figures from the table which Deputy Norton has referred to. I have not yet had any remonstrance from Deputy Everett. I have not heard from him that he questions the fact that in 1931-2 the rate of wages paid on Land Commission relief works was 24/-, as returned in the table. In regard to Kildare, I asked Deputy Norton, when he was reading that table, if there was any other figure for Kildare than 27/-. In Kildare in 1931-2, when agricultural wages were 25/9, the rate of wages paid on Land Commission relief works was in some cases 24/- and in other cases it was 27/-. I think there is one other county to which I might make reference, and that is Wexford. In that county in 1930-1 and 1931-2 the agricultural rates of wages were 23/6 and 22/6 respectively. There were no Land Commission relief works carried out in the County Wexford in those years, but if there had been it is quite clear from the previous examples which I have given that the rate of wages paid on the schemes would have been strictly in accordance with the terms of the circulars issued by our predecessors in 1930-1 and 1931-2, regulating the rates of pay and conditions of work on relief schemes, and stating that: "The rate of wages in the case of relief works carried out by the Land Commission should not in any case exceed the rate paid locally to agricultural labourers." Therefore, if there had been minor relief schemes carried out in County Wexford in the years 1930-1 and 1931-2, in accordance with the terms of the circular the payment on those schemes would have been at the rate of 23/6 and 22/6. The circular goes on: "And if the rate normally paid to labourers employed by the Land Commission is in fact that paid locally to agricultural labourers some reduction should be made in the case of labourers employed on relief works." It is quite clear, therefore, that, as I said earlier, the terms of the Labour Party's motion are quite consistent with the Labour Party's attitude in the past with regard to this matter. Both from the terms of their motion and from their previous silence we must inevitably draw the conclusion that the Labour Party has always recognised that in certain circumstances and for certain classes of work payment at the rate of 24/- a week or even so low as 18/- and 20/-, provided it is in Mayo and not in Kildare, apparently, is defensible, and in fact has been acceptable to members of that Party. Accordingly, I submit that the whole case which Deputy Davin, at any rate, made in the debates on 30th November and on 1st March, in regard to this matter, falls to the ground, he having already acquiesced over a period of years in payment, in his own constituency, at the rate of 24/- a week under relief schemes for precisely the same class of work as was intended to be carried out under those schemes. It may be, however, that I do the Labour Party more than justice when I credit them with the virtue of consistency. There may be another reason for the rather curious terms in which their motion has been drawn. Deputy Norton on occasions recently drew attention to the fact that in some matters we have had the support of the Centre Party in this House. That is quite true, but we never angled for that support. We have been glad, as we shall always be glad, to have the support of that Party or any other Party for our proposals on their merits. Any proposals which we have submitted to the House have been submitted because the Government felt that these proposals were in the best interests of the community as a whole. They were not drafted or submitted to placate this or that Party, to secure the support of this or that section. Can Deputy Norton say the same about his motion? Is it not clear in every word that it is intended to secure the support of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, to make it easy for that Party to vote for it without covering its members with confusion in view of their past record and their policy in regard to relief schemes?

Mr. Norton

Quite untrue.

Mr. MacEntee

If that is not the purpose of the motion, if its terms are not devised to secure the support of Cumann na nGaedheal, why did Deputy Norton not put down a motion asking the House to disapprove of payment at the rate of 24/- a week for works carried out as minor relief works? If the rather curious terms of the motion which has been put before the House were not carefully drawn with a view to securing the support of Cumann na nGaedheal, why did Deputy Norton not put down a motion to which his speech would have been relevant? Why did he not submit a motion asking the House to condemn the payment of 24/- a week for work carried out under minor relief schemes?

Mr. Norton

Read the motion again.

Mr. MacEntee

I will. It reads as follows:—

That the Dáil disapprove of the action of the Office of Public Works in paying rates of wages on relief schemes which are lower than the rates prevailing for similar classes of work in such areas where relief schemes are in operation.

There is nothing there——

Mr. Norton

Get the Parliamentary Secretary to analyse that motion for you.

Mr. MacEntee

There is nothing there about 18/-, 20/-, 21/-, or 24/-, a week. There is nothing there condemning the Government or disapproving the payment of wages at rates as low as 18/- a week, a sum which members of the Labour Party acquiesced in during the years 1930-31 and 1931-32. Why did the Deputy not put down a motion in more explicit terms? He says now that all that is implicit in this motion. How could he or Deputy Davin ask the House to condemn the payment of wages at the rate of 24/-, when the Labour Party acquiesced in the payment of a lower wage in 1930-31 and in 1931-32? We can, however, leave that aspect of the matter to one side for the moment; but we leave it there not to be forgotten.

Mr. Davin

Until it is explained to you so that you will not misunderstand.

Mr. MacEntee

Let us take the general consideration that arises on the motion. The first thing we note is that the Labour Party is now asking the Dáil to disapprove paying rates of wages on relief schemes which are lower than the rates prevailing for similar classes of work in areas where relief schemes are in operation. The first question which must arise in this connection is a question that it will be difficult for the Labour Party to answer. In the years 1930-31 and 1931-32 the rates paid on minor relief schemes under our predecessors were in many cases less than the rates paid for ordinary agricultural labour. Not merely were these rates paid, but members of the Labour Party as a whole must have had full knowledge that such was the case. I am certain that Deputies Davin and Murphy, who are conspicuous in this House for the attention which they pay to the affairs of their constituents, must have been well aware of the position in this regard.

Mr. Davin

For similar classes of work—get that into your nut.

Mr. MacEntee

Deputy Davin at that time was well aware that the rates of wages on minor relief schemes were in some cases lower than the rates paid to agricultural labourers. I have no doubt that although Deputy Davin was aware of the fact, he made no protest. No doubt he was familiar with these conditions, conditions that Deputy Norton would describe as wage-slashing conditions; but Deputy Davin and Deputy Murphy and Deputy Everett and every other Deputy who was looking after the interests of his constituents eagerly sought to secure the largest possible allocation which could be made for their constituencies out of moneys voted for minor relief schemes.

Mr. Everett

I never got a penny.

Mr. MacEntee

During these years, when these moneys were being eagerly sought and when they were much more plentiful than they are now from the taxpayer's point of view, the Labour Party did not see fit to put down a motion in the terms of the motion we are now considering. There was no question then of asking the Dáil to disapprove of the payment of lower rates of wages on minor relief works than prevailed for similar classes of work in the district. When we ask ourselves why, the only answer is that the Labour Party felt that in view of the general nature of these works, the circumstances under which they were carried out, and the primary object for which they were undertaken, which was to relieve destitution and distress rather than to execute works which would be in the public interest or would inure directly and immediately to the service, convenience or advantage of the community as a whole, it was quite justifiable to pay a lower rate of wages upon them.

The next question that arises—and it is one to which I think Deputy Davin proposes to address himself and upon which the Parliamentary Secretary will listen to his remarks with some interest—is in what way do the relief works carried out by the present Government, and financed out of the Vote for minor relief schemes, differ from the schemes carried out by our predecessors in 1930-31 and 1931-32. In view of the terms of the motion and the history and record of his Party, I thought Deputy Norton would have been particularly careful to point out how the works carried out under us differed from the works carried out under our predecessors and for which they paid rates as low as 18/-.

Mr. Norton

They were not reduced to that level in Kildare.

Mr. Morrissey

Will the Minister indicate where wages at the rate of 18/- were paid?

Mr. MacEntee

In Mayo they paid 18/-, at a time when Deputy O'Connell was leading the Labour Party and Deputy Morrissey was still a member of it, on Land Commission relief schemes. Deputy Morrissey was silent then. I am very anxious to find out what is the essential difference between the works carried out in 1932-33 and those carried out by our predecessors. I am anxious to know what has made the members of the Labour Party so vocal on this matter. No attempt was made by Deputy Norton, who proposed the motion, to indicate the difference. Upon Deputy Norton lies the responsibility of explaining it and refuting any objections or criticisms that may be made. It might be expected that by way of justification for this motion and by way of explanation of the change of attitude on the part of the Labour Party, some member of that Party would explain any radical difference between the two classes of work. I say it is impossible to show any difference in the fundamental character of the works carried out by this Government and by our predecessors. They are essentially the same; they are a continuation, an extension, a development of a service which was initiated many years ago for the relief of a type of poverty which tended to lapse into absolute destitution.

The necessity for a service of this kind was first recognised in 1891, when the Congested Districts Board was set up. That Board spent large sums of money in carrying out minor relief works in the years it was in existence. When it was abolished its activities were taken over by the Land Commission and were financed by periodic allocations out of Votes for the relief of unemployment. These functions of the Board, when we came to take charge, were for the better co-ordination of the work of relief, taken from the Land Commission and were placed under the control of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance. I would like to point out that the functions of the Congested Districts Board in the first instance were restricted to certain scheduled areas. In those areas when the Board was superseded by the Land Commission the allocation of the grants in general were continued to be restricted to the same areas. When the first Fianna Fáil Government took office early in 1932 it had, in the first few weeks at its disposal, to make a very hasty survey of the conditions then prevailing in the country. It had found that unemployment, destitution and distress were very much more widespread than our predecessors had permitted the community to know. The question of providing relief on a very much wider scale than had hitherto been done emerged at once as an urgent matter. After a hurried survey which was made as searching and as accurate as almost continuous labour could make it, the following allocations were made:—Increased grant for housing, etc. (private persons), £100,000; additional free grant to local authorities for housing, etc. (minor relief), £350,000; special grant for relief of distress, £150,000; and special Road Fund works, £1,000,000.

The problem of dealing with distress, however, had only begun with the allocation of the moneys. It was found that the machinery that existed was entirely inadequate to provide for administration and for the proper expenditure of these huge sums of money. At last, by efforts—and I say it in view of the attacks which have been made upon him here—which I think I might describe as superhuman, the Parliamentary Secretary — Deputy Flynn—succeeded in co-ordinating all the spending agencies that could properly used for this work. He formed a plan out of the chaos that he found existing and succeeded in getting as many useful public works under way as the existing organisations attached to the local authorities could properly undertake. In this way the machinery was provided for the proper expenditure last year of virtually all the moneys voted by the Dáil for major relief works and road works proper. Notwithstanding these efforts, however, and notwithstanding the allocations which had been made to them out of the major relief grants, there were still one or two counties in which something more required to be done. Virtually all the useful public works that could be undertaken in these counties were under way. There still remained a measure not merely of temporary distress but of almost absolute destitution to be dealt with—destitution which had been created by the gradual decline of the agricultural industry over the preceding ten years, and to deal with this there was no more money left in the principal Vote for relief, and, so far as could be ascertained, there were no more works of the character upon which money could be properly expended. There was, however, still left unallocated some portion of the grant for minor relief schemes, and it seemed that in the counties to which I referred there might be found work of a nature analogous to minor relief works on which the money might be spent. I should like to emphasise that these were counties in which, as in the case of Kilkenny, Wicklow and Kildare, minor relief works had never, or at any rate very seldom, been carried out before.

Mr. Davin

Also Leix-Offaly.

Mr. MacEntee

Furthermore, this created one difficulty because the people of these counties in general were not familiar with the basis on which minor relief works were carried out; and the kind of labour employed upon them, in these particular counties differed in character from the classes of labour employed in the districts for which the schemes were originally intended. In Kilkenny, Wicklow and Kildare those employed were whole-time labourers whose sole means of existence was employment for hire, whereas as a general rule in the other counties those employed in relief works were smallholders or sons of smallholders. At the same time it should be noted, and it is very pertinent to notice in view of the criticisms made, that those engaged in Kilkenny, Wicklow and Kildare were in the main agricultural labourers who, for the most part, would normally be employed at agricultural wages. Apart from this, however, the essential quality common to the schemes everywhere, whether they were being carried out in the Counties of Wexford or Kildare or in the Counties of Mayo or Donegal, was that they were works set on foot not primarily for the purpose of carrying out work which the local authorities or the State would undertake because of any return these bodies would secure from them, but simply because there was destitution to relieve, and it was thought advisable to exact some work in return for the money disbursed. Thus in the case of Kilkenny, the work carried out consisted of: (1) accommodation roads which are maintained by the county council and as a rule serve a number of farmers' houses or give access to their lands; (2) minor drainage works designed to benefit the owners of farms; (3) river embankments, works designed to protect the lands of farmers from flooding.

We now arrive at this conclusion: that the position of the Labour Party as inferred from the terms of the motion and from its silence in the years 1930-31 and 1931-32 in regard to rates of wages is this: that they admit that in certain cases, particularly in the years 1930-31 and 1931-32, it was justifiable to pay lower rates of wages on relief schemes, or to put it in the terms of the circular issued in 1931 by the Land Commission: "That when the rate ordinarily paid to labourers employed by the Land Commission is in fact that paid locally to agricultural labourers some reduction should be made in the case of labourers employed on relief works." It seems to me that when we arrive at these conclusions, and bear these facts in mind, we must also arrive at this conclusion: that the Labour Party, in putting down this motion, did not seriously intend that it should have practical application, because in its terms there is no specific reference to any existing position. It is a mere abstraction and should, therefore, be discussed as an abstraction. Upon that basis might I propose now to discuss the merits of this motion.

The motion deals with the rates of wages paid on relief schemes, which immediately raises the question of the purpose of relief works in general. In that connection it seems that a certain amount of confusion of thought has arisen, due, no doubt, to the form in which the Relief Votes have been presented to the House. We speak of unemployment relief, and in some cases would seem to take the view that the sole and final end of these Votes is to provide employment. But that is not the origin of the Vote at all. There are many people in this country who are unemployed, who have nothing to do, who from many points of view might be better if they had something to do, but the Dáil does not vote huge sums of money to set those people to work; it does not even pass laws to compel them to work, for the simple reason that these people, though idle, are not in distress.

The Dáil votes the money for relief schemes, not for the purpose of providing work as an end in itself, but for the purpose of providing work as a means of relieving distress. It is true that it would be quite open to the Dáil to relieve this distress in another way, quite open to it, if the resources of the community permitted, and if there were not on certain grounds strong objections to such a procedure, to vote sums of money to relieve distressed people at so much per head, without asking from the recipients any modicum of work in return. It is not certain indeed that in the narrow monetary sense this would not be the most economical way of relieving destitution. That would be, of course, to leave out of account altogether the larger moral considerations upon which the State has decided, that wherever money is given some return in labour will be required. This return in labour, it is to be emphasised, however, is merely a secondary purpose to the State's decision to relieve distress.

The State, having determined that so far as possible distress is to be relieved by the provision of employment, the next question that arises is as to the nature of the employment to be provided. Naturally this should be, so far as possible, of a kind which would yield the maximum return for the money expended. Therefore, in the first instance, an endeavour should be made to provide employment by public works of a productive and self-remunerating type. Housing schemes and water-power development are cases in point. If sufficient works of this nature cannot be undertaken, either owing to restriction in demand or to a limitation in the capacity of existing organisations, then works of general public convenience and utility should be considered, such as the construction of trunk roads, which might be said to serve the population of the country as a whole. When the immediate possibilities in this direction have been exhausted, works in which the element of public utility and convenience is more localised might be undertaken, such as local public health works, local improvement and development schemes and trunk roads. The common feature about all these schemes, however, is that they are works which will yield a full social and economic return to the community as a whole, and they are, therefore, works of a kind which the community as a whole would undertake in due course for its own use, benefit and ultimate social and economic profit, apart altogether from any urge to provide employment. They are, therefore, unquestionably works in the execution of which every element, including labour, should be paid for at the full market rate.

It will be readily understood from that, however, that as the experience of the past 12 months has shown, the demand for such works is not very elastic, nor is the organisation which would supervise and carry them out capable of easy, rapid or efficient expansion. The possibility of relieving distress by providing employment of this nature is, therefore, relative. Accordingly, it becomes necessary to go further afield and to undertake other works in which the element of general public value gradually shrinks until it disappears altogether, and men are made to work, not for the return which their labour will yield, but for the sake of the moral discipline which the execution of work involves. In these circumstances men are set to clean up boreens, to clear out drains around fields, to make rough accommodation roads, to trim hedges, and to do, in fact, any odd job that may lie to hand, and which may be undertaken, not for its own sake, but merely as an excuse for paying wages. This position is very nearly, if not absolutely, approached in the case of works carried out under minor relief schemes.

It is quite obvious, however, that at this end of the scale, where work is undertaken merely as an excuse for paying wages, the considerations which must be weighed are quite different from those which apply at the other end where the work is undertaken for the public profit and benefit which it yields. In the latter case the works themselves represent full value for money, whereas in the case of destitution relief, the works themselves are almost valueless. It then becomes a question of distributing to the best advantage the resources which are available to the State for the relief of destitution. It becomes entirely a question of making the money go as far as possible and on the principle which the judgment of hunger and suffering through the ages has formulated in the aphorism that "half a loaf is better than no bread." It seems to me that the moment we get into this region, where there is a limited amount of money available and widespread distress to be relieved, the rate at which the money is given out must have regard, not merely to the rates of wages prevailing in the district, but also to the assumed necessity on social and moral grounds of insisting on a definite return of labour for the money expended, for in this case the purpose of the relief is to provide a subsistence. I presume that, in the opinion of most people, it is better to keep men at work than in idleness.

Considering this motion now merely in the abstract form in which it has been submitted to the House, provided the task required is not incommensurate with the remuneration offered, is not of a kind which would be normally undertaken by public authorities for some public purpose other than the relief of distress, is undertaken purely and simply for the relief of distress and for no other reason whatsoever, and that the rate of wages is such as will provide against want and destitution and, at the same time, induce the recipient to seek other work of a kind in itself more desirable, from the point of view both of the man and the community, then I think there is a good case for using the money devoted to this special purpose in such a way as will ensure that, during the period the destitution exists, the men who are in receipt of relief from public services will be employed as long as possible. On this basis it seems to me that some distinction must be drawn between the regular employee of a public authority, carrying out the works of public utility to which I have referred, and the person who by the mere accident of organisation is working under the supervision of an officer of the same authority in carrying out work for which the urge, from the point of view of public utility, is comparatively little. It may happen that under this scheme both men may be shovelling stones, but one may be doing it with a serious constructive purpose, executing a serious work of public utility, while the other may be doing it merely in fulfilment of a condition for the receipt of relief money. The point which I want to make is that a distinction may be justifiably made in the respective rates of remuneration paid to these two classes of persons.

This motion denies that such a justification can exist in any circumstances. If this motion were to be accepted, it immediately condemns the whole basis upon which minor relief schemes have been administered in this country for the last 30 years. It may be that that condemnation would be just, but if it were to be accepted by this House, it would mean that, instead of asking people to give some labour in return for the money which they received it would be better for us, much more economic, as I have said already, from the mere narrow monetary point of view, to abandon altogether the idea of exacting labour for money and to adopt holus bolus the system of the dole which has been adopted in England and elsewhere. I think that in view of the special circumstances under which relief schemes have come into being, in view of the fact that in general the work done by people under minor relief schemes inures directly to their own immediate personal benefit and advantage, that would be a great mistake. I believe it would mean wholesale deterioration in the employable qualities of our people, particularly in the districts where destitution exists. I believe also that, in general, relief for destitution would not go nearly as far as it goes at present, though in consequence of it the burden on the State would become so large that it would be impossible for them to take any just measure to relieve the distress which undeniably exists.

Mr. J.P. Kelly

County Meath has been referred to by Deputy Norton as a county that received some relief money during the past year. I want to place myself in the dock for having been one of the instruments by which that money was brought into the County Meath. The Minister has explained the unusual circumstances in which money was made available. He has explained that the money was voted by the Dáil for relief schemes in the congested areas; that towards the end of the year it was found that too much money was voted and that some of this was available for relief schemes in other parts of Ireland. We were told when this Government took office that the Estimates were prepared and that was one of the Estimates that was taken over from the old régime. The wage mentioned was to coincide with the average agricultural wage paid in the districts.

In applying for that money to the Board of Works we were aware of the fact that only 24/- a week would be paid to the workers engaged. We went to the workers concerned and we told them the circumstances in which the money was made available. We told them that the wage would be only 24/- a week. We put it to them whether we would accept the money at that wage or whether we would let it go back into the Exchequer. In every occasion in the County Meath the workers asked us to accept the money and that they would work at 24/- a week rather than let it go back to the Exchequer——

Mr. Belton

Wonderful!

Mr. Kelly

——or rather than receive six or seven shillings a week in home assistance. Deputy Norton has tried to force the opinion on the House that this is trying to set up 24/- a week as a wage standard. He has referred to Deputy Everett and something which he said during the debate on the relief schemes. But I would like to point out to Deputy Norton that he will find in the course of the debate in this House on the relief schemes on the 1st March, 1933, Vol. 46, No. 2, Col. 107, that Deputy Everett said "I know that it is not the policy of the Government, having adopted the policy of maintenance, to force men in the present wave of unemployment to accept 24/- a week. I have advised men that it is better to take 24/- a week than to have to live on 5/- or 6/- a week home help." Now Deputy Norton looks upon the back benchers of Fianna Fáil as men who usually tell the truth.

Mr. Norton

I did not say usually.

Mr. Kelly

Well, now and again.

Mr. Norton

I said always.

Mr. Kelly

On that occasion I think Deputy Everett was telling the truth, and I would commend Deputy Everett's speech to the consideration of Deputy Norton. I think that when we take our stand in the dock for having obtained some of this grant that Deputy Norton and some of the Labour Party should stand arraigned with us. During the past five or six years while this wage was being paid by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government through the country the Labour Party remained silent, and remained silent even when a wage of 21/- was being paid.

Deputy Norton

A wage of 27/-.

Mr. Kelly

To my own knowledge a wage of 21/-.

Mr. Norton

The Parliamentary Secretary did not say that.

Mr. Kelly

It has been paid. A wage of 27/- was paid for drainage under drainage schemes, but I would like to point out that while the Labour Party were closing their eyes to the fact that the Cumann na nGaedheal Party were reducing wages at that time, the Fianna Fáil members of the Meath County Council were helping to keep up a higher standard of wages, which was at that time 35/- a week. That is the wage that was then paid and that is the wage that has been continued since.

Mr. Norton

The Fianna Fáil members in Leix did not pay it. They came in and voted against it.

Mr. Kelly

I know one village in Meath in which 80 per cent of the population of the village had been idle for the ten years while the Cumann na nGaedheal Government had been in office. Some of this money was brought there. They accepted it and worked at 24/- a week, not because they believed it was a standard rate of wages but because they believed it was a relief grant and so they worked for it. We realise the poverty that exists in the working man's home. We realise quite well the anxieties that are met with in the home of the working men in order to balance his weekly budget. We know the heartbreaks that are endured and we know of the miserable outlook of the unfortunate working man who is working at low wages and we are not so inhuman as to stand up here and declare that we stand behind an uneconomic wage, or a wage of 21/- or 18/-, or 24/- a week. In voting on this motion we do not stand up for a wage of 24/- a week. We do not proclaim that that is an adequate wage. We merely proclaim by our vote that the Board of Works could not do anything else under the peculiar circumstances in which this money was obtained and made available. Perhaps when we are voting in the Lobbies we may be left alone and the Labour Party will be accompanied into the Lobby by the Cumann na nGaedheal Party. Let us hope that Deputy Norton and the Labour Party will not see the ghosts of the past when they see around them the Cumann na nGaedheal members who reduced the wages in the old days and who asked men then to take 24/- a week.

Mr. Belton

You will see the ghosts of your promises.

Mr. Kelly

The Labour promises may awaken then. On the other hand, it may well be that the Farmers' Party, the friends of the ranchers and of that class of society who more than any other contribute to the fact that we have real unemployment in the country, will vote with the Labour Party on this motion. I wonder will the Labour Party like their company, the friends of the ranchers. If the Labour Party by this motion——

Mr. Norton

What about the part-time agents?

(Interruptions.)

An Ceann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. Kelly

If the Labour Party, by this motion, force the friends of the ranchers to vote on this we will not fancy our company.

Mr. Morrissey

You are on very dangerous ground.

Mr. Davin

What about the part-time agents?

Mr. Kelly

We certainly do not want the support of Cumann na nGaedheal in this because they reduced the wages; nor do we want the support of the Farmers' Party because the people who voted to send those Farmers' representatives here are reducing wages although Deputy Norton has not turned his big gun on the Farmers' Party for reducing the wages down through the country. That is why we do not want the Farmers' Party to come with us on this.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Kelly

I would ask the Chair for protection from these constant interruptions. We are told that the back benchers of Fianna Fáil always tell the truth, and yet when we do stand up to tell the truth people cannot listen to us because, I suppose, they do not like to hear the truth. I wonder has this motion anything to do with the fact that there is an election being held in the City of Dublin at the moment.

Mr. Davin

The motion was down three months ago.

Mr. Kelly

On the 1st March, 1933, Deputy Flinn, the Parliamentary Secretary, in answer to General Mulcahy as to the amount of unemployment relief voted in 1932 and 1933, stated in his reply that no money was allocated to Dublin. Every dead wall in the City of Dublin—we can see it coming in here from the country—is plastered with placards bearing the words "24/- a week." Why is it only placarded in Dublin? Are the Dublin workers being led to believe for a moment that 24/- a week is being paid to them or that the Government here stands behind that as a standard rate of wages for the workers of the city?

General Mulcahy

There is a lot of them with nothing being paid to them.

Mr. Kelly

What leads me to believe that this motion was deliberately placed on the Order Paper at the present time——

Mr. Davin

It was down three months ago.

Mr. Kelly

Yes, three months ago, when it was announced through the country that the elections would be held in June, and now the motion is hastened upon us when the elections are being held.

Mr. Norton

Why did not you postpone the elections?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance (Mr. Flinn)

Because we could not. It would be illegal and we do not do illegal things.

Mr. Kelly

I do not know whether the workers in the City of Dublin really believe this. I am not assuming that the Labour Party here were responsible for putting up these posters themselves——

Mr. Norton

Your intelligence service is very bad.

Mr. Kelly

——but from the speech of Deputy Norton to-day I really do not believe that the workers in Dublin believe that the low wage is the only wage that is going to be paid under works provided by this Government. I do not for a moment believe that the workers, either in the City of Dublin or down the country, believe that we are going to set up a standard rate of 24/- a week. This Party has always stood for an economic wage for the people. Now, when this country is about to become a self-contained economic entity we ask the people to stand by us and we ask the workers to stand by us. Some sacrifice may be necessary, and the workers of the country are not so unpatriotic as to refuse to make a small sacrifice when called upon to do so. We are not asking them to work for 24/- a week. I would not be a member of a party that would deliberately ask people to work at an uneconomic wage. I have stood by labour in the past, and, please God, will continue to do so in the future; but when a motion such as this is introduced in this House, which would force members of this Party, who have loyally stood by labour in the past and will continue to stand by labour in the future, into a wrong lobby so that Deputy Norton and the Labour Party could go down the country and say that we have been wage slashers and to enable them to send out that through the country when they have been silent for so many years while other people were doing the same thing—a thing which we do not intend to keep on doing——

Mr. Belton

What about the Economies Bill?

Mr. Kelly

I think this motion will not have the desired effect. It will have, perhaps, the boomerang effect of coming back on the Labour Party and hitting them stronger than it will hit us. People down the country will be asking themselves the question that I have been asking myself to-day. They will try to reconcile in their own minds the attitude of the Labour Party to-day with their attitude for the last six or seven years and they will fail to reconcile it. I might tell the Labour Party that honesty is the best policy.

Labour Deputies

Hear, hear.

Mr. Kelly

They will find out that even in politics honesty is the best policy; and if honesty is pursued by the Labour Party, as we of the Fianna Fáil Party pursue it, they will find in the end that it will have better results. Personally, I believe that we are justified in accepting some of this money and sending it down through the country. We were not pleased with the rate offered. We do not stand by it. We accepted it simply because we found that 80,000 unemployed were left by Cumann na nGaedheal and we had to provide for them. A motion was introduced by Deputy Morrissey to provide work or maintenance for the unemployed. We were providing maintenance for them when we were giving this relief work. I do not stand for a wage of 24/- a week and in voting against this motion it is not because I believe that 24/- a week should be taken, but because I do not believe in the sincerity of the Labour Party in introducing the motion at the present moment. I have always stood for the rights of Labour. I can safely say that this Party has always stood for the rights of Labour. I am happy in the knowledge that I am a member of a Party which will in future defend the rights of Labour as they have done in the past.

General Mulcahy

Deputy Kelly has induced me to intervene in a debate in which I had no intention in intervening, for the reason that I see very little utility in our discussing here whether 25/-, 24/- or 20/- a week should be paid to people working on relief schemes, when generally we are pursuing a policy that is simply destroying the capacity of this country to pay anyone in respect of relief works.

Mr. Belton

That is getting to business.

General Mulcahy

I am interested in the protestations of Deputy Kelly that he belongs to a Party which stands for an economic wage. Whatever be the difficulties of the Government in the present circumstances in arriving at the rate that they will pay to workers on relief works, I should like to know from Deputy Kelly—and I should like to hear some comment on it from the Front Bench—what he thinks of a Party whose tax officials write to a farmer running a farm along dairying lines, along the lines that give most employment to rural workers, and point out that he is paying too high wages in the dairying industry. We here in the City of Dublin are paying nearly 50 per cent. over the world price for our butter, and yet the Party opposite write to a dairy farmer and say that the amount of £1 12/- for John So-and-So, the amount of £1 5/- per week for Michael So-and-So, and the amount of 14/- for Patrick So-and-So, are surely excessive for milkmen, and that such work is usually performed by women.

An Ceann Comhairle

That matter is surely not relevant to the motion before the House.

General Mulcahy

I submit, Sir, that it is relevant to the case that has been drawn across this discussion here that the Party opposite stands for an economic wage.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy knows that one sentence used by a Deputy as to his policy may not be made the subject for a detailed speech apart altogether from and quite irrelevant to the question before the House. The matter to which the Deputy refers has been discussed on a Bill to which it was relevant. Moreover, I understand that he is referring to the action of a civil servant or a letter from a Civil Service Department, and not to a matter for which a political Party is responsible.

Mr. Morrissey

Surely the Minister is responsible.

General Mulcahy

I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary in fixing the wages for relief works is he going to refer them to the agricultural wages paid to men or the agricultural wages paid to women? If he thinks that the dairying industry is not able to support a wage of 14/- a week or 25/- or 32/- a week to milkmen employed in it, for the product of which we in the City of Dublin are expected to pay 50 per cent. above the world price; if he thinks that these rates are surely excessive for milkmen, what figures— if relief wages are to be related to the wages of men—in a dairying county will he say are suitable wages to be paid to adult males engaged in the dairying industry? If the wages paid upon relief works are to be referred to the wages paid to women engaged in the agricultural industry, are the wages to be paid on relief works to be based in some way on the wages of 5/-, 6/- or 7/- a week for which the Minister's officials told the farmers engaged in the dairying industry women could be obtained?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy was told that that matter was out of order, and it should not be necessary to twice remind him of that fact, nor should he attempt by subterfuge to refer to a matter which he was precluded from referring to directly.

Mr. Morrissey

Might I submit on a point of order that this whole matter of the rate of wages involved——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy is aware that I have ruled that the matter is out of order. No further point of order can arise.

General Mulcahy

Then, Sir, I would ask that in general terms the Parliamentary Secretary would say what are the agricultural wages in the dairying counties to which he considers the wages of the relief workers, that are being discussed at the present moment, should be referred, and whether those wages are the wages of men or the wages of women?

Mr. Walsh

It is not my intention to make a very long speech in this matter. I have got up with the intention of asking a few questions of Deputy Norton or any other member of the Labour Party. I hope that when they are concluding they will be able to answer them. The question I would ask is if Deputy Norton has any solution that would provide work at the rate of 24/- a week for three or four months in the year for 10,000 or 12,000 migratory labourers from my county, among whom are about 1,000 women. If Deputy Norton or any member of the Labour Party can suggest any plan that would give these 10,000 or 12,000 migratory labourers work for, say, four months of the year, I will guarantee to him that not one of them will leave this country. From the town and district of Swinford 2,500 people leave every year for the harvest fields of Great Britain. From the Island of Achill about 1,700 people leave, among whom are about 800 women. I can assure Deputy Norton that if any of those men or women could get a guarantee of 24/- a week for the three summer months, and if Deputy Norton is able to provide a plan to give them work at 24/- a week for the three summer months, the biggest monument that was ever built in the County Mayo will be built to Deputy Norton.

Regarding what Deputy Mulcahy has said, and his anxiety about the rates of wages which he said are being established by the present Government, he is quite aware that this 24/- a week based on the comparative wages paid to agricultural workers in any district, was established by the Government to which he himself belonged. He is also aware that during his term of office, when he suppressed the Mayo County Council and put a dictator in to administer the affairs of the county, one of the first acts of that dictator was to reduce the wages of the road workers by five or six shillings a week.

Mr. Belton

To what level?

Mr. Walsh

To something about 24/- or 25/- a week.

Mr. Belton

Why did you not put up a monument to that dictator?

Mr. Walsh

I think the Deputy does not know what he is talking about. Of course I did make a suggestion recently that if ever the Minister for Education contemplated producing a national encyclopaedia he should make Deputy Belton editor of it, because he knows everything.

Mr. Belton

We knew how to bring you in here. Preface it with that.

Mr. Davin

The Deputy deserves a monument for that.

Mr. Belton

The living monuments we have are bad enough.

Mr. Killilea

We will put the Deputy up on Nelson's Pillar later on.

Mr. Walsh

My experience during the last 12 months is that many of my own constituents have come to me complaining, not that wages were too low, but that they were too high and that as a result more men could not be employed. I do not mean to say that 24/- a week represents an adequate living wage or that any Party in the State should seek to establish 24/- a week as a maximum wage. We are simply faced with circumstances in which we have to cut our cloth according to our measure. We have a certain amount of money at our disposal for the purpose of relieving distress. It is our business as a Government to stretch that money as far as it can be stretched so as to employ as many men as possible. It is far better to have men earning 24/- a week than to have them receiving 5/- or 6/- out-door relief or 10/- or 12/- unemployment insurance benefit. For those reasons I intend to oppose this motion.

Mr. Pattison

I want to make special reference to the policy of the Government in relation to wages. Their intention, apparently, is to introduce a wage of 20/- or 24/- a week. I am forced to speak on this matter to-night because recently, when I considered it my duty down the country to speak as a worker in opposition to this policy, the Minister for Education thought fit to come down the following week-end to launch an attack on the Labour Party and upon me personally as the Labour representative of the constituency of which the Minister is also a representative. I am sorry the Minister for Education is not here to-night. I intend later to meet him outside the House and to deal with all the references he made to the Labour Party and to myself in his Carlow speech.

The first time I heard about this wage of 24/- was shortly after my election as a member of the Dáil. I was informed about it by a very important supporter of the Fianna Fáil Party in my constituency, the secretary of one of the largest Cumainn in County Kilkenny. If the Minister for Education wants his name and address I shall give them to him.

We were told that when Fianna Fáil would take over control we would have absolute freedom and, later, we were told that everything they were doing was a stepping stone towards the Republic. The Oath has been abolished and now the Seanad is to be abolished. Everything that Cumann na nGaedheal did when they were in power is to be abolished, everything except the starvation wage of 24/- a week. The only defence the Minister for Education has in relation to the wage of 24/- is that it was there under the preceding Administration and that Labour never objected to it. Apparently we are not going to be given an indication that at an early date the Fianna Fáil Government will abolish that starvation wage and set up a standard in accordance with the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII.

This evening the Minister for Finance referred to the nature of the work. In County Kilkenny it was actual county council work, not drainage work and not work of an agricultural nature. The actual work carried out in the area from which the secretary of the Fianna Fáil Cumann came to me was the erection of a concrete wall. No tradesmen were to be employed; no carpenters to make the casing. County council labourers who usually are engaged on the steam-rolling of the roads were to fill up their slack time completing this wall and they were to be paid at the rate of 24/-, 22/- and 20/- a week. When I raised the matter in this House last March I was told an error had been made in the calculations in Kilkenny and that the mistake was now being made right and the men would be refunded whatever amounts they were short. If I had not raised the question I am sure that county surveyors and employers generally, being incited by the Parliamentary Secretary and the Government, would continue to lower the 24/- rate until it would reach 16/-, 12/- and finally 10/-, the rate which it takes to maintain a pauper in the Dublin Union.

I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will note the fact that the Minister for Education was greatly mistaken when he said that no substantial complaint had been made. He can tell the Minister that the first complaint Deputy Pattison received was from a very important Fianna Fáil secretary in County Kilkenny. I think it was Deputy Kelly who said he was a member of a Party that always stood for Labour and that he had always stood by the workers. I have never known of an instance on county councils or any public board, when it came to a question of increasing wages, where Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil did not vote in the one Lobby for the smallest possible wage. In every instance of that sort politics were forgotten.

I have no friendship for the Cumann na nGaedheal Party and I declare emphatically that there is no ground for the insinuation that this motion was tabled for a political purpose. I dissociate myself completely from any such intention as that. People on the opposite side of the House know perfectly well that I was never a friend of that Party before I came into the House or since. So far as my national record is concerned, I will not put it on the same level with the record of any man in the Fianna Fáil Party. If any man can find fault with my national record, let him speak inside or outside the House. I certainly could not let this occasion pass without making some reference to the attempt made by the Minister for Education to misrepresent the Labour Party and myself.

Mr. Hales

I really think that this Government must, in a matter of this sort, keep in mind the principles observed by such great schoolmasters of the past as Pearse and Connolly. I remember on one historic occasion 15 years ago hearing President de Valera saying in the Mansion House that labour deserves the best that this country can afford to pay. I believe the President's views are the very same to-day. It is my opinion that if this Party went against that fundamental principle, it would be wrong. If he maintains that the Executive Council and the Parliamentary Secretary went against that principle, that would be also wrong, but in the circumstances, and the new situation created during the previous ten years, and the ruin led up to by the mournful Minister for Industry and Commerce, McGilligan——

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputies must be referred to in this House as Deputies.

Mr. Hales

Excuse me, Deputy McGilligan I should have said. The position that we had to face was a new and an altered one. I admit, and our Party must admit it, that we had no more loyal men than the frieze coated men who fought with us for Irish freedom. They were true to us then and I believe they will remain true in the future. Taking my own constituency—of course, it might be different from Dublin—I met men there and they said to me: "Give us a scheme and we are prepared to work it, not alone for 24/- a week, but for £1 a week in order to take the Government over their difficulties in this historic fight." We look upon this as not interfering with the standard wage; we look upon it as a real emergency, as a relief scheme, as a kind of dole, but in a different form. If Deputy Norton thinks that 24/- a week would fundamentally interfere with the standard of labour in this country, he would be right to oppose it. We hold it would not. It is my personal opinion that, considering the new order and the situation before him, the Parliamentary Secretary has done what he considers wisest and best for Ireland in this critical situation. In these circumstances, I appeal to the House and to the Labour Party to view the position in that light. When this historical fight has been successful I, for one, will uphold the old traditional notion that labour deserves the best that this country can afford to give it.

Mr. Belton

I am afraid the Government are in a bit of confusion about this motion. They have insinuated that unworthy motives prompted it. One Deputy suggested it had been introduced in order to meet the emergency of the Dublin Municipal Elections. If the Government had been fair to private members, this motion, and others on the Order Paper, could have been disposed of long ago and now forgotten by the people. But if this motion coincides with the Municipal Elections, it is the Government's fault and not the fault of the people who put this motion on the paper. It was rather edifying to hear the Minister for Finance telling us that there was to be one rate of wages for one set of men shovelling stones at one end and another rate of wages for another set of men shovelling stones at the other end. It was not due to a difference of work, it was due to a difference of name given to the work. One was work on a major scheme, and the other work on a minor scheme. He insinuated, although he did not say it, it would be better perhaps from a purely financial point of view that for relief it would be better to pay out money rather than seek any return in the shape of work for it. I will not comment upon that. But he added to that remark this, that it would be injurious to our people and would make them unemployable in the future.

I submit that the greatest damage that could be done to the worker is being done under the minor relief schemes as outlined by the Minister for Finance. That money is to be paid for a class of work and paid on the admission of the Minister for Finance to persons for pretending to work and is not really for work at all. The greatest damage that can be done to the worker is to reduce his productive capacity, regardless of the rate of wages. In the final reckoning the productivity of a nation is the aggregate productivity of the workers of that nation. If the units of production, the workers, are reduced in the manner indicated by the Minister for Finance the total production of the country would be seriously impaired. Certain Deputies opposite, amongst them the Parliamentary Secretary, may smile at that line of argument, but I am afraid production in this country is not a very strong point with them.

Deputy Kelly was very eloquent in denouncing 24/- a week as a standard wage, yet he informed the House that the workers in Meath were unanimous in accepting 24/- a week. Deputy Walsh said that a monument would be raised in Mayo to the Parliamentary Secretary if he could guarantee 24/- a week wages for the migratory labourers for the four principal working months of the year. But although Deputy Kelly and Deputy Walsh denounce 24/- a week as a standard still we have the declaration that in Mayo they would raise a monument to the man who paid it. The Parliamentary Secretary is trying for that monument and will have a flag with 24/- a week on it hoisted over him. If that happened I have a shrewd suspicion how long such a monument would last in Dublin if raised there, even if crowned by the imposing figure of the Parliamentary Secretary. The wage paid has been explained as being correlated to the agricultural wage obtaining in the district. While accepting that, how can the Government denounce that standard or run away from that standard when the policy is to reduce the agricultural rate of wages to that level. Does the Government know that wage paying regulates the economic level at which wages are payable. That is the high-water mark of efficiency of Government which the Parliamentary Secretary applies. Another Government Deputy said, "We will raise a monument if we get 24/-," which is another way of informing the House that they cannot get 24/-. Another Deputy went back to the bawneen age and referred to the frieze coat brigade and how they always stood for Ireland. Deputy Kelly said they did not stand for this standard. What voice from the Government Benches is speaking the Government mind?

Mr. Davin

Deputy Briscoe.

Mr. Belton

He is absent and cannot be speaking for it.

Mr. Davin

He is on the hustings.

Mr. Flinn

Doing damn good work.

Mr. Belton

Some Deputies continue to harp back over ten years. We know what happened in the last ten years and what we had to pay for it.

Donnchadh O Briain

Go back three years and find out what labour was paid.

Mr. Belton

I know what I was paying three years ago and what I am able to pay now. Even Fianna Fáil as a Party, do not stand over this rate of wages as a standard rate of wages and merely pay it because it is given, as explained by the Minister for Finance, not for productive work, but to give relief to people who are destitute, yet, it is maintained by the Government that even that wage, paid for destitution rather than for production, is correlated and equal to the agricultural rate of wages paid in the area. If it is not, will any Fianna Fáil Deputy inform the House that he is paying a higher wage than the wage applauded by Deputy Hugo Flinn of 24/- per week? They either stand for that standard or they do not. If that standard is regulated by the wage paid in that area, described in a flippant manner, as if off a platform, as an uneconomic wage by members of the Government Party, then who is responsible for lowering the conditions so that the only wage payable in the largest industry in the country is an uneconomic wage according to the definition of the Government Party? The Government pay for relief works on the basis of that uneconomic wage. There is no way that the Government can shuffle out of it. They have paid this lower rate of wage. They have lowered the wage standard. If the Deputy from Mayo were to be taken seriously, and if employers in the eastern counties were to act on the gesture he has made, we could with profit sack the men to whom we are paying up to £2 per week on our farms and employ those migratory labourers so graciously offered to us by Deputy Walsh at 24/-, and we would probably get the monument raised to us instead of having it raised to Deputy Norton. Like Deputy Mulcahy, I did not intend intervening in this debate.

Mr. Flinn

There is really no reason why you should.

Mr. Killilea

It is doubtful.

Mr. Belton

A Deputy has the privilege to intervene if he likes.

Mr. Flinn

You were not bound to.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order, order!

Mr. Belton

I do not want the Parliamentary Secretary's permission.

Mr. Flinn

No.

Mr. Belton

I am quite aware of that. Neither do I want the permission of a Deputy who never intervenes in any debate except by way of interruption.

Mr. Killilea

There may be as much respect for him as for you.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. Belton

The Deputy pretends to speak the English language. Let him speak it in a manner which can be understood.

Mr. Killilea

I have listened to you——

An Ceann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. Belton

One clear fact brought out is that this is a standard rate of wages for the whole country. From the applause with which it has been greeted by the Government Party it would appear that it is a scale which the economic strength of the country can only support at present, and that economic level has been reached by the wild, mad, insane policy of the Government.

Mr. MacDermot

And the Labour Party.

Mr. Belton

The Government has reduced the paying capacity of industry here.

An Ceann Comhairle

The general economic policy of the country is not in order on this motion.

Mr. Belton

I submit that the economic position of this country or of any country is capable of maintaining a certain wage level.

Mr. Flinn

On a point of order. I submit that the question of the wage level is not in question. There is a specific issue as to whether or not a particular Department of State is paying a particular rate, lower than another rate, and that this general discussion does not arise.

Mr. Belton

The apologia——

Mr. Flinn

Pro vita sua.

Mr. Belton

——made by the Government is that the wage approximates to the wage payable in these areas for agricultural work. Therefore, the relation is set up between this wage and the agricultural rate of wage, and the agricultural rate of wage is dictated by the economic strength of the agricultural industry of this country, and the economic strength of this country is dictated by the economic policy of the Government.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy has been told that a discussion on the economic or industrial policy of the Government or of the country is not relevant to this debate and it should not be necessary to repeat that.

Mr. Belton

I accept the ruling of the Chair. But we have got standards and we cannot get away from them. We know what gave us those standards. We know the people who gave us those standards. We know the people who gave us the promise that everybody would be working or maintained, not at 24/- per week, but at a standard wage for working and a standard level of maintenance if they are not working. We know who gave those promises and they are not forgotten. If the reminders on the dead walls of Dublin show placards with "24/- a week new standard," it will bring up some ghosts of the past and not to this side of the House, but to the Government side of the House. Wives, who were promised that Fianna Fáil would do a certain thing, that their husbands would get work, will now have their eyes open. My only regret in this matter—and it is perhaps a major reason as we are talking of majors and minors why I intervened in the debate at all—is that I cannot vote for this motion as I have no means of recording my vote, having been paired with a Deputy opposite.

Mr. Davin

The Minister for Finance in a rather moderate but clearly misleading speech, answered the very strong case put up by Deputy Norton by saying that half a loaf was better than no bread. That was not the line taken by some other distinguished Deputies who belong to the same Party as the Minister. I am sure it will be of interest to the Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party, who will have more time to read these debates when the debate has concluded and when they receive the reports, to see the conflict that is between the front and the back benches of the Fianna Fáil Party on the issue now before the House. This Party is accused of putting down a motion for Party propaganda purposes, and the Minister for Finance, as well as the Minister for Education, when speaking in this House, stated that the rates to which we now take exception were paid when the Cumann na nGaedheal Party was in office and that no protest was made by the Labour Party. That is entirely incorrect, and it is incorrect to the knowledge of the Fianna Fáil Party, even before they came into office and since they came into office. That Party knows perfectly well that at no time since 1922 did the members of the Labour Party vote for the election of the Cosgrave or Cumann na nGaedheal Party. We declined to do so because we were entirely in conflict with their political, social and economic policy, as far as we understood the Cumann na nGaedheal Party policy. For that and other reasons we never supported them in any policy or issue which came before this House, apart from the fact that we never cast our votes in favour of their being put into office as a Government. The Minister for Education, in Carlow, and the Minister for Finance, here to-day, repeated in parrot-like fashion that this wage was paid during the time when the Labour Party held the balance of power—during the time when Fianna Fáil was kept in office by our votes. That again is incorrect. The first time that this wage was ever paid for work done on minor relief work or schemes was following the passage of the Vote in this House on 30th November last. It was as a result of this House having passed a Vote of that £350,000 for minor relief schemes as such, and when they were first initiated by this Government. These minor relief schemes, as is well known to every Deputy, and the money allocated for them, were for the first time administered by the county surveyors on behalf of the Board of Works. That is not denied.

The Minister for Finance continues in his entirely misleading remarks here this evening to state that the same kind of works were carried out in Leix-Offaly, Carlow, Kildare and in other Leinster counties during the period when the Cumann na nGaedheal Party Government were in office and that no member of this Party took exception to the rate of wages paid for that work. But if the Minister for Finance had, as he should have done, made a study of the nature of the work carried out by the Cumann na nGaedheal Party on what are called Land Commission relief works in Leix-Offaly, Carlow, Kildare, Westmeath and other places, he would find that the work had no relation whatever to the kind of work carried out on minor relief schemes. The method of selecting the individuals who carried out that work bore no comparison to the conditions which came into operation from 30th November last when the Vote for £350,000 was passed by this House. The Land Commission relief work carried out in Leix-Offaly was carried out and the moneys provided by the improvement Vote of the Land Commission, which, as every Deputy who knows the facts knows, is set aside for the purpose of making roads and ditches on the estates acquired by the Land Commission under the 1923 Act. The men selected for the carrying out of these works are selected by the Land Commission inspector, who goes to the district, and, as is well known also to the Deputies, preference for that work has been given by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government and is still being given, as was admitted by the Minister for Defence here yesterday, to the farmers and the sons of farmers who get portions of the land on the estates divided. None of these men were ever taken for this class of work through the Labour Exchanges. I raised a question here yesterday affecting this class of work on the Hackett Estate, Ballycumber, in Offaly. The Minister for Defence, replying for the Minister for Lands and Fisheries, admitted that preference was given at that work to people who had got holdings up to 30 acres of land on some of the estates, while able-bodied unemployed men not entitled to unemployment insurance benefit or home assistance were ruled out in favour of farmers and the sons of farmers who are not without a bit to eat at any rate.

That is the kind of comparison made by the Minister for Finance in his misleading speech. That is the kind of argument used by him for the purpose of drawing a red herring across the issue raised by this motion. When the Labour Party in 1932 cast its votes for the election of the Fianna Fáil Government—without the Labour votes they could not be elected—they had an assurance repeatedly given by President de Valera in the country and repeated by the Party and given in this House since that the Fianna Fáil Party stood for the democratic programme adopted by Dáil Eireann in 1919. The statement and pledges publicly made by the Ministers and by leading members of the Party was that the attitude of the Fianna Fáil Party on trade union issues was much more progressive than the outlook and attitude of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party was on these issues. It was for this and for other reasons that we cast our votes in 1932 for the election of the first Fianna Fáil Government. It is surprising to me to find that when Fianna Fáil is up against this they point to the Labour Party and say, "you tolerated this when the Cumann na nGaedheal Party was in power and in that way justified their attitude in paying the same rate of wages for carrying out the same class of work." Now Deputy Kelly is not here——

Mr. T. Kelly

The other fellow is here.

Mr. Davin

Well, I would have ventured, if I were referring to him to call the other famous man, Deputy Tom Kelly. But I am now referring to Deputy Kelly from Meath. The Deputy quoted an extract from a speech made by Deputy Everett last March. I would ask the Deputy to go back beyond that date to another date when the issue now raised was discussed. I would refer him to the speech made by Deputy Everett on 30th November last. He will read there in column 572 the remarks of Deputy Everett pertaining to the debate at that time on the same issue. Deputy Everett, protesting against the payment of this 24/- wages which he then for the first time learned about, concluded by saying: "I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to make it a condition that the county surveyors pay whatever is the county council rate for road work in that area. If that is not done, you will have endless friction and the scheme of improving the bye-roads will not be the success it should be." That statement was made by Deputy Everett with the knowledge he had of a strong complaint with regard to this new rate paid for the first time in connection with the carrying out of this work in Wicklow. I suppose the Parliamentary Secretary for the Department of Finance when he stands up—and I am glad to see that he is able to stand up here again—will repeat the misleading analogy that was used by the Minister for Finance. I would say the Parliamentary Secretary is the parrot of the Party. It has been stated here that we have not made any proper protest against these rates of wages for those employed on minor relief schemes. Immediately the members of this Party discovered this circular for the first time at the end of November last——

Mr. Flinn

For the first time in ten years.

Mr. Davin

——we took the usual Party steps to bring the matter under the notice of those responsible. I want to say—and I am sure every member of this Party can say with me, and can say it with the same truth—that this circular was discovered by the members of this Party for the first time when it was issued by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance to county surveyors and foremen and gangers employed by him on minor relief works after the Vote was passed in November last. The part of this circular to which we took strongest exception is Section 22, apart from the fact that we object to the employment of these men on such works without having their insurance cards stamped. Section 22 says:——

"The rates of wages in the case of relief works should, where possible, be fixed on a lower scale ...

these are the words to which any member of the Fianna Fáil Party should object—

"... than that normally paid to agricultural labourers in the district."

May I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to make a confession in his own interests? Did the Parliamentary Secretary ever read that circular before it was sent out with his authority last December? Is it because his predecessors stood for that that it went out from him and for the carrying out of work of a different character by Cumann na nGaedheal at the rates quoted by the Minister for Finance here this evening? I do not believe the Parliamentary Secretary ever saw the circular, and if he wants to get rid of his responsibilities in an easy way, I suggest that the best way to do it would be to confess that he never saw the circular. If he did see it the crime is much more serious because of the fact that he, with other Fianna Fáil Deputies, protested so much against the rate of wage of 32/- a week on the Shannon works and he should certainly never have accepted responsibility for sending out a circular worded in the fashion in which Section 22 is worded.

The members of this Party, after they had discovered the contents of that circular, held a Party meeting and, as a result, a deputation of four of our members was selected by a meeting of the Joint Executives of the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party for the purpose of interviewing the Minister for Finance. Failing a satisfactory answer from him, we were instructed to endeavour to see President de Valera on the issue involved. After that decision several attempts were made to make appointments with the Minister. Owing to other and more important engagements, the Minister, on a couple of occassions, postponed meetings already fixed for that purpose, but finally, after the Dáil had been dissolved, on Friday, the 6th January, accompanied by two other colleagues, we had an interview with the Minister for Finance on the issue now raised in this motion. I am won-sorry the Minister for Finance is not here in the House now. I am wondering why he left the House without having said anything about the nature of the interview, which took place on the 6th January last on the issue raised in the motion. We saw the Minister in his office at 3.30 p.m. on that date. We put the issue to him which we had been instructed to put before him for consideration. He asked us what we had to say as to the best ways and means of finding a way out of this dispute. We told him, acting on the advice of the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party, that the only and the proper way out of a dispute of this kind was to pay the same rate of wages on works of this kind as was paid by the local authority for doing the same class of work. If the Minister for Finance is in the precincts of the House send for him and ask him did he turn down that proposal. He did not. He said the proposal would receive his careful and sympathetic consideration; that he thought it his duty to get into telephonic communication with his Parliamentary Secretary, who had some responsibility in the matter, and that he would communicate with us at an early date as to the result. We never heard another word until after the election was over and, consequently, Deputy Norton put down a question for answer in this House as soon as the House met after the elections, seeing that the Minister had not the courtesy to reply to us. The very fact that the Minister for Finance did not turn down the suggestions which we made makes me feel at any rate that I am right in suggesting to the House and to the Parliamentary Secretary that the Minister was sympathetic and in favour of what we suggested as a way out of the dispute. If he was not sympathetic and in favour of the proposal he should have turned it down definitely there and then.

Mr. Rice

He had to think of the general election.

Mr. Davin

At any rate, I challenge him as to whether or not the version of that interview which I am now giving is accurate. I regret that I am making that statement in the absence of the Minister, but that is not my fault, because he was aware that this issue was going to be raised.

In most of the minor relief works carried out in my area the men selected for employment on them were men who were previously employed on county council work in the area, and they were, as far as I know, selected in all cases through the local labour exchanges. If any man had been offered work on the former works and refused it he would have been refused payment of unemployment insurance benefit. At any rate, they were selected in that way, and the class of work that were doing, as far as I know, was the very same class of work that had been done by the county council in these areas. Does the Parliamentary Secretary suggest that the members of this Party could accept a policy which enabled work of the same kind to be done in the same place and under the same supervisor at two different rates of pay? The county surveyor was the person responsible for supervising all the minor relief works carried out in my area. I understand—I am subject to correction in this—that for that work they received 4 per cent. on the amount expended in addition to the fairly large salaries these gentlemen are already in receipt of. I know of cases, and reported them—there was one outside Mountrath—where two sets of men were engaged, in the same quarry in getting out material, one set working for the county council at a rate of 30/- a week and another set, under the same supervisor, being paid 24/- a week for getting out materials for the making of a bog road. Does anybody suggest that this Party could stand for the continuance of two different rates of wages for doing the same class of work in the same place, under the supervision of the same man? That is the issue raised in this resolution, and the Parliamentary Secretary knows it better than any other member of the Government, because it has been pointed out to him on several occassions.

The Minister for Education, speaking with a certain amount of irritation —that is if one can understand the meaning of plain English—in Carlow last Sunday week, attempted to bolster up this case, and to stick a knife into the backs of certain members of the Labour Party, myself included, by suggesting that for instance: "Mr. Flinn pointed out in the Dáil that he had been in constant touch with Mr. Davin on this question." As a matter of fact I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to get the quotation from the official record, "and that Mr. Davin and his colleagues were satisfied with the efforts the Government Party made to meet them where special difficulties arose." I have given the House a very fair and impartial account of the interview which took place between myself and two other colleagues and the Minister for Finance, and we have not yet received the communication from the Minister which he promised to give us on Friday, 6th January last.

I have only had the pleasure of two conversations with Deputy Flinn in connection with the administration of minor relief works. Those had nothing whatever to do with the rate of wages paid on those works, but concerned, as the Parliamentary Secretary knows, the amount of money that might be made available at a particular time for the carrying out of schemes in Leix-Offaly. I happen to be, as the Parliamentary Secretary knows, in the fortunate position of being able to put my hands on two witnesses who would, I am sure, give their version of what transpired at the two interviews concerned. I did see the pleasant face of the Parliamentary Secretary on a couple of occasions in the Lobby, when he went to a good deal of trouble to explain the ups and downs of the unemployment situation in the country, and other aspects of the problem of unemployment, of which he has made a particular study. I have not been in constant touch with Deputy Flinn. He is a very pleasant gentleman to meet in private, but in the House he is a different Deputy altogether. I could give a description of Deputy Flinn in this House which you, sir, I am sure, would not allow me to get away with, and I do not think that at any rate I would serve any useful purpose by giving that description.

Mr. Flinn

Might I ask if that description which would be ruled out as disorderly would be a quotation from the famous speech of Deputy Hogan of Clare?

Mr. Davin

The Parliamentary Secretary will, I am sure, honour us by intervening in the debate later on, when perhaps he could, if he so desires, give us the quotation which he has in mind. The men employed on the minor relief works are paid a rate of wages which is supposed to have some relation to the rate paid to agricultural labourers in the district. I have in mind the case of minor relief work which was carried out a very short distance outside the town of Portlaoghise. Does the Parliamentary Secretary in that case justify the selection through the local labour exchange of men for that work at a rate of 24/- a week, when it was well known that the local rate in that case is 32/- a week? I asked a question the other day as to the rates of wages paid to foremen and gangers on minor relief works. The Minister for Finance stated that the rate of wages paid to gangers and foremen employed on minor relief works was between 12/- and 15/- per day. Mark you, that particular rate was supposed to have some bearing upon the efficiency and competency, if you please, of the gangers and foremen concerned.

Mr. Flinn

I think the Deputy is mistaken. I think he will find that those were men inspecting relief schemes; that they were supervising gangers—a sort of semi-inspectors.

Mr. Davin

I asked for the rate of wages paid to foremen and gangers. What the Parliamentary Secretary may have had in mind I am not quite sure, but if the payment of foremen and gangers on minor relief schemes should have some relation to the efficiency and competency of the individual, surely a different principle should not be applied to the men working under them. I have always taken the line, inside the Party and outside the Party, that the rate of wages fixed in this case, supposed to be fixed by the Parliamentary Secretary, is an issue over which the Cabinet as a body should either stand and defend or remove without delay the obnoxious portion of this circular issued in the name of the Parliamentary Secretary. The Parliamentary Secretary has not yet been given Cabinet responsibility. This is a Cabinet responsibility, and as such should be defended by members of the Cabinet and not by anybody who has not Cabinet responsibility. I do not want to take up too much of the time of the House, and in that way prevent other Deputies from having their say during the short time at our disposal.

I want to say, in conclusion, that the Government of every country is supposed to be, or should be, regarded as the model employer of that country or state. It is a wrong headline for the Government to give to fix a rate of wages which is at the present time below the rate paid by the local authorities at the expense of the ratepayers to other people for doing similar work. I want to give a friendly warning to the Government—it is hardly necessary for me to do so—that the continuance of the payment of this rate of wages for works of the kind that have been carried out in the past under the supervision of the county surveyor will undoubtedly result, in the very near future, in some cases, in the local authorities reducing their rates of wages for the same class of work to the same low level. I have met many local councillors of the Ratepayers' Association in particular, and of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party as well, and Deputy T. Kelly will be surprised to hear that there are supporters in my area on the Fianna Fáil side, who take up the line that if the Government are allowed to continue to pay this rate of 24/- a week for doing a certain class of work analogous to the work done by the employees of the local authorities, then there is no good reason why, as was pointed out to me recently, the pauperised ratepayers of the same counties should pay from five to ten shillings more for doing the same class of work. Realising, as I am sure the Ministry do, that the Government should set itself out as a model employer, I hope they will reconsider the whole issue involved in the dispute which arises in connection with the issue of this circular, and in connection with the matter contained in the motion moved by Deputy Norton. We are naturally not raising this issue for Party purposes. When that deputation was appointed we had not in mind that the Dáil was going to be dissolved on the first Monday in January. We were appointed as a deputation to go in private to the Minister for Finance and argue the whole issue on its merits. If the Minister for Finance had taken our view, as we had reason to believe he did, by the attitude he adopted, there would be no necessity for us to go out in public subsequently and here in this House to-day to raise the matter. The proof that we have not made this a Party issue is the fact that we did not raise it during the General Election. I admit that the reason I did not raise it in my area during the General Election was that I had some faith in the word of the Minister for Finance. I am sorry to say that the lesson I have learned in the school of experience leads me to believe that the Minister's word is not to-day worth what I thought it was worth on 6th January last on the issue now raised in this motion.

Mr. MacDermot

I would have liked a little more elucidation of this problem from the Government Front Bench than we have had already, before I intervened, but, as the hour is getting late, I fear I might not get the opportunity of intervening at all unless I intervene now. So far as I can make out, from the host of rather conflicting assertions that have been made to-night, the real cause of all this trouble is that the Government did make a blunder to the extent of applying money for minor relief schemes in localities for which such schemes were unsuitable. If they did make that blunder it is, no doubt, regrettable, and one can understand perfectly well that it is unsatisfactory and intolerable to have men working in the same quarry, some getting 30/- a week and others getting 24/- a week for precisely the same work. But a blunder of that nature certainly does not call for all the heated condemnation and propaganda that we have been hearing from the Labour Benches for several months. It is a blunder that is capable of being corrected and I should like to hear whether, in fact, it is being corrected, or has already been corrected, by the Government.

It is a source of some satisfaction to me that the alleged crimes, committed by the Government, which we have been discussing to-night were committed in the happy period before the General Election. Deputies of the Labour Party are fond, in their speeches throughout the country, of drawing a contrast between the conditions that obtained before the General Election and the conditions which have obtained since. They have indicated in their speeches that in these happy days they used to have constant conferences and friendly chats with the Government about matters of policy, and that since the General Election owing, apparently, to, in their view, some sinister influence exercised by the Centre Party, these chats have become less frequent or non-existent. At any rate, these particular crimes were committed when the chats were in full blast and when the Government were getting the full advantage of all the moral uplift that might be derived from these amenities.

So far as the members of the Centre Party are concerned, we have nothing to do with producing the grievances that were complained of to-night. As a matter of fact, I do not know that we can claim to have anything to do with producing any aspect of Government policy. I think in connection with any particular matters where we have attempted to exercise pressure on the Government we have been as uniformly unsuccessful as the Labour Party have been successful.

Mr. Davin

What about the "Cuts" Bill?

Mr. MacDermot

We had nothing to do with devising the "Cuts" Bill. We supported it when it came to the House, but we had nothing to do with its origin.

Mr. Davin

You encouraged it.

Mr. MacDermot

We supported it after the event and we are not ashamed of the attitude we took up. We would do the same again. It is not the absence of these delightful parlour talks that has caused the crimes that the Labour Party are complaining of to-night.

I said in the debate on the adjournment before the Easter recess that this Party stood for high agricultural wages; that we regarded the present agricultural wages as absolutely deplorable and, in any attitude we may take on this motion, either in speaking or voting, it is not for a moment to be imagined that we regard 24/-, 21/-, 20/- or 18/- a week— that we know are actually the agricultural wages paid, even by the best employers—as satisfactory, because we do not. If the passing of any motions of this sort in the House would enable agricultural wages to be raised, we would eagerly support such motions. Unfortunately, motions cannot have that effect. The cause of low wages is the economic condition of the country, and for that economic condition the Labour Party must bear their full share of responsibility.

I regard this motion as a bit of humbug. I regard still more the speech of Deputy Norton in favour of the motion as humbug. Deputy Davin did make some real defence of the motion. His speech was addressed to the terms of the motion; Deputy Norton's was not. The terms of the motion, however, are in themselves suggestive of humbug, because they are cloudy to the point of being ungrammatical. I think there is a great deal of truth in the contention of the Minister for Finance that the motion was purposely framed with the object of enlisting the support, if possible, of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party as a whole and, if not, of the less responsible elements in the Cumann na nGaedheal Party. Secondly, I regard the motion as a humbug because of the record of the Labour Party. They cannot get away from that. The fact that they did not give active support to the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, when they were in office, does not absolve them from not having taken the steps that, according to what they now say, they ought to have taken by way of protest against these iniquities. I have not heard anything approaching a decent defence of their attitude.

Mr. Davin

The Labour Party took up a very definite attitude all along in regard to the rates paid for minor relief works. Of course the Deputy was not here and, therefore, he does not know all about that.

Mr. MacDermot

The Deputy is making a bold assertion, because he hopes he will not be contradicted owing to the fact that I did not happen to be here. These assertions, however, cannot be sustained. These low wages go back a considerable period, and the Labour Party had every opportunity of making a strong protest against them if they wanted to do so. Finally, this motion is a humbug, because the people who brought it in have done nothing during the last 18 months to improve the economic conditions of the country. They had opportunities offered them. They talk a lot about supposed intrigues that do not really exist, between the Centre Party and other Parties. One of the first things I did when I came in here was to try to get the co-operation of the Labour Party in turning the Government from courses which were bound to lead to the economic conditions to which, in fact, they have led. I failed to secure that co-operation.

Later on the time came in this House when the question of the financial revision with England was raised, and I urged that the thing should be dealt with on a non-Party basis, that we should have the co-operation of all Parties. I suggested that the one fatal course to pursue was to treat the Cosgrave Agreements as invalid and fraudulent. There was then an opportunity given to the Labour Party to help, but they failed to avail themselves of it. For the agricultural wages and the other things they are complaining of to-night, the Labour Party are every bit as responsible as the Government.

Mr. Corish

"Sez you!"

Mr. Flinn

I intervene because I think the House may feel they are entitled that I should intervene. I am trying to pay as much respect to this motion as I do not feel for it. It is a motion apparently drafted by an amateur lawyer. The Labour Party were offered by me, in no spirit of troversy whatever, but in the spirit of a servant of this House carrying out his instructions and undertaking the responsibility given to him by the House in connection with relief works, a discussion upon relief works, upon wages, upon conditions and upon everything surrounding them—a discussion of a perfectly free character. I said that everything was an open question, and that anyone who could show us a better method of improving distribution would be gladly welcomed. No one could show us that a more logical basis for regulating wages on relief work could be found. The matter was offered for discussion; we were prepared to go on with that discussion as well, on the Vote for the Board of Works. I was prepared to go into it in absolute forgetfulness of the fact that I have been called by a member of the Labour Party in this House "a bloody foreigner,""a dirty liar," and "an ingrained wage cutter."

Mr. Davin

Were these words used by any member of the Labour Party in this House to your knowledge?

Mr. Flinn

Yes, they were.

Mr. Davin

I certainly do not believe they were.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I certainly did not hear these words addressed to anybody in the course of the debate.

Mr. Flinn

I am not suggesting that they were addressed to anybody in this debate, but they were used in this House by a member of the Labour Party, and by a member of the Labour Party sitting here, and I reminded Deputies who are members of that Party that they should not tolerate these things.

Mr. Keyes

I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to produce the Official Report in which these things appear.

Mr. Flinn

Yes, and I might remind the House that the Deputy who used them was asked to leave the House.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair thinks that sufficient notice was taken on the occassion when the Deputy was asked to leave the House.

Mr. Flinn

I quite agree. This matter was here for fair and open discussion. I told the House that anybody who knew anything that was wrong in this relief scheme, or had any concern in the Government should not keep his tongue quite. Yet, in spite of all that, all that the Labour Party could do was to produce this lawyer-like motion in order to provide an academic discussion.

Mr. Davin

We have no lawyer in our Party.

Mr. Flinn

No; if you had, the motion would be drafted properly, instead of being drawn as it is, by an amateur. All the Labour Party have succeeded in doing, up to the present, in connection with this matter, is drafting a purely academic motion. Deputies could vote on this motion quite independently, whether wages were 5/- or 55/- per week. The sole issue raised in this motion is that the Department of the Board of Works, and not any other department, but this one particular Department, which had charge of the relief works of a particular kind, offered less wages than those paid on works estimated to be of a similar kind. This motion has nothing to do with the rate of wages. If the wages had been 88/- a week, a person would have to take exactly the same decision on this motion as if they were 15/-. That is the question which they have tied themselves down to out of the whole range of controversy on unemployment, where they had everything to discuss; all they have chosen to discuss is the purely academic question as to whether a particular department was entitled to pay a lower rate of wages on relief work than was paid in connection with commercial and economic schemes.

Mr. Davin

For a similar class of work.

Mr. Flinn

That is the only proposition. It does not matter what the wages are, the whole question is whether the State or this particular Department, have a right to pay less upon relief works than on other classes of works. I have just received an intimation from a friend of mine to say that I must not get excited and recommending me to take it easy. Very well. It was even raised that had it been the county surveyor who was employing the men in a quarry it would not have been so bad. If this Department had selected separate people to do this kind of work apparently the complaint would disappear.

Mr. Davin

Similar classes of work.

Mr. Flinn

Here is the answer. The Board of Works took over from the Land Commission a specific type of fund, for the relief of a special class of people, to be put on a special class of work, under conditions which had been previously well ascertained and were well known. They have not, in fact, gone outside that category. They put these people to do precisely the same class of work as they had been doing for the past ten years and, Rip van Winkle, Deputy Davin, has only now wakened up, after ten years, to the fact that these things are carried out under precisely the same conditions. Here is a Labour leader who admits that for ten years these things have been going on without his knowing it.

Mr. Davin

You have not wakened up yet.

Mr. Flinn

I am wakening you up.

Mr. Davin

I am shaking you up.

Mr. Flinn

Not a bit. For ten years these Labour leaders who have been in contact with labour conditions, coming here to plead for unemployment show how much they know. It shows how badly informed they were. They never found out in the whole ten years how this labour was paid for. Then Rip Van Winkle, Deputy Pattison, comes along. I wrote to him a few minutes ago asking him if he would give me a copy of the speech he delivered somewhere in his own constituency, and which was answered later by the Minister for Education. My reason for asking him for that was that I read a report of that speech in the "Cork Examiner." I am not going to accuse anybody of anything on the basis of what appeared in the "Cork Examiner." But that speech, as given in the "Cork Examiner" was the most disgraceful speech, from the point of view of the Labour Party, that I ever read.

I want that speech read to the House with the authority of Deputy Pattison. I advise Deputy Pattison to read the report of that speech in the "Cork Examiner," and if that report is not true, then I advise him to take an action for slander against the "Cork Examiner." The statement is there made that the Labour Party had been up for sale before the last general election. That is the meaning of it. According to Deputy Pattison the Labour Party, before the last election, were in precisely the same position that the "Irish Times" said Deputy Thrift and Deputy Good and the Independent Party were, when they said that the Independent Party and the Independent members had kept the Cosgrave Government in power and that every man had his price. That is the meaning of the speech delivered by Deputy Pattison.

Mr. Davin

And your price is 24/-.

Mr. Flinn

What is the price of the Labour Party according to Deputy Pattison? It was going up and they tell us what they discovered after the last election; they only found it out then. These minor relief works were going on during the whole period of ten years and were going on under the Land Commission. The sum of £240,000 was collected in a very ingenious way for the purpose of relief schemes by the previous Government. They had not time to spend it at all and some of it was left over and that money, at these rates, was being paid with the knowledge or in the culpable and privative ignorance of the Labour Party throughout the whole time and not for ten months. Minor relief schemes did not start with the Vote in November. How on earth do you think we could get machinery of that kind going if we waited until November to do it? There was expenditure of all kinds going on taken out of the other Vote. There were 1,250 separate minor relief schemes run in this country in the last year. We have had a very careful examination made, and of those there are 11 border-line cases which might possibly be said, upon the strictest examination, to have gone outside the ambit of the previous works done by the Land Commission. If that is all that is complained of I have no objection whatever. These are all under review. These are not cases which, on their individual merits, you would turn down, but are cases which are merely made doubtful because, unlike any of the other 1,250 works, these were just works upon which the county councils on previous occasions did think they were entitled to spend some money.

The specific difference between the works which we are carrying out under the minor relief schemes and the others is that they are works which will not be carried out by the county councils. 1,250 separate works; 12,680 men employed at one time; somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 men altogether given, not wages, not employment, but just given temporary relief in their necessities. I am not apologising for the minor relief works —not a bit of it; I am glorifying in them. I am proud to have been the instrument of this House in bringing into 12,680 desolate homes, in one particular week, the kindness, the consideration and the charity even—an ugly word, is it not?——

Mr. Davin

It is.

Mr. Flinn

——and whatever of the good human feeling of this House it was possible to bring to those who were in distress. I am not apologising at all. Let us get down to facts. Dublin is placarded with "24/- a week." I am giving the Labour Party credit for not having done that.

Mr. T. Kelly

There is no printer's name on the placards.

Mr. Flinn

I know that there is no printer's name to them. I know of a meeting in the City of Cork which the Labour Party people addressed and the city was snowed under with these placards, and I do not accuse the Labour Party of having put them up.

Mr. Norton

I must take exception to that. The Parliamentary Secretary, while purporting to exempt the Labour Party from any responsibility for putting up those posters, is, in fact, accusing the Labour Party of doing it.

Mr. Flinn

Unhesitatingly, no.

Mr. Norton

Does the Parliamentary Secretary say that the Labour Party had any responsibility for exhibiting these posters in Cork or Dublin?

Mr. Flinn

None whatever.

Mr. Davin

Why did you not leave it alone?

Mr. Flinn

I am making it quite clear that it is in places like those that the Labour Party is being used as a tool by other people. This agitation, which has been created by them, and which, I think, was principally created by Deputy Pattison——

Mr. Davin

You are the tool of the employers.

Mr. Flinn

This agitation which has been principally created, I believe, by Deputy Pattison, which has been wholly created by the professional Labour Party, is being used as a tool, not by the Labour Party, but by others; used by people who do not dare to put their name to the posters which they get another organisation to carry round and put up.

Mr. Norton

Are you suggesting that the Labour Party are getting that organisation to do it?

Mr. Flinn

No. The Labour Party are absolutely clear of any responsibility, so far as I know. I believe they have no responsibility whatever for putting up these posters. They have been put up by somebody else.

Mr. Norton

For the Labour Party?

Mr. Flinn

No. I believe the Labour Party have nothing to do with them, and I am going to tell you why in a moment.

Mr. Davin

Talk about the motion.

Mr. Flinn

Deputy MacDermot said that he was in favour of a higher wage for the agricultural labourers, and so am I. I would remind Deputies that on five separate occasions I have called the attention of this House to the deplorable and shameful fact, that the primary producers of this country, the small farmer and the farmer's labourer, are the worst paid people in the whole country. Do not forget that. How many of them are there? Farmers, and relatives assisting in agriculture, 533,026; others engaged in agriculture, 139,104; a total of 672,129 engaged in agriculture, against 194,000 of all other producers in the country. I am glad to call the attention of everybody in the country to this: that the permanent economic condition of this country is represented by the fact that the basic producers of the country 672,000 of them, against 190,000 of all other producers, are living, and have been living upon the standard of comfort which is represented by the sort of agricultural wages which have been made the standard of minor relief schemes. It is not a temporary condition or a thing produced by our opponents in ten years; it is the remainder of a whole history of misuse of the economic possibilities of this country.

It is time that the workers in the towns knew what apparently they never heard of before. I am glad to see the 24/- a week placards put up in the cities in order that the people who are not the basic producers, who are not the agricultural producers, who are not the agricultural labourers, who are not the men living on the five and ten acre farms of Mayo, who are not the men living in the bogs down in Clare and Kerry, will understand that the vast majority of their fellow countrymen to-day are living on a rate of wages which it would be an exaggeration to state is an average of 24/- a week. It is time they recognised that. It is time that every man in the country, who is obtaining a larger amount of sustenance than that should realise that that is going on. It is time that the people who talk of hair-shirt politics and economics should know that for 672,000 basic producers in this country the standard rate of wages is not higher than the basis of the minor relief schemes which are administered in this country at present. The sooner they do recognise it, the sooner that lesson goes home, the sooner we will be getting down to brass tacks instead of stunts like this.

Mr. Davin

Down to Briscoe's tacks —lower down.

Mr. Flinn

As I have told the House before, I do not pretend to have imagined that we would create in one year a perfect machine for carrying this out. There are going to be blunders. I will say it again. I deliberately hope that there will be mistakes in detail rather than that whole schemes should be held up and the insurance of overhead expenses put upon them to prevent detail mistakes. If, for instance, there have been two men working at two ends of a quarry at different rates, it is very objectionable indeed, but it is better that a little mistake of that kind should be made, in ten cases, if you like, out of 1250, than that I should hold up the work. What has meant the trouble here is that we have brought home to certain people who did not know that there were people in this country who were trying to live on 24/- a week the fact that there are such things. If there had been no relief works in Leix, Deputy Davin would not have known anything about it. It took him ten years to discover what was going on under his eyes. The fact is that he did not know. He did not know, for instance, that minor relief works were being carried out by the Land Commission in January, February, March, April, May, June, July and August.

Mr. Davin

It suits your argument to call them minor relief schemes.

Mr. Flinn

They were, my dear friend, they were. Oh, my friend, if you only knew how you are putting your feet in it.

Mr. Davin

Read the Official Report.

Mr. Flinn

I took over from the Land Commission the whole list of their approved works which they intended to carry out if God's providence did not remove that particular Government in time. I took over £250,000 worth of their approved works. I did not do them all because I did not approve of them, but I did do some of them.

Mr. Davin

They were election works.

Mr. Flinn

If they were election works, then we are doing election works also because we did similar works—precisely the same works. Let us take the question of Leix. This query was sent to the surveyor in Leix:

Amongst the minor relief works entrusted to your charge are there any which are not covered by the following category: (1) labour as engaged by way of manual labour on the work of cleaning, excavating and embanking rivers, streams and drains; (2) the reconditioning of bridges and accommodation works with the object of improving land.

And the answer is "no," and that is precisely the definition of the work which previously and very meritoriously was carried out by the Congested Districts Board and the Land Commission as minor relief works. Deputy Pattison says that the works carried out in his constituency were not of this kind. I do not know how long it takes Rip Van Winkle to wake up. The work done in Kilkenny under the minor relief schemes was not county council work. They could not do it, and the reason why I had to employ the county surveyor, not as a county surveyor but as my personal agent, if I may use the term, was because he would be doing work which he could not do as a county council surveyor.

Mr. Davin

Personal agent?

Mr. Flinn

I might use that term. I am trying to get a phrase for it. It was a sort of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde position. As Dr. Jekyll, he carried out certain works for the county council but, as Dr. Jekyll, he could not do my work. I had to create a Mr. Hyde of a much more urbane and genial disposition in order to carry out minor reliefs in a separate category. The work done in Kilkenny under the minor relief schemes was not county council work and could not be undertaken by the county council. If they had undertaken any of my work they would have had to maintain it and they could not do it.

Mr. Pattison

I did not say that it was carried out under the county council. I said it was done by county council workmen.

Mr. Flinn

If that is all the Deputy's trouble, he need not have come here to make a speech. The concrete embankment referred to was constructed with the voluntary co-operation of neighbouring farmers——

Mr. Davin

Voluntary?

Mr. Flinn

Would the Deputy mind waiting? It was constructed with the voluntary co-operation of neighbouring farmers immediately affected. This voluntary co-operation was a condition of the grant being made available so that the money expended should relieve unemployment in the district to the greatest possible extent. The embankment was intended to prevent the continued flooding of farm holdings in the locality. The one particular case that Deputy Pattison picks out as a non-agricultural minor relief work is essentially a minor relief work carried out with the co-operation of the farmers because they thought they were getting not merely the benefit of the wages but the benefit of the work when it was done. As I said, the thing was brought home to these Deputies and brought home to them unpleasantly, and now they are making it very difficult for me to bring it home as unpleasantly to them again. Minor relief works were previously done in Leix. In seven years, £1,233 worth of work was done. Excluding the Turram bog road, in one year, Fianna Fáil did £3,147 worth. No wonder Deputy Davin noticed it. In Wicklow, in seven years, the Land Commission did £236 worth of work.

Mr. Everett

A year?

Mr. Flinn

That is their total. I am prepared to excuse Deputy Everett from knowing anything about what the Land Commission did, but, in one year Fianna Fáil did £21,148 worth.

Mr. Davin

Quote the rest of it.

Mr. Flinn

I will give you the whole lot. The last time you asked for information I published too much to be good for you.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Parliamentary Secretary should address the Chair.

Mr. Flinn

With pleasure. I am sorry. The Chair wants to know that, in Wexford, in seven years. £1,000 worth of work was done. In one year, we did £1,650 worth. In Kildare, the Land Commission did £2,500 worth of work in seven years and we did £4,330 worth in one year. No wonder Deputy Norton noticed it.

Mr. Norton

And you reduced the wages in Kildare, too.

Mr. Flinn

All right. Go down to Kildare and ask them whether they want £2,487 worth of relief work in seven years or whether they want £4,300 worth in one year at the wages we paid, which are the same wages paid all the time.

Mr. Norton

And the people's money.

Mr. Flinn

Go down and tell them you do not want the work. Go down and say you do not want it.

Mr. Norton

And the people's money.

Mr. Flinn

Go down and say you are putting difficulties in my way, that you are setting out a critical definition through which I am going to find it difficult to get. Go down and tell them that.

Mr. Keyes

Do you want him to be torn limb from limb?

Mr. Flinn

Meath was another place in which we were all wrong and I want the Deputy from Meath who objects to it to go down and tell the people there that they do not want this thing to happen any more. In Meath, in seven years, £640; in Meath, in one year, £2,150. Go down to Meath and tell them that you do not want £2,150. In Kilkenny, the source of all this row——

Mr. Pattison

And first reported to me by a Fianna Fáil supporter.

Mr. Flinn

——where Rip Van Winkle has an excuse, the amount done by the Land Commission in relief works in seven years was nil. We spent £660 in one year and it is this that has called forth this syndicated agitation. I have an office through which millions of complaints pass, including resolutions expressing horror, hatred and utter disgust at Mr. Hugo Flinn for doing, and for not doing, all sorts of things. I have had complaints about the wrong people being employed, complaints that the work did not last long enough and was not carried out in the right places but, apart from professional labour, I have had no complaints about wages. I believe that altogether there were three political Cumainn that passed a resolution on this matter and they were all in towns. We had none of that from those actually living in the bogs, from those who knew the 12,500 people that we were relieving.

Mr. Pattison

What about my letter of the 22nd February?

Mr. Flinn

If Deputy Rip Van Winkle thinks that I can keep in my mind the date of every letter I received from him and the date of my reply, he is dreaming. Deputy Rip Van Winkle had better wake up. I want to make this position perfectly clear to the House. There may be men in this House foolish enough to think that they can get away with it here by saying that they do not know what the wage conditions for minor relief schemes are. They may be foolish enough to think that they can get away with the proposal that the people in the country do not know what was being paid to nearly 10,000 of those men who were actually employed during the general election, but any one of them will not be able to get away with the suggestion in the future that they do not know what is going to happen in the future. The sum of £100,000 has been segregated for bog roads and accommodation roads, and, roughly speaking, for what is going to come under minor relief schemes in the future. They know the conditions under which they were administered. Broadly speaking, there is going to be no change. There may be an incidental change here and there. I mean there may be a levelling up or a levelling down, but, broadly speaking, the system is going to remain the same. We are going to distribute that work as widely as we can among the people who desire to be relieved upon the basis of agricultural wages. Any Deputy who comes and asks for a minor relief scheme in the future will know precisely what he is getting, will take full responsibility for what he asks for, and for what he brings back.

Now, as to one particular point. It is a point which is worthy of consideration, and perhaps adds a subconscious strength to this particular attack—the particular phrase in that particularly secret resolution which kept its secret for ten years from the Department. That was issued principally because the Land Commission, in doing a great deal of estate work, did find that in giving a man not merely payment for work on his own holding, but wages on the result of his work, they were acting very liberally. To the extent to which these works which are carried out under minor relief schemes in the future are of that precise character, in which the direct benefit of the work inures to the man obtaining the wages, that principle is still sound. But to the extent to which these works get to the border-line of being done by people who in the ordinary case are ordinary wage-earners, then that proposition does not seem to me to be justifiable.

I was asked at one particular critical moment if I would withdraw that resolution. I said no. The reason I would not withdraw it was because it was a very easy thing to do so. The scheme had been in operation and was completed, and withdrawing it or leaving it as it was would not affect the issue in the slightest degree. But I propose to look into that question very carefully. I am not at all sure that that particular regulation is in the form in which it ought to remain. One thing I am perfectly sure of is this: that that regulation will not continue to exist in the sense in which it will interfere with the people who are what you might call ordinary wage earners upon relief schemes. I would very much like to suggest sometimes that the House should get a large wagonette and put into it the Deputies from the eastern and more prosperous counties and bring them over to see the almost unbelievable conditions— the 2,000 years behind the times conditions—which exist over a large portion of the country to-day. If we did that there would be an understanding of this wage rate as used in the congested districts for relief works. For instance, we have taken a social cross section of the country from Dublin right through into Mayo. In Mayo 75 per cent, of the total population are living on farms which are under ten acres, and I think somewhere about 94 per cent. of the total farming population in Mayo are living upon farms of under ten acres—ten acres of a kind that people who talk of land in Kilkenny, Limerick, Dublin— and even taking land in some of the prosperous portions of Clare—have very little conception of. There is in this country a poverty problem as well as an unemployment problem.

Mr. Norton

On a point of order. I moved this motion, and I presume I will be allowed some time to reply. It is now twenty minutes past ten o'clock, and there was agreement to finish by 10.30 p.m.

Mr. Flinn

I am sorry. I thought the debate was to go on until 11 o'clock. I will stop at once.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Norton to conclude.

Mr. Norton

This debate has been interesting in more ways than one. It was opened for the Government side by the Minister for Finance who was unable to read what is a very explicit motion. The Minister who normally prides himself on what I am sure he believes to be his inborn keenness and ingenuity, was particularly stupid this evening, or at least pretended to be so. He could not read the resolution. He did not know just what was meant, and affected to believe that the resolution as drafted was not put down for the purpose of getting a clear cut issue on this question, but for the purpose of, as he said later, securing the support of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party. The Minister for Finance, if he wanted to, could easily have understood the terms of the resolution. I suppose there is not much use at this stage in arguing with the Minister or of endeavouring to tell him what the resolution means. One has probably to rely for an explanation of the Minister's attitude on the old saying that there is none so blind as those who do not want to see. The Minister said that this resolution was framed to secure the support of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party. That statement, of course, is quite untrue, but it is quite on a par with many of the statements made by the Minister in the House for the past month. We know that on two occasions at least he has not enhanced his reputation—either in relation to the President's speech in the Town Hall in Rathmines or on the question of the availability of certain statistics which another Minister told him were not available, although the Minister for Finance contended they were.

I do not care where the Cumann na nGaedheal Party stand on this question. Having regard to their attitude on the question of wages in general and having regard to their authorship of the circular in the first instance, they might very well be allied to the Minister on this occasion. It would seem to me that there is a natural affinity between Cumann na nGaedheal and the Minister. The one thing clear from this debate is that there is a spiritual affinity between the Minister for Finance and the Cumann na nGaedheal Party on the question of low wages. I present the Minister for Finance with the Cumann na nGaedheal Party if he wants them. I present him also with the Ranchers' Party, the Party which assisted him to deny compensation to part-time officials of the national health insurance societies. I suppose Deputy MacDermot will lead his legionaries to vote for this atrociously low standard which is now to receive the hallmark of the Government which stands for a Christian State in this country.

The Minister said he gives the Labour Party credit for a consistency which was unusual. The Minister was pretty unfortunate in selecting consistency as a virtue which would receive his approbation. I should like to hear Deputy Breathnach on the Minister's consistency. I should like to hear the teacher who said he was assured that the President's speech in Rathmines applied to teachers' salaries on the Minister's consistency. If these people are to be the judges of the Minister's consistency in their regard, I think the Minister's reputation for consistency will be badly tarnished by the time these people are finished with him.

An effort was made by the Minister for Finance in his long carefully-typed speech to say that this work was work of such a nature that it was a matter of indifference whether they got any return for the money expended, that the work was only instituted to improve the workers' moral tone. Everybody knows that that statement is incorrect. The worker who is registered at a labour exchange can be sent to work on these schemes, and if he declines work on a scheme, his unemployment insurance benefit will be stopped. He can be compelled to accept work at a lesser rate than he would receive if he were receiving unemployment insurance benefit. To talk about its being almost optional to work on such schemes is just so much nonsense and the author of the nonsense knows that very well. The Minister talks about the aphorism which has been established by the evolution of society everywhere, about half a loaf being better than no bread. That is a good election slogan, which can be added to the 24/- a week. Half a loaf for the worker—that is the mentality revealed in this debate. It is one thing to give a man half a loaf instead of a whole loaf, but it is another thing, and this is what the Government are doing, to filch from the unfortunate people the whole loaf which they have well earned during their 55 hour week by cutting down their wages to 21/-.

Deputy Kelly was very helpful to-night in everything but one thing. He said that in 1931 the wage on relief schemes in County Meath was 27/- per week, but in Meath to-day as Deputy Kelly admits, the men are receiving only 24/- per week. Deputy Kelly has not explained to this House how it was that 27/- per week was paid in 1931 and that only 24/- per week is being paid to-day. Deputy Kelly was quite frank about it, a fact which again compels me to pay another tribute to the back benchers of the Fianna Fáil Party for their conduct. He did not like the wage of 24/- per week. It was, however, the best wage he could get, but he would like to have got a better wage. He admitted that he called a meeting of the people affected and they decided to take 24/- per week rather than send the money back. There is the horrible emergency in which Deputy Kelly accepted the 24/- per week. He would take 24/- per week for the unemployed workers in Meath sooner than resort to the horrible expedient of sending the money back. Deputy Everett was quoted as saying that he would prefer work at 25/- per week rather than have a man receiving home assistance. Everybody would prefer that a man should get 24/- per week rather than that he should be forced to live on 5/- a week home assistance, but the case for the 24/- per week is surely getting very thin when that kind of argument is put up to support it. Deputy Kelly said he believed that the workers would stand for sacrifices. The workers may not mind sharing in sacrifices, but it is always the workers who are called upon to make the sacrifice. The three gentlemen who were appointed to the Committee of Reference and who are to receive £800 from the Fianna Fáil Government are not to be asked to make any sacrifice at all. £800 a year for the people on the Committee of Reference under the Hospitals' Sweeps——

An Ceann Comhairle

I do not think that Committee was engaged on relief schemes.

Mr. Norton

No, sir, but if they had to live on the 21/- a week instead of the £800 provided for them by the Fianna Fáil Government they would then have some idea of what this wretched wage means to the worker and his family. Deputy Flinn, with that arrogance, verbosity and brass-necked tactics that have so distinguished his conduct in this House, especially towards the Labour Party, talked about professional Labour politicians. I do not know what Deputy Flinn meant, but in any case, I would much rather be a professional Labour politician, whatever that is, than be a professional dividend hunter, such as Deputy Flinn.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy should refrain from personal remarks.

Mr. Norton

I suggest that Deputy Flinn has been most offensively personal. He has called Deputies on these benches Rip Van Winkles in a most uncouth manner.

Mr. T. Kelly

There is no harm in that.

Mr. Norton

Deputy Walsh said that there were 12,000 migratory labourers in Mayo who would erect a monument to me if I could provide them with work at 24/- a week. I would remind the Deputy that the Fianna Fáil Party promised that they would provide work for 80,000 people when they got into office. One Minister went so far as to say that he was afraid they would not get the 80,000 people in the country, that they would have to send to America for them. I suggest to Deputy Walsh that that monument should be reserved for the President when he provides work for these 12,000 migratory labourers. I do not mind if that monument is erected to the President when he provides work for them, but I am very much afraid that as things are going, that monument will never be erected to him in our lifetime. There is no time left at my disposal to continue the debate further. I will only say that no matter what the result of the division may be, every Deputy who votes against the motion is voting for a wage of 21/- or 24/-, a rate of wages which, notwithstanding the attempt to whitewash it, is disgracefully low.

Question put.

The Dáil divided: Tá, 37; Níl, 65.

Tá

• Anthony, Richard.
• Belton, Patrick.
• Bennett, George Cecil.
• Byrne, Alfred.
• Coburn, James.
• Corish, Richard.
• Cosgrave, William T.
• Costello, John Aloysius.
• Davin, William.
• Keyes, Michael.
• McFadden, Michael Og.
• McGilligan, Patrick.
• McGuire, James Ivan.
• McMenamin, Daniel.
• Minch, Sydney B.
• Morrisroe, James.
• Morrissey, Daniel.
• Mulcahy, Richard.
• Nally, Martin.
• Davitt, Robert Emmet.
• Desmond, William.
• Doyle, Peadar S.
• Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
• Everett, James.
• Fitzgerald, Desmond.
• Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
• Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
• Keating, John.
• Norton, William.
• O'Connor, Batt.
• O'Leary, Daniel.
• O'Mahony, The.
• O'Sullivan, Gearóid.
• O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
• Pattison, James P.
• Reidy, James.
• Roddy, Martin.

Níl

• Aiken, Frank.
• Bartley, Gerald.
• Beegan, Patrick.
• Blaney, Neal.
• Boland, Gerald.
• Bourke, Daniel.
• Brady, Brian.
• Brady, Seán.
• Breen, Daniel.
• Briscoe, Robert.
• Browne, William Frazer.
• Concannon, Helena.
• Corkery, Daniel.
• Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
• Crowley, Timothy.
• Daly, Denis.
• Derrig, Thomas.
• De Valera, Eamon.
• Doherty, Hugh.
• Fagan, Charles.
• Finlay, John.
• Flinn, Hugo V.
• Flynn, John.
• Flynn, Stephen.
• Gibbons, Seán.
• Goulding, John.
• Hales, Thomas.
• Harris, Thomas.
• Hayes, Seán.
• Holohan, Richard.
• Jordan, Stephen.
• Keely, Séamus P.
• Kehoe, Patrick.
• Kelly, James Patrick.
• Kelly, Thomas.
• Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
• Kent, William Rice.
• Killilea, Mark.
• Kilroy, Michael.
• Kissane, Eamonn.
• Little, Patrick John.
• MacDermot, Frank.
• McEllistrim, Thomas.
• MacEntee, Seán.
• McGovern, Patrick.
• Maguire, Conor Alexander.
• Moane, Edward.
• Moore, Séamus.
• Moylan, Seán.
• O'Briain, Donnchadh.
• O'Dowd, Patrick.
• O'Grady, Seán.
• O'Kelly, Seán Thomas.
• O'Reilly, Matthew.
• Pearse, Margaret Mary.
• Rice, Edward.
• Rogers, Patrick James.
• Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
• Ryan, James.
• Ryan, Martin.
• Ryan, Robert.
• Sheridan, Michael.
• Smith, Patrick.
• Victory, James.
• Ward, Francis C. (Dr.).

Tellers:—Ta: Deputies Corish and Keyes; Níl: Deputies Little and Traynor.

Question declared lost.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.40 p.m. until Thursday, 22nd June, at 3 p.m.