I agree. The Deputy is going to do it. There are two tenses of the verb "to do" which are uniquely Irish; one is "after doing" and the other is "going to do.""Going to do" is not good enough in this case. These schemes have been going on. I have investigated complaints from members of all Parties and I think they will all bear testimony that whether we have succeeded or failed we have tried to get to the bottom of them. Deputy Minch has not. Will Deputy Minch send forward his names? All I can tell him is that they will have rigid and rigorous investigation and there will be the same desire to see that that thing does not occur as if we got them from anybody else. It has been suggested that even though the Government themselves have not sanctioned this—it has been explicitly stated that they have not encouraged or in any way connived at anything of that kind—that Fianna Fáil Cumainn have declared that no one would be appointed who was not a member of a Fianna Fáil Cumann. The same declaration made against the ad hoc labour clubs formed on the job—that unless a man has paid 1/3 to a new club formed actually on the job and created for the purpose he could not be employed; that the Labour Party have been able to say: “Unless you are a member of a labour club you will not be appointed.” All I can say is that they can all say that. The Blueshirt organisation can say it; the Fianna Fáil organisation and the Labour Party can say it; but none of them will get away with it as far as we can prevent it. We want that to be perfectly clear. We believe that a fair administration of this is a duty upon whomever it is is to do it and I believe it is downright good Party politics on the part of those who have to administer it.
We had I think 1,500 minor relief schemes last year scattered all over the country. Are those 1,500 minor relief schemes to be monuments to our impartiality? Are they to be monuments to our sense of justice and power of administration or are they to be monuments to our corruption? Where does our interest lie? 1,500 hoardings on which we can show, to the intimate knowledge of everybody who lives in the district, exactly what we are doing and exactly how we are carrying it out. What man but a fool would do that if he had any long sight? Therefore, if the Dáil is not prepared to assume that it is done out of a sense of fairness and of decency, let them be quite sure that it is done out of a sense of downright good policy. All I can say is that any member of the House who knows a case in which there is victimisation, in which there is anything of that kind done, should let me know at the earliest possible moment. He should let me know it while the job is going on and not when the job is over, because it is very difficult to pick up evidence afterwards. If we get it at the time we can send somebody down and we can go to the labour exchange and say: "Give us a list of the men whom you sent out on that job," and then we can compare that list with the whole list in the labour exchange to see whether or not the thing has been carried out. In my opinion the labour exchanges have progressively improved. Month by month the position has been better and better. If there are any defects now they are occasional and incidental defects, in no sense due to policy. They may be due to a formula, and if anyone can give me a formula whereby the labour exchanges sending them out can do better, I shall be perfectly satisfied.
As to the sum allocated for Barrow drainage, the previous Government provided £425,000 for the Barrow drainage scheme. That was delimited in a certain way. This Government provided a scheme of £525,000. That also is delimited before that figure is attained. If everyone who wants an additional mile put on can come up here and get his wish, then the £525,000 is not going to cover the cost; and unless we are prepared to envisage new Barrow drainage schemes, no scheme for incidental miles can be entertained at present. The new scheme added 90 miles of extra tributaries to that scheme. But you have got to come to an end sometime, or to a position in which we can charge up the work done. If then there is a case for extending the Barrow scheme that is another point. But odd bits cannot be added, and that remark I should say covers something like 200 applications in connection with the matter.
Deputy Norton wants bog development. There has been only one kind of bog road made up to the present. That is the small bog road intended to enable individual farmers and cottiers to get turf for themselves. These were only small schemes. They are manifestly valuable, both in themselves, and from the point of view of unemployment relief distribution. You could bring relief definitely to areas in which you wanted to give relief. These schemes have run into hundreds of thousands of pounds in the last ten years. They did not in any case, touch bog development for industrial purposes of a planned order; they would be of an entirely different character. The small schemes were made to help the individual man himself. This year for the first time we have spent money on bog development. There were £10,000 for actual bog development work in the relief scheme of last year. During next year a considerably larger amount of money will be spent upon general planned bog development. In the ordinary way we have made bog roads as relief work in the period when it was most required—in the winter months—and they are not the months in which the best relief can be got in bog drainage or development. In this year a sum will be available, and will be used in the summer and autumn months, is being used now, and will be increasingly used under a planned development of bogs under the Department of Industry and Commerce. This year you will see a very considerable development of well-thought out schemes to render the bog fuel resources of the country available not merely for the persons who live on the bog but for general purposes. Deputy Ben Maguire suggested that some of the moneys should be spent on seeds and fertilisers. Last year we spent a good deal of money on seed potatoes and things of that kind in the western districts, and this year we are also doing the same.
Now a plea has been made for minor drainage relief schemes. They are minor in the sense of practically clearing ditches, and small running drains can be attended to under minor relief schemes so long as they do not happen to be for the benefit of some particular individual. But as the House is aware there are two forms of general drainage in the country at the moment, one minor and the other major. And the difficulty is this: that if we begin to use relief money for the purpose of minor drainage we are going to get, in the first place, the fact that no minor drainage will be carried out by anybody except with a grant, and, secondly, while you are going to get the position that certain people are getting minor drainage for nothing. You will have put up dozens of schemes which will have to be paid for for a considerable period. That is a very considerable problem to solve and I shall be glad if anybody will approach it with a view to helping. We have contemplated work of that kind in areas which would have to be scheduled as areas in which relief of that kind ought to be given. But even if you get agreement in the House as to what are the areas in which such drainage should be done, I think you would all sympathise with the position of those who are in precisely a similar situation over a period of 30 or 40 years and have got to pay for this drainage, and you will sympathise, also, with those who have to try to collect the rates from each area.
One other additional problem is left and that is who is to maintain a drainage system upon these relief moneys. I do not want to be pessimistic but, looking forward, I see a good deal of difficulty having regard to the willingness or the unwillingness, over a period of years, to maintain this scheme. I see a good deal of difficulty in getting the drainage area in which there are statutory obligations to maintain. What is going to happen in a drainage area if we clear off everything without any obligation on anyone to maintain? We had to introduce the 1924 Act that deals with the reconstruction of drainage, simply to deal with the whole mass of the drainage system in Ireland which had been allowed to go completely without maintenance by people under statutory obligations to pay for it. Therefore, while I am very anxious to see money spent on drainage, especially on minor drainage, until I can solve a particular river I see grave difficulty in seeing how it can be done. I only want to deal with the points which concern this question. Is export trade necessary, and things of that kind were mentioned. The Ballyadams drainage was spoken of. It comes under precisely the same heading as the other ones. It is one of these things in which we cannot do much in the way of relief without raising larger matters.
Deputy O'Higgins raised a question which, in my opinion, is quite legitimate, on this measure, as to the present state of unemployment. I want the House to go back for about a year and a half when there was a particular method of registering people for unemployment. It may be taken that year by year the total rose, but it ended in a peak somewhere about 30,000 people. It had the peculiar characteristic of being at the maximum at the beginning and at the end of the year, and at the minimum in the summer. When this Government came in they decided to go in for intensive registration. Instead of men having, in some cases, to go 14 or 15 miles, the registration office was brought practically into their front rooms. Every police station, every post office, and almost every railway station, was made a place for registration, the result being that the unemployment figures rose like the face of a cliff. I gave in this House the position in Mayo where the figures rose from 300 to 11,000. Broadly speaking, they rose from a maximum of 30,000 to about 105,000. I do not think anyone, except on election platforms, has ever pretended that 30,000 and 105,000 are comparable figures. All sorts of things are allowed, I admit, on election platforms, where no man is on his own. What happened was that there was a peak of 105,000 and then the figures began to fall during the year. It apparently followed the old characteristic, multiplied by the new facilities, and multiplied by the new urge, represented by the fact that the employment exchanges were now definitely used for the purpose of putting men into employment. That raised the maximum this year to 85,000 on December 12th, being 105,000 at the same date last year.
I stated before in this House that up to the end of last year, every day, every week, and every month of the period from June until the end of the year, the figures were lower, whatever the reason. I warned the House that that was not going to continue, that we were now faced by a new problem, the Unemployment Assistance Act. The figures started to rise again on the 1st January and will keep rising, as far as I can see, until there has been put upon the register everybody who thinks he has a claim for relief under this Act. We knew that would occur. We knew that as soon as the Act came into operation—and it comes into active operation on March 1st—there was bound to be a rise. I can see there being added to that figure every person who thinks he is entitled to relief of that kind. Therefore, it is impossible to prophesy what the actual figures would be. What I advise Deputies to do is to take a piece of paper and to graph out the figures for last year and for this year. I think they will find that the figures will then explain themselves. I am not of opinion that there is any increase of employment. I am of opinion that there is a decrease of employment and I am also of opinion that you are going to have increased registration of unemployment, until you reach a new saturation.
