I regret that I cannot enthuse about the position of Gaeltacht housing as the Parliamentary Secretary enthuses about it, but I shall wait until later on before I actually deal with that. The thing that would strike one most about the Estimate this year is the huge reduction of almost £16,000 in the total net Estimate, or of £30,000 in the gross Estimate. That decrease will surely excite a good deal of comment from all those Deputies from Gaeltacht constituencies or from constituencies which have sea-fishing ports along their coasts. I shall watch out, with great interest, for criticism, especially from the Fianna Fáil Deputies from Gaeltacht constituencies, and more particularly, if they have listened carefully to the Parliamentary Secretary's speech, or if they have made any kind of a careful study of the subheads under which these decreases occur. For instance, a decrease does not occur in sub-head A, as the Parliamentary Secretary pointed out. As we see in the Estimate, there is an increase of £1,969. At the start let me say that I am not going to indulge in the rather ignorant criticism that I was compelled to listen to for a number of years as to the relation of salaries to any given estimate. That is not my intention. I know that you must have a body of civil servants who will administer the affairs of the Department. I know that they must be paid, and from my pretty long experience of the Department, I know that the staff earn their money, at least as well as in any other Department of the State. There is a provision of £840 in the Estimate for two temporary inspectors to which I must refer. That is the only question I will raise on that subject. I do so because we have not been told since their appointment, and we were not told by the Parliamentary Secretary this morning what these officers are doing. We must conclude that they are really doing nothing. Obviously they have not left their mark in the way of any increased activity as far as the Department is concerned. We must not be blamed, therefore, for believing that here we have two political jobs for which there was really no necessity, and that these officers have no particular function and do not earn the salaries for which provision is being made.
I was glad to have the Parliamentary Secretary's explanation of the first reduction of note, that in sub-head E1 —Vocational Instruction Including Boatbuilding. We find a decrease there this year of £1,000 compared with the sum provided last year. A footnote states that that is a provision for part of the year only. The Parliamentary Secretary has stated that the intention is to hand Meevagh boatyard to the Sea Fisheries Association. I should like to see where the provision is, in the sums voted for the Sea Fisheries Association later on, to enable them to staff Meevagh boatyard, and to carry on the work there in the extended fashion that we would expect, if the statement made by the chairman of the Association at the last annual general meeting was correct. If I remember aright the report stated that the Department had increased very considerably the staff of the Meevagh boatyard, with a view to being able to turn out in sufficient numbers the standard boats which the association required. The Estimate actually shows a very considerable decrease in the amount provided for the staffing of Meevagh boatyard. The provision for the staff there is £240 against £950 last year. The total provision is £1,000 short of the sum provided last year. Of course, we must be satisfied with the statement of the Parliamentary Secretary that everything will be all right in this respect, that the boatyard will be handed over to the Sea Fisheries Association, and that some provision will be made to enable them to carry on the work which they set themselves out to do. It would be a disastrous thing if we started economising in a service of that kind, because it would completely hamper the work of the Sea Fisheries Association.
Although I listened carefully, I did not hear any explanation of the astounding decrease in sub-head G 2 —General Development (Grant-in-Aid) to the Sea Fisheries Association. There is a reduction from £53,000 in last year's Estimate to £20,000 this year, a decrease of £33,000 in that sub-head alone. Even if we take the next Estimate, where there is a provision of £9,000 extra for advances for boats and gear to the Association, yet, it leaves a net decrease of £24,000 in the Grants-in-Aid to the Sea Fisheries Association for development purposes. A sum of £1,000 additional is given for cost of administration. What is the explanation? Is this part of the Fianna Fáil fishery policy that we heard so much about? During all the years that I was sitting on the opposite benches we had loud denunciations of Cumann na nGaedheal by the Fianna Fáil Party when they came into the House, of the neglect to provide sufficient money for the Gaeltacht and for fisheries. We made provision last year for £53,000 for Grants-in-Aid to the Sea Fisheries Association, but the first year that this Government are framing the Estimates they cut them by £33,000. Unless we get a very good explanation the reduction in that sub-head is utterly unjustifiable, and I am certain it will create heart-rendings around the coast amongst persons who believed Fianna Fáil speakers who visited the sea fishing ports. It will certainly give them room for thought. I will leave it at that.
Now we come to kelp, where under sub-head I 1 there is the reduction of £9,500. Under the sub-head for the payment of kelp-makers in respect of kelp marketed by the Department, the amount provided has fallen from £34,500 last year to £25,000 this year. Let me say immediately that I quite appreciate the situation. I knew, of course, that there has been a fall of 50 per cent. in the world price of crude iodine. But, have we not been making experiments in other directions. Did I not read in some newspaper last week that these experiments were tending towards the hope that a nutritious cattle food was to be expected from kelp? Experiments are going on with regard to finding by-products of various kinds in addition to iodine. What has been the result of the experiments? Is there any hope eventually that we will become independent of the fluctuations in the world's price of iodine? As I say, I quite understand that there must be a reduction in prices of the kelp gatherers but, about two months ago, when I put down a question to the Parliamentary Secretary with regard to the price of kelp—if I remember rightly that was about the third week of May—he told me the price had not yet been fixed. He tells us to-night there has been a great increase in the amount of seaweed gathered. I feel that it was very unfair to the kelp gatherers that they were not told at that date what the price of kelp would be for the year—the price per decimal point of iodine content. I presume that is the way it is bought now. The price used to be £1 per decimal point iodine content. For .7 iodine content you got £7 per ton for the kelp. For 1.1 iodine content you got £11 per ton for the kelp. I am afraid that these days are gone for a while. In the case of Tory Island, we were able to pay as much as £14 per ton for certain kelp. The kelp gatherers should have been told before the May weed came in what the Department hoped to be able to pay this year. It would be only fair to them to let them know whether it would be worth their while to gather it and burn it.
The Parliamentary Secretary surprised me when he mentioned that the agents are done away with this year and that officers of the Department are dealing directly with the kelp. I had not known that and I wonder how it has come about. I hold no brief for these agents. I do not think that I know any of them personally. But a great many of these agents gave up fairly lucrative agencies, which they held from foreign buyers around the coast, to come over to the Department when we started this co-operative kelp scheme. The firms who employed other agents were driven out of business through Government policy. It is very unfair, especially as regards those who came over to us voluntarily at the time, that they should now be scrapped in this rather arbitrary fashion. To many of them, this was a very considerable portion of their livelihood. In many cases, they had been at the work from their childhood, buying for various firms along the western seaboard. As I said, I hold no brief for these men, but I should like to hear from the Parliamentary Secretary, when replying, what is behind this doing away with agents and how he hopes to deal as efficiently with the kelp gatherers through the officers of the Department as we were able to do through those agents who were accustomed all their lives to dealing with these men.
There is the excuse of the fall in the price of crude iodine for the fall in the price of the kelp gatherers but there is no such excuse for the fall in the estimate for payments to the carrageen moss gatherers. This year, there is a sum of £4,500 provided under this head as against £10,000 provided last year. It is practically the same body of persons who are engaged at the kelp and the carrageen. They are placed in the same locality—the very poorest part of our western seaboard, mostly in the Fior-Ghaeltacht. Here you have, between a drop of £9,500 payments to kelp gatherers and £5,500 payments to the gatherers of carrageen, a total drop of £15,000 in the income of these poor people in the Fior-Ghaeltacht.
About the same time that the answer, to which I have referred in regard to kelp was given, I was told by the Parliamentary Secretary, in reply to a question, that they had not fixed the price of carrageen per stone this year. I have been told since—I have not got with me a copy of the Debates containing that reply to the question—that the price instead of being from 2/- to 2/6 per stone, as in former years, will now be from 1/6 for good carrageen to 2/6 for excellent carrageen. Something else must have happened, in addition to that fall, because the fall from £10,000 to £4,500 would not be justified if the price only fell the 6d.—bad and all as that would be. I say it is tragic that there should be a fall of 6d. per stone in the payments for carrageen. That fall of 6d. does not account for the fall of £5,500. I take it that the Parliamentary Secretary must not expect that anything near the same amount of carrageen is going to be saved this year. Presumably, it is because they expected this fall the carrageen gatherers did not go to the trouble of gathering. The Parliamentary Secretary must know that it was distinctly understood by the carrageen gatherers two years ago that 2/- would be the lowest they would be paid for carrageen. I feel this, in a sense, as a breach of faith. They were told that 2/- per stone would be the lowest price and that we hoped to make it considerably more. We were able to pay 2/6 per stone for carrageen and we had hoped to be able to give a bonus on top of that. I do not think that the bonus materialised but we never fell below 2/6 per stone since the Department started to deal with carrageen. For this, the Government must take the blame for, unfortunately, the fall in the price paid to the gatherers of carrageen is, I am afraid, directly due to the tariff on carrageen entering the British market. I can see no other explanation. That is, of course, portion of the economic war. It is not only the question of the tariff but the prejudice that was created against anything imported from the Saorstát amongst those persons who would be most likely to buy carrageen across the Channel. A great deal of money was expended in advertising carrageen for its food value and so on, and there was no doubt that it was bound eventually to have a very large market in England were it not for the economic war. A prejudice against everything emanating from An Saorstát, a prejudice in the ordinary English housewife's mind, absolutely prevented that market from expanding. As we said when this business was being entered upon, it is the poor who always suffer in this kind of war, and this certainly is an outstanding example.
The next fall that I will refer to is one to which the Parliamentary Secretary referred, and it is in the loans for industrial purposes. There is a fall from the £2,000 provided last year to £500 in this year's Estimate, and the Parliamentary Secretary explained this was not being utilised in recent years. I am rather sorry to hear that, because I know it was very distinctly in our minds, at the time the Gaeltacht Housing Acts were being put through, that, in addition to providing decent dwelling accommodation in the Gaeltacht, we were also providing houses in which possibly one room could be turned into a little workroom, where the loom or knitting machine could be used to the economic advantage of the person who owns the house. Deputies will remember the provisions of the Gaeltacht Housing Act. Not only were dwelling houses provided for, but poultry houses and piggeries were also provided for as being two of the things, as the Department of Agriculture advised at the time, which were suitable for the economy of the persons looking for Gaeltacht houses. In fact, it was made a condition of one getting a new house—unless the Department of Agriculture said it was not necessary—that that person should also apply for a grant for a poultry house and a piggery.
We had in mind as well this thing of having machines supplied to these houses where they could be worked in an atmosphere in which they could not have been worked in the old tumbled-down shacks which the Gaeltacht houses were intended to replace. I regret to see that reduction, but I suppose one cannot blame the Parliamentary Secretary if the money was not being utilised. I think, however, it is something which the Department should have pushed. It could easily have pushed the utilisation of this sum of money through its ordinary industrial centres in the Gaeltacht, and I have no doubt that with a certain amount of pushing it would have been taken advantage of. At any rate, it is a fault which amounts to, if I total all the things I have mentioned on the development side, a drop of £43,700.
We will now leave the reductions and come to one of the things to which the Parliamentary Secretary referred, just as if he were quite satisfied with it. The Department of Lands and Fisheries has very many varied activities. I have referred so far to those which show a reduction in the Estimate. I now come to sub-head M 1 —Grants Under The Housing (Gaeltacht) Acts, 1929-31. Here we have a provision of £80,000 this year, as against £69,000 last year. I wish that those figures could make one feel that here at least we had some increased activity; but, in fact, as every Deputy from the Gaeltacht knows, the contrary is the case. The £80,000 provided in this year's Estimate is in respect of commitments of the past, commitments entered into in the past. Deputies may not quite understand how these payments are made. The first Gaeltacht Housing Act was passed late in 1929, just before Christmas, in fact. It got into working order well into 1930, probably about the following autumn. It was only then that the sanctions began in any numbers, and, as the sanctions were issued, houses began to be built. There was a provision for a very small sum before the actual house was started, but as the house progressed, a man could draw a little bit more from the full amount sanctioned. Now, houses are being built. They are advancing towards building or are actually built, and of course, the money is falling due.
I invite the Parliamentary Secretary to say whether at least 75 per cent. of the £80,000 provided in this year's Estimate is not for commitments entered into before he actually came into the Department. It is obvious it must be so. Now, the true position of the operations under the Gaeltacht Housing Act was indicated some weeks ago in reply to a question of mine. The reply is reported in the Official Debates, vol. 47, cols. 1859-60. That reply shows that as against 1,166 new buildings sanctioned in 1931-32—that was our last year of office—there were only 345 new buildings sanctioned in Fianna Fáil's first year of office, a fall of 70 per cent. The amount of money involved shows a proportionate decrease. The amount sanctioned for new buildings in the year 1931-32 was £120,826, as against £38,928 in the year 1932-33. On the improvements side the very same state of affairs prevails; that is on the side which deals with repairs to existing buildings. There were 778 improvements sanctioned in the year 1931-32 as against 286 in the year 1932-33, and the amount for improvements sanctioned in 1931-32 was £48,291 as against £17,181 in 1932-33. Now, the state of affairs shown by those figures—and those are the figures supplied by the Parliamentary Secretary in reply to a question—calls for the condemnation of every Deputy who has anything more than lip sympathy for the Gaeltacht.
I do not for a moment say that it is the Parliamentary Secretary who is actually to blame, and I am perfectly satisfied that it is not the Department is to blame. I can well imagine that this condition of affairs must be heartbreaking to the officials of the Department, who threw themselves heart and soul into the work of making the Gaeltacht a better place to live in. I do not blame the Department. I blame the Government as a whole. I blame the Executive Council, and I blame, of course, the Minister for Finance, for the callous manner in which they are dealing with this most important social service of providing decent houses in the Gaeltacht. The Parliamentary Secretary is to this extent to blame, that he is lying down on it. Of course, there is the Minister——
